Today, we start not in celebration, but in solemn outrage. Two of our finest—heroes in uniform, young patriots who swore an oath to protect this great nation—were gunned down in cold blood right here in the heart of our capital.

Last Wednesday, near the White House, in what can only be described as a cowardly ambush, Rah-man-ullah Lakan-wal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, opened fire on two West Virginia National Guardsmen.

Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, just 20 years old, was a vibrant soul who volunteered for duty to keep our streets safe. She has sadly died from her injuries.

Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24, a decorated Air National Guardsman who joined in 2019 and earned medals for his service, remains in critical condition, fighting for his life. These weren’t soldiers in a far-off war zone; they were on American soil, doing what Americans do best: serving selflessly.

Eyewitnesses reported Lakan-wal shouting “Allahu Akbar” as he unleashed his fury with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver, targeting these brave souls who had just been sworn in less than 24 hours earlier for Operation DC Safe and Beautiful—a mission to restore order to a city plagued by chaos and violence for decades.

He drove thousands of miles from Washington State, where he’d been living with his wife and five sons, to carry out this act of pure hatred. His family says they hadn’t heard from him in months; he was isolated, desperate, unable to pay rent—and hell bent on hating America.

But desperation alone doesn’t explain this. This was targeted evil, an assault on the very guardians of our republic. And as we mourn Sarah and pray for Andrew, we must ask: How did this monster get here? How did our government fail these heroes so catastrophically?

To understand how we got here, we have to start with the climate that was deliberately created around our troops and the circumstances that allowed the attacker into our country in the first place. Let’s start with that climate.

For months, the airwaves and social media have been poisoned by a legion of so-called leaders who treat our military like pawns in their partisan games—most recently by the “Seditious Six,” six Democratic lawmakers who released a viral video days before this tragedy urging active-duty personnel to “refuse illegal orders” from President Trump. Trump has issued no such illegal orders. The video was a naked attempt to undermine the Chain of Command.

Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, along with Representatives Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio, and Chrissy Houlahan aren’t backbenchers. They’re retired military and intel community veterans turned politicians who know better. In that smug, scripted clip, they planted seeds of doubt, division, and downright disloyalty in the ranks. They weren’t defending the Constitution; they were subverting it, whispering to our troops that their commander-in-chief is the enemy, in plain violation of 18 U.S.C. Code 2387.

Representative Byron Donalds said it best, slamming the “Seditious Six” for their outrageous political stunt.

And let’s not forget the hypocrisy. These same Democrats cheered when 8,700 service members were discharged under Joe Biden for refusing the COVID vaccine mandate—an order they deemed “lawful.” But now, when Trump deploys the Guard to stop violent crime, suddenly every order is suspect? It’s a dangerous double standard.

Slotkin, in particular, went on ABC last Sunday insinuating National Guardsmen might start “randomly shooting at American civilians” amid rising tensions. She painted our troops as the threat, as if they’re the Gestapo, not the good guys keeping the peace.

Mainstream media has been airing that kind of opinion like it’s popcorn. A CNN guest, retired Major General Randy Manner, didn’t hold back either. Weeks ago, he compared Trump’s use of the National Guard to fight urban crime to how Hitler weaponized the Gestapo.

Nazis? Really? This rhetoric isn’t harmless. It erodes trust, emboldens enemies, and now, tragically, it may have contributed to the blood on our streets. The Seditious Six and their media enablers created a toxic environment where heroes like Sarah and Andrew became targets. And while these lawmakers were busy undermining the very people who protect us, the reality on the ground told a very different story.

Since President Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., on August 11, 2025, as part of Operation DC Safe and Beautiful, the capital has transformed. For too long, D.C. was a war zone—homicides soaring, robberies rampant, assaults turning neighborhoods into no-go zones. Under Democratic leadership, violent crime exploded: 274 murders in 2023, 188 in 2024. Carjackings surged by as much as 75% in some years; families lived in fear.

Then came the Guard—professional, disciplined, and committed—and the results speak for themselves.

According to Metropolitan Police Department data reported by WTOP News, from August 11 through November 27, 2025—108 days—there were only 24 murders in D.C. That’s a staggering 29% year-over-year decline in homicides for 2025 overall.

Extrapolate that pace and you get about 81 murders in a year, the lowest since 2012’s 88 homicides. That’s a 57% drop from 2024’s 188 and 70% from 2023’s 274. We’re talking the lowest murder rates in 40 years, since 1986’s 79 murders. This isn’t coincidence; it’s causation.

The Guard’s presence has plunged all violent crime. Year-to-date through November 26, total violent crimes are down 28% from 2024’s 3,179 to 2,296.

Break it down further and the trend holds: homicides down dramatically, sexual assault down 35%, assault with dangerous weapons down 10%, robberies down 36% with carjackings down an eye-popping 75%, firearm-related violence down 33%. These are the lowest violent-crime numbers in decades, even below 2019 pre-pandemic baselines. Some neighborhoods remain hotspots, but overall the progress is indisputable.

Democrats keep lying about spikes that don’t exist. There are no sustained upticks—only stabilization and drops building on 2025’s early trends. These Guardsmen weren’t occupiers; they were saviors, angels in camouflage. Listen to this D.C. resident, despite the media’s relentless smears.

Sarah and Andrew were the faces of that success—sworn in fresh, ready to serve. Yet they were vilified, and paid the price of failures far beyond their control.

Those failures trace straight back to one of the greatest blunders in American history: Joe Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021. Remember the images—Taliban swarming Kabul airport, people clinging to C-17s, 13 Marines slaughtered in a suicide bombing we could’ve prevented? Biden’s reckless retreat didn’t just abandon allies; it flooded our homeland with unvetted threats.

Over 76,000 Afghans were airlifted under Operation Allies Welcome, plus tens of thousands more, rushed through a so-called “rigorous” process that was anything but. No in-person interviews for almost anyone, no deep dives into backgrounds—just check the boxes in the chaos.

Alejandro Mayorkas, then DHS Secretary, used linguistic gymnastics to imply all those Afghans were vetted before entering the U.S. during his 2021 testimony.

When reminded by Senator Lindsey Graham that he was under oath, Mayorkas changed his tune.

Senator Josh Hawley pressed even further and got Mayorkas to admit this.

And you know what happens when you don’t have that data—when you aren’t diligent about screening who enters your country? You get tragedies like last week, and all the others since 2021. Hawley warned about it back then too.

Troops on the ground were stunned. Orders from the top were to fill planes, vetting be damned.

Hawley exposed emails proving it. One email, sent by Consul General Gregory Floyd, directed evacuation coordinators to “err on the side of excess” when bringing Afghans into the U.S., even insisting total outflow “must exceed the number of seats available” on flights. Biden’s team overrode FBI concerns while the State Department pushed approvals without data. Then-FBI Director Wray confirmed Joint Terrorism Task Forces were probing evacuees from day one. This wasn’t evacuation; it was importation of risk.

For decades, conservatives have warned that mass migration without strict vetting isn’t compassion—it’s catastrophe. It erodes communities, strains resources, and invites danger. Open borders and lax oversight don’t just flood streets with drugs and gangs; they import people who don’t share our values and game the system at our expense. Some estimate as many as 20 million unknowns entered under Biden—unvetted, unchecked, overwhelming hospitals, schools, housing, and law enforcement.

Even Chuck Schumer admitted it back in 1996: the number-one reason illegals come is to steal jobs and defraud programs like Social Security.

He pushed anti-fraud measures then; now his party calls us bigots for saying the same thing.

JD Vance dismantled the claim on CBS in 2021 that all Afghan “refugees” were vetted. Looks like Margaret Brennan owes him an apology.

This isn’t xenophobia; it’s survival. Uncontrolled influxes breed crime spikes, cultural clashes, and economic drain. Neighborhoods crumble, wages stagnate, trust evaporates. Sanctuary cities and border towns already show the receipts—good Americans paying the price for elite delusions.

And when we dig deeper, Rah-man-ullah Lakan-wal was no normal immigrant. He wasn’t a wide-eyed refugee fleeing Taliban terror. He was a battle-hardened veteran of Afghanistan’s elite Commando Corps, fighting alongside U.S. Special Forces in Kandahar for over a decade. CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed Lakan-wal was embedded in the CIA-backed Kandahar Strike Force (NDS-03), a covert paramilitary outfit that conducted night raids, counter-terror ops, intelligence-driven strikes, and targeted hits bypassing Afghan chains of command. He was trained by us, armed by us, and—by Ratcliffe’s own assessment—should never have been allowed here.

He entered the U.S. via a Special Immigrant Visa in September 2021 during the evacuation frenzy, then snagged asylum in April 2025—yes, during the Trump Administration. That doesn’t absolve the pipeline; it reinforces the reality that you can’t undo the consequences of mass migration in one year. When the background checks are junk from the start, the results speak for themselves.

Lakan-wal lived quietly in Washington State—wife, five kids, no criminal record—until he snapped, driving cross-country to D.C. to kill Americans.

There are questions we can’t dodge. If he was CIA-linked and known to intel, why was there no monitoring? And why did Google Trends show a spike in searches for his name in the D.C. area hours before the attack? Maybe coincidence. Maybe not. Congress should subpoena those IPs because something smells fishy.

And the biggest question of all: where are the other Kandahar Strike Force members? Hundreds came through the same rushed SIV pipeline—highly trained killers, not farmers. Who approved them? Who vetted them? Who’s tracking them now?

Trump nailed it after last week’s tragedy: the attack underscores the threat Biden brought with mass, unvetted migration.

You can be frustrated this man was handed asylum this year, but at least leaders today aren’t afraid to say what’s true.

We won’t tolerate it. Deport those who can’t love this country. Reverse migration for the incompatible.

Bottom line: this wasn’t Donald Trump’s fault, despite the media’s attempts to say otherwise. Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for D.C., unloaded on a reporter who blamed Trump for the deployment: “I’m not even gonna go there! We ought to kiss the ground and thank God we have these Guardsmen!”

Making America’s capital safer for its residents is not what killed Sarah and put Andrew in the hospital. That much is undeniable.

This wasn’t an isolated tragedy. It’s the toxic harvest of years of elite betrayal. The Seditious Six sowed doubt in our troops, turning guardians into suspects. Biden’s Afghanistan fiasco brought danger, unvetted and unchecked, straight to our doorstep. Mass migration without borders or brains threatens every community—from job theft to fraud to ambush attacks. Lakan-wal’s CIA ties raise a brutal truth: we trained our own assassin.

Sarah Beckstrom is gone—a 20-year-old angel, sworn to serve, cut down by a system meant to protect her. Andrew Wolfe fights on, a testament to resilience. National security under Democrats has been a punchline: rhetoric over reality, open gates over oversight. Responsibility lies with those who prioritized politics over people—Biden, Mayorkas, the Seditious Six, and the media smear machine that ran cover for them.

But we won’t forget. We’ll honor Sarah and Andrew by demanding accountability: re-vet every Afghan import, seal the borders, and purge the unassimilated threats. Trump vows to pause Third World migration, review every case, and deport the dangers. We will make America safe again—for our kids, our Guardsmen, and our future.