While the lights are off, let’s rewire the government



The United States faces an existential threat from the accelerating military power of communist China — a buildup fueled by decades of massive economic expansion. If America intends to counter Beijing’s ambitions, it must grow faster, leaner, and more efficient. Economic strength is national security.

The ongoing government shutdown may not be popular, but it gives President Trump a rare opportunity to make good on his campaign pledge to drain — and redesign — “the swamp.” Streamlining the federal government isn’t just good politics. It’s a matter of survival.

A government that builds wealth rather than expands debt can out-produce China, sustain deterrence, and restore the American ideal of self-government.

George Washington ran the nation with four Cabinet departments: war, treasury, state, and the attorney general. The Department of the Interior came later, followed by the Department of Agriculture, added by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 when America was an agrarian power.

The modern Cabinet, by contrast, is a bureaucratic junkyard built more in reaction to political problems than by design. The Labor Department was carved from the Commerce Department to appease the unions. Lyndon Johnson invented the Department of Transportation. Jimmy Carter established the Department of Energy in response to the Arab oil embargo. The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence emerged after 9/11.

The result is a patchwork of agencies wired together with duct tape, overlap, and patronage. A government designed for crisis management has become a permanent crisis unto itself.

Enter the Department of National Economy

A return to first principles starts with a single question: How can we accelerate American productivity?

The answer: consolidate. Merge the Departments of Commerce, Labor, Agriculture, Transportation, and Energy into a Department of National Economy. One Cabinet secretary, five undersecretaries, one mission: to expand the flow of goods and services that generate national wealth.

The new department’s motto should be a straightforward question: What did your enterprise do today to increase the wealth of the United States?

Fewer bureaucracies mean fewer fiefdoms, less redundancy, and enormous cost savings. Synergy replaces stovepipes. The government’s economic engine becomes a single machine instead of six competing engines running on taxpayer fuel.

Fold Homeland Security into the Coast Guard

Homeland Security should be absorbed by the U.S. Coast Guard, which already functions as a paramilitary force with both military and police authority, much like Italy’s Carabinieri. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, DHS personnel would share discipline, training, and accountability.

FEMA would cease to be a dumping ground for political hacks. Any discrimination in disaster aid — such as punishing Trump voters — would trigger a court-martial.

The Secret Service would focus solely on protective duties, handing its financial-crime work to the FBI. The secretary of the Coast Guard would gain a seat in the Cabinet.

Restoring intelligence to the OSS model

The Office of Director of National Intelligence should be re-established as the Office of Strategic Services, commanded by a figure in the tradition of Major General “Wild Bill” Donovan. Elements of U.S. Special Operations Command would be seconded to the new OSS, reviving its World War II lineage.

All intelligence agencies — CIA, DIA, FBI, the State Department, DEA, and the service branches — should share common foundational training. The current decline in discipline and capability at the National Intelligence University, worsened by the DEI policies of its leadership, demands urgent correction. Diversity cannot come at the expense of competence.

RELATED: Memo to Hegseth: Our military’s problem isn’t only fitness. It’s bad education.

Photo by Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images

Law enforcement and the flat tax

At the Department of Justice, dissolve the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Shift alcohol and tobacco oversight to the DEA, firearms and explosives to the U.S. Marshals.

Let the DEA also absorb the Food and Drug Administration, which would become its research and standards division.

Return the FBI to pure investigation — armed but without arrest powers. Enforcement should rest with the U.S. Marshals. Counterintelligence would move to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, reinforced by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The IRS should be dismantled and replaced with a small agency built around a flat-tax model such as the Hall-Rabushka plan.

Move the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response to Homeland Security. Send its Office of Climate Change and Health Equity to NOAA — or eliminate it entirely.

At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, expand the inspector general’s office tenfold and pay bonuses for rooting out fraud.

Restoring deterrence

The Pentagon needs its own overhaul. Because of China’s rapid military buildup, the Air Force’s Global Strike Command should be separated from U.S. Strategic Command and report directly to the secretary of war and the president under its historic name — Strategic Air Command.

Submarines and silos are invisible; bombers are not. Deterrence depends on visibility. A line of B-1s, B-2s, B-52s, and 100 new B-21 Raider stealth bombers, all bearing the mailed-fist insignia of the old SAC, would send an unmistakable message to Beijing.

RELATED: Exclusive: China behind massive nationwide SIM farm network that directly threatens American critical infrastructure

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Toward a leaner republic

With Trump back in the White House, this moment is ripe for radical efficiency. A government that builds wealth rather than expands debt can out-produce China, sustain deterrence, and restore the American ideal of self-government.

George Washington’s government fit inside a single carriage. We won’t return to that scale — but we can rediscover that spirit. A lean, unified, strategically organized government would make wealth creation easier, limit bureaucratic overreach, and preserve the republic for the long fight ahead.

Jerome Powell proves the Fed’s ‘independence’ is a myth



One of the least understood but most consequential aspects of American government is the United States Federal Reserve System. Bankers, investors, and even the president sit with bated breath, waiting to see how the Fed will manage interest rates.

The Fed is so important to the world economy that the president sometimes may feel the need to voice his administration’s position and hope the chairman of the Federal Reserve will acquiesce to his wishes. Sometimes, however, he may point out issues with the chairman’s performance, puncturing the claim of central bank independence. President Donald Trump recently accused Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell of being too late with interest rate cuts “except when it came to the Election period when he lowered [interest rates] in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected.”

Powell was clearly willing to play political games that cost Americans their businesses and their ability to feed their children.

Americans had suffered through continued elevated inflation, in part, because Jerome Powell wanted to keep his job.

With the president’s attempted firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook, Powell has jockeyed himself a position as the white knight of central bank independence. He alleges that tariffs, which have no connection with monetary policy on their own, are the cause of an increase in inflation. He seems intent on keeping interest rates high.

Whether that is a good decision is a different subject altogether (the Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken takes on that idea). But what is clear is that Jerome Powell is not the principled opponent to Trump he claims to be; he is just as much a political actor as the president and Congress.

Powell’s politicization

Powell’s politicization is clear in how the Fed functions today. Economists and political scientists stress the importance of central bank independence as a hedge against what is called “political business cycles.” These cycles occur when monetary authorities pump the economy full of easy money to suppress employment problems and create an illusion of prosperity. This eventually results in higher inflation. Politicians reap the benefits of this illusion and blame inflation on something else: energy shocks, supply shocks, disasters, tariffs, etc.

The root of the problem is when new money is created to push down interest rates. Politicians who have control over the monetary authorities are incentivized to push for easier monetary policy to relieve unemployment in the face of elections. If they lose, their opponents reap the consequences; if they win, rates might be allowed to rise to fight inflation, and the illusion is dispelled.

By insulating the central bank from political pressure, the Fed is supposed to be able to pursue its mandates such as low and stable inflation or low unemployment. While this appears sound at first glance, reality shows that the Federal Reserve has never truly been independent.

A history of faux independence

The crowning moment that defines U.S. central bank independence is the Treasury-Fed Accord of 1951, which severed the support the Fed had given the Treasury Department in financing World War II and the Marshall Plan. But as Jonathan Newman has uncovered, this accord was a declaration of independence in name only.

The chairman of the board of governors, Thomas McCabe, by all accounts did appear to favor the separation of the Federal Reserve’s functions from that of the Treasury’s. Yet McCabe was not present at the Accord meetings. Moreover, McCabe resigned in protest soon after they concluded.

Treasury stooge William McChesney Martin Jr. was then appointed Fed chairman. Martin paid lip service to the idea of an independent Fed but ultimately revealed his cooperation with the Treasury Department in a 1955 interview. President Kennedy even renominated him for having “cooperated effectively in the economic policies of [his] administration.”

The Treasury and the Fed have had a revolving door ever since. Martin had chaired the Export-Import Bank in addition to serving as assistant treasury secretary. G. William Miller left his role as Fed chairman to serve as the secretary of the treasury. Paul Volcker served in Nixon’s Treasury Department before joining the Fed.

Particularly egregious was Janet Yellen, who served on President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and then was appointed to the Federal Reserve by both Clinton and later President Barack Obama. She ultimately would become secretary of the treasury under President Joe Biden. Even Jerome Powell served in President George H.W. Bush’s Treasury Department before returning to the private sector. Barack Obama appointed Powell to the Federal Reserve Board, and President Trump later nominated him as Fed chairman.

The constant revolving door between the CEA, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve is no different from agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, and Department of Energy. It reeks of corruption and political influence and certainly proves the Federal Reserve is not truly independent.

Playing political games

Examining Jerome Powell’s own actions when his job was on the line shatters the illusion of so-called central bank independence.

In 2021, as inflation began to climb, Powell dubbed the phenomenon “transitory.” The Biden administration had just taken office a few months prior, and rampant inflation was likely to stick around for the midterm elections. Thus, blame had to be cast elsewhere. It’s also noteworthy that Powell’s four-year term was set to expire in 2022. If you are up for a performance review, you might choose to kiss up to your boss so that you aren’t fired. Central bankers are no different.

Inflation continued to rise through November, climbing to 7% year over year. Americans demanding relief could not turn to Jerome Powell, who kept the Federal Funds Rate at 0%, attempting to hide the real state of the economy for Biden, who renominated him that same month. It was only then that Powell dropped the term “transitory” to describe inflation.

The first rate hike of 0.5% happened in May 2022, after the Senate Banking Committee had advanced Powell’s nomination. Soon after, with rates still low, Powell was confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate. Only two months after his confirmation, the Fed finally began to hike interest rates at historic speed. Inflation had peaked in June at 9% year over year. Americans had suffered through continued elevated inflation, in part, because Jerome Powell wanted to keep his job.

RELATED: Ron Paul exposes how the Federal Reserve keeps up its scam

Photo by Laura Segall/Getty Images

A Fed that was hawkish on inflation would have raised interest rates higher and faster than Powell did, not allowing inflation to run rampant. Powell was clearly willing to play political games that cost Americans their businesses and their ability to feed their children.

The Fed has never been independent — it has always been political. Economists would do well to admit this and argue their case rather than pussyfoot around the question of what interest rates should be or if interest rates should be set at all.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

Press Stunned by Trump’s Brutally Honest Reaction to James Comey Question
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Press Stunned by Trump’s Brutally Honest Reaction to James Comey Question

🚨REVEALED: How Biden's FBI was Targeting Charlie Kirk's TPUSA!
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🚨REVEALED: How Biden's FBI was Targeting Charlie Kirk's TPUSA!

FBI Sources Alleged Biden Stopped Burisma Investigation ‘To Protect The Interests Of Hunter,’ New Docs Show

The outrageous connections described in these newly released documents scream to be fully explained to the American people.

Glenn Beck shares the DISTURBING secret President Bush told him years ago



Back during the 2008 election, Glenn Beck was summoned to the White House by then-President George W. Bush. In a profanity-laden rant, Bush, who was angry about Glenn’s negative coverage of the Iraq War, excoriated him for suggesting that there were grounds to impeach him.

“The first thing the president says to me is ... ‘You know, a lot of people think they know how they can be the effing president. Well, they have no effing idea how to be the effing president,’” Glenn mimics in his best Bush accent.

Earlier that day, Barack Obama, who was still campaigning for president, had said that if he were the current president, he would just “bomb Pakistan.”

“This is at the point where Pakistan is kind of helping us. They’re not our friends. They’re more frenemies,” Glenn says.

When he mentioned Obama’s comment to President Bush, he responded with something Glenn has never forgotten.

“He said, ‘Oh, I heard that. Don’t worry about that. ... Trust me, Glenn, whoever comes into this office, no matter what party they’re in, they’re going to sit behind this desk, and they’re going to realize — because they’re going to be advised by exactly the same people that have been advising me — that they really have no choice. This is what they have to do,’” Glenn recalls.

When he left the White House that day, he was “freaked out.”

“I was like, ‘This is not good. The president isn’t really the president. The president is just listening to all these advisers who were advising the last president and the president before that,’” he says.

It became clear to him that day that the deep state is just “executing a long plan,” regardless of who sits at the Resolute desk.

“What difference does it make who we have in the office if that’s true?” Glenn asks.

He brings up this old story today because it’s becoming increasingly clear that President Trump has ended this trend of deep-state shadow advisers running the country.

On August 18 during his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders, “Donald Trump sat at the table and said, ‘I’m just going to get ol’ Vlad on the phone,’ and he stands up, walks out of the room with all the world leaders, and he just picks up the phone and calls Vladimir Putin and says, ‘Hey, I just want to keep you up to speed of what's going on,”’ Glenn recounts.

“He didn’t ask for permission. He didn’t have anybody whispering in his ear. He’s leading the State Department. He’s leading the world. He’s keeping his own counsel. That hasn’t been done by a president in I don’t know how long,” he adds.

This is the reason “we’re once again the leaders of the world,” Glenn says.

“These advisers — all of these doctors and professors and people who have been in the State Department their whole life and know better than everybody — Donald Trump has said to them, ‘Shut up. I’ve seen your record. It doesn’t work.’”

To hear more of Glenn’s commentary, watch the clip above.

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Inside the billion-dollar pipeline funding the deep state



In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.

James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

RELATED: The deep state is no longer deniable — thanks to Tulsi Gabbard

Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

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Why Republican victories keep delivering Democratic policies



Conservatives often imagine that winning statewide elections means gaining control over the machinery of government. But this is wrong — and dangerously so. For far too long, red states have confused the two. The assumption that political victory automatically confers political authority is one of the chief falsehoods circulating on the right. It is the reason Republican states often look like Democrat ones, only with different bumper stickers.

This is an uncomfortable but necessary message for conservatives to hear: Red states are facing a major crisis of governance.

Red states have built conservative brands on progressive machinery.

The State Leadership Initiative’s new “Index Report” lays out the evidence in extensive detail. By the most basic measures of lean, accountable, and ideologically grounded government, red states are failing. Many of the policies their representatives are voting for and their governors are signing into law are profoundly out of step with the wishes of voters. Bureaucracies are bloated, universities multiply administrators faster than scholars, schools have fewer teachers than administrators, New York-style regulations pile up in red states like Texas, and seven of the 10 most federally dependent states wear the Republican label.

The key takeaway is not just that red states are doing poorly — it is that red states are almost indistinguishable from blue states on the metrics that matter.

This is not conservative governance. It is branding atop the chassis of managerial progressivism. Governors may cut a ribbon, sign a bill, or post a slogan, but beneath the surface, the operating code of their states is indistinguishable from California’s.

How can this be the case?

The bureaucratic cartel

The deeper reason for this unfortunate reality is explored in the State Leadership Initiative’s second major publication, the “Shadow Government Report.” It shows how state bureaucracies have been colonized — quietly, methodically — by a cartel of national associations and professional guilds no voter ever approved. These groups wield more influence over daily governance than most state legislatures, yet they are invisible to the public, untethered from electoral accountability, and drenched in progressive orthodoxy.

These associations are neither think tanks nor trade associations in the old sense. Yet they wield massive powers: They write standards, provide training, host conferences, and broker grants. These guilds credential personnel and tell agencies what “best practice” means.

Because legislators rarely read the fine print in the legislation they pass, the blueprints crafted by these associations become the law of the land by default. When the public wonders why every state suddenly adopts the same jargon, the same metrics, and the same “tool kits” on climate, equity, and inclusion, the answer is almost always because the same group of associations decided it.

The depth of ideological capture in these associations is astounding. The examples border on parody. The National Association of State Treasurers insists that environmental, social, and governance investing is a fiduciary duty and trains treasurers in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The National Association of Medicaid Directors declares equity — not health outcomes — the “foundational principle” of Medicaid reform and pushes race-based service priorities.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials maintains that “structural racism” is a public health emergency and coordinates messaging on abortion, climate, and even online speech with the White House.

The National Association of State Procurement Officials encourages states to embed race- and gender-based scoring rubrics into contracting, turning neutral bidding into an ideological loyalty test.

The National Governors Association, which is supposedly a bipartisan forum of executives, functions as a relay for the left, peddling DEI and ESG tool kits like a traveling salesman.

These examples are far from exhaustive.

National associations operate outside democratic oversight while having a greater influence over shaping state policy than most legislatures. They are the Trojan horses of managerial progressivism. While legislators debate property-tax rates or curriculum, these associations push a suite of prepackaged policies — procurement guidelines, Medicaid waivers, regulatory thresholds — that heavily favor the status quo.

Protecting progressives

Civil service rules protect progressive careerists from political oversight. University boards rubber-stamp DEI because accreditation bodies — another arm of the cartel — say so. Procurement officers copy and paste National Association of State Procurement Officials templates. Medicaid directors take their orders from the National Association of Medicaid Directors rather than the governor.

The bureaucrats Republican governors inherit have been trained in association doctrine, are credentialed by association certifications, and are acculturated in association conferences. Even the vocabulary their agencies use — “resilience,” “inclusion,” “climate readiness,” “public-private partnership” — is imported from slide decks in Washington, D.C.

Our adversaries built the shadow government that now runs the states. The only question is whether conservatives will summon the courage to challenge it.

You may elect a conservative governor. But if his health agency still sends staff to Association of State and Territorial Health Officials trainings, his Medicaid office still uses National Association of Medicaid Directors templates, and his treasury department still follows the National Association of State Treasurers guidelines, the day-to-day governance is leftist by default.

Even if personnel are swapped out, the new trainees will be accepting “best practices,” model regulation, and training seminars from supposedly neutral industry experts. But this neutrality is a farce.

The result is a peculiar kind of political theater. Voters think they have chosen a government. Governors think they are in command. But the machinery hums along, indifferent to election returns and guided by national bodies whose values are taken from the faculty lounge and the federal bureaucracy. It is government by autopilot — and the autopilot was programmed by the left.

Rooting out the cartel

The cartel of leftist national associations needs to be dealt with in order for red states to prosper. The remedy is not tinkering around the edges but an aggressive structural overhaul.

First, states must begin by auditing and restricting association membership. Every agency should disclose its dues, trainings, grant pipelines, and template adoptions. Sunshine is a good disinfectant.

Second, agencies should be barred from importing association policies without legislative approval. If a procurement office wants to adopt National Association of State Procurement Officials rubrics, let it defend that choice in front of elected representatives in open hearings.

Third, association-led DEI trainings should be prohibited outright; they are not professional development but bureaucratic catechism.

Fourth, rival associations must be built, as the State Financial Officers Foundation has already done, to provide training and credentials aligned with republican self-government.

Finally, and most importantly, political leadership must penetrate the bureaucracy — more appointed positions, stronger sunset rules, and the restructuring of state agencies that resist accountability.

Some will protest that this sounds radical. It is not — it is the work of self-government. The radicalism lies in the present arrangement, in which anonymous guilds in a faraway capital dictate to sovereign states what their procurement contracts should look like or what principles guide their Medicaid systems. The radicalism lies in states whose constitutions enshrine republican rule yet whose daily operations are outsourced to entities their people cannot name.

This reform in red states is not optional if conservatives mean to govern.

Changing the machinery

The Index reveals the failures; the Shadow Government Report reveals the cause. Paired together, they teach a crucial lesson: Red states have built conservative brands on progressive machinery. They talk like Jefferson but regulate like Albany. They thump their chests about liberty while paying dues to organizations that smuggle equity quotas into their hiring manuals.

RELATED: The deep state is no longer deniable — thanks to Tulsi Gabbard

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

To continue on this path is to win hollow victories, mistaking campaign slogans for statecraft. It is to send governors into battle armed with speeches while the other side controls the maps, the supply lines, and the ammunition. The work ahead is not to shout louder but to actually govern — to tear down the scaffolding of association rules and build institutions that are faithful to the people they’re supposed to serve. Until that is done, every red state risks being a blue state in disguise.

Governance is not automatic. It is not the inevitable byproduct of winning elections. It is the patient, disciplined, steady construction of institutions aligned with the people’s will. Our adversaries have known this for decades. They built the shadow government that now runs the states. The only question left is whether conservatives will summon the courage to challenge it.

Editor's note: This article was published originally at the American Mind.

Trump’s Foreign Policy Offends The Bureaucrat Paper Pushers Of Dwindling Influence

Low utility middlemen in the Trump administration are feeling left out again, and so they’re back to anonymously moaning to the news media. This time they’re ragging on White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and his peacemaking efforts with Russia and Ukraine. Politico on Friday quoted several unnamed “U.S. and foreign officials and other people” […]

The WILDEST deep-state story the mainstream media won’t tell you



On paper, the U.S. Institute of Peace does exactly what its name suggests: It promotes peace and conflict resolution in global conflict zones.

But dig a little deeper into its operations, and it becomes clear that the quasi-governmental, quasi-private agency is a deep-state snake pit. According to newly appointed acting President Darren Beattie, the USIP pushed to restore the opium trade in Taliban-run Afghanistan, had former Taliban member Mohammad Halimi on its payroll, and attempted to destroy evidence during a chaotic takeover by the Department of Government Efficiency.

Beattie recently joined Glenn on “The Glenn Beck Program” to share the shocking details.

When the DOGE infiltrated the USIP in March of this year, the agency erupted into chaos.

“They barricaded themselves in the offices. They sabotaged the physical infrastructure of the building. There were reports of there being loaded guns within offices. There was one hostage situation where they held a security guard under basically kind of a false imprisonment-type situation,” says Beattie.

“In the course of all of that, they tried to delete a terabyte of data, of accounting information that would indicate what kind of stuff they were up to, what kind of people they were paying.”

Thankfully, the DOGE was still able to uncover a major scandal: “One of the people on their payroll was this curious figure who had a prominent role in the Taliban government,” says Beattie, referring to Halimi.

On top of that, the DOGE discovered that “that one of the U.S. Institute of Peace's main policy agendas was basically lamenting the fact that the opium trade had dissipated under Taliban leadership.”

“They had multiple reports coming out basically saying 'this is horrible that the opium trade has diminished under the Taliban. We need to find some way to restore it,'” says Beattie.

When ProPublica got hold of Halimi’s story, it published a twisted piece titled “DOGE Targeted Him on Social Media. Then the Taliban Took His Family,” in which authors Avi Asher-Schapiro and Christopher Bing argued that Halimi was an “exiled Afghan scholar” victimized by Elon Musk and the DOGE, alleging that the payments he received from USIP were for legitimate work.

“I'm not an expert on this particular person's history, but what's very clear is he was a former Taliban guy, and he was probably one of these people who was playing all sides,” says Beattie.

He points out that the USIP’s hostile behavior upon the DOGE’s arrival stands in stark contrast to ProPublica’s narrative. If the payments were legitimate and Halimi had nothing to hide, then why the scrambling to delete data?

“This is the real deep-state stuff that I think bothers people so much,” says Glenn. “We expect our CIA to do stuff … but when it's in the State Department, when every department is pushing out money to NGOs to overthrow governments and everything else, it's out of control.”

To hear more details from the story, watch the video above.

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