Welcome to Harvard, where studying is now a hate crime



News broke last week that Harvard University — that ancient temple of American prestige and intersectional pride — may finally attempt to curb its notorious grade inflation. For decades, Harvard has handed out A’s like party favors at a preschool graduation. But now, administrators seem to fear the public has noticed that every graduate’s transcript reads: Congratulations! You’re brilliant.

Naturally, the students have responded with calm reflection and humility.

The American university had one job — to cultivate wisdom and virtue. If Harvard students now treat studying as oppression, maybe it’s time to grade the universities themselves.

Just kidding. They’re in full moral meltdown — which is remarkable, since most of them deny morality exists unless it’s part of an identity rubric. Touch their grades, though, and suddenly they rediscover absolute truth, glowing with divine fire.

What provoked this crisis of the soul? The rumor — merely the rumor — that they might have to study.

One distraught undergraduate complained that stricter grading would force students to spend time on academics instead of extracurriculars. And as every Harvard student knows, college is all about extracurriculars. Academics are a high-school hazing ritual — a price of entry to the elite club where you never have to study again.

Other students reportedly spent the day crying. It’s a hard life.

When they lamented losing time for extracurriculars, some surely meant yachting. Others meant activism. Who will dismantle “colonizing heteronormativity” if the revolution has to pause for midterms? Who will liberate the oppressed from the tyranny of citations?

Their outrage, ridiculous as it sounds, reveals at least three uncomfortable truths about the American university system — and the students it produces.

1. They worked hard once so they never have to again.

Some students said they nearly killed themselves to get into Harvard. Not to study there — don’t be ridiculous! — but to ensure that they’d never need to study again.

If you’re an employer expecting a Harvard graduate to be a disciplined thinker, brace yourself. You may be hiring someone who hasn’t cracked a book in years. Many of them majored in activism and minored in demanding that you pay them to keep doing it.

These students treat the workplace as an extension of campus — a new platform for “advocacy,” complete with your office space, Slack channels, and HR department. You wanted an employee. You may get an organizer.

2. Entitlement isn’t an accident — it’s the admissions policy.

Harvard attracts a particular type: students convinced that excellence is their birthright and that hard work is a microaggression.

Some even claim that “work ethic” must be decolonized as a relic of whiteness — a fragile idea until you remember they say it while demanding an A for not working. One almost admires the nerve.

We should stop treating “Harvard graduate” as a compliment. It’s becoming a warning label. These students expect to skip effort, skip merit, skip discipline — and demand that you “check your privilege” if you object.

Why wouldn’t they? Harvard built an entire institutional culture around their sensitivities. The modern university no longer shapes students; it rearranges itself around their demands.

3. The university system has failed.

The Harvard meltdown exposes a national rot. For decades, Americans have been told that college is essential for success. Universities responded by expanding enrollment, inventing dozens of useless “studies” degrees, building administrative empires, and raising tuition to swallow every loan dollar available.

The result?

Now we’re mass-producing indebted graduates with inflated expectations of high-paying careers and no knowledge or skills to justify either. Education has become a luxury accessory — a handbag whose value lies in the logo.

To test the system’s bankruptcy, try asking a recent Ivy League graduate:

  • What is wisdom?
  • What is the highest good?
  • How did your education make you a more virtuous person?

You’ll likely get a breathless word salad about “advocating for marginalized identities and dismantling structures of oppression.” Ask how that helps anyone achieve the good, and you’ll get a vacant stare fit for a zoning map.

Of course, technical fields like engineering still demand real work. But those are small islands in a vast sea of bureaucratic waste. Most universities now operate as billion-dollar community centers with a few classes on the side — entertainment disguised as education.

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Photo by VCG / Contributor via Getty Images

Can the system be saved?

Maybe, but don’t bet on it.

You can’t “hire your way out” of a faculty that’s 97% left or far left. That’s not an imbalance; it’s a monoculture. And monocultures don’t reform themselves.

But the reckoning is coming. Enrollment is falling, budgets are exploding, and public trust is collapsing. The only thing keeping many universities alive is their ability to convince students that identity activism and LGBTQ+ advocacy are transcendent educational callings.

The solution is simple: Stop paying for the nonsense. No one is obliged to spend $80,000 a year to hear a gender-theory lecturer attack the biblical definition of marriage. No law, moral or otherwise, requires funding your own indoctrination.

Let them lecture to empty rooms.

The American university had one job — to cultivate wisdom and virtue. If Harvard students now treat studying as oppression, maybe it’s time to grade the universities themselves.

And the report card is long overdue.

The nukes are fine — the advice is not



Despite his well-known aversion to using the "other N-word" and discussing the issues connected to nuclear deterrence and nuclear saber-rattling by America’s adversaries, the president, during his recent trip to Asia, dropped a bombshell of his own.

On October 29, President Trump posted a brief statement on Truth Social about nuclear weapons testing, which contained the following key points:

  • The United States has more nuclear weapons "than any other country."
  • During Trump's first term in office, the U.S. accomplished a "complete update and renovation" of existing U.S. nuclear weapons.
  • Because of other countries’ testing programs, the president has "instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis."
  • The process of testing our nuclear weapons “will begin immediately.”

Sadly, whoever provided the president with the background information for each of his statements is manifestly unaware of the easily ascertainable facts. The president is being extremely poorly served by his own staff.

The president appears to have been informed that the Department of War is responsible for nuclear weapons testing. It is not.

First, the Russian Federation has more nuclear weapons than any other nation. Its stockpile of nuclear weapons available to the Russian military is about 5,200, while its overall stockpile is about 5,600. The numbers for the U.S. are about 3,700 and 4,400, respectively. This information is readily available in public sources such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook or the annual assessments published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Second, during the president’s first term, progress was made on the Strategic Modernization Program initiated in 2010. Still, no new platforms (submarine-launched ballistic missiles, bombers, or land-based missiles) were deployed between 2017 and 2021. Instead, we rely today on aging systems that are decades old.

Importantly, a small number of modified, low-yield submarine-launched warheads were produced and placed in service, and development of new Air Force nuclear warheads began, but none were deployed.

Related: America must lead the Mars race before China claims the final frontier

Photo by NASA/Getty Images

Third, the president’s staff has a profound misunderstanding about the difference between the test of a nuclear system’s delivery vehicle (i.e., a ballistic or cruise missile) and the test of a nuclear warhead. In the days before the president’s post, Russia conducted a test of a new cruise missile and a new trans-oceanic torpedo (both of which, incidentally, are not constrained by the new START treaty). Tests of missile systems are commonly conducted by all the nuclear powers, including the United States.

Today, with the sole exception of North Korea in 2017, neither Russia nor China nor any other nuclear power has conducted a nuclear warhead test in this century. To be clear, the U.S. intelligence community has raised concerns that both Russia and China may be covertly carrying out extremely low-yield tests of experimental nuclear designs, but those do not appear to be the “tests” to which the president’s Truth Social post was referring.

Finally, the president appears to have been informed that the Department of War is responsible for nuclear weapons testing. It is not. That responsibility belongs to the Department of Energy. Based on over 30 years of neglect, that department would be unable today to conduct a nuclear weapon test in the near future. Based on estimates provided by the Department of Energy to Congress, it would take 24-36 months to do so, at a cost of several billion dollars — dollars that have not been authorized or appropriated by Congress.

When asked, on his return flight from Asia, why he had delivered this signal of U.S. strategic nuclear weapons muscle-flexing, the president said he believed that if others were testing, then we should too. Depending on the state of our own nuclear weapons (currently assessed by the military as being reliable), and if he had been properly informed on the facts that others had resumed testing of nuclear weapons, there would be something to this argument. But as things stand, the president owes it to himself and to America’s national security to improve the quality of advice he is being provided on the vital issue of nuclear deterrence and our ability to sustain it — and soon.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

What we lose when we rush past pain



“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,” wrote C.S. Lewis in “A Grief Observed” after the death of his wife. Grief often strips away our certainties, leaving us to fear if God is who we thought He was, or if our suffering has any meaning at all. In allowing grief to become his teacher, Lewis left a road map for others, showing how to sit with sorrow, process it, and respect both loss and trauma.

That understanding doesn’t come casually; it takes time. In that willingness to observe pain rather than manage it lies a quiet reverence, a recognition that some experiences are not meant to be conquered but understood.

Suffering doesn’t exist to make us louder or more righteous. It exists to make us wiser — to teach maturity, not mobilize outrage.

I watched a young widow step into public life just weeks after her husband’s death. The world called her strong — and maybe she is — but what I saw most was sorrow: raw, recent, and surrounded by noise.

We rush to praise courage yet hesitate to sit with grief. Pain now unfolds before an audience eager to watch and quicker still to turn sorrow into argument. The question isn’t whether we’ll look, but how. Will we meet grief with reverence or rhetoric?

Suffering doesn’t exist to make us louder or more righteous. It exists to make us wiser — to teach maturity, not mobilize outrage.

When nations grieve

What’s true for one heart is true for a nation. After 9/11, America was ready to fight — and we did. But what did we learn? How did we grow? What did we lose along the way? Pain can rally a nation, yet fail to mature its people. Did we take enough time to observe our national trauma?

The lives lost, the wounded carried home, and the enormous resources spent all suggest we did not. And what is true of nations is true of hearts: When we rush past pain, we forfeit the wisdom it offers.

The thought that God rules our pain can make us flinch. If God doesn’t rule it, suffering has no purpose — something to endure but not to transform. His sovereignty may not always appear kind, yet as William Cowper reminded us, “Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

In four decades as a caregiver, I’ve learned that trauma has its own language, one that will not be hurried or managed. It needs presence, patience, and space. Dr. Diane Langberg, who has spent her life among the wounded, often reminds us, “We dare not rush what God Himself is willing to sit with.” That is ministry: sitting beside, not speaking over.

The wisdom of mourning

The Jewish people understand this. When someone dies, the bereaved sit shiva — seven days of stillness and shared silence. Friends come not to fix but to accompany. Then comes sheloshim — 30 days to move slowly back toward life. For a parent, mourning extends a full year. Their wisdom tells us what our culture forgets: Mourning isn’t an interruption of life; it’s part of it.

We can learn from that rhythm. When tragedy strikes, our nation lowers its flags to half-staff. For a day or two, we pause, reflect, and pray. Then the flags rise again and life resumes. That is understandable for a country, but not for a soul. For the bereaved, the flag stays lowered long after the headlines fade.

Even the church can hurry the hurting. We mistake composure for recovery and public strength for peace. But grief that is forced to perform eventually breaks in private and sometimes spills into public.

When my wife, Gracie, lost her legs and entered decades of agony, healing did not come through attention or activity. It came through grace, tears, and time, mostly in obscurity. People see her sing or laugh and assume she has gotten over it, that she’s moved past it. What they do not see is that she had to redefine her life; this is her life. Someone once told me, “Process the pain privately, share the process publicly.” That wisdom has steadied us for years.

The quiet saints of suffering

Our culture is too quick to parade its wounded on stages when they would be better served by sitting in stillness, in pajamas or sweats, without having to put on makeup or smile for the cameras.

I’ve seen that truth in lives like Joni Eareckson Tada’s, who has lived with quadriplegia (paralysis affecting all four limbs and the torso) for nearly 60 years after a diving accident. In her, suffering has distilled faith into something deep and steady, strong enough to hold her and extend grace to others who suffer.

Forgiveness, like healing, takes time. To forgive is not to excuse or forget; it is to trust God with justice and mercy, believing He knows what we cannot. Forgiveness is faith expressed with open hands — the slow loosening of the grip around another’s throat.

Philip Yancey once observed that grace, like water, flows to the lowest places. That is where I have found it: in hospital corridors, in the lonely watches of the night, and in the long quiet of waiting rooms. Not in applause or attention, but in the hush where pain meets patience.

RELATED: The poisoned stream of culture is flowing through our churches

Photo by Anadolu / Contributor via Getty Images

The best model for us

Our culture distracts us from sorrow, rushing past pain as if speed can save us. “Don’t look in the rearview mirror,” people say. “Keep moving forward. Get past it.” But some wounds do not recede with distance. They remain, reshaping who we are and how we see the world. Grief, but only if we resist the urge to flee from it.

Scripture tells us that Jesus Himself was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). If He carried sorrow, then sorrow itself is not unclean. His setting apart for redemption doesn’t happen on cue, not in our timeframe. It unfolds in God’s time, often unseen and unhurried. Our pain, when entrusted to Him, becomes something consecrated, set apart not for ruin but for restoration. In His hands, our sorrow becomes sacred ground.

When trauma shatters a life, our calling is not to elevate but to shelter. We are called to stand nearby like those who sit shiva, unhurried and unafraid of silence. We can only observe another’s trauma, but God enters it. The wounds in His hands and side show us that He understands the anguish of loss, rejection, even death. His way is not avoidance but presence, and His model is a good one for us.

Solitude with God is not empty silence, but the stillness where His healing takes root. The psalmist wrote, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). In that quiet, we see what countless believers across the ages have discovered: Even what was meant for evil, God weaves for good. He does not waste our sorrow. When we trust His timing, the trauma observed gives way to the grace observed.

From 911 to broadband, criminals are unplugging America



Imagine calling 911 and no one answers. A hospital loses internet access mid-surgery and your child is the patient. You can’t work, access your bank, or contact your doctor — all because a few thieves ripped copper wiring from the ground to sell for scrap.

These aren’t distant hypotheticals. They’re happening across the country right now. In recent weeks alone, copper wire thefts darkened 5,500 streetlights in Tucson, shut down Denver’s A-Line train, and caused $1.25 million in losses in Bakersfield, California, where thieves stripped wiring from electric-vehicle charging stations.

Broadband is critical infrastructure — the digital lifeline of daily American life. Protecting it is not a corporate issue but a consumer one.

The problem isn’t slowing down. Two new reports reveal a stunning rise in theft and vandalism against America’s broadband and wireless networks. Between June 2024 and June 2025, more than 15,000 incidents disrupted service for over 9.5 million customers nationwide. In just the first half of 2025, incidents nearly doubled from the previous six months.

Hospitals, schools, 911 dispatch centers, even military bases have been hit — exposing a growing national vulnerability.

Not just a local nuisance

The cost of stolen wire is trivial compared with the damage it causes. Between June and December 2024, theft-related outages cost society between $38 million and $188 million in losses. California and Texas took the biggest hits — $29.3 million and $18.1 million — while smaller states like Kentucky suffered millions too. Every cut cable ripples outward, silencing entire communities.

These aren’t weekend thieves looking for beer money. They’re organized, brazen, and increasingly strategic. Some know exactly which copper or fiber-optic lines to hit. Others destroy fiber cables by mistake, assuming they contain metal. Either way, the result is the same: chaos, cost, and danger.

Consumers pay the price. Each attack disrupts 911 access, paralyzes small businesses, and stalls health care, banking, and remote work. Broadband expansion — especially in rural and underserved areas — slows to a crawl.

When vandalism becomes sabotage

Some of these attacks are so severe that investigators now treat them as potential acts of domestic terrorism. Charter Communications reports a 200% increase in felony attacks on its Missouri fiber network this year. In Van Nuys, California, vandals cut 13 fiber lines in one night, knocking out 911 dispatch, a military base, and hospitals for 30 hours. These were no petty crimes. They were coordinated strikes that endangered lives.

Businesses, taxpayers, and consumers have invested billions to build these networks. Letting criminals dismantle them for pocket change is unacceptable.

Yet under current federal law, destroying broadband infrastructure isn’t punished like attacks on pipelines, railways, or power grids. In many states, penalties are outdated or nonexistent — effectively giving vandals a free pass to cripple critical systems.

A bipartisan fix

Congress has begun to respond. Reps. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) and Marc Veasey (D-Texas) have introduced H.R. 2784, the bipartisan Stopping the Theft and Destruction of Broadband Act. The bill would amend federal law to explicitly criminalize the destruction of broadband infrastructure, giving law enforcement the tools needed to act.

Adding broadband systems to the list of protected critical assets under Title 18 of the U.S. Code would send a clear message: This isn’t scrap-metal scavenging — it’s sabotage, and it will be prosecuted as such.

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Liudmila Chernetska via iStock/Getty Images

To defend consumers and our connected economy, lawmakers must:

  • strengthen penalties for theft or destruction of communications infrastructure, matching protections for other critical sectors;
  • crack down on black-market copper sales by holding scrap dealers accountable;
  • increase funding and coordination for law enforcement to investigate and prosecute network attacks; and
  • support industry-led security upgrades without adding regulatory burdens that slow innovation.

States like Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina have already moved to deter these crimes. Congress should follow their lead.

Defend what we built

Broadband is critical infrastructure — the digital lifeline of daily American life. Protecting it is not a corporate issue but a consumer one. Americans shouldn’t have to wonder whether their connection will work when they need it most.

We built the connected economy. Now we must defend it — before the vandals win.

Explaining Mamdani’s appeal to the young, with polling



It’s a sad week for the de facto capital of the world, New York City. The epicenter of American finance, media, and dynamism now enters a self-imposed trajectory of decline.

But those of us on the populist right should not merely shake our heads and bemoan the extremism of Zohran Mamdani, frightening though it is. Instead, we must understand his appeal, so that we might effectively counter his un-American ideas and continue to build on our 2024 triumph by earning further big gains nationally among young voters.

We have much to learn from Mamdani, even though he is a dangerous Marxist. Establishment Republicans have no effective answer to this kind of populism.

Polling shows the pathway to that success.

First, the great news. Young voters have swung massively to the right over the last three presidential election cycles. President Trump won young men in 2024, and overall, voters 35 and under shifted materially from a +37% preference for the Democrats in 2016 to only a +13% preference in 2024, cutting the young adult margin by two-thirds in just over eight years. It represents a massive macro shift.

In addition, a new national poll of 2,100 voters ages 18-25 shows a substantial rejection of Democrats’ radicalism on key social issues, especially transgenderism and free speech. Simultaneously, young voters express extreme frustration with the current economy, creating a clear opening that Mamdani drove a campaign truck right through.

So, backed by data, here are the three lanes of success that Mamdani exploited.

‘Affordability’ is key

Even though all of his Marxist answers are wrong and immoral, Zohran is laser-focused on the issue that matters most to voters, especially younger ones. Most young citizens have not benefited from the massive run-up in asset prices in recent years. Without substantial holdings of equities or real estate, they struggle to afford the staples of life amid sky-high costs. Even worse, the job market got substantially tougher for young adults, adding even more angst.

These voters correctly blamed the Democrats for the pain of Bidenomics, but that anger has now shifted over to Republicans, fair or not.

Right now, per TIPP Insights polling, only 24% of young adults rate Trump’s performance on the economy as “good” or “excellent,” while 54% rate it as “poor” or “unacceptable.” On inflation, using letter grades, only 6% of young independents give the president an A, while 44% deliver an F.

Mamdani smartly dove into this issue. All his proposed solutions will only make inflation worse, of course, from “free” public transit to lavish benefits for illegal aliens. But regardless, he fixated on what matters to voters, especially young ones.

Media skills

After watching Mamdani throughout the campaign, it’s clear he hates the founding principles and history of the United States. He exemplifies how America’s immigration system — even its lawful pathways — too often imports people who reject the nation’s heritage rather than embrace it.

That said, as a media professional, I can only respect his acumen in front of the cameras.

In this new digital age, which President Trump helped create, successful politicians must be able to perform effectively. Mamdani exudes charisma and likeability. His youth and enthusiasm captivated voters, especially those in the streaming/TikTok spaces.

Media savvy combined with lots of ludicrous promises of freebies is a pretty powerful approach in this populist age. Young people are especially receptive to the heavy use of new/alternative media. TIPP Insights shows that only 31% of independent young adults have positive sentiment for legacy media, and only 34% of young women.

Focus on home

Perhaps the most compelling moment of the campaign for Mamdani was during the July debate, when all candidates were asked where their first foreign visit would be as mayor of New York. All of them said Israel, with Ukraine thrown in as well. But Mamdani gave a truly “New York First” answer instead, one that might well have been uttered by a MAGA partisan. He said, “I would stay in New York City.”

That answer clearly appeals to young voters, who are decidedly non-interventionist abroad. For example, a whopping 69% of young men think we “intervene too much in foreign conflicts.” Only 26% of young adults think the United States should remain involved in Ukraine if Putin and Zelenskyy cannot reach a settlement soon.

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Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

That non-interventionism seeps over into a very negative view of Israel among young voters. Survey results found that only 25% of them have a positive view of Israel, versus 52% negative. Among young independents, only 18% have a positive view of Israel.

Therefore, Mamdani probably did not generate the blowback he deserved for extremist postures, such as embracing a pro-terror jihadi who was implicated, but unindicted, in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.

We have much to learn from Mamdani, even though he is a dangerous Marxist. Establishment Republicans have no effective answer to this kind of populism, because their default is always “cut taxes for the wealthy and go to war.”

The MAGA movement has a very different vision — one that can appeal to reasonable young people in increasing numbers — to continue this patriotic, populist surge for decades to come.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

America can’t afford to lose Britain — again



The Labour government that rules the United Kingdom is hardly a year old, but its time is already coming to an end. Its popular legitimacy has collapsed, and it is visibly losing control of both the British state and its territories.

Every conversation not about proximate policy is about the successor government: which party will take over, who will be leading it, and what’s needed to reverse what looks to be an unalterable course. What is known, however, is that the next government will assume the reins of a fading state after what will likely be the final election under the present, failed dispensation.

We should equip our friends on the other side of the Atlantic with the lessons of the new right’s ascendancy and of a nation-first government in America.

The Britain birthed by New Labour three decades ago, deracinated and unmoored from its historic roots, is unquestionably at its end. Its elements — most especially the importation of malign Americanisms like propositional nationhood — have led directly to a country that is, according to academics like David Betz of King’s College London, on the precipice of something like a civil war. That’s the worst-case scenario.

The best case is that a once-great nation made itself poor and has become wracked with civil strife, including the jihadi variety. It is a prospect that will make yesteryear’s worst of Ulster seem positively bucolic.

American policymaking is curiously inert in the face of the dissolution of its closest historic ally. This is not because Britain’s decline is anything new: the slow-motion implosion of that nation’s military power has been known to the American defense establishment for most of the past 20 years. Ben Barry’s excellent new book, “The Rise and Fall of the British Army 1975–2025,” offers many examples to this end, including the 2008 fighting in Basra in which American leadership had to rescue a failing British effort.

The knowledge that Britain is facing a regime-level crisis has remained mostly confined to the establishment. Outside of it, the American right has mostly dwelled on an admixture of Anglophilia and special-relationship nostalgia, obscuring the truth of Britain’s precipitous decline.

The American left, of course, entirely endorses what the British regime has done to its citizenry — from the repression of entrepreneurialism and the suppression of free speech to the ethnic replacement of the native population — and regards the outcomes as entirely positive.

It is past time for that inertia to end. The last election will redefine the United Kingdom — and therefore America’s relationship with it. Even before it comes, the rudderless and discredited Labour government has placed Britain into a de facto ungoverned state that may persist for years to come.

The United States has an obligation to protect its own citizenry from the consequences of this reality. It also has what might be called a filial duty to assert conditions for Britain to reclaim itself.

That duty means taking a series of actions, including denying entry to the United States to British officials who engage in the suppression of civil liberties. American security and intelligence should focus on the threats posed by Britain’s burgeoning Islamist population. The U.S. should give preferential immigration treatment to ethnic English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish who are seeking to escape misgovernance or persecution in the United Kingdom.

Furthermore, the United States should make it clear that the robust Chinese Communist Party penetration and influence operations in U.K. governance will result in a concurrent diminishment of American trust and cooperation.

Also necessary is the American government’s engagement with pro-liberty and pro-British elements within the U.K. This means working with Reform U.K., which presently looks to gain about 400 parliamentary seats in the next election. Its unique combination of a dynamic leader in Nigel Farage, intellectual heavyweights like James Orr and Danny Kruger, and operational energy in Zia Yusuf makes it a compelling and increasingly plausible scenario.

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Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Although the Tories are polling poorly and have had their reputations battered by their substandard record in government over the past decade, they nonetheless merit American engagement.

America’s role here is not to endorse, and still less to select, new leadership for Britain, which would be both an impossibility and an impropriety. However, we should equip our friends on the other side of the Atlantic with the lessons of the new right’s ascendancy and of a nation-first government in America.

In the fraught summer of 1940, the American poet Alice Duer Miller wrote, “In a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.” The island nation has not feared its own end at foreign arms for a thousand years. But its crisis today is from within, carrying existential stakes.

The current British regime is nearing its end, and the last election is coming. So too is our decision on how to engage it in the years ahead.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

Gavin Newsom’s racial pandering knows no bounds



Leaders should seek to unify people. Instead, California governor and likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom (D) embraces politics, dividing his constituents into those entitled to privileges and subventions by reason of their melanin, sex, or sexual orientation — and those who are required to fund the largesse.

He opposed race-neutral admissions to the California state university system (overruled by the people of California — twice), imposed gender and racial requirements on corporate boards (held unconstitutional — twice), required ethnic studies and ethnically dumbed-down math in K-12 curricula, and is carefully advancing a potentially multitrillion-dollar reparations plan for California’s black residents.

Whether born of intense self-loathing or kowtowing to the radical left, Newsom’s support for reparations is racist political pandering at its worst.

Newsom’s unconstitutional quest to curry favor with, undermine the confidence of, and potentially spend trillions of dollars on California’s 2.5 million black residents began in 2020 when he signed AB3121 into law, which required the state to study and develop reparation proposals for black Californians, with “special consideration” for descendants of slaves.

Then, in 2022, Newsom established a commission to develop policies that impact racial equity and disparities. The following year, it recommended payments exceeding $1 million for each descendant of slaves, as well as housing assistance, guaranteed wages, racially segregated education, and overturning California’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions, among hundreds of other racially abhorrent policies.

Now, Newsom has established a new bureau nominally to develop programs to implement the commission’s report, but with legislative authority to “expand” its mission to address remedies for the “lasting harms” of disenfranchisement, segregation, discrimination, exclusion, neglect, and violence impacting black Californians. The bureau is also authorized to collect nonpublic personal and genetic information to identify those who should obtain preferential treatment.

Newsom vetoed legislation to give admissions preferences to descendants of slaves, which he said colleges can already do; investigate racist property taxes, which is already within the new bureau’s mandate; and allocate 10% of state loans to slave descendants, which is clearly unconstitutional. An appearance of balance is important for a nascent presidential campaign.

Nonetheless, whether born of intense self-loathing or kowtowing to the radical left, Newsom’s support for reparations is racist political pandering at its worst.

Reparations are particularly inappropriate in California. The state was admitted to the Union in 1850 as a free state, in which slavery was prohibited. Its population today is about 37% non-Hispanic white, 39% Hispanic, 16% Asian, and 6% black. Over a quarter are foreign-born.

There is no doctrine in the United States that holds children liable for the crimes of their parents, much less their distant ancestors; nor do children inherit their ancestors’ debts. In 1860, there were 395,216 slave owners in the 15 states that permitted slavery and none in the other 18 states. In total, about 5%-6% of all U.S. households owned slaves.

Today, most blacks are at least middle class, live in diverse suburbs, and pursue the same careers as whites. They are doctors, lawyers, and chief executives. With about 12.5% of the population, blacks account for a somewhat larger share of U.S. House members and about one-third of the mayors in America’s 100 largest cities. Blacks have held the highest offices in government, from president and vice president to numerous Cabinet positions and 22% of current Supreme Court justices.

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Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

In a 2002 Gallup poll, 14% of Americans favored the payment of cash reparations to descendants of black slaves. A 2019 Associated Press-NORC poll found 29% approval. In 2024, a Princeton University-Liberations poll found that 36% of Americans supported at least some form of reparations, with 15% strongly supporting cash payments. A 2022 Rasmussen poll and a 2025 YouGov poll had similar results. About a quarter of blacks oppose reparations.

At least 23 cities and states are considering paying reparations, including New York City, San Francisco, and Boston. Under most reparation proposals, the national cost would range from about $12 trillion to $20 trillion.

While polls usually ask about reparations for descendants of slaves, most commissions also consider payments to other black Americans. A Brookings Institution report justifies giving reparations to wealthy blacks and recent immigrants due to the wealth gap between black and white families.

Polls and partisan commissions aside, the 14th Amendment prohibits governments from allocating benefits based on race. The Supreme Court has been clear that our detour into justifying affirmative action and other race-based programs was a “pernicious aberration.” There have been trillions of dollars of transfer payments to black Americans through welfare, food stamps, loan payments, enterprise zones, minority contracting, and affirmative action. These giveaways deprive blacks of agency and create dependency, not a path toward self-actualization.

Chief Justice John Roberts said it well in the Supreme Court’s decision ending racial preferences in college admissions: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. … [T]he guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.”

Gavin Newsom knows all this. He just doesn’t care.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

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Accountability or bust: Trump’s second term test



Republicans weren’t supposed to have a big night Tuesday — but they had a worse one than expected.

As usual, Democrats, who have had little to celebrate beyond street protests and government shutdowns, framed the results as a referendum on Donald Trump. That claim is exaggerated, but Republicans would be foolish to think the administration’s performance played no role. Weak candidates in blue states don’t explain everything. The message should be taken as a call for maintenance, not panic.

If the Trump administration restores trust through accountability and delivers tangible improvements to ordinary Americans, it will earn a political legacy that lasts generations.

The consensus takeaway is the right one: President Trump should return home and focus on his domestic agenda.

That shift already seems to be under way. Immediately after the election, the president summoned Republican senators to the White House to urge them to revoke the filibuster and pass a bold domestic program. Whether or not ending the filibuster is strategically sound, the impulse behind it shows Trump recognizes that his domestic agenda needs care and attention.

On Thursday, the president followed through by announcing a new affordability initiative, including a deal with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to slash the prices of popular weight-loss drugs.

The missing element

Any serious domestic agenda must center on accountability. Trump’s original campaign gained enormous traction on that theme for a reason. Like affordability, accountability resonates because both expose a corrupt system that favors elites and leaves ordinary Americans powerless. The Epstein saga, still festering years later, stands as Exhibit A — another example of “the big guys getting away with it again.”

That resentment fueled Trump’s rise in 2016 and explains his staying power today. It also helps explain Mamdani’s massive win on Tuesday. Americans are sick of a rigged system, and they are rejecting that system.

Trump represents a chance to correct that system. His second administration has produced real accomplishments. But the obstacles remain daunting: a world in turmoil, an economy tilted against working people, a hostile bureaucracy protected by a conflicted judiciary, and a divided Republican Party that lacks a filibuster-proof Senate majority.

Many within that party seem more interested in positioning themselves for the post-Trump era than advancing his reforms. It’s a weak hand outside the executive branch — but it’s also why voters sent him back to Washington.

A coalition that needs proof

For Trump’s coalition to endure, voters must see results that affect their daily lives. They need proof that their votes produced meaningful change — not better conditions for elites or new foreign entanglements. They want to see powerful wrongdoers held to account and to believe the system can be fair again.

Foreign policy deals won’t secure that trust. Trump’s skepticism of interventionism can survive only so many “necessary” international arrangements. However worthwhile some of those efforts may be, domestic priorities must come first. Accountability and reform should lead.

That means confronting the deep state, disciplining the bureaucracy, and rewarding the citizens who put this administration in power. The ferocity of DOGE’s early efforts — once celebrated as a hallmark of domestic resolve — has largely evaporated. In its place, we’ve seen premature victory laps and deflections. The FBI supposedly reformed. The Butler assassination attempt, which nearly removed a political figure representing half the country, brushed aside as a bad day. The promise to deport illegal immigrants narrowed to the “worst of the worst.”

When government fails to deliver transparency and fairness, the people begin to question the entire system — and rightly so. Americans don’t separate political corruption from economic corruption. It’s all part of the same tilted playing field. Trump still embodies their hope of leveling it.

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Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Contributor via Getty Images

Too much sizzle, too little steak

That mission is undermined, however, by the self-promotional drift of several administration principals. Americans see endless television hits, turf wars, and personal branding. They hear more about Attorney General Pam Bondi than about the Department of Justice, more about Secretary Kristi Noem than Homeland Security, more about Secretary Howard Lutnick than the Department of Commerce.

Most of these officials are countering a hostile media landscape — a necessary lesson from the first Trump term. But the result has been an overcorrection: too much personality, not enough policy. Americans didn’t vote for celebrity cameos. They voted for results.

Trump’s cabinet would do well to follow his lead and return focus to the work at hand. Fewer cameras, more control. Roll up sleeves, reassert authority over agencies, and push through systemic reforms that prove Washington can change — permanently.

The road to renewal

If the Trump administration restores trust through accountability and delivers tangible improvements to ordinary Americans, it will earn a political legacy that lasts generations.

America could use that kind of durability — and that kind of hope.

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