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The upcoming elections are stirring fears of potential unrest, with groups like ANTIFA preparing for action. What’s surprising to many is how these groups manage to profit from their arrests during protests. Below, I’ll outline the mechanics of how ANTIFA and other radical groups make money by being detained—and how it all ties back to your tax dollars.
1. Legal Observers: The ‘Eyes’ on the Ground
When protests escalate, you’ll often see people in green hats labeled ‘Legal Observer’ walking around. These individuals are part of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a progressive organization that claims to monitor for legal violations. However, they focus solely on documenting police actions, not the conduct of rioters. Their purpose? To provide footage and testimony that supports legal claims against law enforcement, setting the stage for lawsuits and compensation.
2. Strategic Arrests and Bail Protocols
Protesters often write a phone number on their arms—the hotline for the NLG. This group is prepared to bail out anyone arrested, ensuring that those detained don’t stay in jail for long. Once released, the charges are frequently dropped, especially in cities with sympathetic district attorneys. This lack of prosecution means that, while the protesters might have been arrested, their records remain clean.
3. The Lawsuit Strategy
Once charges are dismissed, the real profit-making begins. Protesters, with the help of NLG and other legal defense teams, file lawsuits against cities for unlawful arrest or excessive force. Citing police use of tear gas, rubber bullets, or other crowd control measures, they claim damages and seek settlements.
Cities have paid out substantial sums in response to these lawsuits:
Denver paid $1.6 million to seven individuals.
Austin, Texas disbursed $17.3 million.
Philadelphia compensated 343 protesters, totaling around $9.5 million.
These settlements, drawn from taxpayer funds, serve as a financial boon for the arrested individuals and the legal organizations involved. The lawyers’ fees are covered, and the remainder helps fuel future protests.
4. Recycling Bail Funds
Here’s where the process becomes even more lucrative. When someone posts bail—say, $2,500—and the case is later dropped, the bail money is returned to the individual who was arrested. However, this money was initially donated by organizations or activists—not paid by the protester. When it’s refunded, the protester pockets the cash, effectively receiving “pay” for getting arrested.
5. Funding Sources: A Network of Support
This entire cycle is sustained by grants and donations. Progressive groups like the National Lawyers Guild, Earth First, and others receive substantial funding:
Grants from the EPA for “environmental justice” initiatives can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Nonprofits like the Sierra Club allocate funds to radical groups under the guise of environmental or social justice support.
Private donors and political figures contribute to bail funds. For example, Vice President Kamala Harris once promoted a bail fund that paid for protester releases.
6. The ‘Higher’ Purpose and Repercussions
Many rioters see this as a lucrative gig. Those who are jobless, underemployed, or ideologically driven don black clothing, mask up, and head to protests knowing there’s little risk and plenty of potential reward. They can spend a night throwing firecrackers, confronting police, and causing damage—all while knowing that sympathetic legal teams will cover their bail and potentially help them profit from it later.
This system not only fuels ongoing protests but ensures that rioters face minimal long-term consequences. With district attorneys in certain cities declining to prosecute and legal observers documenting police actions exclusively, the cycle continues unchecked.
Final Thoughts
This pattern is not hyperbole—it’s reality. I’ve seen it firsthand, spoken to those involved, and documented how the money flows. As we head into another election season, this model of monetizing protest arrests will likely intensify. Stay informed and be aware of how these mechanisms impact communities and taxpayers alike.
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Breaking news this Saturday: three Americans are dead in Syria tonight, three more are wounded, and the attack—described by U.S. Central Command as an ambush carried out by a lone ISIS gunman—has once again dragged the Syrian war back into the American consciousness for a few brief hours, which is usually all the time the public gives it before the news cycle moves on and the families are left to carry the weight alone.
CENTCOM says two of the dead were U.S. service members and one was an American civilian contractor, and that the attacker was engaged and killed as well, with names being withheld until next of kin are notified, which is the right thing to do; but even with those official facts in hand, I want to slow the pace down a little bit and do what I always try to do here—put this in context—because in a place like Syria, the story you get in the headline is almost never the story that explains why this happened.
I’m not interested in reporting tragedy like it’s a scoreboard, and I’m not interested in repeating a paragraph of breaking news without the background that makes it intelligible; I spent eight years in the military, and I’ve spent more than twenty years following the U.S. military across the globe—Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria included, with more than a dozen trips into Afghanistan, roughly fifteen into Iraq, and seven or so into Syria—so when Americans die in a place most people couldn’t find on a map, I feel a responsibility to show you what the map actually means.
The reported location of the attack is Palmyra—Palmira on some maps—an ancient city in central Syria that sits on the edge of a brutal expanse of desert, the kind of wide open, sun-blasted country where outsiders assume nothing lives and nothing happens, when in reality it’s exactly the kind of terrain insurgents love because “nothing” is a perfect disguise, a perfect place to move, cache weapons, blend into small villages, disappear into wadis, and wait for opportunities.
Palmyra also sits inside territory controlled by Syria’s new administration under Ahmed al-Sharaa, and if that name makes you pause, it should, because this is where Syrian politics gets complicated in the way only Syria can do: al-Sharaa rose through jihadist ranks, he has a history tied to insurgent warfare against Americans in Iraq, he was captured and held for years, and he later returned to Syria and consolidated power with strong Turkish backing—so when you hear phrases like “new Syrian administration” or “transitional government,” don’t imagine a Western-style democracy that suddenly appeared out of the sand; imagine a patchwork of militias, alliances of convenience, old enemies wearing new uniforms, and a leadership class that wants international legitimacy while carrying a past that cannot be scrubbed clean with a new suit and a new flag.
Now layer on top of that the reality that ISIS is not gone from Syria, not even close.
U.S. estimates have long suggested there are still roughly 2,000 to 3,000 ISIS fighters operating in and around the central Syrian desert, and there are far more than that if you include facilitators, family networks, financiers, and the enormous number of ISIS-linked detainees and relatives held in camps and makeshift prisons; and while that fight has mostly slipped out of the American public’s view, it continues quietly, relentlessly, week after week, because the moment pressure is relieved in a place like this, the violence doesn’t fade—it regroups.
The United States currently has about 900 troops in Syria, a number that matters because it tells you how thin the margin is between “containment” and “collapse,” especially when the enemy has deep local roots and decades of practice living off the land and off the grievances of the people around them; and those American troops are there for one primary purpose: to keep a lid on ISIS so we don’t wake up one day to another wave of mass executions, terror-state governance, and regional destabilization that forces the world back into a far more expensive war.
That’s the mission, and it’s not abstract; when ISIS surged the last time, the human cost was staggering, and it wasn’t paid by politicians or pundits—it was paid by Iraqi soldiers, Kurdish fighters, civilians, and yes, Americans too—and the reason our presence in Syria still functions as a deterrent is that in a powder keg region, a small, capable American footprint has a way of discouraging ambitious actors from taking the final step that turns instability into open war.
But here is the part that doesn’t get said out loud very often: the mission in Syria is increasingly tangled up in partnerships that are, at best, uneasy and, at worst, morally and strategically risky.
I’m coming to you today from Panama, where I’ve been digging into a story that’s far bigger than most people realize. It involves a shadowy network of ships—1,423 of them at last count—that roam the world’s oceans moving sanctioned oil for regimes like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Some call it the dark fleet, others the ghost fleet, but whatever the name, it’s become a lifeline for the world’s worst dictators.
Out of those 1,423 vessels, roughly 920 are sanctioned themselves. These aren’t just ships doing business in a gray area—they are part of a global ecosystem of deception, fraud, and corruption that props up authoritarian governments and undermines the international rules that keep maritime trade safe. They spoof GPS signals, turn off their transponders, swap oil with “cleaner” tankers in the dead of night, operate under shell-company ownership, and sail uninsured—floating environmental disasters just waiting to happen.
And for years, not much was done about it. But that may be changing.
Just days ago, the United States seized a massive VLCC tanker—the Skipper—carrying 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan crude bound for Cuba. It’s a move that seems small on its own, but it hints at something larger: Washington may finally be realizing that targeting the dark fleet isn’t just desirable—it’s strategically powerful.
That raises a fascinating question: What would happen if the U.S. and its allies cracked down hard on these ghost ships—everywhere, all at once? Could it reshape global power? Could it even topple Maduro?
Let’s dig into that.
These ghost ships function by exploiting cracks in the global maritime system. They manipulate AIS beacons, swap oil mid-ocean, hide ownership behind layers of shell companies, fly false flags, and operate without legitimate insurance. The UN’s maritime regulator has warned that these rusted, poorly maintained hulks are ticking time bombs—and we’ve already seen “Ukrainian sanctions” in action when Ukrainian sea drones blew up several shadow-fleet tankers in the Black Sea.
Imagine what happens if one of these decrepit tankers explodes in a global choke point like the Strait of Hormuz. You’d see a shock to oil markets overnight.
And yet, that’s the system that keeps Venezuela, Iran, and Russia afloat.
The seizure of the Skipper wasn’t random. It’s part of a broader pressure campaign—one that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has openly supported. He said plainly that going after these vessels is a direct way to choke off the revenue Maduro depends on to stay in power.
Pompeo also noted something key: Maduro’s regime probably has “weeks, not months” of financial runway without this illicit revenue stream. And Cuba—already experiencing rolling blackouts—relies on Venezuela for about a quarter of its total energy supply. This single tanker seizure hurts Havana even more than Caracas.
But perhaps the most important variable is geography. Satellite data reveals dozens of sanctioned tankers parked just off Venezuela’s northern coast. In theory, if the U.S. waits for them to exit Venezuela’s 200-mile EEZ, it could legally seize many of them—especially the stateless ones.
Imagine the U.S. grabbing one tanker per day.
The ripple effects would be enormous.
