Annual Fundraiser Update: We’re Falling Behind

Thanks to subscribing contributors CJTS and TM, whose contributions yesterday, totaling $12.50, bring our annual fundraiser total (as of 5am) to $285.50!

We’re past the 10% point toward our goal ($2,751.50, after which supporter GL has pledged to “match funds” for the $5,503 total) … but we’re also past the 14% mark in terms of schedule (92 days). So:

PLEASE SUPPORT THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT’S DAILY NEWSPAPER!

https://news.rationalreview.com/support-rrnd

We’re a reader-supported publication. You’re a reader. And we only come to you once a year with the strong-arm fundraising stuff. As soon as we hit our goal, I stop doing that for the rest of the year, and MOST of the following year. Let’s get this over with 🙂

Have a great day.

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily

Former Spymasters, a Taped Mouth, and the Market in Cross-Border Snatching

Source: Antiwar.com
by Thomas S Karat

“Just after midnight on New Year’s Day 2024, a man and his two children stood near the harbor in the Danish town of GrĂĄsten, watching fireworks over the water a short walk from the house where the children had been living. … masked men rushed the family and knocked the father, then forty-nine, to the ground. The same witness described one child being loaded into a car while the other fought back, held by two men who carried it by the limbs. … They were carried more than eight hundred kilometers south to a farm in Baden-WĂĽrttemberg and held in a mobile home until their mother arrived to collect them …. The men she is accused of hiring were not ordinary criminals. The prosecution’s case and the testimony of the operatives themselves describe an operation brokered by the former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service and carried out by veterans of Israel’s.” (10/13/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/thomas_karat/2026/10/12/former-spymasters-a-taped-mouth-and-the-market-in-cross-border-snatching/

Australia’s Tobacco Taxes Have Sparked a Criminal Turf War

Source: The Daily Economy
by Jeffrey L Degner

“Australia tried to end smoking with punitive taxes. Instead, it created a lucrative trade for smugglers and a wave of violent attacks on retailers.” (10/13/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/australias-tobacco-taxes-have-sparked-a-criminal-turf-war/

CA: ICE enforcement surge upends state’s most contested congressional race

Source: SFGate

“Esmeralda Soria has seen immigration enforcement throughout her life. Born to immigrant farmworkers in the Central Valley, the state assemblymember has spent her entire life in California’s agricultural powerhouse. Yet even for her, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that shook the valley last week took her by surprise. ‘I have never experienced anything like this,’ Soria said in an SFGATE interview Sunday. ‘Just all of a sudden, now we’re seeing ICE go rogue’. Federal agents have spent the past week sweeping the Central Valley, with local immigrant advocates reporting officers conducting widespread, warrantless detentions, targeting gas stations and Mexican bakeries as farmworkers start their day. People have reportedly been detained without any warrants for their arrest. The chaos turned violent when an off-duty ICE officer allegedly passed out drunk and assaulted a Fresno homeowner only to get shot himself, according to police.” (10/13/26)

https://www.sfgate.com/centralcalifornia/article/ice-raid-midterm-election-22473510.php

Drone attack sinks ship off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, PM says

Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]

“Two ships have been hit in drone attacks off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, with one of them sinking, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said. The Ukrainian-owned Chelsea 3, which was sailing under a Maltese flag, was hit by three drones and damaged about 18 nautical miles (33km) off Bulgaria at about 1:30am on Tuesday (22:30 GMT on Monday), Radev said. Radev said its 15-man crew, seven of them Ukrainians and eight Azerbaijanis, was rescued. Five crew members received medical assistance, and no one was seriously injured. He added that one crew member from the ship that sank was also rescued.” (10/12/26)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/13/drone-attack-sinks-ship-off-bulgarias-black-sea-coast-pm-says

Why British liberals need the Russian bogeyman

Source: UnHerd
by Thomas Fazi

“Since the 2016 Russiagate fiasco, it has become standard practice among Western elites, especially in Europe, to blame every unwelcome election result — and above all every ‘populist’ rebuke to their rule — on Russian ‘disinformation’ and ‘interference’. The campaign has escalated dramatically since 2022. We are told that Russia has for years been running a vast influence operation aimed at manipulating helpless voters. Yet the evidence that this operation has reached, let alone swayed, any meaningful number of them is scant to say the least.” (10/12/26)

https://archive.is/6oEA8

Where in the World Was James Talarico?

Source: Town Hall
by Derek Hunter

“The bowl-cut leftist in Texas, James Talarico, came off the milk carton and returned to the world of the living over the weekend. Where he was remains a mystery, as does why he was gone. What isn’t a mystery is why the corporate media didn’t really cover the story much or question anything related to a candidate in the highest-profile Senate election in the country disappearing for almost two weeks. The ‘official story’ is that Talarico, a very odd person to begin with, simply had the flu. I’ve had the flu, and it’s not fun. It also doesn’t put people in bed for two weeks and rob you of the ability to make any public appearances, if only via video chat. … Was he at a mental health facility for inpatient treatment after a breakdown?” [editor’s note: Obviously not, or he and Hunter would likely have been roomies – TLK] (10/13/26)

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2026/10/13/where-in-the-world-was-james-talarico-n2684552

CA: Reality TV personality shot and killed

Source: SFGate

“A 29-year-old reality television star was shot and killed early Sunday morning in downtown Oakland. Police were called to the 200 block of 14th Street in Oakland at approximately 1:30 a.m. on a report of a shooting, the Oakland Police Department told SFGATE in a statement. When officers arrived, they found Mackayla Paige, a Richmond resident, with a gunshot wound. Paige was transported to the hospital where she later died of her injuries, OPD said. A woman, also from Richmond, was arrested in connection with the shooting, OPD said. … Paige, also known as ‘Kash,’ was featured in several reality series on Now That’s TV, a subscription streaming network.” (10/12/26)

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/reality-tv-shooting-kash-22474234.php

Private Prosecutors

Source: Law & Liberty
by Cory L Andrews

“Civil society, for Locke, begins with a surrender. In the state of nature, anyone may punish a wrong done to the community. In society, that power passes to a common authority, and only the sovereign may avenge public wrongs. Blackstone put the same idea in the language of the common law: private wrongs are the injured party’s to redress, public wrongs are the Crown’s. The Framers absorbed the distinction and gave it a specific constitutional home: ‘The executive Power,’ Article II begins, ‘shall be vested in a President.’ One pocket of private prosecution, however, survives that settlement. … Under the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions, a private plaintiff or ‘relator’—with no injury of her own, no office, and no constitutional oath—may sue in the name of the United States, litigate the government’s claim, and keep up to 30 percent of what she recovers.” (10/13/26)

https://lawliberty.org/private-prosecutors/