Nick Sortor @nicksortor 🚨 BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Ohio mental hospital CONFIRMS James Talarico was discharged from the facility earlier this week

The “flu” thing was a BIG FAT LIE

Following reporting by @SaraGonzalesTX and @CarolineWren , a hospital employee told @RheinAmacher and I that Talarico had in fact been a patient at the Lindner Center of Hope near Cincinnati, Ohio, which specializes in around-the-clock mental health treatment.

While I sympathize with those dealing with mental health crises, this man is CLEARLY not suited to become a US Senator representing over 30 MILLION TEXANS.

The job doesn’t get easier after being elected — it only gets MORE stressful.

And Talarico clearly can’t handle it.

I pray he gets the help he needs, but Texans need a real representative they can rely on.

Nick Sortor, X

Today in the Vatican it is possible to identify a plurality of centers of power, operating within a complex dialectic between strategic convergence and internal tensions. Bergoglio acted as several sovereigns and emperors of the past did, that is, he concentrated power in his own hands during his lifetime, even going beyond what is granted to a Pope by divine law, while at the same time preparing a deliberate fragmentation of this very power that would explode at the moment of his death, precisely to prevent a single successor from monopolizing it and changing its direction.

Tetrarchy in the Vatican?

This is the technique employed by great emperors of the past, such as Genghis Khan or (perhaps a more fitting example in our case) Diocletian, the Roman emperor who prepared the Tetrarchy, that is, a system with four emperors in order to preserve the political project and to prevent the fate of the entire Empire from depending on the will of a single successor.

Paradoxically, the Pope has become, among these four new major centers of power, the least “influential” of them all, although on paper he remains the summit of the Church from every point of view; and he certainly remains so, because the Church is of divine institution, which no one can modify according to his own arbitrary will.

In addition to the Pope, among these centers of power we find the Secretariat of State, which retains control over the most delicate international dossiers (such as the secret agreements with China and multilateral dialogue) and exercises pervasive control over the bureaucratic machinery through offices such as that of the Substitute (a role formerly held by the controversial Edgar Peña Parra), but above all through its influence over episcopal appointments in synergy with the Secretariat of the Dicastery for Bishops.

The third tetrarch is the Roman Curia as a whole. Once at the service of the Pope, over the last twelve years it has become a revolutionary bureaucratic and doctrinal apparatus that dictates to the Pope the agenda to be followed.

The proposal for the new canon states that the totality of the baptized, having received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, ‘cannot err in matters of faith.’Tweet this quote

Leo XIV himself said at the beginning of his pontificate: “Popes pass, the Curia remains”: an announcement that appeared revealing and programmatic. The Bergoglian Curia now acts by seeking to preserve the acceleration initiated by its founding father and finds its nerve centers in the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, a true sounding board for the environmentalist agenda and a privileged interface with the Popular Movements and the UN; in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, until now led by Cardinal Fernández; and in the Dicastery for Divine Worship, which intends to pursue a precise agenda of liturgical reform (aka demolition).

There is a fourth and final center of power that Bergoglio established during his years of rule, namely the Secretariat of the Synod. Led by Cardinal Mario Grech and including key figures from the progressive world such as Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich (who is its General Rapporteur), the Secretariat of the Synod is not merely an organizational body, but the driving force of the ecclesiological engineering of the post-conciliar Church. A laboratory that realized the dream of many revolutionary Jesuits of the last century.

The Secretariat collects, synthesizes, and often steers the impulses coming from local Churches and the more “advanced” European episcopates (such as the German and Belgian ones), serving as a buffer between the most radical reform proposals and the authority of the Pope.

A Proposal to Amend Canon Law

On September 29, the Secretariat of the Synod published the final report of the canonical commission, led by Filippo Iannone, the Prefect for Bishops chosen by Leo XIV, and by Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, Bergoglio’s leading canonist and architect of some of the most important legislative reforms carried out by the Argentinian.

This report proposes restructuring the Latin Code of Canon Law to make it more consistent with the new “needs” of the synodal Church. The main reform proposals mostly include granting laypeople – both men and women – governmental, judicial, and liturgical roles that until now have been reserved to the ordained clergy.

The sensus fidei is the reflection in the people of God of the faith preached by the teaching Church and is what confirms Tradition, without judging it.Tweet this quote

For example, the reform of canon 1425 §4, which would provide for the possibility of a layperson (man or woman) serving as a “sole judge” in first-instance trials involving serious sanctions such as dismissal of a priest from the clerical state and the declaration or imposition of excommunication; the reform of canon 463 §1, which would provide for the requirement that laypeople constitute the majority of members in diocesan synods; the reform of 512 §4, which would allow the appointment to diocesan pastoral councils of Christians belonging to “Churches not in full communion with the Catholic Church”; the reform of canons 230 §3 and 1112 §1, delegating to laypeople (men or women) the authority to assist at marriages without the need for prior authorization from the Holy See and even to lead the liturgical prayers proper to this sacrament.

According to statements by Cardinal Grech and the Commission, the purpose of this reform would be to convert into binding legal norms the ecclesiology that “emerged from the synodal journey.” Canon law is understood as the juridical expression of the Church’s perception of herself, necessary so that theological reflection on so-called “co-responsibility” does not remain purely theoretical.

The Reinterpretation of the Dogmatic Concept of Infallibility

Understandably, many analysts focused on this aspect of the canonical reform proposed by the Synod, namely the extension of governance to laypeople. Less attention, however, has been given to another proposal by the same commission, in my view more serious and important, although it is specular and directly connected to the one that received greater attention.

Among the proposed amendments, in fact, the rewriting of canon 749 §1 reinterprets the concept of infallibility. This is not a minor amendment, since infallibility is a very important theological and dogmatic concept for Catholic doctrine.

Infallibility, traditionally restricted to the Supreme Pontiff and, in a subordinate sense, to the College of Bishops under specific conditions, is now extended to the entire body of the faithful.

The proposal for the new canon states that the totality of the baptized, having received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, “cannot err in matters of faith.” Such infallibility would manifest itself through universal consensus. In this way, the “supernatural sense of faith of the entire people… from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful” would become the new measure (at least apparently) of truth.

Thus we witness the democratization and, ultimately, the relativization of Dogma.Tweet this quote

Note the usual lexical manipulation, typical of neo-modernism. “Sense,” that is, feeling, elevated to a criterion. Catholic Tradition always regarded the sensus fidei, that is, the people’s sentiment of faith, with great respect, but it has never considered it a measure of truth, also because, in the past, there have been several moments in which the majority of baptized faithful – laity and clergy – believed in erroneous doctrines: consider the Arian crisis or the great diffusion of Protestant and related ideas between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Every feeling is a sign of something real, but this does not mean that it is necessarily a sign of truth. It certainly has an important experiential dimension worthy of consideration, but it is not an autonomous source of Revelation – as some modernist theologians would have it – precisely because a feeling cannot be authoritative.

Some great theologians of the past, such as St. Vincent of Lérins, St. Robert Bellarmine, and John of St. Thomas, taught that the con-sensus of the faithful is worthy of consideration because it is a privileged witness to Tradition, that is, to the transmission of the same doctrine from the time of the Apostles.

St. Vincent of Lérins coined the famous maxim: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus (“everywhere, always, by everyone”). When one considers history and sees that a certain doctrine has been continuously transmitted and believed, especially at the liturgical level, then that doctrine is worthy of belief. Therefore, the sensus fidei is the reflection in the people of God of the faith preached by the teaching Church and is what confirms Tradition, without judging it.

One could also say that, traditionally, the People of God must be listened to in order to understand how the faith is lived, not to establish what is true. It may also happen, and it has often happened in the history of the Church, that because of a crisis of authority the People of God live the faith badly. In such a case, the People of God must not be indulged, but admonished and corrected.

A New Conception of Power in the Church?

The proposal for canonical reform reverses this traditional vision. It stands in continuity with a theological tendency of recent times that seeks to reform the traditional concept of the power of governance in the Church, according to which authority arises from God through charism. We will return to this shortly.

Traditionally speaking, in the Church there are two parallel hierarchies, united but distinct: the hierarchy of order and the hierarchy of jurisdiction. The first has the bishop at its summit, who possesses the fullness of Holy Orders; the second has the Pope at its summit, who possesses direct, universal, and absolute jurisdiction over ecclesiastical laws.

Teaching, in fact, is the noblest act of governance, because it guides the will not through coercion, but through conviction.Tweet this quote

Over the centuries, various schools of thought have arisen to study, deepen, and understand to what extent the bond between these two hierarchies should exist, but the majority of authoritative theologians have always held that consecration, and episcopacy in particular, makes the subject especially “suited” to receiving the power of governance, while the two hierarchies – as stated – remain formally distinct and are not confused with one another.

This is, moreover, fitting to the very nature of the Church, which is not only hierarchical but also sacral in its foundations, in which the teaching Church and the learning Church must remain clearly distinct for proper functioning, and where the munus docendi (“office of teaching”) is traditionally considered part of the munus regendi (“office of governance”). Only those who govern also have teaching authority: the Pope above all, and then the bishops united to him. Teaching, in fact, is the noblest act of governance, because it guides the will not through coercion, but through conviction.

Moreover, it is fitting that the power of governance should not derive immediately and automatically from Holy Orders (this too being a tendency of thought that spread in the post-Council period, especially in conservative circles), also in order to avoid the presumption that merely being consecrated is sufficient to govern legitimately.

The two hierarchies must nevertheless remain tendentially united (although there have always been cases in history of laypeople to whom jurisdiction was delegated), both to maintain the unity of the three munera, that is, the offices of Christ (to sanctify, govern, and teach), and because the Church is neither merely a juridical society nor merely a sacramental reality: it is both.

Now, if governance is distributed horizontally, teaching also becomes horizontal, and the one who teaches is also the one who learns. Thus we witness the democratization and, ultimately, the relativization of Dogma. Exactly what the modernists want: to modify attitudes, while perhaps leaving doctrine intact on the pages of catechisms.

From this perspective, the munus docendi tends progressively to transform from an act of governance into an act of consultation; the Magisterium ceases to be conceived primarily as the objective criterion and sole legitimate interpreter of the twofold source of Revelation (Sacred Scripture and Tradition), and instead becomes the interpreter of a faith presumed already to be present and widespread among the people of God.

What the neo-modernists refuse to understand out of ideological obstinacy is that reality is by nature monarchical: this fact cannot be evaded.Tweet this quote

The charismatic vision of ecclesiastical authority was mentioned. Under the pontificate of Francis (and in the reflection of many cardinals close to him), the idea has emerged of completely severing the power of governance from the power of order, in order to anchor it in the transversal dignity of Baptism: two hierarchies no longer distinct but united, but neither confused with each other as certain conservative theologians would have it, but rather distinct and independent. A sort of ecclesiological Nestorianism.

On February 16, 2026, for example, Cardinal Marc Ouellet defended the lay appointments made by Francis, calling them a prophetic shift and proposing the development of an even more “charismatic” vision of Church governance. According to Ouellet, it would be Baptism – not the sacrament of Holy Orders – that makes the faithful “suited” to participate in a stable and proper manner in ecclesiastical governance.

Even earlier, in November 2025, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio suggested in one of his books modifying canon law precisely in order to stabilize and structure lay participation in the governance of the Church according to this “charismatic” vision. With this proposal from the Synod’s canonical commission, this project reached a greater degree of concretization.

The Tetrarchies of the Past Always Collapsed

In conclusion to this brief analysis, I would like to propose a reflection on Bergoglio’s strategy of dividing centers of power in order to preserve control of the Church’s direction along the path he had undertaken. Bergoglio’s strategy, as we said at the beginning, is not a new strategy in history.

Yet history itself teaches us that tetrarchies, or more generally systems of collegial government among several formally equal sovereigns, tend to fail for a structural reason: supreme authority is by its nature difficult to share stably.

This happens because every complex organization sooner or later requires a definitive decision. What the neo-modernists refuse to understand out of ideological obstinacy is that reality is by nature monarchical: this fact cannot be evaded.

The Church will rise again through those who have known how to preserve the true Catholic Tradition.Tweet this quote

In the event of conflict, when there is no truly common superior, the dispute inevitably tends to turn into internal struggle. Moreover, successors do not necessarily share the founder’s project. Sooner or later someone may arise who begins to ask himself: why be one of four when I can be the only one? And the experience of the post-conciliar Church teaches us that personalism is not exactly an unlikely temptation for bishops…

Furthermore, the nature of the human being means that people tend to attach themselves to personality more than to structures. If there are four centers of power, four patronage networks inevitably arise and end up competing with one another. In reality, of all these limitations, this is perhaps the one of which Bergoglio was most aware.

Indeed, as is gradually emerging throughout the world, Francis created in the Vatican a veritable “society of mutual blackmail”: key roles entrusted to prelates burdened by serious allegations or by affairs that have never been entirely clarified, who are guaranteed protection in exchange for absolute loyalty to the line of government. Those who belong to the entourage of power thus feel protected by the higher authority or by the other converging centers of power as long as they remain aligned with the power agenda. As soon as conformity is betrayed, the existence of a judicial case or a complaint is revealed through the media. Consider the unfortunately well-known “McCarrick network” in the United States or the “Lute case” in Peru.

This gives us further hope, in truth, in the fact that modernists do not have a long life. As the Gospel says, “do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, nor secret that will not be made known” (Matthew 10:26). The proposal of the Secretariat of the Synod to redefine infallibility and democratize the Church is part of a deliberate strategy of fragmenting authority, but this strategy is already structurally destined to fail. The Church will rise again through those who have known how to preserve the true Catholic Tradition.

---

Gaetano Masciullo, The Remnant Newspaper

Kevin McCullough

It doesn’t happen. That’s what we’ve been told for years. Illegal voting in America is a myth, a fairy tale, a bedtime story conservatives tell themselves after losing. Anyone who asked about it got a pat on the head and a diagnosis.

Then the Department of Justice went looking.

It charged 64 foreign nationals in roughly five weeks. Seventeen states. Illegal voting, fraudulent registration, election crimes of every flavor. And that’s just the recent batch. Since early 2025, the count is 104.

For something that never happens, it sure keeps happening.

Mhmm.

Minnesota leads the pack with 11 defendants.

Pennsylvania has 10. Texas, nine. Louisiana, five. New Jersey, California and Florida, four apiece. Notice something? Red states, blue states, purple states. This isn’t a partisan problem. It’s an American one, and I’ll keep saying so until the people who called it a myth admit they were wrong.

They won’t. But I’ll keep saying it.

Look at the actual cases. In Emmaus, Pennsylvania, a Filipino national named Evelyn Miller has already pleaded guilty to voting in the 2024 presidential election. Guilty. Not alleged. In Philadelphia County, prosecutors say a Haitian national filed eight voter registration applications. Eight! Then he voted in 2022. In Minnesota, a green card holder from Ghana is accused of claiming citizenship and voting in this August’s primary.

And then there’s Louisiana.

In tiny Cotton Valley, a woman who ran for mayor in 2024 has been indicted for allegedly registering a Jamaican national and swearing he was a citizen. He then allegedly voted for president and for mayor. A candidate. For public office. Signing up a noncitizen in her own hometown.

You can’t make this up. Thankfully, nobody had to.

“But Kevin,” someone will say, and someone always does, “64 cases in a country of 150 million voters? So what?”

So what? Ask Iowa.

In 2020, Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District was decided by six votes. Six. Not 6,000. Not 600. Six human beings. The Justice Department says it’s now bringing more than twice that many election-fraud cases every week.

Ask New Jersey, too, where 2023 municipal races in Caldwell, Atlantic Highlands and Bogota were decided by four to six votes. This is the same state that later admitted roughly 6,600 people who told the motor vehicle agency they were not citizens got registered to vote anyway. Fewer than 400 of them voted. Did those ballots flip anything? Nobody’s proven that, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But nobody should have to wonder, either.

When the margin is six, a handful isn’t a rounding error.

A handful is the whole ballgame.

And even if it never flipped a single race? It would still matter. It always matters!

Every illegal vote cancels out a legal one. Somewhere a nurse dragged herself to the polls after a double shift. Somewhere a veteran stood in a cold line on a bad knee. Somewhere an 18-year-old cast a first ballot with real pride. Each of them did everything right, and someone who had no right to vote quietly erased them.

Think about counterfeit money. One fake $20 bill doesn’t crash the economy. But every one of them steals a little value from the honest twenty in your wallet. Your vote is the currency of a free people. Counterfeit votes cheapen it for everybody.

Then there’s the other side of the ledger, which isn’t who votes but who counts.

Georgia’s 2020 presidential race came down to fewer than 12,000 votes. Last December, Fulton County admitted to the State Election Board that it certified roughly 315,000 early votes without the poll worker signatures state rules require on the tabulator tapes. 315,000. Why were the rules every other county followed simply skipped in the biggest county in the state, in a race that tight? And why did it take five years and a private citizen digging through records to drag it into the light?

None of this is a reason to sneer at lawful immigrants. Many of the people charged are green card holders who were on their way to citizenship and may now lose it, some likely after being told checking the box was no big deal. That’s a real tragedy. Enforcing the law clearly protects them, too. A line nobody enforces isn’t a line at all.

So yes. Good on the DOJ. Keep going.

Legal elections are the only fair elections. And that legality is worth fighting for.

Kevin McCullough

By Dominic Green

The French are revolting. It’s a tradition with them. Riots are as French as croissants, adultery and the 35-hour work week.

France’s current riots may, however, presage the fall of the Fifth Republic.

Mobs of students in the streets. Schools going up in flames. Police using tear gas and flash-ball guns. Hundreds of injuries and thousands of arrests.

The spark for the disorder was strikes by left-wing teachers and other public-sector workers, including firemen. The students besieged their schools at once.

The truants claim they’re protesting overcrowded and underfunded schools. 

Nothing says “Please raise the biggest education budget in the OECD” like a masked youth kicking a policewoman in the head.

The disorder is backed by the far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party. Its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is second in the polls for next year’s presidential elections.

The riots, French intelligence agencies told a government crisis meeting on Oct. 1, originated as “an operation organized by LFI (France Unbowed) and its proxies on the far left.”

LFI has always advocated non-violent demonstrations,” LFI parliamentary deputy Louis Boyard replied.

Meanwhile on the streets of Paris, LFI deputy Thomas Portes was filmed shoving police officers. LFI deputy Bally Bagayoko, who has said that “violence is legitimate,” danced with a student mob at the gates of their school amid burning trash cans.

LFI’s deputies joined the protests all over France. They exhorted students at barricades and led chants of “Free Palestine.” When the students started fires and threw projectiles at the police, LFI’s deputies intervened to protect the rioters.

We must protect the youth from the forces of disorder,” LFI Euro-parliamentarian Anthony Smith said.

“We’ll attack all the police stations in the country,” Ritchy Thibault, a former parliamentary assistant to LFI deputy Ersilia Soudais told students at a Paris school on Oct. 2. “We’re going to set fire to the Élysée [France’s equivalent of the White House]. We’re going to blow everything up.”

So far, so French. The French wrote the script of political street theater. One revolution was enough for the English and the Americans, but the French tolerance for mass disturbance is as high as their cholesterol.

“What you’re doing is incredible,” Mélenchon said in an Oct. 6 message to the protestors. 

Boyard, a k a Monsieur Non-Violence, was nothing if not faithful to this grand tradition when he led a mob of students at Paris-Est-Créteil University in singing France’s revolutionary marching song and national anthem, “La Marseillaise.”

But Boyard sang it surrounded by masked youths. And the flag he raised was not the red, white and bleu of le tricolore. It was the Palestinian flag.

These riots are not just about France’s schools. They are the latest battle between the French state and the “New French,” France’s rapidly growing, poorly assimilated and heavily Muslim population. The French call them “immigrants” even though many of them are French-born.

Long before Mayor Mamdani came to America and the DSA took out their student loans, the French saw the emergence of an Islamogauchiste (Islamo-leftist) alliance between the old radicals of the left and the angry youth of the banlieues, the peripheral housing estates.

The same strategy created the voter base of the ruling Labour Party in the UK. In September, the strategy swung Sweden’s national elections and Berlin’s mayoral elections to left-wing parties that cultivate ethnic bloc votes. It has reshaped the Democrats’ ground game in states such as New York and Michigan. 

Mélenchon may be happy to see the schools burn, but he knows his electoral math. The Immigration and Demography Observatory, a French think tank, predicts that on current trends, French citizens with no immigrant parent or grandparent will become a minority around 2050.

Mélenchon, a 75-year-old ex-communist, is an old leftist but also a new immigrant. Born and raised in Morocco, he came to France in 1962, one among the millions who crossed the Mediterranean as Europe’s empires folded.

He calls French democracy a design for “white privilege” and “part of an already obsolete present.” He wants a “citizen’s revolution” to create a “new France.” He calls the right-winger Marine Le Pen, who leads the polls for 2027, a “fascist.”

Only days before the protests began, the French turned out to greet Pope Leo XIV. Mélenchon and the LFI have helped to turn the same streets into the stage of bloodshed and destruction.

“In just one week, we have been able to see in our streets the two Frances that now face each other on our soil,” Mélenchon’s rival Éric Zemmour, the right-wing anti-immigration politician, said on Sept. 30.

Zémmour, the French-born son of Berber Jews from Algeria, sees a stand-off between the old France of the Fifth Republic, “largely white, Christian, European, even if various minorities join it,” and “another France that is largely African, Arab, Muslim,” and waves “Algerian, Moroccan or Palestinian flags” as symbols of its resentment.

“Eternal France against the new France: that will be the showdown of the 2027 presidential election,” Zémmour predicts. Mélenchon agrees. So does Le Pen.

While Mélenchon and the LFI push France off the cliff for electoral gain, a people and their state are coming apart. The political center cannot hold. The markets are turning on France’s debt-loaded economy. 

France is one of the great democratic nations. It is a nuclear-armed Security Council member, and one of the two pillars of the European Union. But no nation is too big to fail. 

Dominic Green (@DrDominicGreen) is a Wall Street Journal and Washington Examiner columnist.

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition gathering in Washington last week, President Trump warned that many Democratic Socialist candidates “are not social democrats. These are hardcore, godless Communists. . . . This is the most serious threat to our Country since its existence.” Trump’s remarks sparked a wave of condemnations, including from CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who said that “socialism, much less democratic socialism, is not communism.”

Statements like Collins’s highlight how little attention the press has given to the Democratic Socialists of America and its national leadership. The majority of the DSA’s governing board, the National Political Committee (NPC), openly identifies with Communist ideology.

Finally, a reason to check your email.

Self-avowed Communists were not always so well represented in DSA’s leadership, but the DSA’s leftward shift has helped turn it into a vehicle for a wide range of organizing beyond electoral politics, attracting Marxist-Leninist tendencies in particular. To dismiss the DSA as simply “not Communism,” as Collins does, is wrong. Members with Communist political tendencies now significantly shape the DSA’s leadership, and the organization is an increasingly attractive vehicle for bringing together a wide range of left-wing movements, many of which profess to be Communist.

Every two years, DSA convenes its national convention, where delegates pass resolutions and elect members to its board of directors, the NPC. From 2021 to 2023, the Socialist Majority Caucus and the Green New Deal slate held a majority on the NPC, drawing criticism for failing to hold elected officials accountable and for prioritizing coalition building that positioned the DSA as a political partner rather than an independent force. By 2023, however, a “coalition of Communist caucuses” had secured a majority on the NPC.

Vincent Lima, the political committee chair of the Socialist Majority Caucus, described the NPC at the time as divided between two tendencies, “mass politics” and “sectarian.” Those seeing mass politics as the path forward favor labor organizing, electoral participation, and incremental reforms to build a socialist future; they view the DSA as an organization for millions of Americans. The sectarians, by contrast, emphasize ideological purity and see the DSA as something closer to a vanguard prepared for “the final crisis of capitalism to sweep a socialist party into power.”

The upshot of Lima’s somewhat obscure leftist terminology is that the NPC is defined by two competing blocs: a coalition that sees the American system as capable of reform, and a rival bloc grounded in a revolutionary framework that emphasizes movement work and protest, often dismissing electoral politics as a waste of time. Membership in these blocs is not rigid; depending on the issue, individuals on the NPC may move between them.

Lima characterizes the NPC’s sectarian faction as suffering “paralysis,” but that framing understates its level of activity. In the months following the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, sectarian-aligned elements were deeply engaged in movement work, including disruptive protest tactics and efforts like supply-chain targeting. More broadly, Lima overlooks how beneficial this kind of organizing has become for the DSA. When focused on labor issues, it can even serve as a point of convergence between the secularist and mass-politics tendencies. It also helps explain why the DSA continues to enjoy relatively high favorability.

The 2025 convention marked another turning point for the NPC, as the committee expanded in size and Communist-aligned caucuses secured a majority. Far-left news aggregator Fight for a Future reported that the NPC was composed of 51.9 percent Communists, a 14.8 percent “centre” bloc, and 33.3 percent reformists. The existence of a “centre” bloc reflects the political reality that some members occupy a middle position within the DSA, aligning with either of its two dominant factions depending on the issue.

More significantly, the convention repealed the organization’s ban on “democratic centralism,” the Leninist concept that internal debates and voting should occur behind closed doors, after which the group should present a unified public front. One DSA member described the ban as a “holdover from DSA’s anti-Communist period and a ward against entryism by external groups.”

Since the 2025 convention, tensions between reform-minded leaders and those aligned with Communist and Marxist-Leninist perspectives have intensified, with the Communist bloc prevailing on many of the most contentious issues. The divide has been on display throughout 2026 in many contentious NPC votes. One such vote centered on Christopher Winston, better known as BlackRedGuard, a Maoist DSA member of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Liberation Caucus, which published a statement supporting Elias Rodriguez, the alleged assassin of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. After Winston was elected to serve on the DSA’s militant Red Rabbits Security Commission, an NPC member introduced a resolution to remove him from the body, which failed by a vote of 15 to 10. The ten votes in favor of removing Winston came entirely from members of the reformist caucuses, Groundwork and Socialist Majority, along with one unaffiliated NPC member, Abdullah Farooq.

As the DSA continues to grow and gain national recognition as the nation’s largest and most capable socialist organization, it increasingly attracts individuals and groups seeking a vehicle with resources and manpower for their own political projects. In a recent podcast episode, Philly DSA’s James Ray and James Harr of Means Workwear described the DSA as a space where members are open to “the most radical position,” making it “the most fruitful ground” for Marxist Leninists to win people over. Their comments point to the Trotskyist concept of entryism, in which individuals join an organization with a defined ideological aim and work to change it from within. What these two discuss is nearly identical to the argument that the Red Star Caucus advances in “Communists Belong in DSA” for why Communists should organize within the DSA. Christopher Winston has even implied that new DSA members who follow him can wind up as Maoists, citing a clip about brainwashing from the John Candy comedy Volunteers to illustrate this dynamic.

Just last month, the Marxist Unity Group (MUG) put forward an amendment to the “Workers Deserve More!” program that passed the NPC by a razor-thin 12–11 vote. That amendment added language calling for the replacement of the U.S. presidency and Supreme Court with bodies chosen by, and subordinate to, Congress. The coalition in favor of the amendment included MUG, Red Star, Springs of Revolution, Reform & Revolution, and the lone Libertarian Socialist Caucus member. The opposition was mainly Groundwork, the Socialist Majority Caucus, and Bread and Roses. In other words, a more radical bloc pushing for a revolutionary break in U.S. state structure beat out a more reform-minded bloc.

Media figures who reflexively criticize Trump’s rhetoric on the DSA should look into the organization’s evolution. Just as North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, doesn’t reflect the reality of its political system, the DSA’s official name isn’t a reliable guide to the ideological makeup of its current leadership. Though the DSA presents itself as a big-tent organization, its leadership is increasingly dominated by individuals who openly identify as Communists, Marxists, or Marxist-Leninists.

Stu Smith is an investigative analyst at City Journal.

In His sermon to the Apostles during the Last Supper Our Lord spoke these consoling and encouraging words: “These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) God’s inscrutable providence allowed it, that we are witnesses of an unprecedented crisis of the Church, a hostile takeover within the strategic administrative structure of the Catholic Church, which is marked by the spread of not only poisonous doctrinal ambiguities but even by brazen heresies in the ranks of the high clergy, a phenomenon which in some cases comes close to apostasy. Our Lord and His holy Apostles used and understood the word “world” as human society, or culture and their values organized independently of God and hostile to Christ, the Incarnate God. In His High-priestly Prayer Our Lord said that His disciples and hence His Church were “not of the world, even as He Himself is not of it.” (cf. John 17:16) St. James left to the Church for all times this admonition:

“The friendship of this world is the enemy of God. Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becomes an enemy of God.” (Jas 4:4) To make peace with a human society or culture which rejects Divine Revelation and the uniqueness of Christ the Saviour means a complete illusion or a betrayal of Christ. The “world” with its spirit and ideology which rejects the commandments of God and the crystal-clear and unchanging doctrine of Christ gradually penetrated in the last sixty years to such an extent the structures of the Catholic Church, that one can say that the “world” Christ warned of seems to have occupied the Church’s strategic administrative positions, there took place a hostile takeover.

Over twenty centuries the Church fed itself on the purest sources of the Word of God in Scripture and Tradition, in the sacraments and the examples of her innumerable Saints and had, therefore, within herself always fresh air fresh spiritual oxygen. How can then all of a sudden in 1958 the Church’s life be characterized as having stuffy air and the need therefore of opening her windows so that an alleged fresh air of the modern unbelieving world may enter her, from a world marked by cold technology, consumerist materialism, by the spirit of the French Revolution and the Idealist Philosophy? Since the II Vatican Council we could observe the effects of this so-called “fresh air” which entered through the windows of the Church, opened by high clergy to the world. Pope Paul VI famously stated on June 29, 1972, that “the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God through some crack [fissure].”

“The ‘world’ with its spirit and ideology which rejects the commandments of God and the crystal-clear and unchanging doctrine of Christ gradually penetrated in the last sixty years to such an extent the structures of the Catholic Church, that one can say that the ‘world’ Christ warned of seems to have occupied the Church’s strategic administrative positions, there took place a hostile takeover.”Tweet this quote

Bishop Manoel Pestana, who was called the “Athanasius of Brazil”, Bishop of the diocese of Anapolis in Brazil from 1979-2004, and who was my teacher and ordained me priest, said in an interview in 1988 that he had serious misgivings about the Council’s aftermath. “I believe we have gone farther that what may be tolerated,” he said. Bishop Pestana continued to state: “It is not only the smoke of Satan which has entered into the Church through a hidden opening, as Pope Paul VI has said; it is rather through the main doors that the Devil has entered with triumph, even up to the highest places, entirely through his faithful servants”. Bishop Manoel Pestana, also wrote, in a preface to the book “An Exorcist Tells Us” by Fr. Gabriele Amorth that the Lord himself predicts the darkening of faith, the cooling of charity. Here are words of Bishop Pestana: “Who will exorcise [the devil] from our churches, from our episcopal and parish residences, from our community centres, from our seminaries and universities, from our Senates and Legislative Chambers, from our Government and Justice Palaces, from our banks and stock exchanges, from our media, our schools and hospitals, and from the consciences of all of us? And let us not hesitate: who will expel the demons from the Pontifical Palaces, the Congregations and Secretariats, the Nunciatures, the Episcopal Conferences and Episcopal Curias, the Shrines and Basilicas, the UN and the Parliaments, not to mention this ‘evil world’ that thrives ‘under the sun of Satan’? We urgently need exorcism!”

It is obvious, we are living in an extraordinary crisis in the Church, which I think is objectively unprecedented in its extent because it is touching all levels of Church life: doctrine, morals, liturgy, and discipline. There is a relativization in all aspects—”relativism” meaning there is no stable truth; you can choose one thing or its opposite and all is considered acceptable. Of course, we’ve had other crises previously, like the Arian crisis in the fourth century, which denied the divinity of Christ, the Son of God. That was very dangerous and infected the entire Church, but it was more concentrated on one topic: the divinity of Jesus Christ. Today, the crisis is general. It’s like a body where a sickness affects not just one organ, but all organs.

The entire body is completely weak. It is not a deadly sickness because the Church is indestructible, but the entire body is infected and weakened. However, this body can and will regain its strength and be renewed. And this gives hope. This is the divine characteristic of the Church. Contrary to all other human institutions, which collapse when a sickness affects the entire entity, the Church does not collapse because it is also Divine. She has a divine survival mechanism, a divinely given foundation. The Holy Spirit is always in the Church; Christ is the head of the Church. Our Lady is the Mother of the Church. The truth in doctrine, liturgy and moral life can be to a great extent and almost generally obfuscated and disfigured, as now in our day is the case, but it is only temporarily.

“Even if Catholics faithful to tradition are reduced to a mere handful, they are the true Church of Jesus Christ.”Tweet this quote

We have two images in the Gospels that help us see the reality of the Church’s crisis. The first is the boat in the sea where the apostles were with Christ during a heavy storm. The storm’s water started to fill the boat, and Christ was sleeping. The apostles felt alone and feared the boat would go down. Somehow the Lord was sleeping during a storm that normally no one would sleep through. This was a demonstration that we must trust, even in the greatest storms of the Church. The Lord is there, seemingly sleeping, but then He will stand up, command the storm, and calm will return. So too, the Lord will stand and command this storm of our current crisis. We don’t know the exact time, but it will happen.

Many years ago, during a spiritual retreat at which I took part and which Cardinal Robert Sarah preached to a group of bishops, the Cardinal compared the situation of the Church with the scene of the boat in the sea where the apostles were with Christ during a heavy storm and said to the bishops: “We must awaken the Lord!” Whereupon a bishop remarked: “Your Eminence, when we also sleep, who will then awaken the Lord?” We are called in our day to awaken the Lord, who is sleeping in the boat of the storm-torn Church. How we can awaken the Lord? It is primarily through a spiritual storm of prayers, through the loving offering of our manifold sacrifices, through acts of reparation.

As to the image of a seemingly sleeping Lord, I remember a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Zen in Hong Kong many years ago. Knowing about Cardinal Zen’s love for the traditional Latin Mass and the Gregorian chant, I asked him which were his favourite song, whereupon he answered: “The Introit of Sexagesima”. To be honest I did know be heart which was the text of the Introit of the Sexagesima Sunday. The Cardinal noticed it, and started to sing with much unction the Gregorian chant melody of that Introit:

“Exsúrge, quare obdórmis, Dómine? exsúrge, Dómine, ádjuva nos, et líbera nos.” In English: “Arise, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? arise, O Lord, help us and deliver us.” (Psalm 43: 23-26) The Cardinal observed that the course of the melody of this Introit impressively stresses the word “exsurge”, “arise, wake up”.

“The Pope and the bishops are in fact not the lords and the authors of the faith, but should be its faithful and scrupulous keepers, defenders and lovers.”Tweet this quote

Cardinal Zen then shared a hilarious story. He spoke once with a Cardinal in Rome, trying to make clear to that Cardinal an important issue for the Church. When however this Cardinal showed up stubborn and unimpressed, Cardinal Zen began to sing before the Cardinal in Gregorian the Introit: “Exsúrge, quare obdórmis, Dómine? Exsúrge!”, “Wake up, why are you sleeping? Wake up!”.

The second image of the reality of the Church is illustrated by the parable of the wheat and the tares. St. Augustine spoke about the Church on earth as a mixed body made up of the good and evils ones, a “corpus permixtum”. St. Augustine explaining the parable of the wheat and the tares said:

“O you Christians, whose lives are good, you sigh and groan as being few among many, few among very many. The winter will pass away, the summer will come; lo! The harvest will soon be here. The angels will come who can make the separation, and who cannot make mistakes. We in this time present are like those servants of whom it was said, Will You that we go and gather them up? for we were wishing, if it might be so, that no evil ones should remain among the good. But it has been told us, Let both grow together until the harvest. Why? For you are such as may be deceived. Hear finally; Lest while you gather up the tares, you root up also the wheat with them. What good are you doing? Will ye by your eagerness make a waste of My harvest? The reapers will come, and who the reapers are He has explained, And the reapers are the angels. We are but men, the reapers are the angels. We too indeed, if we finish our course, shall be equal to the angels of God; but now when we chafe against the wicked, we are as yet but men. I tell you of a truth, my Beloved, even in these high seats there (among the high clergy) is both wheat, and tares, and among the laity there is wheat, and tares. Let the good tolerate the bad; let the bad change themselves, and imitate the good. Let us all, if it may be so, attain to God; let us all through His mercy escape the evil of this world. Let us seek after good days, for we are now in evil days; but in the evil days let us not blaspheme, that so we may be able to arrive at the good days.” (Sermon 23 on the New Testament)

Saint Athanasius encouraged the faithful suffering under the Arian heresy that had swept through the Church in his time, saying:

“May God console you!… What causes sorrow… is the fact that others have violently seized the churches, while you find yourselves on the outside during this time. It is a fact that they hold the see, but you possess the apostolic faith. They may occupy our churches, but they stand outside the true faith. You remain outside the places of worship, yet the faith dwells within you. Let us consider: which is more important, the place or the faith? The true faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle—the one who holds the see or the one who upholds the faith? True, buildings are good when the apostolic faith is preached within them; they are holy if everything taking place there is holy… You are the blessed ones—you who remain within the Church through your faith, holding fast to the foundations as they have come down to you from apostolic tradition; and if some wretched person jealously seeks to shake that faith on various occasions, they do not succeed. It is they who have cut themselves off from it during the current crisis. No one will ever prevail against your faith, beloved brothers, and we believe that God will one day restore our churches to us. The more the violent seek to occupy places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim to represent the Church, but in reality, they are the ones being cast out of it and led astray. Even if Catholics faithful to tradition are reduced to a mere handful, they are the true Church of Jesus Christ.” (Coll. Selecta SS. Eccl. Patrum, a cura di  Caillaud e Guillon, vol. 32, pp 411-412).

Christians, we must always have hope. This belongs to the essence of being a Christian, to the nature of Christianity: to be persons of hope. We know to whom we gave our trust, we know in whom we have believed, as Saint Paul said, “I am with you all the days until the end of the world.”

These are God’s words; we have to believe them. A lack of trust and hope is contrary to our Christian identity. In the old times of Christianity, the Christian community was called a community consisting of guests, or travelers. It comes from the Greek word paroikia, from which we get the word “parish”. It means we are not living in our own home; we are travelers.

“One day, we will thank the Lord for every moment we had to suffer here on earth and even to have lived in such a tremendous storm within the Church.”Tweet this quote

This is Christianity, we know where we are going, so we have hope.  And then, as Christians, we are marked by the cross. The cross is not only a decoration we carry with us on a chain. It is the crucified Lord. Christ triumphs in and through His Cross. The Cross of Christ is our identity. In our churches we have the cross; in our houses we have the cross; on our grave there will be the cross. This is because we are saved by the Cross of the Lord, it is the sign of our salvation. As Saint Paul says, “In the cross is life; in the cross is hope.”  These are not empty words; this is really true. This is the way to heaven, the way to our salvation. If there were another way, God would have showed us that other way.

There is a beautiful phrase in the liturgy. In Latin it is: Ave crux, spes unica (“Hail, O Cross, you are my only hope.”) We have the privilege to unite our sufferings and trials with the cross of Christ, especially in our day when we witness that our Mother the Church, is going through her Golgotha hours. We do not simply suffer in an empty dimension, or with anger as people who do not have the faith do. When we unite any kind of suffering with faith and hope to that of Christ, then these sufferings, even if they are very heavy and strong, are not in vain. They are blessed by God, and they bear fruits for eternity in heaven. Because of the sufferings of Catholics due to a hostile takeover within the Church, due to the marginalization and persecution of all what is true Catholic within the Church, these all sufferings will bear fruits if they unite them with the sufferings of Christ, with the mystery of His Cross. One day, we will thank the Lord for every moment we had to suffer here on earth and even to have lived in such a tremendous storm within the Church.

The Lord is renewing the Church in our day, starting with the little ones: with families, large Catholic families, good and hidden sacrificial sisters and religious who are praying and sacrificing themselves in contemplative life, or hermits hidden who sacrifice themselves for the Church. There are young people who really love the true faith, the true liturgy, and a heroic Christian life. There are young seminarians and young priests who love the true Catholic faith of all times and the true liturgy of all times. These are signs of hope. They are small, but nevertheless, God loves to use the small ones, the little ones, to fulfill His almighty works. This is happening in our day. People may ask: Will the Catholic faith prevail once more in the world? If so, how might this happen? How long might it take? And what do we need to do?

Our Lord said in the Gospel that Christians are a small flock.  We do not know the plans of God. In our day we have almost apocalyptic signs, not only against Christianity, but we see explicit blasphemy. There is blasphemy of Christian values and public blasphemy of Christ. But the world is nevertheless in the hands of God, not of the devil. The Lord is the master of all history. He permits the devil and his helpers to do their work; we don’t know God’s plans. It is a mysterious permission but St. Augustine said God permits evil so that His almighty power can draw a greater good from it.

We must believe in our time, even with these horrible, apocalyptic scenarios even within the Church, that God will draw a greater good from this situation, that He will purify the Church. We don’t know if God will grant that we have a Christian society again, or at least a part of it is Christian. We don’t know. Our Lady at Fatima promised us that her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end. We do not know how long it will be until the triumph of her Immaculate Heart here on earth, but it will happen. This is our hope.

Ever more timely sound the famous words of Blessed Fulton Sheen: “Who’s going to save our Church?  It’s not our bishops, it’s not our priests and it’s not the religious.  It’s up to you, the people.  You have the minds, the eyes and the ears to save the Church.  Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops and your religious act like religious.” (Address to the Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus in June 1972).

“Indeed, we believe and hope in Christ’s victory over the hostile takeover within the Church. Christus Vincit!”Tweet this quote

The more the high clergy betrays in our day the pure doctrine of Christ and the unchanging teaching of His Church, the more shines in the ranks of the laity, of the little one the purity of the Catholic Faith, the holiness of life and the spirit of martyrdom. We possess some striking examples from Church history. It is the martyrdom of an entire parish in the city of Abitene in North Africa during the persecution of Diocletian, at the beginning of the fourth century. The priest saint Saturninus was celebrating the Holy Mass on a Sunday at which assisted the faithful of his parish, yet secretly, because it was forbidden for Christians to gather for worship. The police suddenly raided the room and arrested all. The children of the priest Saint Saturninus, who we borne to him before his ordination, were present, they were: Saturninus and Felix, lectors, Maria a consecrated virgin and Hilarion a six-year-old child. All parishioners and their priest were led to the judge and then to prison for execution. On the way to the tribunal they met with their bishop Fundanus, who just returned from committing the act of apostasy. The little boy Hilarion, when asked by the judge answered:

“I am a Christian and I have been at the liturgy. I went of my own accord, nobody made me go.”

When the proconsul ordered them back to prison to be executed, little Hilarion with all the parishioners cried out: “Thanks be to God”.

With their martyrdom these little boy, the other teenagers and fathers and mothers of family with their priest Saturninus made also amends for the apostasy of their own bishop, who betrayed Christ in order to save his short earthly life. By this fact we see that God permits that in some periods of the history of the Church the little ones, the faithful, have more strength and fidelity of faith than some members of even the high clergy.

Another example of the bravery and fidelity of the lay faithful to the integrity of the Catholic faith is from the 7th century during the heresy of monotheletism. In 654 was elected a new Pope Eugenius I. He then sent legates to the heretic Emperor in Constantinople. The Papal legates came back from the Emperor with the request that the new pope should declare himself in communion with the heretic patriarch of Constantinople and approve a letter from that patriarch, which was if not not directly heretic, at least doctrinally ambiguous and unclear. This doctrinally ambiguous letter was then publicly discussed in the Roman Basilica of St. Mary Major.

The assembled clergy and lay faithful were so scandalized by the doctrinal ambiguities of that letter that they let Pope Eugenius begin to celebrate Holy Mass only when the pope publicly promised not to recognize the heretic patriarch of Constantinople and to condemn his doctrinally ambiguous letter. (cf. Butler’s Lives of the Saints. Complete edition. Edited, revised, and supplemented by Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. and Donald Attwater, London 1956, Volume 2, p. 458)

What it would be, if laity in some so-called synodal assemblies in our day would ask the Pope and the Bishops to condemn the most spread heresies and ambiguities in doctrine and practice within the Church? Such would be a truly Catholic synodal method! The Pope and the bishops are in fact not the lords and the authors of the faith, but should be its faithful and scrupulous keepers, defenders and lovers.

We have a moving witness of this Catholic truth that in the life of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, those in power, especially the hierarchy, are sustained spiritually by the lowest ones in the hierarchical order. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa from the 15th century was deeply moved by a dream-like vision, which he had. In the vision, he was given a guide who needed to show him something. Together they entered a small, ancient church from the early centuries, and there the Cardinal saw an amazing sight. More than a thousand nuns were praying in the little church. Despite the limited space, they all fit due to their slender and composed nature.

The sisters were praying, but in a way that the Cardinal had never seen. They were not kneeling but standing; their gaze was not cast off into the distance but rather fixed on something nearby which he could not see. They stood with open arms, palms facing upwards in a gesture of offering. Surprisingly, in their poor, thin hands they carried men and women, emperors and kings, cities and countries. Sometimes there were several pairs of hands joined together holding a city. A country, recognizable by its national flag, was supported by a whole wall of arms, and yet even then there was an air of silence and isolation around each one of them in prayer. Most of nuns, however, carried one individual in their hands.

In the hands of a thin, young, almost childlike nun, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa saw the Pope. You could see how heavy this load was for this thin, young nun, but her face was radiating a joyful gleam. Standing in the hands of one of the older sisters he saw himself, Nicholas of Cusa, Bishop of Brixen, and Cardinal of the Roman Church. He saw the wrinkles of his age; he saw the blemishes of his soul and his life in all their clarity. He looked with stunned and surprised eyes, but his fright was soon mixed with an unspeakable bliss. His guide whispered: “Now you see how sinners are sustained and carried and, in spite of their sins, have not given up loving God.”

“What about those who do not love anymore?” the Cardinal asked. Suddenly, he was in the crypt of the church with his guide, where once again, more than a thousand nuns were praying. Whereas the former ones were carried in the nuns’ hands, here in the crypt, they were carried in their hearts. They were exceptionally serious because the fate of eternal souls was at hand. “So you see, Your Eminence,” said the guide, “that also those who have given up loving are still carried. It happens occasionally that they become warm again through the ardent hearts which are being consumed for them—occasionally, but not always. Sometimes, in the hour of their death, they are taken from these saving hands into the hands of the Divine Judge, and they must also answer for the sacrifice that has been made for them. Every sacrifice bears fruit.”

Our Mother the Church is going through an unprecedented time of trials. There is a hostile take-over up to the high ranks of the administrative power in the Church. And yet, in view of this situation, as true Catholics we should not fall into an attitude of anger, bitterness and despondency. Through the current interior trials the Church is being purified. Christ will overcome His enemies who managed to occupy influential positions within the Church. The faithful and the little ones in the Church pray day and night with the voice of the psalmist: “Behold, the Protector of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Ps 121:4).

The voice of Holy Mother Church in her liturgy continue to pray in midst of the darkness: “O God, eternal Shepherd, you are not abandoning your Church, but guard it with constant protection.” (Preface of the Apostles).” And: “O God, Your right hand upheld Saint Peter as he walked upon the waves, so that he would not sink.” (from the Collect of the Octave of the Feast of Saint Peter and Paul)

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich had once a vision of the Church that offers us comfort today: “I beheld a majestic woman walking across the great square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. She held her wide mantle gathered in both arms and floated gently upwards. She stood upon the dome and spread her mantle—which shone as if made of gold—far and wide over the entire expanse of the church. Those who had been tearing down the St. Peter’s Basilica had paused for a moment. Now they sought to return to the task of demolition, yet they found it impossible to approach the area covered by the majestic woman’s mantle. From the other side, however, there arose a flurry of activity among people engaged in rebuilding the church. Very old, sick, and forgotten men arrived, alongside many vigorous young people—women and children, clergy and laity—and soon the structure of St. Peter’s was fully restored.

Then I saw a new Pope approaching with a procession. He was much younger and more austere than his predecessor. He was received with great solemnity. A great double feast of the Church was to take place: a universal jubilee and the restoration of the church. Before commencing the celebration, the Pope had already prepared his team; from the assembled crowd, his new team singled out—without meeting any resistance—a number of clerics, both high-ranking and lowly, and dismissed them. He then enlisted entirely different people into his service, both clergy and laity. Thereupon, the great solemnity began within St. Peter’s Basilica.” (Vision during the Octave of Christmas in 1819)

Let us invoke Our Lord, day and night, offering Him our little and big sacrifices, calling Him to arise and command the storm and restore to His Church again all the purity of doctrine, all the sacredness and sublimity of the liturgy, all the holiness of life, in first place that of the clergy, of the priests, bishops and the Popes. Let us implore the Lord saying: Adorn the Holy See with holy popes who neither fear the powerful of this world nor compromise with the spirit of the age, but preserve, strengthen, and defend the Catholic Faith unto the shedding of their blood, and observe, protect, and hand on the venerable liturgy of the Roman Church. Through an era of holy popes, may the Holy See—which is home to all who promote the Catholic and Apostolic Faith— always shine as the cathedra of truth for the whole world. Hear us, O Lord, and through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of the Church, grant us holy Popes, grant us many holy Popes!

In deed, we believe and hope in Christ’s victory over the hostile takeover within the Church. Christus Vincit!

Bishop Schneider, The Remnant Newspaper

And as with most protests these days, the issue is never the issue; the Revolution is. As much as rioting has been a national sport in France since at least the French Revolution, the ones we are seeing now are far from organic or just kids doing what French kids do.

A Fox News Digital investigation traces how France’s student protests over education cuts are being hijacked by a sprawling network of communist activists, labor unions and far-left political parties — all amplified by a transnational propaganda machine funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon based in China who supports the Chinese Communist Party.

Fox News Digital’s senior editor of investigations @AsraNomani tracked 50 groups in a ‘red-green alliance’ involved in a transnational network organizing, promoting and amplifying the student protests in France.

– Only 15 groups, or 1 of 3, is a youth student group

The 35 other groups for adults are all left-leaning.

– 12 labor groups

– 8 communist or socialist organizations

– 5 civil-rights and human-rights groups

– 5 groups focused on issues from taxes to media

– 4 political parties, including La France insoumise and French Communist Party

– 1 Palestinian advocacy group

On the ground in Paris, the hammer and sickle flies alongside Palestinian flags. The French Communist Party’s national secretary poses with protesters. Far-left politicians from La France Insoumise pose for photos with students.

Groups like the Young Communists Movement of France march behind bright red banners reading “Class War” and demanding an end to “Imperialist Wars.”

“What we’re seeing here is the same Red-Green ecosystem that disrupts infrastructure chokeholds in our country such as the Brooklyn Bridge, college campuses and congressional hearings,” says Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez @Gundisalvus.

In the U.S., BreakThrough News — a pro-communist outlet in the Singham network — pushes the protests to a global audience, racking up hundreds of thousands of likes, including from influencer Hasan Piker, on dramatic anti-police clips while laying the groundwork for the next student explosion, this time in India.

Even the audience the protests are meant to move is not primarily French; what is happening is designed to force change in that country, but the organizers’ goal in keeping the “movement” going is global, with the ultimate aim of further destabilizing Western countries worldwide.

The Singham network’s reach goes far beyond France. BreakThrough News publishes a dramatic video from the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis showing a far-left mayor “protecting” students from police — it racks up 346,000 likes in one day.

From Brazil, teleSUR shared clash footage with a dramatic soundtrack. Self-described Marxist Twitch influencer Hasan Piker, who traveled to Cuba earlier this year and met Singham’s wife Jodie Evans of CodePink, likes the content.

Behind it all is the Neville Roy Singham network and its tentacles reaching into the left-wing political and NGO complex. The protests are nominally about school conditions, but the actions certainly are not designed to make schools a better place to be.

Too few teachers? The solution isn’t to attack teachers and beat them up.

Poor school infrastructure? Burning the schools down hardly makes them more pleasant to attend. You can’t attend a school in ruins.

Kids being kids, the thrill of being part of a “movement” and “doing something” is too exciting to pass up, so they become the frontline troops. But the Captains, Majors, Colonels, and Generals running the show are directly tied to the ideologically communist worldwide network that ultimately leads back to China and Cuba.

On the ground, the protests become a clearinghouse for far-left causes. Activists march behind hammer-and-sickle banners reading “Class War.” The French Communist Party pushes “Stop arming the Palestinian genocide.” A student union announces it’s launching “Democratic and Antifascist Vigilance Committees.” The Party of the Indigenous of the Republic shares photos of students waving Palestinian flags outside a school that became a symbol of the unrest.

In some ways, it’s like a Monty Python script, with all the fractured revolutionary group names, but in others it’s more like a Joe McCarthy fever dream, with a communist plotter pulling the strings in the background. It’s really all coordinated and modeled on the color revolutions, but with a Red-Green tint rather than a Red, White, and Blue one.

The connections runs deep. In January 2023, the People’s Forum — a Singham-funded group in New York — co-sponsored an anti-NATO event with a little-known outfit called Indian Alliance Paris, representing pro-communist students and researchers in France. That same Indian Alliance Paris is now connecting the French student protests to demonstrations in India, posting messages of solidarity to “Gen Z: In France. In India.”

Angry students protesting dirty hallways and large class sizes don’t have connections in Palestine, India, Cuba, and China, and they don’t generally connect directly with American communist billionaires based in Shanghai.

But just as many American “protests” are coordinated by Code Pink in alliance with radical leftist groups and, increasingly, the Democrat Party, the Code Pink/Singham connections are everywhere in the French protests, and they look set to spread from France to other countries.

“What we’re seeing here is the same Red-Green ecosystem that disrupts infrastructure chokeholds in our country such as the Brooklyn Bridge, college campuses and congressional hearings… The communist Red and the Islamist Greens have nothing in common but a common enemy, the Judeo-Christian, capitalist, free West, led by the U.S.” Unfortunately, by now most readers here understand that so much of what appears on the news as organic protests are actually highly coordinated, with enormous foreign resources on top of the domestic supporters contributing; the ordinary Westerner has little idea that he or she are watching a performance.

BreakThrough News is already promoting the next flashpoint: “Indian students and opposition parties call for national mobilization on October 10 against election commissioner.” The Communist Youth of Greece has declared solidarity with French students, with BreakThrough News calling it a sign “foreshadowing more student struggles to follow.”

Even many of the students don’t realize that they are cannon fodder, as disposable to the leaders as the average Russian soldier Putin sends out to die by drone in Ukraine.

As one far-left environmental group, Les Soulèvements de la Terre, or “Earth Uprisings,” declared in the midst of the riots, “Glory to the rebellious high school students.”

The statement invoked a call for broader political subversion: “Pour un soulèvement antifasciste” – “For an antifascist uprising.”

The network’s amplification of France’s protests illustrates how a local confrontation can be presented to international audiences as part of a broader struggle against Western governments and institutions.

“The communist Red and the Islamist Greens have nothing in common but a common enemy, the Judeo-Christian, capitalist, free West, led by the U.S.,” Gonzalez said. “Their goal is to dismantle us.”

The situation in France is potentially even more dangerous, according to Gonzalez, who cited the European nation’s well-established and active communist parties and a history of government changing by street violence. He noted the fall of the Fourth Republic in 1958 after large protests over Algeria, and that the government nearly fell in 1968 over student protests.

“And of course, there was the blood-drenched violence of the 1789 French Revolution,” Gonzalez added.

On the one hand, once you see all the evidence, it doesn’t take a coffee- and nicotine-fueled night at the corkboard to draw the connections. They are all out in the open. But the media rarely take the time, or even have the inclination, to show the full picture, and most of us are trained to see worldwide plots as something out of fiction.

That’s generally a healthy thing — if you start looking for plots, you start seeing them everywhere.

But in this case, the plot is no more hidden than the World Economic Forum’s agenda. Most of it is quite open. It’s not like Singham or the various communist parties are secretive about their desire to destroy the West. They have livestreamed conferences about it, and much of Singham’s funding is easy to trace.

But Americans just don’t think like that. Our social trust is too well developed to automatically suspect evil, even when it is exposed. We look for more benign explanations.

There’s nothing benign here. The tinder was student discontent, married to a French inclination to riot. But the fuel for the spreading fire is being poured on by outsiders.

As with many protest movements, the grievances that sparked the ongoing riots rocking France began with a grain of truth.

And as with most protests these days, the issue is never the issue; the Revolution is. As much as rioting has been a national sport in France since at least the French Revolution, the ones we are seeing now are far from organic or just kids doing what French kids do.

A Fox News Digital investigation traces how France’s student protests over education cuts are being hijacked by a sprawling network of communist activists, labor unions and far-left political parties — all amplified by a transnational propaganda machine funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon based in China who supports the Chinese Communist Party.

Fox News Digital’s senior editor of investigations @AsraNomani tracked 50 groups in a ‘red-green alliance’ involved in a transnational network organizing, promoting and amplifying the student protests in France.

– Only 15 groups, or 1 of 3, is a youth student group

The 35 other groups for adults are all left-leaning.

– 12 labor groups

– 8 communist or socialist organizations

– 5 civil-rights and human-rights groups

– 5 groups focused on issues from taxes to media

– 4 political parties, including La France insoumise and French Communist Party

– 1 Palestinian advocacy group

On the ground in Paris, the hammer and sickle flies alongside Palestinian flags. The French Communist Party’s national secretary poses with protesters. Far-left politicians from La France Insoumise pose for photos with students.

Groups like the Young Communists Movement of France march behind bright red banners reading “Class War” and demanding an end to “Imperialist Wars.”

“What we’re seeing here is the same Red-Green ecosystem that disrupts infrastructure chokeholds in our country such as the Brooklyn Bridge, college campuses and congressional hearings,” says Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez @Gundisalvus.

In the U.S., BreakThrough News — a pro-communist outlet in the Singham network — pushes the protests to a global audience, racking up hundreds of thousands of likes, including from influencer Hasan Piker, on dramatic anti-police clips while laying the groundwork for the next student explosion, this time in India.

Even the audience the protests are meant to move is not primarily French; what is happening is designed to force change in that country, but the organizers’ goal in keeping the “movement” going is global, with the ultimate aim of further destabilizing Western countries worldwide.

The Singham network’s reach goes far beyond France. BreakThrough News publishes a dramatic video from the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis showing a far-left mayor “protecting” students from police — it racks up 346,000 likes in one day.

From Brazil, teleSUR shared clash footage with a dramatic soundtrack. Self-described Marxist Twitch influencer Hasan Piker, who traveled to Cuba earlier this year and met Singham’s wife Jodie Evans of CodePink, likes the content.

Behind it all is the Neville Roy Singham network and its tentacles reaching into the left-wing political and NGO complex. The protests are nominally about school conditions, but the actions certainly are not designed to make schools a better place to be.

Too few teachers? The solution isn’t to attack teachers and beat them up.

Poor school infrastructure? Burning the schools down hardly makes them more pleasant to attend. You can’t attend a school in ruins.

Kids being kids, the thrill of being part of a “movement” and “doing something” is too exciting to pass up, so they become the frontline troops. But the Captains, Majors, Colonels, and Generals running the show are directly tied to the ideologically communist worldwide network that ultimately leads back to China and Cuba.

On the ground, the protests become a clearinghouse for far-left causes. Activists march behind hammer-and-sickle banners reading “Class War.” The French Communist Party pushes “Stop arming the Palestinian genocide.” A student union announces it’s launching “Democratic and Antifascist Vigilance Committees.” The Party of the Indigenous of the Republic shares photos of students waving Palestinian flags outside a school that became a symbol of the unrest.

In some ways, it’s like a Monty Python script, with all the fractured revolutionary group names, but in others it’s more like a Joe McCarthy fever dream, with a communist plotter pulling the strings in the background. It’s really all coordinated and modeled on the color revolutions, but with a Red-Green tint rather than a Red, White, and Blue one.

The connections runs deep. In January 2023, the People’s Forum — a Singham-funded group in New York — co-sponsored an anti-NATO event with a little-known outfit called Indian Alliance Paris, representing pro-communist students and researchers in France. That same Indian Alliance Paris is now connecting the French student protests to demonstrations in India, posting messages of solidarity to “Gen Z: In France. In India.”

Angry students protesting dirty hallways and large class sizes don’t have connections in Palestine, India, Cuba, and China, and they don’t generally connect directly with American communist billionaires based in Shanghai.

But just as many American “protests” are coordinated by Code Pink in alliance with radical leftist groups and, increasingly, the Democrat Party, the Code Pink/Singham connections are everywhere in the French protests, and they look set to spread from France to other countries.

“What we’re seeing here is the same Red-Green ecosystem that disrupts infrastructure chokeholds in our country such as the Brooklyn Bridge, college campuses and congressional hearings… The communist Red and the Islamist Greens have nothing in common but a common enemy, the Judeo-Christian, capitalist, free West, led by the U.S.” Unfortunately, by now most readers here understand that so much of what appears on the news as organic protests are actually highly coordinated, with enormous foreign resources on top of the domestic supporters contributing; the ordinary Westerner has little idea that he or she are watching a performance.

BreakThrough News is already promoting the next flashpoint: “Indian students and opposition parties call for national mobilization on October 10 against election commissioner.” The Communist Youth of Greece has declared solidarity with French students, with BreakThrough News calling it a sign “foreshadowing more student struggles to follow.”

Even many of the students don’t realize that they are cannon fodder, as disposable to the leaders as the average Russian soldier Putin sends out to die by drone in Ukraine.

As one far-left environmental group, Les Soulèvements de la Terre, or “Earth Uprisings,” declared in the midst of the riots, “Glory to the rebellious high school students.”

The statement invoked a call for broader political subversion: “Pour un soulèvement antifasciste” – “For an antifascist uprising.”

The network’s amplification of France’s protests illustrates how a local confrontation can be presented to international audiences as part of a broader struggle against Western governments and institutions.

“The communist Red and the Islamist Greens have nothing in common but a common enemy, the Judeo-Christian, capitalist, free West, led by the U.S.,” Gonzalez said. “Their goal is to dismantle us.”

The situation in France is potentially even more dangerous, according to Gonzalez, who cited the European nation’s well-established and active communist parties and a history of government changing by street violence. He noted the fall of the Fourth Republic in 1958 after large protests over Algeria, and that the government nearly fell in 1968 over student protests.

“And of course, there was the blood-drenched violence of the 1789 French Revolution,” Gonzalez added.

On the one hand, once you see all the evidence, it doesn’t take a coffee- and nicotine-fueled night at the corkboard to draw the connections. They are all out in the open. But the media rarely take the time, or even have the inclination, to show the full picture, and most of us are trained to see worldwide plots as something out of fiction.

That’s generally a healthy thing — if you start looking for plots, you start seeing them everywhere.

But in this case, the plot is no more hidden than the World Economic Forum’s agenda. Most of it is quite open. It’s not like Singham or the various communist parties are secretive about their desire to destroy the West. They have livestreamed conferences about it, and much of Singham’s funding is easy to trace.

But Americans just don’t think like that. Our social trust is too well developed to automatically suspect evil, even when it is exposed. We look for more benign explanations.

There’s nothing benign here. The tinder was student discontent, married to a French inclination to riot. But the fuel for the spreading fire is being poured on by outsiders.

David Strom, Hotair

Former state trooper John Nagel pointed the finger at his opponent, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and the Democratic Party for allowing Somali American gang-linked violence to escalate in the Twin Cities.

Residents of Eden Prairie and surrounding Twin Cities suburbs have been left fearing for their safety after a string of gang-related incidents this month, including the shooting of two teens outside an Eden Prairie High School football game and more than 100 shell casings recovered in a Bloomington neighborhood.

“Where is Ilhan Omar in all of this?” Nagel, a Minnesota native who spent 30 years as a state trooper, asked in an interview with Fox News Digital.

“I would think that, as a congressman that represents this particular area, that she’d be at these meetings, or she’d have a statement, or she’d be sitting down and saying, ‘Hey, how can we help this? How could we stop this?’ And I don’t see her.”

Nagel accused other Minnesota Democrats, including Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, of having their “heads in the sand” and preventing law enforcement from stopping the violence before it got out of control.

“They’re being restrained by politicians, people that are trying soft on crime, people that are trying to send somebody other than a police officer to take care of issues, and it’s not working,” Nagel said.

Looking at the responses of statewide leaders, including Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, Nagel said the majority of Democrats “don’t want enforcement.”

“The people do,” he said. “They’re tired of it.”

It would have been hard to improve the backdrop for Marco Rubio’s foreign policy address on October 7 in Athens, Greece. Standing on the Pnyx with the ruins of the Parthenon rising up behind him, the Secretary of State delivered a speech that won almost universal plaudits. Let me toss my vote in with the overwhelming majority and affirm that Rubio’s speech was simply splendid: robust, heartfelt, honest, masculine, and true.

Is it still permissible to praise such a public performance for being “masculine”? It was part of Rubio’s accomplishment to render that question moot. His speech was statesmanlike but also steely: confident both in manner and substance. Rubio was speaking on behalf of the greatest military and economic power on earth. He knew it. So did his audience. He did not swagger. But neither did he make any apologies for the potency he represented. Rather, he issued a series of clear-eyed affirmations. What he affirmed were the struggles—political, intellectual, martial—that defined Western civilization and made it a world-conquering and world-enriching force. That history made the spot upon which Rubio stood a sacred space. The Acropolis: that “high place” in whose shadow political liberty made its fledgling steps, where Plato and Aristotle taught, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes wrote their plays, where Pericles presided and Phidias built and sculpted.

Rubio is right: “The civilization that built what stands behind me has captivated the imagination of the Western world. Generations of our statesmen, artists, and philosophers have looked to it—they’ve looked to it with wonder, and they’ve looked to it with awe.” Most great historical events—the battles, the revolutions, the abdications, the conquests—tend to live on as historical data, facts, and figures to be read about and docketed. But the ancient Greeks, as Rubio says, “seem to have an almost mystical hold on our memory.” They were an essential part of the foundation of the West: our laws and political institutions, our science, our literature, our art. “The history of America,” Rubio said, “is covered with the fingerprints of antiquity. Greece is literally carved into the architecture of our government: in the towering columns, in the domes and the monuments across our capital city. The city where our Constitution was born—Philadelphia—is itself a Greek name.”

The influence of Athens goes far beyond civic architecture or even the rudiments of our political arrangements. “These institutions and ideas,” Rubio noted, were but the “outward expression of more fundamental qualities we see in the ancient Greeks—qualities that can’t be reduced to any particular political system or theory.”

[I]n Athens, we found the first full realization of all the essential traits that would come to define the West: fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory. An insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates, a hunger to know the mysteries of nature and grasp the secrets of the cosmos. An impatience with the notion of impossibility, chafing at all boundaries and limits, straining to peer into the depths of the unknown.

These were not just the formulas or precepts of a particular school of philosophy. They were the characteristic of a people—expressed in their traditions, their stories, their imagination; in the qualities they demanded of their citizens; in the things they lived and fought and died for.

In short, “What blossomed here in this place was the Western desire to uncover all that ignorance, darkness, and distance had kept hidden from the mind of man.”

Rubio went on to observe that Athens bequeathed to us not just a common culture but also a “common anthropology—a common view of man and his place in the universe. Its descendants would share not just the idea of a natural order, but a distinctive understanding of virtue; of destiny and fate; of truth, goodness, and beauty; of a code that dictates how men ought to live; of objective standards and ideals to strive towards.” It was not so long ago that this “common view of man and his place in the universe” was part of the common mental furniture of most Americans. Such a view stands behind the competitiveness that powers the free market and the general ambition to excel. “The classical Greek city,” Rubio reminded us, “was an arena for great men to test and prove themselves, to hone their potential through perpetual struggle—to be the best, the strongest, the most beautiful, straining to inch ever closer to perfection.”

In recent years, however, this energetic, competitive view of human nature has given way to the culture Lewis Carroll evoked in his description of the Dodo race in Through the Looking-Glass. “Everybody has won and all must have prizes.” What goes along with this attenuated view of life is the ethic of what has come to be called “safetyism.” “The ideal of many ideologies in our time,” Rubio pointed out, has

become a world of perfect safety, devoid of risk or failure, with neither the glory of victory nor the shame of defeat. Too often these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure no one will lose; we preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best. We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.

This loss of spiritedness—what the Greeks called θυμός—has had a far-reaching and depressive effect on the civilizations of the West. Rubio’s diagnosis will be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to what has happened to our schools and to our culture at large. The rise of political correctness and cancel culture goes hand in hand with the spiritual timidity that Nietzsche described in his portrait of “the Last Man.” “Over time,” Rubio noted, “we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional. We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world. Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness.”

Remember when, just a few years ago, our cultural commissars celebrated the career criminal George Floyd and The 1619 Project? The unhappy anti-American beneficiaries of America took to the streets to desecrate our monuments and defile our heritage. It was in this context, Rubio observed, that “‘nationalism’ became a dirty word. . . . [W]e taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.” At the same time, we began to outsource not only our industry but also our sovereignty, “transferring our decisions to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control.”

It is here that Rubio’s speech reaches its denouement. Both the United States and Europe are at a crossroads. Do we endeavor to recover the values we have inherited from the Greeks or do we go quietly into the not-so-good night of spiritual flaccidness? Rubio’s answer caused panic among the low-testosterone denizens of academia and the media. “Under President Trump,” he said, “the United States has made its choice.”

We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power: to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialize our economy, to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.

We choose to reach for new frontiers: in advanced manufacturing and super intelligence; in drones, weapons, and warfare; in chips, minerals, cyber, and every other domain of human possibility. To unleash our energy, to rebuild our factories, to return our astronauts to the moon and launch a new age of exploration in space.

Has any modern statesman had the courage to be so politically incorrect? To note that statecraft requires not only “prudence and diplomacy” but also “the ability to wield force when prudence and diplomacy fail,” and to recognize that power requires “not only having the means to defend yourself” but also “the credibility that you are willing to use it”?

There is only one that I can think of: President Donald Trump. In 2017, in a rousing speech in Warsaw, Trump mounted a defense of the West very similar to Rubio’s speech in Athens. Writing about that speech in American Greatness, I argued that a plausible model for the speech was the Funeral Oration Pericles delivered near the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. “There is nothing like our community of nations,” Trump said at the time. “The world has never known anything like our community of nations.”

We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers.

We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.

This is exactly the spirit that Marco Rubio celebrated in front of the Acropolis on October 7. We are, as Rubio warned, at a crossroads. Do we pursue excellence and take justified pride in the great things our civilization has accomplished? Or do we retreat to the tenebrous mediocrity and querulous ressentiment of the Last Man? C. S. Lewis drew a frightening portrait of “men without chests,” spiritually timid creatures who lack gumption (a plausible English equivalent of the Greek word θυμός). Marco Rubio, continuing in the president’s rhetorical footsteps, has called us to reaffirm the better, more spirited angels of our nature. I like to think that this rousing tocsin will help awaken a salutary and clear-eyed spiritual revival.

Roger Kimball, American Greatness

Bradley A. Thayer

Oct 10, 2026

It all falls to you, Mr. and Mrs. Donald Trump supporters. The midterm elections on November 3 are essential for the survival of the country: The survival of the United States as a constitutional republic is on your shoulders.

The 2026 midterm election is important, but it also sets the stage for 2028, and while every election is important, these elections are existential. This is because the United States is in a revolutionary time. The outcomes of the midterms will be critical. Americans have the chance to save America or send the country down the path of a Communist tyranny.

Should the Democrats capture the Senate and/or the House of Representatives, not only will President Trump’s legislative agenda be thwarted, but the Democrats will use their legislative perch to combat the administration in every way possible and lay the groundwork for their victory in 2028.

They will do this through funding, hearings, subpoenas, impeachments if they have the House, and criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, which will be acted upon should the Democrats win the White House in November 2028. Democrats will do all they can next month to place their party in the best position to win in 2028.

The Democrats understand power and how to use it to further their revolutionary aims. If they return to office, they will act with an intensity, boldness, focus, and discipline because they intend never again to lose power. They will advance their plans to expand the U.S. Supreme Court, to abolish the Senate filibuster, to add new states, thwart election integrity, and import many tens of millions of illegal aliens into the country. The more than 20 million illegals who came in under the Biden administration were just the warm-up act for what they will do in the future. The Democrats will offer them citizenship so they can vote and so keep the Democrats in power forever.

Even in the 2026-2028 period, the Democrats may be able to enact some components of their radical agenda implemented as a budget, or more likely a continuing resolution, but it will have to pass the Democrat-controlled House or Senate, or both.

And that’s not all.

The Old Guard in the Republican Party has not gone away. Ignoring or dismissing all of Trump’s great accomplishments, they treat Trump — one of the nation’s greatest presidents, who saved the Republican Party — with contempt. They are just waiting for a less-than-perfect midterm to declare — beginning on election night — that “Republicans must move on” to return to good ol’ days of tax cuts and beautiful, if elegiac, election night concession speeches. The tried and pathetic cries of “we’ll get them next time” will commence four more years of performative, captured opposition to the Democrats. The Democrats always get what they want, and the Old Guard Republicans always say they just could not stop the Democrats. Worse than useless, they are actually playing for the other side. As for candidates, don’t worry, if they can’t find a Bush to roll out, they’ll go with a near-enough clone. There always is someone like Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) lying around that they can dust off to lose the next election.

The media are playing their old games with polling. Through their polling, “reporting,” and commentary, they are trying to suppress turnout by depressing potential Trump voters. They do this every election cycle; don’t fall for it.

And, yes, the Democrats will cheat, even with the Departments of War, Justice, and Homeland Security watching over them as never before. This is reality; face it, and master it by casting your ballot and encouraging others to as well. The way out is through — every election must be “too big to rig.”

To get to “too big to rig,” you have to vote. You do not have the luxury of staying home or the indulgence of being passive. If you do not act now, America is lost. The cavalry is not coming. You are going to have to act to save the United States. So saddle up. President Trump saved the country in 2016 and 2024. The Biden presidency was only a glimpse of the hell the Democrats will unleash on the country. Now in 2026, you must help President Trump build a bridge to low-propensity voters to get them to the polls to keep the Democrats out of office. Only that will stop the Democrats’ radical agenda.

If you want to assist Trump, vote! If you want to save your country, vote! And get fellow Trump supporters to the polls. If you are able to do more, do it. Volunteer to be a poll watcher or assist as you are able. You stand on the shoulders of giants who made this country and have sustained it generation after generation for 250 years. It’s time for you to participate to honor those who came before and to save America for your children and grandchildren.

Whatever you do, vote. If you can do more, do it. Now is the time to become as active as you can in politics to save America.

Bradley A. Thayer is an American Freedom Alliance Fellow and the author of America’s 100 Years’ War: How to Win Against Communism (Warroom Books, 2026).

Townhall