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The Global Fight for Freedom

1. Persians Cast All Their Votes for Dancing
2. SCOTUS Scores the Golden Goal
3. El Mencho: Betrayed by Love
4. Colombia's "El Tigre": Savior or Predator?
5. In Pakistan, Tweets Are Now Terror

Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking.

I once learned so much from love
That I could no longer divide the world
Into what belongs and what does not.
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Joy taught me something simple:
What life is always asking us to choose
Not once, but again and again
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So when the moment comes
And your heart is deciding how to answer
Remember this:
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Now is the time, dear one.
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for dancing.
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​Persian poet Hafiz wrote these lines six centuries before the Islamic Republic banned public dancing, purged the Persian language with Arabic religious terminology, and destroyed the pluralism he celebrated. When Cyrus the Great — founder of the first Persian empire and arguably the author of humanity's first charter of human rights — conquered Babylon in 539 BC, he issued a decree allowing Jews to return to their homelands and rebuild their temples.
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On Tuesday, Iran's IRGC chief reiterated his intent to destroy Israel. For 46 years, the mullahs have waged war not just on freedom, but on Persian values, culture, and history.
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And yet at the funeral of Reza Asadi — a 30-year-old shopkeeper shot in the streets of Tehran on January 9th — his father began to dance. The scene repeated across Iran on the 40th day of mourning for those slaughtered in January.
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Forbidden. Defiant. Eternally Persian.
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Each dance was a deliberate reclamation — of a culture the regime spent 46 years trying to erase. Mourners chanted what the mullahs most feared: "Not Gaza, not Lebanon — my life for Iran." Not for the Arab proxies. Not for the regime's Islamic imperial project. For Iran. For Persia. The dance, the chant—all drawn from a Persian identity that preceded Islam's arrival by a thousand years.
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The defiance has leaped from graveyards to campuses. For four consecutive days, students at Tehran University, Sharif University of Technology, Alzahra, and Isfahan University of Technology have burned the Islamic Republic's flag and raised the pre-1979 Lion and Sun. Hackers restored Sharif University's pre-revolutionary name — Aryamehr — on its own website, forcing it offline for hours. Across campuses, thousands of students have faced Basij batons with bare fists.
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After 46 years of darkness, Persians will soon retake their country, with or without Donald Trump.
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Once again, they are casting all their votes for dancing.

On February 20th, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a thunderclap felt round the world: Trump's IEEPA tariffs were dead.
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The argument was mercilessly simple. Article I explicitly assigns the duty power to Congress. Trump claimed IEEPA—a 1977 emergency law—granted it through authorization to "regulate" importation. Roberts dismantled it: "IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties," and no president had ever read it otherwise. Trump's alleged "emergencies"—trade deficits and fentanyl trafficking—justified tariffs of 145% on China and 50% on Brazil, while the $901 billion trade deficit barely budged. American households absorbed an average $1,500 annual tax increase —with the OECD attributing a near-halving of projected U.S. growth directly to tariff-driven trade costs.
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I'm genuinely baffled by Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Alito—all constitutionalists. Kavanaugh argued tariffs are a "traditional tool" to "regulate" importation—conflating economic regulation with taxation, ignoring that Article I explicitly reserves the duty power to Congress alone.
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Yet behind the victory lurks a true threat. When broad executive powers benefited Biden—on student loans, climate regulations—Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson argued courts should interpret them to their absolute maximum. Facing identical statutory language under Trump, they suddenly read it narrowly, and still refused to formally embrace the major questions doctrine. Gorsuch exposed the contradiction: constitutional principles applied selectively—generously for one president, stingily for another—are not principles at all.
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It was a reminder Donald Trump does not hold a monopoly on threats to democracy.
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On Sunday, a toothless Jack Hughes slid the puck through the five-hole in overtime, delivering America's first Olympic gold since the 1980 Miracle on Ice against an outstanding Canadian team. "I'm so proud to be an American today," he said.
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Three days later, SCOTUS gave us another reason to celebrate. The guardrails held. It was a great week for American liberty, but this victory was global.

Every weekend, about 5,000 tourists pour into Tapalpa, a pine-forested "magic town" in the mountains of Jalisco state. Few suspected that one of them, there for a quiet tryst with his girlfriend, was Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera — the man the DEA credits with moving at least one-third of all drugs entering the U.S. by air and sea, and whose Jalisco New Generation Cartel had flooded America with fentanyl, meth, and cocaine while staging brazen paramilitary attacks on Mexican government officials who dared challenge him.
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CIA intelligence had tracked him there. When surveillance drones caught him stepping out of a vehicle to embrace a woman, Mexican commanders confirmed their target. His girlfriend slipped away Saturday. El Mencho stayed — betrayed, like Dillinger, by a proverbial woman in red.
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Before dawn Sunday, six combat helicopters and a fleet of turboprop counterinsurgency aircraft descended on his cabin. His elite security detail opened fire immediately. Soldiers drove them into the forest, forcing them to abandon their rocket launchers. For five hours, the mountains thundered. A military helicopter took a round and made an emergency landing. When the guns finally fell silent, El Mencho lay bleeding in the undergrowth. He died on the helicopter out.
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In the carnage that followed, Guadalajara went dark. Black columns rose over the skyline as cartel soldiers torched buses and trucks and erected 252 roadblocks across 20 states. 25 National Guardsmen died holding the line.
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This is what happens when a state is too weak to project force. Mexico's municipal police forces are chronically underpaid, cartel-infiltrated, and disconnected from federal investigators. Meanwhile, 55% of workers are off the books, leaving the treasury to fight cartel armies — flush with cocaine cash — on a shoestring. Until Mexico aligns money, police, and courts into a single credible system, America's insatiable thirst for cocaine will keep funding whoever fills the vacuum.
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Trump applied the pressure, but Sheinbaum executed the mission — without a single American boot on Mexican soil, delivering him the cartel scalp he demanded entirely on her own terms. I've criticized her judicial elections scheme that stripped courts of their independence. But “Mexico's Iron Lady” just struck the most significant blow against organized crime in a generation — and a victory for every American family that has buried someone to fentanyl.
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Three years ago, Colombians did something they'd never done in 212 years of independence: they elected a leftist president. Gustavo Petro—a former M-19 guerrilla—won by promising to end six decades of violence through "Total Peace" negotiations with armed groups.
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The result was total chaos.
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Petro's ceasefire strategy gave guerrillas breathing room they used to conquer, not disarm. The ELN launched an offensive in Catatumbo that killed 117 civilians and displaced 65,000 in January alone. Cocaine production has hit record highs. His approval has cratered. The White House decertified Colombia as an antinarcotics ally and sanctioned Petro's family for alleged organized crime links.
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In May's election, leftist senator Iván Cepeda—Petro's chosen successor—leads polls at 33%. But surging behind him is Abelardo De La Espriella—"El Tigre"— at 25% and climbing.
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The 47-year-old criminal lawyer promises to slash government by 40%, cut taxes, and reactivate oil production Petro shut down—the kind of economic liberalization Colombia's suffocated private sector desperately needs. And with 85% of Colombians saying security is worsening, his message resonates.
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His security platform demands the bombing "narco-terrorist camps," resuming aerial fumigation with U.S. aircraft, and expanding the military.
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But there is cause for alarm: From 2008-2019 he filed over 100 lawsuits against journalists. He defended Colombia's biggest Ponzi schemer and Maduro's money launderer. He openly admires El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who has eviscerated due process and used mass incarceration to restore order.
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El Tigre's surge confirms the Bolivarian dream is dying across the continent. But Colombia faces the same choice as its neighbors: Will the cure for leftist failure be economic liberty—or greater security at the expense of liberty?
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Colombia answers in May.

Imaan Mazari did exactly what lawyers in a free society should— documenting government overreach, defending victims' families, and publishing her findings. When Pakistan's cybercrime agency charged her with "disseminating narratives aligned with hostile terrorist groups," the High Court intervened, barring her arrest. Two days later, police dragged her from her car anyway.
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The sentencing lasted 60 seconds — from Adiala Jail, where she alleged torture and denial of food and water. Ten years, for social media posts prosecutors branded “terrorist narratives.”
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That a High Court order meant nothing is no accident. Field Marshal Asim Munir has spent three years dismantling every institution capable of checking his power. Munir is Pakistan's actual ruler — the elected Prime Minister serves at his pleasure. When Trump hosted Munir at the White House last June, Prime Minister Sharif wasn't even invited.
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Unlike Pakistan’s previous generals who seized power with tanks, Munir governs through constitutional engineering. A 2025 amendment granted him lifetime immunity and command of all Pakistan's armed forces. The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, enacted in 2016 to fight cybercrime, was amended to criminalize criticism of the military. Tweets are now terrorism.
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​The crackdown extends everywhere. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan — imprisoned since 2023 on charges he calls politically motivated — hasn't seen family in eight weeks. Dawn newspaper, founded by Pakistan's founding father in 1941, has been "financially crippled" by authorities.
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Write Munir's name alongside Erdogan and Orbán — men who preserve the elections, gut the courts, and criminalize the truth-tellers.
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Pakistan is nuclear-armed and has been America's frontline partner in the war on terror. Trump has played neutral arbiter in recent India-Pakistan clashes, treating a democracy — however flawed — and an increasingly illiberal military junta as morally equivalent partners.
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Pakistan may be indispensable in the war on terror, but at what point does strategic convenience undermine moral leadership—at the expense of a more critical ally?

Freedom Fighter of the Week: Omar Garcia Harfuch

Dawn had barely broken over Mexico City's elegant Paseo de la Reforma when the commandos struck. Assault rifles. Grenades. Dozens of CJNG sicarios in a coordinated ambush targeting Mexico's police chief in one of its wealthiest neighborhoods. Two bodyguards and an innocent bystander died. Three bullets tore through Omar Garcia Harfuch's body. From his hospital bed, he posted: "We will continue working."
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He meant it. Harfuch built his career on one conviction: the state must confront organized crime directly—no deals, no accommodation. While predecessor AMLO's "hugs, not bullets" strategy produced 200,000 murders in six years, Harfuch rebuilt from scratch, secretly constructing an elite intelligence unit after rival agencies repeatedly denied him resources and investigative files. His results speak for themselves: 37,000 arrests, 300 tons of drugs seized, 1,600 labs destroyed, Mexico's murder rate down 32%.
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The cartels marked him for it. In May 2024, death threats scrawled on cardboard arrived alongside dismembered bodies outside Acapulco—daring Harfuch by name to come personally. Security analyst David Saucedo explained why: cartels were accustomed to deal-making with government. Harfuch refuses.
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Last Sunday, working with CIA intelligence, he orchestrated his answer—tracking El Mencho to a wooded Jalisco cabin. Special forces killed him there.
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His grandfather massacred students. His half-brother died in a cartel ambush. He chose a different legacy.

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