The internet has done an admirable job hobbling the corporate left-wing media’s ability to control the population through a single narrative. But that blessing comes with regrettable costs.
The speed of information and the incentive to push hot takes onto social media mean that when a public figure dies, there is an immediate race to decide which competing narrative will define his legacy.
Was Graham a true convert to MAGA and its values? Unlikely. But politics is not a contest over who believes harder.
When Lindsey Graham died suddenly of heart failure over the weekend, conspiracy theories about foreign assassination plots immediately began to circulate online. Many leftists openly celebrated his death, and the reactionary impulse of conservatives drove others to recast Graham as a stalwart crusader for MAGA.
The truth is more complicated. But in the eternal battle for narrative supremacy, there is little time for reflection, even in response to death.
No one is above criticism. But in a healthy society, some space exists between a public figure’s passing and attacks on his legacy.
That standard now seems quaint, perhaps naive. It is also better for the soul of the nation.
Unfortunately, wishing to live in that kind of society does not make it real. The information war is relentless. Abstaining from the fight only means someone else defines the truth.
The news cycle does not observe a respectable period of mourning. The battle begins the moment the headline drops.
Wild conspiracy theories now seem obligatory whenever a prominent figure dies, and Graham was no exception. The senator toured a Ukrainian weapons factory the day before his death, and several figures speculated that he had really been killed in an attack on that facility or poisoned by the Russians.
Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin suggested on social media that Graham had likely been killed by Israel, despite Graham’s long record of advocacy for that country.
This is not to denigrate conspiracy theories in general. One thing we learned after COVID is that such theories can often prove correct. But the narratives around Graham’s death were bizarre.
Graham was a 71-year-old man with a family history of fatal heart conditions who did not take care of himself. His death is sad, but its cause was hardly mysterious.
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Progressives reacted exactly as expected. There was gloating, celebration, mockery, and even speculation about who should come next.
Graham’s death was nowhere near as visceral or violent as Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but the left’s response carried unnerving echoes. It was a brutal reminder of a lesson conservatives have worked hard not to learn since Kirk’s murder.
Even the average Democrat is emotionally unhinged.
Your progressive neighbor may not be willing to commit violence personally against you over politics. But many are happy to cheer those who do and dance on your grave once you are gone.
The reaction on the right was strange in a different way. Some conservatives rushed to construct a hagiography, transforming Graham into a MAGA saint, a lion who died fighting for the cause.
That impulse may have been an understandable response to the left’s disgusting vitriol. It was not wise.
Graham served in the Senate for 31 years. He supported every disastrous war during his tenure, including the war in Ukraine that Donald Trump ran on ending and the war in Iran now costing the administration dearly.
Graham pushed for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He backed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during military operations in Syria and Libya.
He pushed to send hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign governments while inflation was driving up the cost of living for ordinary Americans. After Graham’s death, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that when he told the senator Israel should pay for its own defense, Graham insisted that American taxpayers should foot the bill.
On immigration, the core issue of the MAGA coalition, Graham was even worse.
He was part of the Gang of Eight and pushed for amnesty alongside men like Marco Rubio. In 2006, Graham teamed up with John McCain to pursue a similar pathway to citizenship. His attempts to secure amnesty for illegal aliens were so common that he earned the nickname “Grahamnesty.”
Lindsey Graham was, in almost every way imaginable, the essence of the Washington swamp Trump promised to drain.
He was also a savvy political operator.
Graham initially fought Trump tooth and nail. Like many Republicans, he slowly changed his rhetoric. Despite still pushing horrible foreign policy and endless war, the senator became a reliable vote for Trump on many domestic issues. His work advancing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the SAVE Act deserves note.
Was Graham a true convert to MAGA and its values? Unlikely. But politics is not a contest over who believes harder.
It would have been unwise to trust Graham. Many Republicans have discovered new respect for Trump to get what they want, only to betray him the moment he stops prioritizing their issues.
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But Graham delivered votes and support at key moments. That made him politically useful in scenarios that cannot be ignored.
Graham spent most of his career as an institutional neoconservative advancing policies that were disastrous for the country. He eventually corrected course on amnesty and delivered some key votes for the Trump administration. Yet his monomaniacal obsession with war made him one of the central proponents of a foreign policy quagmire threatening to derail the MAGA agenda.
Does his opportunistic support for Trump in the final years of his life make him a true MAGA patriot? No.
Does he deserve the hatred poured on him by the left after his death? Also no.
That is not mercy for a political enemy. It is moral clarity. Refusing to lie about a man’s record does not require joining the mob that cheers his death.
Those are entirely separate moral sins.
In the rush to define the narrative, the complicated nature of Graham’s legacy disappears.
The internet has made immediate judgment mandatory and thoughtful reflection almost impossible. It turns public figures into mascots, villains, saints, and demons before the body is cold.
In the end, the internet makes fictional characters of us all.
The Supreme Court’s decision in the birthright citizenship case cannot be sugarcoated: It is a disaster.
Illegal immigration drives many of the problems that afflict the nation — cultural decline, political brinkmanship, the rise of socialist and communist policies, social fragmentation, strained schools and hospitals, and damage to the job market, to name only a few.
Getting back on track requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus resources on targets and operations that can yield large numbers of removals.
But birthright citizenship adds a uniquely destructive incentive. It rewards illegal immigration itself by bestowing sacred American citizenship on the children of people who should not be here in the first place.
Birthright citizenship creates a multiplier effect. It turns one act of illegality into a generational claim on the country. To put it in terms some of my more interventionist friends may understand, the proponents of illegal immigration have secured state-sanctioned weapons of mass reproduction.
Even after this setback, much can be done to mitigate the damage. Fortunately, the solution is not only politically viable; it was promised.
The solution is mass deportation, now with a particular focus on illegal aliens who are expectant parents or already have children.
The Supreme Court’s ruling does nothing to grant amnesty to the parents of would-be citizens if those parents are here illegally. Deporting expectant parents shuts off birthright citizenship before it happens.
For illegal aliens who already have children with ill-gotten birthright citizenship, the parents should be deported with their illegal-alien family unit. They can choose to abandon their children in the United States, which would be a condemnable moral failure, or take their children with them.
To make things easier, the Oversight Project has already put together the “Keeping Families Together Plan: How to Deport After the Birthright Citizenship Case.”
The administration remains far off target on fulfilling its mass-deportation agenda. The numbers are not there. Getting back on track requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus resources on targets and operations that can yield large numbers of removals.
That means high-density enforcement.
Worksite enforcement against illegal labor operations at Republican-protected sanctuary farms, factories, and industrial hubs would produce large numbers of arrests and deportations. Enforcement at high-density physical locations obviously yields more results than chasing one alien at a time.
This is not happening at the necessary scale because the special-interest lobby supporting these industries is a major financial backer of the Republican Party.
But as far as I know, no special-interest lobby for the parents of anchor babies funds Republican elections. I have been surprised before, but this should be an easier political fight.
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It has been difficult to persuade the Trump administration to turn fully toward worksite enforcement. Perhaps the outrage over the Supreme Court’s decision can now be channeled into concrete action to mitigate the damage.
If the court had ruled the other way, presumably these removals would already be happening. If birthright citizenship for illegal aliens is truly the civilizational threat its critics claim it is, then the Trump administration must use every available tool to address it even under this now seemingly permanent constitutional framework.
Other steps will be necessary to address birthright citizenship gained through means other than crossing the border illegally. Temporary visitors and birth tourism should be targeted. So should more exotic abuses, such as a communist Chinese billionaire allegedly mailing sperm to California to impregnate women and produce American-citizen children for him.
There is no shortage of mitigating measures available: tightening rules for temporary visitors, banning birth tourism, and perhaps even banning the use of the mail system for communist Chinese sperm.
For those here illegally, the answer is more straightforward.
The Trump administration should fall back in love with its signature campaign promise to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.
Illegal aliens cannot have anchor babies here if they are deported first.
The solution is sitting right in front of us.
Mass deportation.
The housing crisis shows no signs of slowing, and some home builders are saying that more immigration could help ease Americans' home woes.
The Trump administration has argued that tightening immigration enforcement would open up units currently housing illegal aliens and other immigrants, but some in the business argue otherwise.
'We’ve got to create a visa system for people who want to work legally in this country, in the construction industry.'
"Labor is one of the largest and most expensive inputs when it comes to home production and land development," said National Association of Home Builders CEO and president Jim Tobin to Fox News Digital.
A shortage in skilled labor means costly delays and higher expenses for builders, who pass on the costs to homebuyers.
Tobin added that there's a "persistent shortage" in construction labor, which has expressed itself as a labor gap of as many as 400,000 workers in busy times.
"This shortage adds nearly two extra months to building timelines, inflating costs and delaying delivery,” said Home Builders Institute President and CEO Ed Brady.
About one-third of the home-building workforce is made up of immigrants, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Tobin said the industry struggles to replace skilled tradespeople who retire.
"It’s not only about training more people to come into the industry as our current generation ages out of the skilled trades, but it’s also the immigration problem that we have in this country," he added.
He went on to call for pathways to legalization for workers already in the country.
"We’ve got to find a way to modernize our immigration laws," Tobin continued. "We’ve got to create a visa system for people who want to work legally in this country, in the construction industry."
That is unlikely given the opposition to amnesty in the current administration and in the electorate. A recent poll showed that 46% of Americans supported the president's policies on enforcing immigration, and he has made mass deportations a key promise of his second term.
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However, Americans also want action on housing affordability. The Trump administration announced a plan to ease the housing crisis, but increasing construction labor through immigration was not a part of that plan.
One part of the plan included easing zoning and building restrictions in order to increase the housing stock and give Americans greater options in choosing a home.
Meanwhile, the latest annual report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies revealed very little good news for renters and homeowners, who are strained by high rents and very little housing cost relief.
Tobin went on to conclude that affordability is likely to worsen unless the labor-shortage crisis is resolved.
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