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Connecticut City Opens Police Ranks to Noncitizens After ICE Sweeps

In a vote of 18-2 on September 3, the City Council of Danbury, Connecticut, approved allowing noncitizens to become police officers.

Seventeen Democrats and one Republican backed the measure; two Republicans voted no. The change amends a local ordinance to match a standard the state’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council (POST) adopted in 2020. At that time, POST dropped the U.S.-citizenship requirement for law-enforcement hiring statewide. It extended eligibility to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ( DACA ) recipients in 2025. City officials say more than 30 Connecticut municipalities already follow the same standard.

The vote came roughly a week after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a series of operations in the Danbury area that led to more than 60 arrests. Reports vary on the precise figure, with some outlets citing around 100 people detained, of whom local officials said only six or seven had criminal records. Mayor Roberto Alves, a Democrat, said the raids caused widespread fear, with school attendance dropping by roughly 700 students and residents avoiding stores and work.

About the September 3 vote, City Council member Joe Britton said it “sends a message to our immigrant community at large that you are welcome in Danbury.” President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan pushed back on that framing, saying “ICE has no intention of terrorizing children,” and calling Democrats’ characterization “a political statement … to enrage the American people.”

Notably, Mayor Alves has said he himself entered the United States without legal status as a child. He did not obtain citizenship until 2017, before later winning local office, a biographical detail he has spoken about publicly in connection with his support for the policy.

City spokesman Taylor O’Brien and Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour both emphasized that hiring standards themselves remain unchanged: Every applicant, citizen or not, must still pass the same background investigation, psychological evaluation, physical-fitness testing, civil-service exam, and academy training.

Officials have not published data on how many noncitizens have applied for or been hired into police jobs in the Connecticut towns that have adopted the policy since 2020.

Regardless, the American experiment was based on the concept of self-governance (i.e., Americans governing Americans, not foreigners governing Americans). One formulation represents freedom; the other, tyranny. The fact that a mayor who entered the country illegally is now obstructing immigration enforcement and creating a passive-aggressive atmosphere to abrogate the rule of law is an example of the lunatics being allowed to run the asylum. Or, in this case, the lawless being allowed to run law enforcement.

The insult that this represents to the American people goes beyond what even conquering nations impose when they set up a new government in a vanquished country. When the Germans, for instance, took over France in World War II, they did not permit German citizens to police the French populace. The French constabulary was kept French, even under a time of political occupation. — Rebecca Terrell

Trump Promises Free Money … As Do Democrats

If a liberal Democrat were to offer free money to voters in order to win their votes, would that be wrong? How about if a Republican president were to do the same thing?

Of course, regarding the latter question, we are referring to the promise that President Trump made in his September 9 speech at the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas. On that occasion he said that he will issue “a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000” if the GOP wins majority control of both the U.S. House and Senate in the November elections. If it’s wrong for Democrats to offer free money to voters, then it should also be wrong for a Republican to do so, right?

Not according to at least one conservative online news publication. That publication, The Gateway Pundit, which describes itself as espousing a “politically conservative world view,” said of Trump’s promise:

Trump is fighting fire with fire. Democrats give money for votes all the time. It’s only fair.

But is that really fair? Do two wrongs somehow make a right when the second wrong is committed by Trump?

Not surprisingly, Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) sees it very differently. In an exclusive video interview on The John Birch Society program Birch’N the USA , Massie observed that “Republicans are offering socialism as an alternative to socialism.” He added, “they’re saying, don’t vote for socialism…. We’ll give you free money if we win. It’s, I mean, it’s crazy.”

In his September 9 speech, Trump said he will issue the $5,000 dividends “because we’ve done so well, … because our country is making so much money, that only I can make this promise to you.” Of course, he did not mention in his speech that the national debt is now $40 trillion! The U.S. government is deep in debt; there is no $1.2 trillion (the estimated cost of the giveaway) in the government coffers available to be given way. No, if the money is given away, expect it to be borrowed.

Moreover, if $1.2 trillion is suddenly interjected into the U.S. economy, the additional money will bid up the price of goods and services. Anyone who doubts this should consider what would happen to the bids for properties in a Monopoly game if the banker were to generously give every player piles of extra money.

Economic principles are immutable. They do not change based on whether the economic policies are being pursued by a Democrat or a Republican. As this writer observed in his article “ Principles… Not Personalities” in the August issue of The New American , “We should evaluate politicians based on principles — not personalities, and not parties.” — Gary Benoit

Ukraine Weighs Legalizing Pornography to Bankroll Its Drone War

Ukraine may soon be exploiting its female population to fund its ongoing war effort. Its parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, is advancing a bill to legalize and tax a pornography industry that has operated in legal limbo throughout the war — a move its sponsors frame as pragmatic wartime revenue. The bill, co-authored by Yaroslav Zhelezniak, who chairs the Rada’s finance committee, passed its first reading in July and awaits a second.

The Wall Street Journal reported that roughly 7,900 independent contractors, some of whom are not Ukrainian, earned millions through pressing ethnic Ukrainians into pornography. Some pornography, like OnlyFans , is self-created; it generated $131 million in 2023 alone. Zhelezniak estimates that legalization of this form of human exploitation could raise up to $25 million a year in tax revenue — enough, supporters say, for about 30,000 drones. This is marginal when weighed against Ukraine’s roughly $120 billion annual defense need, but proponents argue that every domestic revenue stream reduces dependence on foreign aid.

This is not the first time Ukraine’s sex industry has been enlisted for war finance. In 2023, an ad-hoc campaign called “ TerOnlyFans ” raised around $918,000 for the war effort and lobbied for the same legalization now before the Rada.

Once a state depends on pornography-tax revenue to arm itself, it acquires a structural stake in that industry’s growth rather than its abolition. It’s the same dynamic long observed with state lotteries and sin taxes on tobacco and gambling.

Moreover, the English word “slave” itself descends from “Slav,” via Byzantine Greek and Medieval Latin, a linguistic fossil of the 8th-to-11th-century trade in which foreigners like Khazars sold enormous numbers of enslaved Slavic people into the Islamic Caliphate — trade so large it displaced the old Latin word servus [serf] as Europe’s default term for the enslaved.

That corridor, in a modern form, never fully closed. The U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons reports have for years li s ted the Middle East among the destinations where Ukrainians are exploited in sex trafficking and forced labor, alongside Russia, Poland, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe. Many of these individuals are pressed into pornography to enrich those who exploit them. The International Organization for Migration estimates that roughly 300,000 Ukrainians were trafficked between 1991 and 2021, and a landmark 2006 PBS Frontline documentary named Ukraine and Moldova as “the centers of the global trade in women and girls.” Reporting since Russia’s 2022 invasion, including that from the Center for European Policy Analysis , describes wartime displacement as sharply increasing that risk, with criminal networks actively exploiting refugees and the vulnerable.

Legalizing and taxing pornography could, in principle, normalize and expand demand for human trafficking, meaning a wartime funding fix could deepen rather than sever one of Eastern Europe’s oldest and most persistent exploitation routes. — Rebecca Terrell

Data: U.S. Asylum Denials Rise to Record-high Level

The U.S. government denied a record percentage of applications for asylum in June, continuing the Trump administration’s efforts to shift U.S. immigration courts in a pro-enforcement direction.

According to a report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which obtained data via Freedom of Information Act requests, immigration judges denied 94 percent of asylum applications in June. Out of more than 14,000 applications considered in June, judges granted only 771, a statistic that the Washington Examiner described as an “all-time high.”

This marks a significant decline from Joe Biden’s presidency. In mid-2023, for example, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency within the U.S. Department of Justice that runs U.S. immigration courts, was approving more than half of all asylum requests.

The New American previously reported that the EOIR had granted only 8.8 percent of requests so far in fiscal 2026. The most recent data indicates that the agency is continuing to strengthen its pro-enforcement approach to immigration policy.

Additionally, the EOIR is considering more asylum cases. In June 2023, for example, the EOIR considered fewer than 6,000 cases. That figure more than doubled in June 2026, to about 14,000.

TRAC attributed this shift in part to the changing composition of U.S. immigration courts. For example, it noted that “a total of 279 Immigration Judges were fired or resigned during FY 2025 [and] FY 2026”; that’s “approximately 38 percent of the 735 Immigration Judges who were employed at the end of FY 2024.” The Trump administration has replaced those judges with individuals presumably more likely to decline asylum requests — and has even hired additional judges beyond replacement levels.

Commenting on the report, Andrew R. Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) described “a new record for asylum denials” as “no surprise,” “given how Biden’s [Department of Homeland Security] ignored [Immigration and Nationality Act] detention mandates, rarely subjected migrants to expedited removal at the Southwest border and ports, and instead released millions of illegal aliens on the (unreasonable) assumption they were all asylum seekers.”

Arthur also revealed a more complicated picture of U.S. immigration-court decisions, based on official EOIR data. He noted :

One web page on [the] EOIR statistics site is captioned simply “Asylum Decisions”, and it provides the figures for IJ [immigration judge] asylum “grants” and “denials” as well as immigration asylum cases in which the asylum decision was “abandonment”, “not adjudicated”, “withdrawn”, or “admin[istrative] closure”.

That’s because the final IJ decision on an asylum claim isn’t always either a “grant” or a “denial.” …

Of the 254,680 asylum decisions IJs issued in the first nine months of FY 2026, 7,231 (2.8 percent) were grants, 89,740 (35.2 percent) were denials, 44,062 (17.3 percent) were not adjudicated, 18,251 (7.2 percent) were withdrawn, and 3,315 (1.3 percent) were administratively closed — but 92,081 (36.2 percent), the largest single category of IJ asylum decisions, were ones in which the claim was “abandoned”.

This data, according to Arthur, indicates that a significant proportion of illegal aliens who apply for asylum are simply not showing up for their immigration-court hearings — “IJs [have] issued 90,288 in absentia orders of removal” so far in fiscal 2026 — which he described as “a recent phenomenon” that developed during the Biden administration.

Nonetheless, the data indicates that the Trump administration is continuing to deliver on immigration — despite broken promises elsewhere — and reverse Biden’s pro-open-borders policies. As an indication of its efforts, a separate CIS report found that the number of illegal aliens living in the United States dropped to 13.5 million in July 2026 from 15.8 million in January 2025. Of course, 13.5 million is still far too many, but at least the number is declining, not growing.

Ultimately, Congress must act to codify the Trump administration’s reforms and restore constitutional, pro-American immigration policies. — Peter Rykowski

TSA Quietly Ups the Ante on Post-9/11 Security Regime

Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks prompted the federal government to seal airport gates off from anyone without a boarding pass, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has begun letting some people back through, provided they’ve already been vetted as “trusted travelers.”

The new program , called “Gateside by TSA PreCheck,” allows PreCheck members and holders of a Known Traveler Number to pass through security without a ticket, so they can walk a departing companion to the gate, greet an arriving one, or simply wait out a layover with a friend, activities that were routine before 2001 but have been largely impossible since. TSA describes it as “an exclusive benefit for our most trusted travelers,” designed to “bring back the moments that once defined air travel.” The program is free, but requires online application one to three days in advance and approval before arriving at the airport. Passes are valid for a single calendar day, though re-entry is allowed within that day. “Gateside” has launched at 13 airports so far, including Los Angeles International, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas’s Harry Reid International, and Salt Lake City International, and TSA says it plans to expand to more airports in the coming months.

The timing of the program’s implementation — during the same week as the 25th anniversary of the attacks — underscores how durable the post-9/11 security apparatus has proven, and how narrow this particular rollback is.

Rather than restoring the old, universal system in which any member of the public could walk a ticketed passenger to the gate, the new arrangement extends the privilege only to travelers who have already paid to enroll in a federal trusted-traveler program and undergone a background check to obtain PreCheck status or a Known Traveler Number. Everyone else remains barred beyond the checkpoint. In that sense, “Gateside” is less a return to pre-9/11 openness than a further tiering of airport access by government-vetted status. It’s a small but telling data point in the broader, still-unresolved debate over how much of the security state built after 2001 was ever meant to be temporary. — Rebecca Terrell

EU Seeks to Impose New Taxes, Expanding Its Power

The European Union is seeking to impose new, EU-wide taxes in an effort to raise revenue, which, if realized, would result in yet another major expansion of the bloc’s power at the expense of its member states’ sovereignty.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, is currently preparing its 2028-2034 long-term budget , which is expected to cost nearly €2 trillion, or $2.3 trillion, altogether. To help finance the budget, which significantly increases spending over the 2021-2027 long-term budget, the commission is attempting to convince EU member states to approve new EU-level taxes.

According to Politico , “the Commission proposed five new levies [in 2025] — targeting carbon imports, emissions, non-collected electronic waste, corporate profits and tobacco products — worth €66 billion per year to finance the budget.” The fourth proposal, also known as a “digital services tax,” comes amid United Nations efforts to standardize taxation on corporations without a physical presence in a certain location. However, member states have so far approved only the carbon-import and electronic-waste taxes, and appear skeptical of the remaining proposals.

Under the EU’s current structure, member states must unanimously approve any new taxes. António Costa, president of the European Council, has been meeting with national leaders to secure support for additional taxes, and EU leaders plan to discuss the proposals during an October 15 summit.

Politico noted that “national capitals are reluctant to hand more taxing powers to the European Commission and agree to new levies that would hit some countries harder than others.” If anything, this concern is vastly understated. In order to truly become a strong , unified regional government — as it has sought to do from the very beginning — the EU must acquire revenue streams independent from the contributions of its member states. With the power to directly levy taxes, the EU will lose any remaining dependence on its member states and allow it to fully eliminate their sovereignty. The bloc is already looking to take more power for itself on issues such as migration and the single market .

This trend from national to global taxes is also occurring at the United Nations. Although last year the U.S. government pressured the UN’s International Maritime Organization into postponing consideration of a global carbon tax on shipping, the global body is likely to consider the proposal at a later date. Meanwhile, the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization is considering a global carbon tax on aviation fuel.

These global taxes demonstrate the dangers of international and supranational organizations such as the UN and EU. Rather than remaining in these organizations — and allowing them to gradually extinguish national sovereignty — the United States and other countries must restore their independence by exiting them. — Peter Rykowski

Envoys Shuttle Between Moscow and Kyiv As War Enters a New Phase

Though neither of them has been officially approved by the U.S. Senate, as the Constitution requires, Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner spent the Labor Day weekend acting as pseudo-diplomats, meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin for more than three hours on Saturday before traveling overland to Kyiv to see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday. It was their first joint Moscow visit since January, and it came after nearly eight months in which the administration’s Ukraine diplomacy had stalled while U.S. attention was consumed by the war with Iran.

Both sides took steps to make the trip possible. The Kremlin ordered a 72-hour halt to strikes on Kyiv, and Zelensky reciprocated by pausing Ukrainian strikes on Moscow, though neither side announced a broader ceasefire and the pause did not extend to the rest of the front. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov called the Putin meeting “substantive, constructive, [and] exceptionally candid,” saying Putin “confirmed his intention to continue working jointly with the Americans to seek political and diplomatic solutions.” Self-styled “special envoys” Witkoff and Kushner, for their part, described the follow-up talks in Kyiv as “substantive,” with Witkoff saying he was “very encouraged.” Notably, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had downplayed expectations beforehand, saying there was “no talk of new ideas” — a reminder that goodwill language has not yet translated into a signed deal.

On the other side of the balance sheet, however, Putin has repeatedly signaled openness to ending the war through negotiation rather than battlefield escalation. He reiterated that stance to Witkoff and Kushner, though Moscow continues to insist that any settlement include Ukraine ceding four claimed regions and addressing what it calls the conflict’s “root causes.”

Zelensky’s posture has shifted markedly: Beyond the weekend’s strike pause, the famously obdurate head of state has floated a full ceasefire and a face-to-face meeting with Putin. In addition, he told reporters in August that Kyiv sent Washington new proposals to end the war, and has helped shape a U.S.-brokered framework envisioning a ceasefire, mutual troop withdrawal, and a buffer “free economic zone.” “I am very serious, and it is important for me to end the war,” Zelensky said.

Both leaders have shown genuine openness to stopping the fighting, but “open to” is not the same as “agreed to,” and no comprehensive ceasefire is yet in place. The prospect of the end of hostilities may be as authentic as the diplomatic credentials of Witkoff and Kushner.

Kyiv suffered its eighth consecutive night of Russian drone strikes just before the envoys’ arrival, with attacks hitting Ukraine’s Security Service headquarters near St. Sophia’s Cathedral and a Coca-Cola bottling plant, part of a barrage that killed or wounded dozens of Ukrainians in early September alone.

Ukraine also faces a worsening shortage of U.S.-made interceptor missiles as winter approaches, so Ukraine and Washington’s sudden willingness to broker an armistice may have less to do with a desire for peace than with the dwindling stock of missiles that America can offer Ukraine as the United States is embroiled in its simultaneous conflict with Iran. — Rebecca Terrell

Report: Canadian PM Carney Seeks Associate EU Membership

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is in talks with European leaders about integrating Canada into the European Union, according to a recent report.

The report , published in The Wall Street Journal , notes that Carney has “held private conversations with almost every major European leader … on how to more deeply plug Canada and its 41 million people into Europe’s 27-nation club,” and “has instructed his special envoy to Europe to scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership in the EU or its common market.”

According to the Journal , Carney has even floated giving Canada the status of “Associate Member of the European Union,” a proposal that EU officials are “open” to. ( The Globe and Mail , however, reported that EU officials made the proposal.) Canada and the EU are considering areas in which the two blocs can integrate, including energy, research, communications, and even “jointly constructing data centers.” The European Parliament has already opened an office in Ottawa, Canada’s capital.

In comments on Sunday, after the Journal published its report, Carney confirmed that he was seeking “a unique alliance between Canada and the European Union,” although he claimed he was not pursuing full EU membership. Negotiating an agreement with the EU could be a tedious, drawn-out process.

In her State of the Union speech on Wednesday, attended by Carney, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen publicly offered to make Canada “the first associate member of the European Union.”

Carney’s efforts come amid deteriorating relations with the United States, particularly on trade. In addition to imposing tariffs on Canada, the United States is seeking to renegotiate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). In negotiating with the EU, Carney is seeking to make Canada less economically dependent on the United States.

What should we make of this development? It appears that with the United States no longer a reliable partner for securing North American integration — on the road to establishing a full-fledged North American Union — Canada is looking to Europe as an alternative. Additionally, Carney’s efforts are reminiscent of past proposals for an “ Atlantic Union ” — or steps ultimately leading to one — between Europe and North America. Although the United States is not involved in these current negotiations, it is certainly possible that a future, more internationally minded U.S. president could seek a similar arrangement, as has been proposed in the past.

Americans must remain vigilant and oppose all attempts at global and regional integration — and work to get the United States out of the United Nations, USMCA, and other globalist bodies. — Peter Rykowski

The Trump Corollary and the Reshaping of Latin America

Earlier this year, in January, the United States captured Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro at the Fuerte Tiuna military complex outside Caracas. As was President Manuel Noriega of Panama in 1990, Maduro was flown to the U.S. to face narco-terrorism, drug-trafficking, and weapons charges. President Trump declared, “We are reasserting American power,” and said Washington would help run Venezuela until a transitional government stabilizes. Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president.

The operation followed months of U.S. naval buildup, lethal strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels, and a blockade targeting sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers. Reaction split sharply along familiar lines: NATO allies largely voiced support or muted concern, while most Latin American, African, and Asian governments, as well as international-law scholars, called the raid a violation of the UN Charter, noting that neither the Security Council nor the Organization of American States authorized it.

Economically, the payoff for Washington came quickly. In September, Chevron announced it would invest more than $7 billion over five years to lift its Venezuelan output toward 600,000 barrels a day, at production costs it says could run under $20 a barrel. Caracas says it retains legal “sovereignty” over its reserves (the world’s largest) while inviting foreign capital and expertise back in. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips have been more cautious, citing the need for durable rule-of-law protections before committing. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has argued that expanded Venezuelan production will eventually ease U.S. gas prices, though analysts note the near-term market impact has been “ neutral ,” dwarfed by supply disruptions from the closed Strait of Hormuz.

The Maduro raid is the sharpest expression yet of what the administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy calls the “ Trump Corollary ” to the Monroe Doctrine — a pledge to “reassert and enforce” American preeminence throughout the hemisphere and deny “non-Hemispheric competitors,” chiefly China , any foothold or ownership of strategic assets here.

Analysts describe this as America stepping back from being the world’s policeman and tightening control of its own backyard. Several governments, including Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago, have already made a broader rightward electoral swing across Latin America, as voters disillusioned with recent left-of-center governance turn toward market-friendly, security-focused candidates, a trend forecasters expect to accelerate through the 2026 election cycle. — Rebecca Terrell

A Recommendation for September 17, Constitution Day

We have an excellent recommendation for you — and any fellow Americanists you’d like to invite to participate with you. That recommendation is to watch The John Birch Society’s classic video Overview of America sometime today — September 17, Constitution Day — or, if that is not practical (you may be reading these words after the 17th), sometime over the next several days. Watching the video will cost you only half an hour of your time (it is available on YouTube here ), and the benefits of watching it will be great.

Narrated by late longtime president of the JBS John F. McManus, Overview of America explains with refreshing clarity the great principles that undergird the greatest experiment in human liberty the world has ever witnessed. Those principles include the self-evident truths so beautifully articulated in the Declaration of Independence — that rights come from God, and that the purpose of government is to protect those rights. The U.S. Constitution created a government based on these timeless principles. These and many other points are succinctly covered in Overview of America — including the fact that our country is a republic, not a democracy, and that if it were to become a democracy, we’d soon lose our freedoms. It also explains that the marvelous free-enterprise system is compatible with freedom and a constitutional republic, while socialism and its variants are not.

Armed with the information in the video, you will understand more about political and economic principles than most political-science or economics students in America’s propagandistic and dumb-downed public colleges and universities. Not only that, but you’ll be able to utilize the understanding and talking points you’ve acquired from the video in our epic undertaking to save and restore our Republic. Those are great benefits, indeed! — Gary Benoit