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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
The husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who advocates ensuring corporations "pay their fair share," previously owned a company that reportedly owed money to the IRS.
Tim Mynett, Omar's husband, and William R. Hailer, Mynett's business partner, operated EStreetCo, an advertising, design, and public relations business that dissolved in June 2022, according to a Thursday report from the Washington Free Beacon.
'The company has no outstanding tax obligations from the COVID era; in fact, we have a balance due to us.'
A document obtained by the news outlet revealed that in 2023, after the company's dissolution, the IRS filed a lien for nearly $206,000 in unpaid income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes.
Omar announced in February that she introduced an amendment in the House Budget Committee to "make corporations pay their fair share." The representative has opposed Republicans' budget resolution, calling it "a blueprint for American decline."
"Let's be clear: They want to exploit your labor, take your tax dollars, and gut your earned benefits — all to bankroll tax cuts for their wealthy friends and donors. They want to increase your health care costs — while Elon Musk and his friends hoard even more wealth," Omar said in February during a speech on the House floor.
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The Free Beacon noted that Omar's personal wealth is as much as $30 million. In a 2021 financial disclosure, she described EStreetCo as a "creative agency," claiming that her husband's share in the firm was worth $1,000 or less.
The news outlet reported that the Sonoma County recorder does not have any record that the IRS released its lien against EStreetCo.
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However, a spokesperson for EStreetCo told Blaze News, "The company has no outstanding tax obligations from the COVID era; in fact, we have a balance due to us." Documents provided by the spokesperson showed that the IRS owed the company approximately $3,000 as of September 3, 2025.
A representative for Omar did not respond to a request for comment.
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So what finally turned us into Gilead? A new ruling allowing churches to endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status.
But the church itself would do well to avoid endorsing any humans, for a myriad of reasons.
Technically, prior to Monday’s ruling, churches could not make endorsements due to the Johnson Amendment, which took effect in 1954 and barred tax-exempt nonprofit organizations from political speech.
I say technically, because left-leaning churches have never let that stop them, as journalist Megan Basham noted in response to a tweet decrying the new rule.
Quite a few on the left are also making evidence-free accusations that “right-wing” churches have been endorsing candidates for years. That’s definitely the pot calling the kettle black, since even Pew Research showed where the politicizing of church is happening. And this is all without fear of the IRS cracking down, apparently.
That’s why this rule, practically speaking, isn’t really changing much.
While conservative-leaning churches did speak out in 2024 about the evils being advanced by the Democrat ticket, in general, they are not nearly as likely to be involved in electioneering as liberal churches. So Megan Basham is likely on point in diagnosing leftist outrage as all about the newly leveled playing field.
Having spent plenty of decades attending Bible-following Christian churches that were likely pretty Republican, I can personally attest that I’ve never heard a sermon that endorsed a candidate or even endorsed a particular political viewpoint.
I have heard sermons that addressed issues in the context of the biblical passage being preached, as they should.
If your pastor is teaching from Psalm 139, for example, and gets to verses 13-16, he better point out that this passage helps us understand how to think about abortion. (Here’s the passage if you’re not familiar.)
So here’s what should stay the same. Solid Christian churches should teach the Bible. Sunday sermons should work their way through scripture, helping us understand what it tells us about God, what it tells us about how to think about life, what it tells us about ourselves.
If, as in the example above, the scripture in question addresses a political issue, the pastor should absolutely be free to say so.
If, using the same example, there’s actually a current ballot issue for or against abortion, the pastor should absolutely be free to encourage his flock to vote with God’s Word — and the new rule should remove any fear of doing that last part.
I cannot conceive, however, of any instances where the focus of a sermon should move away from God’s Word and into which individuals to endorse.
Even in situations where a church member might be the one running for office, this kind of discussion from the pulpit would take the focus off the One we are there to worship.
I hope no pastors will do that.
There already is nothing preventing groups of church members from discussing who to vote for in a non-worship service setting, of course. Let’s keep doing that.
But the church itself would do well to avoid endorsing any humans, for a myriad of reasons — including the fact that tying the church’s name to a politician is far more likely to end up sullying the church’s name (and God’s) than the politician’s name.
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A lot of the left-wing angst over this issue seems to revolve around this idea, expressed by the American Humanist Association (unsurprisingly).
Theoretically a billionaire is limited in how much he/she can donate to a politician, but not to a church. So yeah, someone could give a boatload of money to a church.
But they could have done that before this rule change! And I think it’s highly likely that wealthy leftists have supported the kind of churches where people have been rallied to vote for Democrats. I recall photos of Tyler Perry doing a get-out-the-vote event for Barack Obama in a lovely church with stained glass windows.
So what the left is really afraid of is that conservative billionaires will somehow “buy” influence at conservative churches. Give them enough money, and the pastor will have to endorse Trump (or JD Vance, or whoever).
And there may be a few churches where that would work. It might appeal to the small, pathetic, and power-hungry Christian nationalists (the only “Christians” actually advocating some Gilead-like ideas).
Their goal is to take over America anyway. But they don’t have enough power or influence to draw big money, with their revolting takes on women, Jews, and a host of other issues.
As for most conservative-oriented Christian churches — why would our elusive right-wing billionaire spend money getting them to vote for someone they’ll probably already vote for? And that applies on the left, too, despite the political emphases in left-leaning churches. If a group of people is already in your pocket, you don’t need to buy them.
So I don’t think the humanists have a case for this being any more of a problem than it always was. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for caution here.
Some conservative churches have flown a little too close to the political fire, conflating faith with patriotism. I think those churches might be a bit more at risk of taking their focus off the Lord and succumbing to this new temptation to delve into the political.
But as mentioned, church exists for us to worship God and learn how to follow Him. Anything that takes away from that does not glorify Him. Churches — and perhaps especially pastors — should resist the urge to share opinions that are not relevant to whatever they’re teaching.
Make no mistake — philosophically, this is a free-speech victory. But just because we can — does not mean we should. And pastors/churches should not be endorsing candidates from the pulpit or in an official church capacity.
Our proceeding with restraint in this area might also provide a counter to the left’s call, now, to remove tax-exempt status from churches entirely. I would hate to see this status revoked; I don’t think churches should be taxed at all.
For the most part, we’ve usually known who our pastor might be voting for, because a church is a family of people who live life together and talk about important things. But if he had endorsed someone from the pulpit or in some official capacity, that would have been bringing things into church that distract from worship of a holy God. And that would be a shame. And a sin.
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. – Hebrews 12:28-29
'Based on the above allegations and the evidence provided in support; we believe that the American people are entitled to a full investigation into this urgent matter.'
The 'charitable' voter registration industry should be targeted and this is a uniquely opportune moment to hit it.
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