Patriot Brief
The FBI stopped a planned New Year’s Eve bombing campaign targeting Los Angeles businesses.
Prosecutors describe the plot as organized, sophisticated, and explicitly ideological.
The case exposes violent extremism operating under left-wing activist branding.
This is what actual domestic terrorism looks like — not tweets, not slogans, not inconvenient opinions, but people in the desert assembling bombs and planning mass-casualty attacks. According to federal prosecutors, the Order of the Black Lotus wasn’t posturing or role-playing. They were days away from planting explosives in multiple Los Angeles businesses and detonating them at midnight, using fireworks as acoustic cover. That’s not activism. That’s premeditated murder.
What makes this case especially revealing is how familiar the ideological packaging is. Anti-government rhetoric. “Liberation” language. Free Palestine stickers scattered among bomb-making supplies. This wasn’t some incoherent fringe cell; it was a group steeped in the aesthetics and moral certainty of modern radical activism, convinced violence was justified because their cause was righteous.
The details only make it worse. Text messages celebrating death. Self-described admiration for terrorist groups. Plans not just to destroy property but to target federal immigration agents afterward to “take some of them out and scare the rest.” That’s escalation, not protest.
And yet, if this plot hadn’t been stopped, the conversation would likely have turned immediately toward deflection. Mental health. Systemic grievances. Anything but ideology. We’ve seen that pattern before.
The uncomfortable truth is that extremism doesn’t wear just one uniform. It doesn’t come from only one direction. When left-wing militancy crosses from rhetoric into bombs and body counts, it deserves the same clarity, condemnation, and seriousness demanded in every other terrorism case. No euphemisms. No excuses. Just reality.
From Western Journal:
A New Year’s Eve terror plot by a pro-Palestinian, left-wing, anti-government group that was intent on bombing businesses in Los Angeles was foiled by the FBI.
The group, Order of the Black Lotus, is “a radical faction of the Turtle Island Liberation Front,” or TILF, according to the Los Angeles Times. The group is also “left-wing” and “anti-government.”
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced on Monday that the group of four was guilty of planning an “organized, sophisticated, and extremely violent” New Year’s Eve attack involving bombs.
“We disrupted this terror plot before buildings were demolished or innocent people were killed,” he said.
BREAKING: Asst. US Attorney Bill Essayli in Los Angeles announces 4 arrests in New Year’s terror plot and gives details of their alleged plans to bomb 5 locations in LA & Orange Counties. They allegedly belong to terror group Order of the Black Lotus: pic.twitter.com/CvJ7NwetWV
— Plein Crazy (@PleinCrazy) December 15, 2025
According to Los Angeles magazine, the group was busted as they met in the Mohave Desert on Dec. 12 to build the bombs.
“Card tables trekked into the desert were crowded with the materials they needed, pistol primers, shoelaces, PVC pipes, plastic tubs of potassium nitrate, all shielded from the sun by an overhead tent, along with stickers that read ‘Free Palestine,'” the outlet reported.
The goal of the campaign, known as “Operation Midnight Sun,” was to use “the cover of New Year’s Eve firework celebrations … to mask the sounds” as the group planted backpacks with explosives inside five local businesses and then detonated them right at midnight.
While Essayli wouldn’t identify the specific businesses, he said that they were “logistic centers” similar to the type maintained by Amazon.
The plot also called for follow-up attacks on federal immigration agents that would, according to the indictment against the four suspects, “take some of them out and scare the rest of them.”
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Photo Credit: Jay L Clendenin/Getty Images
