October 15, 2026

Photo credit: Anadolu / Contributor / Anadolu via Getty Images

Last week in Manhattan, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and wounded Oscar Belgal, an illegal immigrant. Agents had been trying to deport him back to his native Dominican Republic.

No relevant facts have been established yet, but that didn’t stop left-wing politicians from denouncing the shooting. Congressional candidate Brad Lander accused ICE of terrorism. The city council’s “progressive” caucus called for ICE to be abolished. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the shooting was an example of how “ICE agents terrorize our communities.”

Federal authorities state that agents fired in response to Belgal allegedly trying to “weaponize” his car against them, possibly to evade capture. This response falls within the agency’s use-of-force guidelines. “Given all this, the anger over the shooting before the conclusion of an investigation into its lawfulness is senseless,” Rafael Mangual writes. Not to mention: Belgal has a violent criminal history—he was arrested for robbery and allegedly terrorized his neighbors with a machete.

Why, then, is the left rallying around him? “Either they want a criminal like Belgal—who not only broke our immigration laws but also then led a life of crime upon arriving in the United States—to remain on the streets of their cities,” Mangual writes. “Or they seized on the shooting because they thought it could help amplify their message in the lead-up to the midterm elections, while giving local radicals something else with which to try tarring NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.”

Read more.

Founded in 2020, La Defensa is an advocacy organization whose founders, L.A. council member Eunisses Hernandez and Ivette Alé-Ferlito, want to abolish prisons in Los Angeles County. From 2022 through 2024, the group spent at least $910,000 on judicial candidates, and those donations helped elect three of them: George Turner Jr., Ericka Wiley, and Holly Hancock.

“The new judges’ backgrounds and ideologies open a window onto La Defensa’s vision for the future of L.A. County’s justice system and beyond,” Christopher F. Rufo and Austen Hufford write. Indeed, Turner studied under some of the founders of critical race theory and appears to believe that the criminal justice system is racist. Wiley has called for dismantling “systems that . . . support mass incarceration.” Hancock wants to “deconstruct” the justice system.

Read more about the judges and La Defensa here.

Over the past two years, billionaires worth a combined $160 billion have left the United Kingdom or cut some of their ties with the country.

“There’s a warning here for policymakers in New York and California who mistake their own jurisdictions’ economic advantages for protection against the consequences of their policy decisions,” Sean Speer writes. Yes, concentrating people and businesses in a city can drive prosperity, even with high taxes and heavy regulation. “But these advantages are no guarantee of future prosperity. Policies that discourage marginal investment can weaken the networks on which that prosperity depends.”

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Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been lambasted for making only modest cuts to government contracting and grants after promising to slash spending by trillions of dollars. But DOGE did have a massive impact on the civil service, Judge Glock points out.

Indeed, before President Trump took office, the federal government had more than 2.3 million employees, a modern peak. It has since dropped by 12 percent—more than 270,000 people. That’s the fastest decline since the end of World War II.

“The DOGE civil-service cuts were substantial, but they fell heavily on administrative and managerial jobs across a wide range of agencies,” Glock writes. “Those who decry them need to explain why, for instance, the roughly 160,000 administration, management, and program-analysis positions that remain are insufficient—and how having tens of thousands more such government workers would improve the lives of Americans.”

Read more about DOGE’s achievements.