The country still shares one screen, but not one meaning. One side will dominate the other, or separation will harden into something more permanent.

The Seattle Seahawks trampled the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX, but the postgame chatter barely touched football. Fans and pundits argued about anthems, halftime, commercials, and what the whole spectacle “said” about America.

For better or worse, the Super Bowl serves as the premier civic liturgy of the American empire, a night when strangers share the same screens and offices share the same small talk. When that ritual becomes another front in the culture war, the country loses one more place to breathe.

Americans once used the game to share food, laugh at ads, and pretend for a night that they still belonged to one people. This year, the country used the game to rehearse separation.

Families fight. Politics intrudes. Resentments pile up. Holidays still force a pause. Thanksgiving and Christmas push people back to the same table, reminding them that the argument cannot become the relationship.

When even the ritual itself turns into the argument — when Thanksgiving and Christmas are no longer about gratitude or celebrating the birth of Christ but rather who can win a political debate — the family slides from conflict toward rupture. A nation works the same way. Shared ceremonies do not solve deep disagreements, but they keep disagreement from becoming total separation.

From national pastime to litmus test

Americans rarely stop living their separate lives to watch the same thing at the same time. Streaming splinters audiences. Social media isolates communities. Even big films and best-selling books now fall into ideological silos.

The Super Bowl remains one of the few national events that still compels common attention. People who hate sports tune in for the ads so they can follow the conversation at work the next day. A shared celebration, however frivolous, still binds people who otherwise share little else in common.

This year’s Super Bowl looked like a country at war with itself.

The broadcast opened with two national anthems: the familiar Francis Scott Key standard and the newer “black national anthem” that appears at more NFL events each season. The league has leaned hard into woke activism, from corporate rituals to social campaigns, and it rarely hides the moral it wants viewers to absorb. Two anthems signal two constituencies. Two constituencies begin to behave like two nations.

A cultural sorting mechanism

The halftime show sharpened that divide. The NFL chose Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican artist who performs almost entirely in Spanish, and the set centered on Hispanic identity. The stage recreated a bodega, complete with an “EBT welcome” neon sign. The performance leaned into sexual provocation, with dancers simulating sex acts and same-sex grinding played for shock and applause. The show ended with performers hoisting foreign flags, a tableau that read less like cultural flair and more like a victory lap.

A large portion of the audience did not buy what the league sold. Ratings suggested many viewers tuned out during the set. Some did so out of prudishness, others out of irritation at the message, others out of confusion. Either way, the halftime show did not function as a shared moment. It became a sorting mechanism.

Turning Point USA offered a competing halftime program featuring country artists singing about America and Jesus Christ. The stream broke records and reportedly became YouTube’s largest live broadcast. The accomplishment deserves credit. The need for it should worry anyone who wants a coherent nation. Instead of one shared celebration, Americans built parallel ceremonies, then congratulated themselves for avoiding each other.

Who is the customer here?

The commercials followed the same pattern. One spot from a mortgage lender portrayed a family of color moving into a mostly white neighborhood and encountering casual racism until they instructed the residents on diversity and inclusion. The ad did not wink. It preached.

Another strange commercial, backed by Patriots owner Robert Kraft, aimed to address rising anti-Semitism. It showed a Jewish student harassed in a school hallway as classmates mocked him and stuck a note reading “dirty Jew” to his backpack. The boy reached his locker, where a black student offered solidarity based on shared experience with hatred from whites. The ad then unveiled a “blue square” social media campaign modeled on the “black square” campaign that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020.

NFL owners did not back away from the woke script. They turned the dial higher.

Two different worlds

The next day I went to my barber, and he described the shift in real time. Small talk drives that job. For most of his life, the Monday after the Super Bowl brought lively chatter about the best plays and the funniest ads. This year, customers wanted to talk politics. They complained about the anthems, the halftime, the messaging, the moral scolding. The game itself barely came up. Friendly banter about the MVP and next season’s prospects gave way to arguments about what kind of country this still is.

That exchange captured the larger problem. Conservatives and liberals increasingly inhabit different worlds. They share geography, but they do not share premises. They do not share authorities. They do not share the same media diet, the same moral language, or the same sense of what counts as a fact. When they occupy the same room, they talk past each other. When they can avoid the room, they do.

The old American civic fracture ran along a map. The new fracture runs through families, workplaces, churches, and neighborhoods. The country did not divide into North and South. It divided into competing moral nations layered on top of the same territory. Each tribe builds its own institutions, its own entertainers, its own narratives, and, increasingly, its own rituals.

No stable regime can endure that kind of division indefinitely. One side will eventually impose cultural dominance on the other, with power used to punish dissent and enforce conformity. Or the country will choose some form of national divorce, formal or informal, with communities separating as much as law and logistics allow.

The Super Bowl did not create this crisis. It revealed it. A shared civic ritual lets people practice unity without requiring uniformity. Americans once used the game as a harmless excuse to share food, laugh at ads, and pretend for a night that they still belonged to one people. This year, the country used the game to rehearse separation.

A nation that cannot share a football game cannot share much else for long.

Auron MacIntyre, The Blaze

Chaos erupted Thursday at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee oversight hearing when Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley confronted Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison over the astounding levels of fraud uncovered in the state just months ago.

During the contentious exchange, Hawley accused Ellison of blatant corruption, alleging he worked with individuals later convicted in the scandal to shield them from investigators, and accepted a $10,000 campaign contribution from them just nine days after pledging to assist their cause.

“The people who ran the Feeding Our Futures program came to you in your official office in the state capitol on December 11, 2021, and asked for your help in getting investigators off their backs,” Sen. Hawley said. They complained to you for upwards of an hour about state investigators going after them, and they begged you to help them. And you agreed to it, amazingly. And we know you did.”

“That’s not true,” Ellison shot back.

“It’s all caught on tape,” Hawley replied. “Every single sentence is caught on tape. Here’s what you said. Let’s take a look.”

You said to them, ‘Send me the names of all these folks who are investigating them.’ You said to them, ‘Send me their names, and I’ll take that list, and I’ll call the person over at Education who’s investigating them and say, what’s going on?’ Why am I getting these complaints? Then you went on to say, ‘I already have my team working on this. What day should we get together to discuss it again?’ You made pledge after pledge to them. You said, we’ve got to make sure this guy who’s investigating them stops it. You said, ‘You have my attention. I’m concerned about this.’ You said, ‘Let’s go fight these people,’ meaning the people who are investigating the fraud. Why’d you do it? Why’d you help them?

Ellison fired back, accusing Hawley of “cherry-picking quotes,” though it was unclear how the remarks in question could be meaningfully recontextualized in a more favorable light.

“I already have my team working on this,” Ellison insisted. “My team assisted with the information that led to the prosecution and conviction of these people.”

He went on to argue that because it was a federal prosecution, he had no part in the actual conviction of the fraudsters.

“BS,” Hawley exclaimed. “You had whistleblowers come to you as early as 2019.”

The Senator went on to accuse Ellison of taking a bribe, in the form of a $10,000 campaign contribution.

Here’s what happened. They went to your office. They solicited money from you. They solicited help from you. They came to your office. It was your official office.You’ve been with them for 54 minutes. They asked you for help. You pledged it to them, and they talked repeatedly about money. In fact, it’s all they talk about. Money, money, money, money. They said, we will put our dollars in the right place. We will support candidates that will fight to protect our interests. You replied, ‘that’s right.’ They said, if you are securing your donor base and securing your power base, you can act the way you want. You replied, ‘money is freedom.’ They said, ‘the amount of money circulating…’ I’m reading the transcript. ‘The amount of money circulating in our community today is powerful, and we haven’t realized it in a meaningful way.’ And you said, ‘Give me the specifics.’ And nine days later, you took $10,000 from people who were then indicted. It’s in your reports. Why’d you do it? Was it worth it?

“You know what? This is a theatrical performance,” Ellison said.

“This is the truth,” Hawley said. “This is what accountability looks like, of which you’ve had none. You helped fraudsters defraud your state and this government of $9 billion, and you got a fat campaign contribution out of it. You ought to be indicted. That’s the truth.”

“Well, for the record, he’s lying, and that’s the truth,” Ellison said.

Sen. Hawley went on:

Oh, no, this is all on the record, sir. Did you bother to investigate where the money that you facilitated their fraud for, where it went? Do you know where it went, what it was used for, the fraudulent money? I do, because we just heard testimony about it yesterday. The funds went to hundreds of millions of dollars, to terrorist groups, to transnational criminal organizations, to the drug trade, to drug trafficking, to child trafficking. And you took $10,000, and helped them do it. The other thing is, whistleblowers came to you as early as 2019. Let’s look. As early as 2019, whistleblower…

In 2019, whistleblowers came to you in your office and referred to you fraud allegations from Feeding Our Futures, and you blew them off. Listen, your own state newspaper, The Minnesota Star-Tribune. The Partners in Nutrition brought its concerns to the attorney general’s office in 2018 and in 2019, and you did nothing. You did nothing for years. The only action you took is, once all these fraudsters came to your office and asked you to get involved and offered you money, then you got involved. Then you took the money, and then you got involved.

Hawley then told Minnesota’s attorney general that he belongs in jail, prompting Ellison to respond, “Well, we’ll see what you can do about it.” Whether Ellison will ultimately face any criminal charges remains an open question.

Dmitri Bolt, Townhall

In periods of civilizational stress, the defining intellectuals are rarely those who echo prevailing orthodoxies. Rather, they are individuals insisting on the legitimacy of first principles when those principles have become unfashionable or even dangerous to articulate. In contemporary Britain, Natasha Hausdorff, Douglas Murray, and Matt Goodwin exemplify this truth-seeking, altruistic calling. Each operates within a distinct professional domain—law, cultural criticism, and political science—yet all share a deeply anti-totalitarian idealism rooted in the defense of liberal democracy against ideological capture. Their engagement is not abstract but personal, involving reputational risk, social ostracism, and sustained public hostility. What unites them is not only dissent, but also a principled refusal to surrender truth, legality or democratic consent to coercive moral narratives.

Natasha Hausdorff’s contribution is distinguished by its juridical precision and moral clarity. As an international lawyer, she confronts one of the most ideologically distorted arenas of contemporary discourse: the legal treatment of Israel. Her merit lies not only in her mastery of international law but also in her insistence that law must remain tethered to evidence, context, and equal standards. In an environment where legal language is routinely weaponized to achieve political ends, her work exposes how selective interpretation and institutional bias corrode the credibility of the legal order itself.

Hausdorff’s anti-totalitarianism manifests in her resistance to what might be termed “normative inversion”: the process by which democratic self-defense is reframed as criminality, while terror, incitement, and authoritarian violence are excused as resistance. This inversion, which includes “victim blaming” at the national level, is not accidental but ideological, sustained by international bodies and NGOs that claim neutrality while advancing a rigid moral hierarchy. Hausdorff’s idealism consists in her refusal to abandon universal legal principles even when doing so would grant her professional safety. By applying the same standards to Israel as to any other state—and insisting those standards be applied universally—she challenges a deeply corrupt system that depends on exception and scapegoating.

The personal courage involved in this stance should not be underestimated. Defending Israel in contemporary legal and academic spaces often entails professional isolation, harassment, and reputational damage. Hausdorff’s willingness to endure these costs reflects a deeper conviction: that the erosion of legal objectivity in one case endangers all liberal democracies. Her engagement is therefore not parochial but civilizational. She understands that when law becomes a tool of ideological enforcement, it ceases to restrain power and instead legitimizes its abuse.

Douglas Murray’s singular merit lies in his capacity to articulate civilizational questions with philosophical depth and rhetorical force at a time when such questions are actively suppressed by mainstream media and academia. His legendary appearance at the Oxford Union twelve years ago became the precursor to numerous daring charges. Time and again, he has taken on Islamists and left-wing celebrities in front of menacing audiences. Importantly, he is not only a shrewd polemicist, who remains calm under pressure, but also a moral diagnostician of Western self-doubt. His anti-totalitarian idealism emerges from his insistence that liberal societies must believe in themselves to remain liberal. Against the prevailing assumption that self-criticism is the highest virtue, he argues that relentless self-denunciation becomes indistinguishable from moral abdication.

Murray’s battleground is primarily cultural. He confronts what might be called the “soft totalitarianism” of consensus enforcement: the informal but pervasive mechanisms by which dissenting views are marginalized without overt coercion. By challenging dogmas surrounding mass immigration, identity politics, and historical guilt, he violates the unspoken rules of acceptable discourse. The ferocity of the response to his work—character assassination, deplatforming campaigns, and persistent misrepresentation—testifies to the power of those rules.

Murray’s idealism is not reactionary nostalgia but a defense of Enlightenment inheritance: reason, individual moral agency, and universal rights. He rejects the reduction of individuals to group identities and resists the moral determinism that excuses behavior based on origin or grievance. This position places him in direct opposition to ideologies that divide society into permanent oppressors and victims, a framework mirroring the propagandistic logic of totalitarian systems even when expressed in therapeutic language. 

Crucially, Murray’s engagement is animated by empathy rather than contempt. His unwavering critique of Islamism, for instance, is paired with a compassionate defense of Muslims who seek to live freely within liberal societies. What he rejects is not “diversity” as such but the refusal to draw moral boundaries. His courage consists in naming those boundaries when institutions and elites prefer ambiguity. In doing so, he exposes the paradox of a liberalism unwilling to defend its own conditions of existence. His deep concern is that the West, instead of standing firm on its Judeo-Christian ideals, is giving in to barbarism and thus preparing its own suicide.

Matt Goodwin’s merit is anchored in democratic realism. As a political scientist, he confronts the gap between elite consensus and popular consent, particularly on immigration, national identity, and sovereignty. His anti-totalitarian idealism is grounded in a simple but increasingly radical proposition: that democracy requires listening to voters even when their views are considered “inconvenient.” His work challenges the technocratic assumption that policy legitimacy flows from expertise alone rather than from democratic authorization. 

Goodwin’s courage lies in his tireless determination to document and articulate patterns that many academics prefer to obscure for fear of ostracism or collapse of preferred theses. By analyzing electoral data, public opinion, and class realignments, he reveals how large segments of the population have been systematically excluded from meaningful representation. His critics often accuse him of “legitimizing extremism,” yet this accusation itself reflects a totalitarian impulse: the belief that certain preferences are illegitimate by definition and must therefore be managed rather than debated.

What distinguishes Goodwin’s idealism is his refusal to moralize disagreement. He does not portray voters as dupes or villains but as rational actors—fellow citizens with a claim to respect in that very capacity—responding to lived experience. In doing so, he restores dignity to democratic participation. This stance is costly in an academic environment increasingly aligned with activist (and, occasionally, extremist) priorities. Professional sanction, media hostility, and institutional marginalization (cancellation) are familiar risks for scholars who deviate from progressive orthodoxy. Goodwin accepts these risks as the price of intellectual honesty.

Taken together, Hausdorff, Murray, and Goodwin exemplify different dimensions of liberal, anti-totalitarian resistance. Hausdorff defends the integrity of law against ideological capture; Murray defends cultural confidence against moral coercion; Goodwin defends democratic consent against technocratic paternalism. Their idealism is not utopian but grounded in institutional realism. Unlike utopians, they do not imagine a conflict-free society, but they insist that conflict must be governed by rules, reason, and accountability rather than by intimidation or narrative dominance.

Hausdorff, Murray, and Goodwin have not spared themselves in the never-ending fight for justice. What makes the engagement of these three individuals particularly significant is that it occurs within liberal democracies that deny any resemblance to totalitarianism. Yet totalitarian tendencies rarely announce themselves openly. They emerge through the normalization of double standards, the stigmatization of dissent, and the substitution of moral certainty for empirical inquiry. Each in their own way, Hausdorff, Murray, and Goodwin recognize these patterns and refuse to accommodate them, even when accommodation would be personally advantageous.

The courage of those three modern heroes is therefore not performative but structural. It consists in sustained engagement over time—under conditions of persistent pressure. They do not retreat into irony or detachment but remain publicly accountable for their arguments. In doing so, behaving like true students of Socrates, they uphold a model of intellectual citizenship that is increasingly rare: one that treats truth as an honorable responsibility rather than a (narcissistic) posture.

Ultimately, the significance of Hausdorff, Murray, and Goodwin lies not only in the positions that they defend but also in the example that they set. They demonstrate that idealism need not be naïve, that realism need not be cynical, and that courage remains possible even in environments intrinsically hostile to independent thought. Their work reminds us that liberal democracy is not self-sustaining. It survives only so long as individuals are willing to defend its principles against both overt enemies and internal corrosion. In that defense, these three individuals stand as serious, if controversial, guardians of a fragile inheritance.

Lars Maller, American Thinker

If you’re old enough, you’ll recall the 1961 Berlin crisis. I recall it subsequently, when schools taught real history. That crisis happened during the Cold War’s peak years. In brief, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev wanted the U.S. out of West Berlin. There were multiple reasons, but, chiefly, access to West Berlin allowed East Germans to escape communist rule.

According to the National Archives, by 1961, as many as four million Germans had escaped East Germany using West Berlin. With tensions rising, and the hemorrhaging increasing, Khrushchev ordered the Soviets’ East German puppet government to string barbed wire and erect concrete barricades around West Berlin to stop the outflow. That was the beginning of the Berlin Wall, which stood as a testament to communism’s failure until 1989.

What does that have to do with America today? The point is that people vote with their feet when conditions become unacceptable. That’s no less true here. Since the nation’s inception — in fact, long before the founding — people came to the continent to escape troubles and moved west in search of better lives. East Germans fled primarily because of politics — albeit, of a brutal, totalitarian stripe.

Annually and increasingly, tens of thousands of people are leaving blue states because of politics. High taxes and red tape, inflated costs, unchecked crime, failing schools, and unashamed race bias — directed at whites — are pushing people out. Soft political tyranny and cultural decay are drivers. Human nature is universal. People will endure until they cannot.

That’s bleak news for blue states. Regardless how many times Gavin Newsom shrugs, ongoing outmigration is having adverse consequences for California and its blue cousins. Red states are benefitting. The influx of money, skilled labor, tech expertise, and businesses are gifts.

Blue state population drains have been occurring for a couple of decades. Outmigration is compounded by low fertility rates. COVID tyranny — generally worse in blue states — spurred further exoduses. Blue states have yet to recover fully from draconian lockdowns.

Wrote Steven Malanga in a fact-packed analysis for City Journal, February 4:

By contrast, Democratic states dominate the list of places with the biggest outflow of residents. Nine of the ten states losing the most population are Democratic, led by California, with a net loss of 229,000 residents, and including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois. A notable addition to the bottom ten is Colorado — a politically competitive state as recently as 2019 but dominated by Democrats since. Unlike California and New York, which have seen net outmigration for more than a decade, Colorado’s fortunes have only recently turned, but dramatically so, as the state recorded the eighth-highest net loss of residents last fiscal year. Only four of the 15 Democratic trifecta states last year gained residents: Washington, Oregon, Delaware, and Maine. In all, Democratic-led states lost about 495,000 residents to net migration.

Opening the borders to millions of “undocumented” migrants was supposedly the remedy for what ails blue states. Population replenishment — albeit with poorly educated, low-skilled peoples — is necessary. Welfare dependency ensures Democrat control. More bodies are required for U.S. Census purposes.

The Biden administration oversaw and manipulated the 2020 Census data to make sure illegals were counted for political reasons. Beyond propping up blue states, hordes of illegals streaming into red states were supposed to “transform” them. With millions of illegals still in the country, Democrats’ hope of transformations isn’t dead yet, but President Trump is determined to foil their schemes. The president closed the borders at an astonishing clip. In little more than a year, over 2.8 million illegals have been deported or have self-deported. The SAVE Act needs to be passed.

The point is worth stressing. Democrats are preoccupied with political survival. Without more bodies — without larger numbers of pliant constituents — population shifts sound a death knell. The 2030 census is pivotal. Perhaps eight — maybe more — U.S. House seats and electoral college votes are expected to shift to red states. The next census is yet another reason to maintain GOP congressional majorities and elect J.D. Vance president — the GOP’s putative nominee — in 2028.

With Trump’s rise in 2016, party realignment has accelerated. The college-educated affluent are now mainstays of the Democrat coalition, along with blacks. That represents an historic reversal. The GOP used to be the party of big money. Yes, money counts, and money fuels the progressive Left’s control of institutions, but those advantages aren’t enough. Numbers matter, and the Great American Middle are the numbers.

Working class and middle-income Americans are trending toward the GOP — or more, accurately, away from Democrats and toward Trump. Jacksonian Democracy, Lincoln Republicanism, McKinley’s working man’s GOP, and FDR’s New Deal are proof that working-class and middle-income voters decide political fortunes.

Not all the wealthy are Democrat locks, however. More of them are abandoning blue states. Since the affluent pay a disproportionate share of taxes, that’s a gut punch to spendthrift Democrats, who keep raising taxes, which helps fuel their states’ doom loops.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is proposing higher taxes on the wealthy to finance his free lunch ploys. He’s about to learn the hard way that money flees quickly and fixed assets can be divested. His supporters claim that if the wealthy don’t like paying more taxes and decide to leave, their businesses can seized. As one of Mamdani’s backers said in an X post video, anyone looking to scram could face confiscatory fines. Never mind constitutional guarantees. Mandani’s supporters are edging closer to the Russian mindset circa 1961.

Not incidentally, blue-collar and middle-income citizens pay taxes, too. Socially, these cohorts anchor communities. They provide skilled labor and management. They’re service providers. They start small businesses. It’s a double whammy for blue states when the wealthy and the Great American Middle departs.

In the early 2000s, Ruy Teixeira and John Judis wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority. It was an optimistic assessment of the Democrats’ future. To Teixeira’s credit, he admits that not only did a Democrat majority not materialize, but that the progressive moment has passed. Teixeira counsels Democrats to return to a more centrist approach to policy and governance. But are Democrats listening? It doesn’t seem so.

A majority of Virginia voters — driven by affluent, government careerists and contractors in Northern Virginia’s D.C. suburbs — just elected Abigail Spanberger governor and handed Democrats legislative majorities. No sooner were Democrats sworn in then a slew of new tax proposals emerged. Wasn’t Democrats’ mantra affordability? They’re also pushing softer criminal penalties. And Spanberger signed an executive order ending cooperation with federal authorities to curtail immigration enforcement. Democrats need the bodies.

Another reason people are leaving blue states, quality of life. Portland is an example.

Wrote Mark Hemmingway for RealClearInvestigations, February 4:

In December, bestselling author and humorist David Sedaris wrote a New Yorker magazine essay about a recent trip to Portland, Oregon. While on a walk to a donut shop, he “lost count of the strung-out addicts I passed on my way” before eventually encountering four homeless people huddled around an empty baby carriage and smoking drugs right on the sidewalk. Moments later, a dog belonging to one of the addicts rushed out and bit him.

Joel Kotkin, a well-regarded demographer and old-school Democrat, in a February 1 New York Post opinion piece, wonders if California is a “lost cause?” After cataloguing many of California’s woes caused by Democrats, Kotkin writes that there aren’t enough Republicans in the once Golden State to win and effect change. He’s right about that. His hope is that “San Jose’s pragmatic [Democrat] Mayor Matt Mahan” wins his party’s gubernatorial nomination. We suppose he’s a voice of sanity. But can one sane voice change California’s miserable dynamic?

Probably not. With a younger generation of Democrats moving even further left, and increasing numbers of sensible Californians voting with their feet, California’s troubles may be baked in. As is the case in other blue states.

Maybe Democrats should consult history? Germans remember. Go ask them.

J. Robert Smith can be found at X. His handle is @JRobertSmith1. At Gab, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover.

I often make fun of the liberal mindset that prescribes that all the personal problems of people in our society can and must be solved by government taxing and spending and the creation of more and more “programs” of one sort and another. As I write on my “About” page:

The central tenet of [the Manhattan] orthodoxy is that all personal problems of the people in society can be solved by government taxing and spending. The obvious corollary is that since all problems can be solved by taxing and spending, therefore they must be solved by taxing and spending, and anyone who stands in the way of those solutions is immoral.

The fundamental difficulty here, as Margaret Thatcher famously quipped, is that pretty soon you “run out of other people’s money.” And that’s when you are only trying to create perfect fairness and justice within your own country. More recently the progressive orthodoxy has morphed to a point where the American taxpayers are now seen as obligated to solve the personal problems of everyone in the world.

Do you think I am exaggerating? Consider if you will the most extreme of possible examples: Afghanistan. Are the American taxpayers obliged to solve the personal problems of the people in that god-forsaken country? If you are wondering, check out this piece from the New York Times on February 4, headline, “In Afghanistan, a Trail of Hunger and Death Behind U.S. Aid Cuts.”

Afghanistan — Isn’t that the country that fought violently and relentlessly for two decades to drive the U.S. out, finally succeeding when the U.S. withdrew in August 2021? We tried to bring 21st century civilization to this violent, tribal society, and they manifestly hated us and wanted nothing to do with us. They killed thousands of our soldiers. Now that we have left, it seems that they find themselves without enough to eat. Could that possibly be our problem? That is the gist of this article. In fact it’s even worse than that, because the article tries to spin the facts to make the reader feel guilty for the alleged suffering of these people. A few excerpts:

The U.S. aid cuts in Afghanistan were as sudden as they were brutal. Even after the U.S. withdrawal and the end of the war in 2021, the United States continued pouring money into Afghanistan. From the 2021 Taliban takeover until last year, Washington had provided nearly $1 billion annually — over a third of all aid flowing into one of the world’s poorest countries.

Did you know that after the disastrous 2021 withdrawal the Biden administration went right ahead and continued to throw a billion a year of American taxpayer money at these people who hate us? And then the bad, bad Trump people imposed the “brutal” cuts.

The [U.S. Agency for International Development’s] programs once helped clear landscapes scarred by war and mines, diversify crops and keep millions from hunger. Four million children are now at risk of dying from malnutrition, according to the World Food Program, the most in a quarter-century.

And it’s not just food but health centers:

Nearly 450 health centers closed because of the cuts, including a tiny white building in the drought-stricken village of Nalej, where Malika Ghullami safely gave birth to two children in past years and was pregnant again with twins last year.

Does it occur to you that the Afghans might have enough to eat if they devoted some effort to growing food instead of opium poppies? Exact figures are not available, but supplying opium to the international drug market is estimated to constitute up to half of the Afghan economy. Somehow this New York Times article never mentions that.

For some more honest information on the Afghan drug-dominated economy, here is a piece from February last year from something called the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. The gist is that after a half-hearted attempt in 2022 by the Taliban-dominated government to ban the growing of opium poppies, the market has returned to “normal,” with Afghanistan by far the dominant supplier of opium in the world markets. The Global Initiative calls the supposed ban of poppy growing “smoke and mirrors.”

Fieldwork in Afghanistan in 2024 found that the sale of opium continued unabated and had even become more ubiquitous. . . . Contrary to initial predictions, the opium ban has not put an end to the illicit drug trade in Afghanistan. The powerful traffickers who were the main source of funding for the Taliban during the insurgency continued to operate freely. . . . Despite the Taliban’s show of strength, the resurgence of cultivation and the continued trade in illicit drugs are testament to the deep roots and resilience of Afghanistan’s illicit drug economy.

So how about Afghanistan taking some of the multi-billions from the international drug trade and devoting that to buying food or operating health clinics? I’m sorry, but that would be expecting these supposedly “fiercely independent” people to actually take some responsibility for their own lives and their own society. If you think they should, then you are not aware of the fundamental principle that it is the American taxpayer, and only the American taxpayer, who must solve all of their problems.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

President Donald Trump said the U.S. should have the “lowest interest rates in the world” and argued that rate cuts would significantly reduce federal borrowing costs during an interview Tuesday on FOX Business’ “Kudlow.”

“This country should have the lowest interest rates in the world,” Trump told host Larry Kudlow. “We keep the world going.”

Trump tied interest rates to government interest expenses, saying that changes of a few points could significantly alter federal finances.

“Every point is $600 billion,” Trump said. “All he has to do if we went down two points, we don’t have a deficit anymore,” he claimed.

Trump also pointed to recent market milestones as evidence of economic strength, telling Kudlow he remembers predictions that the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching 50,000 would be considered a “miracle” by the end of a presidential term.

“I remember when I first won, they said if he gets the Dow up to 50,000 by the end of his fourth year, he will have done miracles,” Trump said. “And we’re at the end of the first year.”

Trump added, “We’ve had a very good run, and we want to keep it going.”

Trump credited falling energy prices for easing costs, telling Kudlow he recently saw gas prices as low as $1.85 in Iowa and saying prices in other parts of the country had “broken $2 a gallon.”

“And that’s like a major tax cut,” Trump said.

In the interview, Trump pushed back on the idea that strong growth should automatically prompt tighter monetary policy, arguing that markets and policymakers react negatively to inflation concerns.

“We’re old enough to remember when the stock market, when there was good news, the market went up and was bad news, the market went down,” Trump said. “That’s the way it should be.”

Trump suggested that dynamic has shifted, claiming markets can fall on positive economic news because of inflation fears and expectations about rates.

“They have the yips,” Trump said, comparing the reaction to golfers who “can’t sink a three-foot putt” when they hear the word inflation. “Well, growth doesn’t mean inflation.”

“We have to go back to the old system when we have good news, the market should go up, and we have bad news, the market should go down,” Trump said, adding, “We’ll take care of inflation as it comes.”

Warsh nomination Trump praised Kevin Warsh, his nominee connected to the Federal Reserve, in the interview’s discussion of monetary policy, saying Warsh would be influential.

“I think he’s somebody that’s going to be a real influencer,” Trump said. “I think he agrees with what I’m saying.”

Trump argued the U.S. has historically maintained comparatively low borrowing costs.

“Let’s go back again. Another 20, 25 years. We were always the lowest interest rate,” Trump said. “We used to pay like almost nothing.”

He then contrasted that with today, claiming, “Now we’re like number 38 because we have had stupid people running our country.”

Switzerland tariffs Trump illustrated his view by recounting a dispute with Switzerland, which he said benefited from low tariffs and trade imbalances with the United States.

“We had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland,” Trump said. “They were paying no tariffs, sending stuff over here like nobody could believe. And we had a $42 billion deficit and we weren’t taking anything.”

“I said, ‘You may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you,’” he added.

Trump said he initially imposed a 30% tariff on Swiss imports before later raising it to 39% following pushback from Swiss officials.

The U.S. later agreed to lower tariffs on certain Swiss goods to 15% from 39% under a trade framework announced last year, Reuters reported.

In a wide-ranging exchange with Kudlow, Trump sharply criticized Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, arguing rates should be lower.

“He’s so bad that, I mean, interest rates should have been cut. We should be two points lower,” Trump said.

Kudlow closed the interview by thanking the president for his time.

Jasmine Baehr, Fox Business

The woke immersion with the Super Bowl obviously isn’t an attempt to educate or persuade. It’s an open expression of power. “You have to listen to us. We’re superior to you. Either you submit to our drag shows and moralistic lectures against America, or we call you a bigot.” It’s an argument via intimidation and emotion. Millions understand this fact, and millions more sense it, on some perhaps not fully articulated level. If wokesters cared about “marginalized” groups, they would make their point in more compelling, thoughtful ways, in a manner respectful of the people they were allegedly trying to persuade. Instead, it’s in your face. It’s riddled with condescension, hostility and insults.

And don’t blame it on the Trump presidency. During the Biden presidency, it was exactly the same message, with the add-on: “You will listen to us or the FBI is coming for you.” Leftism is a form of totalitarianism. It starts with psychological intimidation; it ends with concentration camps. Woke does not mean “liberal”. It means control. It means domination. I will not dignify leftism by calling it a movement. A bowel movement, maybe. More accurately: a form of psychosis merged with sadism. They call us haters for refusing to submit. The hatred has overtaken the accusers.

*******

A proposed California billionaire’s tax is being criticized because it will drive wealth producers — and prosperity — out of the state. No worries. Just make it illegal for the billionaires to leave the state. Or confiscate all their present and future wealth, if they do. It’s called Communism. Ever hear of the Berlin Wall? It’s also called the warmth of collectivism.

Enjoy, California!

*******

New Yorkers have been enduring extremely harsh winter weather, but temperatures are expected to gradually increase into this week.

The bitter winter weather was “colder than parts of Antarctica” with temperatures dropping to three degrees on Sunday, the New York Post reported, noting wind chills made it feel like 14 degrees below zero.

According to the Weather Channel:

Bitterly cold temperatures are here for the Northeast, including New York City and Boston. Cold alerts blanket most of the region through Sunday, where wind chills up to 15 degrees below zero are possible for millions. Single-digit high temperatures are possible for interior portions of the Northeast, and frostbite is a major concern. These temperatures are expected to be the coldest this winter season for the region.

This winter, it’s a good thing New York City has the warmth of collectivism and Communism to sustain it. Dear New Yorkers who support Mamdani: Huddle together with your fellow citizens who voted for economic annihilation so Muslims can score another victory in their unending quest to decimate America and return us to the state of 

Michael J. Hurd

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said “there aren’t anywhere close to the votes” needed to change the Senate’s filibuster rule to allow Republican-sponsored legislation to reform voter registration requirements to pass the upper chamber with fewer than 60 votes.

Thune on Tuesday dismissed the idea that Republicans might lower the procedural threshold for advancing the House-passed SAVE Act, which would require people to show passports or birth certificates as proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Thune said he supports passing federal law to require documented proof of citizenship when registering to vote, but he dismissed talk of changing the Senate rules to create a pathway to passing the legislation, which Democrats strongly oppose.

Thune pledged to protect the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to advance legislation, when he ran for Senate majority leader in 2024.

He said his position is broadly supported within the Senate Republican Conference.

“It’s not just me not being willing to do it. There aren’t anywhere close to the votes, not even close, to nuking the filibuster,” he said of a proposal to lower the threshold for advancing legislation to a simple majority by voting along partisan lines to establish new precedent.

Alexander Bolton, The Hill

As the United States advances toward the 2030 Census, a structural political realignment is quietly but relentlessly taking shape.

It is not being driven by campaign slogans or cable news theatrics, but by population movement, economic performance, and policy outcomes that are increasingly difficult to ignore. Together, these forces are placing Democrats on the brink of a profound loss of electoral power in the 2030s, one that could permanently reshape the national political map.

Fresh population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau have been analyzed by redistricting experts. The facts indicate a clear and persistent migration away from Democrat strongholds, toward Republican-leaning states in the South and West. When translated into congressional representation, this movement has enormous consequences.

Under multiple projection models, states that reliably vote Republican are positioned to gain House seats and Electoral College votes after 2030. Meanwhile, long-dominant Democrat bastions steadily lose clout.

In one model developed by Carnegie Mellon University redistricting scholar Jonathan Cervas, Texas and Florida are each projected to gain four House seats. Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho each gain one. Meanwhile, California, New York, and Illinois collectively lose eight seats, with additional losses in Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

A parallel estimate from the American Redistricting Project is slightly more conservative but reaches the same fundamental conclusion: electoral power is shifting decisively away from blue states and toward red ones.

This matters because House seats determine Electoral College votes. When the math is applied to presidential elections, the implications are stark.

CNN analyst Harry Enten demonstrated that if current population trends hold through 2030, Democrats would lose seven House seats nationally while Republican-leaning states gain seven. Under those adjusted figures, a Democrat presidential nominee could secure every traditional blue state—plus Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—yet still fall short of the 270 electoral votes required to win. The total would reach only 263.

The underlying driver of this transformation is not mysterious. Americans are moving. And they are not moving randomly.

Since the 2020 Census, the five states with the largest population gains have been Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona, all of which voted for Donald Trump in 2024. At the same time, the five states with the worst domestic net migration have been California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, all of which voted for Kamala Harris. This is not a temporary post-pandemic blip. Census estimates through 2025 confirm the pattern is continuing.

The political consequences of this movement are amplified by the economic realities driving it.

Blue states and especially blue metropolitan areas are, by the data, increasingly miserable places to absorb inflationary shocks. Consider a December report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. States carried by Trump in 2024 averaged 2.5 percent year-over-year inflation as of November 2025, compared with 3.0 percent in states won by Harris. In metropolitan areas, the divide was even sharper. Trump state metros saw inflation of 1.9 percent versus 3.0 percent in Harris ones.

Housing costs tell the most punishing story.

Housing inflation stood at 2.3 percent in Trump state metros compared with 3.9 percent in Harris metros, a disparity attributed to restrictive zoning, burdensome permitting, and chronic underbuilding in blue jurisdictions. In New York City, for instance, average monthly rents reached $5,686 as of December, placing extraordinary strain on working families.

Economic stagnation compounds the pressure.

Moody’s Analytics reported in October that roughly 23 states, plus Washington, D.C., were either in recession or at a high risk of entering one. Economic woes were disproportionately concentrated among blue states like Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington. These areas collectively represent nearly one-third of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). California and New York alone account for more than one-fifth of national GDP output, yet both are treading water with minimal growth.

Meanwhile, Republican-governed states are expanding.

Texas recorded 6.3 percent annual income growth in the second quarter of 2025, far exceeding the national average of 2.1 percent. Florida, Utah, and Kentucky posted strong payroll growth and rising employment. This reveals how red states generally offer greater economic opportunity and affordability.

This divergence fuels capital flight. Businesses follow people, and people follow opportunity.

New York residents pay roughly $5,000 more per capita in taxes than the national average and $7,000 more than residents of Florida or Texas. Less than one-quarter of the approximately 500,000 people who left New York City during the pandemic have returned. New York has lost House seats in every decennial reapportionment since 1950. Projections suggest it will lose two more after 2030, while California loses four.

The political feedback loop is brutal. As blue states lose population, they lose representation. As they lose representation, they lose leverage to change national policy. And as economic conditions deteriorate further, more residents leave.

This is why the 2026 midterms loom so large.

Democrats are staring directly at a narrowing window of power. If these demographic and economic trends persist into the early 2030s, the party faces a structurally hostile Electoral College and a House map tilted against it for a generation. That fact raises the stakes for November’s midterms dramatically.

History suggests parties confronted with existential decline do not retreat quietly.

With control of Congress, Democrats would possess the ability to stall legislation, obstruct budgets, block appointments, and paralyze governance. They would wreak havoc and pull out every stop to derail Trump’s administration, along with the Republican brand, as the 2028 presidential election cycle begins. Any fool can see that rank lawfare, procedural warfare, and scorched-earth obstruction become more likely when long-term prospects dim.

This is no exaggeration. It is tactical behavior for a party, specifically the blue one, that understands what the numbers are signaling.

For Republicans, the implication is clear.

Turnout in November is not merely about winning a midterm cycle. It is about preventing a counteroffensive of vandalism by a party confronting the erosion of its power base. Red state growth and economic resilience offer a real model of governance that voters are rewarding with their feet. But that model takes time to show up on congressional maps and in the Electoral College. Furthermore, it can only shape national policy if it has a representative voice on Capitol Hill.

The demographic clock is ticking. The math is shifting. And this year’s fight for Congress, especially the House, is rapidly becoming the front line in a much larger struggle. It is a frenzied clash over what America’s political landscape will look like in the 2030s.

This is the quiet hinge moment of American politics.

Population, money, and misery are moving power south and west. Democrats know it. That is why November matters so much. Turnout shall decide whether blue state decline goes national, or whether voters stop a desperate party from weighing America down with unhinged malice.

Dr. Joseph Ford Cotto is the creator, host, and producer of News Sight, delivering sharp insights on the key events that shape our lives. He publishes Dr. Cotto’s Digest, sharing how business and the economy really impact us all. During the 2024 presidential race, he developed the Five-Point Forecast, which accurately predicted Donald Trump’s national victory and correctly called every swing state. Cotto holds a doctorate in business administration and is a Lean Six Sigma Certified Black 

I always tell people the day Latinos, African-American, Asian and other communities realize that they share the same oppressor is the day we start winning. Because we are the majority in this country. We have the ability to take over this country,” State Rep. ‘Gene’ Yuanzhi Wu, who serves as the Texas Democrat House Minority Leader, recently declared.

Who is oppressing Wu? The Chinese immigrant came here from Guangzhou, graduated from law school and became one of the top officials in the state. Good luck to any American who wants to move to China, become a lawyer and run for public office. And if a non-Chinese immigrant were to suggest that minorities in China should ally together against their Chinese oppressors and take over, his organs would be for sale on Temu in 15 minutes or less.

Rep. Wu represents a Houston district where a majority of the neighborhoods like Gulfton and Sharpstown are Hispanic and only a minority of residents are Chinese. Three out of four core neighborhoods have more black people than Hispanics so it’s understandable that Wu wants to point them at overthrowing their white ‘oppressors’ rather than electing a black or Hispanic man.

(Of course many of the ‘Hispanics’ in Wu’s district are illegal aliens. Wu admitted in an interview that at least a third are illegals, suggesting the real number may be much higher, and that his district is illegitimate. It also explains why Wu fights so hard to protect illegal aliens in Texas.)

But Rep. Gene Wu’s call for a race war isn’t representing Asian Americans either. Instead it hews suspiciously close to the Chinese Communist party’s agenda for tearing apart America.

Houston was the site of one of the most blatant Chinese influence and intimidation operations leading to the forced closure of its consulate in 2020 followed by the fire department showing up when its staffers began burning papers. Wu, who had attended multiple events at the spy consulate, angrily protested the forced closure, warning that “this is how WW3 starts” and ranting that it’s “madness” and claiming that “this is Trump trying to start an actual war.”

Rep. Gene Wu claimed that the closure of the spy consulate was racist and endangering Asian Americans. “It’s not just Chinese Americans that are in danger. But it’s all Asian Americans, because as we’ve seen with COVID-19 issues that there has been a dramatic spike in anti-Asian American attacks both physical and verbal.”

“Everyone spies,” Wu’s wife, who works as a reporter, argued after conducting an interview with the Chinese Communist consul general..

“We try very hard to make sure to bridge the gap between Texas and China,” Rep. Wu told China Daily, a paper controlled by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, and described lobbying members of Congress to support exporting natural gas to China. “Every time I go to DC I make it my business to visit senators and representatives to tell them why this bill is a good idea. If this gets passed and signed by the President, it will be huge for Texas and China… This is the perfect area for Chinese companies to do business.”

Rep. Wu led the fight against Texas Senate Bill 17 barring Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean takeovers of American land after foreign nationals belonging to enemy nations, especially to China, began buying up property near air bases.

“It is anti-Asian, anti-immigrant, and specifically against Chinese-Americans,” Rep. Wu falsely claimed. “It is plainly racist, and our community will not stand for it”. He argued that “this is our new form of yellow peril, where people are scared of whatever issues they have with China.”

The representative from China seemed unaware of what issues anyone might have with the PRC. “There’s you know, other administrations, people caught Chinese spies, they caught U.S. spies, whatever it is.” he said dismissively.

Even as Rep. Wu claimed to be fighting for civil rights while criticizing America in the harshest possible language, he’s had little to say about human rights abuses in Communist China. Instead, Wu has met with top Communist officials, celebrated them and promoted China’s interests inside the United States even while seeking to pit Americans against each other.

Shortly after taking office, Wu spoke at a Chinese Communist front group event welcoming Vice Premier Liu Yandong, who had served in China’s ‘United Front Work Department’ global propaganda and influence front, to Texas. The same politician who claimed that democracy would be “gone” if Americans voted for Trump had no such concerns about China’s tyrants.

Rep. Wu has claimed that “our family has been the victims of communism for a very long time, and we fled to this country as fast as we possibly could.” But he certainly doesn’t act like it. It’s entirely plausible that members of his family were purged during the Cultural Revolution. That’s true of many Chinese Communists and while it’s now common to deplore those abuses, much as Stalin’s abuses were later deplored by the USSR, that’s a long way from rejecting China.

I could not find a single mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre by Rep. Wu, but he did falsely accuse Gov. Abbott and President Trump of “sending armed soldiers to suppress peaceful protests” and claimed that “the Texas we love was built on freedom from tyranny, not submission to it.” No word from Wu on what China is built on.

Genuine refugees from Communist China and Cuba don’t pal around with officials from the countries that their families fled, lobby for their interests or denounce America in favor of them, instead they call attention to the abuses and crimes of those regimes and continue to denounce them and their ideological system.

But when given a chance to denounce Communism, Wu defended it instead.

Last year, Texas Senate Bill 24 was introduced incorporating teaching about the dangers of Communism in schools. Wu predictably came out against the bill, claiming that it would lead to discrimination against people from Communist countries and suggesting that some American Communists were heroes.

When Rep. Gene Wu calls for minorities to unite to take over America, he sounds like them.

Front Page Magazine