The Secret Service Is STILL In Trouble
Rich Staropoli, former Secret Service supervisor, reveals the startling truth
Readers, we’re going to break format a bit this week to lead the Ops Drop with an overview of the weekly podcast — we feel it’s that important.
With Ryan Routh about to go to trial in Florida for an alleged attempt on Donald Trump’s life, and following the horrific near-miss in Butler, PA, most Americans have assumed that the U.S. Secret Service has turned the corner on the malaise of the Biden years.
Most Americans would be wrong.
The Service is still facing major challenges. Add in the fact that, as US Attorney Jeanine Pirro has shown, those threatening Donald Trump appear to be un-indictable in Washington, D.C… and it all adds up to one ugly fact:
Donald Trump (and others protectees) may be no safer now than in 2024.
Rich Staropoli, former Special-Agent-in-Charge at the USSS, lays it all out in detail. Click below for a preview of Rich’s update on where the Service stands today… and HERE for the entire (alarming) pod:
Irrespective of who is in the White House going forward: something has to change. With the Service short as many as 1,000 agents… we hope this story wakes someone in D.C. up.
And if you find all this alarmist, all we can say is: we hope you’re right.
“The Trump Doctrine” Continues
So as readers of The Ops Desk (or those who watch “The Big News Recap” each night on X, Youtube, etc.) know, we have been strongly advising that a new era is dawning south of our border — a continuation of the old Monroe Doctrine, wherein America puts foreign powers on-notice not to mess with our hemisphere. Call it The Trump Doctrine — and slowly, the word is getting out.
Right now, all eyes are on Venezuela. But where The Trump Doctrine might be most strongly felt is just 90 miles from Miami. As Washington wrestles with Nicolás Maduro and Venezuela’s oil chessboard… look to Cuba.
Cuba Is Still A Player
Havana’s failures are spilling north in smuggling, drugs, and migration. This week, AG Bondi rolled up a Cuban human-smuggling ring charging up to $40,000 a head to sneak migrants into the U.S. With sanctions back in place, Venezuelan oil all-but cut off, and the Castro mystique long gone, we may be hearing the last gasps of the jungle commies who wrecked an island paradise.
The regime itself admits it can’t stop the slide. Economy Minister Joaquín Alonso cited missed exports, collapsing industry, and no plan to restore power. That’s not a rough patch; it’s structural collapse.
Cuba once lived on subsidized Venezuelan crude. But fuel shipments plunged from 56,000 barrels per day in 2023 to just 10,000 this January—far short of the 85,000 needed to sustain the grid. Result: rolling blackouts, even in the capital, Havana. That’s communist failure in real time.
A Straight Line From 1959
When a Caribbean state fails, the U.S. inherits the fallout: migration surges, narcotics output surges, and smuggling pipelines harden. Bondi’s takedown wasn’t an isolated case. It was a business model born of collapse.
Cuba’s hostility to U.S. interests is no accident. First expropriating U.S. assets in 1960, then sheltering fugitives, now enabling smuggling networks—it’s not episodic, it’s policy.
It continues. Call it “clear and present danger.” Call it “humanitarian relief.” Call it what you will. This lawlessness looks due to end soon. They’re on the Team Trump’s radar, big-time.
Havana still harbors convicted killers like Joanne Chesimard (Assata Shakur), wanted for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper; FALN bomb-maker William Morales; and Charles Lee Hill, implicated in the 1971 murder of a New Mexico officer and a hijacking to Havana. Congress has kept a spotlight with multiple justice acts pressing for extradition.
Now we have a President willing to act. The message should be simple: no normalization, no relief, until fugitives are returned. If Havana wants a relief from pressure, it needs to play by civilized rules.
Clearly, what Trump would prefer is for the Cubans themselves to topple the regime, hand over the fugitives, and embrace America—there’s at least $2 million in reward money waiting for help with any of these fugitives.
So How Will It Happen?
The game plan for Cuba under The Trump Doctrine seems to be shaping up:
Exploit chokepoints. Target regime revenue sources like state tourism monopolies and military holding firms. Enforce secondary sanctions and press Spain (a major Cuba-enabler) and others to lean harder.
Crash the smuggling economy. Hit facilitators, financiers, and corrupt officials with DOJ–Treasury actions. Pair with lawful pathways for dissidents who can provide inside intelligence.
Back Cuba’s democrats. Expand aid to unions, journalists, and churches; surge circumvention tech (wi-fi, etc.) so Cubans can communicate freely.
Hold the line with Beijing. Quietly warn China that expanding surveillance or military footprint in Cuba is a red line. Keep rhetoric cool, deterrence firm.
The Myth Is Over
The Castro mystique is gone. What’s left is a brittle, lawless, under-producing state edging toward Haiti-style dysfunction—only larger, closer, and more strategically sensitive. Blackouts are constant, salaries average $16 a month, and Havana admits it can’t finance the basics. The people are ready to flip.
Nice job, Che. But all Cuba really got was your face on a million American dorm walls and an utterly failed state.
Let’s put it in the terms of those brave Cubans who have been willing to resist this lunacy: “el final está cerca.”
The end is near.
Guns? Identity Politics? How About Simple Insanity?
Another horrific act of violence last week, this time on a Charlotte light rail. It wasn’t a political statement. It was the traumatic collapse of a broken system.
On August 22, 2025—a mere week before the Minneapolis school massacre—23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska boarded a train seeking only a peaceful ride home after work. The result? She was fatally stabbed by Decarlos Brown Jr., a homeless ex-con with longstanding mental health issues.
Brown’s past—including at least 14 arrests, diagnosed schizophrenia, bizarre delusions that someone was controlling his body, and prior judicial release without bonding or awaited mental evaluations—was a flashing red light that our system and an elected judge chose to ignore.
Meet Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes — who cut Decarlos loose on a promise to “return to court,” and reportedly without the psych eval he was required to undergo.
Now, the left’s predictable response was media silence and a holding of the line on “carceral” responses to the mentally ill. “Trauma-informed reforms,” we’ll hear at some point, when the legacy media deigns to respond. “Treatment, not punishment!”
Funny — when Daniel Penny was on the right side of such a situation, we couldn’t get away from the story.
And the right is not blameless here either. It takes courage to stand up and say the obvious sometimes.
And that is: There are some people who simply cannot be allowed to walk among us.
Guns Are The Instrument. Identity Is The Decoy
In Minneapolis, another shooter without a coherent ideology attacked the most vulnerable. In Charlotte, a man with untreated mental illness ended a young woman’s life as she fled war. The common denominator is: insanity.
Truth is, mental illness isn’t rare. It’s everywhere. But our system—underfunded, fragmented, ideologically strained—leaves those most dangerous to themselves and society without care. Does anyone have a solution?
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once called states “laboratories of experimentation.” Let’s put state governments to work.
Imagine:
Behavioral Mental Health Courts that integrate treatment with supervision—not just for misdemeanors, but for those who pose clear but untreated risks.
Mandatory Crisis Beds in every county—so a 911 psych-crisis call becomes a path to care, not release.
Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) expansion—so families aren’t stuck waiting until someone becomes dangerous before help comes. Make it mandatory.
Full mental health evaluations before bail or release, especially when someone has a record of delusions or violence.
These aren’t ideological flashpoints. They’re commonsense, humane responses to a rising tide of preventable tragedy.
Words Won’t Stop The Next One. Action Could.
President Trump called the Charlotte killing “horrible,” linking it to broader lax criminal policies like cashless bail. Mayors and transit officials are now belatedly pushing for more security and fare enforcement. All to the good—but it’s not enough.
This, America, is the moment to do something harder than posturing: to devise an actual solution for treating mental illness before it kills. Because very often behind mass murderers, random attacks, and random victims like Zarutska, there’s an untreated mind unserved by our system.
Heal — or yes, incarcerate — those minds. The blueprint is out there. What’s lacking is political courage.
Oh yeah — and stop electing judges like Teresa Stokes.
Wow, Is It December of 2023 Already?
Once again, if you’ve been reading The Ops Desk, you were way out ahead on a big story.
All the way back in December of 2023, we advised in this post that FBI counter-intel boss Charles McGonigal was heavily entangled with the Bidens — and while we hate to lapse into cliches: yes, the Biden Crime Family.
Last week this story broke, detailing “new” information about McGonigal’s involvement with Patrick Ho and the Chinese energy company CEFC. Apparently, McGonigal tipped off Ho, through an intermediary, not to come to America for fear of being arrested. Instead, Ho listened to James Biden, who told him the story wasn’t true, and came anyway. He was then arrested — by McGonigal’s own squad.
Later, it was McGonigal’s own squad who had to arrest… McGonigal himself.
So how much were the Bidens involved? Well as we told you back in 2023, McGonigal’s team almost certainly had a wire up on Patrick Ho and CEFC — which means they would have heard everything Hunter and James Biden were doing with Ho, who Hunter himself called, “the f*cking spy chief of China.”
Consider that. The Vice President’s son was cognizantly doing an oil deal with the man he himself considered China’s chief spy.
As for Ho himself, he went to jail for only about a year on a three year sentence, and was then quietly repatriated to Hong Kong by the Biden administration. No one reported on it.
And when Patrick Ho was arrested, his first call was to: James Biden. Who later told The New York Times that he believed Ho meant to call Hunter (!).
Questions: Instead of being quickly shipped home, why was Ho never flipped against Hunter or McGonigal? Why has McGonigal — who’s languishing in federal prison — never been flipped against Hunter and James Biden?
What it all adds up to is proof that we’ll never know the full degree of the venality and corruption of the Biden family.
But as we reported in 2023: A guy who does know at least some of it sits in federal prison for another five years. You’d think someone would ask him.
And finally….
Got us thinking of high school English class….
Spot on. Leadership is the most crucial success factor in a career. When leadership fails your career becomes just a job.