Will Chamberlain talks with Ben Weingarten about the federal investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar, the questions about her father's refugee application and her own naturalization that appear to sit behind the recent search of her home, and what a case to strip her citizenship could look like. The conversation also digs into the evidence that the man she married is her brother, Minneapolis's Somali community, fraud in Somali refugee resettlement, and the red-green alliance.

In this episode:

Ben explains how a column applying the Russiagate standard of links and ties to Omar grew into his 2020 book, American Ingrate

He argues that Omar personifies the red-green alliance between the progressive left and Islamists, and that the Democratic Party has moved in her direction since

He describes her father as a senior military officer in Siad Barre's Marxist regime who, according to reporting, presented himself as an educator when the family sought refugee status

Will lays out the legal theory that concealing service in a communist regime could be enough on its own to undo both her father's naturalization and hers

Ben describes Minneapolis's Somali community as clannish and insular, and says nearly everyone he spoke with there feared for their safety if they talked about Omar

He walks through the evidence that the man she legally married is her brother, including shared addresses, social media posts in which the man called her children his nieces and nephews, and the family naming convention

He says her testimony in a Minnesota campaign finance case that she had lost contact with the man conflicts with social media messages between them

Will and Ben discuss a new Washington Post report that the man withdrew a petition for permanent residency after immigration officials asked about the marriage, and Ben connects it to a 2016 FOIA request by Omar's immigration lawyers

Ben explains how the birth year in her official biography changed from 1981 to 1982, and why that one year matters for whether she qualified for citizenship through her father

Will argues that even if the marriage fraud is too old to charge, it could unravel the story her family told when it first came to the United States

Ben discusses why part of the family appears to have settled in the UK, and the fraud that led the State Department to suspend a Somali refugee program in 2008

He closes on the Islamist networks backing Omar and similar candidates, and recalls the longtime incumbent she unseated, Phyllis Kahn, telling him Omar was unbeatable in the district

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Ben Weingarten: The Federalist, author of American Ingrate · @bhweingarten

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

00:00 Her father's past

02:42 Why Ben wrote American Ingrate

03:07 Ilhan Omar and the red-green alliance

07:58 Who was Ilhan Omar's father?

13:27 Could her father's past be enough to denaturalize her?

14:34 Inside Minneapolis's Somali community

20:55 The evidence that she married her brother

28:43 The Washington Post's buried revelation

29:30 Omar's immigration lawyers and the 2016 FOIA request

31:26 Two husbands at one address

34:03 1981 or 1982? Her birth year and her naturalization

38:01 Why the marriage could unravel the whole story

39:25 Why did the family split between the UK and the US?

43:14 Fraud in Somali refugee resettlement

48:51 The Islamist machine behind Omar

Will Chamberlain talks with Yoram Hazony, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, about why the National Conservatism conference went to Jerusalem and what happened when four young American nationalists told an Israeli audience how support for Israel is softening on the American right. Hazony argues that the fight over Israel and the Jews has become the main threat to the cohesion of the Trump coalition, and that most American and Israeli Jews misread the Republican Party as a contest between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson. The conversation also digs into Bezalel Smotrich's speech on Muslim immigration, Mike Doran's critique and the John Locke debate, James Lindsay, and the coming fight over who inherits the Trump coalition.

In this episode:

Hazony explains why NatCon, which normally alternates between the United States and Europe, held its twelfth conference in Jerusalem

He describes Israel as a model nation state and reflects on what a young, religious, high-fertility society can show Americans and Europeans

He argues that Bezalel Smotrich's speech was the first time a senior Israeli minister said plainly that Muslim immigration to America and Europe is bad for the West, for Jews, and for Israel

He introduces Gadi Taub, the former man of the left who has become one of the most popular intellectuals on the Israeli right

He explains why Israel and the Jews, barely mentioned in NatCon's first seven years, have become the main threat to the cohesion of the Trump coalition

He lays out the idea behind the panel with Matthew Peterson, Amanda Milius, Jonathan Keeperman, and William Wolfe: bringing the tough American right to Jerusalem to talk with the tough Israeli right

He argues that Jewish leaders in both countries see the Republican Party as Ben Shapiro versus Tucker Carlson and skip over the roughly 70 percent of the party in between

Will and Hazony respond to Mike Doran's argument that the panel failed to make the realist case for the alliance

Hazony answers the charge that he wants to write John Locke out of the founding and describes the four factions that make up the NatCon coalition

He contrasts Jeremy Boreing's constructive role on the right with James Lindsay's campaign against the nationalist camp

He argues that young American nationalists broke a de facto ban on going to Israel, and he previews NatCon in Washington, DC, three months from now

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Yoram Hazony: Edmund Burke Foundation · @yhazony

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

00:00 Cold Open: The Fantastic Four

02:18 How did NatCon Jerusalem go?

03:06 Why hold NatCon in Jerusalem?

06:16 A young, religious society

09:00 Bezalel Smotrich on Muslim immigration

12:37 Gadi Taub and the Israeli right

13:55 What was the panel trying to accomplish?

19:15 Softening support on the right, and why the audience was Israeli

21:41 Ben Shapiro versus Tucker Carlson, and the 70 percent in between

26:20 Mike Doran's critique

35:56 Does Hazony want to expunge John Locke?

40:42 Lindsay, Jeremy Boreing, and the libertarian wing

51:09 James Lindsay in Israel

55:09 Breaking the taboo on nationalists going to Israel, and NatCon DC

Will Chamberlain talks with Bojan Pancevski, the Wall Street Journal's chief European political correspondent, about his book The Nord Stream Conspiracy and the small Ukrainian team that blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022. Pancevski explains how a seven-person crew on a rented sailing yacht destroyed one of Europe's most expensive pieces of energy infrastructure for about $250,000, and how German investigators tracked them down. The conversation also digs into Germany's long bet on trade with Russia, the Russia and CIA theories, Poland's refusal to cooperate, and what American conservatives misunderstand about Putin.

In this episode:

Pancevski recounts the September 2022 explosions, first registered as an earthquake, that tore through the world's biggest offshore pipeline system

He traces Nord Stream to Germany's decades-old "change through trade" policy toward Moscow and to Merkel's post-Fukushima nuclear shutdown, which deepened the reliance on Russian gas

He describes how a small group of Ukrainian intelligence and special forces veterans drew up a list of targets meant to choke off Putin's oil and gas revenue

He walks through how the team recruited civilian deep-sea diving instructors and tested them with wiretaps, hidden cameras, and staged arrests

He explains how the operation was paid for almost entirely by private donors, and what is known about who in Ukraine's chain of command approved it

He lays out why the theory that Russia blew up its own pipeline never made sense

He argues that Biden's pledge to end Nord Stream 2 referred to sanctions, which have kept the pipelines offline more effectively than explosives

He reports that senior CIA officials were relieved when Putin blamed the United States rather than Ukraine

He tells how German detectives cracked the case by combing through thousands of speed-camera photos and running one driver's face through recognition software

He explains why German prosecutors charged the suspects with war crimes ahead of the Hamburg trial that opens October 14

He describes how Poland obstructed the investigation, including a Polish judge who refused extradition and called the sabotage part of Ukraine's just war

He closes on what he thinks American conservatives get wrong about the war and why commercial deals will not move Putin

YouTube: [YOUTUBE LINK]

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Bojan Pancevski: The Wall Street Journal · @bopanc

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

00:00 Ukraine's target list

02:28 What happened to Nord Stream in September 2022?

05:25 Germany's change-through-trade bet on Russia

10:21 Merkel's nuclear shutdown and the gas addiction

12:46 How he got inside both the plot and the investigation

14:52 The Ukrainian team behind the sabotage

18:28 Recruiting and testing civilian deep-sea divers

21:28 A privately funded operation, and who signed off

27:44 Did Russia or the CIA do it?

32:07 What Biden meant, and why sanctions beat explosives

36:54 The German investigation and the speed-camera breakthrough

41:52 Arrests, the Hamburg trial, and the war crimes charge

46:12 Poland's refusal to cooperate

49:43 What American conservatives get wrong about the war

55:09 Why deals will not move Putin

Will Chamberlain talks with Heather Mac Donald about the Cornell 7 accusation, why Jane Doe's own 2024 statement to police does not describe a crime, and why handing the case to Letitia James does not change that. The conversation also digs into the old tort of seduction, whether Washington should impose stricter campus rules, the empty campus rape bureaucracy, and what colleges gave up in the 1960s.

In this episode:

Heather Mac Donald says the gang-rape story around the Cornell 7 is a fiction, and that Jane Doe took part voluntarily in a drug-soaked night at a fraternity.

She says Jane Doe drank heavily before she arrived, then drank more and took ketamine, and walked into the encounter on purpose.

She says the young men should not be prosecuted or sued, and that the night was instigated by Jane Doe.

She rejects the idea that the old tort of seduction fits these facts, because Jane Doe kept assenting.

She is wary of using the Department of Education to impose Liberty- or Hillsdale-style rules, because it strengthens the precedent for the next administration.

She describes how colleges dropped in loco parentis in the 1960s and 1970s, then built a Title IX bureaucracy on top of an anything-goes sexual culture.

She says the campus rape centers sit empty, because students the surveys label as victims say they were not raped.

She says the claimed one-in-four campus rape rate is not a real crime rate, and that rising female enrollment at Cornell shows people do not believe it.

She says conservatives have spent their energy debunking the rape-culture myth and not enough time criticizing the bacchanal itself.

She argues that female modesty, not another tribunal, is the practical protection.

She says alumni pressure at Penn after October 7, including Marc Rowan and Ross Stevens, has not fixed the anti-academic culture.

She leaves the policy program to others and says the job is to keep exposing the falsehood.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Heather Mac Donald: Thomas W. Smith Fellow, Manhattan Institute · @HMDatMI

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

0:00 Jane Doe walked in on purpose

0:52 The Cornell 7 accusation

2:31 What the 2024 night actually was

5:45 Consent is the only moral language left

9:01 Defending the students, and the tort of seduction

12:33 Imposing real restrictions on the party scene through Title IX

17:31 What colleges gave up in the 1960s

21:12 Rape centers nobody calls

24:59 If the one in four statistic were real

29:03 Modesty, shame, and the defensive crouch

33:35 Federal power or alumni pressure

38:35 The Greek system

Will Chamberlain talks with Daniel Di Martino about Trump's Venezuela endgame after the capture of Nicolás Maduro, why the old regime can still run Caracas under Delcy Rodríguez, and what it would take to force a real exit. The conversation also digs into Cuba's decades living off Venezuelan oil, the Cartel of the Suns, María Corina Machado's election prospects, the U.S.–Venezuela oil deal, and whether Havana is next.

In this episode:

Di Martino explains how Chávez turned Latin America's richest country into its poorest after Venezuelans voted themselves into socialism

He walks through Venezuela's fall from 1950s top-tier GDP per capita to an roughly 80 percent economic collapse

He argues the regime became a drug cartel once oil loot dried up, with diplomatic passports moving cocaine into the United States

He says Trump's Delta Force arrest of Maduro solved the credibility problem Maduro thought was a bluff

He maps Cuba's Special Period and how Caracas sent free oil that Havana resold through dark fleets

He describes Cuban intelligence embeds in the Venezuelan military as the price of that subsidy

He says Delcy Rodríguez is less popular than Maduro and cannot staff a competent central bank while she remains in power

He explains the colectivos as a Chavista paramilitary used to crush street protests

He argues top leaders cannot safely stay in Venezuela even with amnesty, because the public will kill them

He says only Trump can force exile deals — Qatar, Turkey, elsewhere — because Cuba is next and cannot be the safe house

He says María Corina Machado is the only figure who wins a free Venezuelan election in a landslide

He praises the oil deal's terms but warns U.S. government ownership and a future Democratic administration put long-horizon investment at risk

He backs striking Tren de Aragua leadership and drug boats when identification is solid

He closes that Venezuela was free and prosperous before socialism — and America should not be oblivious to that threat

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Daniel Di Martino: Manhattan Institute · @DanielDiMartino

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

0:00 Cold open — Cuba is next

1:11 Host intro

2:27 Growing up under Chávez

4:43 The deepest economic collapse on record

5:51 First Trump term and recognizing Guaidó

9:08 The Cartel of the Suns

12:19 Maduro in U.S. custody

13:24 Cuba's Special Period and free Venezuelan oil

18:38 Why a blockade alone will not topple Havana

20:38 Delcy Rodríguez's unpopularity

23:30 The colectivos

25:26 Amnesty, exile, and forcing the regime out

27:44 Diosdado Cabello

29:19 María Corina Machado

31:35 The oil deal and the 2028 risk

34:09 Tren de Aragua and the drug boats

37:57 Earthquakes and rebuilding

43:11 Venezuela as a warning for America

Will Chamberlain talks with Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam about Nikole Hannah-Jones’s New York City schools essay in the New York Times, what her experiment with her daughter actually revealed, and why the city’s accountability collapse keeps getting blamed on racism instead of the adults in the building. The conversation also digs into Salam’s own NYC public-school path through Stuyvesant, the charter networks that work, and the marriage of clannish politics and elite self-abnegation.

In this episode:

Salam describes growing up in Borough Park and Kensington and how New York’s ethnodemographic mix reshaped the public schools since the 1980s

He walks through Stuyvesant in the 1990s as an immigrant-rich melting pot that felt less siloed than today’s composition fights imply

He profiles Hannah-Jones as the high priestess of woke 1.0, from ProPublica and the Pulitzer to the 1619 Project and her outsized leverage at the Times

He recounts her choice to send her daughter into Vinegar Hill rather than the high-demand Brooklyn Heights school, and her theory that her own activism would transform the place

He argues New York’s best public options are capped charter networks with high expectations, which the left despises precisely because they work

He says Hannah-Jones talks integration while practicing a racialized nationalism about where her daughter should feel “deeply black”

He frames the real crisis as top-to-bottom unaccountability: no homework, no grading, no consequences, while spending north of $40,000 per pupil

He notes New York City offers about 150 hours less instruction than the average U.S. district — roughly a year of schooling across K–12

He says the middle-school principal who failed her daughter still got escape-hatch praise, blaming racism instead of teaching algebra

He and Will discuss Larry Auster’s “unprincipled exception”: elites applaud 1619 politics until it threatens their own kids’ schools

He argues a healthy society goes with the grain of family self-protection, and that demanding self-abnegation invites hypocrisy

He closes on the Mamdani coalition as the marriage of ethnic nepotism and ideological self-abnegation, and why civilizational self-confidence is fragile

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Reihan Salam: President, Manhattan Institute · @reihan

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

0:00 Check homework after the revolution

2:00 Welcome

2:17 Growing up in NYC public schools

11:59 Who is Nikole Hannah-Jones?

16:18 The Vinegar Hill experiment

18:20 Charters that work, and the ones that don’t

28:08 Accountability collapse

28:56 $40k per pupil and a year less school

33:40 The principal’s racism excuse

38:47 The unprincipled exception

40:47 Family before the state

47:32 Clans, communism, and Mamdani

51:17 Why civilizational confidence is fragile

Will Chamberlain talks with Yonah Jeremy Bob, Senior Military Correspondent and Intelligence Analyst at The Jerusalem Post, and Elliot Kaufman, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, about their book, In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel's Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis.

In this episode:

Yonah explains how Netanyahu, Gallant, and Gantz, three men who could not stand one another, had to run Israel's war together for its first eight to thirteen months.

Elliot argues that Netanyahu, often caricatured as the ultimate Israeli hawk, was one of the most cautious voices in the war room after October 7 and only later became the leader willing to make the riskiest military choices.

Elliot walks through the case Gallant and the IDF high command made for striking Hezbollah first, and how Netanyahu used American opposition, along with the support of Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, to hold that option off.

Yonah reveals that the exploding beepers and walkie-talkies were already part of the war room's debate in October 2023, and that Netanyahu later refused to give Washington a veto over the strike on Hassan Nasrallah.

On Rafah, Elliot recounts how President Biden planted his flag against the operation, then went quiet once Israel evacuated the city's civilians in less than a week.

Yonah credits the IDF with moving well over a million people out of Rafah without mass casualties and reports that Hamas, eager to booby-trap more houses, inadvertently helped the evacuation.

Yonah says Biden was the pro-Israel wing of his own administration until Rafah, and Elliot explains why the Rafah fight ended up strengthening Netanyahu at home.

Yonah explains the dispute between the Mossad and the IDF over when to use the pagers, and says the concern was not imminent discovery but that Iranian inspectors might eventually find them.

Elliot describes the Nasrallah decision, in which Netanyahu warned that American officials would "jump out of their skin" and Washington was told only once Israeli warplanes were in the air.

Elliot reports that Ron Dermer told the war room after meeting Trump in November 2024 that there was an 80 percent chance Trump would allow or join a strike on Iran, and that JD Vance played a crucial role in bringing the United States in.

Yonah recounts how IDF chief Eyal Zamir won over Vance by telling him Israeli aircraft were flying over Fordow unopposed, and argues that nobody drags Donald Trump into anything.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Yonah Jeremy Bob: The Jerusalem Post · @jeremybob1

Elliot Kaufman: The Wall Street Journal editorial board · @ElliotKaufman6

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

00:00 Cold Open

03:02 How In the War Room came together

06:39 Who ran Israel's war: Netanyahu, Gallant, and Gantz

08:47 Was Netanyahu really the hawk everyone assumes?

10:13 Should Israel have struck Hezbollah first?

19:48 The fight over Rafah

27:52 What was the Biden administration withholding?

32:15 Did Biden himself turn on Israel?

36:27 The pagers and the Iranian inspection risk

38:24 The Nasrallah strike and what to tell Washington

43:13 Did Israel drag Trump into war with Iran?

47:57 How Zamir sold JD Vance before Midnight Hammer

49:02 The UAE warning and the failures before October 7

The Houthis are back in the news, advancing down the Red Sea coast and threatening to take control of Bab-el-Mandeb strait, though they have apparently reassured Washington that they mean no harm to international trade, at least for now.

Zineb Riboua is a research fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. On Counterweight she explains who the Houthis actually are — Ansar Allah from Saada, a Zaidi movement that is indigenous and still tied to Iran — then walks through this week’s coastal push, the Southern Transitional Council fight with Saudi Arabia, and why Riyadh sees a window now that IRGC support is thinner. She traces the Saudi–UAE split through Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya; reads the Mecca Pact with Turkey and Pakistan as a deconfliction channel still being written; and argues Trump is unlikely to open a second major front in Yemen while the energy market and midterms dominate. On the Red Sea she spells out why Bab el-Mandeb matters more for Egypt, Europe, and Asia than for U.S. trade — and how Chinese satellite firms supplied Houthi targeting data while Chinese and Russian ships were spared, which flipped the old “include China” playbook. She closes on China’s failed Gulf mediation, the bite of enforced sanctions on Iran’s revolutionary-proxy model, Iraq’s September 30 militia demilitarization test, and Gulf preparations for a much weaker Islamic Republic — including the absence of Arab-capital street defenses of Tehran.

Listen / watch: https://www.counterweightpod.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@counterweightpod

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Zineb Riboua: @zriboua · Hudson Institute

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

Follow Counterweight (twice a week): Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

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Site: https://www.counterweightpod.com

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open — Saudis never allowed to win; Houthis steal the aid

2:31 Who the Houthis are — Ansar Allah, Zaidi, indigenous and Iran-tied

5:05 Coastal ops — STC, UAE, and Saudi’s post-Iran window

8:47 Bab el-Mandeb — Iran’s interest and Houthi diversification

10:48 Why the Saudis struggle — Washington never let them finish it

12:35 Saudi–UAE split — Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya

16:47 Mecca Pact — Turkey, Pakistan, and a still-unwritten deal

19:06 Trump, Houthi strikes, and Abraham Accords leverage

21:07 Bab el-Mandeb for trade — Egypt, Europe, Asia; not mainly America

21:58 China armed the crisis — satellite targeting data for the Houthis

24:04 China’s double game with the Gulf and Iran

27:45 Sanctions hit Chinese oil buyers and the shadow banks

30:23 How badly Iran feels the bite — a revolutionary state without cash

33:58 What America should do — energy market, missile shield, proxies

37:15 Iraq’s militia deadline — the Sep 30 test

40:04 Preparing for a weaker Islamic Republic

40:56 No Arab street defense of Iran — and why that matters

43:57 The perpetual counterterror bill vs tying the Gulf to the U.S.