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About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

The Art of Independence

When I read “The Art of the Deal” by Donald Trump back in 1987, my main takeaway was: “Believe you don’t need it. Believe you can live without it, and you just might get it.” I liked the idea, because it suggested nothing can ever have total power over you — even if it’s something you wish to have. I believe this is part of Trump’s secret, and also why so many hate him. The people who hate him sense the fact that he does not need them — he really doesn’t. Washington DC, Hollywood and the media are built on sycophants. These are people with no independent self, no sense of reality beyond a never ending desire to be at the cool kids’ table. The irony is that nobody at the cool kids’ table has a clue about anything.

Trump is authentic in his projection of someone who actually does not care about the rule or attitudes of sycophants. Even if he’s not always right, he always goes on his own judgment fueled by determination. Many of the leftists hate the man more than his policies. Many of the so-called conservatives agreed with all of his policies until Trump came along; they actually prefer Iran and Communism now, even if they once cheered for Reagan. Why? Because they cannot stand the fact he does not need them, never has, and never will. And this is precisely why millions of us voted for him three times — and would gladly do so again.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Woke 2 Is Here, and It’s Failing Hilariously

Kurt Schlichter  Follow @KurtSchlichter

Oct 19, 2026

Woke 1 died out in the early 2020s when people got sick of the nags, scolds, and harpies trying to pester their way into power. But now these weirdos, losers, and mutations are back, trying to make “Woke 2: Wine Woman Boogaloo” happen. But it’s not going quite the way they want. It’s not happening quite the way they envisioned. Yeah, they’re whining and complaining like the shrill shrews they are, but people have finally figured out how best to deal with these yakking malcontents. You either mock them or ignore them, and when you do, they’ve got nothing.

Understand that woke is an attempt to seek power by weaponizing endless gripes and verbally bludgeoning us into compliance. They can’t actually make us do anything. As anyone who grew up on a playground before the generation of “We only use our words” kids knows, and as anyone with even a glancing familiarity with human history knows, the true basis of all human interaction is force. Somebody bigger and stronger will either beat up or kill the weaker, and thereby exercise power. We’ve gotten away from this basic truth. We stopped punching annoying people because that is aesthetically displeasing, and in retrospect, it seems to have been a mistake. There are a lot of people who should’ve been slugged when they ran their mouths but weren’t, and now they’re running their mouths endlessly with the expectation that we will conform. Hell, if you’d started hassling people about the patriarchy in my junior high school, you’d have been hanging from the flagpole by your wedgie.

Woke is really just a substitute for force. It’s an information operation, an attempt to shape the cultural battlefield by convincing those of us who have the power to do whatever we want to instead do whatever the wokesters want. As long as we give in and go along, it’s great for them. It works. It gives the powerless power over the powerful, or rather, the powerful give the powerless that power either out of moral intimidation or simple exhaustion from the never-ending litany of complaints that characterizes wokeism.

But do you see woke’s vulnerability? We can say no, and there’s not a damn thing these people can do about it.

Now there’s a reason that woke people are so often fat, ugly, and stupid. It’s because they’re the losers. Woke is the tool of the losers; they’ve got nothing else. Its efficacy exists only because of the grace of the winners, and if we stop giving them that grace, it stops being effective. And we give that grace in large part because we’ve been convinced, falsely, that those claiming oppression have some sort of moral edge over the rest of us.

A lot of this stems back to the 70s and 80s popular culture, where nerds were put on a pedestal as somehow morally superior to people who aren’t geeks and goobers. But being picked on does not make you a good person; maybe you were picked on because you suck. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with nerds, but there’s also nothing inherently wrong with non-nerds. Both nerds and non-nerds can be jerks or wonderful. The problem is that we’ve been lied to. We’ve been told that there’s a moral superiority in being a doofus. Look, I love “Revenge of the Nerds” as much as anybody else, but it’s propaganda – dork propaganda. You’re not inherently better because you’re an awkward outsider, nor is your blood corrupted because you’re good at sports and handsome.

Now, we’ve all encountered guys who channel 80s-movies’ James Spader type, the good-looking, rich, popular creep. Those guys certainly exist, but you have something of the authoritarian versus totalitarian issue going on. Remember how Jeane Kirkpatrick differentiated between the two, with authoritarians just wanting to be in charge so they can get rich and the totalitarians wanting control of your mind. The James Spader type doesn’t care about you or what you think; he wants his cocaine and models. But the nerd wants more than just power – the nerd wants revenge for all the endless wrongs he is convinced that he has endured at the hands of normal people. Where James Spader merely wants obedience, the empowered nerd gets off on bending you to his will and making you submit: 2 + 2 = 5, and a man can become a woman, you transphobe. Nothing illustrates this better than that classic Simpsons episode where Lisa and the other nerds suddenly get absolute power and it corrupts them absolutely and hysterically.

Well, woke is the weapon nerds use to get that power. But to get that power, we have to give it to them. Like I said, they can’t take it. It’s not as if they’re going to show up clad in Kevlar with M4s to kick down our doors and make us comply – that happens once they obtain some hard power and find some normal people to go do their dirty work for them. Take England, for example. Their cops, mostly working- and middle-class folks, have betrayed their own castes and become enforcers for a bunch of post-leftist sociopaths who somehow managed to grab the levers of governmental control, then acted exactly as you might expect them to. England is now a country where you get free stuff if you break the law by breaking into it, but if you dare speak freely, it’s off to jail.

The risk here in America is that they somehow achieve governmental power and convince those who carry guns on behalf of the government to betray their own people and become their enforcers. Thank goodness for the Second Amendment. The fact that we are a nation of armed citizens – American civilians currently hold roughly 40 percent of all the guns in the world, though we need to pump up those rookie numbers – makes the decision to pull on the jackboots exponentially riskier to collaborators here than it is in a country where the population consists of a bunch of disarmed serfs.

But that’s their goal down the road; it’s not what’s happening right now as Woke 2 attempts to be born. We’re still at the endless nagging phase. Examples are all around us, including the Cornell 7 case, where they are demanding that the men who, as the evidence shows, simply acknowledged and affirmed the frisky young lady’s erotic empowerment are being held up as evidence of how the patriarchy is out of control. The frat bros’ gross behavior notwithstanding, the play hasn’t quite worked. Woke 2 is dealing with a world where alternative media is even better developed than it was under Woke 1, so all the facts are getting out, grody and nasty as they are. That disrupts the victimization narrative of the innocent young lady who only wanted to blast ketamine off the quivering bodies of multiple dudes as a prelude to erotic action that would turn the stomach of a San Francisco pride parader.

In popular culture, they are again attempting to shame people into compliance as they did under Woke 1, and that’s not working either. Metallica’s lead singer told his audience the band was there to rock, not talk politics, and that outraged the Woke 2 set no end. Yes, it’s not enough for them that you be silent; you have to actively affirm their latest thing. In this case, it was the mythical construct of Palestine – as with anything leftist, Woke 2 closely correlates with hating the Jews. In any case, the Metallica guy just ignored them and went on to continue to sell out massive stadiums.

And there was Sydney Sweeney, who committed the crime of being attractive and heterosexual. She sought the male gaze instead of pretending to be outraged by it. That’s unforgivable. Remember, the nerds are mad because they are unattractive and no one wants them. Woke 2 is largely about working out personal psychodramas using normal people like us as props; it’s all about the daddy issues. The fact is that wokesters are bitter because they can’t get a guy or a girl or whatever, so instead of trying to become beautiful, they have to negate the concept of beauty. In Woke 1, this manifested in them trying to make Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer starlets. But human nature won’t change, which frustrates them no end. And even more frustrating is that Sydney Sweeney just didn’t care. She’s collecting her money, being popular, and shaming them because they can never be what she is.

Then there’s Shane Gillis. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t rolled over after his “Saturday Night Live” monologue, where he pointed out that some women go to the gym looking like they are cruising up and down a city block open for business. And he was right – ladies, we just want to blast our quads, not provide an impromptu gynecological exam for attention-seeking trollops. Now, you might note the incongruity between Team Woke being mad at Sydney Sweeney busting out with wholesome sexuality and defending women busting out – sometimes literally – with not-so-wholesome sexuality. But there’s no incongruity. Woke is not about consistency; it’s about saying whatever needs to be said to obtain the most cultural power at any given moment. And props to Shane Gillis for, at least so far, ignoring them. Let’s hope he moves on to the next stage, actively mocking them, and not to submitting like the pretty new boy on the cell block by explaining how this whole thing has made him learn so much about how the patriarchy is bad and how he’s sorry and waa waa waa.

Of course, the ultimate nemesis of woke is Donald Trump. One of the many reasons they detest him is that he simply doesn’t care what they think; to them, that’s a hate crime. The power of not caring is our atomic bomb, and this guy is Harry Truman. Nothing makes them madder than people who either ignore them or laugh at them, and Trump does both. You saw how mad they got when that blubbery behemoth started running his/her/its mouth at his rally the other day and got dragged out. Trump called the creature “fat,” and Woke 2 nearly had a stroke because not only did Trump defy them, but what he said was true. Remember, truth is to a wokester as garlic is to a vampire.

And you can do it too. You don’t need to submit to these weirdos. You can defy them. Never care. Laugh at them. They think they’ve seized the moral high ground when they call you racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, fat-phobic, whatever. Well, call in an airstrike on that high ground. They’ve got nothing. There’s literally nothing they can do to you except cry more, and it’s funny when they cry.

Kurt Schlichter, Townhall

The Deep Midterms

The midterms are a fundamental choice over America’s economic future, national identity, immigration, energy, and Western civilization.

By Victor Davis Hanson

October 20,

There are two ways of looking at the midterms, now less than three weeks away.

One is as a simple referendum on the issues and politicians of the day. The other involves a far deeper conflict of visions (as Thomas Sowell puts it): socialism versus capitalism, intrusive versus limited government, and the destruction of time-honored institutions and traditions versus their preservation and renewal.

Rarely in American history have the two parties been so far apart or the choice between them so stark. In brief, Islamist-sympathizing socialism is on the ballot against free-market capitalism and American exceptionalism.

The new Islamist-allied socialist Democratic Party is confident, largely because the party holding the White House has increased its share of House seats in a midterm election only three times since 1900. Each of those exceptions arose under unusual circumstances.

In 1934, FDR was still riding the wave of his New Deal promises to end the Depression.

In 1998, Bill Clinton enjoyed backlash support after the Republicans’ unpopular impeachment inquiry, at a time when the economy was robust, and the budget was finally being balanced.

In 2002, George W. Bush had united the nation after 9/11 and had not yet begun what proved to be an unpopular Iraq War.

In other words, the party in the White House has gained House seats in only about 10 percent of the 31 midterms over the past 126 years. Pundits also point to Trump’s approval rating, now below 40 percent in most polls, and the persistently high price of regular gasoline ($4.33). Uncertainty over the 33-week Iran war, they argue, makes it difficult for Trump to preserve his majorities in either the House or the Senate.

Those are the issues ostensibly at stake. But the choice goes much further than that: voters face a “deep” midterm election that will help determine the very future existence of the nation.

The new Democratic agenda is not about lowering gas prices. Americans are being asked to hand Congress to what has become the most radical major party in U.S. history, as socialists and neo-communists believe they can finally win statewide races across the country. What would that entail?

Lawfare

The Democrats have not outlined any agenda other than “Trump! Trump! And more Trump!”

If they win the House, Democrats plan to spend the next two years impeaching, investigating, and hounding Trump, his administration, and his family. Their aim is to block new Republican legislation and paralyze the remainder of his presidency.

The Iran War

The Left condemns the effort to denuclearize Iran as a lost war, even though the United States has nearly destroyed the Iranian theocratic apparatus along with much of the country’s nuclear, military, industrial, and economic infrastructure—at a relatively low cost in blood and treasure by historical standards.

An enfeebled Iran, stripped of its military and economic dominance and facing an uncertain future, would no longer be able to blackmail or threaten Europe and North America as a nuclear-armed theocracy. Its terrorist clients would also lose funding, weapons, and leadership, with profound consequences for the Middle East.

When the war ends—as it soon will—and gas prices return to previous levels, policies already in place, including tax cuts, deregulation, foreign investment, energy development, and advances in AI, should help fuel an economic boom.

But the Democrats’ plan is simply to withdraw from Iran, count on the goodwill of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to guarantee free passage in the Strait of Hormuz, allow Iran to resume full oil production, and accept the Iranian regime’s word that it will no longer threaten the Gulf states or Israel and cease its decades-long support for the terrorist proxies—Hezbollah, Hamas, and, more recently, the Houthis.

Energy

The party that has repeatedly blocked federal oil and gas leases, canceled the construction or reconstruction of dozens of pipelines, and spent billions of dollars to subsidize unreliable, costly, and inefficient solar and wind power is now promising to lower the price of fossil fuels? Who really believes that?

Instead, the Left has vowed to end the production of natural gas, diesel, and gasoline as quickly as possible. Voters need only look at the once robust British and German economies, now struggling after years of restrictions on oil and natural gas exploration and development, as well as Germany’s elimination of nuclear power.

We should recall Obama’s energy secretary Steven Chu. He infamously let slip that his goal was to keep American energy prices at European levels. In the UK and Germany, gasoline is currently around $9 a gallon—a great thing for Democratic Socialists who see high fuel prices as the best way to cool the planet and remain in power.

Gasoline in the United States now averages only $4.33 despite Iranian oil being off the market, attacks in the Gulf, and Iran’s attempted blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The reason is that Democrats were prevented from blocking new fossil fuel leases, pipelines, refineries, and fracking between 2017 and 2021 and again from 2025 onward.

Immigration

Almost none of the current Democratic candidates—at least until the eve of the 2024 election—criticized the Biden administration’s destruction of the southern border, much less the open-armed embrace with which it welcomed some 10–12 million illegal aliens, including 500,000 criminals.

The Left wants to dismantle border enforcement and the wall and to ensure that the current near-zero level of illegal immigration expands to the Biden administration’s peak of 10,000-plus illegal entries per day. Voters may be disturbed by ICE detentions, but they should remember a high-profile ICE presence was only necessary because the border was effectively eliminated by Biden.

By contrast, it is almost impossible now to find Biden’s millions of illegal aliens who were deliberately dispersed by the Left throughout the country—and particularly into Democratic sanctuary-city states. The Left will never close the border. Nor will it ever allow immigration to become entirely legal, meritocratic, diverse, and manageable, because to do so would cut off the Left’s supply of future constituents.

Fraud

Some estimates put aggregate current federal-program fraud at nearly $500 billion annually.

There is also widespread welfare and social services fraud concentrated in blue states like California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York.

In these states, welfare and social services are generous and, by design, subject to little scrutiny. Fraud is treated as a minor problem in what Democrats regard as a successful effort to attract voters with federal and state dollars. Few major Democratic officeholders sincerely denounce such fraud, since doing so could cost them votes.

DEI

The idea that race, outward appearance, gender, and sexual preference are essential rather than incidental to one’s identity is a central doctrine of the contemporary Left.

Should the Left regain power, expect de facto nullification of the bans against racial tribalism found in federal law and Supreme Court rulings. Race-based hiring, admissions, dorms, and graduations would return and proliferate.

The demands for reparations would likely regain traction, as they already are doing in California, a state with no history of slavery and 27 percent of the resident population born outside the United States.

The Left believes that people who were never slaves are owed billions of dollars by a government already $40 trillion in debt—and that people who never owned slaves must atone for an institution abolished 161 years ago. Slaveowners accounted for about 1.4 percent of the nation, almost all in the South. That some 700,000 Americans died in a civil war that ended slavery seems to be of absolutely zero importance to the Left.

Islamism

Only a quarter-century after 9/11, Islamism is somehow on the ballot. After October 7, the Democratic Party embraced the philo-Islamist/socialist view that sees radical Islam as not so radical after all. For them, theocratic Islamism is a legitimate and indeed preferable alternative to democratic Israel and increasingly a legitimate alternative to Western values and laws.

There is not a single truly democratic state in the Islamic Middle East, where women, gays, and non-Muslims are de facto second-class citizens. And yet we are told by many on the new Left that there is no real difference between Iran and Israel and that the terrorist organization Hamas is Israel’s innocent victim.

The apparently new leftist-Islamist alliance is actually not so new. We see its dividends now in a burning Paris. Decades earlier, that political partnership destroyed the Shah’s regime and ushered in nearly 50 years of Iranian theocratic tyranny.

Opposition to radical Islam and illegal immigration, along with justifiable anger toward a class of elites who seem openly to hate Western civilization, explains why reform and remigration parties are gaining traction all over Europe. Indeed, in the continent’s eleventh hour, Europeans are starting to fight open borders, unassimilated immigration from the Middle East, radical green ideologies, and disarmament. Why would we vote into power what the Europeans are now desperately trying to eject from office?

We already know what will happen when the new Democrats take power. After all, they are only promising to do to America what socialists have already done to now-floundering Europe, Canada, and California.

Before the election, voters should also ask themselves why more than two million Americans each year are fleeing the blue-state socialist model.

The answer? On taxes, regulations, cost of living, housing affordability, crime, and state budgets, red and purple states consistently outperform blue states. Americans already vote with their feet; they should remember those differences when they cast their ballots.

Finally, voters should also ask themselves why the current crop of Islamist-adjacent socialists always needs to cleanse their social media accounts. Why must they retract their prior bombast? Why do they attack questioners rather than answer questions about their past?

Why do we all know that what they say and do after being elected will be exactly what they said and did before they ran for office?

By contrast, are conservatives, Republicans, or independents serially trashing the United States in the manner of Democratic Socialists like Hasan Piker, who said that the United States is worse than al-Qaeda?

Is there a Republican counterpart to James Talarico, who scrambles to retract remarks describing capitalism as an “oppressive system” that needs to be “dismantled” or suggesting that “white skin” confers immunity to the “virus of racism”?

Or is there anyone among the conservatives remotely resembling Representative Ilhan Omar, who declared that America is “one of the worst countries”? Or like Darializa Avila Chevalier, who called the United States “a f–king disgrace”?

Are they demonizing the majority of the American people in the manner of Zohran Mamdani’s housing czar, Cea Weaver, who declared that homeownership is “a weapon of white supremacy”? Or like Melat Kiros, who argues that “We were never really going to be able to tackle white supremacy in the way that we need to without reparations”?

Could anyone imagine Republican or conservative candidates apologizing for terrorism in the manner of marquee Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who responded to a cowardly Islamist attack on a synagogue with “Hurt people do hurt people”?

In short, treat this midterm election as the deep choice that it is.

Victor Davis Hanson

U.S. woman claims she’s Madeleine McCann, shares DNA test to try to prove it

On the left is Madeleine McCann, and Eugenea Collins, who claims to be the missing girl, is on the right. Family of Madeleine McCann/ Eugenea Collins / Facebook

An American woman from Arkansas is claiming that she is the real Madeleine McCann, a British girl who disappeared in 2007 while on a family vacation in Portugal.

Eugenea Collins, 22, began posting her claims on Instagram in September 2024 with the username TheOfficialMadeleineMcCann, and the account features numerous side-by-side photos of Collins and McCann.

In her most recent post, Collins shared an ancestry DNA test that shows she is 68 per cent English and northwestern European, which she believes supports her claims.

Collins claims she has struggled to obtain official identification, including her birth certificate. In an Instagram post from November 2024, Collins wrote, “I am 22 years old and my birthday is October 23rd 2002. I am unable to get an id due to my paperwork not having the same matching name all of the way across.”

“I have also never seen an original birth certificate just the one from after my stepdad adopted me which created one and ‘sealed’ off everything and up until 2018 you weren’t Able to ever have the stuff opened back up,” she added.

“Without an id I can’t go to college or even get a job so I can support myself. I graduated high school a year early and I could really do something with my life if given the opportunity.”

In another social media post, Collins shared photos of her biological father, named Eugene, and claimed he looked similar to Christian Brueckner, who was under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of McCann.

“I was always told the man in the photos was my biological father Eugene Collins. The man I’m named after. I never had any relationship with this man whatsoever and I was always told he was a little off in the head,” Collins wrote.

“My mother never allowed us to have any kind of relationship with him whatsoever and now I understand why.”

Collins said that she’s “met him a couple of times” and claims he’s “always been weird about his picture being taken.”

“When I first saw the photos of Christian Bruckner I instantly recognized that man,” Collins wrote.

Brueckner hasn’t been formally charged in the McCann case. He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time of McCan’s disappearance there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.

Collins also told the U.K. tabloid Daily Mail that she first began to think she was McCann when she saw Polish woman Julia Wandel claim the same thing while appearing on Dr. Phil.

“If it wasn’t for me seeing her on the Dr. Phil show I would’ve never known. In a way her stupidity actually helped me find my family,” Collins claimed. “I saw the age progressions and it was like I was looking in a mirror. I just know I saw pictures of myself online and it says I’m missing.”

Collins said she has tried to contact police in Arkansas about her claims but they have not taken her seriously.

This comes just days after Wandel, also known as Julia Wandelt or Julia Wendell, was arrested and accused of stalking McCann’s family by contacting them incessantly and turning up at their home in the U.K.

Wandel was arrested on Wednesday at an airport in Bristol.

According to the outlet, she has been charged with stalking four members of the McCann family — parents Gerry and Kate, and twin siblings Sean and Amelie — throughout 2024 and into 2025. She is also alleged to have paid unwanted and unsolicited visits to their home twice, in May and December of last year.

The charges state the alleged contact, which came in the form of phone calls, voicemails, a letter and WhatsApp and Instagram messages, “had a substantial adverse effect” on the family.

In 2023, Wandel began posting numerous pieces of “evidence” to social media, saying she believed she might be the missing McCann.

Her spokesperson said a DNA test confirmed Wandel was not the missing girl. In fact, the test showed that Wandel has near 100 per cent Polish heritage, with no evidence of British or even German ancestry.

Polish police disputed Wandel’s claims that she was McCann about a week after she reached viral fame and Wandel’s own parents spoke out about her campaign, saying they were “devastated” by her claims and the worldwide media attention they garnered.

— With files from Global News’ Michelle Butterfield and The Associated Press

Katie Scott, Global News

Democrats have more than a Jewish voter fall off to worry about; now its Black voters who are walking away

A recent report from CNN on the voter sentiment among Jewish Democrats in New York painted a stark picture for Democrats in the Empire State.

It noted that in 2018 a generic poll of just New York Jews found they favored Democrats by an unsurprising 40 points.

Nevertheless, the same type of survey conducted in 2026 found Jews in New York favoring Democrats by 13 points representing a 27-point fall of support for Democrats.

Currently, a group of New York State Rabbis is traveling the state to essentially campaign against Democrats.

In Michigan Jews for Republican Mike Rogers groups, something that would be inconceivable just months ago, are working to defeat the Democrat El-Sayd.

But a new demographic group problem is growing for Democrats across the country: Black voters are not as enthusiastic about voting as Democrats need them to be.

El-Sayed, is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open US Senate seat won the nomination by less than a single percentage point in the party’s primary.

Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost to him, nevertheless, defeated him by 28 points in the heavily Black Detroit area. As in the case with Michigan’s Jewish Democrats, groups of Blacks are stepping up to denounce El-Sayd.

Moreover, in Georgia, among early in person voters Black Democrats are, at this point underrepresented.

Back to Michigan, which can rightfully be pointed to as a harbinger of bad news for Democrats depending on Black voters, a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found the following:

“Among likely Black voters, 83 percent say they want Democrats to control the Senate but 67 percent back El-Sayed.”

The significance of the second number can not be ignored because a late September survey of Michigan Black Democrats conducted by Fox News, found 77% support for El-Sayd meaning it has dropped 10 points in less than a month.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

Fight back:

Do what YOU can with what YOU have. Volunteer, donate, wave signs in the streets of YOUR district and pray asking God for His protection from these evil people. Please spread the truth.

Kevin Coach Collins

News Report: Thousands of new docs point to a diabolical CIA color revolution after midterms…

If you thought the political games around the midterms couldn’t get any more disturbing, buckle up, we’ve got a doozy for you. There’s a new bombshell report from DataRepublican, the researcher who made big waves during the DOGE investigations.

And if what she’s uncovering turns out to be true, we’re looking at something a helluva lot scarier than the usual political dirty tricks from our communist enemies on the left.

DataRepublican says she’s got her hands on thousands of transcripts and hundreds of recordings that point to an elaborate, coordinated effort to provoke a constitutional crisis right after the 2026 midterms.

Basically, this would be a CIA-style color revolution on our own soil, in real time.

From DR’s reporting, the goal is to create enough confrontation and unrest that President Trump is forced to invoke the Insurrection Act, then use his response to undermine the legitimacy of the federal government and shift political authority to Dem governors.

It’s an extraordinary allegation. Keep in mind, the materials haven’t been independently verified, and likely never will be. But what she’s describing is specific enough and serious enough that it’s worth talking about.

Because if there’s any truth to this, the midterms could be about a whole lot more than which party controls Congress. It could be a complete and total annihilation of our constitutional republic.

DR says she has a huge collection of material, including thousands of documents that she’s been using AI to analyze.

According to her findings, the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) would play a central role in a much larger plot involving other far-left activist organizations and a whole slew of confrontations with the Trump admin.

What DR is suggesting goes way beyond anything we’ve seen yet. She says there’s an operational plan that could begin unfolding right after the midterms and totally reshape the political fight heading into 2028.

DataRepublican:

The past few days, I got my hands on thousands of new transcripts and hundreds of recordings, thanks to leads from @SKDoubleDub33 and @iamlisalogan.You’ve heard that the DSA is proposing structural reforms to America, including abolishing the Senate and imposing term limits.

What you not have heard is – there is an operational plan to put it all into action. If the Democratic Party sweeps 2026, then DSA will become “foot soldiers” in constant clashes with the administration to cross a “red line” or invoke a “doomsday scenario” – meaning, President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, probably sometime in 2027.

Then, a lot of coordinated responses kick off, including delegitimizing the federal government itself and handing that legitimacy to Democratic governors. 2028 then becomes a vote on whether to keep America governance as-is or to burn it all down to appease a “young and brown” demographic.

The mysterious group who’s been coordinating 50501, Indivisible, and coordinating the NoKings protests is called “United Democracy Alliance” and their intellectual leader is Erica Chenoweth who came up with the 3.5% rule of nonviolent regime change.

Patience. I know I’ve hyped this more than anything else. It’s genuinely the biggest discovery I’ve had. This is an enormous archive. This is only the beginning.

I just ask you to pray to get the message out in the most impactful way possible. A mere 1 year ago, it would not have been possible for a human to connect all the dots in 7000 documents to reconstruct meetings from high-level, secretive, no-recordings alliances.

If you actually want to reclaim soveriegnty – learn everything about AI. Offload homeschooling, accounting, etc to AI to the greatest extent possible. AI/SI has made it possible for everyone to reclaim true sovereignty in the form of picking currencies, school curricula, etc. Choose accordingly.

The past few days, I got my hands on thousands of new transcripts and hundreds of recordings, thanks to leads from @SKDoubleDub33 and @iamlisalogan .

You’ve heard that the DSA is proposing structural reforms to America, including abolishing the Senate and imposing term limits.

What you not have heard is – there is an operational plan to put it all into action. If the Democratic Party sweeps 2026, then DSA will become “foot soldiers” in constant clashes with the administration to cross a “red line” or invoke a “doomsday scenario” – meaning, President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, probably sometime in 2027.

Then, a lot of coordinated responses kick off, including delegitimizing the federal government itself and handing that legitimacy to Democratic governors. 2028 then becomes a vote on whether to keep America governance as-is or to burn it all down to appease a “young and brown” demographic.

The mysterious group who’s been coordinating 50501, Indivisible, and coordinating the NoKings protests is called “United Democracy Alliance” and their intellectual leader is Erica Chenoweth who came up with the 3.5% rule of nonviolent regime change.

Patience. I know I’ve hyped this more than anything else. It’s genuinely the biggest discovery I’ve had. This is an enormous archive. This is only the beginning.

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) October 18, 2026

There’s a lot to unpack, but the timing is crucial.

DR says a Deem sweep in November would set the stage for a much more aggressive confrontation with the Trump administration in 2027.

And like we mentioned earlier, that’s where the Insurrection Act comes into the picture.

The Insurrection Act is a federal law that allows the president to deploy military forces domestically under certain extraordinary circumstances, including serious unrest that obstructs enforcement of federal law.

Under this scenario DR says once that happens, the whole country will take a totally different turn.

Another X user offered a really clean, clear, blunt interpretation of DR’s findings.

Cynical Publius:

Let me break down what I’m seeing and hearing here from DR.

I don’t know DR’s source for these materials , but they appear completely legit and are profoundly disturbing.

These are leading members of the Democrat Party hatching up the following strategy:

1. After the midterms, use the DSA to incite and carry out violent civil unrest.

2. Make the violent civil unrest so bad that Trump must invoke the Insurrection Act.

3. Use the invocation of the Insurrection Act to create a national sense of illegitimacy whereby Democrat governors appear justified in taking the extreme action of refusing to acknowledge federal authority and push to form a new form of federal government via various means, including an Article V transformation of the Constitution.

Maybe there is more to this and it’s not as bad as it seems, but right now this appears to be a conspiracy to create the next Fort Sumter.

This is a CIA-style color revolution in real time, on our own soil.

(Of course the legacy media is nowhere near this–it takes us Internet randos to get the word out.)

Let me break down what I’m seeing and hearing here from DR.

I don’t know DR’s source for these materials , but they appear completely legit and are profoundly disturbing.

These are leading members of the Democrat Party hatching up the following strategy:

1. After the midterms, use the DSA to incite and carry out violent civil unrest.

2. Make the violent civil unrest so bad that Trump must invoke the Insurrection Act.

3. Use the invocation of the Insurrection Act to create a national sense of illegitimacy whereby Democrat governors appear justified in taking the extreme action of refusing to acknowledge federal authority and push to form a new form of federal government via various means, including an Article V transformation of the Constitution.

Maybe there is more to this and it’s not as bad as it seems, but right now this appears to be a conspiracy to create the next Fort Sumter.

This is a CIA-style color revolution in real time, on our own soil.

(Of course the legacy media is nowhere near this–it takes us Internet randos to get the word out.)

— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) October 19, 2026

Now, here’s where we need to understand what this would actually mean if the allegations are true.

Imagine a situation where Trump is dealing with really serious unrest… think Paris or Milan, and the rioting going on there. And it gets so out of control, he decides federal military intervention is necessary.

The strategy would then use that decision to argue that the federal government had become illegitimate, giving Dem governors a political opening to challenge Washington’s authority.

That’s the proposed trap. Trump responds to a crisis, and his response becomes the centerpiece of a campaign against his presidency.

Governors couldn’t just declare themselves the new federal government or rewrite the Constitution. But a political movement could attempt to use a major national crisis to build support for massive constitutional changes… something the Dems need if they want to continue on as a legit party.

And according to DR’s reporting, that new battle would carry over into the 2028 presidential election.

DataRepublican says she’s only starting to work through her archive, so we’ll be watching to see what happens.

Because if the evidence supports what she thinks it does, this could become one of the most consequential political stories of our lifetime.

And we’d much rather know about something like this before the elections than discover afterward that the red flags were there all along.

Revolver News

Has the plague broken out in Russia?

On the evening of Friday 2 October, Daria Shipilova, an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute, died in a district hospital in the Russian city of Shelekhov. Her place of work, and the rumoured circumstances of her death, have triggered a public health emergency in the region and a slew of questions: did the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, kill Shipilova? Could this metastasise into a plague epidemic in Russia? Should we – abroad – be worried?

The Russian authorities have done their best to play down the link between the plague and Shipilova’s death. According to Russia’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, Shipilova had been diagnosed with pneumonia of ‘unknown etiology’ – i.e. of unknown origin.

Irkutsk’s regional governor, Igor Kobzev, announced that a ‘particularly dangerous infection’ had been identified, without specifying a particular diagnosis. Later, Kobzev took to social media to insist that the situation in the region was ‘stable’ and that approximately 200 people who had recently interacted with Shipilova had been tracked down and were being monitored.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the authorities’ vague pronouncements on the incident, many questions remain unanswered about what killed Shipilova. Yersina pestis is, despite its mediaeval associations, still naturally occurring in Russia – although cases of human contraction are rare and can usually be treated quickly with antibiotics. Pneumonic plague is the most dangerous form of the disease: it can pass from person to person via respiratory particles, with symptoms appearing within 24 hours of infection. Incidentally, and somewhat eerily, the Irkutsk region is also where scientists hypothesise that plague first originated 5,000 years ago.

Shipilova had, according to some suggestions, recently conducted a study trip to the Mongolian border (where an outbreak of plague had been reported in August). Another rumour has suggested that Shipilova contracted the disease in Thailand – although given there have been no reported instances of the plague there, this theory doesn’t appear to have legs.

The leading theory as to how Shipilova may have contracted plague, if indeed that is what killed her, is, perhaps naturally, related to where she worked. Some reports have suggested that Shipilova may have broken a test tube containing the plague pathogen whilst working in her laboratory, contracting the disease that way. Nevertheless, some experts have subsequently pointed out that, given the expected nature of the personal protective equipment she would probably have been wearing to enter and work in the lab, infection in this way would seem very unlikely.

Adding to the confusion and growing alarm, Shelekhov city authorities first issued a warning advising against travel to the city, but this was deleted from social media just hours later. According to local media reports, five hospitals in the region have been placed under a three-week quarantine with doctors ‘openly talking about plague’. Ambulances transporting those who had been in contact with Shipilova for testing were, in some cases, reportedly accompanied by patrols from the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service. This has, among other things, prompted unsubstantiated rumours online that the lab Shipilova was working in was conducting classified government work, such as on a bio-weapon.

Rumours of the plague and the authorities’ lack of transparency are, unsurprisingly, causing unrest among locals. Antibiotics have reportedly sold out in pharmacies across the Irkutsk region, and people are stocking up on masks and hand sanitiser. Google searches for the word ‘чума’, meaning ‘plague’, have increased by approximately 2,800 per cent in the week from 29 September 29 to 5 October.

Yesterday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov urged the Russian public not to ‘listen to rumours’ and to instead follow advice from Rospotrebnadzor. But the authorities’ – frankly rather typical – obfuscation and evasive talk of ‘dangerous infections’ and ‘unknown etioligies’ has left a vacuum that has only too readily been filled with gossip and conspiracy. The public health body has since stated that ‘two cases of Covid-19 and two cases of rhinovirus infection have been identified’ among those associated with Shipilova – but at this stage it’s hard to know how much of this is the Russian state whirring into gear in an attempt to manipulate the narrative or a genuinely truthful statement.

With memories of the Covid pandemic still fresh in global memory, the European Union and America’s White House have both said that they are monitoring the situation. US president Donald Trump has even offered help to Russia in containing the spread of any disease should they need it. The Kremlin’s track record, however, on communicating both with the Russian population and foreign governments in times of crisis suggests there is little hope of transparency should this public health crisis in Irkutsk escalate. Plague or not, pigs will fly before Vladimir Putin publicly accepts Trump’s help in containing the spread of any disease.

Young Men Are Being Left Behind

They are finding it harder to reach the American Dream.

From a young age, we ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. Firefighter, doctor, president, mechanic, astronaut, teacher, actor—the list goes on.

Dreams shift as children discover their gifts, what they enjoy, and where the two overlap. The kid who wanted to be a doctor might change his mind after finding out he can design spaceships and likes math better than anatomy.

Allowing people to follow their dreams has always been an American aspiration and part of what makes our country exceptional. Yet today, one group of Americans—young men—is at risk of being shut out from their dreams, largely through no fault of their own.

Mountains of evidence show that our education system and economy are increasingly leaving boys and men behind. This is a national crisis our political leaders must urgently acknowledge and address.

For Exhibit A, simply look at the last 50 years of wage trends. Although earnings for women have steadily increased, nearly doubling in the last half-century, men’s wages have remained largely stagnant. Indeed, while the inflation-adjusted median full-time wage for women has grown by $21,750 since 1976, it has increased for men by only $7,570.

But it gets worse. In August, 98% of U.S. job growth went to women according to government statistics. While female employment has grown by 870,000 since last year, male employment has contracted by 1.5 million. Roughly one-third of men are not participating in the labor force, including over half of young men ages 16-24.

The same trend is happening in college participation. In the mid-1990s, American men and women ages 25-34 were equally likely to have completed college, but the gap has ballooned since then. Today, about 47% of young women have a bachelor’s degree compared to 37% of young men. Women make up about 55% of U.S. undergraduate enrollment, while men account for 40% (with the remaining 5% being unknown or unreported).

Male education and workforce success directly impact family formation. Women are more likely to marry a man with a steady income, and men are more likely to want to work if they have something to work toward. But couples are told to wait until they have financial stability before having kids, a goal that is increasingly difficult to reach, leading them to have fewer children.

And while feminists may cheer the number of women in the 9-to-5 work world, it has not come without a cost. As many observers (including Elizabeth Warren before she entered politics) have pointed out, more mothers entering the workforce has made households increasingly reliant on both parents working to stay afloat, creating a “two-income trap.” It is financially unfeasible for many women to stay home with their children, even when they want to.

Many factors have led us to the current status quo. American industrial and trade policy over the last half-century has shipped many blue-collar jobs overseas while driving down wages for those who remain. Economic policy influenced by feminism has convinced many women to invest in careers rather than family. But we should not overlook another important driver of young men’s present disadvantage: the rapid proliferation of DEI across society.

Jacob Savage’s essay in Compact magazine last December highlighted the devastating impact of the DEI regime on young men. Fittingly titled “The Lost Generation,” Savage chronicled how Millennial and Gen Z men over the last 10-15 years have found themselves chained to the same job, or without one entirely, while less qualified but more “diverse” employees rise in the ranks. This practice has run rampant across numerous industries—entertainment, academia, the medical field—with untold casualties.

What film masterpieces did we miss by passing over a promising writer for a more diverse candidate? What medical breakthroughs did we forgo to reach a quota? What discoveries, studies, and breakthroughs are missing from academia simply because the men who would have made them were unfairly denied the opportunity?

Fortunately, DEI has been in retreat lately, thanks in large part to the Trump Administration’s crackdown. DEI has also declined in popularity in the workforce, though it still boasts majority support amid widespread ignorance about its true consequences. Even so, DEI remains a powerful force that could regain greater influence if political conditions become more favorable.

Meanwhile, young men continue to suffer. A recent Institute for Family Studies survey found that about half of men ages 18-29 now see the American Dream as out of reach. Many have retreated into destructive pastimes such as pornography and gambling, while suicide rates have risen to record highs. The statistics are grim in every direction.

So where does this leave us?

Our young men are still dreaming as they did when they were little boys, but they are being forced to acknowledge that hard work may not be enough to achieve those dreams. In America especially—the country founded on the ability to get ahead and create something spectacular—this is a reality we should not tolerate.

The situation young men face is an issue lawmakers can no longer afford to ignore. We need an economy where men’s skills and contributions are valued and appropriately compensated. We also need to make it possible for a family to raise children on one income. There is no easy fix for these problems. It will necessarily involve a myriad of approaches, from fully eliminating DEI to bringing back blue-collar work and stabilizing our broken dollar, whose debasement undergirds so much of Americans’ current struggles.

To save the American Dream from today’s threats, we must tackle this challenge. We owe it to the next generation of boys who still dare to dream.

Terry Schilling, American Mind

Supreme Court agrees to consider federal ban on home distilleries

The Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the constitutionality of an 1868 federal law that imposes a tax on distilled spirits but also bans home distilleries – that is, the at-home production of spirits like bourbon and whiskey. The penalties for violating the law include fines of up to $10,000, five years in prison, or both. In a list of orders from the justices’ Oct. 16 conference, the court announced that it had granted review in Department of Justice v. McNutt.

The justices will likely hear oral argument in the case early next year, with a decision to follow by late June or early July.

The lawsuit was filed in 2023 by a nonprofit, the Hobby Distillers Association, and some of its individual members, who want to be able to operate home distilleries. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the ban on home distilleries violates two different provisions of the Constitution: the taxation clause, which gives Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes … to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”; and the necessary and proper clause, which gives Congress the power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” its listed powers.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose a tax on distilled spirits, the 5th Circuit determined, but it concluded that the ban on home distilleries exceeds that power. Not only does the ban not raise revenue, the court of appeals wrote, it prevents the production of spirits that could generate revenue. The court of appeals similarly rejected the government’s contention that the ban guards against tax evasion, explaining that “preventing activity lest it give rise to tax evasion places no limit whatsoever on Congress’s power under the taxation clause.”

The federal government came to the Supreme Court in August, asking the justices to weigh in. It contended that “[a] law is necessary and proper if it is ‘convenient’ or ‘useful’ for carrying an enumerated power into effect, and ‘plainly adapted’ to that legitimate end.” That is precisely what the ban on home distilleries does, the government argued. “Congress restricted home distilling because a distiller can more easily conceal a distilling operation or thwart necessary inspections—thereby evading the requisite tax—if the still is located in” a house or a structure attached to that house.

The challengers agreed that the court should grant review, although they urged the justices to leave the 5th Circuit’s ruling in place. The case, they said, “presents fundamental questions of the extent of federal power and the powers reserved to the states and the people.”

In a separate case, Ream v. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reached the opposite conclusion from the 5th Circuit, holding that the ban on home distilleries is a necessary and proper exercise of Congress’s power to collect the federal tax on distilled spirits. John Ream, a retired aerospace engineer and the owner of a brewery who wants to be able to distill his own spirits, then came to the Supreme Court in July, asking the justices to weigh in on the legality of the ban and on the broader question of Congress’ power to regulate “local, noncommercial conduct.”

The federal government agreed that the justices should take up the question at the center of Ream’s petition for review, but it urged the court to grant its own petition, in McNutt, instead. On Monday, the justices did just that.

Amy Howe, SCOTUS Blog

Dems’ “Medicare for All” Includes Illegal Aliens

While several Democrats have declared that Republican predictions that voting for Democrats will lead to Medicare benefits being given to illegal aliens are a lie, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” legislation would do exactly that. Sanders asserted that “medical care is a human right that must be provided to all humans regardless of their citizenship. Republican efforts to restrict these benefits to only US citizens is a crime against humanity.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) still insisted that “Republicans are lying. Right now there is nothing in the existing law that authorizes giving these benefits to undocumented immigrants. The implication that our Party would violate the law to give aid to those not entitled to it is a smear tactic.”

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn) echoed Warren’s claim, saying “of course Republicans are lying. Federal law today says health insurance benefits cannot be used by people who are undocumented, who are not here legally. That is the law. There is nothing that we are currently trying to do to change that law.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) said “the claim that Democrats want to provide health care for illegals is a big lie. I want to remind everyone that Sen. Sanders is not a Democrat. He is an Independent. Democrats cannot be held responsible for his ‘Medicare for All’ bill. We may end up voting for it in the next Congress, but it is wrong for Republicans to try to use this future possibility against Democrats in this year’s election to try to scare voters into voting against us.”

The Democrat nominee for US Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, has made “Medicare for All” — including illegal aliens — a major campaign promise. Eighteen Senate Democrats, including Warren, Smith, and Van Hollen are co-sponsors of Sanders’ bill. This evidence seems to verify the Republican claim that voting Democrats into a majority in Congress would lead to enactment of legislation granting federal Medicare and Medicaid benefits to illegal aliens.

In related news, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill) is sponsoring a “Reimagining Safety Act” that would replace the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with a new Department of Community Safety (DCS) and eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “It’s time we ended the persecution and put out the welcome mat that former President Biden laid out for the brave individuals who endured perilous journeys to come and share in the wealth our country has accumulated,” she said. Co-sponsors of her bill include Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich), Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass).

John Semmens