People do what they want to do.

If they’re doing it, it’s what they’re choosing to do.

You cannot change their actions. They will only change their actions if and when they choose to do so.

Past actions are the best predictor of future actions. People tend to keep doing what they used to do, unless they resolve to change (which most often, they don’t).

The biggest error you will ever make? The false belief that just because you care, you can make another person change. It won’t happen. Not through force, love, intimidation or (frankly) even through persuasion. Not most of the time, if ever.

People change when they’re able and willing to change; when they want or choose to change. Not a moment sooner, no matter how much you care. Accept this fact, stop fuming over it and free your energies and talents to pursue your own life.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said Monday that Rep. Ilhan Omar should be deported, calling the Minnesota Democrat a fraud as the Department of Homeland Security investigates her immigration history.

“If we don’t make an example out of somebody that’s just standing up and blatantly says she hates America, she wants the president to be dead, she backs everything that these communists talk about, and she’s a fraud,” Tuberville said on Newsmax’s “Ed Henry The Big Take.“

“And the people that she represents, they’ve stolen millions and millions of dollars from the American taxpayer. She hasn’t said one thing about it, to condemn it. So at the end of the day, she’s got to be gone.”

Our immigration system is broken, but it’s not broken to the point that we can’t send people home that blatantly have stolen, they’re fraud,” he said.

“And they lie pretty much every day. So let’s send her home. You know, this is a great country, but it’s not as great as it could be without her in it. We need to send her back where she came from.”

Tuberville did not cite any statement in which Omar said she wanted Trump dead.

Omar has called the fraud in Minnesota “reprehensible” and said she wrote to the agriculture secretary demanding accountability when the Feeding Our Future scheme surfaced.

She has also said Somali Minnesotans were themselves victims, saying, “We do not blame the lawlessness of an individual on a whole community.” The Feeding Our Future scheme involved roughly $250 million in pandemic-era child nutrition money.

White House border czar Tom Homan said Sunday on Fox News that Homeland Security Investigations is conducting an “ongoing criminal investigation” involving Omar but declined to describe its scope or cite evidence, saying that “no one’s above the law” regardless of whether the subject is a member of Congress.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said days earlier that investigators were examining allegations involving Omar’s immigration history, including the allegation that she married her brother to help him immigrate. Mullin added that “something’s going to happen.”

Omar has denied the marriage allegation for years and called it a bigoted lie. No publicly disclosed evidence or court finding has substantiated it.

Omar was born in Somalia, fled the country’s civil war as a child, and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before arriving in the United States in 1995. She became a U.S. citizen in 2000 and was elected to the House in 2018.

A naturalized U.S. citizen generally cannot be deported unless a federal court first revokes that person’s citizenship. Civil denaturalization requires the government to establish that citizenship was illegally obtained or procured through the concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.

Deportation would require a separate removal process and an applicable legal ground for removal.

By Solange Reyner, Newsmax

While the hypocrites at WaPo write Dem-friendly puff pieces, Milwaukee elections officials won’t let observers see what’s going on.

The Washington Post likes to say that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” The self-righteous hypocrites behind the accomplice media outlet are part of the dark cloud killing representative democracy. (WaPo is keeping the Pulitzer Prize it won for helping to manufacture the Russia collusion hoax, thank you very much).

We do know that election integrity dies in darkness, and “progressive” organs like The Post have been bludgeoning it for years.

Take Wisconsin’s primary election last month, for instance. The leftist-run Milwaukee Election Commission botched another election, smothered transparency, and came back after a counting delay to announce the Democratic Party’s preferred candidate won a race his opponent had been heavily favored in.

The Democrat in question is Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who was politically dead just weeks before the Aug. 11 Democratic gubernatorial primary. He temporarily left the race in the face of overwhelming polling numbers for Madison socialist Francesca Hong.

Despite understandable suspicion about another rigged election in Milwaukee, WaPo and its corporate media ilk did cursory examinations of the suspect activity, taking the word of the incompetent and corrupt Milwaukee Election Commission as gospel. Nothing to see here. They did make sure to cover the Democratic Party-aligned activist groups rallying behind Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paula Gutierrez, who has compiled a record of “errors” that would land most private sector administrators on the unemployment line.

Quickly, the accomplice media turned the page to do what they do best: write glowing pieces about the Democrat in the race. In The Post’s case, absurd stories that murder the truth, painting Socialist Light Crowley as a moderate — pushing the gritty black kid from Milwaukee’s crime-riddled 53206 zip code narrative and disappearing the stunning record of failure in leading Wisconsin’s most-populous county.

Why, David Crowley could make history by becoming Wisconsin’s first black governor, WaPo reporter Karen Tumulty gushed. Of course, she left out some very inconvenient information the Crowley campaign isn’t all that interested in discussing. Like his “Dirt McGirk” days, or that time Milwaukee County employees nearly lost their health care coverage thanks to a benefits lapse on Crowley’s watch. In the words of another bungling lib, that’s a big (expletive deleted) deal. Certainly something a news publication devoted to lighting the darkness might want to include in a hefty profile piece of Wisconsin Democrat candidate for governor. No problem, Crowley’s campaign loved it. So did the Democratic Governor’s Association. And isn’t that what it’s all about.

Meanwhile, a reporter from The USA Today-owned Milwaukee Journal Sentinel jumped on X to snidely downplay an emergency nighttime plane landing in water that injured Crowley’s Republican opponent, Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany, according to The Heartland Post. Tiffany, endorsed by President Donald Trump, and the plane’s pilot were treated for minor injuries suffered in the crash.

Journalistic integrity dies in darkness.

Crowley, many Wisconsin Republicans suspect, can count on The Post and the rest of the corporate media club again on election night when Milwaukee election administrators keep Wisconsin waiting for final results. If history is any indicator, there will be some massive “irregularity” in Milwaukee’s ballot handling that the accomplice media will dutifully explain away, mainly by accusing the suspicious of being “election deniers.” Maybe even “racists” this time around.

‘Wisconsin Government Depends on This Process’

If WaPo really cares about democracy and darkness and all that crap, they’ll take a look at the complaint filed this week with the Wisconsin Elections Commission alleging multiple state election-law violations in Milwaukee. The accusations further lay out, and records show, a Democrat-controlled city with a long history of suspect election administration practices and transparency failures.

The complaint was filed by Milwaukee resident and election observer Justin Gavery with the assistance of the Center for Election Confidence, an election integrity watchdog. Among several allegations, the complaint claims that the two highest-ranking officers of the Milwaukee Election Commission barred election observers from watching ballot-handling and other activities during last month’s primary election day. Observers could not see what election workers were doing in a “blocked-off area” of Milwaukee’s Central Count location.

“Each failure is independently unlawful, an abdication of basic diligence and competence, or an abuse of discretion,” the complaint states. “Taken together, these failures show that MEC could not reliably administer a partisan primary — an election with a fraction of the turnout and operational demand of a General Election.”

Gavery further notes, as The Federalist has extensively reported, that Milwaukee’s primary election day debacle wasn’t anything new. The Milwaukee Election Commission has been a train wreck in administering elections dating back to at least 2018, demonstrating a “persistent pattern that demands the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s … sustained oversight before November 3, 2026,” the complaint alleges.

The feckless Wisconsin Elections Commission — a “bipartisan” panel comprised of three Democrat and three Republican members — has done little to hold Milwaukee election administrators accountable beyond sending a “polite” letter. Don Millis, the chummy Republican-appointed chair of the state Elections Commission, said last week he was satisfied with Milwaukee’s explanations that it was all just “human error.” Best to just “let it lay,” he said, adding that there isn’t “any need for further action.”

Gutierrez, Milwaukee elections director, told the Milwaukee Common Council on Monday that she’s taking corrective steps to prevent similar problems in November. She said central count workers in charge of downloading election results will receive more detailed instructions, including individual steps to confirm points in the process.

Milwaukee Alderman Bob Bauman scolded Gutierrez about the latest “human error” involving absentee ballots.

“It’s not hyperbole to say the future of Wisconsin government depends on this process,” Bauman said. “Because Milwaukee’s absentee ballot count could very well be decisive, could very well swing the balance, very easily, like it has in the past, given the close nature of elections in the state of Wisconsin.”

‘Not a One-Off Mistake’

Gutierrez has said Milwaukee Election Commission Deputy Director Maricha Harris mistakenly selected, downloaded, and transmitted audit log files instead of results on five of nine data sticks. She did so despite having a written copy of the commission’s election procedures manual on hand, according to a recent letter to the WEC, The glitch stalled the release of Wisconsin’s primary election results, including the final tally in the nationally-watched race for the Democrat’s nominee for governor.

“Downloading audit logs instead of vote totals five times in a single night — when the written procedures manual is right there — points to a concerning gap in training and quality control, not a one-off mistake,” Nicholas J. Boerke, the attorney who represents Gavery, said in a press release.

Boerke, an attorney with Atlanta-based election law specialty firm Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Wallen, LLC., is also involved in the complaint against the city of Green Bay involving former City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys. The disgraced election official resigned after sending out two separate batches of duplicate absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s spring and primary elections. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has found Jeffreys likely broke state election law — again. In that case, WEC commissioners voted to end their investigation into the matter and send the city a sternly-worded letter.

Gavery, who served as an observer at the central count location on the day of the primary election, claims Harris took the actions without an election official of another party present, a serious violation of state election law.

But there’s nothing to see here, at least according to some leftist organizations severely allergic to election integrity.

Votebeat, a left-leaning activist organization masquerading as a news outlet, insisted on Monday that “audit logs from those five tabulators show no evidence of tampering between the time officials initially left the facility and returned again to correctly extract results.” How does Votebeat know? “Experts” said so. Who are the experts? Ryan Macias, a left-wing election technology consultant who previously worked for Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a far-left Democrat, as her official recount observer alongside other leftist groups, according to nonprofit tracker InfluenceWatch.

‘This Isn’t How We Run Elections in America’

As an election observer since 2022, Gavery said Milwaukee officials have increasingly restricted rooms within central count, blocking them or concealing them from the public. That includes a large room containing thousands of absentee ballots in certificate envelopes near a loading dock. The Milwaukee Election Commission refers to the area as the “Secure Ballot Room.”

“But MEC has done more than restrict access. Over several election cycles, it has worked to conceal that the rooms exist at all,” the complaint states.

As The Federalist has reported, administrators have covered the interior windows, once visible to observers, where ballot handling occurs. Elections officials have stacked crates in front of the windows to block views. By this year’s spring and primary elections, Gavery said he personally observed that the MEC “removed the windows outright and windows once covered or obscured were walled off entirely.”

The complaint also alleges that on at least two separate occasions, the Milwaukee Election Commission failed to notice “vitally important” public meetings, including the public test of election tabulating machines for Wisconsin’s primary election.

“That MEC has engaged in efforts to affirmatively block observers from viewing these ballot-handling rooms is unconscionable,” Boerke said in a statement. “But replacing interior windows with bricks or drywall to conceal even the very existence of these rooms, let alone the activity inside, is unbelievable. This isn’t how we run elections in America.”

It’s how they run elections in Democrat bastion that is Milwaukee. And the Dems and RINOs on the Wisconsin Elections Commission have allowed them to get away with it.

‘A Troubling Message’

As The MacIver Institute reported earlier this year, the commission voted 5-1 to dismiss a previous complaint on the central count issue. The two highly partisan Democrat members pushed the full commission to remove the WEC staff’s recommendation “that observers receive some level of visual access to key ballot-processing areas.” It is the law, after all. “The observation areas shall be so positioned to permit any election observer to readily observe all public aspects of the voting process,” the statute states.

“This outcome sends a troubling message,” The MacIver Institute asserts. “The Wisconsin Elections Commission’s own professional staff recommended modest steps to improve election-day observability into ballot processing to include the intake, scanning of envelopes, sorting into wards, and handling of thousands of absentee ballots. Yet, [former Chairwoman] Ann Jacobs personally led the charge to delete that guidance. Observers are not asking to interfere; they are simply asking to see what the law already requires.”

None of it is good news for open government, and it’s worse for flagging voter confidence. The stakes couldn’t be higher in this midterm election. Higher still in 2028, as Wisconsin most likely takes its entrenched position as an all-important swing state.

Republicans will need more poll workers and observers than ever in Milwaukee, Madison and other deep blue Wisconsin cities if they have any hope of ensuring free and fair elections. But will it ultimately matter if elections officials are free to block out the ballot count? Will it matter if high-sounding news outlets that talk a big game about shining light on darkness fail to cover or twist their coverage of election integrity violations?

Transparency dies in darkness.

M.D. kittle, The Federalist

The socialist creed preaches a narrative of Capitalist Oppressors, often large corporations, who somehow collaborate and conspire to keep the oppressed masses down. I was reminded of that narrative when I recently saw a post at the website called New York YIMBY (“Yes In My Back Yard”), that provided some history of a certain office building in midtown Manhattan, 1301 Avenue of the Americas. The post, by Max Gillespie on September 7, is titled “1301 Avenue Of The Americas Fully Leased In Midtown, Manhattan.” It happens that I am very familiar with this building, since I worked right across the street from it for about 18 years.

The history of 1301 Avenue of the Americas provides a small look into the constant change and churn that are endemic among corporations in the real world.

Here from YIMBY’s post is a picture of 1301 Avenue of the Americas, credited to one of the building’s former owners, the Paramount Group.

This building, built in 1964, is not particularly famous or notable in the forest of high-rises that characterizes midtown Manhattan. However, as you can see, the building is quite large — 609 feet high, 45 stories, and 1.8 million square feet. Over the years it has been home to a number of large corporate tenants. And yet, one by one these tenants have downsized, shrunk their footprint or even vacated the building and gone out of business altogether. Nevertheless, YIMBY reports that, with a recent renewal and expansion by a Cleveland-based bank called KeyBank, the building is now fully occupied:

KeyBank has renewed and expanded its lease at 1301 Avenue of the Americas . . . . The Cleveland-based bank added 15,292 square feet under a 15-year renewal, bringing its total footprint to 112,924 square feet across the entire 35th through 37th floors and portions of the 28th and 38th floors. With the deal, the tower is fully leased.

But consider some of the prior tenants. In its early days, the main tenant was a discount department store chain called J.C. Penney. Do you remember those stores? When 1301 Avenue of the Americas was built, J.C. Penney was riding high. In the 1960s and 70s, “J.C. Penney occupied more than 800,000 square feet across 33 floors as the anchor tenant. . . .,” and the building was known as the J.C. Penney building. In 1977, J.C. Penney then “purchased the property for $55 million.” That was just after J.C. Penney reached its peak with 2,083 stores in 1973. But during the late 70s and 80s, J.C. Penney had already begun to decline. According to the YIMBY piece, J.C. Penney “relocat[ed] its headquarters to Dallas in 1988.” Since then J.C. Penney has continued to shrink. In 2020, the company went through a bankruptcy and restructuring. According to its website, it is down to about 600+ stores today.

But other companies came along to occupy the space vacated by J.C. Penney. Around 1990, the large French bank known as Credit Lyonnais took a big bloc of space, and the building was renamed the Credit Lyonnais building. Credit Lyonnais, by the way, was owned at the time by the French state. The bank’s expansion at 1301 Avenue of the Americas was part of a massive world-wide growth push for Credit Lyonnais. Unfortunately, it all quickly came apart. By 1999, an article in Forbes characterized Credit Lyonnais as “the dirtiest bank in the world,” and its trajectory over the course of the 90s as “by far the biggest banking debacle in history.” According to Forbes:

[O]n a Sunday morning in 1996, . . . [a huge fire began, and] raged for 16 hours, destroying most of [Credit Lyonnais]’s headquarters, the largest nongovernment building in Paris, one that dominated an entire block on the Boulevard des Italiens near the old Opera. . . . It’s a striking and fitting image of what Credit Lyonnais has become. Once a force in global finance, the bank is little more than half its former size, having been looted by criminals, racked by scandal and decimated by the loss of at least $20 billion in reckless and corrupt investments.

Forbes described the debacle as “an object lesson in what can go wrong in a government-owned commercial enterprise without accountability.” By 2003 the French government had arranged the merger of Credit Lyonnais into its former rival, Credit Agricole. The footprint of the bank at 1301 Avenue of the Americas shrank dramatically.

But meanwhile, a big law firm known as Dewey Ballantine had also moved to 1301 Avenue of the Americas in 1990. In 2007 Dewey Ballantine merged with another large New York firm called LeBoeuf Lamb, and the LeBoeuf lawyers moved into 1301 Avenue of the Americas as well. (If you were paying extremely close attention to my post a few days ago on the federal court “standing” doctrine, you may have noticed that the lawyer who argued the seminal environmental standing case called Scenic Hudson on behalf of the utility Con Edison was Randall LeBoeuf, the founder of the LeBoeuf firm.) According to the Real Deal, after the merger the combined firm occupied almost 500,000 square feet at the building. The building put up a large sign with the name “Dewey & LeBoeuf.” That lasted until 2012, when Dewey & LeBoeuf blew up, filed for bankruptcy, and suddenly vacated the entire bloc of space.

The lesson is that even very large and successful corporations operate in a risky and volatile world, where they can shrink and even fail very quickly. Examples are everywhere if you take some time to look around. I’m not expecting any professed socialists to observe this any time soon.

UPDATE, September 12: If you would like something more germane to the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, the same YIMBY website has a post today about the status of the reconstruction. On the actual WTC site, there remains just one parcel not fully re-built. That parcel has recently resumed construction, in what is to become a new headquarters for the American Express company. At the moment, construction is just reaching street level, and is projected to take several years; but here via the architects (Foster & Parters) is a rendering of what the new building will look like:

You can go to the link for many more pictures, including of the current buildings and the ongoing construction.

For what it’s worth, my personal opinion is that the new buildings on the site are much better than the old ones. But I lost several friends in the attack, and thinking about that day still fills me with sadness.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

President Donald Trump on Monday pushed back against growing calls for greater regulation of artificial intelligence, and lashed out at Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei over his urgent plea for an AI slowdown.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so!” Trump wrote.

The president’s latest defense of largely unfettered AI growth came amid a sudden crescendo of leading industry voices raising alarms about the risks of the nascent technology.

On Saturday, Amodei published a blog post titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” arguing for slower development of AI models to “reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong.”

Days earlier, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit his job and issued a warning that the technology could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” while accusing both OpenAI and Anthropic of “gambling with our lives.”

Other tech CEOs, including OpenAI chief Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, over the weekend said they agreed with calls for a slowdown.

The Trump administration has broadly encouraged the industry’s rapid growth and the development of controversial data centers in the U.S. as it seeks an insurmountable technological edge over China.

Trump on Saturday said, “We’re leading China in AI.”

“And frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins,” the president said.

In his Truth Social post Monday, Trump claimed that leading AI companies are already sufficiently reined in.

“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” he wrote. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”

“WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!” he added.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s post.

White House AI czar David Sacks on Saturday pushed back on growing AI fears, writing in an X post after Amodei’s warning that tech giants should “go ahead and pace the frontier” themselves.

“Stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic,” Sacks wrote. “You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways.”

He added that China would be “very unlikely” to join a global agreement to regulate the technology.

Any attempt at AI regulation by Congress appears highly unlikely before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. House members are set to leave town Thursday and remain in their districts through October.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Sunday downplayed the necessity of passing legislation to rein in AI development.

“If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, that is a threat to every single American,” Johnson told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We don’t need everybody to panic right now, we need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past, and make sure we’re doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation,” he said.

— CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed to this report.

It looks as if the Democrats have jumped the Blue Whale for the final time. Everything from now on will be anticlimax.

It can’t possibly be any other way, since an actual Democrat candidate has come out and publicly stated on record that she looks forward to Nazi concentration camps for MAGA voters.

As yet, no Democrat has disavowed this. That may well be coming, but it will be half-hearted and shallow at best. I mean, anything more might well cost them a seat, y’know.

The Gauleiter in question is Shelly Headen, Democrat candidate for NC House District 62. Frau Headen joined the party in München in 1926, and was prominent in many street actions against the Bolsheviks. She played a notable role in the NS-Frauenschaft, and after the party took power, was a high official of the Deutsches Frauenwerk, helping build it up as the dominant German women’s organization. Late in the 1930s, she was personally selected by RHSA head Reinhard Heydrich to serve as a camp Aufseherin at the Reich’s facilities for rehabilitating political offenders, before being transferred to new installations in Poland….

Actually no. I have no idea of Headen’s background, and it scarcely matters anymore, because nothing she has ever done or will do is going to outweigh her actions of the past few days. She is always going to be known as the Democrat pol who let the cat out of the bag.

Headen had a photo of herself taken at Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, established in March, 1933, only two months after the Nazis took power, at the express orders of Adolf Hitler. Interestingly, considering the nature of Headen’s actions, Dachau was intended primarily as a camp for political opponents of the Nazis, including communists and social democrats, but extending to all anti-Nazi parties. Some of the most distinguished names in Germany ended up behind the barbed wire there.

Headen published that photo, with a huge smile on her face, along with a caption reading “Visiting Dauchau concentration camp in Germany…. This is where Trump supporters belong.”

Think about that for a minute. Think about how malicious, obtuse, ignorant of history, and plain godforsaken stupid you have to be to do something like that. And then think again…. Because Headen actually took this shot in front of the camp’s ovens, one of the ghastliest places on this sad Earth.

Dachau was technically not a death camp. The Vernichtungslager were never located in Germany but outside the country, mostly in Poland. But believe you me, plenty of people died there – 41,500 is the minimum number, and it was probably much higher. They may not have been gassed, but they were starved, beaten, neglected, tortured, shot, subject to every possible demise that the savagery of the SS could arrange. And when they died, they went to that room and were burned there, with less ceremony than would be given a dead animal. It’s one of those things that makes you wonder whether the universe will ever be clean without the human stain being eradicated.

J.R. Dunn, American Thinker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Historically, we shouldn’t be surprised at all. 

Mark Lewis, Townhall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whether that scrutiny ultimately produces charges remains unknown.

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

Big League Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan Conradson, Gateway Pundit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The selectivity, Riboua notes, is revealing. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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