The race to the Moon is back — NASA needs to get serious to beat the Chinese

Just before my final, 2001 shuttle mission to help build the International Space Station, I asked the NASA chief of human spaceflight when he thought we’d return to the Moon. “Oh, probably not until 2010,” he answered. I was floored — how could it possibly take that long to jump from the shuttle and ISS to the Moon? After all, we’d landed there six times between 1969 and 1972.

NASA’s efforts to return to the Moon, home to valuable space resources, have been repeatedly stalled by shifting space policies and failures in leadership. Finally, twenty-five years after my question, NASA is ready to make that giant leap. It rolled its giant Space Launch System booster to the launch pad and is poised to send the Artemis II crew of four astronauts on a looping path nearly 5000 miles beyond our celestial neighbor.

President Donald Trump’s first administration directed NASA to lead an international return to the Moon with the Artemis program, but progress has been delayed by halting technical progress and anemic funding. Artemis II will launch the first Orion spacecraft crew on a key, ten-day test flight to wring out their ship’s systems, and test astronauts and mission controllers in the harsh environment 240,000 miles from Earth. A successful flight — the first piloted Moon journey since 1972’s Apollo 17, will pave the way for the next Artemis crew to try a harrowing touchdown on the lunar surface.

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Though Artemis II won’t try to land, it’s still a risky and challenging flight. Their Orion, “Integrity,” will venture into the extreme environment of cislunar space, a thousand times farther from Earth than the Space Station’s orbiting astronauts. Orion’s four astronauts will rely on its new life support system for ten days, and if there’s a problem, an emergency abort to Earth might take as long as three or four days. Crew and mission control must navigate precisely around the Moon to safely target their Earth return, where Orion’s heat shield must survive a searing, 5000˚ F plunge through the atmosphere to splashdown.

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During Artemis I’s uncrewed reentry in 2022, Orion’s heat shield, instead of charring and eroding smoothly away, shed palm-sized chunks of its resin-like Avcoat ablator material. That worrisome cracking behavior, caused by trapped, superheated gas within the heat shield, has taken three years to analyze and understand. To minimize gas generation and spalling of the heat shield, mission planners have altered Artemis II’s reentry path. NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, praised the heat shield plan after a review, and cleared Artemis II to fly.

A solid Artemis II success is vital for NASA; proving technical competence is vital to maintaining congressional and presidential funding for the lunar landing challenge to come. Isaacman and his mission managers must not only ensure the success and safety of Artemis II but make a critical decision in the weeks ahead: how best to field a lander that can get future Artemis crews down to the Moon’s rocky terrain.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket was chosen by NASA to serve as Artemis III’s lander, but Starship has progressed slowly in test launches, suffering several major setbacks. Each Starship lander launch from Earth will require fifteen or more other Starship launches to fuel it for its lunar mission, and SpaceX is nowhere near attempting its promised robotic demo mission to the Moon.

Isaacman has re-opened the lander design to other concepts, perhaps from Blue Origin or other industry partnerships; one workable approach was outlined before Congress last year by former administrator Mike Griffin. But time is running out for NASA to decide on a lander that will do the job within two or three years — China is forging ahead with its own plans to send its taikonauts to the Moon by 2030.

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China won’t take that long. The CCP is far along in testing its own heavy-lift Moon rocket, command ship and lander. Merely by repeating our Apollo 11 Moon feat — something NASA can’t do today — China will celebrate a deep space propaganda victory and lay claim to the Moon’s polar ice — hundreds of millions of tons of water and potential rocket fuel.

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Competing for those resources calls for bold NASA leadership, lately in short supply. To lead its partners back to the Moon, that probably means putting SpaceX on the back burner while choosing a more practical lander design in the near term.

Artemis II will take three Americans and a Canadian around the Moon for the first time in 54 years. Establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon will be even more challenging. Building on Artemis II’s bold leap Moonward, NASA must direct a new, workable plan for the Artemis III lander. Only then will NASA prove it has the Right Stuff to lead to the Moon and beyond.

Elon Musk says you can skip retirement savings in the age of AI. Not so fast

Billionaire Elon Musk recently told people not to worry about “squirreling” money away for retirement because advances in artificial intelligence would supposedly make savings irrelevant in the next 10 to 20 years.

Let me translate that into plain financial English: Don’t bother preparing for your future because robots and automation will take care of it.

That may sound exciting on a podcast. Even my own “Red, White, and Green” podcast. It may even sound comforting to those who don’t have a 401(k) plan.

But for everyday Americans trying to plan their financial lives, it’s reckless advice.

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Here’s why.

First, Musk is a visionary entrepreneur. He’s also worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Somewhere between $600 billion to $750 billion depending on the day. Those two facts matter. When you already have generational wealth, it’s easy to talk about a future where money doesn’t matter. Most families don’t have that luxury when many are just scraping by the promise of Social Security in the future is an unknown.

Your retirement isn’t a science experiment. It’s groceries. It’s housing. It’s healthcare. It’s dignity.

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Those bills don’t wait for AI. Those bills can’t be picked up by Tesla.

Musk’s argument rests on a futuristic idea that artificial intelligence and robotics will create so much productivity that scarcity disappears. In this world, goods become cheap, income becomes universal and money loses importance.

That’s an interesting theory. However, since the dawn of time money and power have always mattered.

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And it’s certainly not a financial plan.

It assumes three massive things all happen perfectly: technology advances on schedule (that would be a first), wealth gets broadly distributed, and government systems adapt smoothly. History tells us that technological revolutions don’t spread benefits evenly, and they usually concentrate wealth first and fix inequality later if they ever do at all. Just ask Musk.

Ask factory workers displaced by automation. Ask retail employees replaced by self-checkout. Ask taxi drivers competing with ride-sharing apps.

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Technology doesn’t automatically equal financial security.

Meanwhile, back here in reality, Americans are facing rising healthcare costs, expensive housing, stubborn inflation and record household debt. Social Security already faces long-term funding challenges. Pensions are disappearing. Many workers don’t even have access to employer retirement plans.

That’s the environment people are retiring into right now. It’s not utopia.

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Musk’s argument rests on a futuristic idea that artificial intelligence and robotics will create so much productivity that scarcity disappears. 

And here’s the most dangerous part of Musk’s message as a person giving financial advice for almost 35 years … it encourages people to delay action.

If someone in their 30s or 40s hears this and decides to stop contributing to their 401(k), skip their Roth IRA or pay down their mortgage, that lost time compounds forever. You lose that snowball effect. Compound interest works best when you start early, not when you’re hoping Silicon Valley saves you.

Hope is not a strategy.

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Let’s do some simple math. A 40-year-old who stops saving for 10 years waiting for an AI miracle could easily miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in future retirement income. That’s not theoretical. That’s real money driven by real market returns.

Even if AI dramatically reshapes the economy, and it likely will, money will always buy something incredibly valuable called optionality. The ability to have choices.

Savings give you flexibility. They give you independence. They give you negotiating power over how you live, where you live and when you stop working. They protect you from medical surprises, job disruptions, market downturns and policy changes.

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A future with advanced technology doesn’t eliminate risk. It changes the shape of it.

And let’s be honest about something else. Even in Musk’s dream world, someone still controls the machines. Someone still owns the platforms. Someone still collects the profits. Betting that those gains will automatically flow to everyone equally is optimistic at best.

And here’s the most dangerous part of Musk’s message as a person giving financial advice for almost 35 years … it encourages people to delay action.

So should people planning for retirement take Musk seriously?

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As a dream experiment? Sure.

As day-to-day financial guidance? Not a chance.

Here’s my takeaway from all of this.

Keep funding your retirement accounts. Take the free employer match. Build your emergency reserve. Invest consistently on a monthly basis. Reduce high-interest debt. Diversify your assets and review your plan annually.

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If AI creates abundance someday, great. You’ll enter that future with real assets and not real anxiety.

But if it doesn’t arrive on schedule or doesn’t benefit everyone equally, you’ll be very glad you didn’t outsource your retirement to a prediction made by Elon.

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You can’t retire on optimism.

You can retire on preparation.

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PALANTIR CTO SHYAM SANKAR: The American people are being lied to about AI

The American people are being lied to about artificial intelligence (AI). On one hand, we’re offered apocalyptic prophecies of job loss and oppression — even the extinction of the human race. On the other, we hear utopian fantasies of a future without toil, without sickness, perhaps even without death — a life without meaning or mission.

The utopians and the doomers commit the same error: they neglect human agency. 

The future of AI is not an inevitability to be endured by the American people — it is for us, the American people, to shape. 

AI is not a divinity. It cannot snap its fingers and eliminate jobs; people will use AI to cut jobs or create them. AI cannot decide to oppress us; people will build AI tools that either enforce privacy and civil liberties or erode them. AI did not choose to write poems or generate pornography; people chose to build cheap consumer goods rather than genuine tools of productivity.

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These are choices you and I must make every day. 

I’ve spent the past two decades alongside men and women who are building the future of American AI. They include some of the best software engineers in the world, but also college dropouts, veterans, blue-collar autodidacts and nurses. They don’t treat AI as something that will happen to them — they recognize it as a tool for them to wield to make themselves more productive and our country safer and more prosperous. And so should you. 

The benefits of AI belong to all Americans.

Below are some principles and themes I’ve seen informing the people and organizations wielding AI effectively and in service of worthy ends: reindustrialization, deterrence, improved healthcare and more.

I. AI is a tool for the American worker, not his replacement

The job-loss narrative is a ploy to attract investors, drive media attention and consolidate political power. The real promise of AI in the enterprise is to make the American worker 50x more productive — to unleash his taste and agency. This isn’t speculation; it’s reality. 

I’ve seen maritime industrial base manufacturers use AI to open a third shift. I’ve spoken with the ICU nurse who learned to wield AI so she could spend more time at the bedside, where she’s needed most.

Doomerism is a luxury of the ivory tower; the future of AI is being built on frontlines and factory floors.

II. The American worker will wield AI to do more with less—and become more productive and valuable as a result

For a century, American prosperity was underwritten by a simple bargain: when the worker produces more, the worker earns more. That bargain was broken in the 1970s — not by technology, but by policy choices that stripped workers of power. We will not repeat that mistake.

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When AI doubles output, the worker who wields it should see that gain reflected in his paycheck, equity stake and share of the enterprise. This is not redistribution — it is recognition. The worker is not a cost center; he is a co-creator of value. Treat him accordingly.

III. The American worker deserves world-class tools, not AI trinkets

The electrical engineer in Georgia who enlisted in the Navy out of high school deserves the same capabilities as the Stanford computer science grad in Silicon Valley. He deserves access to instruments of genuine productivity, not consumer toys.

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Before Gutenberg, a book cost as much as a house. Knowledge was locked in monasteries and chained to shelves. The printing press broke that monopoly on information. AI is the printing press of our age — the same technology that serves Fortune 500 companies should serve the worker in Tulsa, the nurse in Tampa and the farmer in North Dakota.

The benefits of AI belong to all Americans.

IV. AI is an American birthright

AI is the product of American grit, ingenuity and culture. It is our birthright. No American worker should be left behind for lack of training. Workers should have access to meaningful AI education that helps them bend AI to their will — not the other way around. The ICU nurse doesn’t need to learn to code; she needs AI to surface the right patient data at the right moment — so that her clinical judgment, honed over years at the bedside, can be applied faster and more accurately.

The American worker is not deficient; he is under-leveraged. AI is the lever.

V. AI implementation should be shaped by and for frontline users

The frontline worker understands what the C-suite cannot. Policy should be shaped by practitioners — the ICU nurse, the manufacturing technician, the logistics coordinator — not by academics, consultants or lawyers. 

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Toyota built the most successful manufacturing system in history on a simple premise: the worker knows best. Its Creative Idea Suggestion System has operated for more than 70 years. Ideas flow up from the factory floor, not down from corner offices. The result: billions in value created and a culture where every worker is an owner of quality. 

AI development and deployment should prioritize American workers and American industry. The goal is not efficiency in the abstract—it is American prosperity in the concrete.

Push power to the tip of the spear and let the American worker do what he does best.

VI. AI should be used to slash bureaucracy and unleash human agency

AI should eliminate bureaucracy, not add to it. No new compliance theater. No “AI governance” committees designed to slow things down and centralize power in “managers.” AI should empower the American worker to move faster, not slow him down.

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Every layer of process that stands between the frontline worker and their ability to do their job is deadweight to be destroyed.

VII. The development and deployment of AI should prioritize American workers and American industry

AI development and deployment should prioritize American workers and American industry. The goal is not efficiency in the abstract — it is American prosperity in the concrete.

China’s manufacturing productivity grows at 6% per year. Ours grows at 0.4%. If we don’t invest in AI and automation, we’ll lose. The American worker with AI superpowers erodes China’s competitive advantage. 

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I see these principles embodied and practiced every day by men and women who are not invited to speak on panels or record podcasts and publish op-eds. They are quietly leading by example and proving what is possible when the most powerful technology ever created meets the most capable workforce ever assembled.

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Armed with AI, the American worker will rebuild our industrial base. He will outproduce any competitor. He will create prosperity not just for himself but for his children, who will inherit not a diminished nation, but an ascendant one.

Silicon Valley builds AI. Wall Street funds it. Washington regulates it.

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But the American worker — on the factory floor, in the ICU, in the field — wields it.

And that will make all the difference.

SEN BERNIE SANDERS: We need to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, Trump is right

We live in a nation of unprecedented wealth and income inequality — where a handful of billionaires are getting much richer while the working class falls further and further behind.

Just since Election Day, while millions of Americans are struggling to afford housing, food, electricity and healthcare, the three wealthiest people in America have become over $625 billion richer and are now collectively worth $1.3 trillion. Meanwhile, as a result of a rigged political system, billionaires now pay a lower effective tax rate than the average truck driver, teacher or nurse.

At the same time, Wall Street has never been more consolidated and powerful than it is today. Incredibly, just four Wall Street firms now manage roughly $38 trillion in assets — more than 120% of our annual GDP — and are major shareholders in over 95% of S&P 500 companies. Further, just five massive financial institutions led by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, American Express, Citigroup and Capitol One now account for nearly 70% of all credit card transactions and just two giant credit card networks (Visa and Mastercard) process well over 80% of credit card transactions.  

With that enormous concentration of ownership, Wall Street has incredible impact over the prices, interest rates and fees we pay and the well-being of workers.

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Within that reality, President Donald Trump went to Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, to speak about his so-called “affordability agenda.” Really? Is there anyone left in America who does not understand that Trump’s concern about “affordability” is nothing more than a flailing attempt to shore up his rapidly declining poll numbers?

Remember: This is a president who gave a front-row seat at his inauguration to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, and who filled his Cabinet with more billionaires than any administration in American history.

This is a president who gave a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1%, while throwing 15 million people off of healthcare and did nothing to prevent healthcare premiums from doubling, on average, for 20 million Americans.

This is a president who is working with Elon Musk and the other Big Tech billionaires to push AI and robotics on the American people, which will result in the loss of tens of millions of decent-paying jobs.

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But, I have to admit, there is one issue that Trump has identified that does make sense. He is right when he says that big banks are ripping off the American people with outrageously high credit card interest rates.

In 2024, credit card companies raked in more than $190 billion from interest and fees charging obscenely high interest rates, while bombarding Americans with roughly 3 billion solicitations. Today, as a result of their efforts to addict Americans into purchasing their high-interest plastic, Americans are drowning in a record $1.23 trillion in credit card debt.

Despite the fact that big banks can borrow money at less than 4% interest from the Federal Reserve, the average interest rate consumers are forced to pay for credit cards is nearly 24%. Yes. 24%.

In other words, while working-class Americans pay unconscionably high interest rates, Wall Street banks and their executives make out like bandits.

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When big banks charge 24% or 30% interest on credit cards, they are not engaged in the business of “making credit available.” They are involved in extortion and loan sharking — squeezing working families who are already stretched to the breaking point. And that should not be acceptable in the United States of America.

So, what do we do about it?

Trump has proposed to cap credit card interest rates at 10%. That is a good idea. The problem is that his proposal would only last for one year and, in many instances, would end up costing consumers even more than they are paying right now.

Today, many big banks already lure people into signing up for their credit cards with introductory rates of 0% only to jack those rates up — sometimes to 36% — once the teaser period expires.  In other words, what Trump is proposing is nothing more than a bait and switch.  

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If we are serious about helping working families, we need something real — not another scam.

That is why I introduced bipartisan legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for at least five years. After that, I believe we should move toward a permanent cap of no more than 15% — similar to the long-standing statutory cap that credit unions have operated under since 1980.

Surprise, surprise. The billionaires on Wall Street and organizations representing the financial services industry like the American Bankers Association don’t like this idea (you can read their full statement here).

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who we all know stays up nights worrying about the needs of working families, has come out strongly against this bill.  I wonder why?  Could it have something to do with the fact that last year, Dimon made $770 million in compensation while the bank he runs made $57 billion in profits charging Americans interest rates as high as 30%?

In other words, while working-class Americans pay unconscionably high interest rates, Wall Street banks and their executives make out like bandits.

Mr. Dimon claims my bipartisan bill would restrict access to credit for low-income consumers. He has it backwards. This bill would restrict JPMorgan Chase and other financial behemoths from charging working-class Americans predatory credit card interest rates that trap them into a vicious cycle of debt.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have estimated that my legislation would save the American people $100 billion a year in interest payments or about $899 a year.

How could this legislation benefit working families?

Let me give you one example.

A 28% interest rate on a credit card balance of $5,000 can cost a consumer as much as $11,000 in interest and take up to 24 years to pay off.  With a 10% credit card interest rate cap, that consumer would save more than $7,200 in interest. The bank would still be able to make over $3,700 in profit off that consumer. It just wouldn’t be able to gouge them.

Let’s be clear: Charging outrageously high interest rates is not a financial service. It is usury — a practice condemned by every major religion on Earth.

In “The Divine Comedy,” Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for people who charged usurious interest rates.  Today, we don’t need the hellfire and the pitchforks, we don’t need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law that caps interest rates on credit cards at 10%.

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This is not a radical idea. Polling suggests that it is enormously popular. The American people — Democrats, Republicans and Independents agree: Credit card companies are ripping us off. It has got to stop.

But, I have to admit, there is one issue that Trump has identified that does make sense. He is right when he says that big banks are ripping off the American people with outrageously high credit card interest rates.

This is also a matter of economic justice.

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When Wall Street’s greed and recklessness brought the economy to the verge of collapse in 2008, causing millions of Americans to lose their homes, jobs and life savings, the taxpayers came to the rescue. The Federal Reserve gave these huge banks trillions of dollars in emergency loans at virtually zero interest. We bailed out the banks. 

Now it’s time for Congress to stand with working families, end Wall Street greed and pass legislation that caps credit card interest rates at 10%.  

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Mamdani’s class warfare against New York businesses is ‘economic vandalism’

Last fall, when New York’s business community warned that the election of a self-described democratic socialist as mayor would trigger an assault on the city’s economic engine, we were waved off as hysterical. The press assured us that Zohran Mamdani was “evolving,” that his rhetoric would soften, that we should focus instead on his vague promises of “affordability.”

That reassurance evaporated almost instantly.

Barely two weeks after his swearing-in — amid lofty rhetoric about the “warmth of collectivism” — the Mamdani administration unveiled its real agenda. Sam Levine, the newly installed commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and a veteran of Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission, released a sensational report accusing companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats of “diverting” more than $500 million from delivery workers.

The charge was dramatic. It was also profoundly misleading.

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The report was less an exercise in economic analysis than a political weapon — crafted to inflame public opinion against large, visible companies operating in New York City. What it obscured is far more important than what it alleged.

In 2021, New York imposed a delivery-worker pay mandate exceeding $21 an hour — one of the highest in the nation, rivaled only by Seattle, another city governed by ideological experimentation. Proponents promised higher earnings without consequences. Economics, as usual, was ignored.

Anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows that artificially inflating labor costs does not create free prosperity. It raises prices, reduces demand and forces businesses to restructure. Unsurprisingly, delivery platforms responded by shifting tipping to post-checkout — exactly how tipping works in restaurants, ride-sharing and countless other service industries.

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That was not exploitation. It was adaptation.

Yet City Hall was not finished. Lawmakers then mandated that apps prompt tipping before service is rendered, requiring preset options of at least 10%. At a time when consumers already suffer from widespread “tip fatigue,” this was another blow to affordability — and to demand.

Levine’s report then claimed that these changes “cost” workers over $500 million. What the press conference omitted — though the report quietly admitted — was that delivery workers earned $1.2 billion more overall under the new system. That inconvenient fact did not fit the narrative, so it was buried.

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Even more telling: Levine’s own department had previously acknowledged this very dynamic. In 2022, DCWP explicitly stated that apps could discourage or eliminate tipping to offset higher mandated wages — and that workers would still receive substantial pay increases. Today’s outrage directly contradicts yesterday’s regulatory guidance.

Rather than correct course, the Mamdani administration doubled down. The mayor appeared at a press conference alongside activists demanding a $35-an-hour minimum wage for delivery workers — nearly double what many first responders earn. During his campaign, Mamdani promised $30 an hour by 2030. Now the demand is $35 immediately. Reality is optional; slogans are mandatory.

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Anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows that artificially inflating labor costs does not create free prosperity. It raises prices, reduces demand and forces businesses to restructure. 

What New York truly needs is not performative class warfare, but policies that expand take-home pay without destroying jobs. One obvious reform? End the tax on tips. Tips are not corporate profits; they are direct compensation from customer to worker. Taxing them penalizes service workers while discouraging generosity and transparency. Eliminating that tax would raise incomes instantly — without raising prices or killing jobs.

The broader issue is not delivery apps. It is a governing philosophy that treats profit as sin and enterprise as something to be punished. Using distorted reports to publicly shame companies is not leadership — it is economic vandalism.

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For New York to remain the world’s capital of commerce, it needs cooperation among workers, businesses and consumers — not ideological warfare. Affordability does not come from mandates and misinformation. It comes from growth, competition and policies that reward work.

Socialism has been tested countless times. It always fails. Let us hope New York’s new mayor learns that lesson quickly. If not, delivery companies won’t be the only casualties. Every entrepreneur, employer and investor in the city will soon find themselves in the crosshairs — and, as always, it will be ordinary New Yorkers who pay the price.

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Hollywood keeps making movies families won’t watch while ‘Lord of the Rings’ rerelease rakes in millions

The profitable rerelease of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy reflects more than the staying power of the quarter-century-old J.R.R. Tolkien-based film franchise – it reveals a troubling creative gap in today’s Hollywood.

First released in 2001, “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” the epic high adventure fantasy film, grossed upwards of $900 million at the box office. Sequels “The Two Towers” (2002) and “The Return of the King” (2003) grossed over $2 billion combined.

Rereleasing profitable and popular movies is a tradition that goes back generations beginning with classics such as “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone with the Wind” and “Casablanca.” Before television and then video cassette recorders, the theater was the only place to re-watch what you saw on your neighborhood big screen.

But studio executives recognized that viewers consider it satisfying to see a movie more than once (or twice or more!) – and sometimes even years or decades apart. Holiday or anniversary rereleases have proven profitable. With the advent of IMAX technology and digital restoration capabilities, it’s been easy to find an excuse to reintroduce some of the classics.

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In the hundred-plus years of Hollywood moviemaking, over 25,000 films have been made. Major studios today are churning out between 200 and 300 titles every year. That may sound like a lot, but it’s a dramatic decrease from a century ago when over 800 films were made every 12 months.

While ranking movies is subjective, the vast majority are forgettable – but some are memorable, and not always because we love them. It’s interesting and revealing that according to IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, of the top 10 worst movies of all time, all but one (“RoboCop 3”) were made this century. Conversely, of the top 10 best movies, just four were made in the last quarter-century – and two of them were “Lord of the Rings” titles.

Keep in mind, the British writer J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his famed series in the early to middle part of the last century.

One of the more curious and baffling habits of Hollywood is studios’ stubbornness and reluctance to produce more movies that appeal to families. Instead, they insist on making films that offend our moral sensibilities, despite evidence suggesting cleaner and more wholesome fare would perform better than the trash they’re creating. We’re bombarded with dark storylines littered with unnecessary profanity and gratuitous doses of sexuality and violence. Instead of goodness, we get garbage.

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Since it costs more to see a movie today than generations ago, it’s misleading to look to the top-grossing films in history to see what struck a chord with audiences. Instead, look at what movies sold the most tickets. Of the top 10 titles that have been seen by the most people, six are solid family fare: “Gone with the Wind,” “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “The Sound of Music,” “The Ten Commandments” and the 1937 “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

A seventh, “Jaws,” scared lots of children and beachgoers alike, but was still relatively tame compared to today’s offering. There’s not one “R” rated movie on the list.

So why not make more of what’s obviously working? This disconnect is something I’ve seen during my three decades working at Focus on the Family, a global family-help organization. We hear from countless mothers and fathers hungry for wholesome and inspiring movies. That’s why we’re releasing our first animated children’s movie in theaters this coming fall: “Adventures in Odyssey: Journey Into the Impossible.” It’s the origin story of a long-running children’s radio program.

PATRICK SCHWARZENEGGER CREDITS PRAYING WITH WIFE AS DAILY ANCHOR IN HOLLYWOOD ‘ROLLER COASTER’

Of course, movies reflect the culture, but they also reveal the hearts and minds of those running studios and writing the scripts for the stories being told. You probably don’t know the name Lewis R. Foster, but you’re likely familiar with the movie he won an Academy Award for writing: “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” starring Jimmy Stewart and directed by Frank Capra.

Stewart credited the classic film about the idealistic junior senator fighting corruption in the D.C. swamp with shaping his career and helping him see how strong and moral characters can positively influence the world. Foster personally embodied those ideals, loved America, his wife and family, and dreamed up the story. Because of that one story, Stewart pursued others like it – including “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

One man’s beautiful mind helps make other minds more beautiful, too. Everything affects everything else.

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There’s a reason the apostle Paul, who called himself the “chief of sinners,” urged people to be careful what they watched and read. There were no movies 2,000 years ago, obviously, but there were plenty of other things vying for attention that influenced human behavior. That’s why Paul wrote, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Of course, movies reflect the culture, but they also reveal the hearts and minds of those running studios and writing the scripts for the stories being told. 

If we really want to redeem culture, we’ll encourage the making of more movies like the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy that embody these very virtues, of hope over fear, good over evil, and the importance of friendship, loyalty and sacrifice.

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In his 1954 New York Times review of “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the poet and essayist W.H. Auden praised the British writer, suggesting his “invention is unflagging.” He then added, “Mr. Tolkien is fortunate in possessing an amazing gift for naming and a wonderfully exact eye for description… No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy than ‘The Fellowship of the Ring.’”

Hollywood would be doing us all (and its own financial bottom line) a favor if they would seek to emulate these same attributes of its screenwriters when sorting through scripts and stories for the big screen.

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Trump can solve the housing crisis, but he needs to get tough with states

America is in the middle of a housing crisis, and it is not a mystery why. Home prices have surged far beyond wage growth, first-time buyers are locked out of the market and young families are increasingly forced to rent indefinitely or leave high-cost states altogether. This did not happen overnight, and it is the predictable result of decades of policy choices that made it harder and harder to build owner-occupied housing.

The data tells a clear story when viewed over time.

In 1950, the United States had 23.6 million owner-occupied housing units. By 2000, that number had climbed to roughly 70 million. That represents an increase of about 196% over 50 years. During that same period, the U.S. population grew from roughly 151 million to about 281 million, an increase of approximately 86%. For half a century, America was building owner-occupied housing at more than twice the rate of population growth. Housing supply was not merely keeping up with demand. It was staying well ahead of it.

That era is over.

CONSTRUCTION LABOR CRUNCH DRIVES UP COSTS AND DEEPENS AMERICA’S HOUSING AFFORDABILITY CRISIS

At the end of the third quarter of 2025, the number of owner-occupied housing units had reached approximately 86.92 million. That is an increase of only about 24% since 2000. Over that same period, the U.S. population grew by roughly 22%. Housing growth and population growth are now moving almost in lockstep, which is a dramatic departure from the postwar model that made broad homeownership possible.

This slowdown is critical because population growth alone does not capture housing demand. Household formation, immigration, the number of families purchasing a second home and changing family structures all increase pressure on supply. When construction merely matches population growth, shortages become inevitable. When it falls behind, prices skyrocket.

One of the biggest reasons America is not building enough owner-occupied housing is regulation. In many cities and popular suburban areas, building codes are hundreds of pages long, and the number of regulations can reach the thousands.

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The massive regulatory burden weighing down homebuilders makes it harder and more expensive to construct new homes. In 2021, an economic analysis by the National Association of Home Builders found that regulations add nearly $94,000 to the cost of building a new home. That burden prices millions of families out of the market before construction even begins. 

Zoning restrictions, environmental reviews, permitting delays and land-use rules combine to make building slower, riskier and far more expensive than necessary. These barriers overwhelmingly benefit entrenched interests while harming working families and first-time buyers.

Land-use regulations have become particularly burdensome. In many states, huge swaths of land are owned by the federal or state government. In other cases, land is privately owned, but local regulatory bodies have blocked developers and families from adding new homes. This has squeezed millions of homes into relatively small areas.

California offers a stark illustration. Roughly 90% of the state’s population lives on just 5.1% of its land area.

Because zoning and land-use rules are largely imposed by state and local governments, Washington cannot solve the housing crisis by decree. But it is not powerless.

The massive regulatory burden weighing down homebuilders makes it harder and more expensive to construct new homes.

President Donald Trump and Congress should use federal leverage to force change. Federal dollars for education, infrastructure, transportation and housing should be conditioned on measurable progress toward expanding owner-occupied housing. States that refuse to loosen land-use restrictions and reduce regulatory barriers should not receive unlimited federal subsidies.

This approach respects federalism while acknowledging reality. The federal government should not draw zoning maps, but it also should not bankroll policies that artificially restrict housing supply and drive up costs nationwide.

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For America’s entire history, home and land ownership have been essential to economic stability, family formation and upward mobility. In previous generations, Americans built accordingly. Today, that commitment has been undermined by regulatory systems that make new housing scarce by design.

Politicians in both parties have wrongly tried to solve these problems in recent years by calling for more subsidies or hatching schemes to make it easier for people to go deeper into debt to purchase a home. But this is terrible economics. When you increase the availability of money without decreasing demand or increasing supply, you end up causing prices to rise rapidly, and that is exactly what has occurred.

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If the housing crisis is going to be solved, states must be forced to change course. And for now, that pressure will have to come from Washington.

If the Trump administration and Congress want to solve the housing crisis, it is time they get tough with states.

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Despite Catholic mission, Notre Dame appoints pro-abortion professor to lead Asian studies institute

The University of Notre Dame announced it has appointed a professor who has publicly supported abortion access to lead its Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies — a move that has drawn scrutiny given the school’s Catholic identity.

Susan Ostermann, who joined Notre Dame in 2017 as a global affairs professor, will assume her role as director of the Asian studies center in July, the university said.

In 2022, Ostermann co-authored an article titled, “Lies about abortion have dictated our health policy,” with former Notre Dame professor Tamara Kay. 

In the article, Ostermann and Kay argued, “Almost 90% of abortions occur during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy when there are no babies or fetuses. There are only blastocysts or embryos so tiny they are too small to be seen on an abdominal ultrasound.”

They also called it a “lie” that abortion is dangerous, writing, “This could not be further from the truth. Research shows abortion is safe and does not have long-term effects on physical or mental health.”

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY IN CHICAGO COVERS ‘ABORTION CARE SERVICES’ THROUGH STUDENT HEALTH PLAN 

The authors further wrote that abortion “doesn’t cause cancer, it doesn’t affect future fertility, and most people feel relief after an abortion and do not regret their decision. Up to 11 weeks, medication abortions are generally performed using mifepristone and misoprostol, which are safer than taking Tylenol.” 

In another 2022 article published by Salon, titled “Forced pregnancy and childbirth are violence against women — and also terrible health policy,” Ostermann and Kay wrote, “Criminalizing abortion results in irreparable harm. In fact, it actually has the opposite policy effect that anti abortion advocates say they want: It can increase abortion rates, unintended pregnancies and infant mortality.”

Additionally, they wrote, “Abortion access is freedom-enhancing, in the truest sense of the word. Consistent with integral human development that emphasizes social justice and human dignity, abortion access respects the inherent dignity of women, their freedom to make choices and to evaluate medical and other risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth.”

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Notre Dame’s position on life issues is published in a 2010 statement on its website, titled, “Institutional Statement Supporting the Choice for Life.” 

It reads, “Consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church on such issues as abortion, research involving human embryos, euthanasia, the death penalty, and other related life issues, the University of Notre Dame recognizes and upholds the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.” 

Notre Dame told Fox News Digital in a statement that Ostermann “is a highly regarded political scientist and legal scholar whose insightful research on regulatory compliance — from forestry conservation in India and Nepal to NSF-funded disaster mitigation in the U.S. territories — demonstrates the rigorous, interdisciplinary expertise required to lead the Liu Institute.”

“A deeply committed educator who has led study abroad programs in Mumbai, she is well prepared to expand the Institute’s global partnerships and create impactful research opportunities that advance our dedication to serving as the preeminent global Catholic research institution,” the university continued. 

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“Those who serve in leadership positions at Notre Dame do so with the clear understanding that their decision-making as leaders must be guided by and consistent with the University’s Catholic mission. Notre Dame’s commitment to upholding the inherent dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life at every stage is unwavering,” the statement added.

Ostermann told Fox News Digital in a statement, “As I step into this role, my primary focus is to serve as a steward for the Liu Institute mission in the context of the University’s larger mission, and a facilitator for our world-class faculty.”

She said she is “fully committed to maintaining an environment of academic freedom where a plurality of voices can flourish. I have long worked with scholars who hold diverse views on a multitude of issues, and I welcome the opportunity to continue doing so. While I hold my own convictions on complex social and legal issues, I want to be clear: my role is to support the diverse research of our scholars and students, not to advance a personal political agenda.” 

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Ostermann added that the “commitment to academic inquiry and mutual respect is deeply rooted in my appreciation for Notre Dame’s identity as a global Catholic research university. I am inspired by the University’s focus on Integral Human Development, which calls us to promote the dignity and flourishing of every person.”

She continued, “I respect Notre Dame’s institutional position on the sanctity of life at every stage. By fostering a collaborative space that values rigorous inquiry, we contribute in important ways to global development and human well-being. As Liu Director, I look forward to working closely with my colleagues to ensure the Liu Institute remains a place where truth is pursued with both excellence and integrity.”

DAVID MARCUS: Don Lemon’s ‘other’ unforgivable crime was against his old profession

Whether Don Lemon broke federal law in his role in an attack on a Minnesota church will be up to a jury, but we can already say he deserves the max for his crime against journalism.

At issue, both in the criminal case and the one in the court of journalistic ethics: Was the former CNN anchor present at the disruption of the church service in St. Paul to document the event or was he participating in it? It was quite clearly the latter.

In the moments prior to the harebrained “protest” in the house of worship that left children in tears, Lemon can be seen outside, on video he took himself, telling his viewers the “operation is a secret,” adding, “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen, but you’re going to watch it live.”

Lemon clearly knows exactly what is going to happen next because he explains why the crowd of agitators is so White and looks “MAGA coded.”

“There is a reason they have so many white people here, I’m going to be honest, for the operation they are doing today, it is important to have allies, White allies here,” Lemon says.

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The only plausible meaning to Lemon’s bizarre leftist gobbledygook above is that the “White allies” among the agitators were there to infiltrate the church service without arousing suspicion until everyone was in place.

At that moment, Lemon was making a fateful choice that should formally end his career in journalism. Instead of choosing to tell his viewers the truth, which he knew, he chose to abet the invasion of a church by agitators.

Lemon could have broken the story, but instead he helped to build it.

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Once the alleged criminal disruption of the church service begins, leaving parishioners shocked and shaken amid piercing screams, Lemon tries to suddenly pretend he’s just a journalist who stumbled on a story. It’s a ridiculous lie.

It is, in fact, very similar to the lie that agitators who physically interfere with ICE operations are just “legal observers,” not participants in the chaos.

During his livestream prior to the disruption of the service, Lemon kept operational security for the group he was supposedly just “covering,” which crosses the brightest line in journalistic ethics.

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By allowing himself to be on the agitators’ “team,” as one of them blatantly says on video, Lemon made himself ineligible to cover them, and the biased results inside the church show exactly why.

Every churchgoer Lemon interviewed, including the pastor trying to tend to his flock in an emergency, was given the third degree about the supposedly evil actions of ICE, while Lemon’s resistance compatriots were not challenged on their disruption.

Lemon has quite clearly convinced himself that President Donald Trump, ICE and all of MAGA are an evil, fascist threat and that his first responsibility is to fight that evil. You might say, “At least he is fairly honest about it.” But it’s not ethical journalism.

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It is possible to do “activist journalism” within an ethical framework. One could argue that James O’Keefe and some other gonzo shock video jocks on the right do so. But what is vital is that they admit they are activists, and they don’t participate in criminal activity.

Lemon and far too many others in journalism on the left have decided that they can somehow be part of the resistance to Trump while also covering it, warts and all, in a fair manner. This has just proven not to be the case.

It has long been argued that the only way to save the journalism industry, which is fundamentally distrusted by 70% of Americans, is for there to be real consequences for ethical violations.

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The First Amendment prohibits the government from meting out consequences for unethical journalism. Only the industry itself can impose them, and that is why Lemon should never be hired by another news organization.

These kinds of harsh penalties are the only way that ethics in journalism can be enforced, and my goodness, are we in desperate need of some serious enforcement.

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There will be reasonable and rigorous debate about the legality of Lemon’s actions in Minnesota as there should be. But there should be no debate regarding his crime against journalism, proven by his own livestream.

It is time for examples to be made, or journalism could lose the trust of the people forever.

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DAN GAINOR: Leftists don’t understand the internet and it’s costing them the culture war

The Left can’t meme. That has been online reality for years. And they get indignant when the right does it. That’s been reality since the beginning of the political era of President Donald Trump. I still remember my favorite Trump meme – the one that redid his WWE appearance, yet turned it into a 2017 presidential smackdown of CNN. Hilarious. More so because of the media freakout.

Fast forward nearly nine years, and Trump is still meming and the press is still fuming. The latest meme pairs Trump with the infamous solitary penguin. The White House combined an iconic image of the penguin marching off on his own with Trump joining him. Add in an American flag and some Greenland mountains with the caption: “Embrace the penguin.”

The response was predictable – a blizzard of angry comments and awful headlines. First the awful: Forbes chimed in with, “TikTok’s ‘Nihilistic Penguin’ Meme, Explained.” Shockingly, they weren’t the only ones to put “nihilistic penguin” in headlines, which hopefully is a first for mankind. USA Today, The Independent and The Week all chimed in with similar word of the day headlines. There hasn’t been this much hatred for the penguin since the last Batman movie.

Then came the berserk ones from the Left. Under the header “Climate Change,” Gizmodo whined, “Trump Urges Americans to Embrace a Suicidal Penguin as ‘Doomsday Clock’ Hits 85 Seconds to Midnight.” The outlet tried to get all sciency by embracing an entirely bogus measure of how near doomsday is. These are the same people who are convinced Mother Nature is big mad at mankind.

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For an added little dig, it wrote: “There aren’t any penguins in Greenland.”

I want to write how no one cares, but clearly some in the press did. So, I’ll stick with no one important cared. There are only about 57,000 people in Greenland. It would have to look like the Opus-filled version of the Falklands (Human population 3,500, sheep population 500,000.) for people to care about the penguins in Greenland. Put another way, Greenland is similar to the population of mega cities like Kalamazoo, Mich., and nearby to me, Gainesville, Ga. But bigger than Alaska and California combined. “Hee Haw” fans, say it with me, “Salute!”

Trump and his multimedia minions don’t care about any of that. They care that they kept the entire world talking Trump and Greenland. And Trump. And the press looked silly freaking out about it. That’s a win, another win, another win. Oh, and a win.

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Sadly, Gizmodo wasn’t the only site made of soulless, humorless scolds – the Karens of the internet. Lefty Mediaite unknowingly embraced the “Ackchyually” meme while complaining, “White House Posts AI Slop of Trump and a Penguin in Greenland, Which Doesn’t Have Penguins.” The Hill went the same route, noting, “Users on social media were quick to mock the White House’s post, pointing out that penguins live almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere.”

The bitter folks at The Daily Beast had to remind their equally bitter readers of Trump’s age in their headline: “Trump, 79, Revives Greenland Fantasy With Absurd AI Post.” Yes, at 79, he’s still better at this game than the entire Daily Beast staff. Newsweek warned, “White House Meme About Greenland Penguin Sparks Jokes, Backlash.” Horrors, not “backlash.” That never happens.

The pre-Trump penguin image comes from a 2007 documentary “Encounters at the End of the World.” The White House responded to the silly media uproar, writing: “The penguin does not concern himself with the opinions of those who cannot comprehend.” That’s a paraphrase of the famous quote, “The lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of the sheep.” Sheep, my lefty journalism friends, means ya’ll.

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Normal online people (i.e., not the Gizmodo staff) also know the penguin is a metaphor. Conservatives, especially conservative men, see the penguin going off on his own as a statement that they don’t have to follow the crowd, that the penguin, “no longer belongs where everyone else is,” as one TikToker phrased it. That he can make his own way in the world.

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That is the essence of Trump’s appeal. The essence of America First, the opposite of the globalist nightmare that exported jobs and imported job takers. The U.S. doesn’t have to do what other nations do. The U.S. doesn’t have to commit cultural suicide, embrace open borders or censor online speech like Europe and the rest of the West. We don’t have to destroy ourselves in a modern version of World War I, like Russia. We can be strong, independent and successful.

We aren’t the 1985 propaganda hit, “We Are the World.” We are the penguin. Trump gets it. The press and their leftist allies never will.

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RT. REV. MARIANN BUDDE, 153 BISHOPS: The question facing America — Whose dignity matters?

We, the undersigned bishops of The Episcopal Church, write today out of grief, righteous anger, and steadfast hope.

What happened a week ago in Minnesota, and is happening in communities across the country, runs counter to God’s vision of justice and peace. This crisis is about more than one city or state — it’s about who we are as a nation. The question before us is simple and urgent:

In the wake of the tragic deaths of two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, we join Minnesotans and people across the nation in mourning two precious lives lost to state-sanctioned violence. We grieve with their families, their friends, and everyone harmed by the government’s policies. When fear becomes policy, everyone suffers.

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We call on Americans to trust their moral compass — and to question rhetoric that trades in fear rather than truth. As Episcopalians, our moral compass is rooted firmly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is what we know: Women were shoved to the ground, children torn from their families, and citizens silenced and demeaned for exercising their constitutional rights. These actions sow fear, cast doubt, and wear communities down with endless noise.

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We cannot presume to speak for everyone or prescribe only one way to respond. For our part, we can only do as Jesus’ teaching shows us.

A Call for Action

This is a moment for action. We call on people of faith to stand by your values and act as your conscience demands.

We urge the immediate suspension of ICE and Border Patrol operations in Minnesota and in any community where militarized enforcement has endangered residents or destroyed public trust.

We also call for transparent, independent investigations of the people killed—investigations centered on truth, not politics. Justice cannot wait, and accountability is essential to healing.

Every act of courage matters. We must keep showing up for one another. We are bound together because we are all made in the image of God. 

We call on the elected officials of our nation to remember the values we share, including the rule of law. Rooted in our Constitution, it ensures that law—not the arbitrary will of individuals—governs us all, protecting individual rights, ensuring fairness, and maintaining stability.

A Shared Commitment

Every act of courage matters. We must keep showing up for one another. We are bound together because we are all made in the image of God. This work begins with small, faithful steps.

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As bishops in The Episcopal Church, we promise to keep showing up — to pray, to speak, and to stand with every person working to make our communities just, safe, and whole. We are committed to making our communities safer and more compassionate:

• So children can walk to school without fear.
• So families can shop, work, and worship freely.
• So we recognize the dignity of every neighbor — immigrant communities, military families, law enforcement officers, nurses, teachers, and essential workers alike.

You may feel powerless, angry, or heartbroken right now. Know that you’re not alone. Each of us has real power: community power, financial power, political power, and knowledge power.

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We can show up for our neighbors, support small businesses and food banks, contact elected officials and vote, and learn our rights so we can speak up peacefully without fear.

Choosing Hope

The question before us is simple and urgent:

Our faith gives a clear answer: Everyone’s.

Safety built on fear is an illusion. True safety comes when we replace fear with compassion, violence with justice, and unchecked power with accountability. That’s the vision our faith calls us to live out — and the promise our country is meant to uphold.

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In the face of fear, we choose hope.

By the grace of God, may this season of grief become a season of renewal. May courage rise from lament, and love take root in every heart.

1. The Rt. Rev Gladstone B. Adams, III, X Bishop of Central New York (Retired)
2. The Rt. Rev. Laura J. Ahrens, Bishop Suffragan of Connecticut
3. The Rt. Rev. Diana D. Akiyama, Bishop of Oregon
4. The Rt. Rev. David A. Alvarez, VI Bishop of Puerto Rico (Retired)
5. The Rt. Rev. Lucinda Beth Ashby, Bishop of El Camino Real
6. The Rt. Rev. David C. Bane, IX Bishop of Southern Virginia (Retired)
7. The Rt. Rev. J. Scott Barker, Bishop of Nebraska
8. The Rt. Rev. Cathleen Bascom, Bishop of Kansas
9. The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Bishop of Indianapolis
10. The Rt. Rev. Nathan D. Baxter, Bishop of Central Pennsylvania (Retired)
11. The Rt. Rev. Mark Beckwith, X Bishop of Newark (Retired)
12. The Rt. Rev. Barry L. Beisner, Bishop Provisional Missionary Diocese of Navajoland
13. The Rt. Rev. Patrick W. Bell, Bishop of Eastern Oregon
14. The Rt. Rev. Scott Anson Benhase, OA, X Bishop of Georgia (Retired)
15. The Rt. Rev. Mark Allen Bourlakas, Assistant Bishop of Virginia
16. The Rt. Rev. Thomas E. Breidenthal, IX Bishop of Southern Ohio (Retired)
17. The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Brooke-Davidson, Assistant Bishop of North Carolina
18. The Rt. Rev. C. Franklin Brookhart, Assisting Bishop of Los Angeles
19. The Rt. Rev. Kevin S. Brown, Bishop of Delaware
20. The Rt. Rev. Thomas J. Brown, Bishop of Maine
21. The Rt. Rev. Susan Brown Snook, Bishop of San Diego
22. The Rt. Rev. Diane M. Jardine Bruce, Bishop Suffragan of Los Angeles (Retired)
23. The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of Washington
24. The Rt. Rev. Elías García Cárdenas, Bishop of Colombia
25. The Rt. Rev. Paula E. Clark, Bishop of Chicago
26. The Rt. Rev. Angela Maria Cortiñas, Bishop Suffragan of West Texas
27. The Rt. Rev. Matthew Cowden, Bishop of West Virginia
28. The Rt. Rev. James E. Curry, Bishop Suffragan of Connecticut (Retired)
29. The Rt. Rev. Michael B. Curry, XXVII Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (Retired)
30. The Rt. Rev. Joe Morris Doss, X Bishop of New Jersey (Retired)
31. The Rt. Rev. Ian T. Douglas, Assisting Bishop of Massachusetts
32. The Rt. Rev. DeDe Duncan-Probe, Bishop of Central New York
33. The Rt. Rev. J. Zache Duracin, Bishop of Haiti (Retired)
34. The Rt. Rev. Mark D.W. Edington, Bishop in charge of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe
35. The Rt. Rev. Dan Edwards, XII Bishop of Nevada (Retired)
36. The Rt. Rev. C. Christopher Epting, VIII Bishop of Iowa (Retired)
37. The Rt. Rev. Douglas Fisher, Bishop of Western Massachusetts
38. The Rt. Rev. Jeff W. Fisher, Bishop Suffragan of Texas
39. The Rt. Rev. Robert L. Fitzpatrick, Bishop of Hawai’i
40. The Rt. Rev. James E. Folts, VIII Bishop of West Texas (Retired)
41. The Rt. Rev. Jonathan H. Folts, Bishop of South Dakota
42. The Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin, Assisting Bishop of Long Island
43. The Rt. Rev. Sally French, Bishop of New Jersey
44. The Rt. Rev. J. Michael Garrison, X Bishop of Western New York (Retired)
45. The Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates, XVI Bishop of Massachusetts (Retired)
46. The Rt. Rev. Wendell N. Gibbs, Assisting Bishop of Southern Ohio
47. The Rt. Rev. Mary D. Glasspool, Assisting Bishop of Massachusetts
48. The Rt. Rev. Susan E. Goff, Bishop Suffragan of Virginia (Retired)
49. The Rt. Rev. William O. Gregg, VI Bishop of Eastern Oregon (Retired)
50. The Rt. Rev. Daniel G. P. Gutiérrez, Bishop of Pennsylvania
51. The Rt. Rev. Douglas Hahn, VII Bishop of Lexington (Retired)
52. The Rt. Rev. Michael Hanley, X Bishop of Oregon (Retired)
53. The Rt. Rev. John T.W. Harmon, Bishop of Arkansas
54. The Rt. Rev. Gayle Elizabeth Harris, Assistant Bishop of Virginia
55. The Rt. Rev. Scott B. Hayashi, XI Bishop of Utah (Retired)
56. The Rt. Rev. Susan B. Haynes, Bishop of Southern Virginia
57. The Rt. Rev. Matthew Heyd, Bishop of New York
58. The Rt. Rev. Rayford B. High, Jr., Bishop Suffragan of Texas (Retired)
59. The Rt. Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr., XI Bishop of Ohio (Retired)
60. The Rt. Rev. Barry R. Howe, VII Bishop of West Missouri (Retired)
61. The Rt. Rev. Carlye J. Hughes, Bishop of Newark
62. The Rt. Rev. Michael B. Hunn, Bishop of the Rio Grande
63. The Rt. Rev. Robert W. Ihloff, XIII Bishop of Maryland (Retired)
64. The Rt. Rev. James I. Jelinek, VIII Bishop of Minnesota (Retired)
65. The Rt. Rev. Don E. Johnson, III Bishop of West Tennessee (Retired)
66. The Rt. Rev. Deon Johnson, Bishop of Missouri
67. The Rt. Rev. Anne B. Jolly, Bishop of Ohio
68. The Rt. Rev. Charles I. Jones, VII Bishop of Montana (Retired)
69. The Rt. Rev. David Colin Jones, Bishop Suffragan of Virginia (Retired)
70. The Rt. Rev. W. Michie Klusmeyer, VII Bishop of West Virginia (Retired)
71. The Rt. Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely, SOSc, Bishop of Rhode Island
72. The Rt. Rev. Chilton Knudsen, VIII Bishop of Maine (Retired)
73. The Rt. Rev. James E. Krotz, IX Bishop of Nebraska (Retired)
74. The Rt. Rev. Philip N. LaBelle, Bishop of Olympia
75. The Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane, Bishop Provisional of Western New York,
76. The Rt. Rev. Mark Lattime, Bishop of Alaska,
77. The Rt. Rev. Jeffrey Lee, XII Bishop of Chicago (Retired)
78. The Rt. Rev. Edward L. Lee, Jr., Bishop of the Great Lakes (Retired)
79. The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue, Bishop of Georgia
80. The Rt. Rev. Craig Loya, Bishop of Minnesota
81. The Rt. Rev. Kym Lucas, Bishop of Colorado
82. The Rt. Rev. Shannon MacVean-Brown, Bishop of Vermont
83. The Rt. Rev. F. Clayton Matthews, Bishop Suffragan of Virginia (Retired)
84. The Rt. Rev. J. Scott Mayer, Bishop of Northwest Texas
85. The Rt. Rev. Dorsey McConnell, VIII Bishop of Pittsburgh (Retired)
86. The Rt. Rev. Jack McKelvey, VII Bishop of Rochester (Retired)
87. The Rt. Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello, Bishop of Connecticut
88. The Rt. Rev. Juan Carlos Quiñonez Mera, Bishop of Central Ecuador
89. The Rt. Rev. Rodney Michel, Bishop Suffragan of Long Island (Retired)
90. The Rt. Rev. Betsey Monnot, Bishop of Iowa
91. The Rt. Rev. Robert O’Neill, X Bishop of Colorado (Retired)
92. The Rt. Rev. Todd Ousley, Bishop Provisional of Wyoming
93. The Rt. Rev. Jacob W. Owensby, Bishop of Western Louisiana
94. The Rt. Rev. George E. Packard, Bishop Suffragan of Armed Forces and Federal Ministries (Retired)
95. The Rt. Rev. Bonnie A. Perry, Bishop of Michigan
96. The Rt. Rev. Kenneth L. Price, Jr., Assisting Bishop of Southern Ohio
97. The Rt. Rev. Brian N. Prior, X Bishop of Minnesota (Retired)
98. The Rt. Rev. Lawrence C. Provenzano, Bishop of Long Island
99. The Rt. Rev. John Rabb, Bishop Suffragan of Maryland (Retired)
100. The Rt. Rev. Rayford J. Ray, Bishop of Northern Michigan
101. The Rt. Rev. David G. Read, Bishop of West Texas
102. The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Reddall, Bishop of Arizona
103. The Rt. Rev. Poulson Reed, Bishop of Oklahoma
104. The Rt. Rev. Gretchen Rehberg, Bishop of Spokane
105. The Rt. Rev. David Rice, Bishop of San Joaquin
106. The Rt. Rev. Austin K. Rios, Bishop of California
107. The Rt. Rev. Ann Ritonia, Bishop Suffragan of Armed Forces and Federal Ministries for the Episcopal Church
108. The Rt. Rev. Bavi (Nedi) Rivera, VII Bishop of Eastern Oregon (Retired)
109. The Rt. Rev. Phoebe A. Roaf, Bishop of West Tennessee
110. The Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, IX Bishop of New Hampshire (Retired)
111. The Rt. Rev. Samuel S. Rodman, Bishop Diocesan of North Carolina
112. The Rt. Rev. Catherine S. Roskam, Bishop Suffragan of New York (Retired)
113. The Rt. Rev. Kathryn M. Ryan, Bishop Suffragan of Texas
114. The Rt. Rev. Audrey C. Scanlan, Bishop Diocesan of the Susquehanna
115. The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, IX Bishop of Iowa (Retired)
116. The Rt. Rev. Carrie Schofield-Broadbent, Bishop of Maryland
117. The Rt. Rev. Gordon P. Scruton, VIII Bishop of Western Massachusetts, (Retired)
118. The Rt. Rev. Brian Seage, Assisting Bishop of Texas
119. The Rt. Rev. James J. Shand, X Bishop of Easton (Retired)
120. The Rt. Rev. Kara Wagner Sherer, Bishop of Rochester
121. The Rt. Rev. Allen Shin, Bishop Suffragan of New York
122. The Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, XV Bishop of New York (Retired)
123. The Most Rev. Melissa M. Skelton, Bishop Provisional of Olympia (Retired)
124. The Rt. Rev. Rob Skirving, Bishop of East Carolina
125. The Rt. Rev. John McKee Sloan, XI Bishop of Alabama (Retired)
126. The Rt. Rev. William E. Smalley, VIII Bishop of Kansas (Retired)
127. The Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith, XIV Bishop of Connecticut (Retired)
128. The Rt. Rev. George Wayne Smith, X Bishop of Missouri (Retired)
129. The Rt. Rev. Douglas E. Sparks, Bishop of Northern Indiana
130. The Rt. Rev. Phyllis Spiegel, Bishop of Utah
131. The Rt. Rev. Marty Stebbins, Bishop Diocesan of Montana
132. The Rt. Rev. E. Mark Stevenson, Bishop Diocesan of Virginia
133. The Rt. Rev. William H. Stokes, XII Bishop of New Jersey (Retired)
134. The Rt. Rev. George Sumner, XII Bishop of Dallas (Retired)
135. The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, Assisting Bishop of Washington
136. The Rt. Rev. G. Porter Taylor, VI Bishop of Western North Carolina (Retired)
137. The Rt. Rev. John Harvey Taylor, Bishop of Los Angeles
138. The Rt. Rev. Jos Tharakan, Bishop of Idaho
139. The Rt. Rev. Brian Thom, Bishop of North Dakota
140. The Rt. Rev. Morris K. Thompson, Jr., XI Bishop of Louisiana (Retired)
141. The Rt. Rev. John S. Thornton, XI Bishop of Idaho (Retired)
142. The Rt. Rev. Martin G.Townsend, IX Bishop of Easton (Retired)
143. The Rt. Rev. Megan Traquair, Bishop of Northern California
144. The Rt. Rev. Michael L. Vono, IX Bishop of the Rio Grande (Retired)
145. The Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon, IX Bishop in charge of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe (Retired)
146. The Rt. Rev. Kristin Uffelman White, Bishop of Southern Ohio
147. The Rt. Rev. Keith B. Whitmore, V Bishop of Eau Claire (Retired)
148. The Rt. Rev. Julia E. Whitworth, Bishop Diocesan of Massachusetts
149. The Rt. Rev. Arthur B. Williams, Jr., Bishop Suffragan of Ohio (Retired)
150. The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah D. Williamson, Bishop of Albany
151. The Rt. Rev. Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, Bishop of South Carolina
152. The Rt. Rev. Wayne P. Wright, X Bishop of Delaware (Retired)
153. The Rt. Rev. Rob Wright, Bishop of Atlanta
154. The Rt. Rev. George D. Young, III, III Bishop of East Tennessee (Retired)

BROADCAST BIAS: Media circle the wagons to protect their anti-Trump reporting

The liberal media includes a cadre of media reporters who see their jobs as waging war on any media owner or executive who might move their outlet ever so slightly toward the center. They’re very happy to find their allies inside newsrooms and grant them anonymity to trash anyone who doesn’t see their job as impeaching and jailing President Donald Trump and describing everyone who works for him as Gestapo equivalents.

CBS News under new owner David Ellison and his hand-picked Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss became a hot topic again this week when Weiss held an all-staff meeting to clear the air with all the anonymous sources who are trashing her behind her back. The Daily Beast headline captured their tilt: “MAGA-curious CBS boss dares defiant staffers to quit in tense all-hands.” Their headlines on new evening news host Tony Dokoupil tag him as “MAGA-coded.”

Critics of this new regime love to predict doom around the corner. The Ringer literally cartooned Weiss’s CBS as “pancaked, Wile E. Coyote–style, against the side of the mountain.” Variety’s CBS sources described the network being on the verge of a “death spiral” that is “hard to reverse.” CBS News has been in third place for decades, and their audience continues to decline, but only adding viewpoint diversity is “death spiral” material.

Weiss was blunt about the declining appeal of traditional media. “We are not producing a product enough people want,” she said. She sounds a lot like other network chieftains in the realization that most younger Americans don’t watch TV news or listen to traditional radio. They’ll have to grab them in some other format. The “graying” of the audience is a hard fact.

BARI WEISS SUGGESTS CECOT ’60 MINUTES’ PIECE SHE DELAYED WASN’T ‘FAIR’ IN MEMO TO STAFFERS

But the liberal hardliners can’t abide trying to find new audiences by including dissenting opinions, or “news judgment” that isn’t fervently anti-Trump. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik relied on eight anonymous CBS complainers. Some were outraged that the “CBS Evening News” brushed over the fifth anniversary of January 6 in less than a minute, but ended the program with a light, jokey segment about memes of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Dokoupil offended the insiders by concluding, “Marco Rubio, we salute you.”

The traditional CBS approach can be seen on their “Sunday Morning” program a year ago, on January 12, 2025, when CBS reporter Martha Teichner celebrated then-President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, under the headline “Man Of The World.” Teichner, a classmate of Hillary Clinton’s at Wellesley, gushed over Blinken “photo bombing” a picture of female foreign ministers at a NATO meeting, and celebrated Blinken as a square. He “promoted music diplomacy — by performing the Muddy Waters blues standard ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ in a suit and tie.” Saluting Democrats is the norm.

The bias-boosting media reporters are also upset at Washington Post CEO Will Lewis, who is expected to announce mass layoffs any day now, with expected cuts to sports and foreign coverage, which do not click profitably. Making a newspaper less broad-based may be the wrong strategy, but it’s fascinating to see journalists blame the owners and the “business side.”

BARI WEISS TELLS STAFF ’60 MINUTES’ CECOT STORY WASN’T READY, SAYS DISRESPECT AMONG COLLEAGUES IS UNACCEPTABLE

Former Post reporter Ashley Parker tweeted: “I don’t understand how laying off a bunch of talented and hardworking journalists solves what is fundamentally a publisher and business side problem. The Post deserves better.” An anonymous Postie claimed: “The newsroom is being punished for absolute incompetence from the owner and publisher.”

It’s better for journalists to stay anonymous when they accuse a self-made billionaire of incompetence. All this makes journalists look like an entitled class of brats. When people stop buying the newspaper and they lose $100 million a year, don’t blame “talented journalists,” it’s a “business side problem.”

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Glenn Kessler, the Post’s former fact-checker, spoke for the reporters when he told Fox News Digital: “Many have dedicated their professional careers to the Post and are worried an important American institution is being dismantled.” But would it be “dismantled” by layoffs, or by appearing more friendly to Trump?

The same internal panic is happening at “public broadcasting” networks in the aftermath of Trump and the Republicans canceling their taxpayer funding. PBS just canceled its “PBS News Weekend” show and created instead two weekend programs that don’t require any weekend staff.

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But the liberal hardliners can’t abide trying to find new audiences by including dissenting opinions, or “news judgment” that isn’t fervently anti-Trump. 

NPR posted a long, screechy article by 19 correspondents about how Trump is engaged in “a sweeping expansion of executive power while eroding democratic norms.” Under a propagandistic graphic of Trump pulling an electric plug out of the wall, NPR charged, “Trump has targeted freedom of speech, attempting to control and change information,” including the defunding of public media. 

These media activists equate their own attack journalism with “democratic norms,” as if “democracy” is defined as trashing Republicans and helping Democrats win as many elections as possible. No one should challenge their ideological “control” of information, or they’re a troop of tyrants.

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Fix is in in Minnesota, where anti-ICE federal judge leaves his lane to side with mob

Patrick Schiltz serves as chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Schiltz has presided over several disputes relating to Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. Recently, for instance, he became embroiled in the battle over the proposed arrest of Don Lemon after he and his anti-ICE friends allegedly stormed a St. Paul church. Schiltz absurdly delayed ruling on whether to overturn a magistrate judge’s decision not to issue an arrest warrant for Lemon, claiming that he would rule on overturning the magistrate within a week. Thankfully, Attorney General Pam Bondi has now obtained an indictment of Lemon from a grand jury, but Schiltz made things more difficult for no particularly good reason.

Another clash almost occurred involving Schiltz and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons this week. Schiltz was furious that a detainee had not been released and ordered Lyons to appear for a Friday hearing with the possibility of a contempt citation in play. “The Court’s patience is at an end,” Schiltz ominously wrote. The detainee is now free, so the Friday showdown is off. It is easy to fathom how future conflict could arise, and Schiltz should not preside over some immigration-related cases.

Earlier this week, Bill Melugin of Fox News reported that Schiltz and his wife Elizabeth had donated and volunteered for the Minnesota Immigrant Legal Center (MILC). MILC provides representation for immigrants in court, as do other legal aid organizations. Schiltz acknowledged to Fox News that he and his wife have donated to MILC for a long time. He compared it to his donations to Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, an organization that provides representation and services for the poor.

There is a crucial distinction between the two organizations, however. MILC does not simply ensure that immigrants are represented in court. It also advocates in favor of and against various immigration policies. For instance, it branded President Trump’s early executive orders on immigration as “cruel and inhumane” in a Jan. 24, 2025, press release. Suppose that one of those executive orders were to come before Schiltz in a case where an immigrant was challenging its legality.

The judicial recusal standard is codified in 28 U.S.C. § 455. A judge must recuse when, among other things, there is an appearance of impropriety. In other words, recusal is required if a reasonable person, familiar with all relevant facts, would question the judge’s ability to be fair and impartial. This standard also appears in Canon 3(C) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. That is absolutely the case here. Just as a judge who had donated to the Equal Rights Campaign has no business overseeing gay rights litigation, a judge who has donated to an open borders advocacy organization has no business overseeing immigration cases.

Moreover, Schiltz and his fellow district judges should not even be presiding over immigration detention cases because they are barred by statute from doing so. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 dictates that immigrants must litigate their removal proceedings before immigration courts. District courts lack jurisdiction to decide removal issues. The Third Circuit recently reversed a leftist New Jersey judge’s intervention in the case of Hamas supporter Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University. The district judge had enjoined Khalil’s deportation, but the Third Circuit correctly held that district courts lack jurisdiction in these cases.

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If Schiltz adopted this position, he would not need to worry about recusal due to his MILC donations. He and all other district judges should stop intervening in deportation cases where jurisdiction is improper. In the meantime, Schiltz should recuse from such cases and others concerning President Trump’s executive orders that the group with which he has affiliated for many years has characterized as “cruel and inhumane.” If he doesn’t, higher courts will need to step in to maintain the integrity of the judicial process.

DR. BEN CARSON: Patients should never fear political bias in healthcare

We all have deeply-held beliefs, and, thankfully, we live in a nation where we can freely express our ideas without fear of government oppression. That freedom is one of our nation’s greatest strengths. But freedom also comes with responsibility — especially for those entrusted with the lives of others. Recently, several shocking incidents have brought to light a disturbing trend: Doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals are putting politics and ideology ahead of their duty to protect the health and safety of their patients. 

The examples are legion. A nurse in Florida posted on TikTok wishing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt a severe fourth-degree tear during childbirth. 

A nurse in Virginia uploaded a video suggesting ways to injure ICE agents, urging viewers to “make their lives miserable.” Detectives in New York City who were injured while making an arrest were reportedly treated rudely and disrespectfully by hospital workers because staff suspected that they were ICE agents. 

Even internationally, in Sydney, Australia, two healthcare workers threatened to kill an Israeli man and claimed they had harmed Jewish patients in their care. Antisemitic conduct by health care providers in Britain is so pervasive that the secretary of state for Health and Social Care admitted it was “completely failing to protect Jewish patients.” These incidents are more than just shocking, unacceptable lapses in judgment. They are violations of the trust and ethical responsibility that are central to medicine. 

CHRISTIAN NURSE WHO FACED ‘RACIAL ABUSE’ FROM TRANSGENDER PATIENT REINSTATED AFTER SUSPENSION

Trust and morality are the bedrock of good healthcare. Unfortunately, that trust has already been tested and broken in recent years. The poor handling of COVID-19, combined with widespread misinformation about vaccines and the efficacy of masking, to name just two, left many Americans skeptical of the health care providers and the public health establishment generally. 

Now, when medical professionals publicly express hostility or wish harm on individuals, it deepens a rift that puts the public at risk. Common sense tells us that no one should have to worry that a healthcare provider’s political or religious beliefs will affect their ability to care. Yet these incidents make that concern all too real. 

Medical misconduct includes breaches of ethical duty and intentional bias. When health care professionals publicly wish harm on someone they have never met, they violate the most fundamental principles of their profession. How can patients be expected to trust a system in which those entrusted with their lives might treat them differently because of their views, religion or background? And what happens when a patient challenges them or is perceived to be “difficult”? Because of this fear, patients may delay seeking care or choose to avoid care entirely. This breach of trust is a tangible threat to public health.

During my years as a neurosurgeon, I treated patients from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs and personalities. None of that mattered on the operating table. Medicine demands that doctors and nurses set aside personal biases and focus entirely on the well-being of the patient. If your mind is occupied with judgments about a patient’s beliefs or lifestyle, you simply cannot practice good medicine. 

An injured drunk driver must receive the same level of care as the people they injured in an accident. Anything less is unethical and unlawful. Indeed, even in warfare — where the stakes are literally life and death — battlefield medics are under ethical and legal obligations to treat enemy wounded so long as the wounded no longer presents a military threat. 

At the heart of the matter, we have drifted as a society from the moral compass and principles of faith on which our nation was founded. Without a higher authority such as God determining the inherent value of human life, the value of life becomes subjective and changeable. 

Medical professionals hold a unique position of power and trust, and with that comes a higher standard of accountability. Using one’s professional status to promote harm, encourage violence or suggest that certain people deserve mistreatment is utterly unacceptable. Those who engage in this behavior should face severe consequences, including loss of their license and employment. The public relies on healthcare providers to act in the best interest of every patient, regardless of personal beliefs. 

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Violations of professional ethics must carry real consequences, including revocation of medical licenses and job termination, so that others understand that these behaviors are intolerable.

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Ultimately, the health care industry exists to heal people, not to advance political agendas. Professionals who cannot meet this standard should not be entrusted with the health and lives of others. Protecting trust in healthcare is not optional; it is essential to the safety and well-being of all Americans. It does us no good to have amazing ways to heal the sick if patients do not trust us to act in their best interests, regardless of any other factor. 

The medical profession demands more than skill. It demands character, integrity and compassion. If we allow personal beliefs to compromise care, we risk lives. Common sense, foundational faith and ethical responsibility must guide our healthcare system if we hope to maintain trust and ensure that every patient is treated with dignity, respect, and the care they deserve.

GREGG JARRETT: Don Lemon left his press pass at the door when he joined church-storming mob

It is a popular fallacy that freedom of the press enshrined in the First Amendment is absolute. It is not and never has been.

The recent arrest of podcaster Don Lemon on federal criminal charges that he willingly joined a mob of anti-ICE protesters who stormed a St. Paul, Minnesota church during Sunday services will inevitably test well-established limits on press freedoms. 

Journalists, however defined, cannot, without legal consequences engage in incitement, defamation, obscenity, threatened violence, national security breaches, and the commission of crimes.  

Calling yourself a “journalist” or claiming that you are simply “committing journalism,” as Lemon has done, is not a defense. It is your  that the law examines. Both words and actions can reveal your intent.

MINNESOTA AG KEITH ELLISON DENIES DON LEMON, ANTI-ICE PROTESTERS VIOLATED FACE ACT AS DOJ MULLS CHARGES

This is why Lemon has found himself in criminal jeopardy. His own digital videos seem to incriminate him.  

In footage that Lemon posted online, it appears that he was not merely an observer recording the illegal protest inside the church, which would be a typical role of a reporter. Instead, he seemed to be an active participant who embedded himself with the mob and joined their cause in harassing and tormenting the parishioners.

Lemon confronted the pastor with contentious questions, the same way that the agitators accosted stunned —and perhaps fearful — congregates. You can see and hear him arguing on their behalf that they were allowed to invade the church, disrupt the service, and shutdown worshipers under the guise of the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

DON LEMON COULD BE PROSECUTED FOR EMBEDDING WITH PROTESTERS AT MINNESOTA CHURCH, LEGAL ANALYST SAYS

Not surprisingly, Lemon’s arrogant lecture shows a stunning ignorance of the law. Free speech is no more absolute than freedom of the press. 

In America, the right to protest does not extend to private property and certainly not to houses of worship. By law, they are protected places — secured spaces where people of all faiths can exercise their other First Amendment right to practice their religion without punishment or persecution.  

There are several federal statutes that afford protection. The Klan Act of 1871 makes it a crime for anyone to conspire to intimidate and interfere with the civil rights of congregants. A different act codified in 18 USC 247 prohibits the intentional obstruction, by force or threat of force, of any person’s free exercise of religious beliefs.

DON LEMON TAPS HUNTER BIDEN’S ATTORNEY TO FIGHT TRUMP DOJ CHARGES

However, the indictment charges Lemon with conspiring to deprive others of their civil rights and violating the FACE Act (18 USC 248). Section 2 of that law strictly protects places of worship from threats, intimidation and interference.

Predictable outrage over the charges was voiced immediately by Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, who declared that it was an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.” It was an ironic statement, given that worshipers were attacked for exercising  First Amendment religious rights.

Lowell, who represented Hunter Biden in two criminal cases resulting in convictions and guilty pleas, invoked Lemon’s right as a journalist to cover events of newsworthy interest.

JONATHAN TURLEY: WHEN MINNESOTA AG ELLISON EXCUSES MOB RULE, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS TRAMPLED

But is that what he was really doing? It is the core question that will be central in any forthcoming trial. Was Lemon acting as a journalist? Or did he shed that role and, by his behavior, join the mob as a willing participant? This is where his actions and words become pivotal.  

Based on video footage, Lemon knew of the protesters’ plan to barge into the church and take over morning prayers. He admitted that he had done “reconnaissance” with them, some of whom were members of Minnesota Black Lives Matter. He handed out donuts and coffee to the demonstrators and vowed to accompany them on their “Operation Pull-Up.” 

As activists rushed into the Cities Church, so did Lemon who shoved his microphone in the face of the obviously shocked Pastor Jonathan Parnell who called the noisy intrusion “unacceptable and shameful.” What followed wasn’t an interview, but a condescending and belligerent dressing-down.

THE CHURCH IS HOLY GROUND, NOT A STAGE FOR THE LEFT’S POLITICAL RAGE

“There’s such a thing as a Constitution and a First Amendment,” lectured Lemon, unaware that churches are protected venues and that such an antagonistic invasion constituted the crimes of trespass, disorderly conduct, disturbing a religious meeting, and violations of the FACE Act.

Whether Lemon behaved as a journalist or not is arguably irrelevant. Churches are private property, not public spaces.  Access is restricted. An invitation to the general public to worship does not give rise to a right to disrupt services.  Even assuming that Lemon acted as a journalist, he still committed a criminal trespass.

Indeed, when a parishioner objected that Lemon and the mob were trespassing, he glibly replied, “Nobody’s fighting.” That, of course, is not the litmus test for trespass. In another video, he boasted that the whole point of ruining the church service was “to make people uncomfortable.” He clearly shared that goal with the mob.

BROADCAST BIAS: NETWORKS SIDE WITH CHURCH INVADERS, CALL ATTACK MOSTLY ‘PEACEFUL’

Later, Lemon appeared on a leftist podcast and described the members of the church as “entitled white supremacists,” as if that somehow justified an attack on them. It is not just a despicable remark, but it suggests that the congregants were taunted because of their race, which could qualify as a hate crime.   

After Lemon learned that he was the subject of a criminal investigation, he suddenly embraced the mantle of victimhood by stating, “I’m the biggest name there.” As he has done before, he claimed that he was being targeted because he’s a “gay black man.”

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In our system of justice, Lemon enjoys the presumption of innocence. The case against him will not be an easy one to prosecute. Lowell is an able lawyer who will mount a formidable defense in casting reasonable doubt. He will also file a myriad of pre-trial motions challenging the indictment itself.

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If the case does go to trial, the outcome may further define the limits of what journalists can and cannot do in the pursuit of stories. Good reporters know that their job is to cover events, not to participate in or influence them.  

Lemon, who was fired from CNN, never seemed to understand this basic tenet of journalism.

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DAVID MARCUS: Why Melania and her fans deserve her silver screen star turn

Something that pretty much any honest observer should be able to admit is that if Melania Trump were the first lady of a Democrat president, she would be the greatest fashion and style icon since Jackie Kennedy.

On Friday, “Melania,” a documentary about the first lady and the 20 days leading to the 2025 inauguration of President Trump opens in theaters nationwide, putting her squarely in the spotlight for once.

It is frankly remarkable, given that Melania is literally a fashion model, that while former presidents’ wives such as Jill Biden and Michelle Obama regularly graced glamorous magazine covers, Mrs. Trump is treated as the icy foreigner when she isn’t just ignored completely.

This cold shoulder from the legacy fashion and social pages, while obvious, does not mean that the first lady doesn’t have a lot of loyal fans. Quite the opposite: Among Trump supporters, especially women, she is wildly popular.

GUCCI HEIRESS LAUNCHES NEW ‘UNITY’ HANDBAG WITH PROCEEDS BENEFITING MELANIA TRUMP’S ‘FOSTERING THE FUTURE’

At Turning Point USA’s AmFest in Phoenix last month, many of the women I spoke with, mothers in particular, could not hold Melania in higher esteem, both as fashion icon and as someone with sway over the president.

One woman, in a sparkly custom MAGA jacket told me, “I think Melania is the only one Trump really listens to.”

The fans of the first lady are clearly the potential moviegoers that Amazon studios is after with the ambitious project, even though no matter how many see the movie, we all know it will be treated as a flop, a failure and a joke.

VANITY FAIR EDITOR RAGES OVER POTENTIAL MELANIA TRUMP COVER, PREDICTS HALF THE EDITORIAL STAFF ‘WILL WALK’

In fact, the debasement of ‘Melania” has already begun. Take, for example, a USA Today headline that blares, “Mocking Melania Trump’s documentary is an act of patriotism.”

The author of this strange and unhinged column asks, “For starters, there’s the question of why. Why do we need this documentary? Who asked for it, aside from the film’s namesake? And who cares?”

This elitist attitude on the left, while not surprising from writers such as this, who have likely never met a Trump supporter, answers the question. People need or want this Melania documentary because these leftists blacklist her from everything else.

MELANIA TRUMP OPENS UP ABOUT SON BARRON’S CAMPAIGN ROLE, LIFE BEHIND THE SCENES BEFORE 2025 INAUGURATION

The cultural institutions of our country and the Western world are still controlled by the left, and though their power over the populace is waning, they retain goodies and prizes to hand out that are for true believers only.

This is how President Trump can settle wars across the globe, and yet we know he won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s how the New York Post can break the Hunter Biden laptop story without a whisper of a Pulitzer, and it’s how the most stunning first lady in a generation can’t get on any magazine covers.

The film is already being knocked as a “vanity project,” but when entire cultural industries are blacklisting a person, as they are with Melania, how else can you reach your fans and tell your story?

MELANIA TRUMP TO RECEIVE PATRIOT OF THE YEAR HONOR AT FOX NATION’S PATRIOT AWARDS

I have no idea how many people will see “Melania.” I do know whatever the number is will be mocked, but for the millions of Americans who admire the first lady, who want to know more about her and role in the White House, the movie is a very rare treat.

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The larger problem of anti-conservative bigotry and censorship in our cultural institutions will take a long time to fix, but there are positive signs. Recent shakeups in the venerated halls of such places as CBS News, the Trump Kennedy Center and Florida’s university system, for example, seem to annoy all the right, or should I say, lefty, people.

Other institutions, like fashion magazines, Hollywood and late-night TV, well, they still have quite a ways to go to achieve fairness and balance.

MELANIA TRUMP NAMED FOX NATION’S ‘PATRIOT OF THE YEAR’ FOR GLOBAL CHILDREN’S ADVOCACY WORK

President Trump is fond of noting that the attacks he suffers are really meant for his supporters, that he is just the one standing in the way. On some level, the same can be said of his wife.

Melania Trump is the stand-in for women who prioritize their husbands and families, who are accomplished but do not insist on honorifics, who go to church but can also rock stilettos and seductive gowns when the situation calls for it.

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These are women who are mainly mocked in our society, and yet behind the scenes, they make much of our society function, a role many think Melania Trump plays in the White House, as well.

So, good for Melania and good for her fans. They deserve this star turn, and if it makes a bunch of whiny liberals upset, then that’s just the tiara on top.

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Democrats can run, but they can’t hide: An immigration reckoning is next in 2028

How Democrats’ fear of enforcing the law led us to this point.

At 5:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, pounding on the front door jolted Johana Gutierrez and Salvador Alfaro awake as flashlights cut through their windows and voices shouted from outside. Inside, their children and relatives were asleep. Minutes later, armed men were standing in their living room.

The children, still in their pajamas, were crying and shaking as agents searched the home room by room — the bedrooms, the kitchen, the laundry room, even the garage. When Gutierrez reached for her phone, she was told not to move. When she offered to get identification, an agent rested his hand on his gun. She was threatened with arrest.

There was no judicial warrant. No emergency. The agents had entered by deception.

DEMOCRATIC SENATOR CALLS OUT PARTY ‘BULL—-‘ FOR CAVING TO ‘SECURE THE BORDER’ TALK

By the time they left, a mother and her 10-year-old son were gone — taken away in unmarked cars to a detention center.

This was not Donald Trump’s America. It was Barack Obama’s.

The raid was part of a 2016 ICE operation that apprehended 121 people — mostly mothers and children — with final deportation orders. The ACLU called it “a mockery of due process.” Inside the Democratic Party, scenes like this left a lasting scar.

They also left behind a political myth: that Obama-era immigration enforcement was gentle, restrained or fundamentally different from what came before or after.

THE SUPREME COURT IS GOING TO GIVE PRESIDENT TRUMP A MAJOR OPENING ON IMMIGRATION

It wasn’t.

Obama never pretended enforcement was painless. “As long as the current laws are on the books,” he said in a 2011 speech in El Paso, “it’s not just hardened felons who are subject to removal, but sometimes families… or decent people with the best of intentions. We don’t relish the pain that it causes.”

He didn’t capitulate to interest groups or activists in the face of their criticism. He doubled down and enforced the law anyway.

Tom Homan — now Trump’s border czar — ran deportation operations under Obama. He was awarded one of the highest civil service honors by Obama’s DHS for removals that were described as “impressive and wide-reaching in scope.” Obama didn’t just inherit ICE’s machinery. He modernized it, expanded it and made it more effective.

Trump didn’t invent aggressive interior enforcement. Trump 1.0 exploited it — and weaponized it — adding cruelty, chaos and family separation to a system that already existed.

Inside the Democratic Party, however, Obama’s record became radioactive. “Deporter-in-Chief” wasn’t just a nickname. It was a warning label for anyone running for president in 2020.

JONATHAN TURLEY: DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS ARE RISKING LIVES WITH RECKLESS ANTI-ICE RHETORIC

And Joe Biden paid the price for it.

I saw it up close. Our campaign was hyper-sensitive — sometimes paralyzed — around immigration. Whenever the issue came up, Biden and Dr. Jill Biden emphasized humanity, restraint and decency. The message was clear: Biden would not be Trump. And he would not be Obama either.

In 1988, when George H.W. Bush promised a “kinder and gentler America,” Nancy Reagan famously turned to the person next to her and asked, “Kinder than who?” In 2020, our campaign answered that question preemptively.

DEM SENATOR WARNER ADMITS BIDEN ‘SCREWED UP’ THE BORDER, BUT CLAIMS ICE NOW TARGETING NON-CRIMINALS

But in the White House, the rhetoric became policy. And policy became a catastrophe.

Biden’s hyper-correction away from both Trump’s and Obama’s enforcement models produced one of the gravest political and governing failures of his presidency. By dismantling deterrence, narrowing enforcement, and signaling retreat, our administration helped create the conditions for system-wide collapse, and ultimately, Trump’s return to power.

Biden didn’t cause global instability, regional violence, or economic desperation. But he did choose to govern in a way that prioritized intraparty accommodation and reassurance over systemic credibility. And once credibility is gone, it is brutally hard to recover.

For nearly two decades now, Democrats have been stuck in a civil war over enforcement. We pretend the argument is about compassion versus cruelty. It isn’t. It’s about whether a governing party can say, out loud, that enforcement is not a moral failure — it is a prerequisite for a functioning system.

Both Obama and Biden knew the truth: there is no executive solution to America’s immigration challenge. We are still operating under a 1986 law for a reason. Fixing it requires legislation. Legislation requires cooperation and compromise. And compromise is hard.

Instead, Democrats have turned ICE into a moral proxy war.

Not “How should it be reformed?” Not “What should its mission be?” But a loyalty test: Are you for abolishing it? Or are you willing to fund it?

Every appropriations cycle now becomes a ritual of self-flagellation. Funding ICE is treated as moral surrender. Defunding it is treated as virtue. The result is a party that often cannot say, clearly and honestly, whether it believes its own laws should be enforced at all.

So every Democratic president ends up trapped in the same vise.

Enforce the law, and you risk revolt inside your own coalition. Fail to enforce it, and the system collapses — and voters punish you.

Obama chose enforcement and paid a reputational price inside the party.

Biden chose accommodation and paid a governing and political price.

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Bad policy is bad politics.

The truth — uncomfortable but unavoidable — is that a country cannot function without credible enforcement. Not theatrical enforcement. Not indiscriminate enforcement. But visible, consistent, legitimate enforcement.

Borders without it are not compassionate. They are fictitious.

“Abolish ICE,” like “Defund the Police,” was never a serious governing proposal. It was a signal — a marker of moral identity. And like “Defund the Police,” it produced exactly what moral posturing so often does: confusion, backlash, and political self-harm.

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Obama understood something our party still struggles to say plainly: America is a nation of immigrants, and it is also a nation of laws. Those two ideas are not in tension. They depend on each other.

Until Democrats stop treating enforcement as a moral sin and start treating it as a governing responsibility, we will keep oscillating between virtue signaling and damage control. And future candidates — the 2028 Democrats — will keep paying the price for a debate the party is still too afraid to finish.

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The most unique thing Trump could do with stolen money recovered from blue states

Several recent news stories inspired me to think of a way to help the neediest in our nation. Most especially those being ripped off in our “blue” states. 

The first story deals with the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars stolen by organized fraud rings in Minnesota, California, New York and in a number of other “blue” states. Some estimates range well over $100 billion. Literally, the equivalent of the Gross National Product of many nations of earth being stolen from the American people.

The next story deals with the ever-growing controversy involving far-left Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s personal wealth. For years, many have wondered if Omar legally entered the United States and what her legal status is at the moment. But in addition to that mystery comes one news story after the other, seeming to document the fact that the personal wealth of her and her husband has skyrocketed of late. Inquiring minds want to know “how?”

Just one year ago, the congresswoman’s required federal financial disclosure form listed two assets at a combined maximum of approximately $51,000. Now, those two assets are listed at a combined maximum of approximately $30 million. Other than stock tips from former Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, what is Omar’s secret? Or, what is she hiding?

CONGRESS OPENS ‘INDUSTRIAL-SCALE FRAUD’ PROBE IN MINNESOTA, WARNS WALZ DEMANDS ARE ‘JUST THE BEGINNING’

Last, was a recent very telling report from Fareed Zakaria on CNN stating in part: “If America has an affordability crisis, it tends to be in places Democrats govern, like New York, Illinois and California, which all feature high taxes, soaring housing costs and stagnant outcomes in basic areas like education and infrastructure…” Always a bit shocking when CNN and the greater left admit to destructive policies pushed by the left, but truly welcome and much needed in this case.

CNN via Zakaria said the quiet part out loud. That being that in reality, it is the poorest and most disadvantaged in these Democrat-controlled “blue” states who pay the highest price – quite literally – for the ideological incompetence offered up by the far left in those states. Men, women and children who have long been taken for granted by the left.   

But, from such Democrat-manufactured chaos and misery, could come a great deal of clarity and … increased “affordability” for the poorest in those beleaguered states. As the Trump administration continues to successfully claw back billions in stolen taxpayer money from those “blue” states, I suggest it establish a “lottery” for the poorest and most disadvantaged legal citizens in those states.

I’VE WORKED THOUSANDS OF MONEY LAUNDERING CASES — FRAUD IS A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT

Once established, every single day, pick a name from the barrel and award that person $10,000. As one who grew up homeless as a child, I can assure you that such an amount is life-changing for those without.

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Such a lottery would have four immediate benefits. First, it would capture the news cycle and spread like wildfire. Next, it would awaken millions in these “blue” states – and tens of millions more across the country — to the fraud perpetrated upon them while cementing in their minds who just created the lottery to help them.

Next, it would demonstrate desperately needed and wanted accountability for such theft taking place. And last, it would create hope in those who have felt neglected and abandoned for decades.

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For those decades, far-left criminal gangs — often aided and abetted by far-left politicians — have successfully stolen billions of dollars from the American people. Now that the Trump administration has exposed this theft, flip the script against those who created and abetted these schemes by helping those most hurt by the crimes. The “Hunger Games” created by the left become the “Feeding Games” for those without.

I can assure you millions of Americans will sign up for such a needed — and eye-opening — lottery.

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Big Tech’s tobacco moment is here — and the truth about harming kids is out

For over a decade, child victims and their parents have been denied the chance to get justice for the harms they have suffered from social media’s products–ranging from anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, suicide, sextortion, and, in the starkest cases, death. Starting this week, they will finally have their day in court. 

On Tuesday, the first bellwether trial against social media companies began in Los Angeles, serving as the initial test case for many more pending lawsuits. Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube face more than 3,000 lawsuits in California alone, along with more than 2,000 additional cases in federal court. 

Startling evidence is already coming to light. One internal Meta employee message exchange compares Instagram to drugs and slot machines. “Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,” “Lol, I mean, all social media. We’re basically pushers.” 

FRENCH LAWMAKERS DECLARE ‘BATTLE FOR FREE MINDS’ AFTER APPROVING SOCIAL MEDIA BAN FOR CHILDREN UNDER 15

This is a landmark case. Never before have we been able to see this evidence, to reach this stage of litigation with social media where courts, and the public, can finally see for themselves the choices these companies have made when it comes to minors.

For years, any lawsuits brought against social media companies were dismissed outright because of a law from 1996 called Section 230 that gives internet platforms immunity for harm caused by third-party content they host. But this new wave of cases takes a novel approach: Rather than alleging that harm to the victims was caused by the content victims were exposed to, they argue that harm was caused by the product design features of the companies themselves. 

These lawsuits do not blame bad content or “too much screen time,” dismantling the idea that parents are to blame for allowing kids to be online too much. Instead, they claim the defendants engineered their platforms to be addictive and failed to warn users about their addictive potential. 

TEXAS FAMILY SUES CHARACTER.AI AFTER CHATBOT ALLEGEDLY ENCOURAGED AUTISTIC SON TO HARM PARENTS AND HIMSELF

The features designed to foster addiction that are at issue include infinite scroll, autoplay, recommendation algorithms that send minors down rabbit holes, push notifications and “likes,” all of which create addictive dopamine-driven feedback loops to keep a user engaged for as long as possible. 

Parents are fighting back because Washington didn’t. Congress hasn’t passed a child online safety law since 1998, nearly a decade before social media even existed.

As with the massive litigation against tobacco companies in the late 1990s and opioid manufacturers more recently, the key question for the jury to decide in this social media trial is straighforward: Did these companies negligently design and market a highly addictive product to children and did they know — and fail to warn users—-that their products cause harms to minors? 

Critics of the social media lawsuits argue that these cases don’t belong in court – claiming that it is too difficult for victims to prove causation of their harms from social media, given the complex interplay of personal experience, personality and online exposure.

AUSTRALIA REMOVES 4.7M KIDS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS IN FIRST MONTH OF HISTORIC BAN

Similar arguments, however, were also made in the past against bringing lawsuits against Big Tobacco or opioid producers. Critics argued that people fall into addiction for all kinds of reasons, and therefore companies weren’t to blame. But we know how those massive litigations turned out: multibillion-dollar settlements from Big Tobacco and the pharma companies to hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs who were harmed by their products. These social media suits appear to be on that same path. 

The evidence speaks for itself. Newly unsealed documents provide smoking-gun evidence that Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok all purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens and that youth addiction was an intentional part of their business models. 

The documents include internal discussions among company employees, presentations from internal meetings, and their own research studies. One exhibit of an internal report from Meta states that “the lifetime value of a 13 y/o teen is roughly $270 per teen.” Another Meta report says, “the young ones are the best ones” in explaining how young users have greater long-term retention for the company in using their products. 

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These companies quantified our children and their attention to maximize their profit value, all while knowing their products were harming minor users. Results of a Meta internal study on teen mental health found that “Teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to” and that “Teens talk of Instagram in terms of an ‘addict’s narrative’ spending too much time indulging in a compulsive behavior that they know is negative but feel powerless to resist.” 

Meta and these other platforms allowed our children to be harmed and said nothing. Now the public will finally know.

Unsurprisingly, two of the four companies in this first trial, Snap and TikTok, both settled before the proceedings began. These companies don’t want damning internal evidence that they knew their products were harming children, and they did nothing to change the design or warn users, to come to light. Nevertheless, parents and teens will finally have their day in court. 

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Parents are fighting back because Washington didn’t. Congress hasn’t passed a child online safety law since 1998, nearly a decade before social media even existed. Whereas Australia has recently passed a social media ban for minors under 16, with France and the UK proposing the same. In the United States, parents and states are the ones stepping in to the void to hold the social media companies accountable through the courts. If Congress won’t do it, parents will. 

This trial is the tobacco moment for Big Tech. 

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Why Trump sending Tom Homan to Minnesota is a stroke of absolute genius

This week, President Trump’s decision to deploy former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director and current border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota signals a deliberate and strategic approach to public safety — one grounded in accountability and a deep understanding of how law enforcement operates.

Minnesota has become a flash point in the national immigration debate. Already in focus for widespread fraud, Minneapolis is ground zero for violent protests, ICE operations and two fatal officer-involved shootings. State and local officials have responded by demanding limits on federal enforcement activity, with some openly calling for ICE to withdraw from the state altogether. At the same time, progressives in Congress are outright calling for the abolishment of ICE.

That reaction may satisfy political activists and agitators, but it ignores a far more dangerous question: what would actually happen if ICE were removed from Minnesota?

FREY, KLOBUCHAR CALL FOR ICE TO LEAVE MINNEAPOLIS FOLLOWING DEADLY CBP SHOOTING IN CITY

One of ICE’s primary missions is to identify, detain and remove anyone who has violated immigration law, particularly those with violent criminal histories. In Minnesota, where state and local authorities are prohibited from working with federal law enforcement due to sanctuary policies, ICE is the only agency capable of preventing repeat illegal alien offenders from returning to the community after arrest or incarceration.

Eliminate that role, and the consequences are predictable. Illegal aliens with records of violent assault, sexual offenses, gang activity or homicide are more likely to be released — not because they pose no threat, but because there is no lawful mechanism to remove them. That is not compassion. It is negligence.

In Minnesota, over 1,300 criminal illegal aliens currently sit in taxpayer-funded jails that ICE has been unable to access. Just last year, nearly 500 criminal illegal aliens were released back into communities. These are the results of dangerous sanctuary city policies under Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz.

This is where Tom Homan matters — and why his new role is a stroke of genius by President Donald Trump.

TRUMP WARNS MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR HE’S ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE’ AFTER IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT CONVERSATION

Homan is not a political firebrand looking for headlines. He is a career law enforcement professional, with over 30 years of experience at ICE and U.S. Border Patrol, who understands the operational realities of immigration enforcement. Sending him to Minnesota is not about provocation; it is about restoring coherence to a situation that has grown dangerously fragmented.

Law and order is not a slogan. It is the foundation of our national sovereignty and public safety. When enforcement disappears, laws become suggestions, and communities bear the cost of repeated crimes and preventable tragedies.

That reality comes into sharp focus this week with the one-year anniversary of President Trump signing the Laken Riley Act into law. Riley was killed by an illegal alien who should never have had the opportunity to harm again. Her death is a painful reminder that policy failures are not abstract. They fall hardest on victims and families who had no voice in the decisions that failed them.

MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR TO VISIT DC TO PUSH FOR END OF ‘UNLAWFUL ICE OPERATIONS’ AFTER TRUMP’S BLUNT WARNING

Victim advocacy groups and law enforcement leaders have long warned that limiting ICE cooperation increases the likelihood that violent offenders will reoffend. When federal immigration enforcement is curtailed, local police are left holding the bag — expected to protect the public without the authority to fully do so.

This reckoning is unfolding as Washington barrels toward a partial government shutdown. With Department of Homeland Security funding set to expire on January 30, Senate Democrats have pledged to block funding unless sweeping restrictions are placed on ICE.

Supporters frame this standoff as a moral fight. But morality without responsibility is hollow.

TRUMP ALLY TELLS GOVERNMENT TO ‘WAKE UP’ AFTER DEADLY FEDERAL AGENT SHOOTINGS IN MINNEAPOLIS

Even if DHS funding lapses, ICE and Border Patrol agents will continue working. They are mission-critical and will remain on the job, many without pay, supported in part by funding from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But there will be consequences: eroding morale, delayed operations and increasing pressure on officers. This budget fight may fit the political leanings of some, but the consequences will be measured in innocent victims.

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Americans want immigration enforcement and violent agitators prosecuted. But they also want accountability from law enforcement once all the facts are analyzed. Trust must be rebuilt.

But accountability does not mean abandonment.

Weakening ICE does not make communities safer. It leaves violent offenders in place and guarantees future victims will pay the price for political symbolism. It also increases the burden on local police, some of whom have been instructed not to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

President Trump’s decision to send Tom Homan to Minnesota reflects a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths rather than evade them. This represents genuine presidential leadership. Public safety cannot be governed by protest slogans or political optics. A humane system still requires enforcement. A lawful society still requires consequences. A government shutdown may be a useful political tool, but using it to undermine public safety is not principled. It is reckless and breeds more of the chaos we have witnessed recently.

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This is a test of whether lawmakers will prioritize ideology or responsibility, messaging or outcomes. In the end, governance is not about winning arguments. It is about whether people can live safely in their own communities.

That is a responsibility no government can afford to abandon.

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SEC CHAIR ATKINS, CFTC CHAIR SELIG : Team Trump readies crypto plan so Americans can count on their future

America’s financial markets are the strongest and most trusted in the world because they were built upon the premises of clear rules and fair enforcement.

Rather than adhere to these principles, the Biden administration chased headlines with flashy enforcement actions and instituted opaque rules that stifled progress. But thanks to the leadership of President Donald Trump, America’s financial regulators are returning to the basic tenets that made our markets the envy of the world.

As new technologies reshape the financial services landscape, we must ensure that innovation thrives on American soil and under American law – in service of everyday Americans.

To that end, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are re-launching Project Crypto as a joint policy initiative to better prepare U.S. markets for the digital era.

DIGITAL MARKUP: DEMOCRATS PUSH FOR GUARDRAILS IN CRYPTO REGULATIONS

As markets move on-chain, regulators must keep pace. Congress is advancing bipartisan legislation to establish a federal framework for digital asset markets. But legislation alone cannot deliver the clarity that investors and market participants need. We must pair it with disciplined regulatory execution, grounded in merit neutrality and free market principles. These are outcomes that the SEC and CFTC are ready to meet to usher in a new era of coordinated and durable financial regulation.

We have designed Project Crypto to ensure that when Congress acts, the United States is ready to reinforce our global financial leadership. That includes sequencing – not stacking – new requirements through sensible implementation roadmaps; creating clear regulatory on-ramps for compliant participants; modernizing surveillance tools to reflect on-chain and hybrid market activity; and engaging transparently with new entrants, incumbents, investors and consumers alike.

We must act quickly to upgrade our rules and regulations to accommodate blockchain technology, digital assets and the legislation to come, or risk ceding these emerging markets to foreign regimes.

At its core, Project Crypto and our broader harmonization efforts reflect a shared philosophy: financial regulation must be precise, not punitive. Rules must be narrowly tailored to address material risks, nimble enough to adapt to technological change and remain anchored in our agencies’ statutory authorities. This principle guides our approach to registration, disclosure, market oversight, custody, clearing and surveillance in digital asset markets – while avoiding the reflex to impose ill-suited legacy structures on new technological realities. 

COINBASE CEO: BIG BANKS ARE TRYING TO ‘KILL THE COMPETITION’ THROUGH CRYPTO REGULATION

For too long, bureaucratic regulators have forced market participants to navigate boundaries that are unclear in application and misaligned in design, particularly where economically similar activities are treated differently based solely on legacy jurisdictional silos. This fragmentation is not merely inconvenient; it limits innovation and hampers investor opportunities.

In on-chain markets, where trading, clearing, settlement and custody are integrated, regulatory seams create friction that impairs risk management, margin efficiency and surveillance effectiveness. As markets move, on-chain and participation deepens, these distortions only compound.

Maintaining duplicative or conflicting requirements for the same economic activity undermines market resilience and regulatory clarity. The status quo cannot sustain U.S. dominance in 21st-century finance. Project Crypto aims to address — and, where possible, eliminate — these conflicts.

The SEC-CFTC harmonization agenda begins with fundamentals: aligned definitions, coordinated oversight, and seamless, secure data sharing between agencies. Market participants should not be saddled with duplicative agency registrations and sets of regulations in order to offer economically similar products that can be effectively regulated under a unified approach. Harmonization strengthens standards through coherence, predictability and economic rationality.

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We must act quickly to upgrade our rules and regulations to accommodate blockchain technology, digital assets and the legislation to come, or risk ceding these emerging markets to foreign regimes.

Project Crypto represents a modern model of inter-agency coordination, recognizing that today’s markets do not conform to 20th-century silos. The SEC and CFTC bring complementary statutory mandates, supervisory capabilities and market expertise. Acting in concert, these capabilities become symbiotic rather than duplicative, delivering clarity and principled oversight as market structures evolve.

The stakes are high. Global jurisdictions compete aggressively to attract digital asset activity – some prioritizing speed over safeguards, others imposing rigidity that stifles growth. America’s advantage has always been its ability to balance both.

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If we fail to provide clarity, innovation migrates elsewhere. If we regulate with a heavy hand, we do not reduce risk, we encourage it. Project Crypto reflects our shared belief that the United States can lead by doing what it has always done best: pairing strong rule of law with an openness to progress.

The future of finance will be built somewhere. Through Project Crypto, and disciplined, harmonized, minimum-effective-dose regulation, we ensure that it is built here, under rules that protect investors, promote innovation and cement America’s leadership in the global financial system.

Virginia bait and switch: Spanberger unleashes Dems’ real, radical agenda

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger was sworn in just a few weeks ago, but the tornado of bad policy is already swirling around her state.

Spanberger’s very first order of business was reversing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order 47, which had allowed for coordination between the Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That coordination was important because it allowed the federal and state governments to cooperate to remove people in the country illegally who had committed additional crimes. That it was necessary for Spanberger to make it harder to deport criminals is a tell that her moderate campaign commercials will instead translate into a much further left administration.

Spanberger isn’t alone in moving Virginia sharply leftward. Both branches of the state legislature are now also controlled by Democrats, and they’re introducing policies that no one campaigned on. House Bill 863 would reduce minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter and child pornography. If Spanberger ran on “let’s let rapists off easy,” the Virginia electorate somehow missed it. In fact, Spanberger’s campaign ads highlighted her law enforcement experience and that she’s a moderate who works with both sides of the political aisle.

I’M THE NEW VIRGINIA GOVERNOR AND AFFORDABILITY IS WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS

Several other bills would raise various taxes and fly in the face of the “affordability” message on which Spanberger campaigned. One would raise sales tax on services like dry cleaning, another would add a tax on deliveries from Amazon and Uber Eats. Spanberger also noted she would rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which would likely make energy bills higher.

Then there’s House Bill 1442, which would prevent any enforcement of immigration law near polling locations. We’re told it’s very rare for illegal immigrants to vote in our elections and yet the Virginia legislature thinks a law like this is a high priority for the state. Why would immigration operations interfere with polling locations unless there are illegal immigrants voting at those polling locations?

Then there’s the chaos Democrats are wreaking at the Virginia Military Institute. VMI is a highly regarded military college with some notable alums, like Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. The House of Delegates introduced a resolution to form a task force to decide whether the VMI should continue to get funding from the state. They’re also politicizing the board of the school. 

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Spanberger appointed former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, well-known for taking a photo in blackface while in medical school, to VMI’s Board of Visitors. Northam will be taking the place of Garrett Exner, who was appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin. Exner was not given a hearing nor asked any questions before being replaced. On his X page, Exner quoted Senator Scott Surovell saying, there are “genuine concerns about the qualifications, backgrounds, and intentions,” of Youngkin appointees. Exner pointed out: “Mr. Surovell is not a veteran. He has never deployed. He has never prepared young men and women for service to the nation. I’ve dedicated my life to serving this country and helping the next generation of leaders succeed. I would like to know what part of my background Mr. Surovell finds, ‘concerning.’”

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There is no actual concern, of course. Exner told me VMI is just “the latest target of Democrats’ assault on America’s institutions. The school, with its strict honor code and devotion to merit, stands in direct opposition to the new ideals of the Democrat party — socialism and equity.”

Democrats are going to spend the next four years moving Virginia as far left as they can get away with — unless Virginians stop them. Virginians who want to save their state have to keep pointing out that Spanberger the candidate is not Spanberger the governor, and that the state government being fully controlled by the Democratic Party is turning lawlessness and social engineering into policy. Virginia can be saved from this, before it becomes another failed blue state with residents running for the door, but they need to act quickly.

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Not coming to America: The 60-year immigration bubble finally bursts

The U.S. has experienced various industry bubbles and bursts over the past six decades, including the 1990s dot.com bubble, and the housing bubble of the 2000s. A third bubble finally just burst in 2025, after growing for 60 years – immigration to America.

Multiple reports show that the U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for the first time since the 1970s. This course correction is long overdue and needs to continue.

The factors that led to these bubbles and bursts in three different industries are surprisingly similar.

The tech bubble grew following the commercialization of the World Wide Web, during a period of rapid internet adoption and technology startups. It was a time of low interest rates and economic optimism. A speculative market frenzy in tech stocks caused the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index to rise from under 1,000 in 1995 to its peak of over 5,000 in March 2000.

DHS WEBSITE TRAFFIC SURGES 68% AS THOUSANDS USE TRUMP’S SELF-DEPORTATION APP FOR VOLUNTARY DEPARTURE

By October 2002, the Nasdaq had fallen to just over 1,000 again, wiping out trillions in market value. The reasons for the bubble bursting were speculation of overhyped emerging technologies and unsustainable business models. This should have been a cautionary tale for the housing bubble.

In the late 1990s, housing prices started rising rapidly and accelerated in the early 2000s. Annual appreciation rates reached 15–17% in 2004 and 2005. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates from 6.5% in 2000 to 1% by 2003, which encouraged borrowing and home purchases. Banks and lenders lowered standards, offered subprime mortgages to borrowers with poor credit and often required little or no down payment.

Government policies required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to support affordable housing loans and financial institutions bundled risky mortgages and sold them to investors. Like the dot.com bubble, lenders and buyers speculated house prices would continue rising indefinitely. When interest rates rose in the mid-2000s and home prices stalled, borrowers defaulted en masse, the subprime mortgage market collapsed, and the bubble burst as part of the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession.

I DID MY FIRST H-1B VISA INTERVIEW 25 YEARS AGO. IT’S FAILING TO PUT AMERICANS FIRST

Immigration to the U.S. – both legal and illegal – has become an industry since the mid-60s when Congress passed the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. That created the family-preference system, resulting in chain migration. Spouses, parents and children (both minor and adult) of U.S. citizens, and lawful permanent residents can permanently migrate to the U.S., along with adult siblings of U.S. citizens, all who, in turn, can sponsor their family members, creating a chain. The U.S. government has annually granted lawful permanent resident status to over 1 million aliens annually (approximately 75% family-based, 20% employment-based, and humanitarian) most years since 2001.

Illegal immigration began increasing since the early 1970s. In 1970, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended over 201,000 illegal aliens along the southwest border. That number consistently rose each year, first reaching over 1 million in 1983 and consistently exceeded 1 million annually through 2006.

The annual number of encounters ranged from over 300,000 to over 800,000, until the Biden administration opened the border to record levels of illegal immigration – over 7 million Border Parol encounters in four years.

UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANT POPULATION SOARED TO AN ALL-TIME HIGH UNDER BIDEN, NEW REPORT SHOWS

Since the 1970s, the U.S. government generally failed to apply consequences to the many common types of illegal immigration – sneaking across the border, overstaying visas, working without authorization, and committing identity and document fraud to remain in the U.S.

Meanwhile, employers were growing addicted to the cheaper foreign labor. Unions, which used to oppose illegal immigration, changed their position to support such immigration as a source of membership and power.

Politicians on the left who used to oppose illegal immigration likewise did a 180 for political power. They increased pathways for illegal aliens to enter and remain in the U.S., including creating visas for trafficking, domestic violence, and other crime victims, special immigration benefits for unaccompanied children, and default extensions and expansions of temporary protected status.

EXCLUSIVE: MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS LEAVE US IN RECORD-BREAKING YEAR UNDER TRUMP POLICIES, DHS SAYS

On the “legal” side of the ledger, the left turned temporary visas into permanent ones, increased caps and uncapped categories, watered down asylum standards, and ignored fraud.

During the Biden years, the left further inflated the bubble by weaponizing mass illegal migration for political power, votes, ballot harvesting, and Census headcount. The Biden administration annually paid tens of billions in federal grants to NGOs to facilitate mass migration to, and throughout, the U.S.

The left speculated that unlimited immigration could continue indefinitely. But the record numbers of migrants, the billions of dollars in costs for states and localities, the record crime and fentanyl deaths led to the bubble bursting. Americans voted in 2024 to secure the border and conduct mass deportations, which the Trump administration quickly did in 2025.

5 BIG IMMIGRATION CHANGES TAKING EFFECT ACROSS THE US

The clear result is the first net negative immigration rate to the U.S. since the 1960s, per multiple reports.

The U.S. Census Bureau just released its new population estimates, which show a historic decline in net international migration (NIM) to the U.S. It reports that NIM peaked at 2.7 million in 2024, declined to 1.3 million in mid-2025, and is projected to further decline to approximately 321,000 in 2026, if current trends continue. Brookings estimates net migration in 2025 ranged from negative 10,000 to negative 295,000, the first time it has been negative in at least half a century. Brookings expects this trend to continue in 2026.

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Pew Research reported that 53.3 million aliens lived in the U.S. in January 2025, the highest number ever recorded. By June, that number decreased to 51.9 million, the first decline since the 1960s. The Congressional Budget Office has made multiple updates to its Demographic Outlook since January 2025 due to lower immigration.

This negative trend needs to continue. America still has millions of deportable aliens here. Resources are still going to them instead of American taxpayers.

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Housing shortages and costs are still too high. American college students, graduates and employees are still struggling to be admitted into universities, interviewed, hired and retained for jobs as they compete with foreign students, graduates and employees, and now also face AI competition in the labor market.

As long as these factors continue, the immigration bubble should not be reinflated.

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Trump successfully turns off crazy Biden era regulations on your home appliances

President Donald Trump has sharply diverged from his predecessor on nearly every issue, perhaps most of all concerning federal home appliance regulations. The Biden administration loved regulating appliances, imposing new requirements for stoves, dishwashers, furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters, light bulbs, refrigerators, washing machines and more. Trump wasted no time targeting such meddling with an Inauguration Day executive order reconsidering these regulations, and his administration is making progress on this priority. Here is an overview of what the administration achieved in year one on home appliance regulations — and what remains undone.

1. Dishwashers and washing machines — These are arguably the two most overregulated home appliances. Washing machines have faced six rounds of successively tighter energy and water use limits over the decades while dishwashers have had four, and the results have been downright painful for consumers. There is evidence that washing machines now require additional maintenance and don’t clean as well or last as long. And dishwashers take two hours or more to complete a load of dishes, twice the amount of time that it took before the feds started tinkering with them. Nonetheless, the Biden Department of Energy (DOE) tacked on yet another round of restrictions for both appliances that will take effect over the next few years.

Thankfully, the current DOE has proposed repealing the most troublesome parts of these regulations, so washing machines and dishwashers might actually start getting better rather than worse.

SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION UNVEILS NEW INITIATIVE TO ROLL BACK FEDERAL REGULATIONS

2. Central air conditioners — All of these appliance regulations raise prices, but the biggest increase by far was for residential air conditioning systems.  A homeowner replacing a 15-year-old system that probably cost around $5,000 when new is likely to face more than twice that amount today. While several factors play a role in this unfortunate trend, the single largest reason is a Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule mandating that all cooling systems manufactured after January 1, 2025, meet new climate change requirements. Industry sources report price hikes of up to $3,000 last summer — the first one under the Biden regulatory regime — and that comes on top of other EPA and DOE measures that had already increased prices in the preceding years.

The Trump EPA is attempting to turn the tide with a proposed rule providing more compliance flexibility for these systems. If successful, it could help moderate any further air conditioning cost increases.

3. Water heaters — It’s the appliance homeowners rarely ever think about until the moment it stops working, but Biden’s regulators gave water heaters plenty of attention. One December 2024 DOE regulation would have effectively banned tankless gas water heaters — the kind that heat the water as needed and don’t require a storage tank — by imposing prohibitively expensive new requirements. Fortunately, last April, Congress and President Trump enacted a law repealing this regulation and thus preserving the tankless option for homeowners who prefer it. However, the deregulatory news on conventional tank storage water heaters is not so good, with a separate Biden-era regulation still on the books that is estimated to raise costs by as much as $953 when it takes effect in 2029.

4. Furnaces — Biden’s 2023 furnace regulation may be the worst one that has not yet been revisited by the Trump administration. It effectively outlaws gas-fired non-condensing furnaces, which is the best option for millions of older homes. Even the DOE estimates its rule will result in cost increases of up to $853 when it takes effect in 2028. Industry sources fear a larger price boost, which will fall disproportionately on lower-income homeowners.

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5. Showers — Trump complains a lot about federal water use restrictions for showers, but he alone can’t repeal them since they come straight out of a 1992 law that can only be undone with the help of Congress. But modest improvements are possible, and the president did issue an executive order and a DOE rule adding a bit more wiggle room to the way the agency interprets the law. Hence, the water use limits now apply to each nozzle rather than the overall unit, so showers with two or more nozzles are legal.  A recently-passed House bill would codify this modification, but there is yet no Senate version.

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Overall, the Trump administration has initiated a good deal of appliance-related deregulation in its first year, but equally important is what Washington has stopped doing – it is no longer piling on new regulatory restrictions, as Biden did at a furious pace for four years and a President Kamala Harris would have very likely continued doing. Quite the contrary, the feds have done a U-turn and are now focused on revisiting measures already on the books and making changes to them. 

It’s a solid start, but only a start. Some of the above-mentioned reforms can and should go further, and there are still several appliance regulations, such as those impacting furnaces and water heaters, that have yet to be addressed. We can only hope that the fight for homeowners continues to be a Trump administration priority for the next three years.

MORNING GLORY: Minnesota tragedies aren’t instant replay calls you make from the couch

An officer-involved shooting is not a disputed call in an NFL game, where the announcers offer opinions on the call made on the field as various angles are played for the audience at home and the network’s in-house referee expert weighs in on what he thinks might happen while filling airtime. The officials on the field know instant replay angles have to be studied on a very constrained timeline and that the play in question is being discussed and debated by millions as they talk among themselves. The stakes aren’t life and death, but they do involve vast sums of money and the careers of the officials, players and coaches. Sports officials are grateful for multiple angles and for input from league headquarters.

NFL camera shots are numerous and precise. That makes them very different from the collection of iPhone videos, Ring camera recordings and limited body-camera footage that circulated online after two officer-involved shootings in the Twin Cities.

Those videos were most definitely not taken by professionals. They may in fact distort the actual events that occurred. In any event, in this era of AI manipulation and selective editing, they cannot be trusted simply because you saw them in slow motion on your X feed.

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The two shootings in Minnesota occurred within seconds. Neither was planned. Unlike professional sports, the cameras were not pre-positioned. And the public has not seen everything law enforcement investigators have.

All of it is a tragedy, two tragedies in fact, neither of which is close to being definitely adjudicated under the legal standard of “reasonable force.” The available video is simply not dispositive because it does not include the sworn testimony from the officers involved or the near-by pedestrians. The justice system will evaluate those actions, as it always does. It will be some time before a determination is reached and we know the decision.

No matter how many angles of either or both shootings you have studied, and no matter how many times you have watched each of them, you do not know what happened in full.

JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP ADMIN FROM ‘DESTROYING OR ALTERING’ EVIDENCE IN DEADLY MINNEAPOLIS SHOOTING

The point of this column is in a country addicted to instant replay and decisions made within minutes, the patience required for serious deliberation and adjudication has eroded. It’s been worn away. We almost all watch sports. We almost all “call” pass interference when it benefits our team. Most fans think “targeting,” to name just one particularly difficult to define infraction, occurred or didn’t occur based on their allegiances. And we are passionate about it. Sometimes for decades.

That is not this. That is a habit of judgment to which we have become accustomed and indeed expect, but it is a habit that does not belong here.

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No matter how many angles of either or both shootings you have studied, and no matter how many times you have watched each of them, you do not know what happened in full. If you have an opinion on either shooting that presumes to declare one or both unlawful or unjustified, you are not telling your audience of family and friends anything other than the reality that your judgment is not to be trusted. Because you are uttering conclusions based on incomplete evidence.

There’s a reason — actually dozens of them — why our criminal justice system functions methodically. It exists to protect the rights of the accused. Shootings involving suspected criminals are naturally upsetting for all of us. Snap judgments about the reasonableness of force — including officer-involved shootings — are always irresponsible.

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These are not games to be watched, cheered or mourned like sporting events. Two officer-involved shootings that leave grief and sadness in their wake cannot be made better by online inquisitions or mob judgments by mobs from the left or the right.

Just wait. We will know in due course.

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