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Election Day 2026: A Democratic Wave, a Republican Surprise, or Another Polling Failure?

November 3, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

As Americans decide control of Congress, Republicans face the traditional midterm headwinds of an unpopular war and high prices. But polling uncertainties, Democratic divisions and unusual controversies in Alaska, Michigan and Texas could complicate the expected results.

Federalist Press | November 3, 2026

WASHINGTON — Americans are voting today in one of the most consequential midterm elections in recent memory, with control of the House of Representatives and Senate at stake, an escalating conflict with Iran influencing gasoline prices, and political controversies disrupting several of the nation’s most closely watched races.

Most national political analysts expect Democrats to make substantial gains, following the historical pattern in which the president’s party loses congressional seats during midterm elections. Republicans, however, are pointing to previous polling failures, the administration’s economic record and divisions within the Democratic Party as reasons the results may differ from the prevailing forecasts.

The central question is whether today’s elections will resemble 2006, when Republicans suffered a substantial defeat during President George W. Bush’s second term, or whether Donald Trump’s political coalition will again prove more resilient than pre-election surveys suggest.

Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, writing in Fox News this morning, argues that Republicans have good reason to fear a repeat of 2006, but also identifies important differences between the two elections.

In 2006, Republicans lost 30 House seats and six Senate seats. Today, the GOP begins with a narrow House majority and a 53–47 advantage in the Senate. Democrats need a net gain of only three House seats to control that chamber, while the Senate presents a considerably more difficult challenge requiring four additional seats.

Are the Pollsters Underestimating Republicans Again?

Perhaps the most intriguing Election Day question concerns the reliability of political polling.

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten has repeatedly examined the tendency of Republican candidates to outperform surveys in several Midwestern states. In September, he noted that Republicans exceeded their September 2024 polling numbers by nine points in Iowa, six points in Ohio and five points in Michigan. Similar polling discrepancies appeared in major statewide races during the 2018 midterms.

Those historical errors matter because Democrats entered the final weeks of this election with polling leads in several contests that were smaller than the previous Republican overperformance.

Hewitt highlighted another concern in today’s Fox News column. According to figures reported by The Washington Post, pollsters attempting to measure the Kansas Senate race made approximately 85,000 telephone calls and sent 50,000 text messages. Their response rate among Democrats was 32 percent, compared with just 12 percent among Republicans.

That discrepancy raises legitimate concerns about nonresponse bias, particularly if Republican voters who decline to participate differ politically from those who answer surveys. Professional pollsters attempt to compensate through weighting and other statistical techniques, but those adjustments are not always successful.

There are also reasons for caution. Polling errors vary between elections, states and individual races. A Republican advantage in one election does not guarantee the same advantage in another. Enten himself warned in late October that an apparent four-point Republican improvement between registered-voter and likely-voter Senate polling was unusually large by historical standards.

The polls are therefore an imperfect guide rather than evidence of a predetermined result. The actual composition of today’s electorate will determine whether Republicans again exceed expectations.

Michigan: A Democratic Senate Candidate Loses His Primary Opponent to the GOP

Michigan has produced one of the election’s most extraordinary political developments.

Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former county health director who supports universal health care, is facing former Republican congressman Mike Rogers for the seat being vacated by Senator Gary Peters.

But on Sunday, Representative Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed, publicly endorsed Rogers. She subsequently explained that her decision reflected serious concerns about El-Sayed and her belief that his campaign had failed to include the voters who supported her.

The endorsement stunned Michigan Democrats. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and state party officials condemned Stevens’s decision, while President Trump welcomed it.

The controversy follows a bitter primary involving disagreements over Israel, progressive economic policies and the direction of the Democratic Party. El-Sayed has emphasized health care and affordability while seeking to expand Democratic turnout among younger voters and working-class communities. Rogers has emphasized his national-security experience and criticized his opponent’s positions.

Stevens’s defection illustrates a broader tension within Democratic politics between progressive candidates and more centrist party figures. Whether that division materially affects the election remains unknown, but it has become a major issue in one of the nation’s most important Senate contests.

Alaska: The Mystery of the Two Dan Sullivans

In Alaska, the controversy surrounding the appearance of two Senate candidates named Dan Sullivan has become a national story.

Republican incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan is facing Democratic challenger Mary Peltola, along with another candidate, Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg.

Republicans alleged for months that the second Sullivan had been recruited to confuse voters and draw support away from the incumbent. The allegations acquired substantial documentary support when The New York Times published an October 28 investigation describing an organized candidate-recruitment effort involving people associated with Peltola’s campaign and national Democratic campaign personnel.

According to the newspaper, operatives searched for Alaskans named Dan Sullivan and worked to encourage additional candidates to enter the contest. Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have denied involvement, and the extent of Peltola’s personal knowledge remains disputed.

The controversy has prompted state and federal investigations and legal proceedings concerning the election. Recruiting candidates to divide an opponent’s support is not automatically illegal, and no court has established that the operation constituted criminal election fraud.

Nevertheless, the disclosures have placed unusual scrutiny on Alaska’s election process, particularly because the state uses ranked-choice voting. The final outcome may require additional counting rounds, and the legal disputes could extend beyond Election Day.

Texas: James Talarico’s Political Balancing Act

Texas presents another test of the Democratic Party’s ability to compete in a traditionally Republican state.

Democrat James Talarico, a former state legislator whose campaign emphasizes Christian faith, education and economic fairness, is challenging Republican Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general.

Talarico has attempted to appeal to voters beyond the Democratic base by emphasizing shared values and economic concerns. Republicans have countered by drawing attention to his progressive policy positions and questioning whether his general-election presentation accurately reflects his political record.

The campaign has become a contest over both ideology and credibility. Talarico argues that his religious beliefs and economic message can attract voters who have grown disillusioned with partisan politics. Paxton emphasizes conservative priorities and seeks to connect his opponent to positions unpopular among Republican-leaning Texans.

Claims that Talarico has reversed specific campaign pledges should be evaluated against his original statements and subsequent explanations. Political moderation, a change in emphasis and an actual policy reversal are not necessarily the same thing.

Texas has attracted substantial national attention because its Senate election could influence the balance of power in Washington and reveal whether Democrats can expand their appeal in a state Republicans have dominated for decades.

The Economy: Strong Growth Meets High Living Costs

President Trump’s economic record presents both an opportunity and a challenge for Republican candidates.

Hewitt points to third-quarter economic growth of 3.4 percent, more than twice the initially reported growth rate during the comparable quarter of 2006. Republicans also emphasize the administration’s tax policies, border enforcement and efforts to expand domestic economic activity.

But voters encounter the economy primarily through household expenses, and those figures present a less favorable picture.

According to the comparisons in Hewitt’s column, inflation stands at approximately 3.7 percent, gasoline averages around $4.20 per gallon nationally, and 30-year mortgage rates are approximately 7.25 percent.

The ongoing conflict with Iran has added pressure to energy markets, complicating the administration’s economic message. Supporters of the president argue that confronting Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional activities is necessary for long-term security. Critics question the military strategy, its costs and the resulting pressure on American households.

The 2025 American strikes severely damaged Iranian nuclear facilities, but subsequent developments have demonstrated that the conflict and questions about Iran’s nuclear capabilities remain unresolved.

Voters must weigh the administration’s economic and national-security objectives against the immediate financial pressures they experience.

That tension may be especially important in suburban House districts, where high housing costs, fuel expenses and household budgets can influence voters who are otherwise divided over national politics.

The House: Dozens of Races, a Narrow Republican Majority

All 435 House seats are on today’s ballot, and Democrats need only a small net gain to take control.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has moved numerous districts toward Democrats during the closing weeks of the campaign. NPR identified approximately 70 districts where both parties have invested at least six figures in late advertising, illustrating the breadth of the competitive map.

Among the contests attracting particular attention are Arizona’s 1st District, where Republican Jay Feely faces Democrat Amish Shah, and Arizona’s 6th District, where Republican incumbent Juan Ciscomani faces Democrat JoAnna Mendoza.

Other important races include Republican Mike Lawler’s contest against Democrat Cait Conley in New York’s 17th District, Republican Bryan Steil’s race in Wisconsin’s 1st District, and competitive districts in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina.

Redistricting has further complicated the picture. Republican-controlled states have altered boundaries in ways intended to improve GOP opportunities, while Democratic-controlled states have pursued changes benefiting their candidates.

The House contest is therefore not simply a national referendum on Trump. It is also a collection of local elections shaped by candidate reputations, district boundaries, spending and the issues most important to individual communities.

The Senate: Candidate Differences Could Matter as Much as Party Labels

Beyond Michigan, Alaska and Texas, several other Senate contests deserve attention.

In Maine, Republican Senator Susan Collins faces Democrat Troy Jackson, a progressive former state legislative leader. Collins’s reputation for independence and Jackson’s economic-populist platform offer voters contrasting approaches in a state known for ticket splitting.

In Ohio, Republican Senator Jon Husted faces former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, whose campaign seeks to revive the working-class coalition that previously supported him.

In Kansas, Republican Senator Roger Marshall faces Democrat Adam Hamilton in a contest that has drawn attention because of unexpectedly competitive polling.

Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff is defending his seat in a state that remains closely divided, while other races in Minnesota, Florida and South Carolina have attracted varying degrees of national interest.

Republicans begin the election with a numerical advantage in the Senate, but the chamber’s eventual composition will depend on several distinct statewide electorates rather than a single national voting pattern.

What Tonight’s Results Will Actually Tell Us

There are several important questions that election returns may begin answering tonight.

Will Republican turnout exceed the expectations built into pre-election polling? Will Democratic gains be concentrated in suburban House districts, or will they extend into states and communities that have recently supported Trump? Will progressive Democratic candidates perform differently from more moderate nominees? And will the Iran conflict and high gasoline prices outweigh arguments about economic growth and national security?

The answers may not arrive immediately.

Alaska and Maine use ranked-choice voting, while several states process large numbers of mail ballots after Election Day. Closely divided House districts could require days of additional counting before control of Congress becomes clear.

The election also provides a test of the reliability of political forecasts. If Republicans outperform polling again, analysts will need to examine whether turnout models and survey participation adequately captured the electorate. If Democrats meet or exceed expectations, the results will reinforce the significance of the traditional midterm disadvantage facing the president’s party.

Neither outcome, by itself, would prove deliberate manipulation by pollsters or the news media. But either would provide valuable evidence about the strengths and weaknesses of the political assumptions that shaped this campaign.

A Country Divided, an Election Full of Uncertainty

The 2026 midterms have brought together an unusual combination of forces: a president serving a nonconsecutive second term, an overseas military conflict, stubbornly high living costs, ideological disagreements within both parties, contentious redistricting and allegations of political manipulation in individual races.

The Democrats are seeking to capitalize on dissatisfaction with the administration and the historical tendency of voters to check presidential power. Republicans are defending their governing record while questioning whether the polling and political commentary accurately reflect the electorate.

The most consequential factor, however, is not a television forecast, a campaign advertisement or a historical comparison. It is the actual decision made by millions of Americans casting ballots today.

The political experts have offered their expectations. Now the voters will provide the evidence.

And when the ballots are counted, the country may discover whether 2026 was another 2006, a repudiation of conventional polling wisdom, or something entirely different.

Democrats’ Secret Alaska Ballot Fraud Exposed: New York Times Uncovers Effort to Recruit a Phony Dan Sullivan

October 31, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

A NYT investigation reveals how Democratic operatives sought to populate Alaska’s Senate ballot with fake candidates who could draw votes from the Republican incumbent. Now federal subpoenas, a state investigation and congressional inquiries are raising questions about the operation’s organizers and its legality.

Federalist Press | October 31, 2026

WASHINGTON — For months, Alaska Republicans alleged that the appearance of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan in the state’s U.S. Senate race was no coincidence. They suspected that Democratic operatives had recruited a political newcomer with the same name as Republican incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan, hoping to confuse voters and divert enough votes to help Democratic challenger Mary Peltola.

Peltola’s campaign repeatedly denied involvement. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which coordinates Democratic Senate campaigns nationally, likewise denied recruiting competing candidates.

Then, on October 28, The New York Times published an extensive investigation revealing that operatives associated with Peltola’s campaign and national Democratic organizations had indeed worked on a secret candidate-recruitment operation. The newspaper’s findings were based on interviews with 12 people, dozens of text messages and documents connected to a possible lawsuit against the campaign.

The revelations have now triggered investigations at both the federal and state levels, while congressional investigators are demanding answers from people identified as participants.

Find Every Dan Sullivan in Alaska

According to the Times, the operation began in the summer of 2025, when a member of Peltola’s campaign staff received an unusual assignment: Search Alaska’s voter records and identify people named Dan Sullivan.

The purpose, according to the investigation, was to find someone sharing the Republican senator’s name who might be persuaded to enter the race. On Alaska’s four-candidate general-election ballot, a second Dan Sullivan could potentially draw support away from the incumbent, particularly among voters who failed to distinguish between the two candidates.

The effort eventually produced Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg, a small community in southeastern Alaska. He entered the Senate contest despite having no established statewide political organization.

The Times reported that the operation went considerably further than recruiting one namesake candidate. Campaign-associated personnel also sought other candidates who might divide Republican support, and the effort included discussions about creating a separate political party to attract conservative voters.

Internally, participants referred to the undertaking as the ballot composition project.

The newspaper identified Jerid Kurtz, a Democratic political operative with experience in Ohio and Georgia, as a central figure in the recruitment effort. Kurtz traveled throughout Alaska, sometimes using a pseudonym while approaching potential candidates.

The Times also documented the recruitment of Gerald Heikes, another candidate appearing on the general-election ballot as a Republican.

How Far Up the Democratic Organization Did It Go?

One of the most consequential aspects of the investigation is its account of participation by national Democratic campaign personnel.

The Times reported that Peltola campaign lawyers and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee participated in discussions about the candidate-recruitment effort. The DSCC is the national organization responsible for coordinating Democratic efforts to win Senate seats.

Former Peltola campaign manager Elisa Rios, who was dismissed in August, described the operation to the newspaper and said Peltola was aware of it, although she was not directly involved.

Rios subsequently attempted to retract her statements. The Times nevertheless published its findings, explaining that her earlier accounts were corroborated by other reporting and documentary evidence.

Peltola’s campaign continues to deny recruiting competing candidates, and the DSCC has denied involvement. Peltola dismissed the controversy as a distraction while campaigning Wednesday.

The reporting does not establish that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer personally authorized the operation. His connection is institutional rather than a documented role in directing the recruitment effort.

Nevertheless, the evidence of participation by national campaign personnel raises questions about how such operations are supervised, financed and disclosed to voters.

Federal Subpoenas and a State Investigation

The controversy intensified Thursday when the New York Times reported that the Justice Department had issued dozens of subpoenas to individuals believed to have knowledge of the recruitment operation.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy separately directed the state’s Department of Public Safety to investigate whether the reported conduct violated state election laws. State officials confirmed that an investigation had begun.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer also sought interviews with Rios and Kurtz, two individuals prominently identified in the Times investigation.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to prevent certification of the Senate election under specified circumstances: if the incumbent loses by fewer votes than those received by the other Dan Sullivan.

The legal challenge is controversial. Alaska election officials have taken steps to distinguish the candidates on the ballot, and the Alaska Supreme Court previously ruled that both Sullivans could remain in the race.

Legal experts have also questioned whether the federal government has grounds to intervene in certification based on the recruitment of a competing candidate.

These proceedings raise separate issues. Investigators must determine whether any election, campaign-finance or disclosure laws were violated, while the courts must consider whether the reported conduct provides a lawful basis for interfering with election certification.

Voters Had Already Begun Casting Ballots

The timing of the revelations adds urgency to the controversy.

By the time the Times published its investigation, approximately 58,000 Alaskans had already voted, according to Fox News reporting published October 29. That meant many voters had cast their ballots before learning the details of the alleged recruitment operation.

Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. But the system does not eliminate the possibility that similar candidate names could confuse some voters, particularly if they do not rank additional choices.

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has supported Democrat Peltola in a previous election, criticized the revelations and called for a truthful accounting from the Democratic campaign.

The Questions Investigators Must Answer

The New York Times investigation has transformed the Alaska controversy from a dispute over suspicious circumstances into a documented account of organized political activity.

The most important unanswered questions concern who authorized the recruitment effort, what resources supported it, whether any campaign-finance rules were violated, and whether the candidates themselves knowingly participated in an effort intended to confuse voters.

The investigation must also establish the extent of Peltola’s personal knowledge and determine whether the public denials by her campaign and the DSCC were consistent with their internal records.

Those are questions that subpoenas, interviews and documentary evidence may help resolve.

The larger issue extends beyond Alaska. Political parties have legitimate reasons to recruit candidates and compete strategically, but voters also have a legitimate interest in knowing when a candidacy is encouraged or supported by people whose political objectives differ sharply from those of the candidate’s apparent constituency.

The Alaska case now provides an unusually detailed example of how a political organization can attempt to shape an election not merely by persuading voters, but by influencing which names appear on the ballot.

Whether that strategy crossed a legal boundary remains for investigators and courts to determine. What is no longer merely speculation is that a coordinated candidate-recruitment operation existed, and that its connections to Democratic campaign personnel were substantially more extensive than the public had previously been told.

With Election Day approaching, the demand for a complete accounting is unlikely to disappear.

Obama Administration Investigated Ilhan Omar for Marriage Fraud

October 29, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Federal investigators examined the Minnesota Democrat’s controversial marriage as early as 2016. The inquiry was closed due to statute of limitations, but newly disclosed details complicate claims that the investigation originated with President Trump.

Federalist Press | October 29, 2026

WASHINGTON — A significant new development in the federal investigation of Representative Ilhan Omar has emerged: The FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigated allegations of marriage fraud involving the Minnesota Democrat in 2016, during the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, long before Donald Trump entered to the White House.

According to reporting published Thursday by Fox News, citing an investigation first disclosed by The New York Times, federal authorities examined allegations that Omar’s 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was fraudulent. Investigators reportedly uncovered some evidence suggesting the marriage may have been arranged for immigration purposes, but prosecutors declined to pursue charges because the suspected felony conduct was considered too old to prosecute under the applicable statute of limitations.

The revelation changes an important part of the public narrative surrounding the current investigation. Although the Trump administration has revived scrutiny of Omar’s immigration history, the underlying allegations had previously attracted the attention of federal law-enforcement agencies operating during a Democratic presidency.

The Investigation Began During Obama’s Presidency

The earlier inquiry reportedly began during the summer of 2016, when Omar was campaigning for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Federal investigators examined allegations involving her marriage to Elmi, including claims that the relationship was not a genuine marital union.

According to the latest reporting, investigators found information suggesting possible fraud, but the evidence and investigative findings have not been publicly released in sufficient detail to establish precisely what authorities concluded. The reported expiration of the criminal statute of limitations also meant that prosecutors faced legal restrictions on pursuing charges for conduct dating back to 2009.

A subsequent inquiry was terminated in 2021 under a U.S. attorney appointed by President Joe Biden. The account of why the earlier investigations ended remains disputed: Omar’s representatives maintain that the allegations were rejected for insufficient evidence, while the new reporting identifies the statute of limitations as a decisive factor in the 2016 inquiry.

An investigation closed because prosecutors lack sufficient evidence is materially different from one closed because a potential offense can no longer be prosecuted. Obtaining the original investigative records would help resolve the discrepancy.

Obama’s Recent Defense of Omar Takes on New Significance

The disclosure follows former President Obama’s public condemnation of the October 12 federal search of Omar’s Washington residence.

In an October 18 statement, Obama accused the Trump administration of using federal law enforcement against a political opponent. He argued that government authorities should not selectively target citizens because of their political beliefs and characterized the investigation as an example of such conduct.

The newly reported 2016 inquiry adds important context to that criticism. Federal investigators were examining allegations concerning Omar while Obama himself occupied the White House.

The Current Investigation Is More Extensive

The renewed federal inquiry has already resulted in a court-authorized search of Omar’s Washington residence, the seizure of electronic devices and other records, and grand jury subpoenas involving members of her family.

Investigators are examining whether Omar or relatives provided false information in immigration and naturalization documents dating to the family’s arrival in the United States from Somalia in 1995. Reports indicate that questions concerning her birth date, family relationships, and citizenship documentation are among the matters under review.

The current investigation also extends beyond the 2009 marriage allegations. Authorities are examining whether statements made during the family’s earlier immigration process were accurate, raising potential legal questions distinct from those considered in the original inquiry.

No criminal charges against Omar have been announced yet, but prosecutors told a federal court this week that investigators are continuing to review evidence seized during the October 12 search.

The Battle Over the Search Warrant

Another development emerged Wednesday when the Justice Department opposed requests by news organizations and Judicial Watch to release the search warrant and supporting affidavit.

Federal prosecutors argued that disclosing the materials while investigators are still examining evidence could compromise the inquiry. The matter is before Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The sealed affidavit is particularly important because it may eventually reveal what evidence persuaded a federal magistrate judge to authorize the search, which allegations investigators are pursuing, and how the current investigation relates to earlier inquiries.

Until those records become available, the public cannot independently assess the full evidentiary basis for the government’s actions.

A Decade of Questions, and an Opportunity for Answers

The newly reported Obama-era investigation establishes that allegations concerning Omar’s marriage and immigration history were examined by federal authorities years before the current administration took office.

It also introduces a potentially important distinction between an investigation that produced no prosecutable evidence and one that could not proceed because of legal time limits.

Those questions should be resolved through the release of authenticated investigative records, not competing political assertions. The reported findings from 2016, the circumstances surrounding the closure of subsequent inquiries, and the evidence supporting the current search warrant are all relevant to understanding how the government has handled the allegations over the past decade.

The public is entitled to know whether investigators uncovered credible evidence of fraud, whether prosecutors applied the law consistently, and whether the present inquiry is being conducted independently and lawfully.

The central revelation is that federal scrutiny of Ilhan Omar’s controversial marriage did not begin with Donald Trump. It reportedly began under Barack Obama. What remains to be established is precisely what those investigators discovered—and why the matter was never brought before a court.

Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal Reopens: Two Former FBI Officials Arrested as Investigators Examine What the Bureau Knew in 2020

October 23, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

New federal charges allege that senior FBI personnel misled Congress about their involvement in the Hunter Biden investigations. The case revives questions about the FBI’s foreign-influence operation, the 51 former intelligence officials who challenged the laptop story, the Biden campaign’s role in promoting their statement, and the suppression of reporting before the presidential election.

Federalist Press | October 23, 2026

WASHINGTON — Six years after the New York Post published its explosive reporting about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, two former senior FBI officials have been arrested and charged with making false statements to Congress concerning their knowledge of the bureau’s investigations into the then-presidential candidate’s son.

The arrests of Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides on Friday, October 23, reopen one of the most contentious episodes of the 2020 presidential campaign: the collision of an authentic laptop, an ongoing federal investigation, false warnings about Russian election interference, a fraudulent public statement signed by 51 former intelligence officials, and decisions by major social-media platforms to restrict circulation of damaging reporting about the Biden family. Never before has there been such a dangerous convergence of government power to overthrow a federal election.

The newly filed criminal complaint does not charge either defendant with suppressing the laptop story or conspiring to elect Joe Biden. Instead, prosecutors allege that both knowingly misrepresented their awareness of and participation in FBI investigations when questioned by congressional investigators in 2023.

The government’s 27-page supporting affidavit describes internal FBI activities and communications that provide new material for examining how the bureau handled information concerning Hunter Biden during the final months of the 2020 campaign.

The case therefore presents two questions. The immediate legal question is whether Floris and Benavides lied to Congress. The larger historical question is whether the Biden government’s efforts to substitute its contrived story of foreign disinformation will be dealt with in a just manner, or swept under the rug.

The October 23 Arrests

According to the Justice Department, Floris and Benavides surrendered to authorities on Friday after federal prosecutors charged them with violating 18 U.S.C. § 1001, the statute prohibiting materially false statements in matters within federal jurisdiction.

Floris served as deputy assistant director and functional head of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, or FITF, from approximately mid-2019 through mid-2022. Benavides served as a section chief within that task force from mid-2019 through the 2020 presidential election.

The task force was responsible for examining foreign efforts to influence American political institutions and elections. Its work included Russian influence operations, but its jurisdiction eventually expanded to other foreign actors.

Both officials were questioned during the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the FBI’s handling of matters involving Hunter Biden.

The government alleges that Floris provided materially false information during her July 19, 2023, congressional interview and that Benavides did likewise on September 28, 2023.

The supporting affidavit asserts that contemporaneous FBI messages, emails, meetings and witness accounts contradict their descriptions of their involvement.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro characterized the allegations as a serious breach of congressional accountability, emphasizing that FBI officials have an obligation to provide truthful information to lawmakers.

FBI Director Kash Patel also announced the arrests, saying that the two former officials had allegedly misled Congress about matters related to the 2020 election.

Floris was deputy assistant director and functional head of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and stated: “I’m basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point.”

The FBI Already Had the Laptop

One of the most significant details in the affidavit concerns what federal investigators knew before the laptop became a national political controversy.

The government states that the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office obtained the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop from a Delaware computer repair shop on December 9, 2019.

The bureau was already investigating Hunter Biden for tax and money-laundering offenses. Internally, the investigation used the code name “Sportsman.”

The affidavit further states that an FBI official confirmed during an October 2020 meeting that the bureau had obtained the laptop, that it belonged to Hunter Biden, and that it related to the ongoing investigations.

This matters because the public debate in October 2020 was not simply about whether a suspicious document had appeared on the internet. Federal investigators had already possessed and examined the computer’s contents for months.

The laptop’s authenticity was later reinforced in federal court. In January 2024, prosecutors stated that information recovered from the computer corresponded with material obtained from Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud account. During his federal firearms trial in June 2024, an FBI witness authenticated the laptop, and the device was introduced as evidence.

Those developments established that the underlying computer was genuine, notwithstanding.

The FBI’s Secretive “Round River” Operation

The most intriguing new material concerns an FBI project known as Round River.

According to the affidavit, analysts associated with the Foreign Influence Task Force began working in 2019 on an effort to examine derogatory information involving Hunter Biden and other subjects for indications of Russian disinformation.

The government describes Round River as an intelligence effort that scrutinized informant reporting and other information potentially associated with foreign influence.

The affidavit identifies Floris and Benavides as officials who reviewed and approved an initial Round River report in September 2020. It also describes their participation in meetings concerning proposed defensive briefings, which are intended to warn people who may be targets of foreign intelligence activity.

A particularly notable September 24, 2020, communication concerned how the FBI might use an informant network to transmit information. The affidavit quotes an official discussing ways to send selected information back through that network.

The statement is significant enough to warrant examination of its full operational context. Intelligence agencies routinely assess the reliability of informants and attempt to detect disinformation. But the precise methods, objectives and consequences of Round River deserve scrutiny because the project operated during a presidential election involving the father of one of its subjects.

October 14, 2020: The Day the Laptop Story Broke

The New York Post published its initial laptop reporting on October 14, 2020, less than three weeks before the presidential election.

The newspaper described emails and other material concerning Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, including his relationship with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

The publication immediately triggered a national controversy. Supporters of Donald Trump argued that the material raised serious questions about the Biden family’s business relationships and the probability that Hunter had benefited from his father’s public office.

Democrat operatives immediately launched a massive public campaign to cast doubt on the provenance of the materials and issued feigned warnings that foreign intelligence services were attempting to influence the election.

The new criminal affidavit documents how the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force responded internally.

According to prosecutors, Floris and Benavides received communications from FBI personnel concerning the laptop story, including questions about whether the bureau possessed the computer and how it should respond to congressional inquiries.

Benavides also received information about a technology-industry call during which participants discussed questions concerning the laptop and Burisma.

The affidavit describes an FBI task-force official communicating with Twitter on October 14 about the laptop reporting. It further recounts congressional testimony concerning an FBI employee who reportedly indicated to a Twitter representative that the laptop was genuine.

Those details are consequential because as a result, Twitter in fact restricted distribution of the New York Post story.

The newly disclosed communications provide additional evidence of contact between federal investigators and social-media companies at the moment the story was being restricted.

The Social-Media Suppression Controversy

The handling of the laptop story by major technology platforms became one of the defining media controversies of the 2020 election.

Twitter prevented users from sharing links to the original New York Post reporting and temporarily restricted the newspaper’s account. Facebook reduced the distribution of the story.

The decisions were criticized by Republicans and civil-liberties advocates who argued that politically significant journalism was being restricted at precisely the moment voters needed access to it.

Later disclosures added another dimension. Former Twitter executive Yoel Roth described regular meetings with federal law-enforcement personnel concerning potential foreign hacking and information operations. According to his account, officials insisted that material associated with political campaigns might emerge through hack-and-leak operations, and that things would go very badly for the social media giant if it failed to kill the story.

Mark Zuckerberg separately acknowledged that Facebook had received FBI pressure to censor the Hunter Biden Laptop contents story.

The new criminal complaint adds details about FBI officials’ knowledge of the laptop and their involvement in untruthful related communications.

The 51 Intelligence Officials and Their October 2020 Statement

Five days after the New York Post published its story, 51 former intelligence and national-security officials signed a public statement questioning whether the release of the Hunter Biden material was connected to a Russian information operation, although they all knew it was not.

The October 19 statement became one of the most influential documents of the presidential campaign’s final weeks.

Its signatories included former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, and former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Their former positions gave the statement considerable authority. To ordinary voters, a document endorsed by dozens of former intelligence officials could appear to reflect the informed judgment of people familiar with classified intelligence and Russian interference operations.

The statement suggested that the laptop disclosures displayed characteristics associated with Russian influence activity.

In particular, Joe Biden cited the former officials during his final debate with Donald Trump, portraying their assessment as support for dismissing the laptop allegations as a Russian operation.

The distinction between a warning about possible foreign influence and a definitive finding that the laptop was fabricated became central to the controversy.

Later authentication of the computer established that the underlying laptop was genuine.

The Biden Campaign’s Role in the Intelligence Statement

The origins of the 51-person statement were examined extensively by Republican-led congressional committees.

Their investigations established that former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell organized the contrived statement after communicating with Antony Blinken, who was serving as a senior adviser to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

According to Morell’s congressional testimony, Blinken’s contact helped prompt him to organize the statement. Morell also acknowledged that he wanted Joe Biden to win the election and that the statement could provide the campaign with a useful response to the laptop reporting.

Those admissions formed the basis for the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees’ conclusion that the Biden campaign played a role in generating a statement intended to discredit authentic damaging reporting.

The committees went further in June 2024, releasing an interim report describing contacts between the statement’s organizers and CIA personnel.

The report found that some individuals presented publicly as former intelligence officials still held active CIA contracts. Among those identified were Morell and former CIA Inspector General David Buckley.

That fact raised questions about the relationship between the statement’s political purpose and the professional obligations of individuals who retained government connections.

The committees also reported that senior CIA officials were informed about the statement before publication and that the agency’s prepublication review process had been involved.

Prepublication review is intended to prevent improper disclosure of classified information.

The involvement of current contractors and agency review personnel created legitimate questions about whether intelligence-community relationships were being used to lend credibility to a campaign-related message.

Clapper, Brennan and the Obama-Era Intelligence Establishment

The involvement of James Clapper and John Brennan gave the 2020 statement particular prominence because both had occupied senior intelligence positions during Barack Obama’s presidency.

Clapper served as director of national intelligence, while Brennan served as CIA director. Their names were associated with the intelligence community’s exaggerated response to very limited Russian interference in the 2016 election and the broader national-security controversies that followed.

Their participation in the Hunter Biden statement therefore connected the 2020 dispute with an established group of former senior intelligence officials who remained influential in public debate after leaving government service.

But their involvement should be understood precisely. The evidence establishes that Clapper and Brennan signed the October 2020 statement.

The most direct documented connection between the Biden campaign and the 51-person statement remains the interaction involving Blinken and Morell.

Hunter Biden’s Criminal Cases and His Father’s Pardon

The laptop controversy cannot be separated from what happened after the 2020 election.

Hunter Biden eventually faced federal criminal proceedings involving firearms and taxes. In June 2024, a Delaware jury convicted him of three felony firearms offenses connected to his purchase of a handgun while using illegal drugs. He also pleaded guilty in California to federal tax charges involving substantial unpaid taxes.

Those proceedings established that Hunter Biden had committed criminal offenses.

In December 2024, President Joe Biden issued his son a sweeping federal pardon, reversing repeated public assurances that he would not use his presidential authority to spare Hunter from the consequences of his criminal acts.

The pardon covered federal offenses committed over a broad period extending from January 2014 through December 2024.

The decision generated substantial criticism because it followed years of public assurances that the president would not intervene.

The Larger Question: Intelligence Power and American Elections

The Hunter Biden laptop controversy illustrates a difficult problem at the intersection of national security, journalism and electoral politics.

Federal intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have a legitimate responsibility to identify foreign interference. Russian operations against American elections are real subjects of national-security concern, and officials must be able to warn relevant institutions if credible threats emerge.

But those responsibilities create opportunities for serious mistakes and potential abuses.

When government officials communicate with social-media platforms about politically sensitive material, their assessments can influence what millions of voters see. When former intelligence officials use their credentials to characterize damaging political reporting, their statements can carry authority far beyond that of ordinary campaign advocates.

And when federal officials testify before Congress about their activities, the public depends upon those statements being truthful.

The October 23 arrests place that last obligation at the center of a federal criminal case.

The government now alleges that two officials responsible for protecting the 2020 election from foreign influence concealed aspects of their own involvement in investigations concerning the son of a presidential candidate.

Those allegations demand careful judicial examination. They also justify continued scrutiny of the institutional decisions surrounding the laptop story.

A Controversy That Has Outlasted Two Presidencies

The Hunter Biden laptop story began as a dispute over a computer and its contents. It became a dispute over media suppression, intelligence assessments, campaign messaging and the integrity of federal investigations.

The laptop itself was immediately authenticated and eventually used in federal court. Hunter Biden was convicted of firearms offenses, pleaded guilty to tax charges and received a presidential pardon. Congressional investigators documented contacts between the Biden campaign and the organizer of the 51-person intelligence statement, along with continuing CIA relationships involving some of its signatories.

Now two former FBI officials face criminal charges over what they told Congress about their roles in the underlying investigations.

The public has a right to know whether federal officials accurately represented what they knew, whether intelligence assessments were communicated responsibly, and whether political considerations influenced decisions that affected the flow of information during a presidential campaign.

The immediate question before the courts is whether two former FBI officials lied to Congress. The larger question for Congress and the public is whether the institutions entrusted with protecting American elections maintained the independence, transparency and accountability those responsibilities require.

It appears that the Biden administration was guilty of conducting subterfuge and lawfare to steal the 2020 election.

Ilhan Omar Faces Expanding Federal Scrutiny: DNA Evidence, Immigration Records and Millions in Disputed Financial Disclosures

October 22, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Federal agents have searched the Minnesota congresswoman’s home, seized her telephone and obtained DNA evidence as investigators examine longstanding questions about her immigration history. Separately, a congressional inquiry has demanded records explaining a dramatic increase in the reported value of businesses associated with her husband.

Federalist Press | October 22, 2026

Federal agents execute search warrant on home and property of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)

WASHINGTON — Representative Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat whose political career has repeatedly generated controversy over immigration, foreign policy and her outspoken criticism of the Trump administration, is confronting an expanding series of federal inquiries into matters reaching back to her family’s arrival in the United States more than three decades ago.

The investigation has now moved well beyond political accusations. Federal agents executed a search warrant at Omar’s Washington residence on October 12, seized her cellphone and issued more than a dozen subpoenas involving family members. Federal authorities obtained her DNA and passport as investigators examine questions surrounding her immigration history, and even her actual identity.

Separately, House investigators have demanded financial records from companies associated with her husband after disclosures indicated that the value of his business interests had increased dramatically.

These developments create several distinct questions requiring answers: Were the representations made during Omar’s immigration and naturalization process accurate? What is the factual basis for longstanding allegations concerning her former marriage? And how should the public understand financial disclosures showing business interests that increased from tens of thousands to potentially tens of millions of dollars?

The answers could carry substantial legal and political consequences. They will depend on documentary records, authenticated evidence and the findings of investigators.

Federal Agents Search Omar’s Home and Seize Her Telephone

The investigation became public in dramatic fashion when Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a search warrant at Omar’s Washington residence on October 12. Investigators had seized her cellphone and issued more than a dozen subpoenas to relatives while examining possible irregularities in her family’s immigration documentation.

Reuters independently reported that the inquiry concerns possible false statements in immigration and naturalization records dating back to Omar’s arrival in the United States as a Somali refugee in 1995. She became a naturalized citizen in 2000. The reported offenses under examination include immigration fraud, conspiracy and false statements.

The use of a search warrant and grand jury subpoenas marks a significant investigative development. Federal authorities are now seeking records and testimony through formal legal processes rather than relying solely on allegations circulated in political commentary.

Questions about Omar’s immigration paperwork have become the subject of a federal inquiry with the authority to compel evidence and examine potentially conflicting records.

DNA Evidence Could Address the Former-Marriage Allegation

One of the most persistent controversies surrounding Omar concerns her former marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009. Critics have alleged that Elmi was her biological brother, and that the marriage was connected to fraudulent immigration benefits.

The latest reporting introduces a potentially important development. Multiple news outlets reported on October 20 that federal authorities had obtained Omar’s DNA as part of the ongoing investigation. The network also reported uncertainty surrounding how the sample was collected, after initial accounts of investigators obtaining discarded genetic material were disputed.

DNA testing could potentially establish or exclude a close biological relationship if investigators possess suitable, authenticated comparison samples.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) raised her head to beg for more cash as she vowed to return to the campaign trail and fight the federal investigation into her immigration status and financial irregularities.

Another development attracting attention is a noticeable change in how Representative Omar has answered questions about her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. For years, Omar has categorically rejected allegations that Elmi was her biological brother, dismissing the accusations as politically motivated falsehoods. But when confronted with the issue during a recent television interview, she answered the question of whether they were related with the more carefully qualified phrase, “Not to my knowledge.” Note the contrast with her previous denials.

The distinction is worth examining. “Absolutely not” is an unequivocal denial; “not to my knowledge” leaves open the possibility of facts unknown to the speaker.With federal investigators obtaining genetic evidence relevant to the allegation, the precise wording of her response has become a legitimate subject of scrutiny. If a scientifically reliable comparison is eventually disclosed, it will provide a far more definitive answer than any political interview.

Questions About Immigration Records and Identity

The immigration investigation also concerns the accuracy of information submitted by Omar’s family when they entered the United States and later obtained citizenship.

Investigators are examining whether Omar’s age was accurately represented in the original paperwork. More recent reporting has raised questions about names appearing in documents associated with her immigration history.

Different names appearing in government records may reflect marriage, legal name changes, transliteration differences or other legitimate circumstances. They can also warrant investigation when authorities have evidence suggesting that a false identity was knowingly used.

The legal issue is whether a materially false representation was made, by whom, and with what knowledge. Those are questions that investigators can examine through original applications, birth and family records, sworn statements, and other documentary evidence.

The public interest in the investigation is substantial because the accuracy of federal immigration and naturalization records is an appropriate subject for lawful scrutiny, including when the person involved is an elected official.

The Financial Disclosures: From $51,000 to as Much as $30 Million

The financial questions are supported by particularly concrete public documentation.

On February 6, 2026, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer formally requested records from businesses associated with Omar’s husband, Timothy Mynett. According to the committee, Omar’s disclosures indicated that ownership interests in two companies—eStCru LLC and Rose Lake Capital LLC—had increased from a combined reported value of as much as $51,000 in 2023 to as much as $30 million in 2024.

That is a substantial change, and the committee requested documents and communications concerning the companies’ finances, ownership and operations.

Congressional financial reporting exists to give the public visibility into lawmakers’ financial interests and potential conflicts. When reported asset values change by such a large amount, examining the valuation methods, business activity, ownership structure and supporting documentation is a legitimate oversight function.

The committee’s February request is an official, independently accessible record of that scrutiny.

Political Controversies and the Question of Loyalty

Omar’s immigration and financial investigations arrive against a backdrop of longstanding political controversy. She has frequently criticized American foreign policy, Israel, and Republican immigration proposals, while many of her statements reflect divided national loyalties.

One frequently cited incident occurred in January 2024, when Omar addressed Somali-American constituents about a dispute involving Ethiopia and Somaliland. A widely circulated video showed her declaring that her allegiance to Somalia came before the United States.

That statement became the basis for demands by politicians for an ethics investigation and even removal from Congress.

Public Accountability Requires Records, Not Political Theater

The central questions in the current investigation are more concrete than debates over Omar’s rhetoric.

Federal investigators can examine original immigration applications, interview witnesses, compare authenticated genetic evidence and determine whether any materially false statements were made. Congressional investigators can examine financial records and determine whether reported business valuations accurately reflected the underlying assets.

The Questions That Remain

The federal investigation has already produced substantial developments: a search of Omar’s residence, the seizure of her telephone, subpoenas involving relatives and reports that investigators obtained DNA evidence. Separately, official congressional records document a request for financial information concerning businesses whose reported value increased dramatically.

The investigation now provides an opportunity to examine them through evidence rather than speculation. The public is entitled to a thorough accounting of the immigration records, the reported genetic evidence and the financial transactions at issue—and to conclusions that follow the evidence wherever it leads.

That standard applies to every member of Congress, regardless of political affiliation. To quote Representative Ilhan Omar, “No one is above the law.”

Violent Threats, Blacklists and Political Revenge: Should Dems be Prosecuted for Terrorist Threats?

October 21, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Senator Elissa Slotkin threatens Soviet-styled investigations to deter young Americans from joining the Trump administration. An Indiana Democratic candidate reminds Republicans that Democrats have guns, too. These statements raise urgent questions about political intimidation, government retaliation and the constitutional limits of threatening speech.

Federalist Press | October 21, 2026

*Senator Elissa Slotkin wants the prospect of investigations to deter young Americans from joining the Trump administration.*

WASHINGTON — Two more Democratic politicians have ignited controversy in recent days with statements about Republicans and the Trump administration that raise a fundamental question about the boundaries of political discourse in America: At what point does a promise of political accountability become a terrorist attempt to intimidate citizens into abandoning their constitutional rights?

In Michigan, Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin has openly described her desire to make young Americans think twice before accepting jobs in President Donald Trump’s administration because of the legal and professional difficulties they might encounter. In Indiana, Democratic candidate Jaime West declared that she would fire Republicans from local government if given the opportunity, disparaged supporters of the MAGA movement, and concluded a televised candidate appearance with the pointed observation that Democrats have guns, too.

Both have drawn attention to a troubling feature of contemporary American politics: the increasing willingness of Democrats to describe political opponents not merely as people whose policies should be defeated, but as people who should face personal consequences or death for their traditional values.

Although the Constitution protects vigorous disagreement, even offensive political rhetoric, it also protects Americans against government retaliation for lawful political activity. And when threats of unlawful violence enter the picture, the First Amendment’s protections have limits that the Supreme Court has carefully defined.

Americans have already witnessed how profoundly government sponsored criminal prosecutions and civil litigation can disrupt a presidential campaign. During the Biden administration, Donald Trump, then the leading Republican presidential candidate, confronted 91 felony counts across four separate criminal indictments, brought by Biden federal prosecutors and Democratic-led state and local prosecutorial offices who coordinated closely with Biden officials. At the same time, Democrat civil proceedings produced judgments totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, including a New York business-fraud judgment initially exceeding $450 million with interest and an $83.3 million defamation award. Trump was forced to devote enormous time, money, and attention to defending himself while campaigning to return to the White House.

That extraordinary convergence of these proceedings amounted to political lawfare—the use of legal institutions to weaken or destroy an electoral opponent. The experience illustrates why threats of politically motivated investigations deserve serious scrutiny. Using prosecution, financial ruin, or professional blacklisting to punish lawful political opposition would resemble the coercive methods associated with authoritarian governments, not the constitutional principles of an American republic. Threatening such tactics to prevent American citizens from supporting a traditional Constitutional government is terrorism. When politicians speak openly of making prospective government employees fear the consequences of serving an opposing administration, Americans have every reason to demand assurances that the machinery of justice will never become an instrument of partisan revenge again.

Senator Slotkin Wants Young Americans to Fear Working for Trump

The more consequential of the two most recent controversies involves Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat and former CIA analyst who spoke at the University of Chicago on October 13 about her party’s political future and the prospect of using congressional investigations to threaten conservatives.

Discussing how Democrats should exercise oversight authority, Slotkin urged her party to pursue what she called “signature cases” involving people who had enabled the Trump administration. She argued that concentrating on prominent examples of contrived misconduct could send a deterrent message to younger Americans considering government service.

Her description of the desired result was unusually candid. She said she wanted prospective administration employees to worry that accepting such positions might be “buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want.” She concluded that she wanted that deterrence message sent in unmistakable terms.

Her remarks were played during Slotkin’s October 19 appearance on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper. The televised discussion confirmed that the controversy was not based on a fabricated quotation. Slotkin had indeed expressed the threat against prospective employees, to discourage them from joining the administration by emphasizing the insurmountable legal and personal problems they would face.

What makes the statement significant is the audience Slotkin explicitly identified. She was not speaking solely about senior officials already suspected of corruption. She described young people leaving school and contemplating an opportunity to work in the federal government.

When an elected official says she wants prospective employees to fear serious consequences of accepting government positions, It is a threat against the government and the people.

A Formal Ethics Complaint Follows

The controversy moved beyond political commentary on October 20, when the Center to Advance Security in America filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee concerning Slotkin’s remarks.

The organization asked Senate Ethics Committee Chairman James Lankford, a Republican, and Vice Chairman Chris Coons, a Democrat, to examine whether Slotkin’s statements were consistent with Senate ethical standards. The complaint characterized her remarks as an attempt to discourage Americans from government service through the prospect of adverse consequences.

The complaint illustrates that the controversy has become more than a dispute over political messaging. It raises questions about the responsibilities of elected officials who possess—or hope to acquire—the power to summon witnesses, demand records, and conduct investigations that can impose enormous costs on the people subjected to them.

Although Congressional oversight is indispensable to constitutional government, it must be exercised only for legitimate legislative purposes. It is not a general license to threaten make political opponents.

An Indiana Candidate Declares: “We Have Guns, Too”

A separate controversy erupted after Jaime West, a Democratic candidate for Fayette County Council in Indiana, appeared at an October 9 local television candidate forum.

Asked about an unpopular policy she might pursue if elected, West said she would fire Republicans. She went on to criticize MAGA supporters, describing them as racist and unintelligent, before ending her appearance with the words, “We have guns, too.”

The remarks circulated widely online and attracted national media attention. On October 19, West appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored, where Morgan questioned both her violent threats against Republicans and her unusual demeanor during the original interview.

West acknowledged having consumed three beers before the local television appearance, explaining that she had been nervous about facing a largely Republican audience. She nevertheless declined to retract her threats against Republicans.

Her firearms statement understandably drew particular scrutiny because it followed remarks about removing political opponents from employment. In a political climate already marked by four attempted assassinations against President Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and many other threats of violence against conservatives, invoking guns while denouncing an opposing political movement is an unmistakable alarm of violence to listeners.

West’s comments also raise a separate issue concerning public employment. A candidate’s desire to dismiss every Republican employee, without regard to individual qualifications or conduct, would invite serious constitutional questions if translated into official action. Public employment law distinguishes between political positions for which partisan affiliation may be relevant and other government jobs where employees enjoy substantial protections against political discrimination.

What Is a Terroristic Threat?

The phrase terroristic threat has a specific legal meaning in many jurisdictions, although its precise definition varies by state. Some statutes prohibit threats to commit violence intended to terrorize another person, cause evacuation, or create serious public alarm. Other statutes use different terminology, including criminal threatening, intimidation, or making threats of violence.

Federal law likewise prohibits certain threatening communications, including specified threats transmitted across state lines.

The Supreme Court addressed the constitutional standard in Counterman v. Colorado, decided in 2023. The Court explained that a true threat involves a serious expression of threatened unlawful violence. It also held that criminal punishment requires proof that the speaker had at least recklessly disregarded the risk that the communication would be understood as threatening violence.

The decision is important because it protects people against genuine threats, as we hear daily in the news. Source: U.S. Supreme Court decision, Counterman v. Colorado

When does political intimidation become a terroistic threat? When it includes threats to commit violence intended to terrorize another person, cause evacuation, or create serious public alarm. Check, check, and check.

Political Intimidation Does Not Require a Gun

Americans ordinarily associate intimidation with threats of physical harm. Yet government officials possess other forms of power capable of imposing profound consequences on an individual.

A congressional investigation can require extensive document production, sworn testimony, and substantial legal representation. A federal criminal investigation can disrupt careers and family finances even when prosecutors ultimately bring no charges. Regulatory scrutiny can affect businesses, professional licenses, and employment opportunities. Republicans have been dealing with just these issues for years.

Those powers serve legitimate purposes when used to investigate evidence of wrongdoing. They become constitutionally troubling when wielded to punish people for protected speech or political association.

The Supreme Court reinforced that principle in its 2024 decision in National Rifle Association v. Vullo. The case concerned allegations that a New York financial regulator had used her authority to pressure businesses into severing relationships with the NRA because of its advocacy.

The Court unanimously recognized that government officials cannot use regulatory coercion to suppress protected expression indirectly. Officials cannot accomplish through threats against private parties what the First Amendment forbids them from doing directly.

The same principle would be relevant if government officials attempted to pressure employers into blacklisting former administration employees solely because of their lawful political activities.

The Coming Battle Over Congressional Investigations

Threats of aggressive oversight is already influencing decisions within the Trump administration.

An October 18 Wall Street Journal report described officials and businesses seeking legal counsel in anticipation of possible investigations if Democrats gain control of congressional committees after the midterms. According to the report, lawyers have been contacted by people concerned about subpoenas, contrived allegations of misconduct, and the financial consequences of prolonged scrutiny.

The prospect of investigations becoming a political deterrent presents a different problem. If capable Americans begin declining government positions because they fear future retaliation for lawful service, the consequences will extend beyond the Trump administration.

If allowed, future Democratic administrations could encounter the same problem. Republicans could adopt similar language and investigative strategies against officials who implement leftist policies. Each change in congressional control could then become an opportunity for political revenge.

A constitutional republic cannot function indefinitely under a system in which government service becomes a recurring source of personal jeopardy merely because the opposing party eventually regains power.

The First Amendment Protects Political Participation

The First Amendment protects political speech and association, including the right to advocate controversial policies and participate in political organizations. Those protections are especially important when an individual’s views are unpopular with people exercising government authority.

Public employees do not possess unlimited immunity from investigation or discipline. Officials who engage in bribery, corruption, obstruction, or other unlawful conduct may properly face consequences. Certain political appointments also carry different employment protections from ordinary civil-service positions.

But lawful political affiliation cannot automatically be treated as evidence of wrongdoing. Nor does service in an administration establish that every employee personally approved every decision made by the president or senior officials.

The distinction should be obvious, yet it can become blurred when political figures speak of making examples of people associated with their opponents.

The American system depends on citizens being able to accept government positions, advocate policies, and participate in elections without facing unlawful retaliation for their political identities.

The Responsibility of Political Leaders

There is an additional reason elected officials should exercise caution when discussing punishment of political adversaries.

Political leaders possess audiences far larger than those of ordinary citizens. Their statements can be amplified through television, social media, and partisan organizations, often reaching people who hear only a provocative excerpt rather than the surrounding explanation.

That does not mean politicians should be prohibited from expressing anger or demanding accountability. It means they should recognize the difference between condemning alleged wrongdoing and encouraging hostility toward entire categories of Americans.

Slotkin is an example of someone with a large microphone abusing that power to make terroristic threats against political opponents, fully expecting to force the public to refrain from living in a peaceful, constitutional manner based on her threats. Those are the very tactics and goals of terrorism.

The Constitutional Line America Cannot Afford to Cross

The United States has endured fierce partisan conflict throughout its history. Political leaders have accused one another of corruption, disloyalty, abuse of power, and betrayal of constitutional principles. Some accusations have been justified; others have reflected the passions of the moment.

What distinguishes constitutional government from political persecution is not the absence of conflict. It is the existence of enforceable limits on how government may treat those who lose a political contest.

Those limits protect Republicans today and Democrats tomorrow. They protect administration officials who implement lawful policies, citizens who advocate unpopular positions, and private individuals who refuse to abandon their beliefs under political pressure.

The recent statements by Elissa Slotkin and Jaime West warrant public scrutiny because they cross those boundaries.

Federal Investigation of Ilhan Omar Expands: Agents Seize Phone, Subpoena Relatives as Citizenship and Financial Questions Mount

October 15, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

A court-authorized search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s Washington home has been followed by revelations of grand jury subpoenas, scrutiny of her citizenship records, and a separate investigation into dramatic changes in her family’s financial disclosures.

Federalist Press | October 15, 2026

WASHINGTON — What began as a renewed examination of longstanding allegations involving Representative Ilhan Omar’s immigration history has developed into a federal criminal investigation involving a residential search warrant, seized electronic evidence, and more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas.

Federal agents searched the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington, D.C., residence on Monday, October 12, as part of an investigation into possible fraud involving immigration documents submitted when Omar and her family entered the United States. By Wednesday evening, additional details had emerged.

Investigators seized Omar’s cellphone, according to Fox News and the Associated Press. Federal authorities have also issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to members of her family, seeking evidence related to the family’s immigration history.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has acknowledged a separate investigation involving Omar’s congressional financial disclosures. The developments represent a significant escalation in federal scrutiny of a sitting member of Congress. They also raise questions about allegations that have circulated for years, including disputed accounts of Omar’s marital history and the circumstances under which she became an American citizen.

Omar denies wrongdoing and maintains that the Trump administration is using federal law enforcement to intimidate a political opponent.

A Federal Search Warrant and a Seized Cellphone

Homeland Security Investigations agents arrived at Omar’s Washington residence before dawn Monday to execute a search warrant obtained through the Justice Department. The department confirmed that agents had conducted a judicially authorized search as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

The operation attracted immediate attention because Omar is a sitting member of Congress and a prominent critic of President Donald Trump. Investigators seized Omar’s cellphone during the search.

The seizure of a phone can provide investigators with access to potentially relevant communications, documents, photographs, application records and other electronically stored information, subject to the warrant’s scope and constitutional restrictions.

The search itself establishes that federal authorities persuaded a left-leaning judge that there was a legally sufficient basis to search the residence.

The Judge Imposed Restrictions on Investigators

An additional development emerged Wednesday when CNN reported that federal prosecutors had encountered resistance from the magistrate judge reviewing their proposed search.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh reportedly required limitations on investigators’ access to certain records because of constitutional protections afforded to members of Congress. Those protections arise principally from the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which shields legitimate legislative activities from certain forms of executive-branch investigation.

It indicates that the government could not simply search every congressional document or communication in Omar’s possession without regard to those protections.

The precise restrictions have not been publicly disclosed. Neither has the affidavit explaining the evidence that investigators presented to obtain the warrant.

Consequently, the public knows that the search received judicial authorization but does not yet know the specific facts supporting that authorization. Those facts will be essential to determining the strength of the government’s case.

The Citizenship Question: Was Omar Under 18?

One of the most consequential allegations involves Omar’s age when she acquired American citizenship. Omar was born in Somalia and entered the United States with her family in 1995 after spending several years in a Kenyan refugee camp.

Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, subsequently became a naturalized American citizen. Omar has stated that she acquired citizenship through her father’s naturalization in 2000, before she turned 18. Under the citizenship laws applicable at that time, a child’s age could be critical to determining eligibility for derivative citizenship.

Investigators are now examining whether information concerning Omar’s birth date was accurate. The specific issue involves conflicting historical references to her birth year. Omar’s official biography identifies her birth year as 1982. However, older biographical materials maintained by the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library previously listed 1981.

According to emails obtained by the New York Post and described by Fox News, Omar’s congressional staff requested that the library change the year to 1982 in May 2019. The library complied.

But an important qualification appears in the same correspondence: the original 1981 listing reportedly came from secondary reference materials rather than an authenticated birth certificate. That means the discrepancy is a legitimate subject for documentary investigation.

Investigators would need to determine her actual date of birth, the information submitted in the relevant immigration proceedings, and whether any discrepancy was intentional and legally material.

The potential consequences could be substantial if fraud were established.

More Than a Dozen Grand Jury Subpoenas

The investigation has extended beyond Omar herself.

According to the Associated Press, federal authorities have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas as part of the immigration inquiry. Some were directed to Omar’s relatives. Her sister, Sahra Noor, is among those subpoenaed.

The investigation reportedly involves a federal grand jury collecting evidence in Minnesota. Grand jury subpoenas can compel witnesses to provide testimony or produce documents relevant to a criminal investigation.

In this case, relatives may possess information about the family’s departure from Somalia, its residence in Kenya, its entry into the United States, or the documents used in subsequent immigration proceedings.

Investigators are also reportedly examining information supplied by Omar’s late father. Because he died in 2020, federal authorities cannot question him directly about the documents he submitted. That circumstance may increase the importance of surviving records and testimony from family members.

The Longstanding Marriage Allegation

Questions concerning Omar’s immigration history are not new. For approximately a decade, critics have questioned her marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen whom she legally married in 2009.

The most serious allegation is that Elmi was actually Omar’s brother and that the marriage was arranged to obtain an immigration benefit. Omar has repeatedly denied the allegation.

The issue attracted considerable attention in 2019 when the Minnesota Star Tribune conducted an investigation into her marital history. The newspaper examined marriage records, divorce filings, business documents, university records and social media material. It identified several discrepancies that Omar had not fully explained.

Among them was the discovery that Omar had filed joint federal tax returns in 2014 and 2015 with Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her children, while she remained legally married to Elmi.

That circumstance raised legitimate questions about her tax filings and marital history.

The current federal investigation may provide investigators with access to immigration records and testimony unavailable to journalists examining the controversy years earlier.

But as of October 15, authorities have not publicly confirmed that the alleged relationship between Omar and Elmi is a specific subject of the current search warrant. Nor have they publicly produced evidence establishing the allegation.

The marriage controversy therefore remains relevant historical background rather than a proven element of the current criminal investigation.

The Financial Disclosures: From Thousands to Millions and Back Again

A second federal inquiry concerns Omar’s financial disclosures.

This investigation involves two businesses associated with her husband, political consultant and businessman Tim Mynett. The companies are eStCru LLC, a California winery, and Rose Lake Capital LLC, a venture capital firm.

Omar’s earlier congressional disclosures placed the combined reported value of the business interests between approximately $15,000 and $51,000 in 2023. Her 2024 disclosures subsequently listed their combined value between $6 million and $30 million.

That dramatic increase attracted scrutiny from House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer.

In February 2026, Comer requested financial records and communications concerning the businesses, including information that might explain their reported valuations. The investigation took another turn when Omar amended her financial disclosures in April. The amended filing substantially reduced the couple’s reported assets, placing their combined disclosed value between approximately $18,000 and $95,000.

Omar’s office explained that the earlier filings had failed to account properly for business liabilities. The office maintained that the original figures created a misleading impression of the family’s actual wealth.

The extraordinary difference between the original and amended disclosures prompted additional questions about the accuracy of the reporting.

On October 13, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro confirmed that her office was examining Omar’s financial disclosures. The inquiry is separate from the immigration investigation that prompted Monday’s search.

The Minnesota Fraud Scandal and Questions About Political Connections

Omar has also faced scrutiny concerning her political relationships with individuals implicated in Minnesota’s massive Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. The underlying criminal case is among the largest pandemic-era fraud prosecutions in the country.

Federal prosecutors established that participants submitted fraudulent claims for meals supposedly provided to children through federally funded nutrition programs. More than 60 defendants have been convicted, and the scheme involved approximately $250 million in fraudulent claims.

The case exposed extensive failures in the administration and oversight of federal assistance programs. Some individuals associated with the scandal had political connections or made campaign contributions to elected officials.

Omar has faced questions about her relationships with individuals involved in the scheme and her legislative activities concerning federal meal-program oversight. Aimee Bock had suggested Omar should have known about irregularities involving restaurant operators.

Federal prosecutors have not yet charged Omar with participating in the Feeding Our Future scheme.

Could Omar Lose Her Citizenship?

The potential consequences of the immigration investigation extend beyond ordinary criminal penalties.

Federal law permits the government to seek revocation of citizenship obtained through certain forms of fraud or unlawful procurement. Such proceedings are known as denaturalization.

The legal standards are demanding, and the government must establish grounds recognized under federal law. In Omar’s case, the legal analysis could be particularly complicated because she says she acquired citizenship as a minor through her father’s naturalization.

If investigators establish that inaccurate information was submitted, courts would still need to consider its materiality, the relevant citizenship statutes and the circumstances surrounding the alleged misrepresentation. The fact that a parent completed paperwork for a child could also be relevant.

Loss of citizenship would not automatically establish that a person should be deported. Removal would involve additional legal questions and procedures.

Nevertheless, the administration’s interest in the circumstances surrounding Omar’s acquisition of citizenship gives the investigation potentially far-reaching consequences.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that federal investigators are examining whether evidence could support proceedings to revoke Omar’s citizenship.

Omar Accuses the Administration of Political Intimidation

Omar has responded forcefully to the investigation. Following Monday’s search, she accused the Trump administration of using federal law enforcement to target political opponents. Of course, that is terribly rich in light of her public delight when the Biden administration filed dozens of federal charges against President Trump to derail his presidential candidacy.

The dispute is particularly sensitive because President Trump has repeatedly criticized Omar publicly, including questioning her immigration history and political positions.

The search also occurred approximately three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections.

Justice Department practice has traditionally discouraged overt investigative steps involving political candidates close to elections when such actions could affect electoral proceedings.

That practice is not an absolute prohibition on legitimate criminal investigations. Nevertheless, the timing has prompted questions about whether ordinary prosecutorial safeguards were followed.

The administration maintains that federal law applies equally to elected officials. “No one is above the law.”

Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that investigators should follow the evidence and proceed only if a genuine case exists.

Ultimately, the legitimacy of the investigation will depend on the evidence, the lawfulness of the investigative process and the decisions of independent courts.

What Evidence Is the Government Seeking?

The investigation has now reached a stage at which several developments could become decisive.

First, investigators may obtain historical immigration records capable of establishing Omar’s actual birth date and the information submitted when her family entered the United States.

Second, grand jury testimony may clarify the family’s immigration history and identify who prepared or supplied particular documents.

Third, forensic examination of electronic evidence may identify relevant communications or records.

Fourth, the separate financial inquiry may establish whether the dramatic changes in her reported business assets reflected legitimate accounting corrections or inaccurate disclosures.

Finally, the government may seek additional testimony concerning Omar’s marital history, although officials have not confirmed that the longstanding allegation involving Elmi is part of the current warrant.

A Test of Accountability and Due Process

The federal investigation of Ilhan Omar has entered a consequential stage.

A sitting member of Congress has had her residence searched under judicial authorization. Her cellphone has reportedly been seized. More than a dozen grand jury subpoenas have been issued.

Federal investigators are examining possible irregularities in her family’s immigration history, while a separate inquiry addresses extraordinary changes in reported financial assets. These are significant developments deserving careful public scrutiny.

The public interest is served neither by dismissing documented investigative developments as meaningless nor by treating unproven allegations as established crimes.

The next decisive development will not be another political accusation. It will be the disclosure of evidence capable of showing what actually happened.

For now, the investigation continues, and the questions remain unanswered.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks from the Athens Acropolis

October 13, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Federalist Press October 7, 2026

There are great ruins all across the world. In many cases, they are places where history seems to have exhausted itself: remnants of distant cultures that have long passed beyond living memory.

But the Acropolis is different.

For thousands of years, the civilization that built what stands behind me has captivated the imagination of the Western world. Generations of our statesmen, artists, and philosophers have looked to it – they’ve looked to it with wonder and they’ve looked to it with awe.

Now time has a tendency to dull the senses: great victories and catastrophic defeats, they seem to shrink to becoming like a footnote in a textbook, another fact for our schoolchildren to memorize and forget. But the Greeks of antiquity, they seem to have an almost mystical hold on our memory. They call us back to them, again and again.

480 years before Christ, the armies of Xerxes arrived in this city and they put its sanctuaries to the torch. Most Athenians had by then evacuated by ship to a nearby island. But there was a handful of them that refused to leave their home. So instead, they barricaded themselves in the rocky fortress of the Acropolis to fight an extraordinary last stand, heaving massive stones down the cliffs onto the Persian invaders and holding the greatest empire of the age at bay for days. They were eventually overwhelmed. The Persians plundered the temples, burned the shrines, and razed the Acropolis to the ground but when the Athenians returned, they gathered the broken remains of the old Acropolis and buried them in the hill where it had stood. And decades later, under Pericles, they raised the Parthenon.

For 25 centuries since, the Parthenon has stood. Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow. And the progeny of the men who built it – the sons of Athens and Rome – have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the Earth.

Two and a half centuries after the founding of the American republic halfway across the world from where I stand now – I stand here today as the Secretary of State of that republic, and a great-grandson of settlers who arrived in the new world from Spain – I stand here to testify to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space can ever extinguish.

The history of America, the history of my country, is covered with the fingerprints of antiquity. Greece is literally carved into the architecture of our government: in the towering columns, in the domes and the monuments across our capital city. The city where our Constitution was born – Philadelphia – is itself a Greek name.

The men who founded my country were fascinated by the heritage we inherited from yours. They were exceptionally well-read in history – they were vividly aware of their unique place in it – but no other age of the past held their attention or their imagination quite like that of antiquity. Many, many people are surprised to learn that the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was not an Enlightenment philosopher or political theorist. No, the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was Plutarch, the Greek biographer of Greece and Rome’s great men.

Now, much has been written and said about the influence of ancient Greece on the ideas of the American Founders – and, for that matter, on all of the Western philosophers and statesmen that preceded them. Most of us are familiar with the basic history. Athens gave us democracy. Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy. Our ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship, and republican government were shaped in the Greek city-states. Even much of our political vocabulary – words like democracy, tyranny, the word “politics” itself – found its origins here.

Now, all of that is true. But the things we owe to this place – as Americans, and as Westerners – are actually far far deeper. These institutions and ideas – these institutions and ideas were the outward expression of more fundamental qualities we see in the ancient Greeks – qualities that can’t be reduced to any particular political system or theory.

Here, in Athens, we found the first full realization of all the essential traits that would come to define the West: fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory. An insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates, a hunger to know the mysteries of nature and grasp the secrets of the cosmos. An impatience with the notion of impossibility, chafing at all boundaries and limits, straining to peer into the depths of the unknown.

These were not just the formulas or precepts of a particular school of philosophy. They were the characteristic of a people – expressed in their traditions, their stories, their imagination; in the qualities they demanded of their citizens; in the things they lived and fought and died for.

To know them is to know ourselves.

What blossomed here in this place was the Western desire to uncover all that ignorance, darkness, and distance had kept hidden from the mind of man. The Greeks did not just shape history; the Greeks gave us history itself. Much about – much of what we know about many ancient civilizations comes almost entirely from the records of Greek explorers and historians, explorers and historians who didn’t just chronicle the histories of their own people, but ventured outwards to observe and record the sagas of foreign peoples and cultures all across the world.

Where others looked inward, the Greeks were the first to direct their focus outward, to chase the thrill and glory of seeing all that was strange and new. It was this trait – it was this trait that would push the West to create and build things that others could not, marking us out from so many other cultures and civilizations where stability and subsistence were the highest ends of life.

But it is not just the ambition to explore the unknown that we inherit from the Greeks; it is the conviction that the unknown canbe known. The confidence that the world can be charted and measured and mapped and understood – and that there is a rational order to the cosmos, governed by certain fundamental laws, laws that men can observe and the mind can come to understand.

This was the foundation of the Western mind: our math, our science, our medicine. Our philosophy, ethics, and religion. It paved the way for the gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe and flourish into the empire of Christendom. It was the foundation of the riches of Christian theology – of Augustine and Aquinas and the whole tradition of natural law.

It gave birth to a civilization marked not just by a common culture, it was marked by a common anthropology – a common view of man and his place in the universe. Its descendants would share not just the idea of a natural order, but a distinctive understanding of virtue; of destiny and fate; of truth, goodness, and beauty; of a code that dictates how men ought to live; of objective standards and ideals to strive towards.

For the Greeks of antiquity, the pursuit of excellence was the very principle of man’s existence. They organized all of civic life around contest, ambition, competition: in philosophy and poetry, in sculpture and drama, in athletics and art, in war and statecraft. The classical Greek city was an arena for great men to test and prove themselves, to hone their potential through perpetual struggle – to be the best, the strongest, the most beautiful, straining to inch ever closer to perfection.

Now I know that to modern ears, what I just described, this way of life, may sound odd; it may even sound cruel. The ideal of many ideologies in our time has, frankly, become a world of perfect safety, devoid of risk or failure, with neither the glory of victory nor the shame of defeat. Too often these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure no one will lose; we preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best. We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.

The men who made the Parthenon, they built upwards. They held that the highest and most noble aspiration in life was to surpass all others, to strive to be the best in all things. The ancient Greek city-states were filled. They were filled with intense passion and rivalry and faction and conflict. But from that constant struggle for distinction – from that came the great flowering of art and philosophy and political and intellectual energy that would transform a collective of Mediterranean cities into the birthplace of the greatest civilization in the world.

The thumos, as the ancient Greeks called it – the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride – is the heart of great civilization. And without it? Without it, nations lose their will to fight, the will to strive, the will to survive.

Today, too much of the West has forgotten this quality. Over time, we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional. We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world. Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness.

The word “nationalism” became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments; we condemned our own history. And in too many places, we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.

And with every passing year, we seemed to outsource more of our sovereignty, transferring our decisions to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control.

But others were all too happy to fill the vacuum that we left – the vacuum left behind by our weakness. And as the West’s confidence faltered, its adversaries and its rivals only grew more assertive, building up their own wealth and their own power in our stead.

And now, today, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all.

Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice. We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power: to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialize our economy, to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.

We choose to reach for new frontiers: in advanced manufacturing and super intelligence; in drones, weapons, and warfare; in chips, minerals, cyber, and every other domain of human possibility. To unleash our energy, to rebuild our factories, to return our astronauts to the moon and launch a new age of exploration in space.

Now for all their lofty ideals, the ancient Greeks were not naive. They understood that nations have interests. They understood that statecraft requires prudence and diplomacy, but they also understood that it requires the ability to wield force when prudence and diplomacy fail. They understood that power requires not only having the means to defend yourself, it requires the credibility that you are willing to use it.

This is the classical understanding of politics and of statecraft that the Trump Administration hopes to reclaim – reclaim not just for our country, but for the whole of our civilization.

We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago.

There are already signs.

Across this continent, we are witnessing what we hope will be the beginnings of a generational shift: skyrocketing defense spending, a flurry of new partnerships and programs, expanded manufacturing and production, following on the historic defense commitments made last year in The Hague.

Greece has been at the center of this shift. The people of this nation have proved themselves once again to be an indispensable friend to Europe and to the United States alike, on everything from energy to migration to defense, where Greece has been a model ally.

And it’s our sincerest hope that all of Europe will follow your example.

Though passions may, at times, have strained the bonds of affection between the United States and Europe, it must not be allowed to break them. Together, we must strengthen an alliance capable of confronting threats of our age.

And we can. Because we do not believe the transatlantic friendship should be zero sum. Quite the opposite: our vision is of an alliance whose strength is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a vision we saw in action just last month, in an unprecedented new agreement between the United States, Denmark, and Greenland – an agreement that will reshape the Arctic and bolster the security of all of NATO. All three partners in that deal emerged victorious. All of Europe – and NATO and the United States emerged safer, stronger, and more secure because of it.

We want to win together. We must win together.

Now it’s has become fashionable today to believe that enlightened foreign policy means prioritizing the global community over one’s own people. And I think here, too, we have much to learn from the men of ancient Greece because they knew that there was nothing selfish or wrong about loyalty to your nation, nor anything selfish or wrong about fighting to defend its interests above all else.

They believed – fiercely – in the ideal of the great man: the exceptional individual who obtains immortality through his own deeds. But they believed that glory and fame, those things were won through striving, sacrificing and achieving greatly for something larger than yourself. The recurring hero of the ancient Greek world was the man who was willing to pay any cost for a cause worthy of his loyalty.

We see this in Socrates, who refused to abandon the inquiry into truth even at the cost of his own life. We see it in the legendary stand of 300 Spartans – surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by the vast armies of Persia – who refused the chance to save themselves, choosing to fight to the last man rather than abandon their post or abandon their duty. And we see it in the epic myth of Achilles, who is offered the choice to return home and live a long and peaceful life – but chooses instead to remain at Troy and perish in pursuit of eternal glory.

These – these are the qualities that would shape the Western moral imagination. From the Christian martyr who refused to betray his faith to the patriot who gave his life for his country; from Saint Thomas More to the Battle of the Alamo, running through the immortal closing words of the Declaration of Independence of the United States which says, “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

It is from the Greeks that the West inherited its sense of duty – an unbreakable loyalty to one’s code, one’s cause, one’s country. Our heroes, the heroes of the West are those who choose to remain faithful to their duty precisely when it is most difficult and painful to do so: the man who is bound by his word, the soldier who will not abandon his post, the captain, the proverbial captain, who goes down with his ship.

This is wholly different from what we see, even now, for example from fanatics like the radical mullahs of Iran, whose cult of death hails child suicide bombers as national heroes, and portrays martyrdom as an end to itself.

Our heroes – our heroes may be willing to die for their cause; but our heroes do not worship death. It is precisely because we value life that we come to recognize the heroism in those who would sooner sacrifice it than to betray their principles. Now, we take the West’s conception of these things – heroism, honor, duty – we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it. A civilization that we must fight to defend today with the same passion as our forefathers did.

The men who built the Parthenon were succeeded by the architects of European Christendom, who raised the cathedrals of Milan, Cologne, and Florence. The quest to perfect the human form that moved the ancient Greek sculptors found a new expression in Michelangelo. The Greek philosophers’ search for the structure of the universe was inherited by Copernicus, and then Galileo, then Kepler, and in Newton.

The hunger for new knowledge, that’s what gave birth to Magellan’s first expedition around the world, to Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, and ultimately to Apollo 11’s journey to the moon. And the qualities that led Alexander to conquer the entire known world reappeared in Caesar, then Charlemagne, and Cortes.

And in America, that same tradition rediscovered itself anew. An open and wild land became the site of a great revival of Western imagination and ambition. The Greek aspiration for new horizons became the American frontier spirit. The civilization of Athens and Rome transformed an infant seaboard republic into a continental empire.

The greatest Americans of every generation have carried the unmistakable features of their forefathers – born in Athens, formed by Rome, baptized in Christendom, hardened in the furnace of medieval Europe, endowed with the English genius for liberty, and then carried across the Atlantic to be reborn on the shores of a new world.

Together, we must now rediscover that spirit. We are at an inflection point – an inflection point not only in the history of my nation, but an inflection point in the whole of our civilization.

The threats we face today are every bit as real as they were on the dramatic stage of antiquity.

National interests did not vanish in the face of international institutions. War did not disappear simply because we preferred peace. Other states continued to arm, to seek influence, to compete for territory, and technology, and resources, and markets, and energy, and power.

And now, there is war again. There is new competition between great powers again. There is vulnerability, aggression, terrorism, a whole universe of new threats and attacks again.

And so we must rebuild our institutions and our alliances to face these threats together – understanding that the purpose of these things is not to abolish the sovereignty of the nations that constitute them; it is to defend them. And that nations need not abandon their distinct identities in order to recognize their common interests.

We have built a model of that with our partners here in Greece. In our defense partnerships, in energy and technology, in our shared ambition to secure Europe’s borders from the threats of mass migration.

Our friendship dates back to the earliest years of my nation. When Greece rose in 1821 to recover its independence after centuries of Ottoman rule, Americans recognized something familiar in that struggle. Three years later, the great American statesman Daniel Webster, he delivered a famous address to Congress, helping bring the cause of the Greek Revolution before the representatives of the young American republic.

And he began by calling their attention to everything around them. This is what he said in his speech; he said: “This free form of government, this popular assembly… this practice of free debate, and public discussion, the contest of mind with mind… even the edifice in which we assemble, these proportioned columns, this ornamented architecture, all remind us that Greece has existed, and that we, like the rest of mankind, are greatly her debtors.”

Those words are as true today as they were when he said them. And all of us – not just Americans, but Europeans and our friends across the West – must relearn the lessons our forefathers took from this place and from its history.

The history of Greece – the history of Greece does not just offer us a glimpse – it does not offer a glimpse of our institutions in their earliest forms. The history of Greece shows us an image of ourselves.

It shows us that ours is the inheritance of great heroes, and that we should be proud – that we should be intensely proud – of where we come from. We should marvel at what our forefathers carved out of this countryside. The story of our civilization is the greatest story ever known to man. And it began here, with the first men and women of the West. From them – from them – we can rediscover the virtues, the courage, and the strength to confront the dangers that we face in our time.

Thank you.

Federal Agents Raid Ilhan Omar’s Washington Home in Criminal Immigration Investigation

October 12, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Justice Department confirms pre-dawn search of Minnesota congresswoman’s residence as federal investigators examine allegations involving her immigration history. No charges have been announced.

Federalist Press | October 12, 2026

WASHINGTON — Federal immigration enforcement agents searched the Washington, D.C., home of Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar early Monday morning, executing a court-authorized warrant in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation.

The operation, conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), represents a significant development in a federal inquiry that became public last month when White House border czar Tom Homan confirmed that immigration authorities were examining allegations involving the Minnesota congresswoman.

The Department of Justice acknowledged the operation in a statement.

“Today in the Washington, D.C., area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice.”

The department added that the operation was part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.

Neither the Justice Department nor Homeland Security Investigations has publicly disclosed the specific allegations underlying the warrant, identified any evidence recovered during the search, or announced criminal charges against Omar.

The investigation remains active.

Investigation Reportedly Centers on Omar’s Immigration Records

The investigation concerns possible fraud involving immigration documents submitted on Omar’s behalf when she entered the United States as a child.

The documents reportedly were completed by her late father.

Omar was born in Somalia in 1982. Her family fled the country’s civil war, spent several years in a refugee camp in Kenya, and eventually resettled in the United States.

She subsequently became an American citizen and entered politics, winning election to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016 before becoming one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress in 2018.

She currently represents Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes Minneapolis. The reported focus on childhood immigration paperwork introduces potentially complicated legal questions.

Immigration applications frequently involve information supplied by parents or guardians on behalf of minor children. If investigators identify inaccuracies in such documents, establishing who supplied the information, whether the inaccuracies were intentional, and whether they were legally material would be important to determining whether any crime occurred.

At present, federal officials have not publicly established that Omar knowingly submitted false information or committed immigration fraud.

Tom Homan Confirmed Investigation in September

Monday’s search follows public statements made in September by Tom Homan, President Trump’s border enforcement adviser.

During a September 13 appearance on Fox News, Homan acknowledged that federal immigration authorities were examining allegations involving Omar. He characterized the matter as an ongoing criminal investigation but declined to discuss specific evidence.

Homan also emphasized that federal immigration laws apply regardless of a person’s position in government. His remarks followed years of allegations concerning Omar’s immigration history and marital relationships.

One longstanding allegation is that Omar entered into a marriage intended to facilitate immigration benefits. Critics have claimed that a former husband was her brother.

When questioned on September 18, Omar said Homeland Security had not contacted her about an investigation and characterized the allegations as politically motivated attacks.

The September statements established that federal authorities were investigating allegations. Monday’s execution of a search warrant marks a new investigative step.

What Does a Federal Search Warrant Mean?

The execution of a judicially authorized search warrant is an important legal development, but its significance should be understood precisely.

Under the Fourth Amendment, federal investigators generally must establish probable cause before a judge may authorize a search of a private residence. Probable cause requires a factual basis for believing that evidence associated with a crime may be found in the location identified in the warrant. It does not require prosecutors to prove that the homeowner committed a crime. Nor does it necessarily mean that the homeowner is the only person under investigation.

The search warrant itself, along with the affidavit supporting it, would provide considerably more information about the government’s allegations. Those documents may remain sealed while investigators continue their work. Federal investigators can seek records, electronic devices and other materials relevant to an inquiry, subject to the scope of the warrant.

As of Monday’s initial reporting, authorities had not publicly identified what, if anything, was seized from Omar’s residence.

The fact that agents obtained judicial authorization establishes that a judge approved the search. It does not establish the truth of every allegation being investigated.

Could Immigration Fraud Affect Citizenship?

The investigation raises questions about whether alleged fraud in immigration proceedings could have consequences for naturalized American citizens. Federal law provides mechanisms for revoking naturalization when citizenship was illegally procured or obtained through concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.

But denaturalization is not automatic, and the legal standards are demanding. The government generally must establish that the relevant misrepresentation was material to the acquisition of citizenship or that citizenship was otherwise unlawfully obtained.

The circumstances surrounding an application submitted by a parent on behalf of a minor child can present additional questions about knowledge, responsibility and intent.

Immigration attorney Michael Wildes, discussing the allegations involving Omar in a September Fox News report, described the evidentiary burden facing investigators as substantial.

Even if federal authorities eventually identify inaccurate information in Omar’s childhood immigration records, that discovery would not necessarily establish grounds for criminal prosecution or loss of citizenship. Those determinations would depend on the evidence and the applicable legal standards.

A Political Confrontation Years in the Making

Omar has been among President Trump’s most outspoken congressional critics since entering the House in 2019. The two have clashed repeatedly over immigration enforcement, national security, American foreign policy and the administration’s treatment of immigrant communities.

Omar has criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement and supported legislation seeking changes to federal immigration enforcement practices. Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly questioned her political positions and immigration history. Their longstanding conflict makes Monday’s search politically consequential. It also places additional importance on transparency concerning the investigation.

Supporters of the investigation may view the search as evidence that federal authorities are willing to examine allegations involving powerful elected officials. Critics may question whether political considerations influenced the decision to investigate one of the president’s most prominent congressional opponents. Neither interpretation, standing alone, establishes whether the investigation is justified.

The underlying evidence, the legality of investigative procedures and any eventual court proceedings will be necessary to assess those questions.

Why the Timing Matters

The search occurred just three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections. Omar is seeking another term representing Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District.

A federal investigation involving a sitting member of Congress naturally attracts public attention, particularly during an election campaign. However, the timing of a law-enforcement action does not, by itself, establish either political interference or improper conduct by the person being investigated.

The Justice Department has not publicly explained why investigators sought to execute the warrant on October 12.

Without the supporting court documents or additional official disclosures, it is not possible to determine what investigative developments prompted the search at this particular time.

The timing nevertheless ensures that the investigation will receive scrutiny from Congress, the news media and voters.

What Happens Next?

Several important questions remain unanswered. The Justice Department has not publicly disclosed the specific criminal statutes under investigation. It has not released the warrant affidavit, described the evidence investigators sought, or identified materials recovered during the search. It has not announced whether Omar is a target of the investigation or whether investigators are examining the actions of other individuals associated with historical immigration filings.

Omar’s response to Monday’s search also remains an important part of the developing story. The Associated Press reported that it had requested comment from her office but had not received a response at the time of its initial report.

Further information could emerge through official statements, court filings, congressional inquiries or subsequent investigative reporting. Until then, the allegations remain allegations.

The Larger Question: Accountability Under the Law

The investigation presents a question that extends beyond the political differences between Omar and the Trump administration. How should federal authorities investigate allegations involving elected officials without allowing political considerations to compromise either accountability or due process?

Members of Congress are subject to federal criminal laws. Holding elected office does not provide immunity from investigation into conduct unrelated to protected legislative activities.

At the same time, elected officials retain constitutional protections, including the presumption of innocence and the right to challenge government searches and criminal accusations. Those principles apply regardless of political affiliation.

The government’s responsibility is to investigate credible evidence lawfully and present any resulting charges in court. Omar’s responsibility, if formally accused, would be to respond through the legal process available to every American. And the public’s responsibility is to distinguish established facts from allegations that have not been proved.

Monday’s search is a documented development in an ongoing federal criminal investigation. Whether that investigation produces charges, uncovers evidence of wrongdoing, or concludes without prosecution remains unknown.

For now, federal agents have searched the home of a sitting member of Congress under judicial authorization. The evidence that prompted the search—and what investigators discovered—will determine the significance of what happens next.

Does Pres. Trump Plan to Announce That Extraterrestrials Are Visiting Earth Before the Midterm Elections?

October 9, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

With the November elections approaching, the administration’s unprecedented UFO disclosure initiative raises an extraordinary question: Could the president make an announcement that changes humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe—and what would happen politically if he did?

By Federalist Press | October 9, 2026

President Donald Trump walks to a podium in the White House. Behind him stand senior military officers, intelligence officials, Congressional leaders, and representatives of the scientific community. He looks into the cameras and makes an announcement unlike anything ever delivered by an American president.

The United States government, he explains, holds convincing evidence that humanity is not alone in the universe. More astonishingly, he confirms that intelligent beings originating beyond Earth are visiting our planet.

For decades, such a declaration has occupied the imaginations of UFO researchers, science-fiction writers, conspiracy theorists and serious investigators alike.

But what if the announcement comes not years from now, but within the next few weeks? And what if it arrives just as Americans are preparing to vote in one of the most consequential midterm elections in history, where the left has moved ever closer to socialism and the end of the America we know?

These questions are speculative. As of this writing, there is no verified announcement that President Trump intends to confirm extraterrestrial visitation before Election Day. His staff has confirmed that he has such a speech prepared, and will deliver it when he judges it is appropriate.

Nevertheless, recent developments within the federal government make the possibility of a significant “D” disclosure worth examining.

The President Has Already Opened the Door

On February 19, 2026, President Trump directed federal agencies to begin identifying and releasing government records concerning unidentified anomalous phenomena, UFOs and possible extraterrestrial life. The administration subsequently established the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, appropriately abbreviated PURSUE.

The initiative involves the Department of War, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, NASA, the FBI, the Department of Energy and other federal agencies. Its stated objective is to identify, review, declassify and release UAP-related government records.

On May 8, the administration released its first collection of records. Additional releases followed on May 22, June 12, July 10, August 7, and September 18. The government has made videos, photographs, historical documents and military encounter reports available for public examination.

Some of these materials describe incidents that remain unexplained. Others provide historical context for government investigations extending back decades.

The administration has emphasized that an unresolved incident does not necessarily establish an extraterrestrial explanation. Nevertheless, the release of government records provides researchers and the public with more material to examine. The official archive is available through the PURSUE disclosure portal.

But releasing old documents is one thing. Acknowledging the existence of extraterrestrial visitors would be something additional.

The September Development That Deserves More Attention

One of the most consequential developments occurred on September 14.

The Department of War announced a targeted legal waiver authorizing current and former military personnel, civilian employees and defense contractors to disclose certain protected UAP-related national defense information directly to designated PURSUE representatives.

The waiver addresses restrictions contained in nondisclosure agreements and special-access-program agreements. Its purpose is to create a legally protected channel through which people possessing sensitive information can communicate with authorized investigators.

However, this is not blanket permission to disclose classified information publicly. The authorization applies to communications with designated officials operating within the disclosure initiative. Nevertheless, the development is significant.

For years, former intelligence officials and UAP whistleblowers have claimed that secrecy agreements, classification rules and compartmentalized military programs prevented knowledgeable individuals from describing what they had encountered.

The new waiver creates a mechanism for investigators to receive certain information without the same contractual obstacles. Whether that mechanism will produce evidence of extraordinary discoveries remains unknown.

But the administration has now established both a public-release system and a protected channel for gathering additional information. That raises an obvious question.

What happens if investigators encounter information that warrants an announcement from the president himself?

Disclosure With a Capital D

Within the UFO research community, the word disclosure has acquired a meaning far beyond the release of military photographs or intelligence reports.

For many researchers, Disclosure—with a capital D—means official acknowledgment that intelligent nonhuman beings exist and have interacted with Earth.

It could involve confirmation of recovered technology, evidence of biological material (bodies), documented encounters or other information that the government considers sufficiently reliable to establish an extraordinary conclusion.

Such an announcement would represent a profound departure from the federal government’s longstanding public position of denying that they have proof that Non-Human Intelligence exists. For a president to reverse that position credibly, the announcement would need to be accompanied by substantial evidence. Simply saying that extraterrestrials exist would invite immediate questions, especially when most of the legacy media have accused the president of lying about everything he says since he first announced he was running for the presidency.

Therefore, the president would need to include certain facts to back up the claim. What evidence supports the conclusion? How was it authenticated? Which agencies examined it? Could independent scientists evaluate the findings? And perhaps most importantly, why was the information not disclosed earlier?

Those questions would become central to the public’s understanding of any presidential announcement.

Why the Timing Matters

The November 3 midterm elections are now less than four weeks away.

Americans are preparing to elect a new House of Representatives, decide numerous Senate contests and select governors and other state officials. The elections are unfolding against a backdrop of considerable economic and international uncertainty. The continuing confrontation with Iran has disrupted energy markets and contributed to higher gasoline and diesel prices.

President Trump has argued that preventing Iran from developing and using nuclear weapons justifies substantial short-term costs, including temporary economic hardship.

On October 8, he clarified controversial remarks about the consequences of Iranian nuclear capabilities, emphasizing that his concern was the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Iran.

Meanwhile, the administration has been exploring ways to reduce fuel prices. On October 9, oil prices declined following Trump’s announcement that the United States would not resume strikes against Iran before the midterm elections and that discussions with Tehran were productive.

These developments illustrate the competing demands facing the administration. National security decisions can carry immediate economic consequences, while voters evaluate those consequences alongside domestic policy, inflation, employment and other concerns.

A presidential announcement concerning extraterrestrial visitation would introduce an entirely different subject into that environment. But would it change the political conversation? And if so, for how long?

An Announcement That Could Dominate the News

Consider the magnitude of the event. For generations, scientists, philosophers and theologians have debated whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Modern astronomy has established that planets are common throughout the galaxy. Researchers have identified thousands of worlds orbiting distant stars.

But the discovery of planets is not the discovery of extraterrestrial civilizations. And the discovery of extraterrestrial civilizations would not, by itself, establish that they have visited Earth.

A credible presidential announcement confirming extraterrestrial visitation would therefore be extraordinary. News organizations around the world would seek immediate explanations. Scientists would demand access to the evidence. Foreign governments would ask what American intelligence agencies knew and whether allied nations had been informed. Religious leaders would consider the implications for their respective traditions. Congress would seek additional briefings concerning the history of any government programs involved.

The implications would extend far beyond American politics. Indeed, an announcement of this magnitude could become one of the defining news events of the century.

Would it produce a positive electoral result for the president? The public’s response would depend on the evidence, the circumstances of the announcement, the credibility of the officials involved and whether the information appeared to have been released for scientific and national-security reasons or for political purposes.

Could Disclosure Change the Midterm Conversation?

There are several plausible ways Americans might respond to an extraordinary presidential disclosure. Some citizens might welcome the information as a long-overdue act of government transparency. Others might question why the government had withheld such knowledge and demand accountability from successive administrations. Some might be skeptical of the announcement itself, particularly if the evidence were incomplete or unavailable for independent examination.

There is also a distinction between changing the national conversation and changing how Americans vote.

An extraordinary scientific or national-security announcement could dominate television coverage and social media without necessarily altering voters’ judgments about gasoline prices, household finances, immigration, healthcare or their congressional representatives.

A Reuters/Ipsos survey released October 9 found widespread concern about rising living costs, including among Americans who otherwise support the president. Those concerns provide important context for understanding the political environment in which any disclosure would occur.

The immediate news impact might be enormous. Its electoral significance would remain uncertain.

What Would the President Actually Have to Reveal?

There is an enormous difference between announcing that the government has investigated unexplained objects and announcing that extraterrestrial beings are visiting Earth.

The first is already established. The United States has investigated UAP for decades.

The second remains unproven in the publicly available official record. A credible announcement of extraterrestrial visitation would require evidence sufficient to distinguish nonhuman technology from classified American systems, foreign military capabilities, natural phenomena, sensor errors and mistaken observations.

Ideally, that evidence would be made available for examination by qualified scientists outside the agencies responsible for collecting it. The recovered crafts and alien bodies would need to be put on display for the public, and the scientific community.

The Question of Secrecy

Perhaps the most difficult questions would concern the past. If extraterrestrial visitors have been documented by American authorities, when did the government first learn of them? Which presidents were informed? Were congressional intelligence committees briefed? Did private defense contractors participate in research programs? Were any discoveries concealed from officials legally entitled to oversight? And if information was withheld, who made those decisions?

These questions have occupied UAP researchers for decades. Of course, it would be easy for this president to simply say, prior administrations hid the truth, but this administration will Disclose it.

The Trump administration’s PURSUE initiative represents an effort to examine and release that information. Full Disclosure would put the ultimate question to rest: yes, we are not alone in the universe, and yes, they have been visiting us for centuries.

What Happens Next?

As of October 9, there is no verified evidence that President Trump has scheduled an announcement confirming extraterrestrial life or visitation before the midterm elections.

The administration has not publicly established that extraterrestrial beings are visiting Earth. Nor has it released evidence that conclusively demonstrates such visitation.

Nevertheless, the developments of 2026 are substantial.The president has issued a disclosure directive. Multiple federal agencies are participating. Six collections of UAP materials have been released.

A protected mechanism now exists for certain defense personnel and contractors to provide sensitive information to authorized investigators. And members of Congress continue to pursue greater access to records and testimony.

These are concrete developments, regardless of one’s conclusions about the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

The next major disclosure could be another collection of military reports. It could be a previously classified document concerning an unusual encounter. It could involve testimony from individuals who claim firsthand knowledge of extraordinary government programs. Or it could be something more consequential.

For now, nobody outside the relevant decision-making circles can reliably say whether the president is preparing an announcement of that magnitude.

A Question Larger Than November

The approaching midterm elections provide a dramatic backdrop for speculation about presidential disclosure. But the underlying question is much older, and its implications extend far beyond any election.

Are we alone?

For centuries, humanity has looked into the heavens and wondered whether other intelligent beings inhabit the universe. Modern science has expanded our understanding of how many worlds may exist. Military encounters and government investigations have introduced additional questions about unusual phenomena observed within Earth’s atmosphere and surrounding environment.

Yet the fundamental question remains unanswered by publicly verified evidence.

If President Trump possesses information capable of resolving it, the significance would extend far beyond the remaining weeks of an election campaign. It would affect science, national security, philosophy, religion and humanity’s understanding of its own history. The American people deserve to know what the evidence establishes.

The discovery that humanity is not alone would belong not to one president, one administration or one political party, but to the entire human family. But President Donald J. Trump would forever be known as the one who Disclosed the truth, and that single accomplishment would set him apart from all other presidents for centuries to come.

From “Buy Greenland” to Permanent U.S. Bases: What Trump Got America in the Arctic Deal

September 23, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Trump’s Art of the Deal: The agreement Trump signed with Denmark and Greenland gives the US greatly expanded, enduring military access to one of the most strategically important pieces of territory on Earth — while restricting potential Russian and Chinese military and economic footholds.

For years, Donald Trump’s fixation on Greenland was treated in much of the political world as something between an eccentricity and a diplomatic provocation.

Trump talked about buying the enormous Arctic island during his first presidency. After returning to the White House, he went considerably further, repeatedly arguing that American control of Greenland was necessary for national security. The rhetoric alarmed Denmark, angered some Greenlanders and generated months of friction inside NATO.

Then came the deal. Of course.

On September 22, President Trump sat beside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen at the United Nations in New York and signed a sweeping new Arctic security agreement:

The agreement permits America to substantially enlarge its military presence;

modernize and expand Pituffik Space Base;
establish new defense areas at Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig;
propose additional defense areas in the future;
move American military aircraft, vessels, forces and vehicles broadly through Greenland;
develop components of the Golden Dome missile-defense system; and
prevent non-NATO nations from establishing military installations or maintaining a persistent military presence there.

The agreement has no expiration date and provides for its continuation even if Greenland eventually becomes independent, provided an independent Greenland remains within NATO and assumes the agreement’s obligations.

That is a very different outcome from the caricature that surrounded Trump’s Greenland campaign.

The Opening Demand Was Greenland Itself

Trump is the author, with Tony Schwartz, of The Art of the Deal, and he has long used large opening demands, public pressure and threatened alternatives as elements of negotiation. Supporters see the Greenland episode through precisely that lens; critics argue that his threats unnecessarily damaged relations with two friendly governments.

The chronology is nevertheless striking. Trump began with the maximal position: America needed Greenland.

Denmark said no. Greenland said no. Political leaders and commentators ridiculed the idea. Relations became sufficiently strained that Greenland’s prime minister now says trust with Washington will have to be rebuilt. Reuters reports that Trump’s refusal earlier this year to rule out military or economic coercion produced a diplomatic crisis and months of intensive negotiations.

Yet those negotiations did not end with Washington walking away empty-handed. They ended with Denmark and Greenland signing an agreement that grants the United States many of the strategic benefits that made Greenland attractive to Washington in the first place, without transferring sovereignty.

Whether that was Trump’s intended landing point from the beginning is known only to the people inside the negotiations. But as a negotiating sequence, it is unmistakable: an extraordinary opening demand was followed by months of resistance and bargaining, culminating in an agreement substantially expanding the American position.

The agreement provides permanent American access, basing and overflight rights and the ability to establish additional military installations when agreed under the treaty’s procedures.

Why Greenland Matters So Much

Pull out a globe rather than a conventional flat map and Trump’s interest becomes considerably easier to understand.

Greenland sits astride the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America. A missile, bomber or other threat approaching the United States from parts of Russia would encounter the Arctic as a natural avenue of approach. Greenland consequently occupies valuable geography for early warning, missile tracking, space surveillance, air operations and North Atlantic defense.

America already operates Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, the Defense Department’s northernmost installation. The U.S. Space Force says the base supports force projection and space superiority and traces its missile-warning mission to the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site established there in 1961. The 12th Space Warning Squadron today provides warning of ballistic-missile launches to U.S. national authorities and NORAD.

The new agreement goes considerably beyond preserving Pituffik.

It expressly allows the United States to modernize and expand operations there and establishes additional defense areas at Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland and Mestersvig in eastern Greenland. It also creates a procedure for additional American defense areas should future threats require them.

The agreement further gives U.S. military aircraft the ability to fly over and land throughout Greenland and gives American public vessels access and movement rights through Greenland’s territorial waters, subject to the treaty’s terms.

In strategic terms, America is no longer talking merely about one isolated Arctic installation. It has secured a framework for a much broader military posture across the island.

Golden Dome Moves North

Perhaps the most consequential words in the agreement concern missile defense.

The treaty specifically recognizes the parties’ interest in American military access necessary to defend Greenland, the NATO area and the American continent, “including through establishment of a Golden Dome defense system.” Geography is the reason.

Greenland lies along important northern approaches to North America. Hudson Institute senior fellow Liselotte Odgaard argued earlier this year that inadequate surveillance and response capability around eastern Greenland leaves vulnerabilities that Russia could exploit in posing a nuclear threat to both the United States and NATO. She noted that the 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy identifies access to Greenland as important to homeland defense.

NATO itself has been expanding its focus on the High North. Seven of the eight Arctic states are now NATO members, and the alliance launched Arctic Sentry in February 2026 as part of its strengthened northern deterrence posture.

Greenland therefore is not simply a remote island covered in ice. It is part of the northern shield of North America.

Russia and China Are Effectively Locked Out Militarily

Article IX of the agreement is remarkably direct: No country outside NATO may establish a manned or unmanned military installation in Greenland or maintain a persistent military-force presence there unless the parties agree otherwise.

That provision has obvious implications for Russia and China.

Russia is an Arctic power with extensive northern military infrastructure. China, although geographically far removed from the Arctic, declared itself a “Near-Arctic State” in its 2018 Arctic policy and has sought economic, scientific and infrastructure footholds across the region. CSIS documents Chinese attempts over the past decade to participate in Greenlandic airports, an abandoned naval facility, a satellite ground station and mineral development; several projects were blocked because of Western security concerns.

The new agreement turns that concern into treaty architecture.

The Other Prize Beneath the Ice

Then there are the minerals.

Greenland contains iron ore, graphite, tungsten, palladium, vanadium, zinc, gold, uranium, copper and significant rare-earth resources. CSIS estimates Greenland ranks eighth globally in rare-earth reserves and identifies Kvanefjeld and Tanbreez as two exceptionally large deposits. China, meanwhile, remains dominant in important parts of the world’s rare-earth mining and processing system.

Europe understands the stakes as well. The European Commission has identified 25 of its 34 critical raw materials in Greenland and signed a strategic raw-materials partnership with Greenland in 2023.

Rare earths and other critical minerals aren’t merely commodities. They feed technologies used in electronics, energy systems and advanced defense equipment. Dependence on a geopolitical competitor for critical supply chains can therefore become a national-security vulnerability.

The Greenland agreement doesn’t hand Greenland’s minerals to the United States, and it would be inaccurate to describe it that way. Greenland retains control over its resources, and actually developing them remains difficult and expensive because of Arctic conditions and limited infrastructure.

What the agreement does do is strategically important.

It defines resource extraction as one of the “particularly sensitive” sectors covered by foreign-investment safeguards. Greenland, working with Denmark and in consultation with the United States and other partners, must prevent investors from countries outside NATO, NATO partner nations or the EU from obtaining control, significant influence or dangerous access to non-public information in sensitive activities when national security or public order would be threatened.

That creates another barrier against an adversarial power converting Greenland’s mineral wealth into strategic leverage.

Greenland and Denmark Got Something, Too

This was not a unilateral American acquisition, and understanding what Denmark and Greenland received is important to understanding why they signed.

The treaty explicitly reaffirms Danish sovereignty and Greenlanders’ right to determine their own political future. It requires the United States to use Greenlandic businesses for construction and servicing of defense areas to the maximum extent feasible, potentially directing substantial economic activity toward the island. It also commits the parties to respecting Greenlandic environmental, cultural and economic interests.

Prime Minister Frederiksen called the agreement one that could “last forever” and said it strengthens NATO while respecting Greenlandic self-determination. Prime Minister Nielsen likewise said a strong NATO presence in the Arctic is vital, although he acknowledged that trust between Greenlanders and Washington needs rebuilding after the confrontation over American acquisition.

Those facts complicate simplistic descriptions of the agreement as either an American conquest or an American retreat. It is a negotiated security arrangement in which all three governments accepted obligations and obtained benefits.

What did America Get?

The most interesting question may ultimately be whether possession was ever necessary to accomplish America’s principal strategic objectives.

The American flag will not replace Greenland’s flag. The island remains part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Trump did not obtain the territorial acquisition he repeatedly demanded.

But the agreement signed in New York gives the United States an enduring military framework across Greenland, two additional defense locations, the ability to expand Pituffik, broad military transit rights, provisions for Golden Dome, a mechanism for additional future bases, protection against non-NATO military penetration and safeguards against threatening foreign control of critical infrastructure and resource extraction. And it does so within NATO rather than by dissolving the alliance relationship.

Perhaps the most extraordinary provision is Article XI. The agreement has no end date.

Even if Greenland someday exercises its right to become an independent nation, the agreement requires Denmark and Greenland to ensure that the new state remains within NATO and assumes the defense agreement’s rights and obligations.

That is why the Greenland story looks considerably different today than it did when Trump’s opening demands dominated the headlines. The debate began with a seemingly audacious question: Will America own Greenland?

The agreement ultimately produced a different question, and perhaps the strategically more important one: How much of what America actually needs from Greenland can it secure without owning Greenland at all?

The treaty signed September 22 provides a substantial answer. President Donald Trump got exactly what he wanted in the deal—exactly what America needed. Anyone who doubts his powers of strategic negotiation has simply not been paying attention.

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.

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.

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.