Alaska Airlines’ woke purge just hit legal turbulence



The case of flight attendants Marli Brown and Lacey Smith is a cautionary tale for corporate America about what happens when ideological conformity takes precedence over religious liberty.

In February 2021, Alaska Airlines announced its support for the Equality Act on the company’s internal communications platform, Alaska’s World. The airline invited employees to comment, promoting the forum as a place where “our differences make us better when we support and respect each other, allowing each of us to be who we are.”

Companies have a legitimate interest in maintaining productive workplaces. They do not have the right to demand ideological uniformity on disputed questions.

Brown and Smith took the company at its word.

Both raised concerns about the proposed legislation rooted in their Christian faith. Brown warned that the Equality Act would “endanger the Church” and “eliminate conscience protections.” Smith asked: “As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?”

Alaska Airlines investigated and fired both women on the same day, citing violations of its anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.

In other words, the airline treated modest and widely held religious concerns about pending federal legislation as fireable harassment — in a forum the company itself created for open discussion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently rejected that reasoning.

The court noted that Brown’s post “on its face reflected the expression of religious belief” and that both Alaska Airlines and the flight attendants’ union understood it that way.

Internal company emails revealed the attitude behind the terminations. One employee in Alaska Airlines’ legal department wrote, “Employees actually do not have the right to believe that LGBTQ rights are ‘immoral.’” A vice president replied, “I 100% agree.”

That exchange goes to the heart of the case.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating against employees because of religion. The law defines religion broadly to include “all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief.”

Employers cannot escape that command by relabeling disfavored religious beliefs as harassment.

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Yet some corporations increasingly treat religious objections to progressive social policies as inherently discriminatory. That turns civil rights law on its head. Protections meant to guard employees against religious discrimination become tools for punishing the religious convictions themselves.

The facts here are especially striking because Alaska Airlines created the very forum in which Brown and Smith spoke.

The company encouraged employees to share their views and promised a “safe space culture where employees feel empowered to have open and critical dialogue.” Alaska Airlines also acknowledged internally that the issue raised religious freedom concerns.

The company knew religious objections were likely. Then it fired the employees who expressed them.

Judge Daniel Bress, writing for the Ninth Circuit majority, put the problem plainly: “Alaska created a forum for employee discussion on controversial issues, then fired Brown after she made religious objections of the kind Alaska anticipated.”

The court concluded that a reasonable jury could find Alaska Airlines' stated reasons for the firing pretextual and determine that the company “used the cover of its employee policies to fire Brown because of her religious beliefs.”

The union’s conduct adds another troubling layer.

The Association of Flight Attendants was supposed to represent Brown and Smith. Instead, union officials criticized and mocked their religious concerns.

The union president texted Alaska Airlines executives, “I wish fewer people would struggle so much with unifying their faith with inclusivity.” The court found that remark could reasonably be interpreted as disparaging religious belief.

Another union representative suggested that someone should “put Marli and Lacey in a burlap bag and drop them in a well.”

Those are not the words of neutral representatives. They reveal contempt for religious belief — precisely the kind of animus Title VII forbids.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision draws an important line.

Employers may protect employees from genuine harassment. But they must distinguish between expression intended to demean co-workers and an employee’s opposition to company policy or advocacy on a contested public issue.

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Brown and Smith did not threaten or demean anyone. They raised concerns about legislation affecting religious liberty.

Companies have a legitimate interest in maintaining productive workplaces. They do not have the right to demand ideological uniformity on disputed questions of law, morality, and public policy.

When employers invite diverse views and then punish employees for expressing religious ones, they betray their own promises and risk violating federal law.

Religious freedom is not a privilege granted at an employer’s discretion. It is a fundamental civil right.

That protection is especially important in the workplace, where most Americans spend much of their waking lives.

Employers that genuinely value diversity and inclusion must make room for religious employees.

The Ninth Circuit has now held that Brown and Smith presented enough evidence for a jury to conclude that Alaska Airlines and the union discriminated against them because of their faith.

When this case goes to trial, we are confident that is exactly what the jury will find.

Trump’s mass-deportation promise needs receipts



I do not believe the actual deportation and self-deportation numbers are anywhere near the roughly 3 million claimed in Department of Homeland Security press releases.

This is more than a hunch. The published figures appear mathematically impossible.

If a population roughly equal to that of New Mexico left the United States, there should be visible statistical evidence.

That is a serious problem, which is why the Oversight Project has announced a lawsuit to force the DHS to release the underlying data.

Some people will be surprised that a Trump-aligned legal and investigative organization, best known for exposing the autopen scandal, is suing the administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

Here is why.

Trump’s central promise

Immigration enforcement has been the central thesis of President Trump’s political career.

It began with “build the wall” after he descended the golden escalator in 2015. He returned to office with 77 million votes after promising mass deportation.

Agenda 47 contained only 20 major promises. The first was to secure the border, and the administration deserves enormous credit for doing so — even as House Republicans refuse to codify those gains without attaching amnesty for illegal farmworkers.

The second promise was to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history.

Trump repeatedly indicated that this meant surpassing President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1954 operation, which some estimates say reduced the illegal population by 31% in a single year.

With two and a half years remaining in office, Trump is entering the period when presidents begin thinking seriously about legacy.

If “promises made, promises kept” is to mean anything, the deportation machinery must begin operating at full capacity now. Only then can removals reach the millions during the administration’s final years and surpass Eisenhower’s record.

Trump has the resources to do it. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is better funded and equipped than ever.

The administration should direct ICE toward high-density workplaces where illegal labor is concentrated — factories, farms, hotels, restaurants, warehouses, and meatpacking facilities — while imposing serious penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

That is how the numbers begin rising rapidly.

Surpassing Eisenhower would be the natural culmination of Trump’s political career. It would fulfill the promise at the center of his movement and provide the necessary answer to the Biden years, when roughly 10 million illegal aliens were allowed into the country and dispersed throughout American communities.

Those illegal aliens are still here. Trump can still remove them.

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The amnesty lobby needs inflated numbers

The second reason for demanding transparency is that the amnesty lobby does not care what Trump promised.

Many Republicans rolled their eyes when he pledged mass deportation. They quickly began trying to narrow enforcement to a small category of the “worst of the worst” criminals.

The reason is obvious: The amnesty lobby, especially its Republican wing, is in love with cheap illegal labor. Its members fiercely oppose worksite enforcement, even though worksite enforcement is the only realistic way to generate removals on the scale Trump promised.

They are already preparing their next push for what they will call “comprehensive immigration reform,” the familiar euphemism for mass amnesty.

The Dignidad Act has roughly 20 Republican co-sponsors. The Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026, another amnesty proposal for illegal farm laborers, has attracted more than 40.

Congress is also considering reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Over time, that law has encouraged migration from noncontiguous countries and fed migrants into labor- and sex-trafficking networks.

It has also created a funding stream for left-wing nongovernmental organizations now suing the Trump administration, undermining both the war on fraud and the work once associated with the DOGE.

The House and Senate are full of pro-amnesty Republicans financed by industries that profit from cheap labor. Most are not going anywhere soon.

Their preferred argument is predictable: Enough people have already been deported. Now it is time to make a deal.

We will not allow them to make that case using inflated numbers.

The amnesty lobby used the same tactic during the Obama administration. It combined border returns with formal removals to portray Barack Obama as the “deporter in chief.”

The goal was to make Obama look tough enough to create political space for amnesty. That strategy produced the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, which collapsed after a national populist revolt, and the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

That revolt also helped create the conditions for Trump’s rise.

I was born at night, but not last night.

The amnesty lobby is preparing to run the same play again.

The numbers don’t add up

The third reason for the lawsuit is simple: The public deserves the real figures.

The DHS recently gave several media outlets the following statement:

In President Trump’s first year back in office, more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations. As of June 24, we have now deported over 948,000 illegal aliens and arrested over 981,000 illegal aliens.

Consider the first sentence.

It refers specifically to Trump’s first year back in office, from January 20, 2025, through January 20 of this year. The same claim appeared on the DHS website.

If 3 million people left and 2.2 million supposedly self-deported, that leaves approximately 800,000 formal deportations or removals.

But DHS has provided no evidence supporting the claim that 2.2 million people self-deported.

The administration has pointed to the CBP Home app, yet only about 72,000 people reportedly used it to leave as of March. I have reason to believe even that number may be overstated.

That leaves a gulf of more than 2 million people.

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If a population roughly equal to that of New Mexico left the United States, there should be visible statistical evidence. School enrollments, rental markets, remittance flows, employment records, border crossings, airline bookings, and foreign-government data should all reflect it.

The DHS should be able to produce that evidence.

Now consider the claimed 800,000 deportations during Trump’s first year.

The department’s fiscal year 2027 Congressional Budget Justification states that the DHS and ICE removed or returned 442,637 illegal aliens during fiscal year 2025, which included several months of the Biden administration.

That figure combines removals, which are closer to formal deportations, with returns, which often occur at the border.

Even with those categories combined, the official budget figure is little more than half the number implied by the press release.

The second sentence creates an even larger problem. If 800,000 people were deported during Trump’s first year, how could the cumulative total be only 948,000 seven months into 2026?

That would mean the administration deported only 148,000 people during those seven months.

The numbers do not add up.

Anyone who travels the country, follows social media, or watches television knows skepticism about these claims is now widespread. That is creating a political problem, especially among young Republican men who rank immigration enforcement and national sovereignty among their highest priorities.

Fortunately, the problem is fixable.

The administration can expand full-scale worksite enforcement and produce real, rapidly increasing removal numbers. It can then release those figures transparently, every month, with the same attention given to the jobs report.

Mass deportation is part of the glue holding Trump’s coalition together.

Regular, verifiable reporting would generate enthusiasm and demonstrate that the administration has not retreated from its defining promise.

The Oversight Project does not want Trump to fail. We want him to succeed.

That begins with knowing the real numbers.

The Supreme Court just broke citizenship. Here’s how Congress can fix it.



The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Barbara struck down President Trump’s executive order denying automatic citizenship to children born to parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the majority found a constitutional violation where none exists.

The court has ruled. Now Congress must answer.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s separate opinion points to the path forward. He agreed that the executive order conflicts with the law’s current language, but he rejected the majority’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

“Congress could — consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment — amend §1401(a) or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Congress now has both the authority and the responsibility to act.

Justice Clarence Thomas’ exhaustive dissent recovered the original public meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” That phrase required more than physical presence. It contemplated complete political allegiance and permanent domicile.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the debates surrounding the 14th Amendment distinguished permanent members of the American political community from temporary visitors and people who remained subject to foreign powers.

Justice Samuel Alito also warned of the consequences of the majority’s interpretation. Automatic citizenship for the children of illegal entrants and birth tourists creates opportunities for foreign exploitation and weakens the nation’s control over membership in its political community.

This was not a close call.

The majority conflated temporary subjection to American law with the solemn allegiance, duties, and privileges of citizenship in a constitutional republic.

The American Revolution rejected the relationship between monarch and subject. The United States instead recognizes sovereign citizens with God-given rights who consent to government through a shared political compact.

By erasing the distinction between a person temporarily subject to American law and a citizen belonging permanently to the American political community, the court cheapened citizenship and created a serious vulnerability.

The judiciary has failed. Congress must now correct that failure.

Unfortunately, the current Republican Congress has squandered much of the mandate voters delivered. Election-integrity legislation remains unfinished, while promised efforts to restrain activist courts and restore constitutional government have stalled.

Voters have noticed.

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The legislative solution follows directly from Kavanaugh’s opinion and the historical record presented by the dissenters.

Congress should pass a Birthright Citizenship Reform Act amending 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a). Citizenship at birth should attach only when at least one parent is a United States citizen or a lawful permanent resident domiciled here.

Congress should also define “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to exclude the children of foreign nationals present unlawfully or admitted only temporarily.

The legislation should apply prospectively and include narrow transition provisions. These changes would respect the original limits of the 14th Amendment, close national security gaps, and restore the integrity of American citizenship.

I am running for Congress in Florida’s 19th District because Washington needs representatives willing to turn constitutional principles into legislation.

I qualified for the ballot through citizen participation rather than by writing a check. As a former January 6 defendant who refused a false plea agreement and endured solitary confinement, I understand the cost of standing on principle.

In Congress, I will introduce the Birthright Citizenship Reform Act and fight for its passage. I will also demand action on election integrity and work to restore American sovereignty.

Justice Alito identified the danger. Justice Thomas supplied the historical case. Justice Kavanaugh identified the legislative remedy. All that remains is for Congress to find the courage to enact it.

The court has ruled. Congress must answer.

This is our republic. We have a duty to keep it.

How Trump can still beat the birthright citizenship racket



The Supreme Court delivered a monumentally bad decision last week in Trump v. Barbara, holding that, with limited exceptions, children born on U.S. soil become citizens at birth.

Much of the majority’s reasoning rested on mythology rather than a faithful reading of the law.

The court has closed one path. It has not closed them all.

No one can say with certainty when the United States began treating the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens as citizens. Google and Wikipedia claim the practice dates to the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868. Both also assert that the Supreme Court affirmed birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

Both claims are wrong.

After the Civil War, the citizenship provisions of the 14th Amendment and its precursor, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, were understood primarily as securing citizenship for former slaves and their children.

It took seven years after ratification for anyone even to ask whether the Citizenship Clause applied to children born here to foreign nationals. When the question finally arose, Attorney General George Williams concluded that such children were not citizens because they retained allegiance to their parents’ countries and therefore were not subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.

Wong Kim Ark addressed a different question: whether a child born in the United States to lawfully present foreign nationals became a citizen at birth.

Nowhere in the court’s 59-page opinion did it decide whether the Citizenship Clause applies to the children of illegal aliens.

Americans are therefore justified in reacting angrily to Trump v. Barbara.

But border hawks and rule-of-law conservatives should stop acting as though the decision ends the fight.

This is not the first dreadful Supreme Court opinion on immigration law. Anyone remember Plyler v. Doe? It will not be the last.

The court could have resolved the problem through a reasonable interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Instead, the majority chose political mythology over persuasive legal argument.

But birthright citizenship never had to be addressed only through the courts.

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It can also be confronted through diligent enforcement of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Now the Trump administration must do exactly that.

Illegal immigration is not merely a border problem. Once illegal aliens reach the interior, they settle in American communities and form families. Under Barbara, their U.S.-born children become citizens.

But illegal aliens who never enter the country cannot give birth here.

The damage from the court’s decision can therefore be reduced through secure borders and rapid removal of illegal entrants before they establish themselves and have children in the United States.

Birth tourism can also be curtailed through enforcement.

State Department consular officers already presume that pregnant women applying for B-2 visitor visas may be seeking entry for the primary purpose of giving birth to a U.S. citizen child.

After Barbara, the administration should scrutinize such applications more aggressively. Applicants suspected of birth tourism should bear the burden of demonstrating a legitimate temporary purpose for travel.

The problem becomes more complicated with foreign nationals admitted temporarily for work.

H-1B workers, L visa intracompany transferees, and other employment-based nonimmigrants may travel with their families and reside here for extended periods. Preventing every birth to those visa holders would be neither practical nor lawful.

But consular officers already have authority to refuse visas when they believe an applicant is misrepresenting the purpose of entry.

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If officials have credible reason to believe that the primary purpose of an application for H-1B, H-4, or another temporary visa is to secure U.S. citizenship for a child, they should deny it.

The Supreme Court’s absurdly broad interpretation of birthright citizenship proves the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Automatically granting citizenship to every child born on American soil to foreign nationals is terrible policy.

The best way to limit its consequences is to prevent the circumstances that trigger it. That means effective border security, rapid removal, rigorous interior enforcement, and close scrutiny of birth tourism and visa fraud.

The court has closed one path. It has not closed them all.

The Trump administration should now use every lawful enforcement tool available to prevent Trump v. Barbara from taking root and expanding the very incentive that produced the case.

Conservatives are blowing the easiest political win in America



After Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2024 election, Democrats had to stop and ask what went wrong. One conclusion from the commentary class was that progressives had a serious man problem, and for once they were right.

Democrats had made contempt for men, especially young white men, central to their message, and that came with a cost. Any white man who remained on the left had to accept that he was either uniquely guilty or expected to participate in his own dispossession. The party even launched a $20 million effort to discover why men were abandoning it, only to arrive at the familiar conclusion that men were simply bad and deserved what they got.

Young men who believe the system is organized against them — and who have substantial evidence for that belief — will organize to defend their interests.

This should have created a golden opportunity for the GOP to secure the loyalty of young men for a generation.

Instead, conservatives are setting that opportunity on fire.

Men’s natural role in society is to protect, provide, and lead. Even when women earn good incomes, the data consistently shows that they still prefer men who are at least as successful as they are. Women generally do not form families with men who cannot find stable work, buy homes, or attain the status markers that signal competence and security.

A society that blocks young men from those roles is choosing dysfunction and decay.

In a recent Fox News interview, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the rise of democratic socialism on Gen Z. She said young people were “raised with silver spoons in their mouths,” called them lazy, and suggested sending them to Cuba or Iran.

Calling those remarks callous and tone-deaf would be generous.

Leavitt married a millionaire real estate developer more than 30 years her senior. It is unlikely that her “silver spoon” would be adjusted by deployment to a foreign combat zone. The entitlement only became more obvious when she defended the comments after deserved criticism.

The message to young people was unmistakable: Your concerns are not legitimate, and we despise you for expecting us to fix anything.

Of course, some young people are lazy and entitled. Every generation has its share. That does not mean most young men are or that the obstacles they face are imaginary.

Young men, especially young white men, have been systematically excluded from educational institutions, corporate hiring, and promotion. This is not mere resentment or speculation. It is the predictable result of decades of cultural indoctrination and civil-rights enforcement that trained institutions to prefer women, immigrants, and minorities whenever possible.

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That has real consequences. Men who cannot secure education, employment, and status are less likely to marry or form families, no matter how often our culture repeats slogans about equality.

Housing has become another barrier. The average first-time home buyer is now approaching middle age. Young men cannot build wealth as their parents did or provide the stability women often want before marriage.

There are many reasons for this, including mass immigration and corporate speculation in residential real estate. But one factor is simply welfare for seniors. Many older Americans failed to save adequately for retirement and now depend on the inflated value of homes they bought decades ago.

President Trump has said explicitly that he does not want housing prices to fall for this reason. That is a deliberate choice to sacrifice young men’s development and family formation to protect older asset holders.

Young men have also watched their country import foreigners, legally and illegally, to replace them. Immigrants receive special access to education loans, business programs, and hiring preferences unavailable to natives. Mass immigration drives up housing, insurance, medical, and education costs while transforming neighborhoods beyond recognition.

In Minneapolis, the mayor now manages Somali clan politics like a colonial regent simply to maintain control.

The question is not why young white men are radicalized. The question is why it took so long.

On July 4, during America’s 250th anniversary celebration, Patriot Front marched in Washington, D.C. The group consists largely of young white men in quasi-military uniforms carrying American flags.

A comical number of conservatives rushed online to call them federal agents after Reuters published a photo of one black woman sitting in a subway car full of Patriot Front members. It later appeared that the supposed new Rosa Parks was a homeless drug user with a record of indecent exposure.

She was certainly safer than Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed in the neck by a mentally ill black man while riding public transportation alone. The Patriot Front members may even have prevented another indecent-exposure incident simply by being present.

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Young white men remain the easiest group in America to attack publicly. The left has demonized them for existing, which should give the GOP an obvious opening.

Instead, conservatives once again take their social cues from progressives. Many still crave left-wing approval and believe belittling young white men proves they are neither sexist nor racist.

I do not think Patriot Front’s tactics are wise, and I have said so repeatedly. Nor is skepticism about the group irrational, given the relationship between the Southern Poverty Law Center, federal law enforcement, and manufactured panic over “white supremacy.”

But dismissing everything as a federal operation is easier than offering serious solutions. Telling ourselves that no legitimate grievances exist and that all unrest is manufactured is foolish and weak. If Patriot Front scares you, good. It should.

Young men who believe the system is organized against them — and who have substantial evidence for that belief — will organize to defend their interests. The answer is not to insult them, mock them, or pretend they are imagining their dispossession.

The answer is to address the problems driving them toward radical groups.

Young men are not asking conservatives to excuse every bad decision or endorse every organization that claims to speak for them. They are asking for a political movement that recognizes their interests, defends their future, and gives them a reason to build.

Conservatives should stop hating the young men they need to inherit the country.

What if the commies were right after all?



I have spent much of my career around self-described communists, democratic socialists, admirers of Bernie Sanders, and professors who think Lenin and Stalin were not sufficiently progressive.

After so many faculty meetings, one begins to recognize that there are really only shades of red.

The American experiment never depended on producing perfect citizens. It depended on understanding that no political system could substitute for moral renewal.

Now, as younger voters embrace self-proclaimed socialists in places like New York, Americans naturally wonder what such movements would mean if they gained real political power. Mayor Mamdani has suggested that no problem is too large or too small for government intervention.

So let us conduct a thought experiment.

Suppose Karl Marx was right.

Suppose the wealthiest families accumulated their fortunes only through exploitation, political favoritism, monopoly, corruption, or violence. Suppose the rich become rich only by taking advantage of everyone else.

Even if we grant Marx that premise, where does it lead?

I know what you are thinking. Professor Anderson, have you lost your mind? Has much learning driven you mad?

Stay with me. I am asking the question socialists cannot answer.

When politicians promise that government will solve every problem, regulate every industry, subsidize every need, and redistribute every inequality, they demand extraordinary trust in political power.

Listen carefully to their rhetoric. No problem is supposedly too large or too small to be solved by expanding government authority into every corner of life.

But why should that follow?

Why would anyone embrace a philosophy that treats people as corrupt when they gather in families, businesses, churches, or private institutions, but assumes those same people become altruistic lovers of mankind when they enter government?

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If concentrated wealth corrupts those who possess it, why would concentrating even more wealth and power in the state eliminate corruption?

The irony is as dense as a room full of critical-theory PhDs.

The democratic socialist says: Give me vast power so that you can be free.

You cannot have it both ways.

History supplies a remarkably consistent answer.

The French Revolution condemned aristocratic privilege. The Russian Revolution condemned the bourgeoisie and the czar. Communist revolutions throughout Asia and Latin America began by identifying corruption among wealthy or politically connected elites.

Some of those criticisms contained elements of truth.

Wealth has often been accumulated through injustice. Powerful families have oppressed the weak. Cronyism, favoritism, and corruption recur in every fallen society.

But the proposed socialist solution creates an even greater danger.

The revolutionary insists that the wealthy possess too much power. He therefore proposes creating an institution with vastly more power.

The wealthy may possess billions of dollars. The state can confiscate trillions.

The wealthy may own companies. The state claims authority over entire industries.

The wealthy may influence markets. The state commands armies, police forces, intelligence agencies, prosecutors, regulators, prisons, and courts.

If fallen human beings abuse power, why would giving some of them virtually unlimited political power solve the problem?

It never has.

Communist governments repeatedly follow the same pattern. They begin with promises of justice, equality, affordable housing, free education, medical care, and security for the poor.

They end with repression, stagnation, censorship, secret police, totalitarianism, and ruling classes whose privileges exceed those of the elites they replaced.

They also tend to end with rivers of blood.

Even if Marx correctly recognized that human beings exploit one another, he made one catastrophic mistake: He assumed that this tendency disappears when those same human beings become government officials.

Governments are not composed of angels. They are composed of people. And people do not become virtuous because they receive a government paycheck.

The contrast would be funny if the consequences were not so severe. Those who claim to distrust evil billionaires place extraordinary trust in politicians who possess powers no billionaire could dream of exercising.

If corruption follows power, why assume government is immune?

I have seen the same contradiction among the radical left-wing faculty that dominate our state universities. They condemn oppression, nepotism, cronyism, and abuses of authority.

Then they acquire power.

They promote their friends, punish dissenters, and censor everything to the right of Mao.

America’s founders confronted this problem directly. They understood that power corrupts because they understood something deeper: Human nature is fallen.

James Madison famously observed that if men were angels, no government would be necessary. Because men are not angels, government itself must be restrained.

The Constitution reflects that insight through divided powers, federalism, checks and balances, and limits on government authority.

The goal was not to create perfect rulers.

It was to prevent any ruler from accumulating too much power.

Yet the founders recognized something else modern politics forgets.

Political institutions cannot cure the human heart.

John Adams warned that the Constitution was made only for “a moral and religious people” and was wholly inadequate for any other.

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His point was not that Christians are incapable of sin. Free government depends upon citizens capable of self-government. When individuals cannot govern themselves morally, the state expands to govern them externally.

That is the lesson America risks forgetting as we celebrate 250 years of independence.

Our greatest danger is not simply expanding government or growing inequality. It is believing political power can redeem fallen humanity.

It cannot. Marx’s solution is doomed to repeated and bloody failure.

Whether oppression comes from wealthy corporations or an all-powerful bureaucracy, the underlying problem remains the same. Human beings misuse power because human hearts are corrupted by sin.

Democratic socialists now promise young voters the end of the wealthy and an endless supply of free goods. At the same time, they exploit constitutional forms to entrench their power, excuse election abuses, and stretch the 14th Amendment far beyond its authors’ intent.

The American experiment never depended on producing perfect citizens. It depended on understanding that no political system could substitute for moral renewal.

But if Americans abandon what is good and holy in sufficient numbers, checks and balances alone will not save us from socialist exploitation.

Christianity offers an answer that reaches beneath economics and politics to the human heart.

Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3 that he must be born again.

The gospel does not merely redistribute wealth. It transforms rich and poor alike. It teaches generosity instead of greed, service instead of domination, and humility instead of pride — out of love for God, not fear of government.

Without that transformation, every revolution produces a new ruling class.

Perhaps America’s greatest achievement after 250 years has not been discovering the perfect political system. It has been recognizing that no political system can save us. Christ can.

Only redeemed people can preserve a free republic. And redeemed people are not created by the state. They are created by the saving work of Jesus Christ.

The administrative state just took a major hit



The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Slaughter is a major victory for constitutional government.

By restoring the president’s authority over the executive branch and overruling what remained of the mistaken Humphrey’s Executor precedent, the justices took an important step toward democratic accountability. The decision also opens a path for President Trump and future administrations to rein in the administrative state.

Americans should celebrate this ruling as a victory for self-government.

At the heart of the ruling is a simple constitutional principle: The president, as the elected head of the executive branch, must have authority to direct executive policy and hold executive officers accountable.

That authority is not merely an administrative convenience. It is the mechanism through which the American people exercise control over executive government.

Article II vests “the executive Power” in a single president and charges him with ensuring that “the Laws be faithfully executed.” Officers exercising executive power derive that authority from the president and must remain accountable to him.

Without meaningful removal authority, the presidency risks becoming little more than a figurehead while unelected officials pursue agendas beyond democratic control.

For decades, Congress has increasingly insulated parts of the federal bureaucracy from presidential supervision. The founders envisioned no such arrangement.

The expansive appeals processes and employment protections shielding many federal employees are well known. Less appreciated is how much of the current system emerged during the 1960s and expanded over the following decades, producing a bureaucracy increasingly insulated from elected leadership.

Whatever the intentions behind those reforms, the result has been to weaken the president’s authority to manage the executive branch and the people’s ability to govern themselves through elections.

The consequences have become increasingly visible.

A Merit Systems Protection Board survey found that only about two in five federal supervisors believed they could successfully remove an employee for serious misconduct. That finding shows how procedural barriers have eroded managerial accountability.

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The same culture was evident during President Trump’s first term, when career officials embedded policies contrary to administration priorities in guidance documents, subregulatory materials, and even formal regulations.

When executive officials deliberately frustrate lawful presidential policy, the president must possess adequate authority to remove them.

Predictably, critics warn that Slaughter will politicize the civil service and revive the spoils system. Those concerns miss the point.

President Trump has repeatedly said federal hiring should be based on merit, qualifications, and competence. His administration’s executive orders, rules, and regulations reject political loyalty tests in career hiring.

Merit-based hiring and presidential accountability are not competing principles. They are complementary.

A professional civil service should be selected because its members are qualified to perform their duties. But once entrusted with executive authority, those officials must faithfully execute the lawful policies of the elected president.

That’s far from “patronage.” It’s how representative government should function.

The administration’s Schedule Policy/Career executive order reflects that distinction. It applies to career employees in confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating positions. Those employees remain merit-based career officials, not political appointees.

But senior career officials exercising substantial policy influence should not be able to use endless procedural protections to delay, frustrate, or undermine an elected administration’s agenda.

The Civil Service Reform Act was never intended to create permanent insulation for officials exercising broad executive discretion.

The administration has also appropriately tested constitutional errors by removing officials whose statutory protections conflict with Article II. Those cases have allowed courts to reconsider precedents that steadily weakened presidential control over the executive branch.

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In its 2026 Jackler and Jaroch decision, the Merit Systems Protection Board recognized that statutory employment protections cannot override Article II when applied to inferior officers exercising significant executive authority.

The Supreme Court’s Slaughter decision builds on that reasoning and on other precedent. It rejects the fiction that agencies exercising executive power can remain meaningfully “independent” of the executive.

Those who execute federal law must ultimately answer to the president.

Opponents will characterize the decision as a dangerous expansion of presidential power. In reality, it restores the constitutional structure the founders designed.

Americans elect a president to implement policies on immigration, the economy, national security, and countless other questions. If unelected officials can frustrate those policies through institutional resistance or procedural barriers, elections become less meaningful.

Accountability disappears because voters cannot determine who is responsible for the success or failure of executive policy.

The Slaughter decision restores that chain of accountability. It strengthens the president’s ability to direct officers exercising executive power while preserving a federal workforce hired on merit and expected to execute the law faithfully. That is neither radical nor unprecedented. It is the constitution's design.

The federal government exists to serve the American people, not to function as an independent center of political power.

By reaffirming presidential authority under Article II, the Supreme Court strengthened democratic accountability and helped ensure that executive power remains where the Constitution places it: with the president elected by the American people.

Americans should celebrate this ruling as a victory for self-government.

Elections cannot provide meaningful accountability when officials exercising executive power are insulated from the president voters chose.

Slaughter helps restore that constitutional chain: Executive officers answer to the president, and the president answers to the people.

The Second Amendment stops at too many tollbooths



On June 23, standing before a crowd in Pennsylvania, President Trump was asked where he stood on a national right to carry.

His answer was four words: “Yeah, we’re working on it.”

The crowd roared.

For millions of law-abiding gun owners, those words pointed toward something they have awaited for decades: an end to a system that treats a constitutional right like a privilege that must be renewed at every state line.

Let’s be honest about where things stand.

The president has not signed anything, and no national reciprocity law exists today. The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act cleared a House committee last fall but has stalled in the Senate.

Our rights are only as strong as our willingness to defend them.

This is the starting line, not the finish line. But it is the right race to run, because the issue reaches far beyond the convenience of carrying a firearm across state borders.

I think about that every time I drive from my home in upstate New York to North Carolina to visit my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson.

I travel through New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. Four states. Four sets of gun laws. Four different answers to the same question: What rights does a free citizen carry when he crosses an invisible line on a map?

We accept this with almost no other right.

My driver’s license is honored in all 50 states. My freedom to speak, worship, and remain secure in my home does not evaporate at a tollbooth.

President Trump has made the same point since 2015, comparing a carry permit to a driver’s license: If one works in every state, so should the other.

The argument is common sense. The principle beneath it runs deeper.

The Second Amendment does not create the right to self-defense. It recognizes a natural right the founders understood to be endowed by God.

The right to keep and bear arms is not a permission slip issued by the government. It is the people’s right of self-preservation.

The founders knew what they were guarding against because they had lived under it.

Strip people of the means to defend themselves, and every other freedom becomes a favor granted by those in power. Free speech becomes a suggestion. Religious liberty becomes a privilege.

History is brutally consistent on this point: Disarmament often comes before oppression, not after it.

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Yet over the past century, America has moved from treating the right to bear arms as a birthright of citizenship to treating it, in too many places, as a government-granted privilege hedged in by fees, waiting periods, and paperwork.

The result is a maze of state and local laws so inconsistent that the same citizen, with the same clean record and character, can be legal in one state and a criminal the moment he crosses into another.

That is not the rule of law. That is a trap for honest people.

National reciprocity would cut through that maze. It would recognize a simple principle: Your right to carry should travel with you.

Twenty-nine states already recognize that citizens should not need government permission to carry. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision also affirmed that the Constitution protects the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense rather than leaving it to the discretion of local officials.

Reciprocity would extend that logic across state lines.

So yes, the president’s words in Pennsylvania were encouraging. But encouragement is not law, and the bill remains stalled in the Senate. It will stay there unless the people who care about this issue make themselves heard.

I have often said that elections are only victories in individual battles. The fight for freedom continues long after the votes are counted.

This is one of those fights.

If you believe your God-given rights should not change the moment you cross a state line, say so. Call your senators. Talk to your neighbors. Make the national right to carry a question every candidate must answer.

Our rights are only as strong as our willingness to defend them.

The founders did their part. The question is whether we will do ours.

Rural health is the next MAHA frontier



As a Virginia farmer, I have spent years fighting regulatory overreach and corporate consolidation that hollow out rural America.

So when Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) recently led the effort to remove a pesticide-liability shield from the House farm bill, rural families had reason to cheer.

If we are serious about children’s health in rural America, we should examine whether newer technologies can reduce toxic exposures.

The provision would have given pesticide manufacturers such as Bayer broad protection from “failure to warn” lawsuits brought by Americans who allege glyphosate caused their cancer. It also would have limited the ability of states and local communities to establish no-spray zones near schools and weakened protections for waterways.

In other words, it was top-down federal overreach and a corporate handout disguised as “regulatory uniformity.” It had no place in legislation meant to serve farmers and rural families.

Luna’s amendment passed 280-142, with more than 70 House Republicans joining all but six Democrats.

Republicans such as Luna deserve credit for refusing to grant blanket immunity to corporations at the expense of American families. They also showed that Make America Healthy Again can become a governing philosophy — one that puts children, families, and farmers ahead of well-connected industries.

More than three years after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his presidential campaign and later joined forces with President Donald Trump, the MAHA movement continues to secure policy victories with consequences that families may feel for decades.

The pesticide fight is only one part of a much larger question. Once policymakers begin examining preventable chemical exposures, the issue does not stop at the edge of the field.

Former Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.), a nurse and Tea Party leader, has noted that many of the same rural children whose schools and waterways Luna’s amendment would protect also spend hours each week riding older diesel school buses. Exposure to diesel exhaust has been linked to pediatric asthma, ADHD, and other health and developmental concerns.

If we are serious about children’s health in rural America, we should examine whether newer technologies can reduce those exposures.

That does not mean Washington should dictate transportation choices to rural districts. It means farmers and small-town families should have a seat at the table and access to resources when cleaner options, including electric school buses, become practical.

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The American Lung Association projects more than $43,000 in health savings per electric bus through reductions in asthma attacks and respiratory illness. Electric buses are also substantially quieter than diesel models, which could benefit students with autism or sensory sensitivities.

Each community should weigh the costs and benefits for itself. But the issue deserves serious local consideration.

Rural water quality deserves the same attention.

A recent national analysis found that more than one in five Americans receive drinking water from systems with elevated nitrate levels associated with cancer and birth defects. Many of the hardest-hit communities are in agricultural regions.

Researchers and public health advocates have also raised concerns about PFAS “forever chemicals” contaminating farmland and groundwater, sometimes forcing farming operations to shut down.

Farmers understand better than anyone that stewardship has consequences. The land, water, and infrastructure we pass to the next generation will shape rural health long after today’s political battles are forgotten.

Reducing unnecessary exposures and modernizing aging infrastructure where it makes sense are practical, pro-family goals that fit squarely within the MAHA vision.

Luna and her colleagues showed that Congress can still deliver for rural American families when lawmakers put them ahead of corporate interests.

They should keep going.

This lawsuit could end the myth of ‘settled’ gender science



The Federal Trade Commission is finally suing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health over sweeping recommendations for pediatric gender medicine that allegedly rested on weak evidence and conjecture.

The action is long overdue.

WPATH’s dishonesty should surprise no one. The organization has openly rejected basic biology.

WPATH has disregarded basic standards of medical honesty for years. Although the complaint was filed only recently, the organization’s indifference to evidence — and to the safety of gender-confused children — has long been apparent.

In 2022, WPATH removed minimum-age recommendations from its standards of care, reportedly under pressure from then-Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a transgender-identifying male.

Thousands of detransitioners now live with the physical and psychological consequences of procedures they underwent as minors. Many of the doctors involved relied on WPATH’s prestige and guidelines to justify interventions children could not fully understand or consent to.

Most doctors are unwilling to risk their licenses by prescribing dangerous drugs or performing irreversible procedures without institutional cover, regardless of their ideological sympathies. Organizations such as WPATH, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics provided that cover.

Holding those institutions accountable could bring down the entire house of cards supporting pediatric gender medicine.

WPATH’s dishonesty should surprise no one. The organization has openly rejected basic biology. In 2024, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that a senior WPATH official denied that sex is binary.

Other reporting revealed that doctors recommending certain drugs to transgender-identifying patients knew the treatments were untested or potentially harmful but continued promoting them in the name of “justice.”

WPATH went so far as to include “eunuch” as a gender identity in draft guidelines published in 2021. It relied in part on material from the Eunuch Archive, a fetish website, to support the inclusion.

The organization suggested that doctors should castrate people who identify as eunuchs because they might otherwise attempt the procedure themselves.

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Why should Americans care about an organization few outside medicine had heard of until recently?

Because WPATH’s guidelines became a central source of authority in court cases defending pediatric sex-change procedures.

During 2023 litigation over an Alabama law banning such procedures for minors, opponents repeatedly cited WPATH’s standards to give their case an aura of medical credibility.

A federal judge subpoenaed WPATH’s internal documents concerning the creation of those guidelines. WPATH tried to quash the order, but the judge ruled that the material was of “crucial import” to the litigation.

The resulting documents steadily undermined WPATH’s credibility and helped lay the groundwork for the FTC’s lawsuit.

That judge understood in 2023 what the Trump administration and the FTC understand now: The medical professionals and activists behind WPATH’s guidelines helped create the current regime of pediatric gender medicine.

Calling them to account could become a decisive moment.

The FTC filed its complaint alongside attorneys general from Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas. The consequences could extend far beyond WPATH itself, affecting doctors, hospitals, professional associations, and court cases that relied on its authority.

Most important, the case could begin addressing the institutional failure that allowed so many young men and women to be fast-tracked into procedures they ultimately regret.