The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement that has influence9d political Islam across the Middle East and beyond. Its ideology and historical connections to various Islamist organizations have drawn scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers and national security officials. Critics of Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan politician, have pointed to his past statements about the movement, his family’s reported connections to it, and his father-in-law’s affiliations with prominent Muslim American organizations. 

Genocidal Hamas = the Arab “Palestine” = Muslim Brotherhood

Hamas is inherently linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, sharing a foundational ideology aimed at the destruction of Western values and the establishment of an Islamic state.

• Foundational Roots: Hamas was explicitly established in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as the violent, militant arm of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. Conservative policy institutes emphasize that Hamas’s original 1988 charter openly declared the group to be a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.
• Shared Islamist Ideology: Both entities operate under a radical Islamist framework that rejects Western democratic principles, capitalism, and modern secular governance, viewing global jihad as a necessity to implement strict Islamic law.
• The 2017 Document: While Hamas issued a revised policy document in 2017 attempting to downplay its formal organizational ties to the broader Muslim Brotherhood, conservative security analysts widely dismiss this move as a deceptive public relations tactic. They argue that the strategic alignment, ideological goals, and financial networks between the two groups remain functionally unchanged

El-Sayed’s Past Statements on the Muslim Brotherhood

In an essay published by HuffPost in January 2011, El-Sayed argued that the Muslim Brotherhood’s potential rise to power following the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak might not be as troubling as some critics feared.

He contended that Egypt’s military would not support the group’s bid for power unless “strong liberal democratic structures were in place.” He also rejected comparisons suggesting that a Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt would resemble Hamas’s rule in Gaza.

Following the rise to power of Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, El-Sayed signed a statement in 2012 urging Morsi “to purge the media and police as quickly as possible.”

“We affirm, as Egyptian Americans, that we strongly reject those voices that are courting America and Europe to take a position against the Egyptian regime,” the statement’s signatories declared.

These statements prove El-Sayed underestimated the risks posed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s political agenda and its approach to democratic institutions.

Family Connections to the Muslim Brotherhood

Questions have also been raised about El-Sayed’s family history. His half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, discussed the family’s historical ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, commonly abbreviated as “MB.” She also indicated that some relatives had been imprisoned in Egypt because of their activism in the organization.

In a 2012 social media post, Abdelhadi described having an “amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college.”

These accounts have added another dimension to scrutiny of El-Sayed’s background. 

His Father-in-Law and Connections to Muslim American Organizations

Further questions have centered on El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, and his reported leadership roles in prominent Muslim American organizations.

According to reporting by the Washington Free Beacon and the Washington Examiner, Jukaku served as president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) from 2005 to 2010 and served on the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

Both CAIR and ISNA were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case. In 2008, five Holy Land Foundation leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. Prosecutors presented evidence concerning what they described as a Muslim Brotherhood-linked network in the United States.

The Washington Free Beacon also reported that Jukaku contributed $200,000 to a super PAC supporting El-Sayed’s Senate campaign. That reported contribution has raised questions among critics about the political networks and financial support surrounding El-Sayed’s campaign.

Why These Connections Matter

Taken together, El-Sayed’s past statements about the Muslim Brotherhood, his family’s reported history with the movement, and his father-in-law’s organizational and political connections provide context for examining his views on political Islam, his loyalties and the networks surrounding his political career.

Comma.point

Matt Margolis

Kamala Harris insists she hasn’t decided whether she’s running for president in 2028, but she accidentally gave the game away.

Obviously, nobody in the Democrat Party is exactly begging her to jump in. The establishment has been pushing back hard on the idea of a third Kamala campaign. Former allies and donors grumble that she squandered her first year out of office, and they can’t come up with a single reason voters should take another look at her. Even her husband, Doug Emhoff, reportedly isn’t thrilled about her running again.

You’d think all that would give her pause. Instead, Kamala keeps dropping hints, and her latest one came at an event in Las Vegas, where she debuted a slower, lower-pitched speaking style. It’s the newest entry in her long record of changing her voice and speech cadence depending on who’s sitting in the audience.

“That era of feeling powerless — like what can we do, this just keeps happening — that era is over because we are now 13 days away from doing something about it to stop the pain,” Kamala said, speaking slowly and in a lower register, as if to a room of sleepy kindergarteners.

She kept up the same condescending tone while urging Nevada voters to back Democrats in the state’s governor’s race and for Congress.

“So that’s where we are right now, and that’s kind of exciting,” she continued. “Right? This is some good stuff. Like, we’re taking our power, we’re using it, to determine who will hold offices like being the governor of Nevada. Which is so important for the people everyday on the most basic issues that affect our lives. Who will continue to walk those halls of Congress, being an extraordinary fighter.”

This new tone she’s adopting fits how Democrats see voters: as children they need to control. You don’t talk to grown adults that way unless you think they need a nap and a juice box before they can handle a ballot.

Let’s be fair: Kamala didn’t invent the fake accent. Hillary Clinton infamously slipped into a Southern drawl while campaigning in the South during the 2008 presidential primaries. Barack Obama was known for adjusting his dialect for different crowds during that same campaign. And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been pulling the same trick for years.

It’s phony and desperate, every single time.

ICYMI: Ilhan Omar’s Answer on Marrying Her Brother Was Just Painfully Bad

The motive here isn’t complicated. Politicians who put on fake accents want voters to feel they share something with them. When a Democrat suddenly picks up a Southern drawl, leans into black vernacular, or shifts her cadence to match the crowd, it’s not random or subconscious; it’s a calculated move. The candidate is trying to manufacture cultural familiarity, hoping voters will see her as one of their own. It’s just shameless pandering from a candidate who wants to convey “I’m just like you” without saying the words.

And Kamala wouldn’t bother with any of this if she weren’t planning to run for president.

Nobody road-tests a new voice for a midterm rally out of civic duty. You do it because you’re auditioning for something bigger. So she can keep saying she hasn’t made up her mind. Kamala just told us she’s running for president.

Matt Margolis, PJ Media

It has happened before in history. Those who think it can’t happen again are out of their minds.

Robert Arvay | October 21, 2026

In 1200 B.C., worldwide civilization fell into ruin.  That is only partially an overstatement.  The Americas and Asia were on a separate path, but the Mediterranean complex of civilizations, the “known world,” was all but destroyed.  It was laying the foundation of Western Civilization, which is the modern worldwide standard for science, technology, human rights, and self-government — and critically, an enduring monotheistic society.

The Bronze Age collapse took about a century, but that is sudden in terms of history.  Before 1300 B.C. there was a network of prosperous, stable kingdoms.  Then, shortly thereafter, everything went wrong at once.  Volcanoes and invasions were the headline causes, but numerous other factors came into play.  The result was the destruction of mighty empires.  Thriving cities fell into ruin.  Trade routes were cut.  Barbarians massacred entire populations.

Recovery took centuries, but here we are, enjoying yet another golden age of worldwide prosperity.  Yes, there are dark spots and open sores in the picture, but day to day, most people awaken to indoor plumbing and controlled temperatures.  They enjoy breakfast, and they thrive within family, career, and comfort. 

It could all come crashing down in a lifetime or less. 

In the 1980s, cultural revolutionaries chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go.”  If no one took them seriously at the time, we do now, because they are getting their wish.

Witness Europe.  The aforementioned modern worldwide standard for science, etc. is being eroded.  Invaders who once were repelled at the walls have now been invited in through the gates, and given food, shelter, medical care, and freedom.  In return, they plunder, rape, and murder their benefactors.  The revolution continues.

All of this was not only eminently predictable, but actually predicted.  Hungary and Poland sounded the warning loud and clear, as did classic liberals throughout Europe and the anglosphere.  Today, those two nations are the safest and most stable countries in Europe, yet they are excoriated by the others for practicing the very policies that make them the shining examples of what the continent could be.  The lepers are screaming at the healthy, “Be like us.”

Is a reversal of the currently unfolding self-destruction possible?  Yes, but the bandage must be painfully ripped off.  Mass deportation, previously unthinkable to the leftist mind, is now being seriously discussed as a necessity.  Painful solutions, however, are not something ignorant populations accept, or even understand.

As our Founders understood, evils will be suffered while they are sufferable, but eventually, they become neither tolerable nor tolerated.  What happens when the evils are so deeply embedded that removing them is not merely painful, but destructive of the institutions of power?

In the 1940s, European civilization was on the brink of final collapse.  The economies of Italy and Germany had become so distressed that brutal dictatorships were installed as a solution, bringing ever more ruin.  Will history repeat itself?

There is hope.  Bronze was never the best metal; iron is better, but iron is more difficult to forge than the copper-tin alloy of bronze.  Only when the supplies of tin were cut off were the metalsmiths forced to resort to the more abundant, and stronger, elemental iron.  It had been there all along, available the whole time.  (Does this give greater meaning to the word irony?)

By analogy, multiculturalism is the weak alloy of various, incompatible cultures.  The values of Western civilization are the iron — difficult to practice but superior values to which we must return.  Europe can survive, but it will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming (and worse) the whole way.

Viva Hungary.  Viva Poland.

American Thinker

Liana Graham | Ashley Reese

Far-left political influencer Hasan Piker was recently grilled on a satirical internet show—and the clips it generated were gold.

“Now, Karl Marx said, ‘To each according to his needs.’ You live in a $2.7 million house,” the host said. “Why are your needs more important than 90% of other Californians?”

Piker appeared uncomfortable as he answered—and it wasn’t because he was fully decked out in a Mao suit. 

To put it simply, proudly sporting the uniform of a regime that took the lives of an estimated 80 million people, all while enjoying the prosperity of a $2.7 million house and invitations to Oscar parties, isn’t a good look.

But of the socialist states Piker views favorably, former Yugoslavia arguably ranks among the highest. He once published a video titled “Yugoslavia Was Awesome!” in which he praised aspects of the former socialist country, including its living standards.

That idea might seem laughable to survivors like Slavenka Drakulic—literally.

In 1992, she published her book “How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed,” which recounts the stories of daily life under communism in Eastern Europe. While Piker may shrug off the textbook figures on communism’s death tolls, he may be less familiar with one of its nearly invisible effects: the subtle erosion of human dignity, hope, and personal responsibility.

Drakulic’s book brings a magnifying glass to these stories, starting with an account of the life of her friend Tanja. After the death of her lover and the destruction of her journalistic reputation for mildly criticizing nationalization, Tanja committed suicide.

For those under socialist rule, a lack of faith in the future was a characteristic feature of life. Everyone around Drakulic seemed to assume the permanence of the communist state.

“What communism instilled in us was precisely this immobility,” she wrote. “The absence of a future, the absence of a dream, of the possibility of imagining our lives differently.”

For Tanja, that loss of hope proved fatal.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote about a similar effect in his well-known book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

Drawing from his experience in a concentration camp, Frankl concluded that the individuals who were able to persevere held on to a crucial ingredient for life: hope. Even in barbaric conditions, hope allowed prisoners to maintain their dignity and will to live.

Ordinary lives—not just political dissidents—were crushed under the weight of socialist regimes.

“Not big heroes, political prisoners, or dissidents,” Drakulic wrote, “but people who just could not stand it anymore.”

In a society with concentrated state power, citizens increasingly lose the sense that they have a stake in molding the future—and that has a devastating effect not only on hope, but also on individual responsibility.

Litter was therefore pervasive. Drakulic wrote that citizens, having lost a sense of their agency, behaved as if “the public belonged to nobody.”

She continued, “If you can’t destroy the system, you can certainly destroy a telephone booth, ticket machine, or flowers in a park. In this silent war, the losers are our cities

Frustration with the system found expression in small acts of neglect. The physical decay of the urban landscape is a mirror image of a population hollowed out from within.

Communism is economically unsustainable—that much is gleaned from the failure of the USSR and its satellite states. But even deeper is its spiritual cost. Forcing humans to live in impoverished conditions, fearful of the all-seeing eye of the state, degrades trust, freedom, and creativity; it degrades the human soul. We must heed Drakulic’s warning of the spiritual rather than merely economic cost of collectivism.

As she stated in the 1990s, “We may have survived communism, but we have not outlived it.” That is because communism is so much more than an economic ideology—it seeps into the very mind and soul of individuals forced to live under its reign.

Daily Signal

Everyone’s excited about Medicare for All. No more premiums. No more medical costs. No more worrying about health insurance. The government covers everything. Unfortunately, the Medicare program for seniors is going bankrupt, as is Social Security. In the next decade, it will collapse by the government’s own figures. So how is Medicare for All going to step in and cover everything and everyone? Taxes can’t go high enough. Democrats want to tax “the rich” as high as 90 percent. But even that won’t cover the cost of Medicare. The only possible solution? Rationing. Plus mandated euthanasia. There’s no other way. People voting for socialism (right now, in early voting) think they suffer so much under capitalism. But how will they cope with the medical equivalent of empty grocery store shelves? Oh, and empty store shelves are coming too. Perhaps when hunger and famine become part of American life, health care won’t matter as much.

But hey — we will have AFFORDABILITY under socialism. That’s all that matters.

*******

We use DNA as the final word in convicting violent criminals. DNA is so trusted that we will send a convicted criminal to Death Row based on it. Yet when it comes to men who decide they’re women, or women who decide they’re men, we no longer consider the DNA evidence. Gender is whatever you say it is, or feel it is, in a given moment. If your DNA proves you’re a man, but you claim you’re a woman — why then, you’re a woman. So much for “trust the science.”

*******

“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Rapid charging speeds are getting faster all the time. There are already a few cars capable of 400kW, while BYD’s Flash Charging tech supplies a whopping 1,500kW. But even the latter system involves stopping, plugging in and waiting for about 10 minutes. Honda, meanwhile, is envisioning a future in which you won’t have to stop at all.

The Japanese manufacturer is working with The Taisei Corporation and its Taisei Rotec subsidiary on wireless, road surface-integrated charging technology that’s capable of keeping an electric car topped up as it drives along. This isn’t a new idea, but the Honda project stands out firstly because of the potential output of up to 150kW, intended to charge up the especially large batteries of electric commercial vehicles on the go.

Another notable aspect is a planned test on a public road from April 2027 onwards. The Tateyama Expressway in Chiba, Japan is the chosen site, although the assessment will be preceded by testing at the Taisei Group’s Future Technology Field in Fukushima Prefecture starting later this year.

Each of the three companies will provide one key piece of the puzzle. It’s Honda’s job to sort the power receiver and transmitter units, while Taisei is developing the DC power supply system, and Taisei Rotec will work on the technology necessary for sticking all of this into the asphalt.

Matt Robinson, AutoExpressUK

A viral video showing a Portland, Oregon high school football player attacking a rival performing a patriotic act prior to their game last Friday is speaking outrage across the country.

As The Daily Mail reported, video footage has emerged showing the moment Grant football players run onto the field behind a teammate who was waving a large American flag prior their game against rivals Jefferson High School before an ugly scene unfolds.

As one will see in the video, a Jefferson player races toward the flag-bearer and levels him. This causes the Grant player to fall to the ground.

Grant players then charge toward the violent thug to confront him.

The account which shared the video (which is not officially affiliated with Jefferson High School) openly CELEBRATED this gross attack.

While the account was later deleted, Taren Feist, an Oregon-based campaign manager, saved the screenshots.

WATCH:

Football player for Jefferson High School (@PPSConnect) in Oregon AMBUSHED a player on the opposing team while he was carrying an American flag onto the field.

The team’s IG account then CELEBRATED the attack.

This is ASSAULT. He should be expelled.

Cullen Linebarger, Gateway Pundit

4

Applying a therapist’s understanding to the Democrats’ relationship with their progressive activists.      

Daniel Winston | October 21, 2026

There is a strange spectacle unfolding in American politics. The Democratic establishment calculatingly spends its dwindling energies bowing to its growing and increasingly radical left wing that has openly declared its intention to replace it. The Democratic Socialists of America, the streamers, the campus activists, and the insurgent candidates who style themselves as the party’s conscience have never hidden their goal. They do not want a seat at the table. They want the whole tent, and they have said so. Yet the establishment responds not with resistance but with flattery, cheerfully murmurating about how big that tent is. That now proverbial tent has become a cage, and the Democrats are in it.

To understand why, we have to understand the historically peculiar power of the radical left. In raw numbers, it remains a minority within the party, but numbers have never been its weapon. Its weapon is intensity. The far left is rich in volunteers who knock on doors in the rain, the small-dollar donors who give again and again, and the online armies that can make or break a candidate in a single news cycle. It punches far above its weight, and in an era of razor-thin margins, a few points of enthusiasm or apathy decide who sits in the Senate. The establishment knows it cannot win without that energy, and it knows that if it crosses these activists, it will be primaried out of existence. So the Democratic leadership is simultaneously dependent on and terrified of the very people who have promised to unseat it. Conservatives will recognize the dynamic from the Tea Party years, with one crucial difference: The Tea Party demanded that politicians keep the promises they campaigned on. The nouveau left demands that Democrats break them. That is not a coalition. That is the establishment’s captivity.

The enslavement takes two forms, and voters should learn to recognize both because failure to do so could truly create an existential threat to democracy. In the first, the candidate genuflects during the campaign. He obsequiously praises the radicals, adopts their language, nods along with positions he privately thinks are foolish, and quietly hopes that once he is safely elected with their help, he can shed the costume and govern as the moderate he claims to be in private conversations with donors. In the second form, the process runs in reverse. The candidate campaigns as a sensible centrist, wins the suburbs and the swing voters, and then, once in office, governs from the left, which is where she intended to go all along.

Whether the candidate fakes radicalism to win or fakes moderation to win, the voter is the mark in a shell game. He is never quite sure which cup holds the pea, and he is not supposed to be. He just needs to be kept confused well enough and long enough to stay in his own plebeian version of the cage.

The deeper humiliation is that the actual masters do not even pretend to be the junior partners they are. They aggressively say the quiet part out loud. Hasan Piker, who has become a kingmaker of sorts among young progressives, recently turned to the subject of James Talarico, the Democrat Senate candidate in Texas. Piker said his movement would need to remind Talarico that they are “the force that allowed him to win this seat of power,” and that if Talarico wanted to keep it, he would have to play ball. This is not the language of a constituent addressing a representative. It is the language of a creditor addressing a debtor, or of a taskmaster reminding a laborer who owns his time. Mixing metaphors is usually considered problematic. In this context, the chaos is so rich that such mixing is genuinely called for.

This is the trap from which there is no clean exit. The establishment Democrat imagines that if he just endures one more cycle, one more primary season, one more term, the radicals will eventually leave him alone and he can finally govern as he wishes. But the radicals will not leave him alone, because their leverage never expires. Every vote he casts and every position he takes is measured against the question of whether it will provoke a primary challenge, and so every vote is cast looking over his shoulder rather than looking ahead.

My clinical work with couples is rooted in the principles of differentiation, the capacity to hold on to yourself while remaining in meaningful connection with people who are pressuring you to abandon yourself. A well-differentiated person can say, “I hear you, I care about you, and I still disagree,” without collapsing into appeasement, exploding into rejection, or launching a frontal attack. A poorly differentiated person attempts to regulate himself by self-correcting according to the anxiety of those around him. He does not ask what he believes. He asks what will keep the loudest person in the room calm. The modern Democrat establishment is a case study in poor differentiation at the scale of a national party. It has fused itself to the emotional reactivity of its most intense faction, and it has publicly mistaken that fusion for unity.

That is why it cannot lead. Leadership requires a fixed point, a set of convictions you are willing to hold even when they cost you. A leader is a compass. He points in the same direction regardless of the weather, and those who follow him know where they are going. What the Democrats have offered instead is a weathervane, an instrument exquisitely sensitive to every gust from the left, spinning to face whichever direction the wind happens to blow that week. You cannot navigate by a weathervane. You can only learn from it which way the storm is going.

American voters deserve to know what they are choosing. When they vote for a supposedly moderate Democrat, they are not voting for the person on the ballot. They are voting for whoever holds that person’s cage key. And on the evidence of the past two years, the key is held by a uniquely energized and organized mob of activists who have announced, without embarrassment, that they intend to collect on their debt.

Daniel Winston is a marriage and family therapist who studied with Dr. David Schnarch, creator of the differentiation-based Crucible Approach, from 1998 until Schnarch’s death in 2020. He runs twelve-hour intensives for couples, has trained more than 150 senior therapists worldwide in the Crucible Approach, and volunteers as a first responder medic and on a search and rescue team.

American Thinker

Why would citizens defend governments that abuse them?

J.B. Shurk | October 21, 2026

Western governments have put themselves in mortal danger.  

They are actively doing things that are destroying their countries: (1) replacing their native citizens with unassimilable foreigners; (2) centralizing government power in unelected and unaccountable bureaucracies; (3) censoring and criminalizing public dissent; (4) offshoring industrial and manufacturing jobs; (5) exacerbating energy costs and general inflation by demonizing hydrocarbons and pushing “global warming” delusions; (6) increasing taxes, government spending, and public welfare in unsustainable ways; (7) demolishing their nations’ historical identities, traditions, beliefs, and common cultures; (8) providing foreigners with “free” homes, food, and educations, while accusing native citizens of being “racists,” “xenophobes,” and “white supremacists”; (9) discouraging healthy marriages and stable families; and (10) indoctrinating the youngest generations to believe that war, “climate change,” overpopulation, and economic collapse will prevent them from ever having happy, hopeful, purposeful futures.

Those are just ten ways that Western governments are hurting their citizens.  There are many more.  But a reasonable person should be able to read the above paragraph and understand that nations cannot survive under such a destructive barrage of harmful policies.  

Western governments are waging wars against their own nations.  The progress of these wars may look a little different in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the United States, but what happens in one country soon enough spreads to all the rest.  It is as if Western leaders got together many years ago and agreed that their countries would drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid and take long dirt naps.  

Perhaps they formed this suicide pact during an “elite” gathering of the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, or the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Perhaps they chanted, “Build back better,” in unison while voting to euthanize the West.  

Adversarial political parties ostensibly compete for control of Western governments, but, in reality, the party system is kabuki theater wherein the same special interests own the politicians on both sides of the aisle.  Until so-called “populist” parties emerged in the West, voters were given merely the illusion of choice.  

After all, the Conservative Party held power in the United Kingdom for fourteen years, and despite repeated promises to do so, its leaders failed to secure Britain’s borders from foreign invasion or to extract the kingdom from regulatory enslavement to the European Union. 

In the United States, President George W. Bush calls President Bill Clinton his “brother” and Hillary Clinton his “sister” and once described Michelle Obama as his “best friend.”  Establishment Republicans such as lame-duck senators Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, and Thom Tillis spend more time attacking President Trump and the 95% of Republican voters who support his MAGA policies than they do warning Americans about the growing number of communists in the Democrat Party.

Western nations have political Establishments that pretend to fight in front of the public but largely conspire behind closed doors and agree about most everything.  We know this to be true because we have witnessed how these political Establishments work together to prevent “outsider” political candidates from reaching higher office or holding power.  

In Europe, the political Establishment enjoy enforcing so-called “cordons sanitaire,” or “firewalls” meant to hinder the leaders of “unacceptable” political movements from obtaining power.  In the Netherlands, the political Establishment have blocked Geert Wilders from becoming prime minister because of his opposition to mass immigration, Islamic supremacy, and the European Union and despite the fact that the party he leads has significant public support.  In France, the political Establishment have done the same thing to Jean-Marie Le Pen, his daughter Marine, and their National Rally because of the party’s pro-national-sovereignty and anti-immigration policies.  In the United Kingdom, the political Establishment have blocked Brexit stalwart and Reform UK chief Nigel Farage from leadership roles in parliament.  In Germany, the political Establishment have attempted to delegitimize the popular anti-immigration party, Alternative for Deutschland, by defaming its members as “domestic terrorists,” “Russian agents,” and anti-constitutional “national security threats.”  

In the United States, Establishment Democrats and Republicans did everything they could to prevent President Trump’s election and then to remove him from office after he soundly defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.  The Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, actively campaigned against Trump in 2016.  So-called “conservative” political pundits, such as Bill Kristol and George Will, repudiated Republican voters and supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.  Even though Republicans controlled Congress, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan advanced the Clinton-Obama-Intelligence-Community operation to frame President Trump as a Russian spy.  Senator Romney twice voted to remove Trump from office.  Democrat prosecutors spent years trying to imprison Trump for life, and Establishment Republicans worked desperately to keep Trump from becoming the party’s presidential nominee once again in 2024.  America’s political Establishment tried to remove Trump from ballots, bully him with investigations, and paint him as a “dictator” in an incitement campaign that encouraged would-be assassins to seek his death.

What have these widespread Establishment efforts across the West to undermine elections and silence public dissent accomplished?  Western institutions — government agencies, universities, news media, banks, corporations, and NGOs — have never been more distrusted.  That makes sense.  Western institutions are hostile to Western citizens.  

While ordinary Westerners are proud of their countries, Western institutions tell them that they should be ashamed of their ancestors and their nations’ histories.  While ordinary Westerners wish to work, buy homes, and have families, Western institutions support mass immigration policies that replace Western workers, increase demand on housing, and make it much more difficult for Westerners to support and protect their families.  When Western citizens object to the political Establishments’ open borders, Western news media demonize them as “racists” and “white supremacists.”  When Western citizens organize around their national flags and march peacefully down city streets, the political Establishment demonize them as “fascists,” “right-wingers,” and “Nazis.”  When Western citizens try to protect themselves from violent foreign nationals, Western law enforcement agencies condemn the Westerners and defend the violent foreigners.  

The West’s political Establishments would rather allow foreigners to burn down churches, town halls, stores, schools, and private homes than take action to protect Western citizens from the deadly consequences of Establishment policies.  The U.K. Establishment allowed Islamic supremacists to rape tens of thousands of British girls without any consequence.  The French Establishment allowed Islamic supremacists to hunt police officers, loot stores, set buildings and vehicles ablaze, and terrorize French citizens without any consequence.  

In Germany, 87% of suspects with open arrest warrants are foreigners.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, London’s police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, says that it is critical to replace merit-based hiring with preferential treatment for black and Muslim applicants (and calls criticism of his “diversity” policies “toxic”).  Western NGOs preposterously claim that capitalism and “climate change” should be blamed for Islam’s penchant for sex slavery and child marriages.  In the U.K., 80% of jobs go to foreign immigrants.  In the U.S., Democrat Senator Elissa Slotkin promises to politically prosecute President Trump’s supporters in order to “deter” them from opposing Establishment policies.  

Even as Western governments attack Western citizens, however, they still expect those citizens to sacrifice their lives in a looming global war.  The head of the British Army, General Sir Roland Walker, recently told soldiers: “Very soon, the political leaders of this country will start to have a frank conversation with the citizens of this country about just what is going on.”  At that time, citizens “have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritize defense and security.”

Nearly half of military-aged Brits say there are “no circumstance” in which they would defend the United Kingdom.  That’s no surprise.  Why would Western citizens defend governments that abuse them?  If the West already “belongs” to foreigners, what else is there to defend?

Western governments’ cascading failures are leading to their demise.  Citizens owe them nothing.

J. B. Shurk, American Thinker

The unfinished work of ensuring there will never be another Donald Trump will be a total effort.

In a previous piece for American Greatness, I said accountability would be the dividing issue in the fast-approaching midterm elections. On the one hand are Democrats, seeking to hold Trump himself and those around him—cabinet members, prominent supporters like Elon Musk, and even corporations that have done deals with the administration—responsible for their role in the “high crimes and misdemeanors” of Trump’s second term in office. On the other are Republicans, wanting to take the Democrats to task for failing to stop the party’s slide into demented gay race communism, as exemplified by its ever-more-radical roster of new stars such as Zohran Mamdani, James Talarico, Melat Kiros, Claire Valdez, and Vanessa Hong.

Over the last week, we got a better idea of exactly what accountability is going to look like in practice for the Democrats. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) appeared on a podcast and said she wanted to use the threat of prosecution to scare young people away from working for the Trump administration.

“I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.”

Slotkin responded to the inevitable backlash by doubling down on X and making clear exactly what she has in mind.

“America must be a place where the rule of law still matters,” she wrote.

“Those laws should apply to everyone equally. If you have aided in the corrupt use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit the President or his family, or you have violated the law in order to carry out guidance from the President, you should be held accountable. And given how rampant that corruption appears to the average American, people looking to work for his Administration should realize that while the Supreme Court has granted the President immunity, it has not done the same for those who do illegal things at his behest.”

You don’t have to twist Slotkin’s words. Taken at face value, her proposal would give carte blanche to investigate and prosecute pretty much anybody who has done pretty much anything for the Trump administration since January 20, 2025, so long as it’s deemed to be “corrupt”—and corruption, like beauty, is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Slotkin has good reason to hate Trump. Last year, she was investigated by the DOJ for sedition. She appeared in a video with five other Democrat lawmakers with military or intelligence experience—Slotkin worked for the CIA—and advised soldiers, sailors, and airmen that they “must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.” Trump had deployed the National Guard to cities including Washington, D.C., and U.S. Southern Command was blowing narco-boats to kingdom come in the Caribbean and posting highlight reels on X.

The video was interpreted, quite rightly, as a call for military personnel to disobey orders, but for whatever reason the charges didn’t stick. Too bad.

In her clapback, Slotkin said it was rich for Trump supporters to cry about “weaponization” of justice for political goals, when that’s exactly what had been done to her. “Spare me the pearl-clutching,” she seethed.

It’s hard not to notice Slotkin’s CIA past and everything that suggests—hint: it rhymes with “creep state”—but don’t forget that she’s widely considered to be a moderate within the Democrat Party. This proposal to go after ordinary rank-and-file members of the current administration just for doing their jobs is not coming from the mouth of a James Talarico, fresh from a nine-day sojourn in an Ohio looney bin, or a Zohran Mamdani and his polyamorous friends in the DSA. This is the dead center of the Democrats in mid-October 2026.

There’s been plenty of pie-in-the-sky talk about the punishment that awaits Donald Trump and his allies, like Matt Ford’s call in The New Republic, for the President to be black-bagged by the International Criminal Court while he’s playing golf in Scotland. The real Democrat plan for retribution, beginning with the midterms, is taking shape under the very knowing rubric of “Project 2029,” which appears to have been coined by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Although the main focus is on regaining the White House in 2029, as the name suggests, detailed preparations are already underway to make life much harder for President Trump and his allies after the midterms.

Impeachment may be off the table, at least for President Trump himself, given how well he has turned proceedings against his enemies. “No one wants a failed vote on day one,” a senior Democrat told Reuters. Instead, the Democrats want to investigate and intimidate a wide range of commercial entities that have done business with the Trump administration. Among those companies are Apple, Alphabet, Blackstone, BlackRock, and Palantir. Companies owned by Elon Musk are also being targeted.

Reuters says, “Democrats are expected to examine Department of Homeland Security contracts, financing for Trump’s planned White House ballroom, corporate donors, and alleged pay-to-play arrangements… They also plan a probe of Trump-linked financial vehicles, including 1789 Capital—a venture capital firm where his son Donald Trump Jr. is a partner—and foreign sovereign wealth funds whose investments in Trump family-linked entities could raise questions about administration influence.”

Party leaders have already sent out letters as a prelude to future subpoenas. Paramount Skydance, Alphabet, and two security contractors that work with the Department of Homeland Security have all received requests for information from the Democrats.

The threat of investigations after the midterms may indeed be enough for Slotkin to get what we might call her “minimalist wish”: promising young men and women fresh out of college may very well decide against a career in the Trump administration in 2026, 2027, and 2028.

But a broader and deeper persecution—Slotkin’s “maximalist wish”—is entirely possible if Gavin Newsom or, heaven forbid, Kamala Harris becomes president in 2029. In fact, it’s almost inevitable. Just a few days before Slotkin made her remarks, we got a reminder of just how broad and deep such persecution has already been. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published its new Debanking Review on October 14, after investigating 100,000 complaints and 50,000 internal bank records covering the years of the Biden presidency. The Review found that JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank, and BMO Bank all debanked customers on the basis of their political, social, and religious beliefs, using the opaque category of “reputation risk” to justify their behavior. “Negative press, protests, criticism from advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, and reprisals from regulators or politicians were cited as the reputation risks most feared by the banks,” the New York Post reports. Individuals and organizations were targeted. Organizations were flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and screening lists were created to identify customers that were deemed to pose a “reputation risk.” After the events of January 6, 2021, various MAGA-related terms were added to internal screening lists that were used to subject customers to enhanced scrutiny.

All nine of the banks under review told the OCC they had changed their practices, but the regulator expressed skepticism, noting that not a single bank has “fully and publicly acknowledged” its “weaponization of finance against hardworking Americans.”

With the support of a very different administration, with very different priorities, it will be the easiest thing in the world for those policies to be reversed.

And maybe too we should remind ourselves of what was done to Douglass Mackey, the man behind the popular “Ricky Vaughn” Twitter account that posted memes during the 2016 election. Mackey was prosecuted under a Reconstruction-era anti-Klan statute for voter suppression for posting a meme he didn’t even make. For the crime of mocking Hillary Clinton and helping Trump to win, Mackey’s enemies in the Democrat Party waited five years, and then within days of Biden’s inauguration, federal agents were kicking down the door.

Retribution was a long time coming, but come it did. That’s exactly what Elissa Slotkin is promising again. The unfinished work of ensuring there will never be another Donald Trump will be a total effort, touching every level of American society, from government to corporations, from MAGA-hat vendors to dudes who post memes on X. Bank on that.

Raw Egg Nationalist, American Greatness