The BLT that broke my brain (and exposed a bigger problem)



When the system can’t make a sandwich, what else is it failing to do?

My wife had just come out of her 98th surgery. It was 10:30 p.m. She hadn’t eaten in nearly 24 hours — and all she wanted was a BLT.

Something simple. Familiar. A sandwich she’s ordered many times before from the patient menu when things ran on schedule.

But this time, the kitchen had closed.

She’d been NPO for nearly 24 hours. (That’s short for nil per os — Latin for “y’all don’t eat or drink nothin’.”)

No food. No coffee. No comfort. Just waiting around with dry lips and an empty stomach until anesthesia wears off and the all-clear is given.

So she turned to me and asked, “Can you go down to the grill and get me one?”

I went downstairs to the hospital’s after-hours grill — the one that stays open for staff and visitors — and asked the cook, “Hey, could I get a BLT?”

Fixing this begins by teaching people that they’re allowed to see the person in front of them.

Let me paint the picture for you.

There was a giant pan of cooked bacon right in front of me. Tomatoes. Lettuce. Bread. All present. All visible. All just sitting there.

But instead of a sandwich, I got a blank stare — followed by: “That’s not on our menu. We don’t have a way to charge for that.”

I even tried to explain: “I’ve got money. Please. Just make the sandwich and charge me whatever you want.”

Nothing. Just more blank stares and quiet helplessness — as if I had asked them to get Prince Harry back into the will.

That was the moment bureaucracy made me want to walk into the sea.

And I was in Colorado!

A little humanity, please

I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I wasn’t asking for seared ahi tuna with a drizzle of truffle oil. I was just trying to bring a woman — who had just survived her 98th surgery — the comfort of a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at the end of a long, painful day.

They had the bacon.

They had the bread.

They had the hands.

But because there wasn’t a billing code for it, it could not be done.

I didn’t argue — much. I didn’t throw a fit. I just didn’t have it in me.

Sure, I could have ordered the bacon cheeseburger and said, “Hold the burger and cheese.”

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But I was tired — besmirched by 13 hours of hospital noise and fluorescent lights. I wasn’t thinking like a work-around guy. I was feeling like a husband who had just watched his wife survive another operation — and who just wanted to bring her comfort food before midnight.

The manager on duty saw me trying to explain — saw the look on my face, probably — and graciously had mercy on me.

No forms. No debate. Just a sandwich.

I left with a BLT, deep gratitude for that manager — and a sigh. One person made it right, but the system still made it harder than it should have been.

If we can’t make a sandwich for a post-op patient, what else aren’t we doing?

The bigger problem

That moment wasn’t just about a sandwich. It was a snapshot of the country we’re living in — where solutions exist, but systems won’t allow them.

  • You want to fix a clerical error with the IRS? Good luck.
  • You want to talk to a live representative? You might have better odds getting RFK Jr. to share an Uber with Anthony Fauci.

America was built by people who hated “we can’t” — and yet we now tolerate “that’s not how we do it.” And somehow, we’ve come to accept this as normal.

There’s something spiritually corrosive about a system that erases people to elevate process.

We see it everywhere — health care, government, schools, even churches.

But what if “good enough for government work” isn’t good enough any more?

Where reform begins

Systems don’t change just because we complain. They change when people remember how to care.

The problem isn’t just that the forms are too long (which they usually are).

It’s that no one feels responsible.

Of course, deflection of responsibility goes all the way back to the garden — where Adam and Eve tried to pass the blame instead of owning their failure.

Fixing this doesn’t begin with a new workflow diagram or a subcommittee hearing.

It begins by teaching people that they’re allowed to see the person in front of them. See the need. See the moment. See the opportunity.

When Jesus saw people, He didn’t ask if they had a referral or a code. He didn’t ask what department handled the lepers.

He stopped. He touched. He healed. He saw the person, not the system.

If we want to model that — whether we’re surgeons, pastors, nurses, cashiers, representatives, senators, or grill cooks — we start by doing the simplest, most human thing: We see the person in front of us. And we make the sandwich.

Even if it’s not on the menu.

The era of managerial rule is over. Long live the sovereign!



There’s a world before President Trump’s descent down the escalator, and there’s a world after it. The recent No Kings protests transmitted the idée fixe of the pre-2015 world. That idea was hostility to personal authority, or personal power — hostility to the notion of sovereignty, to the power once exercised by kings. Donald Trump, the figure who has dominated politics since 2015, is its most visible sign of contradiction. In that sense, the protesters weren’t entirely wrong. Trump’s success marks the passing of the world of the latter half of the 20th century, which was defined by hatred of personal authority.

Successive generations demolished the concept of sovereignty, casting suspicion on the notion that a leader’s decisions can legitimately reshape political or social life. This shift began in the United States when the intelligentsia promulgated the concept of “the authoritarian personality.” They found this personality in the working classes, their churches and associations, their families and fathers, and the politicians who represented them. Where there was the whiff of authoritarian character traits, fascism probably lurked.

All the elements of Trump’s personality that his opponents loathe have proved, for better or worse, to be demonstrations of strength rather than weakness.

The anti-authority impulse then extended to challenge the authority of elected bodies. Popular sovereignty became dangerous. In the late 1950s and '60s, on matters such as school prayer, unctuous judges and administrators tied the hands of potentially reactionary legislatures and frog-marched them toward secularism.

In the 1970s, the target was popular sovereignty as embodied in the office of the president. The American Constitution enabled an energetic executive or administrative presidency, traces of the monarchical form. But the president’s authority was decapitated in the great act of regicide — otherwise known as Watergate.

The ‘golden straitjacket’

Sketching the gloomy landscape of the 1970s, the sociologist Robert Nisbet saw in the twilight of authority the rise of impersonal forces; administrators touting “best practices” stepped into the breach. Therapists, managers, and other experts became increasingly important. They coordinated with economic, social, and legal networks to constrain human agents who might otherwise upset progress.

That’s what globalization was all about. At the peak of the era of what Thomas Friedman called “the golden straitjacket,” sovereignty was outré. Successful politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair dazzled their electorates with the bullion of cheap credit and narratives of an impending gilded age while tightening the bonds ever further. They weakened the power of their offices, distributing it to central banks and international agencies.

Their actions clarified the vocation of right-thinking people. Stigmatize the authoritarian personality. Banish any individual or group that displayed its signs from the helm of government and public life. Spin an ever-tighter web of legal, administrative, and economic networks that could remove the risks of exercising personal human control over government — the risks of an energetic executive — once and for all.

All that changed with Trump’s descent down the escalator. “The golden straitjacket” had numerous critics, but no major public figure exposed its hatred of political, personal power as aggressively and abruptly as Trump did. In 2015, he thrust personal authority back to the center of public life. It’s been there ever since, an example to imitate — in enthusiasm or envy.

Restoring the executive

As president, Trump has fought hard to restore the bloodied Article II of the Constitution. His executive and legal actions on behalf of presidential power even won over skeptics in the conservative legal world. Not only did he challenge the presuppositions of government via the administrative state, but he also exposed the overreaching deep state that is devouring the American Constitution.

Indeed, No Kings could very well function as a pro-Trump slogan. Prior to Trump, American presidents largely functioned as kings. Like the monarch in Great Britain, U.S. presidents had long held power in theory as the “dignified” branch, while other actors in the security state made the real decisions — the “efficient” branch. Trump has been his most republican when he has upset this double government.

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To be sure, anti-Trump No Kings protesters are more troubled by another phenomenon: Trump’s personal style of leadership. They’re not wrong to draw attention to it, but they’re wrong about its significance.

Authority depends on a person’s capacity to command in order to reshape politics. Trump mastered the new fragmented media environment, in which entertainment — rather than solemn statements — wins attention and deference. Trump made his personality an issue. His critics attacked him for it, claiming his persona was a manifestation of the dreaded authoritarian personality. But all the elements of Trump’s personality that his opponents loathe — rhetorical and physical aggression, incivility, scorn for discourse and discussion, brashness, maleness, unwillingness to apologize or express guilt, bluntly demarcating between American winners and losers, claiming the exceptional power to fix America’s problems — have proved, for better or worse, to be demonstrations of strength rather than weakness.

The importance of character traits such as “caring for people like me” or “experience,” which had mattered so much in late 20th-century mass democracy, faded away. Swaths of the electorate would of course still look for their “therapist in chief” or “expert in chief.” But more wanted a boss who asserted control and expected those under him to follow his lead.

The reassertion of personal authority, after decades of opposition to it, has been a messy affair. It’s risible to think that Trump ever intended to abolish elections, set up a dictatorship, or establish a hereditary monarchy. But his style did help accelerate the collapse of institutional authority, such as that once held by the media. Although many of his more dramatic promises have been unrealized (stymied by a variety of forces), the symbology of authority has remained key for gaining and wielding legitimacy.

The twilight of liberalism

A numinous connection has developed between an electorate that confers sovereignty upon its chosen figure and the figure who exercises it. The acoustic and visual symbols this connection generates are all the more potent because, at this point in the 21st century, as Mary Harrington has argued, a culture of mass literacy has vanished. This culture was essential to transmit the symbols associated with the print ideals of liberalism (for instance, the importance placed on the freedom of the press, or on discourse itself). As print culture goes, so go the symbols of liberalism. Other symbols step into their place.

Trump’s more subtle critics, who are troubled by the twilight of liberalism, noticed this transformation. They sense something has changed and single out Trump as the chief villain. But wielding the symbols of personal authority is one area in which Trump has long ceased to be exceptional. Even those who are very far from Trump ideologically and politically still inhabit his symbolic universe, in which personal authority, hierarchy, and one’s capacity to reshape political life are of critical importance.

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Emmanuel Macron’s predecessors, fearing being labeled authoritarians by the May ’68 generation, adopted a deliberately understated, egalitarian style. Macron shocked the French political system by embracing the persona of “Jupiter.” He seized the opportunity that Trump’s descent down the escalator made possible.

Pope Francis began his papacy in a conversational, freewheeling style, akin to a Clintonian or Blairite doing one’s best to manage the media narrative. But after the first few years, he also imitated Trump as his supporters embraced the theology of an imperial papacy.

Joe Biden likewise leaned into a “Dark Brandon” iconography of authority to create the impression that he was in charge, the simulacrum of a functioning presidency.

Politicians who can’t successfully embody the symbolism of authority, such as Biden, or those who shy away from it, such as Justin Trudeau, end up as failures. Trudeau launched his political career by an act of physical prowess, beating up a Conservative Party senator who was too lazy to train for a boxing match. It was a crude but effective way of legitimating Trudeau’s claim to lead the Liberal Party and Canada.

Even in an extremely progressive country, primal assertions of authority win admiration. But Trudeau forgot the underlying lesson. In office, he preferred the symbolism of colorful socks, and his unpopularity forced him to resign in ignominy. Meanwhile, Trudeau’s successor, who invokes the physical, masculine iconography of hockey fights to win votes, has returned to more visceral politics. The liberal norms of national civility go nowhere; it’s the brash Trumpian traits that are deployed to gain victory.

Slashing the straitjacket

The resurgence of authority is why there’s no chance of reverting to globalized, impersonal power — at least how the pre-2015 world conceived it. As candidates compete for personal authority, those vying for power repudiate the notion that economic, social, and legal networks should constrain human agents. The capacity to take back control over these networks is what matters. This helps us understand the deeper unity behind Trump’s signature policies.

All the major themes that Trump hit on when he descended the escalator — an end to mass immigration, free trade, and regime-change missions abroad — were on one level anti-globalization topics: They slashed away at the golden straitjacket.

Anti-globalization themes are now so mainstream that even Keir Starmer imitates Trump’s symbology by talking tough on border control. On one level, it’s a policy victory. But the success is more profound than that. To effect that agenda demands the reassertion of the personal, political will to effect social and political change. Faced with the diminishing returns of the old regime, that’s what more and more people are looking for.

In our new world, leaders rise and fall by how well they can speak the language of authority. Whatever the full implications of this paradigm shift may be, the longing for sovereigns shows no signs of letting up.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally as “A New Birth of Authority” at the American Mind.

Documents Show Biden Admin Ginned Up FBI Investigations Of Law-Abiding Political Opponents

Trump should immediately issue an executive order dismantling Biden's National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

Trump’s SEC pick would blow up Biden’s lawless financial agenda



The media’s narrative has done its job. Many Americans now see Donald J. Trump not as a reformer but as a symbol of corruption. That perception is both dishonest and deeply misleading.

The reality? The first 100 days of Trump’s second term leave no doubt about his goal: to reform and remake the federal government.

Reform should mean growing the economy, not growing the bureaucracy.

It’s about time. Too many unelected bureaucrats accountable to no one infest the federal government like roaches, wielding unchecked power over our lives, liberty, and happiness. They treat the mandate for reform as a nuisance. Their mission: obstruct Trump’s appointees and protect the status quo.

Organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Voice of America have deservedly drawn the president’s attention. But many others deserve the same scrutiny. One that stands out is the Securities and Exchange Commission, which repeatedly overstepped its authority during the Biden years, using vague regulatory powers to impose sweeping social mandates under the guise of financial oversight.

Trump tapped former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to fix it. As chairman, Atkins can be counted on to take a best-practices approach to administrative responsibilities and to ensure that the SEC conducts its mission as described by the law: “facilitate capital formation; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and protect investors.”

That’s a welcome clarification of responsibility. Gary Gensler, who ran the SEC for Joe Biden, was often accused of having a reach that exceeded legitimate bounds, as when, for example, he tried to regulate the market for precious metals.

Gold and silver are not securities. Neither are individual retirement accounts. Yet the Gensler-era SEC attempted to assert authority over companies offering precious-metals IRAs to individuals and families who wish to own gold and silver.

As the Heritage Foundation’s David Burton told the House Financial Services Committee in March 2024, “The commission is statutorily required to promote efficiency, competition, and capital formation by responsible participants in the capital markets.” Still, under the Biden administration, “it increasingly does the opposite.”

John Gulliver of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation told the same committee that Gensler’s SEC had “an unprecedented rulemaking agenda that will radically redesign the regulation of our securities markets and will have a major impact on the cost of being a public company and investing in our markets.”

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 Photo by Tom Brenner for the Washington Post via Getty Images

Atkins can and must guide the SEC away from such nonsense. As CEO of Patomak Global Partners, Atkins oversaw the development of best practices for managing digital assets. Congress should follow his lead wherever it may go, solidifying his reforms into law and preventing the agency from trying to regulate financial instruments that are not securities.

The overreach matters. The United States is in a race with China for cryptocurrency dominance. The winner gets to establish the terms under which everyone else must live. It’s no surprise that the SEC’s failure to establish what Burton called “basic rules for responsible actors to follow” undermines America’s ability to take the lead.

“I am not entirely sure whether this irresponsible failure to provide basic rules is a function of the limited understanding of those charged with regulating in this area or their desire to simply have no rules so that the commission can engage in regulation by enforcement,” Burton told the committee.

Regulation by enforcement doesn’t just stifle innovation — it cripples the economy. It may also violate new limits the U.S. Supreme Court just imposed on federal agencies in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended the Chevron deference doctrine.

But Atkins can’t fix the SEC alone. Congress must step in and rewrite the law to bar the commission from using backdoor tactics to seize authority over emerging markets and financial technologies.

If lawmakers fail, they’ll guarantee a future where financial technology innovation gets strangled in red tape while real fraudsters skate by untouched. That’s bad news not just for entrepreneurs, but for America’s investors — roughly half the population — who rely on strong markets to secure their retirements.

Reform should mean growing the economy, not growing the bureaucracy. With Atkins at the helm, the SEC finally has a chance to get back to doing what it was meant to do.

When bureaucrats rule, even red states go woke



If it’s happening in Georgia, you can bet it’s happening all over the country. Embedded bureaucrats are quietly rewriting the policies voters put in place.

Georgia’s Medicaid program exists to serve the state’s most vulnerable — low-income children and foster youth, pregnant women, and disabled adults. It was never meant to be a vehicle for radical politics. But recent revelations about how the state awarded multibillion-dollar Medicaid contracts show exactly how far left-wing ideologues inside government agencies will go to push their agenda.

When the bureaucracy pushes a progressive agenda behind closed doors, the public has no choice but to push back. Loudly. Clearly. Immediately.

Internal documents reveal that senior staff at Georgia’s Department of Community Health inserted ideological land mines into the bidding process for companies seeking to serve more than 1 million Medicaid recipients — most of them children. This included a scenario question focused on how insurers would treat a hypothetical “fourteen (14) year-old, transgender White female (assigned male sex at birth but identifies as a female).”

Responses that didn’t align with leftist orthodoxy were penalized. In other words, companies lost points unless they promised to steer kids toward hormone therapy — despite state laws banning gender reassignment procedures for minors. That isn’t just dishonest. It’s a direct subversion of the law.

Just this year, Georgia’s legislature passed bills barring men from girls’ sports and locker rooms. But inside the state’s Medicaid agency, officials rewarded insurers for endorsing gender transitions for minors. One winning bidder justified its position by claiming such treatments “could come up in the future.” Never mind that they’re illegal in Georgia.

One losing insurer offered to connect the hypothetical child with a range of community resources, including faith-based organizations. That response was met with scorn. A state official actually complained that faith-based groups shouldn’t have been included — because they weren’t mentioned in the scenario.

Never mind that faith-based organizations have served Medicaid populations for decades. They often provide the only consistent care in struggling communities. But for these bureaucrats, churches and people of faith pose a bigger danger to kids than radical gender ideology.

This is no small issue. Georgia expects to spend $4.5 billion next year on Medicaid and PeachCare, the program for uninsured kids. That makes this one of the largest contracts in state history — and leftist staffers nearly hijacked the entire process.

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 Photographer: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Lawmakers have a duty to step in now. During the last session, they considered a bill that would have barred ideologically charged questions from state procurements. It didn’t pass. That needs to change.

There’s still time. The Medicaid contracts haven’t been finalized. Legislators must act. They should demand a full rebid, remove these radical questions, and ensure that reviewers score responses based on biology, patient welfare, and fiscal responsibility — not on whether companies genuflect to left-wing doctrine.

Georgia’s leadership has worked hard to uphold conservative values and protect taxpayer dollars. But as we’ve seen in Washington, unelected bureaucrats can — and will — undermine that progress if no one stops them.

When the bureaucracy pushes a progressive agenda behind closed doors, the public has no choice but to push back. Loudly. Clearly. Immediately. We must call it out, correct course, and pass the kind of reforms that ensure this never happens again.

Patel’s plan to dismantle the deep state starts with a moving van



The time has come to dismantle the FBI as we’ve known it — and rebuild it into the law enforcement agency it was always supposed to be.

Under former Director Christopher Wray, the FBI became a political weapon. It targeted thousands of Americans, including former President Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago estate was raided in 2022 over “key classified documents.” At the same time, Joe Biden had his own stash of classified material at his Delaware home, which he allegedly took as Barack Obama’s vice president, but the FBI dragged its feet before lifting a finger.

This isn’t just a logistical shift — it’s a symbolic one. A once-centralized, politicized agency now has a chance to rebuild credibility, brick by brick, city by city.

The bureau’s double standards didn’t stop there. Agents monitored citizens for their social media posts and even flagged Christians based solely on their religious beliefs. This isn’t law enforcement — it’s ideological policing.

Now, with Wray gone and Kash Patel stepping in, the FBI has reached a crossroads. And Patel has already announced a major shift. Change can’t come fast enough.

Moving out

Patel recently announced on Fox News that the FBI plans to vacate its longtime home at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., and disperse more than 1,500 active employees to field offices nationwide.

This is welcome news — for several reasons.

First, keeping the FBI’s nerve center in D.C. creates obvious political risks. It placed the bureau within easy reach of powerful politicians eager to influence investigations — something President Biden has reportedly taken advantage of more than once. Centralizing the agency in one building also posed a glaring security risk. A single well-coordinated attack could have crippled the FBI’s operations.

Second, the Hoover Building itself has deteriorated significantly. The Biden administration showed no interest in restoring it. Patel’s plan doesn’t just address a structural issue — it signals a cultural shift.

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“We want the American men and women to know if you’re going to come work at the premier law enforcement agency in the world, we’re going to give you a building that’s commensurate with that, and that’s not this place,” Patel said.

The goal is clear: decentralize power, reduce vulnerability, and rebuild the bureau’s credibility from the ground up.

Time to rebuild

This move offers real benefits.

Dispersing FBI agents across the country allows them to respond more quickly to cases without relying on costly, time-consuming travel. Imagine a homicide investigation that requires FBI involvement. Instead of waiting days for special agents to arrive from Washington, a local team can jump in immediately. That keeps cases from stalling and gets justice moving faster.

It also improves coordination with local law enforcement. For years, under Wray, cooperation often felt strained or disjointed. Decentralization gives agents a better chance to build working relationships with police departments on the ground. That alone marks a major improvement.

But the real win? Breaking from the old image of what the FBI had become.

This isn’t just a logistical shift — it’s a symbolic one. A once-centralized, politicized agency now has a chance to rebuild credibility, brick by brick, city by city.

As I’ve said, keeping the FBI in the J. Edgar Hoover Building only reinforces the agency’s worst associations. That building still bears the scars of Director Wray’s missteps — and before him, James Comey, whose antagonism toward President Trump in 2017 got him fired.

(And judging from recent headlines, Comey still hasn’t taken the firing well.)

This move offers the FBI a much-needed reset. It gives the agency a chance to move past its baggage and build something more effective, transparent, and accountable. Credit to Patel — and likely Trump — for making the call. FBI agents deserve the opportunity to leave behind the cloud of corruption and step into something better.

I’m eager to see how this changes the bureau — not just for agents but for law enforcement as a whole.

How Republicans can shut down this overbearing agency once and for all



With accountability and spending restraint more urgent than ever, Congress should shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for good. Eliminating the CFPB would mark a decisive move to protect taxpayers from another bloated, unaccountable government agency. If Republicans, Congress, and President Donald Trump want to keep their promise to rein in Washington’s runaway bureaucracy, they must ensure this agency stays dead — and buried for good.

The CFPB’s unchecked growth and regulatory overreach have raised red flags for years. Born out of the 2008 financial crisis, the agency operates with minimal oversight and has long avoided serious scrutiny. Its expanding budget and vague authority continue to spark legitimate questions about fiscal responsibility and constitutional limits. Closing down the CFPB would end a failed bureaucratic experiment and send a clear message: Every federal agency answers to the taxpayers. No exceptions.

Consumers deserve clear, commonsense policies — especially after years of market confusion driven by the CFPB’s heavy hand.

The CFPB was built to operate independently, beyond the reach of Congress or the president. Lawmakers granted it broad, vague authority — allowing unelected bureaucrats to meddle freely in the U.S. economy. Beyond its track record of economic failure, the CFPB’s structure flatly contradicts the American model of representative government.

President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, acted quickly. They made high-impact decisions to show Americans they were serious about cutting waste, reducing overreach, and eliminating redundancy across the federal bureaucracy. When the CFPB came up for its DOGE review, the administration halted its operations and dismissed hundreds of staff.

That move triggered criticism from the usual quarters, but consumers and lawmakers should look deeper. Ending the CFPB isn’t just about cost-cutting. It signaled a broader plan to streamline the federal government and promote efficiency across every agency.

Still, even the DOGE can’t finish the job without Congress. Only Congress can repeal the statute that established the CFPB — and only Congress can shut the agency down for good. Lawmakers must do so.

The CFPB currently controls its own funding, bypassing the regular appropriations process and evading critical checks and balances. Reclaiming those dollars would help reduce the deficit, and redistributing the CFPB’s limited useful functions to other agencies would ensure continued consumer protections under proper oversight.

The Federal Reserve and other agencies already handle key aspects of financial regulation and could easily absorb the CFPB’s remaining duties. Congress must finally draw the line: no more duplicative mandates, no more unchecked authority, and no more mission creep. If consumer protections matter — and they do — then Congress must deliver them through a structure that answers to the people.

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Fortunately, the CFPB has begun scaling back some of its overreach. Earlier this month, the agency dropped its lawsuit against Credit Acceptance Corporation, an auto lender. That move signals a step in the right direction — away from regulatory overreach and toward a more balanced role in the economy.

Every unnecessary enforcement action piles compliance costs on businesses, stifles innovation, and hampers economic growth. Reassessing these missteps marks progress toward a regulatory approach that defends consumers without punishing industry.

Consumers deserve clear, commonsense policies — especially after years of market confusion driven by the CFPB’s heavy hand. They also deserve policies shaped by accountable officials, not by bureaucrats operating in defiance of congressional oversight. Credit access remains essential for Americans seeking financial stability in times of need. Crafting sound regulations — and eliminating those that never made sense — protects both their financial futures and the broader economy.

Consumers also deserve protection they can trust. Creditors need clear, consistent rules to serve their customers without facing unpredictable regulatory entanglements. Any reform bill must address these concerns directly and distribute the CFPB’s remaining legitimate duties across existing, accountable agencies.

As these changes take shape, stakeholders must stay engaged. Reforms should be implemented deliberately and effectively — promoting economic growth while preserving oversight where it’s needed. If President Trump wants to cement his legacy as the president who dismantled the administrative state, he must make sure the CFPB doesn’t just get paused. It must stay gone for good.

Joe Biden was a puppet, not a president. So who signed the pardons?



Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book confirms what we suspected all along: Joe Biden’s health was rapidly declining, and the Democratic Party establishment knew it. Rather than be honest with the American people, they chose to cover it up, to prop up Biden just long enough to survive the election cycle. And the media helped them do it.

For years, any mention of Biden’s cognitive decline was framed as a “right-wing smear,” a baseless conspiracy theory. But now, Tapper and Thompson reveal that Biden’s top aides privately discussed the need for a wheelchair after the election — because the man can hardly walk.

We had no functioning president for much of the past administration.

And while Biden’s closest aides were planning that, they and their allies in the press were publicly spinning the fantasy that Joe Biden’s halting gait was due to a heroic foot fracture from a dog-related incident four years ago. They said his frailty was due to his “vigor.” That’s not a joke. That’s a quote.

And while they said this, they were having special shoes made for him with custom-made soles to help him stand. They weren’t planning for a second term. They were planning how to prop him up — literally — just long enough to survive the election. That is a cover-up.

It doesn’t bother me that Biden might need a wheelchair. What bothers me — what should bother every American — is that his aides talked about hiding it until after the election.

Biden wasn’t leading

Needing a wheelchair in your 80s is not a moral failing. It’s human. I own President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wheelchair — it sits in my museum. That chair represents the strength and resilience of a man who, despite paralysis, led this nation through World War II against a dictator who was gassing the disabled and infirm. He hid his disability out of fear the public wouldn’t accept a leader who couldn’t walk. But he led.

RELATED: The Great Biden Book War has finally begun

 Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images

But Joe Biden wasn’t leading. He was a puppet played by faceless swamp creatures whose only concern was maintaining their iron grip on power.

Whatever you think of Tapper, the book reveals the chilling reality that we had no functioning president for much of Biden’s administration. Our commander-in-chief wasn’t just aging — he was declining. And the people around him — government employees, funded by your tax dollars — weren’t honest with you. They lied to you repeatedly and willfully because the truth would have guaranteed a second Trump term. That’s what this was all about.

Who signed the pardons?

Consider the implications of this revelation. We had a president signing documents he didn’t read — or even know about. We had an autopen affixing his name to executive actions. Who operated that autopen? Who decided what got signed or who got pardoned? Who was in charge while the president didn’t even know what he was doing?

Those are not minor questions. That is the stuff of a constitutional crisis.

The problem isn’t Biden’s age. The problem is that the people you elected didn’t run the country. You were governed by unelected aides covering up your elected president’s rapid cognitive decline. You were fed a lie — over and over again. And if anyone tried to blow the whistle, they got buried.

Don’t get distracted by the wheelchair. The chair itself is not the scandal. The scandal is that people inside your government didn’t want you to know about it.

They made a bet: Lie until November, and deal with the fallout later. That is an insult to the American people — and a threat to the republic itself. Because if your government can lie about who’s running the country, what else are they lying about?

We need further investigation and to hold these crooks accountable. If we don’t, it will happen over and over again.

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Trump’s downsizing isn’t cruelty — it’s the last hope for solvency



For more than a century, one trend has defined American politics: the relentless expansion of federal power. The Founders built a limited framework of law and order to protect liberty and promote a flourishing society. That framework has morphed into a sprawling leviathan that reaches into nearly every aspect of American life. Each crisis, often of the government’s own making, brings the same answer: more bureaucracy, more spending, more control.

Generations of Americans have paid the price to support a self-described “problem-solving” class that fails to solve anything — and demands even more to fix the failures it created. Under President Trump, however, the country finally has a leader who sees bureaucracy not as the solution but as the root of the problem.

The choice is clear: a government that serves the people — or an unaccountable leviathan that consumes them.

In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal exploited economic collapse to justify a sweeping expansion of federal agencies. Lawmakers used the crisis to transform the relationship between government and the free market.

By the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society pushed federal overreach farther, binding millions of Americans to Washington through government handouts. Decades later, after 9/11, George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act, giving federal agencies unprecedented access to Americans’ private lives — all in the name of national security.

Today, the federal government reaches into your doctor’s office, your child’s classroom, and even your kitchen appliances — often without a single vote in Congress.

This unchecked sprawl, always justified by its own failures, has saddled taxpayers with $37 trillion in debt, a crushing weight that future generations must carry.

Enter Donald Trump.

In fewer than 100 days, Trump removed 126,000 federal workers and targeted another 100,000 positions for elimination. He gutted USAID — a bloated redistribution agency infamous for funding “Sesame Street” in Iraq — cutting more than 99% of its workforce. The IRS shed 3,600 auditors, directly rejecting President Biden’s plan to hire 87,000 new agents through the Inflation Reduction Act.

RELATED: Why voters are done compromising with the ‘America Last’ elite

 Sarah Rice/Bloomberg via Getty Images

For the first time in years, an American president has moved decisively to dismantle the administrative state — rejecting Washington’s bipartisan instinct to grow government and funnel more power to unelected bureaucrats.

No one should be surprised that Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal government have sparked outrage from Democrats, who now portray federal workers as the new victim class. Their narrative paints Trump and Republicans as “cruel” and “heartless.”

But here’s the truth.

While more than 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, Washington’s bureaucratic elite dominate six of the 10 richest counties in the country — all clustered around the nation’s capital.

During the 2008 financial crisis, 8.6 million Americans lost their jobs — 5.5% of the national workforce. Yet Washington barely flinched, shedding just 1.1% of its taxpayer-funded positions. While global economies collapsed, the D.C. bureaucracy grew, kept afloat by billion-dollar federal contracts. Politicians demanded more money for “problem solvers” to solve the problems they created. After all the “assistance” and bailouts, average Americans were left with just one thing: nearly $1 trillion in new debt.

Trump’s war on the administrative state doesn’t stem from cruelty — it reflects a long-overdue reckoning with bloated federal power. His success represents a win for working Americans. While Trump has made historic gains against the bureaucracy, many of his reforms remain tied up in court, blocked by forces determined to preserve the status quo.

If real change is the goal, Congress must do more than applaud. Lawmakers must codify Trump’s actions and pass his proposed spending cuts. The choice is clear: a government that serves the people — or an unaccountable leviathan that consumes them.

Trump’s Latest Order Could Keep You Out Of Prison For Crimes You Didn’t Even Know You Committed

A new executive order targets hidden criminal laws and restores basic due process to federal enforcement.