Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration recently suspended the processing of all immigration applications from 19 countries, including Afghanistan, citing national security and public safety concerns.

The Dec. 2 decision came a week after an Afghan national who had been allowed into the United States under a Biden-era program was charged with shooting two National Guard soldiers near the White House. The ambush killed one of the victims and left the other in critical condition.

The White House’s move comes amid a global migration crisis, in which millions of people have left their home countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia for the affluent economies of North America and Europe.

Although the United States was founded by immigrants, experts say that times have changed, and the country has become too popular a destination that now action is needed to restore a functioning immigration system.

“How this country was founded, and the ethos and numbers of people in the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s are very different than what we’ve been experiencing,” Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times. “And so our immigration system has just been run away, whether it’s illegal or legal.”

“We need to pop this bubble and get control over our country, [with] a lawful, manageable and orderly immigration system.”

The countries affected by the Dec. 2 memorandum were Burma (also known as Myanmar), Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. Most of these countries have high visa overstay rates or poor vetting procedures.

In August, the Pew Research Center analyzed Census Bureau data and said 53.3 million immigrants were living in the United States in June 2025.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, immigrants made up 14.8 percent of the population in 2024, a rate the United States has not seen since 1890.

“Our inn is not only full, it is overflowing,” Ries said. “So other countries need to step up and pitch in.”

Push and Pull Factors in Migration

In 2024, the United Nations’ population division published data that suggested a record 304 million people lived in a country other than their country of birth.

That figure—which represents 3.7 percent of the world’s 8.2 billion people—was up from 275 million in 2020.

That number would include the 42 million people who, in June 2025, the United Nations refugee agency said have left their home country due to “persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order,” plus 8.4 million who are claiming asylum in another country.

War and political violence are push factors in some parts of the world, says Paul Morland, demographer and author of “The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World,” but he said they were less significant than people’s age-old desire to improve their standard of living.

“A bigger story than the security one is the economic one, because that’s always there,” Morland told The Epoch Times.

He noted that the Congo, which has had an ongoing civil war for several years, has not generated large numbers of migrants to Europe or North America, while India and Pakistan—which have been largely peaceful—have seen large numbers move to the West.

Many times, migrants use the persecution justification to pursue the economic motive, Ries noted.

“There are 193 countries on this planet, so if you are truly fleeing for your life, then you should go to the first safe country that you enter,” she said, “You should not be able to country shop and go through multiple safe countries without getting protection there, just because you want to get to the U.S.”

Cultural differences play a role in immigration’s impact on the host country, said Morland.

“What has a very big impact is when people from very radically different cultures arrive,” he said, “They look very different, their practices are very different, their belief systems and values are very different. And the assumption has to be that they will take longer to integrate.”

In America, immigration has historically been associated with positive outcomes, Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council, told The Epoch Times.

“Since its inception, America has thrived by attracting the best and brightest from around the world to contribute to our innovation, economy, and society as whole,” said in a statement sent by email.

“After all, America was founded on the idea that you could leave your former life behind, start anew, and build something for yourself and your family.”

There are reasons behind that success.

“This idea is reliant on the invisible pillars that hold this nation together and attract contributors from around the world: freedom, opportunity, respect for family, patriotism, law and order, and a strong set of rules and guidelines that enable competition and encourage growth,” said Palomarez.

The “ubiquity of English” in much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America also made the United States and Britain attractive for many migrants, said Morland.

Birth of the Immigration Law Industry

In the 1990s, migrants and human traffickers began to realize that if they could get into their destination country and then claim asylum, they could use legal avenues to prevent being deported, Tony Smith, a former director general of the UK Border Force, told The Epoch Times.

“This gave birth to an industry of immigration lawyers who would support migrants who entered your country illegally,” Smith said. “That had the effect of preventing removals, at least temporarily, whilst that application was processed.”

He said the fact that the asylum-seekers had usually passed through numerous safe countries en route made no difference.

“You have people from all over the world coming in through Mexico because they want to go to the U.S.,” said Smith. “They’re not interested in getting refuge in Mexico or South America.”

A masked migrant illegally crosses into the United States outside of San Diego, Calif., on Dec. 5, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

But President Donald Trump has upended the system.

“He is doing things that actually will horrify some judges and some lawyers,” said Smith, “[but] he’s had a very significant effect, both in terms of reducing illegal migration across the southern border, but also in terms of the inland activity by [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to arrest people who should not be in the U.S., and by exerting political pressure on those countries that have traditionally said, ‘We’re not taking our own people back again.’”

Morland said in countries with grinding poverty, long-distance migration is unlikely.

“Ironically, it’s when people get off the floor [that migration happens],” Morland said. “They get a bit of money. They get an iPhone. They can see what the world’s like. They can afford an airfare. They maybe have already got an uncle in London or Paris. That’s when they move, not when they’re absolutely dirt poor and ignorant sitting in the village.”

Morland said it is also unlikely that migrants would return to countries like Afghanistan, Syria, or Sudan even when peace is restored.

“If the Taliban were overturned, and a beautiful liberal democracy were formed in Afghanistan, I hardly think anyone could go back,” Morland said. “Over many, many years, if that then led to economic prosperity, maybe.”

He said “unforced remigration” is going to be fairly limited from countries such as the United States, Canada, and Germany, where per-capita incomes are $50,000 or more.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) holds a photo of Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, a West Virginia National Guard member who was shot near the White House on Nov. 26, in Washington on Dec. 2, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

National Security and ‘Open Border Welfare State’

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, the Afghan national who has been charged with the first-degree murder of Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and assaulting Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe with intent to kill, in Washington, had worked with the CIA during the war in Afghanistan.

He was one of around 76,000 Afghans allowed to resettle in the United States under a Biden-era resettlement program, Operation Allies Welcome.

It has since faced intense scrutiny from Trump and other U.S. officials over allegations of gaps in the vetting process.

Ries said the president’s actions were a valid response to the Washington shooting, and what the Biden administration had done “in terms of opening the border, and mass paroling of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of inadmissible aliens from around the world.”

Trump’s return to the White House this January also marked the culmination of many American voters’ frustration with the country’s immigration-related policies and concerns about national security, Ries noted.

“People got so fed up with the open border welfare state that we were living in that they voted against that last November,” she said.

“They wanted the border secure. They wanted the portable aliens removed, and they want taxpayer dollars to go to Americans first, not people who aren’t supposed to be here.”

Declining Birth Rate in the US

The global migration crisis also comes amid wildly contrasting fertility rates between the West and the Third World.

Africa has some of the highest rates in the world. Somalia, Chad, Niger, and the Congo all have fertility rates of six or above.

In 1960, the fertility rate in the United States was between four and five. By 2023, that number had halved to 2.2, approaching 2.1, the minimum level at which a population is able to replace itself from one generation to the next.

Macroeconomist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde called low fertility rates “the true economic challenge of our time” in a February report for the American Enterprise Institute.

Palomarez, the president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council, said immigration has been part of the solution for this challenge.

“At the end of the day, especially given our declining birth rate, our nation is reliant upon a steady stream of immigrant workers and entrepreneurs,” Palomarez said.

Ries said the baby bust in the United States should be addressed at a fundamental level.

“The falling fertility rate in America is the result of a long-term destructive campaign against marriage, families, and having children, and so we just need to wake up from this decades-long nightmare of anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-children policies and agenda, and return to how God made us.”

The battle over artificial intelligence policy is moving from Washington hearing rooms to the campaign trail, where two rival political efforts are preparing to spend at least $150 million to shape the outcome of federal and state elections.

The clash pits industry-backed advocates for rapid AI development against a bipartisan group of former lawmakers calling for stronger regulation and tighter export controls. The scale of the planned spending exceeds the roughly $100 million deployed by crypto-aligned political groups during the 2024 election cycle, Punchbowl News reports.

Unlike the crypto push, however, the emerging AI fight features two organized camps preparing to go head-to-head: pro-industry “AI boomers” and regulation-minded “AI doomers,” each seeking to influence lawmakers and voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.

BOOMERS: AI To The Moon Under One National Framework

On the pro-AI side is Leading the Future, a group of industry-backed super PACs seeded with money from technology leaders and venture capital interests. The effort has received early backing from OpenAI President Greg Brockman, venture capital firm a16z, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and is preparing to spend up to $100 million.

Josh Vlasto, who is co-leading the group’s political strategy, said the goal is to elect candidates supportive of a national, federal-led approach to AI regulation.

“You will see a broad consensus in Congress to have the federal government lead on creating a national, pro-AI, pro-America regulatory framework,” Vlasto said.

That approach reflects industry concerns that a patchwork of state-level AI laws could hinder U.S. competitiveness, particularly in the race with China. While Vlasto said his group supports the idea of a federal AI standard, he indicated that policy specifics would be handled by a related advocacy organization.

Leading the Future is expected to support candidates who favor federal preemption of state AI regulations. Vlasto, who also served as a spokesperson for Fairshake – the crypto-aligned super PAC that backed more than 50 candidates in 2024 – declined to set a limit on how many races the AI-focused group might enter.

The group has already signaled its willingness to play offense, announcing plans to spend against New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores, a Democrat who has supported state-level AI regulation and is running for Congress.

Vlasto said the organization is designed to move quickly as policy debates evolve and has leaned heavily into digital advertising, though it has also purchased television spots.

“This is a highly dynamic moment in this policy debate,” he said. “We are built… to use our resources and bring the AI sector together to advocate for this agenda.”

In short, AI Boomers want:

Federal preemption of state AI laws: one national AI framework, not 50 state regimes. States like New York or California passing their own AI rules are seen as a threat to innovation.

Light-touch federal regulation: Support a “federal standard,” but generally oppose detailed, prescriptive rules. Policy specifics are often deferred to industry-friendly agencies or advisory bodies.

Speed over precaution: The belief is that slowing deployment risks losing the global AI race, especially to China. Safety, bias, and misuse concerns are viewed as manageable after deployment.

Industry-driven governance: AI companies should have a major role in shaping the rules that govern them. Regulatory capture is not how they describe it; they frame it as “technical expertise.”

DOOMERS: Control AI before it reshapes society

On the opposing side, former Reps. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) and Brad Carson (D-Okla.) are launching two separate super PACs aimed at boosting candidates who favor stronger AI regulation and export controls.

Together, the PACs aim to raise $50 million for the 2026 cycle – roughly half the amount promised by Leading the Future, but enough, organizers say, to compete with tech industry spending.

“Most people are anxious about AI. They’re not opposed to it, they’re anxious,” Carson said, arguing that public concern about the pace of AI development is being underestimated.

Carson criticized what he described as tech companies’ “accelerationist YOLO agenda” and said his PACs would disclose their donors in the coming months.

The groups plan to support candidates for the House and Senate and are also considering investments in state legislative races and gubernatorial contests. Carson said spending decisions will be made across television, digital platforms, and other media as appropriate, with endorsements coming from both political parties.

Two policy issues are central to the effort: AI regulation and export controls on advanced AI chips bound for China.

Carson said the PACs will support candidates “who favor strong export controls,” and he reiterated opposition to President Trump’s decision to allow Nvidia to sell advanced AI chips to China. Carson, who serves as president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, has argued that export restrictions are critical to national security.

The PACs will also back candidates who believe government has a role in regulating AI, including allowing states to act in the absence of a federal framework.

Doomer priorities:

Meaningful regulation, not just federal symbolism: They want enforceable rules on: Model deployment. Safety testing, Transparency, Accountability for harm. 

State authority as a backstop – not a takeover: States should be allowed to regulate AI if Congress fails to act.

This mirrors how states regulate: Consumer protection, Data privacy, Product safety, State involvement is seen as a pressure mechanism, not the ideal endpoint.

Export controls and national security: They strongly support restricting advanced AI chips to China. They view unfettered exports as a strategic and military risk.

Public trust as a strategic asset: Their argument is that if voters lose confidence in AI, politicians will overcorrect. Early guardrails are framed as pro-innovation, not anti-innovation.

Competing visions for AI’s future

While Carson and Stewart reject the label “anti-AI,” they argue that guardrails are necessary to maintain public trust in the technology.

“Big tech has lost the confidence of the American people,” Carson said. “And if the American people don’t believe in [AI], you’re going to see politicians turn against it in a very severe way.”

Authored by Larry Johnson via Sonar21.com.

Sy Hersh’s latest Substack article on the prospects a successful outcome of the US attempt to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is important because it reveals the pathetic incompetence of the CIA. It appears that Sy reported what senior Trump officials told him about the on going negotiations with the Russians and Ukrainians, and that those officials were sharing their understanding of the capabilities of Russia and Ukraine based on intelligence reports and intelligence analysis provided principally by CIA analysts.

Here are some of the more egregious claims by these officials:

Both nations are on the verge of economic and military collapse…

Putin is facing economic, political, military, and public pressure…

Putin is facing increasing political, economic, and military opposition in Moscow—mortgage rates are soaring and the Russian military is in serious disarray—has realized that he must end the war…

Ongoing warfare is not going to change the balance of forces. Putin is under pressure to end the war from his military and from a public staggered by its continuing costs, and inflation is at 8.4 percent…

Some of the most senior Russian generals, while still loyal to Putin, urgently want the depleted Russian Army to get out.

Putin is staying afloat by borrowing money from Russian banks that are not permitted to lend to the population.

Rather than debunk each of these claims, I will focus on the last two.

Regarding the claim that Russian banks “are not permitted to lend to the population.” Wrong! Russian banks are fully allowed—and actively do—make loans to Russian citizens . According to Russia’s Central Bank and news reports from Reuters , Bloomberg , and The Moscow Times , there are no prohibitions on domestic lending to Russian individuals under current regulations (as of December 2025). Consumer lending (unsecured loans, mortgages, car loans, credit cards) is a major part of the Russian banking sector, with retail loan portfolios growing continuously because Russian wages have increased more than the rate of inflation — 20% — and are greater than the high interest rates. How could the Trump intelligence community get such an easy fact to verify so wrong?

Then there is the assertion that the Russian army is “depleted.” Russia’s active-duty military personnel strength as of December 2025 is approximately 1.32 million. This figure comes from the 2025 Global Firepower Index (reviewed January 2025) and cross-verified sources like Statista , which cites ~1.32 million active troops (part of a total force of ~3.57 million including reserves and paramilitary). My sources in Russia put the number at greater than 1.5 million. In February 2022, according to IISS Military Balance 2022 and Global Firepower , Russia’s active-duty military forces were 900,000.

In terms of Russia’s ground forces, they have grown from 300,000 in February 2022 to 623,000 in just the Ukrainian theater, according to Ukraine’s General Syrsky. Total Russian ground forces now exceed 1 million men. Does that sound like depletion to you?

So why does the CIA persist in peddling provably false information. I blame former CIA Director John Brennan. John Brennan, as CIA Director (2013–2017), initiated a major reorganization in March 2015 that integrated analysts (from the Directorate of Analysis) and operations officers (from the Directorate of Operations) into hybrid mission centers.

This “modernization plan” aimed to break down traditional silos — ie, previously analysts and operations officers worked in separate units — by creating 10 new mission centers (focused on regions/threats like counterterrorism and cyber), where analysts, operators, digital experts, and support staff would work side-by-side under unified leadership. Brennan announced the overhaul on March 6, 2015 , with implementation beginning shortly after (eg, assistant directors named April 30, 2015). The ostensible goal was better integration for modern threats like cyber warfare, modeled partly on the existing Counterterrorism Center, but the actual effect subordinated independent analysis to the covert programs directed and managed by the operations officers.

When I started working as an analyst in the fall of 1986, the Directorate of Intelligence occupied the north wing of the CIA headquarters and the Directorate of Operations occupied the south wing… We were in our respective silos. I was the Honduras analyst when the war in Central America was a top priority for the Reagan administration. Funding the Contras and fighting the Sandinista was a major covert action program of the Director of Operations… The Central American Task Force (CATF) to be precise. The case officers in the CATF had every incentive to make the program look like it was being successful.

I vividly recall a briefing that I, along with the Nicaragua branch military analyst, gave to members of Congress on March 12, 1988 about a developing situation on the border of Honduras and Nicaragua. We were accompanied by the Chief of military operations for the CATF. We had intelligence that the Sandinistas were prepared to launch military operations against Contra forces in the Las Vegas salient of southern Honduras. During the course of that briefing we received news from headquarters that the Sandinistas had allegedly overrun a Contra base and were killing the CIA-backed Contras. What a disaster!

As we filed out of that briefing got into the van to take us back to headquarters, the CATF military chief began berating me and the military analyst for the Nicaraguan branch as having contributed to this alleged disaster for the Contras because our analysis did not enthusiastically support the CATF covert program. When I arrived back at headquarters and had a chance to look at the actual intelligence, I discovered that we had been told a lie. Instead of the Sandinistas swarming a Contra camp like Mexican troops attacking the Alamo, the intel report simply stated that a Contra patrol had skirmished with a Sandinista patrol 15 km south of the Contra base. The point of telling this anecdote is to illustrate the kind of pressure that we as analysts faced from the operations side of the house to spin a narrative that portrayed the Contra’s in the best possible light while downplaying the competence of the Sandinista forces.

I think a similar phenomena has been at play since the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in February 2022. I believe that the analysts responsible for reporting on the Ukrainians and Russians are fully embedded in a Mission Center , something akin to the CATF, and that analysts face daily pressures from operations officers to paint the Ukrainians as victors and the Russians as losers who are on the verge of economic and political collapse.

It is simple human nature… If you want to get promoted, don’t tell the truth, just go along with the program.

I also have learned that the primary source material the analysts are using is generated by the Ukrainians, who are working in concert with CIA officers deployed in Ukraine. I believe that the combination of peer pressure from operations officers to support a covert mission and a steady supply of tainted information from biased Ukrainian sources explains why the US officials who spoke to Sy Hersh are painting such a false and distorted picture of the war in Ukraine and are describing the Russians as incompetent, depleted and on the verge of crumbling. Garbage in, garbage out .

If the CIA has any hope of being able to provide something approaching objective, truthful analysis, the Mission Centers created by Brennan must be dismantled. There was a press report last February that current CIA director Ratcliffe was reviewing whether to reverse Brennan’s changes due to perceived negative impacts on human intelligence (HUMINT) and core missions. Let me assure you that the negative impacts are real, not perceived.

So far, Ratcliffe has not acted to reverse Brennan. Maybe the defeat of Ukraine by Russia will finally convince Ratcliffe to take action to rescue analysts from the clutches of the operations officers.