Entitlement | Federalist Press | Defending Liberty

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

August 14, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

Of course not.

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

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

That reaction reveals the truth.

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

It has always been about who gets to appoint them.

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

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

Nine becomes thirteen.

Thirteen becomes seventeen.

Seventeen becomes twenty-one.

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

The institution itself becomes the casualty.

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

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

History has generally vindicated that decision.

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

Court packing undermines that safeguard.

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

That is not judicial reform.

It is political retaliation.

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

Why not six? Why not ten?

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

There is none.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 12, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wealthy Already Pay Most Federal Income Taxes

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

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

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

Billionaires Are Not Vaults of Cash

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

They do not.

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

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

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

Even Massive Wealth Taxes Have Limits

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

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

Yet federal spending is also measured in trillions.

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

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

Wealth Is Created Before It Is Taxed

The discussion often overlooks an even more fundamental point.

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

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

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

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

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

Taxing Success Does Not Eliminate Poverty

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

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

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

Punishing Success Is Not an Economic Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 6, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

Two Parties—or One Coalition?

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

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

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

Several elected officials identify as democratic socialists, or have received DSA support. Policy proposals once associated primarily with the party’s progressive wing—such as Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, wealth taxes, and broad student-debt forgiveness—have increasingly become part of mainstream Democratic debate.

Maher’s concern is not that every Democrat has become a democratic socialist. It is that ideas once considered outside the party’s mainstream are exerting greater influence over its direction.

The Shift in Priorities

Many mainstream Democrats continue to support a regulated market economy, private enterprise, and incremental reform. Democratic socialists generally advocate more sweeping structural changes to the economy, including expanded public ownership or worker control in most sectors.

There is nevertheless meaningful overlap on several policy questions. Both generally support broader access to healthcare, although they differ on how far government should go. Both support stronger labor protections, though democratic socialists typically seek more extensive workplace restructuring. Both support addressing climate change, though they often differ over the balance between government planning and market incentives. Both favor making higher education more affordable, though the DSA generally advocates tuition-free public higher education as a permanent policy.

The debate is therefore less about whether there is any overlap and more about how far the Democratic Party should move toward the DSA’s vision.

Maher’s Warning

Maher has argued that many Democratic politicians are not themselves radicals, but that they have become reluctant to challenge the party’s most ideological activists. He has criticized slogans and positions such as calls to abolish police, prisons, or borders, and he has warned that embracing such ideas risks alienating many Americans.

His criticism is noteworthy because it comes from someone who still describes himself as a liberal.

Bill Maher says, “I’m not voting for anyone who thinks the wrong side won the Cold War or cheers for the Intifada like it’s the World Cup.”

Rather than urging the party to move right, Maher argues that it has drifted away from the pragmatic liberalism associated with previous Democratic leaders and toward a more ideological politics.

Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, it reflects an active debate within the Democratic coalition itself.

The Larger Question

Every major political party evolves. The Republican Party today differs in important respects from the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.

Likewise, the Democratic Party has changed significantly over the past several decades. The question confronting voters is not simply whether the party has moved left. It is how they view that evolution.

Supporters argue that expanded government programs, stronger regulation, and greater redistribution are necessary responses to modern economic challenges. Critics contend that those policies increase government dependence, reduce economic flexibility, and gradually shift decision-making from individuals and markets to political institutions.

That debate is likely to define American politics for years to come, unless action is taken immediately to eradicate this leftward march toward communism from our nation.

Why Maher’s Voice Matters

Political labels are often dismissed when they come from ideological opponents. They are harder to ignore when they come from longtime allies.

Bill Maher’s recent comments do not settle the debate over the Democratic Party’s future. They do, however, demonstrate that concerns about the party’s ideological direction are no longer coming only from conservatives.

When one of America’s most recognizable liberal voices publicly warns that his own party is being “influenced”colonized” by democratic socialists and says his vote is “in play,” it suggests that the conversation has moved well beyond partisan talking points.

Whether Democrats view that as a warning or an opportunity will shape not only their party’s future—but perhaps the nation’s as well.

Democratic Socialists and Democrats: Is there any Difference?

August 5, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Although the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic Party remain separate organizations, many of their policy priorities increasingly intersect.

The rise of openly self-described democratic socialists and even communists within American Democratic Party politics has revived a question that would have seemed unlikely a generation ago: How different is the Democratic Party from the Democratic Socialists of America?

For decades, American politics treated socialism as a fringe ideology. Both Republicans and Democrats generally embraced a market-based economy, private property, and entrepreneurial capitalism, while debating how extensively government should regulate markets and provide social programs.

Today, however, the political landscape has changed. The Democratic Party has moved steadily left, to the point that they have now intersected with the Democratic Socialist Party, due to their common views and goals of transferring wealth and power to just one party, and doing away with Constitutional safeguards.

Bill Maher expresses growing concern that the Democratic Party is being, in his words, “colonized” by democratic socialists and increasingly radical activists. He has even remarked that his vote is now “in play” because of the party’s direction.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has grown substantially since the mid-2010s, and several prominent elected officials identify as democratic socialists or have received support from the organization. At the same time, many policy ideas once associated primarily with socialism have become part of mainstream debate within the Democratic Party.

Different Organizations, Similar Philosophies

The Democratic Party is one of America’s two major political parties and includes a broad coalition of moderates, liberals, progressives, and some elected officials who identify as democratic socialists. Its platform lightly supports a mixed-market economy, private enterprise, while emphasizing its extreme brand of civil rights protections for non-citizens, environmental regulation, and a social safety net that includes Medicare for all.

The Democratic Socialists of America is a separate political organization that advocates for a swifter transformation of the economy. It supports expanding worker ownership and cooperative enterprises, increasing public ownership in most sectors, strengthening labor unions, and significantly expanding the role of government in healthcare, housing, education, and other public services, and most areas of American life.

Healthcare

One area of significant overlap is healthcare. Many Democrats support strengthening and expanding the Affordable Care Act, while others within the party advocate Medicare for All. The DSA explicitly endorses a universal single-payer healthcare system.

Although Democrats disagree internally about the best approach, both organizations generally support broader access to healthcare than currently exists. The difference often lies only in the degree of government involvement rather than the objective of expanding coverage to complete government domination.

Higher Education

Education provides another example. Many Democrats support reducing college costs, expanding Pell Grants, and forgiving most student debt. The DSA generally advocates tuition-free public colleges and universities as a permanent policy.

Labor and the Economy

Both organizations strongly support labor unions. The Democratic Party generally advocates strengthening collective bargaining rights and improving workplace protections.

The DSA goes further by promoting worker cooperatives, greater employee ownership, and broader democratization of economic decision-making, and the seizure of the means of production and distribution; essentially, pure communism.

Climate Policy

Climate policy has also become an area of considerable overlap. Both organizations support substantial government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage clean-energy investment.

The DSA generally favors larger public investment, expanded government planning, and more extensive public ownership in portions of the energy sector. Many Democrats support aggressive environmental regulation while continuing to rely primarily on heavily regulating private markets and private investment.

Of course, none of these proposed policies is designed to actually affect the climate. They merely use climate philosophy to facilitate the transfer of high levels of wealth and power to the Left.

Taxation

Both organizations generally support higher taxes on many high-income households than current law provides. The DSA advocates broader wealth taxes and more extensive redistribution through public spending.

Many Democrats also support increasing taxes on higher-income Americans, though the party encompasses a wider range of views regarding how far redistribution should extend. Of course, as in all examples of socialism and communism in the past, “the rich” turn out to be nearly everyone, and eventually, all citizens become impoverished through socialistic policies, except for the elite leaders.

Public Ownership

Perhaps the clearest distinction involves ownership itself.

The Democratic Party still accepts the concept ofprivate ownership of businesses operating within a highly regulated market economy.

The DSA argues that more sectors of the economy must be seized by government, and be publicly owned, cooperatively owned, or democratically controlled by “workers” meaning them.

The Broader Question

The broader debate extends beyond labels. It concerns the proper relationship between government, markets, and individual liberty. Democrats earn a D minus in these areas, where the DSA earns a prison sentence.

Supporters of expanded government programs argue they reduce inequality, improve economic security, and provide opportunities that markets alone may not deliver. Critics argue that larger government increases public debt, reduces economic flexibility, discourages investment, and places more decisions under political rather than market control, and will inevitably reduce America to Venezuela or Cuba status.

These competing visions have shaped American politics for generations and continue to influence debates over healthcare, education, taxation, housing, labor policy, and environmental regulation.

Looking Ahead

The conversation about democratic socialism and the Democratic Party is unlikely to end soon. As younger progressive leaders gain prominence and the Democratic Party continues to devolve, voters will continue to evaluate where the party sits along the spectrum between market-oriented liberalism and democratic socialism.

Stop Financing Degrees That Cannot Repay Their Loans

August 3, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Federal student lending should help Americans build productive careers—not guarantee universities unlimited customers while leaving graduates buried beneath debts their earnings cannot support.

Why does the federal government continue lending tens of thousands of dollars to students for degree programs whose graduates routinely earn too little to repay what they borrowed?

No private lender would knowingly finance a $100,000 investment without examining whether the investment had a reasonable prospect of producing enough income to service the debt. Yet Washington has spent decades making enormous education loans with remarkably little regard for the price of the program, its completion rate, the employment prospects of its graduates, or the relationship between their expected earnings and monthly payments.

The result is a system that protects universities from ordinary market discipline while transferring nearly all the risk to students and taxpayers. By the first quarter of 2026, the federal student-loan portfolio had reached approximately $1.7 trillion across 43 million borrowers. Meanwhile, the average student at a public university who borrows to obtain a bachelor’s degree leaves with roughly $31,960 in debt.

That enormous flow of federally guaranteed money has not merely helped students pay rising tuition. It has also enabled institutions to raise prices, expand administrative bureaucracies, construct lavish facilities, and create programs whose economic value is often disconnected from their cost. Tuition and fees nearly doubled in nominal terms between the 2005–06 and 2025–26 academic years, rising 93.2 percent; even after adjusting for inflation, the increase was 17.4 percent. Public universities now charge an average of about $10,340 annually in resident tuition, while private colleges average approximately $39,307 before housing, meals, books, and other expenses are added.

The central failure is simple: Washington has treated nearly every accredited college program as though it represents an equally prudent public investment. It does not.

Federal Loans Should Be Investments, Not Blank Checks

A student loan is not a prize for admission to college. It is a financial investment in a course of study that is expected to increase a student’s knowledge, employability, and future earnings enough to justify the expense.

That does not mean education has no value beyond income. Literature, music, history, philosophy, languages, and the arts contribute enormously to civilization. A free society should permit universities to offer them and students to study them. The issue is not whether such subjects may be taught. The issue is whether taxpayers should guarantee virtually unlimited borrowing for any program, at any price, regardless of whether its graduates can reasonably repay the debt.

People remain free to purchase countless things that the federal government does not subsidize. Freedom to pursue a degree does not create an entitlement to have taxpayers assume its financial risk.

Federal loans should therefore be conditioned upon measurable economic outcomes. Before guaranteeing tens of thousands of dollars for a particular degree at a particular institution, the government should ask the questions any responsible lender would ask: What percentage of students complete the program? What do graduates earn? How many find work related to their education? How much do they borrow? What percentage can repay without requiring decades of subsidies, deferments, forgiveness, or default?

The answers vary enormously by field. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce reports that median earnings among prime-age bachelor’s-degree holders range from about $58,000 in education and public-service fields to $98,000 in STEM fields. A bachelor’s degree still produces a substantial average advantage over a high-school diploma, but the return is far from uniform across majors and institutions.

That distinction matters. “College pays” is an average, not a guarantee. It tells a prospective student little about whether borrowing $80,000 for one particular program at one particular university is sensible.

Universities Receive the Money; Students Carry the Risk

The present system creates a dangerous imbalance. Universities receive tuition immediately. They are paid whether the student graduates or drops out, whether the degree leads to a career or unemployment, and whether the borrower repays the loan or spends decades trapped in delinquency.

The school has already been paid. The graduate and the taxpayer remain responsible for everything that follows.

This is a textbook example of moral hazard. When institutions receive the reward while someone else bears the risk, prices rise and accountability collapses. Universities have little financial incentive to close weak programs, reduce tuition, limit enrollment in oversupplied fields, or tell applicants that their chosen degree may never justify its cost.

The federal government should end that arrangement. Institutions should be required to share the losses when their programs repeatedly leave students unable to repay. A university that collects federal loan dollars should have financial skin in the game.

If graduates consistently default, the institution should reimburse part of the federal loss. If a program repeatedly fails objective earnings and repayment standards, its access to new federally guaranteed loans should be reduced and ultimately suspended. Schools would remain free to offer the program, but they would have to persuade students to pay for it voluntarily, lower its price, finance it themselves, or demonstrate improved outcomes.

The market discipline would be immediate. Programs with genuine value would survive. Programs maintained primarily because federal money makes them profitable would face pressure to improve, shrink, or disappear.

Debt Is Not Merely a Number on a Statement

Bad education debt does more than reduce a borrower’s disposable income. It can delay marriage, homeownership, family formation, retirement saving, entrepreneurship, and other milestones through which people enter stable middle-class life.

Research has also identified an association between student debt and psychological distress. One study found a significant relationship between student-loan debt and distress among graduates, while broader reviews have linked educational debt with anxiety, depression, and diminished well-being. Association does not prove that debt alone causes every mental-health problem, but it confirms what common sense already suggests: beginning adult life with a large obligation and weak earnings can impose profound emotional as well as financial strain.

The current labor market has made the problem harder to ignore. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates reached 5.8 percent in 2025, its highest level since 2013 outside the pandemic disruption.

Many graduates eventually succeed, and some low-paying fields provide immense public value. Teachers, social workers, public defenders, artists, and researchers should not be casually dismissed because their salaries are modest. But acknowledging the social value of a profession does not justify allowing institutions to charge any amount they choose. A necessary but modestly compensated career requires lower-cost training, targeted scholarships, employer support, service-based grants, or explicit public appropriations—not a disguised system that saddles the worker with debt and hopes repayment somehow works itself out.

A Better Student-Loan System

Congress should replace the current blank-check model with an outcomes-based system built around several straightforward principles.

First, federal borrowing limits should be established program by program, rather than merely by degree level. The permissible loan should bear a reasonable relationship to the historical earnings of graduates from that specific program and institution. A degree whose graduates typically earn $45,000 should not carry the same federally backed borrowing capacity as one whose graduates routinely earn $100,000.

Second, every applicant should receive a plain-language financial disclosure before borrowing. It should show tuition, total expected debt, completion rates, median graduate earnings, monthly payments under a standard repayment plan, employment rates, and the percentage of former students who are delinquent or require income-based subsidies. Students should have to acknowledge those figures before taxpayers guarantee the loan.

Third, universities should share repayment risk. When a program repeatedly produces poor outcomes, the institution—not merely the borrower and Treasury—should absorb part of the loss.

Fourth, programs that fail minimum standards for several consecutive years should lose access to federal student loans. The Department of Education has already developed transparency and accountability mechanisms using earnings and debt measures, and a 2026 accountability framework moves toward denying federal loans to persistently failing programs. The sound principle should be applied consistently across public, private nonprofit, and proprietary institutions rather than selectively according to institutional type.

Fifth, federal policy should give much greater support to lower-cost pathways connected to demonstrable workforce demand: community colleges, apprenticeships, skilled trades, technical certifications, nursing, medicine, engineering, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, accounting, and other fields in which training leads to identifiable employment opportunities.

This does not require Washington to dictate everyone’s career. It requires Washington to stop pretending that every educational purchase is equally safe for federal financing.

Stop Confusing Access With Value

Defenders of the existing system will argue that restricting federal loans could reduce access to higher education, particularly for students from lower-income families. That concern deserves serious consideration, but “access” to an unaffordable program with poor completion and employment outcomes may be access to financial harm.

A young person is not helped by being admitted, praised, indebted, and abandoned.

Real access means access to education worth its cost. It means an honest chance of graduation, employment, repayment, independence, and advancement. A federal program that helps someone borrow $70,000 for a credential that adds little to his earning capacity has not expanded opportunity. It has financed a trap.

Low-income students should receive grants and scholarships where there is a compelling public purpose. They should also have access to affordable community colleges, apprenticeships, occupational programs, and properly priced universities. But institutions should not be permitted to invoke disadvantaged students as moral cover for charging prices their graduates cannot sustain.

Universities Must Once Again Serve Students

The federal student-loan system was created to expand opportunity. Too often, it now functions as a revenue pipeline for higher education.

Universities have learned that they can increase tuition because students do not pay the full cost at the moment of purchase. The government advances the money, the institution receives it immediately, and the painful consequences arrive years later—after the graduation ceremony, after the brochure promises have faded, and after the borrower discovers what the degree is actually worth in the labor market.

The market cannot correct prices when government continually supplies more borrowed money to meet them. As long as Washington guarantees the financing, universities remain insulated from the most basic signal in economics: customers refusing to buy something that costs more than it is worth.

That insulation must end.

Students should remain free to study whatever they choose. Universities should remain free to teach any lawful subject. But taxpayers should not be compelled to guarantee any debt an institution wishes to generate.

Federal lending should support opportunity, not institutional excess. It should finance education that gives borrowers a reasonable path toward repayment and productive independence. It should inform applicants rather than seduce them with borrowed money. It should reward schools that deliver value and impose consequences on those that do not.

The guiding rule should be neither complicated nor ideological:

No university is entitled to federally guaranteed customers, and no student should be encouraged to borrow more for an education than that education can reasonably help repay.

That reform would not destroy higher education. It might finally force higher education to remember whom it is supposed to serve.

Envy Is the Fuel of Socialism

July 28, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Social media has created a generation taught to compare, covet, and consume. Socialism arrives promising to satisfy desires that only hard work and free enterprise can sustainably provide.

One of the most destructive cultural developments of the past twenty years has received remarkably little attention. It is not merely the rise of social media, but the rise of manufactured envy. Platforms that began as a way for families and friends to stay connected have evolved into global competitions where millions of people display carefully edited versions of their lives.

Filters erase imperfections. Luxury vacations become routine. Exotic automobiles, designer clothing, expensive homes, private jets, and seemingly effortless wealth fill endless scrolling feeds.

For many users, especially young people, the result is not inspiration—it is comparison. And comparison, left unchecked, often becomes envy.

Researchers have found that social media encourages upward social comparison, particularly among younger users, increasing dissatisfaction with their own circumstances and amplifying the “fear of missing out.” Social media companies profit from that emotion. Influencers profit from it. Advertisers profit from it. Increasingly, politicians do as well.

Every successful political movement appeals to deeply rooted human emotions. Some appeal to hope. Others appeal to patriotism or fear. Socialism has historically found its greatest appeal in resentment and envy. Its message is deceptively simple: someone else has more than you. Someone else lives in the house you wish you owned, drives the car you wish you could afford, and enjoys a lifestyle you have been taught to believe you deserve.

Rather than asking how successful people created their prosperity, socialism asks a different question: Why should they have it at all?

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher understood this tendency better than most. She famously observed, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” She also noted that socialism often appears less interested in making the poor wealthier than in making the wealthy poorer. In fact, history repeatedly demonstrates that many redistributive political movements spend far more time discussing how wealth should be divided than how wealth is actually created.

Social media has fundamentally altered the psychology of younger generations. Previous generations compared themselves primarily to neighbors, classmates, or coworkers. Today’s young adults compare themselves every waking hour to celebrities, entrepreneurs, professional athletes, entertainers, and social media influencers whose carefully curated lives bear little resemblance to reality. Algorithms continuously feed users images of people who appear richer, happier, more attractive, and more successful than themselves. It should surprise no one that many young Americans conclude they are somehow falling behind.

What rarely appears on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube are the years of sacrifice that almost always precede genuine success. Viewers seldom see the entrepreneur who mortgaged his home three times before building a successful business, the contractor who worked nights and weekends for twenty years, the physician who endured a decade of education and residency, or the investor who quietly accumulated wealth through disciplined saving and decades of compound growth.

Social media compresses decades of effort into a thirty-second highlight reel. Success appears effortless. Wealth appears instantaneous. Luxury appears normal rather than exceptional. When the hard work disappears from the story, redistributing someone else’s success begins to seem perfectly reasonable.

It is therefore not surprising that socialism has gained renewed popularity among many younger Americans. Surveys have shown that younger generations express more favorable attitudes toward socialism than their parents and grandparents. There are many reasons for this. Housing prices have risen dramatically. College tuition has exploded. Student debt burdens millions of graduates. Economic mobility often feels more difficult than it did for previous generations. These concerns are genuine and deserve serious attention. Yet social media magnifies those frustrations by presenting extraordinary lifestyles as though they are ordinary expectations. The emotional response creates fertile ground for politicians promising to solve inequality by expanding government and redistributing wealth.

Within today’s Democratic Party, that message has become increasingly prominent. Self-described democratic socialists now occupy influential positions within the party, while others advocate policies that would significantly expand federal control over healthcare, education, housing, energy, taxation, and wealth redistribution. Supporters argue these programs create greater fairness and economic security. Critics respond that every new entitlement, regulation, or subsidy eventually raises the same unavoidable question: At whose expense?

Government creates no wealth of its own. Every benefit it provides must first be financed through taxation, borrowing, inflation, or future generations who will eventually be asked to pay today’s bills.

America has never promised equal outcomes. It has promised equal opportunity under the law. Those are profoundly different ideas. Free societies inevitably produce different results because individuals make different choices, possess different talents, assume different risks, and devote different levels of effort to different pursuits.

Capitalism rewards innovation, investment, entrepreneurship, and productive labor. Socialism increasingly looks to political power to redistribute what others have already created. History offers countless examples of that experiment, and the results have consistently included slower economic growth, diminished innovation, expanding government control, and declining personal freedom.

The proper response to seeing another person’s success has never been resentment. It should be curiosity. How did they build it? What sacrifices did they make? What risks did they assume? What can I learn from their example? Those questions built the American economy. They inspired generations of immigrants, entrepreneurs, inventors, and workers who transformed modest beginnings into remarkable success stories. Envy has never built a civilization. Innovation has. Discipline has. Entrepreneurship has. Personal responsibility has.

Social media will continue rewarding appearances, and politicians will continue rewarding promises. But neither can repeal economic reality. A nation that teaches its young people to covet what others possess rather than encouraging them to build prosperity for themselves risks replacing ambition with resentment. The American Dream was never that government would guarantee every citizen the lifestyle of an internet influencer. It was that every citizen would remain free to pursue success through talent, perseverance, innovation, prudent risk-taking, and hard work.

That dream remains worth defending. Perhaps the first step is teaching the next generation not to ask, “Why do they have more than I do?” but instead, “What can I build?”

The Left’s Favorite Question Is “Who Benefits?” Their Forgotten Question Is “At Whose Expense?”

July 24, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Every law creates winners and losers. Good government begins by honestly acknowledging both.

One of the great weaknesses of modern American politics is that too many public debates begin with compassion, but end without arithmetic. Every election cycle, Americans hear a familiar list of promises: free college, free childcare, free healthcare, student loan forgiveness, rent control, expanded housing subsidies, guaranteed income, climate subsidies, new entitlement programs, higher minimum wages, new regulations, and expanded workplace mandates. The list changes, but the sales pitch remains remarkably consistent.

Supporters almost always ask the same question: “Who will benefit?” It is an important question, but it is only half of the equation. The question too often left unanswered is far more important: At whose expense?

Every law has a cost. Every regulation shifts burdens. Every subsidy comes from someone else’s earnings. Every new government program consumes resources that would otherwise remain in private hands. Economics does not permit free lunches simply because politicians promise them.

Government possesses no independent wealth. It produces no goods. It manufactures no products. Every dollar Washington spends first belongs to someone. It comes from taxpayers, borrowing, inflation, or future generations. Politicians often describe spending as though government itself is writing the check. It isn’t. Your neighbors are—or your children eventually will be. That reality rarely appears in campaign speeches.

Consider healthcare. Supporters of expanded federal healthcare argue that medical care should be available to everyone regardless of income. That is a legitimate moral aspiration. But every proposal must still answer practical questions. Who pays physicians? Who finances hospitals? What taxes increase? What services become rationed? How long do patients wait? How much innovation declines when government sets prices? These are not arguments against helping the sick. They are questions every responsible legislature must answer before expanding government obligations.

The same is true of student loan forgiveness. Canceling student debt sounds compassionate until someone asks, at whose expense? The debt does not disappear. It transfers. Construction workers who never attended college, electricians, truck drivers, retirees, and taxpayers who already repaid their own loans ultimately absorb the obligation. Debt forgiven by government is simply debt shifted to others.

Rent control provides another example. Few ideas sound kinder than making housing more affordable. Yet economists across the political spectrum have long observed that strict rent controls often discourage new housing construction, reduce maintenance, and ultimately shrink housing supply. The intended beneficiaries may receive lower rents, but future renters frequently encounter fewer apartments and higher long-term costs. Once again, the obvious question remains: At whose expense?

Minimum wage increases illustrate the same principle. Everyone wants workers to earn higher wages, and better pay is a worthy objective. But labor markets also operate according to economic reality. If government requires wages substantially above what many small businesses can sustain, employers reduce hiring, automate jobs, cut employee hours, or raise prices. Some workers benefit, consumers pay more, and others never receive the job in the first place. Good intentions cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand.

Environmental regulation presents similar trade-offs. Most Americans support clean air, clean water, and responsible stewardship of natural resources. Yet every major regulation carries economic costs. Electricity becomes more expensive. Fuel prices increase. Manufacturing costs rise. Housing becomes more costly to build. Consumers ultimately bear much of the financial burden. That does not mean environmental protections are unwise. It simply means honest policymaking requires acknowledging both the benefits and the costs.

Perhaps the most overlooked trade-offs involve expanding legal rights. Whenever government creates a new legal entitlement, someone else frequently acquires a new legal obligation. Employers, schools, businesses, religious organizations, parents, and taxpayers all may assume new responsibilities. One person’s newly created legal right often becomes another person’s legal duty. Responsible lawmakers should examine both sides of that equation before legislating.

America’s Founders understood these realities well. They rarely spoke of unlimited government. Quite the opposite. James Madison warned repeatedly that factions would seek political power to advance their own interests at the expense of others. The Constitution therefore limits what government may do—not because compassion is undesirable, but because concentrated political power can become dangerous. Every expansion of governmental authority should be viewed with caution, not because government never helps, but because government almost never relinquishes power once it acquires it.

The genius of free markets is not that they produce perfect outcomes. They do not. Rather, they allow millions of individuals to make voluntary decisions based upon prices, risks, incentives, and personal responsibility, instead of centralized political commands. Markets force difficult choices. Politics often conceals them. Politicians can promise benefits today while postponing the costs until tomorrow. Economics, however, eventually demands payment.

America desperately needs compassion. It also desperately needs honesty. Every proposed law should face one unavoidable question before becoming law: Who pays? Whose freedom is reduced? Whose taxes increase? Whose opportunities disappear? Whose business becomes harder to operate? Whose children inherit the debt?

These questions are not obstacles to good government. They are the beginning of good government. Every benefit has a cost. Every promise has a price. Before Congress passes another trillion-dollar program or another sweeping regulatory scheme, Americans deserve one simple answer that too few politicians are willing to provide: At whose expense?