The murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, in August 2025 drew national attention because of the random brutality caught on camera.  But beyond that, it brought into question the ongoing decline of America’s prosecution and punishment policies, especially within Democrat controlled cities.

The trend within progressive enclaves is to reduce prosecutions in order to reduce crime stats.  Far-left district attorneys and judges also have a habit of cutting deals with repeat offenders in order to keep the prison system from being “overwhelmed.”   Often, they use the excuse that suspects require mental health services rather than long prison sentences.

Violent assailants are set loose on the unsuspecting public over and over again. 

The Iryna Zarutska murder suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., is a repeat offender with a history of 14 arrests including  armed robbery and assault.  He was released without bond months earlier.  The reason?  Brown was initially diagnosed with schizophrenia.  But doesn’t this mean he should have been locked up for good instead of being released over and over again?  

The notion of “rehabilitation” for such offenders is a fantasy.  Numerous psychological studies have failed to produce even the slightest change in the recidivism rate for violent criminals.  Though politically unsavory, the fact is that high recidivism rates are the historical norm and have never substantively declined. Criminal behaviors are habituated and manifest from early callous and unemotional traits in childhood that seamlessly unfold into antisocial personality dysfunction throughout adulthood.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) study between 2008 and 2018 found that 66% of people released from prison in 24 states in were re-arrested within three years.  Of those re-arrested, 48% had an arrest that led to a conviction, and 49% returned to prison.  A review of 110 homicide suspects found that 82% had serious prior criminal convictions, 59% had a prior weapons offense, and 44% had prior violent crime convictions.

Multiple studies from countries around the world indicate that 1% of repeat offenders are responsible for over 60% of all violent crime and convictions. 

Under progressive policies, these criminals enjoy consistent protection from long term imprisonment.  Arguments include the claim that criminals are a “product of their environment” and that American society is to blame, not the perpetrators.  Leftists also assert that rehabilitation is superior to incarceration and that most criminals are “not bad people”, they simply face mental health obstacles. 

None of this is accurate.  Instead, leftist judges and politicians have created an system in which psychopathic offenders of certain demographics receive special treatment in the name of “equity” despite the risk they present to the general public.  Beyond that, leftists want to deconstruct the prison system, not expand it, because they view it as an “oppressive mechanism” of white supremacy.

The passage of Iryna’s Law in North Carolina is triggering a panic among Democrat officials who claim that requiring a bond for repeat offenders is going to pack their prisons; the very prisons they would prefer to defund.   

NC officials: “We are bracing for Monday, as you do when there’s a hurricane or a tragic storm that is coming.”

The new Iryna’s law will require violent criminals to be jailed instead of being released on the streets. pic.twitter.com/YD0xY9sH86

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 28, 2025

Critics also worry that harsher penalties for repeat offenders will open the door to the return of the death penalty. The bill passed the state House of Representatives 82-30 and the state Senate 28-8. Initially a bipartisan effort, 10 Democrats crossed party lines to vote with Republicans in the House. No Democrats voted for passage in the Senate.

Its main provisions enforce stricter pre-trial release conditions, mandate mental health evaluations for some defendants and expedite the process for implementing capital punishment. The death penalty changes were a last-minute amendment introduced by Phil Berger (R), president pro tempore of the state Senate, which caused Democrats to walk out. 

The statute virtually eliminates cashless bail for “violent offenses” and certain repeat offenders, as well as expanding the definition of “violent offenses.” For all offenses, it completely removes the condition to release a defendant on a written promise to appear.

In other words, common sense crime reform which should be the standard across the US.  Liberal crime theory has been an abject failure.  Rather than targeting the primary source of violent crime (repeat offenders) and locking them away for good, Democrats have chosen to hide stats by reducing prosecutions and convictions behind the facade of a mental health crusade.  Where they have failed in protecting the public, Iryna’s Law is likely to succeed.

Authored by George Ford Smith via The Mises Institute,

There’s an argument running through the commentariat that goes something like this: AI (artificial intelligence) has already rendered some jobs obsolete and will continue this trend until the human race is unemployed. Even now it surpasses the ability of most people to write an effective opinion essay because it can create logic-driven, elegant compositions in seconds. Since government schools turn out illiterates, people will depend on AI commentaries for intellectual expression. Combined with research functions that are allegedly dependent on flawed databases, leading users to accept falsehoods in areas such as medicine, government, and economic theory, it renders them easy prey for a program of complete statism, such as socialism.

Why socialism? Because socialists promise to care for the downtrodden, which will be every person left alive when AI achieves full robustness.

AI in the hands of a socialist government will feed and house them, and will, of course, see that it’s done equitably. This leaves libertarians and conservatives with the urgent need to stop AI in its tracks now, while they still can.

The idea of AI overtaking humanity has a distinguished pedigree. The website PauseAI presents quotes from leaders in their fields about the dangers of runaway AI:

Physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking had warned that, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race… It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate.”

Elon Musk—who is developing his own AI called Grokipedia—said, “AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation than be reactive. I think that [digital super intelligence] is the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates thinks “Superintelligent AIs are in our future…. There’s the possibility that AIs will run out of control.”

The founder of computer science and artificial intelligence Alan Turning predicted,

It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said,

There’s a long tail of things of varying degrees of badness that could happen. I think at the extreme end is the Nick Bostrom style of fear that an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) could destroy humanity. I can’t see any reason in principle why that couldn’t happen.

The foregoing experts have IQs far beyond ordinary. But they’re also human, subject to error.

Inventions that shake up the world have always been feared.

According to Plato, the invention of writing “will implant forgetfulness in [men’s] souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.” As it happened, writing by hand can improve memory and learning, especially for children. And, in early America, Thomas Paine showed incredible recall as he hand-wrote detailed critiques while relying solely on his memory.

Calculators have been said to be another tool for the lazy. In fact, they were found to have “allowed learners to focus on problem-solving rather than mechanical calculations” while fostering confidence in their learning abilities.

While it is in some sense true that the internet has shortened attention spans, there is ample evidence to contradict the claim, such as Substack essays, multi-hour podcasts, and eBooks. If people are engaged in tasks meaningful to them, while working in a supportive environment that keeps dopamine distractions to a minimum they are fully capable of multi-hour focus.

People are not, therefore, inert automatons under control of subversive forces. As Bastiat wrote about in The Law, in which he defined socialism as the improper use of force,

When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others. . . . But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed—then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives.

There is nothing in AI or AGI that requires the imposition of force. But socialism and its variants do. Socialism as an economic and sociological theory was thoroughly debunked by Ludwig von Mises in 1920 and again in 1922. As Mises argued in his 1920 essay, socialism suffers from the fatal absence of market pricing in producer goods. Even the best-selling socialist author Robert Heilbroner admitted in 1990, “It turns out, of course, that Mises was right. The Soviet system has long been dogged by a method of pricing that produced grotesque misallocations of effort.”

The only purpose of an economy is to create goods and services that satisfy human wants, not to create jobs. If AI eliminates jobs in the sense we now understand it, other opportunities will emerge for value creation as they have before when new technologies upset the status quo. Human wants are unlimited, and theory and history have shown that a market free from state intervention is the best way to satisfy them.

A recent poll shows more college students favor socialism than capitalism. This is hardly surprising given the socialist orientation of universities and their misrepresentation of capitalism. As Mises wrote in Socialism, “The terms ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Capitalistic Production’ are political catchwords. They were invented by socialists, not to extend knowledge, but to carp, to criticize, to condemn.”

The economic system that has sent students—graduating with four-year degrees, saddled with mountains of debt, and few marketable skills—is the Federal Reserve, income tax, warmongering, interventionist big government monstrosity.

This is a gross perversion of capitalism.

Multiple people were taken into custody by the NYPD during a protest in Chinatown Saturday afternoon after protesters gathered outside a parking garage at Centre Street and Howard Street where ICE agents were reportedly stationed in preparation for an immigration raid.  As with many of these incidents across the country in recent months, activists were somehow tipped off to the location of the ICE rally point.

Chaos and violence ensued as protesters blocked government vehicles (which is illegal), obstructed roadways (also illegal), threw items into the road to create obstacles (very illegal) and damaged public and private property (about as far from legal protest as it gets).  The NYPD was called by residents reporting the blocked streets and was not there specifically to aid ICE.  

The coordination of these groups is rather complex (not grassroots) and is handled by NGOs running call centers (rapid response hotlines).  These centers collect information from anonymous sources and then send out activists for on the ground verification.  Trained activists are then notified by phone or by text of an ICE location in their area. 

The protesters are paid, often by stipend or reimbursement, allowing low wage or jobless people to work as a mob for hire. 

There are a number of NGOs that run these operations in the NY area, but the largest is “Make The Road New York”, a group which is often cited for its involvement in anti-ICE actions.  MRNY receives tens-of-millions of dollars in funding from globalist NGOs like the Ford Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.  They have also collected government grants in the past and have worked closely with Democrat Politicians like former NY Mayor Bill de Blasio.

As we saw in the North Carolina ICE raids, NGO funded networks run training seminars for activists, teaching them methods for obstruction and provocation.  Again, there is nothing “grassroots” about these organizations.  Without funding for ultra-wealthy international non-profits, most of these protest would probably not exist. 

Then, of course, there’s the lack of any real deterrent to their tactics.  Local police make minimal arrests despite the endless criminal violations.  Riot police are rarely deployed and riot tactics are avoided; this puts the police at risk while enabling the paid protesters.  A little CS spray would go a long way in dispersing these mobs, but they seem to be protected from serious repercussions and ICE is limited in their manpower.

These provocations may simply be designed to force the Trump Administration’s hand, requiring Trump to deploy the national guard.  This then allows the leftist media and Democrat politicians to accuse Trump of “authoritarianism”.  At some point, the optics need to take a back seat to practicality.

The majority (66%) of Americans support deportations for illegal immigrants and the public voted for Trump based in large part on his promises to reverse the immigration disaster created by Joe Biden and the Democrats.  NGO funded activism is a direct violation of the will of the voters and eventually, it will have to be dealt with at the source.  

Authored by Jennifer Cowan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sexual extortion of children for profit is on the rise, Canada’s financial intelligence agency says, and a large portion of such activities are tied to organized crime.

A person types on a computer keyboard on May 13, 2025, in this photo illustration. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times

This form of online coercion consists of threats to share sexual images or videos of a victim unless they provide the offenders with money or additional pictures, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) says in a newly published operational alert.

The federal agency released the alert this week as part of its efforts to combat the online sexual exploitation of children.

“Online child sexual exploitation is a disturbing global crime targeting children that continues to rise year after year, not only in the number of confirmed reports showing child sexual abuse images, but also in the severity of the images and videos,” Fintrac said in a press release.

“The motivation for sexually exploiting children varies, and while most perpetrators commit child sexual exploitation for sexual gratification and not financial gain, there has been an increase in financially motivated offending, including sexual extortion cases in recent years.”

FINTRAC described the 11-page report as a way to help businesses identify and report financial transactions associated with such crimes and is urging banks and businesses to be on the lookout for the patterns identified in the report that can point to extortion or other types of child sexual exploitation.

The updated alert is based on strategic intelligence released by the agency in December 2020, and it integrates lessons learned about such crimes since then.

Victims Blackmailed

FINTRAC’s investigation into transactions linked to online child sexual exploitation showed that nearly all suspected offenders were male. They occupied various professions or referred to themselves as retired, with the majority ranging in age from their late 20s to 60s.

There has also been an increase in online purchases of child sexual exploitation material using virtual currencies, typically by men in their late 20s to 30s, the agency said.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has reported that perpetrators often use social media platforms to impersonate a young person so they can establish a connection and lure the victim into sending a nude image or video,  the alert says. The offender will then blackmail the youth after receiving the photo or video, demanding money or items such as gift cards, or further images, in exchange for not distributing the content to family and friends or making it public.

Demands for money have been known to come from international organized criminal networks, FINTRAC said, citing sources consulted by Cybertip, a national tip line for reporting online sexual abuse of children.

“Cybertip further highlights that boys are often targets of financial sexual extortion, while girls are more often extorted for more images,” the alert said.

FINTRAC outlined a range of indicators that could suggest online child exploitation. Sexual extortion may involve the rapid depletion of an account through email money transfers, online gift card acquisitions, or funds transferred to peer-to-peer payment platforms, it said.

Some transaction notes have been known to contain references that the funds are being extorted from the senders, including mentions of explicit content or desperate phrases like “please stop” or “delete the video.”

Some countries attract sex offenders because of their economic conditions, insufficient laws to safeguard vulnerable individuals, or their relative proximity to Canada, the FINTRAC alert said. The jurisdictions identified as high-risk are the Philippines, Thailand, India, South Africa, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Cuba.

FINTRAC was founded in 2000 and began operations as Canada’s national financial intelligence agency and anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulator shortly after, becoming fully operational in 2001.

It looks for funds associated with money laundering by examining millions of data points annually from banks, insurance firms, securities traders, money service providers, real estate brokers, casinos, and various other entities. The agency then passes on the intelligence it gathers to the RCMP and other police services and security partners.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.