DAVID MARCUS: Senate GOP should take Fetterman’s deal on voter ID

Over the next several days, perhaps even stretching into next week, the United States Senate, that grave and august deliberative body, will performatively waste time with impassioned speeches over the SAVE America Act, which they all know will never pass.

There may, however, be an off ramp to this Mobius loop of legislative futility: A proposal from Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., would have the upper body vote on a clean, simple, voter ID bill, without provisions regarding mail-in ballots or citizenship.

Make no mistake, President Donald Trump is correct that all the provisions of the SAVE America Act, including one banning men from women’s sports have broad popular support, and are of vital importance. But if the bill cannot pass, then so what?

The reason the act can’t pass, as we all know by now, is that the filibuster rule can only be overcome with 60 votes, which frankly might as well be a million in today’s fractured Senate, and GOP leadership values this restrictive parliamentary procedure more than protecting American elections.

FETTERMAN SLAMS DEMOCRATS’ ‘JIM CROW 2.0’ VOTER ID RHETORIC AS PARTY UNITY FRACTURES

To the average voter this sounds like the Senate is saying, “Sorry we can’t do anything, but, you see, we made up this rule that says we can’t do anything, so our hands are tied.”

One must ask though, isn’t the whole point of the filibuster to push senators toward compromise, toward a bill both popular and sound enough to carry the 60 votes needed?

This is where Fetterman’s clean voter ID legislation comes in.

REPUBLICANS SHRED ‘NONSENSE’ DEM CLAIMS AGAINST TRUMP-BACKED VOTER ID BILL

Even without the provisions regarding citizenship and mail-in voting, a law requiring a valid ID to vote in federal elections would be a major victory for Republicans, and potentially a first step toward greater election reform.

Politically speaking, such a clean voter ID bill would put Democrats in a much tougher bind than they are in today, because they lose every one of their somewhat plausible-sounding objections to the SAVE America Act.

As silly, and frankly condescending, as Democrats’ arguments that married women and poor people are too dumb or frazzled to obtain proof of citizenship are, we have all stood in line at the DMV or passport office and can glimpse the grain of truth in it.

TRUMP-BACKED VOTER ID BILL FACES GOP RESISTANCE AS TILLIS VOWS TO STOP IT

But a clean voter ID bill that accepts military and a variety of other forms of identification takes all of these objections off the table. It would force Democrats to admit they do not want even the slightest scrutiny over who votes.

To put it bluntly, if Democrats in the Senate cannot say yes to basic voter ID, which truly does have the support of 80% of Americans, then it is reasonable to conclude that it is because they want to cheat in elections.

The American people are frustrated. They are poking the Senate with a stick and saying, “Do something,” but instead, they are treated to name-calling and meaningless oratory.

TRUMP WARNS HE WON’T ENDORSE LAWMAKERS WHO OPPOSE SAVE AMERICA ACT

The only thing that is giving Democrats in the Senate and their friends in the media any cover on the voter ID issue is the breadth and scope of the SAVE America Act. If Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., lacks the will to break the filibuster, he can at least expose the truth.

Senate leadership can, with a single swipe, take away all of the excuses that Democrats have for opposing the same ID requirements to vote that we have to buy a pack of smokes.

Politics, they say, is the art of the possible, not the perfect. But it is also the art of the passable, both in the sense of a milquetoast disappointment and a bill signed into law.

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Fetterman has become like a big old sweatshirt-wearing lighthouse in the Senate, a beacon of sanity and common sense, and his plan for a clean voter ID bill seems like the only path forward that GOP leadership has left.

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If nothing happens, if the SAVE America Act fails and nothing is passed in its stead, the reaction from voters will almost certainly be a pox on both your parties, but with a little extra venom for the one at least nominally in charge.

The American people neither need nor desire a week of pointless speeches about a bill that can’t pass. Instead, let the Senate do some actual work, and at the very least pass a simple, popular and effective voter ID bill.

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Winning the battles, losing the war? America must define the endgame in Iran

The Pentagon’s briefings on Operation Epic Fury leave no room for debate: the U.S.-Israeli air campaign has hammered Iran. War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed more than 15,000 targets were struck. Tehran’s air defenses are in ruins. Its navy is wrecked. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine reported Iran’s ballistic missile launches against Israel and Gulf partners are down 90% since the first day of the war. By every battlefield measure, this campaign has delivered a punishing blow to the regime.

But wars are not won on target lists. They are won when military force produces a durable political outcome. More than two weeks into this campaign, that outcome remains undefined. That is the problem.

Consider the economic fallout. The Strait of Hormuz — the choke point through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s daily oil supply moves — is effectively closed. Tanker traffic has stopped. Oil has blown past $100 a barrel, with Brent crude touching $119 before Iran’s new supreme leader doubled down on keeping the strait shut. The International Energy Agency called it the largest oil supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. That is not a rounding error. That is inflation, economic drag and political pressure on every Western government involved.

TRUMP SUDDENLY SEEMS ANXIOUS TO END THE WAR AS AMERICAN CASUALTIES MOUNT AND IRAN FINDS WAYS TO HIT BACK

The military cost is just as serious. Tomahawks, Patriots, long-range strike missiles — the precision weapons that define American warfighting — are being burned at extraordinary rates. The Pentagon told Congress this week that the first six days of Operation Epic Fury cost more than $11.3 billion, and that figure does not include pre-deployment costs or munitions replacement. Defense analysts and current officials warn the Iran campaign is drawing down the precise weapons stockpiles the United States would need to deter China in the Pacific — and that depleted inventories will take years to replace. Every Tomahawk fired over Tehran is one less available for the Taiwan Strait.

The human cost is real and irreversible. At least seven American service members were killed in combat operations before Thursday. Then all six crew members of a KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft were confirmed dead after the tanker went down over western Iraq while supporting combat strikes. Secretary Hegseth acknowledged the loss, saying “war is hell, war is chaos” and calling the airmen “American heroes, all of them.” They are also sons and daughters of American families — a fact that demands an honest accounting of what we are asking them to achieve.

Despite the pounding, the Iranian regime has not collapsed. Tehran installed Mojtaba Khamenei — the slain supreme leader’s son, described by analysts as a hardliner with deep IRGC ties — as the new ruler within days of the war starting. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps backed him immediately, and he has already vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and promised to attack every U.S. base in the region. This is not a regime on the verge of surrender.

The IRGC and Iran’s ruling clerics do not view this war purely as a geopolitical contest. They see it as a religious fight — a defense of the Islamic Republic against what they describe as an American-Zionist assault. Regimes that fight in God’s name are not easily coerced by bomb tonnage. That is not an excuse for weakness. It is a reality that must shape strategy.

EX-NAVY SEAL WARNS WITHDRAWING FROM IRAN NOW WOULD HAND ‘VICTORY’ TO REGIME

History drives the point home. Conventional airpower has never toppled a determined government by itself. Not in World War II. Not in Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan. Air campaigns degrade capability and shape battlefields. They do not deliver political collapse — not without a ground force or an internal revolt. Neither is coming.

That raises the central strategic question: what exactly is the United States trying to achieve? President Donald Trump set clear objectives — deny Iran nuclear weapons and destroy its ability to threaten its neighbors with missiles and drones. After almost three weeks of strikes, those goals are within reach. But Trump has also suggested he wants to approve Iran’s next leader and questioned whether the Islamic Republic itself should survive. That is not counterproliferation. That is regime change — and regime change requires far more than an air campaign.

The question now is not whether America can keep striking Iran. Of course it can. The question is whether more strikes move the country toward a defined end state — or simply run up the cost of a war with no finish line.

Three steps point the way out.

First, complete the remaining military objectives: suppress residual missile launch capability, clear Iranian mines threatening the Strait of Hormuz, and finish the nuclear infrastructure work. Get the job done, then stop.

Second, define publicly what “done” looks like. The administration has been deliberately vague on the campaign’s end point. That ambiguity may serve short-term messaging, but it rattles markets, unnerves allies and leaves the American public in the dark about what this war is for.

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Third, shift from large-scale strikes to sustained pressure: maritime security operations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, aggressive sanctions enforcement, interception of Iranian weapons transfers and a credible deterrent posture against renewed aggression. Keep the boot on Tehran’s throat without an open-ended air campaign.

In plain terms: finish the military mission, then stop widening the war.

The United States and Israel have won the opening rounds of this fight. The danger now is the pattern that played out in Iraq and Afghanistan — early military success followed by years of costly, inconclusive war that erodes the original victory. America has the firepower to keep striking Iran indefinitely. What it needs is the strategic discipline to stop when the mission is accomplished.

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The men and women executing this campaign deserve more than tactical wins. They deserve a strategy as disciplined as their service.

And so does the country.

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The sound of freedom: Cuba’s regime is running out of time — now the US must act

A Cuban night is no longer quiet. It is filled with the metallic rhythm of thousands of families striking spoons against empty pots in the darkness. This is the sound of a funeral for a failed ideology. The brutal communist regime imposed on Cuba by the Castro family is collapsing in real time. Its economy is in free fall, its people are hungry and the dictatorship is running out of money and fuel.

After more than six decades of repression, the corrupt regime is weaker today than at any point in my lifetime. I know that personally. I lived under it. I fled it. Today I am the only Cuban-born member of the United States Congress.

This moment demands clarity and resolve from the United States. We are closer than ever to ending the tyranny imposed by the Castro family and their loyal enforcers in Havana, but only if we maintain a firm strategy. My message to the world, to those forced from their homeland, and to the regime is simple. There will be no major investments, no bailouts and no economic lifelines unless there is dramatic political change on the island.

FLORIDA LAUNCHES PROBE AFTER CUBA KILLS 4 ABOARD US-FLAGGED SPEEDBOAT NEAR KEYS

Any discussion with the bankrupt dictatorship in Havana must begin from a position of strength. Economic relief should only follow real change. The regime must release all political prisoners, restore human rights and dismantle the totalitarian structures of the Castro dictatorship, as demanded by U.S. law codified in the LIBERTAD Act of 1996, which outlines the conditions for lifting the economic embargo on the regime.

At this moment, the regime carries roughly $46 billion in foreign debt, while its principal sources of revenue have collapsed. Remittances have dropped nearly 70%. Tourism income has fallen more than 68%. Revenue from exporting medical professionals has declined more than 53%. At the same time, the island’s crumbling power grid has collapsed, plunging millions of Cubans into constant blackouts.

These numbers reveal the truth about the economic model imposed by the Castros. The crisis is not the result of outside pressure. It is the outcome of decades of a failed ideology, corruption, central planning and economic mismanagement. For more than 67 years, the regime drained the country’s infrastructure while enriching its henchmen.

Thanks to the leadership of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the United States has restored a clear policy toward authoritarian regimes. Dictatorships that abuse their people will not be rewarded with economic lifelines.

MILLIONS LOSE POWER ACROSS CUBA AS TRUMP SANCTIONS CONTINUE TO FUEL ONGOING ENERGY CRISIS

We have seen this approach produce results elsewhere. In Venezuela, sustained pressure exposed the fragility of the Maduro dictatorship and forced negotiations it long resisted. In Iran, sanctions and diplomatic pressure constrained the regime’s ability to fund destabilizing activities abroad. Authoritarian regimes that depend on outside resources become vulnerable when the democratic world acts with unity and strength.

The dictatorship in Havana is no exception. The Castro regime needs the United States far more than the United States needs the regime. Havana depends on foreign currency, imported food, fuel and international legitimacy. President Trump’s decisive actions give the United States critical leverage to affect change in Cuba.

Every night, thousands of Cubans take to the streets in towns across the island. In the City of Moron on the eastern side of the island, the townspeople even set fire to the Communist Party’s headquarters during a massive protest.

CUBAN PRESIDENT ADMITS TALKS WITH TRUMP ADMIN AS FUEL BLOCKADE CHOKES DOMESTIC ENERGY SUPPLY AND ECONOMY

The dictatorship has responded in the only way it knows: repression. More than 1,400 political prisoners remain behind bars, patriots whose only crime was demanding freedom. President Donald Trump has an opportunity to help change the course of history. If the regime once again resorts to massacring its own people, as it has in the past, the United States must make clear that such brutality will not be tolerated.

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I urge President Trump to send a stark and unmistakable warning to the regime in Havana about the consequences they will face if they continue to repress the Cuban people.

Yet the courage of the Cuban people continues to shine through the darkness. Across the island, the cry of Patria y Vida grows louder every day.

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To my brothers and sisters on the island. We hear your pots and pans echo through the night. We see your courage in the darkness. Your voices carry across the Florida Straits and into the hearts of millions who still dream of a free Cuba. Every protest and every chant for Libertad brings the island closer to the freedom its people deserve.

The night imposed by the Castros has lasted far too long. But the Cuban people have never stopped believing in the sunrise.

TikTok restores Brooke Slusser account after ‘permanently’ banning her after videos on SJSU volleyball scandal

Former San Jose State University volleyball star Brooke Slusser was temporarily banned from TikTok after posting several videos discussing her alleged experience sharing a team and apartment with a transgender teammate. Her account, which was “permanently banned” according to screenshots obtained by Fox News Digital, was later restored Tuesday after publication.

Slusser provided screenshots to Fox News Digital showing the notification of her banishment and an unsuccessful appeal. The notifications cite violations of “community guidelines.” 

“We ask that all users follow our Community Guidelines to help us maintain a safe, respectful TikTok community,” the notification read. 

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Fox News Digital has reached out to TikTok for comment as to why her account was banned and then restored, but has not received a response. 

“I’m pretty mad about it,” Slusser told Fox News Digital after the initial ban occurred. 

TikTok previously banned the activist sportswear brand XX-XY Athletics, which Slusser is signed with, after it posted an advertisement video advocating for the protection of women and girls’ sports from biological male trans athletes.

TikTok was previously owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, before finalizing a $14 billion deal to shift its U.S. operations to a new entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, to avoid a federal ban. However, ByteDance still owns approximately 20% of the company. 

Slusser has been the target of a viral left-wing hate campaign on TikTok and X over the last week after she began to speak out about her alleged experience at SJSU. Her content started coming out after the university, and the California State University (CSU) system, filed a lawsuit against the federal government to challenge a Department of Education investigation that determined SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of a transgender volleyball player. 

On X, the left-wing attacks on Slusser came in response to an interview with Fox News Digital in which she reflected on living in the same apartment with a transgender teammate, Blaire Fleming.

“You find out you’re just chilling in a bed with a man that you have no idea about… I [was] unknowingly sharing a bed at that time with a man,” Slusser said in the interview, also alleging that SJSU volleyball coach Todd Kress encouraged her to live in the same apartment as the trans teammate when another group of players was also looking for a final tenant. 

The fallout of the interview has prompted high-profile activists, lawmakers and even an actor to speak out, taking a side behind or against Slusser.

A coalition of “save women’s sports” activists rushed to Slusser’s defense, with OutKick host Riley Gaines, XX-XY Athletics founder Jennifer Sey, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., women’s tennis legend Martina Navratilova and former ESPN star Sage Steele leading the charge to defend Slusser from the pro-trans detractors.

“I would just say people that don’t know my life or my trauma don’t have room to say how good or bad my time at SJSU was. I hope they never have to understand going through something as awful as that,” Slusser previously told Fox News Digital of the backlash.

TRUMP ADMIN RESPONDS AFTER SJSU SUES TO CHALLENGE TITLE IX INVESTIGATION INTO TRANSGENDER VOLLEYBALL SCANDAL

After the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced at the end of January that an investigation into the university for its handling of a trans athlete and other players concluded that the school violated Title IX, SJSU and the California State University (CSU) system declined to resolve the violation. 

Instead, SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson announced Friday that the school and the CSU system are suing the federal government to challenge the investigation.

“Because we believe OCR’s findings aren’t grounded in the facts or the law, SJSU and the CSU filed a lawsuit today against the federal government to challenge those findings and prevent the federal government from taking punitive action against the university, including the potential withholding of critical federal funding,” Teniente-Matson said Friday.

“This is not a step we take lightly. However, we have a responsibility to defend the integrity of our institution and the rule of law, while ensuring that every member of our community is treated fairly and in accordance with the law. Our position is simple: We have followed the law and cannot be punished for doing so.”

The school is also requesting that OCR rescind its findings and close its investigation. 

Teniente-Matson affirmed the university’s commitment to defending the LGBTQ community in the announcement.

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“Our support for the LGBTQ members of our community, who have experienced threats and harms over the last several years, remains unwavering. We know the attention the university has received around this issue and the investigative process that followed have been unsettling for many in our community,” the university president said.

Among the Education Department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. The department claims “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”

Why I refuse to stay silent as Jews are scapegoated by left and right

I am tired. My tiredness is not from the road that my Walk Across America has brought me to the beautiful city of Shreveport. I need to speak plainly about something that has been weighing on my mind and my heart for too long. My tiredness comes from watching Jewish people get attacked from every direction and seeing those attacks go unchallenged by people who should know better.

On the left, too many Black ministers have betrayed the Bible for a political and ideological worldview that casts Israel as the perpetual villain no matter what and ignores the barbaric slaughter of innocents, including Oct. 7.

On the right, some prominent voices traffic in antisemitism dressed up as populism. They protest that they are just asking questions. They lie that they cannot criticize Israel. We see through their disgusting grift.

MIKE PENCE: NO PLACE FOR ANTISEMITISM IN AMERICA TODAY, TOMORROW OR EVER

The Jewish people are being abandoned, scapegoated and demonized from both sides of the aisle, and I will not stand for it. I will not be silent anymore. I will not betray them.

That is a promise.

The Black church and the Jewish people share a bond forged in fire. Jews helped found the NAACP. They marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. They died for Black voting rights. The names of Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner are forever linked in blood with their brother James Chaney. 

MORNING GLORY: 2026 SHOULD BE YEAR ANTISEMITISM BECOMES UNACCEPTABLE IN AMERICA AGAIN

The Rev. Dr. King locked arms with Rabbi Heschel because they both answered the same prophetic call. The civil rights foot soldiers sang of Exodus deliverance because they recognized in the Jewish story their own. That alliance was not accidental. It was born of a shared and timeless yearning to be free.

That history demands something of us today.

Yet too many woke pastors in the Black church have blinded themselves to this biblical heritage. They have chosen to align with the Palestinian cause not through Scripture but through liberation theology stretched far beyond its proper purpose.

JEWISH SAFETY IN NEW YORK DEPENDS ON CLEAR LINES AND MORAL COURAGE FROM MAMDANI

Author James Cone’s work on Black liberation theology drew from real suffering and real oppression, and in its proper context it carries weight. But there is very little of that context today. What we have instead is the collapse of entire nations and entire races of people into cartoon roles. 

I have always judged people and nations by character and actions, not by color. That standard does not change based on who is asking me to abandon it.

Israel is cast as the White supremacist oppressor because of its perceived whiteness. Palestinians, because of their brown skin, are cast as perpetual victims who can do no wrong, including on Oct. 7. That is not prophecy. That is ideology.

PARENTS ARE FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE SYSTEMIC ANTISEMITISM POISONING CLASSROOMS

Where was the outrage among these Black pastors over Oct. 7? Families slaughtered. Children taken hostage. Rapes. Mutilations. The most horrific massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. If any of them offered condemnation, it was done in passing before pivoting immediately to Israel’s response. This is empathy dictated by politics, not by Scripture.

Jesus was a Jew in Judea. Bethlehem sits in the land promised to Israel. Genesis 12:3 does not bend to political fashion: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.” Psalm 122:6 does not offer an exemption: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” These are not suggestions. God’s covenant with the Jewish people is eternal — not conditional on perfect behavior and not suspended when the cultural winds shift.

CHRISTIAN PASTORS, INFLUENCERS JOIN 1,000-STRONG ISRAEL MISSION BACKING JEWISH STATE, FIGHTING ANTISEMITISM

Supporting Israel does not mean ignoring Palestinian suffering. It means refusing to demonize a people God has preserved through millennia of persecution, exile and genocide. It means seeing Israel’s full reality as a diverse nation that includes Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi Jews and people of every background who have faced their own oppression. 

It means holding Hamas accountable for a charter that calls openly for destruction and refusing to let that truth be buried beneath a narrative decided before the facts were examined. It also means holding both the left and the right in America responsible for their lies about genocide, apartheid and colonialism.

I have always judged people and nations by character and actions, not by color. That standard does not change based on who is asking me to abandon it.

There is a reason the enemies of freedom have always come for the Jewish people first. Antisemitism is not just hatred. It is a warning sign. Every civilization that has turned on its Jewish citizens has turned on its own foundational values shortly after. 

The same principles that gave birth to America — belief in human dignity, the rule of law and the protection of minorities against the mob — are the principles that demand we stand against this hatred today. 

When we abandon the Jewish people, we do not just betray a community. We betray the idea of America itself. This is not only a biblical obligation or a civil rights legacy. It is a test of whether we still believe what we say we believe as a nation and as a civilization.

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To my Jewish brothers and sisters, I see what is happening. I see the attacks coming from pulpits that should know better. I see the attacks coming from political commentators who have dressed hatred in the language of free thought. I see you being made a target from the left and the right simultaneously, as though the oldest hatred in human history has simply found new hosts on both ends of the political spectrum.

I will not look away. I will not equivocate. I will not trade our shared legacy for a political moment.

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As I walk across this country, I carry that commitment with every step. Return to biblical truth over trendy ideology. Reclaim the Black and Jewish legacy of resilience and solidarity. Stand with Israel because Scripture demands it, history proves it and basic human decency requires it.

Unity beats division every time. God bless you, and God bless America.

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I run a fracking company — New York banned the industry and stuck the poor with the bill

New York is making its poorest residents pay for a political fantasy. The Cuomo administration banned shale fracking in 2014, bowing to the noise of “fracktivists.” Hochul kept the ban and doubled down. The result: energy poverty for the people who can least afford it.

Twenty-six percent of New York City children live in poverty. Statewide, 2.7 million residents. Politicians respond with more taxation and finger-pointing at the Feds — but the real answer is sitting right underneath their feet. Trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, untapped, while Albany digs the hole deeper with bad policy and fills it with tax dollars.

The numbers tell the story. A 2025 Heritage Foundation study found that New York’s fracking ban has created a wealth gap of $11,000 per person — $27,000 per family — compared to Pennsylvania neighbors just across the border where fracking is allowed. Before the ban, those counties were economic equals. Since then, Pennsylvania landowners have been collecting thousands of dollars per acre in lease payments and a sixteen percent cut off the top of all gas sales. New Yorkers get nothing for their rich reserves. It’s state-sponsored pauperism.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HELPS FUEL NEW ENERGY SOURCES

If fracking were allowed, New York would receive billions in royalty payments. Tax receipts would swell from high-paying jobs and well-capitalized drillers. The tide from those trillions of cubic feet of natural gas would lift all boats.

I know this because I frack wells in New York. Mine might be the last company still standing. Over two decades, my company has fracked thousands of wells — no groundwater contamination, no low birth rates, no nosebleeds, no apocalypse. Nothing. Because fracking is safe. The data backs it up. But data deniers won’t have it, and so neither will the state’s neediest residents.

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The green alternative isn’t clean — it’s just cleaner-looking. Renewable mandates come at the cost of massive land use, strip mining, toxic battery production and a waste stream all their own. And every solar farm and wind turbine still has to be backstopped by natural gas or coal when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Albany knows this, but presses on anyway — leaving New Yorkers with residential electric costs 40% above the national average and natural gas prices 23% higher. The state imports nearly 80% of its energy, much of it from Pennsylvania. It’s the equivalent of bumming cigarettes instead of buying them. The smoke still fills your lungs.

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Cuomo and Hochul are masters of importing energy and exporting opportunity. They’ve bent before an unkind ideology at the expense of their poorest constituents. Natural gas is the lowest-hanging fruit New York has. It’s right there.

And this is still the “before” scenario. When AI data centers turn energy into a full-blown battleground — and they will — New York’s self-inflicted power shortage won’t just hurt the poor. It will hand the future to whoever has the gold. Governor Hochul, the fanatics you’ve been appeasing don’t pay those utility bills. Your constituents do. Open the taps.

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MORNING GLORY: What will Donald Trump’s legacy be as a wartime president?

Every American alive today has been living in wartime. Every president since December 7, 1941, has been a wartime president. All of them. They can, and should, be judged by how they have waged war, both “cold” and “hot,” against imposing foes and against dangerous irritants. Provided he remains tough, determined and ruthless in this conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump will be the equal of any of them and far superior to most.

There have been stretches of time of largely noncombatant war since the conclusion of World War II, stretches that look a lot like the “peacetime” of the 1920s and 1930s.

From the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11 — 25 years ago this September — for example, the illusion of “peace” was pervasive. Indeed, a “peace dividend” was demanded and paid via deep cuts in defense spending because of that illusion.

LIZ PEEK: IRAN WAR COULD BECOME THE ACHIEVEMENT THAT ENSURES TRUMP’S LEGACY

That illusion survived the United States invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War, the American cruise missile strikes on Iraq in 1993 which President Clinton ordered, the dozen years of conflict with Saddam that followed under both the first Bush and Clinton with the “no-fly zones,” Operation Infinite Reach — when Clinton ordered cruise missiles fired at al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan — and NATO’s Operation Allied Force which was the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from March 24 to June 10, 1999.

Not until 9/11 did most of America collectively conclude that the world contained very bad actors and would never leave us alone or allow us to be indifferent to rising threats.

After 9/11, through the debacle of our collapse in Afghanistan in 2021, no one doubted we were in wars. There were obvious reminders in the tragic killings and wounding of American service members in both the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters. And there was the no-longer-possible-to-ignore threat posed by the rise of China into our “pacing threat,” the descent of Russia into dictatorship and the successful lunge of North Korea for a nuclear arsenal.

Through both the long period of illusory peace and the obvious wartime of 2001 to 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States. It has been thus since the hostage crisis of 1979, through the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in 1983, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996 and the long shadowy campaign of Iranian surrogates against our military in Iraq which killed and wounded thousands of our troops. The fanatics in Iran have not stopped chanting “Death to America” since 1979. They have always meant it.

TRUMP’S OPERATION EPIC FURY PROVES REAGAN-STYLE PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH IS BACK

Iran’s grand plan was to gain nuclear weapons. Its secondary plan was to amass a missile force so vast and threatening to its neighbors (and eventually Europe and perhaps even America) to assure that the United States and Israel would never strike at the nuclear weapons assembly line. With the immunity that comes with nuclear weapons, the ayatollahs would have been free to pursue their agenda of the destruction of Israel and America.

Presidents before Trump have all vowed that Iran would not be allowed to have such weapons. All of them since Iran set out on this path. None of them acted. They did not act either against Iran’s expeditionary force of terrorists — the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard built and deployed in the first instance by Qassem Soleimani — or Iran’s proxies. Until Trump.

President Carter was paralyzed by the mullahs. President Reagan, intent on confronting the Soviets, withdrew from the confrontation with a much smaller threat in the 1980s, and while President George H.W. Bush destroyed Saddam’s army in 1991, he did not advance to Baghdad, much less beyond and into Iran.

MORNING GLORY: PRESIDENT TRUMP AND THE US ARE WAGING A RIGHTEOUS BATTLE — AND WINNING

President Clinton could not stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons because he believed the cost to be too high. He would not concern himself with a distant threat when he could not contain the immediate one. North Korea became a nuclear power on Clinton’s watch.

President George W. Bush was a superb wartime president as he battled Islamist extremism and eventually won through to stability in Iraq. He and every other leader in the West were wrong about WMDs, but he persevered, and the Iraqi people have a much brighter future ahead than they would have had under Saddam’s sadist sons. The conclusion of Bush’s intelligence community was that Iran, afraid and chastened, had abandoned its nuclear ambitions. That “IC” was wrong.

President Obama has been the worst of the post-war presidents because he failed even at doing nothing. He did worse than nothing. He acted to legitimize Iranian ambitions and made a $1.7 billion dollar down payment on his policy of appeasement followed by billions of dollars more in sanctions relief through the meaningless promises of the “JCPOA” — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry with the ayatollahs in 2015.

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When Trump gained the presidency in 2017, ruthless realism returned to the Oval Office. Trump tore up the JCPOA — as it had not been a treaty but simply an “Executive Agreement.” It was, of course, his right to do so.

Trump struck Syria twice for using chemical weapons, restoring a “red line” Obama had erased. (Will the new Obama Library have a “Red Line” room into which visitors disappear?) Trump also ordered the destruction of Russia’s “little green men” who dared to attack U.S. forces in Syria. And when Iran would not stop trying to kill Americans in Iraq, Trump ordered Soleimani killed in January 2020, when the Iranian terrorist set foot in Iraq.

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Then the 2020 election and the disaster for the world that was the long regency of whomever was running Joe Biden around while the sadly diminished Biden inhabited the Oval. We won’t know for years who designed the national security policy in those years, but we know whoever was making the decisions oversaw the debacle in Afghanistan which led to the second Russian invasion of Ukraine —the first had come under Obama — and Iran’s lurch towards nuclear weapons and more and more missiles with which to defend that lurch.

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Five months after he returned to power, Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer and the Iranian nuclear weapons program was obliterated. At that point, Trump gave the theocrats in Tehran a choice — abandon your ambitions or face another round of punishment. Ayatollah Khamenei misjudged Trump. The Iranians began again to seek nuclear weapons and, this time, to also produce so many ballistic missiles that no one dared stop them.

Trump, along with the Israeli prime minister, dared. Iran’s military, including their nuclear weapons facilities and their missile factories are in ruins. The ongoing campaign is leveling the regime’s ability to rebuild others, and it may yet destroy the oil infrastructure it would need to begin to pay to start again down this path.

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By being tough with the mullahs, indeed ruthless and transparent, Trump has already done the world a great favor. The “Alliance of Tyrants” has suffered blow after blow since Trump returned and more are coming as Iran shudders and communist Cuba teeters on the brink of throwing off their dictators.

President Trump really would like to leave a legacy of peace. But he is the sort of tough and indeed ruthless commander in chief the U.S. needs to put away its enemies, not merely put them in timeout. Here’s hoping he sees this battle through until Iran cannot menace us, Israel, the Gulf Nations or anyone for a generation or three.

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LIZ PEEK: Hollywood trashes Trump again — and proves just how out of touch it is

Hollywood elites just cannot help themselves. There they were, sailing through Oscar night with Conan O’Brien doing his amusing and mostly inoffensive emcee bit, and actors like Amy Madigan (Best Supporting Actress) happily gushing about their awards, when along comes washed-up comic Jimmy Kimmel, the proverbial ant at the picnic, blasting President Donald Trump. Thank heavens Trump critic Sean Penn, who also won an Oscar, was unable to attend.

It could have been worse. Yes, there were the usual dark hints about what a troubled world we live in and at least one reference to Palestine, but mostly the show was upbeat and tolerable.

That was gravely disappointing to some. Hours before Hollywood’s big night, The New York Times ran an opinion piece titled “Oscar Winners, Will You Be Complicit?” In his column, German writer Daniel Kehlmann exhorted Oscar stars to lash out against Donald Trump. He whined that last year’s event was “profoundly disheartening” because the participants’ attacks on the administration were “muted,” unlike Hollywood’s “open defiance” during Trump’s first term.

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His piece, which assumes (as many Oscar participants evidently do) that the job of movie stars is not to entertain us and make profitable films but rather to educate us, neatly sums up why so many people dislike Hollywood. (A few years ago, an NBC poll showed the film industry had lower approval ratings than the NRA.)

It also shows why fewer Americans watch the Oscars today than in the past. About 20 million people likely tuned in for a glimpse of the red carpet or to catch the opening monologue on Sunday; 55 million watched in 1998, when “Titanic” won Best Picture.

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The author speculates that actors (or their studios) fear retaliation from the president, or perhaps they sense the public views them as “frivolous, out-of-touch elites.” He recalls then-host Ricky Gervais’ warning to Golden Globes participants in 2020: “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.”

Kehlmann says that’s wrong, asserting that Hollywood icons are known around the world, even in dark places like North Korea; therefore, they have a duty to lambaste our country and reveal how the U.S. is becoming a “dictatorship” under the leadership of a “mad king.” He goes on to liken current events to those of the 1930s, when some of Germany’s most famous actors collaborated with the Nazi regime. You can imagine the rest.

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There is a lot to unpack here, but let’s start with the obvious. Half the country voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Those folks don’t want to hear from some privileged Hollywood actor that Trump is wrecking our nation. Open borders, crime, failing public schools and absurd climate policies that drive energy prices higher — the problems Trump is trying to fix — may not matter to rich movie stars living behind gates, but they matter to most of us.

Second, actors who bemoan income inequality, racism and other purported shortcomings of our society have become rich and famous because of our capitalist system. They are free to stand on that Oscar stage and say whatever they choose. They are also free to post vicious and even dishonest claims about our president online — and many do.

Kehlmann cannot say the same about his home country. In Germany, people can be arrested or jailed for spreading malicious gossip or reposting lies online. Truly, we do not need guidance from Europe.

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Meanwhile, Hollywood is in trouble. It is no coincidence that the Times ran another op-ed the day before titled “Why I Love the Movies — and How to Save Them,” by Tom Rothman, CEO of Sony Pictures’ film studio. Rothman notes that “in 2019, there were 1.24 billion movie tickets sold in North America. In 2025, there were 780 million — a decline of 37 percent.” He says the industry’s gloom has been exacerbated by “the coming end of Warner Bros. — once the mightiest of all studios — as a stand-alone entity after more than 100 years.”

Rothman notes various challenges facing Hollywood, including the threat of AI, and offers thoughtful ideas about how to manage the current upheaval.

Not surprisingly, he does not address what many Americans think is the real problem — the declining quality of movies showing up in theaters. Hollywood needs to make movies people want to see: movies that are entertaining, original, exciting, fun for kids — and not political. This year’s crop of Oscar nominees follows several years of celebrating films that attracted pitiful audiences and made little or no money. That’s not a recipe for success.

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The highest-grossing films of all time (excluding “Gone With the Wind,” generally considered the biggest winner ever) are “Avatar” (2009), “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022), Titanic (1997), and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015). 

Three of these movies were directed by James Cameron, who has moved to New Zealand because he dislikes Donald Trump and our political climate. I find that reprehensible, but that is his right. What is admirable is that Cameron’s films may contain allegorical themes about colonialism or women’s rights, but the messaging is so subtle that the movies appeal to a broad audience.

Of course, people are free to make whatever kinds of movies they like, but they cannot make people pay to see them. In 2020, Hollywood elites awarded Best Picture to “Parasite,” a South Korean film — the first non-English-language winner. Variety’s Jessica Kiang described the story about social inequality as “a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage.” I cannot imagine how I missed it.

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This year’s Best Picture, “One Battle After Another,” carried a strong liberal message. Maybe that’s why, despite good reviews, it bombed at the box office. People are tired of being force-fed left-wing dogma.

Last month, Gervais reposted his message on X, adding, “They’re still not listening.” 

He’s right.

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SEN WICKER: Ending China’s drone dominance with a made-in-America revival

Battlefields in Ukraine and the Middle East have made one fact unmistakably clear: small drones are no longer a niche capability. They are reshaping modern warfare. Now, the militaries of the world can get persistent surveillance and precision strike options from small systems that are at once inexpensive, adaptable and producible at scale. Traditional defenses were not made to combat these drones, which can overwhelm old-school fortifications through sheer numbers. 

Defense planners know this. Real-world warfare has validated war games and live-fire exercises, showing us in real time that drones will shape future conflicts. Small drones have also become a core commercial product for both individual users and key civilian sectors, such as agriculture, energy and law enforcement. 

And yet, America’s small drone industrial base is falling behind. We have not managed to make nearly enough drones. Our small drone production rate lags relative to our competitors, particularly China, who has cornered the commercial and military market. Fortunately, concerted action from Congress and President Donald Trump is poised to rebuild America’s drone industrial base in a few short years.

Over a decade ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) recognized that small drones would become a pillar of modern warfare and commercial industry. The CCP proceeded to take over the small drone market. It dumped tens of billions of dollars into the industry and adopted predatory pricing practices. American drone companies simply could not compete. We watched as our supply chains further withered. That dynamic created a negative feedback loop that reduced U.S. drone supply and made them prohibitively expensive for both military and commercial customers.

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We have seen the facts, and we have acted. Today, America is ready to rebuild its small drone industry, with a one-two punch of investment and tailored industrial policy. 

First, Republicans in Congress, working with the Trump administration, appropriated $2.5 billion in the defense reconciliation bill for the Pentagon to buy small drones. Before that, the military had rarely spent more than $100 million per year on the technology. This $2.5 billion demand signal will allow American industry, along with key allies and partners, to begin rebuilding non-Chinese supply chains for small drones and components.  

More than $1 billion of that investment will flow into the new Drone Dominance program. This initiative has brought together 25 American vendors who make small “Group 1” first-person view (FPV) drones. The companies gathered in February at Fort Benning for the first phrase of a four-round competition.

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The top 11 performers were announced in early March. Based on future Gauntlet iterations, the victorious companies will win a portion of the funding and use it to scale production of affordable FPV drones. They must do so quickly — completing 300,000 drones by 2027.

For the first time, the American small drone industry has received a clear sign of significant demand. But it must be persistent, and it will need to scale. By comparison, our Pentagon witnesses at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week told us that Ukraine built 4.5 million Group 1 drones last year and is on track to build 6 million this year alone. 

Second, Congress and the Trump administration are working together to help protect this fledgling American industry, which is vulnerable to predatory Chinese business practices. Over the years, the Pentagon has taken steps to vet trusted drone platforms. But Chinese drones are still the product of choice in the commercial sector, from agriculture and energy to law enforcement and search and rescue. 

Last year, Congress ordered a national security review of key Chinese drone makers. The law, which was led by Senator Rick Scott and supported by the Senate Armed Services Committee, puts us on the path to banning the sale of these adversary-made components in the United States.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving quickly to implement this law. Just before Christmas, the FCC announced a ban on the future sale of foreign-made drones and drone components in America. The FCC and the Pentagon are working together to process waivers for key Asian and European allies, as these partners remain an essential part of our drone supply chain. 

First, Republicans in Congress, working with the Trump administration, appropriated $2.5 billion in the defense reconciliation bill for the Pentagon to buy small drones. 

These investments and policies are a good start, but they are only that. We must continue these efforts in the years to come at similar levels of budgetary effort and continued partnership among the Trump administration, the Pentagon and Congress. Funding levels should remain steady for a few years as American industry rebuilds itself. We should explore new grant and loan programs to accelerate the adoption of American-made drones alongside our law enforcement and agricultural industries.

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When it comes to components, the drone industry largely relies on a similar supplier base — whether it is building for commercial or defense purposes. The faster we create a sustainable U.S. and allied supplier base, the faster we get commercially viable drones that our military can also purchase for reasonable prices. There is no path for American military drone dominance without an American drone industry that can compete commercially.

The early results are encouraging. Competition is driving innovation, protected technologies are advancing, and the industrial base is beginning to scale. These steps are the foundation for a thriving American-based small drone industry that can equip our military affordably and deliver competitive commercial drones.

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Americans know Iran is our enemy. It’s time establishment politicians agreed

For more than four decades, the Iranian regime has operated as the world’s most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism, funding proxy militias, targeting U.S. forces and destabilizing entire regions. Yet establishment Washington has long treated Tehran as a diplomatic puzzle waiting to be solved rather than a hostile regime executing a deliberate strategy — one that openly chants “Death to America.”

That disconnect is glaring in a new Fox News poll that confirms what history has already shown: 61% of Americans say Iran poses a real national security threat to the United States. The remarkable part is not the poll result, but how long Washington’s foreign policy establishment has taken to catch up with what voters already understand.

Americans have watched Iran fund Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups across the Middle East. Iranian-backed militias have launched hundreds of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, killing and injuring hundreds of American service members. Tehran has consistently threatened the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point carrying almost 20% of the world’s oil supply. The pattern is glaring from Lebanon to Yemen that Iran wages proxy warfare and sponsors terrorism that directly threatens U.S. interests and global stability.

After more than 40 years of the same behavior, voters are hawkish on Iran — not out of ideology, but experience. Tehran funds terrorism, targets U.S. forces and threatens global energy markets. The conclusion is simple: this regime responds to strength, not further diplomatic engagement.

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However, much of Washington still approaches Iran as a negotiating partner. For decades the strategy has been the same: diplomatic frameworks, sanctions relief and meetings to moderate Tehran’s behavior, even pallets of cash. However, a regime built on proxy warfare and regional destabilization is unlikely to abandon that strategy through negotiations alone. That reality helps explain why the United States is confronting the same Iranian threat today that it faced 40 years ago.

The historical record undermines the diplomatic theory. As negotiations dragged on, Iran expanded its proxy networks and led 160 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, just from October 2023 to February 2024. While policymakers debated strategy in Washington and Europe, Tehran continued building missiles and expanding militias to pressure the United States and its allies.

This is why the Fox News poll is more than a snapshot of voter sentiment. It exposes a deeper divide in American foreign policy, thinking it is not Republican versus Democrat, but voters versus the foreign policy establishment. Americans have formed their own conclusions after decades of watching Iran use intimidation, violence and proxy militant groups to destabilize entire regions.

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The regime has repeatedly tested American resolve through asymmetric threats designed to create pressure without triggering full-scale war. This consistent pattern makes clear that Iran’s strategy is confrontation, not regular geopolitical rivalry. That reality explains why public opinion is significantly hawkish rather than supportive of more negotiations. For many Americans, the lesson of the past 40+ years is straightforward: Iran responds far less to engagement than it does to credible deterrence.

Deterrence, in this context, is about credibility. History shows aggressors are far less likely to escalate when they believe aggression will bring immediate and severe consequences. For decades, Iran has operated in the gray zone — using proxy militias, cyber operations and maritime disruption to pressure the United States while avoiding direct confrontation. That strategy has worked, allowing Tehran to expand missile capabilities and its terror network while America’s responses appeared inconsistent.

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Washington’s foreign policy establishment often overlooks that voters want results rather than another cycle of policy debates built on theory. That disconnect is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain because foreign policy must eventually align with the public’s understanding of national security threats.

The gap in perspective is now producing an equally glaring political divide. When voters believe that policymakers are unwilling to confront direct threats to Americans, trust in leadership erodes. National security debates look detached from reality while Americans face the consequences from attacks on U.S. forces, rising energy costs, and proxy conflicts spreading across the Middle East.

However, much of Washington still approaches Iran as a negotiating partner. For decades the strategy has been the same: diplomatic frameworks, sanctions relief and meetings to moderate Tehran’s behavior, even pallets of cash. 

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While the American response has often been inconsistent, Iran has maintained a clear geopolitical strategy: funding terrorist networks, arming proxy militias, threatening strategic shipping routes and exploiting regional instability to expand its influence.

After decades of terrorism, proxy warfare and regional destabilization, Americans no longer see Iran as a diplomatic puzzle waiting for another round of ineffective negotiations. They see a strategic threat that requires credible deterrence. The poll confirms that voters have already reached that conclusion. The real question now is whether Washington’s foreign policy establishment is willing to acknowledge the same reality.

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Overturning an outlandish Supreme Court ruling is the only way to fix education

Tennessee lawmakers have taken a bold stand against the misuse of taxpayer dollars in public education. On March 10, House Bill 793 advanced out of a full committee with a 15-9 vote, divided mostly along party lines, with Republicans in favor and all seven Democrats opposed. The proposal is scheduled to be heard on the House floor on March 16.

The measure now requires public and charter school officials to verify students’ immigration status at enrollment and report the aggregate results to the state. The proposal originally empowered school officials to deny enrollment to students who could not prove lawful presence in the United States or to charge their families tuition. That provision remains in the Senate’s version – which already passed that chamber 19 to 13 – but opponents to the measure later stripped it out of the House proposal. 

This proposal represents the bare minimum in addressing a long-standing injustice, yet it falls far short of what is truly needed. Requiring verification and reporting data sheds light on the number of illegal immigrants in public schools, but it does nothing to stop the flow of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their education.

In Tennessee, as in many states, per-student allocations drive budgets, meaning districts gain financially from admitting more students, regardless of immigration status. Lawmakers must go further by prohibiting public schools from using any tax dollars to educate those unlawfully present. Such a ban would redirect resources exclusively to lawful residents and citizens, allowing per-student funding to surge for eligible children without necessitating tax increases.

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The relief would extend beyond school budgets. Property taxes, which predominantly finance public education systems, exert constant upward pressure on homeowners. By excluding illegal immigrants from taxpayer-funded schooling, state policymakers could alleviate this strain, stabilizing or even reducing property tax rates while enhancing educational quality for legal enrollees.

At the heart of this issue lies the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, which compels state officials to provide free public education to children of illegal immigrants. That ruling, decided 5-4 by a less conservative court than today, imposes an unwarranted federal obligation on states to divert scarce resources toward entitlements for those without legal status.

Education policy, particularly the allocation of limited funds, belongs in the hands of state legislatures, not dictated by unelected judges. States possess the sovereign right to prioritize their citizens and legal residents, especially when federal immigration enforcement failed spectacularly under the previous presidential administration.

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Today’s Supreme Court has an opportunity to rectify this overreach. Conservatives in Tennessee and elsewhere should welcome legal challenges to HB 793, particularly from teachers’ unions eager to preserve the status quo. These unions profit doubly from illegal immigrant enrollment: first, through inflated per-student funding tied to higher headcounts, and second, via supplemental allocations for English as a Second Language (ESL) programs.

Union leaders would likely hesitate to escalate a fight to the Supreme Court, recognizing the risk. A victory for Tennessee could dismantle Plyler nationwide, inspiring a cascade of similar reforms. The precedent would empower legislatures to reclaim control over education spending, removing the incentives that exacerbate illegal immigration. Rather than fearing litigation, policymakers should provoke it, confident that the current court would affirm states’ authority to manage their own affairs.

Public sentiment aligns firmly against the current policy. Phi Delta Kappa International/Gallup poll found that 55% of Americans oppose using taxpayer dollars to educate children of illegal immigrants, with 81% of Republicans agreeing.

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These numbers reflect a commonsense view: American taxpayers should not shoulder the costs of federal border failures. Education represents a significant investment in the nation’s future, and diluting that investment by extending it to those outside the legal framework undermines equity for citizens.

Momentum builds beyond Tennessee. Since early 2025, legislators in Oklahoma, Texas, Idaho, Indiana and New Jersey have pursued measures to contest Plyler v. Doe, ranging from data collection on immigration status to outright tuition requirements. These initiatives signal a growing recognition that unchecked illegal immigration burdens public systems, from schools to hospitals.

Education policy, particularly the allocation of limited funds, belongs in the hands of state legislatures, not dictated by unelected judges.

In Texas, where Plyler originated, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has long advocated revisiting the decision, citing the unsustainable fiscal strain on local districts. Oklahoma’s proposals mandate proof of status for enrollment, while Idaho and Indiana saw bills advance through committees before stalling. Even in blue-leaning New Jersey, lawmakers introduced the “PLYLER Act” to impose tuition on undocumented students.

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Critics of these efforts often invoke compassion, arguing that denying education harms innocent children. Yet the real harm stems from policies that encourage illegal entry by promising free services, perpetuating a cycle of dependency and straining resources meant for legal residents.

States like Tennessee invest billions in education to foster opportunity, but that promise erodes when funds are spread thinner to accommodate those who bypassed the system. Overturning Plyler would restore fairness, allowing states to focus on their own communities without apology.

The fiscal implications demand attention. Nationwide, educating illegal immigrant students costs billions annually, with estimates varying by state but consistently revealing a disproportionate load on taxpayers.

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The influx strains classrooms, necessitates more ESL teachers and inflates administrative costs. By contrast, excluding these students from taxpayer funding would free up resources for class size reductions, teacher salary increases and program enhancements for lawful enrollees. Property owners, weary of annual tax hikes to cover expanding enrollments, would finally see relief.

Plyler exacerbates illegal immigration by mandating education as an entitlement, regardless of status. The Supreme Court could end this mandate, returning power to the states where it belongs.

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Tennessee’s HB 793, though imperfect, ignites a necessary debate. Lawmakers should strengthen it by banning tax-funded education for illegal immigrants outright, then defend it vigorously in court. The proposal would not only safeguard taxpayer dollars but also deter future illegal entries by removing a key pull factor.

Americans have waited too long for relief from policies that prioritize outsiders over citizens. The time has come for the Supreme Court to overturn Plyler v. Doe and let states chart their own course.

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Chinese spy tech is endangering US hospitals. Texas is trying to shut that down

Millions of Americans depend on medical devices — pacemakers, infusion pumps and patient monitors — to stay alive. But some of that equipment is made in China, and it may be spying on us – or worse.

In January 2025, the Food and Drug Administration and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a stark joint warning: patient monitors made by Contec Medical Systems, a Chinese company based in Qinhuangdao, contain a hidden backdoor. These devices, used in hospitals across the United States, can transmit sensitive patient data to a hard-coded IP address in China. Even more troubling, the backdoor allows remote code execution, potentially letting an adversary manipulate displayed vital signs and trigger dangerous clinical decisions.

There is no patch to fix it. For China, it’s a feature, not a bug.

China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires every Chinese company to assist state intelligence operations on demand. When Beijing says open the door, the company complies. The implications for any Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked device in America’s healthcare system are clear and unacceptable.

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President Donald Trump recognized the danger early. In September 2025, his administration launched a Section 232 national security investigation into medical equipment imports, citing the risk that foreign powers could weaponize supply chains. Investigators discovered CCP-linked devices even in U.S. government-funded research labs.

Dependence on an adversarial foreign supplier using state subsidies to dominate American competitors is bad enough. But add to that, the threat of sudden export cutoffs in a crisis as we saw during COVID-19 and the peril is heightened. If hospitals rely on compromised supply chains, patients could be left without lifesaving technology when it matters most.

Thankfully, Texas is not waiting on Washington for further needed action. While congressional gridlock has stalled federal progress, the Lone Star State acted.

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Republican Gov. Greg Abbott banned CCP-affiliated technologies from state government systems and, in June 2025, signed legislation creating the Texas Cyber Command to hunt down and eliminate threats from hostile foreign nations. Late last year, the governor expanded the state’s prohibited technology list to include 26 more China-linked companies — hardware makers and AI platforms with direct CCP ties. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed multiple lawsuits against these firms operating inside our borders.

The public supports this stand. Texans understand that national security doesn’t stop at the border or the battlefield — it extends to the devices monitoring our loved ones in the hospital.

Statutory tools already exist. What’s needed now is to extend those protections directly into state healthcare procurement. That’s exactly where Texas Republicans are stepping up.

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In recent days, the Texas Public Policy Foundation — where we work — sent a letter to state leaders urging further action. The letter, cosigned by 53 members of the legislature, calls for commonsense measures: direct state health agencies to adopt procurement standards barring medical devices from CCP-linked companies; establish a review process for existing contracts and equipment to root out vulnerabilities; and partner with lawmakers to offer grants and preferences that incentivize American-made medical devices.

Texans understand that national security doesn’t stop at the border or the battlefield — it extends to the devices monitoring our loved ones in the hospital.

In our Army careers, one of us was an intelligence officer and the other, a doctor. We spent years studying national security threats and this fight is personal. Critical infrastructure — including healthcare — must never become the soft underbelly of America’s defenses. No Texas patient should have their medical data transmitted to a server in China, or potentially their medical care disrupted or held hostage by the CCP. No Texas hospital should remain one firmware update away from undetected interference. And no state that has already confronted CCP aggression should leave its medical infrastructure as the last open door.

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Texas is once again showing the nation how to lead. We have the framework. We have the public mandate. We have the resolve. Now we must finish the job — before a crisis forces our hand.

The rest of America is watching. Let’s show them what real action looks like.

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Iran war success gives president a Trump card to play in China meeting

When President Donald Trump arrives in Beijing later this March for his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the official agenda will read like every other U.S.–China meeting in recent memory: tariffs, trade balances, supply chains, Taiwan.

The real story walking through the door with him will be Iran.

On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, a sweeping joint campaign targeting Iran’s military, nuclear and command infrastructure. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes — a seismic blow to a regime that had terrorized the region for nearly five decades. Within days, his son Mojtaba was elevated as successor, a dynastic transfer inside a theocracy that once claimed to reject hereditary rule.

The war grinds on — and its consequences are landing on Beijing harder than Xi Jinping ever planned.

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Russia and China: not bystanders

Both Moscow and Beijing are actively helping Iran fight this war. That needs to be said plainly, because the administration’s public messaging has been too cautious on this point.

Multiple U.S. officials have confirmed that Russia has been sharing satellite and targeting intelligence with Tehran — including the locations of American warships and aircraft across the Middle East. That information has a cost. Seven U.S. service members have now been killed in Iranian attacks. Iran’s own ISR capability has been largely degraded by our strikes. The precision of the missile and drone attacks that have gotten through owes something to Moscow’s overhead constellation.

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Retired four-star Gen. David Petraeus told Fox News that Russian intelligence support likely explains “some of the accuracy of the missiles and drone strikes.” He called on Trump to push South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions legislation, which has more than 90 senators behind it. Iran’s own foreign minister did not deny the arrangement, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Iran-Russia military partnership “is still there and will continue.”

An adversary coalition actively helping kill American troops deserves discussion at the table in Beijing.

China’s role is less direct, but no less consequential.

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For years, U.S. officials have warned that Chinese firms have funneled technology into Iran’s missile and weapons programs. The Treasury Department has sanctioned Chinese companies repeatedly for supplying missile-related materials to Tehran.

Analysts have also flagged Iran’s interest in the Chinese CM-302 supersonic anti-ship cruise missile — a weapon designed to threaten major naval vessels — which has surfaced in Iranian procurement discussions. Chinese technology already runs through portions of Iran’s missile infrastructure, from electronics to propellant components.

Denial and innocence are not the same thing.

IRAN WAR JEOPARDIZES TRUMP ECONOMIC BOOM BEFORE KEY MIDTERM ELECTIONS

China’s energy vulnerability

For all of Beijing’s public posturing, the Iran war is costing China real money — and Xi knows it.

China built its manufacturing economy on reliable access to cheap energy, including deeply discounted crude from sanctioned states. Iran has been a critical piece of that equation. According to data from Kpler analytics and other tracking firms, China was importing approximately 1.38 million barrels per day of Iranian crude in 2025 — roughly 13% of its total seaborne oil imports, with nearly all of it routed through shadowy intermediaries to evade U.S. sanctions.

IRAN DIDN’T ADAPT TO AMERICA’S PLAYBOOK. RUSSIA AND CHINA ALREADY HAVE

That flow now runs directly through a war zone. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil passes, sits at the center of the conflict. As of this writing, the strait is effectively closed to tanker traffic. For Beijing, that means rising energy costs, supply chain disruption and the loss of one of its most important discounted suppliers — all at once.

The shadow fleet is being dismantled

Compounding the pressure on Beijing is Washington’s intensifying crackdown on the “shadow fleet” — the network of obscurely flagged tankers used to move sanctioned Iranian and Russian crude into Chinese refineries. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned dozens of shipping companies, vessels and intermediaries tied to Iranian oil smuggling. Much of that crude terminates in China.

The war grinds on — and its consequences are landing on Beijing harder than Xi Jinping ever planned.

SUSTAINED WAR WITH IRAN COULD DRAIN US MISSILE STOCKPILES, TEST ESCALATION CONTROL

If sanctions enforcement continues tightening — and there is every reason to press harder right now — the gray market that has allowed Beijing to secure cheap energy from sanctioned regimes will shrink. The bill for China’s energy dependency will come due.

Xi’s bind

Xi publicly condemns the war. Privately, Chinese energy firms have been pressing Tehran not to strike Qatari liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities — because China sources roughly 28% of its LNG from Qatar. Defending Iran on the world stage while quietly begging it not to torch your fuel supply is not a position of strength.

IRAN WAR, 11 DAYS IN: US CONTROLS SKIES, OIL SURGES AND THE REGION BRACES FOR WHAT’S NEXT

Xi cannot replace discounted Iranian oil overnight. He cannot rehabilitate a dead supreme leader. And he cannot absorb a prolonged energy shock while his GDP growth target sits at a humbling 4.5% — China’s lowest target in over three decades. Every one of those pressures is leverage Trump should use. This is not the time for diplomatic niceties.

What Trump should demand

The Beijing summit is not a trade negotiation. It is a strategic confrontation, and Trump should walk in knowing exactly what he wants.

TRUMP’S STRIKE ON IRAN DEALS A MAJOR BLOW TO PUTIN’S WAR MACHINE IN UKRAINE

First, Xi must use his documented leverage over Moscow to halt Russian intelligence support for Iranian attacks on American forces. Gen. Petraeus is right that sanctions on Russia are long overdue. But China’s economic exposure to this war gives Washington a second lever — and Trump should pull it simultaneously.

Second, China must shut down the missile technology pipeline to Tehran. Treasury Secretary Bessent is already weighing pressing Beijing on sanctioned oil purchases in his pre-summit talks with Vice Premier He Lifeng in Paris. That pressure must extend explicitly to weapons transfers — the CM-302 deal, propellant shipments, dual-use components. Washington is tracking all of it.

Third, Beijing’s rare earth export restrictions — imposed in retaliation for U.S. tariffs and designed to complicate American weapons replenishment — need to be called what they are: economic warfare. The tightening energy markets created by this conflict give Washington leverage it has not held in years. Expanded U.S. LNG exports and Gulf energy cooperation are available — but only for real concessions, not diplomatic theater.

For years, U.S. officials have warned that Chinese firms have funneled technology into Iran’s missile and weapons programs. 

The real question in Beijing

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For years, Beijing methodically cultivated an authoritarian axis with Iran, Russia and Venezuela as a hedge against American power. Iran is now destabilized. Venezuela is out of Beijing’s orbit. Russia is exposed. The axis that gathered in Beijing last September brimming with confidence looks considerably more fragile today.

Xi will arrive at this summit hoping to stabilize the relationship and project strength on his own soil. Trump should arrive knowing that the Iran war has handed Washington something genuinely rare in the long history of U.S.–China diplomacy.

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Leverage.

The card is in Washington’s hand. The question is whether Trump plays it.

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Foreigners are snapping up US homes and stealing the American dream out from under families

President Donald Trump is pushing hard for Congress to ban Wall Street firms from buying single-family homes. He’s rightly worried that financial tycoons are crowding out younger and middle-class homebuyers, especially in fast-growing Southern cities. But there’s another kind of homebuyer the president and Congress should cut off at the pass: foreigners who are blocking our own citizens from the American Dream.

In a new paper, I show that foreign homebuyers are far more common than most people realize. Between April 2024 and March 2025 alone, foreigners purchased more than 78,000 American homes.  And foreign homebuying is becoming more common with every passing year. Between 2024 and 2025 alone, foreign buyers spent 33% more on U.S. homes than they did in the previous year.

Each home bought by someone from outside the U.S. leaves one fewer home for Americans to buy. That fact alone raises prices for first-time homebuyers — it’s Economics 101. But the situation is even worse when you account for the fact that nearly half of foreigners paid all cash. Younger Americans and middle-class families simply can’t compete with all-cash offers — certainly not if they’re buying their first home. The playing field is tilted against them, and it’s tilted in favor of people who may have never set foot in America at all.

But who, exactly, are these foreign homebuyers?

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

Shockingly, a huge number of them are from economic and strategic rival nations. The most foreign homebuyers come from communist China. They purchase about one out of every six foreign-bought homes, and in 2025 alone, they dropped $13.7 billion on American homes.

Tellingly, nearly half of these Chinese buyers intend to use their new home as a way to gain permanent residence in the United States, giving them preferential access to things like a college education for their children. In other words, not only are Chinese citizens crowding Americans out of homes — they’re pushing Americans out of other U.S. institutions, as well.

Whether they’re from China or anywhere else, it’s important to note that these foreigners aren’t simply buying condos or townhomes. They’re overwhelmingly buying the single-family detached homes that Americans want most. Nearly two out of every three foreign home purchases are in that category. So foreign homebuyers are dimming the heart of the American Dream itself.

No matter where they’re from or what kind of home they get, foreign homebuyers are standing in the way of American citizens. But other countries don’t make this mistake. They’ve enacted heavy restrictions on foreign homebuyers precisely because they want to put their own people first.

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Canada is a case in point. While Canadian citizens are some of the most common buyers of American property, their own country bans most foreign purchases of homes. Many foreign purchases that are still allowed are hit with heavy taxes in order to deter them.

Each home bought by someone from outside the U.S. leaves one fewer home for Americans to buy.

Similarly, China severely limits foreign homebuying, even as many of its citizens buy homes in America. The double standard is clear — and so is the harm to America’s people and interests. Our citizens are waiting in line behind homebuyers from our country’s top strategic and economic rival. In what world does that make sense?

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The problem is obvious — but so is the solution. Congress should restrict foreigners from buying American homes, either with an outright ban or heavy taxes that discourage purchases. The Republican Study Committee has already laid out a plan to significantly raise taxes on homebuyers from overseas. Such innovative ideas deserve attention and action in the coming months.

This isn’t a matter of sticking it to foreigners. It’s about standing up for our own citizens. The American Dream is for the American people, and young professionals and middle-class families urgently need it brought within their reach.

Veteran ’60 Minutes’ reporter says the network ‘crumbled’ under Trump’s pressure

A veteran “60 Minutes” journalist slammed the previous owners of his parent network, CBS, for settling an election interference lawsuit with President Donald Trump.

“Our previous owners at CBS faced political pressure and crumbled‚” Scott Pelley said, according to The Guardian’s Jeremy Barr, referencing the fallout over the legal dispute between Trump and CBS. Pelley was introducing former “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens at the National Press Foundation Annual Journalism Awards Dinner last week. 

Pelley was referencing former CBS parent company, Paramount Global, before it was merged with Skydance Media, run by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison.

CBS NEWS IN TRANSITION: WHO’S IN AND WHO’S OUT AFTER A TUMULTUOUS YEAR AT THE NETWORK

In the days leading up to the 2024 presidential election, CBS News aired its “60 Minutes” interview featuring then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Critics at the time noticed that an answer she gave to a question about Israel that first aired in a preview clip on “Face the Nation,” which was mocked by conservatives for her “word salad” comments, appeared to have been swapped with a different answer that aired during the primetime election special the next evening.

Trump accused the network of election interference and filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the company. 

After months of contentious mediation, Paramount and CBS settled Trump’s lawsuit for a sum expected to be north of $30 million, including $16 million upfront for Trump’s presidential library.

CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT ANNOUNCES SUDDEN EXIT FROM NETWORK, SAYS HE’S SEEKING ‘SOME INDEPENDENCE’

Barr also posted on X that veteran “60 Minutes” journalist Lesley Stahl claimed she would have followed former executive producer of the show Bill Owens in resigning during the company’s contentious legal battle with Trump. 

“We would have followed him off the cliff, but he urged us not to,” Stahl reportedly said. 

Owens, who told his colleagues in April of last year that corporate overreach impacted his ability to maintain an independent newsroom. 

When he resigned, he told his colleagues in a memo, “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.” 

CRONKITE-ERA PRODUCER EXITS CBS NEWS IN DRAMATIC FASHION AFTER 46 YEARS AT NETWORK

A representative from CBS did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

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DAVID MARCUS: In an age of broken institutions, the filibuster is one relic we can’t afford

The filibuster, which is in essence a 60-vote threshold to pass legislation in the U.S. Senate, is a well-intentioned instrument meant to protect the rights of states, markets and individuals from excessive federal law. But it must now be abandoned.

Under the filibuster, the Senate can only act when a piece of legislation is overwhelmingly popular, and in the current case of the Save America Act, which has widespread public support, not even then.

When the Senate abdicates this power, the power doesn’t disappear, rather it is vested in non-governmental institutions that we are meant to trust are working in the interest of the country and its people.

So, for example, without the Save America Act’s limits on mail-in ballots, non-government entities, like Mark Zuckererg and Meta back in 2020, are free to influence elections by offering mail-in ballot assistance, but only in their politically approved areas.

THUNE GUARANTEES VOTER ID BILL TO HIT THE SENATE DESPITE SCHUMER, DEM OPPOSITION: ‘WE WILL HAVE A VOTE’

In an age in which we had trusted institutions of education, homeless outreach or monitoring of elections, this might be fine, even admirable. But we do not live in such an age. In our age, far-left progressives have captured almost every institution the Senate willingly hands its power over to.

In the 1720s, England had almost no government-run prisons. Instead, wardensips were purchased, and the warden would profit from prisoner fees.

In 1729, an architect named Robert Castell was thrown into debtors’ prison, but could not pay the warden’s fee. He was put in a room with a man who had smallpox, contracted the disease and died.

SEN LEE DARES DEMOCRATS TO REVIVE TALKING FILIBUSTER OVER SAVE ACT, SLAMMING CRITICISM AS ‘PARANOID FANTASY’

Outrage ensued, and even Sir Robert Walpole, arguably England’s first prime minister who far favored indirect management to direct government control of institutions, began to see the need for state-run prisons.

Was the flawed, non-governmental prison system of Georgian England really so different from our own federal government handing millions of dollars to fraudulent daycare centers in Minneapolis or no-show hospice care sites in LA?

Even short of fraud, our leading institutions have had incredible negative impacts in areas like the trans movement, where basically every single one of them agreed that children should be subjected to surgery and hormones to change their gender.

DAVID MARCUS: SEN THUNE HAS NO IDEA HOW MAD THE GOP BASE IS AT HIM

It was not until executive orders, state legislatures and the courts stood up to trans madness that the fever began to cool, and now, hospitals are quietly removing those “services.”

It was the government, by and of the people, that put in check the shadow government of far-left institutions that nobody ever voted for.

Castell was not the first person to be abused or to die in the very old private English prison system, so why did his case suddenly cause so much furor and eventual change?

REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL

Well, about 25 years earlier, something had arrived on the scene in London called a newspaper. Suddenly, not just the literate Londoner, but the man who heard the news read aloud at the coffeehouse or tavern, had an immediate window into corruption.

Likewise, 25 years ago, we saw the rise of online news, and suddenly the gatekeepers could no longer hide the evils of the institutions on whose boards they often sat.

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Suddenly stories of voter fraud, or detransitioning, or absurd DEI lessons in our schools could not be covered up. The rot at the core of our institutions was laid bare for all to see, just as the cruelty of England’s prisons were 300 years ago.

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE ‘TALKING FILIBUSTER’ AND THE SAVE ACT

Today, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., faces a choice similar to Walpole’s in the 18th century. He would much prefer to keep the federal government out of the lives of Americans, but the institutions that do operate in their lives are broken and corrupt.

While it is the House of Representatives, not the Senate, that is meant to be the vehicle of popular will in our system, that Senate is not meant to be a perpetual roadblock to the will of the people’s house even in the face of massive popular support.

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Sadly, that is what the filibuster has become today, an excuse for our legislators to do nothing as non-government institutions continue to firm their grip on American society.

There might have once been a time when the filibuster made sense, but now is not that time. Now is the time for the people’s government to take back power from our broken, far-left institutions.

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AI comes with a hefty charge. Are you the one who gets stuck with the bill?

For the past two years, Americans have been told the artificial intelligence revolution will change everything, including how we work, how we invest, how we learn and how businesses operate.

But there’s one place where AI could quietly show up that almost nobody is talking about.

Your electric bill.

And if the current trajectory continues, the AI boom could become one of the biggest hidden drivers of higher energy costs for American households in 100 years.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S TOP ‘SCIENTIFIC PRIORITY IS AI,’ ENERGY SECRETARY SAYS

The dirty secret of AI: It eats lots of electricity

Artificial intelligence doesn’t live in the cloud.

It lives in massive data centers that are football-field-sized buildings filled with servers running nonstop calculations.

Training a single large AI model can consume millions of kilowatt hours of electricity. Once deployed, those models still require enormous computing power every time someone asks a question, generates an image or runs automation.

According to the International Energy Agency, global data center electricity consumption could more than double by 2030 as AI adoption explodes.

In the United States alone, some projections suggest data centers could consume up to 9-10% of the country’s electricity within the next decade. Just five years ago, that number was closer to 2-3%.

That’s a staggering shift in the power grid which you may not have even realized today.

Why this matters to your wallet

Electricity isn’t like streaming services. When demand rises dramatically, utilities must build new infrastructure.

That means:

• New power plants
• New transmission lines
• New grid upgrades

Artificial intelligence doesn’t live in the cloud. It lives in massive data centers that are football-field-sized buildings filled with servers running nonstop calculations.

And guess who typically pays for those investments?

SCOOP: TRUMP BRINGS BIG TECH TO WHITE HOUSE TO CURB POWER COSTS AMID AI BOOM

Ratepayers. In simple words: you.

The Electric Power Research Institute has warned that AI-driven data center growth could add tens of gigawatts of new electricity demand across the United States. To put that into perspective, a single large AI data center campus can consume as much power as a medium-sized city.

The tech gold rush for electricity

Major tech companies are now scrambling to lock down power.

Companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google are investing billions in data center expansion.

Some are even exploring small nuclear reactors and dedicated power plants just to fuel AI infrastructure.

TRUMP SAYS EVERY AI PLANT BEING BUILT IN US WILL BE SELF-SUSTAINING WITH THEIR OWN ELECTRICITY

That should tell you something.

When trillion-dollar companies start worrying about electricity supply, it means the demand surge is very real.

The hidden grid stress

America’s power grid wasn’t designed for an AI arms race.

Utilities are already dealing with rising demand from:

• Electric vehicles
• Electrified homes and appliances
• Population growth
• Manufacturing reshoring

Now add AI supercomputers running 24 hours a day.

Some regions are already feeling the pressure. Utilities in states like Virginia, Texas and Georgia with major data center hubs have warned that new projects could significantly increase electricity demand over the next decade.

And guess who typically pays for those investments? Ratepayers. In simple words: you.

Could your electric bill really double?

Let’s be clear: AI alone probably won’t double your electric bill overnight.

But the risk isn’t imaginary. Someone is going to have to pay for the energy.  

If utilities must rapidly expand capacity and upgrade infrastructure, those costs historically get passed along to customers through higher rates and new surcharges.

IN 2026, ENERGY WAR’S NEW FRONT IS AI, AND US MUST WIN THAT BATTLE, API CHIEF SAYS

And energy inflation has already been a problem.

Over the past five years, residential electricity prices in the U.S. have risen significantly, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Add the AI electricity surge, and the upward pressure could continue where in the next 10 years, you could have double the electric bill you have today.

The next silent inflation nobody is talking about

Washington debates inflation constantly about the big three of groceries, gas and housing.

But electricity is quietly becoming one of the most important cost pressures in the modern economy.

Almost everything in the digital economy runs on electricity:

TRUMP BRINGS BIG TECH EXECUTIVES TO WHITE HOUSE TO CURB POWER COSTS FOR AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS AMID AI BOOM

• AI
• Cloud computing
• Crypto mining
• Electric vehicles
• Data centers

Electricity is becoming the new oil of the digital age.

Companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google are investing billions in data center expansion. Some are even exploring small nuclear reactors and dedicated power plants just to fuel AI infrastructure.

What Americans should be watching

As the AI boom accelerates, keep an eye on three things:

1. Utility rate increases Many states allow utilities to raise rates when infrastructure costs rise.

2. Data center construction Communities across America are competing for massive AI server farms.

3. Energy policy: How the country expands energy generation, including nuclear, natural gas and renewable, could determine whether supply keeps up with demand.

Will benefits to all Americans outweigh the cost of AI?

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Artificial intelligence will transform the economy in ways we’re only beginning to understand. But like every technological revolution, it comes with real-world costs.

The question isn’t whether AI will reshape industries.

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It’s whether Americans are prepared for the possibility that the next tech boom could show up not just on their phones or computers but as a huge added expense on their monthly power bill.

And that’s a reality policymakers, utilities and consumers need to start thinking about when the price could double down the road.

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I reluctantly went to my first Grateful Dead show — and discovered one of Earth’s great religions

“Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.”

The Fourth Commandment suddenly came to mind recently as I happened upon Larissa Phillips’ Free Press article about the Grateful Dead. It is all about following the Dead and how the whole thing was like a giant, mobile, joyous church.

I concur.

GRATEFUL DEAD LEGEND BOB WEIR DIES AT AGE 78 SURROUNDED BY FAMILY AFTER CANCER BATTLE

Standing among thousands of fellow Deadheads, especially at the goosebump-inducing peak of a transcendent Jerry Garcia guitar solo, I would look around the mesmerized crowd and think, “If this isn’t a religion, what is?” A religion without a phony, overrated, massively disappointing “God,” and with real, talented, flesh-and-blood musicians to worship: Who could ask for anything more?

Eric Clapton, Jerry Garcia, Elton John and Carlos Santana are my four musical gods. Broadly speaking, those of us who hop on planes and fly across the country or over oceans to see music belong to what I call the First Church of Song.

Seeing and following the Grateful Dead was part of this faith. I was fortunate enough to catch the Dead for in-town shows in the New York City area and Los Angeles. I rode in cars to see individual venues in Foxboro, Massachusetts; Oakland and Ventura, California; Oxford Speedway, Maine; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I flew to see them in Buffalo and Chicago (twice).

GRATEFUL DEAD’S JERRY GARCIA WAS INTIMIDATED BY GUITAR LEGEND MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD: BOOK

And then there were the “follows” — journeys to multiple cities and locations: The Meadowlands, New Jersey, to Washington, D.C. (with an intermittent stop at the Garden State Arts Center, where the Neville Brothers opened for Jimmy Buffett) and the best follow of all: Berlin to Frankfurt to Paris. Following the Dead across Europe in 1990 was among the highlights of my life.

I am eternally grateful to my old junior-high-school friends John Adams, Gill Ilanit and Chris Wessling, who dragged me to my first Dead show — fittingly enough — on Good Friday 1987. The bones, skulls and skeletons abundant in Grateful Dead iconography led me to conclude, with staggering inaccuracy, that this involved some sort of satanic death metal. I envisioned something like Black Sabbath, but even more diabolical.

I strongly resisted my friends’ invitations, but they persisted. Finally, to stop their nagging, I made them a deal: “OK. I will see your Grateful Dead. Just this once. And after that, I do not want to hear another word about them!”

“OK. OK. OK,” they agreed, likely giggling behind my back at the worm-adorned hook that was about to snag my upper lip.

So off we went to the now-defunct Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on a sunny Southern California afternoon. We spent hours in a vast parking lot, thoroughly entertained, as our fellow young Americans in tie-dyed outfits played hacky sack, flung Frisbees and danced with their dogs to bootleg concert tapes. The faithful revered these like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In her Free Press article headlined “Who Needs God When There’s the Grateful Dead?” Phillips perfectly captured the historical moment when this colorful afternoon among the Deadheads unfolded:

“I imagine if you were deeply invested, it would’ve been hard to watch the Dead go mainstream, after so many years of being a sort of secret society. In 1987, they produced their first Top 10 song, and things went crazy from there. MTV began playing the ‘Touch of Grey’ video. I saw frat-boy types wearing tie-dyes, and preppy kids from my suburban high school started going to shows.”

Yup — preppy kids, like many of my friends at Palisades High School in suburban Los Angeles. (We were college students and recent graduates by then.) I was the preppiest among my crew that April 17, but I was not — by far — the only guy out there in Top-Siders.

About this time, Jerry Garcia responded to his band’s finally entering Billboard’s Top 10 club: “I am appalled.”

Back in Irvine, the all-encompassing parking-lot festivities felt like the entire attraction. In fact, it was just the overture. Already sated, my friends reminded me that we were there to see a concert.

As dusk approached, we finally headed in for the Dead show. Rather than harmonies from hell, I heard the delightful sounds of what I call “psychedelic country rock.” The music was fun, upbeat, happy and beautiful.

It also was familiar. I remember hearing “Estimated Prophet” and asking, “Oh, a Grateful Dead song?” Also on the set list: “Truckin’.” I said, “I know this one. I’ve heard it on the radio. The Dead do this?”

Other tunes were brand-new to me. “Deal” was a raucous first-set closer that I immediately embraced and still cherish. “Friend of the Devil” and “Samson and Delilah” became instant favorites.

GRATEFUL DEAD’S ‘HELL IN A BUCKET’ DUCK GOT DRUNK ON SET, PAL POINTS TO WHO LIKELY MAKE IT HAPPEN

The recently departed Bob Weir was a standout on rhythm guitar and vocals. I instantly fell in love with the keyboard wizardry and raspy voice of the late Brent Mydland. The late Phil Lesh quietly kept things together on bass. Not one drummer but two — Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, both still alive — kept the percussion popping.

And then, of course, there was the first among equals, the late lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. Although he was just 44 at that time, decades of less-than-pristine living made him look about 80. He was our rock ’n’ roll grandpa, and we were his grandchildren. His croaky voice, soaring leads and peaking crescendos fueled pure, unfiltered ecstasy. With Persian rugs on stage among the wooden guitars and gear, the scene felt like Jerry’s living room. He was playing. And even among some 16,000 fellow fans, the place could not have felt cozier or more intimate.

At the end of the show, Gill asked me, “What did you think?”

I laughed and replied, “Why didn’t you bring me sooner?”

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“I remember dragging you to that show, then catching you twirling around in the parking lot!” John Adams later recalled. “Hilarious. Hooked for life.”

That was my maiden voyage with the Grateful Dead.

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I returned for 70 more shows.

If this isn’t a religion, what is?

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DAVID MARCUS: Can John Fetterman save the Democratic Party from itself?

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman is the most anomalous politician in America today. Often willing to buck his fellow Democrats, he appears to be a one of a kind on Capitol Hill, even though his ideas are shared by the majority of Americans, including a lot of Democrats.

It is not entirely clear how Fetterman went from being a progressive, and failed, candidate for Senate in 2016 to winning in 2022 and becoming the moderate thorn in the side of the ever-left lurching Democrats. Some believe his medical issues changed him, but the answer might be far more simple.

In fact, it may not be so much that Fetterman moved away from his party, but that his party moved away from Fetterman.

One glaring example is Israel. Even five years ago, support for the Jewish state was as widespread among elected Democrats as E-Z Pass is on American highways. But today, the absurd and fabulist consensus in the party is that Israel has committed genocide.

JOHN FETTERMAN SLAMS ANTI-ISRAEL ‘ROT’ IN DEMOCRATIC PARTY, REJECTS AOC CLAIMS OF GAZA ‘GENOCIDE’

Fetterman, along with a few others like Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., have fought back hard against these anti-Israeli narratives, even as nominally pro-Israel voices, like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have shamefully kept their heads down on the issue.

More recently, on the current shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, Fetterman is once again sticking it to his own party leadership by insisting that the agency should be funded full stop, without any conditions.

He is the only Democrat in the upper chamber taking this sensible stand.

FETTERMAN’S FORMER PROGRESSIVE BACKER SAYS HE ‘SOLD US OUT,’ ESCALATES EFFORTS TO PRIMARY DEMOCRAT SENATOR

Fetterman is also pretty much the only Democrat who is willing to cheer the deaths of the brutal regime leaders in Iran as the rest of his party all but undermines the war effort with nonsensical attacks against Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the communist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, one of the most popular figures in Democratic polling, Fetterman said of him last year, “Everything that I’ve read on him, I don’t really agree with virtually any of it, politically. That’s just where I’m at as a Democrat. He’s not even a Democrat, honestly.”

But here Fetterman appears to be wrong. In fact, Democrats lined up to support and endorse Madman Mamdani and his merry band of capitalism-hating DSA darlings, and it is Fetterman who is losing support among party voters.

FETTERMAN’S NEW BOOK DETAILS EXPLOSIVE FEUD WITH GOV JOSH SHAPIRO OVER PAROLE BOARD DISPUTE

But he isn’t losing support among all voters.

According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, a whopping 72% of Republican voters in the Keystone state approve of Fetterman, while a mere 22% of Democrats do, with independents split about 50/50.

This is the strange place where we have found ourselves, more Republican voters in Pennsylvania approve of Democratic Sen. Fetterman than Republican voters in Texas do of Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

JOHN FETTERMAN SIDES WITH GOP IN SENATE VOTE, SAYS DEMOCRATS ‘CROSSED A LINE’ PUTTING POLITICS OVER COUNTRY

This has all led to speculation that the hoodie-wearing maverick might switch parties and run for his seat as a Republican in 2028. But that is not the sense that I get from Fetterman’s words and actions.

Fetterman wants to save the Democratic Party, not to abandon it. 

The best way for Fetterman to achieve this goal is not by defending his Senate seat two years from now, but by running for president.

FETTERMAN OPPOSES SHUTDOWN EFFORTS AS DEMOCRATIC COLLEAGUES MOVE TO BLOCK ICE FUNDING BILL

Recently I have been polling some insiders I know on both sides of the aisle, asking if Fetterman really has a chance to win the presidency in 2028. The most usual answer has been, “yes,” with a smattering of “absolutelies.”

The logic here is that every other potential Democrat who could stand on a presidential primary debate stage is in lockstep favoring the loony leftist ideas that Fetterman stands athwart.

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Especially now that sports media celebrity Stephen A. Smith has announced he will not be running, owing to the financial hit he would take, Fetterman would be the only Democrat in the field offering a way back to centrist politics.

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The odds are firmly against Fetterman in his quixotic mission to restore sanity to America’s oldest political party, but then again, what were the odds of this guy ever being a senator in the first place?

All Americans should be glad to have this single senator who speaks plain sense regardless of party talking points, marching orders or the flickering winds of public opinion. Maybe it is naive to believe these qualities still matter to voters, but if so, then call me naive.

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I was a doctor caring for Alzheimer’s patients. At 57, I became one. Here’s what’s next

As an internal medicine doctor, I used to care for Alzheimer’s patients. Now, at just 60 years old, I am one. My diagnosis is not the future most people hope for — but there is finally a generation of Alzheimer’s treatments that work for many patients, and I am one of them.

Before my diagnosis, I was a busy, high-performing physician and a present husband and father. Over my career, I completed an internal medicine fellowship at Johns Hopkins, oversaw a medical practice and ran an academic clinic, where I taught residents and medical students. I coached my kids’ basketball teams and served as a deacon at my church.

I was someone who helped others, not someone who needed help myself. Then, three years ago, everything changed.

ALZHEIMER’S SCIENTISTS FIND KEY TO HALTING BRAIN DECLINE BEFORE SYMPTOMS

One afternoon, my supervisor called me into her office and fired me for fumbling tasks I used to handle with ease, asking emphatically, “What is wrong with you?!” Suddenly, I was out of a job, had no health insurance and still needed answers. What was wrong with me?

My family noticed my cognitive decline, too. I couldn’t keep up during a game night, put dishes back in the wrong place, lost track of my phone and repeated questions my wife had already answered.

I was only 57 — younger than most people associate with Alzheimer’s disease — but testing soon revealed the truth. A novel blood test measuring p-Tau217, a biomarker strongly associated with Alzheimer’s, came back abnormal. Further imaging confirmed what I feared most: I had Alzheimer’s disease.

As a doctor, I knew what this diagnosis usually meant. For years, our treatment tools were limited. We prescribed medications that tried to “juice up” the brain. But mostly, we watched patients’ slow demise until they struggled to speak and eventually became unable to swallow. Then we’d call in hospice. Alzheimer’s care was a slog that was hard on families. It was a long goodbye.

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE COULD BE REVERSED BY RESTORING BRAIN BALANCE, STUDY SUGGESTS

But my wife, my superhero, wasn’t going to let me go without a fight. She knew I still had so much to offer my family, my community and my church.

My neurologist, Dr. Jeff Burns, who runs the University of Kansas Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, suggested that I would be a candidate for a new monoclonal antibody treatment designed to clear abnormal plaques from the brain. I began regular infusions that have slowed my decline and improved my cognition.

I still have Alzheimer’s — but treatment has given me back the life I feared I was losing.

HIDDEN BRAIN CONDITION MAY QUADRUPLE DEMENTIA RISK IN OLDER ADULTS, STUDY SUGGESTS

Before treatment, I struggled to remember my cues while serving at the altar as a deacon; after the treatment took hold, I had a service where I was able to hit every mark once again.

I’m able to babysit my 2-year-old grandson, Frank, twice a week. I’ve been enlisted to teach medical students how to deliver bad news to patients, which I treat as a solemn duty.

I go on bike rides, which remind me of what it was like to be a kid. I spend precious time with my children and grandchildren. I take three-mile walks with my dog. I write.

CANCER MAY TRIGGER UNEXPECTED DEFENSE AGAINST ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE, RESEARCHERS SAY

You would think that a treatment capable of restoring someone’s life would be readily available to others like me. But our health care system is still built for late-stage Alzheimer’s, not early intervention. Too often, cognitive decline is dismissed as normal aging, or patients are referred to specialists with long wait times. By the time answers arrive, the window for effective treatment has closed.

What helped me may not work for everyone. But even if a breakthrough Alzheimer’s therapy were to emerge tomorrow that works in every case, the same structural failures would persist: People would still be diagnosed too late, priced out of testing and treatment, and blocked from timely care.

That must change.

LURKING DEMENTIA RISK EXPOSED BY BREAKTHROUGH TEST 25 YEARS BEFORE SYMPTOMS

Early Alzheimer’s detection should become routine in primary care, using modern tools like blood-based biomarkers to identify the disease early and validated cognitive assessments to detect meaningful changes. While some assessments can now be administered digitally outside specialty care, patients are still funneled to neurologists, creating six-month- to year-long delays that cost critical treatment time. These tests should be accessible and covered, not limited to academic centers or those who can afford to pay out of pocket.

My family noticed my cognitive decline, too. I couldn’t keep up during a game night, put dishes back in the wrong place, lost track of my phone and repeated questions my wife had already answered.

Once patients qualify for an FDA-approved therapy, insurance rules should not stand in the way. Ongoing administrative hurdles and repeated coverage denials disrupt care and force families into constant appeals.

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My wife, Cindy, has spent countless hours fighting insurers to maintain the treatment that has kept me alert, engaged and functioning. At times, those denials have forced me off treatment long enough to lose ground before we could begin again.

A current proposal sponsored by Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., would extend Medicare coverage to people 65 and under who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. This legislation, called the BRIDGE Act, would ensure people in my situation don’t face the coverage denials and access interruptions that I did.

Primary care providers — often overworked and running behind — are equipped to spot cognitive decline and can administer cognitive assessments, make timely diagnoses and counsel patients on evidence-based lifestyle interventions such as regular physical activity, sleep optimization and social engagement. These interventions matter and can help slow cognitive decline for some patients.

Finally, caregivers must be recognized as essential partners in care. Cindy made it possible for me to get treatment, stay organized and keep living my life. Supporting families is one of the most effective ways to keep people with Alzheimer’s at home, engaged and connected.

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Alzheimer’s science has moved forward. Policy has not.

If we want today’s breakthroughs to improve lives for patients like me, families and future generations, we must build a system that finds the disease early and delivers care in time.

JONATHAN TURLEY: How Gov Shapiro became a squatter and got sued by his neighbors

The poet Robert Frost once said that “good fences make good neighbors.” He apparently never met Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is being sued by his neighbors for effectively squatting on their land and then seizing it to install a fence along his $830,500 private residence in suburban Philadelphia. The litigation is likely to put Shapiro in a much different light for many who think of him as a 2028 contender.

The irony of the case is crushing. Shapiro opposed Trump’s plan to build a wall along the southern border, declaring that he would sue before a dime of Pennsylvania money would go to pay for it. He apparently adopted a similar approach to his neighbors in Pennsylvania. The difference is that he built the wall, but without giving his neighbors a dime.

Shapiro has long wanted a 2,900-square-foot parcel of land located between the two homes in Abington, Montgomery County. The problem is that his neighbors like their land and want to keep it. They turned down multiple offers from Shapiro.

That is when the governor decided to build it anyway.

GIVE THE GOVERNMENT AN INCH AND THEY’LL SEIZE YOUR $200K HOME FOR A $2K DEBT

Jeremy and Simone Mock allege that Shapiro effectively became a squatter by using the state police to bar them from their own property and then building an eight-foot security fence.

After the Mocks sued, Shapiro countersued, claiming that the land was now his through “adverse possession.” He basically claimed that they abandoned the land despite their repeatedly trying to gain entry and repeatedly turning down his offers to buy it.

Welcome to the world of adverse possession. It is a doctrine dating back to 2000 B.C., and the Code of Hammurabi, allowing people to acquire title to land abandoned by owners over a long period of time. A really long time.

From the Romans to the British to the earliest days of the American Republic, adverse possession has been recognized as a valid means of acquiring title. It was particularly valuable in the early years of the United States, where people acquired or claimed vast tracts of land out West, only to leave them undeveloped and unoccupied. As settlers moved West, they often cultivated the land, built structures and lived openly for years before the original owners reclaimed it. Adverse possession was an efficient rule that allowed land to be put to productive use.

Under Pennsylvania law, you must prove actual, continuous, exclusive, visible, notorious, distinct and hostile possession of the land for 21 years. Shapiro clearly has the hostile part down, but the Mocks are claiming that he effectively used state police to bar them from their land and then claimed that they abandoned it.

Each side is portraying the other as dishonest and opportunistic.

In their complaint, the Mocks allege that the Shapiros made “previous acknowledgments that the Mock Property was owned by no one other than the Mocks.” They document that the Shapiros did not want to pay the asking price, so the Mocks offered to lease the land to them. The Shapiros allegedly agreed but then backed out.

MICHIGAN FAMILY SAYS COUNTY SEIZED HOME OVER TAX BILL THEY DIDN’T OWE — CASE NOW HEADS TO THE SUPREME COURT

The Mocks declare, “what followed was an outrageous abuse of power by the sitting Governor of Pennsylvania and its former Attorney General.” Shapiro declared the property was his.

The Mocks objected that they had been paying taxes to the state on the disputed property for nine years.

The Shapiros claim that from 2003 to 2025, they mowed the lawn, cleared leaves, and removed other debris from the land as if it were their own. Accordingly, they claim that the 21-year period has passed and with it the title to the land. They further allege that, after buying the property in April 2017, the Mocks did not claim the land or challenge the location of an existing fence. However, they did so in October 2025.

Shapiro maintains that the Mocks never even knew the property was theirs until he informed them of the results of a recent survey.

The fascinating element is the use of state troopers to keep the Mocks off their land. The complaint even shows a picture of two troopers, stating, “these members of the State Police are on the Mock Property. Behind the officers are the arborvitae that the Shapiros planted on the Mock Property without permission and over the Mocks’ express objections.”

With the required 21 years only barely passed, any period in which the Mocks were to contest the possession could unravel the adverse possession claim. In the meantime, few people are likely to be sympathetic with the Shapiros taking property from a neighbor. Adverse possession rarely sits well with people, but it is more palatable when the owner has been absent and dilatory.

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Here, the owners are very much present and vocal.

The optics are also worsened by the fact that the state has been struggling to address a squatting crisis where people occupy other people’s homes and then refuse to leave during years of litigation. Shapiro is accused of being a squatter with a state trooper contingent to back him up. It is not clear what would be worse for Shapiro — to lose or to win in taking his neighbor’s property without compensation.

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The dispute has already made its way into the political arena, where Shapiro is running for re-election. One of his opponents, Stacy Garrity, posted a Valentine’s Day message on social media with Shapiro’s face that said: “I love you more than I love my neighbor’s yard.”

The fact is that there are credible arguments on both sides of this dispute. For Shapiro, the question is whether he can afford to win.

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BROADCAST BIAS: Networks hide the ‘M’ word after Muslim terror attack

Journalists inside our broadcast networks have a sensitivity to any criticism of radical Islam, bred by their loathing of conservatives. The term “Islamophobia” is on their lips when anyone recalls anything from 9/11 to people chanting, “Death to America.” When a violent or potentially event unfolds, they’re hoping the assailant isn’t Muslim, as happened after an attempted terror attack this week.

When Muslim Army doctor Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas proclaimed on televised pundit roundtable: “I cringe that he’s a Muslim. I mean, because it inflames all the fears. I think he’s probably just a nut case. But with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going.” NPR’s Nina Totenberg chimed in: “It really is tragic that he was a Muslim.”

That reflex certainly applied to the March 7 protests outside Gracie Mansion, where New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani lives. Two Muslim teenagers turned up at an anti-Islam protest with homemade bombs, and the broadcast networks were extremely reluctant to describe them with the “M word.”

On Saturday’s “World News Tonight,” on ABC, anchor Linsey Davis was brief, describing “two people arrested after a suspicious device went off during an anti-Muslim protest here in New York. The protests outside Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence, prompting counter-protesters to show up as well. Two were arrested for allegedly throwing what is believed to be a smoke bomb. No injuries reported.” Thrown by whom? The anchor didn’t specify. And it certainly didn’t turn out to be a “smoke bomb.” It was a potential mass casualty event.

CNN BOTCHES NEW YORK TERRORIST ATTACK COVERAGE, FORCED TO ISSUE MULTIPLE CORRECTIONS

On Sunday morning, ABC’s “Good Morning America” was even vaguer, with Gio Benitez reporting, “the FBI’s joint terrorism task force is now investigating suspicious devices thrown during a protest as possible acts of terrorism.” Here again, it’s a maddeningly passive phrasing of “devices thrown.” Thrown by whom?

Later in the show, ABC’s Janai Norman recounted: “Police say two suspicious devices were found. Jars filled with nuts, bolts and screws, and a hobby fuse. They say one protest of about twenty people was organized by far-right, anti-immigrant figure Jake Lang. About 125 people were part of the counter-protest.”

So, one side is “far-right” and “anti-immigrant,” and the other can’t be identified with an ideological or religious affiliation. That report was so vague you might think the Lang group threw the bombs.

SOCIAL MEDIA ERUPTS ON MAMDANI OVER REPORTS HIS WIFE LIKED PRO-OCTOBER 7TH POSTS: ‘THIS IS WHO THEY ARE’

NBC “Sunday Today” host Willie Geist at least seemed to get the targeting right: The “incendiary devices” had been thrown “towards a small group of anti-Islam protesters led by a right-wing influencer.”

On Sunday night’s “CBS Evening News,” anchor Jericka Duncan again meandered around it: “Tonight, the FBI is investigating two men after an explosive device with bolts and screws was thrown into a crowd. It happened in New York City on Saturday during a protest that turned violent outside the mayor’s official residence.” Who turned it violent?

CBS reporter Shanelle Kaul identified Mamdani as a Muslim, but not the assailants. They were just “two men,” she repeated.  Viewers could get a clue when the teens were identified as Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, but Kaul blamed the incident on the “anti-Islam demonstration led by Jake Lang … a pardoned U.S. Capitol insurrectionist who has frequently sought out political confrontations in the months after President Trump gave him clemency.” Lang served four years in prison after wielding a baseball bat on January 6.

SUSPECT IN NYC TERROR PROBE PLANNED ATTACK ‘BIGGER THAN THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING,’ PROSECUTORS SAY

On Monday morning, ABC’s Aaron Katersky again tagged right-wing extremists. The bombs were thrown “during the chaotic, dueling protests that were started by far-right provocateur Jake Lang under the banner, ‘Stop the Islamic takeover of New York City’ that Mamdani denounced as ‘rooted in bigotry and racism.’” Katersky then added the bomb plotters “told investigators they had watched ISIS propaganda videos and were there to defend Muslims.”

On Monday’s “Today” program on NBC, reporter Sam Brock relayed that “both men allegedly made pro-ISIS statements during their arrest,” but Brock tied the crowds to WABC’s “polarizing talk show host” Sid Rosenberg for calling Mamdani “a jihadist, before later apologizing.” So, it’s not “polarizing” or “bigoted” to favor ISIS and want Jews dead?

So, one side is “far-right” and “anti-immigrant,” and the other can’t be identified with an ideological or religious affiliation. 

It didn’t improve as the story unfolded. CNN had to pull down a ludicrously florid tweet on Monday about the bomb-plotters, that “Two Pennsylvania teenagers” could have come to New York “for a normal day enjoying the city’s abnormally warm weather.” This inspired a wave of satires.

On Tuesday night, CNN primetime host Abby Phillip — followed minutes later by commentator Ana Navarro — wrongly suggested the target of the bombs was Mayor Mamdani. CNN reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere also wrongly tweeted Mamdani was a target. So much for “Facts First” CNN.

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By Wednesday night, Phillip offered a rare on-air correction. On Wednesday’s “CBS Evening News,” anchor Tony Dokoupil offered a story on “two heroic New York City Police officers who were just steps away from a smoking improvised bomb on Saturday, an attempted terror attack, according to the FBI.” Jericka Duncan told the story of Aaron Edwards and Luis Navarro jumping into the breach to prevent a deadly bomb explosion.

Duncan explained, “Chief Edwards says the path to this moment started with the 9/11 attacks.” Edwards said, “I saw just police and first responders rushing to save people, and that inspired me to take the test.” But even in this cop-honoring story, the angle of Islamic radicalism just hung in the background. The “M-Word” didn’t emerge.

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These cringing journalists have long assumed that Americans (and especially conservatives) aren’t bright enough to think with nuance, that there are many innocent Muslim Americans who have no motivation toward or connection to terrorism. That’s why they have to skip over troubling facts.

That bias by omission extends to Mayor Mamdani’s record of extremist sentiments on Israel, and recent reports that Mamdani’s wife Rama Duwaji “liked” social-media posts celebrating the slaughter of innocent civilians by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The broadcast networks skipped that, endorsing the mayor’s spin that she’s a “private person.” These two are somehow not “far-left” or “bigoted” or extremist.

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Give the government an inch and they’ll seize your $200k home for a $2k debt

Local governments have a nasty habit of taking everything you’ve got and leaving you dry. That’s how Isabella County, Mich., treated the Pung family, whose case was heard on Wednesday, March 11, by the United States Supreme Court. The county foreclosed on the Pung family home for a tax debt of only $2,000. The kicker? Both the state’s Tax Tribunal and its Court of Appeals ruled that the Pungs didn’t even owe that tax in the first place. The response from the local tax assessor: “I don’t care.” The county took title to the Pungs’ home and auctioned it off for a fraction of its full value.

The Pungs’ lawsuit doesn’t focus on whether the tax was actually owed. Instead, the case addresses what the county must do after it takes someone’s entire house over a paltry 2,000 bucks. The home itself was worth about $200,000 — 100 times the amount of the tax debt. But the county hawked the property at a fire-sale auction for just $76,000, deducted the $2,000 debt, and returned the excess $74,000 to the Pungs. That means that about $118,000 of the Pungs’ equity was just wiped out.

Well — not quite. The auction purchaser quickly flipped the property for the $195,000 it was actually worth. For those keeping score: The government gets its $2,000, some private investor gets windfall profits, and the Pungs get shafted.

At oral argument, several justices expressed incredulity about the fairness of taking an entire home over such a trivial debt. But this is not the first time Michigan counties have taken the whole farm over small potatoes.

JACKSON-KAVANAUGH TENSIONS SURFACE IN CANDID EXCHANGE OVER SUPREME COURT ‘SHADOW DOCKET’

For example, Wayne County took a home owned by Erica Perez after she accidentally underpaid her 2014 property taxes by $144. Other than that one minor oversight, the Perez family had paid their taxes in full every year from when they purchased the property in 2013 until the county foreclosed on it in 2017. They even tried to pay their 2018 taxes, only to be told they no longer owned the home. They hadn’t realized that, because the government sent notice to the wrong address. The county then sold the property for $110,000 and kept every penny. The Perezes were left with nothing.

Oakland County took Uri Rafaeli’s rental property after a slight miscalculation resulted in his underpayment of $8.41. That is not a misprint: his home was seized over a debt of eight dollars and 41 cents. That’s less than the price of a Chipotle burrito.

When Rafaeli’s case reached the Michigan Supreme Court in 2019, Justice Richard Bernstein could hardly believe his ears: “You have a situation where people owed eight dollars, and they lost their house. How is that equitable?”

MICHIGAN FAMILY SAYS COUNTY SEIZED HOME OVER TAX BILL THEY DIDN’T OWE — CASE NOW HEADS TO THE SUPREME COURT

In another case, Sixth Circuit Judge Raymond Kethledge put an even finer point on it: “In some legal precincts, that sort of behavior is called theft.”

Rafaeli’s case was a landmark in Michigan. The state Supreme Court ruled, as a matter of state law, that the government’s confiscation of surplus equity after a tax sale violates the Takings Clause of the Michigan Constitution. Like its federal counterpart, that provision guarantees that the government cannot take property without paying just compensation.

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It would take nearly four more years before federal law would catch up. In the 2023 decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, as in Michigan, so it is everywhere: when the government takes more property than it is owed, it has to pay back the surplus — just like in every other debt collection context (imagine if the bank repossessed your car over eight bucks). 

But in Tyler, the court did not consider what exactly must be paid back. The Constitution requires “just compensation,” which usually means the fair market value of the property at the time it was taken. But some courts have measured the value of the property by whatever the government manages to get from selling it, even if the sale price is far below the property’s actual value. That’s the question at issue in the Pung case.

Oakland County took Uri Rafaeli’s rental property after a slight miscalculation resulted in his underpayment of $8.41. 

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The government has a legitimate interest in levying taxes. And when taxes go unpaid, it has several tools available to collect. But there is simply no reason why property owners should lose the equity in their homes over a small, simple mistake. As the Supreme Court said in Tyler, taxpayers must render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s — but no more.

The Constitution is ill-served by any rule that lets the government off the hook for reimbursing the full value of the property they’ve taken. And any regime that permits windfall profits to governments or investors creates a perverse incentive for tax collectors to maximize their bounty at the expense of homeowners. Again and again, local governments have proven that if you give them an inch, they’ll take your home.

DAVID MARCUS: Craven politics is the only excuse left for Dems refusing to fund DHS

When it comes to striking a deal to pay the people who keep us safe, congressional Democrats just won’t take yes for an answer.

Just a month ago, they were demanding that ICE pull out of Minnesota and that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem be fired before they could vote to fund the agency. Now, with Noem gone and ICE pulling back from Minneapolis, Democrats would seem to have gotten what they wanted. So why are Senate Minority Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart Hakeem Jeffries continuing to punish their constituents through this lingering partial government shutdown?

In particular, how can refusing to pay the people who keep our airports safe be justified when we are at war with Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world?

Sadly, though not surprisingly, the answer is pure politics.

DHS SHUTDOWN MAY DELAY US TERROR RESPONSE AMID IRAN CONFLICT, EXPERT WARNS

Make no mistake, the removal of Noem was a serious concession from President Donald Trump. This is, after all, the woman who spearheaded the almost total shutdown of the southern border, arguably, the president’s top achievement.

As to the aggressive ICE tactics used in Minneapolis, while they were generally unpopular, a strong number of voters in the MAGA base didn’t think they went far enough. So yes, Noem’s scalp was, in some ways, a peace offering.

You would think that Democratic leadership would be doing a choreographed end zone dance on the National Mall over this victory, but instead, they are still telling TSA agents, “Sorry, you can’t get paid yet, we like how things are trending.”

TWO SHOOTINGS INTENSIFY DHS STANDOFF AS GOP WARNS OF RISING TERROR THREATS

The only relatively serious demand that Democrats have left, and I’m stretching the term to its limit here, is to have agents unmasked. This can’t happen, because of documented incidents of doxxing, but offers have been made to use ID numbers.

In short, the only real obstacle that the Democrats can point to on the way to restoring funding is themselves.

As to why the Democrats are so intransigent in the face of growing calls to open up the government and more security lines at our airports, I regret to inform you that the answer is nothing but craven politics.

STEVE SCALISE RIPS DEMOCRATS FOR ‘PLAYING POLITICAL GAMES’ WITH DHS SHUTDOWN AMID IRAN THREAT

A year ago, Schumer made clear that his goal was to get Trump’s approval under 42% by the midterms. It’s almost there, and the reason why remains the shutdown of last year, which was a major success for Democrats.

On Oct. 1, when the shutdown started Trump’s approval was at 46%. By the end of the shutdown, it was down to 43%, and he had gone from a net of -6 to -12. With a few chutes and ladders along the way, that number has never recovered.

Meanwhile, Democrats netted governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, while installing a communist as mayor of New York City. So yes, Democrats and the far Left won the last shutdown, decisively.

TSA WORKERS BRACE FOR MISSED PAYCHECKS AS DEMOCRATS HOLD FIRM ON DHS FUNDING

The difference today, obviously, is that we are now at war, and have, in just the past week, seen no fewer than four suspected radical Muslim terror attacks in our nation, at least since the last time I checked.

Let’s go back to some basics for a moment. The agency whose funding is being held up here is quite literally called the “Department of Homeland Security.” It’s right there in the name. Not paying them is like playing in the Super Bowl and not funding your offensive line.

It seems pretty clear that congressional Democrats don’t care if a few Americans wind up dying in preventable terror attacks. After all, they know that most of the media will just blame Trump anyway.

COAST GUARD CAUGHT AS ‘COLLATERAL DAMAGE’ IN DEMOCRATS’ DHS SHUTDOWN AS CHINA, RUSSIA PRESS US WATERS

Democrats’ obstinance here should also be considered in regard to the other great debate in Congress, whether to break the Senate filibuster to pass the Save America Act, as Trump is demanding.

If Democrats won’t take the win on DHS, if they are willing to punish TSA agents and put the nation at risk to score political points there, then how can they be trusted partners in a filibuster process?

The filibuster assumes, and only works if, senators are acting in good faith. But Schumer and his radicals are not doing that. They are using it like sand thrown in the gears of government to sabotage any and all progress.

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For Trump’s part, what the White House needs to continue to point out is that Democrats got what they wanted and are still willing to harm the country in the hopes of a demoralized American electorate handing them power in November.

What Democrats are doing is despicable, dishonest and dishonorable. What’s even worse is that it just might be working.

LABOR SEC CHAVEZ-DEREMER: Our plan to rescind the Biden independent contractor rule

Since President Donald Trump took back the White House just over a year ago, the Department of Labor has followed his leadership with a singular vision: Put American workers first in everything we do. 

As a small business owner who has traveled the country on my 50-state listening tour, I can say confidently that our nation’s labor force is the envy of the world, and workers are thriving under the return of America First leadership. In this fast-changing global landscape, the Trump administration is committed to ensuring our workers have the tools and opportunities they need to compete and earn a good, honest living without unnecessary government intrusion.

In that spirit, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division released a proposed rule that provides clarity to help workers and employers alike determine when a worker is properly classified as an independent contractor and when that worker is an employee owed rigorous protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In proposing this rule, we celebrate the decisions of Americans who choose to test their entrepreneurial spirit — the same spirit on which our country was founded 250 years ago.

I HAD TO LEAVE CALIFORNIA TO SAVE MY BUSINESS. NOW THERE’S HOPE

The way Americans work is rapidly changing, and several states are responding by restricting opportunities for workers to choose independent work in the name of reducing worker misclassification. Eliminating worker misclassification is necessary to ensure workers receive what they are owed. But doing so in a way that severely restricts Americans’ freedom to work as they choose stifles ambition, betrays our foundational values as a nation and harms our economy.

The way Americans work is rapidly changing, and several states are responding by restricting opportunities for workers to choose independent work in the name of reducing worker misclassification. 

Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Labor is taking a better approach. By providing American workers and employers with clear guidance within the confines of longstanding legal precedent, my department balances the need to give independent workers and entrepreneurs the flexibility they want with our mandate to preserve the robust legal protections owed to true FLSA employees.

To that end, our proposed rule would rescind the Biden administration’s 2024 independent contractor rule, which made it harder to work as an independent contractor and led to more confusion than clarity. If left in place, the Biden rule would continue to produce unpredictable results that harm workers and employers alike.

To provide much-needed clarity and help employers comply with the FLSA, our proposed rule would:

1. Use the longstanding “economic reality” test adopted by federal courts to determine a worker’s proper classification.
2. Identify two “core” factors most useful in determining a worker’s classification: the nature and degree of control the worker has over the work and the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss.
3. Advise that three additional factors — skill, permanence, and whether the work is part of an integrated unit of production — have value in this analysis but are typically less useful in determining classification.
4. Clarify that the actual practice of a work arrangement — the on-the-ground reality between worker and employer — is more relevant than what is contractually or theoretically possible.
5. Provide eight concrete examples of how the factors would apply in real-world circumstances.

No matter the complexity or scope of the work arrangement — whether it involves a rideshare driver, an independent trucker or a freelance writer — the proposed rule will make it easier to define work roles with greater predictability. 

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By grounding this classification structure in longstanding legal principles and offering illustrative examples of real-world applications, the proposed rule will deliver tangible benefits for independent workers and employees alike. 

These changes will also empower employers by reducing the risk of FLSA misclassification violations, which hurt workers and employers who are playing by the rules.

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I encourage all interested parties to submit public comments to the department during the 60-day comment period, which is set to end April 28. 

With your help, and under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Labor will continue to fight for American workers every day to ensure their rights and needs come first.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM LABOR SECRETARY LORI CHAVEZ-DEREMER