International
Local SWAT team stopped Trump shooter, not Secret Service counter snipers: report
Still from video of Thomas Crooks walking toward the Trump rally the day of the assassination attempt
From LifeSiteNews
According to Rep. Clay Higgins’ preliminary findings, a Butler County SWAT officer fired the initial shot that stopped Thomas Matthew Crooks. The Butler County coroner was also unaware the FBI quickly released Crooks’ body for immediate cremation.
Representative Clay Higgins is a member of the congressional investigative task force looking into the assassination attempt by Thomas Matthew Crooks against President Trump. Rep. Higgins was also doing independent research prior to his appointment to the congressional committee, and he released his preliminary report findings today.
There are some remarkable revelations in the six-page PDF. One detail outlines how it was a Butler County SWAT officer who fired the initial shot that stopped Thomas Matthew Crooks after eight shots fired. The feds did not initially stop the assassin, the locals did. Another detail highlights how the Butler County coroner was not aware the FBI quickly released the body of Crooks for immediate cremation.

The 9th shot fired on J13 was from a Butler SWAT operator from the ground about 100 yards away from the AGR building. Shot 9 hit Crooks’ rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up. The SWAT operator who took this shot was a total bad***; when he had sighted the shooter Crooks as a mostly obscured by foliage moving target on the AGR rooftop, he immediately left his assigned post and ran towards the threat, running to a clear shot position directly into the line of fire while Crooks was firing 8 rounds. On his own, this ESU SWAT operator took a very hard shot, one shot. He stopped Crooks and importantly, I believe the shot damaged the buffer tube on Crooks’ AR. I won’t be certain of this until I can examine Crooks’ rifle, but I’m 99% sure based upon reliable eye-witness ESU tactical officers who observed Crooks’ rifle before the FBI harvested it as evidence. This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his 8th shot. (Clay Higgins Report, pdf – page 4)

(Page 5, Higgins Report)
Reprinted with permission from Conservative Treehouse.
Business
How convenient: Minnesota day care reports break-in, records gone
A Minneapolis day care run by Somali immigrants is claiming that a mysterious break-in wiped out its most sensitive records, even as police say officers were never told that anything was actually stolen — a discrepancy that’s drawing sharp attention amid Minnesota’s spiraling child care fraud scandal.
According to the center’s manager, Nasrulah Mohamed, someone forced their way into Nakomis Day Care Center earlier this week by entering through a rear kitchen area, damaging a wall and accessing the office. Mohamed told reporters the intruder made off with “important documentation,” including children’s enrollment records, employee files, and checkbooks tied to the facility’s operations.
But a preliminary report from the Minneapolis Police Department tells a different story. Police say no loss was reported to officers at the time of the call. While the department confirmed the center later contacted police with additional information, an updated report was not immediately available.
Video released by the day care purporting to show damage from the incident depicts a hole punched through drywall inside what appears to be a utility closet, with stacks of cinder blocks visible just behind the wall — imagery that has only fueled skepticism as investigators continue to unravel what authorities have described as one of the largest fraud schemes ever tied to Minnesota’s human services programs.
Mohamed blamed the alleged break-in on fallout from a viral investigation by YouTuber Nick Shirley, who recently toured nearly a dozen Minnesota day care sites while questioning whether they were legitimately operating. Shirley’s video has racked up more than 110 million views. Mohamed insisted the coverage unfairly targeted Somali operators and said his center has since received what he described as hateful and threatening messages.
A manager at the Nokomis Daycare Center in Minneapolis detailed "extensive vandalism" at the facility during a Wednesday news conference.
Manager Nasrulah Mohamed reported that the suspect stole important employee and client documents, an incident he attributed to YouTuber Nick… pic.twitter.com/71nNTSXdTT
— FOX 9 (@FOX9) December 31, 2025
“This is devastating news, and we don’t know why this is targeting our Somali community,” Mohamed said, calling Shirley’s reporting false. Nakomis Day Care Center was not among the facilities featured in the video.
The break-in claim surfaced as law enforcement and federal officials continue to expose a massive fraud network centered in Minneapolis, involving food assistance, housing, and child care payments. Authorities say at least $1 billion has already been identified as fraudulent, with federal prosecutors warning the total could climb as high as $9 billion. Ninety-two people have been charged so far, 80 of them Somali immigrants.
Late Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it was freezing all federal child care payments to Minnesota unless the state can prove the funds are being used lawfully. The payments totaled roughly $185 million in 2025 alone.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, under intensifying scrutiny for allowing fraud to metastasize for years, responded by attacking the Trump administration rather than addressing the substance of the findings. “This is Trump’s long game,” Walz wrote on X Tuesday night, claiming the administration was politicizing fraud enforcement to defund programs — despite federal officials pointing to documented abuse and ongoing criminal cases.
Meanwhile, questions continue to swirl around facilities already flagged by investigators. Reporters visiting several sites highlighted in Shirley’s video found at least one — Quality “Learing” Center — operating with children inside despite state officials previously saying it had been shut down. The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families later issued a confusing clarification, saying the center initially reported it would close but later claimed it would remain open.
As Minnesota scrambles to respond to the funding freeze and mounting arrests, the conflicting accounts surrounding the Nakomis Day Care incident underscore a broader problem confronting state leaders: a system so riddled with gaps and contradictions that even basic facts — like whether records were actually stolen — are now in dispute, while taxpayers are left holding the bill.
International
Trump confirms first American land strike against Venezuelan narco networks
President Trump confirmed Friday that U.S. forces have carried out what he described as the first American land strike on a Venezuelan smuggling facility, marking a significant escalation in his administration’s campaign against narco-terror networks tied to the regime of Nicolás Maduro.
The disclosure came unexpectedly during a live radio broadcast on New York’s WABC Radio, when billionaire businessman and guest host John Catsimatidis told listeners his phone was ringing mid-segment — and that the caller was the president. Catsimatidis, who was filling in on Sid and Friends in the Morning, said he had been exchanging text messages with Trump the night before about U.S. military action against Islamic State targets in northern Nigeria. Trump, he said, decided to call in unannounced to discuss a range of global security issues, including maritime drug interdictions in the Caribbean and Pacific.
During that conversation, Trump revealed that U.S. forces had already struck a key Venezuelan smuggling hub on land. “I don’t know if you read it or saw it — they have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump said on air. “Two nights ago we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”
The president did not identify the location of the facility or detail how the operation was carried out. Still, the comment appeared to confirm what Trump had been signaling publicly for weeks — that his crackdown on Venezuelan narco-terror operations would soon move beyond sea interdictions. Trump ordered U.S. forces to begin targeting drug-running boats in September and has repeatedly warned that land-based operations were coming.
In a Thanksgiving Day call with U.S. military personnel, Trump said efforts to stop Venezuelan traffickers “by land” would begin “very soon,” adding that “the land is easier.” He reiterated that message on December 11, telling reporters at the White House that land operations were imminent. If the timeline Trump laid out Friday is accurate, the strike took place less than two weeks after those remarks.
The left-leaning New York Times later reported that unnamed officials had confirmed the strike occurred but declined to provide specifics. According to the paper, U.S. officials would not disclose where the site was located, how it was targeted, or what precise role it played in drug trafficking, and there has been no public acknowledgment from Maduro’s government or other regional authorities.
Even with those details still under wraps, Trump’s remarks represent the clearest confirmation yet that U.S. military action against Venezuelan smuggling networks has expanded onto sovereign territory — a move that underscores how far his administration is willing to go to dismantle drug pipelines tied to hostile regimes in the Western Hemisphere.
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