Prefatory Note:

The following essay represents the author’s observations and analysis based on historical, economic, and political research. The perspectives expressed are intended for thoughtful consideration and do not constitute predictions or directives. The analysis reflects a focus on cause-and-effect patterns in governance and society, drawing lessons from past events to illuminate contemporary challenges.

France’s Current Political Landscape

In October 2025, France finds itself ensnared in a profound political crisis. The resignation of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu—less than a month into his tenure—has intensified the nation’s instability. This marks the third government collapse since the 2024 legislative elections, underscoring the deep fractures within the political system.

The primary divide is between two factions:

1. The Defenders of Promises: Trade unions, left-wing parties, and civil society organizations advocating for maintaining and expanding social benefits, pensions, and public services. They argue that these commitments are integral to France’s social contract and must be upheld despite financial constraints.
2. The Fiscal Reformers: Centrist and center-right parties, along with financial institutions and international creditors, emphasizing the necessity of reducing public debt and deficits. They propose measures such as tax increases and spending cuts to stabilize the economy, but these proposals are met with strong opposition.

The inability of these groups to compromise has led to a political deadlock, with neither side willing to yield. Short-lived governments fail to enact coherent budgets or implement necessary reforms, leaving France politically paralyzed.

Historical Context: How France and Europe Got Here

France’s current predicament is the culmination of decades of policy choices and structural challenges. The nation’s commitment to a generous welfare state, characterized by extensive social benefits and public services, has long been a cornerstone of its political identity.

However, Europe’s ability to sustain this model historically depended heavily on external support, particularly from the United States:

• Military Protection: The U.S. maintained a strong military presence in Europe post-WWII, preventing both internal and external conflicts. Without this protection, European nations would have needed to devote far more resources to defense rather than social programs.
• Economic Aid: The Marshall Plan provided massive financial support, jumpstarting reconstruction and industrial recovery.
• Trade Dependence: U.S. consumers created a ready market for European goods, fueling economic growth that enabled governments to expand welfare systems.

In other words, European social programs were heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Europe enjoyed over 70 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity, largely because the United States carried the burden of military protection, reconstruction, and economic stimulus.

Structural Limits of European Socialism

Despite decades of success, European socialism has an inherent flaw: it cannot sustain itself indefinitely without external support. Welfare systems, pensions, and public services rely on a continuous inflow of resources. When domestic growth slows, populations age, and external subsidies wane, governments face inevitable fiscal limits.

France’s current crisis illustrates this principle vividly: promises made over decades have now collided with reality. Neither higher taxes nor spending cuts are politically feasible without compromise, yet compromise is elusive. The result is deadlock, rising debt, and social tension.

Broader Implications

France’s situation is not unique in Europe. Many nations with expansive social programs have relied, either overtly or implicitly, on favorable external conditions — whether international trade, U.S. financial support, or post-war geopolitical stability.

This period of stability and prosperity, arguably the longest in European history, masked structural weaknesses. Now, as economic growth slows, energy costs rise, and political fragmentation deepens, the limits of welfare spending become impossible to ignore.

The broader lesson is stark: socialist systems that promise extensive benefits without sufficient domestic resources are inherently unsustainable. Reliance on external support may delay the reckoning, but it cannot eliminate it.

Conclusion

France stands at a crossroads. Its political deadlock reflects both the unrealistic accumulation of promises and the structural constraints of its economy. European socialism, historically enabled by U.S. protection, financial aid, and trade, is confronting the hard reality that external support cannot continue indefinitely, and domestic resources are finite.

The unfolding crisis is a cautionary tale: extensive promises require sustainable funding. When governments fail to reconcile ambitions with resources, deadlock, instability, and social tension are inevitable. Europe’s experience, and France’s crisis today, highlight the unavoidable collision between political idealism and fiscal reality.

Anonymous

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Love him or hate him, that adage did bear true when ABC semi-funnyman Jimmy Kimmel was yanked off airwaves for lying about the Charlie Kirk assassin in mid-September.

Kimmel came back from his five-day suspension to an undeniably massive audience: 6.48 million viewers, according to Mediaite.

But if absence makes the heart grow fonder, does presence make the heart grow weary?

Love him or hate him, that appears to be true about Kimmel, as well.

RELATED NEWS: Jimmy Kimmel’s Ratings Collapse, Only Took ‘Comedian’ 5 Shows to End Up Back in the Basement

Despite that monstrous viewership for his return, few of them appeared to have stuck around, if one looks at the Nielsen ratings data analyzed by Mediaite.

After 6.48 million viewers for his return show on Sept. 23, Kimmel has struggled to maintain any sort of momentum.

In fact, Kimmel shed well over half of that audience within the span of 24 hours, as his Sept. 24 show brought in a much more humble 2.43 million viewers.

A day later, Kimmel lost a few more viewers, bringing his show’s viewership to 2.3 million.

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His next two shows brought 2.85 million and 2.45 million viewers, respectively.

Then, however, the bottom fell out as the calendar turned to October.

On Oct. 1, Kimmel’s viewership plummeted to 1.7 million viewers, a number that was much closer to Kimmel’s typical viewership.

Bryan Chai, Western Journal

France’s President Emmanuel Macron faced growing pressure on Tuesday to resign or hold a snap parliamentary election to end political chaos that has forced the resignation of five prime ministers in less than two years.

The 47-year-old centrist president has repeatedly said he will see out his second term, which ends in 2027.

But resignation calls, long confined to the fringes, have entered the mainstream during one of the worst political crises since the 1958 creation of the Fifth Republic, France’s current system of government.

On Tuesday, as Macron’s outgoing Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu held last-ditch talks to form a new government, his first premier in 2017, Edouard Philippe, said it was time for a new president to break the deadlock.

Dominique Vidalon and Sudip Kar-Gupta, Reuters

An unlucky man purchased a Tesla from a used car dealership only to learn that it was nearly impossible to charge the electric vehicle after driving it off the lot.

When the first charger didn’t work, Boycott sought out a few more stations. When none of them worked, he turned to the Illinois dealership and Tesla.

A Tesla representative eventually got back to Boycott and let him know that “the car is currently unsupported for supercharging and warranties are voided due to [it being a] salvaged vehicle.”

Tesla does offer an inspection option for customers trying to get their Tesla back on the Supercharger network, but for a fee of a couple thousand dollars.

Caitlin McCormack

By Victor Davis Hanson

Portland’s left-wing mobs and officials are waging a neo-Confederate-style rebellion—defying federal law, protecting illegal aliens, and turning the city into a sanctuary for anarchy.

In blue cities across America—Portland, Oregon, especially—often violent protesters now seek to surround ICE facilities to stop federal officers from fulfilling their assigned and legal duties of arresting illegal aliens.

Some 10 million or more illegal aliens were allowed to enter the U.S. during the Biden years—illegally and thus without criminal or health checks.

Neither Antifa nor liberal urban America objected to such a flagrant disregard for the law. But both are now as intent on obstructing the legal enforcement of the law as they were earlier in favor of its illegal non-enforcement.

Much less did they care about the consequences of sending millions of foreign nationals into cities and counties where they swamped social services, spiked crime, and flooded emergency rooms and schools.

ICE has repeatedly presented data that show in its first rounds of deportations, it is concentrating on removing either criminal illegal aliens or those who have already been processed with deportation orders, somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of all current apprehensions.

No matter.

Left-wing protesters are swarming ICE headquarters in Portland to violently oppose all deportations, even those of known criminals and those who have already exhausted efforts to remain here illegally

Why? The Democratic Party apparat knows that the public wants both secure borders and deportations of illegal aliens. Indeed, in part, it lost an election by its open-borders advocacy.

But Democrat officials feel that if street thugs like Antifa can surround and besiege ICE facilities in Portland, Oregon, then deportations will stop. Then, a de facto amnesty will follow for millions who entered the U.S. illegally—and will soon become Democratic constituents.

As a result, they do not fully enforce the law when thugs attack federal law enforcement. Antifa and its spin-off groups favor the night, when they try to block all entries and exits of ICE vehicles and personnel, and can commit their violence with greater anonymity.

The masked rioters assault anyone in their way. They count on exemption from punishment for committing violence against federal officers through the goodwill or indifference of kindred local and state officials who hate the Trump administration more than they respect the law. An Orwellian scenario follows in which federal officers are attacked by Antifa, which in turn counts on the non-intervention of local police.

Summed up: the city of Portland’s armed officers are in a de facto proxy war with their federal counterparts—in our version of something out of 1860, on the eve of a real civil war.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek feel their constituents want open borders and thus should have the right in their own city and state to do as they please—and federal law be damned.

But by doing so, both the Democrat Party officialdom and the street armies of Antifa are on the proverbial wrong side of history.

America for almost 200 years has already decided, in formal law and court rulings, that no local or state entity can disrupt the enforcement of federal laws or usurp Washington’s powers. To do so with impunity would unravel the American nation in short order.

We know that from our own violent history. Andrew Jackson, in 1832, like Trump, threatened to send troops to stop South Carolina’s nullification of federal tariff laws.

America fought a Civil War over Confederate states’ efforts to ignore federal law and confiscate or occupy federal property within their state jurisdictions.

As late as 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace thought he could nullify federal law by using his state guard to deny black students’ enrollment in the University of Alabama—until the Kennedy administration federalized all state troopers and sent in additional federal troops.

So what we are witnessing in Portland—and elsewhere—is a neo-Confederate attempt to supersede federal law and, in reactionary fashion, invoke states’ and cities’ rights.

Oregon and Portland believe that they are more moral than the federal government and thus have a natural right to side with street mobs by both not enforcing their own laws against Antifa violence and ignoring the innate civil rights of ICE personnel.

The latter are denied freedom of movement, association, and the ability to fulfill their job duties by what has turned out to be a near city-sanctioned siege of their facilities.

The Democrats are fine with all this. They think the violence against ICE will be portrayed daily as general chaos by their allied media. Thus, the proverbial people who keep clear of the siege and its detritus will simply want all the bother to go away—and supposedly blame those enforcing, not breaking, the law. In sum, the Democratic Party is the official face of the left. Antifa provides the street shock troops, and the media serves as its propaganda arm.

So, the left-wing logic is to allow the violence and siege to continue in a “safe space” for Antifa. A strapped ICE will supposedly eventually shut down operations and move on. And any violence that occurs can be chalked up to Trump’s federal government “baiting” Portlanders.

The reigning moralistic assumption is that ceding territory to terrorists, not enforcing local and state laws, and nullifying federal statutes are all small prices to pay for the larger projection of chaos and violence that can be blamed on Trump.

Such thinking entails utter indifference to any Portlanders who live near the siege and are nightly subjected to constant disruptions, harassment, and occasional violence. Do these law-abiding residents have fewer civil rights than the lawbreaking armies of the night?

contrast, the use of federal troops to stop the siege of ICE facilities will remind the violent protesters of the left that their neo-Confederate tactics will not work, but instead subject them to arrest and federal indictments

Bringing in federal forces to uphold the law will also protect the rights of ICE personnel and neighborhood residents to live in peace and security and have their constitutional protections secured. Not all American citizens are Portlanders, but all Portland citizens are Americans.

In other words, both Antifa and the appeasing Oregon officials are our new neo-Confederate secessionists. They feel that their states are now autonomous entities that are still entitled to federal money but not obligated to follow federal laws.

Portland also reminds us of the recent utter incoherence of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. On the one hand, she pleads for federal dollars to restore her city’s burned-out neighborhoods due to her own incompetence and neglect, while on the other hand actively obstructs the federal government from enforcing immigration laws in her own city.

For a party that has been quick to shout “insurrection,” it is ironic that Democrats and their useful, though violent, Antifa insurrectionists are in rebellion against the federal government and its agents.

It is hard to know which is worse—the Antifa thug who nightly tries to injure a federal officer, or the sanctimonious neo-Confederate official who empowers him to keep trying?

About Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O’Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent  The Second World

Plans are under way to try him in the International Criminal Court. This time he can strike first.

Before his second term began, President Trump was prosecuted repeatedly in state court, federal court and the Senate. After it ends, he could face trial in another venue, the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The U.S. didn’t sign the Rome Statute and therefore doesn’t belong to the ICC, but the court can find a jurisdictional hook in actions the administration has taken abroad in ICC member states.

The strikes on Venezuelan narcoterror smuggling boats provide one possible avenue. Shortly after the U.S. Navy destroyed the first such vessel, Ken Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch, endorsed ICC intervention. “Trump just did what the International Criminal Court has charged former Philippines Pres. Duterte with doing—ordering the summary execution of alleged drug traffickers,” Mr. Roth tweeted. Venezuela is a Rome Statute party, which in the court’s thinking gives it jurisdiction over U.S. officials and servicemen involved in the attacks. The ICC has already launched an investigation against a nonmember state (Israel) based on a single boarding of a vessel flagged by a member state, so it has all the precedents it needs.

Mr. Trump has thus far taken an incremental approach to the ICC. He revived a first-term executive order authorizing sanctions against the court and applied it against four ICC officials. None of this has significantly reduced the risk to the U.S. or led the ICC to change its ways.

strikes on Venezuelan narcoterror smuggling boats provide one possible avenue. Shortly after the U.S. Navy destroyed the first such vessel, Ken Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch, endorsed ICC intervention. “Trump just did what the International Criminal Court has charged former Philippines Pres. Duterte with doing—ordering the summary execution of alleged drug traffickers,” Mr. Roth tweeted. Venezuela is a Rome Statute party, which in the court’s thinking gives it jurisdiction over U.S. officials and servicemen involved in the attacks. The ICC has already launched an investigation against a nonmember state (Israel) based on a single boarding of a vessel flagged by a member state, so it has all the precedents it needs.

Mr. Trump has thus far taken an incremental approach to the ICC. He revived a first-term executive order authorizing sanctions against the court and applied it against four ICC officials. None of this has significantly reduced the risk to the U.S. or led the ICC to change its ways.

The ICC’s supporters don’t see the existing sanctions as an “existential threat.” The tribunal can easily ride it out by lying low until a Democratic president lifts the sanctions, as Joe Biden did. The court takes a long view—its prosecutors and judges have nine-year terms, and its other staffers are part of a global deep state who can expect to remain at their jobs indefinitely.

International lawyers are already developing multiple lines of attack against the administration and its officials. The ICC’s prosecutor has threatened to bring charges over Mr. Trump’s sanctions.

Immigration policy is another potential target. An article published on a leading international-law website argues that Mr. Trump’s deportations “rise to the level of a crime against humanity,” a category over which the ICC has jurisdiction. Moreover, many destination states—such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico—are ICC members, making the court’s jurisdiction straightforward. El Salvador’s CECOT gang prison is already a popular target for international lawyers’ ICC fantasies, now with the added benefit that it would also sweep in deportations by Mr. Trump.

Another potential target is Mr. Trump’s proposal to allow Gazans to escape their blighted territory. A former ICC judge has already called it illegal. Another commentator wrote that “the White House’s ‘plan’ almost begs the ICC to investigate American conduct in Gaza.” Never mind that the plan would actually realize Gazans’ human rights and hasn’t been implemented. Under the new definitions of crimes recently created against Israel, that is not an obstacle.

This isn’t to say marshals from The Hague will face off with the Secret Service. Rather, the court would wait for a favorable administration in Washington and then open an investigation into Trump policies. This itself would have a chilling effect on foreign travel by Mr. Trump and his former senior officials. The court could then use secret sealed warrants to try to ambush former officials, like Marco Rubio or Pete Hegseth, on travels to Paris, London or Tokyo.

A President Gavin Newsom would likely issue diplomatic objections but nothing more. It is unlikely the court would try to arrest Mr. Trump himself. As with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the goal would be to harass him and cast a shadow on his legacy, delegitimizing the people and ideas behind MAGA.

The Duterte case mentioned by Mr. Roth is a cautionary tale for Mr. Trump. Rodrigo Duterte was a democratically elected president who waged a public, and successful, campaign to wipe out his country’s violent drug gangs. Although this bears no similarity to the atrocity crimes the ICC was created to deal with, the court charged him with crimes against humanity. He brushed off the charges and had Manila quit the court. But a few months ago his successor conspired with The Hague to arrest Mr. Duterte, taking a political rival out of play.

Mr. Trump can still avoid this while implementing his policies, but he needs a much more aggressive approach to the ICC. The administration should demand that regional allies like El Salvador and Guatemala quit the court, joining pro-American countries like Hungary, which recently became the first European Union member state to do so. The president should also expand sanctions to target the entire institution and all its employees, whether they work in the office of the prosecutor or the IT desk. The administration is reportedly considering such measures.

Mr. Trump’s adversaries caught him by surprise with their lawfare campaign during and after his first term. With the ICC, he has a chance to strike pre-emptively.

Mr. Kontorovich is a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Trump is clearly listening to the NEOCONS, and he may believe their BS that Russia’s economy is collapsing, so Russia can be defeated in three days, as Kinzinger was claiming. Mark Rubio is a Neocon. I believe Trump hired him as a compromise to the Neocons. But he is taking us into World War III in slow motion.

Trump is listening to the wrong people, and he had better look unbiased at why Putin is being put into a precarious position. He has insulted the dignity of Russia and reduced it to a meaningless 4th-world country. If Putin is replaced one way or in November, sorry, Europe will not recover. Germany fought against Russia in both World War I and World War II and lost both conflicts. A third time will NOT be the charm.

The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported that President Trump signed off on providing U.S. intelligence agencies to supply targeting data to Ukraine for strikes on Russian energy infrastructure (oil refineries, pipelines, power plants). This suggests that now the US will select the target for Ukraine to attack. That is waging DIRECT WAR against Russia. They certainly can provide missiles to Venezuela and provide them targets for Washington, D.C., and put one right up Trump’s ass. I guess that would not be declaring war either.

However, it is not clear that “providing targeting” means full battlefield coordination, command & control, or direction of operations — most media accounts frame it as sharing intelligence, not taking over targeting decisions.

According to multiple sources, Trump authorized the sharing of targeting intelligence with Zelensky/Ukraine for strikes on specific energy infrastructure. This is the NECON argument: stop the energy sales of Russia, the country will collapse, and they can walk in and carve up Russia like a piece of pie. SO let’s see, Putin could strike and take our Wall Street, the US cannot borrow any more money, the economy would collapse since it is dependent on debt, and he could do the same to the USA.

NOBODY seems ever to consider that whatever they do to Russia, they could do the same to the USA and Europe. I am concerned that Putin has been restrained. He cannot agree to peace KNOWING that these Neocons want the destruction of Russia and will NEVER accept them into the world economy. They have already divided the world economy between SWIFT and BRICS, and this division is expected to remain unchanged until after 2032. NEOCONS are braindead assholes who NEVER think one step ahead and only act emotionally to what is in front of their nose with myopic vision.

The NY Post pushed an opinion advocating sending Tomahawk missiles to wipe out Russia. They said:

“Trump should now follow through by supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles to do the job — and ratcheting up the economic pressure on Russia.”

Again, this attitude assumes that Russia is incapable of launching any retaliation against the United States. Putin might as well just launch everything because there is NO POINT to any peace agreement, for Trump is a fool if he really believes this is just about Ukraine. This is about the destruction of Russia, and if he does not get rid of these advisers who have him isolated, we are sleepwalking into the end of Western Civilization.

There is NO WAY China will allow Russia to fall. These Neocons pushed Russia and China together. They will stand together with North Korea and Iran. These NEOCONS are really stupid. They will never be able to defend Europe, the Middle East, Taiwan, and Korea/Japan all simultaneously.

Venezuela’s International Support Cuba has been a longstanding ally of Venezuela. Recently, Cuban diplomats in Angola reaffirmed their support for Venezuela against perceived U.S. aggressions. Russia has continued to support the Maduro government, sending troops to Venezuela in March 2019 and helping the government evade sanctions on the oil industry. China has continued to back the Maduro government, offering to help rebuild the national power grid. Iran has also expressed support for Venezuela, especially in the context of U.S. sanctions and military threats. The two countries have engaged in economic and diplomatic cooperation over the years. Both could also provide long-range missiles to Venezuela, just as Zelensky is demanding, so he can level the Kremlin. Russia could do that with Venezuela and target Washington, DC. Trump obviously never heard = what goes around, comes around.

Turkey has maintained a neutral stance but has occasionally criticized U.S. sanctions and expressed support for Venezuela’s sovereignty. Syria has been a vocal supporter of Venezuela, condemning U.S. actions and emphasizing the importance of respecting Venezuela’s sovereignty. Colombia has shown solidarity with Venezuela, especially in the context of U.S. sanctions and military threats. The country’s foreign minister recently renounced her U.S. visa in protest of U.S. actions against Venezuela.

Brazil has refrained from taking sides in the U.S.–Venezuela conflict. While President Lula has expressed concern over the U.S. naval presence in the Caribbean, describing it as a source of regional tension, he has not indicated any intention to intervene militarily on Venezuela’s behalf. However,

Left-leaning / socialist governments (currently or recently): Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador (varies over time), and sometimes Argentina and Chile, depending on elections. This is why Trump is supporting Argentina. If they flipped back to the LEFT mainly because of Trump’s war against Venezuela, then we can see turmoil in South America. Focusing strictly on war between South American states, the last significant one was the Colombia–Peru War of 1932–1933, which involved a territorial dispute over the Amazonian town of Leticia. It was resolved through mediation by the League of Nations.

Since then, South America has experienced chiefly internal conflicts (civil wars, insurgencies, and guerrilla movements) rather than interstate wars. Border disputes existed (like between Ecuador and Peru in 1995), but these were short-lived skirmishes rather than prolonged wars. However, Trump’s war with Venezuela runs the risk that, as the economy turns down, we can see a rise in anti-Americanism, and this will impact not just militarily, but also economically, with outstanding debt issues. Specifically, U.S. dollar-denominated debt accounts for approximately 92.6% of South America’s total public debt.

In August 1982, Mexico announced that it could no longer service its debt. This is often considered the official start of the Latin American debt crisis.

Other major South American countries quickly followed this:

Argentina (1982) Brazil (1983) Chile (1983) Venezuela (1983) Peru (1984) Bolivia (1984) Uruguay (1983)

This is the unspoken risk with a conflict with Venezuela, which does have the #1 largest oil reserve of any country on the planet.

These Neocons are BRAINDEAD, for they never consider not just the next step, like taking out Saddam, with no comprehension of what comes next. Still, they fail to feel that they are pushing Putin like he is meaningless, and what if he steps aside in November and hands it to their Neocons, for Russia is NOT going down without a fight. Putin has warned that they have bombs that will get these Neocons in their bunkers.

Demand Elections in Ukraine Cut Off All Contact With Ukraine. They are a Patsy for NATO.

Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics

In Canada, even small donors to the cause of truckers fighting vax mandates had their bank accounts locked by the government. Do you think President Buttigieg, Kamala, AOC or Newsom would hesitate two seconds before doing the same? We need freedom of commerce, which means diversity and freedom of choice.

*******

Newsweek reports that the Republican candidate for Governor in Virginia might win after all. Mind you, this is Newsweek talking. I have admired Winsome Sears during her whole term as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. She’s a gun-toting patriot, the best kind. Seeing her beat the smug Communist would be almost as good as seeing President Trump win last year. Get out and vote, Virginia–show the twits in woke-riddled Northern Va who’s the boss!

*******

If there is a HELL, and if you went there, you would be forced to sit and watch the shrews on The View swoon over Communist terrorist Zohran Mamdani. As, of course, they did this week.

*******

The Trump dministration dismissed claims from Democrats and a left-leaning watchdog group that it violated the Hatch Act by using official websites and emails to blame the blue party for the shutdown. “It’s an objective fact that Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown, the Trump administration is simply sharing the truth with the American people,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson tells Newsmax.

Hey, Communists: We, the productive citizens of America, paid for those official websites through decades of taxation and inflation generated by YOUR decades of spending and regulating like drunken sailors. Go to hell. I only hope Republicans finally grow a pair and shut down your precious government agencies. Pay for these worthless enterprises yourselves.

*******

Residents of Dearborn, Michigan, are forced to listen to Muslim prayers on loudspeakers blasting all day long. This violates a city ordinance, but the government won’t enforce it in this case, because they’re afraid of Muslims. It’s sick and wrong. It’s also a clear symptom of what’s wrong with civilization, and why our civilization will collapse if we don’t learn to fight back.

An opponent of the situation in Dearborn told Fox News:

“The Supreme Court has stated that no public school may have a specific prayer to a specific God. Yet this prayer to Allah is prayed on loudspeakers over our school grounds and our playgrounds daily. There is no atheist, Christian, Jewish, Catholic, or other group that is allowed to use loudspeaker to blast a five-minute prayer into the homes of people in the East Dearborn community.”

Once again, patriots and lovers of liberty: Who’s the boss?

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Here’s the problem with “peace in the Middle East”: Peace cannot be forced on people who do not want it. Jews in Israel wish to live. Palestinians, like all Muslims, want non-believers dead — especially Jews. If we let the Palestinians have their way, there would be no peace for Jews, unless you consider death to be peace. If we let the Jews live and help them stay safe, Palestinians will fight to the death. Jews want peace, but they also want to live. Palestinians want Jews and all other people they consider infidels dead.

There is no peace treaty that can fix this.

*******

One simple but powerful solution will obliterate leftism in America: Defund everything they value. Their schools, their universities, their CDC, their OSHA, their FDA, their faux charity programs, their subsidies to illegals. I am talking 80 percent or more of what the federal government does today. If we eliminated federal government involvement in everything not specified in the Constitution, then leftists would be forced to raise funds on their own. Not all the rich Communists in the world could come up with the multiple trillions required.

We don’t have to resort to violence, as leftists do. We don’t have to curtail freedom of speech, as leftists do. All we have to do is get Congress to DEFUND them. Conservatives don’t need any of this federal money. Leftism cannot survive without it. DEFUNDING Leftism should be our central priority. The rest will take care of itself. We have the power, under our existing Constitution.

*******

If there’s no condition under which you would HIRE a black person, then you’re a racist.

If there’s no condition under which you would FIRE a black person, then you’re a racist.

Jim Crow or DEI? KKK or the Democratic Communist Party? THEY ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.

*******

Joe legal works in construction, has a Social Security number and makes $25.00 per hour with taxes deducted.

Jose illegal also works in construction has no Social Security number and makes $15.00 per hour cash, under the table.

Ready?… now pay attention….

Joe legal: $25.00 per hour × 40 hours = $1,000.00 per week or $52,000.00 per year. Now, take 31% away for State and Federal taxes. Joe legal now has $31,231.00.

Jose illegal: $15.00 an hour × 40 hours = $600.00 per week or $31,200.00 per year. Jose illegal pays no taxes. Jose illegal now has $31,200.00.

Joe legal pays medical and dental insurance with limited coverage for his family at $600.00 per month, or $7,200.00 per year. Joe legal now has $24,031.00.

Jose illegal has full medical and dental coverage through the State and local clinics and emergency hospitals at a cost of $0.00 per year. Jose illegal still has $31,200.00.

Joe legal makes too much money and is not eligible for food stamps or welfare. Joe legal spends $500.00 per month for food or $6,000.00 per year. Joe legal now has $18,031.00.

Jose illegal has no documented income and is eligible for food stamps, WIC and welfare. Jose illegal still has $31,200.00.

Joe legal pays rent of 1,200.00 per month or $14,400.00 per year. Joe legal now has $9,631.00.

Jose illegal receives $500.00 per month Federal rent subsidy. Jose illegal pays out that $500.00 per month or $6,000.00 per year. Jose illegal still has $31,200.00.

Joe legal pays $200.00 per month or $2,400.00 per year for car insurance. Some of that is uninsured motorist insurance. Joe legal now has $7,231.00.

Jose illegal says, “We don’t need no stinkin’ insurance.”… and still has $31,000.00.

Joe legal has to make his $7,231.00 stretch to pay utilities, gasoline.. etc.

Jose illegal has to make his $31,200.00 stretch to pay utilities, gasoline and what he sends out of the country every month….

Joe legal now works overtime on Saturdays or gets a part time job after work.

Jose illegal has nights and weekends off to enjoy with his family.

Joe legal’s and Jose illegal’s children both attend the same elementary school.

Joe legal pays for his children’s lunches while…

Jose illegal’s children get a government-sponsored lunch.

Jose illegal’s children have an after school ESL program.

Joe legal’s children go home.

Now, when they reach college age…

Joe legal’s kids may not get into a State school and may not qualify for scholarships, grants or other tuition help, even though Joe has been paying for State schools through his taxes, while…

Jose illegal’s kids go to the, ‘head of the class’ because they are a minority.

Joe legal and Jose illegal both benefit from the same police and fire services, but Joe paid for them and Jose did not.

Do you get it, now?

If we vote for or support any politician that supports illegal aliens,… we are part of the problem.Its way PAST time to take a stand for America and Americans!

– Ron Keen (via Linda Rittenhouse on Facebook)

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The FBI once chased Catholics and parents with the SPLC’s “hate map.” Now, under Trump, the grifters are exposed and America’s institutions are being reset.

emember the good old days when the FBI would hang out in the parking lots of Catholic churches where the traditional Latin Mass was celebrated? The Bureau claimed that such churches were a breeding ground for what the Biden administration called “domestic extremism” and offered plenty of scope for what the FBI called “mitigation opportunities.” Hence, they jotted down the license plate numbers of the parishioners who just got done reciting really dangerous things like “Sanguis Christi custodiat me in vitam aeternam.” “See? See? They’re talking about blood!”

Those were the days. You could go to a school board meeting and watch hapless parents being tackled and hauled off by the police for complaining that they didn’t want little Johnny battened on books like Gender Queer or, come to that, they didn’t want that bloke Jack, who called himself Jill, moseying about the girl’s bathroom or playing touch football on the girls’ team. Wot larks!

That’s all over now. Sure, here and there, you will discover some pasty-faced feminist festooning her classroom with pride flags and banners instructing us to “globalize the intifada” or whatever. But those pathetic eructations are like the twitching of a frog’s legs after the dissection has begun: vestigial motor movements produced by stimulus, not life.

The magnificent address by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth last week was evidence of the new dispensation: “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” Hegseth said to the hundreds of senior officers he had summoned. “No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. No more debris.”

Whence this Novus ordo seclorum? Why, from Donald Trump, of course. It was he, barely inaugurated for the second time, who banned all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives from any organization that received federal (i.e., taxpayer) funds and then went on to remake large swathes of the apparatus that governs us and the narratives through which we understand our identity and obligations as Americans.

The whirlwind that is Donald Trump has not slackened. If anything, it has picked up force and velocity since the heady days following his resumption of office on January 20, 2025. Eventually, we will be able to provide an inventory and assessment of Trump’s activities as the 47th president of the United States. That moment has not yet come.

Still, we can minute the results of individual initiatives. Pete Hegseth’s welcome call for warriors to be warriors, not social justice warriors, was one such result. So was FBI Director Kash Patel’s decision to cut all ties between the FBI and such racist, though putatively anti-racist, organizations as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Time was, the SPLC was the scourge of all manner of conservative organizations and individuals. The FBI would regularly consult its notorious “hate map” to see which Catholics, concerned parents, and Trump supporters they should monitor and harass. In a wide-ranging anatomy of the SPLC from 2019, the former DOJ lawyer J. Christian Adams summed up the SPLC as a “denunciation machine.” The founders of the SPLC, Adams noted, “built an effective fundraising machine that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars by exaggerating claims that America was filled with Nazis and dangerous conservatives. They succeeded in marginalizing groups that enjoy broad respect and espouse views that were mainstream only a decade ago.”

In the bad old days before Elon Musk extracted Twitter from its bondage to an Orwellian commitment to censorship and rebaptized it “X,” the social media platform relied in part on the SPLC to inform its “Trust and Safety Council,” a darkly comic effort to police speech and enforce ideological conformity on its platform. The left-wing online reference site Wikipedia continues to this day to rely on the SPLC’s “hate map.” Its entry on the David Horowitz Freedom Center, for example, bluntly informs readers in its opening paragraphs that the organization is “designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.” The world awaits the advent of “Grokipedia,” Musk’s promised alternative to “hopelessly biased” Wikipedia.

The commentator who described the SPLC’s “hate list” as “really a hit list” got it exactly right. Last May, Charlie Kirk noted that “The SPLC has added [Kirk’s organization] Turning Point to their ridiculous ‘hate group’ list, right next to the KKK and neo-Nazis, a cheap smear from a washed-up org that’s been fleecing scared grandmas for decades.” Somehow, Kirk noted, they

still rake in over $100 million a year peddling their “hate map” nonsense, sitting pretty in their Montgomery “Poverty Palace” while crying about “hate” to line their pockets. Even former staffers called their racket a “con.”

Their game plan? Scare financial institutions into debanking us, pressure schools to cancel us, and demonize us so some unhinged lunatic feels justified targeting us. Remember the Family Research Council? An SPLC-inspired gunman went after them. They’d love nothing more than to see TPUSA in the crosshairs.

But it’s 2025, and nobody with a functioning brain buys their garbage anymore. The SPLC is a laughingstock, a hollowed-out husk of an organization that’s been exposed as a grift time and time again. They’re not just irrelevant—they’re a cautionary tale of how to torch your own credibility.

How dangerous is the SPLC? The commentator Jack Posobiec notes that “One day before Charlie was shot and killed, he was featured in the SPLC’s ‘Hatewatch’ newsletter.” I am inclined to agree with Musk’s observation: “SPLC is guilty of incitement to murder Charlie Kirk.”

Back in 2023, in a column about the SPLC’s attack on traditional Catholics, an author for the Heritage Foundation cut to the chase. “The FBI,” he wrote,

has no business citing the SPLC’s discredited “hate map,” which inspired a terrorist to target the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., in 2012. The gunman told the FBI that he intended to shoot everyone in the building and smear Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches in their faces, sending a clear ideological message at a time when Chick-fil-A’s foundation had come under fire for funding socially conservative organizations.

Kash Patel is right to cut the FBI’s ties with the SPLC. It is part of the more general Trumpian reordering of the way our government does business, which is also a rewriting of the script directing our national self-understanding. We must wait a while for the denouement to reveal itself, but the route there has already shown us what civilizational recovery looks like. It is a pleasing and uplifting spectacle.

Roger Kimball, American Greatness