PETER NAVARRO: If we defund ICE, the body count of American lives would be too high

House and Senate Democrats are trying to turn two tragic federal shootings in Minneapolis into cause célèbres to shackle, slash and ultimately break the budgetary back of ICE. But let’s not pretend this political firestorm is about compassion or accountability. 

If Democrats are successful in abruptly halting the deportation of what some estimates put at as many as 20 million illegal aliens imported under President Joe Biden, hundreds of additional American citizens would be murdered and thousands raped, assaulted or robbed by a violent subset of Biden’s illegal-alien horde. 

Here is the statistical story behind America’s latest true-crime nightmare. 

Numerous studies have analyzed the link between illegal aliens and crime. Using large administrative data sets, researchers have calculated — with surprising precision — the rates at which illegal aliens commit various crimes. From those rates, it is simple arithmetic to estimate how many Americans would fall prey to new illegal-alien violence.

DHS HONORS ILLINOIS WOMAN WHOSE CORPSE WAS ALLEGEDLY ABUSED BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT FREED UNDER SANCTUARY LAWS

Start with homicide. 

The Cato Institute has examined one of the largest and most credible data sets available, drawn from the border state of Texas, and found that for every 100,000 illegal aliens, about 2.2 Americans are murdered. Using essentially the same Texas data, the Center for Immigration Studies corrects for delayed identification and other methodological issues and arrives at a homicide rate of roughly 3.9 per 100,000 in one illustrative year. 

Apply those rates to Biden’s 20 million new illegal aliens, and the result is stark: between 440 and 780 additional Americans would be murdered.

DAVID MARCUS: YES, EVEN WHITE, IRISH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS MUST BE DEPORTED

That’s not a statistic. That’s a slaughterhouse. 

Past victims already have names. 

Laken Riley, 22, murdered in Georgia after prosecutors said she resisted a rape attempt by José Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal alien previously released after arrest.

WEEKEND ROUNDUP: CONVICTED MURDERERS, CHILD SEX ABUSERS AMONG ILLEGAL ALIENS NABBED BY ICE ACROSS US

Jocelyn Nungaray, 12, was strangled to death in Houston in June 2024. Two Venezuelan nationals — Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel and Franklin Jose Peña Ramos — are charged with capital murder. Both had entered the United States illegally, were apprehended near El Paso, Tex., and were released with notices to appear before the killing. They remain in the Harris County Jail awaiting trial, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. 

Rachel Morin, raped and murdered on a Maryland trail by the El Salvadoran Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez. 

Apply those rates to Biden’s 20 million new illegal aliens, and the result is stark: between 440 and 780 additional Americans would be murdered.

Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old Maryland woman with autism, raped and strangled by Walter Javier Martinez, an illegal alien from El Salvador who had entered the United States only months earlier.”

SCOOP: THOUSANDS OF VIOLENT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARRESTED IN MINNESOTA AS ADMIN VOWS ‘WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN’

Future victims would have names, faces, families, and dreams, too — every bit as sympathetic as Renée Good and Alex Pretti. 

And homicide is only the tip of Biden’s illegal alien iceberg. 

According to a National Institute of Justice–funded study published in 2020 using Texas Department of Public Safety arrest data (2012–2018), felony arrest rates per 100,000 undocumented immigrants were 11.3 for felony sexual assault, 77.8 for felony assault, 18.2 for felony burglary, and 136.0 for felony drug violations.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: THE LEFT IS GETTING PEOPLE KILLED

Scaled to 20 million illegal aliens, that arithmetic implies roughly 2,260 more Americans would be sexually assaulted, 3,640 American homes burglarized, 15,560 Americans violently assaulted, and 27,200 felony drug arrests involving dealers, traffickers, smugglers and hard-core possession cases. 

These are the kind of inconvenient statistics Hill denizens like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Democrat Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and sanctuary politicos like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Illinois Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker and Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz don’t want to compute — and pure evil they don’t want you to see. 

As misdirection, the left also loves to point out that many studies conclude crime rates among illegal aliens are marginally lower than those of American citizens. But that is the wrong yardstick.

WEST VIRGINIA WORKED WITH ICE — 650 ARRESTS LATER, OFFICIALS SAY MINNESOTA-STYLE ‘CHAOS’ IS A CHOICE

Even if illegal aliens have a lower crime rate — and the data is far from clear — when millions of illegal aliens enter the country, the absolute number of crimes increases. You don’t need to be a mathematician — or illegal alien crime victim — to understand that. 

There is also this: the older data sets used by many analysts today almost certainly understate the danger posed by the most recent Biden-era wave. Why? 

Because countries around the world like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela deliberately opened their prisons and released violent criminals during the latest border breakdown — both to reduce crime at home and export crime to America.

DEAN PHILLIPS: WE CAN FIX IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WITHOUT FUELING CHAOS OR LAWLESSNESS

That’s the statistics. Here’s the politics. 

The strange bedfellows coalition out to kneecap ICE is led by Democrats playing the long electoral game who view illegal aliens as political pawns and funded by corporate interests that benefit from cheaper labor and wage suppression. Throw in the drug and human-trafficking cartel supply chains and a legacy media blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome, and you have today’s government shutdown crisis.

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Future victims would have names, faces, families, and dreams, too — every bit as sympathetic as Renée Good and Alex Pretti. 

It is our job to resist. Because “defund ICE” doesn’t just mean fewer deportations. 

It means more empty seats at dinner tables. More funerals. More shattered lives — in addition to all the jobs American citizens lose.

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Republicans must do a far better job holding ranks on Capitol Hill and messaging these essential Secure Border Trump truths. 

And Democrats would do well to remember one of the major reasons why they lost the last election. A supermajority of Americans wants both secure borders and mass deportations. For their safety. For their jobs. For their wages. For their culture. 

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Border airspace breached: Cartel drones test US defenses and raise new fears

When the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shuts down the airspace over a major American city for “special security reasons,” Americans should pay attention.

On Feb. 10, the FAA grounded flights in and out of El Paso International Airport. The original notice referred to a 10-day flight restriction, but it was rescinded the same day. Flights resumed. The questions, however, remain.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy later stated that the FAA and the Department of War had acted to address a cartel-related drone incursion, neutralizing the threat before reopening the airspace. No further operational details were released.

Subsequent reporting suggested the closure may have been precautionary and that full operational details have not been publicly disclosed.

Even without those details, the episode matters. It indicates that federal authorities assessed the drone activity as serious enough to affect civilian aviation. 

MEXICAN CARTEL DRONES BREACH US AIRSPACE, ARE DISABLED BY WAR DEPARTMENT, DUFFY SAYS

Cartels Are Adapting

For decades, Mexican drug trafficking organizations have moved illicit narcotics — including fentanyl — into the United States. Federal assessments consistently identify synthetic opioids as one of the deadliest threats facing American communities.

Cartels adjust when enforcement pressure changes. As land routes tighten and maritime interdiction increases, new methods emerge.

FBI RAMPS UP COUNTER-DRONE EFFORTS AS PATEL WARNS OF GROWING THREATS FROM CRIMINALS, TERRORISTS

In 2024, NORAD Commander Gen. Gregory M. Guillot testified that more than 1,000 drone incidents per month were occurring along the southern border, primarily for surveillance or smuggling. If routine drone activity has been tolerated along the border, then federal officials concluded the El Paso incident warranted halting operations at a major American airport. 

Commercial drone platforms are widely available and attractive to criminal organizations. They are inexpensive, difficult to detect and capable of carrying meaningful payloads. Around the world, similar systems have migrated from recreational use to combat applications.

Their use by cartels is not speculative.

AMERICA’S SKIES ARE WIDE OPEN TO NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS, DRONE EXPERT WARNS: ‘WE HAVE NO AWARENESS’

What appears new is the decision to disrupt commercial aviation in response.

That raises an obvious question: Was this an escalation in capability, proximity or perceived threat? Absent further disclosure, the public cannot know.

The Broader Drone Environment

Conflicts abroad have demonstrated how low-cost unmanned systems can be adapted for surveillance, targeting and even kinetic missions. Non-state actors learn from those examples. Criminal organizations are no exception.

WAR SECRETARY HEGSETH HIGHLIGHTS US ‘DRONE DOMINANCE’ PUSH FOR MASS ADOPTION IN MODERN WARFARE

None of this establishes that weaponized cartel drones are operating over American cities. There is no public evidence of that. But the technological threshold continues to decline.

The airspace over the Southwest is no longer immune to innovation.

TRUMP’S WAR ON CARTELS ENTERS NEW PHASE AS EXPERTS PREDICT WHAT’S NEXT

A Shift in U.S. Policy

The El Paso incident also fits within a broader change in how Washington frames cartel activity.

In January 2025, the Trump administration designated several major drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. That classification moved cartel networks beyond a purely criminal framework and into the national security category.

CARTEL DRONES POSE ‘DANGEROUS’ DRUG TRAFFICKING RISK IN BORDER STATE, OFFICIAL WARNS

Federal agencies were directed to apply structural pressure against cartel enablers — financial systems, coordination networks and international supply chains.

The FAA decision did not occur in isolation. It occurred within a posture that treats cartel activity as a cross-border security threat.

What the El Paso Shutdown Tells Us

Several conclusions follow.

First, federal authorities assessed an aerial threat serious enough to affect civilian aviation.

PENTAGON EXPLORING COUNTER-DRONE SYSTEMS TO PREVENT INCURSIONS OVER NATIONAL SECURITY FACILITIES

Second, the Department of War was prepared to respond.

Third, public transparency remains limited. Members of Congress, including Rep. Veronica Escobar, have noted that drone incursions along the border are not new. If this episode reflected a heightened or qualitatively different threat, that distinction should be explained clearly.

When civilian airspace is restricted, clarity strengthens public trust.

Temporary closures of this magnitude should remain exceptional — not routine.

HOW TRUMP’S STRIKES AGAINST ALLEGED NARCO-TERRORISTS ARE RESHAPING THE CARTEL BATTLEFIELD: ‘ONE-WAY TICKET’

Policy Implications

Border Airspace

The United States needs a defined border airspace doctrine. That includes persistent detection capability, streamlined counter-UAS authority for DHS and DoD near the border, and clear standards for when civilian airspace restrictions are justified.

HEGSETH SAYS US STRIKES FORCE SOME CARTEL LEADERS TO HALT DRUG OPERATIONS

Reactive shutdowns are not strategy.

Deterrence

If drone incursions continue, interception alone will not suffice. Disabling individual aircraft addresses the symptom, not the network behind it. Financiers, suppliers and planners enabling these operations must face sustained financial, legal and diplomatic pressure.

MEXICO’S PRESIDENT FIRMLY REFUSES TRUMP’S PROPOSAL FOR US MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST CARTELS

Deterrence requires credibility. The United States has both the authority and the obligation to defend its territory and airspace. Persistent aerial incursions cannot become normalized.

Mexico remains central to a durable solution. Joint enforcement and intelligence cooperation are preferable to confrontation. But history shows that when cross-border threats harm Americans, the United States responds.

Cartels adjust when the cost of operating rises. The objective is to restore control before escalation becomes necessary.

Mexico’s Role

Mexico’s cooperation is indispensable.

Public escalation benefits neither nation. Quiet coordination—shared intelligence, joint surveillance, and coordinated counter-drone efforts—offers a more stable path. Quiet coordination, shared intelligence, joint surveillance and coordinated counter-drone efforts offer a more stable path.

TRUMP ADMIN TELLS CONGRESS IT DETERMINED US ENGAGED IN FORMAL ‘ARMED CONFLICT’ WITH ‘TERRORIST’ DRUG CARTELS

At the same time, persistent violations of U.S. airspace cannot be ignored. Bilateral security cooperation will either deepen or strain under pressure.

The Strategic Choice

The El Paso shutdown may prove to be an isolated episode. It may also mark the first visible sign that cartel operations have expanded decisively into the air domain.

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If criminal networks can probe American airspace without consequence, they will continue assessing its limits.

The administration now faces a choice: respond incident by incident — or establish durable control of the skies along the southern border.

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The ground border has dominated debate for years. The airspace above it may soon demand equal attention.

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DAVID MARCUS: Yes, even White, Irish illegal immigrants must be deported

Seamus Culleton, an illegal immigrant from Ireland was arrested last September by ICE, pursuant to a deportation order after he overstayed his 90-day visa by nearly two decades. Now, for the most cynical of reasons, he is the Left’s new anti-ICE cause celebre.

The pro-Culleton argument is that he had a work visa, a pending green card application, is married to an American and has committed no violent crimes. But none of this changes the fact that his underlying 20-year stay was illegal, and there was an active deportation order against him.

Culleton was given a chance to be taken directly to Ireland, but chose to stay and fight deportation, which he must and should do while in detention. Honestly, the only thing remarkable about this case, and here comes the cynical part, is that he is White and Irish.

A central allegation against Trump’s deportation efforts is that they are essentially racist, that ICE is out there rounding up Brown and Black people based on their skin color. It’s an allegation the Department of Homeland Security vehemently denies and which has not been substantiated.

DEMOCRATS CAN RUN, BUT THEY CAN’T HIDE: AN IMMIGRATION RECKONING IS NEXT IN 2028

Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie opined on X regarding the detention, “This is appalling and I hope cuts through to the ‘heritage American’ types who otherwise could care less about due process for immigrants.” 

The assumption here is that racist supporters of President Donald Trump and his deportation policies will embrace Gillespie’s libertarian pro-illegal immigrant stance to protect a White guy. But it’s absurd, facile, and not happening.

Because there Culleton is in custody, and he’s not the only one. He told Irish radio in a recent interview that, in fact, he and his fellow English-speaking detainees are discriminated against by the mostly Hispanic staffers, who give extra food to Spanish speakers.

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION VICTORY IN A MINNESOTA COURT IS A WIN FOR ALL LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS

Whether that is true or not, it is clear that the Trump administration is not recognizing any White privilege in this situation. Immigration status, not ethnicity is what matters.

The fact is, that if ICE raided midtown Manhattan, it is likely that dozens of Irish pubs would close instantly.

Now, I love tucking myself into an Irish pub for some shepherd’s pie as much as the next guy, but the law has to be the law, whether a restaurant plays Bad Bunny or the Clancy Brothers. If it employs illegals, they are subject to deportation.

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN IN THE SPOTLIGHT AHEAD OF MIDTERMS AS FATAL MN SHOOTINGS IGNITE BACKLASH

Culleton is being presented as a kind of “model illegal alien,” leading many to ask, not entirely unreasonably, if the system should let him stay. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t.

If we allow affable Irish bartenders and tradesmen such as Culleton to skirt the rules, then so too can cartel members, or foreign terrorists, so long as they don’t get caught committing crimes. That’s not acceptable.

The Democrats and the political left think they have a winner here because they assume that conservatives are racists and will say, “Oh no, not a White Irish guy! That’s not who we want deported!” But that isn’t happening.

MORNING GLORY: TRUMP CAN END THE DREAMER STANDOFF BY TAKING ON SANCTUARY CITIES

Part of the purpose of the very public detentions that ICE has engaged in is to scare those in the country illegally into self-deporting, and according to DHS over 2 million did just that in 2025, while the monetary incentive to self deport has been raised to $2,600.

So, an Irish bartender, an Italian bricklayer or a Russian Uber driver in this country illegally have to ask themselves, “Is my immigration status in order, and if not, should I take the money, go home and come back the right way instead of risking detention?”

Over the past three months, including the period of all the mischegas in Minneapolis, Trump’s approval rating has remained remarkably steady after taking about a six-point hit in November. There has been no electoral backlash to deportations.

MINNESOTA SHAKEUP SHIFTS LEADERSHIP NOT STRATEGY, WHITE HOUSE SAYS, PUSHING BACK ON ‘RETREAT’ CLAIM

As one woman I spoke to in Virginia this week told me, “Sometimes it’s sad. I hated seeing that 5-year-old [who was detained by ICE after his father fled], but we have to have a border.”

If Democrats want to stop the deportations Trump was elected to do, they need to come to Republicans in Congress with a broad immigration plan that has more concessions in it than a VIP suite at the Super Bowl.

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For those in the country illegally, there must be no path to citizenship, hence no eventual voting, and some sort of penalty for being in the country illegally. But frankly, even that is probably not enough at this point.

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Joe Biden and his feckless administration allowed more than 10 million illegals into the country in four years, almost certainly under the impression that it could never be undone, that it was too many people to remove.

Maybe it is too many to actually remove, but Trump was elected to try and try he is, even if the illegal immigrant has a lovely, lilting Irish brogue.

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We’re Democrats. From food to housing, costs keep rising — here’s a serious fix

For millions of Americans, affordability is not an abstract policy debate. It is the daily stress of choosing between groceries and prescriptions, rent and childcare, gas and electricity. Families feel it everywhere, and they are right to demand answers.

More than a year past his self-imposed “day one” deadline to lower costs, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have not only failed to lower the cost of groceries, housing or healthcare, but are actively and intentionally making life more expensive for hardworking Americans.

The American people need a real plan to make life more affordable. Instead of addressing the problem, the president has dismissed affordability as a “fake narrative” that “doesn’t mean anything.” But there is nothing fake about families falling behind, workers stretching paychecks or seniors worrying about whether they can afford to age with dignity.

That’s why we’ve worked with our colleagues in the New Democrat Coalition to craft the New Dem Affordability Agenda, which lays out a commonsense roadmap to lower the five core costs that are crushing working Americans: healthcare, housing, energy, family care and everyday household goods like groceries.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: GOP TARGETS AFFORDABILITY WITH RECONCILIATION 2.0 PLAN AHEAD OF MIDTERMS

The New Democrat Coalition is the largest Democratic ideological caucus in the House of Representatives, with 115 lawmakers focused on breaking through gridlock and getting things done. Our agenda isn’t just another white paper wish list — it’s a workable path forward grounded in competition, expanded supply and policies that put working families first.

Groceries and Household Essentials

Prices at the checkout line remain high, in part because supply chains are fragile and markets are increasingly concentrated. President Trump’s trade policies have made matters worse. Broad tariffs function like a sales tax on everyday goods, and we all pay the price. Recent analyses estimate that tariff-related costs add roughly $1,600 per year to the average household’s expenses. The Affordability Agenda strengthens domestic supply chains, supports family and small farmers, and promotes competition to lower prices.

AFFORDABILITY: THE ISSUE THAT BOOSTED TRUMP AND REPUBLICANS IN 2024 DEFLATED THEM IN 2025

Healthcare

Healthcare costs continue to rise faster than wages, squeezing families and employers alike. Recent Republican healthcare legislation would make matters worse by shifting costs onto households and small businesses. Independent estimates project that more than 15 million Americans will lose coverage, while premiums double or triple for 22 million more. When coverage disappears or becomes unaffordable, families delay care, and employers face higher costs that limit hiring and wage growth. Our approach protects healthcare coverage, increases transparency, enforces accountability and expands competition so health care is affordable and predictable.

Housing

TRUMP ROLLS OUT ‘GREAT HEALTHCARE PLAN,’ URGES CONGRESS TO SLASH COSTS FOR AMERICANS

The United States faces a severe housing shortage, estimated at roughly 4 million homes nationwide, and the consequences are playing out in rising rents and fewer paths to homeownership. Years of red tape and outdated regulations have limited new construction. Our agenda cuts those barriers and commits to building at least 4 million new homes over the next decade. More supply will not fix everything overnight, but without it, affordability will continue to slip out of reach.

Energy

Household energy bills are rising, driven by underinvestment, permitting delays and uncertainty that slows progress. Families should not be left wondering whether next month’s utility bill will blow their budget. Our plan accelerates responsible energy development and modernizes the electric grid to keep power reliable and affordable.

HOUSE PASSES BIPARTISAN HOUSING BILL AS TRUMP ZEROES IN ON AFFORDABILITY CRISIS

Family Care

Childcare and elder care costs are forcing families into impossible choices. Too many parents cut back hours or leave the workforce entirely because care is unavailable or unaffordable. Too many seniors worry about how they will age safely. We’re working to expand access to child and elder care so that families can afford to work, care for loved ones and plan for their future.

Affordability is a core component of the government’s promise to the American people: if you work hard in this country, you should be able to provide a safe and comfortable life for yourself and your family. 

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We believe everyone should be able to afford the essentials — housing, healthcare, food, childcare, education, a retirement and more — with enough left over to buy that car, take that vacation and save for your future.

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That’s what our Affordability Agenda is about: renewing the promise of affordability to every American, not just to get by, but to get ahead. 

This is not about ideology. It is about whether Washington is willing to take affordability seriously and act with urgency. Families across the country are asking for relief. The New Dem Affordability Agenda is our answer.

JONATHAN TURLEY: NY Times columnist sinks to sick new low mocking JD Vance’s mom

In an age of rage, it is often difficult to stand out from the mob, as so many pander to the perpetually irate. However, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has found a way to win the race to the bottom. In a post on Bluesky, Bouie mocked the addiction of the mother of Vice President JD Vance, saying that she should have sold her son for drugs.

Bouie used Bluesky — a digital safe zone for viewpoint intolerance on the left — to post one of the most reprehensible attacks on Vance. Bouie wrote that “this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway.” That is hardly notable on today’s rage scale. However, he then decided to use the painful addiction history of Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, against her son: “No wonder his mom tried to sell him for Percocets. I can’t imagine a parent who wouldn’t sell little JD for Percocet if they knew he would turn out like this.”

Vance wrote a celebrated bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about his difficult childhood with a mother who became addicted to pain medication and eventually found herself stealing drugs from her patients. It was a tragic account of how addiction tore their family apart, but also a tale of redemption: “I knew that a mother could love her son despite the grip of addiction. I knew that my family loved me, even when they struggled to take care of themselves.”

JD VANCE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SOLD BY HIS MOTHER FOR DRUGS, NYT COLUMNIST SAYS

In April of last year, Vance celebrated his mother’s decade of sobriety.

As I discuss in my new book, Rage and the Republic,” a common element of past radical movements is the dehumanization of political opponents. In calling others “Gestapo,” “fascists” or “Nazis,” you gain a certain license to say and do things that you would ordinarily never say or do. By stripping them of their humanity and any right to empathy, you are free to discard the limitations of decency and civility.

Rage is itself a type of drug. It is addictive — and, while they never admit it, many relish it.

JD VANCE TELLS DEMS OUTRAGED OVER YOUNG REPUBLICANS’ LEAKED GROUP CHAT TO ‘GROW UP’

Bouie displays a striking lack of self-awareness in his hateful posts, objecting that “this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway.” It is the ultimate example of transference; a self-description projected onto those he hates.

Rage is itself a type of drug. It is addictive — and, while they never admit it, many relish it.

On his New York Times biography page, Bouie insists that “I come from a left-leaning, social democratic perspective, but I strive for honesty, fairness and good faith in my writing.” He adds that “I abide by the same rigorous ethical standards as all Times journalists.” 

A THERAPIST’S WARNING: TRUMP DIDN’T BREAK AMERICA — PERMANENT OUTRAGE DID

If using Vance’s tragic childhood and his mother’s addiction is an example of the “fairness and good faith” of The New York Times, it is a chilling prospect.

In his book, Vance observes that the children of broken and impoverished homes often give up hope, as he did: “Psychologists call it ‘learned helplessness’ when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.”

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He found that choices do matter in shaping your life. We all make such choices, as did Bouie in becoming another voice of rage — and as did the New York Times in choosing to amplify him.

It is the same choice that the Times makes in barring a U.S. senator and firing editors for exposing readers to alternative viewpoints while publishing those who advocate repression or rationalize political violence. To the apparent satisfaction of its readers, the paper now peddles outrage to feed a national addiction.

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In the end, Vance and his mother have overcome far greater challenges than this vicious columnist or the hatefest of Bluesky. From adversity, they found strength and a bond that has inspired many who are struggling with such addictions and poverty.

It is clear who is “wicked” in these postings. Perhaps it is even unintentionally edifying — and self-condemning. As Victor Hugo observed, “The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.”

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Gradually, then suddenly, blue state America is heading for financial disaster

In his famous 20th century novel “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway’s character, Mike Campbell, was asked by a friend how his financial ruin had happened. Campbell replied to the question simply, “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”

Just a cursory look at today’s headlines and one can see this very idea of “gradually and then suddenly” playing out in the fiscal health of many blue states. California, the poster child for a state heading down the road to financial ruin, is slated to lose four congressional seats in the 2030 census due to population loss.

Moreover, major companies such as Wells Fargo and Quantum, with others surely to follow, are moving their headquarters out of the Golden State to Florida. In fact, Miami was recently labeled by one national outlet as the “new Silicon Valley.”

Two of the other largest out-migration states in the country? Illinois and New York. Ken Griffin, the multibillionaire who runs the largest and most successful hedge fund in America, Citadel Hedge Fund, left Chicago in 2022 and moved his headquarters to Florida. Meanwhile, both Illinois and New York are slated to lose between two and four congressional seats in 2030 due to population loss.

BURGUM CALLS CALIFORNIA A ‘NATIONAL SECURITY RISK’ AS ENERGY CHIEF WARNS BLUE STATES ARE SKEWING COST AVERAGES

So, what is going on here? Well, in short, individuals and companies have had it with blue state taxes, wild spending, suffocating regulations and draconian environmental policies that stifle innovation and entrepreneurship. They are moving to red states like Florida and Texas that value capital, markets, free exchange and opportunity. Florida and Texas, incidentally, are projected to gain four congressional seats in 2030. 

Using any measure — GDP growth, job creation, capital investment, employment rates or the all-knowing U-Haul index of in and outmigration — red states litter the top 10 places to move with the occasional purple states of Arizona or Nevada breaking into the mix.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned California, Illinois, New York and many other blue states reside at the bottom. Americans have simply had it with bloated government and the nanny states that want to control every aspect of one’s money and life. And those Americans are voting with their feet.

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The left likes to say that warm weather and beaches are the reasons citizens are moving to red states, but that belies the truth. Last time I checked, Utah, Idaho and Montana had neither warm weather nor beaches and yet these states are routinely in the top 10 of these indices.

What does all of this tell us? Well, we’ve seen this coming for some time. California hasn’t gained a congressional seat since 2000. Illinois and New York? Last century. Blue states have seen their economies weaken and their populations slowly shrink since then, but politicians in those states refuse to acknowledge the reasons why.

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Now reality is sinking in, and with the loss of electoral votes comes the loss of political influence in Washington D.C., let alone financial ruin. 

Mike Campbell probably knew little of electoral politics, but he did know a thing or two about bankruptcy, and his acknowledgment of its occurrence being “gradually and then suddenly” is a cautionary tale for America. Blue states should take heed.

Federal welfare spending is a fraud magnet — and taxpayers are paying the price

Investigators have found a large underworld of fraud in Minnesota’s welfare programs. In one scandal, 57 people were convicted of stealing benefits from a children’s food program. In another scandal, investigators allege that Medicaid programs for housing, autism and assisted living have been looted. A third scandal is the apparent widespread fraud in daycare programs, as profiled by a YouTuber.

Republicans have jumped on the Minnesota scandals to highlight how the fraud spread in the Somali community under a Democratic governor. But there is a deeper lesson from Minnesota, stemming from the fact that the fraud-plagued programs in the news are all federally funded and administered by the state: State policymakers have little incentive to combat fraud when they are spending “free” money from Washington. Meanwhile, federal policymakers act as if they can borrow and spend without limits, and they focus on steering funds to their districts, not routing out waste.  

As a result, many federal aid-to-state programs — which account for $1.1 trillion in spending — suffer from fraud. In the $110 billion food stamp program, for example, there has been an explosion of “card skimming.” Since 2023, more than 670,000 households have had their food stamp benefits stolen by criminals rigging checkout terminals with fake card readers.

USDA IMMEDIATELY SUSPENDS ALL FEDERAL FUNDING TO MINNESOTA AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION

State governments could have solved this problem years ago by putting food stamp benefits on smartcards. But very few states have done so because the costs of fraud are covered by the federal budget, not by state taxpayers.

Another spigot of funding susceptible to fraud is the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s $60 billion in state aid. Last year, the New York City Housing Authority — which is two-thirds funded by HUD — was rocked by scandal as 70 employees were convicted of taking bribes for steering contracts to chosen vendors. The bribery scams had gone on for at least a decade, likely because federal policymakers were not paying attention and the housing authority was mainly spending federal money, not New York’s.

Much of HUD’s community development spending flows to thousands of nonprofit groups with opaque finances, which creates a breeding ground for scammers. Last year in Delaware, for example, leaders of the Dover Interfaith Mission for Housing pleaded guilty to stealing $600,000 of HUD funds. In another case last year, two Amarillo city workers were convicted of stealing more than $500,000 from HUD-funded homelessness programs.

In California, billions of dollars of HUD and state homeless aid to anti-poverty groups has gone missing. One company called Shangri-La allegedly stole $2 million in grants that were supposed to build low-income housing. A federal prosecutor said that he is finding massive fraud and criticized California leaders for letting corruption fester for years.

MINNESOTA DHS WHISTLEBLOWER DETAILS ‘SMEAR CAMPAIGN’ AFTER REPORTING FRAUD CONCERNS TO STATE

With all these scandals, the Trump administration’s crack-down on fraud is clearly needed. But executive actions won’t solve the underlying problem: the states have no incentive to be frugal with federal funds while federal lawmakers deficit-spend with no restraint.

The only durable way to slash fraud is for Congress to transfer the funding of welfare to state governments, which face the discipline of having to balance their annual budgets. It is true, however, that cutting federal welfare funding faces major political hurdles.

First, members of Congress build political support by steering federal spending to anti-poverty groups in their districts. Second, pro-spending lobbies know that the deficit-fueled federal budget is less constrained than state budgets, so they push to move welfare funding up to the federal level.

TREASURY SECRETARY ANNOUNCES CASH REWARDS FOR MINNESOTA FRAUD WHISTLEBLOWERS

Third, liberals fixate on tax distribution, fully aware that federal taxes hit the wealthy harder than state taxes. As such, they favor federal funding of welfare over state funding.

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Finally, liberals favor federalizing programs to curtail interstate competition. If the states funded their own welfare systems, many would decide to have leaner programs and lower taxes. Liberals fear such diversity, so they press for top-down programs that burden all the states equally with bloated programs.

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These are powerful barriers to reform but, strangely, partisanship may break down those barriers. Trump is targeting fraud because Democratic states and Democratic-favored programs are in the news. For taxpayers, this is good news, but even better news would be if Democrats launched their own fraud investigations of GOP-favored programs. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that up to 10% of federal spending gets stolen in fraud scams each year. In the near term, we need more auditing of both Democratic and Republican favored programs. But over the longer term, Congress should end funding of the most fraud-prone programs — and many of those are aid-to-state welfare programs.

Gov Pritzker ignored my letter — after his sanctuary policies killed my daughter

I am a lifelong Illinoisan, and I have met my social contract. I’ve done everything properly. I’ve been law-abiding and I’ve been productive. And if I didn’t do these things, I would have been punished. So I’ve met my side of the bargain. But I want my governor to know that he hasn’t met his end of the bargain.

Recently, I sent Gov. JB Pritzker a letter asking straightforward questions about the sanctuary policies he champions — policies that protected an illegal alien who went on to kill my daughter. I asked for a response by January 19, 2026, the one-year anniversary of Katie’s death. To this day, I have received nothing.

The pain our family has experienced in the past 12+ months since Katie’s death is beyond description. I wish I could explain it to people. The pain is so unbearable at times it has made me almost unable to function. I am haunted by the knowledge that I will never walk my daughter down the aisle, I’ll never hold her children, I’ll never see her again. I would give anything – anything – and the rest of my days for just one more hour with her.

AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT KILLED MY DAUGHTER — LEFTISTS MARCH FOR RENEE, NOT FOR KATIE

My questions to the governor were not ideological questions. They were factual, basic, and rooted in public safety. Among the 11 questions I asked, three stand out:

First, in federal court on November 23, 2025, it was stated that Julio Cucul-Bol is currently receiving treatment through the Illinois Department of Corrections for an incurable communicable disease, HIV. What medical screening protocols, if any, were in place when he entered Illinois?

Second, it has since been revealed that Cucul-Bol, a Guatemalan national, was using the alias “Juan Jahaziel Saenz-Suarez,” falsely identifying himself as a Mexican national. Federal law-enforcement authorities were aware of this identity fraud. Why was an individual known to be using an alias allowed to remain in Illinois communities without meaningful verification?

We ask why this individual was in the country, in the state, and in our communities to begin with. Gov. Pritzker wants the public to stop asking that question. I will not.

Third, Cucul-Bol possessed an Illinois driver’s license despite being illiterate and unable to read or write in any language. How did he pass the written driver’s examination?

GRIEVING FATHER SAYS DAUGHTER’S DEATH BY ILLEGAL ALIEN SHOWS COST OF SANCTUARY POLICIES

These are simple questions. They deserve answers. You can read my entire letter here.

Gov. Pritzker was elected to represent me, my family and every citizen of this state. Instead of responding, he chose silence. And when pressed by the media, his office attempted to deflect responsibility by pointing to a DUI narrative raised by Katie’s mother — as if intoxication somehow erases the fact that the man who killed my daughter should never have been here in the first place.

It does not.

Drunkenness cannot be separated from presence. If an illegal alien stabs someone to death while drunk, we do not excuse the crime by blaming alcohol alone. We ask why that individual was in the country, in the state and in our communities to begin with. Gov. Pritzker wants the public to stop asking that question. I will not.

ICE WARNS ILLINOIS IS RELEASING VIOLENT CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIENS DESPITE DETAINERS, RISKING PUBLIC SAFETY

On January 19, 2025, my youngest daughter, Katie Abraham, was killed in Urbana, Illinois. She was only 20-years-old — brilliant, loving, full of promise and planning a future that will now never come. She died instantly when the car she was riding in was rear-ended at nearly 80 miles per hour by a drunk driver, Julio Cucul-Bol, an illegal alien.

Cucul-Bol was using an alias while in Illinois and went undetected under a system unprepared — and unwilling — to enforce immigration law. First responders had to pry open the vehicle to reach Katie’s lifeless body.

She was gone before we could say goodbye.

GRIEVING MOTHER BLASTS PRITZKER FOR ‘PROTECTING’ CRIMINALS AFTER DAUGHTER’S DEATH TIED TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT

The driver fled the scene but was later apprehended in Texas. He pleaded guilty to a 30-year prison sentence for killing two women, including my daughter, and injuring three others. Some say this is justice. It is not. When that sentence is divided among the five lives shattered that night, Katie’s life is effectively valued at about ten years. And because Illinois is a sanctuary state, we are forced to worry that even this sentence may not be fully served.

Gov. Pritzker likes to say immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government. Yet in practice, he nullified federal immigration law and replaced it with his own. Without legislative consent or meaningful public accountability, he facilitated the entry and protection of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens — without adequate vetting, without health screenings and without a realistic plan for public safety.

Katie was more than a statistic or a talking point. She was vibrant, kind, creative and deeply loved. She had dreams and plans that were stolen — not only by one man’s recklessness, but by a political system that valued ideology over human life.

Yes, Julio Cucul-Bol chose to drink and drive. But Governor Pritzker chose policies that allowed an illegal alien — using an alias, lacking basic verification and somehow licensed to drive — to live freely in Illinois. Those choices intersected on January 19, 2025. When policy decisions directly contribute to foreseeable harm, responsibility does not vanish. There is blood on the hands of those who refused to act.

VICTIM’S MOM SLAMS GRAMMY SPEECHES AFTER DAUGHTER, BOYFRIEND KILLED IN ALLEGED DUI CRASH BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT

This past year has been the most brutal of our lives. Every “first” without Katie has reopened the wound:

• Her 21st birthday, March 28
• Family birthdays
• Thanksgiving
• Christmas
• New Year’s

Katie was more than a statistic or a talking point. She was vibrant, kind, creative and deeply loved. She had dreams and plans that were stolen — not only by one man’s recklessness, but by a political system that valued ideology over human life.

Gov. Pritzker has never acknowledged Katie’s life or her death. No call. No letter. No response. Silence.

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Silence is not neutrality. Silence is a choice.

For families like mine, that choice speaks volumes.

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STEPHEN MOORE: From Dow 800 to 50,000–Reagan, Trump and the supply-side miracle

When I first arrived in Washington in 1982, the Dow Jones hit a low of 800. You may not believe that, so feel free to look it up.

If anyone had predicted that in a little more than four decades the Dow would surpass 50,000, they might have been admitted into a mental institution. But U.S. stocks have grown 60-fold (not counting inflation). Even accounting for inflation, the Dow is up about 12-fold. We have lived through the greatest period of wealth creation in perhaps the history of the world.

No other nation has come even close in modern times. Consider that American publicly traded companies are now worth more than $70 trillion.

TRUMP PREDICTING 100K ON DOW BY TIME HE LEAVES OFFICE, CLAIMS HE WAS ‘RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING’

Is China catching up? Yes, but they’ve got a lot of work to do despite having four times more people than we do. The market cap of all Chinese companies is estimated at roughly $11 trillion. The market cap of all European Union countries is roughly $16 trillion. Japan’s companies are worth $7 trillion.

We are worth roughly as much as the rest of the world combined, even though we only have 5% of the world’s population. THAT should get you out of your chair shouting, “USA, USA, USA!”

We have lived through the greatest period of wealth creation in perhaps the history of the world.

This wealth spurt didn’t happen by accident. It’s the triumph of good economic policy — including the steep decline in tax rates and tame inflation bookended by two of our greatest pro-business presidents, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

STEPHEN MOORE: ECONOMISTS KEEP MISSING THE TRUMP BOOM — AND THEY WON’T ADMIT IT

Rewind to 1981 when Reagan came into office: Inflation was running at about 12%, the top income tax rate was 70%, the corporate rate was 46%, the estate tax was 70%, and the capital gains rate was 28%. The economy was in a state of collapse.

Today, inflation is roughly 3%, the top income tax rate is 39.6%, the corporate rate is down to 21%, the estate tax is 40%, and capital gains taxes are taxed at 23.4%.

Supply-siders like Steve Forbes, Arthur Laffer and Larry Kudlow should take a bow. They were right about lowering tax rates and inflation, igniting growth and prosperity. The income redistributionists were wrong that the rich would pay much less taxes. They pay more. The top 1% now pay roughly 40% of the income tax.

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That’s the good news. The bad news is that so many Democrats haven’t learned the lesson that lower tax rates create more prosperity. By the way, the evidence also shows that even with these lower tax rates, the richest 1% pay a higher share of the tax burden than ever before.

The city in the U.S. with the highest combined federal/state/local income tax rate is New York City. The new mayor, Zohran Mamdani was elected promising that millionaires and billionaires would pay more taxes to close a $10 billion deficit.

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California is our most populous state. The liberal Democrats want to put a first-in-the-nation wealth tax on the ballot that has already created an exodus of millionaires and billionaires out of the state.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., Trump is predicting the Dow will reach 100,000 by the time he leaves office. That’s a bit of a moonshot, for sure, but the last four decades prove supply-side miracles can come true.

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Nicki Minaj broke free from identity politics — and the left can’t stand it

As I make my way from Alabama into Mississippi on my Walk Across America, I’ve been thinking a lot about the chains that bind us. I’m not thinking of the visible chains of poverty, drugs and violence, but the invisible ones that shackle our minds. Just as great ideas set our minds free, there are destructive notions that keep us imprisoned. It seems far too many of us prefer this imprisoned mindset — and why?

What got me thinking about this was the recent attacks on Nicki Minaj. This Trinidad-born rapper, who rose from the streets of Queens to worldwide fame and wealth, dared to step outside the identity politics script by publicly supporting President Donald Trump. 

Predictably, the left unleashed a torrent of attacks with the explicit aim of “canceling” her. All for what? An individual expressing her opinion? Or, more accurately put, a Black individual expressing her own opinion?

NICKI MINAJ FANS SAY THEY’RE LEAVING DEMOCRAT PARTY AS RAPPER’S POLITICS SPARK BACKLASH AND PRAISE

Is this politics, or something deeper — like White guilt manifesting as control over Black thought? It’s a tired pattern we’ve seen before, from the vilification of thinkers like Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele. Even I was vilified when I came out in Chicago as a Black conservative. I lost more than half of my church, and my family had to go into hiding due to death threats.

When Minaj appeared at a recent U.S. Treasury event promoting “Trump Accounts” for children’s financial futures, she didn’t mince words. She declared, “I am probably the president’s number one fan, and that’s not going to change.” 

She addressed the backlash head-on: “The hate or what people have to say — it does not affect me at all. It actually motivates me to support him more.” And she didn’t stop there, calling out the “bullying” and “smear campaigns” against Trump, saying, “We’re not going to let them get away with bullying him. … It’s not going to work.”

JOY REID SAYS GOP USING NICKI MINAJ AS A ‘HOUSE PET’ TO PUT ‘BLACKFACE’ ON MAGA

Minaj, an immigrant who came to America as a child, was once a Trump critic. But in her recent posts on X, she has not shied away from questioning the Democratic establishment, asking why key figures like Jay-Z stayed silent when Trump pardoned a Roc Nation executive. 

She’s also called for voter ID, exclaiming, “What sensible, forward-thinking, cutting-edge, leading nation is having a DEBATE on whether or not there should be VOTER ID?!?!!!!”

This isn’t just celebrity gossip. This is a woman in a position of great influence, with millions of fans, who has chosen her own path and opinion. 

TRUMP CALLS NICKI MINAJ ‘A WINNER’ AS RAPPER DEFIES HOLLYWOOD MOLD

The response? A full-scale assault from the left in hip-hop and entertainment circles, where mindless submission to progressive orthodoxy is demanded.

Fans and critics have piled on. One X user lamented, “Nicki Minaj sold her soul for a Trump gold card. … She sold out Black fans, queer fans, immigrant fans.” Another accused her of becoming “anti-immigrant” and “embarrassing” for supporting Trump. 

Even at the Grammys, host Trevor Noah took a swipe: “Nicki Minaj not here — she’s still at the White House with Donald Trump.” 

NICKI MINAJ ACCUSES CALIFORNIA GOV NEWSOM OF ‘TRYING TO BE TRUMP’ IN SCATHING INTERVIEW

Reports claim she’s lost millions of followers due to fan “backlash” and her “MAGA-fication.” One critic even wrote, “She’s such an embarrassment & her fans don’t even care.” The Democratic Party’s official account even quoted a stan page to diss her — a rare and revealing move against a celebrity.

Is this all White guilt at play? Absolutely. White liberals, in their zeal to “protect” Black people from themselves, often end up patronizing and controlling us. They assume we must all think alike, vote alike and speak alike — or else we’re traitors. On the other hand, Black elite liberals shame us into groupthink to keep their hold on power — or else we’re labeled race traitors.

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Steele, in books like “White Guilt,” exposes how liberals use racial guilt to maintain power, treating Blacks as perpetual victims who need their guidance. White guilt is never about actual guilt — no White person today can feel personal guilt for what past Whites did. Instead, White guilt is solely about power, and it has been the tool of progressive elites to keep their tribal agenda alive. As Steele says, White guilt is Black power.

White guilt isn’t benevolence. It’s a cage. It says, “We’ll forgive your history if you let us dictate your future.” But when a Black person like Minaj breaks free — endorsing Trump on issues like economic empowerment or border security — White guilt turns to rage. They can’t handle a queen who crowns herself. Instead of debating her ideas, they bully, mock and erase. This isn’t progress. It’s plantation politics in modern dress.

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I see hope. If I had listened to the progressive left, I would never be in the middle of building my life-changing community center on Chicago’s South Side. That is why I admire Minaj’s defiance. It echoes the spirit of those who’ve always fought for true liberation — thinkers like Sowell and Steele, who remind us that freedom includes the right to disagree. 

Blacks are not a monolith. We can support Trump on policies that build wealth for our kids, like those Trump Accounts, without losing our soul. The left can’t silence us or blind us to the truth. As Minaj said, the hate only motivates more — and let that be our fuel for a far better future for us all.

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American seafood is national security — and Washington is failing fishermen

I have spent my life working on the water as a commercial fisherman. Today, I serve as the chairman and chief strategist of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, (NEFSA) representing fishermen who fish the waters of the North Atlantic and the New York Bight, along with their families, business and industry associations and members of the public who support wild-caught American seafood. I speak for people who work these waters every day and for communities that depend on them.

We see ocean conditions as they exist, not months later in reports. Yet policy too often prioritizes theory over experience and paperwork over outcomes. Commercial fishermen are not line items. We live with the consequences of every decision made in Washington. On the water, those decisions can make fishing less safe, manage fish poorly and drive American commercial fishermen out of business.

AMERICAN SEAFOOD IS AMERICAN FOOD SECURITY

In 2026, it is time to clearly recognize that U.S. wild-caught seafood is U.S. food security. America controls one of the largest and most productive ocean food resources in the world, and commercial fishermen make it possible to feed this country under some of the highest standards anywhere.

COAST GUARD IDENTIFIES 7 VICTIMS ON BOARD GLOUCESTER COMMERCIAL FISHING BOAT THAT SANK OFF MASSACHUSETTS

At the same time, we are forced to compete against cheap imported seafood flooding U.S. markets and undercutting American harvesters. Much of this product comes from overseas operations with weak or nonexistent environmental and labor standards, yet it is marketed as fresh or sustainable. Meanwhile, American fishermen following the rules are slowly being pushed out.

American farmers know this problem well. Domestic food producers who follow strict regulations are routinely undercut by imports that do not. Commercial fishermen, like farmers, are a pillar of national resilience. Any new food policy must rebuild and protect domestic seafood production, so American fishermen can feed American consumers under American standards.

OFFSHORE WIND EQUALS FOREIGN INDUSTRIAL TAKEOVER OF OUR OCEANS

We cannot credibly claim to support domestic seafood or food security while allowing the industrial takeover of our ocean. Offshore wind destroys habitat, displaces fishing from historic grounds and embeds permanent industrial hazards into working waters. It would be like setting our farm fields on fire and calling it progress.

Commercial fishermen warned from the beginning that these projects would compromise offshore safety. Offshore wind degrades marine radar, interferes with search-and-rescue capability and disrupts military and homeland defense systems. When radar and rescue systems fail offshore, lives are put at risk. Infrastructure that causes those failures has no place in working waters or national security zones.

Once built, the damage is permanent. Taxpayer dollars should not be used to eliminate American commercial fishing jobs so foreign energy companies and private equity firms can industrialize the waters that feed this country.

FIXING GROUNDFISH FROM THE GROUND UP

Our New England groundfish fishery is in turmoil. Fishermen face quota swings that shift from feast to famine, often driven by incomplete surveys or outdated data. A stock can be abundant one year and effectively unavailable the next, not because the fish disappeared, but because the survey failed to capture reality.

When that happens, fishermen cannot simply pivot. If the fishery they depend on is suddenly closed and they do not hold permits for others, boats tie up, crews are sent home and coastal businesses suffer despite healthy fish in the water.

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Restoring confidence starts with better assessments. Better science does not mean more models divorced from reality. It means cooperative, industry-based research, with fishermen working alongside scientists over time. On the West Coast, industry-chartered vessels and fishing crews have partnered with scientists for decades to improve surveys, reduce uncertainty and produce more reliable management outcomes.

A COMMON-SENSE PATH FORWARD

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The choice before the nation is clear. We can continue policies that push American commercial fishermen aside and replace domestic seafood with imports and industrial ocean uses, or we can follow the direction set by the president’s executive order and put America’s food producers first. Through President Trump’s leadership, the federal government has recognized that domestic seafood production is a matter of national interest, economic resilience and food security.

Commercial fishermen stand ready to meet that call. With a clear vision from the White House and policies grounded in real-world experience, we can protect and strengthen fisheries that are already sustainable, restore working waterfronts, and once again make American seafood a backbone of our national food supply. We are a nation of fishermen ready to roll up our sleeves, do the work and get the job done with the president’s help, feeding America first and leading the world by example.

MORNING GLORY: Legacy media didn’t lose readers, it drove them away

Readers will always read, and news junkies will always find and especially read news. Reading is simply faster than broadcast, so news delivered by text is always going to have a market. That reality does not, however, guarantee any platform the loyalty of a subscriber.

“Journalism is a craft, not a profession,” the late Michael Kelly would routinely state in the blessed years when he was a weekly guest on my radio program. Kelly was the equal of any American journalist of his generation, having worked for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The New Republic and The Atlantic. 

Michael was killed covering the American invasion of Iraq in April 2003. The point he was making was that anyone could be a “journalist,” as there is no licensing involved in American journalism as there is with professions such as medicine and law. Getting paid to “be a journalist” — that was the trick, and as the internet exploded, so did the opportunities to work in the craft.

WASHINGTON POST CEO STEPS DOWN AMID ONSLAUGHT OF BACKLASH FOLLOWING MASS LAYOFFS

The craft survives and thrives in the United States unlike anywhere else in the world because of the First Amendment. The ongoing, never-ending creative destruction of capitalism (thank you for the phrase, Joseph Schumpeter) is the constant companion of every business, including journalism. Freedom of the press, as guaranteed by the Constitution, makes the rise and fall of platforms for journalism particularly robust. There is hardly any “state” media left with the demise of federal funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but the vast universe of media continues to expand, and the “news media” within it.

In the aftermath of the big layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been an explosion of commentary — again — about the decline and often the death of newspapers. But if you are reading this, it came to your attention via some means other than a subscription to a legacy newspaper. And there, in a sentence, is the dilemma for legacy “news,” and indeed any written product for which a reader has to pay: There is so much “free” content that it is very, very difficult for a high-overhead text product that depends on subscriptions to succeed. By “succeed,” I mean at least break even.

EX-WASHINGTON POST CHIEF BLASTS ‘GUTLESS’ BEZOS AS PAPER ROCKED BY MAJOR LAYOFFS

For as long as I’ve been a broadcast and print journalist — and that dates to 1979, when I first was paid to write by a newspaper, and 1990, when I first broadcast over the airwaves — I’ve been a critic of legacy media in general for its liberal and then left-wing bias. I have tried to do so without dumping on former employers or colleagues. So this column is not specifically about The Washington Post, for which I wrote columns from February 2017 to October 2024.

The late Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor who hired me, was a splendid editor and person, as are Ruth Marcus and David Shipley, who supervised the Opinion pages in turn after Fred’s death. All three proved terrific people to work for and with, as did all of my editors at the paper.

After I left the Post, however, I also stopped subscribing to it. That’s not intended as anything other than a statement of fact. Over the past five years, I have also discontinued subscriptions to The Telegraph and the Financial Times in the U.K., as well as The New York Times and most subscription-based products that existed 20 years ago as newspapers, other than The Wall Street Journal and Cleveland.com. (The Journal is owned by Fox News Media’s sister company, News Corp.)

WASHINGTON POST JOINS OTHER NEWS OUTLETS IN LAYING OFF RACE-BASED JOURNALISTS

The Journal has excellent reporting on every major story covered by legacy media, and Cleveland.com super-serves any fan of Cleveland’s Browns, Cavaliers and Guardians, as well as the Ohio State Buckeyes.

That second subscription to a “legacy platform” (the former Cleveland Plain Dealer) makes a key point: The sports editor for Cleveland.com, David Campbell, has done a masterful job cultivating the absolutely essential revenue driver for any formerly “regional paper” that needs a far-flung fan base to be satisfied — and indeed tied even more deeply — to its sports addictions. The podcast and text options available for a couple of bucks more, or for free with a quick ad or two, present a model to be studied by any struggling paper. 

Campbell has kept the dean of Cleveland sports analysis, Terry Pluto, working — and now podcasting — along with a dozen veteran beat reporters, while developing a new generation of journalists serving each team’s “verticals.” I assume, but do not know, that successful platforms in every sports-blessed region have done something similar — and have thereby kept many journalists outside the sports section working.

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I hold up The Journal and the sports section of Cleveland.com as models for what still works for primarily text-based products that depend upon subscription revenue but compete for readers’ eyeballs with quality non-subscription text and audio-video. 

Quality matters most of all, but niche readership super-service, particularly in areas like sports news and opinion, is a close second. In this era of abundant free information, it was inevitable that the winnowing that began with the rise of internet-based blogs — then internet-based newsletters without legacy platforms’ sunk costs — and then Substack and podcasts would take a toll on every legacy platform that owed its origins and legacy audiences to a now-extinct quasi-monopoly status and continued reliance on subscription revenue.

Writers and reporters can still get paid to write and report. Andrew Sullivan — arguably the single most influential journalist of the past 50 years because he helped bring about the institution of same-sex marriage through a sustained effort to persuade, while also pioneering the stand-alone, one-writer subscription model — is no longer alone among writer-reporter-columnists who work for themselves. Such journalists are now, in fact, legion. But they must work for their readers, or the revenue will go away.

The journals and subscription websites that have thrived or arrived in this era are best served by a commitment to both quality and the super-service of niches. Bylines have long been brands, and it is very useful to have some of those as well. The new platforms that have flourished, and the old ones that have survived, must earn subscriber support at least annually. They cannot alienate or drive readers away. It’s just the business. 

The abundance of “free and good” is deadly for the “not free, no matter how good” — and certainly for the “not free and redundant,” or worse, the “not free and just bad.” Free beats not free every time, just as quality beats slop.

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Text-only platforms remain abundant, and news delivery platforms are many and varied. The number of working journalists has probably increased since the arrival of the web. Merriam-Webster’s primary definition of a journalist is broad — “a person employed to gather, write, or report news for newspapers, magazines, radio, or television” — but not broad enough. Slash the second half off to make the definition current: Anyone employed to gather, write or report news is a journalist, even if employed directly by readers or viewers. 

In America, at least, the Golden Age of Journalism has begun: There are zero gatekeepers.

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LIZ PEEK: The trans fever is over — and America is reckoning with the damage done

Trans fever has broken. All it took was a president with the guts to call out the evil being done to children across America and a shocking $2 million settlement awarded to a young girl whose body was mutilated by the grown-ups supposedly looking after her.

Bless President Donald Trump for tackling the trans issue head on in his current term, defying the woke police. In his first few weeks in office, he issued a number of executive orders that reset the issue of gender “fluidity”, declaring that henceforward, agencies would acknowledge two sexes — male and female. No more marking passports with an “X”; no more biological men locked up in women’s prisons. 

Trump demanded that schools stop pushing gender ideology in their curriculums (no more picture books like “When Aiden Became a Brother” targeting 4-year-olds) and using pronouns based on gender identity rather than sex. Trump also challenged the granddaddy of transgender issues by declaring that the “policy of the United States [is] to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports…as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.” 

I WAS 15 AND TRUSTED THE ‘EXPERTS’ ON GENDER CARE. TURNS OUT, THEY WERE WINGING IT

Most importantly, the president declared the government would “not fund, sponsor… or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another.”

An estimated 4,000 children aged 12 to 18 have endured trans surgeries over the past four years in the U.S., a period during which many countries in Europe moved away from such procedures, declaring them “experimental” and the medical evidence supporting them unreliable. 

As The Economist wrote in 2023, “Some older studies suggest that, left alone, most children will naturally grow out of their dysphoric feelings.” They also reported that the longer-term impact of puberty blockers are unknown but might include problems with “brain development and decreasing bone density.”

Why didn’t America’s doctors investigate the revealing studies and reach the same conclusions as their colleagues in Britain, or Sweden or France? Maybe because concerns about botched diagnoses and harmful surgeries were dismissed by people like Rachel Levine, former President Joe Biden’s assistant secretary for health, who claimed that such reports were just anecdotal. Levine, herself a trans person, claimed, in a radio interview, that, “There is no argument among medical professionals…about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.” Except, actually, there was.

PLASTIC SURGEON CITES ‘EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL,’ POOR EVIDENCE IN WARNING AGAINST YOUTH GENDER SURGERIES

As this shameful chapter in American medicine comes to a close, let us hope that a veritable tsunami of lawsuits follows, charging doctors, parents and educators with having ruined the lives of far too many children.

Adults who were either too ignorant or too craven to confront the madness of the moment, and who turned a blind eye to the ghastly “gender-affirming” cruelty that was ruining the lives of (mainly) young girls. They have no excuse. The transgender craze, and gender confusion was, from the beginning, very much a fad.

In 2023, when a staggering 38% of students at Brown University declared themselves “not straight”, compared to only 7% of Americans overall, didn’t anyone at that Ivy school imagine that something was screwy?

PRISHA MOSLEY: DOCTORS TOOK MY BODY APART FOR GENDER ‘CARE.’ NOW THEY ADMIT IT WAS WRONG

And yes, there are people who suffer from genuine gender dysphoria, and who need help. But doctors should know the difference between that rare condition and normal adolescent explorations and confusions.

Like most fads, this concept of gender fluidity is fading. The number of kids claiming to be neither male nor female has plummeted. According to one researcher, “The transgender share among university students peaked in 2023 and has almost halved since, from nearly 7 percent to under 4 percent.” Do we really think the biological makeup of young people changed radically in a matter of a few years? Of course not; young people simply moved on. 

But a number of girls and women in our country cannot move on. One of those is Fox Varian, the 22-year-old from New York state who sued her psychologist and plastic surgeon for performing a double mastectomy on her when she was only 16. She won a $2 million lawsuit against the doctors who recommended the procedure; the jury agreed that the treatment was ill-advised and that Fox, who had a multiyear history of mental health issues, was not given proper care.

DETRANSITIONER PREDICTS MASSIVE WAVE OF LAWSUITS AFTER LANDMARK $2 MILLION VERDICT

There are a number of similar lawsuits in the pipeline, lodged by women whose breasts have been removed or were prescribed puberty blockers at a young age and who later regretted their decision. Chloe Cole is one of the most vocal “detransitioners” who underwent radical surgery and trans treatment beginning at 13 years of age. As she said in an affidavit, “The worst part about my transition would be the long-term health effects that I didn’t knowingly consent to at the time.” 

In a recent interview on Fox News, Chloe said she expected the recent decision would prove a “massive precedent” and that similar lawsuits would flood the country. Let us hope so. 

It is not an easy path to challenge woke gender orthodoxy. Chloe Cole has been doxed and shamed by the trans community; they despise anyone who believes this transition should be left only to adults capable of making such a profound decision.

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The American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a statement after the Varian verdict admitting that, “there is considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria, and the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.” In other words, the medical basis for such life-changing interventions is garbage.

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The American Medical Association, the country’s largest physician group, has also pivoted, declaring that children should not receive surgical gender-realigning treatments. Surely the American Academy of Pediatrics, which reaffirmed their backing of trans mutilations as recently as 2023, will follow suit.

Too little, too late for some women who will forever live with the consequences of a nation and a medical community afraid to tell the truth.

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Ronald Reagan’s granddaughter, Kevin McCarthy honor late president’s legacy on his 115th birthday

Hundreds gathered Friday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to honor the late president on what would have been his 115th birthday — a tribute especially poignant with the death of his son Michael Reagan earlier this year.

Among those in attendance was Reagan’s granddaughter, Ashley Reagan, who said the annual commemoration helps maintain the legacy her father Michael spent much of his life preserving.

“Even with his passing recently, it was very important to my whole family to make sure we were here to honor my grandpa and his legacy and everything it represents,” she said.

“What he lived for was making sure that my grandpa’s legacy lived on,” she said. “So now, it’s carrying on my grandpa’s legacy and my dad’s legacy.”

MICHAEL REAGAN, ELDER SON OF FORMER PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN, DIES AT 80

The annual commemoration in Simi Valley, California drew family members, political leaders and longtime admirers of the former president.

Fox News Digital spoke exclusively with Ashley Reagan and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to reflect on Reagan’s legacy and the relevance of his leadership in today’s deeply divided political climate.

Ashley spoke candidly about her father following his death on Jan. 4 after a battle with cancer. He was 80.

“He was definitely a big personality. He spoke his mind. You always knew where he stood with politics as well,” Ashley said. “He was somebody that always spoke the truth.”

Ashley said her father, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, shared the ability to connect with people from all walks of life, “no matter who they were.”

“I think it came from a lot of years of watching and observing and kind of watching how my grandpa interacted with people, how he communicated with people and his communication wasn’t based on who somebody wasshe explained “It’s why he was able to accomplish what he was able to accomplish when he was in office.”

Ashley also emphasized that the version of Ronald Reagan Americans saw on the national stage as president was no different than the “grandpa” she knew at home, characterizing him as the “heart of the earth.”

“The person that you saw was the person he was with us,” Ashley told Fox News Digital. “We rode horses with him; we went to his house and had lunch with him all the time, and he was just, he was Grandpa.”

A SPEEDING TICKET LED ME TO RONALD REAGAN’S HOMETOWN AND A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF AMERICA’S PRESIDENT 

When speaking about how Reagan would perceive today’s political climate, both Ashley and McCarthy said it bears similarities to the turbulent period Reagan faced when he took office in the 1980s, theorizing that history is repeating itself.

“I think it mirrors when he took over in the ’80s,” Ashley said. “I think if you go back in history and you kind of look at where the country was at before he came into office, it mirrors that time frame.”

“High inflation, America embarrassed what happened with our hostages, the challenge that you had a sitting president believe the best days were behind us… A lot of similaritiesMcCarthy added.

Ashley said her grandfather would have emphasized unity, particularly at a time when political divisions run so deep.

“I think he would encourage us to reach across the aisle a little more, but unfortunately, I think we’re watching history repeat itself in a lot of ways,” she said.

“He was all about unity, and he always said the only way you can get things accomplished is by reaching across the aisle and working with the other side. And he was able to accomplish so much because he didn’t just focus on people that agreed with him, but he worked with everybody,” she added.

McCarthy, a keynote speaker at Reagan’s 115th birthday commemoration, told Fox News Digital that the former president played a big influence in determining his political philosophy.

“I grew up in a family of all Democrats,” the speaker said. “He and Abraham Lincoln are the reason why I’m a Republican. I rejected what I heard at home.”

“I remember in elementary school watching Jimmy Carter tell me the best days were behind me and he [Reagan] walks up to a podium, say no pastels, fly the bold colors, and go to that shiny city on the hill. That’s who I wanted to follow. And that’s what brought me to the Republican Party,” McCarthy added.

The speaker also described Reagan as a “happy conservative” who believed strong principles brought more freedom — the kind of leader, he said, America needs today.

“He actually welcomed more people to the party,” McCarthy said. “We had what we called were the Reagan Democrats. These people just got educated through him and said, ‘I wanna be with him. I want America to be better.’ Those are the type of candidates we should look for.”

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Ashley said part of how she continues the Reagan legacy is through her work with Young America’s Foundation (YAF), which operates the Reagan Ranch in Santa Barbara, California – a site she explained as deeply personal to the family.

“With my dad’s passing, it only makes us more involved in that sort of thing because we don’t want to miss that connection with Ronald Reagan,” she said.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, YAF’s President, former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said, “Young people still draw inspiration from President Reagan’s words on freedom. Drawing attention to his birthday draws attention to his remarkable influence even today.”

From kneeling to Spanish anthems: How the NFL lost Middle America at halftime

After the chaotic early 2020s, when the NFL led the way by leaning into woke nonsense like kneeling for the national anthem or introducing “Lift Every Voice” as a separate anthem for Black Americans, there’s been a lack of trust between the average football fan and the Super Bowl halftime production. The sense is, “What are they going to try this time?”

The NFL responded with an all-Spanish halftime show and effectively challenged Americans to have a problem with it. What are viewers going to do — not watch?

But many didn’t.

BAD BUNNY’S SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW IGNITES TRUMP’S FURY, DIVIDES VIEWERS

Turning Point’s “All-American Halftime Show” was announced a few months ago to contrast with what many expected would be a politicized halftime show by Bad Bunny, an artist whose songs are exclusively in Spanish and who has made political statements in the past, including “Ice Out” at the Grammy Awards and “F— Trump” during the Black Lives Matter protests.

The New York Times puts the number of concurrent viewers of the alternative show at 6.1 million, while Turning Point says its total viewership was around 9 million. The show aired on streaming platforms like YouTube and Rumble. That number may be a fraction of the “official” halftime show, but the Super Bowl halftime show is one of the most expensive productions in entertainment, often running more than $10 million, and the artists, who are not paid, perform for the exposure.

TURNING POINT USA’S PATRIOTIC SUPER BOWL ALTERNATIVE EARNS PRAISE AS MILLIONS TUNE IN OVER BAD BUNNY

To lose anywhere from 6 million to 9 million viewers is not a win for the official show. That Turning Point was able to compete at all, with stars like Gabby Barrett and Kid Rock, is a testament to how much Americans are craving a normal show — one with performers who don’t hate them, don’t attack law enforcement and don’t despise the president they just re-elected.

There was some irony in the show, such as when Ricky Martin joined Bad Bunny on stage for the song “Lo Que Pasó en Hawái,” which translates to “What happened to Hawaii.” What happened to Hawaii is that an influx of people moved in unchecked, and the local population was displaced, with some forced to leave their homes. 

NFL’S ROGER GOODELL BELIEVES BAD BUNNY ‘UNDERSTANDS’ SUPER BOWL LX PLATFORM IS MEANT TO UNITE AMID ICE OUTCRY

The lyrics could easily be applied to concerns many Americans have about unchecked, massive, illegal immigration during the Joe Biden presidency:

“Quieren al barrio mío y que tus hijos se vayan (They want my neighborhood and want your children to leave) / No, no suelte’ la bandera ni olvide’ el lelolai (No, don’t let go of the flag or forget the lelolai) / Que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái (I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii).”

Before the show, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called Bad Bunny “one of the great artists in the world,” saying the performer “understood the platform he was on” and that the platform is used “to unite people and bring them together through creativity and talent.”

He didn’t.

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His only spoken phrase in English — still the primary language of most Americans — was “God bless America,” followed by a list of countries in Central and South America. The point, of course, was that America — the United States of America — is not special and not something worth celebrating.

That’s the problem with choosing someone like Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl halftime show. His music is fine on a beach, a few beers in, playing in the background. But the halftime show is supposed to be something else. As Goodell said, it’s supposed to unite.

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We’re in a new moment as Americans — a “vibe shift” following the re-election of Donald Trump — where we know we have something worth preserving and celebrating. 

Bad Bunny doesn’t get that, and it showed.

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I’ve done thousands of fracking jobs — here’s the truth the activists won’t tell

In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli used a tube of mercury to first measure pressure. In 1897, German mechanical engineer Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine with financial help from the Krupp family, financiers of the Third Reich. Four thousand years ago, the Egyptians invented the pump. Collectively, the above are the bedrock of fracking.

In 1949, Haliburton performed the first frack job ever. In 1865, E.A. Roberts received a patent for loading a torpedo with nitroglycerin and dropping it into shallow Pennsylvania wells. 

Fracking is science, but not a dark one. To date, there have been about 2,000,000 frack jobs in the U.S. My company alone has done thousands of them without incident. Yet, the public has been slow to catch on, or is suspicious, or distrusting. That is mostly a byproduct of the culture wars and the rich deceiving the poor, but more on that below.

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By process, rock mechanics determine the pressure needed to fracture an oil and gas formation. Completions engineers use that data to calculate fracture pressure and propagation, the amount of frac slurry required, and at what rate it should be pumped. A frack company then mobilizes on-site alongside a wireline company. Wireliners isolate the wellbore a few hundred feet at a time into “stages,” shooting 20 or 30 holes through the casing and then pull off. The frac fleet starts in with a mix of water, sand and chemicals that they pump down the vertical section of the wellbore, a mile or two deep, and then out into the horizontal section for another two, three, or four miles. Most shales are pumped at 3,800 gallons per minute against surface pressures of 10,000+/- psi.

Pumping continues for a few hours, creating a web of permeability that will allow oil and gas to flow back to the wellbore. The process is repeated, often more than 50 times for a single well. Why it works so well is that even though the oil and gas formation may be only 50 feet thick vertically, turning the bit horizontally exposes the same formation for two, three or four miles. That’s a multiple of 210 to 420, an astonishing difference. Furthermore, it was a revolutionary one that is credited to a Houston wildcatter named George Mitchel, the son of Greek immigrants, who spent his own millions proving you could couple horizontal well drilling with high-rate fracking to unlock hydrocarbons in the source rock — shales (where oil and gas are formed) — instead of from the sandstones and carbonate trap rocks where oil and gas accumulate.

By the job’s end, millions of pounds of silica sand are pumped, which no one much cares about, but the millions of gallons of water pumped are a flashpoint. It might sound like an unquantifiable number, that is, until you compare it to golf. The watering of U.S. golf courses uses more water than all of North America’s fracking, and little of it is recycled. Consider too, that golf produces no energy. Nor does it save the planet, though that’s debatable.

Another flashpoint is the chemicals used in a frac job. Polyacrylamides reduce friction and are toxic in large concentrations, but are also used in cosmetics, moisturizers, shampoo and sunscreens, where they are also toxic in large concentrations. Guar, another commonly used friction reducer and viscosifier, is made from edible bean extract. Clay stabilizers like choline chlorides are cheap and not toxic in the quantities run. The biocides run are similar to household bleach and the chlorine used in pool water. Acid is used in small quantities that become benign with activation. The truth is that there just isn’t much toxicity left to frac chemicals anymore. If you think otherwise, watch Chris Wright drink a glass of frac fluid. Chris is the current U.S. Energy secretary and remains alive to this day.

AMERICAN ENERGY DOMINANCE GIVES US THE POWER TO FEND OFF ENEMIES AND RESCUE VENEZUELA

Fracking does not “destabilize” the earth, as I recently heard, nor will it contaminate the earth’s fresh water supply. I’ve never seen an intrusion into an aquifer. Ever. The wastewater scare is also fading away as other companies, like my own, recycle their wastewater into frac water. Electric frack fleets are displacing diesel fleets in an effort to combat emissions. Frackers and their customers were self-starters on all of this. No legislation mandated it.

Irrationally, though, fracking remains a maligned and misunderstood business. Ridiculously politicized, yet fracking is the apex building block of U.S. energy. Three-quarters of all U.S. production is from fracked wells. That’s nine plus million barrels out of 13. If you canceled the nine, as is the wish of the Park Foundation (which funded misleading anti-frack documentaries), the Heinz Endowments, and the Schmidt Family Foundation, we’d be living in a dog-eat-dog world of energy competition. Their goals would be an absolutely suicidal concept, killing one thing that works — always — is cheap, and is not changing the planet in any meaningful way, in favor of something that works intermittently, cannot be scaled to meet the need, is expensive and has its own climate issues.

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Per climate scientist Bjorn Lomborg, to go entirely electric, three months of battery backup would be needed. Currently, the U.S. has the equivalent of 10 minutes! The cost to get to three months would be roughly one-third of the U.S. GDP ($10 trillion yearly). The environmental result would be a hellscape of smelting, acid rain and deforestation. But surely these wealthy foundations and their enthroned trustees and beneficiaries thought through this, didn’t they?

Then suddenly we have AI with its power-hungry data centers, and Silicon Valley’s turn to natural gas. Therein lies a little break for fracking. The realization that it is essential to life on earth. 

JASON CHAFFETZ: 2028 election will be a referendum on our AI-dominated future

Neither party has put a stake in the ground on the issue that will drive the next presidential election cycle. Artificial intelligence is expected to transform the global economy at a dizzying pace, radically reordering nearly every industry and bringing with it unprecedented disruptions in the labor market.

Nobody is prepared to address what could be the biggest issue of 2028. In a recent earnings call, xAI founder Elon Musk described an exciting era of abundance in which AI and robotics take over labor and Americans enjoy what he calls “universal high income.” But that vision raises more questions than it answers.

Where do people go when entire industries shrink? How do we fulfill our need for meaningful work? Who decides how to distribute this “universal high income?” What is the role of higher education? How much government would we need?

PALANTIR’S SHYAM SANKAR: US MUST USE AI AS ‘SLINGSHOT’ AGAINST CHINA OR FACE ECONOMIC DEFEAT

As America approaches its 250th anniversary this summer, we celebrate principles of individual liberty, free markets and limited government that have propelled our prosperity for more than two centuries. Are those principles compatible with Musk’s vision of a post-labor economy featuring universal income distribution? 

We have to come to terms with where this AI revolution could take us. In the world of politics, which tends to follow where the winds are blowing, what are the principles that remain timeless? Who do we trust to steer us in these uncertain waters?

Economic incentives are about to shift dramatically. Will free-market Republicans be tempted to become protectionists? Will big government progressives have to embrace deregulation and nuclear energy to protect threatened industries?

I expect every other issue to take a backseat to the looming questions that affect young and old, rich and poor. Traditional political alignments may be turned on their heads. This is too important for us to get it wrong. We can’t just respond reflexively. 

FOX NEWS POLL: TOO FAST, TOO UNCHECKED? VOTERS SOUND OFF ON RAPID AI USE & GOVERNMENT REGULATION

AI may offer Americans a generational opportunity to double down on the foundational principles that historically drove our prosperity. But we can expect strong headwinds pushing us toward revisiting the collectivist experiments that have consistently failed in the past.

The rules are changing. You used to be able to protect your likeness, your works. We had patents, trademarks, boundaries. But now with deepfakes, generative AI and apps that will undress anyone at the touch of a button, we need to come together to establish a better framework of boundaries.

Both parties need to come up with a vision to steer AI toward empowerment, foster independence and amplify human potential rather than erode it. Historical precedents suggest technological advances, though disruptive, ultimately create more opportunities than they destroy.

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I’m hopeful that AI will create new roles we cannot yet fully imagine, perhaps allowing workers to focus on strategic and creative roles that machines can’t replicate. AI doesn’t have to be the end of work. It can be the beginning of better work.

AMAZON TO CUT 16,000 ROLES AS IT LOOKS TO INVEST IN AI, REMOVE ‘BUREAUCRACY’

Economic incentives are about to shift dramatically. Will free-market Republicans be tempted to become protectionists? Will big government progressives have to embrace deregulation and nuclear energy to protect threatened industries?

But in the process of getting from here to there, we face challenges that will test our resolve and the foundational principles that sustain our past success. AI threatens to create the perfect opportunity for globalists to build the central-planned economy they’ve always wanted.

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America is very good at harnessing innovation to foster independence. If we approach this the right way, AI may empower us to innovate — to build a future where every American contributes on their own terms. We know that government doesn’t create jobs. Entrepreneurs do.

The key is not to resist, but to embrace AI as a tool that enhances independence — freeing us for meaningful pursuits like family, community and invention. We can build a future where every American contributes on their terms. For 250 years, these principles have stood the test of time. Instead of resisting progress we need to be directing it to more productive use.

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How Jeff Bezos ruined The Washington Post and why he should sell it

The first time I spoke to Jeff Bezos, he had founded Amazon as an online bookstore and made himself available to all kinds of journalists — a “political genius,” said The New York Times Magazine, a “brilliant, charming, hyper, and misleadingly goofy mastermind.” In 1999, having blown past the naysayers who scoffed at the strange notion of online retailing, the 35-year-old businessman was named Time’s Person of the Year.

Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, as one of the world’s richest men, Bezos spent $250 million of his personal fortune to buy the Washington Post from Katharine Graham’s family.

And now he should fold his cards and sell it.

It’s a different era for the industry and a very different Bezos, one who is comfortable slashing a third of the paper’s staff.

EX-WASHINGTON POST FACT CHECKER HITS ‘ABSENTEE OWNER’ BEZOS, TELLS HIM TO COMMIT TO SAVING PAPER OR SELL IT

Having initially declared that “the duty of the paper is to the readers, not the owners,” Bezos, whose Blue Origin company has federal contracts, is actively trying to repair his once-strained relationship with President Donald Trump. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

While management has made more than its share of mistakes, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Bezos has destroyed what was once one of America’s great newspapers.

I bring my personal history to the table. I spent 29 years at the Post, working for Bob Woodward’s investigative SWAT team, as Justice Department reporter, as New York bureau chief, and eventually as media reporter and columnist.

In the 1980s and ’90s, when newspapers really mattered, the Post, while lacking the resources of The New York Times, delivered scoops with an all-star team, from politics (David Broder and Dan Balz) to sports (Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon and Tom Boswell) to the metro desk (Woodward and Bernstein). And there was the freewheeling Style section of Sally Quinn and many other narrative writers.

This was the paper of Watergate, helping to drive Richard Nixon from office, after defying his administration in running the Pentagon Papers, documenting the lies of the Vietnam War. It was the newspaper of the legendary Ben Bradlee, whose retirement I covered after being secretly briefed. Despite occasional blunders (such as Janet Cooke’s fraud), it was glamorized in two movies (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in “All the President’s Men,” Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in “The Post”), inspiring legions of young graduates to go into journalism.

When Bezos fired 300 journalists the other day, he completed the wave of destruction that had already left the Post a shell of its former self. Those dismissed included such remaining stars as Lizzie Johnson, who said she was “devastated” as she reported from the Ukraine war zone without heat or running water. And Marty Weil, a sardonic night-shift guy who has been at the paper for 60 years. And Sarah Ellison, an elegant writer who came from Vanity Fair. And this wrecking ball followed several earlier rounds of layoffs. 

Bezos doesn’t care. I just think he’s bored with the property he once believed would bring him instant credibility. He’s more interested in his rocket company. The Post is a blip on his global radar.

PROMINENT PITTSBURGH NEWSPAPER THAT PREVIOUSLY ENDORSED TRUMP TO SHUTTER THIS YEAR

I’m not in the camp that says Bezos should subsidize the paper forever just because he’s uber-rich. With the paper losing $100 million last year, he’s entitled to look for a path to profitability. But Bezos is getting absolutely hammered by the media. 

“We’re witnessing a murder,” wrote Ashley Parker, now with the Atlantic.

Liberal commentator Charlie Sykes offered this headline: “Gutless Billionaire Guts the Post.”

Former executive editor Marty Baron, who previously ran the prize-winning Boston Globe, declared: “Bezos’ sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”

Onetime Metro editor David Maraniss, a mentor to so many at the paper, said: “He bought the Post thinking that it would give him some gravitas and grace that he couldn’t get from just billions of dollars, and then the world changed. Now I don’t think he gives a flying f—.”

In fairness, many newspapers have struggled with the collapse of their business model, as classifieds and advertising migrated online, and people could get breaking news from their phones or watches. Some converted to websites; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is closing in May. 

More than a quarter of American newspapers have folded in the past two decades. Back in 1981, the Washington Star, where I worked, was shuttered as afternoon papers became obsolete.

But the Post is a classic case study of failure to adapt to the digital age. Katharine Graham was skeptical when she summoned me to explain this emerging universe.

EX-WASHINGTON POST CHIEF BLASTS ‘GUTLESS’ BEZOS AS PAPER ROCKED BY MAJOR LAYOFFS

In the Bezos era, the crashing waves of cutbacks meant asking readers to keep paying for a product that grew increasingly diminished over time, with its star players defecting to other major outlets. 

At first, Bezos took a hands-off approach, seemingly in sync with the newsroom culture. During Trump’s first term, he coined the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But there was a drastic shift in 2024.

When the editorial board drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris, Bezos killed it, which, as the owner, he has every right to do. Had he decided on a non-endorsement earlier, few would have cared. But Bezos wielded the ax a week before the election, and the furor was deafening. As the Post itself reported, more than 250,000 people canceled their subscriptions.

Four months later, Bezos decreed that the editorial pages would focus every day on promoting “personal liberties” and “free markets,” banning any attempt to offer opposing views. Opinion Editor David Shipley, whose section had won two Pulitzers, resigned, and other editors and columnists cut ties with the Post.  

Meanwhile, the mogul socialized with the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago, and sat behind the president at his second inauguration.

Bezos himself, as everyone knows, is now quite the jet-setter. He found himself in the middle of a tabloid scandal when the National Enquirer published lewd texts between Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, as news of his divorce was breaking. The Enquirer also published pictures of his genitals, which he slammed as an attempt at blackmail. Bezos proposed to Sanchez on his 417-foot yacht, and they were married last spring in Venice, an extravaganza attended by the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gayle King, Tom Brady and Kim Kardashian. The price tag for the multiday celebrations was somewhere between $20 million and $50 million.

For Bezos, this was basically spare change. Peter Baker, a Post alumnus who is now chief White House correspondent at the Times and an MS NOW analyst, reports that Bezos’ net worth is up $224 billion since buying the Washington paper.

So why does Bezos need the headache? He should unload this distressed asset to someone who would have a fresh shot at resuscitating The Washington Post from its near-death experience–though in all candor, it’s probably too late.

A day after abolishing the Post’s sports section, CEO Will Lewis – who blew off the staff call explaining the layoffs – was walking the red carpet at the NFL Honors in San Francisco, an event leading up to the Super Bowl. Those who had lost their jobs, and their colleagues, were furious.

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Even worse, he wouldn’t allow the Post to write about the sweeping layoffs. Seriously. His terse farewell note thanked only Bezos.

Back in the day, there would have been a half-dozen stories in the Post about the journalistic earthquake in its midst. But that was a long time ago.

No, Rep Crockett, driving an 80,000-pound truck is not the same as driving a rental car

As someone who has spent decades training professional truck drivers, I take highway safety very seriously. America’s economy depends on a national freight network that moves goods through every state, across every major highway corridor, and into every community. When safety standards for commercial drivers are weakened anywhere, the consequences ripple across the entire country, putting motorists, supply chains and professional drivers at risk.

That’s why I was deeply troubled by recent remarks from Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, suggesting that English language proficiency is not necessary to safely operate a commercial motor vehicle. She equated it to the same practice as someone driving a rental car in a foreign country where they might not speak the language. Her assertion is misguided, dangerous and dismissive of the professionalism of America’s truck drivers.

Operating an 80,000-pound commercial vehicle is not remotely comparable to driving a passenger vehicle. A commercial driver is not simply following turn-by-turn directions from point A to point B. They are navigating complex highway systems, responding to emergency situations, complying with law enforcement instructions, interpreting roadside signage, understanding weather alerts, and coordinating with dispatchers, first responders and inspectors — often under intense pressure. English language proficiency is fundamental to every one of those responsibilities.

Across the United States, commercial trucks move agricultural products from rural communities, consumer goods through major interstate corridors and critical supplies to ports, factories, hospitals and distribution centers. From coast to coast, our economy relies on professional drivers to keep freight moving safely and efficiently. That makes strong, consistent safety standards not a regional concern, but a national imperative.

MIGRANT TRUCKERS SUE CALIFORNIA DMV OVER CANCELED COMMERCIAL DRIVERS’ LICENSES

Federal law has long required commercial drivers to demonstrate English language proficiency for good reason. A commercial driver’s license is not a checkmark on a piece of paper — it is a promise to the public. It tells every motorist sharing the road that the person behind the wheel of that truck has been properly trained, evaluated and held to consistent safety standards. Weakening or downplaying those requirements undermines trust in the Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) itself.

This debate cannot be divorced from a broader reality confronting the trucking industry. Across the country, regulators are uncovering bad actors who cut corners on training, falsify records, or exploit loopholes to push unqualified drivers onto public roads. These so-called “CDL mills” don’t just endanger safety — they devalue the hard work of legitimate drivers and reputable training schools that do things the right way.

As a training professional and chairman of the Commercial Vehicle Training Association (CVTA), I see the difference every day between real, rigorous instruction and sham operations that promise “fast” or “guaranteed” licenses. True commercial driver training takes time. It involves classroom instruction, hands-on skills development, supervised behind-the-wheel training, and clear communication between instructors and students. None of that works without a shared language.

To be clear, this is not about exclusion. Trucking has always been a pathway to opportunity for people from diverse backgrounds. CVTA supports expanding the workforce — but growth must never come at the expense of safety. Lowering standards does not solve labor shortages; it creates more crashes, more fatalities, more scrutiny and, ultimately, fewer good jobs.

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Our drivers — professional men and women who earn their living the right way — deserve better than to have their work trivialized. Suggesting that language proficiency doesn’t matter insults the professionalism of drivers who take pride in mastering a demanding craft and meeting high expectations every single day.

The solution is not new laws or political talking points. The solution is consistent, nationwide enforcement of existing safety requirements. Regulators must fully enforce entry-level driver training rules, conduct meaningful audits and shut down fraudulent operators wherever they exist. Every state should continue partnering with federal agencies to ensure every CDL on the road represents real training, real accountability and real competence.

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When you see a truck in the next lane, you should be confident that the driver can read the signs, understand emergency instructions, and respond correctly in a crisis. That confidence begins with maintaining — and enforcing — standards that put safety first.

We owe that to our drivers and the traveling public.

What Usha Vance’s pregnancy news tells us about men and women in America

Second lady Usha Vance’s announcement of baby number four was delightful and refreshing news. Having four children in the U.S. is not the norm these days. Across the U.S., women are having fewer children, or none at all. As a parent myself, I hope Vance’s news will encourage more women to do the same.

A woman’s decision to have children is often seen as a personal lifestyle choice. However, this decision also affects the nation: without enough births to maintain its population, a country struggles to sustain its economy, communities and culture.

We do not have to look far to see where this leads. The Free Press recently reported that Britain is facing a full-blown demographic crisis. Deaths are now poised to outnumber births. Many educated, prosperous and financially stable women say their decision not to have children is deliberate. One woman in The Free Press story noted, “It’s not that I don’t have reasons. It’s that I have too many. If you knocked one down, I’d just give you 10 more.”

The United States is experiencing a sustained decline in birth rate, which has lasted for over a decade and now puts the rate well below replacement level. This trend mirrors challenges seen elsewhere.

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The reasons women give for avoiding motherhood are real: children and childcare are expensive; many careers demand total availability during a woman’s prime fertility years. Often, the culture treats motherhood as a professional liability rather than a benefit to society.

But there is another factor few are willing to say out loud — one that affects women long before they ever consider having children. Increasingly, women are not delaying motherhood because they do not want families: they are having trouble finding men who are ready to build one.

Modern dating is broken, and pornography has played a devastating role. Millions of men now habitually consume pornography. Barna Group data from 2024 found that 78% of U.S. men (ages 13–65) consume pornography “to some extent.” But this is not harmless entertainment. Many studies have shown that heavy pornography consumption distorts expectations, damages emotional intimacy, reduces motivation and undermines real-world relationships.

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Pornography can lead men to have distorted views of sex and women. A culture that normalizes constant sexual consumption trains men to expect gratification without sacrifice. Pornography promises connection but delivers isolation.

A lonely society, cut off from marriage, family, and genuine intimacy, does not reproduce itself. A culture that floods men with pornography should not be surprised when fewer of them step up as husbands and fathers. When men are trained to consume rather than commit, women ultimately pay the price, but so does the larger society.

Marriage does not collapse because women suddenly lose interest in family. It collapses when men stop pursuing commitment. Growing numbers of men are living disconnected lives, often alone, often online. Indeed, men are also being sold a lie that they have to have an enormous amount of money saved before they can commit to marriage and children.

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Women are not often rejecting motherhood out of selfishness or ambition. They are responding rationally to a dating culture where emotional maturity, fidelity and long-term responsibility are increasingly rare.

America needs strong men who are willing to reject pornography and focus on leaving a legacy by building families. At the same time, women should resist the message that motherhood must be delayed until everything is “perfect.” That day will never arrive. And the reality is that fertility does not wait.

Often, the culture treats motherhood as a professional liability rather than a benefit to society.

Yes, economics matter. But economics alone cannot explain what is happening. Even countries with generous family benefits, paid leave, and subsidized childcare remain well below replacement fertility rates. When marriage weakens and meaning erodes, no amount of government spending can persuade people to build families.

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Career success matters — education matters. But neither was ever meant to replace family, meaning, or legacy. A culture that treats children as optional accessories eventually runs out of people. That decline shows up in labor shortages, strained entitlement systems, and a shrinking pool of future caregivers, workers and citizens.

What is missing is a shared belief that marriage, motherhood and fatherhood are still good and worth protecting.

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Each generation before us faced uncertainty, whether in the form of war, depression, or upheaval, and yet still chose to build families. They believed the future was worth the investment. A society that stops believing stops having children.

America now stands at a crossroads: we can rebuild a culture that honors marriage, supports motherhood, and calls men to responsibility, or we can manage decline and pretend it is progress. Children are not the problem: they are the point. Second Lady Vance models that well.

America can’t duck and cover from Washington’s nuclear waste disposal failure

Nuclear energy is hot and everyone wants a piece of the action. President Donald Trump has announced his vision to quadruple America’s nuclear capacity by 2050, and 33 countries signed a declaration to triple nuclear capacity over the same period.

Not only are governments clamoring for new nuclear power, but private companies are moving full steam ahead. Tech companies are working to restart shuttered plants and to extend the lives and power levels of existing ones. America’s largest, oldest and most successful companies are moving towards new nuclear energy.

But a 90,000-ton pot of nuclear waste lies at the end of this rainbow and poses problems not for safety but for a significant nuclear energy expansion. First, the federal government collected fees for nuclear waste disposal but did not dispose of the waste. Second, because Uncle Sam was assigned responsibility, companies had no incentive to develop disposal solutions.

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It is not a safety issue. Nuclear waste, or more accurately, spent nuclear fuel is safely stored on site at nuclear power plants in secure pools and in dry casks and takes little space. All U.S. spent fuel ever produced would fit on a single football field stacked 10 yards high, and a few more reactors would add little to the mound.

However, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the federal government responsibility for disposing of nuclear waste, and it gave Washington until 1998 to start doing its job. To pay, the Energy Department collected fees predominantly from electricity ratepayers totaling over $65 billion, including accrued interest. The Department spent $11.5 billion, and the remaining funds held in the Nuclear Waste Fund total over $50 billion.

But the Energy Department has provided no service for these funds, collecting virtually no spent fuel, pouring over $10 billion down a hole in Yucca Mountain, a proposed disposal site, without finalizing the system. Nuclear companies left holding waste and paying for storage, sued Washington for not meeting its contractual obligation — and won. Now taxpayers are liable for $44.5 billion, the cost of the Energy Department’s failure, according to an audit conducted for DOE’s Office of Inspector General.

This liability is paid not from the Energy Department’s budget, but from the government’s Judgment Fund, set up to pay for court judgments against the federal government. Under current policy, waste is produced, nothing happens to it and taxpayers pay to make everyone financially whole. This decimates any incentive for a real solution.

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Washington should never have been made responsible for waste management. Even if the system worked perfectly, bureaucrats would have chosen a compulsory waste solution. This rigidity would have undermined incentives for the private sector to innovate by finding more economical ways to manage waste; reactors that produce more efficient waste streams; or value from spent fuel. Today’s firms have pioneered such technologies, but if there is no demand for waste management services, the value of these technologies cannot be captured or even measured.

President Trump’s executive order Reinvigorating The Nuclear Industrial Base may break this stalemate. In compliance with the order, the Energy Department has issued a request for information from states “interested in hosting potential Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses.” These campuses would house nuclear energy hubs that would include all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including spent fuel management.

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Three reasons for optimism and innovation exist. First, the request asks states to self-identify as interested hosts — in contrast to the current broken system, which used political processes to identify the host state. Second, the request requires private sector leadership, imperative for any successful plan. Finally, although the request provides substantial detail on desired commercial activities, these are only guidelines and the Department is open to other proposals. This leaves a lot of room for innovative thinking on how to solve the problem.

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It is not only government seeking solutions. Former Nuclear Regulatory Chair Allison MacFarlane and former acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Lake Barrett recently issued a new nonpartisan report, “The Path Forward for Nuclear Waste in the U.S.,” laying out a strategy for moving nuclear waste policy forward. Full disclosure: I was a contributor.

The report suggests plans to realign responsibilities for nuclear waste management, ensuring that the money collected for nuclear waste disposal gets spent on its intended purpose. The report provides flexibility to meet today’s and tomorrow’s growing disposal needs by holding the federal government responsible for its current obligations and allowing for new systems. Lastly, the report recognizes the need for permanent geologic storage but also allows for other technologies and approaches.

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For the first time in decades, Washington is signaling that it may untangle the policy failures that have paralyzed nuclear waste management. The Path Forward report outlines a workable strategy, but success now depends on states and private firms stepping up where the federal government has fallen short. 

If we want abundant clean energy and a thriving nuclear industry, we must replace bureaucratic stagnation with competition, innovation, and genuine accountability.

Why Bad Bunny’s polarizing Super Bowl halftime show felt like a slap at America

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show is officially behind us. Mercifully. What began with hype and outrage, and then more outrage, ended with a show most charitably described as polarizing and confusing for those who were not already Bad Bunny fans. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell promised that Bad Bunny would use the show to unite the world “in a really creative and fun way.” It turns out that he was right. Most of the country, with the exception of some Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, was united in its revulsion over a show that was narrowly tailored to a niche audience despite being billed as inclusive and respectful of America.

The pre-show hype around Bad Bunny’s invitation to perform at this year’s Super Bowl began with his “SNL” demand that viewers “learn Spanish.” He walked the dig back at the pre-Super Bowl press conference, but the sentiment ended up being true.

Then there was the online rumor that Bad Bunny would wear a dress during his halftime performance and honor Hispanic LGBTQ+ figures. That turned out to be a hoax.

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You’ve got to hand it to Bad Bunny and his marketing team. In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, they made sure to captivate people’s attention, whether positive or not.

The Super Bowl halftime show was a condensed version of the show he put on during his Puerto Rico residency. As America watched, Bad Bunny began with a walk through a sugar cane field. He passed by several scenes typical of Puerto Rico as he opened with “Tití Me Preguntó (“Auntie Asked Me”),” such as a coconut water stand and a domino table. As he arrived at a house, viewers were treated to a mashup of several of his other hits before transitioning to a homage to ’90s and ’00s reggaeton and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it depiction of two dudes grinding.

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Had any of the show been in English, we would’ve heard a mostly positive message from Bad Bunny: “My name is Benito Martinez Ocasio. And if I’m here today at Super Bowl LX, it’s because I never, never stopped believing in myself. You should also believe in yourself. You’re worth more than you think. Believe me.”

We then proceeded to the highlight of the show: Lady Gaga joining the salsa band in a version of “Die With a Smile” on a stage built to resemble the El Morro fortress in Old San Juan — the one moment where perhaps a majority of those present at Levi Stadium could sing along.

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But wait, there’s more. This segues into Bad Bunny’s “Baile Inolvidable (Unforgettable Dance),” “Nueva Yol (New York),” and a symbolic handover of his Grammy.

Up until this point, there wasn’t anything in the show that could be perceived as overtly anti-American. That changed when Ricky Martin began singing the chorus of “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii (What Happened to Hawaii),” which translates to:

“They want to take the rivers and the beaches away from me They want to take my neighborhood and for Grandma to go away No, don’t let go of the flag and don’t forget the le lo lai (song) I don’t want them to do with you what happened to Hawaii.”

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“What happened to Hawaii” is that it was admitted into the Union as its 50th state. Bad Bunny, who sings under the auspices of a record label founded by a former Venezuelan intelligence officer, would prefer that Puerto Rico separate from the United States in order to become an independent country — an option that only 12% of the island’s voters chose in 2024. The record shows that Bad Bunny also endorsed the pro-independence, Chávez- and Castro-sympathizing candidate for governor of Puerto Rico.

The Grammy-winning artist’s halftime show ended with a depiction of power outages, the titular “Debí Tirar Más Fotos, and his Grammy quote, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” flashing on the big screen.

Bad Bunny walked off the field with a flag-bearing entourage in tow. His shout of “God Bless America!” really meant “América,” as in the Americas, not the United States. A grand finale that was stilted, confusing, and subtly but passively aggressively anti-American.

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This begs the question: Why even invite Bad Bunny to do the show in the first place? Could the NFL make a business argument to bring him in as the halftime performer? Yes. As the league expands into Latin America and other markets, Bad Bunny makes sense. They both share Mexico as their biggest overseas market, for example. It was a no-brainer.

On the other hand, this was a clear vetting failure. The halftime show was carefully constructed to mainstream two similarly toxic ideas to viewers in the United States: first, the idea of Puerto Rico as a separate nation from the United States. Second, the idea of Latino identity as a nation within a nation, a permanent immigrant status separate from the American mainstream.

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Far from uniting the world “in a really creative and fun way,” Bad Bunny delivered a highly divisive show that put identity politics front and center. The final product fell far short of Goodell’s hype, leaving a sour taste in the mouths of millions of viewers.

One shudders to think what the league might have in mind for next year if they insist on forsaking their core audience in pursuit of global expansion.

DAVID MARCUS: In rural Virginia, mixed signals for Trump and the GOP

LEXINGTON, Va. – President Donald Trump’s poll numbers are a bit all over the place these days. The averages have him about seven points underwater, while some surveys show him down as much as 19. And then, one poll, the most accurate of 2024, has him up one point at 50%.

Likewise, large majorities of Americans say in polls that they want all illegal immigrants deported, but large majorities also say that the Trump administration is going too far in executing this policy. 

So, what do the American people actually want?

I traveled to Lexington, Virginia, to get a feel for what the reality is on the ground, below these shaky and inconsistent poll numbers, and what I found was good news and bad news for both parties and a midterm that is still wide open.

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Brian, from nearby Lynchburg, was visiting town with his wife Erin. A chef in his early 50s and a former Republican, he finds Trump’s coarseness, and what he would call his racism, such as the recent social media post featuring the Obamas as monkeys, to be a dealbreaker.

Brian was very interesting because, while he knew he could not tolerate Trump, he was also quite forthright about the negative tradeoffs in voting for Democrats. When I asked him, as a business owner, about Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger, his response was telling.

“I voted for her,” Brian told me. “Part of me wishes I hadn’t had to, but I did, given the alternative.”

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The alternative here seemed to be Trump, not former Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, Spanberger’s actual opponent, and something that any Republican thinking of running by distancing themselves from Trump should consider. It probably won’t work anyway.

I pressed a bit on Spanberger, asking Brian if the wave of new taxes she supports worries him.

“Absolutely it worries me,” he said. “I’m a fiscal conservative. I have to balance my budget, and the government should too. But if the alternative is racism, then I have to reject that.”

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Never mind that Earle-Sears is African American. Brian was the perfect example of why Democrats focus so much on race and racial issues. For some voters, alleged racism on the president’s part will trump even their own policy beliefs and preferences and taint the party he rules.

This phenomenon can also look like fool’s gold to pollsters who see a voter with some conservative leanings who should be obtainable. But some, like Brian, just flat-out will never support Trump or the GOP so long as Trump leads it.

As Brian bluntly put it, “If it’s men in women’s sports or racism, I have to go with men in women’s sports.”

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But it wasn’t all bad news for Trump in rural Virginia. Alice, who is in her 40s and works in real estate, thinks the Trump economic measures are starting to pay off.

“I can just feel it,” she told me. “Gas prices are low, more stuff is on sale at the grocery. That’s what we voted for.”

When I asked about Trump’s gruff manner, the one that bothered Brian so much, she just said, “If you aren’t used to it by now, you’re not getting used to it.”

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Others, like Peter, in his 70s and retired, are feeling a real political fatigue. Apathy is the wrong word, but perhaps frustration fits.

“Today, it’s like who you vote for is your whole identity,” he said. “But I can’t fall out of a tree every time Donald Trump opens his mouth.”

On Friday afternoon, a small protest of mostly older White people was gathered on a street corner in pretty-as-a-picture Lexington. Annette, the leader and spokesperson, was handing out cookies. Unlike their peers in Minneapolis, they were happy to talk with the press.

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“This is what we feared all along,” one man holding the Virginia state flag with its motto, Sic Semper Tyrannis, told me of the Trump administration’s handling of Minneapolis. “It’s why we have been out here protesting for a year.”

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Generally speaking, the huge shifts that pollsters are so ardently looking for appear to exist more in the world of numbers than that of flesh and blood, where it continues to be very rare to meet anyone who has changed their mind politically in the age of Trump.

No, the fear for Republicans today is not that Trump or the party are bleeding support. It’s that the Democrats on the ground seem far more motivated to stop Trump than the Republican voters are to reward slow and steady progress.

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Importantly, there does not appear to be anything that Trump could do, any position he could soften, be it on immigration enforcement, tariffs or his own rhetoric, that will sway the third of voters who just detest the man. But both Trump and the party have proven they can win without them.

From now until the midterm, we will be in the field with our ear on the ground, listening to the things that voters never tell the pollsters. And if Lexington is any indication, this is still anybody’s ballgame.

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Whispering death: Army’s new M1E3 Abrams tank is a hybrid-drive silent killer

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has his “Arsenal of Freedom Tour” in full swing, visiting the nuclear submarine production floor at Newport News, Virginia, and Blue Origin’s space launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida. His goal: restore American industrial prowess and secure freedom for generations to come.

You’ll never guess which program is moving fastest of all: it’s the Army’s new M1E3 Abrams tank.

Get this: the M1E3 Abrams is five years ahead of schedule. Yes, five years. And it’s a hybrid.

While Golden Dome missile defense, the battleship design and other programs are on the drawing board, the Army has accelerated the M1E3 Abrams to wartime pace.

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Credit Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll. It’s part of their push to accelerate top programs like the MV-75 air assault tilt-rotor plane. In the case of the tank, the Army had been studying upgrades and watching the Ukraine war. George and his science advisor Dr. Alex Miller were told they would not see the tank until 2032. “We said no,” Miller recalled.

The result: the M1E3 prototype rolled out at the Detroit Auto Show in January. The first platoon of the M1E3 will be ready for testing by soldiers in 2028.

As seen in Detroit, the new M1E3 is a sleek change from earlier Abrams models. Gone is the top turret position. Now the three-man crew side by side in the hull where armor is strongest. External cameras, sensors, heat-detecting thermal sights and laser-range finders feed into gaming-inspired cockpit displays. Their remote? It’s not for changing channels. An M1E3 tank crew can remotely fire a Javelin anti-tank missile with a 2.5-mile range and a range of other weapons, including loitering munitions.

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Here are five killer attributes of the M1E3 Abrams.

• Formula One Cockpit. The M1E3 tank has a driver interface that “looks like an Xbox controller,” said George. Just as important, the tank uses a modular, “plug-and-play” open systems software backbone. Soldiers can plug in new apps and upgrade it at a point in the vehicle software where all the things that make the vehicle run are protected.
• Quiet mode. It’s a hybrid. No, the Army isn’t going eco-friendly. The M1E3 will have a Caterpillar diesel engine and a SAPA transmission that allows it to switch into electric mode. The hybrid electric drive is all about silent stalking. Iraqis facing the Abrams in 1991 called it Whispering Death, but the new Abrams takes the silent mode into a new realm when the tank is running on electric. Add in heat signature reduction and electronic jammers. The new Abrams takes silent lethality to a new level.

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• Active Protection. Shoot at an Abrams and “active protection” will detect, target and obliterate you. This is the Army’s term for a system that can sort out a whole range of incoming threats, from recoilless rifles to anti-tank guided missiles, rockets, tank rounds and rocket-propelled grenades. And of course, drones. The best part is the detection system nails the location of the enemy shooter so the Abrams crew can destroy it.
• Reactive Armor. Already an Abrams standard, tiles fitted on the tank hull prevent penetration by RPGs and deflect blast downward or outwards, depending on the tactical situation. The Army really doesn’t like to talk about this secretive system, but guarantee you, the M1E3 will improve on it.

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• Great Guns.  With lessons drawn from the Ukraine battlefield, a .30-mm chain gun replaces both the .50-caliber and the loader’s gun. The .30-mm can hit light-armor vehicles like the Russian BMP. It can also chew up drones. Remember, remote control permits the crew to fire without popping the hatch.

By the way, this is a tank on a diet. Older Abrams models weigh close to 80 tons. Expect the M1E3 to weigh in at about 60 tons, after shedding top turret armor. Lighter weight yields about 40% greater fuel efficiency. It also allows the M1E3 tank to access 30% more bridge crossings in Poland and other NATO Eastern front-line countries facing Russia.

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Why a new tank? To deter Russia. The Ukraine war could stop tomorrow, and Putin’s Russia would still be a long-term threat. Russia has lost over 3,000 tanks in Ukraine but can still produce 1,500 tanks per year, according to Gen. Christopher Cavoli, former NATO supreme allied commander.

In the end, it is the tank that deters the taking of territory. Just ask the soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, who wrapped up an armored live-fire exercise in Poland during Operation Winter Falcon last month. Polish and U.S. forces fired their M1A2 Abrams tanks side by side. “We train to be ready for anything that might happen in the future… you’ve [got to] do that in the place you may have to defend,” said U.S. Army Col. Matthew Kelley, commander, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team.

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From 4 wins to Super Bowl contender — the secret behind the Patriots’ epic turnaround

The New England Patriots are going to the Super Bowl for a record 12th time. But this time is unlike any previous trip.

Last season the Patriots won only four games. This season they won 17 games and are the AFC Champions. It is one of the greatest turnarounds in NFL history.

I’ve written and spoken about comebacks and turnarounds. I wrote a book “Turn Your Setbacks Into Comebacks” sharing the components of a comeback and the steps to a turnaround.

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But before you can drop setback mentality, exit survival mode, have forward focus or regain your momentum, something must happen first.

A turnaround or comeback will only happen if you change. You must be willing to do things differently from what you’ve done up to that point. A turnaround pivots on decisive change.

This is exactly what the Patriots did. They made massive changes to their team, and the result is a wildly successful season with an opportunity to become NFL champions. And be the first NFL team to win seven Super Bowls.

Anyone who wants a turnaround in their life must be willing to change too.

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The first thing that must change is your mind. And you change your mind through knowledge. A change of mind happens when you receive new information and gain new knowledge. Part of that knowledge comes through defeat and failure.

The Patriots knew they had to make wholesale changes after losing 13 games last season. Their change started at the top by hiring a new head coach Mike Vrabel. He had played for the Patriots and won three Super Bowls. He previously was the coach of the Tennessee Titans. He hired Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator. McDaniels had coached for the Patriots twice before and won Super Bowls with them.

McDaniels developed quarterback Drake Maye from a rookie to an MVP candidate in just his second season. Maye’s progress meant the Patriots had an All-Pro at the most important position in football.

The Patriots made changes in their roster too. They signed wide receiver Stefon Diggs, who leads the team in receptions and yardage. They signed linebacker Robert Spillane, who leads the team in tackles. They signed edge rusher Harold Landry, who leads the team in sacks. And they signed defensive tackle Milton Williams, who impacts the whole defense.

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They drafted key players as well. The Pats picked Will Campbell to be their new left tackle and Jared Wilson their new left guard. They drafted running back TreVeyon Henderson, who scored 10 touchdowns this season. The Patriots’ opening day roster included 30 new players, most in the NFL. All these changes helped turn around the Patriots’ season.

A turnaround or comeback will only happen if you change. You must be willing to do things differently from what you’ve done up to that point. A turnaround pivots on decisive change.

You can have an incredible comeback if you change your mind. It happens because you know more, you are wiser and you have insights that will lead to a turnaround.

After a change of mind, there must be a change of heart. A change of heart is the result of a new attitude; you decide that your attitude is going to change. You determine that you are going to view life from a positive perspective.

Some people never have the comeback they should because they refuse to change their attitude. A negative attitude will never lead to a positive comeback.

Resistance to change is mostly fear of the unknown. The way you overcome fear is with belief. You believe that the change can happen, that it can be done. This is what coach Vrabel stressed to his team, “You have to believe things sometimes before you can see them.”

You must open yourself up to new possibilities, new opportunities and new experiences. But if your attitude doesn’t change, and you don’t have a change of heart, it won’t happen.

Vrabel helped his team to believe more by introducing the Four H’s, where players shared personal insights into their history, heroes, heartbreaks and hopes. He went first, and the entire team bonded over a newfound attitude of belief.

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There is a final change that must happen. You must change your future. And you change your future through commitment. You choose to be committed to your turnaround. Everybody wants a turnaround; every NFL team wants to be a conference champion. The Patriots won because they committed to coach Vrabel’s two non-negotiables — effort and finish.

You have a comeback when you commit to change.

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Not when you want to change, not when you think you should change, not when you talk about changing, but when you commit to change.

Commitments drive success more than goals. Successful people are simply ordinary people who make commitments others are unwilling to make. I’ve seen it repeatedly in my life and leadership. And the NFL has witnessed it with the Patriots’ remarkable turnaround.

If you gain new knowledge, believe you will have a comeback and stay committed to the process — you can experience a powerful turnaround too.

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