A (0:00)

Good evening. And today, let's do a bit of a roundup of some important and yet underreported stories happening right now within the Trump administration, starting with a warning that President Trump issued to the country of Canada. Now, the backstory here is that amidst the rising tensions with the United States, Prime Minister Mike Carney of Canada traveled to Beijing last week in order to meet with Xi Jinping and to iron out some kind of a deal. Quote, Carney met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing where he signed a series of agreements that included slashing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports from 100% to 6.1% for the first 49,000 units in exchange for China cutting tariffs on Canadian canola from 85% to 15% until at least the end of the year. While in Beijing, Carney said Canada China relations are entering a new era and that Ottawa's pursuit of a partnership with China sets us up well for the New World Order. That New World Order motif was then echoed by Mr. Carney at Davos, Switzerland, when he gave a speech at the World Economic Forum. Take a listen.

B (1:06)

It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must argue. The middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu. But I'd also say that great powers, great powers can afford for now to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what's offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It's the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more, more just. This is the task of the middle powers.

A (2:19)

However, President Trump is not just sitting back and watching this seismic shift happen without reacting to it. Instead, he put out a notice of his own saying that if Canada enters into some kind of a free trade agreement with China, especially if they wind up turning Canada into a drop off port for China in order for them to send goods into the U.S. canada will be slapped with a blanket 100% tariff on on all their goods, which by the way, is really a significant thread because if you look at a list of Canada's largest trading partners, the US Is number one and China is number two. But the difference between those two is kasmic. Canada exports more than half a trillion dollars worth of goods to America, while to China they only export roughly $30 billion worth of goods. And so no matter how good of a deal they might be able to strike up with the Chinese Communist Party, there is little to no way that that deal would offset a 100% tariff on half a trillion dollars worth of trade. And compounding this whole problem for Canada is that unfortunately, in July of this year, In July of 2026, the USMCA agreement is up for renewal. The USMCA is the United States, Mexico, Canada Free Trade Agreement that's been giving preferential treatment to Canada in relation to the US for the past six years. Now, quote Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added that Trump may not allow Canada to maintain the second best trade deal with the United States when it comes time to renegotiate the usmca, noting that Canada's current deal with the United States ranks second after Mexico. Under the USMCA, 85% of Canadian goods are exempt from tariffs, while products that don't comply with a trilateral deal face tariffs of 35%. Mexico's non USMCA products are subject to 25% tariffs, meaning that Trump's threat comes at a time when there's an actual renegotiation of the status quo. Now, to be very specific, here's exactly what President Trump wrote to the Canadian Prime Minister in a public post. Quote, if Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a drop off port for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken. China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric and general way of life. If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the usa. Thank you for your attention to this matter. And then in a subsequent post, Trump added the following, quote, the last thing the world needs is to have China take over Canada. It's not going to happen, or even come close to happening. And so we'll have to see where this war of words is going to lead to for the Canadian side. There have been, you can say, mixed messages coming out after this threat from President Trump. For instance, immediately after this threat of tariffs, you had the Canadian minister who's responsible for trade relations with the US basically come out with a well worded statement stressing the Importance of Canada U.S. relations and adding that Canada, rather the Canadian government was not pursuing a free trade agreement with China. Quote, as the Prime Minister said this week, Canada and the United States have built a remarkable partnership in our economy and security and and we will remain focused on ensuring the future of that relationship will benefit workers and businesses on both sides of our border. There is no pursuit of a free trade deal with China. What was achieved was resolution on several important tariff issues. However, juxtaposing this statement on that very same day, you had the office of Mike Carney share out a promotional video highlighting the Prime Minister's recent trips to China and Qatar and writing in the caption for that video, quote, from China to Qatar to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Prime Minister Carney advanced Canada's economic and strategic interest, strengthening partnerships, diversifying trade and attracting investments to support good jobs and long term growth for Canadians. And so there you have it. Canada is really stuck between a rock and a hard place. With the Canadian government now having to basically thread the needle in a way that doesn't totally tank their economy, but still doesn't totally have them lose face as a sovereign nation on the world stage. It'll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out leading up to the July renegotiation of the usmca. If you'd like to read about the current tariff battle between the two, I'll throw several really good analysis pieces that have come out in the last week that I've read. You can find the links to those down in the description box below which I should mention is that description box right below those like and subscribe buttons. Both of which I hope you take a moment to smash, that this video can be picked up by the YouTube algorithm and shared out to ever more people. Thank you so much for that. Now, moving along in more domestic news, the Trump administration has recently ordered citizenship verifications to be conducted for all tenants that are currently living in federally funded housing. Quote, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has ordered immediate citizenship verification for all beneficiaries of HUD funded housing across the United States to ensure that these benefits are not going to ineligible individuals such as illegal immigrants. Now, this order of theirs came on the heels of an audit that was conducted jointly by both the Department of Housing and Urban Development alongside the Department of Homeland Security. And that audit of the whole system, it found some, I guess you can say, troubling anomalies. They found 25,000 deceased tenants, meaning people who were receiving these housing benefits despite being dead. Secondly, they found 6,000 ineligible non American tenants, meaning non US citizens, who were getting these housing vouchers. And then they also found 200,000 tenants who require eligibility verification, leading them to ultimately make the following statement. Quote, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that all public housing authorities and owners participating in HUD funded housing have 30 days to take corrective actions to address these findings. Meaning in a practical sense that all public housing Authorities nationwide have 30 days per to run immigration status checks on their tenants. Failure to do so can lead to serious sanctions. And it is perhaps worth noting that the bigger reason that this really matters is because if you have thousands or even perhaps tens of thousands of illegal aliens or just non citizens taking up these federally funded housing units, that basically directly takes a place, a living place, away from US Citizens. That's because there is a limited number of these housing units available. There are only so many Section 8 vouchers that can go around, and there is already a long line of US Citizens waiting to get federal housing. Quote, there are hundreds of thousands of American families currently on housing wait lists across the United States, which makes it essential to ensure that limited resources go to only eligible families. And so that's pretty rough if you consider it. You have hundreds of thousands of American families waiting for that social safety net of, of federally funded housing and they're on a waiting list while an illegal alien family that crossed the border maybe in the last year or two was given priority placement in that exact same house. Let's wait 30 days to see what comes of the citizenship verification. And let's see what percentage of the housing was actually occupied by illegal aliens. We should hopefully know the number by sometime February or March. If you'd like to read this HUD notice for yourself, I'll throw a link to it. You can find it down in the description box below. Moving along though, Speaking of generally U.S. citizenship, just earlier this week the Department of Justice announced that they had actually stripped the citizenship status from a man who happened to be a child sex offender. Quote, the Southern District of Texas McAllen Division issued an order revoking the citizenship of Mr. Carlos Noe Gallegos, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a child prior to naturalizing and later withheld, disclosing his illegal acts and and accompanying conviction throughout his naturalization process. Now, I would like to quickly run through this particular man's story because what it demonstrates is the difficulty of stripping someone's naturalization status once they get it, and that basically it can only be done under very specific circumstances. And so let me give you the basic background of this particular story. Mr. Carlos Gallegos. He was born in Mexico. Then he married a US citizen woman in the year 2001 and then became a green card holder in the year 2003. Then starting in 2007 he began sexually assaulting his seven year old stepdaughter on multiple occasions. I won't go into the details, but if you for some reason want to read them, the court details will be the court documents will be linked in the description box below. Now, in 2009, Mr. Gallegos applied to become a U.S. citizen and on his application there was a question about whether or not it he had committed any crimes during the preceding five year period for which he had not been arrested. So whether or not he was arrested, the question was had he committed any crimes? He said that he had not committed any crimes and therefore the very next year he was granted US citizenship in 2010, however, in 2016 he was indicted on two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. He took a plea deal and he pled guilty to one of the counts and he was given a fat sentence of six years of community supervision and a $1,000 fine for the crime of sexually assaulting a child. Regardless, in 2018, a lawsuit was filed by the feds in the Southern District of Texas to strip Mr. Gallagos of his citizenship, arguing that it was illegally procured due to his concealment of the material facts on his application. Quote, according to U.S. citizenship and Immigration Services, denaturalization is not handled by the agency. Instead, revocation of naturalization can occur only in federal courts, adding that denaturalization can be pursued through a civil proceeding or as a result of a criminal conviction. Two factors typically constitute the general grounds for revocation of illegal procurement of naturalization or concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation. And indeed, after going through the details of his particular case, the courts ruled that this was indeed the case with Mr. Galagos and his US citizenship was revoked. Attorney General Pam Bondi in the General DOJ statement she added the following quote, American citizenship is a privilege that this child abusing monster never should have been able to attain. We will continue ensuring that anyone who conceals such conduct while obtaining naturalization is found out and stripped of their citizenship. But still, it's worth mentioning that this is the rare case where it can actually happen. It's very difficult to strip someone of their US citizenship status unless, just like Mr. Galagos, there was A clear cut crime committed in that five year window prior to applying. And he also lied about it on the application form. There have been some other high profile cases recently, like there was a convicted drug trafficker over in Florida, there was a Colombian national wanted for robbery over in Minnesota, as well as a Peruvian national in Florida who was previously charged with eight murders in his home country of Peru. But the number of these cases could really be counted on your fingers. Now, there has been some rhetoric recently coming from the Trump administration of doing this on a larger scale. For instance, this most recent Thanksgiving, you have President Trump write the following quote, even as we have progressed technologically, immigration policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all third world countries to allow the US System to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden's auto pen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States or is incapable of loving our country. End all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our country. Denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility and deport any foreign national who is a public charge, security risk or non compatible with Western civilization. And then roughly a week later in December, when he was asked to, to clarify by a reporter, here's what President Trump added, quote, we have criminals that come into our country and they were naturalized maybe through former President Joe Biden or somebody that didn't know what they were doing. If I have the power to do it, I'm not sure that I do, but if I do, I would denaturalize, absolutely. But again, setting everything else aside, just the denaturalization element of what President Trump said, it's extremely difficult, it's very rare, it's hard to do. And barring a substantial change to the law, the number of people who get denaturalized is really incredibly small. According to the public records I was able to pull, from 1990 up until 2017, the DOJ averaged about 11 denaturalization cases per year. Then under Trump's first term, it was about 42 per year. Under Biden's term, it was 16 per year. And under Trump's second term, thus far, the DOJ has brought 13 cases forward and, and won eight of them. And so even at the maximum, there has maybe been 1,000 denaturalizations in the past 36 years, which is a tiny fraction of the 25 million people who are currently living in the United states as naturalized U.S. citizens. And so there you have it. If you'd like to learn more about either Mr. Galagos specific case or denaturalization more broadly, I will throw several links and explainers down into the description box below this video. You'd like to dig into the weeds for yourself. And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. Stay informed. Most importantly, stay free.