▶️ VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: ISRAEL HATE FATIGUE
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VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: ISRAEL HATE FATIGUE
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srael dominates the daily news in this 2026 midterm election year—almost always in a boring, fatiguing, negative light. Tens of thousands of innocents may be slaughtered, ethnically cleansed, butchered, and tortured by the world’s dictators, yet an overwhelming and obsessive abhorrence is reserved for tiny, democratic Israel.
Such perverse asymmetry is strange, since, at least privately, most Americans would concede that of the 18 Middle Eastern nations, only Israel is a genuine consensual democracy.
As far as tolerance goes, in the entire region, only in Israel is it legal to criticize political or religious figures. Only there can one choose to adopt an openly gay or trans lifestyle. Only there can an apostate renounce one’s religion or urge others to do the same. And only there can Christians establish a new church almost anywhere they choose.
Some of Israel’s fiercest feminist critics who wear miniskirts and halter tops, some of its most severe gay opponents, and some of its more virulent trans adversaries would in all likelihood be summarily arrested in most Middle Eastern countries if they dared to speak, act, or wear clothes as they do in the West—except, of course, in democratic and free Israel.
In terms of protest, scream publicly in Tel Aviv, “I no longer believe in the Jewish faith, and I hate the current government of Israel”—and there is little chance of being arrested.
Chant the same publicly in any Muslim country in the Middle East—“I no longer believe in Islam, and I hate our current government”—and the loud critic would be either jailed or beaten by a street mob or worse.
✪ The New, Old Hatred
On the Left—whether that is defined as the ossifying Democrat Party or the ascendant Democratic Socialists of America, or both—it is now a general rule that no candidate can win a primary election in a blue state if the candidate is on record supporting Israel.
In practice, no Jewish American can now be nominated on any national Democrat Party ticket.
Once extreme but now mainstream Democrat candidates, officeholders, and influencers, from Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and podcaster Hasan Piker, call for the virtual end of Israel as we currently know it. Most Democrat candidates prefer to be seen on the stump with the antisemitic, America-trashing Hasan Piker rather than with their own Senate Minority Leader, Senator Chuck Schumer.
On campuses, left-wing students, along with foreign student visitors from the Middle East, openly cheered on the Hamas massacre of 1,200 civilians and soldiers (including 46 Americans) on October 7, 2023.
Some 80 percent of the once pro-Israel Democrats now view Israel unfavorably. Their hatred explains why once strong nationwide support for Israel has fallen from about 80 percent to 60 percent.
On the extreme Right, not a day goes without podcasters Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, or Candace Owens charging Israel and its supporters with some nefarious conspiracies, from secretly directing U.S. policy in the Middle East and suppressing the Epstein files, to orchestrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk and having advanced knowledge of, or at least a hand in, the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Now orphaned, but once hyper-MAGA, politicos like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Kent, and Thomas Massie blame much of their own estrangement from the Trump Administration and their now inert political careers on the influence of Jewish money and pro-Zionist Jews.
On examination, their accusations make no sense. But they do reveal a sudden recrudescence of a reductionist and ancient hatred.
✪ Irrational & Unhinged Venom
Is America really a captive of Jewish influence? Since its founding, Israel has contributed about $300 million, adjusted for inflation, to U.S. universities and nonprofits.
In contrast, the Gulf states alone have given more than $12 billion. Our chief rival, a hostile China, has donated more than $6 billion. Yet somehow Israel is accused of buying and leveraging U.S. institutions.
Members and close associates of the Bush, Biden, and Trump families have partnered in lucrative investments with rich Gulf-state entities. Yet we hear that pro-Israel American lobbying groups like AIPAC—whose money comes exclusively from American citizens or residents—pose an existential threat to the U.S.
Since the beginning of the Ukraine War in February 2022, the U.S. has sent Ukraine nearly $200 billion in aggregate military and economic aid.
That sum is about 10 times the amount given to Israel in the same period, during which Israel was likewise at war. In that same timeframe, Israeli cities were targeted by more than 30,000 drones and missiles launched from terrorist entities in Iran, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, and Yemen.
Characteristic of the current revulsion toward Israel and its supporters, Jews especially, is a barrage of untrue, selective, and hypocritical charges.
Israel is accused of “genocide” for waging war against Gaza, from which the October 7 massacre was launched, and killing tens of thousands of civilians—according to Hamas’ manipulated figures.
What is conveniently left out of those numbers: 1) Israel counters that some 20,000 or more of the fatalities were Hamas fighters, with thousands more abettors; 2) the total death figures are supplied to Western authorities solely by Hamas, a designated terrorist organization or its prejudicial UN affiliates; 3) Hamas deliberately uses its own civilians as shields, both above ground and in its massive billion-dollar tunnel labyrinth, paid for by misappropriated aid funding from naive Western groups and a corrupt UN.
The tunnels’ entries and exits were located, by design, beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques. That choice was itself a damning indictment: Hamas expected Israel to be far more careful to avoid collateral damage to Gazan civilians than Hamas itself, which deliberately put them in the line of fire to save its own fighters.
Hamas’ logic was clear: the Israelis may spare us because they value Gazan lives more than we terrorists do, who use them as human shields.
✪ Selective Venom
Hating Israel is a selective syndrome. Israel’s critics conveniently ignore the genocidal efforts of Islamic terrorists in Nigeria who have killed thousands of innocents. Did any of our protesting students cite the genocidal former Somali dictatorship of Siad Barre, which killed more than 200,000 fellow Muslim Somalis? Do they remember the murder of 3,000 Americans on September 11 by the Islamists of al-Qaeda? Did the protesters at Stanford, Harvard, or Columbia ever blast the Sudanese Islamic killers who butchered more than 60,000?
Unlike the IDF, Turkey, a fierce critic of Israel, never phoned or texted Kurdish civilian apartment dwellers or small villages during its urban anti-insurgent operations, urging them to evacuate before the terrorists hiding among them were targeted.
John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, has found that in urban combat operations the combatant-to-civilian fatality ratio in Gaza runs between 1:1 and 1:2—far lower than the 1:9 ratio used by the UN.
Scholars have noted that the U.S. bombing campaigns against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II—campaigns that by early 1945 were destroying the Axis wartime economies and shortening the war—as well as the bombing of urban areas in North Korea and Vietnam, killed far more civilians.
We should remember that more than 2,000 Gazan civilians enthusiastically joined the October 7 murderers, drawn by the gleeful news of easy opportunities to kill, rape, and steal from mostly unarmed Israeli women and children.
When Israeli hostages were bound and brought back to Gaza, even the Hamas terrorists had to protect their captives from Gazan civilian mobs who, in a bloodthirsty frenzy, tried to dismember them in the street.
✪ Hypocrisies & Libels
Many other countries and peoples far better fit the left-wing/Islamist slur “settler colonialists” or “apartheidists” than do Israelis, who can claim that Jews have lived in their present-day homeland for at least 3,500 years.
In the parlance of the current Left, Arab Muslims “stole” their present homelands in the Middle East and North Africa from Romans and Greeks, who had predated them by some 800 years.
No one dares call President Xi of Communist China a “settler colonialist” for absorbing and colonizing Tibet after World War II.
Is China an “apartheid state” for putting a million Muslim Uyghurs in veritable concentration camps? What about Qatar? Should not such an “apartheid” nation be condemned on American campuses for ordering Christians to worship only in a few officially registered Christian churches, physically segregated and confined to a single, patrolled government enclave, Mesaimeer?
Who are the real apartheidists of Uganda—the hyper-rich Indian colonial overclass that chooses to cluster and segregate in upscale, separate neighborhoods, or the Ugandan majority who likely prefers they do?
No one accuses Zohran Mamdani (who promises to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal” if he sets foot in New York City) of being a late-arriving “settler colonialist” from Uganda, part of the “one-percenter” Indian community that somehow still controls 60–65 percent of that nation’s wealth.
As for the charge of “war criminal,” why does Mamdani not arrest any of Iran’s UN delegation who venture to New York, given that their government butchered more than 40,000 of its own citizens as recently as a few months ago? Does he define “war criminals” as Jews only?
Would Mamdani have arrested Rep. Ilhan Omar’s own late father, a former Somali colonel in the genocidal Siad Barre military? Remember, he fled to the United States to escape the revenge of his victims and to find sanctuary for his family in Minnesota.
As for “occupied lands” and “ethnic cleansing,” those charges better fit Azerbaijan, which just ethnically cleansed 150,000 Armenians. Does Harvard protest that atrocity, or Vladimir Putin’s rounding up of people from Russia’s own ethnic minority regions in Siberia to be wiped out and used as cannon fodder in Ukraine? Does Muslim Turkey get a pass for ethnically cleansing northern Cyprus of its ancient and indigenous Greek population and sending “settler colonialists” from Turkey to replace them?
Is tiny European Denmark a “colonialist” power for owning underdeveloped, impoverished, vast, and far-distant North American territory of Greenland?
Are socialist Spain and its neo-communist prime minister Pedro Sánchez “settler colonialists” for retaining by force Spanish colonial enclaves on the Moroccan coast?
✪ True & False Middle Eastern Friends
Survey the Middle East as allies—and weep. One cannot find a single country that is more pro-American or pro-Western than Israel.
Iran has been a terrorist monstrosity for half a century; it has killed thousands of Americans with shaped charges in Iraq and Afghanistan. Syria was run by a genocidal Assad-kleptocratic regime for decades. Qatar hosts the rabid anti-American propaganda organ Al Jazeera that hosted all sorts of anti-American terrorists. Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian.
Our “ally” Turkey cannot be trusted with American weapons, still less with American nuclear weapons, for fear it will share our technology with Russia, Iran, or China. American diplomats have been butchered in Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, and Sudan. We have waged war against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
The USS Cole was nearly sunk in Yemen, which continues to fire missiles at American ships. Pakistan sheltered a mass murderer: Osama bin Laden. And on and on.
The United States and Europe have suffered more than 200 major terrorist attacks from Muslim jihadists, both as immigrants and foreign residents, often with support from radical Islamists in the Middle East.
So it seems surreal to turn instead on our only time-tested ally, Israel. The new tolerance for hating Jews explains why they are now targets for more than 50 percent of all hate crimes reported in Mamdani’s New York. Armed guards now protect most synagogues in America from antisemitic terrorists, who turn out most often to be Muslim residents who, or whose forebears, originally stem from the Middle East.
American tourists were kidnapped in Egypt’s Sinai, while American oil-company employees were murdered in Algeria. After 9/11, few American tourists felt safe in the Middle East. But none feared Israeli or Jewish terrorists.
✪ The October 7 Hatred Surge
Three recent chapters in the long history of antisemitism remain inexplicable. First, hatred of Jews and Israel peaked immediately after the greatest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—weeks before Israel entered Gaza, and only after Hamas refused to surrender the masterminds of the slaughter or the 251 hostages. The Jewish crime, apparently, was being so easily murdered by Hamas.
The clearest sign of that Pavlovian hatred was the jubilation on the far Left and among Islamists—and the strange new alliance these seemingly disparate groups were already forming—over the ease with which so many mostly unarmed Jewish civilians had been butchered and the prospect of even more killing to follow.
The ghoulish celebrants were not concerned about mass murder, torture, or mutilation of the women, children, and elderly. Instead, they grew ecstatic at the prospect of still more medievalism and blood to come.
Hamas, the darling of American campuses and Muslim communities, issued Arabic-to-Hebrew phrase books to the invaders with instructions for the rapist-killers on how to say in Hebrew, “Take off your pants, Take off your clothes, Raise your hands and spread your legs.”
Second, none of the Israel-haters ever offers any alternative course that the Israelis should have taken to retrieve the hostages and punish the murderers.
Much less do they imagine what other nations might have done—the United States, France, or the United Kingdom—had terrorists conducted such a mass slaughter at numbers proportional to their far larger populations.
I doubt any other nation would have petitioned the beloved International Criminal Court to bring the Hamas killers to justice.
Its chief prosecutor, the Israel-hating Karim Khan, refused even to examine Israeli evidence and instead rushed to condemn Prime Minister Netanyahu as an international war criminal.
Perhaps Khan’s hatred of Israel was aimed at hiding the fact that the now-fired Khan was being accused by his own legal team of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. Who will police the police? Will Mayor Mamdani arrest the ICC predator if he lands at JFK Airport in New York City?
Third, when 6,000 Hamas terrorists and Gazan “civilians” invaded Israel, it was during an agreed-on peace. Indeed, take away October 7, and Israel would never have entered Gaza; indeed, even after the slaughter that took place on that day, Israeli officers dreaded walking into such a subterranean ambush. And prior to the mass murder, it was Israel, not the Muslim nation and adjacent Arab neighbor Egypt, that had supplied almost all of Gaza’s water, electricity, fuels, and telecommunications.
For years Israel had invited 20,000 Gazans to work inside Israel at two to three times the wages available in Gaza. Gaza itself had been “ethnically cleansed” of all Jews in 2005 by the Israeli Government under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was generally considered a “hawk.” Any valuable infrastructure they left behind was immediately looted and destroyed. After the departure of all the Jews from Gaza, the grifting Hamas government shook down roughly $20 billion of the more than $40 billion in international aid given to the Palestinians in general.
Had Hamas simply sought to create a multiparty democracy, held regular elections, created a bill of rights, and adopted a Western economy, it would have garnered hundreds of billions of dollars more in foreign investment. And its privileged seaside location could have made it the next tourist hub like the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, or Oman.
Instead, the nihilist Hamas preferred to make Gaza an impoverished, violent, and pariah terrorist enclave, to rip off its own people, and to expose Gazan civilians to death on a regular basis to save its fighters’ skins and further its fanatical cause.
Hamas was never dedicated to bettering the daily lives of its own population, developing Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline or putting its enormous foreign aid to productive use. Instead, it had only a single homicidal agenda: to kill as many Jews as possible and to destroy the state of Israel.
Hating Israel while championing Hamas and its thousands of terrorist killers is a referendum not on Israel and its supporters, but a window into the mind of a sick, sick West—and an even sicker Middle East. ✪
▶️ JB SHURK: GOVERNMENT DOESN’T LIKE IT WHEN WE GATHER
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JB SHURK: GOVERNMENT DOESN’T LIKE IT WHEN WE GATHER
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here are a number of ways in which Western governments are waging war against their citizens. The United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Leftists in the United States do not believe in free speech. These Western governments also spy on their citizens without warrants or probable cause. They have transformed their court systems into ideologically-partisan dictatorships that impose rulings based upon feelings and “political correctness,” rather than black-letter law and self-restraint. An offense that often gets overlooked, however, is Western governments’ infringement of citizens’ freedom of association.
Freedom of association is our natural, God-given right to meet with likeminded people, discuss ideas, express ourselves, and promote our mutual interests. As with freedom of speech, it is fundamental to any notion of liberty. Respect for freedom of association is the bedrock for religious freedom, freedom of conscience, communal identity, and national self-determination.
Countries are born when people of common ancestry, language, history, and customs choose to work together and defend their way of life. Towns spring up when likeminded people settle and develop a region together. Religious congregations grow through common worship. Schools, skilled trade unions, clubs, sports leagues, and civic organizations of all types are formed when people come together to pursue similar interests and advance shared ideas.
At its heart, freedom of association respects human beings’ natural inclination to cooperate with others to build something together which would not be possible for any one person to build alone. As a voluntary commitment to pursue a group’s common aims, it is the collective expression of each individual’s personal liberty.
As with all God-given rights and liberties, government power (or State authority) is the greatest threat to freedom of association. When governments prevent people from discussing ideas, worshiping together, working together, or pursuing common interests, the State is using its monopoly on the lawful use of force to infringe citizens’ inalienable rights.
What we see across the West is the bureaucratic State imposing its political will in defiance of the collective will of citizens.
Perhaps the most glaring problem of the last several decades has been Western governments’ refusal to secure their national borders. There is no more natural political association than a nation state’s citizenry. Over centuries and millennia, tribes of similar peoples came together to protect their lands and resources from foreign invasion, while promoting domestic order, safety, and peace.
The Rule of Law traces its origin to common customs, personal duties, social obligations, religious convictions, and beliefs. Both political philosophers and ordinary people with common sense tend to define a government’s foremost obligations to include two complementary tasks: (1) to secure territory from invasion and (2) to promote the common law. Governments that successfully perform these duties advance their citizens’ natural freedoms, general welfare, and domestic peace.
By opening up their borders and inviting millions of foreigners to take over parts of their nations, Western governments have undermined their own citizens’ self-determination. They have directly attacked citizens’ freedom of association in the context of forming nation states. These governments have effectively destroyed the natural associations formed by generations of Westerners over many centuries. Because respect for the Rule of Law originates with common customs and beliefs, the introduction of foreign populations (who have no interest in assimilating) immediately erodes domestic safety and peace. Western governments betray their citizens twice: First, they fail to secure their territories from invasion. Second, they make domestic tranquility an impossibility.
However, attacks on Westerners’ freedom of association go much further than open borders. Because Western governments are clearly conspiring to facilitate mass migration without the consent of their respective citizenries, these governments are particularly invested in preventing their peoples from resisting the invasion of their lands. In order to silence public dissent, governments have chosen to abrogate citizens’ natural freedom to assemble together and protest their governments’ criminality. We see this taking many different forms. In Europe, political parties that seek to secure borders and limit immigration are designated “right-wing, fascist, nationalist,” and “threats to national security.” Those last two insults are peculiar contradictions;
Europeans who wish to protect their nations are simultaneously branded “threats” to the nation state. In the United States, any voter who supports President Trump’s border security policies risks being harassed online, de-banked from financial institutions, fired from jobs, and targeted by Democrat prosecutors. In both the Old and New Worlds, the freedom of citizens to work together to fight their governments’ dangerous open borders policies is under constant attack.
Mass migration, however, is only one of many government policies that have been deemed so “sacrosanct” that citizens are not allowed to organize against them. Western governments continue to threaten and prosecute Christians who seek to end government-sanctioned murder of unborn babies. Under the Biden Administration, the FBI placed concerned parents on domestic terror watchlists for publicly opposing “transgender” indoctrination in schools. Across the West, pro-family organizations that encourage strong marriages between one man and one woman are either officially or unofficially identified as “hate groups.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center in the United States has made a fortune over the years falsely acting as an authority on what kinds of public associations should be promoted and which should be condemned. While celebrating Black Lives Matter as a civil rights group (even though its member have caused billions of dollars in property damage and left dozens of unsolved murders across the country), the SPLC routinely designates conservative organizations and publications as threats to civil rights — designations that have prompted illegitimately-predicated law enforcement investigations, IRS scrutiny, censorship, and de-banking.
During Western governments’ COVID totalitarianism, freedom of association was effectively eliminated. Friends and families were not allowed to celebrate birthdays or comfort dying loved ones. Workers were not allowed to make a living. Congregations were not allowed to attend church services. Students were not allowed to learn together. Athletes were not allowed to compete against each other. Clubs were not allowed to operate. Civic organizations were shut down. Online dissent was censored. Medical researchers who opposed lockdowns, mask mandates, and forced experimental injections were denied any opportunity to work together. Western governments essentially outlawed people from associating together and sharing their experiences and opinions. And they prohibited freedom of assembly unless that assembly was part of the violent and destructive network of Antifa and Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists intent on burning down parts of major cities.
Today, we see freedom of association under constant attack in two separate public domains: (1) the local community and (2) the online community.
During Joe Biden’s presidency, his administration transplanted over ten million foreign nationals into unsuspecting towns across the United States. In the United Kingdom, some small villages now have six migrant men to every local woman. After Spanish authorities did nothing to prevent the invasion of Ceuta, foreigners have destroyed the small enclave in a matter of days. This unnatural phenomenon is occurring in every corner of the West. The common feature is that Western governments show outright disdain for the self-determination of local communities.
Likewise, Big Tech continues to work hand in glove with Western governments to shadow-ban, demonetize, and outright censor any associations of people opposed to official government policy. Western governments claim these attacks on free speech and freedom of association are necessary to combat “disinformation,” promote online safety, and protect so-called “Western values.” But the values which Western governments are committed to securing are not Western values at all; they are shameless infringements of Western citizens’ natural, God-given rights and liberties.
When governments prevent people from choosing their next-door neighbors and online friends, they target the essence of personal freedom. Such abuse constitutes an attack on freedom of association & a war on Western citizens. ✪
▶️ PRIVATE PROPERTY CONFISCATION
PRIVATE PROPERTY CONFISCATION
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mericans have always traditionally understood what they owned was theirs and not the government’s. Yet, over the last century, that principle has steadily eroded; from gold confiscation to civil asset forfeiture to proposed wealth taxes. The emerging principle is stark: Your property is yours only to the extent that the State allows you to keep it.
Preliminarily, what does it mean to own something? In America, the traditional answer was straightforward: it meant property was yours—not the government’s—and the State had no claim to it unless you forfeited it through a criminal act or the government seized it through eminent domain for the public good.
Private property was understood as an extension of individual liberty, protected by right and law rather than being a privilege that the government granted at its discretion. That principle was deeply embedded in the American tradition and helped distinguish a free citizen from a subject of the State. However, that relationship has changed dramatically in the 20th Century.
Perhaps the most well-documented exercise of government power over private property occurred in 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, requiring Americans to surrender most of their monetary gold to the government at the then-fixed price of $20.67 per ounce. Those who failed to comply faced criminal penalties.
The following year, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 placed all monetary gold under Federal ownership and raised the official price of gold to $35 an ounce; a nearly 70 percent increase from the $20.67 price at which Americans had been required to surrender their gold. Whatever the legal justification, the episode demonstrated something deeply unsettling about the power of the State: It could declare lawful property impermissible to own, compel its sale to the government at a price it dictated, and then change the official value of that property after acquiring it. By any ordinary understanding, that is confiscation backed by the power of the State.
The next expansion came with the institutionalization of modern civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture originated in an old maritime and customs doctrine and has become a powerful and controversial domestic instrument of government.
Federal forfeiture authority expanded significantly in 1978 and 1984, when Congress broadened the government’s ability to seize the proceeds of alleged drug crimes and property used to facilitate them. The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 also established the Department of Justice’s Assets Forfeiture Fund and authorized the Attorney General to share forfeited property with state and local law-enforcement agencies.
This created a profound change in the incentives driving police and regulatory agencies. Property could be seized and forfeited without the government necessarily obtaining a criminal conviction against its owner, and law-enforcement agencies could benefit from the property they seized, much as pirates did.
Owners who had not been convicted of; or even charged with, a crime could find themselves fighting to recover money, vehicles, homes, and other property in proceedings in which the government was pursuing the property rather than proving the owner’s criminal guilt.
America is a country of precedent. Once the government established the precedent it could seize private property without first convicting—or even charging—the owner of a crime, and sometimes without even obtaining a warrant, the process felt like an illegal grab. Today, Federal forfeiture alone is a multibillion-dollar enterprise. In fiscal 2025, the Justice Department’s Assets Forfeiture Fund received $2.287 billion in forfeiture proceeds, following $2.422 billion in 2024 and $3.339 billion in 2023.
And it’s not only the Feds, either. States have developed their own civil asset forfeiture systems, allowing law enforcement agencies to seize property alleged to be connected to criminal activity and, after forfeiture, retain or spend the proceeds.
Florida provides a particularly revealing example. Its Contraband Forfeiture Act expressly authorizes law-enforcement agencies to use forfeiture proceeds as “supplemental funding.” State law directs forfeiture proceeds into law-enforcement trust funds, while Federal asset-sharing programs provide another avenue for state agencies to receive proceeds from Federal forfeitures. What began as an extraordinary power to take property associated with crime has evolved into a nationwide system in which government agencies have a vested financial interest in the property they seize.
Not every exercise of forfeiture or taxation is unconstitutional or illegitimate. The government has always possessed some authority to take property under the law. The question is where the boundary lies; and whether each expansion of that authority comes close to an extra-judicial taking.
Even with all this hanky-panky, the government’s reach apparently isn’t broad enough. Now states and the Federal Government are contemplating the next rung up the ladder: outright wealth confiscation.
There is a fundamental difference between government taking property because it claims the property was involved in a crime and government taking property simply because someone possesses it. The former at least purports to rest on an allegation of wrongdoing. The latter rests on the government’s assertion that it has a legitimate claim to something you’ve earned.
Once government moves from taxing what we earn to taxing what we own, ownership itself becomes the taxable event. The government no longer must point to a transaction, an offense, or even a particular act that generated the property. The mere fact that you possess it is enough to establish a first lien on your wealth.
And this is no longer theoretical. In March 2026, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna introduced legislation imposing a 5 percent annual tax on billionaires’ wealth. California voters will also decide in November whether to impose a one-time five-percent tax on the net worth of qualifying billionaires. California’s Legislative Analyst describes the measure as a tax on wealth, defining wealth as the value of what a person owns, less his debts.
Remember our discussion of precedent earlier? We’ve now arrived at the heart of the matter.
Whether government takes 5 percent, 50 percent, or ultimately 100 percent, the amount is a question of degree. The underlying concept that property is only conditionally yours is the more important issue.
The fundamental question is whether government has a legitimate claim to property simply because a citizen possesses it. Once the answer becomes yes, the government—not the owner—ultimately determines how much of that property the “owner” is permitted to keep. Calling it a tax does not change the underlying assertion of power: the State is effectively placing a lien on property you own.
And history suggests the government rarely leaves a newly established power confined to its original boundaries. The justification will always be the next confiscation is different, the next group is different, or the next need is greater.
The government does not have to begin by taking everything. It merely must establish the principle that it can take something that was previously understood to belong entirely to the individual and declare a portion of it belongs to the State.
Once ownership is deemed conditional, private property ceases to be a protected right. That is the real issue. It is not how much wealth the government takes; it is whether we are willing to accept the proposition that the government has a claim to wealth simply because we possess it. Because once that principle is accepted, the question is no longer whether the government can take your property; it is how much of it the government will allow you to keep.
Did someone say “Communism?” God Bless America. ✪
▶️ SEPARATIST REFERENDUM: IS ALBERTA A ‘TEXAS OF THE NORTH?’
⭐️ KAT
SEPARATIST REFERENDUM: IS ALBERTA A ‘TEXAS OF THE NORTH?’
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eet your new neighbor, America, Alberta separatists issued the message to the United States on Saturday as they promoted the province’s 19 October referendum, branding the oil-rich Canadian province the ‘Texas of the North’ and predicting that a vote on leaving Canada could follow in early 2027.
‘Texas of the North is closer than Ottawa thinks,’ Rise of Alberta wrote on X, accompanying the post with an image of Alberta illuminated above the United States. The separatist page said victory in October would clear the way for a subsequent independence vote:
Alberta is Canada’s conservative energy heartland, producing the vast majority of the country’s oil and gas, while resentment towards the Federal Government over energy and environmental policy has fueled separatist sentiment for decades. The movement has accelerated over the past year, with campaigners successfully gathering enough signatures in May to trigger the formal referendum process.
However, the October vote is not itself an independence referendum. Albertans will choose between remaining a province of Canada and instructing the provincial government to ‘commence the legal process’ required to hold a future binding referendum on separation.
An early-2027 independence vote is therefore a separatist target rather than a guaranteed timetable. The process has also become entangled in litigation over the provincial government’s obligation to consult the so-called First Nations. Even if Alberta eventually holds a direct referendum and separatists win a clear majority, independence would not follow automatically: Canadian law requires negotiations with Ottawa and the other provinces, followed by a constitutional amendment, with Indigenous rights, borders, assets, and liabilities among the issues to be settled. In reality, the prospect of independence is close to zero, as allowing Alberta to leave would be suicidal for other provinces regarding energy supply.
The Alberta separatist movement has become increasingly sympathetic towards the United States since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. Representatives of the Alberta Prosperity Project have already reportedly met US State Department officials in Washington to discuss how the United States might respond to an independent Alberta, including potential energy links.
Separatist spokesman Jeff Rath told Reuters the objective was an independent Alberta, ‘not statehood.” TrumpAdministration officials confirmed staff-level meetings but said no commitments or support had been offered. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately welcomed Alberta’s sovereignty aspirations publicly, saying: ‘People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got.’
The reported contact sparked a furious reaction from Ottawa’s Liberal government. Prime Minister Mark Carney said he expected Washington to respect Canadian sovereignty. His government has also tried to mitigate separatist sentiment in the province by engaging more constructively with its energy sector than the previous Trudeau Administrations. ✪
▶️ TWO FANTASIES WHICH COLLIDE WITH REALITY
TWO FANTASIES WHICH COLLIDE WITH REALITY
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any people seem to want to live in fantasies which directly contradict facts as their reality. However, facts can’t be ignored; and we are not required to accept other’s fantasies as our own truth and reality. Here are two such obvious fantasies: a man can become a woman or vice versa, and Marxism is better for citizens of a country.
A simple examination of biology and medical science is all that’s required to disprove the first fantasy. Sex chromosomes are specific arrangements of DNA found inside all our 30 trillion cells which have a nucleus. There are only two different kinds of these chromosomes, X and Y. When an egg is fertilized at conception, the egg itself always contributes an X chromosome, while the sperm can contribute either an X or a Y chromosome.
Sex chromosomes are genetic elements which specifically define a person’s biological sex. Females have XX and males have XY chromosomes. The chromosomes themselves are made up of proteins and DNA which carry our genetic information from cell to cell. In addition to biological sexual orientation and the corresponding reproductive systems, these chromosomes determine all of our other physical traits, e.g., eye color. These facts are basic high school biology.
The reproductive systems in men and women are distinctly different. The male reproductive system mostly exists outside of the body. The external organs include the penis, scrotum and testicles. Internal organs include the vas deferens, prostate and urethra. The male reproductive system is responsible for sexual function and urination. The female reproductive system is a group of organs that enable reproduction, pregnancy, and childbirth. It also produces female sex hormones, including estrogen and progesterone. The system consists of organs and tissues inside the body and some that are visible outside the body. Once gain, fundamental high school biology.
Medically, it is not possible to transplant the reproductive system of one sex into the body of the opposite sex. Drugs and mutilating surgeries can change a person’s appearance, but cannot change their biological gender or physical sexual orientation.
To dispel another related fantasy, women are physically weaker than men because of a combination of factors rooted in this biology. Women have less total muscle mass, different muscle fiber profiles, lower testosterone levels, higher essential body fat, and smaller, lighter bones. These differences are significant. In upper body tasks, women produce roughly 56% of the amount of force as men. In the lower body, that figure rises to about 72%. The average gap is real, measurable, and driven by physiology which diverges sharply at puberty. Factual biology demonstrates it is impossible for women to successfully compete at an equivalent level against the strength of men in physical tasks and sports.
Next, let us look to history to disprove the second fantasy which seems to be so popular today; the curse of Marxism. The Democratic Socialists of America are claiming Americans would be better served and enjoy a higher quality fo life under a Marxist system of governance. Both socialism and communism are based on the principles of Marxism. Their claim is both are better for citizens than our current form of government, a constitutional republic with an economy based on capitalism. however, history repeatedly shows this false claim are always just desperate attempts to seize power & control.
They claim Marxism would provide for a classless society; peace for all; and less labor required, meaning there would be more leisure time. They consider the last to be the true measure of wealth. However, it is Capitalism instead of any form of Marxism, which is the only economic system which delivers any leisure time. Below are some unpleasant, past historical results of living in such Marxist fantasies:
In all of these regimes, Marxism stripped millions of citizens of all their wealth and property, imprisoned, debased, tortured and ultimately murdered millions. In order to escape these madmen, citizens were forces to flee their native homelands.
To date, eleven countries have attempted to implement the socialist model and all have failed. The only “equality” achieved for all was widespread misery, anguish and suffering. The only people who prosper from Marxist forms of government are the elites who run those governments.
The far Left is now trying to buy us off in 2026 by promoting the same eight “free programs” fantasies they offered back in 2019. These include: Universal Child Care, Guaranteed Income, Reparations to Blacks and Illegals, Affordable Housing, Medicare for All, Student Loan Forgiveness, Free Public College and the Green New Deal. This is all a sick joke because none of this will ever happen.
In 2019, the World’s total wealth was estimated to be $360.6 trillion. The United States wealth (assets minus liabilities) represented about 29% of that total, or $106 trillion. The far Left would need to spend an estimated $81.9 trillion to make good on all their promises to deliver these “freebies.” That amount represents approximately 77% of our total wealth on their giveaways. Of course, global wealth and costs of these proposed programs have both increased over the last 7 years, but the wealth to costs comparisons still remain valid & proportional
Unlike Marxist forms of government, American citizens still retain a much greater degree of individual freedoms and economic opportunities. America must never become a socialist or communist country becauseMarxists never really improve your life regardless of whatever they claim. However, History shows they certainly can destroy or end it. ✪
▶️ THE TERRORIST ON CAMPUS
THE TERRORIST ON CAMPUS
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our months after an ISIS supporter walked into a classroom and opened fire at Old Dominion University, an independent investigation revealed another disturbing part of the story: the university had no idea it had readmitted a convicted terrorist to its school.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh’s terror ties were well known to the Federal Government. In 2016, the former Virginia Army National Guard soldier pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to ISIS. His case involved weapons he believed would be used in an attack against U.S. military personnel. He was sentenced to 11 years in Federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release. He was released early, in December 2024.
Before he was even out of prison, Jalloh had applied to return to Old Dominion University. He was readmitted in January 2025 and approved for on-campus status. Old Dominion was left in the dark about why he had spent the previous years in Federal prison.
Just over a year later, on March 12, 2026, Jalloh entered a classroom for the ROTC program, which trains college students to become commissioned officers in the armed forces when they graduate. After confirming that it was, he shouted “Allahu Akbar” and opened fire.
Lt. Col. Brandon Shah was killed, and two cadets were wounded before students stopped the attack.
Last month, an independent review released by Old Dominion concluded Jalloh had carried out a targeted terrorist attack against ROTC students and their instructor. It also documented the information gap that preceded it. No Federal or state law-enforcement agency had notified Old Dominion about Jalloh’s previous terrorism conviction. His probation officer did not notify the university either.
That leaves a much larger question than what happened on one campus: who owns Jalloh’s risk?
✪ Terrorists After Prison
For more than two decades, the United States built an enormous counterterrorism system around finding people before they could attack. Intelligence agencies map networks. Investigators track communications and money. Joint Terrorism Task Forces develop cases. Prosecutors charge hundreds of defendants with terrorism-related offenses, and courts send them to Federal prisons.
Most of those sentences end. The ISIS cases from the last decade are now moving into that next phase. Defendants arrested during the height of the group’s western recruitment campaign have completed their sentences and have returned to American communities. More will follow.
Jalloh did not disappear from government oversight. He was serving a five-year term of supervised release. His conditions allowed his probation officer, when appropriate, to require notification of third parties about risks associated with his criminal history or to make those notifications directly. However, Old Dominion was never notified.
This was not a simple case of a university failing to run a background check. Virginia law restricts public universities from asking applicants about criminal history on their admissions applications. Universities can only inquire after admission and before enrollment, allowing them to assess whether a student’s history presents a threat to the university community.
Old Dominion already had a process for doing exactly that. Since 2022, the university has sent a voluntary criminal-history questionnaire to newly admitted freshmen, transfer students, and graduate students. The gap was readmitted students. Jalloh was a readmitted student, so he was never asked.
The Federal Government knew Jalloh had been convicted in an ISIS case involving a planned attack against American military personnel. It knew he had been released from prison, and he remained under Federal supervision. Old Dominion knew none of that. That becomes harder to dismiss as an administrative oversight when considering where Jalloh eventually went. He did not randomly enter a classroom. He went to ROTC.
The independent investigators later concluded if Old Dominion’s threat-assessment personnel had known about Jalloh’s terrorism conviction, it was highly likely the university would have tried to remove him from campus because of the potential threat he presented, particularly to military-affiliated members of the university community. The people responsible for protecting that community never received what they would have needed to make that assessment.
There is another unanswered part of the story. During its investigation, the law firm conducting Old Dominion’s independent review sought information from the FBI and the U.S. Probation Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Both declined to meet with the investigators. As a result, the review could not fully determine what happened during Jalloh’s Federal supervision or why his terrorism history was never passed to the university.
We know where the system broke. We still do not fully know why.
✪ This Was Already Coming
The larger problem did not begin at Old Dominion. Researchers already warned the United States was entering a new stage of the ISIS-era terrorism problem. A 2024 analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, using data from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, found 72 of 209 Americans arrested on ISIS-related charges had already been released. At least 73 more were expected to reach their scheduled release dates during the following decade.
The overwhelming majority were not publicly linked to any new terrorism activity. That matters. A terrorism conviction does not carry a lifetime presumption someone will attack again. People can disengage from extremist movements and rebuild their lives. Education and employment can be an important part of that process.
However, researchers also identified a smaller group who were rearrested or re-incarcerated after violating their conditions of supervised release. Some returned to terrorist behavior remarkably similar to what had brought them into the system in the first place.
One of those cases is particularly relevant because, by conventional measures, the individual appeared to be succeeding after prison. Ali Shukri Amin was 17 years old when he pleaded guilty in 2015 to conspiring to provide material support to ISIS. Amin had operated a prominent pro-ISIS social-media account and helped another young man travel to Syria. After cooperating with authorities and serving several years in Federal prison, he was released in 2020.
His life afterward appeared to be a model of reintegration. He earned numerous technical certifications, graduated summa cum laude from Northern Virginia Community College, pursued graduate education in information technology management, and obtained professional employment.
At the same time, Federal authorities determined Amin had repeatedly violated the conditions of his supervised release. Court records examined by researchers showed he reestablished prohibited contacts, including communication with convicted terrorist John Walker Lindh, and engaged in activity involving the dissemination of ISIS propaganda.
In 2023, Amin was returned to prison for violating his supervised release. His case does not show that education failed. It shows education, employment, and outward signs of stability do not necessarily tell us whether authentic ideological disengagement has occurred. Those are different assessments, and confusing the two creates its own blind spot.
✪ A Campus Is a Community
Universities make this problem particularly visible because they are designed to be open. Thousands of people move through campuses every day. Universities contain laboratories, research facilities, religious organizations, political groups, foreign students, major public events, and military programs. Many universities operate more like small cities than controlled facilities.
The problem at Old Dominion was not simply Jalloh was allowed to pursue an education after prison. It was nobody at the university knew enough to assess that risk.
There is a significant difference between giving someone a second chance and requiring the people responsible for security to operate blind. A terrorism conviction may involve extremist relationships, allegiance to a foreign terrorist organization, specialized knowledge, previous target selection, or a demonstrated interest in attacking a particular population. However, none of those factors necessarily indicate someone will offend again, but they are important when assessing risk.
Old Dominion has already fixed one part of the problem. Following the attack, the university expanded its post-admission criminal-history questionnaire to include readmitted students. Someone returning through the same admissions pathway Jalloh used should now receive it.
The university has also increased resources for its Office of Threat Assessment, added staffing, and moved toward additional investigative and threat-management capabilities. Those are reasonable changes, but they still depend in part on someone disclosing their own history.
The independent review recognized that limitation. A voluntary questionnaire is only useful when the person filling it out decides to tell the truth. For someone who represents a serious threat, that is not much of a safeguard.
The review therefore pointed toward the issue at the center of the case: information sharing. Old Dominion already had a working relationship with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force before the attack. The university’s police chief regularly communicated with the task force, yet Jalloh’s terrorism history never reached the university. Investigators recommended Old Dominion explore using that relationship to establish a notification process when terrorism defendants or people convicted of other particularly dangerous crimes seek to enroll or are already students.
That may be the most important recommendation in the report. The information existed, but it never reached the people who really needed it.
✪ What Has Changed & What Hasn’t
The Bureau of Prisons has addressed another part of Jalloh’s case. He received an early release, despite his terrorism conviction, because he completed the Federal Residential Drug Abuse Program. The Bureau of Prisons has since closed that loophole for terrorism-related offenders.
That addresses how Jalloh got out early. It does not solve what happened after he got out. As of August 2026, there is no publicly announced national requirement directing Federal probation offices, the FBI, or another Federal agency to notify a university when a terrorism offender under Federal supervision enrolls there. Virginia’s underlying admissions law also remains in place.
That does not mean nothing has changed internally. Policies and practices can change without those changes being made public. But there is no publicly announced nationwide system which would guarantee a different outcome if the same circumstances occurred somewhere else tomorrow.
The concern is not every terrorist offender leaving prison is waiting to attack again. The concern is we already know some do not fully disengage. Some violate supervision. Some reconnect with extremist networks. Some return to the same behavior which put them in prison. A functioning system has to identify the individuals who continue to present risk, and it cannot do that when the relevant pieces of their profile remain separated.
America spent the years after September 11, 2001, building one of the most sophisticated counterterrorism systems in the world. We became very adept at spotting terrorists. We now have to learn how to get better at what happens after they leave prison.
More terrorism offenders will complete their sentences in the coming years. They will go to work, attend universities, move into neighborhoods, and rebuild their lives. Successful reintegration should be the goal, but reintegration and threat management are not opposing ideas. Someone can start over again while their history still matters to those responsible for assessing a legitimate security risk.
Old Dominion has begun to fix what it can control. Yet, the larger gap remains. Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was convicted of attempting to support ISIS. His case involved a planned attack against American military personnel. He remained under Federal supervision and returned to a university with a significant military-affiliated population. The pieces were in place, but no one was able to completely connect them before he walked into that ROTC classroom.
The next terrorism offender leaving Federal prison may go to work, return to school, or enroll at another American university as part of rebuilding a life. But when someone presents a genuine threat, the institution responsible for the safety of people around them should not be the last to discover that history only after an attack.
Someone needs to know, someone needs to make the assessment, and someone needs to own the risk. ✪
▶️ ‘THE VIEW’ IS NOT AN UNBIASED NEWSCAST
‘THE VIEW’ IS NOT AN UNBIASED NEWSCAST
ppp
ree speech may protect ABC’s right to run an all-left-wing panel every weekday morning. However, it does not entitle ABC to call that panel a news program when convenient and a protected editorial product when it is not.
Disney and ABC walked into a federal courthouse in Washington on Tuesday and asked a judge to save them from the Trump Administration. The network’s 45-page complaint accuses the FCC of running a “retaliatory campaign” against ABC for broadcasting content the White House dislikes.
In a separate FCC docket, Disney lawyers have spent months arguing the panel show anchored by Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg is functionally indistinguishable from Meet the Press. Both arguments cannot be entirely true at once, and after a decade testifying on fiduciary duty and evidentiary standards, I have developed an ear for a witness who wants the jury to believe two contradictory stories depending on which room they are standing in.
That is the real story buried under Tuesday’s headlines. The View, for anyone who has never watched it, is an ABC daytime opinion and entertainment program, a politically left-wing panel where celebrity guests, cultural chatter, and news headlines all run through the co-hosts’ strongly held personal views. There is nothing illegal about that.
Yes, government leaning on a broadcaster’s license because it dislikes the coverage should worry every American who still owns a copy of the Constitution. However, ABC’s own legal position, that this program is simultaneously a target of unconstitutional persecution and a neutral bona fide news program, does not survive first contact with its own guest list.
Start with what actually happened. In April, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered early license renewal reviews for Disney’s eight “owned-and-operated” ABC stations, in markets from Los Angeles to New York, years ahead of their normal 2028 through 2031 schedule, the first time in more than 50 years the agency had done that.
The timing followed a dust-up over Jimmy Kimmel saying Melania Trump “had a glow like an expectant widow,” and it landed on top of an existing FCC probe into Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. ABC’s lawsuit, filed before U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan, asks for a temporary restraining order and argues the administration waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for disapproving what it broadcasts. Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the FCC, publicly cheered the lawsuit, calling the renewal process a “campaign of censorship and control.”
Separately, and this is the part most coverage buries, the FCC has spent months examining whether the show is still eligible for the “bona fide news interview” exemption to the equal time rule, a Section 315 provision which forces a station to give rival candidates equal airtime once it lets one candidate on the air. The Media Bureau put broadcasters on notice in January that segments “motivated by partisan purposes” do not qualify for the exemption. ABC insists the show operates just like network Sunday shows, resting on a 2002 FCC letter which has remained untouched for close to a quarter century.
Congress created the “bona fide news” exemption in 1959 so no station hosting one candidate would owe every rival equal minutes, which would have turned local news into a scheduling nightmare and discouraged campaign coverage altogether. Lawmakers carved out four categories; newscasts, news interviews, documentaries where a candidate’s appearance is incidental, and live coverage of events like debates, trusting a broadcaster’s good-faith editorial judgment over government second-guessing. That theory holds only if the programming is practicing journalism rather than advocacy with a rotating cast of interviewers, and the guest ledger below makes that call easy.
Here is where the expert witness in me leans forward. If you are going to ask a Federal judge to treat you as a martyr for independent journalism, you should probably not also ask a Federal agency to treat your panel show as a hard news broadcast while it tells viewers to “vote Democrat” in the next election, which is exactly what co-host Ana Navarro told her audience on air this year.
A NewsBusters count of the show’s full 29th season, running from last September through July, found 87 guests expressing a liberal opinion against 5 conservative ones, a split of roughly 95 percent to 5 percent. The prior full calendar year was worse at 128 to 2, better than 98 percent one-sided, and one of the two conservative bookings only occurred because Marjorie Taylor Greene was feuding with her own party’s leadership that week.
That is not a rounding error. It is a programming decision, repeated for years, by a staff that knows exactly what it is doing. Meet the Press does not have that problem, because it functions as a news interview program rather than a daytime rally with commercial breaks.
None of that makes the FCC’s conduct defensible. I am a card-carrying skeptic of government power, and a president musing publicly about pulling a license because its comedians are mean to him is exactly the content-based leverage that should make conservatives nervous, not gleeful. Justice Antonin Scalia spent a career reminding us the First Amendment protects speech we hate as fiercely as speech we love, and a broadcast license is not a leash the White House gets to yank whenever a punchline stings.
If the FCC can find a viewpoint-neutral basis for accelerated review, tied to the DEI investigation rather than the jokes, let it make that case on the merits. If it cannot separate the two, it should lose.
But conservatives do not have to pick a side between “the FCC is right” and “ABC is the victim here.” Both institutions can be behaving badly at once. Government should not weaponize licensing against disfavored speech, and a network dressing up a partisan talk show as neutral journalism to dodge a fairness rule is also misleading the public, just with better lawyers and worse math.
Justice Louis Brandeis had the right prescription more than a century ago: sunlight is the best disinfectant. Publish the guest logs. Publish the FCC’s actual legal theory for a renewal that was not due for two more years. Let both records speak, because each side is betting the public will only read the press release its own side wrote.
The View was created to showcase women of “different generations, backgrounds, and views,” according to its own founding premise. Somewhere between Barbara Walters and Ana Navarro, the “different views” part fell off entirely, which is the network’s prerogative under the First Amendment and also the reason its equal time petition deserves the skepticism it is demanding for its own claim.
A program booking political guests at a 95-5 ratio is not a discussion; it is a caucus meeting with better lighting. Free speech protects ABC’s right to run an all-left-wing panel every weekday morning. It does not entitle ABC to call that panel a news program when convenient and a protected editorial product when it is not. Pick a lane. The rest of us are trying to drive. ✪
▶️ KURT SCHLICHTER: GOOD RIDDANCE TO JOHN CORNYN
KURT SCHLICHTER: GOOD RIDDANCE TO JOHN CORNYN
ttt
n perhaps the least surprising revelation of this campaign cycle, besides the epiphany that the guy with a Nazi tattoo turned out not to be very nice to women, was the Deputy Legislative Director for nominally Republican Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) just enlisted in the legions of blasphemous, demonic Democrat James Talarico.
For any Texans wondering if, in retrospect, they should’ve given Ken Paxton a shot instead of sticking with the incumbent, you’ve got your answer: Hell yes. This turncoat, one Jacob Smith, had a central role in developing policy for an allegedly Republican senator, yet he slid seamlessly into the camp of the imp pushing the gender mutilation of children, socialism, DEI, open borders, and gun control. But then again, Sen. John Cornyn would be on a smooth glide path to another term as a senator if he had ever done anything to stop the gender mutilation of children, socialism, DEI, open borders, and gun control. His record on these ranges from AWOL to active collaboration with the Democrats.
So, but for Ken Paxton, Texas’s non-Cruz senator would’ve had the same policies, whether it was John Cornyn or Pete Buttigieg’s Mini-Me.
This is why we Republican voters sometimes have to take the risk of dumping the weakhearts, the losers, and the toe-shrimpers of the ruling class and their regime media overlords in favor of the based.
Talk about proving us right. Cornholio has already been reveling in the strange new respect bestowed by the Washington Post and others following his utter humiliation by the Texas GOP. The sorest of sore losers, a man offended by the uppity voters refusing to obey, he’s refused to do anything to support the Republican nominee, blocked Trump’s initiatives, and passively aggressively tweeted stuff that’s 180 degrees from the conservative Republican promise he ran on. That’s not surprising because John Cornyn is not a member of the Republican Party. He’s a member of the John Cornyn Party, and the John Cornyn Party’s platform consists solely of John Cornyn being the senator and getting all the perks, prestige, and posterior-kissing that come along with it. Texas GOP voters saw him for the phony he is, and now he hates them even more than he did before the primary — and he hated them a lot.
And he’s so bad at this. That’s one of the things that you often see with hacks like Cornyn and fellow travelers like Bill Cassidy and Thom Tillis. They’re not even good at being phonies. The first problem is they get high on their own supply, buying into what the Wormtongues are whispering in their ears, that they are great Solons, wise elder statesmen who have and deserve the respect of their lessers. Their lessers are, of course, you, me, and everybody else. To the pompous princes, elections are an unseemly imposition, and voters are impudent children who should be ignored for the first five years of their terms and then mollified with cowboy hats and cheesy ads during the election year. When I was in Texas before the primary, every other ad was about how much Cornie loved Donald Trump, how he was standing by Donald Trump, how he was the best friend of Donald Trump, and how he was kissing Donald Trump’s feet as eagerly as Dick Morris with a shoeless escort.
But nobody fell for it. Nobody believed it. Thanks to the Interwebs, we could see the truth. When he went on Spanish-language media and started talking about amnesty, we heard about it. And when he supported the Democrats’ gun control proposals, you bet we heard about it. Even now, when he tries to explain why one of his key policy advisors eagerly joined the staff of a leftist Democrat, he’s unbelievably tone-deaf. What kind of idiot would go with this word-splooge of a rationalization?
“John, only in authoritarian countries does someone else get to decide where you work. Not in Texas. Those concerned might want to channel their energy into broadening R outreach to a coalition of voters rather than just those already converted.”
Yeah, the big problem is the fascist notion that perhaps it’s not a great idea for a policy principal of a reportedly conservative Republican to not only be able to, but to choose to, fit right in on the staff of a hard-left Democrat who pushes every weird, creepy, and heretical pinko policy. How dare people try to stop this innocent staffer from getting a new job! What’s more Texas than treachery? And take that, all you Republicans who don’t want a broadened Republican outreach by embracing the DSA-approved policies of James Talarico!
Fight the power, John Cornyn! Keep standing up for the rights of Republican staffers who are actually Democrats. That’s what Texans sent you to Washington for — that, and to open our borders to all Third World aliens plus to help Democrats take our guns. There’s pathetic, and there’s stupid, and then there’s John Cornyn.
Let’s talk about the race itself. Is this Benedict Arnold maneuver going to change the electoral calculus? No. Democrats will despise the guy for working for a Republican. Remember when Kamala Harris got Liz Cheney to endorse her? You get that same Never Trump energy going here. Everybody hates a traitor, including the side to which the traitor defects. Certainly it isn’t going to switch any Republicans. Do they imagine a thought process along the lines of “Well, some generic staffer for John Cornyn went over to Talarico and, of course, political functionaries are virtuous paragons who we should look to for moral guidance. After all, no Senate staffer would ever do anything wrong, like being caught on video after hours performing acts of unnatural love in a hearing chamber.”
It’s unlikely that some anonymous flunky switching jerseys is going to make Texas Republicans decide to vote for the guy who hates meat, loves trans kids, and imagines that God is non-binary and that they mandated abortion in the Bible.
This incident also casts light on the recent stories in the regime media about older Republican staffers bewailing how young Republican staffers are all “groypers, fascists,” and all sorts of other designated epithets. Apparently, the real problem is that these younger staffers believe in the things that Republican voters believe in, and the old guard of phony Republican functionaries just can’t handle that. These faceless flunkies do the real work behind the scenes in Congress, and accumulate power accordingly to influence their members. Along the way, they often imagine that they themselves are important, rather than interchangeable. That’s why they probably think this is a big deal, and we just think it’s yet another routine RINO betrayal.
Now, where does this leave the Texas race? Well, if you listen to the regime media, Texans are apparently clambering to elect the least Texan person conceivable — you couldn’t have created a less Texan homunculus in a lab using advanced AI and black magic. But let’s look at a few data points. The polls are presumptively crap, but they’re tightening, and Ken Paxton is coming in ahead sometimes. Jasmine Crockett still hasn’t endorsed Talarico, and he’s got real problems with the black vote. In fact, he’s going to have to devote millions upon millions of precious dollars to try to salvage it. Then there’s anecdotal evidence. I was in Texas last week, in a fairly liberal area, and saw seven signs for the little creep; when Beto was running, the place was plastered with them.
Though not scientific, my most compelling evidence is the uniform analyses from multiple connected friends who are in touch with what’s happening in the Lone Star State. None of them — none of them — thinks this guy is going to win. In fact, they don’t think he’s going to do anywhere near as well as Beto did against Ted Cruz. Yikes. Imagine your political epitaph being “He’s no Beto.”
Oh, it’s still going to be a fight. Of course, right now people are just dancing around and positioning themselves. The real fight starts after Labor Day, and then you’re going to see a dump of opposition research on Talarico that will curl your toes. I’m not going to get specific, but you take one look at the guy, and you know it’s going to be ugly.
But this is all going to take a lot of money, and that’s a problem. The D.C. Republican establishment is still mad at Paxton for daring to dump their friend, and their short-sighted, petty, girlish anger may keep them from supporting Paxton to the extent they need to. It would be nice not to have to spend heaps of money in a Republican state, but you know what would be nicer? If we had had a Republican senator who didn’t trust his policy work to people who, at the flip of a switch, can become the deputy policy director for a hard-core leftist who embraces socialism, perversion, and blasphemy.
That’s not too much to ask of Republican politicians, though it was apparently too much to ask of John Cornyn. Regardless of how this turns out, at least we will be rid of him come January. He will not be missed. ✪
▶️ ALASKA’S RANKED CHOICE VOTING TRAVESTY
ALASKA’S RANKED CHOICE VOTING TRAVESTY
gggg
laska’s first two ranked-choice elections were embarrassments, marked by complexity, confusion and delay. But, oh, for the good old days of mere humiliation. This year operatives finally cracked the many devious ways the system can be outright gamed. Alaska is now the poster child for dirty-pool politics.
Alaskans won’t know until the end of August which “final four” candidates for each office will be on their ranked-choice November ballot after this week’s jungle primary. Residents will need that time to recover from the trauma of a monthslong campaign in which they were not valued as “we the people,” but duped and confused, treated as pawns in a seedy game.
Alaska conducts elections in two stages under completely different rules. First, all candidates, regardless of party, face off in a primary, in which each voter casts a single vote. The top four finishers advance to the general election, in which voters can rank all four and their votes shift in multiple rounds of counting in which the bottom finisher is eliminated and his votes reassigned.
As with Alaska’s past races under this system, which began in 2022, there was the usual insane complexity: 17 candidates for governor, 16 for the U.S. Senate, 15 for the state’s lone House seat. This is in part a function of Alaska’s silly filing requirements, the loosest in the country. Anyone can run for office for a fee of $100—no need to gather petition signatures. That encourages frivolous candidacies in Alaska’s system, allowing attention seekers the guarantee of having their name listed next to prominent people—and free media.
Alaska’s House contest featured, again, Eric Hafner, who is serving a Federal prison term in New York after pleading guilty in connection with a string of threats against government officials. He made the final ballot in 2024, and may do so this year, too. The Senate race featured his mother, Carol Hafner, and Green candidate Richard Grayson—neither of whom lives in the state. Of more than 30 candidates running for the Senate and House, few outside the incumbents or the main Democrat challenger even tried to raise money. Mr. Grayson recently explained that he was running “for fun,” that he actually supports Democrat Mary Peltola, and that if he makes the final four, he’ll quit. This is the contempt RCV encourages candidates to show Alaska voters.
At least the felon and the out-of-staters weren’t deceiving voters. The Senate race featured the last-minute entry of a retired elementary school teacher with a history of supporting Democrats, including Mrs. Peltola. He happens to be named Daniel Sullivan—the same name as the Republican incumbent—and filed, just before the deadline, to run as a Republican. The decoy insists he isn’t trying to confuse voters, and isn’t working with Mrs. Peltola or her supporters. Yet his filing documents were handled by an Anchorage Democrat consultant, and his campaign logo is a near replica of Sen. Sullivan’s.
Doppelgangers have run in other elections but, again, Alaska’s system dramatically increases the spoiler potential. In a jungle primary teeming with candidates, voters struggle to focus on individuals or disputes. Every name is dropped on one big ballot. The Sullivans were adjacent this year, with the decoy candidate listed first. How many Alaskans ticked the first box, unaware they were voting for someone other than whom they intended?
With 80% of the vote counted, Mrs. Peltola has 64,000 votes and Sen. Sullivan has 57,000. No. 3? Decoy Dan, with 3,200 votes, who didn’t campaign and has only 12 donors (not including himself). Alaskans will be even more confused when they have to “rank” the two Dans in November.
While fringe candidates didn’t bother raising money, “pop-up” partisan groups poured more than $3 million into Alaska’s tiny media market to game the primary. A group called Right for Alaska spent $2.2 million in ads supporting little-known conservatives to skim voters from Sen. Sullivan. Another mystery organization, Fair Deal Alaska, ran more than $750,000 to help the Carol Hafner and Grayson campaigns draw votes from Mrs. Peltola. The American Democracy Project blew $300,000, in part to boost David Leslie, a Democrat, also to undermine Mrs. Peltola. Mr. Leslie said he was “surprised” when people starting praising his video ads, since his campaign never ran any. Alaska mailboxes were flooded with flyers encouraging them to vote for spoiler candidates. While some manipulation happened in prior elections, this year there was little but manipulation. Gaming Alaska’s system is now a feature—not a bug.
Alaskans won’t even decide who is on the final ballot. Politicians are now wise to Alaska’s RCV game, including a provision that automatically moves candidates up if any of the official “four” drop out. Candidates are in active backroom discussions about who will withdraw, under what circumstances, to juke the ballot. Democrats want one Democrat in the final four, against three Republicans (to split that vote). Republicans want the opposite. Voters may ask why they bother going to the polls when politicians set the final field.
There will be at least one clear choice on November’s ballot. Alaskans will vote on a ballot initiative that would ditch ranked-choice voting. A similar attempt failed by 700 votes in 2024, after outside groups invested heavily to retain the failing system. After this election season, Alaskans would be crazy to vote no. ✪
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