Dirty

 

"The Ever-Expanding Matrix Of NGOs Created An Army Of Useful Idiots..."

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Funny Money

“The revelations that are coming for America possess the potential to reshape our entire notion of the relationship between citizen and state.” 

- El Gato Malo on Substack

You’ve got to wonder how the Party of Chaos thought they would get away with the Stacey Abrams grift-of-grifts. 

In case you forgot, Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia twice, lost, and claimed she was “real governor” for years after.

In the meantime, she parlayed her celebrity persona to a $3.17-million net worth by 2022, doing nothing but running for office. 

She claimed it derived from giving speeches, publishing romance novels, and “wise investments.”

That was then, and this is now.

Stacey popped up again this week in what looks like a textbook case of political scamming, uncovered by The DOGE team of forensic financial investigators. 

As “Joe Biden” racked up Democratic presidential primary wins in 2024, the shadowy claque behind him allocated $27-billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the huge Inflation Reduction Act, ostensibly for “climate change action.” 

The money was stashed at Citibank, where it became a hidden slush-fund to keep payoffs flowing to party favorites no matter who won the 2024 election. An EPA “special advisor on climate action,” one Brent Efron, told a Project Veritas investigative reporter that “President Biden” was “throwing gold bars off the Titanic”.

The key to understanding how the Democratic Party works is how it uses federal grants to redistribute taxpayer money into jobs programs for its rank-and-file. As seen in the recent USAID scandal, the action revolves around the creation of countless NGOs (non-governmental orgs). They are easily created, poorly supervised, and assembled into large networks of self-serving, inter-dependent organisms whose main mission is paying staffers — and secondarily pretending to do good works, as suggested by a given group’s name is. These staffers make up the matrix of Democratic Party activists, well-paid foot-soldiers in do-nothing jobs who can be called upon to cheer-lead for the party, organize street protests and, most critically, harvest ballots when the time comes.

Stacey Abrams became a kind of field marshal for setting up NGOs around her campaigns for office and then later turned them into money laundromats for the trillions of dollars fire-hosed out of the US Treasury during the Covid-19-darkened “Biden” years. Here are some of Stacy’s NGOs:

• The New Georgia Project and its affiliated NGP Action Fund — set up for her 2018 run for governor. It was eventually fined $300,000 for failing to disclose millions in contributions, failing to register properly, and sixteen violations of campaign laws. Its main purpose was providing jobs for an army of activists. One question that might have been asked: how many of Stacey Abrams’ books were purchased by The New Georgia Project, juicing her royalties?

Buy A Voter?

 

Musk Details How Treasonous The Biden Administration Was...

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

During comments at the CPAC conference Thursday, Elon Musk detailed just how extreme the Biden administration was when it came to the opening the border and flooding the country with illegal aliens.

“It’s important for people to understand the Biden Administration sent any possible money they could send to amplify illegal immigration,” Musk urged.

He explained, “They took money from FEMA meant for helping Americans in distress and sent it to luxury hotels for illegal immigrants in NY. That is an outrage. They actually did that.”

“Not only that, even after The President (Trump) signed an EO saying it has to stop, the deep state bureaucrats still pressed send on $80M last week to send money to The Roosevelt Hotel and other places. Now they’re mad and they’re trying to sue to have it restored. The gumption of these people,” Musk told the crowd.

Newsmax host, Rob Schmitt then asked Elon “Do you think they were trying to create a new voter class?”

Musk responded “Yes. Look at basic incentives. If the probability that an illegal is going to vote Democrat is 80-90% then the incentive is to maximized the umber of illegals in the country.”

“That is why the Biden administration was pushing to get in as many illegals as possible. because every one of them is a customer. Every one of them is voter. The entire thing is a giant voter import scam,” Musk asserted.

“Then they created this CBP1 app to literally fly people in. When people are being flown in at your expense that is crazy. Then we found out some guy in London was paid $100M to make this app,” Elon added.

“When they’re flying illegals into the swing states, it’s not going to be a swing state for long,” he further contended.

Watch:

Where Is The Money Zelensky?

 

Zelensky Acted Two-Faced & Trump Is "Personally Very Upset" With Him: Rubio

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed in a televised interview that President Trump is "personally very upset at President Zelensky" over Ukraine's reaction to discussions on access to Ukraine's mineral wealth, for which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was dispatched to Kiev last week.

"We discussed this issue about the mineral rights, and we explained to them, look, we want to be in a joint venture with you — not because we’re trying to steal from your country, but because we think that’s actually a security guarantee," Rubio explained to Canadian journalist Catherine Herridge.

Getty Images

He described that Zelensky expressed openness to such a deal before apparently reversing course. Rubio said the Ukrainian leader conveyed that "sure, we want to do this deal; it makes all the sense in the world — the only thing is I need to run it through my legislative process, they have to approve it."

"I read two days later that Zelensky is out there saying: I rejected the deal; I told them no way, that we’re not doing that. Well, that’s not what happened in that meeting. So, you start to get upset by somebody — we’re trying to help these guys," Rubio continued.

That's when the top US diplomat emphasized, "We're trying to help these guys. Ukraine doesn't directly impact the daily lives of Americans, there should be some gratitude here."

"When you see him accusing the President of disinformation, that's highly counterproductive. President Trump isn't going to take that. He's not going to get gamed," Rubio added. "He hopes Zelensky isn't trying to hustle the United States, that's not going to be productive here."

"I think President Trump is very upset with Zelensky, and rightfully so." Watch:

Nothing To Hide

 

Apple Nukes End-to-End Encryption In UK After Refusing To Give Backdoor Access

Apple has elected to remove its most advanced, end-to-end encrypted security feature for cloud data in the United Kingdom after the government ordered the company to build a backdoor for accessing customer data.

On Friday, Apple announced that Advanced Data Protection, a stronger form of end-to-end encryption used on a wide variety of user data, is no longer available in the UK for new users. This affects iCloud data storage, device backups, web bookmarks, voice memos, notes, photos, reminders and text message backups, Bloomberg reports.

"We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy," Apple said in a statement. "ADP protects iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, which means the data can only be decrypted by the user who owns it, and only on their trusted devices."

Two weeks ago reports surfaced that the UK government had ordered Apple to build a backdoor into customer data globally - which Apple said was "unprecedented overreach by the government," which the company said meant that "the UK could attempt to secretly veto new user protections globally preventing us from ever offering them to customers."

Good Times

 

Watch: Trump Deputy Chief Of Staff Blasts Media Propagandists To Their Faces

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller torched fake news reporters Thursday during a briefing for playing along with the charade for years that Joe Biden was mentally fit, before giving them a lecture about how government works.

“Many of the people in this room for four years failed to cover the fact that Joe Biden was mentally incompetent and was not running the country,” Miller told leftist media correspondents.

He then noted that to counter the ridiculous leftist talking point that Elon Musk is an unelected bureaucrat, the media was in need of “a brief civics lesson.”

Miller then began his short but ever so sweet fact smackdown.

“A president is elected by the whole American people. He is the only official in the entire government that is elected by the entire nation. Judges are appointed, members are Congress are elected at the district or state level,” he noted.

“The Constitution, Article II, has a clause known as ‘the vesting clause,’ and it says ‘the executive power shall be vested in ‘a’ president — singular. The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president. That president then appoints staff to impose that democratic will onto the government,” he continued.

“The threat to democracy — the existential threat to democracy — is the unelected bureaucracy of lifetime, tenured civil servants who believe they answer to no one; who believe they can do whatever they want without consequence; who believe they can set their own agenda, no matter what Americans vote for,” Miller explained.

“So, Americans vote for radical FBI reform, and FBI agents say they don’t want to change. Or Americans vote for radical reform on our energy policies, and EPA bureaucrats say that they don’t want to change. Or Americans vote to end racist DEI policies, and lawyers at the DOJ say they son’t want to change,” Miller further outlined.

“What President Trump is doing is he is removing federal bureaucrats who are defying democracy by failing to implement his lawful orders, which are the will of the whole American people,” Miller asserted.

Watch:

JUST IN: Stephen Miller slams the media to their faces for lying about Joe Biden's mental decline for years before calling out federal bureaucrats.

"Many of the people in this room for four years failed to cover the fact that Joe Biden was mentally incompetent and was not… pic.twitter.com/t4Aj6BZvob

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 20, 2025

Is there an angle of this where we can see their faces?!

Legacy media doesn’t know what to do. They’ve been coddled too long by DEI KJP.

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) February 20, 2025

So, incredibly well put.

Exciting

 

Senate Confirms Kash Patel To Lead FBI

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Kash Patel to lead the FBI.

Patel had widespread support of Republicans - even Mitch McConnell (!), who argued that the Trump nominee would reform the nation's top law enforcement agency after decades of corruption.

"Mr. Patel should be our next FBI director because the FBI has been infected by political bias and weaponized against the American people. Mr. Patel knows it, Mr. Patel exposed it, and Mr. Patel has been targeted for it," Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said last week during a committee meeting to discuss Patel's nomination, before the panel advanced Patel in a party-line vote.

Democrats, meanwhile are positively spooked...

Goodbye NATO

 

"And Just Like That" - Does NATO Even Exist Any More?

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Even shrugging off three-plus weeks of shocking headlines, some in markets must surely wake up today "And just like that…" realize the world around them has changed dramatically. We no longer live in a market dream Manhattan with glamour, lunches, petty insults, and expensive shoes. Rather, we are in a reality with clamor, golf games, petty insults, and expensive jackboots.

President Trump has called President Zelenskyy a corrupt “dictator” who ‘started the Ukraine War,’ warning he must make a deal while he ‘still has a country left.’ That sounded like Kremlin terminology to many European ears. Yet the US walking away from Ukraine without them even being at the table is no shock historically: does one not recall the fate of the Afghan government? Or President Mubarak? Or the South Vietnamese?

In response, Europe is assembling a crisis group of the EU, except Slovakia and Hungary, and everyone in NATO, except those two… and the US. This leads some to wonder if NATO can hold together. Yet without it, what can the others do? Even as the UK and France float air support for Ukraine, bringing them close to confrontation with Russia, that still requires US logistics: some ‘Great Power’ and ‘strategic autonomy’. Where next if the US defence umbrella which markets have been able to lunch and golf under since 1945/1991 folds?

That question is also aimed at the EU. As Professor of European Studies @stefanauer_hku warns:

“EUrope is finished. And it’s not just that France and Germany might no longer find it possible to work together (as @BecirovicMuamer points out). There will be conflicts between those countries who continue seeking security from the US (e.g., Poland) and those who won’t.”

Christmas Early

 

Trump's Goal Is To 'Abolish The IRS' As Layoffs Loom: Lutnick

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Wednesday that President Trump's goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"Think about it, Donald Trump announces the External Revenue Service, and his goal is very simple (...) his goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay," Lutnick told Fox News host Jesse Watters.

Trump has said that the External Revenue Service will force foreign trade partners to "finally pay their fair share," and has previously floated the idea of abolishing federal income taxes as part of his plans for "tariffing and taxing foreign nations to enrich our citizens."

Lutnick also said that Elon Musk and DOGE were "going to cut" $1 trillion, "and then we're going to get rid of all these tax scams that hammer against America, and we're going to raise a trillion dollars of revenue."

The IRS is responsible for collecting the federal taxes from individuals and corporations - taking in some $823 billion in individual taxes in 2024, roughly 52% of total revenue, according to the Treasury Department.

Lutnick's remarks come as the IRS is reportedly looking to lay off thousands of workers. According to the Associated Press, the agency will start by letting go roughly 7,000 probationary workers in Washington and around the country. Those with roughly one year or less of service at the agency - largely in compliance departments - will be affected, according to the report.

The layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s intensified efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce through the Department of Government Efficiency by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who have not yet gained civil service protection. They come despite IRS employees involved in the 2025 tax season being told earlier this month that they would not be allowed to accept a

Resources

 

Trump Signs Executive Order Terminating All Federal Taxpayer Benefits Going To Illegal Aliens

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

President Trump signed his executive order, PRESERVING FEDERAL BENEFITS FOR AMERICAN CITIZENS, Wednesday night “to ensure taxpayer resources are not used to incentivize or support illegal immigration.”

Details of the EO are here.

Wednesday afternoon, Trump delivered remarks in front of a group of billionaires at the Faena Hotel during Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund’s FII PRIORITY Miami 2025 conference.

A White House official told Melugin that Trump’s executive order will direct federal agency and department heads to identify all federally funded programs that provide financial benefits to illegal aliens, and for them to “take corrective action.”

The measure is reportedly designed to ensure that any federal funds to states and localities “will not be used to support sanctuary policies or assist illegal immigration.”

While illegal aliens are not supposed to be eligible for welfare programs, the Biden-Harris regime abused loopholes to confer “status” to millions of non citizens as a part of their catch-and-release agenda, the Economic Policy Innovation Center pointed out in its December 2024 report.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), there were 10.8 million encounters with illegal aliens between fiscal years 2021 and 2024. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the net immigration of illegal immigrants totaled 7.3 million between FY 2021 and 2024. In comparison, net migration of illegals was negative in the four years prior to this.

For the past four years, illegal aliens have been receiving welfare benefits from many different public assistance programs, including:

• Food Stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, “SNAP”)

• Child nutrition programs

• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)

• Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

• Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG)

• Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

• Child Tax Credit (CTC)

• Obamacare Premium Tax Credit

• Obamacare cost sharing subsidies

• Medicare

• Medicaid

• Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)

• Pell Grants

• Student loans

• Head Start

• Public housing

• Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF)

The cost of welfare programs for noncitizens  is estimated to be in the billions.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated that federal expenditures on illegal aliens in 2023 totaled nearly $66.5 billion, including more than $23 billion in federal medical expenditures and $11.6 billion in welfare benefits from Food Stamps, child nutrition, SSI, and other programs.

In its “Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration On United States Taxpayers 2023” report, FAIR estimated that the net cost of illegal immigration for the United States at the federal, state, and local levels at the start of 2023 was at least $150.7 billion.

The Manhattan Institute estimated that “every new illegal immigrant has an average net fiscal burden of about $130,000.”

Who Was Your Daddy?

 

USAID, Soft Power, And How Solzhenitsyn Predicted This Crisis

Via OneLeggedParrot.com,

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) existed to fan America’s post-World War II brand as the guardian of democracy in the world. It was mostly an info-op euphemistically called soft power. 

The mission meant that it occasionally helped people, because that made America look good. The “AID” moniker was a rhetorical trick, though. USAID handled some of the dirtiest jobs of American hegemony, like union busting, censorship, and election fixing. 

Assassinations were left to the CIA, for the most part. 

Last week, USAID was shut down and everyone except a skeleton staff was laid off. Its employees emerged from the woodwork, quite offended. Shutting down the agency hit a lot of Washingtonians right in their “I’m important and the world needs me!” glass jaws.

If you are a certain kind of mediocrity who has known only the circle of money and influence Washington provides, there are oodles of self-regard when a great and grand wizard at the Department of State confers on you the title Doctor of Thinkology.

“Now go, therefore, and topple the government of Bangladesh!” – is a fair summary of the valedictory. That is not an exaggeration. Soft power did that recently.

Americans are marinated from their infancy in movies, media, and television. The foreign policy establishment occupies the Walter Mitty role in the American empire. Since at least 1948, Washington bureaucrats have been on a hero’s journey built around the conceit that the United States exercises power always and only to save the world. 

Having a steel desk in a stone building with discretionary control over a budget line item made you a Star Trooper wherever the Empire decided to strike back. Then 2016 happened. 

Trump won the presidency on the promise that he would destroy Washington’s permanent bureaucracy – calling it the deep state. Minor state functionaries responded by saying Vladimir Putin was behind him. 

In the clown cuckoo land of Washington, the Star Troopers needed to be fighting a diabolical mastermind with a Russian accent, or it was just not self-affirming. Getting mean-tweeted at by a reality show host with a wild haircut threatened their delusions of grandeur more than losing wars, which they had been doing regularly for 70 years.

The FBI officially launched Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016. A few days later, the secret agent who opened the investigation texted his secret agent lover, “We’ll stop” Trump. Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Trump and Putin had to walk into Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige’s. 

And, too, “It’s Putin and we’ll get him,” sounds better whispered over a pillow at the Fairmont Hotel in Gaithersburg, Maryland than, “people in mesh hats are exercising their democratic prerogative to stop funding our pretend world, and we may want to stay out of this one.”

At one point last week, Mike Benz – who has inhabited X for years as the bugle blowing Gunga Din of USAID’s mendacity – connected nepo baby turned playground mean girl Liz Cheney to USAID. Elon Musk retweeted Benz. 

To which Liz Cheney herself responded: 

Damn right, @Elon. I’m proud of what America did to win the Cold War, defeat Soviet communism, and defend democracy. Our nation stood for freedom. You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen.

Uh-huh. After she graduated from college, Liz Cheney’s then Defense Secretary dad got her a job at USAID in Washington, and she thinks she ended the Cold War. 

She went from there to law school and then in 2002 her Vice President dad got her appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, where she and her dad proceeded to wreak havoc. 

She now adorably thinks that starship lassoing Elon Musk lacks street cred because his daddy never got him a job where he stopped communism.

The fake world where Dick and Liz defend democracy, and Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige bang to Putin fantasies – the world of the Washington beltway – was hatched in the aftermath of World War II. 

It is an odd mix of propaganda, media, technology, and the storytelling method known as the hero’s journey. 

Grain

 

How USAID Assisted The Corporate Takeover Of Ukrainian Agriculture

Authored by John Klar via the Brownstone Institute,

A recent essay titled “The Real Purpose of Net Zero” by Jefferey Jaxon posited that Europe’s current war against farmers in the name of preventing climate change is ultimately designed to inflict famine. Jaxon is not speculating on globalist motives; he is warning humanity of a rapidly unfolding reality that is observable in the perverse lies against cows, denigration of European farmers as enemies of the Earth, and calls by the WHO, WEF, and UN for a plant-based diet dependent entirely on GMOs, synthetic fertilizers, and agrichemicals. 

Revelations about the evil doings of the Orwellian-monikered “United States Agency of International Development” (USAID) reveal a roadmap to totalitarian control unwittingly funded by America’s taxpaying proles. USAID’s clandestine machinations have long focused on controlling local and global food supplies as “soft colonization” by multinational chemical, agricultural, and financial corporations. European farmers revolting against climate, wildlife, and animal rights policies are harbingers of this tightening globalist noose.

The roots of the current globalist plan to “save humanity from climate change” link directly to the infamous Kissinger Report, which called to control world food supplies and agriculture as part of a globalist collaboration between nation-states and NGOs to advance US national security interests and “save the world” from human overpopulation using “fertility reduction technologies.” Kissinger’s 1974 Report was created by USAID, the CIA, and various federal agencies, including the USDA.

Fast forward to the 2003 Iraq War, justified using fear-mongering propaganda about weapons of mass destruction and neo-conservative malarky about rescuing the Iraqi people. The US-led occupation of Iraq became a rapacious profiteering smorgasbord for colonizing corporations husbanded by USAID. Iraq is heir to the birthplace of human civilization, made possible by early Mesopotamian agriculture: many of the grains, fruits, and vegetables that now feed the world were developed there. Iraq’s farmers saved back 97% of their seed stocks from their own harvests before the US invasion. Under Paul Bremer, Rule 81 (never fully implemented) sought to institute GMO cropping and patented seed varieties, as Cargill, Monsanto, and other corporations descended upon the war-ravaged nation using American tax dollars and USAID.

About Time

 

Trump, Musk To Discuss Sending US Taxpayers $5,000 Checks Using DOGE Savings

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Feb. 18 that he will discuss with President Donald Trump a proposal to send U.S. taxpayers rebate checks representing a portion of the money saved by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk is spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government and reduce wasteful spending.

The DOGE leader took to his social media platform, X, to say he would check with Trump regarding the possibility of introducing a “DOGE Dividend.”

The SpaceX and Tesla founder made the remarks in response to a suggestion from James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria, that a “tax refund check” be sent out to Americans after DOGE completes its work in July 2026.

The refund would be funded “exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE,” according to Fishback’s proposal.

As Katabella Roberts reports for The Epoch Times, DOGE aims to deliver $2 trillion in federal spending cuts during its 18-month lifespan.

Fishback’s proposal calls for 20 percent of the $2 trillion in savings—approximately $400 billion—to be returned to 79 million tax-paying households via direct payments.

That would amount to roughly $5,000 being returned to each of those 79 million households, according to Fishback.

He said the rebate “compensates American taxpayers for the egregious misuse and abuse of their hard-earned tax dollars that DOGE has uncovered,” and encourages them to report “instances of waste, fraud, and abuse” to DOGE, thereby increasing the total amount that DOGE saves.

In addition, Fishback said the rebate would help “restore public trust between taxpayers and their government” and increase “tax morale.”

 

 

Way To Go

 

US Designates Mexican Cartels As "Foreign Terrorists," Signaling Financial Warfare Looms

The US State Department has designated eight Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, setting the stage for a series of legal and financial measures aimed at paralyzing command structures and financial networks of cartels to stop the drug death catastrophe in the US.

"Foreign Terrorist Organization Designations of Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha, Cartel de Sinaloa, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Carteles Unidos, Cartel del Noreste, Cartel del Golfo, and La Nueva Familia Michoacana," a notice issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio read earlier this month.   

Rubio said in the notice that these cartels contain individuals who "have committed or have attempted to commit, pose a significant risk of committing, or have participated in training to commit acts of terrorism that threaten the security of United States nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States."

"I have determined that no prior notice needs to be provided to any person subject to this determination who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, because to do so would render ineffectual the measures authorized in the Order," Rubio added.

The designation comes about a month after President Trump issued an executive order on his first day of office to evaluate whether Mexican drug cartels could be designated as terrorist groups.  

"The cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs," Trump wrote in his order.

In recent weeks, we have incrementally reported USAF spy planes that conducted signals intelligence operations along the US-Mexico border, Green Berets from the US Army's 7th Special Forces Group deployed on a training mission in Campeche—a Mexican port city on the Gulf of Mexico, and CIA reportedly flying MQ-9 Reaper drones over regions of Mexico dominated by heavily armed drug cartels.

Analysts told Epoch Times that designating cartels with FTO paves the way for the US government to unleash financial sanctions to disrupt the command and control centers of these cartels. Then, after financial networks are disrupted, strike cartel-operated facilities... 

"You could go after people trafficking firearms to the cartels; you could arrest them for providing material to a foreign terrorist organization," Ioan Grillo, a Mexico-based journalist, told Epoch earlier this month.

Human traffic investigator François Cavard said the Trump administration's FTO designation would "make it clear to the high-level corrupt accomplices these criminals may have within the United States and in US government offices and agencies … that they're going after them also."

Here's the latest reporting: 

• USAF Spy Plane Runs SIGINT Operation Near Cabo As US Preps For Potential Cartel Fight

• USAF Spy Jet Flies Second SIGINT Operation On US Border With Focus On Narco Hub

• Border Czar "Expects" Kinetic Warfare Between US Troops & Mexican Drug Cartels

• CIA Reportedly Flying MQ-9 Spy Drones Over Mexico As Cartel Fight Nears

• Designating Cartels As Terrorists Will Have Huge Consequences, Say Analysts

Readers should understand that the disrupt-and-dismantle strategy is broad, targeting not only Mexican cartels but also transnational criminal organizations spanning from Canada to China.