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Trump Derangement Syndrome has made its way to the City of Brotherly Love.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) stood before a crowd this week and delivered one of the more unhinged public statements you’ll hear from an elected official.
The woke prosecutor, long backed by George Soros’s network, wasn’t talking about solving the city’s persistent violent crime problem. Instead, he was fantasizing about the future demolition of President Trump’s new White House ballroom.
Because that's what a city DA should be focused on ... or something.
"In about 10 to 15 years, we are all going to be sitting here with smiles on our faces," Krasner said. "And I'm going to have a paperweight sitting on my desk. And do you know what that paper weight's going to be? It's going to be a piece of the ballroom after we blow it up."
It's hard to believe, but apparently the top legal mind in the city of Philadelphia shares a brain wavelength with that of Madonna, who also once fantasized about blowing up the White House. Not exactly a promising fact for city residents.
After making the blatant threat, Krasner allowed about 10 seconds for the hamster wheel in his dome to start firing up, and he slowly realized what he had just said. That's when he attempted to add some quantifying details.
"In an official — official ceremony, just so we're clear," he said, clearly confused. "In an official ceremony, we're going to blow it up, and we're going to get the taxpayers their money back by selling all the pieces as paperweights."
"And I will have one on my desk."
Which would be an impressive feat, given that internal documents and statements by the administration indicate the ballroom itself is fully privately funded.
Krasner, according to NBC-10 Philadelphia, also referred to President Trump as a "pain in the ass" and an "embodiment of hate, the embodiment of ignorance and the embodiment of depriving people of their vote and education."
This is the same lunatic who once referred to ICE agents enforcing laws on criminal illegal aliens as "Nazis" and threatened them directly, stating, "If we have to hunt you down ... we will find you."
He backed that up with another vow to hunt down and arrest law enforcement.
“This is how it works. You commit crimes within the jurisdiction that is the city and county of Philadelphia, I prosecute you… No, the president cannot pardon you," he said. "Yes, I will put you in handcuffs, and I will put you in a courtroom, and if necessary, I will put you in a jail cell.”
Napoleon complex is a terrible thing. If you're willing to allow criminal illegal aliens, rapists, and murderers to run rampant on your city streets, but will leave no stone unturned in the effort to imprison those trying to bring them to justice, you're not a good guy. You're the baddies.
The same man responsible for prosecuting criminals in one of America’s most dangerous big cities is instead tucking into bed at night in his little "resistance warrior" underoos and dreaming about blowing up the White House ballroom and chasing down imaginary Nazis.
The California governor has spent nearly $1 billion on nonprofits that want, among other things, to dismantle the border, “abolish ICE,” and help immigrants “living with HIV.”
Former President Joe Biden’s administration oversaw an unprecedented wave of migration across the southwestern border of the United States. Migrants convoyed in “caravans” in hopes of overwhelming border authorities. Cartels trafficked drugs and people in droves. At some points, American authorities estimated that more than 130,000 people were crossing into the U.S. each month; arrivals came not just from Latin America but every corner of the earth.
At the height of this drama, some border states sought to stop the wave of illegal immigration on their own. Texas dispatched thousands of National Guard soldiers and spun razor-wire barriers across the desert. Arizona sent construction cranes to stack hundreds of shipping containers into a makeshift border wall near Yuma. Then-Arizona Governor Doug Ducey called it a “border crisis.” Texas Governor Greg Abbott called it an “invasion.”
California, on the other hand, welcomed the flood. In this City Journal investigation, we have traced the money and can reveal that Governor Gavin Newsom has granted approximately $1 billion to an army of nonprofits that has encouraged unchecked numbers of migrants to enter the country, fought deportation orders in the courts, and led street protests against ICE. These groups often operate under the guise of “humanitarianism” or “immigration justice,” but many, as we have uncovered, are in fact left-wing activist groups that use propaganda, lawfare, and street protests to transform America’s demographics and build political power for California Democrats—all on the public dime.
This is the story of how Gavin Newsom subsidized the illegal invasion and turned a wave of desperate people into pawns in his political game.
California was ground zero for the Biden-era migrant wave. The state saw an enormous number of people cross its border, including more than 400,000 illegal immigrants between 2021 and 2023 alone. Under Newsom’s leadership, the nation’s largest “sanctuary” state granted hundreds of millions of dollars to nonprofits that have encouraged the flow of humanity across the border, variously providing migrants with transportation, shelter, social services, and legal protection.
The expenditures have been enormous. According to our review of state funding records, since Newsom took office, California has granted massive contracts for migrant-related services: more than $250 million to Catholic Charities; $85 million to Jewish Family Services; $12 million to Centro Legal de la Raza; $23 million to the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area; and more.
Many nonprofits benefiting from these funds are shockingly radical. Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit that has been awarded more than $2 million from California since Newsom took office, helps migrants enter the United States—hence the group’s name, “to the other side.” On social media, Al Otro Lado touts its efforts to provide “freedom of movement” to migrants. In addition to providing legal guidance, the group deploys volunteers to “remote migration routes to leave water, food, and essential supplies.”
According to its own materials, Al Otro Lado is anti-borders and openly hostile to the American nation. In one Instagram video, the group’s litigating attorney Diego Teixeira clumsily summarized the view: “I honestly just believe that there’s no reason for why we should have borders.” In another video, the group shows off books from its library, such as Undoing Border Imperialism, that “remind us that the U.S. is [sh*t].” The organization, which did not respond to our comment request, is currently suing the Trump administration to prohibit the government from turning away certain migrants at the border.
Other groups focus on ideological subpopulations. Oasis Legal Services, another taxpayer-funded group, has worked on helping “queer and trans immigrants navigate immigration relief and benefits.” In a recent report, the group boasted that “the odds of winning an asylum case go up to 99% for clients when they are represented by an Oasis team member.” (The group denies that it encourages the entry of immigrants.)
Adam Ryan Chang, Oasis’s executive director, believes that “homosexual audacity” is his “superpower,” and he has framed his work with the nonprofit as part of a broader left-wing campaign of “liberating” the “LGBTQ+ community.” In a recent annual report, the group highlighted its work of apparently representing migrants with a sexually transmitted disease. In 2024, the report said, “one in six of new clients is living with HIV and the rest are all at significant risk of contracting HIV.” In 2025, the proportion increased to one in five.
In response to a request for comment, Chang said people “living with HIV are not barred from entering the United States on that basis.”
For Oasis, the public health implications are apparently not a cause for concern; it is all part of reducing “stigma” and ensuring that “immigration justice” prevails.
Once unauthorized people have crossed the border, Governor Newsom has sought to ensure that they don’t get turned away. Since the beginning of his term, he has granted more than $100 million to nonprofits that fight deportation orders—sometimes even for clients with criminal convictions.
One of the most prominent anti-deportation nonprofits is the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, or ImmDef, which has been awarded at least $6.7 million in state funds since Newsom took office. The group portrays the United States as an oppressor, denouncing the Trump administration’s “white supremacist” agenda and accusing ICE of causing “terror.” ImmDef has explicitly called to “abolish the immigration prison system” and to “abolish ICE”—which, in effect, would abolish the border itself.
ImmDef, which did not respond to our comment request, is open about its radical views and ambitions. In a 2023 video, its CEO, Lindsay Toczylowski, suggested that a Biden-era effort to restrict asylum claims was analogous to countries shunning Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. In a recent panel, she listed one of the group’s primary focuses: “getting people out of ICE prison.”
ImmDef CEO Lindsay Toczylowski (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for The Business of Fashion)
In keeping with that priority, ImmDef represents thousands of migrants in deportation proceedings, even working with some before they cross the border. The group’s Cross-Borders Initiative provides legal consultation and social services to migrants between the border cities of Tijuana and San Diego, effectively exploiting the loopholes and technicalities of the immigration and asylum system to facilitate migration.
Once illegal immigrants are in the United States, ImmDef provides legal representation to fight deportation orders, including for those with criminal convictions. ImmDef is explicit about this: it has adopted a “merits-blind universal representation model” and provides “post-conviction relief” to illegals convicted of criminal offenses.
It’s impossible to find out precisely how many illegal-alien criminals have benefited from the “merits-blind” policies of ImmDef and other taxpayer-funded groups. That’s thanks to a California law that prohibits officials from disclosing defendants’ immigration status in criminal court without a judge’s permission. But there are alarming hints.
In 2023, the taxpayer-funded San Diego County Immigrant Legal Defense Program, which has worked with ImmDef and another state-funded group, came under scrutiny for using county funds to provide immigration legal services to 34 noncitizens convicted of crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and acts “involving moral turpitude.” In its most recent annual report, the program claims to have provided legal aid to 65 such individuals deemed inadmissible on “grounds related to criminal activity.” In response to our comment request, the program insisted that such migrants made up a “very small share” of its annual caseload.
Last year, under pressure from state Republicans, the Democrat-led legislature restricted the spending of public immigration defense dollars on felons. But skepticism is warranted. The state has other channels by which it can protect felons from deportation, and, moreover, the law contains no reliable enforcement mechanism.
Meantime, the state’s more liberal Democrats apparently want to scrap the reforms and dramatically expand legal protections for unauthorized migrants. Assemblymember Mia Bonta, wife of Attorney General Rob Bonta, is working to extend state-funded legal aid to all illegal immigrants fighting deportation.
Assemblymember Mia Bonta (Photo by Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
The final part of Newsom’s illegal immigration machine is the activist element, which is designed to resist federal authorities who would challenge California’s status as a “sanctuary state.”
Last summer, the conflict between President Trump and Governor Newsom came to a head. Protesters launched anti-ICE demonstrations around the country, most notably in Los Angeles, where the riots cost the city $32 million and led to hundreds of arrests. Throughout L.A., agitators burned cars, looted stores, shut down the freeway, and threw rocks, bottles, and fireworks at law enforcement officers—all, effectively, to stop Trump from deporting illegal aliens from the United States.
An anti-ICE riot in Los Angeles last summer (Photo by Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Activists framed the protests as spontaneous and grassroots, but behind the scenes, a web of powerful, and sometimes publicly funded, organizations drove the narrative, and, in some cases, the “direct action” in the streets. At the center of this web is the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA), which, since Newsom took office, has been awarded some $110 million from California taxpayers.
CHIRLA can be described as a one-stop activist machine, with the ability to produce propaganda, engage in legal action, and—most importantly—get people into the streets. The group coordinates the L.A. Rapid Response Network, which tracks ICE raids and takes “direct action to shut down detention centers.” During the wave of protests in L.A., CHIRLA activists agitated on social media, led a street protest, and called for a “Summer of Resistance.”
At the height of the unrest, CHIRLA’s executive director, Angelica Salas, spoke at a street protest, telling crowds that ICE agents were conducting a “militarized siege” against illegal migrants. “We are going to stop Trump’s terror campaign against our community,” Salas said. “We will not stop marching. We will not stop fighting.”
Angelica Salas, executive director of CHIRLA (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
Congress took notice. The House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation to determine whether CHIRLA was using public funds to “support violent criminal activity that impedes the enforcement of federal immigration law.” Senator Josh Hawley accused the group of “bankrolling civil unrest” and threatened a criminal investigation. CHIRLA denied Hawley’s accusations, claiming that its protest tactics are “rooted in non-violent advocacy, community safety, and democratic values.” (In response to our comment request, the group suggested that City Journal was trying to “weaponize government power and intimidate advocates like CHIRLA.”)
CHIRLA was not alone. Al Otro Lado released a statement opposing the ICE raids and standing “in solidarity” with the protesters. The Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles, an immigrant-services nonprofit, was reportedly “heavily involved” in the demonstrations. The center—which features a picture of an anti-ICE protester on its website—has been awarded $18 million by the Newsom administration since 2019.
We reached out to the governor’s office for comment on this story. In response, a spokesperson denied that California was “‘funding criminal activity’ or bypassing public health law.”
Who benefits from this system? Certainly, the migrants who entered the United States without documentation and would like to stay. But also, and perhaps more importantly, the army of nonprofits, lawyers, activists, and bureaucrats who keep the system running—and keep politicians like Newsom in power. The work of these groups involves not only advancing an open-borders political agenda but also maintaining the flow of funds to left-wing activists who can use the issue of immigration to achieve the broader vision of revolution.
From this perspective, the 2 million illegal migrants in California are pawns—merely the instruments of an activist class that would like to see America burn.
Remember that Air Force major who decided it would be a good idea to put on his uniform, march onto the steps of the United States Capitol, and publicly demand that President Trump be impeached? Well, he just found out that actions have consequences, particularly when it comes to active-duty military personnel who call out their commander in chief.
The airman in question is Maj. Jason Watson, and he has now been formally charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) with multiple offenses stemming from his July 1 stunt. Accompanied by Democrat Rep. Al Green (TX-09) and carrying a sign that read "Impeach Convict Remove," Watson called for the removal of both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
"When the President of the United States orders military action against foreign countries, absent an emergency scenario, where American interests are under imminent, dire threat -- as was done with Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran -- that's an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress' authority, and a violation of the War Powers Clause," Watson foamed at the mouth. "These violations resulted in the deaths of 13 service members, and injuries of hundreds more."
"For this, the president and vice president must be impeached, convicted, and removed."
Here's video of Watson's stunt.
The Air Force immediately launched an investigation, and Watson certainly didn't help himself by going on CNN last week to double down on his calls for a presidential impeachment.
“What is happening with President Trump is not normal,” Watson told CNN's Erin Burnett. He then accused President Trump of “flagrantly violating the Constitution,” “breaking the law,” engaging in “rampant corruption,” and “killing Americans.”
Then came this remarkable line: “I believe we can defeat this government if we just take a stand.”
Except he can't take a stand because he's still an active-duty military officer, not a civilian political activist who's free to say whatever he wants.
Well, Watson's behavior has now caught up to him, and he's been formally charged under UCMJ with 10 offenses stemming from his very public campaign against President Trump.
BREAKING: US Airman Jason Watson has been hit with MULTIPLE criminal military charges after he called for President Trump to be impeached while in uniform at the US Capitol
He is now IN CUSTODY. FAFO!
The charges are:
- 3 violations of Article 88: Contempt Toward Officials
- 5 violations of Article 92: Failure to Obey Regulations
- 2 violations of Article 133: Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer
Make an example out of him!
Watson had been taken into pretrial confinement by the Air Force following his CNN appearance – an Air Force spokesperson said the decision was based on “probable cause to support allegations of continued misconduct.”
Watson is currently on a military hold at a Maryland detention facility.
For those who might be new to this series, qualifying for our monthly “Dishonorable Judicial Conduct Award” means a judge has refused to apply the law as written or follow binding precedents or has made absurd findings that twist or defy the facts in a case. And the judge does this to achieve a particular — and usually a “woke” — political, social, or cultural outcome. Our August award goes to two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington who just want to interfere with the White House addition currently under construction.
In National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP), a non-profit group chartered by Congress, sued to stop construction of the addition that includes a ballroom above ground and security and communications facilities below. The first rule in civil lawsuits like this is that the plaintiff must have legal “standing,” that is, an imminent and particularized legal injury caused by the defendant that a court is able to remedy. No standing, no lawsuit.
The NTHP said it was suing on behalf of one member, retired Professor Alison Hoagland, who claimed that “the sight of the ballroom will harm her during her monthly walks past the White House.” That’s right, she claimed this “aesthetic injury” was so real, so imminent, that she could ask a federal judge to just stop the whole thing in its tracks. A district judge bought it, issued a temporary restraining order, and in a 2-1 decision, the appeals court affirmed the order. Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia, appointed, respectively, by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, jointly wrote the majority opinion and easily earn our Dishonorable Judicial Conduct Award.
Their opinion has lots of rhetoric about their personal opposition to this construction that has nothing to do with the legal issue before them. They expressed, for example, their outrage at the fact that the president “unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for.”
What does it matter whether Congress authorized the prior construction or the taxpayers paid for it? The legal question was whether one person’s distaste for the design or the dimensions gave her standing to sue over it. That is an easy question to answer, and they got it wrong.
Those who have served in administrations of both parties, Republicans and Democrats, will tell you that expanding the space for large White House events, such as state dinners, is long overdue. Whether the White House needs more event space as well as an adjoining safe-space for the president in the event of an attack, and what that space should look like, are policy decisions. The legal issue here is whether someone not liking the White House design choices has enough skin in the game to file a lawsuit.
In a long line of precedents, the Supreme Court has held that to have standing to file a lawsuit, you must show an actual, concrete injury. Taxpayers, or even members of Congress, who don’t like policy decisions of the executive branch or a president don’t have an actual injury and don’t have standing to go to federal court and challenge those decisions.
The facts here are very straightforward. Because the White House is situated in President's Park, a unit of the National Park System, the Office of the Executive Residence is managing the project in coordination with the National Park Service. As dissenting Judge Neomi Rao explained, the NTHP has no standing because it was not provided by Congress “with any statutory authority or interest pertinent to the White House.”
The NTHP, Congress said when creating it, can “acquire real property for preservation,” but is strictly “prohibited from acquiring property within the National Park System.” Thus, the NTHP is violating its own charter by even bringing this lawsuit, and it has no standing. According to Rao, the majority claims the National Trust has standing to pursue lawsuits for purposes unconnected to its congressional statutory grant: “But that is really grasping at straws… [t]he majority's authorities are thus worthy of no more precedential effect than a drive-by jurisdictional ruling, which is to say: none.”
The NTHP must have known that it was grasping at legal straws and so brought Hoagland along just in case. But an organization cannot sue on behalf of its members unless those members have their own standing. All Hoagland could claim was that she occasionally walks by the White House and, assuming she would continue doing so, seeing the new ballroom will be aesthetically displeasing to her. Her entire claim is based on her saying that she anticipates being “impressed with the White House” but “displeased with the planned ballroom.”
The fact that Millett and Garcia gave her standing not only violates binding precedent on standing, as Rao ably points out, but it is also patently absurd. The court elevated “the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government's security interests in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President's home and office.”
Hoagland obviously “has failed to demonstrate an imminent and particularized injury in fact,” wrote Rao. Not only should the injunction never have been issued, but the case should have been dismissed immediately because of the blatant lack of standing of the challengers. But in “deciding the ballroom construction ‘has to stop!’” says Rao, the court “transgressed the equitable authority of the federal courts. The preliminary injunction is a clear abuse of discretion.”
Millett and Garcia tried to justify their activism by claiming that Trump's actions to renovate the White House, improve its security, and provide the needed additional space for official functions will “seriously intrude on the public interest.” The opinion is full of this mushy, vague, subjective rhetoric.
No, what “seriously intrudes on the public interest” is partisan judges acting far outside of their judicial authority and interfering in the functions of the executive branch. Fortunately, Chief Justice John Roberts has issued a temporary administrative stay of that injunction while the Court considers an emergency appeal from the Trump administration.
But such misbehavior by the lower court deserves a Dishonorable Judicial Conduct Award.
America has a serious entitlement-spending problem, and the scale of Medicare fraud is making it worse.
Over the weekend, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, warned that Medicare’s trust fund is projected to become insolvent within the next six to seven years. But Oz argued that by eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse within the program, it could double the it's lifespan, delivering twice as many years of benefits without asking taxpayers to pour even more money into the already broken system.
"I'll just put it in the context of what you just gave me. The insolvency of the Medicare trust fund, which is gonna happen in six to seven years, it'll last twice as long, think about that, twice as many years of benefits if we just take the fraud out of Medicare," Dr. Oz said on CBS News' Face the Nation. "Forget about everything else. Just this past year, we cut $42 billion of fraud from Medicare by never leaving the money out of the door. And those are the kinds of benefits. We're seeing dramatic changes in durable medical equipment fraud by a nationwide moratorium. 42 billion, the federal government paid 1.2 trillion on Medicare benefits. That's just the beginning. That was last year. We hadn't even gotten to full speed."
"But let me just point one reality out. This is important. The fraud doesn't just steal money. It steals our trust. And we have states that are not working closely with us on these issues. And that's because in some cases, what's fraud to us, objectively, is actually a feature for the states," he continued. "But you're acknowledging that while important work is not sufficient to that massive financial problem. The even bigger benefit. More needs to be done."
More absolutely needs to be done. Democrats campaign on increasing entitlement spending, which means increased taxes, while Republicans campaign on saving money, but few have even attempted to tackle the issue that will haunt the country in the near future: the seemingly impossible task of reforming federal entitlement programs.
However, Dr. Oz suggested that emerging developments could make politicians’ jobs easier when it comes to cutting costs and extending Medicare’s lifespan, especially as the country enters a new technological era driven by artificial intelligence.
"What's even bigger as an opportunity to save us money is the use of technology, including artificial intelligence," Oz said.
This comes less than a week after the national debt crossed $40 trillion, with few in Washington offering a realistic plan to bring it under control. The debt has been driven in large part by the growing cost of entitlement programs and interest payments, costs that will only rise as politicians across the political spectrum continue campaigning on promises of more "free" government benefits.
The Democratic Socialists of America may be the most candid about their appetite for expanding the welfare state, but they are hardly alone in treating the expansion of government programs and power as a political selling point.
