DAVID MARCUS: Only Hegseth can save storied Virginia Military Institute from woke state lawmakers

The last time that Virginia Military Institute was nearly destroyed was when Union troops set it ablaze during the Civil War. But today, a new threat to this storied college is coming from within the Old Dominion itself, in the form of woke Democrat politicians.

Measures before the Virginia Legislature, in response to allegations of systemic racism at the institution, could not only strip the oldest state-run military college in the nation of its independence, but also cut off funding it needs to exist.

Last week, the Department of War, under Secretary Pete Hegseth, took to social media to back up VMI, writing that, “the stability of this proven leadership pipeline is a matter of direct national security interest” and that the department “reserves the right to take extraordinary measures to protect the integrity of VMI.”

Having spent some time this week in Lexington, Va., the mountainous home of VMI, it is clear that not only is the college a national treasure, it is very much a local one as well.

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“VMI is the beating heart of Lexington,” Melinda, an educator who has lived in the town for decades, told me. “I can’t imagine the place without it.”

I met John, who graduated from VMI in the early 2000s and who said of the supposed racism and sexism, “the people who hate VMI just hate VMI because they think it represents the Confederacy.” He insisted that allegations are overblown because every cadet lives by the same code of conduct.

Even a group of anti-President Donald Trump protesters I ran into on chilly Friday afternoon had little but glowing things to say about VMI.

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“We were disappointed by the firing of the superintendent,” Annette told me, referring to Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, the first black head of the school, who was fired last year. “But we all love VMI.”

So, if basically everyone in Lexington thinks VMI is great, and if it has provided America with great military leadership, from Gen. George S. Patton to to Gen. George C. Marshall, why is it on the chopping block?

Because of the insatiable appetite for destruction of wokism.

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VMI is integrally connected to the history of the Confederacy. Its most famous instructor was Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, whose preserved horse one can visit at the college museum. But over the course of the 20th Century, the school came to terms with this, often bending over backwards to do so.

Take for example the historical marker for Benjamin West Clinedinst’s epic painting “Charge of the New Market Cadets.” It reads:

“Although “Charge of the New Market Cadets” was completed during a time in American history when ‘lost cause,’ ideology was pervasive in Virginia, today the painting serves the VMI community not as a commemoration of a Confederate victory, or veneration of the Confederacy…”

That is what political correctness looked like, sheepishly apologizing for your own culture when nobody asked you to. But wokeness is different. Wokeness cannot tolerate the existence of ties to the evil past.

Even my hotel, which for nearly a century stood as the Robert E. Lee, has a new name. The only reference to Lee left is a plaque indicating the elevator is an original Otis car installed in 1926.

The erasure of history lurks around every corner, and now is coming for VMI.

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The Union army chief of artillery who shelled and destroyed much of VMI in 1864, over his personal objection, was a Delaware man named Henry A. Du Pont, who in 1914, as a U.S. senator, passed legislation to reimburse the school for the damage he had wrought.

These are the kinds of stories that echo around the halls of the Institute, tales of imperfect men of an imperfect nation, working towards greater perfection. If you quiet yourself on the campus, on a cold, crisp winter day, you can hear them.

Last week, the VMI Class of 2001 penned an open letter to Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, published in Lexington’s News Gazette. Two things are notable about this class: It was the first class to include women, and it graduated into war.

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“We integrated women into the Corps when the nation doubted it could be done,” read the letter. “We produced citizen soldiers of every race and background who trained, served, and bled together. We did not prove this through symbolism. We proved it in Fallujah, Kandahar, the Korengal, and in military funerals across the Commonwealth.”

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With Democrats in clear control of the political power in Virginia, the threat to VMI’s funding and future is very real, which is why it is so vital that Hegseth and the Department of War make clear that they are a backstop to keep this special place running.

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A nation and a people are its history and few institutions hold so much of it as VMI. A town and a community are its institutions, the places that are old and storied, and in Lexington, that is VMI.

Long may Virginia Military Institute and its traditions endure.

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JONATHAN TURLEY: Grandstanding Newsom will stop at nothing to ride the rails to glory in 2028

In the dystopian novel “1984,”  George Orwell wrote, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” 

The true meaning of that line was never more clear than watching the truly bizarre photo op of Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom heralding the success of the greatest boondoggle in history: his high-speed train to nowhere. 

Without laying a single yard of track after burning $12 billion, Newsom showed a diesel freight train on a conventional track to create the appearance of a working railroad.

I have been writing about this boondoggle for years. Newsom promised years ago that the project would be transformative. It was, but not as he promised.

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Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 after absurdly low estimates of the projected cost. Influential figures and companies stood to make a fortune, and the key was to secure a “buy-in” worth billions, so that it would become increasingly difficult to abandon the project as overruns and delays sent costs soaring.

Now the official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and it demands billions more to complete a project delayed by decades. Remember that this entire project was meant to create a rail line of only 171 miles. It is projected to exceed $128 billion and could ultimately cost a billion dollars per mile. There are still uncompleted environmental assessments and challenging rail lines through the mountains.

There is still no train and not a yard of track almost 20 years later.

The state’s inspector general, Benjamin Belnap, issued a scathing report on the first phase of the still uncompleted project.  That is only the stretch from Merced to Bakersfield which was supposed to be completed by 2033. 

Belnap wrote, “With a smaller remaining schedule envelope and the potential for significant uncertainty and risk during subsequent phases of the project, staying within the 2033 schedule envelope is unlikely. In fact, uncertainty about some parts of the project has increased as the authority has recently made decisions that deviated from the procurement and funding strategies that were part of its plans for staying on schedule.”

JAMES WOODS WARNS NEWSOM’S PRESIDENTIAL APPEAL WON’T LAST LONG AMID ‘ATROCIOUS’ CALIFORNIA FAILURES

Rather than deliver on the promise of high-speed rail from Los Angeles to San Francisco, the Merced-Bakersfield line would now cost $35.3 billion, exceeding the 2008 projection for a complete system.

Merced and Bakersfield have a combined population of just 500,000 for the most expensive rail project in the state’s history.

However, Newsom still wants to be president, even as citizens are fleeing his state in record numbers. The “train to nowhere” is a problem. Even The New York Times is writing editorials on whether Newsom will be the next mistake of the Democratic Party.

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Newsom’s response is to arrange for gushing columns like Maya Singer’s embarrassing piece in Vogue: “Let’s get this out of the way: He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address.

“Newsom’s lanky frame was folded onto a sofa a bit too low-slung for him. This made him lean back — away from me. Or it could be that his body language had nothing to do with ergonomics and is a function of Newsom’s quality of being at once gregarious and aloof.”

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It is the type of teenybopper heartthrob coverage that Newsom is counting on from the media. It is not the billions burned on a non-existent railway but his glorious hair and “eminence.”

However, others beyond Vogue readers may be interested in his actual record. Hence, the need to release this absurd photo op that would make a propagandist blush.

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“All of the hard work behind us. Now we’re going to see the fruits of that. We’re going to start seeing precisely what you see here. Real tracks, real progress.”

Merced and Bakersfield have a combined population of just 500,000 for the most expensive rail project in the state’s history.

It is like paying for a meal at a restaurant and the chef charging you ten times what was on the menu, not producing the meal for hours and then showing you a picture of a different dish as a sign of his progress.

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The difference is that Newsom has taken almost two decades to deliver and cut the original dish to a fraction of its original size while increasing the price exponentially.

Californians are now captives on a train to nowhere. The state must continue to burn billions because too much is invested economically and politically. They must ride the train with Gavin Newsom to the very end.

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PRISHA MOSLEY: Doctors took my body apart for gender ‘care.’ Now they admit it was wrong

This week, two of the most influential medical associations in the country quietly admitted what detransitioners have been saying for years: The American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons both acknowledged that gender surgeries on minors should not be considered standard medical practice. The ASPS said surgery is not recommended “until a patient is at least 19 years old.” To me, these policy reversals amount to a confession—one that arrived years too late, after childhoods like mine were permanently altered in the name of “care.”

Childhood is precious. It is precious because children are innocent, and because they don’t yet understand the dangers and deception of the world. We choose our words carefully in front of children and avoid certain subjects that may be confusing or too graphic for them to comprehend. We make sure they’re in bed by a decent hour and that they eat their vegetables so they can grow up big and strong. We send them off to play with toys like Mr. Potato Head, to use their imagination and experience the kind of innocent fun that childhood is meant to hold.

Unfortunately, over the past 15 years, we have turned children into Mr. Potato Heads instead. I would know, because I was one of those children.

MAJOR MEDICAL ORGANIZATION URGES DELAYING YOUTH GENDER SURGERIES

When I was a teenager, I was introduced to transgender ideology, which led me into a series of irreversible decisions that I still live with today. Doctors and activists told me my body was made up of interchangeable parts, easily removed or added on. That lie cost me healthy parts of my body I can never get back. And the worst part is that I believed it—because that’s what my doctors told me.

Predatory activists and doctors enable delusional beliefs that children develop from video games, online communities on social media, and movies, and then trick young patients into signing up for losses they cannot possibly comprehend.

Let that sink in.

THE MEDICAL SYSTEM PUSHED TRANSGENDER SURGERY ON KIDS — NOW IT’S FACING LEGAL JUSTICE

For years, I was told that what I was experiencing wasn’t distress or trauma, but an identity issue. The solution, I was assured, wasn’t patience, counseling, or time to grow into a young woman. It was hormones, surgery, and the promise that if I altered my body enough, my mind would finally fall into place.

Doctors and activists told me my body was made up of interchangeable parts, easily removed or added on. That lie cost me healthy parts of my body I can never get back. And the worst part is that I believed it—because that’s what my doctors told me.

This is how thousands of young people today are taught to see their bodies: as customizable avatars—something separate from who they are, something malleable, something disposable.

What no one dared to explain to me was that a body is a vessel. My mind and body are not separate entities negotiating with each other. Instead, they are one integrated system, designed to support one another through every stage of the human experience. You cannot cut, suppress, or chemically alter a healthy body without consequences, no matter how alluring the promise of a fix may sound.

CHILDREN’S NATIONAL HOSPITAL IN DC TO END GENDER TRANSITION MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS

My doctors, rather than healing me, removed perfectly healthy bodily functions in pursuit of fraudulent mental health goals. Cosmetic alterations cannot cure psychological suffering. Yet I was told—explicitly and implicitly—that removing healthy body parts would bring peace. I believed my doctors. I had no idea I would later regret these changes because detransition and regret were never discussed.

Regret is often downplayed. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a prominent pediatrician and advocate of medical interventions for gender-confused children, said girls who have undergone mastectomies but want breasts later in life can “go and get them!” That statement alone reveals the depth of the deception. Natural breasts are not interchangeable with silicone implants, which lack natural sensation and cannot breastfeed. Olson-Kennedy is misleading young women and girls in service of an ideology.

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The industry wants patients to believe that nothing is truly lost. But tell that to me now: after giving birth to a beautiful baby and wanting more children, I have to live knowing that I cannot breastfeed because of my double mastectomy or feel the sensation of my baby’s skin on my chest. Doctors also fail to adequately warn patients about vaginal atrophy—or deterioration of the pelvis, uterus, and hips. They somehow do not see it as a problem when normal functioning body parts are lost, and see more silicone and surgery as the solution.

Activist doctors hide the consequences of their practices while continuing to sell false hope to new victims.

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Now, the tide is turning. Also, this week, detransitioner Fox Varian won a landmark case, receiving a $2 million verdict after she sued her psychologist and surgeon for misleading her and her parents into believing that removal of her healthy breasts was necessary to save her life. Experts testified that surgery does not, in fact, prevent suicide. I share Fox Varian’s pain, having lived through a strikingly similar story—lied to and manipulated at a young age.

Real compassion tells children the truth: that their bodies are not broken, not up for trade, and not interchangeable parts on a plastic toy. If we truly want to protect children, we must stop treating them like experiments and start honoring the reality that childhood is not something you get back once it’s been taken apart.

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MIKE DAVIS: 2 assassination plots, 2 judges and 2 brands of justice

This is a tale of two federal judges — one Trump appointee and one Biden appointee—who separately sentenced two men for their attempted assassinations of a former (and future) president of the United States and a current Supreme Court justice. The Trump judge correctly followed the facts and the law, sentencing the would-be President Trump assassin to life; the Biden judge dangerously followed her political and ideological agenda, sentencing the would-be Justice Kavanaugh assassin — because he now pretends he’s a woman — to less than one-third of the recommended sentence.

On Sept. 15, 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh took his position in a sniper’s nest at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.  He chambered a round into his SKS rifle, which, as a convicted felon, he had no legal right to possess. He then aimed at President Trump and his entourage. By the grace of God, a Secret Service agent saw the rifle barrel poking through the bushes and saved Trump’s life from his second assassination attempt in just two months. On Tuesday, South Florida U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sent Routh to rot in a cage for the rest of his miserable life. Cannon understood the gravity of the moment and passed the test.

A few months ago, radical leftist Biden-appointed Judge Deborah Boardman, sitting in Maryland, failed a similar test — and failed miserably. Nicholas Roske, a pet store employee, was very angry after the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Roske learned the Court was poised to return abortion to its proper place for debate: the states. So Roske decided he wanted to assassinate three justices to change the Court’s outcome. Roske posted about his barbaric desires on social media, yet the Biden Justice Department failed to pursue him.

Shortly after the draft leak, Roske flew across the country from his home in California to Maryland, where Justice Kavanaugh, his wife Ashley and their two young daughters lived. Roske had procured Kavanaugh’s address and planned to carry out his sick goal of altering American legal history. He brought two unloaded guns so as to be able to transport them on the plane. He also brought zip ties, a knife, lockpicking tools and boots with soles specially altered so that he could move stealthily about the Kavanaugh residence. He took a cab to his target’s home and got out, assassination kit in tow. Then, his plan hit a snag. Because of threats as a result of the shameful Dobbs leak, a larger number of law enforcement officers were protecting Justice Kavanaugh’s home. Roske could not complete his evil mission, so he quickly strategized.

Roske called his sister and then 911. He told the dispatcher of his plan and claimed that he was suicidal. Police quickly arrived and arrested him. The case was a slam dunk in light of Roske’s confession, assassination kit, and gruesome trail of social media posts. The Trump Justice Department recommended a sentence of 30 years in prison.  Judge Boardman, however, had a different plan. She focused on Roske’s claim that he identified as a female named Sophie. Boardman whined during the sentencing that Roske’s time would be harder because he would have to serve it at a men’s prison. Unbelievably, even for Democrat judicial standards, Boardman handed down a sentence of merely eight years to someone who had attempted to kill a Supreme Court justice. Several defendants received far harsher sentences for their conduct in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters shockingly received nine years for a nonviolent election offense where no votes had been altered; no attempt had even been made to alter votes. Even Trump would-be assassin Routh’s lawyer requested of Cannon a 27-year sentence for his monstrous client in Florida. Despicably, Boardman’s deranged transgender fanaticism allowed Roske to skate with a mere eight-year sentence.

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Just imagine if Roske had succeeded. No Supreme Court justice ever has been assassinated; the only prior attempt occurred in the nineteenth century. President Joe Biden would have taken full advantage of Roske’s act of domestic terrorism, appointing a hardcore leftist to replace Kavanaugh with the eager help of the Democrat-controlled Senate.  Roe would have survived, and Roske would have gotten his wish. Boardman’s sickening sentence sends a crystal-clear message that terrorism will not be treated harshly if the terrorist has a story that tugs at a leftist judge’s heartstrings — or worse.

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Those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome likely do not care because their hatred is all-consuming, but every rational American should understand the gravity of Routh’s act. Cannon plainly did, as she sent Routh to rot in a cage for the rest of his pathetic life. Boardman just as plainly did not grasp the gravity of the moment. She allowed her radical ideology to contaminate her judgment. She had a chance to send a message to the country that attempting to murder Supreme Court justices will not be tolerated. Instead, she did the opposite. Boardman is a disgrace who should be impeached. Cannon deserves strong consideration for elevation to a court of appeals and, perhaps, to become Justice Cannon one day.

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BROADCAST BIAS: ‘Public’ media furious Washington Post cut back on anti-Trump crusade

The broadcast outlets that were most upset about The Washington Post announcing they were cutting 300 jobs were NPR and PBS. It makes sense, since the journalists at these outlets have no intention of trying to make money. They expect people to hand them endless millions so they can make the kind of “news”/commentary that attempts to change the world in their ideological direction.

They have internalized the trauma of President Donald Trump and the Republicans taking away an annual half-billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies.

On the Saturday before the layoffs, NPR media reporter David Folkenflik explained the view from Post staffers: “They’re saying that readers of The Washington Post deserve sophisticated, contextualized reporting that requires a sophisticated, contextualized reporting team.” These are buzzwords for liberal bias, the same way Dan Rather always told people CBS gave you “context and perspective.”

Weekend anchor Scott Simon asked Folkenflik: “The Washington Post — it’s a paper woven into U.S. history. Has it really come to this?” The media reporter naturally thought of taking down President Richard Nixon, as liberals do: “Well, obviously, you think of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers and other historic moments, but they’re also doing things at the moment. They are holding power to account.”

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This being NPR, no one was going to consider conservatives suggesting that pandering to the left-wing base of the Democrat Party might not be a stellar business strategy. One of the amusingly tone-deaf moments before the Post job cuts came when staffers were hoping to enlist actors Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks to lobby the paper’s owner Jeff Bezos. They had starred in the 2017 movie “The Post,” which glamorized the paper’s war on Nixon.

When liberal journalists blather about “holding power to account,” they really should ask if outlets like the Post energetically worked to hold the Biden administration to account. The Post wasn’t going to win a Pulitzer Prize for exposing Hunter Biden. Instead, in 2022, the Post won a prize for its reporting on the January 6 riot. Even the prize system is all about holding only one party accountable.  

Instead, we remember Post front-page articles like this Eli Saslow banger weeks after Barack Obama won in 2008. Obama “was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.” You could make a movie out of this, but it might be NC-17.

WASHINGTON POST REELING FROM BUYOUT EXODUS AS BOSSES HOPE TO TURN THE PAGE AT EMBATTLED PAPER

When the Post announced the job cuts, CBS anchor Jessi Mitchell summarized on its early-morning newscast: “Outrage sparked online after the announcement, calling out the publication’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, for the decision.”

On NPR, Folkenflik recalled that Bezos used to be a role model (for lefties). He “was seen as a savior, a champion of tough and intense journalism, has not interfered with the newsroom, but he’s apparently had enough.”

Now, he argued, “You’ve seen both Marty Baron and Marcus Brauchli — two distinguished former executive editors of The Washington Post — just in the last hour or two share information with me, saying basically there seems to be no strategy. The Washington Post, its readers and the country deserve better.”

Baron is a poster boy for crusading liberal journalism. He was glamorized for The Boston Globe’s war on the Catholic Church in the 2015 movie “Spotlight.” Now he’s starred in several PBS segments lamenting Bezos. On “Amanpour & Co.” on January 23, he suggested Bezos was far too “tepid” toward Trump and no longer lives up to the Post’s drama-queen motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

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After the cuts were announced, “PBS News Hour” interviewed Baron for seven minutes, and he said the cuts did “enormous damage” to the paper. Baron uncorked the entire leftist critique. Bezos drove away the leftist subscribers by killing the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024, and then Bezos appeared on stage at Trump’s inauguration. He bought rights to Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” for Amazon Prime and bankrolled a big documentary on Trump’s wife and First Lady, “Melania.”

When the Post announced the job cuts, CBS anchor Jessi Mitchell summarized on its early-morning newscast: “Outrage sparked online after the announcement, calling out the publication’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, for the decision.”

Baron was so upset he added the Post bosses were “completely changing the opinion pages so that essentially they have no columnists who are really left of center. And they’re very deferential to Trump. And I think they lack a moral core.” This would come as a surprise to their Trump-haters like Max Boot, David Ignatius, Kathleen Parker and Fareed Zakaria, to name a few.

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New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (last seen running for office as a Democrat in his native Oregon), tweeted out the NPR/PBS mindset: “Jeff Bezos, who could keep the Wash Post a pillar of American democracy with the change dug out from his limousine seats, sets an example of surrender to authoritarianism for every other business person and institution in America.”

Everything is very black and white for these journalists. You are either raging against the Trump machine or you are collaborating with their imaginary Hitler. Their hurt feelings at Bezos feel like a tsunami of moral superiority and entitlement.

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Benghazi arrest delivers long-overdue justice and reminds America who failed our fallen

After 13 years of pursuit, one of the terrorists who allegedly murdered four Americans in Benghazi has arrived on U.S. soil to face justice.

Zubayr al-Bakoush was flown to Joint Base Andrews early Friday morning following an FBI overseas operation. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced that he faces eight federal counts, including murder, terrorism and arson for his alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, State Department officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

“For 13 hours, Americans waited for help that never came,” Pirro said, referring to personnel defending the nearby CIA annex under sustained attack. “Today, American justice has arrived.”

BENGHAZI TERROR SUSPECT EXTRADITED TO FACE US CHARGES

The families of the fallen deserved this moment. But Benghazi was always about more than catching terrorists. It exposed fundamental leadership failures and an administration that prioritized narrative control over accountability.

Security failures nobody owned

The State Department’s own Accountability Review Board delivered a devastating verdict in December 2012. The board found “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” that resulted in “grossly inadequate” security in Benghazi. While the board did not assign criminal liability, it made clear that leadership failures in Washington materially contributed to the tragedy.

Despite extensive intelligence warnings about deteriorating security and al Qaeda’s expanding operations, State Department officials in Washington repeatedly denied requests for additional security from personnel on the ground. The CIA, by contrast, increased security at its Benghazi facilities.

This is what American resolve looks like when clarity replaces spin and persistence replaces defensiveness.

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Four State Department officials were cited for their failures by the Accountability Review Board. They were placed on administrative leave with pay, then returned to government service in other roles rather than being dismissed. Two eventually retired voluntarily. More than a year after the attack, no official had been fired, demoted or otherwise held personally accountable for decisions that left Americans vulnerable.

The YouTube video that wasn’t

In the days following the assault, senior Obama administration officials blamed a spontaneous protest sparked by an anti-Islam video. That explanation collapsed under scrutiny. Intelligence agencies understood almost immediately that this was a coordinated terrorist attack by extremist militias, including the designated terror group Ansar al-Sharia.

DEADLY STRIKE ON US TROOPS TESTS TRUMP’S COUNTER-ISIS PLAN — AND HIS TRUST IN SYRIA’S NEW LEADER

When Hillary Clinton appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2013, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., pressed her on why evacuees who could confirm there was no protest were not immediately contacted. Clinton’s response became infamous.

“What difference, at this point, does it make?” she said.

To critics, her remark symbolized an administration more focused on managing political fallout than confronting hard truths about security and responsibility.

Those five words crystallized critics’ view that the administration prioritized public messaging in the weeks preceding a national election over candor. Clinton later said, “I take responsibility,” yet she simultaneously distanced herself from operational security decisions, and no disciplinary action followed. President Obama took no steps to remove her from office.

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Congress launched multiple investigations. The House Select Committee on Benghazi, after two years and $7 million, found bureaucratic failures and ignored security warnings but no definitive evidence of personal wrongdoing by Clinton.

That contrast between evasion then and resolve now explains why this arrest matters.

Why this arrest matters

The capture of al-Bakoush sends an unmistakable message: America does not forget its fallen, and justice will be pursued regardless of time or politics. 

As Pirro emphasized, “There are more of them out there. Time will not stop us from going after these predators, no matter how long it takes.”

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This is what American resolve looks like when clarity replaces spin and persistence replaces defensiveness. The terrorists who attacked Americans that September night made a calculation that they could kill with impunity. Friday’s arrest proves that calculation wrong.

Benghazi remains a painful chapter marked by loss and leadership failures. But this arrest demonstrates something essential. When America commits to justice, we finish what we start. The families who waited more than a decade understand the difference that makes. It also sends a message to adversaries worldwide that America’s commitment to justice — and to its people — does not expire.

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The sun is stronger than our electric grid — and we are defenseless against it

Imagine being a telegraph operator in September 1859. You’re sitting at your station, using cutting-edge technology to tap out messages hundreds and thousands of miles away. Suddenly, brilliant auroras light up the night sky from the tropics to the poles.

Then chaos.

Sparks shower from your equipment, shocking you with a jolt strong enough to knock you out of your chair, while igniting your telegraph message papers. You later find out that some of your fellow operators could still send messages even after disconnecting their batteries — not knowing that the telegraph wires were being energized by massive currents induced in the wires by the most powerful geomagnetic storm in recorded history.

WALL STREET UTILITY TAKEOVERS MAY MEAN HIGHER BILLS AHEAD

That storm, triggered by a colossal solar flare observed by British astronomer Richard Carrington, unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME) that slammed into Earth’s magnetic field. Such a massive solar storm is known as a Carrington Event.

A telegraph operator in 1859 could only wonder at today’s technology — technology that is far more vulnerable to the sun than was the case then.

The sun has an 11-year cycle, and this year is the peak of the cycle. On Feb. 1, giant sunspot AR4366 — a behemoth that grew rapidly from nothing to nearly half the size of the monster behind the Carrington Event — unleashed an X8-class solar flare, the strongest of Solar Cycle 25 so far.

In the preceding 24 hours, this unstable region hurled 23 M-class and four X-class flares earthward. Extreme ultraviolet radiation from the X8 blast ionized the upper atmosphere, blacking out shortwave radio communications across the South Pacific for hours.

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More concerning is the potential CME. The explosion ejected dense plasma that could be Earth-directed. If it arrives with sufficient force, it will compress Earth’s magnetosphere and induce powerful geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) — in other words, electrify the Earth’s surface. GICs, in turn, can impart a current to the high-voltage transmission lines that form the backbone of our electric grid. And that can be a problem.

Modern society is infinitely more dependent on electricity than in the telegraph era. A Carrington-level event today wouldn’t just spark a few fires in telegraph offices. It would risk melting or destroying hundreds of massive high-voltage transformers, triggering widespread blackouts that could last months or years. Supply chains would collapse, water systems would fail, fuel pumps would go dark, communications would vanish and refrigeration would cease. Estimates of economic damage range from $600 billion to $2.6 trillion in the United States alone, with untold loss of life from lack of heat, medicine and emergency services.

Yet despite clear warnings, America’s grid remains dangerously vulnerable.

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In my 2023 report for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Texas Defense, I detailed how both natural geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) and man-made electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks pose existential risks to the grid.

A severe event could damage or destroy effectively irreplaceable extra-high-voltage (EHV) transformers, leading to prolonged outages across the state and beyond.

But there is good news: Proven, cost-effective hardware solutions exist today. Neutral Blocking Devices equipped with capacitors, installed in the grounded neutral of high-voltage transformers, can prevent catastrophic damage. These devices block the quasi-direct current (quasi-DC) GICs induced by solar storms or the E3 component of an EMP blast, while allowing normal 60 Hz AC power to flow unimpeded. These devices buffer harmful ground currents, preventing overheating, destructive harmonics, voltage collapse and eventual meltdown.

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As a bonus, these devices also mitigate lower-level GICs that currently shave years off transformer life and cost industry billions annually in reactive power losses.

Costs for these devices have fallen dramatically as technology has matured. A nationwide deployment protecting the most vulnerable 6,000 transformers would require a one-time investment of roughly $4 billion — a fraction of the trillions at risk.

Yet utilities and transmission companies remain reluctant, wary of passing even modest costs to ratepayers. Regulators, meanwhile, have dragged their feet, relying on standards derived from studies that dramatically underestimate the threat.

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Many of these vulnerability assessments trace back to European research conducted more than 30 years ago, during an unusually calm solar period. Those models assumed lower GIC intensities and failed to account for today’s more interconnected, higher-voltage grid — or the far more active sun we’re experiencing now in Cycle 25.

Compounding the problem is the fact that most large power transformers are no longer made in America. The majority come from China, South Korea, and Germany, with typical delivery lead times stretching to four years or more under normal conditions. If dozens or hundreds are destroyed in a severe solar storm, replacement could take a decade or longer — time we wouldn’t have in a prolonged blackout.

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With sunspot AR4366 still crackling and more explosions likely in the coming days, the warning couldn’t be clearer. Congress and state legislatures must act swiftly to mandate or incentivize installation of neutral blocking devices. Utilities must prioritize grid resilience over short-term rate concerns. And regulators must update standards to reflect real-world risks, not Pollyannaish assumptions from a sleepy sun.

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The Carrington Event literally shocked telegraph operators. A repeat could shock an entire civilization into the pre-industrial age.

We have the technology to prevent it. We should act on it.

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From the Olympic Village to Little League fields, sports still hold America together

Divisions are intensifying across the nation, with a recent poll finding that over half of Americans fear the U.S. is on a path toward civil war and two-thirds believe that American democracy is under serious threat. More than ever, both politicians and everyday Americans need a reminder that we are still one country, and that competition without guardrails quickly becomes something else entirely.

While not erasing complicated geopolitical realities, the upcoming Winter Olympics from Feb. 6 to Feb. 22 in Milan, Italy, can be a reminder of the power of unity. Sports can offer a counterweight to divisions at home and abroad. Rather than a distraction from politics, they can be an example of how to do it better. On the world stage and in our own communities, athletic participation shows us the value in finding common ground.

As we watch the world’s great athletes gather in Milan, we should carry the Olympic spirit beyond our television screens and into our Little League fields, school gyms, community leagues and even our most contentious civic spaces. Our legislators should carry that spirit into the halls of Congress and their state capitols. We should apply its lessons of rivalry without hatred and national pride without resentment to how we live alongside one another at home.

The Olympics began in ancient Greece over 2,000 years ago as an opportunity for the citizens of Greek city-states to come together, display their athletic prowess and trade truly violent conflict — ubiquitous at the time — for rules-based sport. Rulers instituted the “Olympic Truce,” ensuring safe participation for the duration of the games.

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The first modern Olympic Games took place in 1896 in Athens, Greece, mirroring the spirit of unity, cultural exchange and excellence exemplified by their historical predecessor. Beginning in the 1990s, the United Nations General Assembly even revived the tradition of the Olympic Truce, adopting a resolution before each Summer and Winter games that calls on member nations to suspend hostilities during the Olympic period.

The Games do not deny conflict, of course, but they show how it can be bound. And they reveal how sports can be a diplomatic language when politics fail.

A recent example comes from the 2018 Winter Olympics, when North Korean and South Korean athletes competed together on the same women’s ice hockey team and marched under the same Korean Peninsula flag in the opening ceremonies, amidst ongoing political tensions between the two nations.

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Sports serve diplomatic ends by bringing countries together and facilitating conversations. Such meetings don’t resolve disputes head on, but they lower threat perception between rivals and reopen channels of communication. They show us how common ground can be found even with people very different from ourselves.

North Koreans and South Koreans have vast cultural differences, but they also share a history, language and a desire for dignity for their people. Teamwork on the ice briefly brought these shared interests into focus.

Viewers can likewise find common ground with their fellow countrymen from watching athletes of all different backgrounds compete together. It’s natural to feel patriotic watching your country’s great athletes walk together, compete and raise the national flag in victory. Global sporting events show how a shared national pride can flourish and rise above prejudice or divisions.

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Competing fiercely while respecting rules is consistent with American constitutional values. The principles we can learn in sports — discipline, respect for our adversaries, fair play, restraint in victory and defeat — carry over in other elements of our lives. These same habits make elections hard-fought but respectable, with the most rough-and-tumble matches ending in a handshake.

While a sports event with the global scale of the Olympics or World Cup only takes place every few years, what happens among nations during the Games reflects what is already happening — quietly — in American communities every weekend. At Little League baseball and softball fields and Friday night high school football games, church leagues and rec centers, our children learn how to compete without hating their opponents, how to follow rules even when emotions run high and how, by working as teams, we can achieve more than by ourselves.

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The Games do not deny conflict, of course, but they show how it can be bound. And they reveal how sports can be a diplomatic language when politics fail.

Just as the Olympic village is a microcosm of the globe, a 12-and-under girls basketball team is a microcosm of a local community. Different backgrounds, different beliefs, different family stories, all bound together by love of the sport and shared rules and goals.

Sports create civic habits that are so needed in our civility-starved world: restraint, respect, discipline and team-focused cooperation. Whether in our small towns or on the world’s stage, shared athletic rituals sustain our nation and remind us that all Americans play for the same team, under the same flag.

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In times of great division, our leaders need reminders that another way is possible. Polarization is not inevitable. Civility can wane, but it can also flourish.

It’s important that we protect the global institutions that allow us to compete without hostility and participate in the local ones that do the same thing. The next time you watch a global sporting event or participate in a local one, remember that the spirit on display is not reserved for the world’s greatest athletes. It’s a model for how free people, at every level of society, can live, compete and still recognize one another as fellow citizens.

SEN JOHN KENNEDY: Democrats’ defund-the-police plan failed, but here they go again

As I’ve watched the protests in Minneapolis, it seems obvious to me that America is at risk of falling face-first into another disastrous anti-law enforcement crisis.

Here’s a cold dish of truth: There are some people in this world who enjoy hurting other people and taking other people’s stuff. These people aren’t sick. They’re not confused. They’re not mixed up. It’s not that their mothers or fathers didn’t love them enough. They’re just antisocial. I don’t know why God made some people that way. If I get to Heaven, I’m going to ask.

Every society deals with these people differently, but in America, we’ve chosen to hire brave men and women to enforce our laws by confronting antisocial people when they commit crimes. We rarely hear about these courageous officers and the millions of positive interactions they have each day. We only hear about the handful of cops who — by negligence or by choice — harm other people while enforcing the law.

The defund the police movement seized upon a few bad examples of law enforcement to sell the lie that cops are worse than criminals. These activists believed that our country would be better off if we fired all police officers and replaced them with social workers.

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Prior to the death of George Floyd, the defund the police movement was a fringe idea that was only popular among Marxist academics and soy-latte drinking, NPR-tote bag carrying Karens. Fair-minded Americans knew it would be insane to replace cops with social workers. Murderers, thieves, drug dealers and carjackers don’t need hugs; they need jail cells.

But the Karen wing of the Democratic Party saw Floyd’s death as an opportunity to promote the defund-the-police movement. This presented Democratic officials, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, with a choice. Door #1: They could ignore the Karens and restore law and order. Door #2: They could defund, disparage and demoralize every officer in the state to appease the Karens.

Walz, Frey and many others chose Door #2. They let rioters seek revenge on law enforcement, stood by as police precincts burned and sat in silence as activists defamed the countless good cops who kept their cities safe.

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These decisions created one of the worst crime waves in American history. Commercial burglaries increased by 43%, carjackings increased by 93% and murders rose by 44% in the wake of the George Floyd riots.

The defund the police project backfired faster than anyone could have imagined, and Democratic mayors scrambled to undo the damage. But maintaining a strong police force is not a light switch you can flick on and off as the woke mob demands. After years of demoralizing police officers and denigrating them as bigots, racists, and murderers, a lot of cops didn’t want their jobs back.

Nationwide, police departments are still operating with an average of 6% fewer officers than they did in 2020. In Minneapolis, the police force is still 36% smaller than it was before Mr. Floyd’s death, despite a prolonged effort to hire more officers.

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If anyone can recognize the deep-dish stupidity of the defund-the-police movement, it should be Walz and Frey. But today, it looks like they are ready to lead their Democratic friends down the same anti-law-enforcement path — with a slight twist.

Instead of arguing that cops are a bigger problem than criminals, Walz and Frey have joined the Karen wing of the Democratic Party to say that enforcing immigration laws is racist and vetting migrants is a form of White supremacy. Once again, these activists see the chaos in Minneapolis as an opportunity to use the George Floyd playbook to get Congress to defund ICE and the Border Patrol.

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Prior to the death of George Floyd, the defund the police movement was a fringe idea that was only popular among Marxist academics and soy-latte drinking, NPR-tote bag carrying Karens.

But rioters do not get to dictate which laws the federal government enforces, which illegal immigrants it deports, or which types of fraud it investigates. The federal government, empowered by voters, has the right to make those decisions under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, and it is illegal for states to obstruct legitimate federal law enforcement.

I understand that Walz, Frey and their Democratic colleagues must follow their hearts. I’m just asking them to take their brains with them.

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It was weapons-grade stupid to defund the police in 2020. It is just as dumb to defund ICE today. From terrorists entering the country to cartels smuggling people and drugs into our communities, President Joe Biden’s open border policies were a disaster for the security and prosperity of the United States. President Trump may have made it look easy to secure the border, but it wasn’t. ICE and Border Patrol worked hard from day one to restore order at the border.

No one wants to see violence in our streets, but we have got to learn the lessons of 2020 and recognize that good law enforcement is the solution, not the problem.    

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Why Melania’s hit documentary terrifies critics who desperately wanted her to fail

The film “Melania,” a documentary about first lady Melania Trump, made nearly $8 million on its opening weekend, making it the highest-grossing documentary in a decade. It’s a huge win for the first lady and a crushing defeat for those rooting against her.

The director of “Melania,” Brett Ratner, has previously helmed Hollywood blockbusters such as “Rush Hour” and “X-Men: The Last Stand.” The fact that Ratner is already an established brand in Hollywood is noteworthy. During the first Trump term, it would have been unlikely that a Hollywood director would take a chance on a documentary about Melania Trump. Ratner still took a risk making the film, because Hollywood is traditionally in lockstep on politics and quick to cut off anyone who steps outside the line. It’s easier to make a film like this in 2026 than it was in 2017, but only marginally so.

The film is a soft-focus look at Melania Trump’s life as first lady, offering a glossy, feel-good glance into what people normally don’t get to see inside the private first lady’s life. Still, it wouldn’t have mattered what was in the film — the media would have hated it anyway.

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The reviews in the mainstream press aren’t so much scathing as personal. Variety called the film a “cheeseball infomercial of staggering inertia,” while The Guardian noted it was “dispiriting, deadly and unrevealing” and “unredeemable.”

In the film, it’s true we see Melania in her beautiful outfits and flawless makeup, but we also see her as the woman behind the man.

In one scene in the film, Melania advises the president to include the word “unifier” in his inaugural speech. On Jan. 20, as he said the words, “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier,” the president turned around to look at his wife. Of course, Melania wants her husband to be both a peacemaker and a unifier. She is rooting for him to succeed because it helps us all. A vicious media refuses to concede that she may want what is best for the country.

The film portrays a marriage where the first lady cares about her husband, worrying about his security on Inauguration Day and expressing relief when festivities are moved indoors. This portrayal flies in the face of the frequent commentary claiming the marriage is in name only. Why would the first lady care about her husband’s safety if she’s only in the union for glory or money? The New York Times counted how many days Melania has spent in the White House during this term, and Trump biographer Michael Wolff has claimed, without evidence, that they are separated. This film answers those accusations and rumors directly, in Melania’s own words.

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In a 2018 interview with ABC, Melania was asked about her marriage and said, “I know people like to speculate and media like to speculate about our marriage. It’s not always pleasant, of course. But I know what is right and what is wrong and what is true or not true.”

She does, and she shows it in this film.

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On the review site Rotten Tomatoes, the film “Melania” is setting another kind of record: the largest discrepancy between the scores of film reviewers and filmgoers in the site’s history. It makes sense, since most of the reviewers went into the film with a rating in mind, whether or not they actually enjoyed the movie. The people who spent their money to go watch their first lady on the screen were going to be more honest, even if some were swayed by their enthusiasm for their president.

The media has three more years of the Trump administration and Melania Trump. They can stop having outbursts about the first lady and give her a fair hearing — something more than half the country would commend. Or they can continue to descend into irrelevance, as everyone knows even their panning of a film will be political. The choice is theirs.

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I infiltrated radical groups 40 years ago. Leftists are desperate for martyrs

It appears that agitators are trying to spark confrontations with federal law enforcement that could lead to protesters being harmed, even killed, to spark outrage and support for their cause.

It’s a sick story. It sounds outrageous. But it’s true, and everything old is new again.

I saw it 40 years ago and testified about it to Congress. Today we are seeing again: Inserting American citizens into flash points as part of a political strategy to get people shot for the purpose of inflaming the public against a president and his policies.

The recent deaths of two Minneapolis protesters reminded me of what I had learned as a 24-year-old in the mid-1980s while infiltrating radical groups – much as people in their 20s are doing today.

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Revolutionaries and insurgents create or exploit flash points in anticipation of getting some of their followers killed. Journalist Cam Higby has reported on this in Minneapolis. They need martyrs to spark or fuel public anger.

Facing professionally organized provocations and stressors, it was inevitable that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents would plunge into circumstances that domestic extremists had created to provoke media outrage.

Revolutionaries call it “armed propaganda.”

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After Portland, Ore., activist Benjamin Linder was killed in Nicaragua by U.S.-backed resistance fighters, or contras, against the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime in 1987, the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs held a hearing.

Linder was armed with an AK-47 at the time of his death. Sympathizers portrayed him as a peaceful humanitarian worker. I was called as a witness.

“For two years,” I testified, a group called Witness for Peace (WfP) had “anticipated the killing of an American citizen by the contras so that they could use his death for political propaganda. They wanted someone like Benjamin Linder to die.”

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That was hard to say, not only because it sounded so outrageous, but because I was sitting with Linder’s parents in the congressional hearing room.

The Linders were lifetime radicals from Portland. They supported North Vietnam and the Vietcong against American troops. The mother was the local leader of a group that collaborated with Soviet active measures operations against the United States. They raised their son Benjamin to place himself in mortal danger.

Facing professionally organized provocations and stressors, it was inevitable that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents would plunge into circumstances that domestic extremists had created to provoke media outrage.

My impression was that they seemed less like grieving parents and more like mourners of a fallen comrade.

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As college students and afterward, my friends and I had infiltrated and exposed groups across the country that supported the Central American communists. I also worked with the Nicaraguan resistance fighters against the Sandinistas.

At the hearing, I gave my eyewitness account, plus secondary reports, about how American militant leaders wanted U.S.-backed forces to kill some of their do-gooder allies.

Revolutionary insurgencies require martyrs to outrage and inspire.

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“It is obvious that Witness for Peace leaders are aware of the military role they are playing in Central America,” I testified.

“On one of my trips with the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) resistance in 1985, I asked several commanders and fighters if the presence of Americans was having any effect on their ability to fight the Sandinista army,” I said in my testimony. “The answer was positive: The FDN fighters were afraid of hurting any Americans working with the Sandinistas for fear of a backlash of public opinion in the United States.”

At a 1995 Witness for Peace meeting in Boulder, Colo., I learned that the group was planning to expand operations to El Salvador, only to abort three days later when its guerrilla friends murdered four off-duty U.S. Marines and two other Americans.

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I testified that in a later New York meeting, we heard “that some of the group’s leaders privately expressed hope that some of their activists in Nicaragua would get shot by the resistance. If a Witness for Peace activist was killed, they reasoned, American public opinion would turn against the contras.”

The Boston Globe quoted another WfP activist, a lawyer from Bangor, Maine, as saying that “Some of us have got to die” at the hands of U.S.-backed forces. “If some of us die, we bring the cause home to our countrymen in a very personal way,” he said. “If that’s what it will take, that’s what it will take.”

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With Linder’s death, I told Congress, the American radicals “finally had a martyr. They got their televised interviews. They have their congressional hearing. They got their wish.”

Which brings us back to Minneapolis today. America must face the fact that organizers are out there to enrage, demoralize and manipulate us all. They don’t care about the human fallout.

DR MARC SIEGEL: How AA, faith and science align with Trump’s fight against addiction

I applaud President Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order known as the Great American Recovery Initiative, but I think it should be renamed the Bill W. and Dr. Bob Initiative, after the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Both men suffered from severe alcoholism until a fateful day in December 1934, when Bill Wilson experienced a spiritual awakening — described as a blinding white light — after demanding that God show Himself. Bill also described the sensation of standing on a mountain with the wind of the Spirit blowing through him, and he instantly felt liberated, his obsession with alcohol gone.

This conversion experience formed the basis for Bill W.’s spiritual transformation and recovery from alcoholism, and it led to the core 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, which Bill W. co-founded in June 1935 with Dr. Robert Smith. Dr. Bob also suffered from severe alcoholism, and Bill W. helped him quit. By that June, Dr. Bob had taken his final drink. Together with Sister Ignatia, Dr. Bob helped transfer his freedom from alcohol to others, providing medical care and physical guidance to thousands of alcoholics in Akron, Ohio, and around the country.

The reason I believe President Trump’s initiative could be called the Bill W. and Dr. Bob Initiative is because, like AA, it recognizes the importance of community, health and faith. These elements must be central tenets of the plan for it to be successful. The White House announcement states its goal is “to coordinate a national response to the disease of addiction across government, health care, faith communities and the private sector in order to save lives, restore families, strengthen our communities and build the Great American Recovery.”

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Trump’s initiative was soon followed this week by the HHS $100 million Safety Through Recovery, Engagement and Evidence-based Treatment and Supports (STREETS) program, which will focus on addiction, mental health, homelessness and crisis intervention. 

This is a much-needed program and I was glad to see it spearheaded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., himself a recovered heroin addict, along with his cousin, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a recovering alcoholic whom I have interviewed and found to be a powerful and convincing voice for recovery.

The reason I believe President Trump’s initiative could be called the Bill W. and Dr. Bob Initiative is because, like AA, it recognizes the importance of community, health and faith. 

Keep in mind that denial is a key part of the problem for most addicts, and deep faith, along with role modeling, is a critical way to overcome that denial. As the White House pointed out in its fact sheet, “48.4 million Americans, or 16.8% of our nation’s population, suffer from addiction, yet very few who need treatment receive it or believe they need it.”

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During President Trump’s first term, in 2019, when he declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, he also acknowledged that his brother Fred had “a very, very, very tough life” before succumbing to alcoholism and heart disease. Trump said the same to me when I interviewed him at the White House in July 2020, and I could see how deeply the loss affected him personally.

Trump’s heart is clearly in the right place when it comes to the current initiative — and he is not alone. The announcement of the new federal plan to combat drug and alcohol addiction included Kathryn Burgum, a former alcoholic and the wife of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, as well as United State Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who told the story of his son dying from a drug overdose during the event.

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Raising awareness is a lofty goal, along with acknowledging just how hard addictions are to break. The role of faith and the church must be emphasized, but so too must the scientific tools that enable miraculous recoveries — from buprenorphine, a partial opioid agonist, to naltrexone, an opioid antagonist that blocks both euphoria and craving. GLP-1 agonists are also showing promise in decreasing cravings for alcohol and drugs and reducing alcohol consumption, in part by delaying gastric emptying. Medically assisted therapy for opioids — specifically methadone, naltrexone and buprenorphine — has been shown to reduce opioid-related deaths by more than 50%.

As I wrote in my new book, “The Miracles Among Us,” so-called soft miracles arise from an intricate combination of science and faith.

All these tools must be paid for, and the federal government should help make them more available. Indeed, every primary care physician like me should have the unrestricted ability to prescribe these lifesaving medications, and every major church and synagogue should have a federally subsidized recovery program for drug and alcohol addiction.

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Addiction destroys not just individuals, but entire families and communities. Recovery from addiction is a multi-pronged process involving faith, access to quality health care and committed leaders who can relate to the problem. 

Ninety years after Bill W. and Dr. Bob started us down the path toward beating addiction, their caring, spiritual approach is more important than ever.

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America is the sole superpower again. Here’s how Trump surprised the world

There’s one superpower that dominates the planet again, and it’s the United States.

In just one year in office, President Donald Trump has catapulted the U.S. from a country that seemed on the brink of inevitable decline, into the American colossus that’s put the other great powers — especially China and Russia — in the shade, and now determines the tempo and direction of world events.

What happened in Davos should set aside any doubts. In 24 hours, President Trump turned worldwide panic about possible U.S. military intervention in Greenland into worldwide relief with a framework for peacefully securing the giant island for generations to come.

We were the world’s “sole superpower” twice in the 20th century, right after World War II and again after the Cold War. Now, thanks to Donald Trump and his administration, it’s happening again in the 21st century. It’s important to understand why and how, and what it means for the future.

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There are three components that make a dominant world power: military strength, economic strength and bold leadership.

Military power: By taking out the Iranian nuclear program and by snatching the Venezuelan dictator in the middle of the night — both without losing a single American — Donald Trump demonstrated that we have a military with an unparalleled global reach and effectiveness. Meanwhile, Russia is bogged down in a World War I-style stalemate in Ukraine, while the last time China’s army fought a real war was in 1979 against Vietnam — a war China lost.

Economic strength: This year will mark the start of an economic boom triggered by the Trump tax cuts and deregulation, that may see the U.S. economy grow by 5% or more (China will be lucky to hit above 4.5%). Trillions of direct foreign investment dollars and a revived American industrial landscape means we will have an economy geared toward making things again, not just spending money. At the same time, Trump’s use of tariffs has redirected the flow of world trade to America’s advantage and China’s disadvantage, as we leverage our power as the world’s biggest and best customer to get other nations to play fair in the trade game.

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The global management company Teneo’s annual CEO and Investor Outlook Survey shows that 73% of global CEOs expect the global economy to improve in 2026, in large part because of the coming U.S. boom. 

Bold leadership: Just a year ago, America was still feeling the disastrous effects of an enfeebled president who surrendered world leadership to China, Russia and Iran. Joe Biden and his team had all but crippled the American economy with rampant inflation and declining productivity, while their obsession with “climate change” came at the expense of one of the country’s most important economic assets, our oil and natural gas industry.

Along comes Donald Trump, and suddenly what seemed like problematic areas of the U.S. economy — AI, cryptocurrency, oil and natural gas production, manufacturing — leap into the forefront of administration policy for making America great again. Instead of weakness and impotence on the world stage, the United States has retaken the lead, from ending the fighting in Gaza and reshaping the future of the Middle East, to starting to push interlopers like China, Russia and Iran out of the Western Hemisphere — whether it’s Venezuela or Greenland or the Panama Canal.

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Most importantly, for the first time in a very long time — perhaps not since Ronald Reagan was president, — we have a president who is unapologetic about flexing American power and influence around the globe, and who sees world leadership not as a temporary transition phase, but as America’s birthright on its 250th anniversary.

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Leadership doesn’t mean being globocop. It does mean acknowledging moments like the one last month, when Venezuela’s Maria Machado handed over her Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump, in gratitude for supporting the democratic resistance in her country.

The moment tells us that, under President Trump, America has re-assumed the moral leadership, as well as military, economic and technological leadership, of the planet.

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These “sole superpower” moments can speed by. The first after World War II faded with the rise of the Soviet Union, and died in the jungles of Vietnam. The second, after the Cold War, was dissipated in military spending cuts and an orgy of “peace dividend” spending, which facilitated the advance of Communist China. Russia and especially China remain formidable adversaries — and nuclear-armed ones. Trump and his administration need to take full advantage of America’s current sole superpower status before some unforeseen event, or failure of judgment or nerve, triggers its demise.

In the meantime, enjoy being the dominant power on the planet. It’s a great way to start America’s next 250 years.

The medical system pushed transgender surgery on kids — now it’s facing legal justice

Two million dollars.

That’s how much money a 22-year-old woman just won in a New York lawsuit against her doctors. She sued them for medical malpractice after they cut off her breasts when she was 16. They told her she could become a boy, even though that’s biologically impossible. Now she has won the first-ever lawsuit against doctors who try to give sex changes to kids.

That brave young woman isn’t alone.

I’m 21 years old, and I’m also suing the medical system that gave me sex-change treatments starting at age 13. There are so many other young people like us. We were lied to by doctors, nurses and therapists when we were vulnerable and confused children. They did irreversible harm to our bodies and minds, making a mockery of the medical profession. They should absolutely be held accountable for sacrificing us in service to radical transgender ideology.

HHS GOLD STANDARD STUDY FLIPS ‘GENDER AFFIRMING CARE’ ON ITS HEAD AS DEMS KEEP PUSHING TRANS ISSUES AT SCOTUS

The woman in New York has a heartbreaking story. She accused a psychologist and surgeon of pressuring her to get a sex-change surgery when she was a teenager. While her mother was opposed to the surgery, she felt like she had no choice but to allow it. That checks out: Doctors tell parents all the time that without a sex change, their child is going to commit suicide. How can a parent argue with that?

But “fixing” someone with a sex-change surgery is what actually breaks them. The New York woman found that out the hard way. She’s now a detransitioner, and she’ll be dealing with the effects of those doctors’ actions for the rest of her life. In that $2 million settlement, the jury awarded her $1.6 million for her pain and suffering — and $400,000 for future medical expenses. She’s probably never going to stop needing physical and mental health care because of what was done to her.

I WAS TOLD I WAS A BOY. SUPREME COURT MUST DESTROY LIES THAT HARM WOMEN LIKE ME

The exact same thing happened to me. In my pre-teen years, I became deeply confused about my gender because of the influence of social media and video games. But instead of helping me accept that I’m a girl, therapists and doctors told me I was a boy.

CALIFORNIA AG SUES HOSPITAL THAT ENDED GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT FOR MINORS TO COMPLY WITH TRUMP POLICIES

They gave me puberty blockers at age 13, stopping my body from developing naturally. They gave me cross-sex hormones not long after that, altering my brain as well as my body. At 16, they cut off my breasts, too. Years later, I still have bandages on my chest.

My doctors told me everything was reversible. But as soon as I realized the mistake I made, I also realized they had lied. There’s no real going back — not completely, and not ever. Like the young woman in New York, I was misled by the doctors my parents and I trusted. Just like her, I need medical help until the day I die. But the doctors who did this to me wouldn’t even talk to me, much less try to help me regain my life as a girl.

Doctors should know better. They’re dealing with kids whose minds and bodies are still developing. They’re dealing with kids going through the awkward years of adolescence. The best medical path is obviously to wait and watch. Wait to let kids develop naturally. Watch that development with the help of real mental health care, especially therapy that helps kids come to grips with who they really are.

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Instead, these doctors are rushing kids down the irreversible and dangerous path of sex changes. Do No Harm has found that nearly 14,000 kids have received sex changes in recent years, although the real number is almost certainly far higher. What’s been done to them is the definition of medical malpractice. The doctors who perpetrated this injustice should absolutely pay for the lives they’ve destroyed.

For that matter, every doctor who’s even remotely involved in providing sex changes should stop — immediately. People like me are coming for them. They pressured us and hurt us in profound ways. We demand justice. The $2 million that New York woman just won is a start. But this won’t end until the medical profession atones for its actions and stops giving sex changes to children once and for all.

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MORNING GLORY: Trump can end the Dreamer standoff by taking on sanctuary cities

Is there a path emerging for the “Dreamers” to finally receive legal status? Could a “regularization” of this group of more than 3 million illegal immigrants be near?

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., whom I interviewed on my radio show Wednesday, did not sound overly optimistic about passing the final FY 2026 appropriations bill — the one that funds the Department of Homeland Security — but he also did not rule out including “regularization” for the “Dreamers,” provided the same bill includes a funding knockout for “sanctuary cities and states.”

President Donald Trump, Thune noted, has long been open to regularizing the status of the Dreamers. If congressional Democrats want to actually accomplish something with their latest funding stunt, they should ask for legal status for the Dreamers while being prepared to apply pressure to sanctuary cities.

On Tuesday, I argued for just such a deal on this platform — a “Nixon-to-China” compromise that President Trump could pull off, and that no other Republican would dare to attempt, much less succeed in executing.

STEPHEN COLBERT CHEERS ON ALEX PADILLA’S BILL THAT WOULD MAKE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS CITIZENS

The president showed the way with his “First Step Act” criminal justice reform law during his first term. Now he could again lead — this time to secure long-desired “regularization” for the Dreamers — reflecting a view shared by the vast majority of Americans: Illegal immigrants brought here as minors should not be deported to countries of origin, if those countries can even be identified.

On Wednesday, I proposed such a law to the majority leader, and his polite refusal reflects the two decades of scars nearly every Republican legislator carries from past immigration battles.

A hard-core group of deportation absolutists opposes regularization for the Dreamers, and their volume often obscures how small their numbers really are. That kind of strident rejection of commonsense solutions must, in turn, be rejected by the president and congressional Republicans.

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN SPARKS BIPARTISAN CALL FOR ASYLUM FIXES, PROTECTION FOR LONGTIME MIGRANTS

The coalition that returned the president to the Oval Office was built on common sense about the border. First, close it — as the president has done. Second, fund and finish the wall, which is underway. Third, detain and deport the most dangerous among the tens of millions of illegal immigrants in the country — a challenge made nearly insoluble by President Joe Biden’s four years of border failure, but one now being addressed.

A “First Step on Immigration Act” would continue the commitments the president campaigned on, and it should not attempt to be a “comprehensive solution” to the illegal immigration mess left by the Biden administration.

Such “comprehensive” legislative schemes rarely make it through Congress, because either the political right or the political left — or both — rise up to shout them down, often with good reason.

TOP REPUBLICAN REBUKES NOTIONS TO ARREST DHS AGENTS WITH PLAN TO PULL FUNDING FROM PROBLEM CITIES

For one thing, these efforts over the past 20 years have promised a “pathway to citizenship,” which should never be available to someone who broke the law to get here. Millions wait patiently in line to legally enter the United States, and those who cut that line cannot be allowed to stay while also gaining the right to vote or access entitlements reserved for Americans who have paid decades of taxes into programs like Medicare and Social Security.

There are “first steps” toward making immigration enforcement rational, just as the first steps President Trump took in his second term were to close the border and as Congress’ first step was to fully fund construction of the border wall. Check and check.

The next steps should include granting “blue cards” to Dreamers — and to any other narrow category of illegal immigrant around which consensus exists — but only if those grants are paired with serious penalties for any city, county or state that refuses to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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The United States must be consistent in its message: We are a welcoming and compassionate country, and we will regularize the Dreamers. But we are also a nation of laws, and no federal funding should flow to jurisdictions whose law enforcement agencies refuse to cooperate with ICE to identify and deport illegal aliens who have been arrested and are in custody.

Common sense on compassion, combined with common sense on compliance with federal law, is the sweet spot for the next phase of solving the illegal immigration crisis.

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Democrats have handed President Trump the high ground in this debate. They believed they could make the last appropriations fight about ICE. Instead, the president and congressional Republicans should make it about the Dreamers and sanctuary cities.

Good policy can also be great politics. Consult virtually any poll on immigration. A “First Step on Immigration Act” built on “80-20” positions — those that eight in 10 Americans agree with — is a great place to start.

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Trump’s immigration victory in a Minnesota court is a win for all law-abiding citizens

Minnesota is not an island – geographically or legally. That’s the firm message from the Jan. 31 decision by Judge Katherine Menendez, refusing to issue a preliminary injunction against the federal government’s immigration law enforcement operations in Minnesota.

The federal immigration laws apply in Minnesota just as much as in Missouri. Contrary to cynical politicians who seek to weaponize misguided individuals into fighting a phantom holy war pitting some states against the national government, Operation Metro Surge is neither unconstitutional nor a violation of states’ rights.

The federal court’s stinging rebuke appears to have quickly forced Minnesota’s governor to deliver “unprecedented cooperation“ and enable border czar Tom Homan to draw down federal agents on Feb 5. Here’s why.

Let’s start with how this case got to court. Minnesota’s politicians have been engaged in lawfare against the Trump administration, claiming that the federal government is intruding on the state’s sovereignty. They challenged the federal enforcement actions as violative of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Minnesota sought a preliminary injunction to stop Operation Metro Surge.

‘BORDER CZAR’ TOM HOMAN SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT HIS MISSION IN MINNEAPOLIS

Even though the court’s ruling was on a preliminary motion, the constitutional argument was effectively busted by the judge’s reasoning.

Minnesota argued that Operation Metro Surge was motivated by political animus, aimed at punishing it because it was a sanctuary state, and violated the Constitution’s equal sovereignty and anticommandeering principles.

The problem is that our Founding Fathers designed the Constitution to ensure the supremacy of federal laws and the capacity of the executive branch to enforce them. In Federalist No. 44, James Madison expounded on the perils of not having such supremacy: “the world would have seen, for the first time, a system of government founded on an inversion of the fundamental principles of all government; it would have seen the authority of the whole society every where subordinate to the authority of the parts; it would have seen a monster, in which the head was under the direction of the members.”

MINNESOTA DRAGS TRUMP’S ICE TO COURT IN EFFORT TO PAUSE IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN

Madison concluded that “no part of the power is unnecessary or improper for accomplishing the necessary objects of the Union. The question, therefore, whether this amount of power shall be granted or not, resolves itself into another question, whether or not a government commensurate to the exigencies of the Union shall be established; or, in other words, whether the Union itself shall be preserved.”

Nowhere is the question about the preservation of the union more critical than in the matter of immigration and foreign relations. That’s why the president has such broad powers in these areas, because he needs those powers as they are “commensurate to the exigencies of the Union” and necessary to preserve a unified country under the laws.

Here, the supreme federal law is the Immigration and Naturalization Act, a statute passed by Congress. That law confers power on federal officials to undertake various enforcement actions, including detention and removal. And President Donald Trump campaigned and won an election specifically on the total abdication by the prior administration in enforcing immigration laws. Having won the election on that issue, it stood to reason that Trump would keep his promise and seek to remove illegal migrants – especially those with criminal backgrounds.

BORDER CZAR TOM HOMAN CALLS ANTI-ICE ROADBLOCKS IN MINNEAPOLIS A ‘JOKE’ AFTER POLICE CHIEF DISBANDS THEM

In the face of widespread fraud and diversion of federal funds to illegal migrants and the state governor’s willful refusal to prosecute them, Trump deployed federal officers to enforce the law.

Minnesota’s argument in court that Trump violated the 10th Amendment’s anticommandeering principle is nonsense. As explained by the Supreme Court in New York v. US, 505 U. S. 144, 161, “Congress may not simply ‘commandeer the legislative process of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.’” The purpose is to ensure political accountability, protect individual liberty and prevent the federal government from transferring the costs of enforcing a federal law on to the states.

Contrary to cynical politicians who seek to weaponize misguided individuals into fighting a phantom holy war pitting some states against the national government, Operation Metro Surge is neither unconstitutional nor a violation of states’ rights.

Trump and ICE did not commandeer Minnesota state officials to enforce immigration laws. In fact, the Minnesota governor and Minneapolis mayor have both loudly proclaimed that they will not enforce immigration laws or cooperate with the federal government. They have labeled ICE agents as thugs and goons and incited resistance. Clearly, state officials are not being commandeered – the facts show the opposite: resistance.

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Minnesota also claimed that ICE operations were causing it to respond and divert resources away from other purposes. This is equally nonsensical – it takes fewer resources to cooperate and help ICE in arresting criminals than it does to obstruct and resist. No one forced Minnesota to appease its voter banks and provide a freebie for those who evade immigration laws. In effect, Minnesota is telling anyone who is clever enough to violate or evade immigration law that the state’s legal machinery will protect them. That is a response and diversion of resources to protect lawbreakers – of Minnesota’s own choosing. It was not a choice forced on it by ICE.

Second, the equal sovereignty argument is unavailing. The president has discretion on the enforcement of the immigration laws just as he does in the context of other executive powers conferred upon him by the Constitution. The Supreme Court explained in US. v. Texas, 599 U.S. 670, 678 (2023), that under Article II, “the Executive Branch possesses authority to decide ‘how to prioritize and how aggressively to pursue legal actions against defendants who violate the law.’”

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The deployment of ICE officers in larger numbers in Minnesota underscores the value of the discretion possessed by the president. Clearly, the fraudulent diversion of funds to illegal migrants and Minnesota’s refusal to take corrective actions warranted a more robust federal enforcement response than in other states. Equal sovereignty is not violated by the prudent exercise of discretion – it is reinforced by proportionate enforcement.

Ultimately, Democrat Gov. Tim Walz’s lawfare against the Trump administration is not a war about state sovereignty. It is a war for and on behalf of lawbreakers being fought by diverting valuable resources away from law-abiding citizens and using misguided citizens as cannon fodder. Minnesota deserves better.

The border gets the attention while fraudulent government benefits bleed taxpayers dry

The immigration debate is focused almost entirely on the border, but the real failure happens after entry, inside taxpayer-funded benefits systems that rarely demand proof. While enforcement dominates the headlines, billions of dollars quietly move through Medicaid, housing and social services with weak identity verification, inconsistent eligibility checks and little accountability. This is where the system breaks down: Americans work harder, taxpayer dollars move faster and fraud thrives in the absence of enforcement.

While Democrats and much of the mainstream media obsess over ICE enforcement and border encounters, a far more serious failure is unfolding inside Medicaid offices, housing authorities and social services agencies nationwide. Federal data show that Medicaid improper payments of our tax dollars reached $37.4 billion in fiscal year 2025, with error rates climbing above 6%, up from $31.1 billion the year before. Across federal healthcare programs, improper payments now approach $95.5 billion.

They are the taxpayer dollars of hardworking Americans paid out without adequate documentation, verified eligibility or proof that payments met program rules. Federal auditors report that over 77% of improper payments stem from documentation gaps unsubstantiated by administrators. While not every improper payment constitutes fraud, weak identity verification and minimal oversight create incentives for abuse by both providers and recipients. States lacking robust verification systems are far more likely to issue improper or fraudulent payments, a risk repeatedly flagged by federal watchdogs. This is the predictable outcome of systems that prioritize rapid enrollment over verification, expansion over accountability and optics over enforcement.

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

Minnesota has become ground zero for an epic collapse in benefits oversight. Since 2018, approximately half of $18 billion in federally funded social service spending has come under scrutiny amid allegations of fraud tied to Medicaid, housing stabilization services and disability care programs. Prosecutors allege schemes involving billing for services were never provided, shell providers approved with minimal vetting and even after red flags were raised, state agencies continued payments. The Feeding Our Future case alone resulted in more than 50 federal convictions and hundreds of millions in fraudulent claims, making it one of the largest nonprofit fraud prosecutions in U.S. history. This is the predictable result of ignored audits and failed oversight.

California is another stark example of taxpayer fraud when verification is optional. A federal Office of Inspector General audit found the state improperly claimed more than $52 million in federal Medicaid reimbursements for illegal aliens because California failed to check eligibility and enforce basic verification. That same breakdown appears in homelessness spending, where federal auditors warned that hundreds of millions of dollars were at risk given weak controls, a warning recently highlighted by a federal criminal complaint alleging a California nonprofit fraudulently obtained $23 million in federal homelessness funds. Instead of proving eligibility, the system assumed eligibility and taxpayers paid the price.

SEC SCOTT BESSENT: HOW TO STOP FRAUD IN MINNESOTA—AND ACROSS THE COUNTRY

Maine shows the same dangerous pattern. A federal Office of Inspector General audit found at least $45.6 million due to improper Medicaid payments driven by lack of compliance of eligibility checks and inadequate documentation. Maine agreed to repay up to $28.7 million in federal funds, but oversight failures continued. Just last month, state investigators also found that Gateway Community Services overbilled MaineCare by more than $1 million, triggering payment suspensions and investigation amid suspected fraud.

WALZ’S MINNESOTA MESS COULD SPARK THE TOUGHEST FRAUD REFORMS IN DECADES

These cases are only the ones that were investigated, but showcase a national pattern where, when benefits systems are designed to move money quickly and verification is treated as optional, waste and fraud are inevitable. Americans feel this disconnect, and the data confirms it. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in January 2026 found that 53% of Americans say immigration policy is moving in the wrong direction, outweighing approval. At the same time, Pew Research reports only 17% of Americans trust the federal government in Washington to do what is right. That distrust is not just about immigration, but reflects a broader belief that government has lost control, spending taxpayer dollars without audits, accountability or consequences. The political class is stuck in denial. Democrats often frame audits and eligibility enforcement as cruel or discriminatory, while some Republicans tout it as the “cost of doing business.” Both positions are a losing message for taxpayers who see massive fraud with little oversight. Protecting public trust in social safety nets requires pro-taxpayer, pro-rule-of-law enforcement.

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We must enforce the same standards working Americans face daily when they apply for jobs, loans or any government services. Identity verification, eligibility checks and continuous audits are the bare minimum of responsible governance.

Arguing over border enforcement while ignoring the benefits systems only deepens the chaos. You cannot control immigration while refusing to control the programs that quietly finance disorder. Immigration did not spiral because Americans demanded order — it spiraled because government stopped demanding proof.

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RILEY GAINES: Georgia voters must reject Jon Ossoff’s awful record against women

As a former collegiate swimmer who raced against, and lost opportunities to, a male competitor, I know exactly what is at stake when women’s sports are not protected: scholarships, records, roster spots, and the promise of Title IX — that women and girls would finally have an equal opportunity to compete on a level playing field. It happened in Georgia. And now, in 2026, the safety of every girl in Georgia remains on the line.

When it has mattered most, Georgia Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff has abandoned women and girls every single time.

Start with sports. Sen. Ossoff has had three chances to stand up for female athletes –three chances to say girls’ sports are for girls. Three times, he voted no.

In March 2025, he voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a straightforward, common-sense bill that would have clarified under Title IX that female sports are reserved for females based on biological sex. The measure would have reinforced the law’s original intent.

THE ATHLETES, COACHES, LAWMAKERS AND OFFICIALS WHO HAVE PICKED A SIDE IN THE SCOTUS WOMEN’S SPORTS BATTLE

In March 2024, he voted to kill an amendment that would have withheld federal funds from schools and states that allow men to compete in women’s programs.

In March 2021, he voted against an amendment to stop schools from placing male athletes in female categories. 

Three chances to stand with women. Three times he refused.

But it doesn’t stop there. Sen. Ossoff is also pushing to override Georgia’s state-level protections by repeatedly backing the federal Equality Act. He co-sponsored it in 2021 and 2023 and campaigned on it in 2020. The bill would redefine sex to include gender identity across federal civil rights law, with no carveout for sports. Legal experts and elite female athletes — many of them not conservatives — have warned exactly what that means: co-ed competition, lost opportunities, and compromised safety.

REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS URGE JUSTICES TO DEFEND WOMEN’S SPORTS AS SUPREME COURT HEARS KEY CASE

The Equality Act is not a compromise. It is a federal mandate that wipes out Georgia’s right to protect its own girls.

Ossoff’s record goes far beyond the playing field. He’s supported legislation that would force access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms based on gender identity. Translation: He supports policies that would require your daughter to undress in a locker room with a man. No regard for privacy. No regard for safety.

He supports policies that tell women——that their discomfort and fear don’t matter, that male feelings matter more than a woman’s physical safety. 

On women’s sports, women’s spaces, women’s shelters, and religious freedom, the Democratic senator sides with Washington mandates over Georgia families

Think about women fleeing abuse, staying in domestic violence shelters with their kids. These women deserve dignity, privacy, and trauma-informed policies. Yet Ossoff has supported measures that would force women’s domestic violence shelters to admit males who identify as women, despite survivors repeatedly that these policies can retraumatize them and push them back onto the streets. That’s not compassion. That’s cruelty dressed up as progress.

‘SAVE WOMEN’S SPORTS’ ACTIVISTS REACT TO SUPREME COURT TRANS ATHLETE HEARING

Religious freedom isn’t safe either. Sen. Ossoff introduced a bill to override the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, forcing Christian hospitals in Georgia to perform transgender surgeries against their deeply held beliefs. 

Put it all together, and the pattern is obvious. On women’s sports, women’s spaces, women’s shelters, and religious freedom, Jon Ossoff sides with Washington mandates over Georgia families. Georgia is trying to protect fairness. He’s trying to federalize it away.

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Some say fairness can be preserved with hormone rules or case-by-case exceptions. It cannot.

I lived the reality. Women are asked to be quiet, to disregard our gut instinct when it tells us it’s wrong to nonconsensually undress next to a man in a locker room, to surrender records and roster spots to maintain someone else’s feelings. Title IX was never meant to make women invisible to solve a controversy. It was meant to ensure that we count.

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Georgia is leading with courage. Georgia schools can maintain girls’ teams for girls. Georgia courts may soon confirm that simple truth nationwide. Georgia senators should help, not hinder. 

Sen. Ossoff has had multiple chances to stand with Georgia women and girls. He chose politics –and fear of radicals in his party –over our daughters, over even his own daughter. With the Supreme Court poised to potentially uphold states’ authority to protect women’s sports, it is time for Georgia’s senator to do the same. It’s time for a real man to send Jon Ossoff home.

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Kevin Warsh must move fast to undo the worst Fed mistakes in decades

President Trump hit the bullseye in selecting Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve Board chairman.

In contrast to the failed tenure of Jerome Powell, Warsh is not political, and he is not an inflationist. He has declared many times that “I reject the discredited Phillips Curve notion that growth causes inflation.” He believes we can return to a prosperous era of low inflation and high growth, as we saw under Paul Volcker in the 1980s and Alan Greenspan in the 1990s.

Powell never understood that. He believed that growth causes inflation. What we got instead was a near Fed-created stock market crash and slow growth in 2018, followed by four years of Biden-era stagflation, with stagnant real wages AND high prices.

Powell is a lame duck, and a wounded duck he should resign immediately. He won’t, so we have four more months before regime change and the abandonment of his monetary and interest rate mismanagement that gave us 9% inflation.

REPUBLICAN SENATOR VOWS TO BLOCK TRUMP FED NOMINEE OVER POWELL INVESTIGATION

This means Warsh must be ready to reverse monetary course on day one.

First, I agree with former World Bank President David Malpass that the overriding goal of the Warsh Fed should be to keep the dollar strong and prices stable. Defend the dollar.

It’s critically important for Warsh to “know thine enemy,” or the Fed’s blob will chew him up and spit him out. The Fed staff will openly work to subvert Warsh’s primary strategy to conquer inflation.

I’m a little worried that Trump wants a weak dollar, which is what Powell has delivered of late. The decline in the dollar, relative to other currencies and gold, are trends that could raise prices and put the dollar’s world reserve-currency status at risk. Don’t go there.

SUPREME COURT WEIGHS TRUMP BID TO FIRE FED GOVERNOR LISA COOK

Second, Warsh must move quickly to clean house at the Fed. He has promised to cut the bureaucracy by 30%. That’s a good start.

The Fed doesn’t need more than 3,000 bureaucrats and hundreds of Ph.D. economists, given all the mistakes they’ve made in recent years. They could have just as easily created 9% inflation with half that many people.

This is urgent because the empire is already preparing to strike back.

TRUMP CRIMINAL PROBE OF FED CHAIR POWELL MARKS UNPRECEDENTED ESCALATION — AND A WARNING TO HIS SUCCESSOR

Krishna Guha, a former New York Fed official, warned in the Financial Times that if Warsh tries to put in place his “restructuring plan in the spirit of MAGA regime change, it will maximise resistance and opposition from the vast majority of others in the system.”

It’s critically important for Warsh to “know thine enemy,” or the Fed’s blob will chew him up and spit him out. The Fed staff will openly work to subvert Warsh’s primary strategy to conquer inflation.

It would also set a good example of fiscal restraint for the Fed to practice what it preaches: fiscal discipline. Let’s not forget that Powell spent nearly $2 billion renovating the Taj Mahal–like Fed building in downtown Washington. Talk about setting a bad example.

Third, Warsh is exactly correct that adding trillions of dollars to the Fed’s now $6.5 trillion balance sheet “was the worst Fed mistake in 45 years.” Just 25 years ago, the Fed’s balance sheet contained less than $1 trillion in assets, and last year it hit an all-time high of more than $8 trillion.

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Speeding up the sale of these stranded assets would help suck excess money out of the economy and bring inflation down to its 2% target while boosting affordability.

There’s an old saying about success in life: “You always want to succeed a failure.” Warsh is now in that position as he replaces the Powell regime. He can help Trump restore price stability, and if he does, he will go down in history as one of the greatest Fed chairmen.

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Finally, adopt an interest-rate price rule and make it transparent to the world. My preferred price index is a basket of commodities ranging from gold to coal to copper to cotton. If the commodity index starts rising, there’s too much money — raise rates. If prices start falling, cut rates.

Warsh’s best gift to Trump would be restoring price stability and dollar dominance. If he succeeds, he will go down in history as one of the greatest Fed chairs of all time.

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JIMMY FAILLA: Billie Eilish cries ‘stolen land’ — then goes home to her $2.3M California mansion

Billie Eilish won the Grammy Award for Best “Anti-ICE Tantrum” on Sunday night by declaring that “No human being is illegal on stolen land.”

Unfortunately, the blowback against her is serving as the latest in a long line of reminders that Hollywood celebrities should lay off the politics and stick to doing what they do best, which is cocaine.

Now, obviously, I have no idea if Billie is taking any drugs whatsoever, but you’d have to be on SOMETHING to think all of this Trump bashing is helping awards shows.

BILLIE EILISH CALLED OUT ON ‘STOLEN LAND’ GRAMMY COMMENTS WHILE OWNING MILLION-DOLLAR MANSION

Ratings were down 9% year over year for the Grammys, and of course, we all know that viewership has fallen by 50% in the last two decades for that Well-Dressed-Group-Therapy- Session we call the Oscars.

One of the main reasons why is that people turn to movies and music for an escape from politics and the torments of everyday life. If they wanted a predictable, one-note political lecture, they’d put on the Jimmy Kimmel show.

That being said, Billie’s got bigger problems than fixing the Grammys. For starters, her “stolen land” rant on Sunday night has turned her into a national punchline. My guess is she never saw this coming because nobody gets in trouble for stealing anything in Gavin Newsom’s California. If you don’t believe me, you’ve never run an Ulta Cosmetics.

MUSIC’S BIGGEST STARS PROTEST ICE AT GRAMMY AWARDS AMID TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN

Yet as we speak, the “Birds of a Feather” singer is now on the business end of a million viral memes that point out the weapons-grade hypocrisy of ranting about stolen land while not offering to give back a single square inch of her $2.3 million dollar Glendale horse ranch.

This is the Grammy equivalent of Snoop Dogg calling the viewers a bunch of potheads. It doesn’t help that Billie’s digs just so happen to sit on the ancestral land of the Tongva tribe, whose spokesperson told the Daily Mail: “Eilish has not contacted our tribe directly regarding her property, we do value the instance when Public Figures provide visibility to the true history of this country.”

Which is a fancy way of saying her overtures to the Native Americans were emptier than a Somali daycare center in Minneapolis. But they didn’t pay nearly as well.

GRAMMY AWARDS VIEWERSHIP PLUMMETS 20% AMONG YOUNG ADULTS IN FINAL YEAR ON CBS

Thousands of people have suggested Eilish host some undocumented migrants at her mansion, but as we speak, she has yet to send out an invite. Something tells me it’s not because she’s still designing them on Shutterfly.

In short, it’s a miracle she’s won so many Grammys because she’s completely tone-deaf. Is this the end of her career? Of course not. She may be a National Laughingstock, but Kamala Harris was able to ride that all the way to the vice presidency.

The larger hope is that the Billie Backlash serves as a cautionary tale to other would be virtue signalers that there’s nothing wrong with making YOUR Grammy victory about YOU.

And why not?

BILLIE EILISH SAYS PROTESTERS ARE BEING ‘ASSAULTED AND MURDERED’ DURING AWARD SPEECH

Millions of fans around the world use your musical talents to transport themselves to a better moment in their lives. There’s a much better way to honor that gift than catering to the whims of a Hollywood crowd that’s so liberal they want to defund the cop in the Village People.

Trust me, bashing ICE might be popular at the Grammys, but out here in the real world it didn’t go over nearly as well with the un-Botoxed masses.

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Mainly because we’ve seen this act before.

This season’s “ICE Out” pin was last year’s “Free Palestine” button, which was preceded by a “Stand With Ukraine” ribbon.

There’s so much Social Justice flair that we’re getting to the point where every woman walking the red carpet looks like a waitress at TGI FRIDAYS.

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Look. I don’t doubt there are some people who’ve made it to the end of this piece and opined that I am in NO position to criticize the girl who wrote the mega smash hit from the “Barbie” soundtrack. I agree. If anything, I look like Ken’s brother CAN’T.

But even I know that music awards shows won’t last much longer if we’re all watching with the sound off.

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A first lady like no other: How Melania Trump made presidential history

Melania Trump has made history again in her role as first lady of the United States by being the first sitting first lady to serve as executive producer of her new film, “MELANIA,” which gives the world an unprecedented glimpse into the 20 days leading up to her return to the White House. 

In 1962, the American people saw another stylish first lady make her debut in a documentary when first lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave a Valentine’s Day tour of the White House, sharing her renovations to the Presidents House — which, at the time, was a major television event. 

We have seen previous first ladies while in office appear on talk shows, sitcoms, documentaries and other forms of media broadcasts. Nancy Reagan appeared on “Diff’rent Strokes,” Barbara Bush and Laura Bush appeared on “Sesame Street,” Michelle Obama made appearances on several TV shows like “Parks and Recreation,” “NCIS” and “Black-ish” to name a few. 

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However, what Melania Trump has done with MUSE Productions — a nod to her U.S. Secret Service code name — makes this particular achievement both groundbreaking and historic.

She took a thoughtful approach to purposefully reintroduce herself to the world in a way we have not seen previously. Before the nationwide release in theaters, she personally welcomed guests and close friends for a private black-tie screening at the White House. Then last night she held a red-carpet premiere at the Trump-Kennedy Center’s Opera House, where she personally welcomed guests in her signature heels not just in Washington, D.C., but throughout cities across the nation via livestream.

The first lady was clear in her welcoming remarks that this is not a traditional documentary: “My film is a very deliberate act of authorship, inviting you to witness events and emotions through a window of rich imagery. It is a created experience that offers perspectives, insights, and moments that only few have seen. Here, honor, pride, and truth are revealed, not through narration, but through genuine discovery. It is purposeful storytelling.” In so doing, she not only humanizes herself, but also the presidency. 

Interest in the American first family has risen with the significance and prestige of the American presidency, and interest in first lady Melania Trump has been unparalleled. Through her thoughtful narration, she sets the story straight — sharing what matters most to her, highlighting that she is more than the ceremonial role and that under that iconic hat she is a mother, wife, daughter, friend and businesswoman.

EXCLUSIVE: FIRST LOOK AT ‘MELANIA’ FILM

The unifier theme was present throughout, and in some ways the film was not just a movie about Melania, but rather the story of America through the eyes of not just her, but also the close advisors, designers, artisans and staff that make up the White House — and by extension, the rich pageantry we share with the world every four years, regardless of who is in office, through our unique transfer of power. 

The highly personal, reflective and humanizing film reflects the things that are important to her — family, faith and, yes, fashion. Melania gives viewers the opportunity to learn about the legacy of her mother, who passed away a year before her White House return, the impact of her father, who also lives at the White House, the pride and love she has for her only son, Barron, and rarely seen interactions between her and the president in surprisingly funny and many affectionate moments.  

Trump’s small team of talented White House staff and advisers took center stage, showing the inner workings of her operation and leadership style. Acutely aware of her status as one of America’s most fashionable first ladies, we finally got a glimpse of how some of her iconic dresses and looks came together with the help of her longtime friend and close advisor Herve Pierre, who designed both her inaugural gowns that will be showcased for posterity at the Smithsonian. Pierre is one of the few who has created designs not just for Melania Trump, but also first ladies Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama under the iconic fashion labels of Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera.

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Trump’s leadership was consistently displayed throughout the 90 minutes, especially with regards to her programs Be Best and Fostering the Future. Highlights included scenes of her relationships with other first ladies such as Brigitte Macron, and Queen Rania of Jordan, who also attended the White House screening. For those that don’t care to acknowledge her ability to speak multiple languages, it was quietly displayed that Trump is fluent in French by watching her write her notes while Macron spoke to her in Macron’s native French language. 

Queen Elizabeth and the royal family were known for inviting the cameras in to document their lives and bring the world behind the walls of the palace yet in a much different way. In America, our first families live very public lives, but we rarely see what life is really like for them beyond the gates of the White House. 

There has always been a push to humanize and personalize the presidency through events and media appearances. This film does just that, showing us that Melania is witty, strategic, creative and honestly quite funny. While many newspapers and magazines rarely share a smiling and laughing first lady, we saw first-hand: many smiles, and rare personal moments with her husband, the president, or what she referred to him in welcoming remarks as “America’s director.” We even saw never-before-seen dancing moves to YMCA on the Inaugural night at 2 a.m., and to all the female viewers’ dismay — not a single complaint of how long she had been wearing her gorgeous stilettos. We even learned that Michael Jackson is her favorite performer and watched her happily sing along to her favorite song of his, “Billie Jean.”

Trump’s move to allow cameras behind the scenes into her life at such a pivotal moment in history has made an unprecedented mark on the role of first lady. 

After the assassination attempt of President Reagan, Mrs. Reagan voiced a lot of concerns about the safety of her husband at public events, even asking for changes. Melania Trump was shown to be no different in a very vulnerable and direct scene about her safety concerns around proposed inaugural events. She was vulnerable, yet firm, on what she felt regarding the safety of not just her, but also her family. 

It wasn’t until 50 years after Kennedy’s televised tour of the White House that we learned how involved she was in that film as her handwritten notes, suggestions and edits were finally released to the public. Similarly, in a documentary about Lady Bird Johnson’s diaries produced years after her death, we learned just how incredibly influential she was in giving advice to her husband via long, typed memos.

DAVID MARCUS: WHY MELANIA AND HER FANS DESERVE HER SILVER SCREEN STAR TURN

One scene in the film shows Trump sitting in on speech prep and suggesting adding the word “Unifier” to the president’s Inaugural address, which he ended up using in his historic remarks saying, “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier  We now know why he turned to her and smiled after that line.

While it has always been quietly known that the role of first lady has a real impact on the United States presidency, it has rarely been documented in such a visible and deliberate way. Melania Trump finally documented, in the moment, for the world to see how she, like many of her predecessors that have come before her, can be a real asset for the president of the United States. 

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The critics will certainly have their opinion about every aspect of her movie, but in the end, history will give the real review. The impact of giving the world such an insight into the days leading up to her return to service as first lady of the United States is extraordinary.

MELANIA TRUMP HOSTS STAR-STUDDED WHITE HOUSE SCREENING AHEAD OF HER FILM’S RELEASE

While today, we all cherish that televised tour given by Kennedy in 1962, at the time, there were mixed reviews and even some criticism about the money spent by the networks. In the end, we appreciate having that peek behind the White House curtain.

“MELANIA” should be on everyone’s list regardless of age, party affiliation or nationality, because it allows you to get to know our first lady directly, not from secondhand accounts, anonymous sources, political commentators or even historians like me — and that is a gift.

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Trump said in the film, “I feel energized to serve the American People once again and as always, I will move forward with purpose and of course with style.” 

Melania Trump is redefining the role of what it means to be first lady during her second term in historic ways, through legislation, events, policies, programs and yes, “MELANIA.”

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I’m young and shut out of the American Dream but I won’t be government or the left’s victim

The Trump administration is considering a plan to let Americans use their 401(k) retirement accounts for a down payment on a home, though the president is “not a huge fan” of the idea.

The move is the latest in the administration’s string of initiatives intended to combat what’s been termed “the affordability crisis.” From floating the idea of 50-year “eternal” mortgages, to demanding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds to push down interest rates, to capping credit card interest rates at 10%, there’s been no shortage of proposals.

The Trump administration rightly recognizes the financial pinch that many Americans are feeling – and have been feeling for years.

THE AMERICAN DREAM ISN’T DEAD, BUT EACH ONE OF US NEEDS TO HELP IT TO THRIVE

According to a December 2025 Gallup poll, nearly half of Americans (47%) describe current economic conditions as “poor,” the highest since September 2024. A staggering 68% believe economic conditions are deteriorating, and 11% say inflation is the most important problem facing the U.S., up from 6% in September.

Why would any American feel the need to steal from their future to afford the present, by taking out a 50-year mortgage, or draining their retirement account, just to purchase a home?

These numbers might come as a surprise, considering our nation’s decent economic conditions. Today, inflation sits at 2.7%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. This slightly elevated rate is a far cry from the 9.1% inflation rate the U.S. experienced during the summer of 2022.

Meanwhile, the national unemployment rate is 4.3% as of November 2025, barely up from 4.0% a year earlier. Most Americans today can easily find a job if they find themselves out of work.

Furthermore, real average hourly earnings increased 1.1% from December 2024 to December 2025, meaning most Americans have made progress in the fight against inflation over the past year.

I’M GEN Z AND MANY IN MY GENERATION LOST FAITH IN THE AMERICAN DREAM. PROVE THEM WRONG

So, why are so many Americans sour about the economy? Why is the Trump administration pulling out all the stops to address the affordability crisis? And why would any American feel the need to steal from their future to afford the present, by taking out a 50-year mortgage, or draining their retirement account, just to purchase a home?

For young Americans like me, it is “the best of times [and] the worst of times,” to quote Charles Dickens in “A Tale of Two Cities.”

While today’s economic indicators are generally above average, Americans are still reeling from the generational economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government’s extraordinary response to it.

The inflation rate has fallen, yes, but that doesn’t mean prices have gotten any cheaper. It simply means already greatly inflated prices are now increasing more slowly.

What you could buy for $100 in January 2020 now costs $125.62. Unless our economy sees deflation (which generally only occurs during a recession), most goods and services will cost even more a year from now.

Furthermore, homes are now more expensive than at any time since World War II. The home price to median income ratio hit 7.07 in September 2025, surpassing the ratio of 6.81 which was hit during the peak of the Housing Bubble in 2006.

THE AMERICAN DREAM SLIPS FURTHER AWAY AS YOUNGER ADULTS RETREAT TO PARENTS’ HOMES

It’s no wonder the typical first-time homebuyer in the U.S. is now 40 years old – the oldest on record, as of November 2025. The median age of all U.S. homebuyers in 2025 was 59 years old, compared to 39 years old in 2010.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve, the government’s central bank, purchased $1.4 trillion in mortgage bonds, artificially depressing mortgage interest rates and leading to skyrocketing home prices.

From 2020 to 2022, the median home price increased a staggering 40% in just two years, from $317,100 to $442,600. If that weren’t enough, the Federal Reserve decided to add insult to injury.

The Fed raised interest rates from near zero in 2020 to over 5% in 2024. Mortgage rates correspondingly increased from 3.37% in 2020 to 6.75% today. So not only do houses now cost more, but the debt required to purchase a home is far more expensive than it was just a few years ago.

This reality teaches us a lesson: There isn’t any problem too large that the government can’t make much worse.

These economic realities have real consequences. Young people are likely to feel like they can’t afford to get married, start families or purchase homes, thereby putting off many life milestones previous generations took for granted.

An unaffordable economy is part of the reason the median age for first marriage in the United States is 30 for men and 28 for women, both record highs. Likewise, the U.S. fertility rate has fallen to historic lows.

Moreover, financial stress negatively impacts all American families – both young and old – since money fights are the second leading cause of divorce, behind infidelity.

While the Trump administration is admirably looking to relieve some of the symptoms many are feeling, as former President Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

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Young Americans shouldn’t look to Washington, D.C. to solve their economic woes. Rather, they must do what Americans have always done. Take responsibility; work hard; and never ever give up.

Young adults must learn to live on less than they make, create and live on a budget, choose to sacrifice financially, pay off debt, pick up a second job if necessary and save for the future.

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America may be experiencing an affordability crisis. But never give into the left’s victim mentality, nor ask the government to solve a problem it created.

The solution starts and ends with the person in the mirror.

DEAN PHILLIPS: We can fix immigration enforcement without fueling chaos or lawlessness

Our broken immigration system is a stain on both major political parties and leaders, who have instead burdened us with massive debt, the world’s most expensive healthcare and medicines, an uninspired, second-tier public education system and policies that actually incentivize illegal crossings of our borders.

Ronald Reagan would be appalled at both parties, and George Washington would say he warned us as we find ourselves at yet another disconcerting moment in American history.

Today’s crisis is one of our own making: a battle over immigration enforcement in Minnesota — a low-crime state estimated to be home to just 100,000 undocumented people, about half the national average per capita and nowhere close to the millions residing in sunny Texas and Florida. Needless to say, it’s not a stretch to believe Operation Metro Surge is a campaign of provocation and retribution rather than resolution. It’s also not a stretch to contend that common-sense Americans (myself included) believe the porous southern border enabled by former President Biden was as absurd and unreasonable as attempting to deport 14 million undocumented people as current President Donald Trump is endeavoring to accomplish at this very moment.

TIM WALZ ACCUSES TRUMP OF ‘ORGANIZED BRUTALITY’ IN IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN, SAYS ICE TACTICS ARE ‘UN-AMERICAN’

While we should all celebrate the removal of undocumented criminals from our streets, the misguided and mismanaged effort in Minneapolis will be remembered as one of the most horrifying abuses of American law and decency in my lifetime. It killed two American citizens in cold blood and trampled on the civil rights of countless others, including multiple off-duty police officers in the Twin Cities who were accosted by roving, masked, ID-less, armed ICE agents because they were brown, or black, or spoke with an accent. But the operation did accomplish something that had seemed impossible just a month ago: a progressive left unified with gun-rights advocates, libertarians, police chiefs, rule-of-law Republicans and even a Republican senator retiring at the end of his term and liberated to speak the truth.

While the America to which Ronald Reagan aspired seems like a distant dream, I believe the better angels of America’s massive majority recognize the horrifying consequences posed by incompetent leadership and moral breaks in our national fabric.

Some on the left view Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an occupying force — an agency to be resisted at every turn. Others on the right see local pushback as undermining lawful immigration enforcement and local public safety.

But to the massive majority, this binary is a false choice.

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The executive branch has constitutional authority to enforce immigration law, and that mandate doesn’t magically disappear because state or local officials object. That’s why some level of cooperation — even if reluctant — makes sense. It prevents chaotic clashes between different authorities, allows shared information and oversight, and ensures enforcement actions are transparent. Refusing to cooperate entirely only heightens tensions and leaves communities less protected and more polarized.

Yes, cooperation must be thoughtful, conditional and rooted in respect for civil liberties. It should not be blind support for every tactic an agency employs. But neither should it be principled obstruction that fuels distrust and diminishes accountability.

Democrats and Republicans alike should want cooperation where it reinforces constitutional order, protects public safety and ensures due process. That’s not capitulation — it’s common sense governance.

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Let’s be clear: the fallout from this operation has been horrifying. People have died. Families have been torn apart. Young children have been detained. These are real harms that demand accountability and reform — not spin and not deflection.

At the same time, dismissing all enforcement as illegitimate invites lawlessness and undermines the very framework of the rule of law, due process and judicial review that protects civil liberties in our country. We don’t want an abdication of enforcement authority, rather a reimagined approach that respects constitutional due process and civil rights.

This is where local cooperation can actually be a force for reform. When state and city officials engage with federal agents, they can help ensure enforcement measures are proportionate, targeted and transparent — rather than arbitrary and alienating.

BIDEN SPEAKS OUT AGAINST IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN IN MINNESOTA, SAYS IT GOES AGAINST AMERICAN VALUES

But we’ll keep finding ourselves in this destructive battle until we address the root causes once and for all. And there is more common ground on immigration policy than many recognize. I believe:

1. Most of us want a lawful, orderly immigration system that attracts and welcomes high potential contributors while offering reasonable refuge to the oppressed.

2. Most of us want the quick removal of undocumented, convicted criminals, and the application of due process, human dignity and judicial review before the deportation of others.

WHY TRUMP SENDING TOM HOMAN TO MINNESOTA IS A STROKE OF ABSOLUTE GENIUS

3. Most of us want honesty and accountability from federal, state, and local agencies charged with enforcing our laws and protesters who exercise their rights peacefully.

4. Most of us want to fix the broken system with majority support for: Changing our asylum laws, which currently require asylum seekers, legitimate or not, to physically set foot in the United States. That means our law essentially requires an illegal border crossing to legally apply for asylum. Why not require applications to be filed at one of our consulates or embassies around the world before crossing our border?

Devising a pathway to citizenship for those contributing to America, who confess to illegally crossing our borders, who pay a fine to the US Treasury, and who fulfill citizenship education.

SEN RUBEN GALLEGO: I WON’T FUND A ROGUE ICE THAT SHOOTS FIRST AND CALLS IT LAW ENFORCEMENT

Raising the physical bar for illegal immigration and lowering the administrative bar for legal immigration. We should be recruiting the world’s best and brightest while remaining a place of refuge for the oppressed.

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In the meantime, we must come to some resolution on the leadership and tactics of ICE and uncooperative sanctuary states and cities. Minnesota leaders have rightly voiced their concerns about the violence and societal disruptions tied to these enforcement actions. These voices matter and should be part of the national conversation on reform.

But full resistance — refusing any cooperation — risks turning legitimate grievance into fruitless confrontation. That’s why cities and states should engage with enforcement agencies strategically to make immigration enforcement more just instead of creating battlegrounds that magnify mistrust.

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Conflict always presents the possibility for collaboration. The current crisis shouldn’t be an end point, rather a turning point — one where Americans of all political stripes prioritize reforms and enforcement that’s lawful, humane, transparent and accountable.

It’s surely the agenda Ronald Reagan would have fought for, and one we’d be foolish not to embrace as a great nation of immigrants.

FOX Sports’ Jamie Little talks about covering the 150th edition of the Westminster Dog Show: ‘Such an honor’

The 150th edition of the Westminster Dog Show is underway.

The highly anticipated event has taken place at the Javits Center and will conclude at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. “Prove-It,” the Border Collie, handled by Amber McCune, won the Westminster’s Masters Agility Championship on Saturday.

The conformation part of the show began with best of breed judging from the Javits Center on Monday, and group judging continued on Tuesday, on FS1, where Best in Show is awarded.

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The floor reporter for FS1’s primetime coverage, Jamie Little, talked with Fox News Digital about what it’s like to cover the event.

“Such an honor to be here to cover the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. It is the biggest dog show in the world. It’s the most prestigious. And then you add in the fact that it’s the 150th. You have to let that sink in. This is the second longest sporting event to the Kentucky Derby,” Little told Fox News Digital.

Little interviewed the first four winners on Monday, and the 47-year-old said you can feel the intensity and the emotions of those participating.

“You meet these families that have been coming here generation after generation with show dogs. We have so many stories. And that’s what makes this year special. We’re telling those stories, the background of the breeds who was here in the first year of the show in 1877 is pretty neat,” Little said.

“It’s always intense backstage in the staging area with the dogs you always feel the energy. But last night you know interviewing those first four winners that we saw on Monday night it’s we saw tears. I saw tears two or three times because it means that much more.”

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Winning the Westminster Dog Show is always an honor, but there is something different about having the chance to win the 150th edition.

“I mean the fact that you have a chance to win the 150th, I mean that’s just something for the record book you’ll never forget,” Little said.

Little has been covering the show for eight years and said it feels like the event has only gotten bigger and that the dogs have gotten better. She said that even for those who don’t have a dog, the show is for everyone and it’s something that everyone loves.

Last year was the first time in four years the Westminster Dog Show returned to Madison Square Garden, returning for the first time since COVID-19. Little talked about the significance of the event being at the world’s most famous arena.

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“My first year covering this show, we were at Madison Square Garden. It was just like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Like, it’s that show or that movie that you see ‘Best in Show.’ It’s like the bright lights, the cameras, the energy. And then with COVID-19 we had to move out of the city, and we’ve gone to a couple other places,” Little said.

“Being back at Madison Square Garden, that’s what everybody wants. They want that big venue. I mean, the amount of events that this place does and then they turn it into a dog ring — like dog showing — it’s amazing. But the energy and the lights, it’s just something special for the people watching, the sound from the audience, the dogs feed off of it.”

The favorite part of the show for Little is getting the opportunity to interview the winners.

“I think my favorite part is just telling the stories of the dogs. I think these winners that come in and they’re emotional because they’ve been trying it for 20 years, and then their parents before them, their grandparents before that. And they work so hard every single day to create these perfect specimens that they do. And to have them as a show winner, it means everything to them. So, I think anything, no matter what I’m covering, interviewing a winner is the best. And this is even better because then I have a dog I get to pet during the interview.”

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After covering the Westminster Dog Show, Little will shift gears and head down to cover the Daytona 500. She said the dog show is intense, but it’s different compared to the intensity that comes from NASCAR.

“I always joke with people that I cover four paws and then I’m going to shift it up and go four wheels in Daytona. And it is so different. I mean, you have the intensity of the dog show, but everybody’s happy. They’re having fun. The dogs love their job. These dogs are treated better than most people. I mean, they’re living a life. They are pets at home or they’re therapy dogs. They do incredible things,” Little said.

“And then you shift it up to Daytona where people are happy, but it’s intense. I mean, we’re going to see crazy wrecks. It’s going to be intense. So, completely different worlds. It’s so much fun. My hair will be back in a ponytail, headset on. For the dog show, I’m wearing a fancy evening gown like I’m going, you know, to a wedding. It’s incredible. It’s fun to get to do both.”

As Minneapolis fractures, Mobile shows how work, law and God still unite

I am now in Mobile, Alabama. My Walk Across America has brought me to the Gulf Coast, where I see a city alive with the prideful sweat of American labor, deep faith and the quiet determination to enjoy a good quality of life.

Yet, when I look at the news on my phone, all I see is the turmoil up north in Minneapolis, where federal agents have been involved in two fatal shootings last month alone — first Renee Good and then Alex Pretti. It’s a stark cultural war flashpoint: one side demanding aggressive border security and law-and-order crackdowns under the current administration and the other crying foul over what they call excessive force and federal heavy-handedness in a blue city.

As I walk these Southern roads, talking to everyday Americans, I can’t shake the question: Are we losing sight of our foundational values in this bitter culture war that seems to know no bottom?

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Everyone claims the moral high ground for America, but the visions are diametrically opposed. On the one hand, you have personal responsibility and secure borders, and on the other, you have grievance politics and open-ended leniency. The progressive left, emboldened in places like Minneapolis, isn’t stopping there. They’re pushing policies that undermine law enforcement and excuse disorder in the name of social justice.

What’s truly at stake? The very idea of ordered liberty. Will we defend the rule of law, secure communities and the God-given right to self-reliance, or descend into endless division, eroded sovereignty and a nation where chaos replaces order? From what I’m witnessing on this walk, the antidote isn’t more government overreach or radical activism—it’s the timeless principles still alive in places like Mobile.

Mobile, one of America’s oldest port cities, wasn’t conjured from academic theories, DEI mandates or endless federal stimulus checks. It rose through generations of hard work, free enterprise, trade and personal accountability.

I can’t help but notice the contrast to the South Side of Chicago, where the focus is on the government debating bloated programs and wealth distribution schemes that trap people in cycles of dependency. The result is business vacancies, lack of resources and massive, dilapidated housing projects.

The Port of Mobile stands as living proof that jobs — good, honest jobs rooted in industry and initiative — deliver dignity far better than any government handout ever could. 

But here in Mobile, the dockworkers, shipbuilders and logistics crews are out there every day creating real wealth and opportunity. The Port of Mobile stands as living proof that jobs — good, honest jobs rooted in industry and initiative — deliver dignity far better than any government handout ever could. When people are valued for what they produce rather than managed as wards of the state, communities flourish.

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I’ve spoken with families here whose livelihoods depend on this port, and they don’t wait for permission from Washington. They show up, work hard and build legacies. In sharp contrast to Minneapolis, where failed progressive policies have allowed crime, especially fraud, disorder and unchecked immigration, to fester before federal interventions turned deadly, Mobile reminds us that a strong work ethic and local economies free from overregulation are the true engines of prosperity and safety.

That’s precisely why I didn’t come to Mobile to lecture or “save” it. I came to listen and learn. True leadership doesn’t arrive with top-down government mandates or activist agendas. It walks humbly alongside communities, respects their God-given strengths and builds from the ground up. You can’t heal what you don’t love, and real transformation—like what we’ve fought for with Project H.O.O.D. in Chicago—grows organically when rooted in local faith, family and responsibility. 

In Mobile, pastors, parents and workers have welcomed me not as an outsider with all the answers, but as a brother in Christ seeking common ground. This stands in stark relief to the ideological battles paralyzing places like Minneapolis, where federal overreach meets radical resistance and commonsense solutions are lost in the noise.

The South’s quiet resurgence proves what coastal elites mock as “backward” is actually forward-thinking: lower taxes and living costs that let families thrive, stronger marriages and churches that anchor moral life, and a belief in personal ownership over government dependency. 

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Hurricanes have hammered Mobile repeatedly, yet the people rebuild without whining or waiting for bailouts. Neighbors helping neighbors, faith sustaining hope, responsibility trumping excuses. When faith erodes, as it has in too many urban centers, communities crumble.

Government can coerce compliance, but only God and the individual, rightly understood, can truly transform hearts and rebuild societies.

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