I can’t stand to watch coverage of the Charlie Kirk killer’s trial. He looks smug and complacent, not just because he’s a sociopath, but because he knows he has the academics, the corporate elites, the political-media class, the entertainment Establishment, and what passes today as civilization on his side. Because it’s Utah, and not New York, California, Illinois or Colorado, there’s a chance he will be convicted. But he knows that we know that Charlie Kirk’s tragic end will be America’s too, unless the decent forces of our lost civilization reassert themselves way, way, way more than they already have.
You don’t have to know or care much about Charlie Kirk’s specific ideas and attitudes to grasp that the stakes are very high. Charlie Kirk was murdered for his ideas alone, and according to the leftist perspective, this was OK if not admirable. This alone puts us one click above concentration camps. If Kirk’s killer were actually acquitted or given a light sentence, expect the concentration camps soon.
Put simply: It’s not good for freedom, truth and justice when the most evil persons alive are so smug and comfortable. And it’s bad when there’s any hint of friendliness to the idea that people deserve to be killed for their ideas, especially when those ideas, while controversial to some, are entirely peaceful. Get to know your leftist friends and family: they’re more on board with this than you may realize, and it’s truly chilling.
Increasingly, I think the best way to battle leftism is to defy it and isolate it. Red states should simply refuse to enforce national leftist laws or policies. After all, that’s how blue states and cities are handling ICE, DEI and everything else. They simply ignore Trump’s actions and do their own Communist, pro-criminal thing. We must fight them on the terms they, the Democrats, have created. Don’t try to tell me this will divide America and obliterate our Constitution–because the Democrats have already done that.
The other way to fight leftists is to isolate them. Rural, Republican and moderate counties in New York, Illinois, Washington state, Oregon, and California, etc. should do everything they can to isolate the super leftist cities. Do everything possible to make it harder for them to survive, try not to do business with them — just distance, disassociate, treat them as you would treat an enemy country (which they are, be real). Let them suffer the consequences of their own insane policies. It’s a fantasy to think they will reform or get better. Get to know a hard core leftist. They are not reasonable, and they are not your friends. If we let people like this determine the course of our whole nation, we will be living under a total dictatorship in 2-3 years. Mamdani is their direction. They’re not going away, and they will not be reforming. So why not prepare to break with them now, rather than a few more years down the road? Postponing the inevitable is foolish.
A seasonal railway conductor for Tennessee’s Incline Railway at Lookout Mountain has been fired after making now-viral comments, wishing riders a happy Independence Day, which triggered some passengers.
The conductor, identified as Jack Peterson, is clearly fed up with mass migration policies that are ruining our country. He hilariously told passengers on the Fourth of July, “To the very, very few Americans in here, happy Independence Day.”
He continued, “To the rest of you, welcome to the greatest country on the face of the planet, and if you disagree, you can leave.”
It is unclear how many foreigners were on board the train.
The conductor was fired almost immediately after father Charles Scherer and son Nathan Scherer caught the moment on camera and promptly reported Peterson to the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA), which operates the train.
Nathan Scherer described the comments as “disparaging remarks about foreigners” in an interview, adding, “Even if you were critical of the country, the idea that you have to leave if you have any complaints… the whole thing is weird to me.”
“He doesn’t really know who is American and who’s not just by the way they look, so that kind of floored us,” Nathan’s father, Charles, said. While discussing Peterson’s immediate firing on the same day as the incident, Charles said, “That made me feel really good about CARTA and about their responsiveness to this and believing it should have been handled.
Peterson declined to comment on the incident.
According to Fox News, CARTA Chief of Staff Scott Wilson told News 9, “I want to apologize directly to the passengers who experienced this, and to everyone who has seen the video and felt its sting. It should never have happened.”
“We have zero tolerance for language that demeans or excludes anyone who rides with us. For 131 years, the Incline Railway has welcomed visitors from Chattanooga and from around the world. Every passenger who boards our railway deserves to feel respected and welcome, and we are committed to making sure that is always the case,” Wilson added.
The funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei is the Islamic Republic’s biggest political ritual since the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and one of the most consequential political events in the Islamic Republic’s history. Coming after the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, it marks both the end of one era and the beginning of another.
Every aspect of the funeral has been carefully choreographed. Its scale, symbolism, religious rituals, foreign attendance, and even the route of the procession communicate different messages to different audiences. Like other major state ceremonies in the Islamic Republic, the funeral serves not only to honor the dead but also to shape the political landscape for the living.
Domestically, the central message is continuity. The country’s Supreme Leader was killed in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, yet the Islamic Republic seeks to demonstrate that its institutions remain intact, succession has taken place, and the state continues to function despite the gravest external challenge it has faced in decades. The funeral projects order rather than uncertainty, stability rather than crisis.
It is also a demonstration of resilience. By portraying Ayatollah Khamenei as a martyr who died during a foreign aggression, the leadership is framing the U.S.-Israel war on Iran as one of national resistance rather than mere survival. The message to supporters is that sacrifice has strengthened, not weakened, the Islamic Republic.
Religious Symbolism
Religiously, the funeral draws on the powerful symbolism of Shi’a mourning, reinforcing the close relationship between political authority and religious legitimacy. Its timing added another powerful layer of symbolism. Islamic tradition generally calls for burying the deceased as soon as possible, but the U.S.-Israel war on Iran delayed the funeral by weeks, allowing the leadership to transform it into a much larger political and religious event.
Held during Muharram, the holiest month of mourning in the Shi’a calendar, the ceremonies deliberately drew on themes of sacrifice, injustice, victimhood, and martyrdom that lie at the heart of Shi’a religious memory. Those themes were reinforced by the highly publicized presence of Ayatollah Khamenei’s family, including his young grandchild, connecting the family’s personal loss to the broader national narrative of war, resistance, and sacrifice.
Regional and Global Signals Regionally and internationally, the funeral also carried different messages. To supporters and allies, it reassured them that the Islamic Republic remained intact despite the war and the loss of its highest leader. To rivals, it signaled that Iran had absorbed a devastating blow without political collapse. To the United States and Israel, it sought to demonstrate that military pressure had not dismantled the Iranian state or fractured its governing institutions.
The attendance list itself offered a snapshot of Iran’s postwar geopolitical position. The presence of friendly governments and members of what Tehran calls the “Axis of Resistance” underscored the partnerships Iran considers strategically important after the war. Equally telling were the absences. Few European governments sent senior representatives, reflecting Tehran’s view that Europe had aligned politically with the United States and Israel during the conflict. Some Persian Gulf Arab states also kept their representation limited, illustrating the limits of regional rapprochement after a direct war. Attendance — and equally, absence — became a visible marker of Iran’s postwar diplomatic alignments.
The funeral’s regional dimension extended beyond diplomacy. The decision to take Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral procession to Iraq before his burial linked Iran’s political leadership to the holy Shi’a cities of Najaf and Karbala, reinforcing both his religious stature and Iran’s enduring influence across the wider Shi’a world.
“The Islamic Republic’s unifying theme is that the U.S.-Israeli regime change war has failed. Domestically, they enjoy broad popular support and national unity. Militarily, they remain strong. Politically, they will continue to resist Western aggression, the MOU with Trump notwithstanding,” Nader Hashemi, Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University told CIP.
Perhaps the most striking image, however, was someone who never appeared. Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, remained out of public view throughout the ceremonies. Security concerns following the war, together with reported injuries sustained in the strike that killed Ayatollah Khamenei, and years of careful image management, likely contributed to his absence. Unlike Ayatollah Khomeini or Ayatollah Khamenei before him, he assumes leadership without decades of public visibility or a well-established political persona.
His absence highlights one of the defining challenges of the postwar transition: protecting the country’s highest authority while gradually building his public legitimacy. That balancing act may become one of the first major tests of the post-Ayatollah Khamenei era.
War, Society, and Domestic Politics The funeral also offered a window into how the U.S.-Israel war on Iran has reshaped Iranian society and politics, at least for now.
One of the war’s most immediate consequences has been a rally-around-the-flag effect. External military attack tends to strengthen national cohesion, and Iran has been no exception. For supporters of the Islamic Republic, the war reinforced long-held beliefs that the country faces an existential external threat and that resistance remains necessary. The funeral became an extension of that narrative, honoring not only Ayatollah Khamenei but also those killed in the war and presenting their deaths as sacrifices made in defense of the nation.
The impact, however, extends beyond the Islamic Republic’s traditional support base. Many Iranians who oppose the political system also opposed the U.S.-Israel war, viewing it as an attack on Iran rather than simply on its leadership. For them, nationalism and patriotism do not necessarily translate into support for the Islamic Republic. Rather, they reflect a broader attachment to Iran’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national dignity. A large funeral crowd, therefore, should not automatically be interpreted as broader political support for the state. It may equally reflect grief, religious conviction, patriotism, or rejection of foreign military intervention.
The war has also temporarily reshaped Iran’s domestic political landscape. External conflict naturally pushes internal divisions into the background as national security becomes the overriding concern. Political space has narrowed, security has tightened, and organized dissent has largely been pushed off the streets.
That should not be mistaken for the disappearance of public grievances. The economic hardships, political frustrations, social demands, and calls for greater freedoms that fueled repeated waves of protest over the past decade remain unresolved. They have not disappeared; they have simply become less visible during wartime. Once the immediate security environment recedes, many of those demands are likely to resurface.
The funeral therefore should not be read as evidence that Iran’s internal political debates have ended. Rather, it reflects a temporary shift in national priorities. History shows that societies under external attack often postpone internal confrontation until the immediate threat has passed, and Iran is unlikely to be an exception.
A Transition and an Uncertain Future The funeral also marks the beginning of a new political chapter. Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei inherits a country transformed by war, a region undergoing rapid geopolitical change, and a political system entering its first leadership transition in more than three decades. His leadership will be judged not only by how he preserves continuity but also by how he addresses the political, economic, and social challenges that long predate the war.
In the immediate aftermath of the conflict, the funeral appears to have achieved its principal objectives. It projected continuity after the loss of the country’s highest authority, reassured supporters, signaled resilience to adversaries, and reminded allies that Iran remains a central regional actor despite the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.
Whether those messages endure will depend less on the symbolism of the funeral than on what follows. As wartime emotions recede, Iran’s leadership will once again confront familiar challenges: rebuilding the economy, addressing public demands, navigating relations with the United States, maintaining regional deterrence, and establishing the authority of a new Supreme Leader.
The funeral closes one chapter in the history of the Islamic Republic. Whether the next chapter is defined by continuity, adaptation, or deeper transformation will depend not on the symbolism of the funeral, but on the choices the leadership makes after the mourning ends.
Author Stephen King deleted a post on social media defending Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner (D), who is facing widespread backlash after his former girlfriend accused him of rape.
King, a Maine resident, weighed in on a report from Politico published Monday that revealed the accusation from Jenny Racicot, Platner’s former girlfriend, who alleged Platner sexually assaulted her five years ago.
King wrote in a post on the social media platform X, which was later deleted: “Graham Platner may drop out. (I hope he doesn’t, but.) Meanwhile, the Abuser in Chief just keeps on keepin’ on,” appearing to compare the allegations against Platner to accusations previously made against President Trump.
He followed up with another post.
“Tell you what–if you knew the whole truth about everyone in the Senate and House of Reps, those chambers would be dead empty. Jesus said, ‘Let him without sin cast the first stone,’” he wrote.
Platner quickly denied the allegation in a video but added he would take time to reflect on his campaign and consider next steps. Prominent Democrats soon after urged him to end his Senate bid.
The posts garnered swift criticism online, with commentators bashing King for appearing to minimize the severity of the allegations against Platner.
Among the critics was columnist Jonah Goldberg, who wrote: “So because we don’t know about hypothetical rapey legislators we should forgive the ones we do know about.”
King attempted to clarify his position on Tuesday following the backlash.
“Not defending Grah, Platner. If he committed rape, he should bow out. Just making a comparison,” he wrote, following up with a post to correct his misspelling of “Graham.”
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) also walked back her online criticism of Platner’s accuser, deleting a post saying she should not turn “consensual sex” with Platner “into rape for politics with conflicting stories.”
Politico reported that Racicot met Platner on the dating app Bumble in 2019, and the two had been in an on-and-off relationship since.
Racicot told the outlet that in 2021, Platner drunkenly entered her home uninvited and sexually assaulted her. She said she did not come forward initially out of fear of retaliation. She also wanted a Democrat to win against incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in November.
Politico corroborated her story with several people in whom she initially confided, including a former boyfriend and her therapist.
The allegation has rocked Platner’s campaign, which had already been riddled with a series of other scandals, including sexually explicit texts Platner sent to women while married.
After easily winning the Democratic primary, the populist oyster farmer was set to head to the general election to face off against Collins. But in light of the recent bombshell revelations, Platner has lost critical support from most of his party, with both state and national Democrats calling for Platner to drop out of the race.
Everyone was ready for a grand signing ceremony to mark the historic moment when President Trump put his name on the bipartisan bill, The 21st Century Road to Housing Act. It was to be a celebration of unity, a brief respite from the nation’s bitter divisions, Shangri-la in the capital city. Then, suddenly, the president decided not to sign it.
All I can say is: Thank you, Mr. President!!!
Apart from eliminating some burdensome federal regulations previously enacted by these morons (repealing almost anything passed by any Congress ever, for any reason, is a good idea) the main outcome of the law will be to destroy neighborhoods, while unjustly enriching well-heeled landlords of decrepit apartment buildings.
Specifically, the act expands Section 8 housing, a government program to move violent, gun-happy, drug-dealing welfare recipients from inner-city public housing units into previously safe neighborhoods. The theory is that if only criminals lived in nice middle-class areas, they’d get jobs and become productive members of society!
Prevented by their own ideology from criticizing welfare dependency, single motherhood, drug use or criminality, liberals blame dysfunctional behavior on… zip codes. Instead of addressing why people might not want to live in places where they get mugged, Congress decided to move the bad neighborhoods to them. Work ethic, orderliness, respect for the law — irrelevant! It’s location, location, location.
In a completely unexpected development, wherever Section 8 appears, crime skyrockets. The newcomers don’t get jobs, but they do get to live in nicer places and have access to a relatively more prosperous set of victims.
If you built a wall around voucher-enabled housing in any town, you’d cut violent crime by 50%. A black alderman in Chicago said the only time he was threatened by his black constituents was when they warned him against putting criminals in their neighborhoods with Section 8. It’s like injecting a virus into a community.
Ferguson, Mo., is an illustration of what happens when Section 8 housing comes to your town. Once a nice middle-class suburb for people fleeing crime in St. Louis, things changed after residents of inner-city projects began being funneled into “Housing Choice” apartments there.
The town’s most famous resident, Michael Brown, lived in Section 8 housing — and wasn’t it ennobling to see all his neighbors tell the God’s honest truth about how Officer Darren Wilson shot Brown in self-defense and didn’t make up a cock-and-bull story about Brown crying out, “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!”? (None of that happened. Even Obama’s Justice Department found they were lying.)
The New York Times seems to think that the high crime rate in Brown’s neighborhood was the result of some malevolent plot by white people to enforce segregation. As the Times reporter put it: “Can the barriers that keep blacks out of prosperous, mostly white communities be toppled? Data suggests that they often cannot.” Because, the paper sadly noted, “when you’re black and poor, freedom has its limits.”
Except Ferguson WAS a “prosperous, mostly white community.” Far from being “kept out,” poor black people were given government vouchers to move in.
And yet, for reasons entirely mysterious to the Times, crime exploded. It’s almost as if the crime rate was a result of the criminality of the people who were moved there.
The truth comes out in posts on an “Apartment Rating” website from residents of the exact Section 8 building where Brown lived, the Northwinds. For years, the complaints centered on inattentive landlords and shoddy maintenance. But as the landlord switched to mostly Section 8 housing, the comments were all about crime.
E.g.:
“It is not safe here! Shootings every weekend.”
“The crime is really bad. We have neighbors that stand around all day and sell dope.”
“I was not there 2 weeks and my car got broken in to. My home was next.”
“I had my home invaded 4 times in the past 16 months.”
“At least 50 units have been broken into this year.”
Section 8’s sole achievement has been to create one-building crime waves in formerly safe areas. So naturally, instead of ending this federally-funded Destroyer of Neighborhoods, Congress’s housing bill expands it.
Don’t think for a minute, oh the poor landlords. These are rich people being bailed out of bad real estate investments. With federal vouchers, they’re suddenly able to charge a thousand bucks in rent for apartments that would get $300 in a market setting. The voucher recipients don’t care. They’re not paying. We are. (Jared Kushner’s family has made millions in Section 8 housing.)
Slumlords offload crappy apartments at extravagant rents, and the people who pay the price are working and middle-class Americans, whose kids are offered up to the criminals moving in next door. Don’t worry — Section 8 won’t be coming to Chappaqua anytime soon. “Every town needs a ghetto” is for other people.
For the cherry on top, the program can’t be criticized because it involves race.
I know the GOP is running scared over the “affordability” crisis, but wrecking middle-class neighborhoods while showering taxpayer money on multimillionaire landlords may not be the populist solution they think it is.
This catastrophic bill becomes law on Friday if Trump doesn’t veto it first. He should hold a grand signing ceremony so we can gaze admiringly at him as he uses a Sharpie to scrawl, “VETOED!” all over it.
The Trump administration says it has uncovered a dramatic increase in Medicare claims for tissue and organ transplants, resulting in a broad crackdown on suspected fraud that officials say has already blocked hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable payments.
Administration officials said Medicare claims for tissue and organ transplants, known as allografts, climbed from $200 million in 2019 to $14.4 billion in 2025—a 7,100 percent increase.
The surge led the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force, headed by Vice President JD Vance, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to intensify their review of claims. Since March, the agency has denied 96 percent of allograft claims identified during the review.
CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said the agency identified 4,200 potentially fraudulent allograft claims totaling $224 million through May.
“That’s a lot of money,” Oz said during a Wednesday news conference in Milwaukee. “And that bankrupts not just hospital systems and physician groups, but it causes major problems across the entire landscape.”
The agency also announced enforcement actions involving Durable Medical Equipment (DME) including wheelchairs, walkers, hospital beds and other medical equipment.
According to CMS, payments have been suspended to 102 suppliers, while billing privileges have been revoked for another 725 suppliers. The agency said those suppliers accounted for 8.6 percent of all Medicare-funded DME in 2025.
CMS officials reported they identified suspected fraud involving claims for equipment that was not medically necessary or ordered, equipment that was more expensive than prescribed, and equipment that was never delivered.
“In just six months, the task force has effectively wiped out Durable Medical Equipment fraud in America,” a spokesperson for Vance’s office said. “After the vice president and Dr. Oz announced a moratorium on new DME companies, paired with aggressive enforcement actions by DOJ and HHS, this kind of fraud has effectively ended.”
Oz said the administration’s efforts have already prevented significant losses.
“Thanks to the whole-of-government approach spearheaded by the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force, we stopped nearly $220 million in fraudulent skin substitute claims and suspended or revoked billing privileges for over 800 DME suppliers,” Oz told Fox News Digital. “We are keeping our promise to the American people: we will root out corruption, protect vulnerable patients, and hold every bad actor accountable.”
Oz also warned those engaged in health care fraud that the administration intends to continue its enforcement campaign.
“To anyone out there, and I’m talking to you if you’re a fraudster, for anyone out there who thinks they can get away by stealing from the American people, especially American patients, I’ve got a bit of advice for you: Do not walk away from this press conference. Don’t walk away from us. You start running because the vice president and this task force are coming after you,” Oz said.
The enemies must have a firm grasp of and appreciation for America’s founding principles. In this regard, the more success that outright communists have in taking over the Democrat Party as part of their institutional conquest of the United States, the more committed patriotic Americans must become to the cause of defending our God-given rights and liberties. As our enemies become more emboldened in their campaign to destroy America, we must find within ourselves the confidence to resist and persevere.
This is why Ryun’s Thread of Liberty is so timely. It tells the story of America exceedingly well. Whereas Barack Obama’s presidency rejected American Exceptionalism, introduced a cancerous self-hatred within the body politic, and provided cover for Islamic supremacists, Antifa domestic terrorists, and anti-American communists to run for political office on platforms openly calling for the destruction of our constitutional form of government, Ryun’s documentary shows just how remarkable America’s founding principles have always been. Whereas race hucksters, such as Al Sharpton and Eric Holder, and instigators of racial hate hoaxes, such as the Ku Klux Klan-supporting Southern Poverty Law Center, pit Americans of different races against each other, encourage Americans to topple over statues of the Founding Fathers (because some might have owned slaves), and push for special preferences in college admissions and hiring decisions depending upon an applicant’s skin color, Ryun explains how the Civil War continued the American Revolution’s fight for human liberty, inalienable rights, and equality under the law. Whereas leaders of the Democrat Party openly conspire to aid and abet illegal aliens in defiance of federal law, permit non-citizens to vote in elections, pack the Supreme Court with dyed-in-the-wool Marxist-socialists, and empower government bureaucrats to micromanage every detail of our lives, Ryun’s film shows how a century of regressive “progressivism” has instituted the “soft despotism” of “experts” who rule as cubicle kings and queens.
The Thread of Liberty does a tremendous job of defending the American Experiment and demonstrating how America’s founding principles have directly guided the country through its darkest times. While the vast majority of Democrat voters have been indoctrinated to despise their country, dismiss the Founding Fathers as racists, and reject the constitutional safeguards set up to protect our God-given rights, Ryun’s documentary shows how the Founders’ vision informed the Emancipation Proclamation, the Reconstruction Amendments, and the mid-twentieth-century’s Civil Rights Movement. Those who wish to destroy America use our nation’s worst conflicts as a means to delegitimize both the spirit and legal framework of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, while those very documents embody the quintessential American virtues that have continued to lead us down the path toward freedom, security, and prosperity.
To be sure, the thread that connects the generation of our Founding Fathers with our own is worn and unraveling. There is a real fear today that we might lose our country and, therefore, lose our liberty. How can we preserve a constitutional republic that has already abandoned Madison’s system of checks and balances among coequal branches of government in favor of a sprawling administrative Deep State whose members govern despotically and cannot be voted out of permanent bureaucratic office? How can we protect our inalienable, God-given rights when most elected officials reject the authority of God and insist that government is the source of all rights? How can we speak and pray as free people when the Intelligence Community conspires with social media companies to censor our speech and lawmakers empower prosecutors to persecute people of faith for their religious beliefs? How can we enjoy our liberty in peace and use our private property as we wish when a century of jurisprudence has enabled presidents such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to erect an administrative state Leviathan that claims unmitigated authority to regulate every element of our lives? Is there anything remaining of the thread of liberty, or are we unmoored from our country’s founding principles and drifting into a morass of administrative state tyranny?
In asking these questions, Ryun’s documentary serves as a jolt of electricity in the two-hundred-fiftieth year of the American Experiment. One of the things that his film does so well is to show the viewer that Americans have stepped up to the abyss and nearly lost their country many times before. The War for American Independence, the interstate squabbles that arose during the uncertainty of the Articles of Confederation, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, the Reconstruction era, the flight from farms to factories, Jim Crow laws, two world wars, the disastrous growth of the unconstitutional administrative state — every decade of the past two and a half centuries has pulled at that thread of liberty and threatened to separate us from our American inheritance.
To be sure, the thread that connects the generation of our Founding Fathers with our own is worn and unraveling. There is a real fear today that we might lose our country and, therefore, lose our liberty. How can we preserve a constitutional republic that has already abandoned Madison’s system of checks and balances among coequal branches of government in favor of a sprawling administrative Deep State whose members govern despotically and cannot be voted out of permanent bureaucratic office? How can we protect our inalienable, God-given rights when most elected officials reject the authority of God and insist that government is the source of all rights? How can we speak and pray as free people when the Intelligence Community conspires with social media companies to censor our speech and lawmakers empower prosecutors to persecute people of faith for their religious beliefs? How can we enjoy our liberty in peace and use our private property as we wish when a century of jurisprudence has enabled presidents such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to erect an administrative state Leviathan that claims unmitigated authority to regulate every element of our lives? Is there anything remaining of the thread of liberty, or are we unmoored from our country’s founding principles and drifting into a morass of administrative state tyranny?
In asking these questions, Ryun’s documentary serves as a jolt of electricity in the two-hundred-fiftieth year of the American Experiment. One of the things that his film does so well is to show the viewer that Americans have stepped up to the abyss and nearly lost their country many times before. The War for American Independence, the interstate squabbles that arose during the uncertainty of the Articles of Confederation, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, the Reconstruction era, the flight from farms to factories, Jim Crow laws, two world wars, the disastrous growth of the unconstitutional administrative state — every decade of the past two and a half centuries has pulled at that thread of liberty and threatened to separate us from our American inheritance.
Ryun also points us to the prescriptive remedy by highlighting Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic work, Democracy in America. What the French political philosopher, historian, and anthropologist recognized in the United States of the 1830s was a country whose people governed themselves effectively because they valued Christian virtue, civic organizations, and church fellowship over the machinery of government. Self-confident, self-sufficient, moral people who cherish their liberty more than the empty promises of politicians are the essential bulwark against tyranny and the perpetual guarantors of personal freedom.
America’s survival depends upon a return to the nuclear family, a renewed sense of Christian duty, reinvigorated patriotism, and the replacement of bureaucratic “experts” with “We the People.” That’s the “covenant” connecting Americans today with those who first secured our liberties two and a half centuries ago. That’s the thread of liberty that we must make strong once again.
The eyes of the nation are on the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Maine, since a peculiar Marxist won the Democrat party nomination this past June.
In an explosive Politico report released Monday, July 6, it was alleged that Democrat nominee Graham Platner sexually assaulted his former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot in 2021.
The nominee categorically denies the charge.
They apparently agree that their relationship was “on again, off again,” having met on Bumble in 2019, which makes it somewhat murky, but of course if she said no at the time, that’s rape. She reports that she ended the relationship permanently after this 2021 incident.
Several prominent Democrats have begun retracting their endorsements of the nominee, apparently in the hope that he will drop out of the race in time to meet Maine’s July 13 deadline for the party to be allowed a two-week window in which to select a replacement.
Incumbent senator Susan Collins (R) has been a resilient political icon in Maine for decades. As a moderate Republican, she has comfortably won, consistently, in a state that Democrats always expect to capture. Would the Democrats have won this time, with Platner? It’s difficult to imagine. But the party continued to at least pay lip service to their confidence in Platner until this latest story broke.
The Statute of Limitations
We shouldn’t move on to discuss this issue without addressing the elephant in the room, from the perspective of the criminal justice system: If this happened five years ago, why didn’t the victim come forward before this?
The victim claims that she didn’t come forward about it earlier because she was conflicted; Being a leftist like him, she was hesitant to hurt his campaign. But Platner wasn’t a politician five years ago, when the alleged assault occurred. There was no political reason to protect him at the time.
Society has statutes of limitations for two primary reasons.
First, we want a prosecution to be fair to everyone involved — both suspect and victim — so we want to move on it while the evidence is fresh, witnesses’ memories are at their most reliable, and we have the best odds of getting it right.
The second reason is arguably even more important from a public policy perspective: We want to remove criminals from society as soon as possible, in order to protect potential future victims. The longer a crime goes unreported or unprosecuted, the longer the criminal is out loose in public, able to victimize other innocents.
Statutes of limitations vary, both from state to state and from crime to crime. As it happens, it would still be legal for Ms. Racicot to press charges today, if she wanted, because Maine has no statute of limitations for rape. But as of the reports available at press time, she has not filed charges with the state — only with the press.
One wonders why.
Society is at its best when there are as few crimes as possible. You accomplish that goal by removing guilty criminals from society as soon as their predatory behavior is known. Regardless of statutes of limitations, victims should always file charges right away, not after discussing it friends or therapists for years and years.
Why Come Forward Today?
It is widely theorized that Democrat machers have been watching this campaign with fear, seeing their hopes of knocking out Susan Collins diminish as embarrassments and allegations about Platner mount.
He has been accused of abuse against women (Ms. Racicot is hardly the first), and of countless misogynist statements online, and of racist views, and of Nazi sympathies, all of which he blames on PTSD and other personal problems, but all of which he naturally wholeheartedly “regrets.”
We’ve had politicians with tattoos before, but Graham Platner is the first U.S. Senate candidate to sport a Nazi concentration camp guard tattoo on his chest. Is saying “I’m sorry” enough?
As his polling suffered from greater public awareness of his flaws, without causing him to drop out, some suspect that it was members of his own party who went looking for more allegations, just so they could force his hand while there might still be time to salvage their chances against Senator Collins.
So when this young lady showed up out of the blue, in recent weeks, choosing at long last to come forward, just under the wire, how did she know whom to call to ensure maximum impact?
Why did she reach out to Politico rather than the local police, as normal assault victims do?
Even if the allegation is 100 percent accurate, this is as clear a political hit as you can get, and it is just as clearly friendly fire.
The Lesson for 2026
When Platner is almost inevitably forced out of the race this week, the Democrats will proudly attempt to claim the moral high ground for doing the right thing and replacing their deeply flawed candidate.
But should they be able to get away with that?
The Democrats, after all, nominated this guy in an open primary. Democrat voters selected him over more “normal,” relatively inoffensive mainstream Democrats just three months ago, when virtually all his many shortcomings were already known to their Maine primary voters.
There is no difference on the issues, after all, between Platner and the less obviously reprehensible Democrat candidates he defeated. They all agree on everything from confiscatory taxation to rabid overregulation, from their lockstep disdain for human life to the open borders policies that the intersectionality of Democrats require every modern progressive to champion, no matter how much damage such policies do to their constituents, their country, and their world.
The only difference between them is that Mr. Platner made his offensiveness too visible, through a tattoo, some published posts, and a few cases of past behavior. If it were about issues, the primary voters could have chosen any of the others, but they consciously chose the most blatantly repulsive one of the group.
If he had continued to be just as reprehensible a candidate as the rest of his fellow Democrat candidates, but had the sense to keep it more of a secret, he would enjoy the full support of the Democrat party going into the general election.
Platner had his Nazi tattoo covered up. He had his social media scrubbed. He apologized for past behavior and said he was a new person. Until this latest allegation arrived on the scene, the Democrats hoped that simply repudiating all his past writings, his past actions, and his past tattoos would be sufficient to coast to victory.
But this raises yet another question: What is the election process for, if not to evaluate the full life experiences of the candidates and choose among them?
If, in district after district, state after state, we allow Democrat nominees to evade responsibility for past positions, behaviors, and beliefs, holding Republicans’ feet to the fire for every past indiscretion while forgiving a mountain of Democrat sins, what is the point of holding elections at all?
It’s time the American public stopped letting candidates get away with any of these alleged rebirths. “You got a Nazi tattoo, you shook down a car dealer, you used drugs, you dated a Chinese spy, you forced the closure of a business, you destroyed our health care system? Well, that’s what we’re judging you on, against your opponent’s equally real résumé.”
If you wouldn’t deserve the support of your desired constituents once your real identity got exposed, you shouldn’t have run in the first place.
“A Republic If You Can Keep It!” These words of Benjamin Franklin, in response to the question, “what kind of government was the United States to have, a republic or a democracy?” are exceedingly prescient today, for we are surrounded, infected, and infested by enemies within and without.
The four enemies I will focus on today (there are many more than four) are progressivism, the democratic socialists of America, radical Islam, and America’s four horsemen of the apocalypse (hedonism, nihilism, materialism, and narcissism).
First, progressivism. Just in time for our 250th birthday party, progressives in California are blowing up the basic premise of our constitution by fomenting class warfare. This rotten political ideology posits that virtually everything about America is either a lie or its wrong. That is, the Constitution was a racist construct aimed at preserving white, male power. Progressives also believe it is wrong for people to become successful, but it is right to redistribute their wealth to people who did nothing to earn it or deserve it.
California, like other blue states, is an epicenter of progressivism. On the ballot this November is the so-called billionaire’s wealth tax which is not to be confused with an income tax. This class of earners are already paying more than their “fair share” of taxes. Together, the top 1% of earners (which includes multi-millionaires) in our state pay upwards of 45% of all income tax collected, some $122 billion annually. SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, is behind the initiative, not because they are concerned about state and federal benefit cuts to the poor, but because their members stand to lose their jobs as a result of the cuts.
This tax taxes wealth, including the unrealized value of businesses, stocks, bonds, art, collectibles, and intellectual property. Of course, the problem here is that the billionaires are leaving and taking their companies, tax revenues, and jobs with them. It is estimated that $1 trillion in assets have left the state, which means the state’s income tax revenue will crater unless the middle class makes up the difference via future tax hikes. In other words, our state economy is set to implode because of the unmitigated greed of public employee unions in this state who have additionally burdened us with upwards of $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are progressives on crack! Take for an example, Avila Chevalier who just won the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th District, with the support and endorsement of the current leader of the pack, New York Mayor Mamdani. Avila Chevalier has been described by some as “like AOC, but to the left”. According to CNN, “Darializa Avila Chevalier, deleted a previous Twitter account that included thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist”.
That begs the question, that people like James Carville are asking, why are DSA members allowed to run as democrats?
Of course, the progressives are responsible for creating the circumstances that have led to the election of radicals like Mamdani and “the squad” (Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, and the like who are considered DSA “affiliates”), namely by flooding our country with poor immigrants from third world countries who constitute their main constituent voting bloc. That is, these immigrants are voting for fellow immigrants like Chevalier, Mamdani and Omar. For example, according to censusreporter.com, Chevalier won her party’s nomination by winning a district where 33% of the population is foreign-born, 55% of households speak a language other than English at home, and most of the people are poor earning a paltry median income of $37,754. In other words, a constituency that would love to be the beneficiaries of the redistribution of wealth via a distortion of the American dream that can only survive by destroying the American dream.
It is not an accident that many of the leaders of the DSA and their affiliates are Muslim radicals that did not come here to assimilate but to conquer. I do believe there are many Muslims in America that wish our country no harm. They are not proponents of Sharia law, or jihad. They don’t support the genocide of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel. But, the fact remains, America, just like Europe, is being colonized by radical Islam. One illustration I can give you about this is a statement made by the UAE, a solid Muslim country. The UAE provides scholarships to its own citizens (UAE nationals) to study at foreign universities, in addition to supporting them at local institutions. However, the United Arab Emirates is restricting students from enrolling at UK universities amid fears campuses are being radicalized by Islamist groups, namely, the Muslim Brotherhood. Well, this radical movement is not restricted to our cousins across the pond!
Last year, “The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released its landmark report, The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Entryism into Western Society: A Systematic Analysis, at a high-level policy event in Washington, D.C., featuring members of Congress, senior diplomats, policy experts, and leading researchers. The report represents the first-of-its-kind comprehensive strategic assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan at its halfway point, mapping its ideological, institutional, and financial penetration into North America.”
“The 200-page analysis provides a detailed account of how the Brotherhood has spent five decades embedding itself within Western institutions while maintaining ideological opposition to democracy and pluralism. Drawing on authenticated internal documents, verified network mapping, and extensive case studies, the research reveals a coordinated, multi-generational project designed to influence policy, education, and civil society from within.”
As stated, “the Muslim brotherhood is not simply a political movement but a transnational ideological project that adapts itself to Western systems while working to undermine them. The Brotherhood has learned to use the very freedoms of democracy as tools to erode it from within, exploiting the tolerance and openness of liberal societies as strategic vulnerabilities”.
Of course, none of these things would be a problem for America and in America, were it not for the four horsemen of our apocalypse. As Robert George outlined in his report, “Solzhenitsyn’s Prophecy”, on the occasion of the 1978 commencement speech to Harvard graduates, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offered a severe critique of American society. It was a time, as George noted, that anti-Americanism was flourishing both abroad and at home. Many Americans—particularly young Americans—had lost faith in their country, its institutions, its principles, its culture, its traditions, and its way of life. He viewed the West’s weakness, including its weakness in truly standing up to Soviet aggression, as the fruit of the materialism, consumerism, self-indulgent individualism, emotivism, and narcissism—in a word, the immorality—into which we had allowed ourselves to sink. What is behind all this? According to Solzhenitsyn, the moral decline of the West has behind it the same factor that produced the horrors of communism, namely this: “Men have forgotten God.”
People worship themselves, deify their own desires, fall into an idolatry of the self, because they have forgotten that there is something—indeed someone—higher. They have forgotten God.
And, I might add, they have forgotten the warning of Benjamin Franklin as they can’t define what constitutes a constitutional republic even though their life and their freedom depend on it!
