MIKE DAVIS: Don Lemon and his church-storming mob must face Ku Klux Klan, FACE Act charges

The freedom of worship is a cornerstone value of our Republic, enshrined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Last Sunday, a group of anti-ICE agitators violated this most sacred right when they stormed into Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., during church services to protest the pastor’s supposed ties to ICE. This mob of leftist bigots included fired CNN anchor Don Lemon, who stunningly claimed they (somehow) had the First Amendment right to target, trespass into, terrify and disrupt a church service – even based upon the race and religion of the congregants. Non-attorney Lemon has refused to back down – and in fact, has doubled down – on his demonstrably wrong and dangerous legal analysis. For his outrageous criminal behavior and total lack of remorse, Lemon must face legal accountability – including federal felony charges under the FACE Act and Ku Klux Klan Act. In short, Lemon must go to federal prison – and for years.

In 1994, Democrats had the trifecta: control of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Bill and Hillary Clinton White House. Leftist Sen. Ted Kennedy, abortion-industry monopolist Planned Parenthood’s Senate champion, prioritized protecting abortion clinics from pro-life Christian protesters. (Protesters and public scrutiny are bad for the business of mass-killing unborn children.) Kennedy led the charge in passing the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances (FACE) Act, 18 U.S.C. § 248. This law criminalizes the use of intimidation or force to impede individuals from entering or operating in abortion clinics. But in order to win the necessary Senate Republican support to overcome a likely legislative filibuster, the compromise statute also prohibits such acts with respect to any house of worship. First-time FACE Act offenders, who cause no injury, generally face federal misdemeanor charges and up to one year in federal prison. Repeat offenders or offenders who make threats, use force or cause injury generally face federal felony charges and years in federal prison.

The Biden Justice Department did not hesitate to enforce the FACE Act against abortion-clinic protesters; in fact, the Biden DOJ enforced the FACE Act mercilessly. This included coupling FACE Act charges with federal conspiracy charges under the Ku Klux Klan Act (18 U.S.C. § 241) — passed after the Civil War to punish individuals who conspire to violate the civil rights of others. The Biden DOJ threw the book at and imprisoned — for years — elderly Christians, young pro-life Black mothers and the like. Meanwhile, the Biden DOJ gave amnesty to left-wing radicals who attacked White churches, synagogues and pro-life pregnancy centers — but no doubt not Black churches or mosques.

For instance, the Biden DOJ imprisoned for two years Paulette Harlow – at age 75 – with FACE Act and Klan Act charges after she protested outside an abortion clinic. The Biden DOJ had a young Black mother, Bevelyn Williams, thrown in prison for 41 months for FACE Act and Klan Act violations for protesting at a Manhattan abortion clinic.

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Lemon and his conspirators’ church-crashing last Sunday constituted textbook violations of the FACE Act and Klan Act. Cities Church worshippers were inside during a religious service. All of a sudden, a group of anti-ICE agitators barged in and began yelling at the churchgoers. The worshipers included small children, who were understandably frightened by the events. Just last year, a trans-terrorist busted into the Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis, murdered two children, and injured dozens more. As such, the fear Lemon and his fellow modern-day klansmen would become violent was eminently reasonable. And Lemon was right in the middle of the mob, approaching parishioners – and even the pastor on the pulpit during the church service – with his microphone and interrogating them. One man told Lemon the protesters had no right to come into the church and begin yelling. Lemon claimed that the First Amendment allows such misconduct – but he is plainly and dangerously wrong.

The First Amendment, among other things, generally prohibits Congress from unlawfully restricting free speech or religious expression. The protesters’ actions are not protected by the First Amendment or any other provision of law. This church is private property. Worshipers were asserting their own First Amendment right to exercise their religion freely by worshipping. If the First Amendment protected actions like those of the protesters, then people could barge into any religious service and begin shouting to protest anything. The pro-Hamas crowd, for instance, could storm synagogues and rail against the “genocide” in Gaza. Individuals opposed to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani could crash a service at a mosque to rail against his socialist policies. White men could crash a Black church service to protest DEI policies. The examples of the chaos that would be permissible under non-attorney Lemon’s absurd legal theory are endless.

Fortunately for decent society, Lemon’s legal theory is not the law. Neither the Supreme Court nor any court has ever sanctioned protesters’ storming into a religious service to engage in such disruptive misconduct. The behavior of these agitators interfered with the First Amendment rights of the worshippers, but Lemon appears to have no regard for these First Amendment rights. Neither does Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a radical leftist disgrace. When asked about the storming of the church, Ellison responded that “[n]one of us are immune from the voice of the public.” This absurd statement crumbles upon the slightest scrutiny. Would Ellison, a Muslim, support people who charged into a mosque service yelling that all Muslims should be deported? Of course not. He would scream Islamophobia and charge the trespassers.

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Lemon also claimed that he was merely covering the rally as a journalist. Even if true, several individuals made the same argument concerning the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. These people were in the Capitol and engaged in no violence. The Biden Justice Department, however, still charged them with trespassing. Journalists are subject to trespassing laws just like everyone else; otherwise, journalists could climb over fences and enter one’s yard without permission. Journalists could even enter individuals’ homes under this absurd theory. Lemon also asserted that he had no idea that the protesters, who are affiliated with Black Lives Matter, were going to the church until they arrived.

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But, as the New York Post reported, “Don Lemon admitted he was embedded with anti-ICE agitators in Minneapolis and knew of their plans before they burst into a St. Paul church during Sunday services — despite claiming he was there as a journalist and had no advance knowledge of what was going down.”

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Lemon and his co-conspirators clearly violated the federal FACE Act. And these thugs face another potential charge under the modern-day version of the Ku Klux Klan Act. Here, Lemon and his fellow modern-day klansmen conspired to deprive the pastor and his parishioners of the right to worship by storming their church. The law also provides for potential civil liability as to state officials who fail to act to stop such unlawful conduct. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, two modern-day confederates, have appeared to take no real steps to hold these anarchists accountable; indeed, Ellison appeared to offer a statement of defense for their despicable conduct.

Minnesota has descended into lawlessness. Billions of taxpayer dollars are squandered because of rampant fraud, mostly concerning the Somali community. Because of deranged anti-ICE rhetoric from inept confederate-like leaders Walz, Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (i.e., calling the federal government’s presence an invasion and claiming that Minnesota is at war with the federal government), modern-day klansmen in Minnesota, like Lemon, have good reason to think that it is open season on federal law enforcement–because state authorities will do nothing about violence directed against ICE and even citizens supposedly associated with ICE. Those who stormed the church – especially Lemon – must receive indictments to punish them and send a crystal clear message to every other modern-day klansmen who is contemplating a similar act. We cannot tolerate this seditious and bigoted misconduct, and any perpetrator like Lemon must spend a long time in federal prison.

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The firebombing of Beth Israel in Mississippi strikes at the heart of religious freedom, dignity and peace

In the early morning hours of Jan. 11, 2026, flames tore through Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi — the state’s largest and oldest synagogue. The fire destroyed the library, two sacred Torahs and the Tree of Life plaque honoring generations of meaningful moments. But this was not an accident. This was an act of deliberate hate. 

According to an FBI criminal complaint, 19-year-old Stephen Spencer Pittman confessed to breaking a window with an axe, pouring gasoline inside and igniting the fire because of the building’s “Jewish ties.” He referred to the synagogue as the “synagogue of Satan.” When confronted by his father about burns on his hands, ankles and face, Pittman reportedly laughed and said, “I finally got them.”

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For Beth Israel Congregation, this attack is not the first. Founded in 1860, the synagogue has stood as a beacon of Jewish life in Mississippi for over 165 years. In 1967, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, local Ku Klux Klan members bombed both the synagogue and the home of its rabbi — a man who had courageously spoken out against racism and segregation.

Nearly six decades later, hatred has once again targeted this sacred space. The parallels are chilling. The methods may differ, but the intent remains the same: to terrorize, to silence and to destroy a community’s place of worship and belonging. 

This attack in Mississippi is part of a disturbing global rise in antisemitic violence. Just weeks earlier, a father and son opened fire on Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, killing 15 and injuring dozens. Across the United States, Europe and beyond, Jewish communities are facing an alarming surge in hate crimes, vandalism and threats.

The FBI’s complaint reveals that Pittman conducted “research” before the attack — a chilling reminder that antisemitism is not spontaneous. It is learned, cultivated and emboldened by rhetoric that dehumanizes Jewish people. When we allow hateful language to go unchallenged, when we dismiss antisemitism as “just politics” or “free speech,” we create the conditions for violence.

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Despite the devastation, Beth Israel Congregation is standing strong. President Zach Shemper released a statement affirming the resilience of the synagogue’s 150 families: “As Jackson’s only synagogue, Beth Israel is a beloved institution, and it is the fellowship of our neighbors and extended community that will see us through.”

Remarkably, a Torah that survived the Holocaust — protected by a glass display case — was not damaged in the fire. It stands as a powerful symbol of Jewish survival and continuity in the face of relentless hatred.

Local churches have offered temporary space for Beth Israel to continue services as the synagogue rebuilds. Jackson Mayor John Horhn declared, “Acts of antisemitism, racism and religious hatred are attacks on Jackson as a whole and will be treated as acts of terror against residents’ safety and freedom to worship.”

The firebombing of Beth Israel is not just an attack on the Jewish community — it is an assault on our shared values of religious freedom, dignity and peace. When one community is targeted, we are all diminished. This is why bridge-building work is more urgent than ever. We must create spaces where people from all backgrounds can come together in dialogue, education and solidarity. We must confront antisemitism wherever it appears — in our schools, our workplaces, our social media feeds and our communities.

We must stand with our Jewish neighbors, not just in moments of crisis, but in the everyday work of building a society rooted in respect and understanding.

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As we reflect on this tragedy, let us commit to speaking out against antisemitism and all forms of hate, even when it is uncomfortable. That means educating ourselves and others about the history and impact of antisemitism, building bridges between communities through dialogue, shared experiences and collective action, and supporting Jewish communities in tangible ways — from attending solidarity events to advocating for security resources and amplifying Jewish voices. It also means holding leaders accountable for rhetoric that fuels division and violence.

The flames that engulfed Beth Israel Congregation were meant to destroy. But they have instead illuminated the urgent need for solidarity, the power of resilience and the enduring strength of community.

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We cannot allow hate to win. We must choose connection over division, understanding over ignorance, and love over fear. Together, we can build a future where sacred spaces are protected, where all people can worship freely and where acts of terror are met with unwavering unity. 

The work of peacebuilding is not easy, but it is essential. And it starts with each of us choosing to stand together — today and every day.

Mob violence in Minnesota isn’t free speech — it’s grounds for the Insurrection Act

Should we tolerate the chaos and violence in Minnesota as a sign of a vibrant democracy or crush it as an “insurrection” or “domestic violence” that “hinders the execution of the laws”?

President Donald Trump has been unequivocal that it is an insurrection, and has threatened to deploy armed forces using the Insurrection Act to crush the protests. It turns out that he may well be within his powers to do just that. Here’s why.

The power of the president to deploy armed forces against insurrections dates back to the Calling Forth Act of 1792, which was passed by the 2nd Congress of the nascent United States. Chapter 28, sec. 2, of that law stated, “whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations … it shall be lawful for the President … to call forth the militia … to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed.” President George Washington used this law to quell violent protests by farmers angered by the imposition of taxes on the distillation of whiskey. The so-called “Whiskey Rebellion” saw Washington himself lead a militia of about 13,000 to end the unrest.

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That 1792 law was not an American invention. Its origins can be traced at least as far back as the 1661 King’s Sole Right Over the Militia Act and the 1662 Act for ordering the Forces in the Several Counties of this Kingdom passed by the English Parliament. The logic was simple: the king’s laws were backed up by the king’s arms and his realm could only be maintained if insurrectionists could be crushed by troops at his command.

Our Founding Fathers were well aware of this English history. Thereafter, the 1807 Insurrection Act was passed giving the president the power “in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws,” to use the militia “for the purpose of suppressing” insurrection or “of causing the laws to be duly executed,” as “shall be judged necessary.”

An amended version of the Insurrection Act was used by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. In his July 25, 1862, proclamation, Lincoln referenced the law to “warn all persons … to cease participating in, aiding, countenancing, or abetting the existing rebellion or any rebellion against the Government of the United States.”

The most recent invocation of the statute was by President George H.W. Bush during the Los Angeles riots.

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In its current form, the law’s key provisions are in Title 10, Sec. 252 and 253. Section 252 provides, “whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

Sec. 253 authorizes the president to “take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it — (1) so hinders the execution of the laws … and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice.”

The statute gives broad power to the president: it is he alone who can determine whether he “considers” there are obstructions to the enforcement of the laws, and he is the sole judge of what are “necessary” measures to “suppress” the violence.

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The language does not leave much room for judicial second-guessing of the president’s power. Justice Story’s opinion in the case of Martin v. Mott (1827), established that “the authority to decide whether the exigency has arisen belongs exclusively to the President, and that his decision is conclusive upon all other persons. … this construction necessarily results from the nature of the power itself and from the manifest object contemplated by … Congress. The power itself is to be exercised upon sudden emergencies, upon great occasions of state, and under circumstances which may be vital to the existence of the Union.”

Justice Story was aware of the downsides of the “very high and delicate nature” of the president’s power. He deferred to the president’s discretion, admitting that “[a] free people are naturally jealous of the exercise of military power, and the power to call the militia into actual service is certainly felt to be one of no ordinary magnitude.”

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The violent incidents in Minnesota are not some form of peaceful civil disobedience in the genre of Henry Thoreau, who inspired peaceful protests by Gandhi and Dr. King. They are organized acts of violence perpetrated by paid instigators funded by dubious sources. Their attacks on counter-protesters, malicious personal targeting of ICE personnel and willful obstruction of federal law enforcement have to be tackled.

The law must apply in Minnesota, just as much as in Missouri, if the union has to have any meaning. And the curious silence of these protesters in the face of egregious fraud and corruption (which is far more important to the average citizen than ICE) in Minnesota shows that these protests are not about respect for the law — they are a calculated attack on the rule of law.

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Those who oppose ICE actions have peaceful alternatives to ventilate their grievances. If ICE oversteps, they have recourse to the courts, where judges have been all too willing to rule in favor of challenges to the Trump administration’s immigration law enforcement actions. Which makes these violent protests all the more unworthy of support. They resemble insurrection and unlawful obstruction more than civil disobedience.

If the protesters do not heed Trump’s warnings and cease violence, they should meet the full force of the president’s executive powers. Minnesota cannot pick and choose which federal laws it likes to enforce. If its leaders fail to execute the laws and instead support insurrectionists, they must bear the consequences.

GORDON CHANG: Appeasing China won’t save Europe — Trump’s hard power just might

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz plans a trip to China early this year, probably in late February. So does British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose government just surrendered to Beijing by greenlighting the “mega embassy,” thus assuring the visit will go forward. French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife traveled to the Chinese capital at the beginning of December.

Europe is desperately looking to China, to achieve elusive goals of trade and security. Unfortunately, there is, as Margaget Thatcher once said, “the stench of appeasement” in the air. European leaders are absolutely determined to placate the Chinese, no matter what Beijing does to impoverish Europeans and endanger their homelands.

At the same time, the decline in support for the U.S. across Europe has been, as Mark Leonard, director and co-founder of the European Council on Foreign Relations, points out, “precipitous across the continent.”

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“Europeans,” writes Leonard, “have already realized Washington is more foe than friend.”

Foe? Europeans are now focused on President Donald Trump’s brazen demands to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark. His implied threats to use force — “one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland,” he told reporters this month — and tariff threats of course alienate Europe, but Europe’s leaders are not keeping their eyes on what’s important.

In fact, they just do not get Trump.

As an initial matter, they should be criticizing themselves for ignoring the real threat: China’s and Russia’s militaries were openly threatening to dominate the Arctic with frequent and aggressive air and sea patrols. China, in addition, is installing its own infrastructure of satellite ground stations and fiber-optic cable in the region, part of its Polar Silk Road and Digital Silk Road initiatives.

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Trump has been right in noting that Greenland’s defense now consists of “two dog sleds.”

NATO countries — France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium — are now sending military personnel to the world’s largest island. Yes, these tiny deployments are apparently intended to prevent Trump from invading, but he is getting them to take Greenland’s defense seriously, long neglected by both Denmark and NATO.

More broadly, the American president has been good for Europe, shaking it out of an almost terminal slumber. Even after two Russian invasions of Ukraine, European leaders were having trouble stirring themselves into necessary action.

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As NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte last month declared, Trump has been good for the Atlantic Alliance, calling the recent pledge of member countries to spend at least 5% of their economic output on defense the American president’s “biggest foreign policy success.” He also said NATO was “stronger than it ever was” and that the American president “is good news” for both collective defense in general and for NATO in particular.

Europeans are understandably irate by Trump’s abrasive tactics, but they didn’t budge when previous American presidents, including Trump himself in his first term, used only soft words to get them to up absolutely necessary defense spending.

Trump’s second-term actions, therefore, were needed. And although Europe, in its stupor, had essentially abandoned itself, Trump has the best of intentions. His National Security Strategy, released last month, makes this crucial point: “We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe.”

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At the moment, Europeans are reacting emotionally. “The rules-based order is giving way to a world of spheres of influence, where might makes right and the West is split from within,” wrote Leonard.

Leonard and others are not paying attention. Trump does believe that foreign powers should stay out of the Western Hemisphere — the “Donroe Doctrine,” as it is now called — but he does not believe either Russia in Europe or China in Asia should have their spheres. Trump’s short and easy-to-read strategy document makes that clear.

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The National Security Strategy prioritizes regions, with Europe coming in third behind the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific. Whatever one thinks of Trump’s division of the world — I don’t think the world, with China and Russia challenging America across-the-board, can now be broken up that way — Europe is still seen as a power controlling its own destiny.

Leonard, also author of “Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail,” correctly points out that the rules-based order is dead or dying. Many in Europe, including Leonard, blame Trump, but here they are wrong. China and Russia killed the rules-based order throughout this century, with, among many other things, the invasions of Ukraine.

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Americans and Europeans, trying to accommodate Beijing and Moscow, refused to defend that order when they had the chance. Trump, to his credit, is taking the world as it is. He is using American power to secure America.

By doing so, he is making the world safe for Europe too.

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Walz’s Minnesota mess could spark the toughest fraud reforms in decades

Multibillion-dollar government benefit fraud cases in Minnesota are making headlines for being so pervasive and brazen. But the Minnesota fraud machine is not an isolated concern. Benefit fraud is a big business across dozens of states and scores of benefit programs. I say this because I saw it firsthand as the former head of all FBI criminal investigations and later Global Security Director at one of the largest financial institutions in the U.S., where we used advanced data analytics to detect fraud schemes.

This is not a new problem. An April 2025 GAO report estimated that since 2003, taxpayer losses from fraud in state-administered benefit programs such as SNAP and Medicaid exceed $2.3 trillion. Based on the same GAO data, losses from fiscal years 2018 through 2022 alone range from $233 billion to $521 billion. The exposure of the Minnesota fraud machine — and the remediation that follows — may ultimately be the greatest accomplishment of Tim Walz’s political career. A 2025 California State Auditor’s report put that state’s benefit fraud at more than $70 billion.

Among the largest programs that have been exploited are Medicare and Medicaid. For too long, unscrupulous healthcare providers have used strategies such as medical identity theft, billing for unnecessary services or items, billing for services not furnished, upcoding, unbundling and kickbacks to unfairly profit from Medicaid programs. According to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, about 3% — roughly $300 billion — of healthcare spending is lost to fraud annually. That’s a bonfire fueled by taxpayer dollars.

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The Minnesota scandal has at long last brought this seedy situation into full public view and, ironically, may become the catalyst for initiatives that finally staunch the long-standing hemorrhage of taxpayer funds. A sleeping giant has been awakened: taxpayer outrage and an administration now under pressure to act. Minnesota will be ground zero to unleash the FBI, IRS and various inspectors general, who have long been limited to chasing whistleblower complaints one by one in a wasteful game of whack-a-mole. Reliance on sporadic tipsters is not an effective way to confront systemic fraud.

Make no mistake, significant indictments will follow for years to come because of the Minnesota benefits crime tsunami. Arresting and prosecuting criminals works — it deters future crime.

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But law enforcement is the tail end of the process. The real failure comes earlier: programs must be administered responsibly, and crimes must be detected before the money is gone. The ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles famously said, “What is not sought will go undetected.” That maxim applies perfectly to fraud schemes draining taxpayer funds.

What federal prosecutors have described as “industrial-level” fraud was predictable and detectable. States willing to use modern tools — especially artificial intelligence — will find it. Simple steps, such as allowing the U.S. Treasury Department’s “Do Not Pay” system to cross-check beneficiaries against Social Security death records, were implemented only recently. Meanwhile, financial institutions and insurance carriers have used data analytics — now marketed as AI — for decades to prevent fraud. Banks deploy predictive analytics, anomaly detection and network analysis because they have a financial incentive to do so.

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Although CMS and other stakeholders have attempted to install safeguards, evidence suggests Medicaid programs are still losing billions. Traditional “pay and chase” approaches remain ineffective. The system shovels benefits out the door, then attempts recovery long after the damage is done. But there is something even more troubling than sheer incompetence.

The uncomfortable truth is that blue enclaves like Minnesota, California and New York often lack the political will to aggressively detect fraud because permissive systems serve electoral goals. Showering large blocs of friendly voters with taxpayer funds wins elections. That same logic fueled open-border policies under the Obama and Biden administrations. Ungoverned benefits programs and illegal migration translate into votes and campaign cash for the facilitators.

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Case in point: under Gov. Tim Walz, Minnesota has experienced the largest increase in SNAP benefits in the nation. Between 2018 and 2023, benefits surged 128%, followed by Massachusetts, Vermont and California at 120%, 96% and 89%, respectively. It is no accident that 82 of the 92 defendants indicted in Minnesota child nutrition, housing services and autism program fraud schemes are Somali. This voting bloc can swing elections. Meanwhile, funds intended for those who rightfully need help are siphoned off by criminal enterprises.

There are success stories. A new artificial intelligence tool helped the U.K. government recover nearly £500 million in the past year, according to the BBC, by cross-referencing data across agencies and flagging vulnerabilities before they are exploited. Officials say it can help make policies effectively fraud-proof before rollout.

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States willing to look for fraud will find it. The hope is that the Trump administration’s response to Minnesota’s systemic malfeasance becomes a template nationwide — red, blue and purple. 

Taxpayers deserve the same relief achieved through firm border enforcement: near-zero losses without changing a single law. The goal should be zero tolerance for sloppy administration and criminal schemes — preventing losses before they occur, not chasing them after the fact.

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BISHOP BARRON: Minnesota’s crises demand real change, not more division

As a resident of Minnesota and as the bishop of the diocese of Winona-Rochester, I’ve been just heartbroken about the present situation in my home state. We seem to be lurching from crisis to crisis, with little hope of resolution. The atmosphere is thick with corruption, violence, threats of retribution, angry shouting and scapegoating.  

The two outrages that dominate are, of course, the massive institutional corruption that has been revealed over the last several months and the recent incursion of ICE agents that has inspired passionate protest. I will address the latter issue in due course, and I am reluctant to permit it to distract attention from the first.  

It appears certain that hundreds of millions of dollars have been siphoned from the taxpayers of Minnesota through one of the greatest public frauds ever perpetrated in our country. Enormous amounts of money were directed to phony front organizations and then to fraudsters both inside Minnesota and outside the country. One of the most disturbing features of this episode is that a journalist, Christopher F. Rufo, and Nick Shirley, an independent investigative reporter, broke the case by doing what ordinary inspectors and public officials in the state should have been doing for years: simply verifying where the money was going.  

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I realize that, to some, this kind of financial malfeasance can seem a relatively harmless “white-collar” crime, but nothing could be further from the truth. Catholic social teaching is adamant that public corruption constitutes a grave threat to society and especially to the poor. It undermines confidence in our leaders and the political process, compromises the integrity of the institutions of government and subverts the rule of law. Even more importantly, it deeply harms those most in need, effectively stealing resources from them and blocking essential services such as health care and education.

Moreover, if the kind of fraud on display in Minnesota is discovered in other states as well, we are dealing with an astonishing violation of human rights and an attack on the needy. I would sincerely hope that opposition to this sort of evil should not be a matter of partisan politics. I see no reason why Democrats, Republicans, independents and progressives shouldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder in confronting this corruption.

Alas, Minnesota’s turmoil does not end with financial scandal alone. The tragic shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent during a federal immigration enforcement operation — and the ensuing protests and clashes between demonstrators, local officials and federal agents — has heightened tensions and brought yet another crisis to the forefront of public life in our state.

The situation is being driven by a volatile mix of illegal immigrants, political leaders, protesters and federal agents all colliding in the same small space at the same time. In response to the crisis prompted by the arrival of ICE agents in large numbers in Minnesota, might I make some simple suggestions?

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First, along with my brother bishops, I strongly defend our nation’s right to maintain the border and to enforce immigration regulations. I do not subscribe to the effectively open border policy that held sway during the Biden administration. But, at the same time, I think that ICE operations should be limited to rounding up only undocumented people who have committed serious crimes. I understand that anyone who has entered the country without documentation has committed a crime, but I believe that ICE raids against such people are simply too blunt an instrument. 

The status of illegal immigrants who have lived productively and peacefully in our country for many years should be a matter for political adjudication and not aggressive police action. The riots in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the country prove that the American people are ill at ease with the present policy. 

At the same time, I would urge the political leadership in the state of Minnesota to stop stirring up resentment against federal officers who are endeavoring to enforce the laws of our country. The comparison of these oft-beleaguered individuals to Nazis and fascists and Gestapo agents is morally heinous and directly productive of violence. I was particularly appalled when the mayor of Minneapolis suggested that the municipal police ought to fight ICE agents and when the governor of Minnesota urged ordinary citizens to warn their neighbors of the presence of ICE agents and to film their “atrocities.” All such rhetoric is utterly contraindicated. 

I would add this as well: These operations are made far more chaotic because Minnesota and Minneapolis officials refuse to share information with federal law enforcement and refuse to support ICE operations by doing such basic things as crowd control and arresting or moving people who try to box in ICE agents. If local authorities had done their duty in this regard, the likelihood of dangerous face-to-face confrontations would have been significantly diminished.

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Similarly, though I am in no position to adjudicate every tactical decision, ICE agents should follow established protocol and not stand in front of a running vehicle. Finally, though I strongly support the right to engage in peaceful public protest, I urge protesters not to interfere directly with the work of ICE officials. Speaking one’s mind is one thing, but getting in the way of police vehicles or inserting oneself in situations where armed officers are present is inviting tragedy.  

Everyone on all sides of this issue must stop shouting at one another and demonizing their opponents. Vigorous public conversation and honest debate are essential features of our democracy. Vitriol, scapegoating, insults, and impugning of motives are not. We quickly have to make some changes because where we are right now in Minnesota is untenable. 

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It’s not too late, you’re not too old: National champion Curt Cignetti just proved it

It seems unbelievable — but it’s true. The college football program that started this season with the most losses all-time of any major college football team just went undefeated and won the College Football National Championship.

It sounds more like a movie than a true story. How did it happen? 

Indiana University hired a new coach two years ago. Curt Cignetti had never been the head coach of a major college program. Cignetti was an assistant coach for almost 30 years before he got his first head coaching shot. He did not even become a head coach until he was 50 years old.

INDIANA STAR OPENS UP ON TEAM’S MINDSET AHEAD OF CFP GAME VS ALABAMA

His first head coaching job was at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Division II school. He was an assistant coach at Alabama and had to take a pay cut just to get the job.

He then went to coach Elon College, a Division I FCS school. And from there he coached at James Madison University, a Division I FBS school. He had success at every school, reaching the playoffs at each school and playing for the FCS National Championship at James Madison before they became an FBS school.

The man who couldn’t get a head coaching shot compiled a 119-35 record, taking his teams to the postseason nine times in 13 seasons. Cignetti proved he was a winner, a program builder, a culture changer and a coach who had been overlooked for years.

When Indiana hired him, he was 62.

ALABAMA STAR RECEIVER GIVES ‘GLORY TO JESUS CHRIST’ AFTER TEAM’S CRUSHING CFP LOSS TO INDIANA

He made waves when he first arrived in Indiana by telling people, “Google me — I win!” And he has won big. In just two seasons at Indiana, he has won 27 games, the most by a coach in his first two years at a school since the AP Poll debut in 1936. 

In 136 years of playing college football, Indiana’s winning percentage was .419 — in Cignetti’s two years it is .931. Indiana had never had a 10-win season. Cignetti has won over 10 games in both his seasons.

He won the first Big Ten title for Indiana in 58 years. He led them to their first undefeated regular season ever. And he won their first National Championship.

TRUMP CONGRATULATES INDIANA AND MIAMI AHEAD OF CFP NATIONAL TITLE SHOWDOWN: ‘MAY THE BEST TEAM WIN!’

He has done it by building a culture. A leader who prepares relentlessly, sets standards and models exactly what winning looks like. He’s created belief through consistency, confidence and clarity. He is fond of saying, “You get freedom of choice, but not freedom of consequence.” 

Cignetti waited a long time to be a major college head football coach. Maybe you’ve been waiting a long time for your dream to come true. Have you ever wondered why some things have not happened as you hoped? You have done what is right, but there are no results. 

Preparation takes time. And success happens when preparation meets opportunity. Cignetti’s background prepared him for this moment. His dad was a college head coach; he worked for other great coaches — including Nick Saban. He came up through the lower divisions and proved his systems and philosophy work. It took him years to become an overnight success.

We are often too hard on ourselves. We think we should be somewhere, reach a certain level, accomplish personal goals. But we aren’t there yet. This brings unnecessary pressure, anxiety and self-doubt. Each person’s journey is different.

Ray Kroc, Vera Wang, Colonel Sanders, Martha Stewart all experienced success later in life. President Donald Trump is 79 years old, one of the oldest presidents in American history. You’re not too old. Time has not passed you by. Age is just a number; you determine your destiny.

It’s not too late for you. Sometimes we must wait longer than we want, but it is worth it. Sometimes there is rejection, but it is really redirection.

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Maybe there are desires in your heart — hopes that are not being realized. Perhaps you believe that no matter how hard you work, no one seems to notice. Don’t grow tired of doing the right things. There will be a moment when all your hard work will be recognized. 

Your time will come.

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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.

WHOLE MILK HEADED BACK TO SCHOOL CAFETERIAS AFTER TRUMP SIGNS LAW AS EXPERTS TOUT BENEFITS

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.

WASHINGTON POST CITES U-HAUL DATA IN CALIFORNIA EXODUS TO ‘PRO-GROWTH’ STATES, SAYS ‘DECLINE IS A CHOICE’

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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