• The report: Describes the US's decision to reinstate the VOA's Persian service due to escalating conflict between Iran and Israel.

• Background: President Trump ordered the shutdown of the Persian service in March as part of a broader dismantling of US-backed global media.

• Action: Employees previously placed on administrative leave have been recalled to counter Iranian state media.

• Context: The move comes amid missile strikes exchanged between Israel and Iran, highlighting the need for the Persian service.

• Statements: Cites a VOA employee and Patsy Widakuswara, a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Trump administration, criticizing the decision.

• Protests Evolution: The article discusses the evolving Wikipedia description of the June 2025 Los Angeles events, shifting between 'protest,' 'riot,' and 'civil unrest'.

• Editor Discussions: Editors debate appropriate terms like 'unrest,' drawing parallels to the 2014 Ferguson unrest, with consideration of whether events constitute a 'riot' based on violence and damage.

• Differing Perspectives: Views vary, with some favoring 'riot' based on widespread violence, while others, citing Wikipedia convention, prefer 'protest' even with clashes.

• Historical Context: The article contrasts the 2020 George Floyd protests with earlier events like the Boston Tea Party, highlighting the shifting nature of protests and riots.

• Wikipedia's Role: The article examines how historical events are documented in real time by anonymous users, reflecting broader cultural changes and editorial biases.

• The article introduces Meela: An AI companion designed to alleviate loneliness and depression in senior citizens.

• Meela's Functionality: The AI engages in empathetic conversations, remembers past interactions, and offers cognitive behavioral therapy.

• Pilot Study Results: Early trials at RiverSpring Living showed improved mental health outcomes for residents using Meela.

• Meela’s Developer: Josh Sach created Meela after witnessing his father-in-law's isolation.

• Future Plans: Sach plans to expand Meela's availability through a subscription service and to other senior living communities.

The new dominant form of organized crime has shown its face in Los Angeles in recent days. Though it comes under the banner of “protest” and is whitewashed in the media as “mostly peaceful” and presumed spontaneous, a close observer can see that it is none of these things. It is in fact the result of a calculated civil terrorism movement taking advantage of Americans’ reluctance to treat criminals as criminals.

Images and videos from the riots give the game away. Why are there keffiyehs everywhere? What does Palestinianism have to do with preventing the federal government from enforcing immigration law, and how did the rioters know to show up covering their faces with the same symbolic gear? Who brought gas masks by the truckload? Who managed to convince hundreds of people to take up rock-throwing, Molotov cocktail-dropping, and arson at seemingly arbitrary places and times? Who laid the groundwork for street violence by training people in the tactics that prevent law enforcement from ending it promptly? As domestic-extremism expert Kyle Shideler puts it, this violence is “not black magic, it’s just hard work.”

But just as it is not black magic—not orchestrated down to fine details by mob bosses—neither is it grassroots. Nothing about this “protest” is organic. It is organized, activated, and AstroTurfed—and it has a hard time sticking to script. When Students for Justice in Palestine chimes in to say that “from the barrios of LA to the refugee camps of Bethlehem, we will globalize the intifada,” it makes the unrest look less like an expression of outrage against immigration policy than a lashing out against the rule of law itself.

It will still cloak itself in the language of law and democracy. It gets significant help from credulous media reporting, like CNN’s claim that “protests in and around Los Angeles erupted on Friday after federal immigration agents arrested at least 44 people.” A protest is when people peaceably assemble for a redress of grievances. What has transpired in Los Angeles is wanton property destruction, assaults on cops, and exuberant lawlessness.

None of this stands any chance of showing the American people that the government’s actions are wrong and the “protesters” are right. All it can do is show that the rioters are loose cannons, and that Americans ought to be afraid of what they might do. It is the opposite of democratic.

Strategically deployed acts of intimidation are the mechanism by which civil terror groups—themselves strategic, organized, well-funded, and cleverer than they look—seek to advance their anti-Western cause. One would have to be naive, at this point, not to suspect that they want to make immigration law enforcement a third rail in American politics.

For those who openly seek to “globalize the intifada”—the guerrilla campaign against civilians in the “Little Satan,” Israel—lax immigration standards provide an excellent way to amass manpower for the burgeoning struggle against the “Great Satan,” America. While no hard evidence demonstrates Iran’s involvement in fomenting this organized chaos, civil terror groups do use Tehran’s terms and those of its proxies for other acts of terror. All appear to view the two nations in the same way.

Is the mass criminal activity we’re seeing in cities a foreign-funded effort to destabilize our politics, intimidate Americans to subvert the democratic process, and prevent the federal government from carrying out entirely justifiable immigration law enforcement? It’s hard to say definitively without further investigation. So long as these miscreants continue to act lawlessly, however, states and the federal government will have ample cause to open those investigations—to identify who is laying the groundwork for violence, which large nonprofits should face massive asset forfeitures for bankrolling civil terrorism, and which individuals should be facing prison time for bringing the new wave of organized crime to American streets.

Top Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Many believe that masculine industries, such as military and defense, are naturally immune to left-wing race and gender ideologies. This is mostly a myth. These institutions are organized according to prestige and profit—and when those signals point to “woke,” industry leaders have dutifully followed.

Take America’s largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin. As we have previously reported, after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Lockheed adopted radical DEI policies and, in one instance, required white men in leadership positions to attend a racial reeducation program and atone for their “white male privilege.”

Now, a whistleblower has come forward to claim that Lockheed executives were so committed to DEI policies that they awarded some year-end bonuses based on employees’ skin color, rather than performance—in open violation of civil rights law.

The story began in December 2022, when the whistleblower was preparing recommendations for the aeronautics division’s year-end bonuses. The whistleblower was proud of the work the team had done to calculate awards. But soon after the bonuses were submitted for approval, higher-ups told the whistleblower that there was a problem: the “Comp Adder” list, which named recipients of bonus compensation, had too many white employees on it.

Santiago Bulnes, a vice president who now leads engineering on Lockheed’s F-35 program, wrote an email to the whistleblower. “I got a call from [human resources director] La Wanda [Moorer] last night regarding diversity stats on comp adder,” Bulnes, who did not respond to a request for comment, said. “They took a run at getting your few approved and we’re told that we need to fit in the box. I asked her to send you the list of diversity names to simplify the task of finding the best in the group.”

Next, our source claims, officials in Lockheed’s human resources department made the demand explicit. One communication instructed the whistleblower to add more than a dozen minorities to the list and recommended removing an equal number of “non-minority” employees. The implication was clear—“increasing POC for Comp Adder will result in removing equal count of non-minority”—and the instructions were deliberate, recommending specific race swaps by manager. For example, for one team, human resources officials instructed the whistleblower to “increase POC 4 and decrease non-minority 4.”

Our source was outraged. The company was requiring managers to reward employees “on the basis of their skin color alone and contrary to documented performance.” The whistleblower tried to protest this decision and filed an ethics complaint, arguing that the policy was unethical and could expose the company to legal liability, but management insisted. “Our HR counsel told me that while this may present business risk, it was the ‘less[e]r of two evils.’”

One driving force behind Lockheed’s discriminatory policy, according to our source, was La Wanda Moorer, the director of human resources. When the whistleblower asked Moorer, who did not respond to a request for comment, what would happen if the team could not find enough minorities to replace white workers on the bonus list, Moorer responded forcefully. “[T]he preference is for you to get there,” Moorer wrote. “If you are coming back and saying you can’t get there and it’s unnatural than [sic] I think that changes the conversation as a business area what risk are we willing to assume, and should we get into a situation where there is legal activity that takes place then you will be part of that process . . . . We haven’t ever been in a situation where we haven’t gotten there.”

Moorer’s last comment is worth highlighting. It suggests this wasn’t the first time Lockheed had engaged in a secret, post hoc process to strip bonuses from top performers and instead award them to employees who checked diversity boxes. And in the preceding sentence, Moorer seems to acknowledge that such policies, which are inherently discriminatory, could violate the law. Apparently, the company’s commitment to “diversity” trumped any other consideration.

In the end, the whistleblower followed the order and “swapped” 18 whites for 18 minorities, solely on the basis of race. A few months later, our source left the firm and penned a resignation letter to colleagues.

“I, at the direction of Lockheed, have actively discriminated against higher performing individuals, denied them higher pay they earned, denied them the opportunity to be motivated as a top performer,” the letter read. “Not only does this force a violation of my conscience that forces me to leave, but we could have 18 valid individual claims with associated public embarrassment and lost customer trust.”

A Lockheed spokesperson responded to our request for comment, insisting that “Lockheed Martin is a meritocracy” and is “committed to recognizing performance, rewarding excellence, and upholding the principles of merit and fairness.” The spokesperson claimed that our reporting “raise[s] concerns that we are taking seriously and investigating.”

Nevertheless, a reckoning may be coming. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from maintaining discriminatory DEI programs. His administration has signaled interest in prosecuting cases of anti-white discrimination. Though Lockheed quickly shuttered its DEI initiatives after Trump’s executive order, its actions earlier in the post-George Floyd era cannot be erased. As the whistleblower warned, racial discrimination is illegal—and the company could pay a heavy price.

One hopes that it will. For decades, companies could deliberately discriminate against white men without consequence. But that calculus is changing. The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, now led by conservative super-lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, has sought to return the civil rights regime to its original mission: to enforce the law equally for individuals of all racial groups.

Dhillon might initiate this policy with a high-profile target—perhaps the nation’s largest defense contractor.

Photo by Orjan F. Ellingvag/Corbis via Getty Images