President Trump has done more to reorder the Western Hemisphere in eighteen months than his predecessors managed in twenty years. The Shield of the Americas coalition, launched in March, turned a decade of hollow summit language into actual intelligence sharing and joint operations against the cartels, with governments that want to use it. Major trafficking organizations have been designated as terrorist entities and treated accordingly. Secretary Rubio has assembled a working coalition of roughly a dozen friendly capitals. Tariff leverage has been applied where it produces results and relaxed where partners deliver. And the June ambassadorial slate was a statement of seriousness, sending Daniel Perez to Brazil, Mark Abreu to El Salvador, Peter Snyder to Ecuador, Nate Morris to Colombia, and Paul Kalmbach to Paraguay. Those are consequential posts filled with people who carry weight.

The results include an election almost no one in Washington expected to break the right way. In the final stretch of the Honduran presidential race, with polling tight and the outcome genuinely uncertain, President Trump endorsed Nasry Asfura. Asfura won by a razor thin margin and took office in January. The endorsement was decisive.

In six months Asfura has preserved the extradition treaty his predecessor moved to terminate, an instrument that has already delivered more than fifty Hondurans into American custody on narcotics charges. He suspended roughly twenty cooperation agreements signed with Beijing under the previous government, including a free trade deal that had been under negotiation for two years, and has left his ambassadorship in Beijing unfilled since January. Senior officials have said the 2023 break with Taipei is under review. He came to Mar a Lago in February to talk migration, tariffs, and security. No other government in Central America has moved that far that fast on Washington’s agenda.

I have a personal stake in getting this right. I grew up in Tegucigalpa and went to school there, and my family’s ties to Honduras go back decades and continue today through missionary work. For most of my life I have watched Washington discover Honduras in the middle of a crisis, commit loudly, and drift once the cameras leave, and I have watched Honduran leaders learn to plan around that pattern. It is legible from Beijing as well. What is different now is that the drift has stopped, and there is an administration in Washington and a government in Tegucigalpa that want the same things at the same time. That does not happen often, and it does not last long.

What remains to be done in Honduras is substantial, and all of it is time sensitive.

On energy, the Honduran Congress is in the final stage of negotiating a reform of the state utility, which loses close to two million dollars a day. Asfura went public this month asking legislators to pass it. Behind that vote sits the largest power procurement in Central American history, an international tender for 1,500 megawatts of firm capacity contracting supply out to 2030 under a sovereign guarantee. When those bid documents were first circulated, one of the audiences briefed was a forum of Chinese investors. The European Union has already positioned itself with an eight million euro grant engineered to unlock as much as five hundred million euros in European Investment Bank lending. The Development Finance Corporation has signaled it will move in once the legal framework is repaired. The reform text itself decides whether American capital can participate at all, because it governs collateral, the treatment of existing power contracts, and whether long dated agreements survive a change of government.

On logistics, Puerto Cortés is the only port in the CA-4 that can receive the largest container ships crossing the Atlantic. Its operator is investing a hundred million dollars this year in nine additional hectares of yard, twelve gantry cranes, and two quay cranes, taking capacity to 1.4 million TEUs by early 2027 against 816,000 handled last year. Industrial investment in the surrounding corridor is projected to create eight to ten thousand jobs. This is the nearshoring infrastructure the administration has been asking the hemisphere to build, already under construction, a short sail from the American market.

On the cartels, Honduras sits astride the principal cocaine corridor to the southern border, and its north coast and Bay Islands are where interdiction either happens or does not. A government in Tegucigalpa that wants to be a Shield of the Americas partner is worth a great deal, and partnerships of that kind are built by people with standing, not by cables.

The reflexive objection is that Honduras is too dangerous to do business in. That reputation is now well behind the data. Honduran police recorded a 2025 homicide rate of 15.3 per hundred thousand, down from 26.07 the year before, which puts the national figure below what Baltimore and New Orleans reported over the same period. What holds capital back is uncertainty about contract enforcement, not violence, and reducing that uncertainty is diplomatic work.

Which leaves one gap in an otherwise commanding hemispheric record. Of the seven countries in Central America, six have a confirmed ambassador at post or a name before the Senate. Costa Rica and Panama are filled. Belize received a nominee in April, El Salvador in June, and Nicaragua on August 7. Guatemala’s nominee withdrew in July, but a name at least went forward. Honduras has not appeared in a single nomination message of this administration, and it has not had a Senate confirmed American ambassador appointed under either Trump term. Nicaragua, run by a regime this administration has rightly treated as hostile, has a nominee pending. Honduras, which voted the way the President asked it to, does not.

The United States has just finished a $429 million embassy in Tegucigalpa, nine acres and an eight-story chancery, opened last year. A country does not build that for a relationship it intends to manage at arm’s length. What that building needs now is a chief of mission who carries the President’s personal confidence. The June slate reflected that judgment, sending political appointees with standing to Brazil, Colombia, and Paraguay rather than treating those capitals as rotational assignments. Rank and proximity are operational variables in Honduran politics rather than formalities. They determine who sits with a congressional bloc leader before a floor vote rather than after, and whether the Honduran across the table believes he is hearing the President or hearing a readout.

My parents still live in Tegucigalpa. I have watched three American administrations pass through that relationship without leaving much behind. This one could be different, and the window for it is measured in months.

Honduras is not a problem to be managed. It is a country that voted the way this President asked it to, has governed the way he hoped it would, and is making decisions this month that will bind for a decade. The administration has put the right people in the right posts across the hemisphere. Honduras belongs on the list.

Nick Raineri is a partner at TSG Advocates in Washington, D.C. He previously served as a political appointee at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and helped stand up the Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital. Born in Chicago, IL, he grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where his parents currently reside, and graduated from Academia Los Pinares.

Ed. Note: An abbreviated version of this article originally appeared in The Washington Times

Walk the crowded streets of Flushing, Queens, and you’ll pass a dense stretch of social adult daycare centers that have long raised questions about Medicaid scams, and billings that often appear phantom in nature.

A recent investigation by the New York Post turned up a conspicuous connection, revealing that the owner of one of the area’s most lucrative facilities has collected tens of millions from the program while also writing checks to Governor Kathy Hochul’s campaign.

Baoli Zhang, a 69-year-old local powerbroker and accomplished erhu musician who has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Juilliard, remains at the center of the latest reporting.

Through Bao Kang Adult Day Care and related businesses, his operations have billed Medicaid at least $32 million since 2018 for services tied to tens of thousands of patients. Campaign records show Zhang personally gave Hochul $10,000 in 2022, with another $5,000 coming from Bao Kang itself.

While Zhang listed himself as the owner and manager of Bao Kang on campaign finance disclosures, local and federal Medicaid data list other individuals as the owners, a pattern that also appears with Empire Adult Day Care, another facility he has claimed.

Local politicians have long treated the centers as ready-made voting blocs. “If you get 100 people in there and you make them vote, it’s very powerful for a primary. Every politician goes to these daycares for help,” one industry source told the New York Post.

Hochul’s office claims the governor has rooted out waste and fraud, saving billions, reforming Medicaid, and prosecuting wrongdoers, adding that contributions do not influence decisions.

Rep. Grace Meng (D) welcomed good-faith investigations while rejecting what she described as political targeting of Asian American seniors. State Sen. John Liu (D) called Zhang a longtime respected community leader and said any suspected fraud should be fully investigated.

Zhang is not alone. Jiemin Shang runs Livingwell Day Care, which donated $5,000 to Hochul the same year it billed Medicaid $5.8 million, plus another $5,000 from Finest Adult Day Care, which he also operates.

Together, these two men account for nearly half of the roughly $55,000 that Flushing social adult daycares channeled to Hochul’s 2022 campaign.

Nine such centers overall gave more than $5,000 each that year, including American Adult Daycare, Big Apple Adult Daycare, and Greater New York Social and Health, and those same nine billed Medicaid a combined $49 million in 2022 alone.

When reporters stopped by the flagship locations last month, the picture looked quiet. Livingwell, which federal data link to about $27 million in billings from 2018 to 2024 for more than 26,500 unique patients, stood empty, with staff quickly asking the visitors to leave.

Bao Kang told a similar story: a worker said the place typically handles 100 to 200 people a day, yet the rooms appeared vacant and the $32 million figure drew only a shrug. Neither Zhang nor Shang has been accused of any wrongdoing, and both declined to comment.

A source familiar with the industry said, “In 2021, [social adult daycare centers] were dying due to COVID. Someone threw them a lifeline and must have said something like, ‘Take care of me, I’ll take care of you.’ They’re making more money than ever now.”

The money trail shows sharp growth after the pandemic. Livingwell’s Medicaid claims jumped from just $114,000 in 2018 to more than $8 million by 2024. Bao Kang climbed from $1.5 million to $7.22 million over the same stretch.

Across Flushing’s dense concentration of these centers; dozens packed into a one-mile radius that collectively bill more than $100 million a year, according to reporting and a July CBS News data analysis, monthly revenue has nearly doubled from pre-COVID levels.

Zhang’s reach extends further. He also owns Confucius Social Daycare in Manhattan’s Chinatown, which billed another $15.7 million over the six-year period, plus related management companies including Silver Arch Management and AA Plus Management Inc., the latter of which billed roughly $2.65 million as a point-of-service Medicaid provider.

That same building on Baxter Street in Chinatown that Zhang lists as a business address also houses Cathay Adult Daycare, which donated $5,000 to Hochul in 2022 while billing $8.4 million that year; Zhang is not listed as its owner and any connection remains unclear.

He founded the Asian American Adult Daycare Association in 2023, with Shang serving as secretary-general, and has given to other Democrats as well, including $7,800 to Rep. Grace Meng and nearly $5,000 to State Sen. John Liu.

In a 2022 Chinese-language report following earlier Flushing fraud cases, Zhang praised New York’s system, saying the state “is one of the states with the best welfare in the United States” while warning that “excessive consumption will only deprive their descendants of resources.”

Flushing has become one of the most prominent focal points for questions about New York’s social adult daycare program. Statewide, the centers have drawn 387 referrals for investigation since 2021, roughly one-third of which were elevated to the Attorney General.

Those referrals sit alongside earlier federal cases, including the February charges against two Flushing men in an alleged $120 million kickback scheme covered by Gothamist, and findings from State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s February audit of questionable payments and capacity violations. Recent reporting has most fully connected the billing patterns, empty facilities, and political donations.

These centers are meant to offer socialization for frail seniors who need more support than regular senior centers, along with structured activities, and meals.

But, the combination of empty rooms on ordinary weekdays, sky-high billings, and steady political donations has left many wondering how tightly the system is being watched, and where the hardearned taxpayer money is really going.

As of now, no charges have been filed against Zhang, Shang, or any of the centers named in connection with the donations and high Medicaid billings, leaving the larger questions about oversight and accountability unresolved.

Recent reporting based on newly detailed court filings has revealed that Playboy founder Hugh Hefner warned the FBI about Jeffrey Epstein in 2005, yet agents delayed meaningful follow-up for about 15 years.

The allegations, first reported by Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown on her Substack  from the court filings, show that Hefner repeatedly contacted the FBI in 2005 to report sexual abuse and trafficking claims involving one of his Playmates.

According to the documents, former Playboy Playmate Audra Lynn Christiansen, who was Miss October 2003, confided in Hefner while living at the Playboy Mansion that Epstein had raped her shortly after they met and trafficked her for roughly a decade, including to wealthy associates.

Among those she specifically named to Hefner was Macau casino billionaire Stanley Ho, known as China’s “Godfather of gambling,” a figure later referenced in Epstein-related documents who died in 2020.

Christiansen, who was then in her early 20s, asked Hefner to make the calls to authorities himself. She believed his connections and public standing would ensure the FBI would take the report more seriously than if she contacted them alone. The complaint states Hefner called multiple times on her behalf to report Epstein.

The bureau allegedly indicated it would look into the matter.

These claims rest on Christiansen’s account and her declaration in the lawsuit; the specific 2005 tip from Hefner is not corroborated by currently public FBI documents.

Despite those assurances, Christiansen did not hear from the FBI until October 2020; roughly 15 years later and more than a year after Epstein’s death by suicide in a New York jail cell while facing federal sex-trafficking charges.

By then, both Hefner and Epstein were deceased. Even after she contacted the FBI herself in 2020, citing family threats and hiring an attorney, the bureau showed continued reluctance to meet.

She has also described problems with an FBI Form 302 in which identifying details, including her Playmate status, were allegedly improperly unredacted around the time of a public survivors’ statement, requiring later correction efforts.

The delay forms part of a broader negligence complaint filed by roughly 32–34 Epstein survivors in the Southern District of Florida (case 9:25-cv-80880). The suit alleges the FBI failed to investigate credible tips about Epstein’s crimes dating back years.

The Hefner tip joins a longer record of ignored warnings about Epstein, most notably artist Maria Farmer’s 1996 report to the FBI, which also sat for years without meaningful follow-up, according to congressional records and subsequent reporting.

Local Palm Beach police opened an investigation in 2005 after a separate complaint involving a minor, the same year as the Hefner tip, yet federal action remained limited for years afterward.

In the current lawsuit, survivors argue the FBI violated its own mandatory policies requiring investigation of credible child sexual abuse and trafficking reports.

They contend the failure to act created a foreseeable risk that allowed Epstein’s operation to continue harming additional victims.

The government has moved to dismiss the case, asserting that the bureau is not required to investigate every complaint and citing investigative discretion and statute-of-limitations issues.

A magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation that touches on immunity and discretion grounds.

Christiansen’s account, as detailed in the filings, describes how her modeling agents introduced her to Epstein after her Playboy centerfold appeared. She has said the FBI still showed reluctance even when she later reached out with legal representation. Other former Playmates, she has indicated, remain reluctant to come forward out of fear.

The revelations, first widely reported in August 2026 after the court documents, have renewed scrutiny of institutional responses to Epstein over two decades.

Survivors and their attorneys continue to press for greater accountability, arguing that earlier intervention could have disrupted the network long before the 2008 non-prosecution agreement or the 2019 federal charges.

As the litigation presses forward, the Hefner tip stands as one of the more telling examples of how prominent warnings reportedly failed to prompt timely federal action, leaving questions about priorities, resources, and bureaucratic gaps that survivors say enabled years of additional harm.

The Trump administration is moving to restore Second Amendment rights for Americans who have paid their debt to society and can demonstrate they are no longer a danger to the public. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Monday that the Justice Department has finalized a new process allowing certain people barred under federal law from possessing firearms to apply to have those rights restored.

For more than three decades, the relief process authorized by Congress was effectively unavailable to most applicants. The new system does not automatically hand guns back to criminals. Applicants must show that their record, reputation, circumstances, and subsequent conduct demonstrate they are unlikely to threaten public safety.

Violent felons, registered sex offenders, illegal aliens, and others considered ongoing dangers will remain presumptively ineligible. That distinction matters. The Second Amendment is a constitutional right, not a privilege government should permanently erase without considering whether an individual still poses a threat.

The Trump administration is protecting law-abiding citizens, keeping firearms away from dangerous people, and rejecting blanket lifetime prohibitions that offer no meaningful path to restoration. The Trump administration has increasingly treated the Second Amendment as a genuine civil right, with the Justice Department also challenging restrictive state and local gun policies. That represents a major shift in Washington D.C.

Instead of asking how the government can place more barriers between Americans and their constitutional rights, the Trump administration is asking when the government has gone too far. After all, when the Founding Fathers wrote “shall not be infringed,” they left no ambiguity.

They wanted the public and the militia to be “well-regulated,” which means in the parlance of the day, they were to be heavily armed. If an individual poses no threat to society, they should be able to own firearms without question. Trump administration policy now makes that abundantly clear.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is in full retreat. The man who once dictated pandemic policy from the highest perch of government power, believing he was above the law, is now dodging questions, refusing interviews, and hiding behind lawyers as a damning revelation exposes how he personally helped censor the lab-leak COVID origin theory.

Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran, a liberal reporter with a modicum of integrity, just admitted on The Fifth Column podcast that his 2021 Nightline investigation into the Wuhan lab origin of COVID was gutted hours before airtime. Moran and his team had produced a serious examination of evidence pointing to a lab accident, including Chinese military funding at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Then the script went for “review.” It returned “incomprehensible,” stripped of meaning and loaded with caveats meant to protect those who were likely responsible. When Moran demanded answers, he was told one ominous word: “Fauci.” Lawyers, standards editors, and the nation’s top infectious-disease official had intervened.

Moran was “absolutely livid,” cursing in the booth. The segment that aired was not his work at the fact that his important work was being censored and repressed. While Fauci and his allies dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory” and racist, he was quietly ensuring mainstream audiences never heard a coherent case for it.

The pattern continues to this very day. Sen. Ron Johnson’s subcommittee requested a private transcribed interview. Fauci’s attorney refused, claiming it would “impermissibly harass” him for political purposes. This is the same Fauci who once claimed he had “nothing to hide.”

After he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment under oath, that showed the public once and for all that he had something to hide. The walls are closing in. There is now a public mandate to charge Fauci with crimes against humanity. The Trump administration must make the most of this opportunity.

President Trump is taking American public-health policy back from globalist control, this time by reshaping childhood vaccine recommendations despite the World Health Organization’s objections. President Trump signed an order directing much-needed changes to the childhood vaccination schedule, including spacing out the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines rather than relying exclusively on the combined MMR shot. 

His administration has made the case that the changes are necessary to give parents more flexibility while aligning U.S. recommendations with scientific evidence and practices in other developed nations. Predictably, the WHO lashed out at the Trump administration, defending its recommendations to pump as many Big Pharma shots into the bodies of children as possible. This response from the WHO is music to the ears of the MAGA faithful.

The COVID-19 pandemic badly damaged public confidence in global health authorities, which was led by the WHO. Guidance changed repeatedly, legitimate scientific inquiry was purposefully stifled, and fearmongering propaganda warped the public’s psyche in ways we are only beginning to comprehend. 

Whatever one’s view of vaccines may be, Americans should never outsource critical health-policy decisions to an unaccountable and discredited international bureaucracy. 

President Trump’s order indicates that public health will now answer to American families, American doctors and American institutions, not global organizations obsessed with mandates and forced compliance. The WHO can feel free to offer advice. It will likely fall on deaf ears with the Trump administration and rightfully so. We are making America healthy again, and if that offends the enemies of American sovereignty, so be it.