Everybody says they want freedom, but most people really don’t, mainly because they don’t know what true freedom is. And if they did, they would—and do — reject it. “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, and most people don’t want to be virtuous. Which is why they prefer socialism.

Homo sapiens, as a species, is a group of jungle savages who know very little about history, and especially do not understand historical perspective. In fact, when it comes to history, most humans are incredibly ignorant. 

Two hundred and fifty years — the life of the American Republic — when compared to the entire span of human history, is not a very long time. And we Americans look at our history very narrowly, and rarely see the whole panorama that history really is. That’s typical of all humanity. We see through a glass tunnel, and very darkly.

Americans — and especially the Left — tend to judge things, current and past, through the lens of the very slender historical time period we live in — our “zeitgeist.” We rarely — the Left never — put our judgments in an overarching historical milieu. People see all things only as they see them currently, and, most often, the way they want to see them. No vision, no context, no historical perception.

Many Americans today are surprised and dismayed that massive numbers of their countrymen are moving towards socialism, communism, leftism, promiscuity, godlessness, everything the Democrats and the Left are directing us towards. We should not be surprised, and if we knew history well enough, we wouldn’t be. This movement is new for America, but it’s not new for humans, or the world.

Why do so many Americans now prefer socialism to capitalism? Well, by studying history, we discover that most people, surprisingly, actually do prefer slavery (dependence) to freedom (risk). Dependence upon someone else means, well, somebody else takes care of us. That’s a very easy way to live, and how many millions of Americans today have opted for that course? Freedom, which virtuous Americans think is the way things ought to be, means risk, trials, hazards, individual responsibility, and acceptance of consequences. And there aren’t too many people — and never have been, frankly — who have the character and self-control to be able to conquer themselves and achieve that.

Nor do they have the spirituality. Freedom comes from God, the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. As Franklin said, only a virtuous people can be free. But since increasingly, more and more Americans don’t believe in or obey God, and don’t want to, they end up rejecting the life, liberty, and property God provides. So, they are rejecting capitalism, free markets, hard work, and individual responsibility for socialism, i.e., letting government take care of them, in effect, sponging off other people. Countless millions of Americans not only do that, but that’s the life they prefer. Selfish dependence, not virtuous freedom.

And history tells us that such dependence — and slavery — is far more common than human freedom. 

Thus, when I see the Democrat Party moving towards socialism, totalitarianism, licentiousness, godlessness, etc., it doesn’t surprise me in the least because as a historian, I try to view historical perspective and not just look at the current, narrow zeitgeist. Zeitgeists are nearly always wrong, and much of ours is too.

We today aren’t allowed to call this dependence “slavery” (our Founders did), not in our current zeitgeist. Slavery has become the worst crime in existence, the unforgivable sin, the one the Left has taught us is the greatest evil imaginable and to never forgive America for. And they teach their sheep that America should be hated for it, since we probably invented the practice. There is zero historical perspective in this, of course.

Slavery is certainly un-American because the founding principle of the country was freedom. But the Left fails to see — or admit — that it was the founding principles of America that eventually ended chattel slavery worldwide. It took time; history usually moves slowly, but that is what historical perspective is all about, of which the Left has none at all.

And, of course, the Left will NEVER admit that socialism is simply another form of slavery. Socialism is not personal, individual chattel slavery; it’s slavery to government. We give government the right to oversee all economic factors, thus ultimately controlling, and distributing — and withholding — economic resources as it sees fit. Socialism makes people dependent upon government. That’s its purpose.

since, sadly, countless Americans today don’t have the virtue necessary for individual freedom, they want socialism.

Americans will insist they want to be free. But how many people voluntarily place themselves into dependence upon government? They don’t have to; they have a choice. But in one of history’s supreme oxymorons, they use their freedom to place themselves in slavery. But they lack the virtue, the character to take care of themselves, and to thus be truly free. And so, they turn to socialism, which makes them dependent upon somebody else. Too many Americans, if they ever had the virtue to be free, have lost it. And the Democrats love that.

The Left, of necessity, has redefined “freedom” as doing whatever one wishes to do, especially sexual licentiousness, the right to have as much sex as one wants with whomever one wishes to have it with — with no responsibility or consequences. But because of this inaccurate, and frankly vile, definition of freedom, people actually become enslaved (addicted, like a druggie) to their own lusts and passions, and, as a result, with no self-control or virtue, become enslaved to (dependent upon) government. These people want moral “freedom,” yet end up in economic dependence (socialism). Exactly what Democrats want.

It is interesting to see that the people who are pushing socialism in America are the same people who are attacking Christianity, glorifying sexual licentiousness, and who hate America—traditional, free America. And history.

Historically, we shouldn’t be surprised at all. 

Mark Lewis, Townhall

Federal investigators are reportedly expanding their scrutiny of California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, issuing subpoenas seeking years of financial records and communications involving a nonprofit that has helped bankroll the governor’s international travel and other expenses.

The development puts fresh attention on Newsom and his political operation as the California governor continues to be viewed as a potential contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

According to documents reviewed by the San Francisco Standard, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California issued subpoenas in early September seeking roughly six years of records connected to the California State Protocol Foundation.

One subpoena reportedly states that the records are being sought as part of “a criminal investigation pending in the Eastern District of California.”

The subpoenas seek information involving the foundation’s donors and fundraisers, Newsom’s international travel and overseas appearances, as well as money potentially used for the governor’s residence, living expenses or other personal costs.

The subpoenas do not identify a specific alleged crime, and their issuance does not mean Newsom or anyone else has been accused of criminal wrongdoing. No charges have been announced against Newsom, his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, or anyone connected to the foundation in relation to the latest inquiry.

Newsom’s office has fiercely denied wrongdoing and accused President Donald Trump of weaponizing the Justice Department against a political opponent.

“Governor Newsom went after the king — and as he warned in June, the tyrant is now coming after everyone around him,” Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos said.

“This is what Donald Trump does to his enemies: investigate first, hunt for a crime that doesn’t exist second.”

But a source familiar with the matter previously told the Los Angeles Times that multiple federal inquiries involving individuals in Newsom’s orbit originated with information supplied by California whistleblowers rather than orders from Washington.

The latest subpoenas appear to bring the California State Protocol Foundation squarely into investigators’ sights.

Created in 2001, the nonprofit has been used by both Republican and Democratic administrations to finance official events, host foreign dignitaries and cover expenses associated with gubernatorial travel.

During Newsom’s tenure, the foundation has helped pay for trips to China, Mexico, Israel, the Vatican and El Salvador.

But questions have lingered over where the nonprofit’s money comes from and the potential interests of its donors.

According to the Standard’s review of state and federal records, more than $5 million raised through funds associated with Newsom’s 2019 and 2023 inaugurations was later transferred to the Protocol Foundation.

Some donors reportedly included companies, tribes and other organizations with business interests before California state government.

Newsom has also directed more than $7.5 million in outside contributions to the foundation since taking office in 2019, according to the report.

Federal investigators are now reportedly seeking communications involving several current and former members of Newsom’s inner circle.

Among them is Rebecca Prowda, Newsom’s chief protocol officer, who oversees the governor’s international travel and is married to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Investigators are also reportedly seeking communications involving former Newsom chief of staff Steve Kawa, former executive secretary Jim DeBoo, former deputy chief of staff Jason Elliott and other individuals connected to the foundation.

The expanded inquiry comes as another former member of Newsom’s inner circle faces separate legal trouble.

Former Newsom chief of staff Dana Williamson pleaded guilty in an unrelated federal corruption case that began during the Biden administration. That prosecution is separate from the investigation involving Newsom’s travel and the Protocol Foundation.

Newsom revealed in June that federal investigators were examining matters involving himself and his wife, immediately accusing the Trump administration of political retaliation.

Federal prosecutors have not publicly detailed the full scope of their investigation.

But the newly reported subpoenas provide the clearest indication yet of where investigators are looking: the millions of dollars flowing through a nonprofit that has financed expenses connected to one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent governors.

Whether that scrutiny ultimately produces charges remains unknown.

For Newsom, however, the federal investigation surrounding his political and government orbit appears to be getting wider — not going away.

Big League Politics

Democratic Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego appeared on CNN this morning and said the next Democratic President should destroy all remnants of Trump, including the beautification of Washington, DC, once he leaves the White House. 

Trump has undertaken various projects to beautify DC, including cleaning the vandalism and restoring statues and monuments across the city, fixing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and building a White House Ballroom and a “Triumphal Arch.”

The Department of the Interior is preparing to break ground on the Arch on Columbia Island, where it will overlook the Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac River. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced earlier this month that the excavation work was set to begin “over the next two-week period.”

We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island between the Lincoln… pic.twitter.com/8aff90jKNd

— Secretary Doug Burgum (@SecretaryBurgum) September 3, 2026

But Gallego says he would advocate for the reversal of these actions, including tearing down the Arch and Trump’s ballroom, under a Democratic president. Apparently, he would also have vandals and hobos return to the monuments as well.

“I think I’d be advocating for almost all of that,” Gallego told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“You know, the real stain that this president has put on this country has been the fact that he eroded democracy,” he continued, pointing to January 6, accusing Trump of attempting a coup. “That right there is a reason why we should not have anything’s name towards him.”

Gallego then said Trump “destroyed the institutions that have kept this government together through some of the hardest times,” including the DOJ, arguing that “we need to be taking down all these, you know, honorific situations or emblems of him.”

Of the Triumphal Arch, he said it’s an “ugly monstrosity” that would desecrate the Arlington National Cemetery and that it’s an example of Trump “destroy[ing] the very fundamental things that these men and women have fought for, which is to save this country and continue this democracy.”

Jordan Conradson, Gateway Pundit

While China has been pouring billions into its own AI infrastructure and expansion, it may also be funding an equally expensive influence campaign here in the U.S. to oppose the building of data centers — critical to advancing the technology.

The stakes in the AI are incredibly high, so high that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently said whoever dominates in the field of artificial intelligence is “going to control the world.”

While China is massively expanding their AI industry growing evidence indicates they are pushing misinformation campaigns in the U.S. with the goal of stopping or delaying the build out of data centers.

These centers are massive computing factories with significant energy and water needs that are key to running AI systems like Grok, ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and others.

The data centers have become a focal point for supporters and opponents of the new technology.

In April Sen. Bernie Sanders convened his own panel on Capitol Hill to discuss “the existential threat of AI,” claiming “the richest, most powerful people in the world are now building a runaway train with no brakes.”

Sanders did not hide China’s interest in stopping U.S. AI development. He asked two senior Chinese officials to host the panel with him.

The pair from China — Zeng Yi, dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor and Counselor to China’s State Council — used their Capitol podium to downplay the U.S.-China AI race.

The far left is unequivocally seeking to completely stop U.S. advancement.

Earlier this year Sanders, along with fellow Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act. The bill would freeze all new U.S. construction of AI datacenters.

President Donald Trump and others have been counterpunching in what they see an undue foreign influence over a critical technology for U.S. security and economic interests.

On Monday, Trump signed a slew of Executive Orders that aim to combat security risks posed by foreign adversaries.

Last year he signed an Executive Order that streamlined the permitting process for data centers and provided loans and tax incentives for their construction.

In December he reinforced his earlier Order with another one that shields federal permitting from state and local rules.

In May a sweeping new 17-page report from the Bitcoin Policy Institute raised real concerns about China’s efforts to back efforts to sow distrust of data centers and effectively block AI programs in the U.S.

The Institute’s report — “Foreign Influence in the Campaign Against American AI” — details what it calls a multi-year influence operation backed by China targeting U.S. AI data centers and programs. 

Sam Lyman, BPI’s head of research and a former senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, traces three interlocking vectors: Chinese state media propaganda; a U.S.-based nonprofit network bankrolled by Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based American with ties to the Chinese Communist Party; and more than $2 billion in dark money from foreign billionaires routed into the very groups now demanding moratoriums.

“None of this is hidden,” the report states. “Each layer is documentable from primary sources.”

The stakes could not be higher, Lyman told Newsmax in an interview.

“Data centers are critical to winning the AI race. Whoever wins, will control the information layer of the global economy, which is why the U.S., with its commitment to free expression, must win,” Lyman said.

Indeed, President Xi Jinping himself declared AI “an important strategic handhold” for Beijing to seize global technological supremacy with a national plan to make China the world’s AI innovation center by 2030. 

While China’s media outlets like CGTN have published and aired reports warning Americans that data centers will spike their electricity bills, strain power grids, and contribute to global warming —  the same outlets trumpet Beijing’s subsidies that slash energy costs for China’s own AI businesses by up to 50%.

Inside the U.S., the most “operationally significant” player is that web of 501(c)(3) nonprofits funded by Singham, as tax records show that the tech billionaire and Marxist activist has poured some $285 million into activist groups since 2017.

Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans, co-founded CodePink, a far-left protest group that has run explicit campaigns against U.S. AI data centers and the Pentagon’s AI efforts, framing them as part of a new Cold War on China.

And multiple signatories to the coalition letter that helped trigger the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez moratorium bill have taken Singham money.

The movement is also getting an assist from leftist billionaires like Switzerland’s Hansjörg Wyss and Britain’s Alan Parker and his Oak Foundation.

Together these billionaires alone have funneled more than $2 billion into U.S. advocacy, with about $39 million reaching 12 organizations actively opposing data-center expansion. 

A single $1.3 million Wyss grant went to a signatory of the December 2025 moratorium demand letter — with the grant using the same language that appears in the bill from Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.

The activists they fund have been increasingly effective at the national and local levels.

So far about five dozen moratoriums have already passed at the local government level, pausing the construction of new data centers in multiple states, according to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that tracks economic development and corporate subsidies.

Beyond claims that AI is causing electric bills to surge, the left is using environmentalism as an excuse to halt new data centers. 

Ocasio-Cortez, at a Congressional hearing on May 20, dramatically displayed jars of dirty water, claiming the culprit was a Georgia AI data center from Meta, the Facebook parent.

In reality, the brown water came from four private wells and was likely from normal construction dirt that started when Meta broke ground. A probe found no evidence the running of the data center harmed the water supply.

Still, the stunt whipped up a panic about a lack of potable water in the area due to Meta’s project.

Experts say that the water used by most data centers is less than the amount to manage a typical 18-hole golf course.

Hudson Institute research fellow Zineb Riboua sees a deeper ideological driver behind a disparate left-wing coalition that includes CodePink, NAACP chapters, environmental groups, and even anti-Israel activists. 

“These groups arrive with a fully formed ideological inheritance,” she told Newsmax.

“They hold the conviction that Western capitalism is structurally predatory and that American technological power is merely colonialism by another name.

“The data center is simply the latest surface of this.” 

The selectivity, Riboua notes, is revealing. 

“China is building data centers at a scale and speed that dwarfs the American buildout, consuming coal-fired power with no environmental review, no community consultation, and no indigenous land acknowledgment — and there is not a single CodePink rally, NAACP resolution, or climate justice statement directed at any of it,” she said.

The impact of the foreign-backed activism is having a real impact on public opinion.

A Gallup poll released in May shows the backlash is real: seven in 10 Americans oppose new AI data centers in their local area, with Democrat opposition especially intense.

Hundreds of local fights, lawsuits, and rallies have delayed or blocked projects worth tens of billions of dollars, with perhaps a single critic inside the Democratic Party, Sen. John Fetterman.

Fetterman has denounced the moratorium push as “lunacy” and a “China-first kind of a policy.”

Republicans in Congress are becoming more vocal on the foreign involvement in these campaigns.

Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has opened a probe of the Chinese money flows to activist groups in the U.S.

Smith recently called on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to remove the tax-exempt status of groups receiving foreign funding who oppose AI data centers because such activities “jeopardize our national and economic security.”

“We’ve tracked down Chinese money that’s come into U.S. non-for-profits that are organizing the protests against data centers because China wants to win computational dominance,” Smith said.

“If they can sow discord and chaos within the American citizenry, they’ll slow down [the U.S. in] the AI race — and they win,” he said, adding “We have to be guarded.”

Paul Bond has been a journalist for three decades, writing stories reporters in legacy media typically ignore.

Victor Joecks•   September 13, 2026

A farmer can’t make his plants grow, but he can create the conditions that lead to their flourishing. A society can’t make its citizens virtuous, but it can nurture the institutions that lead to virtuous citizens.

Great thinkers in Western civilization have long noted the importance of virtue. In “Politics,” Aristotle declared, “The best life, both for individuals and states, is the life of virtue, when virtue has external goods enough for the performance of good actions.”

“Virtue then is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is, as the prudent man would determine it,” Aristotle wrote in “Nicomachean Ethics.” Practically, that means “virtue in a man will be the disposition which renders him a good man and also which will cause him to perform his function well.”

Contained in that clunky English is a key insight. Virtue requires ascertaining truth and moving toward it with actions. This presupposes that truth is objective, not a personal possession.

This fits in with an observation the great Roman statesman Cicero once made. He contrasted virtuous citizens with those who cared “more for his own interests than for those of the republic.”

Perhaps you can start to see the link between liberty and virtue. A man with the ability to do as he chooses can use that ability to oppress others. Or, as Cicero warned, he could make self-centered choices that undermine the governing system that protects liberty more broadly. Since freedom is rare, both are serious threats.

A tyrannical government may compel subservience from its citizens by removing their ability to take some destructive actions. The result may look virtuous, but coercion doesn’t create virtue by compelling conformity.

Our Founding Fathers talked about the importance of virtue and extended it to Christianity, the ubiquitous religion in the colonies at the time.

In 1776, John Adams declared, “The happiness of society is the end of government.” But his definition of happiness may surprise you. He wrote, “All sober enquiries after truth, ancient and modern, Pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity consists in virtue.”

That should make you think differently about the Declaration of Independence declaring that the “pursuit of happiness” is an unalienable right.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” former President George Washington said in his 1796 Farewell Address. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men & citizens.”

In a 1798 letter, Adams explained why morality and religion are essential to check human passions. Without them, human vices “would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The country has spent decades rejecting the virtue and Christian principles that the country was founded on. A deeply divided country only seems to agree that the government isn’t working as it should. This is a major reason why.

Government can’t make individuals virtuous, but it can stop undermining the institutions, like the family and churches, that once inculcated virtue in the next generation. Government schools once taught students the Bible. Now those schools undermine parents, the country and even the notion of truth.

A people without virtue shouldn’t expect to enjoy the blessings of liberty indefinitely. That’s a crisis to jump in and fix, not a foregone conclusion to observe passively. Next week, I’ll look at the difference between liberty and license.

COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Victor Joecks | contributor

Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal

Victor Davis Hanson

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. 

I’d like to offer an update on the Canadian-American trade spat. 

Earlier, I had staged it. I said stage one was surprise on both sides of the border that two neighbors who spoke the same language, had the same civilizational origins in Britain, were close neighbors, and had the largest undefended border in the world were at a point of very angry disagreement. 

The second stage was that Prime Minister Mark Carney started to suggest that the United States was solely culpable, was a bully, and had forced him to cancel the agreement at the 11th hour late on a Friday afternoon without warning.  

And he said that the United States tried to impugn or intercede or limit, prune back, whatever term you use, Canadian sovereignty, both by telling Canada that it couldn’t import cheap Chinese EV vehicles or that it could not import cheap steel and aluminum from China that were really, to be fair, dumped below the cost of production as a way of getting around American tariffs via being used for assembling autos or vehicles in Canada and then shipped into the United States at a cheap price. 

And he accused us of trying to squelch Canadian and indigenous Canadian expression. In other words, our digital media companies were so successful in bringing the news and social media accounts to Canada that people who wanted to get the indigenous voice out and the French voice out couldn’t, and therefore he was going to unilaterally tax us 5% on top of corporate income tax, which nobody else does. 

We don’t tell Canadian broadcasters or Canadian newspapers we’re gonna tax you so you include the particular culture of the San Joaquin Valley of California. We feel that you don’t know anything about it, and so you’re gonna have to pay a tax to operate in our country. It’s absurd. 

So then the second stage was this war on the United States. The third was a recalibration. People said Carney hasn’t really digested the actual details of why he walked out. He’s been mysterious. He’s been murky. He won’t tell us exactly. 

And why would he side with a totalitarian communist government with Maoist roots that has a million Uyghurs in camps, destroys international trading protocols with dumping products below the cost of production, maintains asymmetrical mercantile trade surpluses, manipulates money and currency, and copyright and patent violations?  

Why would he want to side with them over the largest, the longest democracy in the world, its neighbor, its English-speaking neighbor? It doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that? 

And I also suggested in stage three that one of the reasons he was doing that is Canada has not utilized its treasure house of natural resources. I’m talking about precious metals, potash, timber, oil, gas, you name it.  

It’s a socialist, ossified, calcified European-style economy plagued with 45% of the population was not born in Canada or their parents were not born in Canada, and they have enormous social welfare needs that the ossified European socialist economy cannot meet. 

And so, because it is failing, it has to have trade surpluses with the United States, and it has to have the United States protect it, and it resents the United States, thinking that we caused its problems. We didn’t cause its problems. 

Alberta can’t make a pipeline to British Columbia because of us. It can make a pipeline into Washington. It can make a pipeline into the United States in the Midwest to sell its oil, but it can’t do it between provinces. 

So if you want fossil fuel products into Quebec or Ontario from Alberta, then they’re gonna come through the United States’ pipeline system. We didn’t do that. 

We had nothing to do with their insane immigration policies. We had nothing to do with their net-zero, insane Green New Deal solar and wind policies. We experienced all that, but we stopped it, and we told them to stop it. 

So that was stage three, a second look at Carney’s narratives. 

Stage four is more serious for Canada. The jobs report came out. They’ve lost 41,000 jobs just in one week of the tariff war. We created 160,000 in August. It’s gonna get worse for Canada. 

We have, as I said, nine times the population, 13 times the nominal GDP, and Canada is entirely reliant. Seventy-five percent of it is reliant. I don’t say that out of triumphalism or boasting, but in sadness for Canada. I don’t know what they’re doing. 

Mr. Carney, who had three passports before he was prime minister, a Canadian, a British, and an Irish. He was the epitome of a globalist, and he wasn’t a nationalist. So his immigration, his energy, his defense policy, and his trade policy were all globalist. They were all European-style, and they didn’t realize or properly exploit the natural gifts of Canada. 

So now we’re in stage four, and the Americans are starting to notice something. The Canadians are booing us at sports events between Canadian and American teams. They keep bragging about elbows up, i.e., we’re gonna be like hockey players and defend ourselves from aggressors like you, violent aggressors.  

And they are waging anti-American propaganda. Carney is. He’s whipped this up because he did not want, as I said in stage three, he didn’t want an autonomous Alberta and an autonomous Quebec, and those referenda are coming up. 

More importantly, he’s now interfering in U.S. internal midterm politics. He’s got left-wing governors and senators deliberately taking the Canadian side, trashing their own president, with Gavin Newsom cutting videos in support of Canada, not us, and then targeting these tariffs at red and purple states along the border to get Trump supporters financially endangered, and therefore they won’t vote for Republican congressional candidates. 

And now we have the reaction. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He does not know what he’s doing. He’s living in a fantasy house.  

So far, the Americans have not noticed this. It’s just water off a duck’s back. But when you show on media day after day people booing us, and you hear him talk about war and battle, and you think that the whole world’s against us, they’re not. He’s all alone. 

He and the Chinese are the only two countries that issued counter tariffs. People in Europe love what he’s doing, but not one of them would follow his example. He’s got his neck out, and the fate of 41 million Canadians depends on him being successful, and he’s gonna fail because the United States is saying, “This is a new world. We’re not gonna subsidize everybody’s defense and run up $200 billion deficits with one neighbor, Mexico, and $50 billion to $60 billion with our northern neighbor and call it a free trade zone.” 

It’s not. It’s a mercantile effort, and we are at our wit’s end, and it’s gonna be a new world. We’re not the wealthy powerhouse we always were. We have $31 trillion, maybe $40 trillion, depending on how you calculate it, in debt, and it’s a new world. 

We want symmetry, and we want gratitude, and this man wants to wage an economic war and gin up world opinion against the United States in alliance with the most pernicious, deadly government in history, as a direct descendant of Mao Zedong, who killed 70 million people, and he’s championing Chinese interests by trying to get around our leverage. 

What he doesn’t understand, to conclude, is this: Canada has key interests in the Arctic. Given warming temperatures, the Northwest Passage may be used to navigate from east to west and west to east. We’re in a dangerous world where an increasing number of countries like North Korea have intercontinental ballistic missiles that have nuclear tips on the missiles. 

What am I getting at? Canada has 79 jets, and they’re 45 years old. Seventy-nine. Seventy-nine. I think California’s National Guard has almost as many. It has about 30 large, considerable ships rather than speedboats, but 30, 35 maybe. It has no military. It hasn’t kept its promises. It has welched. 

It depends on the United States to protect it from incoming aircraft or missiles, to protect it when Russian or Chinese ships decide that they’re going to claim areas of the Arctic that Canada thinks it has possession of or when they want to transit the Northwest Passage.  

In other words, we are subsidizing their defense like we just subsidized Europe’s defense. 

We are subsidizing their economy by allowing them to run up a $50 billion annual surplus. There are one million Canadians in the United States. There’s only a quarter of a million Americans in Canada. You’d think there’d be more since we’re so big, 360 million versus just 40 million. But a little tiny country of 40 million has a million in the United States. 

And you know what the final irony is? Two of Mr. Carney’s four children, his daughters, went to Harvard and Yale and live in the United States, and 95% of his globalist investments are in America. 

So when he tells Canadian small businesses to tough it up, we’re going to war economically against the United States, and your little businesses might have to go broke, but my investments are American because I’m betting on America over Canada because I would not dare put my capital into Canadian financial investments. He’s not. And my children prefer to live where? Not in socialist Canada with socialist medicine, with 45% of the population being immigrants or first- or second-generation Canadians, with a bankrupt economy. They want to live in the United States. 

And so the whole thing is absurd. And I would just caution Mr. Carney: The one thing you do not want to do is so gin up this war that you get on the wrong side of the American people. But all that invective, all that cheap booing, all that grandstanding, all of your flirtation with this communist, lethal government are not going down well. 

And for the first time, people are starting to notice. And your entire economy is in peril because when these reciprocal tariffs start to go back, they were aimed at lowering your $50 billion surplus, our deficit, to a manageable level. But now it’s going to go beyond that. 

And your economy cannot withstand it, not what you’ve done to it, not what you and Mr. Justin Trudeau did to it. You took a vibrant economy and a vibrant defense sector, and you turned them into a calcified, aging European economy and culture, and you’re not up to it. 

And don’t get on the wrong side of the American people with your cheap rhetoric. It won’t end well. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

ADEN/DUBAI, Sept 12 – Saudi Arabia has shut down its East-West pipeline after the vital oil conduit came under aerial attack in the widening Middle East war.

The world’s largest crude oil exporter temporarily closed the pipeline after a drone attack that both Baghdad and Riyadh said had originated in Iraq, where Iranian-backed militias operate. Iraq dismissed a military commander on Saturday in response to the attack.

The 1,200-kilometre (745-mile) pipeline running across the Arabian Peninsula had helped Saudi Arabia to bypass a shipping logjam in the Strait of Hormuz, where tanker traffic has slowed to a trickle due to the war between the U.S. and Iran.

Democrats are using every means possible to keep pushing the can down the road to buy time, but there is no time left to return integrity to America’s elections.

Ron Wright | September 13, 2026

The SAVE America Act, which would have cleaned the rolls and secured the elections, passed the House and is dead in the Senate. House and Senate recesses used up the calendar. Trump then tried to do by executive order what the Senate refused to do by statute: requiring proof of citizenship, a reliable federal voter list, and limits on mailed ballots.

Election officials in fraud-prone areas, however, refuse to produce the ballots and the rolls. They call it privacy, and say doing so would expose illegal aliens to ICE! The real reason is to conceal their own conduct.

Activist federal district judges blocked those executive orders that would have counted this year.

With midterms rapidly approaching, Trump could declare a national emergency, as he has teased, on election integrity. If he does not, November runs on the same black-box machines with source code no outsider may examine, the same dirty rolls, and mass-mailed ballots that are an open invitation to fraud.

I have extensive education, training, and experience in law enforcement and criminal investigation, including conspiracy, fraud, forgery, identity theft, and related economic and computer crimes. I know how those crimes are committed.

As president of a large city police officers’ association and a statewide criminal investigators’ association, I worked with the California Legislature on matters of interest to those groups. After retiring, I spent ten years, including 2020, working on election nights at an Associated Press data center that collects returns from state and local counting centers.

Officials and the legacy press dismissed my work—and the work of other independent investigators—as conspiracy theory. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s claim that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history” is still treated as fact. I worked that night. I had never seen swing-state feeds go down together and return with a 180-degree switch between winning and losing candidates. I disagree.

In my professional opinion, systemic election fraud is real. Isolated voter fraud—mailing a dead relative’s ballot—is statistical noise, so officials and the legacy press interchange the two, so the public never has to look at the system. Systemic election fraud is what can swing an outcome.

As I wrote in 2020 and 2026, I believe a massive, ongoing RICO conspiracy by the Deep State and others existed to unseat a duly elected president in his first term, and it succeeded in 2020. I have also argued that retaining political power and concealing theft of federal funds were part of that larger enterprise. Government auditors have put annual improper payments and fraud in a range that reaches the hundreds of billions of dollars. See my reporting at American Thinker.

The second is whether the country sits still while that investigation crawls. The calendar is fixed. The Senate will not pass SAVE. The courts blocked the executive orders that would have mattered in this election cycle. The states will not produce the lists and the ballots.

No court has ruled on the merits, renegade states say, so there is nothing wrong. But if nothing moves until there is a conviction, the republic waits for a verdict the other side can prevent by sitting on the evidence. That hands them another free shot at installing their people through an election that no one is allowed to check.

On the criminal track, I wrote in “Joe DiGenova Returns” that I believe RICO investigations are underway in the Southern District of Florida. Indictments before November are doubtful. DiGenova resigned this week. After a “no evidence” quote, he said it was taken out of context: the evidence is there; these cases take time.

The election-fraud case in Riverside County, California, is still frozen. A citizen audit found a hole in the county’s own paper. The sheriff seized more than 650,000 ballots under search warrants. The state attorney general ran to the California Supreme Court, which put the investigation on ice. Why?

In my opinion, there is strong probable cause that fraud occurred. The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI can adopt the case and put a forensic audit team on the evidence already seized (18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 242). Indictments before the midterms are possible. Trials are not.

That leaves the public-policy question: If criminal investigations cannot produce answers before November, can the executive branch lawfully act now?

A declaration of a national emergency:

The President is the only nationwide elected official. A corrupt election system is an existential threat to our constitutional republic. The Constitution, federal statutes, and case law allow him to make policy changes when an emergency disables ordinary political channels.* He does not need a district judge’s blessing to treat election integrity as a national-security issue.

The stall on the SAVE America Act was touted as saving “democracy.” It disenfranchises citizen voters. Support for SAVE is not close—polls put it in the seventies.

There is enough smoke: machines no outsider may test, rolls that are not a list of citizens, mass mailing, foreign collection of voter files, a mail-ballot scheme that never reached him in the daily briefs, and officials who will not open the vault.

This short video shows the machine problem in plain sight. The official total never has to match the real ballots. The scoreboard and the paper cannot be reconciled. Under this system, they never can be. That is the con.

A national emergency is not martial law. It is a finding under the National Emergencies Act that an unusual and extraordinary threat exists, which unlocks tools already used in Executive Order 13848 when foreign interference with election infrastructure was named a national-security threat.

On August 31, Trump continued EO 13848 for another year. The question is whether he attaches the midterm rules to it or only keeps the sanctions file open. The Act does not define “emergency.” The call is the President’s. It buys time until Congress writes a lasting fix.

Congress can terminate the emergency only by joint resolution, presentment, and, after a veto, two-thirds of both Houses (INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983)). That is staying power against a thin majority. It is not a bar on a judge attacking a particular order.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), and Article I, Section 4 still leave the times, places, and manner of congressional elections with the states and with Congress.

What must be in place before November to ensure a clean election: proof of citizenship to vote, rolls limited to eligible citizens, no mass mailing off a dirty list, early voting cut to a short window, hand-marked paper, no black-box machines, and no endless recount. Publish a count a citizen can check. Do not let the person who writes the company checks also reconcile the checkbook.

If a state cannot change in time, that is the state’s problem. killed the SAVE Act. They enjoined the orders. They kept the vault shut. They can ask Congress to move the date. The President’s job is to stop the casino and the theft, not to rescue the people who rigged the clock.

Of course, DNC attorney Marc Elias will file an injunction by breakfast and call it a coup. Let him. The house is on fire.

Ron Wright is a retired detective who served 35 years with Riverside P.D., Calif. Ron earned a B.A. in political science from Cal State University, Fullerton, and a Master of Administration from the University of California, Riverside. X @RonTcop

Perhaps the primary issue with Muslim immigration into America—beyond the importation of terrorist sleeper cells, that is—is the cultural differences, informed by Sharia, that make Islam fundamentally incompatible with American liberty. Democrats not only don’t care about that, they’re embracing it.

The Danbury, Connecticut, City Council recently voted to allow non-citizen legal residents to become police officers, despite their being ineligible under federal law to possess or carry guns. Apparently, the Council is “sending a message” about ICE immigration enforcement.

The former Muslim police chief of Detroit suburb Hamtramck took a big step further toward Islamic barbarism:

The former police chief of Hamtramck, Michigan, is in hot water after investigators have dug into allegations against the Muslim chief for how he ran his department.

Court records show that Hamtramck Police Chief Jamiel Altaheri personally engaged in a “pattern” of domestic violence in his own household, and told officers that wife-beating isn’t a “formal” crime.

Ah. Apparently in Michigan, or at least in Sharia law, there is such a thing as an “informal” crime? Does that have to do with how the criminal is dressed?

The voting fraud scandal bubbled to the surface last year when former city manager Max Barbarino blew the whistle on mail-in ballot malfeasance he witnessed, as well as alleged criminal misconduct involving the city’s Muslim police chief, who was recently forced to resign …

In addition, the suit describes a ’disturbing pattern of domestic violence from Altaheri.’ On two occasions in 2024, Altaheri was said to ’hit and punch’ the mother of his child. He allegedly ordered responding officers not to write up incident reports, arguing, ’You guys here in Michigan don’t handle things the correct way; you guys make everything formal,’ suggesting such cases should be handled through mosques following the tenets of Sharia law, which does not proscribe wife-beating as a crime. Altaheri, who did not respond to requests for comment, is also accused in the suit of punching a man ’in the head at a hookah lounge in Dearborn [Mich.].’

Altaheri, who is of Yemeni descent, previously served as a New York police officer where he co-founded the NYPD Muslim Officers Society and the Yemeni American Law Enforcement Officers Association. He also headed the NYPD’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, where he led efforts to hire more Muslims on the force.

But of course! What does every law enforcement agency in blue states and cities need more than Muslim officers who adhere to Islamic standards of behavior rather than applicable state and local law? After all, they’re only women, and Islam not only allows, it mandates beating them to keep them in line. But that wasn’t this noble enforcer of Sharia law’s only transgression:

The investigation uncovered multiple incidents of Altaheri allegedly driving intoxicated in his city-issued truck. It details a time last September when he allegedly drove to and from a strip club with other officers.

Wait a minute: aren’t Muslims supposed to be teetotalers, aren’t they all about keeping women covered head to toe?

Evidence also supported the allegations that the chief handed a loaded gun to a civilian volunteer and told her to put it to someone’s head.

The investigation also found at least five 911 calls to Altaheri’s home in the span of five months. In one of the calls, officers responded to a 911-hang up call with yelling in the background. The investigation found Altaheri then allegedly pressured the responding officers to lie on a police report to help him in a custody dispute.

According to the report, Althaheri allegedly recovered a stolen car for a friend without following proper protocol. He also allegedly directed an evidence technician to wipe his phone minutes after he was placed on leave.

This all took place from May 2024 to May 2025 while Altaheri was chief.

The article notes Altaheri filled several police agencies with Muslims before moving to Hamtramck. That’s part of a centuries-old Islamic pattern of conquest. It’s a miracle Altaheri or others of his Sharia-compliant officers didn’t honor-kill their wives or daughters, or perhaps some did, and our Democrat media didn’t report it. 

Domestic violence is a perennial problem plaguing society, one police officers dread. Every year, innumerable officers are injured, and some are killed, responding to those calls. Cops have no sympathy for wife and child beaters, thinking them among the lowest of the low. It’s more complicated when officers must handle immigrants with a cultural history of those despicable crimes.

How many examples of the absolute incompatibility of Islam with any civilized culture must we have before we take positive steps to prevent the destruction of our constitutional, representative republic? Steps like declaring Islam the terrorist ideology it manifestly is? I know: silly, futile question.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor. 

If you didn’t see Elon Musk explain his vision of the future, you need to.

He states that in ten years there will be “well over a billion humanoid robots” whose productivity per robot will be “five times that of a human.” He thinks this is a “conservative” estimate, and would put “serious betting money on” their being “more productive than all humans combined.”

How will this happen? Musk says once you start making robots, “the robots will start manufacturing other robots, so you get a recursive effect. It starts slowly, but then grows at an explosive rate.”

If this doesn’t send a cold wave of terror down your spine, you haven’t been paying attention. This is not speculation by some science fiction writer, but a prediction from one of the most consequential and accomplished industrialists alive, with a proven track record of stunning results, who is in the unique position to actually make it happen.

What can be wrong with immeasurable abundance served up by billions of humanoid robots? This change promises the end of want, hunger, and hardship.

One might think a modern-day Garden of Eden awaits, unless, of course, one has read history. Those who have read understand that unearned abundance has repeatedly led to disaster.

The answer to the paradox of abundance ushering in disaster rests in human nature—a nature forged through hundreds of thousands of years of survival in a world that, to quote Hobbes, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” not one of abundance.

Necessity sparks the virtues of industry, innovation, and societal unity; abundance breeds sloth, extravagance, debauchery, and disunity.

History is replete with examples: as the late Roman Republic transformed into Imperial Rome, the concentration of immense wealth from conquest, tribute, and slavery undermined internal innovation, self-reliance, and moral character. For the ruling class, it ushered in decadence, hedonism, power, lust, sadism, and societal deterioration.

The professor announced an in-person final, 18 students dropped, 9 didn’t show, and the class average was 48.6.

The point is not that people cheat; it is that they take the easy way out—always.

Some will try to stop “progress,” and I’m rooting for them, but who is going to convince the masses to choose hard work, self-reliance, and moderation when your neighbor is indulging in every conceivable depraved excess free of consequence?

The resistance will be mocked, censored, and declared enemies of the state. And make no mistake, the authorities will be the first to embrace AI-powered humanoids. The chilling reality of conscience-free, obedient androids being dispatched against political enemies will be the greatest mass-produced instrument of coercion ever unleashed on mankind. A real-life Borg, where “resistance is futile.”

In 1968, Star Trek gave us a glimpse of this future in the “Ultimate Computer.” An M5 Multitronic computer is installed to captain the Enterprise. Redundant, its crew is removed. The M5 autonomously engages in war games where, in minutes, it ruthlessly defeats its human counterparts.

Commodore Wesley relays his “compliments to the M5 and regards to Captain Dunsel.” A dejected Captain Kirk exits while a confused McCoy asks, “who the blazes is Captain Dunsel?” Spock matter-of-factly explains, “Dunsel, Doctor, is a term used by midshipmen at Starfleet. It refers to a part that serves no useful purpose.”

If Musk brings his vision to reality, humanity itself will become Captain Dunsel, and that is terrifying.

In a robot-run world, the ultimate enemy won’t be the robots; it will be us.

Huck Davenport | September 13, 2026

Huck Davenportt is a pseudonym.