June 5, 2025

I have a lot of Democratic friends who are extremely disappointed with their party leaders. They tell me that the Democratic Party is currently rudderless, weak, passive, lacking a compelling message. I try to be polite, but I want to tell them: “The problem is not the party leaders. The problem is you. You don’t understand how big a shift we’re in the middle of. You think the Democrats can solve their problems with a new message and a new leader. But the Democrats’ challenge is that they have to adapt to a new historical era. That’s not something done by working politicians who are focused on fund-raising and the next election. That’s only accomplished by visionaries and people willing to shift their entire worldview. That’s up to you, my friends, not Chuck Schumer.”

There have been only a few world-shifting political movements over the past century and a half: the totalitarian movement, which led to communist revolutions in places like Russia and China and fascist coups in places like Germany; the welfare state movement, which led in the U.S. to the New Deal; the liberation movement, which led, from the ’60s on, to anti-colonialism, the civil rights movement, feminism and the L.G.B.T.Q. movement; the market liberalism movement, which led to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and, in their own contexts, Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev; and finally the global populist movement, which has led to Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Brexit and, in their own contexts, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

The global populist movement took off sometime in the early 2010s. It was driven by a comprehensive sense of social distrust, a firm conviction that the social systems of society were rigged, corrupted and malevolent.

In 2024, I wrote about an Ipsos poll that summarized the populist zeitgeist. Roughly 59 percent of Americans said the country was in decline. Sixty percent agreed “the system is broken.” Sixty-nine percent agreed the “political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people.” Sixty-three percent said “experts in this country don’t understand the lives of people like me.” The American results were essentially in line with the results from the 27 other countries around the world that were polled.

The Republicans have adjusted to the shift in the zeitgeist more effectively than the Democrats. Trump tells a clear story: The elites are screwing America. He took a free trade party and made it a protectionist party, an internationalist party and made it an isolationist party. Recently, George F. Will compiled a list of all the ways Trump is departing from conservative orthodoxy and behaving and thinking in ways contrary to the ways Republicans behaved in the age of conservative market liberalism. Will’s list of Trump pivots is worth quoting in full:

“1. Combating the citizenry’s false consciousness by permeating society, including cultural institutions, with government, which is politics. 2. Confidence in government’s ability to anticipate and control the consequences of broad interventions in modern society’s complexities. 3. Using industrial policy to pick economic winners and losers because the future is transparent, so government can know which enterprises should prosper. 4. Central planning of the evolution of the nation’s regions and the economy’s sectors, especially manufacturing. 5. Melding governing and party-building by constructing coalitions of government-dependent factions, as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal did with the elderly (Social Security, 1935), labor (the 1935 National Labor Relations Act favoring unions) and farmers (the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act). 6. Rejecting conservative growth-oriented tax simplification — lowering rates by eliminating preferences — to use taxes (including tariffs) as tools of social engineering. Bypassing the appropriations process, the tax code can transfer wealth to favored constituencies. 7. Limitless borrowing from future Americans to fund today’s Americans’ consumption of government goods and services. 8. Presidential supremacy ensured by using executive orders to marginalize Congress. 9. Unfettered majoritarianism, hence opposition to the Senate filibuster.”

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Trump has taken the atmosphere of alienation, magnified it with his own apocalypticism, and, assaulting institutions across society, has created a revolutionary government. More this term than last, he is shifting the conditions in which we live.

Many of my Democratic friends have not fully internalized the magnitude of this historical shift. They are still thinking within the confines of the Clinton-Obama-Biden-Pelosi worldview. But I have a feeling that over the next few years, the tumult of events will push Democrats onto some new trajectory.

The crucial point was made by the Bulgarian-born political scientist Ivan Krastev on the “Good Fight” podcast with Yascha Mounk. He said, “In every revolution, there is always more than one revolution.”

He went on to explain: “If this is a revolution, revolution changes the identity of all players. No political party or actor is going to get out of the revolution the way they started it. You can have Lenin after Kerensky; you cannot have Kerensky after Lenin. It is a totally different story. The Democratic Party is going to be as dramatically transformed by the Trumpian revolution — for good or for bad — as the Republican Party is.”

If you’re thinking the Democrats’ job now is to come up with some new policies that appeal to the working class, you are thinking too small. This is not about policies. Democrats have to do what Trump did: create a new party identity, come up with a clear answer to the question: What is the central problem of our time? Come up with a new grand narrative.

For nearly a century, the Democrats have ridden on the grand narratives of previous eras. First, the welfare state narrative: America is too unequal; we can use big government to give people economic security. Second, the liberation narrative: History moves forward as progressive movements fight the oppression of marginalized groups: Black people, women, Palestinians, members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Those are noble narratives. They are not sufficient in the age of global populism.

The Democrats’ first core challenge is that we live in an age that is hostile to institutions and Democrats dominate the institutions — the universities, the media, Hollywood, the foundations, the teachers unions, the Civil Service, etc. The second is that we live in an age in which a caste divide has opened up between the educated elite and everybody else, and Democrats are the party of the highly educated.

Democrats recently had an argument about whether they should use the word “oligarchy” to attack Republicans. They are so locked in their old narratives that they are apparently unaware that to many, they are the oligarchy.

If I could offer Democrats a couple of notions as they begin their process of renewal, the first would be this: Cultural elitism is more oppressive than economic elitism. The welfare state era gave Democrats the impression that everything can be solved with money funneled through some federal program. But the populist era is driven by social resentment more than economic scarcity.

Every society has a recognition order, a diffuse system for doling out attention and respect. When millions of people feel that they and their values are invisible to that order, they rightly feel furious and alienated. Of course they’ll go with the guy — Trump — who says: I see you. I respect you. If Democrats, and the educated class generally, can’t change their values and cultural posture, I doubt any set of economic policies will do them any good. It is just a fact that parties on the left can’t get a hearing until they get the big moral questions right: faith, family, flag, respect for people in all social classes.

My second notion is this: Pay attention to Dwight Eisenhower. Ike was a Republican president in the middle of the welfare state era. He basically said: I’m going to endorse the basic shape of the New Deal, but I’m going to achieve those ends more sensibly. You can trust me.

For today’s Democrats that means this: If people rightly distrust establishment institutions and you are the party of the establishment institutions, then you have to be the party of thoroughgoing reform. You have to say that Trump is taking a blowtorch to institutions, and we are for effectively changing institutions.

To show that, you have to be willing to take on your activist groups: We’re going to reform schools in ways the unions don’t like. We’re going to reform zoning in a way the NIMBY brigades don’t like. We’re going to reform Congress in ways the incumbents don’t like. We’re going to talk about patriotism and immigration in ways the groups don’t like. We’re going to fix how blue cities are governed in a way the groups don’t like.

Do you really think professional politicians are going to lead the tectonic shifts that are required? That takes intellectuals, organizers, a new generation, all of us. It’s the work of decades, not election cycles. Clear your mind. Think anew.

David Brooks

In politics, they say you want your people all peeing out of the tent rather than into it.

In this context, there is a case to be made for assigning Elon Musk a new task to keep his mind off the budget and keep him focused and on point.

Here is the assignment. Give him a contract to develop the desalination technology that will increase the habitable size of the USA by one-third and double the habitable size of the Earth. This can be achieved by collapsing the cost of desalinating seawater to roughly $ 200 per acre-foot. (That would make it economic to farm any desert on earth and place data and server farms– as well as mango and avocado orchards–in the US deserts.) And if Musk wants to, he can make the technology dual-use. That is, the technology will work on both Earth and Mars.

Do you think this project would achieve the political ends mentioned above while advancing Trump’s policy aims?

Anonymous

Radio host Charlamagne Tha God on Thursday criticized black Democratic voters for what he called blind loyalty to the party.

Charlamagne’s comments on “The Breakfast Club” followed former White House press secretary Latrine Jean-Pierre announcing on Wednesday that she was leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent and publishing a book. The radio host praised her departure from the Democratic Party, arguing that black Americans should not be tied to either major political party.

“I respect her being independent because I feel like if you black in this country, you shouldn’t be loyal to any party. You should only be voting your interests,” Charlamagne said. “You should only be voting for politicians who are implementing legislation and policies for your communities and your people. And if you ask me, none of these parties have done enough for us to be screaming we Republican or Democrat. So independent is the way to go.”

Jean-Pierre’s book is titled “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” and is slated for publication in October.

Charlamagne read a quote from a press release for the book, which he called “very interesting.”

“We need to be willing to exercise the ability to think creatively and plan strategically,” Jean-Pierre’s press release stated. “We need to be clear-eyed and questioning rather than blindly loyal and obedient as we may have been in the past.”

“And that right there is the problem with Democrat supporters, especially black ones — just blindly loyal and obedient for no damn reason,” Charlamagne said after reading the quote.

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said on “CUOMO” in May that he was pleased with President Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory because he believed the Democratic Party has long manipulated black voters, including through “guilt” and scare tactics — rather than policy.

“I think, for the longest time, black Americans have played the role of suckers to the Democratic Party,” Smith said. “They’ve guilted us into voting for them, making us feel as if we’re going to be ostracized, creating division within our own communities or what have you to get our vote, instead of saying to us, ‘Hey, this is what we will do for you. And it will work better than what they’re offering.’”

Trump made gains with black voters in November, garnering 13% of their votes, including 21% of men, according to a CNN exit poll.

Staff, Daily Caller

What did I learn from a year at New College? Reform efforts in American higher education need to be aligned with what matters to a flourishing civilization. What do matter—what, in other words, remain overwhelmingly reliable and powerful propellants of civilization—are parenting, families, K-12 preparation, sports and business endeavors, educational norms, faith communities, work, cultural leadership, literary life, and public reverence for the past and our inherited institutions. This means that if places such as New College are to make an impact, they have to reach beyond the classroom.

One thing that some of the new Christian faculty at New College did this year was to start a C.S. Lewis Society, where we met biweekly for lunch with students, staff, faculty, and community members to discuss faith in contemporary society. The college also connected better to elite high schools in Florida, through teacher training, dual enrollment, and student debate and essay contests. New College will soon launch a masters in educational leadership to take the reconquista into K-12 education. Its public-speaker series offers mostly conservative speakers to an audience in Sarasota overflowing with liberal ones. It has initiated a long overdue partnership with the local business community for internships and recruitment. It has low-level sports teams that bring energy without the farce of big-time college athletics.

These initiatives at least take aim at high-impact pathways for human betterment rather than fixating on the classroom. They depend importantly on administrative leadership that consults with but is in no way bound by the faculty. The faculty will slouch in the back seat, griping like spoiled teenagers. But with grownups at the wheel, the institution could make real progress. Writ large, that’s a car that could take you places.

Bruce Gilley is presidential scholar-in-residence at the New College of Florida and the author, most recently, of The Case for Colonialism.

It takes me about eight minutes to walk across the campus of the New College of Florida, where I just concluded a year as a visiting professor. There are rare sightings of students, a grand total of 800, who dart in and out from under the palm trees like white ibises. The clock bell on the astroturf in front of the library can be heard from the waterfront all the way to the student dorms. The all-faculty email list for the 100 or so scholars emits messages such as: “Is anyone having trouble with the Internet?”

Despite its minuscule size, the Sarasota college attracted 17 separate articles or op-eds in the New York Times in 2023 and hundreds more in the mainstream American media as a whole. That journalistic attention has not abated, perhaps because New College is now seen as the anti-Harvard. The Guardian newspaper serves up a steady diet about the right-wing horrors unfolding here. Every few weeks, another media storm arises: a heated debate in Tallahassee over the college’s budget or an over-medicated administrator exposing himself off-campus. The latest indignation is the college’s scotched plans to reclaim the architecturally integrated Ringling Museum in its midst, as well as a University of South Florida campus to the north, clear evidence of a search for lebensraum.

The AAUP has been churning out a steady stream of op-eds about the “intellectual reign of terror” at New College.Long-form essays of astonishing detail continue to appear. The Chronicle of Higher Education weighed in with 8,000 words, or 10 words for every student, in April. Politico is about to serve up a novella, as well. Meanwhile, the very busy American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has been churning out a steady stream of op-eds, censures, and interviews about what they call an “intellectual reign of terror” at New College. All hands on deck, as they say.

The Left’s obsessive focus on New College tells us more about the manias of the intellectual establishment than about the likely impact of this tiny institution.Make no mistake: The efforts by Florida governor Ron DeSantis to revive an intellectually moribund higher-education sector in the state, including his reconquista at New College, are worthy acts. But the Left’s obsessive focus on New College tells us more about the manias of the intellectual establishment than it does about the likely impact of this tiny institution—or, for that matter, about the entire 12-university state system in Florida and its 430,000 students.

To understand why, let me borrow the language of statistics. While the policy changes undertaken in Florida are reliable or dependable drivers of better outcomes in the sense of being effective means to improvement, their magnitude is small and is overwhelmed by other factors. In terms of a metaphor, while you can depend on the fact that an oil change will help your your car move forward, having enough gas and being a competent driver matter more.

Policy shifts, in other words, are not sufficient to improve education and perpetuate a flourishing civilization. Other factors are more important, such as family and cultural norms. In the case of New College (or the entire Florida system), the policy shifts are not even complete oil changes, more like a top-up of fresh Castrol. Gainesville may actually be going backwards under its new “anti-racist” president. So why the panic?

One theory is that the Left’s hysteria over Florida and New College is simply misinformed. American college campuses, including, alas, New College, are not changing anytime soon in terms of their substantive cultures or the ideas they offer. The old oil will continue to circulate for a long time to come. The baby steps achieved so far in Sarasota have required a Herculean effort, combining top-level political support, a muscular board of trustees, and a determined president and administration. All this for 800 students, and still the results are only partial. If this is a “model,” then the news is not good. What kind of war room would be required to transform a larger institution?

I dearly wish that the Left’s fixation with New College were justified. But academic cultures are slow to change. Faculty radicals still wield enormous influence at the college. While President Richard Corcoran shuttered a comatose gender-studies program (sample thesis: “The Female Nonwhite Dancing Body and the White Male Gaze”) and has hired a few dozen scholars who actually deserve the name, the faculty remains decidedly hostile to efforts to inject intellectual diversity and professional accountability into the place.

The faculty committee, for example, is so antagonistic and dysfunctional that they could not convince anyone to stand for chair during the past year. When the long-tenured historian David Harvey eventually agreed to take on the thankless role (one he had previously held), only 30 of the faculty voted in favor, while 50 abstained and 23 voted against. Harvey is suspected of collaborationist tendencies. This is the behavior of children.

I dearly wish the Left’s fixation with New College were justified. But academic cultures are slow to change.In late May, the faculty passed an illegal and pointless “resolution” against immigration enforcement on campus. It then nominated as one of the three academic division chairs a Mexican radical who has become the face of La Resistencia and whose scholarly record consists of nothing but campus activism.

This sends red flashing lights to any non-leftist scholar considering a career at the college, especially because DeSantis leaves office next year, and Corcoran is a politician who could be called away at any moment. In short, New College is about as likely to become a “conservative bastion” as is NPR.

The safest bet is that there will never be any public university in the United States whose faculty is even remotely politically balanced.The good news is that it might not matter as much as we suppose. The malign effects of that old oil in misshaping higher education may be overstated, despite the pretensions of the professoriate. Cultural reproduction now takes place largely outside of universities: in the alternative media, in churches, in sports teams, in parent groups, in the workplace, and of course in the practice of adult reading. If Florida’s higher-education sector really were “ground zero of the culture wars,” as one AAUP Bolshevik asserted, then we might be more concerned about the resilient monoculture at New College. In the actual present, such a concern would be ill-informed.

Even if New College quickly became a successful model of an intellectually diverse and rigorous institution and scaled up to its planned 1,400 students and 200 faculty, it might merely be cited by the state’s professoriate as a reason to dig in elsewhere. “You have your conservatives in Sarasota,” they would assert, echoing the common fallacy that having a few token conservatives makes a place intellectually diverse.

The fact is, we just don’t know how this will play out. The safest bet is that there will never be any public university in the United States whose faculty is even remotely politically balanced, much less intellectually diverse. A recently released nationwide survey of faculty from 2020 showed that 40 percent described themselves as socialists, Marxists, activists, or radicals.

To be fair, many on the right may be equally ill-informed about the degree of change at New College, as well as the possibilities. They cling to a classical ideal of campus life that is about 3,000 years out of date. Even our best students today are woefully unprepared, and becoming more so, for a serious liberal-arts education. Digital dementia is the great challenge of our time, and it is rendering discussions about syllabi frankly quaint. There is as much chance of a Socratic experience erupting in Sarasota as of fresh sulfur flares on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Not that we shouldn’t try. I was part of a faculty group at New College this year that fashioned an honors track in the new general-education program known as … um … well … the Socratic Experience. But the Right, including myself, has as much work to do as the Left in tamping down hopes about what can be accomplished, and thus what is at stake.

A second theory for the furor over New College is that it is a form of psychological displacement. The enormous trauma on the left surrounding its unexpected loss of hegemony in American intellectual life since 2016 may have caused a redirection of those passions to soft targets such as New College. If the “Trumpocene” has gotten you down, there is nothing like a good old-fashioned campus rally to restore mental tranquility. You can even bring your own tambourine.

Again, some on the right may be engaging in similar psychological displacement reflecting frustration with the spread of woke ideology. I admit that my last contribution to the Martin Center belied such frustrations. But to rest one’s hopes on a tiny liberal-arts college is like asking a moped to deliver a shipping container. Only the major vessels, such as the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Florida, have any hope of success.

If New College is the extent of the reconquista then the broader cause is lost.This year’s commencement speaker, Alan Dershowitz, declared while visiting that “American higher education can survive without Harvard. It cannot survive without New College.” Actually, if New College is the extent of the reconquista then the broader cause is lost. The fact that Dershowitz then used his commencement-speaker bully pulpit for an ill-conceived rant against Woke suggests that maybe the cause would be better off without New College, as well. If conservatives are so tone-deaf or egotistical that they trample on the most beautiful day in a young person’s life in pursuit of change then something is wrong with this model.

Many on the right were enraged when gender theorist Judith Butler came to New College in February. But Butler will have her audience, and critical responses to her flummery, such as mine, show how such events can have the opposite effects as intended “outside the room,” which is where it matters. Out there, gender madness is being reversed, followed by climate madness, immigration madness, and DEI madness. This is not because the universities have become more plural places of late, quite the opposite. The professors simply don’t matter as much as we thought.

What did I learn from a year at New College? Reform efforts in American higher education need to be aligned with what matters to a flourishing civilization. What do matter—what, in other words, remain overwhelmingly reliable and powerful propellants of civilization—are parenting, families, K-12 preparation, sports and business endeavors, educational norms, faith communities, work, cultural leadership, literary life, and public reverence for the past and our inherited institutions. This means that if places such as New College are to make an impact, they have to reach beyond the classroom.

One thing that some of the new Christian faculty at New College did this year was to start a C.S. Lewis Society, where we met biweekly for lunch with students, staff, faculty, and community members to discuss faith in contemporary society. The college also connected better to elite high schools in Florida, through teacher training, dual enrollment, and student debate and essay contests. New College will soon launch a masters in educational leadership to take the reconquista into K-12 education. Its public-speaker series offers mostly conservative speakers to an audience in Sarasota overflowing with liberal ones. It has initiated a long overdue partnership with the local business community for internships and recruitment. It has low-level sports teams that bring energy without the farce of big-time college athletics.

These initiatives at least take aim at high-impact pathways for human betterment rather than fixating on the classroom. They depend importantly on administrative leadership that consults with but is in no way bound by the faculty. The faculty will slouch in the back seat, griping like spoiled teenagers. But with grownups at the wheel, the institution could make real progress. Writ large, that’s a car that could take you places.

Bruce Gilley is presidential scholar-in-residence at the New College of Florida and the author, most recently, of The Case for Colonialism.

Mark Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran. To be clear, Levin has no plans to fight in this or any other war. He’s demanding that American troops do it. We need to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, he and likeminded ideologues in Washington are now arguing. They’re just weeks away. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same people have been making the same claim since at least the 1990s. It’s a lie.

In fact, there is zero credible intelligence that suggests Iran is anywhere near building a bomb, or has plans to. None. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignorant or dishonest. If the US government knew Iran was weeks from possessing a nuclear weapon, we’d be at war already. Iran knows this, which is why they aren’t building one. Iran also knows it’s unwise to give up its weapons program entirely. Muammar Gaddafi tried that and wound up sodomized with a bayonet. As soon as Gaddafi disarmed, NATO killed him. Iran’s leaders saw that happen. They learned the obvious lesson.

So why is Mark Levin once again hyperventilating about weapons of mass destruction? To distract you from the real goal, which is regime change — young Americans heading back to the Middle East to topple yet another government. Virtually no one will say this out loud. America’s record of overthrowing foreign leaders is so embarrassingly counterproductive that regime change has become a synonym for disaster.

Officially, no one supports it. So instead of telling the truth about their motives, they manufacture hysteria: “A country like Iran can never have the bomb! They’ll nuke Los Angeles! We have to act now!” They don’t really mean this, and you can tell they don’t by what they omit. At least two of Iran’s neighbors — both Islamic nations — already have nuclear weapons. That fact should scare the hell out of Mark Levin.

Yet for some reason he never mentions it. How come? Because it’s not the weapons he hates. It’s the ideology of the Iranian government, which is why he’s lobbying to overthrow it. It goes without saying that there are very few Trump voters who’d support a regime change war in Iran. Donald Trump has argued loudly against reckless lunacy like this. Trump ran for president as a peace candidate. That’s what made him different from conventional Republicans. It’s why he won. A war with Iran would amount to a profound betrayal of his supporters. It would end his presidency. That may explain why so many of Trump’s enemies are advocating for it. And then there’s the question of the war itself. Iran may not have nukes, but it has a fearsome arsenal of ballistic missiles, many of which are aimed at US military installations in the Gulf, as well as at our allies and at critical energy infrastructure.

The first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans. It could also collapse our economy, as surging oil prices trigger unmanageable inflation. Consider the effects of $30 gasoline. But the second week of the war could be even worse. Iran isn’t Iraq or Libya, or even North Korea. While it’s often described as a rogue state, Iran has powerful allies. It’s now part of a global bloc called BRICS, which represents the majority of the world’s landmass, population, economy and military power. Iran has extensive military ties with Russia. It sells the overwhelming majority of its oil exports to China. Iran isn’t alone.

An attack on Iran could very easily become a world war. We’d lose. None of these are far fetched predictions. Most of them comport with the Pentagon’s own estimates: many Americans would die during a war with Iran. People like Mark Levin don’t seem to care about this. It’s not relevant to them. Instead they insist that Iran give up all uranium enrichment, regardless of its purpose. They know perfectly well that Iran will never accept that demand. They’ll fight first. And of course that’s the whole point of pushing for it: to box the Trump administration into a regime change war in Iran.

The one thing that people like Mark Levin don’t want is a peaceful solution to the problem of Iran, despite the obvious benefits to the United States. They denounce anyone who advocates for a deal as a traitor and a bigot. They tell us with a straight face that Long Island native Steve Witkoff is a secret tool of Islamic monarchies. They’ll say or do whatever it takes. They have no limits. These are scary people. Pray that Donald Trump ignores them.

Tucker Carlson

Editor’s Note: I’d love to see regime change in Iran, assuming there are few civilian casualties.  However, Carlson makes a good case for avoiding war with Iran.  Our enemies would relish it.  Russian and China would likely get involved, perhaps militarily.  War with Iran is simply too risky and uncertain.  A/D

We spent decades kicking that rusted can, telling ourselves the road would hold if we just bought more time. But now the can is gone. It rusted through, crumbled into dust. The road behind is littered with the ruins of old promises, and ahead lies a choice.

No easy paths. No shortcuts.

One direction follows the same broken trail, it feels familiar, but hollow. The other, a quieter road through unknowns, dappled with light but demanding more of us.

This isn’t just a political moment. It’s a human one.

Some will see this image as the common man. Others might see the last leader who tried to drag a broken system back to its feet.

Either way, the choice remains: do we keep trying to salvage the unsalvageable? Or do we walk forward — without the can — into whatever comes next?

The road’s still there. The only question now is whether we have the courage to walk it.

EBH

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday said Elon Musk’s sharp criticism of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was “flat wrong,” but that he did not take it personally.

Musk on Tuesday torched the GOP spending package on X, calling it “a disgusting abomination,” which the speaker said was a complete 180 from what he had indicated in private just a day earlier.

Johnson and other House Republicans spoke to reporters Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill, where they addressed a variety of topics, including the future of the spending bill.

“I consider Elon a friend,” Johnson told reporters. “It’s curious to me what happened this week. Elon and I had a great conversation—about a half hour long talk— on Monday,” Johnson explained. “We talked about the Big Beautiful Bill.”

He recalled that Elon had questioned how a spending bill could be both big and beautiful, and that he had tried to answer the question.

Johnson said he pointed out that there is an unprecedented $1.6 trillion in spending cuts in the bill and a “record level of savings,” as well as “great policy prescriptions.”

“I explained to him what we’re doing, and that this is just the beginning—you can’t do it all in one bill!” Johnson exclaimed. “It took Congress decades to get to this situation, it’s going to take us a little while to get out of it,” the speaker added. “But we have a very specific plan to do that.”

Johnson told reporters that Musk seemed “encouraged” by his words, and when the conversation turned to the midterm elections, the billionaire said, ‘I’m gonna help. We’ve got to make sure the Republicans keep the House majority.”

The speaker said Musk had expressed concern that if Democrats take the majority in 2026, they’ll immediately move to impeach President Trump.

“The president needs four years to do all this reform—not two years,” Johnson said.

“Elon and I left on a great note,” the speaker continued, “and then yesterday, 24 hours later, he does a 180, and he opposed the bill. It surprised me, frankly. I don’t take it personal.”

Johnson said that policy differences should not be taken personally, but stressed “I think he’s flat wrong. He’s way off on this.”

The speaker also told reporters that he feels very confident about the midterm elections because when the “Big Beautiful Bill” is passed, “every single American is going to do better.”

“I have NO concern whatsoever, I am absolutely convinced we are gonna win the midterms and grow the House majority because we are delivering for the American people and fulfilling our campaign promises,” he said.

Johnson said he called Musk last night, but he didn’t answer.

“I hope to talk to him today,” he told reporters, insisting, “I’m not upset about this.”

The speaker added that he speaks with President Trump “multiple times a day” and that the president “is not delighted that Elon did a 180” on the Big Beautiful Bill.

“I don’t know what happened in 24 hours,” Johnson said. “Everyone can draw their own conclusions about that.”

Meanwhile, on X Wednesday, Musk posted a series of tweets expressing concern about the national debt.

“Interest payments already consume 25% of all government revenue,” the former DOGE chief wrote in response to a post about the United States’ annual budget deficit skyrocketing to over $2 trillion per year. “If the massive deficit spending continues, there will only be money for interest payments and nothing else! No social security, no medical, no defense … nothing.”

In response to Musk’s post, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) pointed out that “Congress continues to add to the debt at an astounding rate of $2 trillion per year—with our national debt growing faster than our economy.”

The senator added, “unless we turn this around quickly, our debt and deficit will increasingly threaten our ability to fund the basic operations of government.”

Musk responded: “This is debt slavery for the American people.”

Update:

In a mid-afternoon X post Wednesday, Musk made clear that he was unpersuaded by any GOP defenses of the Big Beautiful Bill.

“Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok!,” Musk wrote. “KILL the BILL.”

Debra Heine, American Greatness

The Senate has opened its hearing process to decide whether to approve President Donald Trump’s nominations of judges to the federal bench.

Senators on the Judiciary Committee opened the review of a judge appointed to an appeals court and several others to district courts.At the outset, reported Politico, political posturing got underway with Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, reminding Democrats that former President Joe Biden often had the support of opposition Republicans for his nominees. “Elections, as we all know, have consequences,” said Grassley. “I worry that partisanship will hamper these efforts.”

His comments may have been a dig at Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the ranking Democrat on the committee who previously commented he might attempt to hinder the nomination process for Trump appointments.

Durbin and Grassley also got into a back-and-forth over the Trump administration’s decision to prevent the American Bar Association from providing official input into the selection process. The administration characterized the bar as favoring liberal candidates.

Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to ABA President William Bay, “Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations.”

Grassley reminded senators that while the bar has no official standing in the process, it is always free to submit information it deems important, and senators could consider or ignore the bar as they desired.

Trump’s nominee for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Whitney D. Hermandorfer, faced intense scrutiny in the opening hearing. The position on the Sixth Circuit Appeals Court bench is one of only a few appeals court seats Trump may be able to nominate. Democrats pointed to what they saw as her limited experience at the appellate level, while Republicans appeared pleased at her overall legal experience.

Hermandorfer currently works as the director of the strategic litigation unit for the Tennessee attorney general.

Jim Mishler ✉

Jim Mishler, a seasoned reporter, anchor and news director, has decades of experience covering crime, politics and environmental issues.

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.

Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires—so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal’s lust, men who neither make sacrifices nor accept them.—Ayn Rand

Freedom requires a price to be paid by every generation.

1. While most of America remains blissfully uniformed by our establishment press, the world’s two greatest superpowers are being manipulated by Dark Forces inside and outside our government, into a major military confrontation that no country wants, and no sane person would ever want.

2. I have no role in the Trump Administration, but over a long career in the active uniformed military, specifically military intelligence, I have made it a point to cultivate many sources of information around the world. From what I can piece together, I want to share my deep concerns about who is behind this march to war, and my recommendations for how our nation and the West can avoid a major military confrontation with Russia.

3. I believe that the American Deep State is staffed by those with a deep, visceral, and irrational hatred for Russia, and these persons have conspired to box in President Trump’s decision making through the Russiagate Hoax. During the time the Soviet Union was expanding and infiltrating our government, I was an outspoken anti-communist, but, despite the lies told by our Deep State, Russia is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin. Even today, years after the Russiagate Hoax has been exposed, President Trump’s efforts to bring peace are met with resistance. The Establishment Press, deeply influenced and even sometimes controlled by our Deep State, labeled President Trump and those who work for him “Putin’s Puppets” to goad him into taking unwarranted and aggressive steps against Russia. These voices from the establishment press reflect the views of the Deep State, not the American People, and not the MAGA movement, and should be completely disregarded, if not mocked.

4. During almost all of the post-World War II period, and certainly since the establishment of the CIA in 1947, these unelected dark establishment forces have acted to destabilize the world, bringing death, famine, assassinations, violence, coups, riots, revolutions, and destruction to our planet. Currently, these forces are working to provoke Russia into a major — perhaps a final — military conflict with the West.

5. This provocation has many forms. Most recently, it involves the surprise drone attack on the Russian federation strategic arsenal, said to affect 40 bombers, or about a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. Since Russian and American strategic bombers are generally required by agreement to be visible to satellite surveillance, never before has anyone engaged in an attack on these visible targets. If Russian bombers can be attacked with impunity, so can American bombers. By this action, the Ukrainian Government has not just weakened Russia, it has jeopardized America. Thus, those in the Ukrainian government who ordered these strikes have made themselves enemies not just of Russia, but of the United States. Making matters worse, this unwarranted attack was followed by Ukrainian attacks on the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Russia and Crimea.

6. I do not believe that the recent escalation against Russia’s strategic bomber fleet was authorized by or coordinated with President Trump. Rather, it is my view that the Deep State is now acting outside of the control of the elected leadership of our nation. I believe that these persons in our Deep State are engaged in a deliberate effort to provoke Russia into a major confrontation with the West, including the United States. The time is now to take aggressive action against those who abuse their authority as government employees to manipulate the elected leadership of our nation.

7. Growing up in an Irish Democrat family in Rhode Island, I was only about five when John Kennedy was assassinated, but our family viewed John Kennedy as a hero. Not just for my family, one of our most beloved Presidents, John F. Kennedy, in 1961, found himself manipulated by earlier versions of these same Deep State forces when they attempted to manipulate President Kennedy to launch Air Force planes to attack Cuba after the failed invasion, resulting in an open conflict with both Cuba and the Soviet Union. In President Kennedy’s June 1963 speech at American University declaring his vision of peace with the Soviet Union, he declared himself to be an enemy of this Deep State, which by all indications then retaliated by participating in his assassination five months later in Dallas. The American Deep State is not only a threat to peace, but a threat to the President.

8. President Trump has already faced at least two assassination attempts. If there is one person who I believe has the character and love for our nation to rid our government of these forces, it is President Trump. After the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, President Trump displayed the type of personal courage that those of us who have served in the military deeply admire. With great affection for the President, I now urge him to risk the wrath of the Deep State once again by taking actions to purge enemies of our nation within our agencies and departments. Removing such persons from power is absolutely necessary to achieve the type of peace he described during his campaign and the beginning of his Administration.

9. Once President Kennedy realized he was being manipulated, and opposed because he sought peace, he removed Allen Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence, and several of his assistants. I urge President Trump to immediately clean house of any in government who had prior knowledge of or participated in any way in the Ukrainian attack on the Russian federation strategic bombers, and to go further by immediately declaring an end to any support for the Ukraine War. President Trump is right: this is not “his” War. I urge him to recall all open and covert military and other government personnel from Ukraine. I urge him to have all those personnel removed and interrogated by the FBI or the military to learn of their possible participation in unauthorized military activities. Any Americans who have aided and abetted Ukraine’s attacks should be investigated for violation of American law, and prosecuted as necessary.

10. I also believe President Trump should distance himself from certain Western leaders such as German Chancellor Fred Merz, who have acted and spoken in an irresponsible manner with respect to the Ukraine War. If there are countries in Europe who wish to provide military assistance to Ukraine, that is their concern, and they should not be surprised by President Putin’s response to their actions against Russia. If such leaders want to lead their nations to war by persisting in such irresponsible behavior, they will go it alone.

11. I urge President Trump to also distance himself from demonstrated war mongers in our own government, chief among whom is U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham. Those who love wars fought by others are no friends of America, and have no entitlement to be friends of the President.

12. Finally, I urge the American people to stand prayerfully and resolutely with President Trump as he cleans house and acts in pursuit of the type of peace which President Kennedy embraced. Peace is not the normal state of man. Freedom requires a price be paid by every generation. It is time to recommit our nation to both.

Ltd. General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.)