Chicago kids are dying while Mayor Johnson fights Trump, ICE and reality

The only reason I am doing my Walk Across America is because of the kids who are caught in the crossfire of failing policies, broken education systems and leaders who prioritize everything except their future. In Chicago, under Mayor Brandon Johnson’s watch, we have a city screaming for help, but instead of listening, he’s fixated on ICE raids, shielding illegal immigrants, showing solidarity with Minneapolis and even weighing in on foreign policy in Venezuela. Why? When our own streets are stained with the blood of our children, and our schools have failed for years?

Just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. In a recent video, Johnson declared, “If we don’t push back against Trump and ICE with everything that Black people used to get ‘us free,’ we’re going to find ourselves subjugated to tyranny. One thing is for sure: Not in Chicago.” 

But hold on — the same man who claims those sacrifices “got us free” is the one who constantly cries about inheriting a “White supremacist system” full of ongoing oppression and racism. Which is it, Mayor Johnson? Are we free, or are we still subjugated? You can’t have it both ways just to fit your narrative. And why drag our ancestors’ legacy into shielding the city from federal law? That’s not honoring their fight. That’s exploiting it.

WHY WOULD A CITY MAYOR DEFEND A DICTATOR WHILE HIS OWN STREETS CONTINUE TO BURN?

If you want to know the real truth, there’s a population in our city that is not as free as it could be — a population that is constantly denied equality of opportunity, a population that is exploited by the left as “evidence” of systemic racism — and that population is the kids. If White supremacy is truly behind this oppression of our kids, I want to know who’s behind it so we can protest them out of power.

But everyone I see in positions of power is largely Black. Mayor Johnson is Black. Most of his administration is Black. The superintendent of police is Black. The Cook County state’s attorney was Black until recently. The chief judge of the Cook County Circuit Court is Black. The Illinois attorney general is Black. The Chicago Fire Department commissioner is Black. The Cook County Board president is Black. The state Senate majority leader is Black. The Illinois lieutenant governor is Black. The Illinois Secretary of State is Black. The Chicago treasurer is Black. Even the CEO of Chicago Public Schools is Black.

So, Mayor Johnson, where is this White supremacy that you speak of?

CHICAGO RESIDENT GOES AFTER CITY’S ‘PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC GANG’ FOR REFUSING TRUMP’S FEDERAL HELP ON CRIME

Or is this just an excuse to deflect from the fact that the mayor and his leftist policies may be the true oppressors of the kids in our city?

Former Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas wrote that since Mayor Johnson took office, “504 school-age children, 17 years and younger, have been shot, and 107 have been killed. Twenty-three of those deaths were children under the age of 12.”

FROM SELMA TO CHICAGO, MLK’S LEGACY IS BEING BETRAYED BY GRIEVANCE POLITICS

Nobody knows this. It never made the news. Mayor Johnson didn’t care to make it news. The Chicago Teachers Union didn’t care to make it news either. You know what did make the news, though? The union’s luxury trips to Las Vegas, Hawaii, and overseas safaris — all in the name of “professional development” — which have cost the city more than $20 million since 2019.

Meanwhile, far too many of our kids cannot read or do math on grade level. In some schools, this failure rate is as high as 96 out of 100 students.

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Shelby Steele, in his 2020 film “What Killed Michael Brown?” said that the biggest systemic oppressor of Black youths is post-60s liberalism — the kind that the mayor and his ilk embrace. He’s right.

The mayor is busy grandstanding against President Donald Trump and ICE, defending sanctuary policies that protect undocumented immigrants, and condemning Trump’s military actions in Venezuela as “illegal” and tied to “oil and power.” He tells Congress that scapegoating immigrants is “misleading and unjust,” while our own citizens languish in poverty and danger. He does all of this because he has no viable solutions. None.

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Most of all, I blame us — We the People. We elected this incompetent and ideological man as our mayor. We never hold our leaders to full accountability. We care more about protesting Trump than we care about our kids. That’s the cold reality. We need to wake up, reverse course, and fix very fixable problems. It’s not magic to educate a child. But the will must be there — and right now, it is not.

That is why I’m walking across America to spread awareness of this problem, which affects not just our community but communities all over the country. Surrendering our values to elite agendas leaves nothing for the rest of us. Only folks like Johnson benefit. Our kids deserve leaders who fight for their present-day education and their future opportunities. This is the greatest country in the world, and we must raise our kids to know this truth — or we will reap what we sow.

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Greenland is America’s front door — forgetting that has dangerous consequences

President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States will impose a 10% import tariff on eight European countries opposing U.S. control of Greenland has forced a long-ignored Arctic debate into the open. Several European governments responded with immediate objections, while skepticism at home followed just as quickly.

Critics warn that tariffs risk alienating allies and straining NATO. Polling shows widespread public unease with any move that sounds like American domination of Greenland. Those concerns are real, but they do not change the strategic facts. Dismissing Greenland as optional ignores a central lesson of modern history: the Arctic has never been peripheral to the defense of the American homeland.

Washington confronted a similar — and far more dangerous — strategic dilemma during the Cold War.

TROOPS FROM EUROPE DEPLOY TO GREENLAND IN RAPID 2-DAY MISSION AS TRUMP EYES US TAKEOVER

During that period, U.S. defense planners did not view the Arctic as a distant theater. They treated it as the most direct avenue of attack against North America. Soviet bombers and missiles followed the shortest routes over the Pole, forcing Washington to confront an unavoidable geographic reality.

Because missiles and bombers traveled over polar paths, Arctic geography drove American defense planning. In cooperation with Canada and with Denmark’s consent in Greenland, the United States constructed an unprecedented early-warning system across the high north. The Pinetree Line, the Mid-Canada Line and the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line together formed more than sixty radar stations stretching from Alaska across the Canadian Arctic toward Greenland. When intercontinental ballistic missiles replaced bombers as the primary threat, Washington adapted again, fielding the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at Thule in Greenland, Clear in Alaska and Fylingdales in the United Kingdom — designed to provide decision-makers with critical warning time in a nuclear crisis.

Those Cold War lessons still apply because missile flight paths, warning timelines and homeland defense remain shaped by Arctic geography.

Some analysts argue that existing defenses — particularly those at Fort Greely, Alaska — reduce the need for strategic positioning in Greenland. Fort Greely is a vital component of U.S. homeland missile defense. But, it does not operate in isolation.

NEW TRUMP ADMIN ENVOY SAYS US WON’T ‘CONQUER’ GREENLAND, EMPHASIZES TALKS WITH LOCALS AS DENMARK BALKS AT MOVE

In a crisis measured in minutes, even small gaps in detection or tracking can mean the difference between deterrence and disaster.

Missile defense depends on multiple sensors and early-warning systems positioned across vast distances. Forward radar installations in the Arctic extend detection time and improve tracking against threats approaching from polar trajectories. During the Cold War, Washington did not choose between Alaska and Greenland; it reinforced both. Defense planners still rely on geographic depth to preserve warning time and decision space.

Greenland’s importance, however, extends well beyond missile defense and early warning.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS MOVE TO BLOCK TRUMP’S GREENLAND ‘BOONDOGGLE’

In addition to its military significance, Greenland’s deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals have become a focal point of competition among the United States, Europe and China. These materials underpin modern weapons systems, energy technologies and advanced manufacturing. Unfortunately, the U.S. remains uncomfortably dependent on Chinese-dominated supply chains.

The strategic objective regarding Greenland should not be ownership for its own sake. It is access and denial: ensuring reliable Western access while preventing Beijing from securing long-term leverage over future supply. That objective can be pursued through long-term investment agreements, joint development and security partnerships with Greenland and Denmark — without annexation.

But access without security is fragile. China has repeatedly used commercial footholds to translate economic presence into political leverage. Agreements endure only when backed by credible deterrence.

SENATE DEM JOHN FETTERMAN SUPPORTS PROSPECT OF US GREENLAND PURCHASE, CITING ‘MASSIVE STRATEGIC BENEFITS’

For years, Arctic shipping lanes were dismissed as speculative. That era is over. The Northwest Passage is becoming increasingly navigable, shortening transit between Asia, Europe and North America. Russia already treats Arctic waters as sovereign corridors, enforced by military power. China is positioning itself for future control of ports, resupply nodes and undersea infrastructure. Greenland occupies a pivotal position along these developing Arctic routes.

An expanded NATO presence in the Arctic — including Greenland — would strengthen deterrence, particularly if it includes substantial U.S. forces. But NATO remains a consensus alliance, and consensus slows decision-making in moments of crisis.

During the Cold War, Greenland’s defense worked because American leadership was clear and operational authority was unambiguous, even as Danish sovereignty was fully respected. Effective deterrence requires clear authority and responsibility, not uncertainty about who decides when time is scarce.

How this debate is framed carries real consequences. Talk of “taking” Greenland or overriding local opposition invites comparisons to imperial ventures the United States should never repeat. America does not need occupation forces, nor does it need another protracted insurgency. History — from the Philippines after 1898 onward — offers blunt warnings about the costs of confusing strategic geography with colonial ambition.

Greenland and Denmark have made clear that Greenland is not for sale. Tariffs may draw attention to the issue, but coercion should not become a substitute for diplomacy, investment and alliance leadership.

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Polling shows that many Americans oppose acquiring or dominating Greenland. That skepticism reflects war fatigue and distrust of open-ended commitments. But it reflects a failure to explain the stakes — not their absence. Greenland is not Iraq or Afghanistan. There would be no nation-building project, no counterinsurgency campaign and no attempt to impose governance.

This debate is about access, basing rights, early-warning capability and denial authority — objectives the United States has pursued in Greenland before, successfully and peacefully.

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Washington faces a choice that is often mischaracterized as empire versus restraint. In reality, the decision is whether to remain engaged, with respect for sovereignty and alliances, or to step back as strategic competitors consolidate influence. As China and Russia expand their reach in the high north, American leadership — rooted in history, geography and restraint — remains indispensable.

America once learned that the Arctic is the front door to the homeland. Forgetting that lesson now would invite consequences far more dangerous than remembering it.

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LEE CARTER: Trump’s approval ratings reveal what legacy media refuses to see

Tuesday, Jan. 20 marks one year since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office. One year of executive orders, foreign policy shock waves, immigration crackdowns and a governing style that never once tried to soften its edges.

And for one year, the same headline has seemed to be everywhere: Trump is unpopular.

Approval in the low 40s. Disapproval in the mid-50s. The verdict, according to the polling-industrial complex, is clear.

FROM WASHINGTON: THE PRESIDENT’S FIRST YEAR ‘REPORT CARD’

But one year in, it’s worth asking a more uncomfortable question: What if the polls aren’t telling us Trump is failing? What if they’re telling us he’s delivering — and the country is splitting in response?

Because Trump is not like other presidents. And that means we’re reading his first year through the wrong lens.

A First Year Without the Usual Pivot

Most presidents spend their first year recalibrating. They discover the limits of power. They soften the rhetoric. They explain why campaign promises were harder than expected.

They govern in beige after campaigning in bold color. Trump never did that.

He governed exactly as he campaigned — and dared the country to react.

He promised to get tough on immigration. He did.

He promised to put America first, even if allies bristled. He did.

He promised decisive action over consensus. He delivered it.

You can disagree with the choices. Many do. But you cannot credibly argue that he misrepresented who he would be.

And that’s why his polling looks so strange — and so stable — one year in.

THE ECONOMIC POLICIES SHAPING TRUMP’S RETURN TO THE WHITE HOUSE

According to national polling averages, Trump’s job approval sits around 41% to 42%, with disapproval in the mid-50s. Those numbers dominate headlines. But buried in the same data is the statistic that actually defines his first year: According to a Wall Street Journal poll this week, 92% of voters who supported Trump in 2024 still approve of the job he’s doing.

That is not drift.

That is not erosion.

That is alignment.

Trump didn’t lose America; he kept his people.

The Polls Still Measure Performance — But Through Identity

Here’s the shift that explains everything: The polls absolutely reflect what Trump is doing. They just don’t reflect it the way they used to.

In past presidencies, performance led to persuasion. A good economy moved numbers up. A crisis moved them down. Voters behaved like jurors, weighing evidence and revising judgment.

Today, voters behave more like mirrors.

Trump acts. And people don’t reconsider. They react as who they already are.

Supporters see delivery.

Opponents see confirmation.

The same action produces opposite conclusions — and the polls record the split.

Think of today’s polling like polarized sunglasses. Everyone sees the same reality — but one lens turns it red, the other blue. The event isn’t hidden. It’s filtered. Trump’s presidency doesn’t change minds; it clarifies them.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION REVOKES MORE THAN 100,000 VISAS IN FIRST YEAR BACK

That’s why approval doesn’t swing wildly. That’s why scandals don’t collapse support. That’s why victories don’t expand it. The country isn’t being persuaded. It’s being sorted — in response to Trump doing exactly what he said he would do.

Why His Numbers Barely Move

This is why Trump’s approval ratings feel so unsatisfying to everyone.

Critics want them to signal collapse.

Supporters want them to signal dominance.

Instead, they signal something more unsettling: stability without consensus.

Recent polling suggests Trump’s approval has stabilized after early dips — not because nothing is happening, but because everything is settling into place. The sides are formed. The reactions are predictable. The country has chosen its lenses.

Trump isn’t chasing approval. He’s holding his line.

And that, one year in, is the defining feature of his presidency.

A Promise Actually Kept

Here is the thing that makes both sides uncomfortable:

Trump didn’t run as a unifier and then divide.

He didn’t run as a reformer and then manage.

He didn’t run as an outsider and then assimilate.

He ran as a disruptor — and governed as one.

That doesn’t make him right.

It doesn’t make him wrong.

It makes him consistent.

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And consistency, in a country this divided, is no longer a virtue everyone can tolerate. It’s a provocation.

One Year Later

One year in, Trump’s approval ratings aren’t a warning sign. They’re a receipt. They show that he delivered exactly what he promised — and that half the country can’t stand what was delivered.

In an era built on walk-backs and reversals, Trump did something voters are told never to expect from politicians: He meant it.

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And on the one-year anniversary of his presidency, the polls aren’t judging his performance.

They’re measuring America’s discomfort with getting exactly what it voted for.

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MORNING GLORY: President Donald Trump has become the ‘punisher in chief’

The first year of the second term of President Trump concludes today. Only extreme partisans will deny that 45-47 hung a lot of wins on the wall this past year — the closed border, “eight-and-a-quarter” peace negotiations, the “one big beautiful bill,” Operations Midnight Hammer and Absolute Resolve and the wonderful combination of falling inflation and rising wages and, of course, rising domestic oil and gas production and the march towards small, modular nuclear reactors. (President Trump, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright don’t often get the headlines for our energy breakout, but AI and our country’s national security depends on continuing and expanding it.)

Most important to the world of his achievements in his first year back: President Trump is not only the commander in chief of the mightiest military in history, he knows how to use it. Trump restored America’s deterrence that had been forfeited by our collapse in Afghanistan by becoming “The Punisher.”

Iran, Islamist terrorists across Africa, from Somalia to Nigeria and Nicholas Maduro have all suffered devastating blows that punished them for behavior outside the guardrails that President Trump set. Iran is still on the likely receiving end of another massive, but rapid and devastating, hit that could leave Kharg Island and other oil export facilities in Iran in ruins and the ayatollahs and the IRGC bereft of any means to finance their massive murdering sprees.

TRUMP SAYS JD VANCE WOULD BE ‘PROBABLY FAVORED’ FOR 2028 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION

It turns out that it is not wise to ignore Trump’s demands on matters he defines as vital to America’s national security.

Today also marks Vice President JD Vance’s first year as the only other official elected by the entire country. Spare a moment to zoom in on the 41-year-old former senator from Ohio, investment banker, Yale-trained lawyer and Marine.

The vice president has been the ideal #2 in year one: He supports his boss, messages for him, provides his best advice and is willing to go where dutiful vice presidents have to go: Europe and anywhere else the president sends him.

But Vance also emerged in the first year of the second term of President Trump as the John Wick of the Sunday shows and Euro-gabfests.

MORNING GLORY: PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS PLACED AMERICA’S ADVERSARIES ON NOTICE

Vice President Vance’s communication skills have been widely known since his evisceration of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in the 2024 vice presidential debate. Elected officials with this particular skill set are going to attract some attention from lots of directions as a matter of course, but other than Vice President Cheney in the year following 9/11, I don’t recall any other #2 with the level of legacy media attention that Vance has received in his first year. (The asterisk is when Vice President Harris became the nominee after the collapse in the polls of President Biden after his disastrous debate with President Trump wherein the infirmity could no longer bet hidden and 45-47 deftly underscored how Biden had lapsed into incoherence.)

One example of the “Vance effect”: Almost every group I speak to, and certainly every GOP-inclined group I appear before, includes comments or questions that assume Vance will be the 2028 nominee (with Secretary Rubio as his running mate), and some segments of the Republican donor class at least are confident as well that it will be an eight-year run in the presidency for Vance. (I go back to GOP Switzerland whenever these questions are posed, because there’s no point in covering the news if you are a political Calvinist. I also know that front-runners at this point in the cycle often falter and fall aside.)

The vice president’s public appearances are “known knowns.” Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear can watch the tape or read the transcripts and see the veep’s verbal knife work done on legacy media or actually talk to Republican groups outside the Beltway to learn what activists in the donor class think is unfolding. What is on the record, or available with even a little bit of actual reporting, isn’t debatable. The vice president is a “five-star prospect” to borrow from the vocabulary of college football recruiting.

WHITE HOUSE RACE UNDERWAY: WITH 2026 LOOMING, BOTH PARTIES ARE ALREADY PLAYING FOR 2028

But the vice president must find it odd how so many people putting pen to paper or opining on cable who claim to “know” what he is thinking on topics he hasn’t addressed in public, even topics and controversies on which he has never commented.

Some reporters and “analysts” even purport to know what he is doing and with whom he is talking and — biggest of all ridiculous speculations — what Vance is thinking apart from his public appearances, on-the-record interviews and the occasional cameo in an Oval Office presser or meeting.

Vance is very much the opposite of mysterious. He’s been running for office for about half of the last five years — whether for Ohio’s Senate seat, which he won in 2022 and for which he began campaigning in 2021, or for the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024. He’s been my guest 25 times since 2016, and has been available to media and voters for years. Since being sworn in a year ago, Vice President Vance has notched over 100 public appearances, with nearly 50 on-the-record interviews since Inauguration Day. He is the opposite of a “known unknown.”

President Trump has lapped the Veep a couple of times on both the metrics of appearances and interviews, but that is the normal order of things. The second in command doesn’t want to even come close to overshadowing the boss and never wants to contradict him, at least in public. Vance has accepted and thrived within the rules of this Constitutional and political arrangement.

Which makes the negative obsessions with Vance so bizarre. Rarely a day, and hardly ever a week, passes without someone in the political press attributing to the vice president views and policy positions that he has not taken in public. Many journalists over the past year have purported to know the advice the vice president has given to the president in private. Some suggest who the vice president takes his policy preferences from, as though there is someone other than the president giving such cues.

Why? Because the legacy media appears invested in making Vance unelectable in 2028 by attempting to make him “own” positions not held by President Trump, to cast him as an isolationist or a “restrainer.”

The effort is silly. No one can read minds and unnamed “sources” are usually that way because identification would shatter any illusion of expertise on the veep’s thinking. The “sources” on the VP seem almost always to provide ammunition for negative takes on him, as levers to pry Trump and Vance apart or to push Vance into categories that might make it easier for Governor Gavin Newsom or Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to vanquish him, if indeed Vance is the GOP nominee in 2028. (Again, I’m not predicting that because such a guess marks the guesser as ignorant of history’s verdict on predictions three years out from an election.)

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The “Vance-is-actually-worse-than-Trump” campaign is very real, however, and has emerged online on every platform. The consistent drumbeat of attacks on Vance of all sorts has begun far earlier than anything I can recall.

Vance had a great first year, though, of course, it has been in a supporting role to the president’s return to the Oval Office. As the “punisher in chief” goes about reordering the world without dispatching tens of thousands of ground troops anywhere, Trump’s critics have grown very worried that “America First” is more than a momentary blip in American politics, an exception-to-the-rule of the left’s canards about the “right side of history.”

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President Trump’s many second-term successes have frightened progressives into fearing that his policies can’t be reversed in the near term. If Vance, or anyone else who approves of Trump’s belief in an “American Millennium,” emerges stronger as Trump racks up wins, the left and its adherents in legacy media are going to ramp up the attacks on Vance and anyone else standing squarely behind Trump.

“Trump Derangement Syndrome” has birthed “Vance Derangement Syndrome.” Neither will abate in the second year of Donald Trump’s second term.

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LIZ PEEK: Trump’s first year: The good, the great and the foolish

Donald J. Trump was inaugurated for a second term as president exactly one year ago. It is safe to say the country, and the world, will never be the same. 

President Trump has engaged in energetic and bold governing and diplomacy, fulfilling campaign promises like boosting domestic energy production, while also seeking peace in turbulent parts of the world and attempting to follow through on long-term ambitions, like acquiring Greenland.

He has engaged with the press on a near-daily basis, boosted recruitment for our military, dismantled harmful left-wing shibboleths like DEI, convinced our NATO allies to spend more on their own defense, junked burdensome regulations that interfered with our country’s progress, challenged our woke universities, extracted and jailed alleged drug kingpin Nicolás Maduro, defended women’s sports, significantly derailed Iran’s nuclear program, overseen new health initiatives like ridding our food of artificial dyes, shrunk the ever-expanding federal bureaucracy, and pushed through a reconciliation bill that lowered taxes for middle-class Americans. It is an incredible boatload of accomplishments.

‘PERCEPTION VS. REALITY’: TRUMP’S ECONOMY PICKS UP SPEED — BUT VOTERS AREN’T BUYING IT YET

But Trump’s first year is most notable for closing the southern border that predecessor Joe Biden opened to millions of unvetted illegal immigrants, and for resetting U.S. trade relations through the introduction of tariffs. As he might boast, few imagined that these efforts would succeed; however, neither has been without controversy.

Today, President Trump is at a crossroads. He begins midterm campaigning with approval ratings that are underwater, according to polling aggregated by RealClearPolitics, even on his signature issues of immigration and the economy. He has, in particular, lost favor with independents and with some of the groups that helped him win in 2024, like young voters and Hispanics. 

Surveys suggest voters think the president is spending too much time on foreign affairs instead of working to reduce the cost of living. While he pursues peace between Ukraine and Russia, Americans want lower cereal prices and cheaper housing. 

President Trump is trying to do too many things at once. On the one hand, we applaud the energy and pace of this president, a welcome change from the inert Joe Biden. On the other hand, Americans want stability, not chaos.

President Trump is aggrieved that the country is not giving him high marks for booming economic growth, a declining fiscal deficit, new investments flowing into the U.S., a declining trade gap, rising middle-class wages, all-time high oil production and record stock prices. And, inflation is substantially lower than the decades-high 9.1% recorded during the Biden presidency.

REBECCA GRANT: TRUMP’S 8 BIGGEST NATIONAL SECURITY WINS OF 2025

Public perceptions about the economy will play a decisive role in the midterm elections. Given today’s subdued consumer sentiment, President Trump faces the very real prospect that Republicans will lose their slim control of the House and maybe even their advantage in the Senate. He has warned more than once that should Democrats take over, they will almost certainly move to impeach him; he may well be right. 

Faced with that threat, and seemingly rattled by Democrats’ new “affordability” pitch, Trump has unleashed a barrage of new policies meant to address the cost of living, some of which appear half-baked. He has proposed capping interest rates on credit cards at 10% and has strategized about that controversial notion with progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a development giving most Republicans hives. In addition, he has launched an attack on corporate-owned housing, which he claims has driven up rents. The number of homes bought up by businesses in recent years is small, and not likely to be a major source of rent inflation.

The frustrated president is also lashing out at adversaries, threatening to sue JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for “debanking” him in 2021 and waging war against Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, for instance. 

Trump blames the Fed chair for keeping interest rates too high, which in turn drives up the cost of living. The Justice Department’s investigation into whether the Fed Chair lied to Congress about the costly renovation of the Fed’s headquarters was a foolish miscalculation; it has backfired as Powell has dug in and caused the Senate to balk at confirming his successor.

RNC CHAIR BETS ON ‘SECRET WEAPON’ TO DEFY MIDTERM HISTORY, PROTECT GOP MAJORITIES

Trump has also recently rolled out “The Great Healthcare Plan,” which would make payments directly to households to cover health expenses rather than send federal subsidies to insurers on consumers’ behalf. This proposal comes as Congress continues to debate extending enhanced premium subsidies on Obamacare; the lapsing of payments augmented during COVID-19 will raise some peoples’ insurance costs significantly. For not being ready with a solution to this dilemma, which was anticipated for more than a year, voters should blame Republicans in Congress, not President Trump. Nonetheless, attempting to reconfigure our dysfunctional healthcare system, nearly one fifth of our economy, should not be done on the fly.

Most recently, Trump has again threatened to slap onerous tariffs on European Union countries unless Denmark agrees to sell Greenland. This is a mistake, as it undermines the president’s constructive use of tariffs, indicates our partners cannot trust hard-fought trade agreements, and again plunges America’s commitment to NATO into uncertainty.

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President Trump is trying to do too many things at once. On the one hand, we applaud the energy and pace of this president, a welcome change from the inert Joe Biden. On the other hand, Americans want stability, not chaos.

They especially don’t want chaos on the streets of Minneapolis, with ICE agents under attack. They also don’t want chaos in our dealings with foreign nations. And, they don’t want chaos in our economy, with tariffs being raised and lowered according to the latest push from the Oval Office and with major proposals being spun out almost daily.

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The president has accomplished a great deal in his first year in office. He needs to build on the wins, and remind voters why they elected him. That begins with deescalating some of his confrontations and restoring confidence through steady leadership. It continues with hitting the campaign trail, talking to the American people, and bringing them back on board.

President Trump’s agenda is not complete; let us hope he reboots and wins for three more years to continue making America great again.   

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GREG GUTFELD: Scott Adams was the man who interrogated reality and made it talk

They say when you’re born, you come into life with no instruction manual.

If we’re lucky, we inherit a good set of parents, who set us up with good habits and sound thinking.

We might pursue a religious practice, embrace an education, and learn to think for ourselves.

‘DILBERT’ CREATOR SCOTT ADAMS DIES AT AGE 68

Others might not be so lucky. Anxious and unsure — we turn to other things to make sense of reality — drugs, alcohol, sex or easy money.

Without a set of instructions, we rely on what we think is our operating system: the ego.

And we protect it with all our might.

It is the ego, after all, that gets us into fights, creates resentments and wastes our time thinking about the past — ignoring the glories of the present. We find ourselves angry and irritable — pissed off at a coworker, cut off from a relative, mad over current events. And it is a devotion to an ego that makes us powerless to predict life’s terms or life’s turns. We end up more wrong than right, and our ego rages in response.

I came across Scott Adams accidentally, but it couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

It was around 2015 or so, and I was hot and bothered by Donald Trump. 

My friends and relatives had jumped aboard the Trump train, but I resisted — and resentfully so. I had my reasons for it, no doubt. But I never question what lurked beneath those reasons. Turns out it was self-doubt — the weak armor of an insecure ego. 

I found myself dreading work, and angry that nearly all my predictive powers had failed. Every day I would say, “Trump’s finished!” and he only got stronger. This wasn’t like me.

But one day on Twitter, some soul I’ll never be able to thank tweeted a simple suggestion: read Scott Adams. And, in a rare moment, I decided to heed a comment on Twitter. I googled Scott’s blog. And it changed my life.

Scott was already a world-famous cartoonist, of course — the creator of “Dilbert.” He had a pile of bestsellers.

Scott loved humans, but understood the nature of their pain — caused by how little they understood the reality behind the one they took as real.  

But I knew little of that world. And I had no idea what I would discover when I entered the Scott Adams universe — a place where the most profound thinker ruled with a cup of coffee, a goofy grin and a deep understanding of moist robots — i.e. humans.

Scott loved humans, but understood the nature of their pain — caused by how little they understood the reality behind the one they took as real.  

While some people would tell you they knew life’s secrets in order to impress upon you their brilliance — Scott was only trying to help. It’s why Dilbert was so successful. He was expressing the reality behind the reality. And we immediately got the joke.

Reality is subjective. And we see things as we think they are — not how they really are. And we foolishly make predictions based on those assumptions.

We had no answer key to life — and for many of us, that led us to making the same mistakes over and over. But Scott explained to us the conceptual reality behind the physical one — and it was the world of persuasion. He calmly explained how it operates — which in time made it possible to almost predict anything.  Once you knew how persuasion worked, you could see around most corners.

This was the difference between Scott and most intellectuals trying to flex their brilliance.

They were interested in reversing reality — but Scott was merely trying to explain it.

And he did that every morning.

It was then, daily, that I listened to “Coffee with Scott Adams” — certain I would glean some valuable insight into the world. And that prediction never failed. He would offer reframes of issues and ideas that would change the way I looked at things.   

 I remember Scott talking about the joys of being fired.

Having been fired three times in my life — I remember being angry and resentful after each one. Turned out, as Scott pointed out, I should have been grateful — because each firing was a step forward into a better career. My life never got worse after being fired — it only got better.

And this pretty much holds true for everyone. Being unhappy over a firing was based on a faulty assumption that the game had just ended. When, in fact, you were just entering a new level. The game started anew. And you could do anything.

It also helped that he framed getting fired — as well as getting dumped — through the same simple filter: that the relationship was not a good fit. Once you look at losing a job or the girl as “not a good fit,” you have eliminated a wound on your ever-present ego. It’s not about you.

And that frees you from the bag of rocks known as bitterness.

The ego is something that we all have and few can control. Usually the ego runs our lives, often into the ground. But Scott reframed it with an analogy — and I quote it often…

Imagine a person asks you to carry an original Picasso down the block to a gallery. You oblige, and the journey is harrowing. You pack up the painting, you wait for the rain to stop, you walk carefully and timidly — step by tiny step — terrified of pedestrians and puddles. Now imagine that same person asking you to carry a potato. Sure, no problem! You throw the spud in your pocket and head out. And if you drop it, no big deal — it’s just a potato!

Then comes Scott’s kill shot on the ego: Right now, your ego is a Picasso. From now on, think of it as a potato.

And when I did that, I felt a weight lift. I worried less about slights, or embarrassments. If I was wrong, I embraced it. In fact, losing the ego enabled me to see the worth in being wrong — for it merely sharpened my own ideas. I abandoned the sunk cost fallacy and learned to leave stupid opinions behind.

Scott believed in a higher power — that there is more to the world than just the physical reality. 

He put his money on a simulation — that God might actually be a programmer. He would often point to an underlying structure that guides us. 

I hate that Scott is gone, because he helped me so much. He changed the way I thought, and by doing so made me a happier, better version of myself.

 Scott hadn’t invented the idea — he was simply discovering things about life and shared them with you. This is why when you listened to his morning show you felt that you were on an anthropological dig, led by an incredibly brilliant archaeologist sifting through today’s news, showing us the things that we overlooked — things that point to a reality we didn’t know existed. You might call it God. Or a simulation. But it was there all right. A design and a Designer.

Adams pointed to a conceptual reality that lurks behind the physical one. And without understanding that secret knowledge, we are often disappointed and resentful.  

When Scott would go to his whiteboard during his podcast, he would explain this clearly and without ego. He used his unique power for good — showing you how to reframe things like laziness, or failure, death, or loss — in ways that bettered your existence.

He often referred to the mind’s mental shelf space. And while you cannot stop thinking bad thoughts (which depress you), you can crowd that stuff out and off the shelf with positive thoughts. Which is why he championed positive affirmations. 

His treatment for laziness is quick and effective: imagine the outcome instead of the effort.

That tip combined both the affirmations and the shelf space analogy. Right now, your brain is focusing on the effort to do the dishes; when you could be thinking about how great it is that you have clean dishes in the cupboard and a spotless kitchen counter. You think a good thought, which crowds the bad one out — and the outcome is realized.

I am avoiding the real benefit of Scott Adams. Because it hurts. It’s friendship. I lost a dear friend, someone I loved. A mentor obviously, but a friend I adored.

In his podcasts, Scott offered his hand to everyone — he would be there, 7 a.m. West Coast time, whether you showed up or not, because he knew that whoever did show up, needed a friend. 

I would exercise with Scott’s morning show on, daily — for nearly a decade. I would be pumping away on the Peloton, my ears fixated on Scott’s observations — pausing every now and then to send myself a note about something amazing that Scott just said.

When my life changed — having a baby — I ended up not being able to listen to Scott live — so I looked forward to the comfort of a podcast banked for later.

I am avoiding the real benefit of Scott Adams. Because it hurts. It’s friendship. I lost a dear friend, someone I loved. A mentor obviously, but a friend I adored.

It was a good feeling to remember that, “Oh yeah, I have a Scott Adams I didn’t get to!” It might be Scott’s greatest accomplishment — creating a community of gentle, intelligent beings who met every morning to share in a sip of a beverage of their choice. Those who didn’t get it… well, too bad.

There are those who remain critical of Scott — but I attribute that to their ignorance. Not ignorance in general, but specific to Scott. They just had no idea what they were dealing with, when they disparaged him. It’s like rejecting a gold bar because it’s too heavy.

Fact is, the more you got to know him, the more valuable he became.

He was the exception to his own frame known as “The Basket Case Theory” — which stipulated that once you got to know someone you admired or envied — you’d find out they’re just as messed up as you. 

It was an excellent frame for people with anxiety or shyness. You might think that the unfamiliar people are judging you in that hip restaurant — but really, they’re too busy judging themselves. They have their own problems and trust me — you wouldn’t want them.  

Scott once was posed the question: would you trade your life with anyone? It’s a good question for those of us who envy the rich and famous. 

But Scott said that you have no idea what the problems are of other people. The rich playboy may have syphilis; the popular actor may be riddled with alimony and addictions; the accomplished artist is almost always a nervous, palpable wreck. It was a simple reframe that helped dispense with jealousy. 

But Scott’s own life subverted this frame — sure, he had his own problems; but the more you got to know him — that fuller picture made him only that much more endearing.

At a certain point in his life, Scott decided to devote himself to service, and he brought that service up to his dying breath. Instead of extinguishing the flame with assisted suicide months ago — once he felt the love swirling around him — he decided to stick around for our sake.

He wouldn’t leave us, not yet anyway.

He even reframed his death: that one’s death is a relief for the dying, for their problems have gone. It is we who are in pain, not him.

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And it’s our selfish pain — that he decided to be there for!

I hate that he is gone, because he helped me so much. He changed the way I thought, and by doing so made me a happier, better version of myself.

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I fear I will lose that gift now — with him gone, and I told him so a few months ago.

To which he said, “No, you got it now.”

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SEC BROOKE ROLLINS: Trump brings whole milk back to schools, undoing Obama’s war on real food

In 2012, the Obama administration decided that America’s kids didn’t need whole milk. As a result, our children missed out on essential nutrition and our farmers lost critical income. Obama-era economic stagnation and anti-agriculture policies, including those promoting the Green New Scam multiplied hardships on the farm and many hardworking Americans began to lose hope.

Nearly one year ago, President Donald Trump’s inauguration restored that hope, and today he renews it. In signing the Whole Milk for Heathy Kids Act, President Trump delivers on his promise to put the welfare of American farmers and American children first.

While President Barack Obama took away market share from America’s dairy farmers to fight the war on healthy fats, President Trump is expanding markets both at home and abroad, pushing for better real food options for our kids.

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The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, sponsored by Sens. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., and championed by Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., and Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., restores whole milk to schools across the nation, delivering real food for the next generation and standing up for the farmers who feed this country.

This issue is near and dear to my heart. Last year at my confirmation hearing, Sen. Marshall asked me if whole milk belongs in school lunches. I enthusiastically agreed. I also shared that growing up, my mom made sure that our refrigerator was always well stocked with whole milk. She instinctively knew that whole milk was a building block to a healthy future for me and my younger sisters.

So much has changed since the founding of our nation 250 years ago, but the benefits of drinking whole milk have remained the same. If anything, the nutrients that whole milk naturally provides are more in demand than ever before.

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The childhood health crisis currently facing our nation is nothing less than an existential threat.

Over 75% of kids in America struggle with obesity, poor physical fitness or related health challenges. These rising rates of chronic disease are influenced by several factors, but diet plays a central role.

We have a responsibility to help fix this crisis, especially since it was partly driven by misguided federal nutrition policies that replaced real food with ideology.

The absence of whole milk from schools has long been overlooked by countless public officials, but President Trump noticed and has done something about it. This administration understands that the national health crisis cannot be overcome without reorienting federal nutrition policy around science and real-world outcomes.

The Trump administration understands that the national health crisis cannot be overcome without reorienting federal nutrition policy around science and real-world outcomes.

Let’s be clear—whole milk isn’t just another drink on a school lunch tray. It’s a nutrient-dense, affordable source of protein, calcium, vitamin D, and healthy fats that growing bodies and minds need to thrive.

Bringing whole milk back to schools also builds on this month’s release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, which recognize full-fat milk, protein and healthy fats as essential building blocks of a balanced diet.

For the first time in years, federal guidance and school meal programs will complement one another, sending a consistent message to families about what healthy eating really looks like.

The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act restores flexibility to schools, allowing them to offer whole, reduced-fat, low-fat, or fat-free milk. This is a win for local communities and parents, who can now make choices that best serve their kids.

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And equally important, it’s also a win for American farmers—the backbone of rural America.

School meal programs create consistent demand for their products, strengthen local economies and reconnect children to the food that truly fuels them. And after Thursday’s announcement, the demand for whole milk will take off like a rocket.

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So, to America’s dairy farmers: get ready. Gone are the days of declining milk consumption driven by failed Obama-era policy. Your hard work is back where it belongs, front and center in feeding our nation’s children.

This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about practical, commonsense government policy, and it’s exactly the kind of real-world reform President Trump was elected to carry out.

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Jewish safety in New York depends on clear lines and moral courage from Mamdani

Shortly after Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election, I received a text from a new number. It was the mayor-elect.

I felt compelled to speak with him out of my respect for him becoming the new mayor. Our intense and productive conversation came after a violent protest outside my father’s Park East Synagogue. What happened that night in the streets of New York was not a political debate, but a deliberate act of intimidation against Jews, including a targeted campaign at the doors of a synagogue.

That call marked the beginning of an ongoing dialogue between us, where New York City must draw lines, how it protects houses of worship and what leadership looks like when fear enters sacred spaces. Since then, the mayor and I have been in contact regularly.

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It was clear where the mayor and I disagreed, namely that he must recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. His demonization of the Jewish state of Israel and his prior use of antisemitic tropes, such as “apartheid,” “occupation” and “genocide” has put the safety of New York Jews at risk. I told him, just as I tell every Muslim leader I know, that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

I urged Mayor Mamdani to pursue legislation banning protests directly in front of all houses of worship. This was not about silencing free speech. It was to draw a clear and reasonable line between the right to protest and the right to pray without fear. To his credit, he listened. Our conversations also led to concrete policy steps. In Mamdani’s second executive order, he directed the police commissioner and the law department to review NYPD patrol guidance to ensure clearer protections for houses of worship. The order called for evaluating buffer zones near synagogues, churches and mosques, ranging from 15 to 60 feet from entrances, additional restrictions during publicly scheduled religious services and appropriate limitations even during non-religious activities.

This was a serious and substantial advancement. The mayor acknowledged what Jewish communities across New York have been saying for months: that protests targeting houses of worship cross a line.

When a pro-Hamas protest was planned in Queens, the new mayor did not wait for chaos to erupt. Hours before the protest began, he ordered dozens of NYPD officers to the area to ensure the safety of nearby synagogues, Jewish schools and families. That proactive measure demonstrated that disagreements do not preclude responsibility. In a statement, Mayor Mamdani wrote that “chants in support of a terrorist organization have no place in our city.”

In my mind, his words acknowledge that past rhetoric, hesitation and intimidation during protests, including ones in which Mamdani attended, were wrong. I believe saying such chants have “no place in the city” is an admission that hate speech during protests against Jewish New Yorkers can turn violent.

The mayor’s rebuke of the protesters and the terrorist organization may have come at a political cost from his base, as some progressive activists and members of the Democratic Socialists of America criticized Mayor Mamdani and other leaders for condemning the chants. That reality should trouble every New Yorker. Rejecting terrorism and antisemitism should never be controversial in America.

But gratitude does not eliminate disagreement. Mamdani took a step in the right direction. Now, he is pushing for this bill with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who proposed a statewide bill to prevent protesters from being within “25 feet of the property line at houses of worship.”

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Leadership is not measured by whether the right words are spoken, but by whether they are spoken immediately, consistently, and backed by action.

To be overly optimistic, perhaps we are seeing a change in the mayor’s understanding of Israel and of how anti-Israel rhetoric impacts New York City’s Jewish community, the largest outside of Israel. As I wrote during the High Holy Days, “But Jewish tradition is clear: a genuine transformation does not happen overnight or for convenience. It requires contrition, confession, and change.”

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The next step will be for Mayor Mamdani to join me in meeting with global Muslim leaders and their representatives in New York who I have worked with for decades. These are leaders of Arab and Muslim majority countries who may not agree with every Israeli government policy, but they all unequivocally recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation. These voices represent coexistence, not incitement.

Now, as mayor for all New Yorkers, he must demonstrate an understanding that Israel is at the very core of the Jewish faith. One cannot bifurcate Israel from the Jewish community.

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California’s hatred for capitalism is killing the goose that laid its golden egg

California didn’t become the world’s fifth-largest economy by accident. Silicon Valley wasn’t built by regulators. Hollywood didn’t turn into a global storytelling powerhouse because of government planning. California was built by entrepreneurs, risk-takers, and innovators who believed in capitalism and the simple American ideology that if you work hard, take risks and build something valuable, you should be rewarded. 

That’s why California’s newly proposed billionaire tax should alarm anyone who still believes capitalism works. This proposal isn’t just another tax hike. It’s a fundamental shift away from the very system that makes Americans prosperous as a nation. 

Under the plan, California would impose a one-time tax on residents with net worth over $1 billion, targeting “wealth” rather than income. That includes unrealized gains, which means stock ownership, private company equity and illiquid assets that exist on paper. Wealth isn’t always in checking accounts. Supporters call it fairness, but it’s a tax on success before success is ever realized. 

Here’s the part most politicians ignore. Billionaires don’t necessarily sit on piles of cash. Their wealth is overwhelmingly tied up in businesses, real estate stock holdings and their private companies. When the government demands a massive check based on paper valuations, the only way to pay it is to sell assets.

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And that’s where the real damage begins for the people who rely on these billionaires to provide jobs for them to become millionaires. 

If you force someone to sell public stock, the markets can absorb it. But when you force the sale of private company stock, you’re often forcing a founder to sell part of their business or all of it earlier than planned. That can mean selling to private equity, taking on leverage, cutting costs or laying off workers to generate liquidity. 

In other words, a tax aimed at “the rich” doesn’t just hit balance sheets. It hits payrolls.

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Capitalism works because it incentivizes innovation and growth. It rewards people for building companies, hiring workers and reinvesting profits. When you start taxing wealth simply for existing rather than income, profits or transactions, you flip that incentive structure upside down. The message becomes clear to entrepreneurs. If you build too much and succeed too much, the government will punish you and possibly dismantle prematurely what you built. 

We’ve already seen how this movie ends for other Californians. 

Take billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who moved Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas. Musk didn’t leave because he dislikes sunshine or beaches. He left because regulatory overreach, rising taxes and a growing hostility toward business innovation made it harder to build and scale companies. When the world’s most influential entrepreneur and job creator votes with his feet, policymakers should listen.

CALIFORNIA IS BROKE, BUT IT’S NOT TOO LATE FOR THE REST OF US

He wasn’t alone. Host Joe Rogan moved his podcast empire out of Los Angeles, citing taxes, governance and quality-of-life concerns. Larry Ellison relocated Oracle’s headquarters out of California. Just look at Sergey Brin and Larry Page and their recent moves to sever ties with California. Even liberal Hollywood elites quietly establish residency in Nevada, Texas or Florida, while keeping second homes in Malibu. 

This isn’t coincidence. It’s cause and effect. 

If you force someone to sell public stock, the markets can absorb it. But when you force the sale of private company stock, you’re often forcing a founder to sell part of their business or all of it earlier than planned. 

Entrepreneurs don’t just create wealth for themselves. They create jobs, supply chains, tax revenue and philanthropy. When government policies force founders to sell companies prematurely just to pay a wealth tax, it’s workers who pay the price long before billionaires do. 

The danger doesn’t stop at California’s borders. Other blue states are watching closely. If California can tax unrealized wealth, what’s stopping New York, Illinois or Massachusetts from doing the same? Today, it’s billionaires. Tomorrow, its founders worth $100 million. Next, it’s family business owners who spent decades building companies only to be taxed on paper valuations they haven’t monetized.

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Supporters argue the tax would only affect a few hundred people. That misses the point. Policies aren’t judged by how many people they hit. They are judged by the incentives they create. 

Capitalism depends on a promise that if you take risks, build something meaningful and create value for others, you can be rewarded with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

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California once understood that better than almost anywhere else in the world. This billionaire tax suggests the state is forgetting what made it a real Golden State. Since COVID-19, you’ve seen a massive shift of both individuals and businesses, showing that the Golden State may not be so golden anymore. 

The lesson is simple. Money always chases something. When success is treated like a liability, money leaves. And when capitalism is undermined, everyone pays the price and not just the billionaires. 

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From Selma to Chicago, MLK’s legacy is being betrayed by grievance politics

I recently crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, just days ago during my Walk Across America, and I felt the full weight of its history. That bridge, stained with the blood of civil rights foot soldiers, stands as a testament to the unyielding courage of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and those who fought alongside him for dignity, equality and justice. Now, as Martin Luther King Jr. Day arrives, I find myself pondering a haunting question: What would Dr. King think if he could see Chicago’s South Side today?

The South Side is not a relic of the past. It is a present-day living crisis. Gunfire echoes through neighborhoods where children should be playing in the streets. Poverty is visible everywhere — in littered streets, broken windows and abandoned buildings. Schools pass on failing kids. Families are torn apart not by white supremacy, but by the poison of neglect, fatherlessness and a culture that embraces dependency over free will.

Dr. King dreamed of a beloved community where character, not color, defined us. He spoke often of the Promised Land, and those words defined his final speech before he was assassinated. He marched for opportunity, not handouts. He spent a lot of time in Chicago during the 1960s.

WALKING ACROSS AMERICA SHOWED ME WHY FAITH AND FREE THOUGHT CAN STILL WIN

But if he walked these streets now, I believe he would weep — not only at the violence and deprivation, but at how we have squandered his legacy. He would see a Black Lives Matter movement that exploded onto the scene in 2020 and reaped billions of dollars in donations — what one of its founders brazenly called “white guilt money.” Corporations and celebrities poured in fortunes, virtue-signaling their way to absolution.

Yet where did that money go? Not to the South Side’s crumbling schools or job-training programs. Not to mentoring programs for at-risk youth or safe havens from the streets. Instead, it lined the pockets of a few — funding mansions in upscale neighborhoods — while the Black underclass continues to tread at the bottom.

I know this firsthand. As a pastor who has dedicated his life to uplifting his community through Project H.O.O.D. — Helping Others Obtain Destiny — I have seen zero dollars from those windfalls. We are in the process of building our Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center, the first new building in my neighborhood in more than 50 years. We provide job training and fight daily battles against despair — without a dime from the grievance industry.

That’s what it is, folks: an industry. A machine that profits off pain, peddling slogans and outrage while ignoring real solutions — solutions that are often simple but require hard work and perseverance. Dr. King didn’t march for performative activism or luxury homes bought on the backs of the suffering. He marched for self-reliance, family, faith and the American promise that hard work could lift anyone.

So what would King say about this? He would call it a betrayal. He would remind us that true progress is measured in transformed lives. He would decry the lowered expectations imposed on Black communities — the insidious notion that we are perpetual victims, excused from accountability.

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No, Dr. King didn’t die so that America could lower its expectations of Black communities. He died so we could rise to the highest expectations — the same standards to which all Americans are held.

The South Side doesn’t need another slogan or more empty politics. It needs one thing above all else: development. It needs the development of its youth into strong citizens with the ability to seize opportunity. It needs development that teaches people how to live and thrive in freedom.

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Most of all, it needs the restoration of good faith to reverse more than 60 years of bad faith that has destroyed too many communities.

Martin Luther King Jr. may be long gone, but his vision of the Promised Land — a land of opportunity for all — remains within reach. We must seek it or perish.

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ROB SCHNEIDER: Go woke, go broke isn’t a slogan — it’s becoming Hollywood’s reality

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Towards the end of the fifth season of “Stranger Things,” the character of Will Byers gathers his family and friends together. He has good reason. They need to prepare for the final battle against Vecna, a terrifying, skinless monster with a penchant for mass murder and apocalyptic terrorism. But instead, Will comes out as gay.

This is perhaps the most anticlimactic moment in television since Pam woke up to reveal that the entire tenth season of “Dallas” had been a dream. In laborious and earnest tones, Will takes four minutes to tell everyone that he just isn’t into girls. Cue the inevitable chorus of solidarity from his friends and a warm group hug. Given that this series is set in the 1980s, a more realistic approach would have been for them to storm out and declare Will to be more disgusting than Vecna.

This has happened so often in Hollywood that it’s become the norm. A storyline is upended to promote the ideological obsessions of the present. We’ve had a Black Cleopatra, a lesbian kiss in the “Toy Story” spinoff “Lightyear,” empathetic, home-loving orcs in Middle Earth, and a robot in an animated series of “Transformers”declaring its pronouns as “they/them,” as though mechanized killing machines are sensitive about their gender identities.

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A key aspect of storytelling is verisimilitude. Movies can present completely unreal worlds, but unless an audience buys into the internal logic, they quickly lose interest. Consider the recent Netflix series “Ripley,” in which a major male character is played by a female actor who identifies as “nonbinary.” The characters don’t notice that she’s a woman, and we’re expected to play along. It insults our intelligence and completely derails an otherwise brilliant series.

If we want to save the arts, we must return to the universal. We have to remember that we’re meant to be entertainers, not high priests of a new religion that nobody asked for.

The audiences know it, too. The “coming out” episode of “Stranger Things”is currently the lowest-rated episode on IMDb. The recent live-action remake of “Snow White,” with its emphasis on diversity rather than murderous stepmothers and subterranean dwarves, reportedly lost over $115 million for Disney. 

The all-female leads of “The Marvels”might have made a few executives feel good about themselves, until it turned out to be the franchise’s biggest bomb of all time. And after poor test screenings, HBO’s big-budget wokefest “Batgirl” was shelved altogether.

So, while executives pat themselves on the back for their “virtue,” their studios are plunged into debt. According to public filings, as of late 2025, Disney’s debt is roughly $35.3 billion and Warner Bros. Discovery’s debt stands at approximately $33.5 billion. Cinema attendance continues to decline, with annual box office receipts in North America struggling to reach $9 billion. In a world where production and marketing costs have skyrocketed, these numbers represent a dying industry.

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It turns out that audiences prefer to be entertained rather than hectored. If people wanted a sermon, they’d probably just stick to church. I’ll make a prediction right now: if things don’t change, they won’t be making movies on those legendary big studio lots in five years’ time — they’ll be selling them off as prime real estate for luxury condos. You can’t continually patronize and insult your customers and expect to keep the lights on.

Since the rise of the “woke” movement, and its total domination of the creative industries, anyone with a conservative point of view has been punished and even blacklisted. 

Artists are meant to be the most free-thinking people in the world, but the industry demands conformity above all else. Worse still, the woke fixation simply doesn’t tally with the views of the general public, most of whom don’t want their children being indoctrinated by studios smuggling in ideology and propaganda under the guise of entertainment.

Contrary to what the self-identifying, morally superior, adjacent elites want you to believe, the woke ideology has never been popular with the public. It represents the luxury beliefs of the privileged few, those who spend most of their time pontificating about “social justice” and “environmental responsibility” while flying in their private jets and ingesting enough cocaine to keep the cartels of Mexico living like kings.

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The good news is that the American people aren’t waiting for permission from the big studios anymore. We are seeing a massive explosion of alternative media. Whether it’s independent streaming platforms, podcasts or creator-owned networks, a new frontier is being built.

Audiences are migrating to where they can find authenticity and truth. They’re supporting creators who prioritize strong storytelling over “the message.” While the legacy studios are busy building “safe spaces” for their writers, and scolding audiences for not being sufficiently “progressive,” we are building a new industry for the people.

Hollywood used to be about what brought us together. Now, it’s about what divides us. They’ve traded the Dream Factory for an Indoctrination Lab, and the American people are voting with their wallets and their remote controls.

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If we want to save the arts, we must return to the universal. We have to remember that we’re meant to be entertainers, not high priests of a new religion that nobody asked for.

If that doesn’t happen, get ready to see a lot of “For Sale” signs on those studio gates.

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DAVID MARCUS: Sorry Omar Fateh, we’re not doing Somali-run no-go zones in Minnesota

In a chilling series of social media posts on Saturday night, Minnesota state senator and former Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh pledged to make the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of his city a “no-go zone for white supremacists.”

“No-go zone” is a term popularized in Europe that refers to Muslim-majority neighborhoods where it is not safe for White people to go.

The X posts began with Fateh and two other men standing before the iconic Cedar Riverside towers with the message, “Cedar Strong. White Supremacists aren’t welcome here. We protect our own.”

A bit shocked by the sentiment, I quote-posted the senator to remind him Americans can enter any neighborhood they want to, writing, “You don’t decide who is and isn’t welcome anywhere. We don’t allow ‘no-go zones.’”

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To this, Fateh doubled down, responding, “This is a No-Go zone for white supremacists,” adding an angry emoji for emphasis.

The first and obvious question here is, what does Fateh mean by “white supremacist.” But before we get to that, let’s be clear, if somebody wants to don full Nazi regalia and walk up and down the sidewalk in Little Mogadishu, Minnesota, while doing the John Cleese funny Hitler walk, they can.

This is a free country and one of our most cherished freedoms is expression. It is long established not just legally, but socially in America, that as abhorrent as Nazis are, they still have rights.

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But let’s not be naive. Omar Fateh is not talking about the Ku Klux Klan or even the Proud Boys here. He is almost certainly talking about anyone who supports President Donald Trump and the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Twin Cities.

Fateh and his Democratic colleagues in Minnesota, such as Gov. Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey and Rep. Ilhan Omar, have painted the fully legal ICE actions in the Land of 10,000 Lakes as racism, again and again and again.

Many of these same so-called leaders have hurled accusations of racism against journalists like Nick Shirley, who have exposed a largely Somali fraud scandal that federal prosecutors say took more than $9 billion away from needy children and senior citizens. One can perhaps understand why Fateh would want a No-Nick-Shirley-Zone to protect the corrupt among his constituents.

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On Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis, pro-Trump counter protesters were physically assaulted as they tried to make their voices heard. One man was threatened with violence if he didn’t take off his American flag sweatshirt, in frigid temperatures.

In America.

This is abject madness, bordering on total chaos, and what is Fateh’s response? To pour fuel on the fire by promising similar treatment to any pro-ICE person who dares enter his Somali-run no-go zone.

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Does anyone doubt for even half a second that a MAGA hat, or at this point, even an American flag itself, would be considered “White supremacy” by Fateh and his ilk?

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What percentage of Americans do Fateh and his buddies think are White supremacists? Millions? And if so, by what authority have they simply decided those people aren’t allowed in this neighborhood? 

Who is going to enforce this no-go zone? Will it have its own militia? A small Somali standing army in the Midwest? This is craziness.

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Everybody, but especially Democrats, need to be crystal clear in saying to Fateh that European-style no-go zones will not be tolerated in America. We long ago did away with shameful “sunset towns” where Black people could not venture after dark. We will not allow Fateh to bring that horrid practice back.

This is just further evidence that leadership of the Somali community in Minnesota has no interest in assimilation. They want a semi-autonomous area that they control. Not only is that not how America works, it also harms the futures of those they represent.

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Fateh and Omar would have their constituents believe that the broader rules of America, including our democratically enacted immigration laws, simply do not apply to them. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Americans are not going to be told that there are neighborhoods in their own nation which they may not enter. That might fly in Cologne or Copenhagen, but not in the United States. Omar Fateh needs to figure this out before he gets more people hurt or killed.

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The Panama Canal proves one lesson America needs now: Never quit

I grew up in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Our town’s name described what made us unique — we had locks on the Connecticut River. Ever since I was a kid, I have understood how locks worked, and I always wanted to see the ones that changed the world.

Recently, I had that opportunity when I transited the Panama Canal. To see the locks operate just as they have for more than 110 years was thrilling. Traveling the almost 50-mile journey from the Pacific to the Atlantic was an experience I’ll never forget.

The construction of the canal was the largest and most expensive project ever undertaken at that point in human history. Nothing so massive, elaborate or systematic had ever been attempted before. The financial cost, combined with the human toll of more than 25,000 lives lost, was comparable to a war.

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Such a monumental achievement could never have happened without determination, perseverance, persistence and grit. The result changed the world and the global economy forever. The canal cut the distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific by 8,000 miles, resulting in three fewer weeks of travel time.

Today, ships carrying as many as 11,000 containers transit through the canal. Cars, appliances and an array of other goods make their way across the world thanks to the more than 13,000 to 14,000 ships that use the Panama Canal each year.

But the journey to a mid-continental canal was a long one, filled with crushed dreams, financial ruin, enormous adversity — and ultimate triumph. The French were the first to attempt building the canal. Ferdinand de Lesseps had built the Suez Canal and was certain he could build the Panama Canal too. The French created a private company to do it. They sold shares in multiple rounds of investment. Huge sums of money were raised and spent.

After almost a decade of work, they quit and accepted defeat. Ferdinand de Lesseps insisted on a sea-level canal instead of one with locks, even though the two oceans have different sea levels, with tides rising 20 feet on the Pacific side but only three feet on the Atlantic. That decision was the single greatest factor in the project’s failure.

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More than 20,000 workers died, most from yellow fever and malaria. He would later admit that Panama was 10 times more difficult than Suez. Most unfortunate were the more than 800,000 French men and women who had invested in the project. The savings of entire families were gone. People lost everything. It was the largest and most significant financial collapse on record — a historic failure.

A decade later, America chose to build the Panama Canal. President Theodore Roosevelt asked the U.S. Senate to choose either Panama or Nicaragua for the canal. Even though a Nicaragua canal would be 135 miles longer, require more locks, and be more expensive to operate, it was the favorite. But after 14 days of debate, Panama won by a mere eight votes.

America would pursue the seemingly impossible task of building the Panama Canal. It would require cutting through a jungle filled with ferocious animals, snakes and tarantulas — and carving through the sheer rock of the Continental Divide.

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Roosevelt tapped John Wallace as chief engineer. He lasted only a year, overwhelmed by the monumental task, a brutal climate and the fear of yellow fever and malaria. John Stevens took over and proposed a lake-and-lock plan.

The Panama Canal is not a simple passageway. It uses three locks to lift ships up to travel through the man-made Gatun Lake, then three more locks to lower them back down to another canal. Stevens also tasked chief Army physician William Gorgas with successfully eradicating yellow fever. But Stevens resigned three years later with no explanation.

Col. George Goethals took over and finished the job. He brought a military mindset to the work, but the demanding conditions remained. The rainy season lasts eight months in Panama, with 120 inches of annual rainfall, resulting in flooding and mudslides.

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Heat and humidity were oppressive. At the bottom of Culebra Cut, the midday temperature was seldom less than 100 degrees — and often reached 120 to 130 degrees. On a typical day, more than 300 rock drills were in use, along with steam shovels and dynamite blasts. The noise was deafening and could be heard for miles.

Though yellow fever and malaria were eradicated, death was omnipresent. Men were struck by flying rocks, crushed by machines or blown to bits by dynamite. More than 5,000 men died during the American construction. It was an incredible test of human endurance.

But on Aug. 15, 1914, the canal opened for business — miraculously under budget and six months ahead of schedule. It was the culmination of a dream and more than 20 years of phenomenal effort and perseverance.

This new year, you can see the impossible become possible in your own life — if you practice the same persistence and determination. As the English preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, “By persistence the snail reached the ark.”

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This could be the year you stick with it — no more quitting or giving up. No more excuses for why it can’t be done or is simply too difficult. The canal went from a dream to reality through grit and determination, through consistent progress in a singular direction.

Maybe you are disappointed with the pace of your progress or the rate of your accomplishments. You may wish you were further along than you are. It takes time for the work to be done in our lives. It often takes longer than we expect. We can get frustrated at the slow pace of growth and wish for more.

But if you have perseverance and endurance, you can see your dream become reality. You may lack money, ability or resources, but a million dollars’ worth of determination will get it done.

There may be setbacks this year. Illness strikes. Loss hits. Relationships end. Time and again, in the building of the canal, there were setbacks that required restructuring. You, too, must regroup and continue your journey. Despite the failures, you must choose to persevere through disappointment and pain.

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You can hang on far longer than you think. You may believe you can’t do it anymore. It’s hard. It’s challenging. But so was building the canal — and they overcame. You can too. Sometimes the toughest moment comes right before the breakthrough.

The Christian missionary Hudson Taylor said it best: “First it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.”

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Is heaven real? Science may reveal where God’s eternal kingdom exists

When our son was 4 years old, he asked my wife and me: “Can you drive to heaven?” Out of the mouth of babes, right?

It’s a question only a child would ask, but it raises a very adult question: Where exactly is the heaven described in the Bible?

As a scientist, I understand the importance of definitions. According to the Bible, the lowest level of heaven is Earth’s atmosphere. The mid-level heaven is outer space. The highest-level heaven is what we’re talking about: It’s where God dwells.

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As for heaven’s location, the Bible contains many verses that describe us as looking “up” at God in heaven, and God as looking “down” at us on Earth.

Imagine boarding a nuclear-powered rocket and traveling straight “up” into deep space. Will you ever reach a point far enough “up” into space that you finally reach heaven?

Before you laugh off the idea, consider this.

In 1929, American attorney-turned-amateur astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are rushing away from one another like so much shrapnel from a bomb. Hubble also discovered there’s a definite pattern to how galaxies are rushing away from each other, namely: The farther “up” in space a galaxy is located — the farther away it is from Earth — the faster it’s moving away from Earth and everything else. It’s called Hubble’s Law.

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But, here’s where it gets really interesting.

Theoretically, a galaxy that’s 273 billion trillion (273,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles away from Earth would move at 186,000 miles per second, which is the speed of light. That distance, way “up” there in space, is called the Cosmic Horizon.

That means you and I can never reach the Cosmic Horizon — not even aboard the most souped-up, nuclear-powered rocket imaginable — because, as Einstein explained in his theory of special relativity, only light and certain other non-material phenomena can travel at the speed of light.

So, then, where is heaven located, exactly? It’s entirely possible heaven is located on the other side of the Cosmic Horizon. Here’s why.

One: According to modern cosmology, an entire universe exists beyond the Cosmic Horizon. But it’s permanently hidden from us because we can never reach, let alone cross over, the Cosmic Horizon.

Two: Our best astronomical observations — and Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity — indicate that time stops at the Cosmic Horizon. At that special distance, way “up” there in deep, deep, deep space, there is no past, present or future. There’s only timelessness.

Three: Unlike time, however, space does exist at and beyond the Cosmic Horizon. Which means the hidden universe beyond the Cosmic Horizon is habitable, albeit only by light and light-like entities.

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Four: According to modern cosmology, the Cosmic Horizon is lined with the very oldest celestial objects in the observable universe. That means whatever exists beyond the Cosmic Horizon predates these oldest objects… predates the so-called big bang… predates the beginning of the observable universe.

All these modern scientific realities, and others, are why it’s entirely reasonable to speculate that:

1. Heaven is, indeed, located “up” there — way above our heads and way beyond the visible, starlit universe — just as the Bible indicates.

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2. Heaven is inaccessible to us mortals while we’re alive, just as the Bible indicates.

3. Heaven is inhabited by nonmaterial, timeless beings, just as the Bible indicates.

4. Heaven is the dwelling place of the One who predates the universe — the One who created the universe — just as the Bible indicates.

Pins, platitudes and silence: Hollywood’s hollow response to Renee Good

There is a lot happening internationally. The United States has taken control of Venezuela, is closely monitoring Iran and has even floated ideas about Greenland. But domestically, inside our own communities and cities, there is a far bigger and more immediate story. That story is what happened to Renee Good in Minneapolis.

If we’re marking time through award season, the shooting of Renee Good happened three days after the Critics Choice Awards and three days before the Golden Globes. It set off a national firestorm. It dominated headlines, consumed social media and demanded attention from everyone from the president to local officials across the country. It became a turning point for ICE and the national conversation around immigration enforcement. More importantly, it was a moment of genuine unrest and grief.

And it also gave celebrities time.

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Time to ingest what each side believed about the shooting. Time to calibrate their reactions. And time to plan. Plan for what, you may ask? What they were going to say.

There is no better display of the cultural pulse than an awards show. In 2022, the Oscars were marked by Ukraine ribbons. Other years have featured refugee pins. We’ve seen dueling red carpet statements for Gaza and Israel. So when I settled in to watch the Golden Globes this year, I fully expected to see pins.

What I didn’t expect was how vague those messages would be, or how few people would actually wear them.

The pins on display this year were meant to reflect the moment around Renee Good and ICE, but many of them required interpretation. One said “BE GOOD,” a play on Renee’s last name, but one that would likely confuse the average viewer. Be good to whom? To law enforcement? To immigrants? To the Trump administration? To the president? To the public? The message lacked clarity.

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Another pin said “ICE OUT.” It was small and muted, without the visual clarity we’ve seen from past movements like the yellow ribbon for Israel or the Palestinian flag pins. And frankly, the slang phrase “ice me out,” popularized in music, already carries a cultural meaning far removed from immigration enforcement.

Some could argue that this is nitpicking. Historically, actors have used pins as conversation starters, explaining them on the red carpet. Often, the message is reinforced during interviews and expanded into a real, if imperfect, conversation.

And in fairness, some did exactly that. Mark Ruffalo delivered a passionate red carpet speech, appearing visibly emotional. That is expected from Ruffalo, who has long occupied one of the most consistently politically active spaces in Hollywood. Jean Smart, who would later win for “Hacks,” said on the carpet that she was speaking as a citizen, acknowledging how people often get annoyed when actors speak out. But when she won, she noted in her acceptance speech that she had already said her piece on the carpet.

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Which brings us to the speeches themselves.

If you had taken someone from the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and placed them in the Golden Globes of 2026, they would never believe the country was in turmoil over the shooting of a woman by a police officer. Political references in acceptance speeches were sparse, if present at all. This was especially striking given that one of the night’s most celebrated films centers on democracy and resistance to a police state.

That silence stood in sharp contrast to recent years. At the 2023 Oscars, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” dominated the night. Ke Huy Quan spoke about being a refugee and his journey to that stage. Just weeks earlier, Tennessee had banned drag shows, and when Daniel Kwan accepted Best Director, he plainly stated that “drag is a threat to nobody.”

To be clear, I don’t personally mind an awards show where speeches aren’t 10 minutes long and centered on the social justice issue of the week. I watch award shows for the films, the performances and the fashion. Sometimes, it’s nice to forget everything else for a couple of hours.

But many people rely on these moments. TikTok was filled with frustration about how little was said, how muted the messaging felt and how much further it could have gone. Some pointed out that there was no mention of Iran, while others noted how Gaza had seemed to fall to the wayside. There was real disappointment across corners of the internet that the weight of so many current political moments barely hovered over the ceremony at all.

And that’s the reality of celebrity activism. It is often just that, a moment.

If you want activism that lasts beyond a news cycle, it requires sacrifice. Marlon Brando famously declined his Oscar, sending a Native American woman in his place to read his statement. I wasn’t alive when that happened, and I still know it as cultural lore. It mattered because it cost him something. Pins do not.

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We also need to stop outsourcing moral leadership to celebrities. In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris had virtually every major celebrity stop by her rallies. You could attend a political event and also hear Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, or catch a rare glimpse of Beyoncé. The assumption was that star power would turn out votes. Instead, it energized those who already needed no convincing.

As the Golden Globes ended and attendees changed into their second or third outfits for the after-parties, the pins disappeared. Without cameras, microphones or red carpets, there was no need for messaging.

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DAVID MARCUS: Secure border brings plummeting overdose deaths, but don’t expect Trump to get credit

These days, it seems like the hardest thing to come across in the United States of America is something that all of us can celebrate as unambiguous good news. Well, you would think the steady and substantial decrease in drug overdoses over the past two years would fit the bill.

The only problem for the legacy news media is how to tell this happy story without giving any credit to President Donald Trump.

In 2022, under the disastrous Biden administration, opioid overdose deaths peaked at a shocking 110,000. In 2025, under Trump, that number was an estimated 73,000. It is true that the decline began during Biden’s final year in office, once the people actually running the country acknowledged that border security was an election-year issue. But last year’s number was down 21% from Biden’s last year in office.

A drop of 37,000 this year from the 2022 annual peak is truly a miracle. For perspective, 58,220 American lives were lost in the Vietnam War. Trust me, to the extent you hear this good news at all, it will be framed as a trend begun by Grandpa Joe.

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That’s like giving a serial arsonist credit for stubbing out one lit cigarette.

Much of Biden’s final year in office is reminiscent of Bill Cosby’s joke about kindly grandparents who were brutal to their own kids, “You are looking at an old person trying to get into heaven,” he quipped. In Biden’s case, just replace heaven with getting reelected.

Whatever the motivation, we should be happy and grateful that the previous administration oversaw tens of thousands of fewer tragic overdose deaths, even if it took them a while, and we should be overjoyed that, under Trump, that number is diving even lower.

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Frankly, there are approximately as many supposed explanations for this drop in overdoses as there are experts to proffer them. Some credit new regulations around fentanyl in China, others the widespread availability of anti-overdose drugs like Naloxone, still others credit treatment programs.

What you hear less about are the major interdiction efforts by the Trump administration. In one week-long operational surge in September of last year, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized 200 pounds of fentanyl powder from the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, more than enough to kill everyone in most American states.

Add to this the fact that for the first time, maybe ever, the U.S. has a southern border that doesn’t resemble a spaghetti strainer leaking drugs and the illegal immigrants who trade in them.

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The Trump administration has brought inflation under control, and overseen an increase in real wages that may well be walking many at-risk Americans off of the bridge of despair and into purposeful lives.

One also ought not whistle past the upswing in church attendance, especially among the young, when accounting for lowered overdose deaths. Religion has often been called “the opiate of the masses,” a phrase borrowed from Karl Marx, for a reason. Well, it certainly beats real opioid addiction.

All of these positive trends under Trump, added up, have created a situation where some doctors say they have gone from seeing 10 to 12 overdoses a day to only one or two.

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Whether it is through his secure border, his attacks on Venezuelan drug-running boats or even his trade negotiations with China, Trump has prioritized stemming the flow of deadly drugs into our nation, and it’s working.

Politics, especially these days, can seem like a game show. Who is putting points on the board? What do the polls say? Where are the prediction markets?

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But politics is much more than that, and because of Trump’s sound policies, tens of thousands of Americans enjoyed the holidays with their families, who otherwise would have been represented by a mournful empty chair.

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The inability, or the unwillingness, of the legacy news media to celebrate any accomplishment by Trump, even one as unalloyed as saving lives from overdoses, remains the greatest and most obvious stain on its crumbling credibility.

If the administration can keep this trend going, if fewer and fewer of our brothers and sisters succumb to the slow death of opioids, then whether Trump gets the credit or not, it will be a cause for great joy. Actually, it already is.

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DR MARC SIEGEL: America, beware of false weight loss gods

Oprah Winfrey is on a tour promoting her new book, “Enough: Your Weight and What It’s Like to Be Free.” In 2023, she reportedly had one of her famous “aha” moments, this time realizing her road to personal freedom involved GLP-1 agonist drugs.

She stopped seeing obesity as a personal failure and began viewing GLP-1s as a way to “quiet the noise” that comes with constantly wanting to eat. In her telling, she was suddenly free.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe Oprah’s “aha moments” are real, and I also see the great value of GLP-1 drugs, especially in a society where nearly 70% of the population is either overweight or obese. 

I also like the way these drugs work, decreasing hunger signals in the brain and delaying gastric emptying, which have added benefits that may include reducing the desire for alcohol, improving insulin efficiency and decreasing inflammation in the body. They lower blood pressure, reduce cholesterol levels and improve cardiac function, which is one of the reasons so many cardiologists are taking them. 

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But they are also false gods. They are powerful tools for physicians and their patients, but they do not take the place of treating your body like a temple and honoring it by exercising more, sleeping better and eating healthier foods. The place to start is not with GLP-1 drugs. They are not medical miracles all by themselves.

They are also part of a larger problem where people rush to shots and pills for solutions without fully examining the underlying cause. Of course, as a practicing internist, it is important to me that I help you get your weight down by whatever safe means necessary because of the strong association between obesity and the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and several kinds of cancer, including breast, colon, liver, and pancreatic cancer. 

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GLP-1 drugs are not miracle workers. They are simply effective tools in a trained doctor’s arsenal to fight obesity.

Worshiping them can lead to dependence that is difficult to break, and when they are stopped, patients (including Oprah) often find themselves regaining the weight.

Holding these drugs out as the only effective solution also opens the door for charlatans to use them to proselytize many into taking ripoffs and cheap alternatives sold through online pharmacies that may be medically dangerous.

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It is a more fundamental approach to look at the food we eat and to embrace the MAHA — “Make America Healthy Again” — movement’s emphasis on whole foods, with a declared war on ultra-processed food.

God didn’t put us on the planet to pollute our bodies with chemical dyes or synthetic flavors or sweeteners that draw us into a world of unhealthy addiction.

Replacing an addiction to unhealthy foods with a dependence on GLP-1 drugs is not the only viable long-term solution.

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Keep in mind that losing weight can also be associated with your faith, seeing your body as sacred, aligning spiritual discipline with healthy eating and exercise and seeking comfort in God rather than in food.

In fact, there are many prayers throughout the Bible that may help us down the road to treating obesity. Here is one of my favorites:

“Your Word says my body is Your temple, and I am responsible for stewarding this gift. I choose today to make right choices regarding the foods I eat. I will not eat more than my body needs, and I will not fill my mouth with foods that are unhealthy, such as excessive sugar and carbohydrates. I refuse to live a life of gluttony and instead clothe myself in self-control and healthy living, so I may serve You well.” 

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Can the hunger “noise” that Oprah speaks of be quieted by the GLP-1 weight loss drugs? The answer is yes. These drugs are miracles of modern science. But the way to a thinner future can also be found through a healing hymn, prayer and spiritual healing that may provide the path to a more permanent solution than any injection alone.

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JONATHAN TURLEY: Clintons dare House to hold them in criminal contempt. Will it work?

Woody Allen famously said, “80% of success in life is just showing up.” When it comes to Bill and Hillary Clinton and possible congressional contempt, it may be 100%. The two politicians have decided to defy lawful subpoenas issued by the House. For the House Oversight Committee, now is also the time for contempt proceedings.

Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and the House Oversight Committee are investigating the Jeffrey Epstein controversy and have subpoenaed the Clintons to testify. Neither has been accused of criminal conduct. 

The Clintons failed to appear and, instead, issued a chest-thumping letter of defiance, declaring:

“Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences. For us, now is that time.”

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The committee is likely to agree that “now is that time” and the consequences are the start of contempt proceedings.

On Aug. 5, 2025, the committee approved the subpoenas. Former President Clinton’s deposition was initially set for Oct. 14, 2025. It was then moved to Dec. 17, 2025.

In December, Comer postponed the depositions for a second time to allow the Clintons to attend a funeral. However, he said that their counsel, David Kendall, then declined to offer any alternative dates.

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The vote to issue the subpoena was taken on an unusual bipartisan basis for the often divided committee. Even Democratic members, such as Rep. Ro Khanna, of California, said the Clintons must comply.

There was a time when subpoenas were viewed as more than discretionary matters. Counsel has insisted that the testimony is unnecessary and a distraction. However, that is not a ground that any court would view as justification for knowingly and repeatedly ignoring a lawfully issued subpoena.

The position of the Clintons seems a repeat of the defiance of Hunter Biden, who chose to hold a press conference outside of Congress rather than appear inside for his deposition. He was accompanied by Democratic members like Eric Swalwell, of California.

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At one time, Democrats were aghast at those who might defy congressional subpoenas.

President Joe Biden maintained that defying subpoenas cannot be tolerated. When subpoenas were issued to Republicans during the House’s January 6 investigation, Biden declared: “I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable criminally.”

Two Trump associates — Steven Bannon and Peter Navarro — refused to appear in the House and were quickly held in contempt by a majority of the House, including Swalwell.

I wrote at the time that these individuals were also undeniably in contempt of Congress. 

Now, however, such defiance is viewed as righteous and somehow excusable by figures such as Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who has routinely chosen political over institutional interests. 

The defiance could result in a criminal referral for the couple, prosecutions that would mirror those under the Biden administration.

In 2021, Hillary Clinton mocked Bannon’s indictment for contempt of Congress by saying that she planned for a “restful” weekend as he prepared for possible conviction.

It is an ironic moment. The Clintons are adopting the Bannon strategy that led to his conviction.

At the time of Bannon’s charge, I noted that all he had to do was appear and invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. The committee would then have had to issue an immunity grant to compel any testimony. The worst thing that you could do is not appear.

That is precisely what the Clintons just did.

In reality, I expect that neither Clinton is losing any sleep over the prospect of a criminal charge. They have spent their career dodging such prosecutions. Of course, this is a Republican-controlled House and a Republican administration. 

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What is most striking is the lack of any effort to come up with a cognizable defense. The Clintons simply chose open defiance. For those who have denounced a two-tier justice system, there is nothing more entitled and privileged than this letter. Such rules do not apply to the Clintons, who feel that they have the license to decide when they will appear. 

They are wrong and, like Bannon, left themselves no viable legal defense. They are simply asserting a type of de facto Clinton immunity that could leave even a sympathetic federal district court judge with no real alternative to trial. Kendall is an experienced lawyer, and perhaps he will reveal a legal defense that escapes me. For the moment, I am baffled by the legal strategy. Indeed, I see no intelligible legal strategy at all in effectively saying, “We simply do not feel like it.”

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They seem to be repeating the same pitch that Bill Clinton gave in the Lewinsky matter: “I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century.”

Despite a federal judge finding that Clinton lied under oath, it worked. The problem is that a defendant like Clinton can always argue in a perjury case that “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” In this case, it does not depend on what the meaning of the word “testify” is. Whatever the meaning, showing up is a critical element. It is hard to argue that you are not in contempt when you make your contempt for the committee your defense. 

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PAUL ‘TRIPLE H’ LEVESQUE: I went from 130 pounds to a world champ. We all must get fit

At 14, I was about six feet tall, pimple-faced and 130 pounds soaking wet. I remember because that was the year I joined a gym. It was on Daniel Webster Highway, not far from my house in Nashua, N.H., and my mother said she’d drive me as long as I kept up my grades.  

I’ll never forget the sounds that greeted me as I walked through the door: the clank of the weights, plates being loaded onto the machines, the grunts that came with each rep. I remember thinking: powerful stuff is happening here. In fact, it was more than that. It was transformative. I couldn’t do a single pull-up when I started. Fortunately, some of the older guys encouraged me, giving me tips on everything from technique to nutrition. Suddenly, I was hooked. The gym helped me think of myself in a different way. It allowed me envision what I wanted to be. For me, working out illuminated a destination.  

Now I’m not suggesting that you become a WWE Superstar or even an athlete. You do you. Just understand that a fitness regimen — doesn’t have to be clanking weights in a gym — will help you get there. And I’m imploring you, and your kids, to start right now. It will make you all better, sharper, healthier.  

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This year will mark the 70th anniversary of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Now, President Donald Trump is revitalizing the council and reviving a core tenet, the Presidential Fitness Test. We will work with schools and communities across the country to encourage Americans of every generation to be healthier, stronger and more active in their daily lives.

Here’s the deal: our health has dramatically declined over the past few decades. Americans are increasingly sedentary and lacking nutritious diets. Our children, in particular, are facing a crisis. Rates of chronic disease and poor nutrition are through the roof. Childhood diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate. One in five American kids are obese — a 270% increase from 50 years ago — and obese children are five times more likely to remain overweight in adulthood.  

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Bottom line: We’re allowing our kids to eat super-sized portions of ultra-processed food, and spend too much time on their butts, looking at screens. Kids don’t play outside anymore. Schools rarely instill the lifestyle practices to live healthy lives — exercise, proper nutrition and the inclination to challenge oneself. 

We can’t continue this way. 

It’s why those of us at the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition are so committed to reversing this calamity and revolutionizing Americans’ health and fitness, especially for the next generation.

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It’s vital to take care of ourselves physically. But it’s even more crucial to set an example. Kids don’t just listen, they observe. The good news is, it’s not that complicated. You don’t have to spend hours pumping iron or start training for a marathon. 

Just a daily 15-minute walk significantly reduces one’s risk of early mortality. So, get outside, move, begin pushing yourself. Start small, progress gradually — as long as you keep showing up. Remember: It’s not just about you. It’s about your kids.   

Physical fitness is a lot more than being strong, fast, or playing varsity sports. Actually, I’m not writing this for those who already think of themselves as athletes so much as those who don’t. I’d tell them the same thing I told my own daughters when they said something was hard.

The reward is on the other side of difficult.  

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It doesn’t matter if you can’t do a single pullup, pushup or sit-up. It matters if you try. If you keep trying, you will. Working out will give you discipline. Discipline will give you confidence. It will open up a door to the possible. That’s what this is really about. 

A physical fitness regimen changes you as a person. It changes the trajectory of your life. So, I’m asking, on behalf of the president: are you ready? 

GREGG JARRETT: Trump has authority to send troops to Minneapolis to stop attacks on ICE

If President Donald Trump decides to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military into Minneapolis to halt anti-ICE violence, the state’s elected leaders have only themselves to blame.   

Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey purposely lit a fuse on the powder keg of unrest immediately after last week’s tragic shooting of a motorist in a confrontation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  

Without waiting for the facts to emerge, Frey called the claim of self-defense “bulls—” and shouted for ICE to get the f–k out of Minneapolis.” As demonstrations devolved into bedlam and violence, Frey blamed federal agents. That’s like blaming a bank for enticing the robber.  

PROTESTERS CLASH WITH FEDERAL OFFICERS AFTER ANOTHER ICE SHOOTING IN MINNEAPOLIS

Not to be outdone, Walz tossed high-octane gasoline on the blaze.  

Having previously denounced ICE as a “modern-day Gestapo,” the governor praised protesters while accusing ICE of imagined “atrocities” and “organized brutality.” It was music to the ears of activists who screamed, “Nazis!” and “fascists!” in the agents’ faces. 

Fiery remarks tend to ignite fires.  

So, inevitably, more ugly clashes erupted on the streets as crowds raged. An American flag was burned. Rioters and organized groups alike harassed and obstructed ICE. Some used their SUVs to block agents. Others conspired to “de-arrest” suspects. Never mind that interfering with federal law enforcement constitutes crimes.  

It escalated after a second shooting when a federal officer was ambushed and beaten as he tried to effectuate a legitimate arrest. Agitators hurled rocks, bottles and fireworks at ICE agents. Federal vehicles were vandalized and looted.  

One demolished car was defaced with graffiti that read, “Hang Kristi Noem,” the Homeland Security Secretary. The angry mob also spray-painted the words, “The only good agent is a dead one.”     

As bedlam reigned, local police did little or nothing to stem the chaos. That should come as no surprise in this notorious sanctuary city where the fanciful rights and privileges of illegal migrants supersede the rights of law-abiding citizens.      

Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche warned, “The Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a failed governor and a terrible mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It’s disgusting.” Blanche’s use of the word “insurrection” was both correct and deliberate. 

It is broadly defined as a violent uprising or revolt against government authority. 

As the violence swelled, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act if Minnesota’s leaders refused to protect federal officers and ensure public safety. He has the legal right and power to do so.  

This would mean flooding the city with military forces instead of federalizing the National Guard, as he has done elsewhere to suppress civil disorder arising from the enforcement of immigration laws. 

As I explained in two earlier columns, the Insurrection Act has been utilized numerous times in American history by previous presidents. In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower sent U.S. troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce federal civil rights laws in the face of a hostile governor and mob violence.  

President John F. Kennedy did the same thing in both Mississippi and Alabama. President George H. W. Bush dispatched troops to Los Angeles in 1992 to bring rioting under control where local authorities failed or refused. In all, fifteen Presidents have employed the Insurrection Act dating all the way back to Thomas Jefferson.

Uninformed critics erroneously assert that Trump is barred from acting by the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of federal troops for policing on domestic soil. This is a frivolous argument since the Insurrection Act is a well-established exception to Posse Comitatus. 

In the recent legal kerfuffle over National Guard troops, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh emphasized “the president’s long-asserted Article II authority to use the U.S. military (as distinct from the National Guard) to protect federal personnel and property and thereby ensure the execution of federal law.”  

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That is precisely what Trump would do in Minneapolis — protect ICE agents and their federal property from the ongoing violence while enforcing immigration and deportation laws. But, he also has the authority to quell the general rioting, as Bush did.  

When and whether to invoke the Act is an exclusive power of the president. However, it does not mean that exerting it is the most prudent or wise decision. In its Friday editorial, The Wall Street Journal counseled against it.  

The Journal argues that “events in Minnesota are so far nowhere near the standard for riots and destruction that would justify such a move.” Moreover, calling in federal troops “could incite more protests.” Finally, it is an election year, which presents its own calculus.   

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These are fair points and are surely part of President Trump’s deliberations.  

Having the power to act can be tempting. But wisdom is also found in restraint.  

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BROADCAST BIAS: How the media relentlessly frames ICE and Trump as villains

For more than 70 years, there has been at least one evening news program airing on a broadcast network in America. These shows, all of which air at the same time in the evening, are often referred to as the “nightly news,” but in the age of 24/7 news coverage, they would be better labeled as the ultra-liberal “nightly narrative” from ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS.

The second week of negative network-news coverage of “tensions” over ICE activities in the Twin Cities underline how narratives are built and can be repeated for days and weeks.

1. Trump’s political opponents are not identified as Democrats. George Stephanopoulos led off “Good Morning America” on Tuesday: “Fighting back. Minnesota and Illinois are taking Homeland Security to court over the surge in immigration officers. Minnesota calls it a federal invasion of the Twin Cities days after a mother of three was shot and killed by ICE agents. Illinois accuses the Trump administration of creating a climate of fear.” 

It’s not Gov. Tim Walz or Gov. J.B. Pritzker fighting Trump, Democrats vs. Republicans. It’s just two states versus Trump.

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On screen, ABC played a hot soundbite from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey with an unspoken “D” on screen, but reporter Faith Abubey repeated the Stephanopoulos phrasing: “Minnesota accusing DHS of engaging in unconstitutional stops and arrests, brandishing weapons and dragging people out of schools and hospitals.” It implies an entire state’s population is staunchly opposing Trump and ICE. Abubey also cited the “Hennepin County Attorney” would be probing the ICE agent who shot Renee Good, without stating that official is an elected Democrat.

Over on CBS, morning co-host Gayle King — the one who vacations with the Obamas and has donated tens of thousands to Democrats — shared this framing: “We’re going to begin with the latest pushback to President Trump’s anti-immigration tactics. It’s a new lawsuit filed by the state of Minnesota and the Twin Cities. Now, officials there allege that ICE agents have invaded the area, wreaking havoc, they say, and violating residents’ constitutional rights.”

This is exactly how these networks covered elected Democrats, from Letitia James to Fani Willis prosecuting Trump. They weren’t elected Democrats, they were just prosecutors, with nonpartisanship falsely implied.

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2. Anti-ICE protesters aren’t identified as ideological. On the Tuesday “Today” show, NBC co-host Craig Melvin summarized: “More outrage in Minneapolis. Protesters clashing with federal immigration agents again. Minnesota officials suing the Trump administration over the growing deployment of federal officers.” Seconds later, Melvin repeated: “We begin with the growing tensions in Minneapolis, after yet another heated clash between protesters and federal agents, and now city and state officials are suing the Trump administration over the deployment of federal officers there.”

3. Leftist protesters are almost always peaceful. Network reporters heavily underlined the force used by ICE agents — people dragged out of their cars and taken into custody — but weren’t emphasizing violence against agents by protesters or illegal immigrants. On Thursday morning, after three illegal aliens beat a man with a broom handle and a shovel, and he shot one in self-defense, the violence was emphasized on one side.

CBS morning co-host Nate Burleson announced the narrative on Thursday: “We begin in Minnesota where there’s another shooting involving ICE. This time, the man was shot in the leg. The shooting prompted a new round of protests last night and federal agents once again used controversial tactics against the demonstrators.”

MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR WHO TOLD ICE TO ‘GET THE F— OUT’ NOW CALLS FOR PEACE AFTER ANOTHER SHOOTING INCIDENT

So it’s not a “controversial tactic” for illegal aliens to brutalize an ICE agent.

On Thursday night’s “PBS News Hour,” anchor Amna Nawaz began: “Protesters clashed with ICE agents in Minneapolis again today after a man was shot and wounded when he allegedly assaulted federal officers.” The words “shovel” and “broom handle” never emerged on PBS, and the assault had been “allegedly” committed.

The AP dispatch PBS posted online at least mentioned the weapons used. “A federal officer shot a man in the leg in Minneapolis after being attacked with a shovel and broom handle while trying to make an arrest Wednesday, officials said.”

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PBS briefly touched on violence, as something condemned by the police (if not by journalists): “The city’s police chief said yesterday went too far when protesters hurled rocks and fireworks at law enforcement.”

On Thursday night’s badly titled NPR newscast “All Things Considered,” correspondent Jasmine Garsd, who routinely reports from a place of wokeness, couldn’t consider an ICE agent’s perspective. She mentioned the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement that an agent had been attacked with a shovel and a broom handle, but the protesters sounded like the real victims.

“The Trump administration is calling protesters professional agitators and insurrectionists,” Garsd lamented. “I met a lot of families there, older adults, different ethnicities. It was a very mixed group. I spoke to a nurse who said she’s afraid of ICE retaliation for protesting. She wanted to only be referred to by her first name, Karen. And she asked me, ‘Is it normal how scared I am right now?’”

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4. Some facts can never be established as facts. On Thursday morning, CBS reporter Lana Zak was still casting doubt that the ICE agent was struck by Renee Good’s SUV: “As for Jonathan Ross, the agent who shot and killed Renee Good, the DHS has said he was also acting in self-defense. They said yesterday that he suffered internal bleeding. We still don’t know the extent really of those injuries and, from the video, it is not clear whether or not the car made contact with him and — and how forceful it may have been.”

This is like arguing that CBS still cannot confirm that Dan Rather used phony National Guard documents in trying to ruin George W. Bush. Facts aren’t stubborn things with these people. They’re always malleable to whatever their current political objectives are.

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DAVID MARCUS: Gen X knows the only force that can defeat violent leftist protest culture

At 250 years old, there isn’t much that the United States of America hasn’t gone through, and this includes periods of intense political protest and violence, the last of which ended roughly in the late 1970s. The ‘80s and ’90s were not completely protest-free, but they were not protest-driven.

Most of Generation X, the young would-be protesters of the time, saw little purpose to it because, by and large, we liked America. We thought it was doing good in the world, and it also just seemed like a lot of effort.

By 1999, a chair would fly through a window in Seattle during the World Trade Organization protests. In 2011, Wall Street would be “occupied,” and in 2020, many American cities were ablaze, ostensibly over the death of George Floyd.

Protest culture was back, with a vengeance.

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Today, as the battle of Minneapolis rages, not just rhetorically but in physical confrontation, we mourn the death of Renee Good, while we still reel from the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It feels like our nation is back in the deadly maelstrom of 1960s and ’70s violent protest.

So what was it, back at the end of the 1970s that brought America out of the nosedive of near constant political protest and violence? Looking at the record of events, one answer stands out more than any other: Patriotism.

There is some symmetry here, for in 1976 the U.S. celebrated its bicentennial, and just as will be happening this year for the semiquincentennial (fine, we’ll just call it 250th), there were vast patriotic celebrations across the land.

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Heading into the bicentennial, America was still suffering from the failures of Vietnam and the disgrace of Watergate, not so different from our own relationship to the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the scandal of Joe Biden’s absentee presidency.

Something began to change in 1976. It marked the beginning of an anti-American fever breaking, and there was a man to lead this movement, a man named Ronald Reagan, whose presidency, in his own words, would bring back “morning in America.”

For those old enough to remember it, the 1980s were a time of shocking new patriotism. We listened to “Born in the USA” (hilariously missing Bruce Springsteen’s intended point) and watched Rocky Balboa knock out Soviet Ivan Drago and the whole nation cheered our Olympians like sprinter Carl Lewis and gymnast Mary Lou Retton. All of it was quite sincere.

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As for protests in the 1980s and ’90s, exceptions such as anti-apartheid sit-ins and the 1992 LA riots, proved the rule, Gen X teens and young adults mocked their boomer parents’ tales of anti-government agitating glory days and had no intention of repeating them.

At the end of the day, in those final two decades of the 2nd millennium AD, there wasn’t a whole lot for Americans to protest. We had won the Cold War and were the world’s only superpower. For all the world, it looked like if we could fix the Y2K computer glitch, we’d be good as gold.

So, how on Earth did the first two decades of the 21st century bring us squarely back to a place of violent protest clashes and political murder? Once again, the central theme here is patriotism, but this time, its swift diminution.

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By the 2000s, political correctness, soon to metastasize into wokeness, had already changed our education system into one that always first and foremost finds a way to blame America and the West for all the woes of the world.

Our history was no longer taught as the imperfect tale of a nation making great strides toward equality of opportunity, but rather as a fixed power structure, always propping up mediocre White men, always suppressing magical minorities.

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Our television shows would begin to tell us that America really isn’t the greatest nation on Earth, that it’s a lie and, in fact, we are an ignorant bully which needs to cede more power (while still paying for everything, of course).

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It is ugly rhetoric that has brought us to an ugly place.

Over the next three years, with the 250th birthday of the nation, the hosting of the World Cup and the Olympics, and further possible foreign policy victories under President Trump around the globe, we can see a chance for patriotism to rise again, just as it did at the dawn of the 1980s.

A Gallup poll last year showed that only 36% of Democrats are extremely or very proud to be American, with Republicans at a staggering 92%, and independents, as usual, stuck in the middle at 53%.

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There is likely no form of measure more predictive of who one will vote for and whether one will protest than if one is proud of the country. In many ways, it is the central divide that explains so much of the mayhem of violence we see today.

Patriotism is the answer. Patriotism is what our nation so badly needs, and the good news is that all of us can exhibit and celebrate it every day.

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MIKE DAVIS: What is happening in Minnesota is why we have the Insurrection Act

Minnesota reeks of corruption and incompetence. Gov. Tim Walz presided over a fraud catastrophe that prosecutors say could top $9 billion, authorized tampons in boys’ bathrooms and bungled virtually every aspect of governance. Now, he outdoes himself by claiming Minnesota stands “at war” with the federal government and portraying federal law enforcement as an occupying force. Radical leftists riot once again in Minneapolis’ streets, assault ICE officers, and openly flout the law. Enough is enough. President Trump must invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and restore order.

Sanctuary states and cities cripple federal law enforcement. Leftist leaders refuse to assist the federal government in enforcing immigration law, including the outrageous refusal to honor federal detainers for illegal immigrants arrested for other crimes. When state jails release illegal immigrants, officials fail to notify ICE. Agents must track fugitives on the streets instead of making safe arrests inside jails, exposing themselves and the public to unnecessary danger. Sanctuary policies shield murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers, and armed robbers from deportation.

The latest outrage surrounds the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a radical anti-ICE agitator who called herself a “legal observer.” That label grants no immunity. Good blocked roads and boxed in ICE vehicles, which is illegal obstruction. When an ICE Agent ordered Good out of her SUV, she drove off and struck another agent, who sustained internal injuries and fired at Good to protect his life and the lives of others. An SUV weighing thousands of pounds obviously constitutes a deadly weapon. A mother behind the wheel can inflict the same harm as any large man with a firearm.

Leftists maliciously call the ICE agent a murderer. They lie. Only Good’s partner, Becca, could face felony-murder criminal liability if a jury finds Renee’s death resulted from Becca’s felonious misconduct. Becca urged her to “Drive, baby, drive!” A jury could find she conspired to obstruct ICE, instigating the attack that forced her partner’s lethal restraint. Becca must face the full weight of the law.

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Renee Good’s death unleashed predictable leftist chaos. Walz, ever the agitator, mused about using the Minnesota National Guard against the federal government and repeatedly described the state as “at war” with the U.S. government. Anti-ICE radicals looted federal vehicles, stole sensitive documents, and doxxed ICE agents online. They terrorize law enforcement with impunity–and Walz’ complicity.

Minnesota openly defies the Supremacy Clause, which makes federal law supreme. Immigration enforcement remains an exclusive federal responsibility, yet blue states filed absurd and frivolous Tenth Amendment lawsuits seeking to expel ICE. No court precedent supports their claim. If their theory held, segregationist states during Jim Crow could have barred federal civil-rights enforcement. Red states cooperate fully with ICE, while Minnesota wallows in chaos.

Minnesota’s lawlessness has gone unchecked. Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and other leftist officials refuse to act and even encourage left-wing law breaking. Police watch rioters loot an ICE vehicle and attack federal officers without intervention.

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Because Walz and Frey caused open-season on federal immigration officials doing their jobs by enforcing federal immigration laws, Trump can and should federalize the Minnesota National Guard and deploy active-duty military members under the Insurrection Act. Indeed, this is textbook insurrection. History provides precedent. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act to quell riots in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict. Minnesota faces at least an equally dire threat, as radical thugs target federal officers enforcing federal laws. If Walz and Frey have their way, their Somali warlord, pirate, and fraudster political allies will replicate Black Hawk Down in Minneapolis instead of Mogadishu.

Trump previously deployed the National Guard to restore order in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.. Despite the immediate drop in crime and the resulting lives saved, the Supreme Court blinked, misinterpreted the law, and limited the president’s authority under ordinary statutes. Justice Kavanaugh noted that the Supreme Court did not address the Insurrection Act. ICE agents now face imminent danger. Trump cannot reduce enforcement. Doing so would surrender to domestic terrorists. He must wield the Insurrection Act decisively. Lawsuits will follow, but the rule of law demands immediate action.

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Invocation alone cannot stop this threat. Federal prosecutors must hold these Minnesota insurrectionists accountable. Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Soros prosecutor Mary Moriarty refuse to enforce the law. Federal grand juries must indict them for insurrection, seditious conspiracy, harboring illegal aliens, assault on federal officers, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and many other serious federal felonies. Walz must face investigation for the Somali daycare fraud scandal, which allegedly amounted to at least $9 billion of taxpayer funds allegedly funneled to Somali warlords and other terrorists while state whistleblowers faced threats. This pattern of lawlessness has persisted for decades.

Minnesota’s leaders habitually defy the law, undermine federal authority, and endanger citizens. Trump, as the commander-in-chief and chief executive officer, holds both the constitutional and statutory authority to act. He should invoke the Insurrection Act, federalize the Minnesota National Guard, deploy active-duty military forces, and prosecute these Minnesota insurrectionists. These actions fulfill the government’s primary duty, which is to preserve order, uphold the law, and protect American lives.

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A ‘tear down the wall’ moment in Iran will damage both the Islamic Republic — and China

Having already demonstrated a willingness to use American military might in the B-2 strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year that brought the 12-Day War to an end, President Donald Trump is robustly supporting the brave Iranian people now entering their third week of protests against the theocratic regime that has oppressed them for so long.

President Trump’s response to the Iranian protests couldn’t be more different from President Obama’s to the 2009 Green Revolution. Just days after Obama gave a speech in Cairo called “A New Beginning” in which he offered an outstretched hand to the mullahs in the hopes of diplomatic engagement, Iranian people inconveniently flooded into the streets to protest an obviously fraudulent election. It took the regime days to muster an effective response.

Even after unarmed protesters were shot in the streets, Obama opted for strategic silence, despite the fact that the Islamic Republic had been an implacable foe of America for some 30 years at that point. As his future Secretary of State John Kerry gushed in The New York Times, Obama’s reticence would prevent the mullahs from blaming the protests on America, while leaving the door open for the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Kerry would negotiate.

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Obama’s silence turned out to be great for the Iranian regime, which would spend the coming years bilking his administration into that disastrous nuclear deal that meant hundreds of billions of dollars for Tehran but disaster for the Iranian people. Forgotten while the regime attacked them with impunity, the protests dwindled to nothing.

Eighteen years later, President Trump seems determined not to repeat this unfortunate failure. While he, too, offered Tehran the opportunity for diplomacy on their nuclear program, when they refused to negotiate in good faith, he ordered the B-2 bombing strike. After the combined might of Israel and the U.S. in the 12-Day War revealed the regime to be paper tigers, the Iranian people have started to come back to life.

As Tehran has failed to provide basic services such as food, water and fuel — not to mention a stable currency or a functioning economy — they were emboldened to take to the streets and stay there with numbers and tenacity that dwarf 2009.

Also, and importantly, the Iranian people know that China, the regime’s main patron, did nothing to assist them during the war—and aren’t bailing them out now.

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In March 2021, at the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term, China and Iran signed a strategic partnership ushering in 25 years of economic and security cooperation. Since then, the PRC has preyed on Iran, pumping it for natural resources and military support for their other vassal, Russia. Theoretically at least, they have bolstered the regime’s defenses in return.

But when Israel and America attacked, those defenses were worthless and China took no action — something the Trump administration noted as well, suggesting there’s an opportunity to reduce Beijing’s influence in the Middle East and its access to inexpensive Iranian energy imports.

A more sinister Chinese export to Iran is the so-called National Information Network (NIN), derisively nicknamed by Iranians the “halal internet.” Bolstered after the 2019 protests, this PRC-designed tool of information control is the mechanism through which the regime has been able to shut down the internet across Iran for almost a week. Given the cost to their already-teetering economy, they cannot go on this way indefinitely, but for the time being it has been an effective way to stifle communication in and out of Iran.

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If emergency communications systems can be preserved or replaced with a satellite-based system, targeted kinetic and cyberattacks on NIN infrastructure could be an effective way to materially support the protesters, as well as strike a blow against the Chinese-designed apparatus that has been used to oppress them.

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President Trump’s robust statements about the protests, and warning of reprisals for attacks against them, are being criticized as giving the regime the opportunity to blame America for the uprising while creating a rally-around-the-flag effect that will bolster support for the mullahs. But just as some of Ronald Reagan’s own staff worried that the phrase “tear down this wall” was too provocative, these critics are simply too timid or craven to take the appropriate actions to follow up on the rhetoric.

The reality is that the Islamic Republic has blamed America for all their problems since 1979, regardless of what we did or didn’t do. President Trump has stopped giving the mullahs a veto over our actions, and, thanks to him, the Iranian people may soon be in the position to tear down the walls that have encircled them for so long.

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Trump knows good real estate — and he knows Greenland’s value to national security

“The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building,” President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday.

Trump is right. Grab a globe and look down from the North Pole, or check out this official Pentagon map. You will see that Greenland is pivotal to the Arctic front. Greenland’s eastern coast guards the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom or GIUK. This is the entry gate to the Atlantic for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear-armed submarines. Greenland hosts important early warning radar sites because its field of view covers so much of the bomber and missile flight routes from Russia and China. No Greenland, no Golden Dome missile shield.

That’s why Trump lit a bonfire under Denmark and NATO to spur much-needed progress to counter aggressive moves by Russia and China.

Trump does have an eye for prime real estate. And the fastest, easiest solution would be for the U.S. to take over. There’s a good business case for buying Greenland. Especially if you throw in the critical minerals mining there. And Trump has run the numbers. Back in 2019, he estimated the carrying costs of Greenland at about $770 million per year.

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No, there probably won’t be an invasion. The one sure way for Greenland to lose its home rule sovereignty is to get too close to China. In 2017, Greenland’s prime minister flew to Beijing and asked China to bankroll new airports, according to The Wall Street Journal. Denmark stopped the deal. If anything like that happens again, Greenland will be flying a U.S. flag.

Officially, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is not about to get in between Trump and Greenland. “I never, ever comment when there are discussions within the Alliance,” Rutte told Danish business executive and Member of the European Parliament Christine Bosse after a speech Jan. 13.

Behind the scenes, NATO and Denmark will step up. Rutte grasps the importance of the High North and so do NATO militaries. Rutte, on January 13, praised Denmark’s investment in ice-breakers, Boeing P-8 surveillance planes for anti-submarine warfare and enhanced missile defenses.

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So for Trump, Greenland will probably turn out to be a bit like that house on your block you covet, but can’t actually purchase. But he’s going to keep the pressure on. Here’s why.

Protecting America

Greenland is the center of U.S. defenses against Russian or Chinese nuclear missile attacks. At Pituffik Space Base they have a runway, a seaport and a lot of radar and gigantic satellite dishes. U.S. Space Force Guardians operate the early-warning radar system to spot intercontinental ballistic missile threats and sea-launched missiles coming out of Russia, China or anywhere else. The squadrons also provide tracking and command and control for U.S. satellites and all other objects up in space, such as China’s 1,300 satellites. America would be blind without this surveillance.

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China Wildcard

China sent three icebreakers to the Arctic in 2024 and last summer a “research submarine” ventured under the Arctic ice cap. In 2025, China, for the first time, sent a container ship from China to Britain via the “Polar Silk Road.” The design for China’s newest Type 096 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine appears to have a stronger hull for operating amidst ice. Put Chinese submarines in the Arctic and U.S. military bases, data centers and more are suddenly in range. The U.S. will do whatever it takes to halt that threat.

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Denmark is a Capable Ally 

Denmark comes through when it matters. Denmark deployed aircraft and special forces to Afghanistan and their soldiers fought in Helmand province. Denmark’s air force already flies U.S.-made F-35 stealth fighters and put in an order for 16 more back in October. Speaking of space, the Danes bravely waded into the regulatory mess that is the new European Union Space Act, offering a more balanced plan to treat American commercial space companies fairly as they build out low Earth orbit constellations. Keep in mind, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen faces tough elections in October, so resolving a dust-up over Greenland could be a feather in her cap.

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NATO Will Step Up 

NATO is not breaking up over this. The world situation is too dangerous. Putin launched another nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile at Ukraine on Jan. 10. Besides, NATO partners are well aware of the High North problem. “Britain is stepping up on Arctic security,” said Britain’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper in a Jan. 14 press release. Britain has been training with Norwegian commandos for decades and wrapped up Operation Tarrassis in October, exercising with 9 other NATO nations across the Baltic Sea and Arctic. As Cooper said: “Coming together as an alliance allows us to unify and tackle this emerging threat.”

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