We’re told that most Muslims oppose Islamic terrorism and that it’s only a tiny fringe of radicals and extremists who practice “radical Islamic terrorism” (as opposed to‘moderate Islamic terrorism’ in which the moderate participants moderately detonate bombs, moderately stab civilians and moderately ram cars into pedestrians) and that their actions don’t reflect Islam.

Even those who correctly identify the roots of Islamic terrorism in the Koran and Islamic teachings still firmly insist that most Muslims oppose terrorism and only a minority support it.

Is that really true? The answer is that it depends on which Islamic terrorism we’re talking about.

There are four categories of Islamic terrorism.

Caliphate Terrorism – These are terrorist attacks carried out by groups like ISIS which claim that their leader is the Caliph of all of Islam and Muslims who refuse to obey him may be killed.

Islamic Terrorism Against Muslim Countries – Domestic terrorism by Muslim terrorists fighting to replace an insufficiently Islamic government, e.g. Muslim Brotherhood or Al Qaeda.

Islamic Terrorism Against Western Non-Muslim Countries – Terrorist attacks against America or Europe, where large numbers of Muslims live and can become collateral damage.

Islamic Terrorism Against a Non-Muslim Religion – This includes Islamic terrorism targeting a country seen as defined by a non-Muslim religion such as Israel or India and it also includes Muslim violence inside Muslim countries against non-Muslim minorities such as Christians in India or Hindus in Bangladesh or violence against Christians in mixed countries such as Nigeria.

Most Muslims oppose ISIS and ‘Caliphate’ terrorism directed at Muslims, smaller numbers of Muslims oppose Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood violence that is directed at Muslim governments, significant numbers of Muslims support Al Qaeda terrorism directed at Western countries and majorities of Muslims support violence directed at non-Muslim religious groups.

Qatar’s Doha Institute (Qatar is a state sponsor of Hamas) released a poll after the Oct 7 attacks which found that 67% of those polled in 16 Arab countries supported the attacks and 69% supported Hamas. That same year, 1 in 3 Muslims in America admitted to supporting Hamas, while by 2026, 44% came out ofthe Hamas closet. Since supporting Hamas is still illegal in America, unlike the Middle East, this is likely to be an undercounting in the U.S.

Many insist that Israel is different and the large Muslim support for terror there isn’t reflective of any broader Muslim backing for terrorism, but Muslim support for terrorism in Israel is actually consistent with Muslim support for terrorism against non-Muslim religious groups.

For example, a survey found that 53% of Pakistanis supported Islamic terrorism against Hindus by Lashkar-e-Taiba, but only 34% supported similar terrorist attacks by Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. What was the difference? Lashkar-e-Taiba is covertly backed by the Pakistani government and only targets Hindus, but does not kill Pakistani Muslims, while Tehrik-i-Taliban also carries out attacks against the Pakistani government and kills other Muslims.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has made a point of distinguishing between non-Muslims and Muslims while carrying out its massacres, asking tourists in Kashmir about their religion before killing them in the recent 2025 massacre in Kashmir. This is why so many Muslims support it.

Lashkar-e-Taiba’s position is that it is dedicated to wiping out Hindus and Jews, but that it will not harm fellow Muslims who ‘profess the faith.’ That is enough of a difference for its level of support among Pakistanis to climb from a third to a majority. And this embodies the gap in Muslim support between terror attacks against Muslims and against non-Muslims.

Here’s another example.

In 2004, 67% of Jordanians were supportive of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in Iraq (ISIS) and only 10% considered it a terrorist group. In 2005, Al Qaeda in Iraq bombed several hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 59 people, including a wedding party, and the backlash was so severe that its leader released a tape claiming that they had actually been targeting “Zionist intelligence” only to somehow blow up a wedding.

Al Qaeda’s approval rating in Jordan, after it killed fellow Sunni Muslims, dropped from 67% to 20%, and the number who considered it a terrorist group shot up from 10% to 48%.

Did Jordanian Arabs, who are 97% Muslim, fundamentally rethink their support for Islamic terrorism? Not very much. After Al Qaeda killed fellow Muslims, the number of Jordanians who considered Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks to be terrorism rose from 35% to 61%, but support for Hamas only fell from 86% to 73%. The number opposed to killing civilians in an ‘occupied’ Muslim country rose from 77% to 92%, but many supported terrorists killing non-Muslims.

“We ask Allah to have mercy on the Muslims, who we did not intend to target, even if they were in hotels which are centers of immorality,” the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq apologized.

The central issue was not terrorism: it was terrorism against Muslims. Or, more specifically, Sunni Muslims, since Al Qaeda in Iraq had already been bombing Shiite mosques in Iraq.

By 2014, with a clearer distinction between Al Qaeda and ISIS (Osama bin Laden had taken pains to distance Al Qaeda from the ISIS targeting of fellow Muslims), only 44% of Jordanians considered Al Qaeda to be a terrorist group, while 62% thought ISIS was a terrorist group.

So do the majority of Muslims oppose Islamic terrorism? Only when it kills Muslims.

Islamic terrorism is not an absolute for Muslims. Support for it or opposition to it depends on who is carrying it out, why and who the victims are. Islam is both highly legalistic and tribal, and support for Islamic terrorist attacks depends on clerical approval of particular groups and their tactics as well as whether they are attacking a hated non-Muslim group or fellow Muslims.

The Muslim terrorist groups with the broadest approval from Muslims are religiously nationalistic, attacking a non-Muslim religious group with the aim of expelling them from land claimed by Muslims, such as Israel and India, in purported defense of an aggressive Muslim colony, such as Kashmir or Gaza. Such attacks most closely parallel the founding genocides carried out by Mohammed in the early days of Islam, and are the least controversial among Muslims even when terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hamas kill women and children.

Devout Muslims are more drawn to Islamic terrorist groups seeking to firmly establish Sharia law by seizing power in Muslim countries, e.g. Al Qaeda and ISIS: however such groups are controversial among many Muslims who remain loyal to their governments, worry about being targeted and don’t necessarily want to live in a proper Islamic state. Al Qaeda initially won a good deal of Muslim support by focusing its attacks on America even though its larger aim was toppling the Saudi monarchy. Osama bin Laden had built a reputation as a devout global Jihadist who was fighting the Russians and then the Americans. The Iraq War, more than anything else, destroyed Al Qaeda’s reputation among Muslims and birthed ISIS.

Many Muslims are not at all certain that they want to live in the ISIS version of an Islamic State. They are much more comfortable with Islamic terrorists focused on killing non-Muslims in defense of Islamic expansionism than they are with the idea of toppling their own governments. ‘Good’ Muslims terrorists distinguish between Muslims and non-Muslims: another reason that some Muslim terrorist groups make a point of sparing non-Muslims during terrorist attacks by quizzing them about Islam as Somalia’s Al-Shabaab did during the Kenya mall attack.

An Islamic terrorist attack in Israel or India isn’t terrorism. An attack in America or the UK might or might not be. While an attack in a Muslim country is almost always seen as terrorism. To Muslims, targets matter more than tactics. Rather than opposition to terrorism, they oppose being terrorized. And they are quite willing to support Islamic terrorism as non-Muslims die.

The majority of Muslims don’t oppose Islamic terrorism. They don’t even view attacks like September 11 or Oct 7 as representing ‘terrorism’ until they end up on the wrong side of them.

Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine

Matt MargolisFollow @mattmargoli

He doesn’t read the comments section. You can send news tips, praise, hate mail, and media inquiries to tips@mattmargolis.com.

For weeks, Republicans have accused Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-50th District) of faking a rightward shift on transgender issues to win a statewide race. Now the public doesn’t have to take our word for it.

Why? His own pastor just confirmed it.

An undercover journalist for the Daily Wire caught Rev. Babs Miller, a “minister” at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Talarico’s longtime “church,” on hidden camera discussing exactly what we’ve suspected all along.

Talarico has drawn Republican criticism for his professed love for “trans children,” claiming that there are seven genders, and that “God is non-binary.”

Miller knows who Talarico is, and isn’t buying his attempt to rebrand himself.

“He’s getting some advice that I don’t think he should be following.” She predicted he’d drop the act the moment he’s safely in office, telling the undercover journalist, “I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was.”

That’s the whole scam, according to the guy’s own “minister.”

When the undercover journalist suggested Talarico simply “has to play this game” to win, Miller agreed, saying, “That’s what his campaign has convinced him of.” She added that the Democrat Party broadly is softening its posture on transgender issues, saying “his staff is encouraging him to kind of do the same thing, just for the next 50… days.”

She continued, “I think it’s bad advice personally, but if it helps him win, okay…”

Because it’s okay to lie if it means you get elected.

Now you know why I keep putting “minister” in quotes in reference to her.

Miller has been part of the St. Andrew’s community since the mid-1990s. She was ordained there in 2014 as an openly lesbian chaplain, retired shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, and returned to the church in 2022.

Recommended: Nancy Mace Recommends What Many Are Too Polite to Suggest for Lindsay Clancy

Miller wasn’t the only insider caught making the same admission on hidden camera. Footage separately caught Texas Democrat Party organizer Jennifer Miranda, a manager with Texas Together and the Texas Democrat Party, describing Talarico’s shift as a calculated play to reassure conservative-leaning Texans uneasy about Paxton. “I would say right now he’s trying to target a wider net, which unfortunately means being more palatable to Republicans here in Texas. He really needs to win those Texans over,” Miranda said.

None of this should surprise anyone who’s been paying attention. Talarico spent years pushing radical gender ideology from the legislature and the pulpit alike.

I mean seriously, were we supposed to believe it was just a coincidence that after years of having a creepy obsession with “trans kids” and being all in on radical gender ideology, he saw the light just as he was running for statewide office in Texas?

I’ve said before that Talarico’s pivot is a sign that his internal polling numbers are not as good as the public polls. Now his “minister” has confirmed he’s lying to win. If he were really ahead, this pivot wouldn’t be happening.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

Help PJ Media continue to report on the Democrats’ radicalism and inform voters as our nation faces a crossroads. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.

Matt Margolis

He’s a great columnist. I think he’s terrific.”  – Mark Levin

Matt Margolis is a conservative commentator and columnist. His work has been cited on Fox News and national conservative talk radio, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dan Bongino Show. Matt is the author of several books and has appeared on Newsmax, OANN, Real America’s Voice News, Salem News Channel, and even CNN. You can also subscribe to his newsletter for free!

He doesn’t read the comments section. You can send news tips, praise, hate mail, and media inquiries to tips@mattmargolis.com.

Look, I can’t tell you that everything is going to be OK for us patriots in the midterms. I think it will, but I’m not sure. Nobody knows for sure. What I do know is what the correlation of forces, to my mind, indicates. It indicates another 2022, a year when we Republicans were going to clean up against an unpopular, semi-conscious president. And we did OK. Not great. OK. And it looks to me, from where I sit, from who I’ve talked to, from what I’ve seen, and yeah, from my gut, that that’s the high-water mark for the Democrats. They might do OK. They might get the House by a few seats, and they might cut our lead in the Senate. That’s just my perspective, though. I’ve talked to well-placed optimists and doomers (one who, you know, says we lose the House and 50-50 in the Senate if we are lucky). But I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows.

Let’s look at the big themes, then get down to specific cases. What do the Democrats have going for them? History, for one. History doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it often rhymes. The party in power, especially in a second term, tends to struggle in the midterms. People get tired of the status quo.

The problems add up, the friction and the fog of war slow the progress, and people get bored. That gives Democrats another advantage: excitement and intensity. And boy, are they ever excited and intense about taking us out. They can’t wait to crawl out of their old folks’ homes, cat-overrun condos, moms’ basements, Hollywood mansions, university dorms, and perverted communes to vote out those wicked patriotic Americans of the Republican Party. They would crawl over broken glass to vote against us or at least hire illegal aliens to do the crawling over broken glass that American Democrats won’t do. Every single one of them is going to vote, probably several times.

That intensity leads to their third advantage: the polls. Negative polling can demoralize Republican voters.

But to the extent the polls are not actively bent to support the Democrats (which some of them manifestly are), Democrat intensity skews the polls because Democrats actually answer them. Anecdotes are evidence of nothing but anecdotes, but I like to informally poll fellow Republicans about whether they ever respond to political polling. I never do. And they tell me they never do. I don’t know who the Republicans answering these polls are, but I haven’t met one.

The polling is terrible for us if you take it at face value. It has us losing in places we have no business losing. But I just can’t make myself believe it. The polls don’t fit the fundamentals, and they’re too darn convenient for the opposition. Is that wishful thinking? It may be, but it’s wishful thinking based on polling’s track record of failure. Remember the famous 2024 Ann Selzer Iowa poll that had Kamala three points up on Trump? Trump ended up beating her by something like 13 points. And just a couple of weeks ago, Hasan Piker’s Hamas-diddling puppet Abdul in Michigan was supposed to win by double digits over his moderate (sic) Democrat opponent, but he ended up barely squeaking to victory by a point or so. The polls are wrong a lot, and always in one direction. When’s the last time you found a polling error that favored a Republican? That’s about as likely as finding leftovers in JB Pritzker’s fridge.

Of course, the polls could be right. I don’t think they are. Given the dire unanimity of the current polls, disbelieving them means betting on both the malice and the incompetence of the pollsters. I’ll take that bet, especially when so many are polls from outfits you’ve never heard of, like the “University of College/Pepsi Challenge Public Opinion Survey” or the “Geebo Strategies Online Solutions.”

What do we have in our favor? Well, we have a ton of money. That’s good. Plus, the folks in the know whom I’ve talked to like the strategy of waiting until after Labor Day to really start spending. Democrats have been spending for a while, but traditionally you spend early to create a positive image for your candidate and tear down the other guy. That used to work, but will it work now? This is a very partisan environment. If you’re a Democrat, we already know what we think of you, and all the ads with you and Mee-maw sitting on the porch talking about values you don’t actually believe in aren’t going to change your image as an avatar of a political party that supports crime, communism, castration, and open borders.

We also have Donald Trump, who’s good for turning out our voters. His ability to enrage the other side is already baked in, but he’s going to be out and about everywhere rallying our troops. That’s good. And while the convention was slammed for low ratings, it did what needed to be done. It set a positive tone and motivated our base.

This election is all about turning out our base. We now have a decade of experience getting the kind of voters in our coalition to come out and vote when Donald Trump himself is not on the ballot. We better turn them out. That we can’t is everyone’s big fear. But the base staying home because it’s mad seemed much more plausible when the Democrats were just annoying rather than a threat to our way of life. It’s easy to say, “Who cares?” when, at their core, both parties are composed of people who generally like America and want what’s best for it. But that’s not true with today’s Democrats.

They want to flood us with Third World barbarians, mutilate our kids, take our guns, tax us into poverty, and outlaw normal people. Yeah, there’s an affordability problem, and there’s a crime problem, and there are lots of other problems, but the Democrats caused all those problems, and everyone knows that it’s not like they’re going to fix them. America has become vastly more partisan, and vastly more binary, and I’m thinking that very few Republicans are going to be able to swallow the idiotic notion that we need to show the dumb Republicans among us (and there are a lot of dumb Republicans among us) what-for by allowing the election of a bunch of communist pervert-enablers.

I just don’t think Republicans are going to stay home in droves, much less actually vote for Democrats. I do expect the polls to tighten as we get closer to Election Day, largely because that’s when pollsters have to start thinking about their reputations and will take at least a couple of their fingers off the scale. It always happens.

So, let’s look at the races. There’s just too much going on in the House to go through individually, but our maps will do a lot to limit any damage. The House is going to be tough because we only have a handful of seats in our majority, but some of the folks I’ve talked to were confident about it in private. These people have nothing to lose by telling me what they really think. You can take it or leave it. But while Team Black Pill will get all the regime media coverage, know that there are a lot of GOP guys out there who think we can do OK in the House.

The Senate remains our firewall. We have a 53-seat majority. Democrats need to net four seats to overcome JD Vance’s tiebreaker vote. Let’s ignore the wildcard scenarios, like whether Lisa Murkowski or John Fetterman might switch parties to ensure a majority. Let’s find those four seats, if we can. We’ll start with the seats Republicans are defending. Keep in mind, the polls are negative for Republicans in pretty much all of them.

I’ve talked about Texas and that blasphemous imp Talarico already this week, and for the reasons I set forth, I think we hold it.

With the guy with the Nazi tattoo having been replaced by the guy who has kids with his second cousin, Susan Collins has a very good chance of keeping her seat in Maine. It would be pretty wild for the Maple Syrup State to swap out the chair of the Appropriations Committee for a guy who makes family Thanksgiving dinners awkward with sexual tension. She’s likely to win.

North Carolina is probably the Republicans’ toughest fight, with Michael Whatley struggling against that state’s less masculine version of Abigail Spanberger. Roy Cooper is a straight-up leftist pretending to be a moderate, and North Carolina is a purple state. I think we lose that one, but we shouldn’t give up.

Dan Sullivan in Alaska has to contend with Dem dirty tricks like ranked-choice voting and a doppelgänger on the ballot. It will be tough. I think he holds – a lot of Alaskans depend on oil, and the Democrats want to end the industry. But it will take money and effort.

Jon Husted is allegedly struggling in Ohio against leftist retread Sherrod Brown. The same is true in Iowa, with Ashley Hinson against Josh Turek. Both of these are red states. It’s hard to toss out an incumbent like Husted, and Hinson is a strong candidate. It’s going to take money and work, but I think we pull it off and keep both seats. There is also some crazy talk about Democrats expanding the map to Kansas and Florida. That’s just not going to happen, and if it does, it’s such an apocalypse that nothing else is going to matter anyway.

Now, the best defense is a good offense. What states are we going to take from the Democrats? Jon Ossoff is getting the full-court press from the regime media in Georgia; he’s an even more beta Beto, but they do like young, glib, good-looking guys. He’s up against Mike Collins, who’s a good old boy, and who I’ve gotten to know a little from interviews. The dude is smart. He ran a trucking company. When you talk to him, he doesn’t talk to you in hack clichés. He talks about money, organization, getting out the vote, and what matters. Do not underestimate him the way a lot of people seem to. Governor Brian Kemp, who backed somebody else in the primary, just decided he wanted to remain a viable GOP candidate in 2028 or later and has endorsed Collins. Let’s see if he turns his formidable Republican machine out to snatch that Senate seat; if he does, that makes him viable in the future. If Kemp can’t help recapture the seat, what good is he? In any case, we have a decent chance in Georgia, but let’s be conservative and assume we don’t; though if we do, that destroys all the Democrats’ dreams once and for all.

In New Hampshire, John Sununu seems to have a decent shot at beating Chris Pappas, who’s another Spanberger Democrat who talks moderate but would vote left. New Hampshire is a purple state, and they do elect Republicans. The name Sununu still means something there. Again, my conservative nature tells me that it’s more likely than not that we lose, but if we win, oh boy.

In Minnesota, Michele Tafoya is running against a lunatic, pervert-loving communist woman in a state that elects lunatic, pervert-loving communist women of all genders. But enough about Tim Walz. We’re probably not going to win this one, but there’s that outside chance.

And then we come to Michigan, where Mike Rogers, a straight-up veteran patriot, is going up against Abdul El-Sayed, a straight-up Islamist communist who makes AOC look like William F. Buckley. Here we’ve got a real opportunity, and I think it’s more likely than not that the good people of Michigan are going to want to be represented by a resolutely normal guy rather than a guy who dreams of imposing socialist sharia on a country he despises. I think we win this one.

So let’s tally it up. I think we lose one we had, and I think we gain one we didn’t. I think we have a couple of other pickup opportunities in purple states, but it’s hard for me to see them picking up any in our red states. It could happen, but I don’t think it will.

So I put the Senate at 52 to 54 GOP.

This is just a snapshot just under seven weeks from the midterm election. That’s an eternity. Anything can happen. And anything probably will happen.

Kurt’s next action-packed conservative novel, “American Warlord,” is out for presale now! Read Kurt’s Kelly Turnbull/People’s Republic series, including the latest “Panama Red,” and follow Kurt on X @KurtSchlichter!

Kurt Schlichter

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has suggested that churches and family members of refugees could sponsor and fund people’s relocations, as he calls for an end to federal welfare benefits for refugees, some of whom remain on benefits long-term.

Paul appeared on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show” Tuesday to discuss separate lawsuits filed by major American cities and 22 states over a pending rule that seeks to prevent immigrants who would be dependent on government assistance from entering the U.S.

“We actually have laws on the books that [say] if you come here illegally, you’re not supposed to be eligible for a host of welfare programs for five years,” Paul said.

“Some of the [ways] that people have gotten around this is by coming [on] refugee status,” he added. Paul noted that refugees are exempt from the federal government’s five-year waiting period for certain means-tested benefits and cited statistics showing that about 85% of Somali refugees who went on welfare when entering the U.S. are still on welfare before calling for changes to federal law.

Paul highlighted legislation he introduced that would “eliminate all welfare for refugees.” The bill, titled the End Welfare for Noncitizens Act, would prohibit the use of federal funds to provide benefits to refugees, asylees and illegal immigrants from obtaining federal funds under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Paul insisted that under the bill, “You can still come to this country, have someone sponsor you, have a church sponsor you and they take care of you.” He mentioned another option would be to “have a family member sponsor you and they take care of you. That’s the way it historically was. That’s the way it should be.”

“We should not have any welfare for immigrants, and it should not be a beacon to the world to come here and get free stuff,” he proclaimed. Paul also discussed documented welfare fraud before characterizing the welfare system in the U.S. as a “terrible system” where “the federal government funds it and the state governments police it,” asking, “if you’re policing something you don’t pay for, do you really care if it’s wasted?”

Paul accused Democrat-run states of using the welfare system to “bribe people to get their vote.” According to Paul, “They say ‘here, you can all have welfare and we’re not going to check to see whether you need it or not or whether you’re stealing it because Uncle Sam, the federal taxpayer, is going to pay for it.’”

Paul asserted that the federal government should shift responsibility for both funding and oversight of welfare programs to the states.

“I propose that we shift this all back to the states so that the payment and the policing would be at the state and they would bankrupt themselves if they didn’t police the system,” he said.

While Paul’s bill itself hasn’t received a vote in the Senate, Paul previously offered an amendment that would have eliminated funding for refugee and entrant assistance. The amendment was rejected in the Senate.

Twenty Republicans joined Democrats in rejecting an amendment to the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026 that would have eliminated funding for refugee and entrant assistance.

Paul’s appearance on “The Will Cain Show” and his push for an overhaul of the welfare system, along with his call for churches and families to assume responsibility for sponsoring refugees, come as a new rule published in the Federal Register is slated to take effect Friday.

The rule seeks to reverse a Biden-era policy that the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Homeland Security alleges “limited the public benefits that DHS could consider in a public charge inadmissibility.”

Federal law declares that “Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.”

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday by New York City, Chicago, Santa Clara County, California, San Francisco, Seattle and King County, Washington, alleges that the new rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act and would have adverse economic impacts. The plaintiffs are seeking to have the rule set aside.

The states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin as well as the District of Columbia filed a separate lawsuit making similar allegations in the same court Monday. Both complaints are asking for a federal court to set aside the new rule.

In a statement posted on X Monday, DHS reacted to the lawsuits by asserting that “Sanctuary states are terrified they will lose federal funds because hundreds of thousands of illegals and noncitizens might remove themselves from American welfare programs.”

Condemning the “ideological contortion required by left-wing leaders to justify their defrauding of the American taxpayer at the hands of illegal criminals,” DHS stated that it had “heard for months that illegal aliens weren’t using these very same programs” before asking, “Which is it?”

Ryan Foley, Christian Post

At a demonstration against the GOP-controlled Congress, a decidedly anti-Trump crowd has a Democrat’s name on its mind: Sen. John Fetterman.

“I voted for him. I donated money to his campaign,” said Vick Lindquist. “I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back as a Pennsylvanian. It’s very — I can’t even put it into words. I’m so disappointed in him.”

In his 2022 campaign against Mehmet Oz, Fetterman was hailed as a progressive willing to buck convention, campaigning in what would become his Senate uniform of a hoodie and basketball shorts. While in office, he’s grown increasingly isolated from his party, in part over his votes for several of President Trump’s cabinet nominees, his resolute defense of Israel and his frequent appearances on Fox News, where he bemoans the far-left wing of his party.

His seat comes up for re-election in 2028 — a date some of his constituents say can’t come fast enough.

Middle East conflict

Fetterman traveled to Israel and met with Netanyahu despite blowback on the left

“He doesn’t seem to want to do the job, at least based on everything that his ex-aides are telling us,” said Rod Dougherty of the Lehigh Valley. “He should pack up his bags and go.”

Dougherty was nodding to a recent Wall Street Journal article that reported Fetterman has skipped hearings, missed meetings with constituents and shown a general disinterest in the day-to-day responsibilities of being a senator.

NPR has not independently verified the reporting and his office did not respond to a request for comment. In an interview with CNN, Fetterman dismissed the Journal‘s reporting as “lies, half-truths, innuendos, smears and anonymous.”

Long-simmering frustrations

Discontent among his base has been brewing for some time.

“Initially, I was very excited about Fetterman,” said Ren, a Democrat in southeastern Pennsylvania who voted for him. She spoke on condition that NPR only use her first name, citing concerns about sharing her political beliefs publicly in what she sees as an increasingly partisan and dangerous climate.

“You really felt like he was fighting for you. And he was a non-conformist — obviously with his wardrobe, but also just very outspoken in a progressive way.”

She said her frustration came to a head when Fetterman voted alongside Republicans last year to end the government shutdown. At the time, Democrats were holding out their votes in a bid to renew expiring health care subsidies.

“I was really disappointed with his decision. I feel like he’s betraying Democratic Pennsylvanians and independents who support him,” she said. “I regularly write emails to his office and the last email I sent says, ‘please step aside and let someone else have your job who will do the job as they’re elected to do.’ And he’s not doing the job that he was elected to do.”

Sergio Cea is the political director for Reclaim Philadelphia, a progressive group inspired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He said he hears frequently from voters about their frustration with Fetterman.

“It’s something that makes my work very hard because as an organization that tries to endorse candidates with populist messages, more and more what I’m hearing from people at the doors is — how can I trust this person you’re supporting? I don’t want to get another Fetterman,” Cea said.

Surprise spot at GOP convention

Fetterman has developed a friendship with Sen. Dave McCormick, his GOP Pennsylvania counterpart. The pair recently formed a joint fundraising committee — a rare form of bipartisanship that raised eyebrows. Fetterman even filmed a video introduction for McCormick at the recent GOP midterm convention in Dallas.

“I’m a commonsense Democrat. I’m always going to stand with America. I’m always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life,” Fetterman said in the video.

Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., was at the convention and said he was surprised by Fetterman’s appearance.

Politics

Fetterman, already at odds with his party, makes surprise video for GOP convention

“But at the same time, Sen. Fetterman and Sen. McCormick have a great working relationship that is very well known. I would think that’s what you want as a state when you have elected officials from two different parties — that they would work together well,” he said. “What I’m most surprised by is how angry Democrats are with the fact that one of their members wants to work in a bipartisan fashion with somebody else. To me, that is exactly what we should be doing.”

The video sparked outrage among Democrats.

“It’s a big strategy for this election for Republicans — they say ‘common sense versus communism’ or ‘common sense versus crazy,'” said Christopher Beem, managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. “[Fetterman] said words that directly fit with the Republican strategy for ’26. That’s bad for Democrats.”

‘I’m not going to be a Republican!’ 

A common refrain among many frustrated Democratic constituents is that if Fetterman is going to have a cozier relationship than they’d like with GOP lawmakers, he should make it official and switch parties.

In May, Fetterman addressed this directly in a Washington Post op-ed, saying he’d be a “terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats.” He has since said he would switch if the Democratic Party became the “anti-Israel party.”

But his declarations haven’t stopped him from getting peppered with the same question. On Tuesday, he exasperatedly told a reporter on Capitol Hill, “I’m not going to be a Republican!”

Pennsylvania state representative and House majority whip Mike Schlossberg said people suggesting Fetterman switch parties are overlooking the political reality.

“His votes are pretty much in line with our party, maybe a little bit more conservative and a little bit more pro-Trump — but Pennsylvania is a swing state and I don’t actually have a problem with his votes,” Schlossberg said. “I have a problem with how he’s chosen to advertise himself and the disrespect that he’s shown to Pennsylvania voters in doing so.”

Many of Fetterman’s policies are solidly in the Democratic platform, like supporting abortion rights and LGBTQ rights, expanding healthcare and raising the federal minimum wage.

“So let me get this straight. The guy who flew the LGBTQ flag, who ran around advocating for the legalization of marijuana — he’s going to be welcome in the Republican Party? Anybody who thinks that has been smoking too much of what Sen. Fetterman wants to legalize,” Schlossberg said.

Outrage spills into state politics 

Fetterman’s Democratic constituents aren’t the only ones up in arms in Pennsylvania. State and local Democrats say the senator isn’t part of the intense campaign effort to make the case for Democrats up and down the ballot in November.

“He has been nowhere,” said State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who ran against Fetterman in the Senate primary. “Frankly, I’m not sure his presence would be welcome to begin with.”

Allegheny County Councilman Dan Grzybek voted against Fetterman in that primary, but went on to knock on over a thousand doors to get him elected in the general election.

“I can’t think of a single event that I’ve seen John at since he was elected in 2022,” Grzybek said. “We can’t find you anywhere, we can’t get assistance from you — but yet you can go on Fox News, you can fly out to Israel multiple times, you can appear on Bill Maher — how is this helping Pennsylvanians?”

He added there was broad support for Fetterman after he had a stroke ahead of winning his seat, and a later hospitalization for clinical depression at the start of his term.

“Folks were extremely sympathetic to Sen. Fetterman and what he went through with his stroke and the mental health concerns he had following his stroke,” Grzybek said. “It was really only after that point, whenever he was casting votes and engaging in rhetoric that was very contrary to the values in which he ran on — that’s when folks started to get disenchanted with him.”

Lori McFarland, chair of the Lehigh County Democratic Committee, said although Democrats “have had it with him,” there’s no coordinated push to get Fetterman to leave office.

“Right now, we have a more immediate election in November – but I do believe that we have some really strong people that are interested in primarying Fetterman come 2028.”

Barbara Sprunt, NPR

The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) recently estimated that the gap between unmarried and married men under the age of 40 continues to widen—with 15 million more bachelors than husbands between the ages of 20 to 39 in 2025.

The gap has widened by 12.4 million since 2000, when the gap between married and unmarried stood at 2.6 million.

IFS also reports, according to a General Social Survey, 11 percent of young adults in the early 2000s said they were “not too happy.” That percentage is now at 26 percent. During the same period, the number of married men ages 20–39 dropped by 15 percent.

Leading the unhappiness charge are single men, who are either postponing or rejecting marriage, or not perceived as a suitable marriage partner by single women because of various societal changes.

This is a serious problem for American society.

In his book, “Men and Marriage,” (an expanded edition of his 1973 work “Sexual Suicide”) George Gilder wrote: “Men lust, but they don’t know what for; they wander, and lose track of the goal; they fight and compete, but they forget the prize; they spread seed but spurn the seasons of growth; they chase power and glory but miss the meaning of life.”

Brad Wilcox of IFS agrees with Gilder: “Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy. It’s never good for a society to have large numbers of unattached, dispirited, and unhappy young men.”

A Wall Street Journal article from last year titled, “American Women are Giving Up on Marriage,” touches on several reasons why women are not getting married—whether it be trouble finding a suitable man or choosing a career over marriage.

Disillusioned with the current state of what they perceive to be suitable and available men, they say they are more content with singleness than their male counterparts. A commonly heard complaint is that in their search of a suitable man to marry, they are only finding a world of “man-children.”

So, why has this happened? Why are there so many unmarried young men and why are women having a hard time finding a suitable partner in what would seemingly be an abundant harvest?

First, many of these young men have no idea of what it takes to be a husband or father because they had no one to model that for them. This is just another symptom of the breakdown of the family, a culture of divorce, and a society that has economically awarded single parent families while placing financial burdens on traditional two-parent families.

Secondly, especially among working class men, the jobs that would have traditionally provided for a family have either not kept up with inflation, or in some cases, simply disappeared. In addition, our educational system is no longer providing the needed training for these men to enter the workplace and succeed. Meanwhile, the number of men attending college, the ticket to good paying and stable jobs, continues to decrease.

Finally, numerous voices in our culture have sent a message that women can succeed without having a husband—“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” as the saying goes. But when men are not marrying, there is a ripple effect that impacts all aspects of our society.

For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of children born outside of marriage has risen from 33.2 percent of all live births in 2000 to 39.5 percent in 2024. This means a much higher percentage of young people are growing up in single parent households. And single parent households are often more dependent upon government assistance, with boys who grow up without a father often ending up failing socially and economically.

Those numbers also indicate that we’re hurtling toward a demographic disaster. Married couples not only provide a nurturing environment for children but also are more likely to have children.

It is not that young men have given up on marriage. Pew Research reported in 2023 that 74 percent of teenage boys want to be married someday. The problem is that many have no internal road map or GPS to help them get there.

As a society, we need to equip these young men with the skills, personal discipline, and sense of purpose to make them “marriage material.” It is a time for us, as a society, to return to a time when men have purpose—to be faithful husbands, loving fathers, and good providers.

This is going to be a long process, and it will require a long-term societal investment in affirming healthy, traditional two-parent families with engaged fathers who model such discipline and purpose to their sons. Boys do not have a choice when it comes to the families they are born into, but adults can make the right choices to help them flourish and thrive.

Men, women, and our society will be much better off as a result.

Timothy S. Goeglein, Epoch Times

The Iran war could reshape the midterms as Democrats, Iran’s regime, dissidents, and Kurdish rebels weigh the political and military stakes of the next 50 days.

By Victor Davis Hanson

September 17, 2026

Many narratives swirl around the U.S. war with Iran as the November 3 midterm elections loom.

The Left is giddy with confidence that Democrats may take control of Congress. It is therefore planning a circus of impeachments, lawfare, and investigations to neuter the last two years of the Trump administration.

High gas prices and the current unpopularity of the Iran conflict, coupled with the historical reality that the president’s party has lost seats in Congress in 39 of the last 41 midterm elections, have convinced Democrats that they could win enough seats to cut off funds for the war.

Yet the elections are still seven weeks away, and the sheer number of known unknowns ensures an uncertain outcome.

Every side is now gaming the midterms.

The Democrats believe the unpopular war can at last halt Trump’s momentum and are already declaring it all but lost.

The Iranian theocracy agrees.

It will do its best to ratchet up tensions with a series of October surprises in hopes that Trump loses control of Congress and the United States reverts to familiar Democratic policies of ending sanctions and downplaying Iran’s race toward nuclear weapons.

Its leaders also remember Barack Obama’s “hands-off” policy when a million Iranians took to the streets during the Green Revolution of 2009. Then-President Obama remained silent as thousands of protesters were jailed and killed.

As for Trump, he remains enigmatic and says only that the war will likely end shortly after the midterms.

Trump could simply mean that Iran is on the ropes and the regime cannot survive much more than two months.

Or Trump may be hinting that after the midterms, regardless of who controls Congress, he will be free of electoral pressures and able to resume military operations to accelerate the theocracy’s ongoing economic ruin.

But it is often forgotten that two other groups may also be gaming the midterms with October surprises of their own—and in quite different ways.

If Iranian dissidents—35,000 of whom were killed by their own government in January—believe that a Democratic takeover of Congress would benefit the murderous regime they hate, then they may face very different deadlines and renewed incentives to resist.

The embattled opposition, suffering existential food and energy shortages, might conclude that if the regime is tottering in October, this may be its last chance to overthrow it before Democrats restrain Trump and spare the hated mullahs.

The same mindset might be embraced by some 10–15 million restive Iranian Kurds, who periodically resist the theocracy in Tehran.

If they, too, believe that ascendant post-midterm Democrats might defund the current American strikes against the theocracy, or that Trump will eventually be pressured into ending American involvement, then they may see overthrowing the hated regime as a now-or-never proposition.

The point is not what might actually happen if the Democratic opposition controls Congress or otherwise pressures Trump this fall to end the conflict.

The key, instead, is the perception that it would.

There are still more known unknowns.

This remains a strange conflict in which almost no news emerges from Iran. The United States has used no ground troops. There are no embedded correspondents. Western media are largely barred from Iran unless they regurgitate theocratic propaganda.

Thus, no one knows the true extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear, industrial, and military complexes.

Nor do Westerners know precisely how much the new sanctions, secondary boycotts, strangulating blockades, and frozen foreign assets have further weakened an already crippled regime—and driven a starving, fuel-starved, and furious populace to desperate measures.

It is understandable why the bloody popular uprisings of early 2026 failed against an oil-rich Iran whose half-century-old, half-trillion-dollar military-industrial complex was still largely intact.

Not now.

The theocracy is now vastly diminished after months of Israeli and American bombing and crushing new sanctions. Moreover, the desperate regime has continued to murder dissidents in the months since the failed uprising of January 2026.

In sum, the Iranian conflict is one of the strangest wars of the modern age.

The Iranian regime has suffered terrible material and financial damage.

Its nuclear program is likely in ruins, and its original command-and-control leadership has been destroyed.

The people detest it. The Kurdish minority loathes it. Conditions on the ground are dire, with terrible shortages of food, medicine, and fuel.

The resistance may sense that the Trump administration would double down on kinetic force to finish off the wounded regime if a mass popular uprising emerged and needed support from the air.

Taken together, these possible October surprises before the November midterms could make the next 50 days the most volatile in modern memory.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved its first interest rate hike in more than three years and indicated another to come, as part of an effort aimed at combating inflation brought on by spiraling oil prices and other factors.

In a move that markets widely anticipated, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee voted 12-0 to increase its key interest rate by a quarter percentage point, or 25 basis points. The move brought the overnight funds rate to a target range of 3.75%-4%.

“Inflation remains elevated,” the committee said in its brief post-meeting statement. “Today’s policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee’s 2 percent goal. The Committee will deliver price stability.” Despite a raft of conflicting recent statements from policymakers, markets had priced in a better than 90% chance that the FOMC would approve the increase, though there was chatter about the possibility of multiple dissents.

Persistently high inflation readings coupled with statements from Chairman Kevin Warsh a few weeks ago had convinced Wall Street that the Fed would OK its first rate increase since July 2023. Updated projections the committee released Wednesday showed that a strong majority of officials think another hike is possible later this year.

The dot plot grid of individual officials’ expectations indicated that 16 of the 18 participants – Chairman Kevin Warsh has chosen not to submit a dot since taking the position – expected another hike, with four of those seeing two more as possible. Two participants expected the committee to stop at one hike.

However, there are no increases penciled in for subsequent years, with one cut each indicated for 2028 and at least one for 2029. Officials also nudged up their expectations for inflation this year. They see the headline personal consumption expenditures price index at 3.7% and core excluding food and energy at 3.4%, both 0.1 percentage point higher than the last update in June. The Fed doesn’t expect to reach its inflation target until 2029, though it sees both measures dropping off sharply in 2027 – 2.3% for headline and 2.5% for core.

The committee had been on hold all year and was expected to stay there, until the tide began turning towards a hike in late August. The Fed rarely only moves once, as policymakers generally eschew incremental moves when they think inflation is too high and needs elevated rates, or when growth is too slow and the Fed tries to boost demand with lower rates.

While the move was expected, the rationale behind the hike was unusual. The Fed generally looks through the kind of inflation the economy is experiencing now, with the higher fuel costs from the Iran war and the lingering impacts from tariffs. However, officials in recent days have weighed the cost of continuing to look through the price increases, particularly in light of a stabilizing labor market. The committee lowered its outlook for the unemployment rate to 4.1%, down 0.2 percentage point from June.

The worry now is that the duration of the energy prices could raise inflation expectations and start to spread through the economy. Economists also see expanded investment in artificial intelligence as a potential inflationary factor. Also, the “transitory” episode from a few years ago is still fresh in policymakers’ minds, as Fed officials thought the supply-and-demand shock from the Covid pandemic eventually would fade. Instead, inflation readings hit 40-year highs before the Fed decided to act.

In July, the debate generated considerable dissent on the policy view, with three FOMC members voting against the decision to hold, preferring instead a quarter-point hike. At this week’s meeting, 2027 was a fairly close call, with eight officials pointing to another hike, six seeing the funds rate holding steady and four envisioning cuts. Markets already have been pricing in higher rates across the spectrum. Treasury yields have been surging. The 10-year note has risen about a quarter percentage point since Warsh’s remarks at the Fed’s Jackson Hole, Wyo., symposium on Aug. 28. The benchmark is up about a full percentage point since its February low. The 2-year note, which is most sensitive to rate expectations, has seen even sharper gains.

Borrowing costs are on the move as well. A 30-year fixed rate mortgage has soared to 7.19%, up some 38 basis points since the Jackson Hole speech and more than a full percentage point from a year ago, according to Mortgage News Daily.

Jeff Cox, CNBC

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced eight articles of impeachment Tuesday against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, accusing him of exceeding constitutional and congressional limits on U.S. military action in Iran, Yemen and Venezuela.

Massie introduced the resolution on the House floor, where he spent more than an hour outlining allegations ranging from violations of the War Powers Resolution to unlawful military strikes and retaliation against a U.S. senator.

The first three articles focus on the administration’s war with Iran. Massie argues the conflict began without a congressional declaration of war or other statutory authorization and alleges Hegseth continued military operations despite congressional efforts to end U.S. involvement.

Massie also accused Hegseth of continuing hostilities beyond time limits established under the 1973 War Powers Resolution.

Other articles target the Pentagon’s conduct in military operations against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean. Massie alleges the administration improperly substituted military force for traditional law enforcement and failed to adequately protect civilians.

Another article concerns Operation Absolute Resolve, the U.S. mission that resulted in the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Massie alleges Hegseth lacked constitutional or statutory authority for the operation.

Massie also accused Hegseth of retaliating against Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., over Kelly’s participation in a video urging military personnel to reject unlawful orders.

The eighth article challenges U.S. military operations in Yemen, alleging Hegseth initiated hostilities without congressional authorization and failed to comply with War Powers reporting requirements.

“In all of this, Secretary Hegseth abused the powers entrusted to him as Secretary of Defense by subordinating the constitutional limits on the use of military force and the laws governing the conduct of hostilities to his own policy objectives,” Massie said.

American Greatness Staff

The FBI has now released its eighth tranche of files on Thomas Matthew Crooks — the 20-year-old who came within an inch of killing Donald Trump in Butler, Penn. Like the earlier drops, this one is 181 pages of interview summaries, invoices, evidence logs, and internal communications from FBI Pittsburgh. It’s heavily redacted, and 95 pages are withheld outright. In June I went through the fifth tranche, and found that the redactions said more than the visible text. What survives the redactors is still stranger than most of what you’ve heard about this case on television. Here’s what stood out to me.

1. The FBI had the ladder a week before Wray said it wasn’t found

On July 24, 2024, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Judiciary Committee: “We did not find the ladder at the scene.” He added that the Bureau did not believe Crooks used one to reach the roof.

A 302 in this release, dated July 17 — a full week before that testimony — records that a private citizen found a ladder and a long-gun bag “just inside the wooded area” of an empty lot beside the Village Square Mall in Bethel Park, along with two empty 20-round ammunition boxes. Inside the bag was Crooks’ Clairton Sportsmen’s Club membership badge, ID number 1133 [1927–1929].

So Wray’s statement was accurate in the narrowest possible sense: the ladder was not at the scene in Butler. It was 40 miles away in a wood lot — and already in FBI custody — when he chose those words. Nobody on the committee asked the follow-up, because nobody knew to.

The recovery itself is weird. The citizen didn’t leave the items where he found them. He loaded the ladder and the bag into his pickup and drove them to the parking lot of a Crowne Plaza hotel, where the Evidence Response Team photographed and collected them. As they finished, a “slim piece of black plastic, with potentially a button on one side” fell out of the tailgate. The citizen said it wasn’t his. Agents bagged it as evidence. The file doesn’t say what it was. FBI(25-cv-2216)-1928 — ladder and long-gun bag collected at the Crowne Plaza

2. The FBI was looking for a second phone

Four days later, on July 21, a special agent and a supervisor walked a linear search pattern across that same area — coordinates given to six decimal places — and rummaged through a dumpster “for a phone believed to be associated with Thomas CROOKS” [1920–1922].

They also searched a second location, an apartment complex on Library Road, because its coordinates were “saved on CROOKS’ phone,” and reviewed a funeral home’s security cameras covering the road outside it for the morning of July 13.

They found nothing. But the search only makes sense if investigators believed a device existed that they did not have. Crooks’ primary Samsung was recovered from his body. Elsewhere in the file, evidence item 1B40 is a separate Samsung containing a year of texts and calls ending in July 2023 — so the Bureau had at least two of his phones and was, a week after the shooting, hunting for a third. FBI(25-cv-2216)-1920 — dumpster search for a phone associated with Crooks

3. Someone who looked like Crooks walked into a gun store 120 miles away — with two men

Every witness in this file, family included, says the same thing: Crooks did everything alone. He went to the range alone, bought ammunition alone, had “no friends in general.”

Then there is Keystone Armory in Edinboro, Penn., two hours north of Bethel Park. The store called FBI Pittsburgh itself to report that on May 25, 2024, a “person of interest who resembles the shooter” spent about an hour browsing the store “accompanied by a white male believed to be around his mid 30’s and another older white male with a gray beard.” The lookalike bought 20 rounds of 7.62x54R — Mosin-Nagant ammunition — with a MasterCard at 12:41 PM [1933–1936].

The timing is plausible. Crooks was booked into a 5 PM carbine class in Mars, Penn., that same day; Edinboro to Mars is a comfortable drive. The store handed over its surveillance video. The release contains no follow-up 302 confirming or ruling out the identification, and no indication anyone identified the two men. Either it wasn’t him, in which case the file should say so — or it was, in which case the “lone wolf with no friends” story has a hole in it. The Bureau hasn’t felt obliged to tell us which. FBI(25-cv-2216)-1933 — Keystone Armory tip, Edinboro (lookalike + two men)

4. A stranger on the range the day before

On July 12, the afternoon before the shooting, Crooks was at the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club rifle range. He signed the log at 2:45 PM; the cameras show him arriving at 12:45. The club’s officers told agents the footage “shows CROOKS talking with another, unknown club member on the range. This member was the only other person on the rifle range” [1851].

He shot two guns that day: his AR and “an older military style rifle” — which, if you’re keeping score at home, is the kind of gun that fires 7.62x54R.

Agents photographed the unknown man and his vehicle off the club official’s phone, then ran DMV checks on every name on the sign-in sheet. Whatever came of it is not in this release. FBI(25-cv-2216)-1851 — Clairton range; unknown club member with Crooks

5. The contents of the gun bag

Alongside the sling, gloves, earmuffs, and safety glasses you’d expect in a rifle bag, agents inventoried a Stanley 12-foot tape measure, a red Sharpie, a Hyper Tough stapler, and a box of light-duty staples [1928]. Make of that what you will; the agents didn’t.

6. Four encrypted Belgian email accounts, and two foreign governments

An analyst reviewing Crooks’ phone found it had repeatedly accessed Mailfence — described in the file as “an encrypted email service hosted in Belgium” — between April 15 and July 8, 2024, across what appear to be four separate account IDs [1947–1948]. On July 15, two days after the shooting, FBI Counterterrorism sent formal “Foreign Dissemination Requests” to two governments, names redacted, asking for “any and all records” on accounts found on the device [1972–1982]. Rep. Mike Waltz later said the accounts traced to Belgium, New Zealand, and Germany. What those governments sent back, if anything, is not here.

7. The Deputy Attorney General personally authorized something

A five-page 302 dated July 19 opens: “per authorization by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, as conveyed by the Office of the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania,” two FBI officials “accessed the [redacted]” pertaining to Crooks [1896]. The rest of the five pages is black. Thirteen further pages were pulled from this release as “Referral/Consult” — bureaucratic shorthand for records that belong to a different agency. Which agency is not stated.

Whatever DAG-level sign-off was required to look at, it wasn’t a Samsung or a gun-club sign-in sheet. Those didn’t need one.

8. The father’s account

The interview with Crooks’ father gives us more of an idea who his son was. Thomas, according to his father’s FBI interview, talked to himself constantly, and more so after community college — “moving his hands and speaking to himself.” At night his parents heard what “sounded like he was dancing and whispering.” Two or three times a week he paced the house. His father joked with him about hearing voices; Thomas answered, without anger, that there were no voices, he was just talking to himself. He had recently bought a chest rig and ceramic plates. He bought ammunition online “going from website to website until he found a site that would sell to him.” And, perhaps most relevant: “THOMAS not known to write, and no writings or manifestos were found.”

The father learned his son was the shooter from two CNN reporters, who called him before the police did. A neighbor was contacted by a New York Times reporter before the FBI knocked [1795]. The press beat the Bureau to Bethel Park.

9. The anti-Trump story falls apart

A classmate had told a task-force officer that Crooks made anti-Trump statements. Her lab partner, interviewed a week later, said “she couldn’t have gotten it more wrong,” that he was “very upset” the claim had been passed along, and that Crooks never once discussed anything personal [1938]. Another classmate described him as the smartest person in the room, unable to tolerate small talk, and — on seeing the news — thought it was “analogous to having a course with Lee Harvey Oswald” [1894].

10. Somebody else paid for the cremation

This one isn’t in the FBI file; it landed the same day I was finishing this piece. The New York Post reports that Crooks’ cremation was paid for by an “anonymous donor.” The source is a note at the end of an FBI summary of an interview with Crooks’ father — part of a trove of records the Bureau handed to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley for his own Butler inquiry, which the Post obtained. The information, the document says, appears to have come from the family’s lawyer. An addendum notes the father was “retired” and the mother on leave from work, which the Post reads as the family being unable to cover the cost; elsewhere in the same records the father describes himself as “unemployed” at the time of the shooting. The Post couldn’t reach him.

I flagged the cremation itself in June. The FBI released Crooks’ body to his family on July 23, 2024, ten days after the shooting, and the family had it cremated. Nobody told the Butler County coroner, nobody told local law enforcement, and when Rep. Clay Higgins showed up on August 5 to examine the remains on behalf of the House task force, he found that “on J23, Crooks was gone.” The Bureau’s response at the time was that releasing a body to next of kin is routine, which is true, but beside the point: it is not routine to do so while a congressional investigation into that body’s final afternoon is under way.

What’s new is that the family didn’t pay for it. Someone else did, and that someone doesn’t want to be named. Perhaps it was simple charity for a family in the worst week of its life; the father was out of work, the mother on leave, and there are worse things to spend money on than sparing them a bill. That would be a kind thing to do, and an easy thing to say. It would also be easy for the Bureau, which wrote the note, to say who it was. It hasn’t. One correction to the record

Crooks’ last ammunition purchase at Allegheny Arms was not in the morning, as widely reported. Store video shows him entering at 1:32 PM on a system the store admits runs 17 minutes slow — real time roughly 1:50 PM, minutes after his father says he left the house at 1:45 [1862]. He asked for five- and ten-round magazines. The store had none.

For the record: what the fifth tranche already told us

This release doesn’t stand alone. When I went through the fifth tranche in June, the striking thing wasn’t anything the FBI said; but rather everything unsaid. Roughly 150 pages in a single release were withheld not under any FOIA exemption but as “Sealed Pursuant to Court Order” — a seal the Department of Justice has never identified by court, proceeding, or party, in a case with a dead shooter and no charged co-conspirator. Two witnesses were interviewed at the Cranberry Marriott the evening after the shooting, and every substantive line of both 302s was blacked out “per ICE,” which is not an agency that asserts exemptions over ordinary domestic witnesses. A rally-goer described to agents two unidentified men on the AGR perimeter in the hour before the shooting — one screaming at spectators from a red Chevy pickup, the other in fatigue pants with a camera bag walking into the AGR building — and the file showed no sign either was ever identified. And four days in, the Counterterrorism Division had already pivoted from investigating the shooter to monitoring the public’s reaction to him under the “domestic violent extremist” framing, tool name redacted.

Put the two tranches together and the same question keeps asking itself. The fifth release had two unidentified men on Meridian Drive; the eighth has two unidentified men in a gun store in Edinboro and an unidentified man on the range in Clairton. The fifth had 150 pages under an unexplained seal; the eighth has a five-page memo that required the Deputy Attorney General’s sign-off and is entirely black. Each tranche adds a detail that doesn’t fit the lone-wolf account, and each tranche is missing the pages that would explain it. What this adds up to

None of this proves a conspiracy, and I’m not claiming it does. What it proves is that the public account of this case has been shaped as much by what officials chose not to mention as by what they said. The ladder existed and was in evidence when the Director said it wasn’t found. Investigators were hunting for a phone they never disclosed. A store two hours away reported the shooter with two companions, and the file goes silent. A five-page memo needed the Deputy Attorney General’s permission and is entirely blacked out.

Two years on, the FBI has still not explained any of it. The documents suggest it could. Whether it will depends on whether anyone with subpoena power reads them.

Tom Elliott