Zach Lahn just changed the Iowa GOP playbook



In the biggest upset of this primary cycle so far, businessman and farmer Zach Lahn defeated four other candidates in the Iowa Republican gubernatorial primary, including U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, who received President Trump’s late endorsement.

Lahn won by less than one percentage point and fewer than 1,700 votes out of nearly 215,000 cast. He fused together evangelicals, MAHA voters, a Turning Point USA endorsement, and late encouragement from yours truly for Iowa Republicans to vote strategically against Feenstra, who ran the most cynical campaign I have ever seen.

Even when Trump endorsed against him, Lahn was still the candidate saying the most Trumpian things to the base. That was all that mattered.

Back in February, Brent Buchanan, one of the best pollsters of the 2024 cycle, published research arguing that Republicans’ secret weapon for the 2026 midterms could be a fusion of MAHA messaging with traditional conservative themes. He added that “most Republican candidates are too cautious to grab it.”

Enter Lahn.

His issue-driven success may signal that the personality-driven retail politics that long defined Iowa, thanks to its first-in-the-nation presidential caucus status, is fading.

When I endorsed Adam Steen early in this gubernatorial primary, I had never met Lahn. I had never even heard of him. I chose Steen because he fit the kind of candidate Iowa Republicans have traditionally rewarded: high integrity, strong character, serious faith, and real governing experience.

Steen had essentially been the chief operating officer of Iowa for the past five years. He seemed like one of us during Republican Kim Reynolds’ popular and successful governorship. That level of trust and connectivity is what Iowa conservatives have long craved, and it helps explain why Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum found success here over the years.

In almost any earlier political era, Steen probably would have been where Lahn is now.

But the electorate has changed. Many evangelicals overlooked Trump’s past because they liked where he stood on the issues. They cared less about the résumé of the salesman than the sales pitch in front of them. In the final month of the primary, more Iowa voters answered the question “Do you know what time it is?” with one name: Zach Lahn.

Even when Trump endorsed against him, Lahn was still the candidate saying the most Trumpian things to the base. That was all that mattered.

Issues, not background.

That is likely where Republican politics will stay as the Fox News generation fades and the GOP gets younger. Younger Republicans include more people from broken homes, more people who have gone through divorce, more people who came to faith later in life, and more voters carrying baggage that no longer fits the old Pleasant Valley Sunday model.

RELATED: Iowa primary: One Trump-backed candidate secures landslide victory, while another is narrowly defeated

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They are not looking for perfect biographies. They want results.

That hunger for results was strong enough to overcome Trump’s 11th-hour endorsement of Feenstra.

And yes, Trump’s endorsement helped. The president took a candidate whose negatives had climbed 20 points in the final three months and, in less than four days, gave him at least a 10-point bump without major media assistance. That should have finished Lahn.

But Iowa Republicans decided, with some irony, that the candidate Trump endorsed could not be trusted on Trump’s own issues as much as the candidate Trump opposed.

To be honest, the risk I took by supporting Lahn in the campaign’s final days had nothing to do with confidence in how that dynamic would play out. But here we are. For the sake of the state where my children are raising my grandchildren, I am grateful it ended this way.

Lahn had enough independent wealth to make himself visible and viable, no matter when or how Trump weighed in. With the right message on the right issues, he found the secret sauce.

So to Iowa Democrats and their Trojan horse candidate Rob Sand, here is our message: Now we fight.

All aboard the Lahn train.

Support for the LGBTQ+ lifestyle is in free fall: Poll



The cultural obsession with — and corresponding private-public support for — all things non-heterosexual is waning, having apparently reached its zenith sometime earlier this decade.

New Gallup polling shows that support for homosexual "marriage," non-straight relations, and so-called transgenderism is collapsing.

'Those pro-LGBTQ+ attitudes peaked about five years ago.'

Whereas in 2023, 71% of American adults said that homosexual "marriages" should be valid — up from 27% in 1996 — that number has since dropped to 65%.

After reaching an all-time high in 2022 of 71%, the percentage of U.S. adults who regard homosexual relations as "morally acceptable" fell to 62% this year, the lowest it has been in a decade. This decline shows no signs of stopping.

Gallup started asking Americans in 2021 whether "changing one's gender is morally acceptable." That year, 46% of respondents said "yes," but this year, only 38% of Americans said the same.

Just 5% of Republicans and 42% of independents said that "changing one's gender" is morally acceptable.

RELATED: Just 1 MLB team opts out of Pride Night as league shifts toward LGBT 'package'

Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

The polling outfit credited Republicans with the declining support for the LGBT agenda, noting that some of the most drastic changes in attitude regarding non-straight issues have taken place on the right.

In 2022, for instance, 55% of Republicans said that they support legal homosexual "marriage," but over the past four years, that number has plummeted 18 percentage points.

Independents are similarly pumping the brakes on the rainbow train, with their support for same-sex "marriage" having fallen six percentage points.

While Democrats predominantly remain on board with the LGBT agenda, there are some signs of fatigue. This year, 81% said that homosexual relations are morally acceptable — down five points from 2025 — and 60% signaled support for transgenderism, down seven points since 2021.

"For about two decades, Americans grew more accepting of LGBTQ+ people and more supportive of their civil rights," said Gallup. "However, those pro-LGBTQ+ attitudes peaked about five years ago and have since edged downward, mostly among Republicans."

Coinciding with the change in attitude about non-straight issues, there has been a precipitous decline in the proportion of students identifying as "transgender" and "non-heterosexual," as detailed in a study last year from the University of Buckingham's Centre for Heterodox Social Science.

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The AI boom is turning public meetings into crime scenes



Big Tech companies helped censor Americans during COVID. Now many of the same interests pillaging rural America for surveillance data centers want to suppress debate over their next great project. This time, they are not merely trying to censor speech. They are helping create the pretext to criminalize it.

Federal and state law enforcement should have their hands full with real threats: jihadist networks, political assassinations, attacks against ICE, and the growing culture of left-wing violence that led to Charlie Kirk’s murder. Yet last week, Wired obtained documents showing a coordinated effort among the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and roughly 80 regional fusion centers to monitor supposed anti-tech and anti-data-center violence.

It is disgraceful to watch law enforcement silence Americans on behalf of Big Tech.

More than 1,000 pages of internal DHS, FBI, and fusion-center reports describe “anti-technology extremism” as an emerging domestic threat based largely on a handful of unverified threats against politicians. No one should excuse genuine threats or violence. But the idea that data-center opponents have created a domestic threat requiring this level of federal coordination is absurd. It is gaslighting dressed up as intelligence work.

This is the same logic behind the Trump administration’s decision to station marshals with surveyors for data-center transmission lines in Carroll County, Maryland. The point was not to respond to credible threats. The point was to frame opposition — especially in one of Maryland’s most conservative counties — as dangerous before the debate even began.

Which brings us to Dixon, Illinois.

Last week, resident Harley Delander organized a Facebook protest outside the home of former state Rep. Tom Demmer (R), who is now promoting a 387-acre data-center site through the Lee County Industrial Development Association. People can debate the prudence of protesting at an official’s residence, though such protests have become common in local disputes. But police produced no credible evidence that Delander or his friends planned violence.

Delander was arrested outside his home 12 hours later and charged with two felonies: intimidation and stalking. Police said his communications “knowingly and willfully” caused fear for Demmer and his family’s safety. Delander recorded the arrest.

This reflects a growing trend: criminalizing sharp public debate based on how a public official claims to feel rather than what a citizen actually did.

A Massachusetts resident was sentenced to prison and spent a full year behind bars before trial for writing angry emails to a local Michigan politician. The emails were ugly — the sort of language elected officials receive every day — but they contained no personal threats or even veiled threats. He was extradited to Oakland County, Michigan, in December 2023 and charged under Michigan’s law against intimidating public officials, which hinges on whether the “victim” felt “terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested.”

RELATED:After fierce debate, Trump opts for federal controls in AI development

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We have reached the point where heated political debate — a tradition as old as Adams and Jefferson — can become grounds for abridging the First Amendment. What a way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence!

The crackdown is not limited to nasty emails or home protests. Across the country, law-abiding rural residents, many of them seniors, are getting roughed up or arrested for speaking too long or objecting too loudly at data-center hearings.

On February 17, Oklahoma farmer Darren Blanchard exceeded his three-minute speaking limit by a few seconds at a Claremore City Council town hall on “Project Mustang,” a proposed AI data center backed by Beale Infrastructure. Once his time expired, he stopped speaking and walked to the rostrum to give the city manager a written copy of his remarks. For that, police handcuffed and removed him, transported him to Rogers County Jail, and booked him on criminal trespassing charges.

In April, Imperial County, California, resident Ismael Arvizu was arrested and charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and threatening a public official. Did he attack an official? No. After speaking during his allotted time at an Imperial County Board of Supervisors meeting, Arvizu applauded when another resident threatened to start a recall petition against the supervisors. The Los Angeles Times reported that an officer led him out and arrested him, and prosecutors charged him with threatening a public official.

In Midland, Texas, video shows a resident calmly calling for a point of order under meeting rules at a data-center meeting. He was immediately grabbed and removed from the room. He does not appear to have been arrested or charged, but the point remains: Police increasingly seem prepared to remove data-center opponents before their speech, outbursts, or objections would traditionally qualify as disrupting a meeting.

RELATED: Self-driving trucks are about controlling the roads — not making them safer

Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg/Getty Images

This is happening in deep-red counties across America. It is disgraceful to watch law enforcement silence Americans on behalf of Big Tech.

Recently, the Intercept obtained a law-enforcement bulletin from a fusion center housed within the Philadelphia Police Department showing that federal authorities were monitoring anti-data-center social media posts for “domestic violent extremists.” The bulletin warned that “domestic violent extremists” were “likely interested in targeting artificial intelligence data centers,” posing physical and cyber threats to infrastructure in the Philadelphia region. Then it conceded that authorities lacked “specific information on plans to target AI data centers in the Philadelphia area.”

That is the whole game. Invent a vague threat, inflate it into a domestic extremism category, and use it to justify surveillance, intimidation, and arrests. Then pretend ordinary citizens are dangerous because they object to surrendering their land, power, and communities to Big Tech.

The irony is hard to miss. Governments at every level are deploying censorship, surveillance, and criminal enforcement to service an agenda built on surveillance, data extraction, and control.

Talk about paying for the rope to hang ourselves!

UFO disclosure is a test of whether citizens still own reality



This week, as critics lined up to call Steven Spielberg’s June 12 film “Disclosure Day” the best thing he has made in 20 years, Glenn Beck made a point on his program that matters more than the movie.

The real story, Beck argued, is not whether Spielberg is running a quiet psychological operation for the Pentagon. The real story is that we have entered what Beck calls “the death of free will” — an age in which the device in your pocket studies what frightens you, flatters you, and keeps you watching, then feeds each of us a private version of reality until no two Americans can agree on what is true.

A faction that insists on deciding how much reality you can handle and an algorithm that quietly decides which reality you will see are two versions of the same problem.

He is right. I would push the point one step further.

That is precisely why the fight over UFO disclosure matters more than it appears.

I am an attorney by training and a California public school science teacher of 19 years. I have published 20 books, all on governmental and corporate corruption, and none of them touched anything I would have called fringe. Two and a half years ago, I co-wrote “Catastrophic Disclosure: The Deep State, Aliens, and the Truth” with documentary filmmaker Michael Mazzola.

I came to the subject as a skeptic. What convinced me something serious was being hidden was not a sighting or a leaked photograph. It was a congressional hearing.

On July 26, 2023, three credentialed witnesses — Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch and Navy pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor — testified before the House Oversight Committee. Anyone who has covered Capitol Hill knows witnesses are vetted exhaustively before they testify under oath.

Grusch described an active military program of UFO crash recovery, reverse engineering, and the retrieval of “biologic” remains. He said he was denied access when he asked for it. Either the witnesses were lying, or the government was. As a lawyer, my instinct was to look for what we call best evidence: the earliest accounts, made before anyone had reason to shade the truth.

That brings me to the documents.

RELATED: Pentagon publishes first tranche of ‘hidden’ UFO files

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On May 8, the Pentagon began releasing what it calls “never-before-seen” files on unidentified anomalous phenomena under a new program called PURSUE. The first tranche, roughly 162 documents, includes Apollo-era astronaut sightings, decades-old military records, and pilot encounter reports over the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. More tranches are promised on a rolling basis. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called it “the first in what will be an ongoing joint declassification and release effort.”

One document, dated December 19, 1947, is a letter from H.M. McCoy, the Air Force chief of intelligence, transmitting reports on what were then called “flying discs.” McCoy wrote that continued reports from qualified observers still made the matter one of concern.

A second document — a September 23, 1947, assessment by Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining of the Air Materiel Command — is blunter. Twining concluded that “the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” He described disc-shaped objects roughly the size of manned aircraft, with metallic surfaces, maneuvering in ways that suggested intelligent control at estimated speeds above 300 knots.

That was the Air Force’s own view in 1947. In 2026, our best and brightest still cannot give the public a credible answer. We have walked on the moon. We have edited human DNA. Yet, we still cannot explain what military pilots record on infrared cameras over the Persian Gulf.

Credit where it is due. The May 8 release would not have happened without the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), and the persistence of Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.). President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deserve credit for the directive that made it possible. This is real progress and the kind of transparency that should not be a partisan question.

But it is a first step, not a final one.

When I started the book, my co-author described a quiet war inside the national security state between two factions. One wanted “controlled” disclosure, a careful release at a pace the public could absorb. The other wanted “full” disclosure, the entire record at once. The first faction feared the second would trigger what it privately called catastrophic disclosure — a revelation severe enough to disrupt the basic institutions of public life.

RELATED: The real mystery isn’t UFOs — it’s what the government won’t explain

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What that faction fears the public will learn, I do not know. I will not pretend I do.

Here is where Beck’s warning and my book meet. A faction that insists on deciding how much reality you can handle and an algorithm that quietly decides which reality you will see are two versions of the same problem. Both take away the same thing: the right to look at the evidence and judge it for yourself.

Beck worries that the machine will hand each of us a custom world and convince us we discovered it on our own. The defense against that is not a better algorithm. It is a shared, documented, public record — primary sources and sworn testimony any citizen can read and weigh.

That is exactly what disclosure produces. It is also exactly what the “controlled” faction wants to ration.

In an age when truth is splintered into a million private feeds, a common set of facts is not a small thing. It may be the only thing.

On June 12, Spielberg releases “Disclosure Day.” He has spent his career telling stories about contact, from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” He is a serious filmmaker with serious sources. The question is whether the disclosure he puts on screen looks like what the government released May 8 — or like something larger it is still holding back.

I hope it is the larger one.

Beck asks what is real. In a free country, the answer starts with the documents.

The American public can handle them. We have earned them.

Ain’t no scam: Bitcoin fixes the looming AI oversight fiasco



Welcome, America, to the Thunderdome of AI oversight.

President Trump has dropped his executive order, putting the onus on the federal government’s most secretive agencies to determine whether the products of private corporations are safe for public consumption. The National Security Agency is at the heart of the plan, with the intelligence community setting classified benchmarks, vetting, and gatekeeping new AI models within a 30-day window. Private-sector institutions and stakeholders, including AI companies themselves, must sit and wait, blind, for decisions to be handed down.

It can’t be said that this decision is strongly supported by conservatives, the “based community,” or even MAGA people more narrowly. The personal, private bid by former White House AI and crypto chief David Sacks to stop the Trump train on AI resulted only in a delay and a narrowing of the oversight window. On X, Sacks had to resort to emphasizing the things the order doesn’t do that he and the accelerationist wing of the right oppose.

Is there anything we can tell these machines to do that doesn’t tend to demote us as human beings?

That means even Trump’s inner circle will keep on duking it out among themselves.

Congress is wrestling with OpenAI’s approach, which relies on (deep breath) the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation. In short, the idea is that oversight and testing should be carried out under the aegis of established and respected bodies that bridge government and industry through public-private partnerships. This approach allows AI companies themselves, plus other stakeholders and experts outside the intelligence community, to have a participatory role in testing and oversight of new models.

Yet Congress is sharply divided, and the upcoming midterm elections could alter the balance of power. Competing bills are already in the mix on Capitol Hill, with the leading piece of draft legislation, the bipartisan American Leadership in AI Act, hinging on outcomes in the rat’s nest of congressional politics — ranging from Louisiana Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s unwillingness to reauthorize the House AI Task Force to rank-and-file Democrats’ unfavorable disposition toward the draft bill.

Can both houses of Congress come to an agreement on AI model development as well as testing? One that Trump won’t veto? Probably not, but with anti-AI sentiment running hotter and hotter across the populist (and opportunist) wings of both parties, principled members and ambitious members alike are all but guaranteed to shoot their shot before November.

That means Americans won’t be looking to their elected representatives for clarity on AI.

RELATED: Why dystopian AI doomers need to get religion

The doomer delusion ArtMarie via iStock/Getty Images

And Pope Leo XIV, of course, has his landmark encyclical out there, insisting — along with many other Christians — that no law or regulation or basket of rules is enough to enable anyone, even the United States government, to get the kind of grip on AI that will ensure our sacred human being is no worse for wear.

But there’s no indication that America’s Christians, much less the world’s, are poised to throw down their doctrinal and ecclesiological differences and line up shoulder to shoulder with the pope’s presentation of things — or with the pope as a singular planetary spiritual authority on all matters AI and tech.

That means neither our leading political power players nor our leading spiritual authority figures will give Americans the kind of overall guidance they increasingly seem to crave.

Perhaps, however, we should all recognize that’s actually for the best, because the essence of the problem concerning AI is its risk, not of wiping out the human race, but of emptying the human race of all power and authority except for a tiny cyborg elite, one hell-bent on remaking all God’s creation, every single one of us included, in their monomaniacal image.

Paradoxically, responding to this risk by maximizing tech hate and consolidating all tech hatred into as tiny and powerful an elite as possible dramatically increases the risk of both wiping out the human race and deepening the would-be cyborg elite’s conviction that if they don’t achieve a radical and irreversible break with all to ever come before them, then they’ll meet a fate worse than death.

Back on our feet and back in charge

Given the dangers of over-centralized AI oversight on one hand and a regulatory war of all against all on the other, now is a good time to ask whether Bitcoin can offer ordinary people a more balanced, distributed, and practical path forward.

For all the noise and blather in the fractured crypto world, the case for Bitcoin in the AI age is simple: If we are not going to dismantle these machines — and if people will keep building more powerful ones — can we direct them toward anything that preserves rather than diminishes our human dignity?

The answer is obviously yes, but the combination of massive fear over techno-dystopia and massive resistance to “organized religion” leads many to paint themselves into a paralyzing psychological corner where no answer seems plausible or effective.

That’s a shame. Bitcoin is sitting right there, an advanced, mature technology that allows people with a minimum of new information or expertise to start creating and growing markets and institutions that benefit and protect themselves and their friends, families, and parishes, without having to rely on superintelligent machines or government financial systems.

Given that superintelligent machines and government financial systems have a clear logical and practical tendency to converge, becoming one system very well suited to enforcing a single, uniform, and servile existence worldwide, it would seem fairly urgent for people to consider the benefits of taking a few steps outside their zone of comfort or self-disempowerment and start to use Bitcoin at least a little with those they care about most.

That’s why I continue to offer my book on our tech reckoning, "Human Forever," only in Bitcoin. Piling up the digital currency and waiting for Nirvana just isn’t going to cut it, whether we face a societal collapse scenario, an age of mandatory pleasure and plenty, or a mutant future that somehow combines both into one waking phantasmagoria. Using Bitcoin needs to happen well beyond the realm of books, obviously. But being a writer, well — I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

Is it enough to solve all our problems, with our machines and with one another? Obviously, again, no. But it just might fix our attention on how we can preserve human ways of life that open the way not just to solutions, but to salvation.

Grants are a secret weapon for American communities



Most people think of grants as free money handed out at random or as something reserved for large nonprofits with powerful connections. In reality, however, grants are one of the most structured and intentional forms of funding in the American economy. They are designed to connect capital with specific outcomes, and both sides benefit when that connection is made.

Essentially, a grant is a non-repayable investment. A donor, whether an individual, foundation, or corporation, allocates capital toward a defined purpose. A recipient, whether a nonprofit, business, or project leader, applies for that funding with a plan to execute that purpose.

Unlike a loan, there is no repayment, and unlike a general donation, there are expectations.

That structure is what makes grants so effective.

Understanding how that system works is the difference between missing out and getting ahead.

For recipients, the benefit begins with access to capital without added risk. Organizations can fund new programs, hire staff, or invest in infrastructure without having to take on debt or divert limited funds. That security opens the door to growth.

Grants are often used as seed funding, supporting early-stage ideas that would otherwise struggle to attract financing. They allow organizations to think beyond short-term constraints and plan for the long term.

Just as importantly, grants create credibility. When an organization is awarded funding through a competitive or structured process, it signals validation. That recognition can attract additional donors, partners, and opportunities, creating momentum that extends far beyond the initial award.

But grants are not just one-sided. For donors, instead of broadly contributing to a cause, grantmakers can define exactly what they want to support. Grantmakers can also establish criteria, require reporting, and track outcomes over time. That creates accountability and ensures that funding is tied to results, not just good intentions.

Matching grants, for example, are designed to unlock additional funding by requiring others to contribute. This approach not only increases total dollars raised, but it also expands participation and engagement. According to data from the Bolger Foundation, these types of campaigns consistently drive higher donor involvement and overall contributions.

There are also practical advantages on the donor side. Contributions can offer tax benefits, and tools like donor-advised funds allow individuals and families to strategically manage their giving over time.

However, the grant system only works when the right capital meets the right opportunity. Too often, organizations struggle to identify funding sources that match their mission. At the same time, donors can find it difficult to connect with projects that align with their goals.

RELATED: No more free ride for federal grant hogs

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That disconnect slows everything down.

That’s why more and more firms like mine have grown increasingly focused on grant matching as a way to close that gap.

By helping connect recipients with funding opportunities that align with their work and aligning donors with clearly defined outcomes, the process becomes more efficient for both sides. The alignment happens, and the results are tangible: Projects move forward faster, funding is deployed more strategically, and donors and recipients alike have greater confidence.

Grants are part of a system designed to direct resources where they can have the greatest impact. Understanding how that system works is the difference between missing out and getting ahead.

For organizations looking to grow, grants offer a path to funding without added burden. For donors looking to make a difference, they offer a way to turn intention into measurable results.

The opportunity is already there. The question is whether more people are ready to use it.

Two-tier Britain finally has its George Floyd moment



Bodycam footage from the United Kingdom has turned Henry Nowak’s death from a local outrage into a national indictment. The footage appears to show officers handcuffing an 18-year-old stabbing victim, dismissing his pleas for help, and treating him as the suspect while he bled to death.

Nowak, an 18-year-old from Essex, reportedly told officers, “I can’t breathe,” and “I’ve been stabbed.” Officers mocked him, denied that he had been injured, and debated whether they had any obligation to check. The case has drawn comparisons to George Floyd in the United States. The comparison is imperfect, but the contrast is obvious: In Nowak’s case, the police had every reason to believe the man on the ground needed urgent medical care.

The purpose of a system is what it does. British police no longer appear organized to protect the people of Britain, but rather to eliminate them.

In December, Nowak was walking home from a pub while recording himself on social media. He encountered Vickrum Digwa, a 22-year-old Sikh immigrant, who claimed Nowak intentionally bumped into him. The recording stopped during the initial encounter, so the exact sequence remains unclear. When it resumed, Nowak called Digwa a “bad man” before Digwa grabbed his phone and the recording ended.

Digwa then allegedly stabbed Nowak multiple times in the jaw, legs, and heart with a ceremonial dagger. Britain imposes strict anti-knife laws on its native population, yet Sikhs receive exemptions to carry kirpans. That fact turned Nowak’s death into a symbol of Britain’s two-tier society.

Digwa did not immediately summon help. He recorded himself mocking Nowak as the wounded teenager tried to escape over a fence. Nowak told his attacker more than once that he was dying. Digwa’s brother eventually called police with a story that Nowak was a violent racist who had insulted and assaulted the Sikh man before injuring himself while climbing a fence.

The police appear to have accepted that story instantly. They treated the bleeding English teenager as the threat and the immigrant suspect as the victim. They handcuffed Nowak, and he reportedly choked to death on his own blood in police custody.

Even before the bodycam footage emerged, Nowak’s death had become a flashpoint in a deeply divided Britain. Despite the clear wishes of voters, British politicians have allowed mass migration to transform the country. Immigrants have strained the welfare state, crowded the job market, driven housing pressure, and changed the country’s culture. But nowhere has the transformation become more obvious than policing.

The Pakistani grooming-gang scandals revealed the pattern. English girls were raped across the country while police, terrified of being called racist, ignored or minimized the crimes. In some cases, victims were treated as the problem. In others, fathers who tried to protect their daughters faced the law instead. The message was clear: The state feared accusations of racism more than it feared the destruction of its own people.

RELATED: ‘White lives matter’: UK erupts over footage of English teen’s demise in handcuffs after stabbing by Sikh thug

Carl Court/Getty Images

Immigrant stabbing attacks have also helped justify sweeping bans on defensive weapons, including knives and pepper spray. Yet Nowak died from a ceremonial blade Digwa was permitted to carry. Immigrants enjoy exceptions while native Britons face disarmament. That is not equal justice. It is hierarchy.

After a stabbing spree last year left three young girls dead, riots broke out across Britain. The government response was brutal. Authorities did not merely arrest violent offenders or street protesters. They escalated social media arrests so aggressively that Britain now jails people for speech and political offenses at levels no free country should tolerate. At every turn, the government has privileged the comfort of foreign communities over the safety and dignity of the native population.

Americans often fail to grasp how deeply George Floyd’s death reshaped the Anglosphere. Britain, despite lacking America’s domestic history of slavery, endured its own Black Lives Matter revolution: protests, policing struggle sessions, and attacks on statues of figures such as Winston Churchill. Keir Starmer, now prime minister, bent the knee for a foreign criminal. A country convulsed itself over an American drug addict, yet struggles to muster the same moral energy for murdered English children. The implication is dark.

The Nowak footage poured gasoline on a smoldering fire. Officers assumed the white teenager was guilty without evidence. They joked as he begged for help. They placed him in cuffs when he posed no threat. One image now circulating shows officers shackling Nowak’s pale hand, ghost-white from blood loss. It captures the moral condition of the British state.

RELATED: Free speech in Britain is worse than you think

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The purpose of a system is what it does. British police no longer appear organized to protect the people of Britain. Too often, they protect the regime’s migration project and punish anyone who resists it. When mass migration produced predictable violence, the government minimized, excused, or concealed it. When victims and their families protested, the government disciplined them. When citizens took to the streets to demand justice, the government crushed them.

The British state has made mortal enemies of the English people. That may sound extreme, but what better explanation fits the evidence? The system treats white Britons as permanent suspects and immigrants as protected classes. It uses “racism” not as a neutral moral category but as a weapon to silence, disarm, and destroy the native population.

One officer involved in Nowak’s death has reportedly resigned. According to the Telegraph, the other three remain on duty and have not been suspended.

White lives matter. Henry Nowak’s life mattered.

A real price must be paid for his death, and radical reforms must follow. If British elites attempt to bury this case, they will be playing with righteous fire.

Jill Biden’s stroke excuse was pure ‘Black Knight’ politics



One of the enduring gifts of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is that 50 years later, people still quote it.

My favorite scene involves the Black Knight.

King Arthur encounters him guarding a bridge, and a duel follows. The fight goes badly for the knight. Arthur lops off one arm, then the other. When the knight keeps fighting, Arthur removes both legs as well. Reduced to a torso lying in the dirt, the knight somehow surveys the situation and announces, “All right, we’ll call it a draw.”

The older I get, the more convinced I become that much of human behavior can be explained by that scene. We possess a remarkable ability to keep arguing with reality long after reality has settled the matter.

And which of us has not, in some absurd situation, said, “It’s just a flesh wound”?

Reality has a way of reminding us that some things we carry are, indeed, more than a flesh wound.

That thought crossed my mind recently while reading statements coming out of Iran. Whatever one thinks about the conflict itself, leaders standing amid rubble and declaring victory have a distinctly Monty Python quality. At a certain point, the rhetoric sounds less like confidence and more like the Black Knight insisting he still has a chance.

But Iran does not have a monopoly on reality rejection.

Recently, Jill Biden said she feared her husband was having a stroke during his one and only 2024 presidential debate. She described watching him struggle on stage and wondering whether he was experiencing a stroke or some other medical emergency.

As a caregiver, I am apparently behind the times. For 40 years, I foolishly assumed that if one suspects a spouse is having a stroke, the next step involves medical attention. Evidently, the new protocol may include chants of “Four more years!” at the after-debate rally, followed by a late-night visit to Waffle House.

Medical science has made huge strides.

Someone’s Waffle House hash browns were clearly scattered and smothered. Whether they were covered as well remains an open question.

As the Black Knight might say, it’s only a flesh wound.

Like Jill Biden, I am not a licensed physician. But watching her reminded me that I know enough to recognize when someone may need urgent care — or at least a cranial specialist.

Yet while I laugh at the Black Knight, sigh at Iran, and look with exasperation at Jill Biden — and at the reporter who let that remark pass without serious follow-up — I have to admit that defiance in the face of reality is not limited to them. Sometimes it appears in my own bathroom mirror.

The absurdity of these public examples points to a common problem in the human condition. Most of us have our own version of the same speech. We insist the exhaustion is not that bad, the debt remains manageable, the resentment is justified, the addiction is under control, or the diagnosis must be wrong.

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Every day, I talk with family caregivers who insist things are fine while staggering under impossible burdens.

We twist ourselves into pretzels defending positions reality abandoned long ago. We can mock Iran’s leaders and Jill Biden. We can laugh at the Black Knight. But are we prepared to admit that we often travel the same road, just not as far down it?

The Serenity Prayer asks for the wisdom to know the difference between what can be changed and what cannot. Most of us would prefer a third option: the ability to negotiate with reality until it agrees to call the whole thing a draw.

Sooner or later, reality delivers its verdict and waits.

The question is whether we will acknowledge it.

The Black Knight never did. Iran’s leaders and Jill Biden seem intent on following him into absurdity. That is why we laugh at the knight and deride the others.

But perhaps we should stop laughing long enough to see ourselves.

Reality has a way of reminding us that some things we carry are, indeed, more than a flesh wound.

Polarization may be the cure — and the clarity — America needs



Recent primary elections across the country have confirmed the end of bipartisanship in the United States — and the destruction of the uniparty that has ruled Washington since the early 1980s.

Both major parties’ congressional establishments are crumbling. Prominent, once-popular legislators and governors are falling to upstart socialists in Democratic primaries and to Trump-endorsed MAGA candidates in Republican contests.

The old bipartisan order blurred responsibility. Polarization reveals who stands for what.

This is the most important and positive change in American politics in decades. Bipartisanship is no longer possible. Polarization now defines American politics.

Contrary to what the media and establishment figures keep insisting, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Two genuinely divergent political parties in Washington can serve the American people better than a cartel of polite agreement. Strong, fundamental disagreement keeps politicians from doing too much, too quickly, with too little scrutiny.

That is how the founders designed the system to work. They did not want easy majorities imposing their will on everyone else. They built a constitutional order full of friction, checks, divided powers, and obstacles to sudden national action.

Bipartisanship, by contrast, gets things done. That is often the problem.

When Washington becomes “effective,” it usually means politicians, powerful interests, and armies of professional grifters have found a way to expand spending for their mutual benefit. The public pays. The insiders profit. The press calls it “responsible governing.”

We see this across federal programs, from Medicaid to food stamps to defense spending. Fraud, chicanery, and outright theft flourish when both parties decide the money must keep flowing. The late Department of Government Efficiency began to expose some of the grift. It did not last long.

That is what bipartisanship often produces: waste, theft, and punishment for the people who expose it.

Polarization interferes with the trade of public money for political power. For everyone except thieves and grifters, that is a benefit.

Fortunately, American politics is now undergoing a thorough bifurcation.

The Democratic Party is nominating more open socialists at every level of government. They are winning in places such as New York City and Seattle and taking office. Republicans, for their part, are giving landslide primary victories to candidates endorsed by President Trump.

These events mark the end of the old bipartisan arrangement. The two parties are moving to opposite corners of the ring. The middle has grown thin.

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Democrats have made their stand as the party of open socialism. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and her fellow Squad members call for vastly expanded government power and direct attacks on speech, enterprise, and excellence. Their politics increasingly divide Americans by race, sex, and class in pursuit of a utopian vision.

Their party tested many of these ideas during the pandemic and the racial upheavals of the past decade. We know they mean it. Republicans who assisted in those efforts are now being cast out of office as their terms expire — or are leaving before primary voters come for them.

Republicans, meanwhile, have coalesced around Trump’s MAGA movement, a call to restore American greatness through freedom and the rule of law. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Secretary of State Marco Rubio represent this vision. It seeks to unleash human excellence while dismantling the destructive concentrations of power built over the past century.

The two elements of the MAGA strategy — freedom and government retrenchment — reflect the two poles of the founders’ vision of ordered liberty. That creates some tension inside the movement. MAGA partisans must sometimes use government power to break up the crony system government helped build. More liberty-minded Republicans understandably find that uncomfortable, necessary though it may be.

Democrats struggled with their own internal split. For now, the hard-left democratic socialists have won. That is the real reason for today’s polarization: The party of the left has moved farther to the fringe.

The only thing both parties still agree on is that they cannot stop overspending. Even there, they overspend for different reasons. Democrats emphasize social programs. Republicans emphasize national defense and the border.

The current gridlock in Congress, with major legislation stalled in the Senate because of the filibuster, is not the fault of polarization. The Republican Senate majority could pass much of its agenda by eliminating the filibuster. It has chosen not to do so.

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The country needs major federal reform, especially a large reduction in spending. Polarization is not the obstacle to that work. It is the beginning of clarity.

The old bipartisan order blurred responsibility. Polarization reveals who stands for what. Eventually, the American people will decide which vision they prefer.

That bifurcation gives voters clearer choices between parties, within parties, and among candidates. It is becoming much more obvious what citizens are voting for when they support either side.

As cities such as Detroit, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland deteriorate into hellscapes while their most capable residents move to Dallas, Nashville, Charlotte, Miami, and other places with lower taxes, less crime, and lighter regulation, the consequences of these rival political visions grow harder to ignore.

Political polarization is the source of that clarity. It is the one thing that can restore true self-government to the American people.

No more free ride for federal grant hogs



Washington has an old joke: Nothing is more permanent than a temporary government program.

Look past the quip and a pattern emerges. Programs created to address specific problems rarely disappear when those problems recede. They develop constituencies, build bureaucracies, and acquire defenders. Programs meant to die are kept alive through zombie funding long after their original purpose has faded.

Federal grants are not entitlements. Recipients should earn and re-earn them through demonstrated performance.

Milton Friedman spent decades explaining why. In “Free to Choose,” he distilled the point into a simple insight: When you spend your own money on yourself, you care about cost and value. When you spend someone else’s money on someone else — which is precisely what federal grantmaking entails — neither cost nor value receives the same scrutiny it would if the money were your own.

That is the system the Trump administration is now trying to change through a sweeping overhaul of federal grant regulations developed by the Office of Management and Budget. The core idea is simple enough that it should not require federal rulemaking to defend: Public money should produce public results. If it does not, the money should not continue automatically.

Washington has often operated on the opposite assumption. Grants get awarded. Organizations build staffs around them. Those staffs lobby to preserve them. Programs that fail rarely disappear cleanly; they are restructured, rebranded, and refunded. The constituency for any particular line of spending is loud and organized. The constituency for cutting it is diffuse and quiet. That is not a bug. It is a feature that benefits insiders and leaves taxpayers with the bill.

The proposed reforms rest on a simple principle: Federal funding should be earned continuously, not granted automatically. Stronger reporting requirements would force grantees to demonstrate results rather than document activity. Expanded use of the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay system would help prevent improper payments before funds go out — a meaningful safeguard given that the OMB reported roughly $236 billion in improper payments government-wide in the 2023 fiscal year. Enhanced transparency rules would make it easier for taxpayers to see where federal dollars go and what they produce.

The goal is to shift federal grantmaking from routine renewal to ongoing performance review.

The proposal also takes on something Washington rarely discusses honestly: grantee capture. When a nonprofit receives most of its revenue from federal grants, it no longer operates as a purely independent civic institution. It functions as a publicly funded contractor with a development office. Taxpayers deserve to know when groups presenting themselves as independent advocates also depend heavily on federal money.

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One provision deserves special support: ensuring that faith-based organizations can compete for grants on equal terms with secular ones. Charitable-choice provisions dating to the 1996 welfare reform law, executive-branch guidance under President Bush, and Executive Order 14332 signed by President Trump in 2025 already prohibit religious discrimination in many grant competitions.

But law on paper and law in practice often diverge. The federal government should judge applicants on their ability to deliver results — not on whether they pray before staff meetings.

Critics will argue that these reforms could be used to disadvantage political opponents. Some of that criticism will land. Implementation will matter enormously, and the effort’s credibility will depend on whether agencies apply performance metrics consistently and transparently across programs.

But the underlying principle should command broad support: Federal grants are not entitlements. Recipients should earn and re-earn them through demonstrated performance. Any serious steward of public resources should embrace that standard.

Friedman understood that bad incentive structures produce bad outcomes regardless of the intentions of the people operating within them. The federal grant system has tolerated weak incentives for too long. Large flows of public money require constant oversight. Without it, mistakes, waste, and fraud become predictable.

After decades of promises to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration’s reforms represent something Washington too rarely attempts: real change.

Every dollar the federal government spends was earned by someone outside Washington. Taxpayers deserve to know it was used well.