How does America survive when its citizens belong to two divided camps that believe fundamentally incompatible things?  

Over the last century, there has been a trend to establish “truth and reconciliation commissions” in countries emerging from periods of political terrorism, totalitarianism, or civil war.  The idea is to acknowledge the crimes and atrocities that past governments officially sanctioned and to recognize the harms inflicted upon their victims.  As is often the case when governments “disappear” citizens or throw them in gulags for their politically incorrect thoughts, it is the not knowing that haunts society.  Survivors bereft of answers are left with inconsolable anguish.  The commissions are often used as a first step toward healing grave national trauma.

It is no surprise that these commissions generally reflect the worldviews of the prevailing government that forms them.  Communist governments are quick to label past “right-wing” officials as “murderers” while memorializing their own murderers as “patriots,” “civil rights heroes,” or “noble revolutionaries.”  Politically correct governments in the West today often describe their countries’ founders and explorers as “racists,” “white supremacists,” “imperialists,” and perpetrators of “genocide.”  No doubt the people alive during these consequential periods of history would take exception to the way they are remembered, but descendants — particularly descendants in possession of political power — maintain at least a temporary monopoly over the historical record.

Although Democrat politicians and Antifa terrorists hysterically insist that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are “disappearing” foreign nationals present in the United States illegally, that is not the case.  But that lie — reinforced on Wikipedia, news blogs, and on cable news — is one example of an expanding collection of diametrically held beliefs deeply dividing the American people.  

American citizens who are opposed to open borders and endless illegal immigration see ICE agents as performing critical tasks.  Those agents put their lives on the line every day in order to arrest illegal aliens — many of whom have been convicted or accused of serious crimes — and protect American citizens.  Democrat politicians, however, call ICE agents “slave catchers” and “Gestapo thugs.”  Antifa-affiliated groups dox officers, physically harass them, and even shoot at them.  Anarcho-communists explicitly call for “war against ICE.”  Deranged leftists stalk and assault Trump administration officials every day.  Half of America sees ICE officers and administration officials as selfless patriots who should be honored for their sacrifices.  The other half wishes them death.

Right now, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and MSNBC are all very upset that former FBI director Jim Comey has been indicted for false statements and obstruction of a federal proceeding.  Well known political pundits are all repeating some version of this statement: We have never had a situation in which a sitting president has so brazenly used the criminal justice system to go after his political adversaries.  This is the consensus opinion of those with institutional power, prestige, credentials, and fame.  Yet to ordinary Americans without such accolades, elite talking heads sound delusional, amnesiac, and maliciously deceptive.

How could people at the height of their professions possibly describe the indictment of Jim Comey as “unprecedented”?  Americans for the last ten years have witnessed abject weaponization of the Justice Department and Intelligence Community against Donald Trump, his associates, and his supporters.  Hillary Clinton’s inner circle and Barack Obama’s trusted lieutenants co-opted  the FBI and CIA in an effort to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy, remove him from office, and perhaps even convict him for treason.  Jim Comey was instrumental in this nefarious plot.  As journalist Matt Taibbi said the other day, “think of the national security implications of implying that your own president is a spy for a foreign country. … You can’t have an FBI director doing these sorts of manipulations and lying to Congress about it and getting away with it.”

Yet the Russia Collusion Hoax was only one part of a decade-long effort to destroy Trump and his MAGA movement.  Democrat saboteurs working for the U.S. military and CIA turned a normal conversation with the president of Ukraine into Trump’s first impeachment.  Then the FBI and DOJ labeled the January 6, 2021 protest against election fraud an “insurrection” — laying the grounds for Congress to pursue a truly unprecedented post-presidential impeachment.  For years, FBI director Chris Wray lied to Congress and the American people about the presence of federal law enforcement officers near the Capitol that day.  Only in 2025 have we now learned that nearly three hundred plainclothes FBI agents were on the ground during the protest, along with dozens of informants and an unknown number of other federal and local agents, all possibly stirring up mayhem.

Millions of American have long suspected that agitators created a “false flag” event on January 6 to help justify a subsequent prosecution of Trump and preclude his running for president once again in 2024, but those voices were censored on social media accounts for years.  Treating Trump and his supporters as “terrorists” became the order of the day for both Silicon Valley and the federal government.

FBI SWAT teams busted into the homes of ordinary families in predawn raids to make it clear to MAGA Americans that — unlike Antifa and Black Lives Matter members — conservatives enjoy no “privilege” to protest official authorities in the United States.  The Biden administration — arguably illegitimate since it secured election “victory” through blatant mail-in-ballot fraud — chose not to cool things down for the sake of the country.  Instead, Obama holdovers running Biden’s presidency prosecuted high-profile members of Trump’s team for spurious “crimes”; harassed conservative parents opposed to leftist teachers’ racial and sexual indoctrination of their children; and intimidated pro-life activists, Christians, and just about any group too closely aligned with Trump’s MAGA agenda.  

Joe Biden called Trump a “criminal” and the “greatest threat to democracy” and labeled MAGA voters “violent extremists” and “domestic terrorists.”  His administration conspired with social media companies to censor Trump and conservatives, generally.  The Biden White House created several iterations of a “disinformation” board in order to justify Democrats’ continued ban on political dissent and conservative speech.  Lawfare specialists successfully disbarred Trump’s lawyers for simply defending their client’s interests.  Then Democrat lawyers orchestrated civil and criminal lawsuits against President Trump in half a dozen jurisdictions while working to remove him from the 2024 ballot in crucial battleground states.  And after years of Democrats calling President Trump a “Russian agent,” a “dictator,” a “Nazi,” a “fascist,” and every other kind of vile pejorative that might convince a delusional listener to believe that Trump had no right to live, at least two separate assassins tried to murder him last year — killing one civilian and wounding several others in the process.

At no time in American history has such a large-scale effort gone into utterly destroying a political candidate, his aides, and his voters.  Yet when the current DOJ decides enough is enough and that at least one of those anti-Trump conspirators should be prosecuted for perjury and obstruction, the mainstream media lose their collective mind.

We may not be emerging from the aftermath of a terrible civil war, but America is nonetheless desperately in need of a “truth and reconciliation commission.”  The problem is that we can’t agree about anything.  One side believes in God; the other side largely does not.  One side believes men can become women and that a “climate apocalypse” is about to kill us all; the other side refuses to play along with such fantastic delusions.  One side believes that government agents provide citizens with certain privileges; the other side knows that rights exist regardless of bureaucratic decree.

It may be impossible to reconcile a nation so divided about basic truths.  We must try.  Otherwise, the real trouble is just beginning.

J. B. Shurk, American Thinker

Following President Trump’s announced intention to surge federal forces into Portland, Oregon, where riots are held daily outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, the useful idiots of Anti Profa are planning a “direct action” for Sunday, September 28th. 

This is a significant escalation. As is so often the case, the independent journalist and Antifa foe Andy Ngo broke the news.

A direct action has been planned for Sept. 28 at the Portland ICE facility after Trump issued a statement that he plans to send in troops to protect the federal property. Antifa and communists have said they refuse to back down and plan to escalate their rioting. They have called…

The post continues:

They have called for militant reinforcements in Seattle and Los Angeles.

It is belaboring the obvious to note that this could get really ugly, really fast. Since the president only announced the deployment on Saturday, it’s unlikely any significant number of federal forces have yet to be deployed. 

Antifa was recently designated as a domestic terrorist group by President Trump, and they richly deserve it. The question is this: How in the world do the actions Antifa claims to be planning not constitute an insurrection under the Insurrection Act of 1807? 10 U.S. Code § 252 – Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority, would seem to apply here. That section states:

Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.

That would appear to state that the President of the United States would, in the event Antifa does what they claim they want to do, have the legal recourse to unleash the full might of United States federal forces to restore order. To point out that this wouldn’t end well for Antifa is the grossest of understatements. What’s a trifle baffling is that this legal recourse hasn’t been invoked before now.

Britannica defines an insurrection as:

…an organized and usually violent act of revolt or rebellion against an established government or governing authority of a nation-state or other political entity by a group of its citizens or subjects; also, any act of engaging in such a revolt. 

That’s precisely what Antifa is doing. It was even more egregious in the summer of 2020, when not only did rioting useful idiots cause several deaths and a billion or so dollars in property damage, but some actually seized a portion of the city of Seattle, installed an armed thug as the ruler of the area, and expelled civil authorities. Granted, they were so incompetent that they couldn’t feed themselves, and their rebellion collapsed, but that doesn’t make the crime any less.

Sunday will tell the tale. Will it be a violent conflict? Or a fizzle?

Ward Clark, Red State

A $1.8 billion lawsuit brought by an anonymous activist and the state of Texas is seeking to recover money they say Planned Parenthood illegally took from Medicaid.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Thursday in the case, Doe v. Planned Parenthood.

When Planned Parenthood was exposed for selling fetal tissue and organs, Louisiana and Texas quickly moved to revoke the organization’s Medicaid eligibility. Court orders delayed the revocation.

As the courts debated Planned Parenthood’s eligibility, the group continued to make Medicaid reimbursement claims despite the uncertain status until 2020, when the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the states.

In a lawsuit filed in 2021, a whistleblower sued Planned Parenthood under the False Claims Act. Designed to protect taxpayer dollars from fraudulent actors, the False Claims Act requires that “any person who knowingly submits, or causes to submit, false claims to the government is liable for three times the government’s damages plus a penalty that is linked to inflation,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice website.

Pro-life leader and legal expert Jennie Bradley Lichter called the case an “existential threat” to Planned Parenthood in an opinion piece for The Hill.

Lichter, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, wrote that “under the False Claims Act, money obtained from the government while ineligible — even if collected under a court order that is later overturned — must be repaid in full.”

Susan Baker Manning, general counsel for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, denied that the legal theory has any merit.

“This theory is yet another effort to weaponize the law to attack Planned Parenthood,” Manning said in a statement on Wednesday. “This case has one goal: to shut down Planned Parenthood and deny patients access to sexual and reproductive health care.”

Katie Glenn Daniel, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s director of legal affairs, said Planned Parenthood “had no right” to the taxpayer money.

“The whistleblower in this case, Doe, is suing on behalf of the people to recover taxpayer dollars Planned Parenthood had no right to take and still has not voluntarily paid back, plus fees and interest,” Glenn Daniel told CNA.

“The nation’s largest abortion business felt so entitled to taxpayer money, it spent years billing Medicaid after being disqualified by Texas and Louisiana — a direct result of their disregard for human life exposed by David Daleiden’s undercover videos showing their role in the sale of baby body parts,” Glenn Daniel said.

As part of a recently enacted tax package, the federal government cut Planned Parenthood funding. More than 40 locations are closing this year. The New York Times reported alleged medical negligence at New York-based Planned Parenthood locations earlier this year.

“Despite reports of medical negligence, declines in actual health services, and record political spending, Planned Parenthood demands the taxpayer faucet stay flowing forever,” Glenn Daniel said.

Kate Quinones, Catholic News Agency

We need digital IDs. State governors are pushing it. Gavin Newsom last year allowed drivers licenses onto Apple and Google wallets. This “mobile drivers license,” or mDL, is a digital ID, and one more link in the chain.

And it is Americans, including Bill Gates and the controlling owner of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who are financing the digital ID push. “ The NHS [National Health Service] in the UK has an incredible amount of population data, but it’s fragmented,” he told Blair in February of this year. “It’s not easily accessible by these AI models. We have to take all of this data we have in our country and move it into a single, if you will, unified data platform… The secret is to get all of that data in one place.”

In September, Ellison made clear that he viewed the power of data centralization in behavior change. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly watching and recording everything that’s going on.”

Ellison’s Oracle is an AI database cloud computing company and he is its best salesman. Ellison, the second richest man in the world, and owner of CBS and CNN, has “donated or pledged at least £257m to the Tony Blair Institute,” reportedthe New Statesman last week. “Ellison donations have helped it grow to more than 900 staff, working in at least 45 countries.”

The nightmare scenario for mass, constant spying on citizens is not theoretical. China in 2019 created a social credit system with rewards that include better employment, school admissions, and shorter wait times in hospitals, and punishments including denial of access to public services and social events, denial of train and air tickets, and public shaming.

One study found that at least one-third of total “offenses” were not actually against the law and thus expanded “local government authority into moral and social domains beyond the law,” found researchers.

UK’s Big Brother Watched recently warned that a digital ID system, even if initially limited, could be a gateway to more invasive government surveillance and intrusion.

Why would any liberal and democratic Western government like Britain want such a thing?

Money is no doubt a big part of it. Oracle and other high tech companies stand to make billions taking bits of our money here and there for every transaction. Governments like Keir Starmer’s also seem eager to give them billions in contracts to monitor and analyze the population.

We found no evidence Starmer would personally benefit financially from digital IDs, however, and as a political leader, he must consider whether his actions are popular, and digital IDs are not. A YouGov poll released yesterday found UK opinion toward digital IDs was 42 percent in favor and 45 percent against. And given the negative reaction to them online, popular opposition will likely rise.

Tony Blair Institute’s (TBI) polling may have misled Starmer. TBI’s first question primed people to think about how inconvenienced they’ve felt without a digital ID, a blatantly manipulative form of polling.

No honest pollster seeking to give a client a realistic understanding of how the public thought about digital IDs would have started with that question, because they know the importance of framing.

The second question was equally biased. “Some are suggesting the government should introduce a new app, allowing instant access to a range of public services.” The framing suggests awareness on the part of the pollster that the public had a negative view of “digital ID,” hence the use of the “app” euphemism.

The third question was “Do you think there is digital technology that could help tackle these issues… Processing asylum seekers and managing the UK’s borders.”

One reason to think Starmer relied on the TBI’s biased polling is that Starmer pitched the digital ID as necessary to stop mass migration. “I know working people are worried about the level of illegal migration into this country,” said Starmer. “Digital ID… will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.”

The notion is absurd. Nations have maintained borders for hundreds of years without the need for digital IDs.

Given how badly the Starmer government’s digital ID roll out appears to have backfired, why did Starmer and Blair push it?

One possibility is that they really believe in the mission of improving people’s lives. That is already how they justify it. Said Starmer, “it will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly – rather than hunting around for an old utility bill.”

But it is hard to believe Starmer and Blair really viewed the difficulty of finding where you left your utility bill as a high-priority social problem.

It appears more likely that they are hiding their reasons and that the real motivation is the same as the Chinese government: to control the population.

Gates last year released a Netflix documentary calling for sweeping AI-powered censorship of people he disagrees with on vaccines and other issues.

The Starmer government’s digital IDs should be a wake-up call to all of us. For years, various people have been raising concerns about digital IDs but free speech and privacy advocates have clearly not done enough to stop them. That needs to change.

The good news is that the backlash to the digital IDs appears strong and growing. And anyone can see that, when they spoke, Blair was taking instructions from Ellison.  “You can pipe this data from these three thousand separate data sources into a single unified database,” said Ellison, “and that’s what we need to do.”

The episode should wake us Americans up to the continuing threat of total surveillance and censorship. Powerful American high-tech elites see dollar signs in controlling our data — and our behavior.

Michael Shellenberger, X

Trump fumed, ‘Wasn’t she the one that married her brother in order to gain citizenship?’

In as Trumpian a fashion as it gets, the president has rekindled the years-long debate: Did progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) marry her brother?

Shortly after conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a deranged leftist, Omar reposted a video on X that called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.” Republican lawmakers saw an opportunity to censure the “Squad” member and remove her committee assignments. The motion failed by a 214-213 vote.

Nevertheless, some conservatives are demanding Omar’s denaturalization and deportation to Somalia. Denaturalization is allowed in cases of “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.” To be clear, Omar will not be denaturalized, nor deported.

But amid Omar-gate, President Trump fumed that she was “SCUM,” derided her “Country of Somalia,” and asked, “Wasn’t she the one that married her brother in order to gain citizenship???”

The accusation is nearly a decade old, prompted in part by court filings and a trail of murkier evidence.

Public records show that Omar entered a religious marriage with a man named Ahmed Hirsi in 2002, separated in 2008, and then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009. Elmi, a British citizen who later attended college in the US. It is Elmi who some have suggested may be Omar’s brother, an allegation Omar has consistently denied.

The marriage with Elmi ended in 2011, but they did not obtain a legal divorce until 2017. In that same period, Omar reconciled with Hirsi, had another child with him, and even filed joint tax returns with him in 2014 and 2015, despite still being legally married to her alleged brother.

In 2020, the Daily Mail quoted an old friend of Omar, Abdihakim Osman, who claimed Omar herself had described Elmi as her brother – and admitted she married him to get the papers he needed to study in the US. Osman claimed Elmi was introduced around Minneapolis as family, and that Omar told him explicitly she was helping her brother get student loans. Omar has flatly denied this, dismissing the story as “baseless,” but has refused to provide documentary evidence to settle the matter.

In 2018, one conservative outlet discovered archived Instagram posts from 2012 that appear to show Ahmed Elmi calling Ilhan Omar’s daughter his “niece.” In 2015, photos from a London trip placed Omar alongside Elmi and relatives, all appearing under the shared surname “Elmi.” But these posts are no longer available and cannot be independently verified.

The Star Tribune tried to confirm Elmi’s identity but ran into the same problem: Somali records are difficult to obtain, and Omar herself declined to clarify.

While this scavenger hunt remains incomplete, what is beyond doubt is that Omar’s life today bears little resemblance to the humble origins she once invoked.

Ilhan Omar was born in Mogadishu in 1982, the youngest of seven children. Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was a colonel in the Somali army who brought the family to a Kenyan refugee camp before they eventually resettled in Minneapolis, where Omar grew up in public housing and later entered politics.

She built her brand as the daughter of refugees, a progressive outsider weighed down by student debt – the antithesis of a silver spoon Congressman. But her most recent financial disclosure revealed a net worth as high as $30 million — a staggering increase of 3,500 percent in a single year.

The source of that fortune is her most recent husband, Tim Mynett. His venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, ballooned from under $1,000 in 2023 to as much as $25 million by the end of 2024. The firm’s board is stacked with powerful names, including former senator and ambassador to China Max Baucus.

Rose Lake Capital’s website once bragged about structuring “legislation” before that word was quietly removed. It now claims $60 billion in assets under management. Around the same time Rose Lake took off, Mynett’s California winery, eStCru, jumped from being worth just $50,000 to as much as $5 million. Both companies have faced lawsuits alleging fraud, which have since been settled.

The overlap with Omar’s official role is clear. After the launch of Rose Lake, Omar formed a congressional US-Africa Policy Working Group. She and Mynett have since appeared at events promoting investment in Africa – exactly the kind of opportunity Rose Lake now pursues. At face value the arrangement is indistinguishable from influence-peddling.

The same Omar who has scorned politicians for leveraging their office for gain now appears to be doing it herself, handsomely. In America, the socialists have a funny way of always cashing in.

So, back to Trump’s accusation. Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother? As it stands, it’s impossible to say one way or the other. Omar continues to deny the allegation as baseless.

What is certain is that Omar has prospered enormously in America, moving from refugee housing to the halls of Congress to a personal fortune worth tens of millions.

That story is perhaps the greater indictment. The congresswoman who speaks endlessly of justice and equity appears to have mastered the very Washington tricks she pretends to loathe.

Barack Obama’s long-promised presidential library is shaping up to be just as corrupt as his administration. You probably haven’t heard much about this in the media, but recent tax filings reveal that money donated to the Obama Foundation—supposedly earmarked for his sprawling “presidential center” in Chicago—is quietly being redirected to one of the left’s most notorious dark money groups: the Tides Foundation.

The numbers tell the story. In 2022 and 2023, the Obama Foundation handed over $2 million to Tides, a group best known for serving as a clearinghouse for radical left-wing causes and for shielding donor identities. It should come as no surprise that George Soros heavily backs Tides, and Tides is directly tied to groups organizing anti-Israel protests. That includes demonstrations against the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocities. In other words, donations made in the name of funding a presidential library are now helping bankroll organizations promoting antisemitic activism under the guise of social justice.

That’s pretty on-brand for Barack Obama.

“The Tides Center played an administrative role in the program by processing grants while Cities United [a nonprofit] managed the application process,” the spokeswoman said in an email. Grants ranged from $15,000 to $30,000 each over the two summers.

Tides has also handled donations for Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which sued the group in California Superior Court last year. It alleged “egregious mismanagement” of more than $33 million in its funds, according to court documents. That lawsuit is ongoing.

In addition to sending donations to Tides, the Obama Foundation has sent more than $3 million in 2022 and 2023 in grants to Gofundme.org for undisclosed “grassroots leaders to empower girls through education,” according to the group’s filings.

Meanwhile, the foundation admitted it has so far spent more than $615 million building the Obama Presidential Center, which is scheduled to open in spring 2026, according to its website.

The group, which received just $129,320 in donations in 2022, spent more than $27 million on salaries.

While community members struggle, insiders at the Obama Foundation are doing just fine. The foundation’s CEO, Emeka Jarrett, earned over $750,000 last year. The executive vice president, Rob Cohen, pocketed nearly $650,000, and also maintains ties to the Pritzker Realty Group. His connection to Penny Pritzker—sister to Governor J.B. Pritzker—only highlights the tangled web of Democratic powerbrokers who are thriving while the project supposedly dedicated to “the people” spirals out of control.

ICYMI: A ‘Deranged Leftist’ Assaulted a Trump Admin Official at the United Nations

Meanwhile, the presidential center itself—originally sold to the public as a beacon of civic pride for Chicago’s South Side—has turned into a financial pit. Construction on the 20-acre site in Jackson Park began years ago, with a ballooning price tag that has already exceeded $615 million, far above the initial $500 million projection. The opening date has slipped again, now pushed to spring 2026. Local residents aren’t thrilled either. One lawyer described it bluntly as a “monstrosity,” pointing to rising costs, neighborhood headaches, and little actual benefit to the people forced to live around it.

This entire project reeks of the kind of carefully crafted con job only career political operators could pull off. Sell it as a beacon of unity, then funnel millions to radical, antisemitic causes, all while insiders pocket obscene salaries. It’s a true reflection of the same kind of corruption that plagued Obama’s presidency.

The Obama Presidential Center is a $615 million con, funneling money to radical causes and insider salaries. The mainstream media won’t cover this, but we will. Support our work by joining PJ Media VIP. Use promo code FIGHT for 60% off for ad-free access and sharp reporting. Support America First journalism.

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.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that white men of a “certain religion” are responsible for “so much damage” just two weeks after the assassination of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.

Clinton, 77, made the remarks during a segment Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in which the two-time Democratic presidential candidate said America has yet to achieve the “more perfect union” spoken of by former President Abraham Lincoln.

“We haven’t gotten to the more perfect union, and we fought a Civil War over part of it. And people have been protesting for hundreds of years that things were not as they should be, given our ideals and how we should be moving toward them,” said Clinton.

“So, I think that’s what makes us so special as a country, and the idea that you could turn the clock back and try to recreate a world that never was dominated by, you know, let’s say it, white men of a certain persuasion, a certain religion, a certain point of view, a certain ideology, it’s just doing such damage to what we should be aiming for.”

Earlier in the conversation, Clinton, who is promoting the 20th anniversary of the Clinton Global Initiative, warned that equality and progressive ideology were “in the crosshairs of those on the right.”

“The idea of ‘We The People’ that all men and women are created equal, that seems to be in the crosshairs of those on the right who want to turn the clock back on the progress that has been made,” she said.

In an October 2023 interview with CNN, Clinton suggested that supporters of then-presidential candidate Trump — whom she described as “MAGA extremists” — are in a “cult” and should undergo “formal deprogramming.”

“Sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure,” she said. “He’s only in it for himself.”

Ian Giatti, Christian Post

Charlie Kirk is emblematic of one of the things that is great about our country.  Endowed by our Creator, we have freedom of speech.  The First Amendment in our Bill of Rights enshrines this.  Within bounds, we can express our own opinion, argue, and debate.  Most importantly, we are free to say unpopular things so long as there’s no incitement to violence or willful defamation.

Charlie used freedom of speech to enlighten, educate, argue, and persuade.  He chose a debate format, offering people with ideological differences a chance to give their own perspectives.  If you count winning by hearts and minds, there was a clear champion over time of the debates.  And, that champion was gathering strength and gaining ground.  This is what terrified atheists and progressives most.  The latter’s worldview has a stranglehold based on conformity, consensus, and ideological purity couching no challenge or dissent.

Calls have been renewed for progressive fascists to renounce political violence and violent rhetoric.  This would leave progressives embracing just the socialist component of fascism.  Establishing such a limit on themselves, they would have to settle for progressive socialism.  This presents a vulnerability to ever louder calls to debate differences instead of resolving them with coercion, intimidation, and violence.

Why can’t progressive fascists debate?  The answer is that, decades ago, progressives lost all the arguments on their merits.

How can Democrats defend socialism when it has impoverished and tyrannized citizens everywhere and every time it’s been tried?  Won’t capitalism have to be recognized as the only economic system in mankind’s history capable of elevating people out of poverty and increasing liberty?

How will progressives justify regulation of every personal and corporate action?  How will they oppose implementing only necessary, affordable, and beneficial regulations?

When libertarians opine the money you have earned legitimately is yours, what argument will advance the idea that all money belongs to the government from whence it is allocated to the people?  How will leftists advocate for confiscatory taxes instead of low tax rates?

Will advocacy for open borders sound more compelling than having only legal immigration that serves our country’s interests?

Progressive fascists crave social justice even though it brings violence and anarchy.  How will this stack up against citizens’ desire to live in safety in their neighborhoods applying criminal justice?

Will authoritarian arguments for freedom only within narrowly specified bounds sound better than freedom of everything as long as it’s not specifically forbidden?

Will Marxists convince listeners that words are violence, or will freedom of speech be cherished even if the opinions expressed are unpopular or disfavored?

What new arguments will be made that welfare should be open-ended, and there should be no workfare by able-bodied individuals?

How will consumers be convinced that higher cost, unreliable wind and solar energy with blackouts and brownouts is preferable to lower cost, abundant energy?

Is the U.S. an immoral and degenerate country led by, and populated with, irredeemably racist and unremittingly oppressive people?  Or, will more people be persuaded these United States represent the best nation on earth, and things keep getting better over time?

Will Democrats argue Western Civilization is evil in all respects?  What response will be given to evidence presented that Western Civilization is the best that’s ever been?

Apostate Christians and atheists have found their home in the Democrat party.  Will that party now plainly advocate for their worldview, knowing there’s only this life with the highest goals of hedonism or a struggle to build utopia?  What will be the rebuttal to the Christian worldview that best perceives, understands, and explains reality?

When does life begin?  If it’s not a tomato or a squirrel, what is that newly conceived being?  Is it a human being?  When should new individual human life be protected?  Christians and conservatives have ready answers.  What responses can be given by atheists and progressives that won’t evoke horror and revulsion in many?

Over decades, our culture rejected Christian roots and influence.  We progressed to modernism in our post-Christian time.  Progressivism knowing no limits, modernism has been rejected for a post-reality vision.  Nevertheless, science and facts are useful for describing reality. So, what is the compelling argument by progressives for a reality defined only by imagination and unburdened by what is sensed? That reality is just what political elites say it is today?

Is the grooming of children for sterilization and sexual mutilation going to be defended outright by Marxist cultural theorists?  Won’t conservative advocacy maintaining the innocence of children for as long as possible be received more favorably?  How will arguments go for holding accountable enablers and practitioners when inevitable buyer’s remorse of Frankenstein procedures is expressed?

Will enablers of perverts, predators, pedophiles explicitly be lionized by the left?  Or, is there insurmountable empathy for protection of women and girls in spaces and opportunities?

Are progressive arguments better for group identity and enforced level achievement when compared to those for individualism and exceptionalism?

Will leftist arguments for reparations based on ancestral offenses win the day along with the idea of inexorable systemic racism?  Rather, shouldn’t people, all made in the image of God, be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin?

Everyone’s for equality.  But, is this forced equality of outcomes?  Or, will there be recognition that individual differences means there will always be inequalities of outcomes absent coercion. Aren’t arguments more attractive for equality of opportunities?

For decades, progressives in both political parties have put American interests last in economics and foreign affairs.  Is this defensible?  Contemporary arguments advocate for putting American interests first.  We can’t go in both directions.  Which is most appealing?

World government is the gold ring for many progressive fascists.  Incremental progress has been made over time with innumerable multilateral engagements.  Can these be defended against arguments for only bilateral relationships that best serve our country’s interests?

If progressives can’t win any debate on the merits, then they won’t participate.  It suggests speeches, arguments, and debates should still be used by Christians, conservatives, and libertarians for the purpose of awakening some of the woke.  This will work and be effective so long as freedom of speech endures.  But, the primary goal of progressive fascists will be to re-impose censorship and hollow out freedom of speech.  Censorship will be expanded greatly in scope along the lines of what was implemented in the great trial run during the COVID-19 tyranny.  If progressives can’t win a debate, then there should be no debate.  In the immortal words of Anthony Fauci, “Just do as you’re told.”

It doesn’t bode well for our country when one of the two major political parties disdains virtues and eschews traditional and normal values.  With or without any debate, the progressive fascist grip on the Democratic Party means their pernicious ideas are being mainstreamed. In memory of Charlie Kirk, let us resist those ideas and vanquish them, in debate, winning hearts and minds one by one.

Whitson G. Waldo, III is a capitalist, a venture capitalist, and master and skipper of a 43 foot monohull sloop-rigged 

Like the late Soviet Union, it depends on ignorance and wishful thinking.

With the last, desperate attempt to restore the integrity of the system he had given his life to having failed, the only tolerable course of action open to Sergey Akhromeyev was to hang himself. Over the years, many have questioned whether Akhromeyev and his fellow plotter of the August 1991 coup attempt, Boris Pugo, truly died by their own hands. Surely, a soldier like Akhromeyev would have done the job with his service pistol, rather than hang himself with his Party ribbon? Along with a short note giving some account of himself, Akhromeyev left behind a modest but precise amount in cash, to cover his outstanding bill at the Kremlin staff canteen. It seems unlikely that an assassin would have gone to such trouble.

I wrote before about how Britain’s present political settlement carries the same stench of doomed malevolence as the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the years before they collapsed. Yet I will be the first to admit that the analogy only goes so far. One cannot imagine the architects and apparatchiks of the Blairite state doing the decent thing — with the aid of their rainbow lanyards — when the curtain finally falls. And Pret wouldn’t have offered them credit anyway.

Akhromeyev’s last gesture, and the objectives of the coup attempt that sealed him into that path, was an expression of a particular sense of Marxist-Leninist propriety — one that was fundamentally at odds with the reality of the modern world into which Mikhail Gorbachev had been attempting and failing to integrate the USSR. Financial debt had become a defining feature of the Soviet Union in its final years; the socialist superpower’s dependence on the institutions of Western capitalism to keep itself creaking on made a mockery of decades of propaganda. 

Looking back, it’s surprising to remember that up until the mid-1980s, in the world of international high finance, the Soviet Union was considered one of the most well-regarded sovereign borrowers. The Ministry of Trade’s monopoly on international transactions, and the size and solidity of the Soviet state, left creditors reassured that the Union’s institutions would never be allowed to fail in their financial obligations. But with the Gorbachev reforms, all of that changed, as sub-sovereign and state-owned entities were given the authority to negotiate their own financial dealings with foreign entities, and to build up debt on their own books. Suddenly, international markets took an interest in which bits of the Soviet economic system actually sustained themselves, and they did not like what they found. 

For much of its existence, the Soviet economic and trade strategy was simple; to use the export of commodities to finance the development of heavy industry, with domestic consumption deliberately suppressed, even to the point of famine. Initially, the primary export commodity was grain, eventually replaced by oil. The success of this strategy in the 1920s and 30s is often exaggerated, with industrialisation in these years probably proceeding slightly more slowly than it had done in the Russian Empire in the period 1890-1914. It was in post-war reconstruction in the late 1940s and early 1950s (with the assistance of expropriated plants from defeated Germany) that this approach demonstrated the most impressive results. 

However, once the country had rebuilt its basic industries by the early 1960s, the command economy proved far less successful at cultivating innovation and driving productivity than the market economies of the West, and the USSR began its long period of economic stagnation. The necessity of suppressing domestic consumption in order to maintain a sustainable balance of payments created widespread political dissatisfaction. At the same time, the Soviet Union was attempting to maintain military parity with the United States and its allies, as well as equipping and arming its network of client states in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. 

This burden was ultimately unsustainable, but for many years, the Soviet system was able to make a decent fist of hiding it — not only from the outside world and its own citizens, but also from its own leadership. So long as the central government maintained a monopoly on international trade, and the citizenry were unaware how far behind the West their own living standards were falling, then continual trade surpluses could be kept up. Huge swathes of Soviet industry were consuming more resources than their output was worth, but the profitability of key export commodities ensured that the economy overall was just about in surplus, so long as consumption was kept to a bare minimum. This resulted in vast distortions in the allocation of resources, and unmet needs and wants on an immense scale among a population who, up until perestroika, had little choice but to lump it. 

Political choices cause resources to be allocated in very strange ways, and incentivise behaviours among consumers, investors and producers that run contrary to the interests of prosperity

At first glance, this bears little resemblance to the economy of modern Britain, in which basic and heavy industries have atrophied or moved abroad, and in which a free-floating currency means that a large current account deficit and a reliance on imports is regarded essentially as a self-correcting non-problem. Under the surface, though, we can find a system in which political choices cause resources to be allocated in very strange ways, and incentivise behaviours among consumers, investors and producers that run contrary to the interests of prosperity. The ultimate answer of where these resources will come from, and what the corresponding opportunity cost will be — i.e. who pays — is left unaddressed. The wealth is assumed simply to exist because the need exists, and if it doesn’t it will be up to somebody to create it, and hand it over. 

The most obvious area in which this is visible is the parlous financial state of many British local authorities, as a result of the imposition of adult social care costs onto their budgets, with additional pressure created statutory obligations to provide certain services, such as taxis to take children with special needs to school. Some of the figures associated with these expenses are truly astounding. Certainly, these needs could be met in one manner or another far more efficiently, but it is the underlying logic that illustrates the predicament of the system.  

The local authorities know that these costs are ultimately unsustainable. SEND taxis, adult social care, and the various other statutory obligations substantially exceed the taxes they are able to levy. But it is illegal for them not to provide those services, so they go on doing so; borrowing for as long as they are able to, in the knowledge that at some point, they will go bust — as some already have and dozens more are projected to in the coming few years. If a private company were to do this, it would be considered trading while insolvent and it would be illegal — but for the local authority, it would be illegal for them not to. 

What really happens when a local authority goes bust? Technically, they cannot go bankrupt in the way that a business can, but they can issue a Section 114 notice, obliging councillors  to come back with a new budget within three weeks. These usually necessitate substantial cuts to the most basic services the authority provides to rate-payers, such as waste disposal, but the statutory obligations remain. Presumably, what is keeping the whole thing going, and causing suppliers and creditors not to consider the entire realm of local government in Britain as financially delinquent, is the unspoken assumption that ultimately, the national government will be obliged to stand behind local authorities.  But the situation in Birmingham suggests that we will have to wait to see just how much ruin there is in a city before Whitehall steps in. 

Burdensome statutory obligations are not the only way in which the law has intervened ruinously in the finances of local authorities. Birmingham City council was ultimately bankrupted by a tribunal judgement on historic equal pay claims, which saw judges rule on whether or not a range of jobs were “equal” or not, and thus whether a group of predominantly female employees in one set of roles had been discriminated against when compared to another group of predominantly male employees in another set of roles. They did this with seemingly minimal reference to what those people actually did in their jobs, or to the relative aggregate supply and demand for people willing to do that work in the economy as a whole  Instead, justices appeared to be making a subjective judgement on the relative social status of the jobs, which they concluded were equal and thus befitting equal payment.  This followed several similar judgements against private sector employers which collectively, are likely to be transformative in how low- and semi-skilled work is contracted and remunerated across the economy. 

Beyond the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act and the raft of other quasi-constitutional laws that guide the judiciary in their role as the nation’s economic guardians, there is now a bewildering array of entitlements, cross-subsidies, and needs-based pricing which completely distort to whom things are sold, for how much, and where the bill is sent. 

Commentator Max Tempers has documented the astonishing growth of the Motability scheme in the financing of new cars, to the point that it now accounts for at least a fifth of the market. This means that hundreds of thousands of brand new vehicles are paid for out of Personal Independence Payments to individuals for disabilities, the huge growth of which in recent years seemingly being down to mental health complaints, such as anxiety. In an example of knots of legally enforceable entitlements the state has bound itself up in, a council is forbidden from taking into account whether a parent has motability financed car on account of a SEND child, should they also request a council-funded taxi service to school. 

In housing, strict rules ensure that builders must offer a certain percentage of any new development at sub-market “affordable” pricing in return for permission to build anything at all.  In utilities and banking, a baroque structure of cross-subsidy ensures that the costs of serving the bottom quintile are passed on to the slightly better off, at the government’s behest. The exception is retail electricity, where the market has been abolished altogether by the government’s price cap — introduced to shield consumers from the price shock in Autumn 2022, and now effectively politically irremovable.  Although government intervention in energy pricing had distorted anything resembling a free market in electricity, by imposing the costs of subsidising, balancing and backing up intermittent generation, long before that. 

I could go on and on, but the important point is that in many cases prices are ceasing to mean anything — they are simply a division of the cost of supplying something for everyone, divided by the number of people the state deems able to pay. They no longer serve as a signal telling producers where to allocate resources and what to prioritise. Price signals act as the nerve system of a market economy — the alternative ought to be a command economy, but Britain has no mechanism for that either. 

The link between production and consumption has been broken.

Chris Bayliss

Chris Bayliss is an independent consultant whose main interest is the energy sector in Iraq. He tweets at @baylissbaghdad

Democrats are vowing to break up media companies that kowtowed to Trump if they take back power.

Earlier this week, comedian Jimmy Kimmel delivered his monologue, as he does at the beginning of every episode of his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He focused on the reaction to the assassination of conservative media figure Charlie Kirk, and claimed that “the MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”

In addition to not being very funny, the observation rested on a false assumption—that the presumed killer, 22-year-old Utah man Tyler Robinson, is a conservative. Incorrect notions about the suspect’s political tribe have remained enduringly popular in liberal media circles; one of the top mainstream liberal Substack writers, Heather Cox Richardson, wrote earlier this week that the motive of the alleged shooter “remains unclear.” This is simply not true: Interviews with Robinson’s friends and family members, as well as text messages between Robinson and his roommate—his transgender romantic partner—paint a clear portrait of a man who found Kirk’s conservative views “harmful.” It’s fine to leave room for new details that further elucidates or complicates this picture, but for now the totality of the available information suggests an essentially left-wing motivation.

While Kimmel is a comedian rather than a newscaster, given how paranoid the mainstream media is about the spread of so-called misinformation, the criticism of Kimmel on this subject was well-deserved. And I had been planning to criticize him in this newsletter all week.

Unfortunately, the story no longer ends there.

Brendan Carr, chair of Federal Communications Commission (FCC), weighed in on the matter; not only did he criticize what Kimmel had to say, he also implicitly threatened the broadcasters. (Kimmel’s show appears on ABC.)

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said Carr during an appearance on conservative influencer Benny Johnson’s podcast. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC.”

This was not an idle threat. The FCC licenses broadcast channels, and can fine them or even take them off the air. Moreover, the FCC oversees mergers of companies in the communications space. Nexstar Media, which owns many of the ABC local affiliate stations that air Kimmel, is attempting to acquire Tegna Inc., a rival firm; the FCC needs to okay the deal. There’s a lot at stake, and FCC can make life very difficult for companies that defy it.

And so, on Wednesday night, both Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group—another major telecommunications company—informed ABC that they would not air Kimmel on their affiliate stations. ABC then opted to place the show on indefinite hiatus. (Disclaimer: Nexstar owns Rising, the news show I host for The Hill.)

Robby Soave, Reason Magazine