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Deeper Dive Into White House UFO Tranche 6. The Files That Deserve Another Look.

September 21, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Three days after the government’s latest UAP release, researchers are finding details easily missed in the initial flood of documents: six maneuvering spheres reportedly traveling 480 mph, a military study of injuries following anomalous aerospace encounters, a 1952 UFO film the Air Force’s own laboratory struggled to explain—and evidence of how officials contemplated explaining that case to the public.

Still frame from the 2025 video showing 6 small apparent “spheres or orbs” over a U.S. military platform. Image via DoD. Read more about the latest Pentagon UAP files below.

When the federal government released its sixth tranche of UFO records Friday, the sheer volume made immediate analysis difficult.

The release contains roughly 70 records spanning more than seven decades: military videos, Project Blue Book records, an hour-long recording of Capt. Edward Ruppelt, local law-enforcement evidence, Defense Intelligence Agency contracts and dozens of technical studies dealing with subjects ranging from advanced propulsion to wormholes and antigravity.

Federalist Press reported Friday on one of the most historically remarkable items—the newly released 1952 recording of Ruppelt discussing the Air Force’s early UFO investigation. Article>

But researchers have now had a weekend to dig. And several other pieces of Tranche 6 deserve considerably more attention.

None proves that extraterrestrial spacecraft are visiting Earth. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office continues to say it has found no verifiable evidence establishing an extraterrestrial origin for the phenomena. But some of these records raise questions that are difficult to dismiss with the word “balloon.” And there is nothing saying that non-human craft hail from far-way worlds. Some beleive they may come from “here.”

Six Objects. 480 Miles Per Hour. Changing Direction.

Perhaps the most immediately intriguing contemporary case comes from U.S. Central Command.

A one-minute infrared video recorded from an American military platform in the Middle East during 2025 shows what the accompanying mission report describes as six small spherical objects traveling together.

The report describes the objects as apparently agile and frequently changing direction.

Most remarkably, the observer estimated their speed at approximately 480 miles per hour.

Watch: Pentagon Tranche 6 — six spherical objects recorded by U.S. military

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has now taken a closer look at that report and raised an interesting question: could this simply have been a drone swarm?\ Possibly. But Loeb argues that the reported performance makes that explanation more complicated than it initially sounds.

Typical small drones operate nowhere near 480 mph. Loeb notes that even extremely fast racing quadcopters can approach roughly 300 mph only under unusual conditions, while coordinated drone swarms generally operate at considerably lower speeds. Maintaining a close formation while maneuvering becomes increasingly difficult as velocity rises because every aircraft must continuously know where its neighbors are while avoiding collisions.

Loeb estimates that coordinated swarms generally operate at speeds up to approximately 150 mph—less than one-third the speed reported in the military document. That doesn’t make the objects alien spacecraft. It makes “What were they?” a considerably more interesting question.

There is also an important limitation: 480 mph is an observer’s estimate recorded in the mission report, not necessarily an independently established speed derived from complete telemetry now available to the public. That distinction matters.

But so does the fact that the United States military recorded the encounter, documented the estimated speed and behavior, submitted it to AARO—and it remains unresolved.

Then There Is the Object Over the Yellow Sea

Another military video is intriguing for an entirely different reason. The 27-second infrared recording was submitted by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command following a 2023 encounter over the Yellow Sea. It appears to show a spherical object moving through or immediately above clouds.

Loeb points to what appears to be a faint trail associated with the object’s interaction with the clouds, arguing that this is evidence the image represents a physical object interacting with its environment rather than simply an internal camera artifact.

That conclusion should be treated as Loeb’s interpretation rather than a Pentagon determination. A short infrared video by itself doesn’t establish the object’s composition, distance or origin. Nevertheless, the apparent interaction with the cloud layer makes the footage worth examining closely.

The Government Studied People Who Were Allegedly Injured

Then we get to one of the strangest documents in the entire release. Consider a 38-page Defense Intelligence Reference Document produced in 2010 examining what its authors called evidence concerning injuries to human observers associated with anomalous advanced aerospace systems.

The study discussed three previously healthy and active individuals who reportedly experienced an anomalous aerospace-related event and subsequently developed physical symptoms. Those reportedly included skin heating and redness, hair loss and, in one individual, signs characterized as radiation illness followed over subsequent years by malignant changes.

The three individuals were reportedly antenna engineers. The researchers compared their cases with published and unpublished incidents involving known radio-frequency injuries and considered whether electromagnetic exposure could account for the effects.

The document’s author reached a provocative conclusion: enough incidents and medical information existed, in his assessment, to support a hypothesis that some advanced systems were already deployed while remaining incompletely understood by the United States.

And the Pentagon specifically cautions that the AAWSAP technical documents are reference and synthesis papers rather than proof that the concepts they discuss have been validated.

But the existence of the study is significant for another reason. The government wasn’t merely paying contractors to speculate about what UFOs looked like. Researchers were investigating whether some reported encounters might produce measurable physiological effects on human beings.

Loeb calls this one of the notable aspects of Tranche 6 and says the release explicitly connects investigation of physiological injuries with possible UAP encounters.

Then We Found the Tremonton File

This may be the most fascinating historical part of Tranche 6.

On July 2, 1952, Navy Chief Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse was traveling near Tremonton, Utah, when he observed a group of bright objects moving across the sky. Newhouse had a movie camera. He filmed them.

The result became one of the most famous UFO films of the Project Blue Book era. The footage is included in Tranche 6.

The objects have been debated for more than seven decades. The government’s first attempt to debunk the video seven decades ago was that Newhouse filmed birds—possibly gulls—whose bodies reflected sunlight. But researchers examining the newly released government paperwork noticed something considerably more interesting than the film itself.

According to the technical material in the released Air Force file, the government’s own photographic laboratory concluded it was “reasonably certain” that the brightness recorded on the film exceeded that expected from birds. The analysis also questioned whether the objects were spherical and noted the absence of sound as a problem for an aircraft explanation.

That still doesn’t tell us what Newhouse filmed. But then comes the really interesting part.

What the Air Force Considered Telling the Public

Among the newly available records is an Air Force Memorandum for Record concerning how the Tremonton case should be handled publicly.

An independent analysis of the PURSUE archive by WARUFO drew attention to the apparent tension between the laboratory analysis and the contemplated public explanation. According to the memo, if public release became necessary, officials contemplated saying that although the Air Force could not positively identify the objects, it was reasonably confident they were balloons or gulls and therefore would pursue the incident no further.

The memo reportedly went even further when considering release of the underlying laboratory work, saying it would be poor policy to suggest that another military service had made an error.

It is historically important because it shows something UFO researchers have alleged for generations: the government’s internal uncertainty about a case could be considerably more complicated than the simplified explanation eventually contemplated for public consumption.

That is a much more defensible, and arguably more interesting, observation than declaring that the memo proves officials knew UFOs were extraterrestrial.

The Government Was Studying Warp Drives and Wormholes

Another part of Tranche 6 has generated spectacular headlines. The government really did fund studies involving subjects including warp drives, traversable wormholes, antigravity, negative-mass propulsion, invisibility cloaking and other exotic concepts.

Thirty-seven Defense Intelligence Reference Documents released in this tranche came from the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, or AAWSAP, established by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2008.

AAWSAP received approximately $22 million in federal funding. That sounds extraordinary. But there is an important distinction being lost in some online discussion. The existence of a government study titled around warp drive does not establish that the government possesses a warp drive.

The Pentagon explicitly cautions that these documents should be understood as reference and synthesis products rather than original experimental research proving that the concepts work. Indeed, one of the antigravity studies acknowledges that proposed concepts were not then feasible from an engineering standpoint.

What the documents establish is still fascinating: The Defense Intelligence Agency considered these concepts sufficiently relevant to future aerospace threats to pay experts to examine them.

A Police Officer Adds Something New to the Government Archive

Another story has received relatively little attention.

For the first time in the PURSUE tranches, Release 6 includes a distinct category of evidence originating with local law enforcement rather than military or intelligence personnel.

The Colorado case occurred in October 2023. According to the released material, an officer observed and filmed an object described as silent, displaying red, blue and green flashing lights. The officer reportedly checked available radar information and found no aircraft in the area. More interestingly, the officer said the object remained stationary for approximately 15 minutes before appearing to move closer.

Four videos accompany the report.

“Calvine” UAP Photo taken near Perth, Scotland

We now have a trained civilian law-enforcement observer documenting what he was seeing contemporaneously, checking for conventional air traffic and recording the event.

And Then There Is the 74-Year Continuity Problem

This may ultimately be the most interesting observation to emerge from the entire release. Put the files side by side.

In 1952, Edward Ruppelt told his audience that approximately 20 percent of roughly 800 Air Force cases consisted of good reports from reliable observers for which investigators could draw no conclusion. He discussed silent high-speed objects, radar detections and concentrations around Los Alamos, Albuquerque and Oak Ridge.

In 2022, military personnel reported small objects moving erratically over the Middle East. In 2023, an American military sensor recorded a spherical object over the Yellow Sea. A Colorado law-enforcement officer separately filmed an unexplained silent object. And in 2025, U.S. Central Command documented six small spherical objects reportedly maneuvering together at an estimated 480 mph.

Different decades. Different sensors. Different witnesses. Different locations. Different agencies. Yet some descriptions are surprisingly persistent: spheres or orbs, unusual movement, high speeds, lack of obvious conventional propulsion and objects that remain unidentified after investigation.

So What Does Tranche 6 Actually Prove?

It doesn’t prove extraterrestrial visitation . . . yet. There is no recovered spacecraft in these files. No extraterrestrial body. No verified alien communication. No document in which the United States government formally concludes that a particular object originated beyond Earth. Even some of the most provocative technical studies are literature reviews rather than observational evidence.

But dismissing the entire release because it doesn’t contain an alien spaceship would miss what is actually happening.

The United States government has now publicly released hundreds of records showing that military personnel, intelligence agencies, scientists, pilots and now local police officers have encountered things they sometimes could not satisfactorily identify.

Some cases undoubtedly have ordinary explanations. Some almost certainly suffer from insufficient data. But some contain measurements, trained witnesses, military sensors or multiple pieces of evidence that justify further investigation.

And that may be the real story of PURSUE. For most of the modern UFO era, Americans argued about whether the government possessed serious information about unidentified objects at all. We don’t have to argue about that anymore. The government is publishing it.

The question now is whether scientists, journalists and the American public are willing to actually read it.

Explore PURSUE Release 6 yourself

The Pentagon Just Dropped UFO Tranche 6 — And a 74-Year-Old Recording May Be the File to Hear First

September 18, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

The newest PURSUE release went public Friday morning. Among the newly posted government records is a remarkable 1952 recording of Project Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt discussing unexplained objects, extraordinary speeds, radar contacts and UFO concentrations around America’s nuclear installations.

Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953.

For nearly three-quarters of a century, Americans have argued about what the United States government really knew about UFOs during the earliest years of the phenomenon.

Friday morning, the government opened another window into that history.

The Department of War has released Tranche 6 of the government’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters—PURSUE—the extraordinary disclosure initiative that has been releasing government UFO records in batches since May.

The sixth release went live this morning, September 18, following previous releases on May 8, May 22, June 12, July 10 and August 7. The government describes the archive as an effort to find, review, declassify and publicly release unresolved UAP records scattered across federal agencies and decades of government files.

Readers can examine the government’s complete archive themselves here: Explore the government’s PURSUE UFO archive

And while researchers will undoubtedly spend days combing through Tranche 6, one newly released item immediately stands apart.

It is an audio recording made 74 years ago. And the man speaking is Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt.

Listen to the Man Who Ran Project Blue Book

The government has now publicly posted a recording titled: “DOW-UAP-PR160, Presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, 1952.”

The recording runs one hour, five minutes and thirteen seconds and is dated March 26, 1952. According to the government’s description, Ruppelt discusses the Air Force’s reorganized investigation of what were then commonly called “flying saucers”—an investigation that became Project Blue Book.

UFO UNSEALED: Never-before-seen files are being released by the White House—and @pdoocy got an exclusive first look!

From mysterious objects over Utah in 1952 to unexplained orbs hovering over Colorado decades later, here's what he found inside. pic.twitter.com/3eddmGs1Zv
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) September 18, 2026

This isn’t somebody remembering the UFO controversy decades later. It is the officer running the investigation speaking in 1952, while it was happening. That distinction makes the recording historically fascinating.

Ruppelt explains that the Air Force had examined approximately 800 historical cases and that roughly 20 percent remained unexplained after technical analysis, according to the government’s newly published description of the recording. The unresolved reports included observations by military personnel, commercial pilots and other technically qualified witnesses.

Then it gets more interesting. The government’s summary says Ruppelt discussed concentrations of reports around sensitive national-security and nuclear-weapons facilities, including Los Alamos, Albuquerque and Oak Ridge.

And he described radar observations indicating unconfirmed speeds ranging from approximately 1,000 to 3,500 miles per hour.

Remember the date: March 1952. The first operational American jet fighter had entered service only a few years earlier. Sputnik was still more than five years away. Yet the officer responsible for investigating UFOs was discussing reports involving silent high-speed objects and radar indications of velocities reaching thousands of miles per hour.

That does not establish that these objects were extraterrestrial spacecraft. Ruppelt himself apparently emphasized that the Air Force had reached no conclusive determination about their nature or origin.

But it establishes something historically significant: the United States Air Force considered at least some UFO reports sufficiently difficult to explain—and sufficiently relevant to national security—to pursue systematic methods of gathering better physical evidence.

They Wanted Better Cameras, Better Radar and Better Data

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the recording is how surprisingly modern the proposed investigation sounds.

According to the government’s description, Ruppelt discusses possible use of diffraction-grating photography and synchronized radar-scope photography to obtain objective evidence rather than relying exclusively on eyewitness accounts.

In other words, 74 years before today’s arguments about whether UAP evidence needs multiple synchronized sensors, the Air Force was already wrestling with essentially the same problem: How do you turn a strange observation into measurable scientific data?

Ruppelt’s later published account confirms that the Air Force pursued specialized cameras and sought assistance from prominent scientists as the 1952 UFO wave intensified. He wrote that the Air Force wanted every available piece of evidence and was attempting to determine whether the reports represented something genuinely unknown.

The newly released recording therefore gives Americans something unusual: not merely another government memo describing what happened decades ago, but the voice of the man who was there explaining the investigation in real time.

Congress Helped Pry This Recording Loose

There is another interesting story behind the recording. Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri specifically went looking for it.

On May 8, Burlison sent MIT Lincoln Laboratory a letter requesting preservation and review of a reel-to-reel recording identified as “AF-ATIC-FILM, 03/52” and labeled simply: “flying saucer talk.” The listed briefer was Edward J. Ruppelt.

Burlison asked MIT Lincoln Laboratory to determine whether the recording survived and to coordinate with the National Archives regarding its preservation and archival review.

Now, four months later, the government has published Ruppelt’s March 26, 1952 presentation as part of PURSUE Release 6. The newly posted government copy identifies the recording as public domain and attributes its release through the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

That makes it one of the clearest examples yet of congressional pressure and the government’s current disclosure initiative bringing obscure historical UAP material directly to the public.

Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt discusses the Air Force investigation of UFOs in a March 26, 1952 presentation newly released by the U.S. government. The recording runs approximately 65 minutes. Source: Department of War/AARO/DVIDS. Listen to the complete 1952 Edward Ruppelt recording on the Defense Department’s DVIDS archive

But Tranche 6 Isn’t 65 Minutes of Smoking Guns

Much of the initial discussion surrounding Release 6 suggests that a significant part of the tranche consists of Defense Intelligence Reference Documents, or DIRDs, associated with the government’s later AAWSAP/AATIP research effort.

Those technical papers explore subjects at the speculative edges of aerospace engineering and theoretical physics. Early researchers going through Friday’s dump have noted that many of these documents had already become publicly available through previous government FOIA releases.

Seventy-Four Years Later, We’re Still Asking Ruppelt’s Question

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about listening to a recording from March 1952 is how little the central question has changed. What are these things?

Ruppelt and the Air Force were discussing radar, qualified observers, high speeds, nuclear facilities and the need for better scientific instrumentation.

Today’s military talks about infrared sensors, radar tracks, satellite observations, multisensor correlation and objects encountered in restricted military airspace.

The technology changed dramatically. The question survived. And so did Ruppelt’s insistence that the phenomenon deserved serious investigation rather than reflexive belief or reflexive ridicule.

His own later account of Project Blue Book makes clear that the Air Force could explain a large proportion of reports as balloons, aircraft, astronomical objects and other conventional phenomena. But it was the remainder—the well-documented cases that resisted easy explanation—that kept the investigation alive.

That same distinction should guide Americans looking through the files released today. Don’t begin with the conclusion. Begin with the evidence.

The Government Is Asking the Public to Look

One of the most unusual features of PURSUE is that the government isn’t simply releasing documents and declaring the matter closed. The Department explicitly says it welcomes private-sector analysis, information and expertise concerning unresolved cases. That amounts to an invitation.

Researchers can download the documents. Engineers can inspect the technical material. Pilots can evaluate aviation reports. Physicists can examine claims about performance. Historians can compare newly released documents against the government’s previous public explanations.

And ordinary Americans can look at the evidence themselves. That may ultimately be the most important change represented by PURSUE.

For generations, the argument surrounding UFOs was partly an argument over what information the government possessed but wasn’t showing us. Now hundreds of government records are sitting on a public website.

There will undoubtedly be prosaic explanations among them. There will be old material, duplicative material, dead ends and cases for which insufficient information will make an answer impossible. But there may also be cases that remain genuinely difficult to explain.

Tranche 6 is now public. The government has opened another box. And this time, one of the voices coming out of it has been waiting since 1952 to be heard.

Open PURSUE Release 6 and examine the files yourself

The Economic Numbers Americans Should See: Income Rises, Poverty & Crime Fall and Job Growth Rebounds

September 18, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Newly released Census and Labor Department figures contain some strikingly positive news for American households. Income reached a record high in 2025, child and Hispanic poverty reached record lows, and the latest employment report showed a sharp rebound in job creation. The numbers strengthen the economic case for President Trump’s agenda—but the underlying government data tell a more nuanced story in some areas.

Americans have spent years hearing about inflation, affordability, government debt and economic anxiety. Those problems have not vanished. But a remarkable collection of statistics released by the federal government this month deserves attention for another reason: several important measures of American economic well-being moved decisively in a favorable direction during 2025, the first year of Donald Trump’s second administration.

Median household income reached the highest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau. Official child poverty fell to the lowest level in the government’s historical series. Hispanic poverty reached its lowest recorded level. Black households registered a particularly large increase in median income. And the latest employment report, covering August 2026, showed payroll growth rebounding sharply after a period of weak job creation during the Biden years.

Those results form the centerpiece of a new economic assessment from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, the conservative economic-policy organization associated with economists Stephen Moore, Arthur Laffer and Steve Forbes. Its presentation is unabashedly favorable to Trump’s economic record and compares a series of indicators under Trump and former President Joe Biden. The Economic State of the Union — Unleash Prosperity

And several of those numbers are striking.

Household Income Reaches a Record

The Census Bureau reported September 15 that median U.S. household income reached $87,460 in 2025, up from $85,210 in 2024. Adjusted for inflation, that was an increase of 2.6 percent in a single year.

More significantly, Census says 2025 median household income was the highest recorded in its data series going back to 1967.

Americans don’t experience prosperity merely through changes in GDP or the stock market. What ultimately matters to a household is what its income can purchase after accounting for rising prices.

The gains were not confined to the highest-income households. Census reported that median income increased 3 percent among White households and 4.8 percent among Black households between 2024 and 2025. The estimates for Asian and Hispanic households did not show statistically significant changes.

A 4.8 percent real increase in median Black household income is substantial.

There is additional good news after taxes. Census found that median household income after accounting for taxes and credits increased 3.1 percent, from $73,760 in 2024 to $76,060 in 2025.

Child Poverty Hits a Historic Low

Perhaps the most consequential statistic has received considerably less attention than most monthly political controversies. According to the Census Bureau, the official poverty rate among American children fell to 13.4 percent in 2025—the lowest level ever recorded under the official measure.

The overall official poverty rate also declined, from 10.7 percent in 2024 to 10.2 percent in 2025, leaving approximately 34.5 million Americans below the official poverty threshold.

The official measure compares pretax money income with poverty thresholds based on family composition. The Supplemental Poverty Measure incorporates taxes, government benefits, housing costs, work expenses and medical expenses.

By America’s long-established official poverty measure, child poverty reached an historic low in 2025. That is genuinely important news.

Hispanic Poverty Also Reaches a Record Low

The Hispanic poverty numbers are similarly striking. Census reports that the official Hispanic poverty rate dropped 1.2 percentage points in 2025, reaching 13.9 percent—the lowest recorded level in the historical series. Census says the record remains even after accounting for methodological changes in the survey over time.

Other groups also experienced declines. The Unleash Prosperity presentation highlights the racial and ethnic breakdown and argues that the gains undermine claims that Trump’s economic policies primarily benefit wealthy Americans.

The data establish the improvement. Annual income and poverty outcomes reflect many forces simultaneously: wages, employment, inflation, monetary policy, previous legislation, demographic changes and broader economic conditions.

Record real household income, record-low official child poverty and record-low Hispanic poverty are consequential economic developments and Trump’s policies certainly have earned the political credit.

Then Came a Much Stronger Jobs Report

The newest employment report adds another favorable development. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on September 4 that employers added 162,000 payroll jobs in August, while unemployment remained at 4.1 percent.

The improvement from July was dramatic. July produced only 21,000 additional jobs. Over the previous 12 months, monthly job growth had averaged approximately 31,000. August’s 162,000 therefore represented more than five times the preceding 12-month monthly average.

Food services and drinking establishments added about 59,000 jobs. Local-government education added approximately 42,000. Manufacturing added 16,000, while information employment declined by 23,000.

Government Employment Is Moving in the Opposite Direction

One of Unleash Prosperity’s most dramatic charts concerns federal employment.

Its argument is ideological as well as economic: private-sector employment produces goods and services in the marketplace, while government employment is financed through taxation and borrowing. The organization therefore presents reductions in federal payrolls under Trump as evidence of “draining the swamp.”

The underlying direction is real: the federal workforce has contracted significantly since Trump returned to office. The precise comparison depends heavily upon which starting and ending months are chosen and how employees receiving severance or paid leave are counted, so the group’s headline figure should not be treated as a simple measure of government savings.

What can safely be said is that Trump’s second administration has deliberately pursued a smaller federal workforce while the Biden administration generally presided over federal employment growth.

The Inflation Story Is Better Than 2022

One of the most visually arresting Unleash Prosperity charts traces inflation from the Biden years into Trump’s second administration.

There is an important truth behind it: inflation reached 9.1 percent in June 2022, the highest 12-month CPI increase in four decades, before declining considerably.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in August 2026 and were 3.4 percent higher than a year earlier. Core inflation, excluding food and energy, was 2.4 percent over the year. Gasoline prices were responsible for more than one-third of August’s monthly increase.

Economic Growth Continues

The economy itself continues to expand. Real GDP grew at a 2.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026 and 1.5 percent in the second quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Consumer spending, exports and investment contributed positively to second-quarter growth, while declining government spending partially offset them.

The composition is noteworthy. An economy in which private consumption, investment and exports expand while government spending contracts is different from one in which headline GDP growth depends heavily upon expanding public expenditures.

The third-quarter numbers, due later, will tell us considerably more about whether the August employment rebound is part of a broader acceleration.

Retirement Accounts Have Benefited From Strong Markets

Unleash Prosperity also highlights retirement accounts, arguing that average 401(k) balances lost purchasing power during the Biden years but have increased substantially during Trump’s two terms.

This is an area where the organization’s calculation requires more caution than its graphic suggests.

A 401(k) balance is affected not merely by presidential economic policy but by employee contributions, employer matches, withdrawals, participant demographics, asset allocation, interest rates and financial-market performance. Comparing average balances at presidential endpoints therefore cannot establish that a president personally “created” or “destroyed” the difference.

Nevertheless, strong equity markets and rising asset values unquestionably matter to tens of millions of Americans with retirement accounts. For households with substantial market exposure, asset appreciation can be an important component of financial well-being even when it doesn’t appear in household-income statistics.

Crime Has Fallen Dramatically

Another chart supplied by Unleash Prosperity attributes large crime reductions to Trump. The underlying decline is real—and remarkable.

The Council on Criminal Justice found that in its sample of large cities, homicide fell 21 percent in 2025 compared with 2024, gun assaults fell 22 percent, robbery 23 percent and carjackings 43 percent.

The improvement continued in 2026. During the first half of this year, homicide was another 18 percent lower than during the corresponding period of 2025, robbery fell 17 percent and carjacking fell 47 percent.

What the Numbers Actually Tell Us

The emerging economic picture contains a substantial amount of good news.

In 2025, inflation-adjusted median household income rose 2.6 percent and reached a record. Black median household income increased 4.8 percent. Official child poverty reached a record low. Hispanic poverty reached a record low. Overall official poverty declined. After-tax median household income increased. Crime continued falling dramatically. And now August 2026 has produced the strongest payroll-growth month in some time.

The Biden years included the 2021–22 inflation surge that sharply reduced household purchasing power.

Americans will ultimately judge Trump’s policies by results accumulated over years, and the latest results provide plenty worth noticing.

American household income is at a record high. Official child poverty is at a record low. Hispanic poverty is at a record low. Unemployment is 4.1 percent. August produced 162,000 new payroll jobs. And several categories of violent crime have continued their steep decline.

Those aren’t campaign slogans. They are measurements appearing in the latest reports from the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics and independent crime researchers. And in an era when Americans are accustomed to being told what’s going wrong, they are also a reminder that sometimes the numbers contain genuinely good news.

America Has Seen This Movie Before: Don’t Let Fear, or China, Stop the AI Revolution

September 14, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

From electricity and the automobile to mainframes, calculators, personal computers and the Internet, technological revolutions have repeatedly frightened Americans before making them richer, more productive and more capable. Artificial intelligence may be the next great test of whether America still has the confidence to build the future.

There is a familiar sound echoing across America today. Artificial intelligence is going to eliminate our jobs. Data centers are going to consume all our electricity. Computers are becoming too powerful. The technology is moving too quickly. Government must slow it down. Communities must stop the server farms. Perhaps America would be safer if we simply built less.

We have heard variations of this argument for generations. The technology changes. The fear does not.

For more than a century, Americans have repeatedly been warned that the newest machines would render human beings obsolete, destroy employment, disrupt communities and concentrate intolerable power in the hands of whoever owned the machines. The warnings were not always foolish; technological revolutions really do disrupt industries and livelihoods. But the recurring prediction of permanent mass technological unemployment has repeatedly failed.

Now America is having the argument again, only this time the machine is artificial intelligence—and there is an enormously important difference. The United States is not developing this technology in isolation. It is competing against China for leadership in what may become one of the most consequential technologies since electricity itself.

And there is now evidence that China-linked actors understand perfectly well what is at stake.

The Fear of the Machine Is Older Than the Computer

Fear that machinery would eliminate human labor goes back at least to the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites of early-19th-century Britain became so convinced that new textile machinery threatened their livelihoods that they destroyed machines. Similar fears resurfaced during the Great Depression, after World War II and during the great automation debates of the 1950s and 1960s. The American Historical Association notes that anxiety about “technological unemployment” has accompanied technological change for generations.

The automobile brought its own upheaval. The internal-combustion engine eventually devastated enormous portions of the economy built around horses. Blacksmiths, carriage makers, stable operators, harness makers and countless others saw their businesses transformed or disappear.

But America did not become poorer because it stopped organizing its transportation economy around horses.

It became vastly richer.

The HP-35 was HP’s first pocket calculator. It was introduced at a time when most calculators (including expensive desktop models) had only the four basic functions. The HP-35 was the first pocket calculator with transcendental functions.

Automobiles created assembly-line manufacturing, filling stations, repair shops, dealerships, trucking, road construction, motels, suburbs, drive-in restaurants, automobile insurance and industries nobody standing beside a horse-drawn carriage could possibly have predicted. The technology eliminated some jobs precisely because it allowed human beings to accomplish vastly more with less labor—and that increased productivity generated new wealth and new forms of employment.

Electricity did much the same thing. Electric motors and electrically powered factories replaced older machinery and transformed manufacturing. Electric appliances eliminated countless hours of domestic labor. Refrigeration changed food production and distribution. Electrified offices changed clerical work.

The result wasn’t the end of work. It was the beginning of an economy our ancestors could scarcely have imagined.

Economists have studied this phenomenon extensively. David Autor of MIT observed in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that automation certainly substitutes for some human labor, but it also complements labor, increases output and creates additional demand for labor. That is one reason generations of technological progress have failed to produce the permanent mass unemployment repeatedly predicted.

Then the Computers Were Coming for Us

The computer age generated another round of anxiety.

IBM introduced its revolutionary System/360 family in 1964. These were not cute little desktop machines. They were imposing corporate computers occupying specialized facilities and performing work that previously required rooms full of clerks, bookkeepers and human calculators. IBM itself describes the System/360 as a fundamental change in computing: software developed for one machine in the family could operate on others, allowing organizations to expand their computing capabilities without rebuilding everything from scratch.

Mainframes became more capable. The System/370 followed. Banks computerized accounts. Airlines computerized reservations. Corporations computerized payroll. Governments computerized records.

Once again came the question: What will happen to all the workers?

The anxiety became sufficiently serious that presidential candidate John F. Kennedy warned in 1960 that America stood on the threshold of an automation revolution carrying both the promise of prosperity and the danger of “industrial dislocation, increasing unemployment, and deepening poverty.” The feared permanent employment collapse never occurred. The American economy instead generated millions of additional jobs as computing transformed what workers could accomplish.

Then the computer escaped from the corporate data center.

Pocket calculators arrived. A machine small enough to fit into a student’s hand could perform arithmetic that once required paper, pencil, slide rule and considerable human effort. Surely that would make people intellectually lazy. Surely students would forget how to calculate. Surely accountants would become unnecessary.

Instead, the calculator became another tool.

Then came the personal computer.

The Apple II, Commodore, TRS-80 and IBM PC moved computing onto desks and eventually into homes. Word processors threatened typists. Spreadsheets threatened armies of accounting clerks. Desktop publishing threatened traditional typesetting. Computer-aided design transformed drafting.

The IBM PC Convertible (model 5140) is a laptop computer made by IBM, first sold in April 1986

Again, some jobs really did disappear. Others changed beyond recognition.

But the economy didn’t disappear with them.

Then Came the Internet—and Another Revolution

The Internet multiplied the disruption.

Email threatened postal mail. Online news threatened newspapers. Amazon and other online retailers threatened brick-and-mortar stores. Streaming threatened video rental. Digital photography devastated the film-processing business. Smartphones absorbed cameras, calculators, maps, calendars, address books, music players, flashlights and dozens of other formerly separate products.

Entire industries were diminished or destroyed.

And entirely new industries appeared.

Search-engine optimization specialist would have been a meaningless occupation in 1980. So would app developer, cloud architect, cybersecurity analyst, social-media manager, YouTube creator, e-commerce fulfillment specialist and countless other occupations employing people today.

Technological progress does not promise that every existing job will survive. It never has.

It promises something more important: human beings become capable of producing more value with the same amount of time and effort.

That is productivity. And over the long run, productivity is one of the foundations of rising prosperity.

AI Is the Next Tool, Not the End of Humanity

Artificial intelligence is unquestionably more powerful than a pocket calculator. It will disrupt occupations. Some tasks now performed by people will eventually be performed by machines, just as computers replaced filing cabinets and automobiles replaced horse-drawn wagons.

But focusing exclusively on what AI can replace misses what millions of Americans are already discovering it can augment.

A doctor can use AI to help examine medical information. A programmer can use it to inspect code. A small-business owner can analyze data that previously required a consultant. A researcher can process information in minutes that once consumed days. An engineer can test ideas more rapidly. A writer can use it as an editor, researcher and second set of eyes. A student can have concepts explained individually rather than waiting for the next classroom session.

Used properly, AI does not have to substitute for human judgment. It can increase the reach of human judgment.

The important question therefore isn’t merely, “What jobs can AI perform?”

It is also, “What can an American worker accomplish when the worker has AI?”

That distinction may prove as important as asking in 1985 what an accountant could accomplish with a spreadsheet rather than asking how many calculations the spreadsheet could perform without the accountant.

But AI Needs Factories

This brings us to the increasingly contentious subject of data centers.

Artificial intelligence may seem intangible when it appears on a laptop or telephone screen, but the computations behind it are intensely physical. AI requires semiconductors, servers, cooling systems, networking equipment, buildings—and enormous quantities of electricity.

Those data centers are effectively the factories of the information age.

And demand is unquestionably large. The International Energy Agency projects global data-center electricity consumption will roughly double from about 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 to approximately 950 TWh in 2030, with AI-focused facilities growing considerably faster. The United States and China are the two great centers of that expansion.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration now says data-center development is a major driver of America’s renewed electricity-demand growth. EIA expects U.S. electricity generation to reach a record level in 2026 and grow again in 2027, driven in part by data centers and manufacturing.

That is not an argument against AI.

It is an argument for building more energy.

Don’t Ration Electricity. Produce It.

America is an energy-rich continental nation. If AI requires more electricity, the answer should not automatically be to ration computation. It should be to ask how America can generate the additional electricity efficiently, reliably and affordably.

Natural gas can contribute. Nuclear power can contribute. Geothermal can contribute. Solar and wind can contribute where their economics and reliability make sense. New transmission and storage can contribute.

Indeed, the AI boom is already helping revive American nuclear power. NextEra recently secured a federal loan of up to $1.9 billion toward restarting Iowa’s Duane Arnold nuclear plant, with Google contracting for its output. Other projects are pursuing restarts of previously closed nuclear facilities, including Palisades in Michigan and a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

President Donald Trump has explicitly embraced this build-more approach. His July 2025 executive order accelerating data-center infrastructure identifies natural gas, nuclear, geothermal and other dispatchable power sources as infrastructure that can accompany major data-center projects. It also encourages appropriate federal lands, brownfields and other suitable locations for development.

That is much closer to the American answer to technological progress throughout our history:

Build the infrastructure the new technology requires.

We didn’t respond to the automobile by refusing to manufacture cars because existing roads were inadequate. America built roads.

We didn’t respond to electrification by banning appliances because the existing generating system couldn’t support them. America built generating stations and transmission networks.

We shouldn’t respond to AI by saying our electrical grid was designed for yesterday’s economy and therefore tomorrow’s economy must remain small enough to fit inside it.

Build the power.

Build the transmission.

Build the computing infrastructure.

A Data Center Doesn’t Belong Everywhere

Supporting data centers does not mean every proposed location is sensible.

People who don’t want a giant industrial complex immediately behind their homes aren’t Luddites. Communities can legitimately consider noise, transmission infrastructure, water consumption, land use, tax incentives and effects on local electricity rates. Congress is currently considering bipartisan measures intended to prevent ordinary ratepayers from being saddled with infrastructure costs attributable to large data-center customers.

Those concerns should be addressed rather than mocked.

But data centers possess an advantage many traditional industrial facilities do not: their product is information. They don’t need to sit on Fifth Avenue or beside a suburban subdivision to reach their customers.

There are technical limits to that principle. Latency matters for some computing applications, fiber connectivity matters enormously, and electricity and water infrastructure constrain possible sites. Information doesn’t literally move instantaneously; signals through fiber travel below the vacuum speed of light. But compared with a steel mill that needs raw materials or a retail store that needs customers physically nearby, computing facilities have extraordinary geographic flexibility.

America has enormous stretches of industrial land, brownfields, energy-producing regions and other suitable sites where large computing campuses can be developed with fewer conflicts with residential communities.

The intelligent response is therefore not “No data centers.”

It is “Build them where they make sense, and build the infrastructure to support them.”

And China Is Watching This Argument

Here is where the debate becomes considerably more serious.

China is not sitting around wondering whether artificial intelligence is fashionable. Beijing recognizes advanced AI as a strategic technology with economic, military, intelligence and geopolitical consequences.

And there is now evidence that China-linked actors have attempted to influence the American debate over the infrastructure necessary to develop it.

In June, OpenAI reported that it had disrupted a cluster of accounts that likely originated in China and were being used to generate social-media material for a covert influence operation. The operators posed as Americans from different backgrounds and produced English-language content criticizing U.S. AI and data-center development. OpenAI assessed that the operators were likely associated with a private Chinese technology company working for Chinese provincial-government clients.

Then in August, X reported finding roughly 200 accounts associated with a suspected Chinese bot farm posting in ways that could manipulate legitimate American debate over AI and energy policy. According to Axios, some posts emphasized electricity prices and grid strain or portrayed data-center operators enriching themselves at ordinary Americans’ expense.

That doesn’t mean the mother worried about her electric bill is a Chinese agent.

It doesn’t mean the homeowner opposing a data center next door is working for Beijing.

And it certainly doesn’t prove that every environmental organization or politician skeptical of AI infrastructure is secretly financed by China. Reporting examining some of the broader claims about Chinese funding has found the evidence for those sweeping accusations weak.

But foreign influence operations rarely need to invent an American disagreement. Their more effective strategy is to find an existing disagreement, amplify its most inflammatory arguments, encourage Americans to distrust one another and push the controversy in a direction favorable to the foreign power.

That appears to be precisely why the AI infrastructure debate is attractive.

China Doesn’t Have to Defeat American AI if Americans Defeat It Themselves

Imagine the strategic outcome if the United States spends the next decade making large computing facilities almost impossible to permit, refusing to build enough reliable electricity, allowing transmission projects to languish, frightening investors away from AI infrastructure and treating every increase in electricity demand as evidence that the underlying industry must be stopped.

China would hardly need to sabotage an American data center.

We would have sabotaged ourselves.

The United States has an enormous advantage precisely because it combines scientific talent, capital markets, innovative companies, abundant energy resources, world-class universities, semiconductor expertise and a political tradition that historically allowed entrepreneurs to build things.

Those advantages aren’t permanent laws of nature.

They have to be used.

The Real Lesson of 150 Years of Technological Panic

None of this means artificial intelligence is harmless.

AI can be abused for fraud, propaganda, cybercrime and surveillance. Powerful systems require sensible safeguards. Workers whose occupations change deserve opportunities to acquire new skills. Data-center developers should pay the appropriate costs of the infrastructure they require rather than quietly shifting them onto homeowners. Communities should retain a meaningful voice over land use.

But managing a technology is fundamentally different from fearing it.

America has repeatedly encountered technologies that destroyed old ways of doing things. Electricity did. The automobile did. Automation did. Mainframe computers did. Calculators did. Personal computers did. The Internet did.

The important historical fact is not that nobody was hurt by those transitions. Many people were.

The important fact is that America as a whole became vastly more productive and prosperous because it adopted the technologies rather than trying to preserve the economy that existed before them.

Artificial intelligence presents us with the same choice on a much larger scale.

We can build the computing capacity. We can build the power plants. We can build the electrical grid. We can train Americans to use AI as an amplifier of human intelligence rather than treating it exclusively as a competitor to human labor. We can locate data centers intelligently instead of pretending they must either be built in someone’s backyard or prohibited entirely.

And we can remember that while Americans argue over whether the future is too frightening to build, our principal geopolitical competitor is working very hard to build it.

America did not become the world’s technological leader by being the country most afraid of the next machine. It became the world’s technological leader by inventing it, improving it, powering it, putting it to work—and discovering opportunities that nobody could see before it existed.

Artificial intelligence should be no different.

The question is not whether the AI age is coming. The question is whether America intends to lead it.

Is Islamic Terror Winning? 25 Years After 9/11: America Must Remember What Happened

September 11, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Is Osama bin Laden winning? The attacks of September 11 did not emerge from nowhere. They were the culmination of years of escalating Islamist terrorism against Americans and others. A quarter-century later, remembrance requires more than mourning the dead. It requires remembering the ideology that motivated their killers.

Twenty-five years ago this morning, Americans turned on their televisions and watched something that seemed impossible.

A passenger jet had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At first, millions assumed they were witnessing a terrible accident. Then, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower before television cameras and millions of witnesses.

America was under attack.

Before the morning was over, another hijacked airliner had crashed into the Pentagon. A fourth, United Flight 93, was brought down in a Pennsylvania field after passengers learned what was happening and fought the hijackers. Both towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. Nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed. Twenty-five years later, Americans are gathering again at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and Shanksville to remember them.

But September 11 did not come without warning.

The War Had Already Begun

For years before Americans understood that they were confronting a new kind of enemy, radical Islamist organizations had been telling the United States precisely what they intended to do.

On February 26, 1993, terrorists detonated a truck bomb in the underground garage beneath the World Trade Center. Six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. The objective was vastly more ambitious than the death toll suggests: mastermind Ramzi Yousef intended to topple one tower into the other, potentially killing tens of thousands. The FBI later described the bombing as a deadly dress rehearsal for what would happen eight years later.

The plotters were Islamist extremists. Yousef had trained in a camp associated with Osama bin Laden, and his uncle was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would become the principal architect of the September 11 plot. Investigators subsequently uncovered another conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks, including the United Nations and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels. In 1995, authorities in the Philippines disrupted the Bojinka plot, which envisioned blowing up a dozen U.S.-bound airliners over the Pacific; Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were involved.

The attacks continued.

In November 1995, a bombing in Riyadh killed five Americans and two others. In June 1996, terrorists bombed the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen and wounding hundreds. The 9/11 Commission attributed that attack primarily to Saudi Hezbollah, with assistance from Iran—a reminder that the terrorist threat Americans faced was not confined to al-Qaeda or to Sunni jihadism.

Then came Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war.

In February 1998, bin Laden and other Islamist leaders issued a purported religious decree calling for Muslims to kill Americans, military and civilian. Six months later, al-Qaeda simultaneously bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands.

In December 1999, an attempt to bomb Los Angeles International Airport was stopped when Ahmed Ressam was caught entering the United States from Canada with explosives.

Then, on October 12, 2000, suicide terrorists maneuvered an explosives-laden boat alongside the USS Cole while the American destroyer was refueling in Aden, Yemen. The explosion ripped a massive hole in the ship, killing 17 American sailors and injuring nearly 40. The FBI concluded that al-Qaeda planned and carried out the attack. Investigators also discovered that the terrorists had previously attempted to attack the USS The Sullivans, but their overloaded explosives boat sank before reaching its target.

The pattern was no longer obscure. Indeed, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission later concluded that by September 2001 America’s government, Congress, news media and public had received unmistakable warning that Islamist terrorists intended to kill Americans in large numbers.

The Ideology Behind the Terror

Islamism is a political ideology seeking to organize government and society according to particular interpretations of Islamic law and authority. Jihadism is its revolutionary and violently extremist manifestation—the ideology embraced in differing forms by al-Qaeda, ISIS and affiliated organizations.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, jihadist terrorism has not vanished. Europol reported this year that it remained the primary terrorist threat in the European Union: jihadists accounted for 24 of the EU’s 45 terrorist attacks in 2025 and 347 of its 486 terrorism-related arrests. Modern jihadism increasingly operates through propaganda and online radicalization that can mobilize lone actors without the enormous organizational machinery al-Qaeda required for September 11.

Western societies therefore have two responsibilities that are entirely compatible: refusing to treat peaceful Muslims as terrorists because of their religion, while refusing equally to sanitize or ignore a violent Islamist ideology because acknowledging it might offend someone.

September 11, 2001

Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists boarded four commercial aircraft that Tuesday morning.

At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.

At 9:03, United Flight 175 struck the South Tower.

At 9:37, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

On Flight 93, passengers receiving telephone calls learned what had happened in New York and Washington. Understanding that their airplane was itself a weapon, they acted. They rushed the cockpit. At 10:03, the hijackers crashed the aircraft near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, before reaching their intended target.

At 9:59, the South Tower collapsed. At 10:28, the North Tower followed.

The scale of the destruction almost defied comprehension. Firefighters and police officers ran upward while thousands fled downward. Ordinary office workers carried injured strangers. Passengers aboard Flight 93 knowingly confronted armed terrorists rather than permit their aircraft to destroy another American landmark. Nearly 3,000 people were murdered in a matter of hours.

And then something remarkable happened. America became America again.

For a Brief Time, We Remembered That We Were One People

The flags appeared everywhere.

They hung from houses and apartment windows. They flew from pickup trucks and highway overpasses. Blood-donation centers filled. Churches filled. Americans donated money, food and equipment. Firefighters drove toward New York from communities hundreds of miles away.

Political divisions that had seemed enormous on September 10 suddenly looked trivial.

There was widespread agreement about several basic facts. America had been deliberately attacked. The killers were al-Qaeda Islamic terrorists motivated by a radical Islamist ideology. The country had a right to defend itself. Terrorist organizations could not be allowed sanctuary from which to organize mass murder.

The mistake came later, when parts of Western political and media culture increasingly treated concern about Islamist ideology itself as though it were indistinguishable from prejudice against individual Muslims. Islamophobia was born on CNN and other liberal outlets.

One can defend a Muslim American’s constitutional right to worship while vigorously opposing Islamism. One can welcome an immigrant who embraces America’s constitutional order while questioning immigration policies that import people hostile to that order. And one can condemn anti-Muslim bigotry while demanding that governments confront jihadist organizations without euphemism.

Twenty-Five Years of an Argument We Still Have Not Resolved

The intervening quarter-century did not make the underlying problem disappear.

Al-Qaeda survived in altered form. ISIS established a territorial caliphate before losing it and inspired or directed terrorist attacks abroad. Europe endured jihadist massacres in Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels, Manchester and elsewhere. America suffered attacks at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, Orlando and other locations.

And on October 7, 2023, Hamas and other armed groups poured across the Gaza border into Israel, murdering civilians and taking hostages. A United Nations investigative mission subsequently found reasonable grounds to believe that rape and gang rape occurred at multiple locations during the attack and clear and convincing information that hostages were subjected to sexual violence, including rape and sexualized torture. The same UN investigation also rejected some specific allegations for which evidence did not hold up—an important reason to distinguish documented atrocities from rumor.

None of this means Muslims collectively bear responsibility for terrorism. They do not. Collective guilt is both unjust and intellectually lazy.

But neither does that truth require the West to avert its eyes from radical Islamism.

Even today Americans remain profoundly divided about that question. A Pew Research Center survey released just before this anniversary found that 51 percent of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers, compared with 25 percent in March 2002. The partisan divide is enormous: 76 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said so, compared with 29 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

That does not establish which interpretation of Islam is correct. It demonstrates something else: the argument America seemed to have settled on September 12, 2001, is very much alive 25 years later.

Europe Learned Some Lessons the Hard Way

Immigration makes the issue still more difficult because several distinct questions are routinely collapsed into one.

Europe has experienced serious problems involving integration, radicalization and—in some communities—forms of criminality whose cultural dimensions authorities were reluctant to discuss. Britain’s group-based child-sexual-exploitation scandals are an especially grim example. A major British government audit concluded in 2025 that national ethnicity data remained too inadequate to establish a definitive nationwide perpetrator profile, while also examining significant local evidence involving men of Pakistani heritage. The British government has since established a statutory inquiry specifically charged with examining ethnicity, religion and culture alongside institutional failures.

The lesson should not be that Pakistani men, Muslims or immigrants are collectively responsible for these crimes. That would substitute prejudice for analysis.

The lesson is that governments must be willing to investigate uncomfortable facts—including cultural or religious factors when the evidence supports them—without suppressing discussion because officials fear accusations of intolerance.

A civilization confident in itself should be capable of doing both things simultaneously: protecting innocent minorities from collective blame and protecting the larger society from genuinely dangerous movements within minority populations.

The Strange Political Coalitions of the Post-9/11 Era

One of the more remarkable developments of the past 25 years has been the political convergence, on certain issues, between elements of the Western progressive left and Islamist political movements. Their underlying philosophies are hardly natural allies. Secular progressivism and traditional Islamist doctrine profoundly disagree about religion, sexuality, women’s roles, family structure and the proper relationship between religious authority and government.

Yet alliances can form around common political causes—anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, opposition to Western foreign policy, immigration politics or a shared conception of certain groups as oppressed and others as oppressors.

That phenomenon deserves scrutiny without turning every Muslim political candidate, immigrant or Palestinian advocate into an Islamist. American Muslims are politically diverse, just as Christians, Jews and atheists are.

The constitutional question is ultimately straightforward. Americans may believe whatever religion they choose. They may criticize Christianity, Judaism, Islam or atheism. They may advocate socialism, capitalism or almost any other political philosophy. But America’s constitutional system—not religious law, racial identity or revolutionary ideology—remains the governing compact.

Immigration policy has a legitimate role in protecting that compact. Citizenship should mean more than physical residence. A country has every right to ask whether those seeking to join it are prepared to live peacefully under its laws and constitutional institutions.

Did Bin Laden Succeed?

Osama bin Laden failed in his most obvious objective.

He did not destroy the United States. He did not establish an Islamist state here. Al-Qaeda’s original leadership was devastated, bin Laden was eventually killed by American forces, and the United States has prevented another foreign terrorist attack approaching the scale of September 11.

But the more disturbing question on this 25th anniversary is whether he succeeded in a different way.

Terrorism is intended not merely to kill people but to alter societies. Bin Laden hoped to provoke conflict, deepen divisions and undermine confidence in the Western order. Twenty-five years later, Americans distrust one another profoundly. Our understanding of national identity is contested. Even basic discussions about borders, assimilation, religion, terrorism and Western civilization can become exercises in partisan accusation.

It would go too far to attribute those changes to bin Laden. They have many causes, most of them originating within the West itself.

But that makes the lesson of September 11 more important, not less.

Bin Laden therefore failed to conquer America, but he succeeded in making America change itself. Every security checkpoint, every fortified airport, every counterterrorism bureaucracy and every hour an innocent traveler spends proving that he is not carrying a weapon is part of the enormous price a free society has paid because a small number of men were willing to murder strangers in the name of an extremist ideology. Necessary precautions may protect liberty, but their necessity itself represents something we lost on September 11. The America of September 10, 2001—where ordinary citizens could move through many public spaces with a degree of openness that younger Americans have never experienced—is a country that in some respects no longer exists.

The Freedom We Lost After September 11

There was another victory the terrorists achieved that Americans rarely discuss when commemorating September 11: they permanently changed the way ordinary Americans live. Before 9/11, family members could routinely accompany travelers to an airport gate and wait there to embrace them when they stepped off the airplane. Airport security was comparatively unobtrusive. Americans traveled without removing shoes, surrendering bottles of water, measuring shampoo into tiny containers or routinely submitting themselves and their belongings to elaborate screening. Today we accept identification checkpoints, scanners, metal detectors, restricted areas, security lines and searches as ordinary features of American life. Some of those precautions are reasonable responses to genuine threats, but that does not change why they became necessary. Nineteen terrorists demonstrated that civilian transportation could be transformed into a weapon of mass murder, and hundreds of millions of innocent travelers have lived with the consequences ever since.

The transformation went far beyond airports. Congress created the Transportation Security Administration in November 2001 and the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, producing an enormous federal security apparatus devoted to aviation security, border protection, intelligence coordination, cybersecurity, emergency preparedness and counterterrorism. The federal government acquired surveillance and investigative powers that would have generated extraordinary controversy before September 11. Buildings strengthened security. Public events acquired checkpoints and bag searches. Police departments developed counterterrorism units. Governments spent vast sums hardening transportation systems and potential targets. Whatever one thinks of each particular policy—and some unquestionably prevented or complicated subsequent attacks—the larger historical fact is undeniable: terrorism imposed a tremendous tax on American liberty, privacy, time and money. The passengers standing barefoot in an airport security line a quarter-century later are living, however indirectly, with the consequences of September 11.

There is an additional frustration in the necessarily generalized nature of modern security. A grandmother, businessman, child or mother traveling with breast milk can find herself subjected to rules created because terrorists learned to conceal explosives in shoes, liquids, underwear, electronics and other ordinary objects. (Breast milk is actually exempt from the TSA’s normal 3.4-ounce liquid limit, although it must be declared and may receive additional screening.) The principle of equal treatment means security procedures generally cannot simply assume that someone is harmless because of race, sex or appearance—and racial or religious profiling would also sweep enormous numbers of innocent people into suspicion while potentially missing terrorists who do not fit a stereotype. Yet there is a bitter irony here: law-abiding Americans who had nothing whatsoever to do with Islamist terrorism surrendered freedoms and conveniences because governments had to devise systems capable of detecting the comparatively tiny number of people who might commit it. The terrorists did not merely murder nearly 3,000 people on September 11. They forced an open society to spend the next quarter-century protecting itself against another September 11.

Never Forget Means Remembering All of It

“Never Forget” cannot merely mean remembering collapsing buildings once a year.

It means remembering the people inside them.

It means remembering the firefighters climbing stairwells from which they would never return. The police officers running toward destruction. The passengers aboard Flight 93 deciding that their own lives might have to be sacrificed to save strangers. The husbands and wives who made final telephone calls. The children who went to bed on September 10 with two parents and did not have them both the following night.

And it means remembering why they died.

They were not killed by an airplane accident, poverty, American intolerance or an abstraction called “extremism.” They were deliberately murdered by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists acting in service of a radical Islamist ideology that had declared Americans legitimate targets.

Remembering that fact does not dishonor peaceful Muslims. Blaming peaceful Muslims for September 11 would itself betray America’s principles of individual responsibility and religious liberty.

But refusing to name an ideology that openly seeks our destruction would betray those principles in another way.

Today, at the Pentagon, Ground Zero and Shanksville, Americans are again reading the names of the dead. Twenty-five years have passed, and an entire generation has grown up knowing September 11 only through photographs and recordings.

We owe that generation the truth—neither hatred nor historical amnesia.

On September 11, 2001, Americans saw what radical Islamist terrorism could do.

For a brief period afterward, we also saw what Americans could do when they remembered that beneath every political disagreement, race, religion and region, they belonged to one country.

Twenty-five years later, perhaps the most important words remain the simplest:

Remember the dead. Remember the heroes. Remember the enemy that attacked them. Defend the Constitution that the terrorists could not destroy. And never forget.

The ‘Choice’ the Left Hates: Our Children’s Education

September 2, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Democrats speak constantly about choice. But when parents want to choose where their children are educated, and where the public money assigned to those children is spent, the party and its most powerful education allies suddenly discover the virtues of monopoly.

There is perhaps no government service in America for which failure would be more consequential than education. A school can lose money and recover it. A district can replace a superintendent. A legislature can rewrite a curriculum. But a child gets only one fourth grade, one eighth grade and one senior year. When a school fails him year after year, government cannot return those years at age 25 and allow him to try again.

That is the moral case for school choice, and it is far more important than the institutional arguments surrounding it.

For most of modern American history, the public education system has operated on a principle that would be considered strange almost anywhere else: government assigns a child to a school largely according to the family’s home address, sends enormous amounts of taxpayer money to the institution, and then asks parents to trust that the institution will deliver. Wealthy parents have always possessed school choice because they can move to a desirable district, pay private-school tuition or hire tutors. The families most thoroughly trapped by geography have generally been those with the fewest resources.

Arizona decided to challenge that model.

The result is one of the broadest educational marketplaces in the country: traditional district schools, open enrollment across district lines, charter schools, private schools, homeschooling and Empowerment Scholarship Accounts that allow eligible families to direct state education money toward an educational setting they choose.

The operating principle is almost embarrassingly simple:

Fund the child, not the building.

Arizona Turned the ZIP Code Into a Starting Point, Not a Sentence

Arizona’s public-school open-enrollment law says families can seek admission not merely to another school within their district but to schools in other districts, subject principally to available capacity and specified enrollment preferences. Districts must publish capacity information and accept students throughout the year when space exists.

That alone changes the relationship between school and family.

A neighborhood district school no longer possesses a guaranteed customer simply because a child lives within a particular boundary. If parents believe another district school offers better academics, discipline, athletics, special education or simply a better environment, they can pursue it.

Arizona then added one of America’s largest charter-school sectors. State financial data show approximately 231,660 students were enrolled in Arizona charter schools in fall 2024, across roughly 560 schools. And the state went further still.

Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program is now universally available to resident K-12 students who satisfy the program’s requirements. Instead of automatically directing the child’s state education allocation to the neighborhood school, an ESA permits qualifying educational expenses such as private-school tuition, tutoring, curriculum and other approved services. As of August 31, 2026, the Arizona Department of Education reported 104,644 students enrolled for the 2026-27 ESA year.

That is not a pilot project anymore. It is an alternative education system operating alongside the traditional one.

For decades, the political answer to disappointing educational results has been remarkably consistent: spend more money. Yet the states themselves provide a natural experiment demonstrating the limits of that prescription.

New York spends roughly three times as much per public-school student as Arizona. $30,000 vs just $11,000 per student. Arizona operates under this fiscal constraint familiar throughout the West: enormous portions of its territory remain under federal ownership and therefore outside the normal state and local property-tax base. Congress makes Payments in Lieu of Taxes to Western communities partly because those governments cannot tax federally owned land the way communities elsewhere tax private property.

Yet, Arizona has built one of America’s broadest educational marketplaces on a comparatively very lean public-education budget. District schools compete with other district schools through open enrollment, with charter schools, and increasingly with private and alternative educational arrangements through Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.

What Happens When Schools Have to Compete?

The economic argument for school choice is one conservatives will immediately recognize. Competition normally disciplines providers.

A grocery store that provides bad food at high prices loses customers. A restaurant that treats patrons contemptuously eventually closes. A manufacturer that ignores what consumers want watches a competitor take its business.

Traditional public education largely insulated schools from that feedback mechanism. A chronically underperforming school could lose the confidence of thousands of parents while retaining most of those parents’ children because geography, transportation and finances left them nowhere else to go.

School choice changes the incentive.

When money follows students, losing families eventually means losing revenue. At that point, parental dissatisfaction is no longer merely an unpleasant school-board meeting. It has financial consequences.

Arizona’s experience is especially interesting because most educational competition does not involve private schools at all. An earlier Goldwater Institute examination found that, in sampled Maricopa County districts, more than 30 percent of students were attending a district school other than the one assigned by residence; combined with charter attendance, roughly 47 percent were attending something other than their geographically assigned public school. That analysis predates today’s universal ESA program, but it illustrates something frequently lost in the voucher debate: school choice often means choosing another public school.

And there is evidence that competition can improve the schools students leave behind.

Research on Ohio’s voucher program, for example, found academic improvement among students remaining in public schools close to the threshold for voucher eligibility—a competitive effect also found in earlier Florida research. That does not prove every choice program produces the same result, but it undermines the assumption that choice can benefit only the child who leaves.

That point deserves more attention. A school-choice program does not have to destroy public education. Properly structured, it can force public education to compete for the privilege of educating the public’s children.

The Charter Evidence Is Particularly Difficult to Ignore

One of the strongest arguments for choice comes not from a conservative think tank but from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

CREDO’s major national charter-school study compared charter students with demographically and academically similar students in traditional public schools. Nationally, charter students showed greater average progress in both reading and mathematics.

Arizona’s results were notable. According to CREDO data summarized by the Goldwater Institute, Arizona charter schools produced stronger reading growth than comparable district schools in about 35 percent of comparisons while producing weaker growth in approximately 12 percent; the remainder were statistically similar. In mathematics, Arizona charters were stronger in about 38 percent of comparisons.

Those numbers do not say every charter school is excellent. Some are not, and bad charter schools should close.

That is the point. Choice should never mean replacing a government monopoly with an entitlement for private or charter operators. It should mean permitting schools to compete, measuring results, giving families useful information and allowing unsuccessful institutions to lose students.

Accountability through choice is meaningful only if failure carries consequences.

America’s Educational Results Give Parents Every Reason to Demand Something Different

The backdrop to this debate is a national educational performance crisis that neither political party should minimize.

On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress—the Nation’s Report Card—only 31 percent of fourth-graders were at or above NAEP Proficient in reading. Sixty percent reached at least Basic, meaning roughly four in ten did not. Fourth-grade reading performance actually declined from 2022.

Mathematics was somewhat better but hardly reassuring. Thirty-nine percent of fourth-graders reached Proficient in 2024. Among eighth-graders, only 28 percent reached Proficient in mathematics, while 61 percent reached Basic or above.

Then there is civics. The most recent national eighth-grade NAEP civics assessment found only 22 percent of students at or above Proficient. The average score fell from 2018 and was statistically no better than it had been when the assessment began in 1998.

This is the context in which defenders of the educational status quo ask parents to be patient. Parents have already been patient. Children are still failing to read. Millions struggle with mathematics. Basic understanding of American government is frighteningly weak.

At some point, insisting that every family continue patronizing the same institution ceases to look like loyalty to public education and begins to look like loyalty to the institution itself.

Detroit Is Paying Children to Show Up

One of the articles that prompted this discussion captures the dysfunction in an almost surreal way.

Fox News reported this morning that Detroit-area public schools are experimenting with incentives of as much as $1,000 in gift cards for perfect attendance, an attempt to combat severe chronic absenteeism. The same segment discussed districts elsewhere lowering academic standards in attempts to improve reported performance.

It would be unfair to blame teachers for all of this. Chronic absenteeism has enormous causes outside school—family instability, poverty, post-pandemic habits, neighborhood conditions and parental disengagement among them.

But the spectacle still tells us something. An education system in which government must pay students simply to enter the building is not suffering from too much parental choice.

It is suffering from a collapse of confidence and accountability.

Seattle Offers Another Window Into the System

Seattle Public Schools entered this school year facing an estimated $100 million budget gap while its teachers union considered a strike.

According to reporting cited by Fox, 91 percent of participating Seattle Education Association members authorized a strike if negotiations failed to produce a new contract involving higher compensation, benefits and special-education provisions. Superintendent Ben Shuldiner, hardly a conservative school-choice activist, publicly rebuked the union and said the district was “broke.” The district reportedly has roughly 5,000 fewer students than in 2019.

The union’s position deserves to be represented accurately. Its concerns include compensation, working conditions and special-education supports, and unions argue that recruiting and retaining competent teachers requires competitive pay and manageable workloads.

But Seattle exposes the structural problem. What happens when enrollment declines but the institution’s financial and labor obligations do not decline with it? The traditional answer is usually more money.

The school-choice answer is different: ask why families are leaving.

Why Teachers’ Unions Fight Choice

The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers make no secret of their opposition to private-school choice.

This summer the two unions jointly urged Democratic governors to reject the new federal private-school scholarship initiative, calling it a threat to public education. The AFT adopted a 2026 resolution declaring that public funds should remain in public schools and arguing that vouchers divert resources, disproportionately subsidize families already using private schools, increase segregation and permit private institutions to operate without the same obligations imposed on public schools.

The unions’ fundamental premise is that public education is a public institution with obligations no private school necessarily shares. District schools must accept the children who arrive at their doors, including students who are expensive to educate. Private schools may charge tuition above the value of a voucher, enforce admission standards or offer fewer services for students with significant disabilities. Critics also argue that widespread ESAs can subsidize families who were already paying private tuition rather than induce students to leave public schools.

Arizona’s own data give that last criticism some substance. For FY2025, Arizona’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee reported 87,602 ESA participants and $872.2 million in awards. State data also show that among newly entering universal ESA students in grades 1-12 during a reporting period, 57 percent had been enrolled in public school immediately beforehand—meaning a substantial share had not.

School-choice advocates should not duck that debate. Universal eligibility costs money, and lawmakers have a legitimate responsibility to prevent fraud, audit expenditures and determine whether the program is delivering value to taxpayers.

But there is an enormous philosophical difference between regulating a choice program responsibly and declaring that parents should not have the choice at all. The unions consistently favor the latter when public money would follow a student into private education.

Democrats Have Made Their Position Official

The alignment with the Democratic Party is not speculation.

The Democratic Party’s most recent national platform explicitly opposed “private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships” and similar programs that transfer taxpayer-supported education funding outside public schools. Democrats argue that these programs drain public-school resources and lack sufficient transparency and nondiscrimination protections. The platform simultaneously called for greater investment in teachers, public schools and increased charter-school accountability.

So the divide could hardly be clearer. Democrats generally seek to strengthen the existing public-school system through more funding, staffing, collective-bargaining protections and government-directed reforms.

Republicans increasingly seek to strengthen education by giving families leverage over the system. Those are fundamentally different theories of accountability.

One says experts, elected boards and governments should improve schools from inside. The other says parents should have the ability to walk away.

Follow the Child

There is a revealing phrase used repeatedly by opponents of school choice: “Taking money away from public schools.”

But whose money is it? If a school receives money because James is enrolled there, and James leaves, why should the school continue receiving the portion intended to educate James?

We do not normally say a restaurant was robbed because a customer ate across the street. We do not say a university was defunded because a student enrolled somewhere else. The public-school system exists to educate children. Children do not exist to finance the public-school system. That reversal of priorities may be the most important idea in the entire school-choice debate.

Choice Is Especially Important for Families Without Money

The wealthy will always have educational choice. They can buy a house beside the best public school. They can pay $20,000 or $30,000 in private tuition. They can hire tutors. They can move. They can homeschool with one parent staying home.

The child trapped in the worst school is disproportionately the child whose parents cannot do those things. That makes opposition to educational portability strangely regressive.

A politician who sends his own children to private school while telling a poor mother that public money must remain with her failing neighborhood district is not defending equality. He is defending his choice and denying hers.

The Conservative Reform Should Be Choice Plus Accountability

There is one place where conservatives should resist ideology of their own. Simply handing money to any educational provider and declaring victory would recreate the same problem in another form.

Arizona and other choice states should insist upon aggressive financial auditing, transparent academic information, swift prosecution of fraud, easy comparisons among schools and consequences for providers that consistently fail students. Parents cannot exercise meaningful choice without meaningful information.

Universal choice should be accompanied by rigorous measurement. Reading. Mathematics. Science. History. Civics. Writing. Parents should know whether a school is teaching them. And taxpayers should know what they are buying.

That is not an argument against school choice. It is how a serious school-choice system should work.

The Institution or the Child?

At bottom, the argument isn’t really about charter schools, ESAs or vouchers. It is about who possesses the presumption of authority.

The education establishment begins with the institution: this is the public school, this is its funding, this is its staff, and reform must occur within its walls.

School choice begins with the child: this is the child’s education, and the institutions must earn the family’s confidence.

One system asks parents to wait while professionals repair failing schools. The other gives parents an exit. America has been waiting for decades.

Only 31 percent of fourth-graders are proficient readers. Only 28 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in mathematics. Only 22 percent of eighth-graders were proficient in civics on the latest national assessment.

At some point, protecting the system from competition becomes harder to justify than protecting children from the system’s failures.

Arizona has chosen competition. Other states increasingly are following. At least 18 states now have education-choice programs with universal eligibility, according to the Education Commission of the States.

The question for the rest of America is increasingly straightforward. If a public school is excellent, why should it fear choice? It should attract families. It should grow. It should prosper.

And if another school can teach a child to read better, calculate better, understand American history better and leave school better prepared for citizenship and adult life, why should government prevent his parents from choosing it?

The purpose of public education is not to preserve a particular collection of buildings, bureaucracies or bargaining units.

It is to educate the public.

And when the interests of the institution and the interests of the child diverge, there should be no question which one comes first.

The Red Line Moves: The Socialist-Islamist Insurgency No Longer Hides at the Democratic Party’s Fringe

September 1, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Abdul El-Sayed insists he isn’t a socialist. ‘Socialist’ may be too weak for a man who seems more enamored of an Islamist Caliphate. From Michigan to New York to Florida, candidates once relegated to the ideological fringe are defeating establishment Democrats—and beginning to look less like a faction than a possible future of the party. Totalitarian candidates are on the rise in the Democrat Party.

For years, conservatives warning that America’s progressive movement was marching steadily leftward were routinely accused of exaggeration. Democrats were not becoming socialists, Americans were told. Bernie Sanders was an eccentric outlier. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represented an unusually liberal congressional district. The Democratic Socialists of America were activists operating at the edges of a much larger and fundamentally conventional political party.

That explanation has become increasingly difficult to sustain.

The story unfolding in 2026 is not that every Democrat has suddenly become a socialist. Not completely–not yet. Is democratic socialism synonymous with Soviet-style communism? Again, not yet. The more consequential development is that candidates openly identifying as democratic socialists, and candidates closely allied with that movement, are demonstrating that they can defeat traditional Democrats, capture Democratic nominations and build a political infrastructure capable of reproducing those victories.

And Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed may be the most revealing example precisely because he publicly rejects the socialist label.

The Candidate Who Says He Isn’t a Socialist

El-Sayed is now the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in one of America’s most important battleground states. He defeated the more centrist Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic primary and will face Republican Mike Rogers in November. His victory followed endorsements from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and every current member of the congressional “Squad.”

El-Sayed nevertheless insists that descriptions of him as a socialist are wrong. “I’m not somebody who is a socialist,” he told CNN during the campaign, adding that he believes in capitalism but believes it must be regulated. In another interview he described himself as “a capitalist who’s actually read about capitalism.” A wholistic survey of his totalitarian-leaning statements provide a textbook definition of Mussolini-styled fascism.

Fox News reported that El-Sayed appeared at six DSA events between 2017 and 2020. He headlined a 2019 fundraiser that raised approximately $10,000 for Detroit DSA, whose organizers reportedly described him as a “longtime friend.” At one event, El-Sayed and Rep. Rashida Tlaib were photographed behind imagery depicting a hand labeled “DSA” choking a snake labeled “capitalism.”

Streamer Hasan Piker, left, and Abdul El-Sayed take a selfie with young fans following a campaign event at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, on April 7. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)

Then there is the coalition behind him. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez campaigned with El-Sayed. The entire Squad endorsed him. DSA members have gravitated toward his campaign even without a formal organizational endorsement. His agenda includes Medicare for All and an aggressive attack on corporate concentration and money in politics.

Whether El-Sayed personally checks the “socialist” box is therefore almost beside the point. He has become a vehicle through which America’s socialist left can exercise power in a state that Donald Trump carried twice. That is much more significant than a label.

The Deleted Posts

El-Sayed’s past rhetoric has received renewed attention as he attempts to broaden his appeal for the general election.

CBS News reported this week that it verified two deleted El-Sayed posts comparing America’s COVID death toll with the nearly 3,000 people murdered on September 11. He is for it. Another deleted post from the 20th anniversary of 9/11 compared the victims with deaths resulting from subsequent American military interventions.

Then there is is close relationship with Hasan Piker. Piker, the enormously popular left-wing streamer who infamously said that “America deserved 9/11” appeared at El-Sayed campaign events. Their association has become sufficiently controversial that fellow Democrats have demanded a repudiation.

This is no longer simply Republican opposition research. It has become an argument inside the Democratic Party about how far its insurgent wing has traveled and which associations should remain beyond the pale.

The same problem surfaced after an attack on a Michigan synagogue. El-Sayed initially discussed the attack partly through the assailant’s personal loss in the Middle East and said that “hurt people hurt people.” He subsequently apologized to Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus, saying he had not intended to excuse violence and regretted the pain his words caused.

Taken together, the statements illustrate that a candidate who developed his political identity within America’s activist left is now attempting to translate that identity into statewide political power. And he is hardly alone.

Zohran Mamdani Proved the Model Could Work

The political earthquake really began with Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani doesn’t run away from the terminology. He is a democratic socialist and was sworn in as mayor of America’s largest city in January after campaigning on universal childcare, free bus service, rent freezes and higher taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

More importantly, Mamdani isn’t treating his victory as a one-off New York phenomenon. He told CBS that democratic socialism “can flourish anywhere.” The movement is now testing that proposition.

In June, all three congressional candidates endorsed by Mamdani won their New York Democratic primaries. Brad Lander defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman. Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated Rep. Adriano Espaillat. Claire Valdez captured the nomination for an open congressional seat. At least a dozen NYC-DSA-backed candidates won races that night.

That is not an activist club issuing manifestos. That is an electoral machine. And because these are overwhelmingly Democratic districts, primary victories can be tantamount to election.

The Insurgency Spreads to Michigan

Then came Michigan. State Rep. Donavan McKinney, a DSA member, defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. McKinney ran on Medicare for All, ending military aid to Israel and rejecting corporate PAC money. He was backed by DSA and other progressive organizations and is heavily favored in his Democratic district.

On the same primary night, El-Sayed defeated the more establishment-oriented Stevens for the Senate nomination. Consider what that means.

A democratic socialist knocked a sitting Democratic congressman out of office. A Sanders- and AOC-backed progressive with longstanding DSA relationships captured the party’s Senate nomination. And the results occurred not in Brooklyn or San Francisco, but in Michigan, one of the states that determines who governs America.

Reuters now describes El-Sayed and McKinney as part of a broader test for the democratic socialist movement as it attempts to expand its coalition beyond younger progressives and into constituencies, including older Black Democrats, that have traditionally been more skeptical of the socialist left.

Florida Just Delivered Another Warning

Florida provided yet another data point. State Rep. Angie Nixon stunned the Democratic establishment by defeating Alex Vindman for the party’s U.S. Senate nomination. Nixon joined the Democratic Socialists of America in June, although she has emphasized that she doesn’t endorse every position taken by the organization.

After winning, Nixon told CBS that voters weren’t interested in ideological terminology. “It’s not about labels,” she argued.

That phrase is becoming remarkably common. El-Sayed says he isn’t a socialist. Nixon says labels aren’t important. Mamdani says democratic socialism can flourish everywhere.

Conservatives would be foolish to become obsessed with terminology while ignoring the underlying transformation. Look at the policies. Look at the alliances. Look at who is winning.

A Democratic Leadership Vacuum

Former Democratic fundraiser Lindy Li offers one explanation for why this is happening.

Li, who raised money for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris before breaking with the party and now identifies as conservative, told Fox News that the Democratic Party’s post-Biden leadership vacuum has created an opening for DSA.

“Power abhors a vacuum,” she said. “They’re simply filling a vacuum. There’s no one there.” Li’s political conversion obviously gives her a point of view, and her characterization of DSA should be understood in that context. But the underlying observation is difficult to dismiss.

Who currently defines the Democratic Party? The Biden generation is gone. The old Clinton-era centrism has little emotional hold on younger Democratic voters. The party establishment remains institutionally powerful, but establishment-backed incumbents have repeatedly discovered that institutional power doesn’t guarantee victory in a Democratic primary.

The socialist left, meanwhile, has something establishment Democrats increasingly lack: an ideology, an activist base, recognizable national personalities, an economic narrative and an organized mechanism for identifying and electing candidates. It knows what it wants.

Socialism With Better Marketing

There is also a reason the movement is succeeding that conservatives should understand rather than caricature. Its candidates rarely campaign by giving voters lectures on Marx.

They campaign on rent. Groceries. Health insurance. Childcare. Corporate power. Housing.

Young Americans facing enormous housing costs, student debt and health-care expenses (all created by Democratic policies) are told that their economic insecurity is not primarily the result of scarcity, regulation, monetary policy, taxation or failed government programs. They are told instead that the system has been captured by billionaires and corporations, and that government can make life affordable by transferring more economic power to the public sector.

That message has political potency.

Mamdani’s campaign was built around affordability. Nixon stresses everyday costs. El-Sayed continually redirects interviews toward housing, health care and the price of living. Even Reuters’ examination of the socialist movement today notes that its candidates are concentrating on affordability as they try to broaden their electoral appeal.

Supporters see these policies as democratic government correcting market failures, restraining monopolies and providing necessities that private markets have failed to make affordable. They reject comparisons with authoritarian communism and point to social-democratic programs throughout Europe and elsewhere. That is the strongest argument for their side.

But conservatives should recognize what is occurring beneath the friendlier vocabulary: the acceptable boundary of government intervention in American economic life is moving dramatically.

Policies that would have been considered outside mainstream Democratic politics a generation ago are increasingly presented not as radical experiments but as obvious moral necessities.

Yesterday’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Establishment

That is the real lesson of Abdul El-Sayed. It isn’t necessary to prove that he secretly keeps a copy of The Communist Manifesto under his pillow. It isn’t even necessary to win an argument over whether “socialist” “communist” or even “caliphate” is the technically correct description of his political philosophy.

Watch the movement instead. Bernie Sanders spent decades as an eccentric independent socialist from Vermont. Then came AOC and the Squad. Then came Mamdani.

Now Mamdani has become mayor of New York City and helped knock incumbent Democrats out of Congress. DSA-backed candidates are winning nominations in Michigan. A DSA member has captured Florida’s Democratic Senate nomination. And a politician who spent years appearing at DSA events, enjoys the backing of virtually every major figure in the congressional socialist left and advocates some of its signature economic policies is now the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Michigan.

The socialist movement has not quite captured the entire Democratic Party. A few moderate Democrats may still exist, often resist it somewhat, and in many parts of the country remain more electorally successful. But that is no longer the relevant threshold.

The question is whether socialism has moved from the Democratic Party’s fringe into a position from which it can plausibly compete for the party’s future.

The 2026 election cycle is supplying an increasingly uncomfortable answer: It has.

And Americans who were once told that warnings about the Democratic Party’s leftward march were merely conservative hysteria no longer have to speculate about where the movement wants to go.

Its candidates are telling us. Its organizations are mobilizing. And increasingly, Democratic primary voters are putting them in office.

Do Liberal Women View Lindsay Clancy Murders Akin to Late Term Abortions?

August 29, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

As the Lindsay Clancy jury deliberates, hundreds of supporters dressed in pink have turned a horrific triple killing into a national debate over motherhood, mental illness—and criminal responsibility

Three children are dead. Their mother killed them. Those two facts are not disputed by either side in a Massachusetts courtroom.

Cora Clancy was five years old. Her brother Dawson was three. Their baby brother, Callan, was eight months old. On January 24, 2023, their mother, Lindsay Clancy, strangled all three children with exercise bands in the basement of the family’s Duxbury home after she sent her husband to pick up medication and takeout food. After murdering her three children, Clancy then attempted to kill herself, ultimately leaving herself paralyzed.

What the jury must decide is something considerably more complicated: Was Lindsay Clancy legally responsible for what she did?

After five weeks of testimony, the case went to a Plymouth Superior Court jury Thursday. The panel deliberated for several hours Thursday and approximately seven more Friday without reaching a verdict. Jurors requested to examine prescription medications and the knife involved in Clancy’s suicide attempt before being dismissed for the weekend. Deliberations resume Monday morning.

The jury has five potential outcomes before it: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, outright acquittal, or a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible because of mental illness. A first-degree murder conviction could result in life imprisonment without parole; a finding of no criminal responsibility could result in confinement in a psychiatric institution rather than prison.

The defense: This was psychosis, not murder in the legal sense

Nobody seriously disputes that Clancy was suffering psychologically before the killings.

She had sought psychiatric treatment, experienced suicidal thoughts, contacted crisis resources and underwent hospitalization. Her defense maintains that she developed postpartum psychosis following the birth of Callan and was subjected to an ineffective and excessive succession of psychiatric medications. Defense experts testified that she was psychotic when she killed her children and therefore incapable of appreciating the wrongfulness of what she was doing.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington consequently isn’t asking the jury to believe someone else killed Cora, Dawson and Callan. He acknowledges that Clancy did it. His contention is that mental disease had so profoundly destroyed her rational capacity that Massachusetts law cannot hold her criminally responsible.

That could be a legitimate legal defense, and it deserves to be considered on the evidence rather than dismissed because the crime is horrifying.

But prosecutors have presented a profoundly different interpretation.

Prosecutors say there was planning

The prosecution contends Clancy was depressed and psychologically troubled but not psychotic to the degree required to eliminate criminal responsibility.

Prosecutors emphasize the sequence preceding the killings. Clancy sent her husband Patrick awayt from the house to obtain medication for one of the children and collect dinner. While he was away, she had the opportunity she needed to kill the children. She strangled them individually with exercise bands before attempting suicide.

Prosecution experts also challenged Clancy’s subsequent account that she heard a voice directing her to kill the children. Forensic psychologist Kirk Heilbrun testified that he doubted she was suffering an acute psychotic episode and concluded that she understood the wrongfulness of her conduct. Other prosecution experts pointed to inconsistencies in her descriptions of what happened.

That conflict—not whether Clancy killed her children—is the case the jury is deciding.

Then came the women in pink

Outside the courthouse, however, something unusual happened.

Hundreds of Clancy supporters assembled wearing bright pink. Associated Press reporters estimated approximately 300 women and a few men participated in one demonstration. Shirts carried messages including “Believe,” “She Needed Help” and “Peace For Lindsay.” Some supporters traveled considerable distances to attend.

These supporters have said nothing about Cora, Dawson and Callan in this extraordinary public spectacle.

Whatever ultimately happened inside Lindsay Clancy’s mind, three human beings incapable of defending themselves were brutally murdered. The oldest had barely begun school. The youngest had lived only eight months.

A society can demand better psychiatric treatment for mothers while remembering their murdered children. Those propositions do not conflict.

When the accused becomes the symbol

The unsettling feature of the demonstrations is not concern about postpartum psychosis. That concern is legitimate and potentially lifesaving. The uncomfortable question is why the person who killed three children became the visual centerpiece of the movement.

There are countless women who have suffered postpartum depression and psychosis without killing anyone. Their experiences deserve attention. So do women who recognized frightening symptoms and sought emergency intervention, families who protected mothers and babies during psychiatric crises, and physicians attempting to recognize an uncommon but extremely dangerous condition.

Making Clancy herself the symbol creates an unavoidable moral ambiguity.

One recent commentary from the political left demonstrates how far that reframing can go. Left Voice, a self-described revolutionary socialist publication, published an essay with the remarkable headline “In the Trial of Lindsay Clancy, Capitalism Is the Guilty Party.” Its authors argued that the capitalist healthcare system—not Clancy—was the true guilty party.

That is no longer simply an argument that mental illness can eliminate legal responsibility. It relocates moral responsibility from the individual who performed a murderous act onto “the system.” It echoes Luigi Mangione shooting United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in the back, and the large cast of young liberal supporters of that “heroic” act of murder.

And that deserves examination.

Compassion cannot require forgetting the victims

Mental illness is real. Postpartum psychosis is real. A human being suffering a genuine psychotic break may be incapable of understanding reality in a way that fundamentally changes criminal responsibility. American law has recognized versions of that principle for generations.

The jury, not demonstrators, commentators or politicians, must determine whether the evidence proves that happened here. But compassion for a mentally ill defendant need not require the moral displacement of her victims.

There is something deeply uncomfortable about seeing hundreds of people assembling around the person who admittedly murdered three defenseless children while the children’s names risk becoming secondary characters in their own deaths.

Cora. Dawson. Callan. They were not abstractions in a debate about America’s healthcare system. They were children. Beloved by their decimated father and extended family members.

Is there a broader cultural question?

The spectacle also raises a difficult cultural question that extends beyond this particular defendant.

Modern political debate increasingly frames traditional obligations through the vocabulary of autonomy. Marriage can be discussed primarily in terms of personal fulfillment. Pregnancy becomes a question of bodily autonomy. Parenthood is frequently discussed in terms of its economic and psychological burdens. Abortion politics, particularly regarding later stages of pregnancy, places the competing moral claims of mother and unborn child at the center of an intense national disagreement.

The Clancy case is legally and morally different from abortion, and it would be inaccurate to claim that the women outside the courthouse necessarily connect the two.

Nevertheless, a conservative cultural critique can legitimately ask whether something happens to a society when the language of adult autonomy consistently becomes louder than the language of obligation toward dependent children.

That is a philosophical question, not evidence concerning Clancy’s guilt.

But this case makes the question difficult to avoid.

Now twelve jurors must decide

The jury of nine women and three men has already spent more than ten hours examining an enormous record developed during five weeks of testimony. Their early requests for prescription medications suggest, although we should not speculate too far, that they are carefully considering the medical evidence central to Clancy’s defense.

They return Monday. Their responsibility is narrower than America’s. They must determine Lindsay Clancy’s criminal responsibility under Massachusetts law.

The rest of us confront a different question. Can we acknowledge severe mental illness without romanticizing the person who commits an atrocity? Can we identify failures in psychiatric medicine without automatically transferring responsibility from individuals to institutions? Can we have compassion for a desperately ill mother while reserving our deepest compassion for three children whose lives were taken from them?

We should be capable of all three. Whatever verdict eventually comes from Plymouth Superior Court, one fact should never become obscured by pink shirts, political ideology, psychiatric terminology or television cameras.

Cora Clancy was five. Dawson was three. Callan was eight months old. They deserve to remain at the center of this story.

For What Possible Reason? The Political Movement That Opposes the People

August 24, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

There is a question Americans ought to ask whenever they encounter a political position that seems, at first glance, difficult to understand: What principle connects it to the other positions being advanced at the same time? Taken separately, arguments over illegal immigration, voter identification, gun ownership, government fraud, taxation, regulation and the growth of the federal bureaucracy can appear to be unrelated disputes.

Taken together, however, they illuminate one of the oldest disagreements in American political life: whether government exists primarily to protect the liberty and sovereignty of the individual citizen, or whether increasingly consequential decisions should be entrusted to an expanding administrative state.

What Possible Reason for an Open Border?

Consider the border. A sovereign country has both the authority and responsibility to decide who may enter, who may remain, and who may become a citizen. What obligation does the federal government have to the existing citizenry when immigration occurs illegally or at a scale that strains housing, schools, hospitals, public assistance and law enforcement? Immigration policy is not merely a discussion about the people seeking admission. It is mainly a question about the government’s responsibilities to the people who already constitute the nation. Those people ARE the government.

The Democrats oppose controlling our borders. For what possible reason? They oppose removing illegal aliens. For what possible reason?

What Possible Reason to Oppose Election Integrity?

The same fundamental question arises in election administration. Americans can reasonably disagree about precisely which safeguards provide the best combination of ballot access and election security. But the objective itself should be overwhelmingly shared: every eligible citizen should be able to vote, every lawful vote should be counted, and unlawful votes should not be counted. Requirements such as voter identification, accurate voter rolls, auditable election procedures and effective citizenship verification should therefore be evaluated according to whether they accomplish those objectives without improperly disenfranchising qualified voters. Election integrity should not belong to Republicans or Democrats. Confidence in legitimate elections is infrastructure for the republic itself. Yet, Democrats oppose election integrity at every step. For what possible reason?

What Possible Reason to Oppose Gun Ownership?

Then there is the Second Amendment. The Constitution does not merely mention firearms as an incidental matter of public policy; it expressly protects a right of the people to keep and bear arms. Americans should recognize the deeper philosophical question underlying the debate. A society in which peaceful citizens possess enforceable rights independent of government is fundamentally different from one in which government decides which privileges citizens may exercise. The distinction between a right and government-granted permission is central to the American constitutional experiment. The right to keep and bear arms exists before, during and after the existence of the federal government, and the government has no ability to “infringe” that right. For what possible reason would Democrats seek to restrict or eliminate that right?

What Possible Reason to Oppose Ending Government Fraud?

Perhaps nowhere should political agreement be easier to achieve than in the effort to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from government.

Whether the amount ultimately uncovered is billions or hundreds of billions of dollars, every dollar fraudulently obtained from government originated with taxpayers or public borrowing. A fraudulent Medicaid payment, fictitious government contractor, nonexistent beneficiary, corrupt grant recipient or improperly obtained federal benefit is not free money. Someone earned the money that government collected, and future taxpayers must ultimately service the debt incurred when government spends money it does not have.

That should make aggressive auditing one of the least partisan propositions imaginable. It is not. Democrats oppose ending government fraud at every step, and their abhorrent treatment of DOGE and Elon Musk are clear evidence of their disdain.

If investigators identify apparent fraud, investigate it. If an audit discovers payments going to ineligible recipients, stop them. If government databases contain glaring inconsistencies, reconcile them. If contractors are billing taxpayers for services never performed, prosecute the responsible parties where the evidence warrants it. If an agency cannot satisfactorily account for enormous amounts of public money, require it to do so.

After all, a government confident in its integrity should welcome serious auditing because an audit that disproves an allegation is valuable too.

The Answer

There is one common answer to each of these simple questions. Who could possibly oppose doing what is best for the American people, rather than what is best for unvetted foreigners, election fraudsters, Leftist politicians with totalitarian desires, and financial fraudsters?

Those who benefit, is the common answer.

Democrats benefit from a permanent underclass, who will vote against America’s interest to elect politicians who promise massive benefits and cash for little effort.

Democrats benefit from promoting and defending those involved in election fraud, because those illegal votes are nearly 100% cast for Democrats.

Democrats are always engaged in anti-Second Amendment activities, because they, like every wanna-be totalitarian government that preceded them have trouble taking away American rights if American’s are armed.

Democrats oppose investigating and prosecuting fraud because it is their operatives who engage in it, funneling billions to friendly recipients, and many millions of those ill-gotten dollars end up in Democrat campaigns coffers.

I challenge anyone to offer sound reasons why these conclusions are not true. There is no other possible reason for Democrats to take these harmful and foolish positions.

Supreme Court Hands Trump Major Victory on Mail-Ballot Safeguards Ahead of Midterms

August 24, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

High Court removes key legal obstacle to administration’s election-integrity order as battle over mail voting enters critical final weeks

The Trump administration scored a significant victory at the U.S. Supreme Court Monday as the justices cleared away a major legal obstacle that had prevented the administration from implementing new safeguards governing mail-in ballots ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The Court lifted an injunction affecting 23 states that had challenged President Donald Trump’s March executive order. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. The Justice Department and U.S. Postal Service indicated that they would move toward implementing the revised requirements.

The administration has made election integrity a major priority, Monday’s ruling removes an important roadblock at a critical moment.

What Trump actually ordered

Much of the political argument surrounding the order has been reduced to the phrase “restricting mail-in voting.” The actual provisions are more specific.

Trump’s March 31 executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Social Security Administration, to compile state-by-state lists of confirmed U.S. citizens of voting age. It also directed the Postal Service to develop standards for handling federal-election mail ballots.

Those postal safeguards include unique Intelligent Mail barcodes on ballot envelopes, standardized Official Election Mail markings and USPS-compatible envelope designs. The administration also called for state-specific lists identifying people participating in mail or absentee voting.

The Postal Service subsequently produced a 95-page final rule. Under the rule, states participating in the system would provide USPS with information concerning voters receiving mailed ballots and use unique barcodes on outbound and return ballot envelopes. USPS says the system is intended to provide an auditable trail and assist enforcement of federal election laws.

Those details matter.

Whatever one’s opinion of Trump, barcoding an election envelope so that it can be tracked is fundamentally different from examining the voter’s choices. USPS says postal employees would not inspect ballot contents, and the system would not collect party affiliation. The information maintained would concern the exterior of the envelope, including addresses and tracking information.

The argument for the safeguards

Supporters see a straightforward principle at work: voting should be easy for eligible citizens, but the mechanisms used to distribute and return ballots should also be auditable.

Mail voting introduces a logistical chain that does not exist when a voter personally appears at a polling place. A ballot can travel from an election office through the postal system to a residence and back again.

The administration argues that unique identifiers and voter-list verification create a stronger chain of accountability without examining how anyone voted.

Postmaster General David Steiner described the objective in practical terms: USPS wants to ensure that ballots states believe they sent correspond with what actually entered the postal system.

The administration also emphasizes something on which there is little legal controversy: noncitizens are prohibited by federal law from voting in federal elections. Trump’s order cites existing federal statutes imposing criminal penalties for unlawful registration and voting and directs federal agencies to improve citizenship-verification capabilities.

The political dispute is therefore not principally about whether noncitizens should vote in federal elections. They cannot legally do so. The argument concerns what verification measures government may employ, which level of government possesses the authority to impose them, and whether the federal executive branch has exceeded that authority.

The constitutional objection

Opponents have a substantial constitutional argument of their own.

The Constitution gives states primary responsibility for determining the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections, while granting Congress authority to alter those regulations. Democratic-led states and voting-rights organizations contend that this structure does not give a president independent power to redesign state election administration through executive action.

They also warn that introducing substantial procedural changes only weeks before voting begins could create confusion or prevent otherwise eligible voters from receiving ballots. Some states are preparing to distribute ballots very soon, making the timing particularly consequential.

Those arguments have not disappeared because of Monday’s decision. They may ultimately determine the fate of portions of Trump’s program.

An important distinction from another recent Supreme Court ruling

There is another reason for precision.

This case should not be confused with the Supreme Court’s June ruling involving Mississippi’s deadline for receiving mailed ballots.

In Watson v. Republican National Committee, the Court rejected a challenge to Mississippi’s law allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive and still be counted during a subsequent grace period. That decision therefore went against the Republican challengers seeking an Election Day receipt deadline.

Monday’s case concerns a different set of federal mail-ballot procedures stemming from Trump’s executive order.

The distinction is worth emphasizing because headlines describing the Court as simply “limiting mail-in voting” can blur two quite different legal controversies.

The larger question: confidence in elections

Beyond the lawsuits lies a problem neither political party can afford to dismiss: Americans need confidence that elections are both accessible and secure.

Critics of Trump’s approach point to studies finding documented mail-ballot fraud to be rare and argue that sweeping new restrictions address a problem that has not been shown to alter modern national election outcomes. Supporters respond that election safeguards should be preventative rather than imposed only after substantial fraud has occurred. The Supreme Court has sided with President Trump.

A system can have historically low documented fraud while still benefiting from technologies that make ballot movement more transparent and auditable—provided those safeguards do not improperly prevent qualified citizens from voting.

That is ultimately the standard against which the new rules should be judged.

A consequential victory—but not the last word

For President Trump, Monday’s Supreme Court action is unquestionably a significant legal victory. A lower-court barrier to one of his administration’s most ambitious election-integrity initiatives has been removed at precisely the moment preparations for the 2026 midterms are accelerating.

But it is not necessarily the final word from the judiciary. The unresolved question is whether the administration’s proposed safeguards survive the remaining constitutional challenges—and whether they can be implemented effectively in the short period remaining before Americans vote in November.

What Monday’s ruling guarantees is that the administration will have an opportunity to press forward with its case: that modern mail voting can remain available while becoming more verifiable, trackable and auditable.

For a country in which confidence in elections has itself become a deeply contested political issue, the American people are one significant step closer to regaining their confidence in a system that has been hijacked by widespread fraud.

The Growing Cloud Over Sen Ruben Gallego: Money, Staffers, Swalwell and Questions Arizona Deserves Answered

August 21, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

A federal investigation into campaign spending, newly revealed family travel, reported relationships with congressional aides and Gallego’s extraordinary closeness to Eric Swalwell are creating a very different picture of Arizona’s junior senator than the carefully managed public image.

Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego increasingly has a Washington problem that cannot simply be dismissed as partisan gossip.

The latest disclosure came this week, when campaign records reviewed by the New York Post showed that Gallego’s political operation spent more than $2,000 flying his sister-in-law and the family’s Brazilian au pair to Washington ahead of his January 2025 Senate swearing-in. The campaign reportedly spent approximately $1,227 on airfare for his sister-in-law and another $777.91 flying the au pair from Mexico City. Campaign funds were also reportedly used to purchase roughly $661 worth of customized stationery announcing the birth of Gallego’s daughter to political donors.

These revelations arrive while the Department of Justice is already investigating whether Gallego improperly used political money for family travel and personal expenses dating back years. CBS News, Axios and ABC News have independently confirmed the existence of that federal investigation.

Disney, Miami Beach, St. Barts and the Super Bowl

The spending now under scrutiny is extensive.

Reports based on Federal Election Commission records show Gallego-associated political committees paying for travel involving Disneyland, Disney World, Miami, Chicago, Puerto Rico, Nantucket and the Caribbean. His JUNTOS PAC reportedly spent approximately $1,500 on meals and lodging connected to a Disneyland trip and about $2,900 at Disney World. Gallego’s family accompanied him on some of these trips.

Then there was Miami Beach.

Gallego and his wife stayed at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel during a trip coinciding with her birthday, with political funds reportedly covering more than $9,000 in hotel expenses.

There was also a trip to St. Barts associated with the birthday of Gallego’s wife’s employer. Again, Gallego’s representatives have described the travel as part of a broader political and fundraising itinerary.

And then there is the Super Bowl.

Gallego and former Rep. Eric Swalwell created a joint fundraising vehicle known as the Swallego Victory Fund. FEC records reportedly show that committee spending more than $37,000 on Super Bowl tickets and meals surrounding the 2023 game in Arizona. Gallego says the Super Bowl event was a fundraiser.

Federal campaign records also raised questions about a 2021 Puerto Rico trip surrounding Gallego’s wedding. Swalwell’s campaign reported approximately $1,522 in expenditures at the Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve, the resort where Gallego was married, while Gallego’s campaign separately reported a $2,000 payment to another Puerto Rico resort.

Federal Election Commission rules are fairly straightforward in principle: campaign funds cannot be converted to personal use. The FEC applies what it calls the “irrespective test.” If an expense would have existed regardless of the person’s candidacy or duties as an officeholder, campaign funds generally cannot pay it.

More Than $18,000 in Childcare

Gallego’s committees have reportedly paid or reimbursed more than $18,000 in childcare expenses since 2019. Among those payments was approximately $400 paid to his mother-in-law for babysitting during a fundraiser.

The Department of Justice Is Investigating

The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Ruben Gallego for suspected campaign-finance violations.

CBS News reported that the investigation was triggered by a whistleblower complaint originating in Southern California and is examining Gallego’s use of campaign money since approximately 2019 for family travel and related expenses. Axios and ABC News separately confirmed the federal investigation.

Gallego denies wrongdoing and says the Trump administration is politically targeting him because he has criticized the president.

Federal investigators now have an obligation to follow the money wherever it leads and explain publicly, when legally possible, what they found.

The Congressional Staffer Relationships

Then there is Gallego’s personal conduct on Capitol Hill.

Multiple sources told the New York Post that Gallego had sexual relationships with at least two female congressional aides while serving in the House. Other outlets, including ABC News reporting on subsequent congressional reform discussions and The Independent, reported the allegations.

The ethical concern being debated in Washington is instead the enormous power disparity between an elected member of Congress and junior congressional employees.

When reporters asked Gallego about the reports concerning the two staffers, he did not issue a detailed denial. He said: “I’m not going to engage in gossip.”

Arizona voters can decide whether it is an adequate answer from a senator whose political future increasingly attracts scandalous national attention.

The Divorce That Was Kept Sealed

Gallego’s personal history became an issue years earlier because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the end of his first marriage.

In December 2016, while his then-wife Kate Gallego was pregnant and nearing the birth of their son, Ruben Gallego filed for divorce. Contemporary reporting described the couple as expecting their first child, and later-unsealed records confirmed that the petition was filed shortly before the birth.

Gallego also sought to have the divorce record sealed.Years later, after litigation by the Washington Free Beacon, Arizona courts ordered most of those records released.

Critics have understandably focused on the human element: a husband initiating divorce proceedings while his pregnant wife was approaching childbirth.

And Then There Is Eric Swalwell

Perhaps no relationship has produced more uncomfortable questions for Gallego than his close friendship with former California congressman Eric Swalwell.

These were not two Democrats who occasionally sat together in committee hearings.

Gallego described Swalwell as one of his closest friends in Congress. They were roommates on Capitol Hill. Gallego chaired Swalwell’s short-lived presidential campaign. The two created the Swallego Victory Fund. They traveled together. Their families socialized together. Gallego subsequently supported Swalwell’s political ambitions.

When serious sexual misconduct allegations against Swalwell emerged this spring, Gallego said he was shocked and quickly distanced himself, claiming that despite their extremely close relationship and many travels together, he had no idea about Swalwell’s constant womanizing.

Swalwell denied the allegations, but eventually withdrew from California’s gubernatorial race and resigned from Congress. Federal agents have since seized electronic devices and searched his Washington residence as part of an investigation into multiple sexual-misconduct allegations. Swalwell continues to deny wrongdoing.

How could someone so extraordinarily close to Swalwell have known nothing?

Skepticism is reasonable when two politicians were roommates, campaign partners, travel companions, joint fundraisers and publicly described close friends for years.

Gallego was sufficiently concerned about the political fallout that he hired former Biden deputy press secretary Andrew Bates for crisis communications, including specifically to deal with matters involving Swalwell and Gallego’s own ethics problems.

The “Cool Kids” Culture on Capitol Hill

Recent reporting has also linked Gallego, Swalwell and Rep. Jimmy Gomez socially as members of what has been described as a Capitol Hill “Cool Kids Clique.” Gomez is now himself facing an Ethics Committee investigation after acknowledging an extramarital relationship with a younger congressional staffer; his accuser disputes Gomez’s characterization that the relationship was consensual. Gomez has denied assault.

This accumulation of misconduct allegations involving interconnected lawmakers has generated a broader institutional question that Congress can no longer avoid: whether an entrenched culture allowed powerful elected officials to treat junior staffers as part of their social and dating pool.

The Money Questions Are the Most Concrete

Sexual gossip attracts headlines. The campaign-finance records may ultimately matter more.

Federal filings do not depend upon anonymous rumors. They document money leaving political committees.

The Justice Department now has the authority to determine whether Gallego’s travel, childcare, family airfare, political events and other spending complied with federal law.

The FEC’s governing principle is remarkably simple: Would the expense have existed irrespective of the campaign or the officeholder’s official duties?

If yes, campaign money generally cannot pay it. If no—if the expense genuinely resulted from campaign or official activity—it may be lawful.

That means investigators can examine each trip individually. Why was Gallego in Miami? What political events occurred? Who attended? How much money was raised? How much of the hotel expense was political and how much personal? Why was the family traveling? Why did the campaign pay airfare for relatives or childcare providers? Were reimbursements made for personal portions? Were contemporaneous records kept?

Arizona Deserves Answers

Arizona sent Ruben Gallego to Washington to represent its citizens—not to create a political financial ecosystem so complicated that voters need federal investigators to determine where political expenses end and personal life begins.

The Justice Department should finish its investigation. The Federal Election Commission should examine any expenditures requiring review. Congress should close the loopholes that permit lawmakers to engage sexually with junior employees outside their own offices.

And Ruben Gallego should answer the questions directly rather than dismissing them as gossip, smears or partisan persecution.

Because eventually every politician facing a growing stack of receipts reaches the same point: The explanations have to be better than the questions.

No Debate, No AG Interview: What Is AZ Gov Katie Hobbs Hiding?

August 20, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Arizona’s governor won’t debate Rep. Andy Biggs. She won’t sit for interviews requested by investigators examining pay-to-play schemes. Meanwhile, her campaign is spending heavily to falsely define her opponent without facing him.

Arizona voters are being asked to give Katie Hobbs another four years as governor. Why would they do such a foolish thing?

It is remarkable how many questions the governor appears unwilling to answer, even in the traditional forums where politicians are expected to answer them.

Hobbs has announced that she will not debate Republican gubernatorial nominee Andy Biggs before November’s election. She similarly refused to debate Republican Kari Lake during her successful 2022 campaign and has not participated in a televised political debate since 2018.

Hobbs is no stranger to controversy over institutional conflicts. During the 2022 gubernatorial election against Kari Lake, Hobbs simultaneously served as Arizona’s Secretary of State—the state’s chief elections officer—and Democratic nominee for governor. Hobbs rejected calls to recuse herself from election duties, and ultimately certified the very questionable election declaring herself the winner.

Hobbs refuses to submit submitted to a formal interview requested months ago by investigators working for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes—a fellow Democrat and close friend of Hobbs—who is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of a pay-to-play scheme involving one of Hobbs’ major political benefactors.

Rep. Andy Biggs will attend debate vs. sitting Arizona governor Katie Hobbs whether she shows up or not.

Hobbs says she is cooperating with the Attorney General’s Office, but Mayes reports that Hobbs is refusing to sit with criminal investigators for an interview.

After two years for stonewalling investigators, Arizona voters are entitled to wonder why obtaining straightforward answers has proved so difficult.

The $400,000 Question

At the center of the controversy is Sunshine Residential Homes, a company providing group-home services for children in Arizona’s foster-care system.

The basic chronology is not a partisan invention. Sunshine and its leadership made more than $400,000 in political contributions benefiting Hobbs, her inaugural operation and the Arizona Democratic Party during 2022 and 2023. Sunshine previously had little history of political giving.

Then came the state money. After Hobbs became governor, her Department of Child Safety approved a substantial special increase in the rate paid to Sunshine for caring for foster children, worth millions of dollars.

Other providers seeking increases had been turned down. And yes, Sunshine got one.

The resulting increase ultimately took its rate from approximately $140 to $234 per bed, according to Capitol Media Services—a rise of more than 60 percent.

That combination—large political contributions followed by favorable specific government treatment worth many millions of dollars—was sufficiently troubling that it eventually triggered multiple investigations.

It presents exactly the kind of circumstances that investigators exist to examine.

Three Investigations—and Two Years Later, Still No Answer

Attorney General Mayes opened her investigation in June 2024. That means Arizona has now entered the third year of an investigation involving its sitting governor.

And Mayes isn’t the only prosecutor looking at the matter. Republican Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has conducted a separate investigation, and the Arizona House retained outside attorney Justin Smith to conduct an independent inquiry for lawmakers. That is important because criticism of Mayes’ handling of the investigation has inevitably been complicated by politics. Mayes and Hobbs are both Democrats, and are closely aligned.

The extraordinary duration of the investigation, and Mayes’ inability or unwillingness to say whether investigators will actually get the governor into an interview room, naturally invites scrutiny.

In April, Mayes publicly confirmed that investigators are seeking to interview Hobbs. “Our investigators are prepared to do that interview,” Mayes said at the time, calling it appropriate to ensure that the investigation was thorough.

Months passed. No interview.

Although earlier this month, Mayes insisted that “no one can blow off the Attorney General’s office,” Hobbs has done exactly that. Despite numerous invitations and demands by prosecutors for interviews, Hobbs has refused each and every opportunity to tell her side of the public corruption story.

Last week, Hobbs told KTAR that her office remains in discussions with Mayes’ office about the request but offered no explanation for why she has not simply sat down and answered investigators’ questions. That is difficult, if not impossible, to understand.

If the governor had nothing to do with Sunshine’s favorable treatment, as she maintains, why has arranging an interview with investigators required months of “negotiation”? The answer becomes more obvious with each passing week.

In reality, a criminal investigation involving a sitting governor cannot simply drift through an election indefinitely. Either the evidence supports her story in the criminal investigation, or it doesn’t. And after more than two years, Arizona deserves answers.

Even worse, Hobbs Vetoed a Contract-Transparency Bill

There is another awkward chapter in the Gov Hobbs criminal investigation saga.

Republican state Sen. T.J. Shope proposed legislation requiring companies seeking state contracts and grants to disclose certain political donations, gifts and financial connections involving the governor and her political network.

Hobbs vetoed that legislation in June.

Politically, the optics are extraordinary. A governor under criminal investigation over allegations involving political contributions and a lucrative state arrangement vetoes legislation specifically designed to expose relationships between political contributions and state contracts.

Arizona taxpayers should not have to work this hard to discover who is giving politicians money while simultaneously seeking taxpayer-funded business.

Hobbs Won’t Debate Biggs Either

Against that backdrop comes Hobbs’ other refusal. She won’t debate her opponent, Rep. Andy Biggs.

Hobs likewise refused to debate Kari Lake in 2022. She also refused to debate her Democratic primary opponent that year. Her last televised political debate was reportedly in October 2018.

Biggs, meanwhile, has committed to appearing at the October Clean Elections debate whether Hobbs shows up or not.

Arizona voters deserve better than dueling television commercials.

Hobbs’ “23 Percent Tax” Attack Is a Lie

Hobbs has instead gone aggressively negative against Biggs, particularly with advertisements claiming he wants to impose a 23 percent sales tax that would make groceries, gasoline, rent and other necessities 23 percent “more expensive.”

The truth is that Biggs has discussed replacing federal income and payroll taxes with a national consumption tax.

Its central premise is to abolish federal individual income taxes, payroll taxes and several other federal taxes and replace that revenue with a simple, across the board consumption tax.

Of course, that is merely restructuring the manner in which federal taxes are levied and collected. It does not add any tax.

A gubernatorial debate would be an excellent place for Hobbs to challenge Biggs on that, and for Biggs to react to a few of the allegations against Hobbs. She has chosen not to debate him—likely, for that very reason.

Arizona Really Does Have an Affordability Problem

There is one criticism of Hobbs that doesn’t require exaggeration. Arizona has become painfully expensive.

A 2026 Common Sense Institute analysis ranked Arizona 45th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., for affordability, down sharply from 2019. Arizona PBS reported the study as placing the state seventh-least-affordable nationally. Housing is the largest problem: CSI estimates that only about 42 percent of Arizona households could afford the monthly mortgage on an average-priced home under conventional affordability standards, compared with 66 percent in 2019.

Much of Arizona’s housing-price explosion began during the pandemic and the Biden inflation mistakes. Hobbs touted and even embraced those democratic party policies, and now seeks to escape her responsibility for the affordability crisis in Arizona.

Again, that sounds like an excellent debate question.

Arizona Deserves Answers Before November

Arizona voters shouldn’t have to choose their governor first, and receive answers about the governor’s criminal investigations afterward.

They deserve to know why a company and its principals suddenly became major political benefactors and subsequently received unusually favorable state treatment, resulting in millions of dollars in benefits.

They deserve to know whether anyone in the Governor’s Office influenced that decision They deserve to know what Mayes’ investigators found after spending more than two years examining it They deserve to know why Hobbs still has not sat for the interview investigators requested months ago.

And they deserve to see their governor stand across from the man seeking her job and answer questions without handlers, campaign advertisements, or carefully controlled events separating the candidates.

Hobbs says she has nothing to hide. Andy Biggs says he is prepared to debate. Kris Mayes says nobody can blow off the Attorney General.

Excellent.

Then there should be a remarkably simple solution to all three controversies: Answer the investigators. Debate the opponent. And let Arizona voters hear the answers before they cast their ballots.

The Fang Fang Files: Democrats Covered Up Eric Swalwell Affair with Chinese Communist Intelligence Officer

August 18, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Newly declassified FBI records reveal an intimate relationship, a years-long counterintelligence investigation, suspected foreign campaign contributions, and disturbing questions about Chinese efforts to cultivate rising American politicians.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D) and “Best Friend” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D) in the hot seat after traveling to Doha on several Qatar-sponsored trips, and being caught in extramarital affairs.

For nearly six years, Americans have heard two dramatically different versions of the Eric Swalwell–Christine Fang story.

One version portrayed it largely as partisan gossip: a rising California Democrat encountered a Chinese woman active in Bay Area politics.

Newly declassified FBI records reveal that abbreviated version as a lie.

According to records released yesterday, Swalwell acknowledged to FBI investigators that he had engaged in what he described as “physical relations” with Christine Fang—better known as Fang Fang—on a “handful of occasions.” The disclosure provides an important fact that was absent from the original public reporting when the controversy erupted in 2020. Fang Fang would show up at Swalwell’s rooms “wearing no panties,” and the security team was under instruction to allow her in.

Chinese honeypot Fang Fang solicited illegal campaign donations for Eric Swalwell and placed Chinese spies in his office, FBI found

More importantly, the documents illuminate the concerning breadth of the FBI’s concerns about Fang herself and about Chinese Intelligence efforts to cultivate relationships with American politicians.

The FBI investigation ran from 2014 through 2017 under the code name “Freshman Fifteen.” Investigators examined suspected foreign-source campaign contributions, congressional internships and Fang’s relationships with American political figures.

Swalwell was never criminally charged by Biden’s DOJ and a House Ethics Committee investigation ended without disciplinary action against him.

This Was About Much More Than Sex

Federal investigators believed Fang was associated with China’s intelligence apparatus and were sufficiently interested in her activities that the FBI at one point attempted to develop her as an intelligence source.

The FBI discovered the Swalwell relationship during that effort. Investigators eventually concluded that Fang could not be trusted as a source.

The documents also provide additional information concerning Fang’s political activities. Investigators examined campaign contributions and internships in Swalwell’s congressional office, finding that she was planting female Chinese Intelligence operatives on Swalwell’s staff in exchange for political contributions.

Of course, foreign nationals are prohibited from contributing to American federal campaigns for an obvious reason: Americans, not foreign governments or foreign nationals, are supposed to choose and influence America’s political leadership.

And the broader question remains unavoidable:

How did a woman under FBI counterintelligence scrutiny for suspected connections to America’s principal geopolitical adversary obtain such extraordinary access to a rising member of Congress?

China’s Influence Operations Are Not Hypothetical

The larger story is Communist China’s patient approach to cultivating political influence inside the United States. Intelligence operations rarely begin with a stranger walking into a congressman’s office and requesting classified documents.

They begin with relationships. Access. Introductions. Fundraisers. Friendships. Political assistance. Personal vulnerabilities.

And sometimes, sex.

An intelligence service does not necessarily need its target to become a conscious spy. Simply establishing access to an ambitious politician can produce information about personalities, relationships, political networks, schedules, vulnerabilities and future opportunities.

That is why the original Fang story was significant even before these new documents appeared.

The original 2020 Axios investigation reported that U.S. intelligence officials believed Fang participated in a Chinese political-influence operation targeting promising American politicians. She assisted Swalwell’s fundraising efforts and helped place interns in his congressional office.

Today’s declassified records provide considerably more context about just how close the relationship became.

Then Swalwell Joined the Intelligence Committee

The chronology makes the episode especially uncomfortable. Swalwell entered Congress in 2013 and subsequently served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence beginning in 2015.

Members of that committee oversee extraordinarily sensitive national-security matters involving the CIA, NSA, covert activities, foreign intelligence operations and threats posed by adversarial governments—including China.

Counterintelligence is supposed to identify vulnerabilities before classified information is compromised.

Imagine reversing the political parties and changing only one country.

Suppose a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee admitted having repeated sexual encounters with a woman whom the FBI suspected of connections to Russian intelligence. Would Washington dismiss questions about that relationship as partisan politics?

Would journalists consider the matter unworthy of aggressive investigation? Would congressional leaders insist there was nothing interesting to see because GOP prosecutors ultimately filed no espionage charges?

Americans can answer those questions for themselves.

The “Freshman Fifteen” Investigation

The newly disclosed existence and scope of the FBI investigation deserve particular attention.

According to the newly reported documents, “Freshman Fifteen” operated from approximately 2014 through 2017 and examined Fang’s activities surrounding American politicians, including suspected campaign-finance activity.

Investigators reportedly believed Fang herself may have violated federal laws governing foreign political contributions. Reporting on the records says investigators believed she understood the prohibition against foreign nationals contributing to American campaigns and examined whether American intermediaries had been used instead.

Fang departed the United States in 2015. The FBI dropped its investigation. But Americans should understand that “not charged” is not synonymous with “nothing happened.”

The newly released records demonstrate that the FBI considered the situation sufficiently serious to conduct a multiyear counterintelligence investigation.

Why Didn’t Americans Know?

That brings us to perhaps the most important question raised by the entire release. Why did Americans have to wait until 2026 to learn so much of this?

When the Fang controversy became public in 2020, Americans did not have the investigative record now available. It was essentially covered up by the Deep State FBI. They received fragments of the story through anonymous intelligence sources, partisan arguments, and carefully worded political responses.

The FBI knew substantially more. Investigators had interviewed Swalwell. They knew the nature of his personal relationship with Fang. They had investigated Fang’s political activities. They had examined suspected campaign-finance issues. They had attempted to assess her intelligence connections.

Yet the public remained largely in the dark about the underlying investigative material. Only conservative news outlets like Fox News provided the public coverage of the outrageous behavior of Rep. Swalwell, and later, his “Best Friend,” Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona.

National-security investigations legitimately require secrecy while they are underway. Sources and methods must be protected. Active counterintelligence operations cannot simply be published on the Internet. But an investigation that concluded years ago raises a different question.

At what point does protecting legitimate national-security information become protecting Washington from embarrassment? That question deserves an answer.

What About Ruben Gallego?

The release has also renewed attention on Sen. Ruben Gallego (D) because of his extraordinarily close political and personal relationship with Swalwell. Gallego and Swalwell were exceptionally close, by their own admission.

Gallego served as national chairman of Swalwell’s short-lived 2020 presidential campaign. The two traveled together often, on foreign junkets paid for by foreign countries. They were congressional roommates, and maintained a close friendship. Swalwell has reportedly described Gallego as his “best friend in the world.”

That makes questions about what Gallego knew politically interesting. Recent revelations about Galleo’s extra-marital affairs are likewise deeply disturbing, particularly when discussing allegations involving national security.

When prominent politicians campaign together, travel together, live together, have affairs at the same time, and publicly defend one another, reporters are perfectly entitled to ask what each knew about controversies surrounding the other.

Patriotism Should Not Be Partisan

There is a principle here that should transcend political affiliation. China conducts sophisticated intelligence, cyber, economic and political-influence operations against the United States. American intelligence officials under Republican and Democratic administrations alike have repeatedly warned about their scale.

Protecting America from foreign influence therefore cannot depend upon which letter follows a politician’s name.

If a Republican develops an intimate relationship with someone suspected of connections to Russian intelligence, investigate it. If a Democrat develops an intimate relationship with someone suspected of connections to Chinese intelligence, investigate it.

If foreign campaign contributions appear to be entering American elections through intermediaries, investigate them.

If foreign operatives are cultivating young American politicians whom they believe may someday become governors, senators, presidential candidates or members of sensitive congressional committees, expose those operations.

National loyalty should come before party loyalty.

The Fang Fang Story Is No Longer a Punchline

For years, “Fang Fang” became a punchline in partisan political arguments.

The newly released records demonstrate why it never should have been. Foreign intelligence services cultivating American politicians is serious business.

Sexual relationships can create counterintelligence vulnerabilities. Foreign campaign money is prohibited for a reason. Access to congressional offices matters. Access to congressional personnel matters. And access to politicians who later oversee America’s intelligence agencies matters enormously.

The FBI investigated Christine Fang for suspected connections to Chinese intelligence personnel and political-influence activities. Investigators examined suspected foreign-source campaign contributions and congressional internships. And Swalwell acknowledged an intimate relationship with Fang on a “handful of occasions” during the period when his political career was rapidly ascending toward one of the most sensitive committees in Congress.

Americans deserved to know those facts. They deserved to know them years ago. And that leaves Washington with questions that cannot be dismissed simply by pointing out that no prosecution resulted:

What exactly happened? Who knew about it? What did the FBI conclude about China’s operation? And why did the American people have to wait more than a decade to see so much of the underlying record?

The American press and Democratic leadership did everything they could to hide the story, and lied about the facts for over 10 years while they boosted Swalwell’s political career. That is why the American people are only learning about it today.

Trump UAP Disclosure: Five Tranches Later, UFO Disclosure Is No Longer Fringe

August 17, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

The most important revelation may not be a single photograph or video. It is that the United States government has finally acknowledged, in public and at scale, that it has spent decades collecting and studying phenomena it often could not explain.

UAP seen and photographed by civilians on ground, and chased by RAF jet over Scottish Highlands in August 1990.

Something extraordinary has happened in Washington over the past several months, and it risks being missed because Americans have been conditioned to expect “disclosure” to arrive as a single spectacular photograph of an alien spacecraft or a president standing behind a podium announcing that mankind is not alone.

That is not what has happened. In fact, from what President Trump has said in the past, it appears that he and his tops officials have not been read officially into the government’s legacy UAP programs yet, but are exerting force within the government to obtain all of the records.

Instead, President Donald Trump directed the federal government to begin identifying, reviewing, declassifying, and releasing records involving UFOs and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Five separate tranches have now been published through the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters—PURSUE—beginning May 8 and continuing through the fifth release on August 7. The Department says the effort involves dozens of agencies, tens of millions of records, material extending across many decades, and additional releases expected on a rolling basis. See documents>

That statement alone represents remarkable progress.

LARGE “DISC” UAP / ACTIVITY : UAP NAVIGATES THROUGH CLOUDS / DETECTION : AIR FORCE / 23 NOV 2020

For generations, Americans who suspected that the government had taken UFO reports seriously were routinely portrayed as conspiracy theorists. Yet the government’s own disclosure portal now openly acknowledges that agencies throughout the national-security establishment possess decades of UAP-related records, that many remain unresolved, and that officials are conducting a government-wide effort to locate and release them. The Department explicitly states that the cases published through PURSUE remain unresolved because officials cannot make definitive determinations about what was observed.

That does not mean the Pentagon has announced that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth.

Incident: “Cold Orbs” UAP in Gulf of Oman Date: 8 September 2021 Platform: U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider Evidence: EO/IR sensor imagery and multiple released video sequences Public Release: 7 August 2026 Status: Unresolved / no definitive public identification On 8 September 2021, the crew of a U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider operating over the Gulf of Oman recorded a series of unusual objects using the aircraft’s electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor systems. The incident has become known as the “Cold Orbs” UAP encounter because the objects appeared as small spherical targets with unusual infrared characteristics.

It means something more modest, but historically important: the phenomenon was real enough to investigate, important enough to classify, persistent enough to generate records across generations, and unresolved enough that the government is now asking outside scientists and researchers to help evaluate the evidence.

That is a very different world from the one Americans inhabited only a decade ago.

The Fifth Tranche May Be the Most Interesting Yet

Veteran UFO historian Richard Dolan, who has studied the government’s handling of this subject for more than three decades, spent hours reviewing all 41 files in the fifth release. His assessment was unusually positive. Dolan called Tranche Five the most interesting of the releases so far, while simultaneously criticizing the government for continuing to withhold important dates, locations, telemetry, and identifying details necessary for rigorous independent analysis.

That balance is important.

The fifth tranche is not the smoking gun many disclosure advocates have spent years anticipating. It contains incomplete records, artist reconstructions, ambiguous imagery, and cases lacking enough data to reach definitive conclusions.

But it also contains material that deserves serious attention.

Perhaps the most striking involves a September 2021 encounter over the Gulf of Oman involving a U.S. Special Operations Forces AC-130J gunship. Newly released infrared footage and an accompanying intelligence report describe approximately 25 UAP observations during a live-fire exercise. The report characterized some of the objects as “cold orbs,” estimated their speeds at approximately 250 to 1,300 miles per hour, and reported aggressive maneuvering and apparent reactions to the aircraft’s cannon fire.

Scientific American—hardly a publication known for sensational UFO reporting—highlighted the Gulf of Oman material because it originated from a sophisticated U.S. military platform operating infrared sensors during an actual military exercise.

Dolan also drew attention to expanded footage associated with the USS Omaha encounter, an incident already familiar to serious UAP researchers. Earlier leaked material showed an oval or spherical object apparently descending toward the Pacific Ocean. Tranche Five provides additional video surrounding that event, giving analysts more context than the brief clips previously available.

Declassified Pentagon UAP files, Gulf of Oman 2021: an AC-130 gunship crew reports ~25 “cold orbs” at 250–1300 mph — on six phone videos. DEEP FILE 001.

The release also contains CENTCOM footage, FBI witness interviews describing large triangular objects, and historical military documents dating back to the early years of the modern UFO era. Dolan’s conclusion was not that Tranche Five proves extraterrestrial visitation, but that anyone dismissing the release as containing “nothing” has failed to examine what is actually there.

That seems about right.

The Historical Documents May Ultimately Matter More Than the Videos

Modern audiences naturally gravitate toward photographs and video. Yet some of the most important evidence in the five tranches may be the paper trail.

The releases include military memoranda, intelligence reports, astronaut material, FBI records, pilot accounts, investigative files, and photographs extending back into the 1940s. Taken together, they establish beyond serious dispute that elements of the U.S. government have been collecting and evaluating UFO reports for roughly eighty years.

That history matters because the official public posture toward UFOs was often far more dismissive than the private bureaucratic record now being exposed.

Director Dan Farah, whose documentary The Age of Disclosure featured dozens of former and current senior government, military, and intelligence officials, argues that the historical files demonstrate just how seriously the government treated the problem internally. Farah singled out an Apollo 17 photograph in the first tranche showing a triangular arrangement of unidentified objects above the lunar horizon as particularly intriguing, though the image itself remains open to competing interpretations.

More important than any single photograph is the cumulative pattern.

Military organizations were writing memoranda about unusual aerial objects in the 1940s.

Pilots were reporting extraordinary encounters.

Intelligence agencies were collecting witness accounts.

Nuclear and military installations repeatedly appeared in UAP files.

Modern warships and aircraft continued recording unexplained objects decades later.

And today, rather than dismissing these records as meaningless, the government is publicly cataloging and releasing them.

That is progress.

What Has Changed Most Is Washington

The transformation of the political environment may ultimately be more significant than any individual release.

UAP disclosure has become genuinely bipartisan.

On the Republican side, Representatives Anna Paulina Luna, Eric Burlison, and Tim Burchett have been among the most visible advocates for transparency. Democratic Representatives Jared Moskowitz and André Carson have also pushed disclosure efforts. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer, Mike Rounds, and Kirsten Gillibrand have backed legislation and oversight intended to force additional government records into the open.

Years before Trump’s PURSUE initiative, Schumer and Rounds introduced legislation modeled partly on the JFK Records Act that sought a formal government collection of UAP records and contemplated government control over recovered technology of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence if such materials existed in private hands.

That is not the language of a government that considers the entire subject frivolous.

Congressional interest has only intensified.

A major Disclosure Forum held on Capitol Hill this summer brought lawmakers together with former intelligence officials, scientists, military personnel, whistleblowers, and researchers. Participants discussed not merely sightings but whistleblower protections, classification, alleged crash-retrieval programs, national security, and how government should respond if more consequential information eventually becomes public.

Congresswoman Luna made one particularly revealing comment about the degree of White House engagement, praising senior presidential adviser Stephen Miller as “absolutely incredible on this topic” and saying disclosure advocates were providing the administration with names of individuals who might receive immunity in order to come forward.

Whether those witnesses ultimately substantiate extraordinary claims remains to be seen.

But it is increasingly difficult to argue that the disclosure effort consists only of UFO enthusiasts shouting from the political sidelines.

It now reaches deeply into Congress and the executive branch.

Trump Appears Serious About the Process

President Trump’s February directive instructed the Secretary of War and other departments and agencies to identify and release government material involving UFOs, UAP, extraterrestrial life, and related subjects. The Department of War subsequently stated that it is coordinating with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on an unprecedented government-wide review of tens of millions of records. Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly described the effort as part of an administration commitment to unprecedented transparency.

That does not tell us what Trump personally believes UFOs are.

It tells us something arguably more important: he has ordered the government to look.

Farah says senior cabinet officials have been pressing agencies and military branches for evidence and records, while encountering resistance from portions of the national-security bureaucracy. Those assertions come from Farah and his sources rather than from independently released government documentation, but they are consistent with the administration’s acknowledgement that the review involves a massive, decentralized archive spread across many agencies.

Ross Coulthart has similarly argued that Trump appears serious about exposing secrets held within the national-security establishment, while continuing to press officials and whistleblowers for greater disclosure.

The significance is difficult to overstate.

For decades, disclosure advocates complained that presidents expressed curiosity about UFOs but eventually surrendered to the bureaucracy.

This administration has created an actual public release mechanism.

Five tranches later, it is still operating.

There Is Still Plenty to Criticize

Disclosure advocates should resist the temptation to treat every government release as proof of their preferred theory.

Many files remain incomplete.

Some photographs are ambiguous.

Some objects will almost certainly prove to be balloons, drones, sensor artifacts, satellites, aircraft, or natural phenomena.

The government itself emphasizes that “unresolved” means precisely that—unresolved—not extraterrestrial.

Dolan’s criticism is especially important: independent analysts often cannot properly evaluate cases because crucial metadata remains redacted or absent.

If the government truly wants private-sector scientists to analyze the evidence, it must eventually provide better-quality original sensor data, telemetry, complete incident timelines, radar records, chain-of-custody information, and sufficient contextual material to permit real scientific evaluation.

A fuzzy video without metadata may generate curiosity.

It does not settle anything.

Yet Look How Far We Have Come

That criticism should not obscure what has changed.

Within a remarkably short period of time, the United States has moved from institutional ridicule of the UFO subject to:

a presidential directive ordering disclosure;

a permanent government website releasing UAP records;

five successive public tranches;

Cabinet-level involvement;

cooperation from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence;

bipartisan congressional pressure;

formal legislation concerning UAP records;

government acknowledgement of decades of investigations;

and military videos and reports being openly released for public examination.

The stigma is collapsing.

Whatever the final explanation for UAP turns out to be, the question itself is no longer politically unserious.

Scientists are examining the material.

Members of Congress are demanding records.

Military personnel are speaking publicly.

Government agencies are publishing evidence.

And the President of the United States has explicitly told his administration to pursue the truth.

That may ultimately be the most important disclosure of all.

We still do not know what some of these objects are.

We do know, finally and officially, that the government has been asking the same question for a very long time.

And for perhaps the first time in modern history, it is beginning to let the American people look over its shoulder while it searches for the answer.

If Packing the Supreme Court Is a Good Idea, Why Shouldn’t President Trump Do It?

August 14, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

For years, many progressive Democrats have argued that the Supreme Court should be expanded by four seats. They call it “court reform.” Others call it “court balancing.” Critics have called it by a more accurate name: court packing.

The argument is simple. Democrats dislike the current ideological makeup of the Court, so they propose changing the rules until they achieve a different outcome. It is a remarkable admission that the problem is not with the Constitution, nor even with the qualifications of the justices. The problem, they argue, is simply that too many justices disagree with them.

But there is a simple thought experiment that exposes the weakness of the entire proposal.

If expanding the Supreme Court by four justices is fair when Democrats control Washington, why wouldn’t it be equally fair for President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress to do exactly the same thing? Now!

Imagine President Trump announcing tomorrow that he intends to appoint four additional constitutional originalists to the Supreme Court. Would the same politicians who have spent years demanding court expansion applaud his commitment to institutional reform?

Of course not.

They would denounce it as authoritarian. They would call it an assault on democracy. Editorial boards would declare the judiciary under attack. Cable news networks would run wall-to-wall coverage warning of constitutional crisis.

The very people who have insisted that adding four seats is perfectly legitimate would suddenly discover that it is dangerous, reckless, and fundamentally unfair.

That reaction reveals the truth.

The debate has never really been about the number of justices.

It has always been about who gets to appoint them.

The Supreme Court has consisted of nine justices since 1869. That number is not fixed by the Constitution, but it has endured through Republican and Democratic administrations alike because both parties gradually recognized that constantly changing the size of the Court would destroy public confidence in its independence.

Once one party expands the Court for political advantage, the other party has every incentive to respond in kind.

Nine becomes thirteen.

Thirteen becomes seventeen.

Seventeen becomes twenty-one.

Eventually the Supreme Court ceases to function as an independent judicial branch and instead becomes another political battlefield whose membership changes whenever power changes hands. Supreme Court Justices become political activists, appointed by the party what holds the White House.

The institution itself becomes the casualty.

Even President Franklin Roosevelt—perhaps the most powerful Democratic president of the twentieth century—failed in his attempt to enlarge the Supreme Court after the justices struck down portions of the New Deal. Roosevelt argued that additional justices were necessary for efficiency. Few believed him. Americans understood that the proposal was fundamentally about changing judicial outcomes rather than improving judicial administration.

Congress rejected the idea, including many members of Roosevelt’s own party.

History has generally vindicated that decision.

The genius of the American constitutional system lies in its separation of powers. The judiciary was intentionally insulated from day-to-day politics precisely so that constitutional rights would not depend upon whichever party happened to win the most recent election.

Court packing undermines that safeguard.

Ironically, many of the same politicians advocating Supreme Court expansion have spent years warning that American institutions must be protected from political interference. Yet they propose changing one of the nation’s oldest institutions because they dislike its current decisions.

That is not judicial reform.

It is political retaliation.

There is another question that proponents rarely answer. If four additional justices are appropriate today, why stop there?

Why not six? Why not ten?

What constitutional principle determines the “correct” number of justices?

There is none.

The only apparent principle is obtaining enough votes to guarantee preferred outcomes.

That is a dangerous precedent regardless of which party holds power.

Those who support court packing today should remember that political fortunes change. Every tool one administration creates eventually becomes available to its successor. That is exactly why the GOP refuses to do away with the filibuster; a tool that works against them currently.

If expanding the Court is acceptable when progressives hold the White House, it must also be acceptable when conservatives do.

If President Trump were to announce tomorrow that he intended to appoint four new constitutional originalists to a newly expanded Supreme Court, would today’s advocates of court packing cheer the decision?

Their answer would almost certainly be no. And that answer tells us everything we need to know.

The issue has never been the number nine. The issue has always been power.

The American people should be wary of any proposal that changes the rules of our constitutional system simply because one political faction dislikes the current outcome. The Constitution was designed to restrain temporary political passions, not surrender to them. Preserving the independence and legitimacy of the Supreme Court ultimately requires something increasingly rare in modern politics: the willingness to respect institutions even when they do not always produce the decisions we prefer.

The Politics of Envy: Why “Tax the Rich” Is an Economic Dead End

August 12, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” — Winston Churchill

One of the most popular slogans on today’s political left is also one of its least examined: “Tax the rich.”

The slogan gives the false impression that “the rich” are not taxed, or not sufficiently taxed.

It is a rallying cry heard at political rallies, on college campuses, and increasingly from elected officials who openly identify as democratic socialists. “Eat the rich.” “Make billionaires pay.” “No one should have that much money.”

These slogans promote class warfare, but they fail to answer a far more important question: How much should the rich pay?

Ask advocates whether millionaires should pay 50 percent, 70 percent, or 90 percent of their income. Ask whether billionaires should surrender half their wealth. Ask what percentage would finally satisfy the demand for “fairness.” There is rarely a clear answer. The line simply moves whenever the previous one is crossed.

The goal appears less about reaching a tax rate than sustaining a political grievance.

The Wealthy Already Pay Most Federal Income Taxes

One fact often missing from the debate is that America’s federal income tax system is already among the most progressive (stair-stepped) in the developed world.

According to IRS data, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay roughly 38 to 40 percent of all federal individual income taxes, despite earning about one-fifth of all reported income. The top half of all taxpayers pay well over 95 percent of federal individual income taxes, while the bottom half pays only a small fraction.

That does not mean lower-income Americans contribute nothing. They pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes through rent, and countless other taxes embedded throughout the economy. But when politicians speak of “the rich paying their fair share,” they are almost always referring to federal income taxes, and on that measure the burden is already concentrated heavily on upper-income earners.

Billionaires Are Not Vaults of Cash

Another common misconception is that billionaires possess enormous piles of cash sitting idle in bank vaults.

They do not.

Most billionaire wealth consists of ownership in companies, factories, warehouses, office buildings, patents, farmland, and investments. Those assets finance businesses that employ millions of Americans.

When someone says, “Take half of every billionaire’s wealth,” they are usually talking about forcing the liquidation or transfer of ownership in productive businesses—not seizing stacks of currency.

The practical effect would almost certainly include reduced investment, declining stock values, lower business expansion, and diminished job creation. Economists argue that confiscating large portions of productive capital would come with significant economic consequences.

Even Massive Wealth Taxes Have Limits

Suppose, for the sake of argument, Congress confiscated half the wealth of every billionaire in America.

The number sounds enormous because billionaire wealth is measured in trillions of dollars.

Yet federal spending is also measured in trillions.

Even several trillion dollars would finance only a relatively limited period of current federal spending before being exhausted. It would not permanently fund Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, national defense, interest on the debt, veterans’ benefits, and every other federal program. It would be a one-time transfer against recurring annual obligations measured in the trillions. After the money was spent, the government would still face the same structural deficits unless spending itself changed.

History shows that governments never solve chronic spending problems with one-time revenue windfalls.

Wealth Is Created Before It Is Taxed

The discussion often overlooks an even more fundamental point.

Before someone can pay millions—or billions—in taxes, that wealth first has to be created.

Successful entrepreneurs build companies that manufacture products, develop software, transport freight, discover medicines, finance new ventures, construct buildings, or provide services that millions of people voluntarily purchase.

Those businesses generate payrolls for employees, contracts for suppliers, retirement savings for investors, charitable donations, and tax revenue at nearly every level of government.

The overwhelming majority of American workers are employed not by government agencies but by private businesses Without profitable enterprises, there are no payroll taxes because there are no payrolls.

Without successful businesses, there are no corporate taxes because there are no profits Without investment, there is less innovation, slower productivity growth, and fewer opportunities for upward mobility.

Taxing Success Does Not Eliminate Poverty

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the “tax the rich” philosophy is its assumption that reducing wealth at the top automatically improves conditions at the bottom. History offers no support for that proposition.

Societies become prosperous not because everyone is equally poor, but because people are free to innovate, invest, compete, and create new wealth. The greatest advances in living standards have generally occurred where economic freedom allowed businesses to expand and productivity to increase.

That does not mean every wealthy individual acquired his fortune virtuously, nor does it mean every tax policy is perfect. Tax reform is a legitimate subject of debate. Closing loopholes, simplifying the tax code, and eliminating favoritism deserve bipartisan support But those discussions are very different from the politics of envy.

Punishing Success Is Not an Economic Strategy

The language surrounding taxation has increasingly shifted from financing government to punishing success.

When politicians promise to “make the rich pay,” the applause often comes not because voters have calculated the expected revenue, but because they enjoy seeing someone else penalized. That is not tax policy. It is emotional politics.

A nation cannot tax itself into prosperity. Government does not create wealth; it redistributes wealth that has first been created by someone else. The more successful that creation becomes, the larger the tax base available to fund legitimate public functions.

The challenge is to encourage more wealth creation—not less.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher understood this problem better than most. She famously observed, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” She also noted that socialism often appears less interested in making the poor wealthier than in making the wealthy poorer. In fact, history repeatedly demonstrates that redistributive political movements spend all their time discussing how wealth should be divided, and none on how wealth is actually created.

Whether every word commonly attributed to Churchill originated with him is debated by historians. The principle, however, remains worthy of serious consideration.

A prosperous society should seek to expand opportunity, reward innovation, and encourage productive investment—not elevate resentment into an economic philosophy that destroys the wellbeing of everyone.

Trump Administration Releases Fifth Tranche of UFO Files as Transparency Initiative Continues

August 7, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Newly declassified records focus on mysterious triangular craft, eyewitness testimony, and additional FBI investigative files as public scrutiny intensifies.

Artistic interpretation of a reported incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in June or July of 2011.

The Trump administration has released the fifth tranche of declassified UFO and UAP records through the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), continuing what has become one of the most ambitious government transparency efforts ever undertaken on the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena. link>

Although previous releases included military videos, NASA imagery, historical intelligence files, and incidents involving nuclear facilities, the newest release appears to concentrate on one of the most persistent mysteries in UFO research: large triangular craft.

For decades, reports of massive silent triangles have occupied a unique place in UFO literature. Whether they represent advanced military technology, misidentified conventional aircraft, atmospheric phenomena, or something more exotic remains unknown.

The newest release is likely to ensure that debate continues.

The “Triangle Edition”

Early reviewers have already begun referring to the latest collection as the “Triangle Edition.” Community discussions note that multiple newly released FBI interview summaries describe witnesses reporting nearly identical triangular objects observed years apart in different locations.

Among the newly released accounts:

A witness described a large triangular craft with bright white lights positioned at each corner.
Another reported a triangle displaying red corner lights while moving silently across the sky.
One observer stated the object appeared capable of accelerating almost instantaneously while surrounded by what appeared to be waves or distortions in the surrounding air.

None of these reports establishes what the witnesses actually observed. They do, however, reveal remarkable similarities between reports collected independently over many years.

Artistic interpretation of a reported incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) near Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2023.

Former Pentagon Employee Describes Extraordinary Sighting

Perhaps the most widely discussed document released today is an FBI interview with a former Pentagon employee who described witnessing an unusual object over Colorado in 2023.

According to the interview summary, the witness and his wife observed what he described as a translucent triangular craft flying silently only a few hundred feet overhead.

The witness reportedly stated the object lacked conventional aircraft features such as wings, engine nacelles, or visible propulsion. It appeared surrounded by a faint haze and emitted a silver-blue glow before rapidly changing orientation and disappearing within seconds.

Because the witness lived near an airport and was familiar with conventional aircraft, investigators noted that he believed the object behaved unlike any airplane or drone he had previously observed.

Continuing a Historic Release Program

Today’s publication follows four earlier releases that collectively opened thousands of pages of government material to public examination.

Those previous tranches included:

historical FBI memoranda,
military cockpit videos,
NASA photographs,
astronaut observations,
Department of Energy reports,
audio recordings,
intelligence summaries,
Project Sign documents,
and investigations involving unidentified objects observed near sensitive military and nuclear installations.

One of the most discussed cases from the fourth tranche involved an unidentified object reported near the Pantex Plant in Texas, America’s principal nuclear-weapons assembly facility. Another included a 1949 conference examining the mysterious “green fireballs” reported over Los Alamos.

What People Are Saying

Reaction to the fifth release has been mixed.

Many UFO researchers have welcomed the continued flow of primary-source documents, arguing that allowing independent researchers to review original government files represents a significant improvement over decades of official secrecy. Others remain cautious.

Artistic interpretation of a reported incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in the western United States in 2026.

Some observers have expressed disappointment that several releases continue to include digital reconstructions or artist’s renderings alongside authentic documents, arguing that recreated imagery should be clearly distinguished from original evidence to avoid confusion.

Many commentators also note that while the collection contains intriguing witness testimony, it still falls short of providing definitive proof regarding the origin of the reported objects.

Transparency Remains the Biggest Story

Perhaps the most significant development is not any individual sighting. It is the release process itself.

For decades, Americans were told that UFO files either did not exist, contained nothing of interest, or could not be made public.

Under PURSUE, the federal government has now released hundreds of documents, photographs, videos, and investigative records for anyone to examine. That does not mean every mystery points to extraterrestrial intelligence.

An artistic interpretation of a reported incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in the western United States in 2026.

Many cases may eventually prove to involve drones, classified aircraft, atmospheric phenomena, sensor artifacts, or simple misidentification. Others remain unresolved.

The Department of War has repeatedly emphasized that these records are being released to encourage public review and independent analysis—not to endorse any particular explanation.

What Readers Should Examine First

For readers visiting the PURSUE archive, several items from the fifth tranche appear especially noteworthy:

The FBI interview describing the 2023 translucent triangular object witnessed by a former Pentagon employee.
The multiple reports describing large triangular craft with illuminated corners and silent flight characteristics.
The accompanying FBI interview summaries documenting how investigators recorded and evaluated witness testimony.

Whether these reports ultimately point to advanced human technology, natural phenomena, or something not yet understood, one conclusion continues to grow stronger with each release: The American public now has access to a body of official records that, only months ago, remained locked behind classification barriers. The debate over what they mean is only beginning.

When Bill Maher Starts Worrying About Socialism, Democrats Should Pay Attention

August 6, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

A lifelong liberal says his party is being “colonized” by democratic socialists. The question is no longer whether the Democratic Party has changed—but how much, and how far will it go.

For years, Republicans have warned that the Democratic Party has steadily moved left, far left, embracing policies that greatly expand government, increase redistribution, and elevate the role of the state in every aspect of American life. Despite overwhelming evidence, Democrats have generally dismissed those criticisms as partisan rhetoric.

Now, however, one of the country’s best-known liberal commentators is raising many of the same concerns.

Bill Maher is hardly a conservative. Not even a moderate Democrat. He is firmly rooted in the far left. For decades, he has identified with liberal causes, criticized Republican presidents, and supported Democratic candidates. Yet in recent interviews and on his HBO program, Maher has expressed growing concern that the Democratic Party is being, in his words, “colonized” by democratic socialists and increasingly radical activists. He has even remarked that his vote is now “in play” because of the party’s direction.

That observation is significant precisely because it comes from someone who has long been a thought leader of the American left.

Two Parties—or One Coalition?

The Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America remain separate organizations, technically.

The Democratic Party is a broad coalition ranging from moderates to progressives. The DSA is an independent organization that advocates substantially expanding the role of government in healthcare, housing, education, labor policy, and parts of the economy, while also supporting greater worker ownership and cooperative enterprises. In other words, it advocates for state ownership of the means of production and distribution, the touchstone of Marxist and Leninist communism.

Yet in recent years, the distinction between Democrats and Democratic Socialists has become less clear in the public mind.

Several elected officials identify as democratic socialists, or have received DSA support. Policy proposals once associated primarily with the party’s progressive wing—such as Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, wealth taxes, and broad student-debt forgiveness—have increasingly become part of mainstream Democratic debate.

Maher’s concern is not that every Democrat has become a democratic socialist. It is that ideas once considered outside the party’s mainstream are exerting greater influence over its direction.

The Shift in Priorities

Many mainstream Democrats continue to support a regulated market economy, private enterprise, and incremental reform. Democratic socialists generally advocate more sweeping structural changes to the economy, including expanded public ownership or worker control in most sectors.

There is nevertheless meaningful overlap on several policy questions. Both generally support broader access to healthcare, although they differ on how far government should go. Both support stronger labor protections, though democratic socialists typically seek more extensive workplace restructuring. Both support addressing climate change, though they often differ over the balance between government planning and market incentives. Both favor making higher education more affordable, though the DSA generally advocates tuition-free public higher education as a permanent policy.

The debate is therefore less about whether there is any overlap and more about how far the Democratic Party should move toward the DSA’s vision.

Maher’s Warning

Maher has argued that many Democratic politicians are not themselves radicals, but that they have become reluctant to challenge the party’s most ideological activists. He has criticized slogans and positions such as calls to abolish police, prisons, or borders, and he has warned that embracing such ideas risks alienating many Americans.

His criticism is noteworthy because it comes from someone who still describes himself as a liberal.

Bill Maher says, “I’m not voting for anyone who thinks the wrong side won the Cold War or cheers for the Intifada like it’s the World Cup.”

Rather than urging the party to move right, Maher argues that it has drifted away from the pragmatic liberalism associated with previous Democratic leaders and toward a more ideological politics.

Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, it reflects an active debate within the Democratic coalition itself.

The Larger Question

Every major political party evolves. The Republican Party today differs in important respects from the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.

Likewise, the Democratic Party has changed significantly over the past several decades. The question confronting voters is not simply whether the party has moved left. It is how they view that evolution.

Supporters argue that expanded government programs, stronger regulation, and greater redistribution are necessary responses to modern economic challenges. Critics contend that those policies increase government dependence, reduce economic flexibility, and gradually shift decision-making from individuals and markets to political institutions.

That debate is likely to define American politics for years to come, unless action is taken immediately to eradicate this leftward march toward communism from our nation.

Why Maher’s Voice Matters

Political labels are often dismissed when they come from ideological opponents. They are harder to ignore when they come from longtime allies.

Bill Maher’s recent comments do not settle the debate over the Democratic Party’s future. They do, however, demonstrate that concerns about the party’s ideological direction are no longer coming only from conservatives.

When one of America’s most recognizable liberal voices publicly warns that his own party is being “influenced”colonized” by democratic socialists and says his vote is “in play,” it suggests that the conversation has moved well beyond partisan talking points.

Whether Democrats view that as a warning or an opportunity will shape not only their party’s future—but perhaps the nation’s as well.

Democratic Socialists and Democrats: Is there any Difference?

August 5, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Although the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic Party remain separate organizations, many of their policy priorities increasingly intersect.

The rise of openly self-described democratic socialists and even communists within American Democratic Party politics has revived a question that would have seemed unlikely a generation ago: How different is the Democratic Party from the Democratic Socialists of America?

For decades, American politics treated socialism as a fringe ideology. Both Republicans and Democrats generally embraced a market-based economy, private property, and entrepreneurial capitalism, while debating how extensively government should regulate markets and provide social programs.

Today, however, the political landscape has changed. The Democratic Party has moved steadily left, to the point that they have now intersected with the Democratic Socialist Party, due to their common views and goals of transferring wealth and power to just one party, and doing away with Constitutional safeguards.

Bill Maher expresses growing concern that the Democratic Party is being, in his words, “colonized” by democratic socialists and increasingly radical activists. He has even remarked that his vote is now “in play” because of the party’s direction.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has grown substantially since the mid-2010s, and several prominent elected officials identify as democratic socialists or have received support from the organization. At the same time, many policy ideas once associated primarily with socialism have become part of mainstream debate within the Democratic Party.

Different Organizations, Similar Philosophies

The Democratic Party is one of America’s two major political parties and includes a broad coalition of moderates, liberals, progressives, and some elected officials who identify as democratic socialists. Its platform lightly supports a mixed-market economy, private enterprise, while emphasizing its extreme brand of civil rights protections for non-citizens, environmental regulation, and a social safety net that includes Medicare for all.

The Democratic Socialists of America is a separate political organization that advocates for a swifter transformation of the economy. It supports expanding worker ownership and cooperative enterprises, increasing public ownership in most sectors, strengthening labor unions, and significantly expanding the role of government in healthcare, housing, education, and other public services, and most areas of American life.

Healthcare

One area of significant overlap is healthcare. Many Democrats support strengthening and expanding the Affordable Care Act, while others within the party advocate Medicare for All. The DSA explicitly endorses a universal single-payer healthcare system.

Although Democrats disagree internally about the best approach, both organizations generally support broader access to healthcare than currently exists. The difference often lies only in the degree of government involvement rather than the objective of expanding coverage to complete government domination.

Higher Education

Education provides another example. Many Democrats support reducing college costs, expanding Pell Grants, and forgiving most student debt. The DSA generally advocates tuition-free public colleges and universities as a permanent policy.

Labor and the Economy

Both organizations strongly support labor unions. The Democratic Party generally advocates strengthening collective bargaining rights and improving workplace protections.

The DSA goes further by promoting worker cooperatives, greater employee ownership, and broader democratization of economic decision-making, and the seizure of the means of production and distribution; essentially, pure communism.

Climate Policy

Climate policy has also become an area of considerable overlap. Both organizations support substantial government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage clean-energy investment.

The DSA generally favors larger public investment, expanded government planning, and more extensive public ownership in portions of the energy sector. Many Democrats support aggressive environmental regulation while continuing to rely primarily on heavily regulating private markets and private investment.

Of course, none of these proposed policies is designed to actually affect the climate. They merely use climate philosophy to facilitate the transfer of high levels of wealth and power to the Left.

Taxation

Both organizations generally support higher taxes on many high-income households than current law provides. The DSA advocates broader wealth taxes and more extensive redistribution through public spending.

Many Democrats also support increasing taxes on higher-income Americans, though the party encompasses a wider range of views regarding how far redistribution should extend. Of course, as in all examples of socialism and communism in the past, “the rich” turn out to be nearly everyone, and eventually, all citizens become impoverished through socialistic policies, except for the elite leaders.

Public Ownership

Perhaps the clearest distinction involves ownership itself.

The Democratic Party still accepts the concept ofprivate ownership of businesses operating within a highly regulated market economy.

The DSA argues that more sectors of the economy must be seized by government, and be publicly owned, cooperatively owned, or democratically controlled by “workers” meaning them.

The Broader Question

The broader debate extends beyond labels. It concerns the proper relationship between government, markets, and individual liberty. Democrats earn a D minus in these areas, where the DSA earns a prison sentence.

Supporters of expanded government programs argue they reduce inequality, improve economic security, and provide opportunities that markets alone may not deliver. Critics argue that larger government increases public debt, reduces economic flexibility, discourages investment, and places more decisions under political rather than market control, and will inevitably reduce America to Venezuela or Cuba status.

These competing visions have shaped American politics for generations and continue to influence debates over healthcare, education, taxation, housing, labor policy, and environmental regulation.

Looking Ahead

The conversation about democratic socialism and the Democratic Party is unlikely to end soon. As younger progressive leaders gain prominence and the Democratic Party continues to devolve, voters will continue to evaluate where the party sits along the spectrum between market-oriented liberalism and democratic socialism.

Flashback: When Chuck Schumer Insisted Voter ID Was Common Sense

August 5, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Senate Minority Leader Once Argued It Was “Easy” to Obtain Identification, and important to election security. What Changed?

For years, Democrats have argued that requiring voters to present identification at the polls amounts to “voter suppression.” It amounts to “Jim Crow 2.0,” to quote Chuck Schumer. They contend that voter ID laws disproportionately burden minorities, women, the elderly, and low-income Americans, making it more difficult for eligible citizens to cast a ballot.

Yet there is one prominent Democrat whose own words tell a remarkably different story.

A recently resurfaced video shows Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer standing on the floor of the United States Senate making the very arguments Republicans have repeated for years. “This is an anti-fraud amendment,” he asserts. Watch the 31 second video.

A resurfaced clip from 1996 shows Chuck Schumer strongly supporting voter ID requirements to protect election integrity. “This is an anti-fraud amendment.”

Schumer argued that obtaining identification is not difficult. Americans need identification to cash checks, board airplanes, drive automobiles, receive government services, open bank accounts, and perform countless everyday tasks. Requiring identification to participate in the most important civic act in our constitutional republic, he argued, was simply common sense.

Schumer said, “Everywhere people go, they’re asked for a social security card. In fact, one way to prove you’re a bonafide person who can have a job is to ask for a driver’s license and a social security card. This is an anti-fraud amendment. All the over, where we go, people say, ‘Well, why can’t you stop illegal immigrants or others from coming here?’ And the number one answer we give our constituents is when they come here they can get jobs, get benefits against the law, because of fraud.” Chuck Schumer, 1996.

Today, however, the Democratic Party and Chick Schumer specifically have abandoned that position. Why?

A Dramatic Reversal

The contrast is impossible to ignore. Modern Democratic leadership has opposed many Republican-backed election integrity measures, including legislation requiring documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration and stricter voter identification requirements.

Republicans argue these proposals protect the integrity of elections, in nearly the exact terms as Chuck Schumer, by ensuring that only eligible citizens vote, and that every lawful vote carries equal weight.

Democrats respond that ID laws prevent eligible citizens from voting because of documentation requirements or administrative burdens.

The contrast between Senator Schumer’s earlier remarks and his current position raises an obvious question: If voter identification was once considered simple and common sense, why is it now portrayed by Democrats as an attack on democracy?

Confidence Matters

Every election produces winners and losers. What should never be a casualty is public confidence in the process itself.

Poll after poll has shown that large majorities of Americans—including many independents and substantial numbers of Democrats—support requiring voters to present valid identification before casting a ballot.

Supporters argue that the requirement is modest, widely accepted throughout daily life, and helps reassure the public that elections are conducted fairly. Recent revelations reflect that millions of illegal aliens have been registered to vote in many states.

Confidence in elections depends not only on preventing fraud, but on convincing the public that the rules are fair, transparent, and consistently applied. They are not.

Immigration and Election Integrity

Immigration has become deeply intertwined with the election debate. The Biden administration’s border policies produced record levels of illegal immigration, estimated at nearly 30 million illegals in the country, prompting Republicans to argue that restoring border security is inseparable from protecting election integrity. Democrats, on the other hand, have gone to extraordinary lengths to guarantee that the borders are wide open, and that any attempts by the current administration to remove illegal aliens musst face the highest level of resistance.

Of course, federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections. Nevertheless, Republicans have argued that maintaining accurate voter rolls, verifying citizenship during registration, and requiring voter identification at the polls are prudent safeguards in light of the nation’s immigration challenges.

Democrats respond that existing laws already prohibit non-citizen voting and that there is insufficient evidence of widespread non-citizen voting affecting federal election outcomes. They argue the greater danger is disenfranchising eligible voters through overly burdensome registration requirements–a nonexistent problem.

Consistency Builds Trust

One lesson emerges from Chuck Schumer’s earlier speech.

At one time, prominent Democrats openly acknowledged that proving one’s identity before voting was neither extraordinary nor oppressive. It was simply one of many routine responsibilities of citizenship.

Today, many of those same Democrats oppose all of the same measures they once defended. What is the difference? They now consider those illegal aliens that they invited into the country, their voters.

But consistency matters. When political leaders reverse longstanding positions on fundamental issues such as election integrity, they should be prepared to explain why.

The American people deserve elections that are both secure and accessible. Those objectives need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, maintaining confidence in democratic institutions requires both. Republican policies provide both. Democrat policies rob the nation of election integrity.

As the video of Senator Schumer demonstrates, there was once broad agreement that verifying a voter’s identity was a reasonable safeguard rather than a partisan controversy. He was right. Now, he is just lying.