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Hello Reader,
This week, we witness the final gasps of movements that once filled millions with hope. From the remote villages of Myanmar to the waterfront of Dar Es Salaam, tyrants perfect new methods of crushing the human spirit.
The Global Fight Against Tyranny
- Colombia's Leftist Death Spiral Begins
- Tanzania's Leader Joins Dark Sisterhood
- Stolen Child Epitomizes Chinese Tyranny
- Myanmar's "Rebel Alliance" Refuses to Yield
- Hong Kong: Freedom's Final Breath
Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House, with * indicating a territory as opposed to an independent country.
While Javier Milei performs economic miracles in Argentina, Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro moves swiftly in the opposite direction, pursuing the same failed policies that destroyed Argentina under Milei’s leftist predecessors.
This week, Petro signed sweeping labor reforms favoring unions that will throttle economic growth —and called for a national referendum to rewrite the constitution, centralizing economic power in his hands by sidestepping Congress.
Petro’s "reforms" represent everything liberty-loving people should fear: state capture of private industry, exploding deficits, and criminal empowerment masquerading as peace.
Petro nationalized Colombia's two largest private health insurers after threatening to seize all 27. His labor "reform" increases overtime premiums, hikes hiring costs 15%, and will drive more workers into black markets where 60% already toil. His deficit spirals past 7% of GDP as economic growth stagnates.
Meanwhile, his "Total Peace" initiative has failed spectacularly. Violence surged 45% in early 2025 as child recruitment into gangs rose. Opposition senator Miguel Uribe lies in critical condition after a 15-year-old hitman shot him in the head, exemplifying Petro's soft approach to criminality.
Will Latin America ever learn?
In September, pro-democracy opposition figure Ali Mohamed Kibao's body turned up in the waterfront district of Dar Es Salaam, a day after he was pulled off a bus, beaten, and soaked in acid. This wasn't the work of some military strongman—it happened under Tanzania's first female president, once affectionately dubbed "Mama Samia."
Samia Suluhu Hassan rose to power in 2021 with genuine reform credentials. She had championed underage mothers' rights and drafted constitutional protections against abuse, earning international acclaim. When she lifted a ban on opposition rallies and freed political prisoners, hope abounded.
Now hope has turned to horror. Hassan's government has orchestrated over 70 documented abductions since she took power. Opposition leader Tundu Lissu now faces treason charges and possible execution as Hassan bans his party from October's election.
Female dictators remain exceptionally rare. In 1975, Isabel Perón ordered security agents to "annihilate subversives" in Argentina as Indira Gandhi was suspending India’s civil liberties. Sheikh Hasina was ousted last year after 15 years of authoritarian rule in Bangladesh.
Hassan joins this dark sisterhood, proving that power's corruption transcends gender, as Tanzania’s democracy hangs by a thread.
In spring of 1995, Chinese Communist Party thugs stormed into a remote Tibetan home, seizing a six-year-old boy the Dalai Lama had named as Panchen Lama just three days earlier. The child vanished along with his entire family, becoming history's youngest political prisoner. No one outside China’s control has seen them since.
Beijing immediately replaced the legitimate Panchen Lama with the son of Communist Party members and arrested the search committee’s head for treason. He died in 2011 under suspicious circumstances.
The brazen abduction epitomizes the CCP’s relentless assault on Tibetan autonomy since it invaded and “peacefully liberated” the region in 1951. The Panchen Lama traditionally recognizes the Dalai Lama's reincarnation. His abduction gave the atheist CCP control over Tibetan Buddhism and set up a succession crisis as the Dalai Lama approaches his 90th birthday.
I find nothing sacred about hereditary religious titles—they're as arbitrary as monarchies. Recent allegations against the Dalai Lama, including a video where he asked a boy to suck his tongue, are deeply troubling. But Beijing's Godless regime has no moral authority to choose Tibet's spiritual leaders.
The stolen child remains a damning symbol of China’s global tyranny.
Seventy bombs rained down on Myanmar villages earlier this month—37 filled with poison gas—as junta forces attacked Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) positions in northern Shan state. Myanmar's military is escalating its brutality in a war where 55 million people suffer under both dictatorship and China's economic imperialism.
When junta generals overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in 2021, they ignited fierce resistance that threatens China's $20 billion investment in the region, giving birth to the Three Brotherhood Alliance—a diverse patchwork of ethnic armies now locked in a geopolitical struggle of David versus two Goliaths.
Beijing has already broken one rebel group, forcing the MNDAA to surrender hard-won Lashio by shutting borders, freezing bank accounts, and starving local populations into submission. Five hundred resistance fighters died capturing that northern stronghold.
Yet despite relentless Chinese pressure, the TNLA and Arakan Army refuse to yield. TNLA forces hold their strategic gateway on the vital Mandalay-China trade route while the Arakan Army now controls most of western Rakhine State as it prepares a final assault on the state capital of Sittwe.
To date, China has been unable to buy, bomb, or starve this “Rebel Alliance” into submission.
China drove the final nail into Hong Kong democracy's coffin this week as the “League of Social Democrats”—Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy organization—was forced to disband, ending the last vestige of a movement that once filled the streets with millions.
To be fair, it was a radical leftist group. Founded in 2006 with the slogan "No resistance, no change," they threw bananas at chief executives and disrupted legislative meetings. Their leader, "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung, became an icon of defiance, his ponytail and Che Guevara t-shirts a symbol of Hong Kong's rebellious spirit.
Now Leung rots in prison, one of 47 democrats convicted under Beijing's national security law. His wife held the party together despite closure of its bank accounts—until the warnings came: disband by July 1 or face "serious consequences."
China once promised the world Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms would endure under "One Country, Two Systems." That lie died this week. From the 1989 Tiananmen vigils to the 2019 protests that brought two million to the streets, Hong Kong's democracy movement spanned generations.
The Chinese Communist Party has now systematically crushed it all.
Our American Democracy
War Powers Debate Rages - for 178 Years
In 1847, Representative Abraham Lincoln rose, furiously demanding President Polk prove the "exact spot" where American blood justified war with Mexico. Polk's action was arguably the earliest violation of the "War Powers Clause" of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war.
But fourteen years later, President Lincoln matched Polk's overreach, violating his own principle. Acting without Congressional approval, he called up 75,000 troops and ordered a naval blockade of Confederate ports—a necessary response to Confederate aggression, but a clear act of war.
Today, the war powers controversy rages on after Trump unilaterally attacked Iranian nuclear sites.
In 1973, the War Powers Act emerged from Congress's rage over Nixon's secret Cambodia bombings. Passed over Nixon's veto, it requires 48-hour notification and limits deployments to 60 days without authorization. It was designed to restore the Founding Fathers' intent: only Congress declares war.
Yet every president since has violated it. Reagan deployed troops to El Salvador in 1981. Clinton bombed Kosovo past the 60-day deadline. Obama waged an eight-month Libya campaign, arguing it wasn't "hostilities."
Article II grants the president command of the military, creating eternal tension. While the Iran threat pales compared to Lincoln's existential crisis, deference to the Commander in Chief was established long, long ago.
Supreme Court Limits Power—of Its Own Branch
Can a single federal judge with only local jurisdiction stop the entire federal government? The Supreme Court returned its verdict Friday—an emphatic "NO."
In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled federal judges cannot issue universal injunctions. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote they “exceed the equitable authority Congress has given to federal courts”, noting these weapons were "conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation's history." To me, her logic was crystal clear: individual plaintiffs deserve relief from harmful government actions, but judgments don't apply to 330 million Americans who aren't parties to their cases.
Meanwhile, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent was legally incoherent, demanding "universal adherence" to any court ruling while accusing the majority of granting "permission to engage in unlawful behavior." Barrett demolished this reasoning as "at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself." She's right—universal injunctions didn't emerge until 1963, then exploded under Obama and Trump as forum-shopping litigants found friendly judges to halt policies they couldn’t defeat legislatively.
Future Democratic presidents will thank this Court for preventing Trump’s judges from weaponizing injunctions against their agenda. In this case, constitutional governance has been restored.
Supreme Court Delivers Victory for Religious Freedom
I want my daughter to learn tolerance and respect for everyone, including LGBTQ individuals. I would not shield her from lessons featuring diverse families. But I also want her to live in a society where her government cannot force individuals to act against their deeply held beliefs. Friday's Supreme Court ruling ensures it will not.
In a 6-3 decision, the Court sided with Montgomery County parents seeking to opt their children out of elementary classes featuring LGBTQ-themed books like "Uncle Bobby's Wedding" and "Born Ready." Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion struck the right constitutional note: "The board's…decision to withhold opt-outs places an unconstitutional burden on the parents' rights to the free exercise of their religion.
Alito understood what was really at stake, observing these books contain "a clear moral message" while noting the refusal to accommodate sincere religious objections violated the First Amendment's protection of conscience.
This isn't about discrimination—it's about religious freedom. Parents shouldn't be forced to choose between their faith and public education. Friday’s ruling ensures they won't have to.
Trump, Media Distort Iranian Reality
When President Trump declared last week U.S. strikes had "completely obliterated" Iran's nuclear program, it echoed George W. Bush's 2003 "Mission Accomplished" hubris. In response, the media amplified a single low-confidence DIA report suggesting the bombs might only delay Iran's efforts by a few months.
The assessment is ongoing, but satellite imagery is getting us closer to the truth. Bulldozers and cranes are actively repairing damage at Fordow, confirming Iran is already rebuilding key facilities. Meanwhile, IAEA Director Rafael Grossi acknowledged the sites experienced "severe damage" but "not total damage," with restoration efforts underway. Western intelligence indicates Iran retained much of its enriched uranium underground and ”could” restart enrichment within months.
Both narratives were misleading. Trump's triumphant declaration was premature and politically driven. The press showed its bias by amplifying leaks supporting its preferred conclusion without awaiting confirmation. The strikes inflicted severe damage but fell short of the decisive blow Trump claimed.
This episode reminds us why character matters in a president. While Trump deserves some credit for decisive action against a true threat, his reflex to self-aggrandize—and the media's reflex to undermine—both distort reality in dangerous ways.
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