Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia announced Tuesday that she intends to vote against the proposed fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, saying the legislation spends too much taxpayer money on foreign priorities. 

Greene said in a post on X that the NDAA is ‘filled with American’s hard earned tax dollars used to fund foreign aid and foreign country’s wars.’

Greene pointed to the rising national debt, which, according to fiscaldata.treasury.gov, is more than $38.39 trillion.

‘These American People are $38 Trillion in debt, suffering from an affordability crisis, on the verge of a healthcare crisis, and credit card debt is at an all time high. Funding foreign aid and foreign wars is America Last and is beyond excuse anymore. I would love to fund our military but refuse to support foreign aid and foreign militaries and foreign wars. I am here and will be voting NO,’ Greene declared in her post.

But House Speaker Mike Johnson has praised the proposed NDAA.

‘This year’s National Defense Authorization Act helps advance President Trump and Republicans’ Peace Through Strength Agenda by codifying 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the warrior ethos,’ Johnson said in part of a lengthy statement.

Greene plans to leave office early next month, in the middle of her two-year term.

George Washington Plunkitt was born into poverty in 1842 but rose through the ranks of the Democratic Party machine of New York, the famed ‘Tammany Hall,’ to become a state representative and a state senator. He also became quite wealthy along the way.

Plunkitt always defended his machine and its methods — and the money they made him. Plunkitt would gladly defend the practices of Tammany, rebutting charges of corruption with the standard reply that ‘nobody thinks of drawin’ the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There’s all the difference in the world between the two.’

Plunkitt’s brazenness lives on in the modern-day machines of the left, found in the deep-blue jurisdictions of the country. With the focus on the bilking of Minnesota taxpayers by the Somali community of the Twin Cities (many citizens, many not), voters across the country are still in shock as the story has unfolded since 2022. The lights shone on the Gopher State should get much brighter now, and after that, I have a follow-up that will make the swamp of the Twin Cities seem like a puddle.

The Minnesota story has been hiding in plain sight, with superb reporters from one of the original blogs of more than 20 years ago, Powerline, poring over the scandal for years.

Powerline’s founders John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson, and more recently their colleague Bill Glahn, have continued to dig and report, dig and report, dig and report on the ‘Somali connection.’

In recent weeks, the story caught fire with the help of reporting by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and by Fox News. That ‘Minnesota is drowning in fraud,’ as Thorpe and Rufo put it, has now become a national story. Pray that it is the first of many.

‘There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works,’ Boss Plunkitt would say. ‘I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.’

Turns out the defendants, the indicted and the convicted in the Gopher State saw their opportunities as well, and they put Tammany to shame when it came to scale and speed.

The conmen of Minnesota bilked the state out of vast piles of cash through a variety of plays, the most infamous of which is, for the moment, ‘Feeding Our Future.’ It took truly extraordinary efforts by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, to turn their eyes the other way to allow that scam and soon others to flourish. The possessed girl in ‘The Exorcist’ had nothing on Walz and Ellison when it came to turning their heads.

We have former Attorney General Eric Holder and former White House Counsel Dana Remus to thank for elevating the massive fraud ring run primarily out of the Somali American and Somali community in the Twin Cities to the nation’s attention.

Why? Because that pair made Walz much more than an obscure governor of a deep-blue state. That duo was primarily responsible for ‘vetting’ the 2024 Democratic nominee for vice president as one of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ potential running mates. The dynamic duo of Holder and Remus either wholly missed the massive cons run on Walz’s watch or judged them not significant enough to derail his candidacy.

During ‘Brat Summer,’ the legacy media abandoned its past practices and joined in the effort to push the worst pair of candidates to the finish since Alf Landon and Frank Knox got blown out by FDR in the 1936 referendum on Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Holder blessed Walz, and Holder’s fans in the Manhattan–Beltway corridor followed suit. Media elites blessed Holder’s judgment in turn.

Big mistake.

Now Walz is part of the national Democratic Party’s brand and refuses to go away, choosing to concentrate his efforts on running for a third term as governor next year — and apparently hoping he might be the party’s standard-bearer in 2028. Instead, ‘Feeding Our Future’ broke out of the Minnesota news ghetto and onto the national stage.

‘Run Tim Run’ should be the GOP’s chant, alongside ‘Run Gavin Run,’ because just like Walz, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has some industrial-level explaining to do.

No, I’m not referring to the California governor’s French Laundry debacle. And no, not the devastating fires that tore through L.A. in January. Not even his indicted former chief of staff. No, the exact parallel to Walz’s woe is the Newsom administration’s handling of COVID-era relief for the unemployed — a statewide con run by political cons.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA), like the Lost Wages Assistance plan, was devised and funded by Congress to keep alive Americans left unemployed or with their businesses shuttered by COVID lockdowns. Like standard unemployment programs, these COVID-era programs were primarily run through state unemployment insurance offices and other state agencies.

The COVID lockdowns were unprecedented, and the public health ‘authorities’ responsible for advising and administering them should never be taken seriously again.

Many of those bureaucrats, drunk on new authority, stepped forward when elected officials sought guidance on what to do about the mysterious and deadly disease imported from China. (Their dismissal of the lab-leak theory speaks to their actual, as opposed to presumed, expertise.)

When lockdowns became the solution du jour, Congress rightly understood that they were shutting down the livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans and flooded the country with life-saving money — three times.

It was not just the Minnesota Somali community that had ‘seen their opportunities and took ‘em.’ So, too, did the cons of California: the real, honest-to-goodness cons of the California penal system — inmates for whom available time to scheme and scam is abundant.

Ask your favorite AI engine, ‘How much fraud was perpetrated against the California Employment Development Department during COVID?’ The answers will vary, but the floor on the cost of the fraud is $20 billion. The ceiling is more than $30 billion.

The Golden State’s EDD is ‘run’ by a director, and Gov. Newsom, who took office in 2018, has appointed two: Rita Saenz and Nancy Farias. COVID arrived on Newsom’s watch, and he and his appointees should own the fraud that followed. They make the Walz–Ellison team look like pikers when it comes to ignoring fraud.

In his first term, President Trump stood up Operation Warp Speed, and Congress rightly decided to (1) spend federal dollars to lessen the lockdown pain and (2) leave the payment of most public benefits to state agencies, while COVID business loans were handled by private-sector banks as the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department innovated in a variety of ways to prevent an economic crash.

The years following the mishap at the Wuhan lab demonstrated the vast incompetence of the American administrative state but also the necessity of a federal government to pick up the tab when ‘scientists’ lose their collective minds and, for example, counsel the closure of schools.

The official timeline has COVID appearing in Wuhan in December 2019 and reaching U.S. shores a month later. We may never know when the first cases were diagnosed by the Chinese Communist Party, and we are not in a position to investigate the horrific fraud and consequent disaster for which General Secretary Xi Jinping is responsible.

But President Trump could order a six-month deep dive into the financial fraud that followed in the U.S., not just in Minnesota and California — though those are the ‘patient zeroes’ for never allowing a crisis to pass without enriching the state’s worst actors.

Could President Trump stand up a time-limited panel to investigate fraud perpetrated on state agencies during COVID? Yes. Might that panel torch a few GOP reputations along the way? Inevitably.

But the interest in the Minnesota Somali shakedown should be a demand signal for accountability across the country.

President Trump often acts in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt, who, like 45–47, was never afraid of a headline — provided he provoked it.

Now is the time for the president to ask a handful of the smartest, most respected people in the country to sort through the wreckage of the COVID era’s many state governments’ responsibilities and ‘initiatives’ and report in rapid fashion — and in clear English — the scale of fraud perpetrated upon state agencies.

Make your search-and-publicize team smart and fast. Putting Johnson and Hinderaker as co-chairs of a strike team devoted to compiling the facts as we know them today would ensure accuracy and fine writing.

And give them a deadline: Aug. 31, 2026. Voters deserve to know how their state governments worked during COVID — or didn’t — before they vote again.

President Donald Trump spearheaded major changes to the Kennedy Center Honors ahead of the highly anticipated awards ceremony. 

Founded in 1978, the Kennedy Center Honors recognize a handful of performing artists every year for their lifetime contributions to culture. The Kennedy Center Honors, which are presented by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., are considered the nation’s top lifetime achievement award for the performing arts.

After returning to the White House in January, Trump, 79, became chairman of the Kennedy Center board and has since undertaken efforts to reshape the honors program — pushing for a glitzier, star-studded celebration. 

In August, Trump announced this year’s lineup of honorees, which included country legend George Strait, Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone, rock band KISS, Broadway icon Michael Crawford and Grammy Award-winning singer Gloria Gaynor.

‘The 48th Kennedy Center Honorees are outstanding people, incredible, we can’t wait… in a few short months since I became chairman of the board, the Kennedy Center, we’ve completely reversed the decline of this cherished national institution,’ he said in his speech.

From overhauling the honoree selection process to unveiling a new medallion, here’s a breakdown of how the Kennedy Center Honors have been revamped under Trump. 

Trump-led selection process 

Since the Kennedy Honors’ inception, the honorees were chosen by a bipartisan committee that worked with the Kennedy Center’s artistic staff, the Board of Trustees, external arts advisors, and the Center’s president and Honors team. 

While U.S. presidents have historically participated in the ceremonial aspects of the Honors including hosting a White House reception and attending the gala, they typically have not been directly involved in the selection process. 

However, Trump said he played a major role in choosing the 2025 honorees during an August event at the Kennedy Center to announce the recipients. 

Though there was a Special Honors Advisory Committee that made recommendations, Trump appeared to confirm that he made the final choices.

When reporters asked Trump how involved he was in selecting the 2025 honorees, he responded, ‘I was about 98% involved… they all came through me.’

‘I turned down plenty, they were too woke,’ he continued. ‘I had a couple of wokesters. No, we have great people. This is very different than it used to be.’

While taking aim at the state of Hollywood awards shows, Trump took a swipe at the Oscars.

‘Look at the Academy Awards — it gets lousy ratings now, it’s all woke,’ he said. ‘All they do is talk about how much they hate Trump, but nobody likes that. They don’t watch anymore…’

Trump concluded his ‘very long answer’ by saying he ‘was very involved’ in the selection of the Kennedy Center Honorees.

New medallion

For 47 years, the medallion received by the honorees had remained unchanged. The Honors medal hung from wide satin ribbon in five bright rainbow colors that formed a V-shape around the honoree’s neck. 

The gold circular medallion was shaped like a starburst and featured an abstract representation of the Kennedy Center building and was handmade by the same family for nearly five decades. Throughout the awards show’s history, the medallions were handmade by the Baturin’s, a Washington D.C.- based family of artisans and metalworkers. 

In a press release issued on Tuesday, the Kennedy Center announced that the medallions ‘have been re-imagined and donated by Tiffany & Co.’

‘As the first American high jewelry house, Tiffany & Co. has played a defining role in American luxury culture for nearly two centuries – making them the ideal collaborator to design the Honors medallion,’ the press release continued. 

‘The brand-new medallion features a gold disc etched on one side with a depiction of the Kennedy Center. The building is flanked by rainbow colors representing the breadth of the arts celebrated when receiving the Honor. The reverse side bears the Honorees’ names in script above the date of the Medallion Ceremony, December 6, 2025. The medallion hangs from a navy-blue ribbon, a color associated with dignity and tradition.’

Massive governance shake-up ahead of the Honors

n February, Trump announced a major shakeup of the Kennedy Center leadership. He revealed that he had decided to immediately fire multiple Kennedy Center board members appointed by former President Joe Biden and other prior trustees, including the chairman, and fill that role himself.

Trump claimed he and the former chair David Rubenstein along with the ousted board members ‘do not share [the same] vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,’ according to his announcement on Truth Social.

‘We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!’ he added. 

Trump also criticized Kennedy Center programming, including drag shows, under the prior administration.

‘Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP. The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!’ Trump said on Truth Social. 

He later replaced the former members with 14 other members, including allies including second lady Usha Vance and ‘God Bless the USA’ singer Lee Greenwood. 

The new board elected Trump as chairman on Feb. 12. Trump dismissed long-serving Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter and appointed his ally Ric Grenell – who became the U.S.’s first openly gay cabinet member under the first Trump administration when he served as acting director of national intelligence – as interim executive director amid the board overhaul. 

More mainstream-pop culture class of nominees 

The 2025 honorees including KISS, Gloria Gaynor, George Strait, Sylvester Stallone and Michael Crawford indicated a shift toward recognizing artists from more mainstream, pop culture fields rather than the cross-disciplinary lineups of prior years. 

During the first two decades after the Honors were founded, the recipients were mainly from the world of classical arts with some notable exceptions including actor James Cagney, actress Lucille Ball and film director Elia Kazan. 

In the mid-1990s, the Honors began expanding toward mainstream entertainment, honoring more pop musicians, rock artists, film and television actors and Broadway stars. The expansion accelerated through the 2000s and 2010s and into the 2020s.

In addition to mainstream artists, past honoree classes have always included representation from classical music, jazz, dance, opera or composition.  However, 2025’s lineup features no honoree from those disciplines, marking a first in modern program history.

The 2025 honorees chosen under Trump’s direction are entirely from rock, disco, country, film and Broadway.

In the Kennedy Honors Center’s August press release announcing the honorees, Grenell said, ‘For nearly half a century, this tradition has celebrated those whose voices and visions tell our nation’s story and share it with the world.’ ‘This year’s Honorees have left an indelible mark on our history, reminding us that the arts are for everyone.’

Trump will host the Honors 

At the August event to announce the honorees, Trump announced that he will host the Kennedy Center Honors gala, becoming the first president in history to host the event. 

‘I’ve been asked to host. I said, I’m the President of the United States. Are you fools asking me to do that? ‘Sir, you’ll get much higher ratings.’ I said ‘I don’t care. I’m President of the United States, I won’t do it.’ They said, ‘Please,” Trump told reporters.

Trump went on to say that his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles also asked him to host the Honors. 

‘I said, ‘OK, Susie, I’ll do it.’ That’s the power she’s got,’ he said. ‘So I have agreed to host. Do you believe what I have to do? And I didn’t want to do it, OK? They’re going to say, ‘He insisted.’ I did not insist, but I think it will be quite successful, actually.’ 

‘It’s been a long time. I used to host ‘The Apprentice’ finales and we did rather well with that,’ Trump added, referring to his long-running NBC reality competition show.

‘So I think we’re going to do very well, because we have some great honorees, some really great ones.’

During Trump’s first term, he and First Lady Melania Trump did not attend the Honors or host the traditional White House reception for the honorees.

In 2017, honorees including Norman Lear and dancer Carmen de Lavallade announced that they would not attend a White House reception hosted by Trump in protest.

The White House subsequently issued a statement that read: ‘The president and first lady have decided not to participate in this year’s activities to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.’

Trump and Melania also did not attend in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, the Honors were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and instead took place in May 2021, with a revamped format including smaller, socially-distanced and virtual tributes.

The 48th Annual Kennedy Center Honors will take place on Dec. 7 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and will air Dec. 23 on the CBS Television Network and on Paramount+

Congress released a $900 billion defense bill that reshapes U.S. economic and military competition with China by imposing new investment restrictions, banning a range of Chinese-made technologies from Pentagon supply chains, and expanding diplomatic and intelligence efforts to track Beijing’s global footprint. 

The legislation, which authorizes War Department spending at $8 billion above the White House’s request, includes a 4% pay raise for enlisted service members, expands counter-drone authorities, and directs new investments in the Golden Dome missile defense shield and nuclear modernization programs. 

It also extends Pentagon support to law enforcement operations at the southwest border and strengthens U.S. posture in the Indo-Pacific, including funding for Taiwan’s security cooperation program.

In a victory for conservative privacy hawks like House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the legislation includes a non-defense provision that would mandate FBI disclosure when the bureau was investigating presidential candidates and other candidates for federal office.

That measure was the subject of party in-fighting last week when Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., whom Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had appointed chairwoman of House GOP leadership, publicly accused the speaker of kowtowing to Democrats and allowing that provision to be removed.

Johnson said he was blindsided by Stefanik’s anger and was unaware of her concerns when she had made them public.

Stefanik later claimed victory on X, stating the provision had been reinstated after a conversation between herself, Johnson and President Donald Trump. 

Coverage of in vitro fertilization (IVF) for military families, which became a flashpoint in recent days, is not included in the final NDAA. Neither are provisions preempting states from regulating AI or banning a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC). 

Republicans have pushed the CBDC prohibition as a privacy and civil-liberties measure, arguing that a government-issued digital dollar could give federal agencies the ability to monitor or restrict individual transactions. 

House aides said the anti-CBDC language became tied to a separate housing-policy package known as ‘Road to Housing,’ and the concessions required to keep both items together were unacceptable.

The bill also establishes a new ‘Artificial Intelligence Futures Steering Committee’ charged with producing long-range forecasts and policy recommendations for advanced AI systems, including artificial general intelligence.

The legislation takes aim at long-standing bottlenecks in the defense industrial base by authorizing new investment tools, expanding multi-year procurement for high-demand munitions and platforms, and overhauling portions of the acquisition system to speed the fielding of commercial and emerging technologies. 

Alongside those reforms, lawmakers approved new ‘right-to-repair’ style requirements that force contractors to provide the technical data the Pentagon needs to maintain and sustain major weapons systems—a change intended to reduce vendor lock-in and ease chronic maintenance delays across the fleet.

One major section of the bill establishes a far-reaching outbound investment screening system, requiring U.S. companies and investors to alert the Treasury Department when they back certain high-risk technologies in China or other ‘countries of concern.’ The measure gives Treasury the ability to block deals outright, forces detailed annual reporting to Congress, and grants new authorities to sanction foreign firms tied to China’s military or surveillance networks. Lawmakers cast the effort as a long-overdue step to keep U.S. capital from fueling Beijing’s development of dual-use technologies.

The bill also includes a procurement ban targeting biotechnology providers that would bar the Pentagon from contracting with Chinese genetic sequencing and biotech firms linked to the People’s Liberation Army or China’s security services. 

Additional sourcing prohibitions restrict the War Department from purchasing items such as advanced batteries, photovoltaic components, computer displays, and critical minerals originating from foreign entities of concern, further tightening U.S. supply chains away from China. They also require the department to phase out the use of Chinese-made computers, printers and other tech equipment.

Beyond economic measures, the NDAA directs the State Department to deploy a new cadre of Regional China Officers at U.S. diplomatic posts around the world, responsible for monitoring Chinese commercial, technological, and infrastructure activities across every major geographic region, including Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The NDAA contains several Israel-related provisions, including a directive for the Pentagon to avoid participating in international defense exhibitions that bar Israeli involvement. It authorizes funding for  Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow – the missile defense programs the U.S. operates with Isra

The bill also requires biennial reports comparing China’s global diplomatic presence to that of the United States. The Pentagon is separately directed to strengthen U.S. posture in the Indo-Pacific by extending the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and expanding cooperative training and industrial-base initiatives with regional allies, including Taiwan and the Philippines.

The legislation reauthorizes the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative at $400 million per year for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. Congress will also require more frequent reporting on allied contributions to Ukraine to track how European partners support Kyiv.

The bill repeals two long-dormant war authorizations tied to earlier phases of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, while leaving the primary post-9/11 counterterrorism authority untouched. Lawmakers said the final text includes repeals of the 1991 Gulf War AUMF and the 2002 Iraq War AUMF, both of which successive administrations have said are no longer operationally necessary. The 1991 authorization approved the U.S.-led effort to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and the 2002 authority permitted the invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush.

Both parties have debated winding down these authorizations for years, arguing they no longer reflect current U.S. missions in the Middle East. Presidents from both parties, including Trump, have maintained that modern military operations in the region do not rely on either statute and that the commander in chief already holds sufficient Article II authority to defend U.S. personnel when required. Repeal also answers long-running concerns in Congress about outdated war authorities being used as secondary legal justifications for actions far from their original intent, such as the 2020 strike on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

The NDAA does not touch the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which remains the central legal basis for U.S. counter-terror operations against al-Qaeda, ISIS, and associated groups. That post-9/11 statute continues to underpin nearly all active U.S. counter-terror missions worldwide.

House aides said leaders in their chamber hoped to consider the bill as soon as this week. It will first need to go through the House Rules Committee, the final gatekeepers before legislation gets a chamber-wide vote. It could hit that panel as early as Tuesday afternoon.

Then it will head for a vote in the Senate before reaching Trump’s desk for his signature.

For Social Security it has been a miserable year. 

After President Donald Trump unleashed Elon Musk and DOGE on the Social Security Administration, the agency lost more staff in a shorter period of time than ever before in its 90-year history. Fortunately, public outcry and pushback from congressional Democrats saved Social Security from a 50% cut to staffing and the closure of scores of field offices as Trump and his administration had announced back in March. So, somehow, those dedicated workers remaining at the Social Security Administration have still managed to keep the agency running — without missing a single monthly benefit payment. 

There are not many public or private insurers in the world who can claim to never have missed a monthly benefit payment in 90 years. 

This is good news for 71 million Americans — many of whom depend on their earned benefit every month as a lifeline. But we are not out of the woods yet. The agency has been gutted. Enormous damage has been done to customer service and to the agency’s ability to process claims.

Just as many are demanding that Trump’s deep cuts to healthcare be restored, so too must Trump’s deep cuts to Social Security be restored, as the two are inextricably linked. Sixty-four million Medicare recipients will see a reduction in their Social Security benefits in 2026 due to Trump’s Medicare price hikes that will cut into their Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), making life more expensive for seniors. This is the greatest erosion of the Social Security COLA in nearly a decade, and the first time that Medicare premiums exceeded $200 per month. 

With the Social Security Administration’s staffing now reduced to a 60-year low and baby boomers swelling the number of active beneficiaries to an all-time high, the agency is struggling badly, and the American people are paying the price. Wait times to get to a person in a field office or to talk to a person on the 1-800 line have become longer and longer.  

As the Trump administration claims that things have never been better, millions of Americans are having a very different experience. In fact, more people today now die waiting in line for their initial disability determination than at any time since President Dwight Eisenhower signed the disability portion of the act into law in 1956. Even just recently, Trump and DOGE risked 300 million Americans’ personal data from the Social Security Administration. They have robbed Americans of customer service and peace of mind.

Conditions have grown so bad – Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, has called for Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano’s resignation. It proves to be a telling illustration of the deep concern experts have for the damage done to the agency. 

None of this had to happen. It was made to happen. As a candidate, Trump vowed all through the campaign that he would protect Social Security. Instead, he wrecked the program’s customer service, took a chainsaw to its functions and maligned its reputation with false claims of waste, fraud and abuse.

In a time of great political division, Social Security remains the most strongly supported program in America. In fact, 80% of Americans are concerned whether Social Security will be available when they retire and want it to be strengthened, made better — not hacked to pieces, privatized or liquidated. 

This is a democracy moment. Social Security should be a bipartisan issue. All lawmakers — Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike — need to come together to deliver on its promise of a secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work. 

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s threats against Ukraine following a drone strike echo a 2022 plot to infiltrate Kyiv and target President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former Ukrainian government official has said.

The leader’s latest threat came after a Ukrainian drone reportedly struck a high-rise building near Kadyrov’s home in Grozny on Nov. 5.

The strike prompted the Chechen strongman to vow retaliation in an online video post, according to Reuters.

‘This new threat would just be another assassination threat for Zelenskyy. The Chechens are really serious about revenge,’ a former government official told Fox News Digital.

‘But in Kyiv they are not panicking about this like they were in 2022,’ the former official said under condition of anonymity.

‘Zelenskyy is now better protected, feels more powerful and is less fragile,’ they said.

The recent Ukrainian strike, reported by Reuters, hit the 28-story Grozny-City tower that sits roughly 830 meters from Kadyrov’s home.

Kadyrov, who is loyal to Russia, later allegedly confirmed the attack in a Telegram post, stating there were no casualties, but he condemned the strike as making ‘no tactical sense.’ 

He also warned that retaliation was imminent.

‘Starting tomorrow and in the course of the week, the Ukrainian fascists will be feeling a stern response,’ he threatened.

Unlike Ukraine’s strike, he added, ‘we will not be making a cowardly strike on peaceful targets,’ per Reuters.

Ukrainian attacks have hit sites in Chechnya before now, including a police barracks and a training academy. Chechen units were also deployed during Russia’s 2022 invasion and were among the Kremlin’s most loyal forces.

At the time of the 2022 invasion, the official said there was intense anxiety in Kyiv.

‘At the beginning of the large-scale invasion in 2022, Chechens were sent to Kyiv to murder top politicians,’ the former official said.

‘This included Volodymyr Zelenskyy and top politicians from the government and security services and Parliament, and many other agencies.

‘Zelenskyy and Yermak were very scared,’ they claimed. ‘They were calling from the office, asking some people in the military and security service to secure the metro station in Kyiv.’

The source said one metro station in Kyiv was a potential infiltration route for the Chechens into Zelenskyy’s presidential bunker.

At the time, the station in Kyiv that was deep underground and near the presidential bunker, was viewed as the most vulnerable entry route, the source said.

‘They were afraid that Chechens would get to the bunker through this metro station, but in the end the Chechens were killed before they reached Kyiv.

‘They tried to reach Kyiv, somehow downtown, somehow via the river, but it’s quite a complicated way to get there,’ the former official said.

Meanwhile, with the Nov. 5. Grozny strike landing so close to his home, Kadyrov, already one of Putin’s most aggressive enforcers, is signaling a harsher stance as attacks reach inside Russian territory.

The Moscow Times reported that the drone struck a building that houses regional government offices, including the Chechen Security Council and agencies connected to tourism and religious affairs.

Despite the rhetoric, the former Ukrainian official claimed Zelenskyy is unfazed this time around.

‘These days, Zelenskyy isn’t afraid of Kadyrov’s actions against him or the Ukrainian people. Zelenskyy is feeling very powerful right now,’ they added.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Zelenskyy’s office for comment.

Rosie O’Donnell is sounding the alarm about her ongoing fixation with President Donald Trump.

The 63-year-old, along with some of her friends and family, spoke to The Washington Post about her move to Ireland after Trump’s re-election last November, and one thing was made clear from the article. 

She ‘can’t resist’ speaking about Trump.

O’Donnell told the outlet she promised her therapist the Wednesday before Thanksgiving she would refrain from posting about Trump for two days.

It fell apart within hours.

A longtime friend, Jennifer Kopetic, was described as ‘annoyed’ when she told O’Donnell during a recent visit, ‘Roseann, you’ve got to detach. You’ve got to disconnect.’

She made another vow — three days this time — telling her 1.2 million Instagram followers she was ‘gonna try again to not give him a minute of me.’ However, she failed that attempt, too.

O’Donnell has said her emotional spiral began the moment Trump was elected.

‘I felt on the verge of crying … when he got elected,’ she previously told an Irish TV audience in March, explaining she feared a second term. 

The former talk show host said her concerns were personal. A lesbian mother of five — with her youngest, 12-year-old Clay, identifying as nonbinary and diagnosed with autism — O’Donnell feared what she saw as Trump-era hostility toward LGBTQ Americans and the potential gutting of federal support for special education programs.

The Washington Post reported that, during Trump’s first term, she channeled her anxiety into more than 200 angry digital portraits of the former president on her iPad, labeling him ‘Moron,’ ‘Loser’ and ‘Liar.’

That kind of ‘obsessed’ focus on Trump is exactly what convinced O’Donnell she had no choice but to leave the U.S.

Her brother Eddie, who is helping with her Irish citizenship application, called her move abroad ‘the best decision she’s made … honestly.’ 

O’Donnell made her recent remarks after she said the political stress she carries is spilling into her family — especially her daughter, who she said blames Trump for uprooting their lives.

‘My daughter is now saying, ‘Damn him. Damn Trump,’’ O’Donnell said during an appearance on ‘The Jim Acosta Show.’

According to O’Donnell, her daughter hit their table in frustration, shouting, ‘He made us move for our own safety … and now he’s destroying the country.’ 

O’Donnell acknowledged the difficulty of trying to keep her daughter shielded from the chaos while still being honest about why they left. 

‘She hears everything. She recognizes what’s going on,’ she said.

The comedian added she’s ready to step back from political combat.

‘Somebody can tap me out. … I did 22 years. I don’t need to do anymore.’

The White House wasted no time responding to O’Donnell’s renewed attacks.

‘Rosie O’Donnell clearly suffers from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it’s better for the entire country that she decided to move away,’ White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital earlier this week.

O’Donnell moved to Ireland after claiming Trump threatened to strip her of U.S. citizenship. 

In October, she announced she was pursuing Irish citizenship, citing her grandparents’ roots and her desire for distance from American politics.