Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently promised to focus immigration enforcement on criminal aliens. At a National Governors Association forum with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), Mullin also noted that the United States had naturalized nearly 900,000 immigrants during the previous 12 months.

That number should have set off alarms.

The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.

Republicans are consumed with preventing noncitizens from voting illegally. That problem is real, but the much larger electoral transformation is occurring legally, as millions of immigrants become citizens and acquire the right to vote. The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.

As I have argued before, an immigration moratorium would do more to shape the country’s political future than the SAVE America Act. The White House, however, has shown little interest in confronting legal immigration at that scale.

After Mullin cited the latest figure, I reviewed the Department of Homeland Security’s naturalization data by year, country of origin, and demographic trend. I have long examined the size and composition of America’s green-card flow, but naturalization is the point at which immigration becomes electoral power.

Naturalization is a lagging indicator. The Hart-Celler Act drove immigration sharply higher beginning in the 1970s, but naturalizations did not surge until the mid-1990s. Since 1996, the United States has naturalized roughly 21 million people. From 2015 through 2024 alone — excluding the nearly 900,000 Mullin cited for the latest year — the total was 7.9 million.

Outside the COVID disruption, annual naturalizations have climbed from roughly 500,000 to 700,000 toward a range of 750,000 to 900,000.

The historical contrast is striking. As recently as 1984, fewer than 200,000 immigrants became citizens. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the annual average remained in the low 100,000s.

Even after the great immigration wave of 1880 to 1920, annual naturalizations generally peaked between 100,000 and 200,000. The high points were 217,000 in 1919, 233,000 in 1928, and 224,000 in 1929.

During the 39 years from 1908 through 1946, the United States issued about 6.2 million naturalizations. During the 39 years from 1986 through 2024, it naturalized 24.1 million people — nearly four times as many.

The modern citizenship wave has therefore dwarfed the one that followed the great wave, and it has continued for three decades with no end in sight.

The top-line numbers tell only part of the story.

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Roughly 90% of immigrants during the great wave came from Europe. In 2024, by my estimate, only about 10% of the 818,000 people naturalized came from Europe or Canada.

Mexico supplied the largest single group, with 107,670 new citizens. Latin America as a whole accounted for roughly 348,000, or 43% of all naturalizations. That four-decade pattern has helped make Spanish a durable second language across large parts of the country.

India supplied 49,700 new citizens and China 29,200. Those flows have remained substantial for decades. The United States is not merely adding population. It is importing millions of people shaped by political systems, religious traditions, and social assumptions far removed from the country’s historic norms.

The same question applies to immigration from Muslim-majority countries. DHS does not report naturalization by religion, so no precise count exists. But tabulating immigrants from the 49 predominantly Muslim countries I have identified previously yields 119,170 naturalizations in 2024 — about 15% of the total — and roughly 1.15 million over the past decade.

The largest 2024 totals included 12,200 from Pakistan, 11,600 from Bangladesh, 8,100 from Iraq, 7,100 from Iran, 7,000 from Egypt, and 6,800 from Afghanistan.

These numbers have not necessarily crested. The central question is whether naturalization policy is producing citizens with a durable attachment to the Constitution, the nation, and the obligations contained in the oath of allegiance.

One imam in Sterling Heights, Michigan, recently boasted that concentrated Muslim voting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan could swing a presidential election. He was describing the political power that large-scale naturalization fosters.

Many naturalized immigrants become patriotic Americans. But a country naturalizing close to 900,000 people each year cannot assume assimilation will occur automatically, especially when so many arrive from societies with different political values and weak traditions of constitutional government.

This is all legal! It is also why the Republican fixation on a relatively small number of unlawful noncitizen votes misses the larger question.

The figures do not include the long-term electoral effect of birthright citizenship among children born to illegal immigrants, temporary visa holders, and legal permanent residents.

Pew Research estimated that 240,000 babies were born in 2023 to families in which neither parent was a legal permanent resident. The Center for Immigration Studies estimated that 72,000 children were born to tourists, foreign students, and other visitors in 2016. A separate CIS analysis suggests that 225,000 to 250,000 children were born in 2023 to families with at least one legal permanent resident.

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Those estimates come from different years and categories and should not be treated as a precise annual total. They nevertheless show how mass immigration, combined with automatic birthright citizenship, extends the electoral consequences for generations.

Legal immigration is producing as many as 900,000 new voters each year through naturalization. Birthright citizenship may add hundreds of thousands more future voters annually. Even if Congress shut off immigration tomorrow, the naturalization wave already in the pipeline would continue for years.

Illegal voting can decide a close election and should be prevented. But the scale of legal electoral change produced by immigration dwarfs the problem the SAVE America Act is designed to solve.

Any politician who campaigns on the SAVE America Act while refusing to support an immigration moratorium is missing the forest for the trees.

The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.

It’s the economy, stupid — again

The conservative political class is committing one of the most disastrous acts of political malpractice in recent memory.

When Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre chided Americans for complaining about the price of staples such as milk and eggs, she did serious damage to the Democratic Party. Many voters backed Donald Trump because they trusted him to address inflation and the broader affordability crisis. Now conservative pundits and influencers are repeating the same mistake, telling consumers that everything is fine and that only economic illiterates think groceries, gas, and housing cost too much.

Democrats lost because they cut themselves off from reality. Republicans have no reason to copy the strategy.

Elections are not won by lecturing voters that their problems are imaginary. This is Politics 101. Professional political actors adopting the strategy months before the midterms is both bizarre and dangerous.

Affordability is not a Democrat talking point or a socialist catchphrase. It is real, and it will dominate every foreseeable election. Republicans understood this when Biden occupied the White House. The problem did not disappear when Trump returned.

People can feel that the economy is not working for them. They can see the American dream drifting farther out of reach. Conservative pundits may produce charts, cite aggregate statistics, and explain that certain indicators look healthy. None of that will save the GOP any more than it saved Democrats who insisted that “Bidenomics” was working.

The party cannot dismiss this anger as a failure of messaging. Voters do not experience the economy as an abstraction. They experience it at the checkout counter, at the gas pump, when the insurance bill arrives, and when another year of saving still leaves a starter home beyond reach. Their judgment is concrete and entirely rational.

The price of some discretionary goods, such as flat-screen televisions, may have fallen. The essentials of ordinary life have not followed the same path. Food, health care, child care, education, insurance, housing, electricity, and gasoline remain punishingly expensive. Gross domestic product and a surging stock market may comfort those already winning in the economy, but they are poor measures of the daily experience of a family struggling to stay afloat.

Many of the underlying problems are nearly untouchable in a democratic system. The hard truth is that buying votes is often the optimal electoral strategy. No candidate wins by promising voters that their benefits will shrink, their home values will fall, and their taxes will rise.

Trump understands this better than anyone. He promised not to touch major entitlements, pledged to protect home values, and proposed eliminating taxes on tips. America may be on a slow collision course with fiscal disaster, but no politician wants to lose an election by volunteering to hold the bomb when it explodes.

Blaze Media Illustration

The American version of this problem has modern features, but the core dilemma is ancient. Large civilizations require immense resources. When rulers can no longer obtain enough through ordinary taxation, they manipulate the currency.

Roman emperors knew little of modern monetary theory, but they understood that reducing the precious-metal content of coins allowed the state to mint more of them. The apparent solution eventually helped destroy confidence in the currency and contributed to the collapse of hard money across much of Europe.

There is only so much Trump can do about structural inflation and accumulated debt. He can, however, avoid taking actions that make the problem worse.

Gasoline is the literal fuel of the economy. Higher prices punish voters at the pump and then reappear in the cost of every product that must be transported. Energy bills, food prices, and fuel costs hit households immediately and simultaneously. Voters will remember that squeeze more clearly than any lecture about macroeconomic fundamentals.

The war with Iran has taken on a disturbingly familiar shape. Its champions mocked anyone who warned that the conflict might last more than a few weeks. Now the country approaches a critical midterm election with no end in sight.

This was predictable. Once a war begins, the ability to control its scope and duration rapidly diminishes. Machiavelli put it plainly: “Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.”

The same pundits who demanded war now tell voters they are stupid or selfish for noticing its economic consequences. They will inevitably blame any disastrous midterm result on the people who opposed the conflict, but the political reality is obvious.

The central issue is not that voters have developed a sophisticated position on Iran. Many probably care little about the strategic details. They care that everything costs more. Telling them they lack economic literacy has roughly the same electoral appeal as shooting a puppy on live television.

America has already spent tens of billions of dollars on the Iran war and depleted munitions stockpiles that will require years and billions more to rebuild. The Republican House also approved another $8 billion in loans for Ukraine, despite Trump’s promise to end that war immediately.

Blaze Media Illustration

The United States does not have this money sitting in a vault. It must be taxed, borrowed, or created. Each method imposes a cost on Americans who receive little material benefit from these foreign conflicts.

The political system limits what Republicans can do about inflation. Ending vast expenditures on wars that do not improve the lives of voters is nevertheless the most obvious place to begin.

The road ahead is difficult, but many of the wounds are self-inflicted. The first step toward recovery is to stop repeating the behavior that caused them.

End funding for the war in Ukraine. Bring American forces home from the Persian Gulf. Stop telling voters that concern over rising prices is foolish, greedy, or manufactured by Democrats.

The GOP still has one advantage: Democrats remain deeply unpopular. Redistricting has improved the Republican electoral map, and the left continues to repel many ordinary voters. There may still be time to limit the damage or even regain momentum.

But first the war hawks must admit that they were wrong — again — and change course.

Democrats lost because they cut themselves off from reality. Republicans have no reason to copy the strategy.

The Biden autopen scandal has one big winner: Anthony Fauci

Anthony Fauci is probably going to skate. He should not. But nearly every institutional and political incentive now points toward that outcome.

Americans who watched Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times before the Senate are understandably furious. They may also be headed for an epic letdown when the man they most want held accountable resumes his life in pompous peace.

Public frustration will rise when people realize that Fauci may leave Congress untouched after pleading the Fifth more than 100 times.

The first obstacle is the legal uncertainty surrounding Fauci’s autopenned pardon.

The pardon was signed by autopen, and substantial evidence raises questions about whether President Biden personally authorized it. A presidential pardon is an authority only the president may exercise.

In Fauci’s case, the written record includes an email from Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients on the final evening of the administration. Zients emailed: “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.”

Biden later told the New York Times in an interview that he had approved broad categories of pardons rather than, in every instance, specific names.

That admission came from the same newspaper that had initially dismissed the Oversight Project’s autopen disclosures in an article headlined “How an Autopen Conspiracy Theory About Biden Went Viral.” Within months, the Times had moved from ridicule to damage control.

The basic facts are therefore established: Fauci’s pardon was executed by autopen, and serious questions remain about Biden’s awareness and authorization.

President Trump has called the autopen controversy the scandal of the century and declared the affected actions “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.” The Department of Justice, however, has behaved as though that declaration carries no legal consequence.

That gap between political assertion and prosecutorial action is decisive. Questioning a pardon’s validity in public is one thing. Charging someone whose defense rests on that pardon is another. So far, the Justice Department has shown no appetite for testing the issue in court.

Fauci’s Senate testimony exposed the contradiction at the center of his position. He repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, arguing that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was trying to lure him into statements that could support a perjury referral.

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In his opening statement, Fauci said: “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

A witness may invoke the Fifth Amendment when he genuinely believes his answers could expose him to criminal liability. The privilege is not a general escape hatch from politically uncomfortable questioning.

Fauci’s plausible claim of criminal exposure rests, at least in part, on the uncertainty surrounding his pardon. But relying on that uncertainty means conceding that the pardon may not be beyond challenge.

If Fauci insists the pardon is unquestionably valid and no prosecution is possible, he weakens the basis for invoking the Fifth. If he claims a real risk of prosecution, he implicitly acknowledges that the pardon may not protect him.

The same cloud that threatens the pardon also strengthens his Fifth Amendment claim.

That sounds like vulnerability. In practice, it may protect him.

There is still no sign that the Justice Department plans to prosecute Fauci or anyone else in a case designed to test an autopen action. The department has not challenged a single autopenned pardon or commutation.

Worse, the Trump administration continues releasing offenders whose sentences Biden shortened by autopen. The executive branch is carrying out the very orders the president has publicly described as nullities.

For the Oversight Project, that contradiction is more than theoretical. It’s incredibly frustrating. Putting violent felons back on the street is difficult to reconcile with the claim that autopenned acts are void.

Could Congress hold Fauci in contempt for invoking the Fifth rather than answering questions? Possibly. Probably not.

Fauci would likely show enough basis to argue that Paul sought a criminal referral and that the uncertainty surrounding his pardon created a genuine risk of prosecution.

Any challenge would probably be litigated in federal court in Washington, D.C., a venue far friendlier to Fauci than many others. That venue alone improves his odds.

The political barriers are even greater. There are almost certainly not enough votes in the Senate to pursue contempt, both because of uncertainty over whether Fauci’s conduct crossed the legal line and because senators fear accusations of political weaponization.

Getting 60 votes to overcome a filibuster is a fantasy. Even clearing Paul’s committee, divided 8-7, may prove difficult. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) has already expressed some sympathy for Fauci’s position.

Paul has suggested another path: If the committee approves contempt on Thursday, he could refer the matter directly to the Justice Department or pursue a civil action.

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Fauci would immediately argue that a committee cannot exercise the contempt power of the full Senate. He would contend that without a vote of the whole chamber, there is no valid contempt finding to enforce.

The courts are likely to agree. Which leaves the public exactly where it began.

Congress has little chance of imposing consequences. The only meaningful route runs through the Justice Department: charge Fauci, force litigation over the pardon, and finally test whether Biden lawfully authorized it.

That would require the department to abandon the passivity it has displayed so far.

Public frustration will rise when people realize that Fauci may leave Congress untouched after pleading the Fifth more than 100 times.

The useful response is not another round of televised outrage. It is sustained pressure on the Justice Department to treat autopenned actions the way Trump himself described them: null and void.

Zillow put a toll booth on the American dream

For two decades, Zillow has assembled the pieces of a real estate empire.

It acquired Trulia, StreetEasy, and ShowingTime in a series of deals regulators allowed to proceed. It launched mortgage and closing products. It drew buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, and lenders into the same expanding system.

Zillow calls itself 'the front door to the housing market.' Regulators should act before the company installs a turnstile.

This year, Zillow accelerated.

In March, five of the country’s largest brokerages agreed to give Zillow early access to listings without offering rivals the same terms. In May, Zillow sued a major multiple listing service after it lost access to some listings.

Neither move necessarily violates antitrust law by itself. Taken together, however, they show how a company can stop competing within a market and begin positioning itself to control the market.

Zillow describes itself as “the most visited real estate app and website in the United States,” with an “ecosystem” covering “the entire home journey, from dreaming and shopping to renting, buying, selling, and financing.”

Its year-end 2025 filings reported 235 million average monthly unique users, up 6% from the previous year. Its CEO has boasted that Americans search for “Zillow” more often than they search for “real estate.”

The company’s ambitions match its reach. Zillow openly promotes what it calls a “housing super app,” a single platform designed to occupy every stage of the transaction.

That combination of audience, listings, services, and leverage should command antitrust scrutiny.

In March 2026, Zillow launched Zillow Preview, a premarket listing product. Keller Williams, HomeServices of America, RE/MAX, Side, and United Real Estate signed on as launch partners. Together, those firms represent roughly 30% of residential brokerage.

More than 60 additional brokerages have since joined.

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Those premarket listings appear on Zillow and Trulia and, through a separate agreement, Realtor.com. They do not appear on Homes.com, Redfin, or the traditional MLS system.

The arrangement resembles exclusive dealing: A platform with enormous consumer traffic secures early access to inventory from major suppliers and denies comparable access to competitors.

Imagine a shopping mall with 70% of the region’s foot traffic persuading its largest retailers to display new merchandise there first and nowhere else. The mall would no longer be attracting customers through better service alone. It would be restricting the merchandise competitors could offer.

Zillow Preview raises another concern: a commission-sharing arrangement that echoes practices challenged in the litigation against the National Association of Realtors.

When a Preview listing closes through Zillow’s Preferred Agent network, the listing agent receives 10% of the buy-side commission, according to the company’s terms. Zillow sets that rate.

The NAR litigation produced a $1.78 billion jury verdict and settlements exceeding $700 million. The cases challenged practices that tied buyer and seller compensation together and helped normalize commission rates.

Less than two years later, Zillow has created a system that appears to reconnect those commissions on terms established by Zillow itself.

The company is also using litigation aggressively.

In May 2026, Zillow sued Midwest Real Estate Data, the large Chicago-area MLS, and Compass, alleging that the two conspired to restrict its access to listings. The lawsuit came only weeks after Zillow secured exclusive premarket inventory from dozens of brokerages.

The apparent message to regional MLS systems was difficult to miss: Zillow may reserve inventory for itself, but others risk litigation if they restrict inventory from Zillow.

CoStar Group, which owns rival Homes.com, filed an amicus brief accusing Zillow of hypocrisy and arguing that Preview is designed to divert leads and steer borrowers toward Zillow-affiliated services rather than neutrally match buyers with homes.

Should Zillow prevail, it may not merely compete with the MLS system. It could begin replacing it.

The company’s ambitions extend well beyond listings.

Zillow Home Loans is now the country’s 25th-largest mortgage lender, and Zillow has identified mortgage growth as central to its future. The company also faces several pending class-action lawsuits alleging undisclosed referral fees and steering toward its own, potentially more expensive mortgage products.

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Those allegations remain to be tested in court. But they point to the core danger of vertical integration: A platform that dominates home searches may use that position to channel consumers toward its own agents, lenders, and closing services.

Strip away the antitrust terminology, and mortgage steering is easy to understand.

It can mean a worse rate on the largest purchase of an ordinary person’s life, arranged by the same company displaying photographs of the kitchen.

A quarter-point increase on a 30-year mortgage can cost a household tens of thousands of dollars. For a generation already struggling to buy its first home, some of the market’s apparent friction may be a toll imposed by the platform controlling the route.

Antitrust scholars sometimes call this a “monopoly broth”: an accumulation of practices that collectively entrench market power even when no single ingredient is plainly illegal.

In Zillow’s case, the ingredients may include exclusive access to premarket listings, commission arrangements, litigation against suppliers, and the use of platform dominance to steer consumers toward affiliated mortgage products. Each practice strengthens the others.

More exclusive listings attract more users. More users give Zillow greater leverage over brokers. Greater brokerage dependence creates more opportunities to sell leads and mortgages. The wider the ecosystem grows, the harder it becomes for any participant to refuse Zillow’s terms.

That is the regulatory problem.

The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general should examine whether Zillow is using dominance in home search to foreclose competitors and extract revenue from adjacent markets. Private plaintiffs who successfully challenged the NAR’s commission system will likely examine the same evidence.

The question is not whether Zillow has built a successful product. It plainly has.

The question is whether success in attracting homebuyers now allows Zillow to dictate who sees listings, how agents are compensated, which lenders receive referrals, and how much consumers pay.

Zillow calls itself “the front door to the housing market.” Regulators should act before the company installs a turnstile.

Everyone loved revenue sharing … until the revenue got shared

Congress is considering competing bills to “save college sports” after last year’s landmark name, image, and likeness settlement. The debate often begins with athlete compensation. It should begin with the financial structure that compensation is about to disrupt.

Football and men’s basketball do not merely pay for themselves at major universities. They subsidize nearly everything else.

Football and men’s basketball laid the golden eggs, and nearly everyone else lived on them. That arrangement may be ending.

Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act reports show the scale of those surpluses. In 2025, the last year before the settlement took effect, Michigan reported more than $120 million in combined surplus from football and men’s basketball. Tennessee exceeded $116 million. Notre Dame topped $102 million.

Those schools are not outliers. At least 12 of the Big Ten’s 18 members cleared more than $50 million from the two sports. At least eight of the SEC’s 16 members did the same. Half of the ACC schools reporting usable figures generated more than $17 million.

The pattern extends beyond the largest programs. Football and men’s basketball produced more than $20 million at Boise State and about $6 million at San Diego State.

Even those figures may understate the subsidy. EADA reporting is inconsistent and often opaque. Some universities hide profits and losses across entire athletic departments. Others report revenue from profitable sports while obscuring deficits elsewhere. Yet wherever the figures are complete, the same structure appears.

Football and men’s basketball generate cash. Nearly every other sport consumes it.

At the 12 Big Ten schools with complete women’s sports data, the average deficit approached $20 million. Nine SEC women’s programs reported deficits above $27 million. The seven ACC schools with complete figures averaged shortfalls greater than $11 million.

Success on the field rarely changes the arithmetic. Nebraska and Wisconsin built elite volleyball programs, yet each lost well over $1 million in 2025. Purdue volleyball and women’s basketball were rare Big Ten programs to report profits above $4 million. Duke volleyball posted only a small surplus in the ACC. South Carolina’s national champion women’s basketball program ran a deficit exceeding $5 million.

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Men’s nonrevenue sports also lose money, though generally less. At the Big Ten schools with complete reports, those programs averaged roughly $10 million in losses. The SEC average was about $11 million. Wisconsin men’s hockey lost $1.3 million; the national champion women’s team lost nearly $3 million.

The disparity is not an argument against women’s or Olympic sports. It explains how those sports have survived at their current scale.

Ticket sales, television contracts, and donations tied to football and men’s basketball have long financed teams that cannot cover their own costs. The surplus from the two commercial sports has sustained the breadth of the modern athletic department.

The NIL settlement is redirecting that surplus.

Schools may now share revenue directly with athletes under a cap, while collectives and boosters can make additional uncapped payments. Early evidence suggests that most capped money is flowing to the athletes who generate it.

Texas Tech spent 74% of its cap on football and 17.5% on men’s basketball. North Carolina State spent more than 85% on those two sports. North Carolina spent nearly 98%.

The logic is obvious. Schools competing for quarterbacks, pass rushers, and starting guards will direct money toward the players who determine wins, television audiences, and donor enthusiasm. Every dollar paid to those athletes is a dollar no longer available to subsidize programs that run permanent deficits.

The uncapped side payments create a second pressure. Donors who once gave to athletic departments — where their money could support the entire portfolio of teams — may instead direct funds to outside collectives focused on recruiting and retaining football and basketball players.

The same revenue engines are therefore being tapped twice: once through direct school payments and again through donor-backed NIL deals.

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President Trump’s executive order on college athletics recognizes the danger. It warns that the new financial pressures could jeopardize women’s and Olympic sports and seeks greater discipline in the post-settlement system.

Whether the order or any pending bill can preserve the old model remains an open question. Congress cannot legislate away basic economics.

Athletes in revenue sports now have a stronger claim on the money they generate. Schools still want to maintain dozens of teams that do not generate enough revenue to sustain themselves. The same dollars cannot fully satisfy both demands.

For decades, college athletics concealed this trade-off behind the language of one unified department. The financial reports tell a simpler story: Football and men’s basketball laid the golden eggs, and nearly everyone else lived on them.

That arrangement may be ending. Congress should understand what it is trying to save before promising that every program can survive unchanged.

Ceuta is America’s border warning

Spain is offering the United States a warning we would be foolish to ignore.

For years, Democrats have pursued an immigration agenda built around weak enforcement, mass amnesty, and the surrender of national sovereignty to globalist priorities. Americans who want to see where that agenda can lead should look at Ceuta.

Codify secure borders now or prepare to watch the crisis return under the next Democratic administration.

In recent days, an estimated 60,000 migrants — many military-age men — attempted to overwhelm the small Spanish enclave on the Moroccan border. They arrived by land and sea, swamping local authorities and producing deadly chaos.

This was not an isolated event. It followed Spain’s moves toward amnesty for illegal immigrants, effectively signaling that unlawful entry might eventually be rewarded.

Spain’s Civil Guard described the border as totally collapsed. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez rushed to the enclave, denounced the surge as a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity, and deployed the military.

By then, however, the warning was unmistakable. Ceuta has a population of roughly 85,000. A migrant surge approaching three-quarters of that number threatened to overwhelm the enclave in a matter of days.

Americans should recognize the pattern because we recently endured our own version of it.

During the Biden-Harris administration, the United States suffered four years of relentless border disorder. Record numbers of illegal immigrants crossed the southern border while the administration expanded catch-and-release, abused immigration parole, and allowed migrants to exploit an asylum system never designed to handle claims on that scale.

The result was a border that functioned less as a boundary and more as a processing center for unlawful entry.

President Trump’s return to office and his decisive executive actions have restored deterrence and operational control. But executive actions are temporary. A future Democratic administration could reverse them as quickly as Biden reversed Trump’s first-term policies.

Conservatives rightly insist on “no amnesty.” Honesty, however, requires us to confront a harder truth: Unless Congress closes the loopholes embedded in current law, America remains one presidential election away from another invasion.

The vulnerabilities exploited during the Biden years remain.

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The Flores Settlement continues to encourage family units and unaccompanied minors to arrive at the border knowing that current law may lead to their release into the interior. The asylum system remains vulnerable to economic migrants who use dubious claims to gain admission. Mass parole authority and catch-and-release remain available to an administration determined to abuse them.

Presidential resolve is not enough. Congress must harden the law itself.

The House Freedom Caucus has used its leverage to advance the reforms necessary to do that. This summer, we secured a House Judiciary Committee markup for Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy’s Permanent Trump Secure Border Act, H.R. 9773.

The bill carries forward the strongest border-security provisions of H.R. 2, which passed the House in the 118th Congress with overwhelming Republican support. It offers Congress a vehicle to make Trump’s successful border policies permanent and protect Americans from the next open-borders administration.

Its provisions are serious and targeted.

The bill would reform asylum by barring claims from migrants who passed through safe third countries, raising the credible-fear standard to “more likely than not” and limiting asylum applications to ports of entry.

It would end the abuse of mass parole, require detention or prompt return when operational control cannot be maintained, and mandate safe-third-country agreements.

It would also close loopholes created by the Flores Settlement that encourage the release of families and minors, crack down on visa overstays, and expand the criminal bars to asylum eligibility.

These reforms directly address the gaps the Biden-Harris administration exploited.

RELATED: Assimilate or hit the brakes

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When Congress returns in September, Republican leaders must bring the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act to the floor immediately.

Partial measures will not suffice. Neither will another round of promises to address the border later. The left has not abandoned its vision of demographic transformation through unchecked migration. It is waiting for another opportunity to impose it.

Ceuta offers a preview of what can happen when government signals that borders are optional and unlawful entry may be rewarded.

America has restored order for now. The question is whether Congress will make that restoration durable.

The House Freedom Caucus has provided the blueprint. Republicans need to pass it.

Codify secure borders now — or prepare to watch the crisis return under the next Democratic administration. Our sovereignty, security, and rule of law depend on getting this right.

Thank you, Sophie Cunningham

Too many people scare themselves into silence by making courage more complicated than it is.

For years, women such as Jennifer Sey and Riley Gaines have carried the hopes, safety, and opportunities of girls on their shoulders. We applaud them, share their interviews, and call them brave. Then we tell ourselves that we could never do what they do.

The next voice does not have to be famous. It may have to be yours.

That’s easy. Speaking when the consequences belong to us is much harder.

Only four years ago, Gaines was a college swimmer preparing to graduate and attend dental school. She had no national platform, political résumé, or plan to become one of the country’s most recognizable advocates for women’s sports.

Hundreds of female swimmers were forced to compete against and share a locker room with Lia Thomas. Gaines became the name people remember because she decided that what happened required more than private disapproval.

Now we see the television appearances, speeches, photo shoots, merchandise, and crowds. We see a confident and articulate woman who has become exceptionally good at public advocacy.

What we forget is that she had to begin before she felt ready.

I know that temptation.

Nearly five years ago, at 18, I helped pass Iowa’s Save Girls Sports law, which bars male athletes from competing in women’s sports. I wrote articles, gave interviews, posted information online, and spoke at the state Capitol.

I also felt overwhelmed and badly underqualified. I was called a bigot and a transphobe. I received harassment and death threats. Being compared to a Nazi was not how I expected to spend my senior year of high school.

Over time, I learned to make peace with the insults. If someone cannot acknowledge the difference between a man and a woman, that person’s condemnation says more about his relationship to truth than it does about me.

But my 18-year-old self had not learned that yet.

During one of my first interviews, on BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey’s “Relatable” podcast, I admitted that something had to be done but insisted that plenty of people were better equipped to do it.

Stuckey answered with a sentence I have carried ever since: “God doesn’t call the equipped. He equips the called.”

That is what I love about Sophie Cunningham. The WNBA guard did not deliver a complicated manifesto when she defended women’s spaces. She stated a basic truth plainly.

“I think that I am here to extend love,” Cunningham said. “But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

When reporters pressed her, she did not retreat into qualifications or issue the ritual apology expected of public figures who violate progressive etiquette.

“I think I said what I said.”

That’s it. It’s that simple. And the answer resonated because it stripped away the excuses people use to stay silent.

Michael Hickey/Getty Images

Men and women are different. Girls deserve privacy, safety, and fair competition. Saying so may provoke anger, but the argument itself is not difficult.

Cunningham’s example is more than a headline or slogan. It reminds ordinary people that public courage does not begin with a perfect résumé, a media strategy, or complete confidence.

It begins when someone decides that fear of criticism cannot carry more authority than the truth.

Games will end. Records will fall. Statistics will be forgotten. Cunningham’s willingness to speak when silence would have been safer may outlast all of them.

She was not obligated to speak because she is famous or because her platform is large. She was obligated because girls were being asked to surrender their rights to a lie.

The same obligation does not belong only to athletes, activists, or people with television audiences.

You do not have to be Riley Gaines, Jennifer Sey, or Sophie Cunningham. You do not have to consider yourself the smartest, bravest, or most articulate person in the room. You do not have to feel qualified.

You do have to stop using those doubts as permission to do nothing.

God does not ask for perfection. He asks for obedience. Again and again, He accomplishes more through willing people than they imagined themselves capable of doing.

Thank you, Sophie Cunningham, for showing how simple the first act of courage can be: Tell the truth, withstand the reaction, and refuse to take it back.

The next voice does not have to be famous. It may have to be yours.

Gen Z is reopening America’s cold cases

Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Andrew Jackson have little in common beyond one striking fact: Young Americans are revisiting reputations that schools, media, and popular culture once treated as settled.

The trend is not a wholesale endorsement of every decision these men made. It is a rebellion against inherited verdicts.

TMZ may fret that McCarthyism is returning. It isn’t. Institutional deference, however, may be gone for good.

As democratic socialists such as Francesca Hong and Zohran Mamdani have gained traction with voters, some young conservatives have revived interest in McCarthy’s campaign against communist influence in the United States. The slogan “Joseph McCarthy was right” has circulated online alongside renewed discussion of Soviet espionage and foreign political influence from countries such as Cuba and China.

McCarthy’s record remains contested, and the abuses associated with his name should not be waved away. But younger critics are increasingly unwilling to accept the textbook version in which he appears only as a paranoid bully who invented a threat that did not exist. One widely used history resource, for example, describes his methods as bullying tactics that created a climate of fear.

McCarthy is not alone.

Richard Nixon became a viral figure this summer through “Nixon-maxxing,” an online fascination that mixes irony and style with a serious effort to reconsider his foreign-policy record and political downfall. George W. Bush, once a permanent punch line for late-night comedy, now appears in nostalgic images as a cowboy from a more confident American era. Andrew Jackson has also returned to online debate as younger people reassess his nationalism and tariff policy.

None deserves automatic vindication. McCarthy, Nixon, Bush, and Jackson were consequential men with real failures, bitter controversies, and legacies that remain open to dispute.

But their reputations were shaped by institutions that many members of Gen Z no longer trust.

Black Lives Matter activists tried to tear down Jackson’s statue in Washington. Legacy outlets treated Nixon’s name as shorthand for betrayal and corruption. Late-night television and “Saturday Night Live” spent years reducing Bush to a caricature.

When those same institutions lose credibility, their historical judgments lose authority with them.

That loss of trust is measurable. Confidence in higher education fell from 57% in 2015 to 36% in 2024. Gen Z reports the highest levels of mistrust toward colleges of any generation, and 59% of students say they fear expressing “right-wing” political opinions in class.

RELATED: The once and future Nixon

Photo courtesy of the Richard Nixon Foundation

Young people therefore approach official narratives with a suspicion earlier generations reserved for propaganda. If they want the truth, they need to uncover it themselves.

COVID taught us the hard way.

Most members of Gen Z were in high school, college, or the opening years of adulthood when governments closed schools, restricted work, separated friends, and imposed sweeping health rules. They were told that officials possessed reliable answers, then watched many claims change, collapse, or become subjects of bitter dispute.

The vaccine debate supplied one example. Research identified an increased risk of myocarditis after some COVID vaccinations, particularly among adolescent and young adult males. That finding did not prove every warning about vaccination correct, but it complicated the insistence that skepticism itself was irresponsible or morally wrong.

The release of Anthony Fauci’s diary reinforced the belief among many young Americans that officials presented more certainty in public than they privately possessed.

The result was not merely disagreement over masks, vaccines, distancing, or school closures. It was a broader lesson in institutional fallibility.

Young Americans learned that credentials do not eliminate self-interest, consensus does not guarantee truth, and a confident official narrative may later require substantial revision.

That lesson now shapes how they view both contemporary politics and American history.

Donald Trump’s return to the presidency after Russiagate, two impeachments, criminal prosecutions, and years of predictions that his movement would collapse reinforced the idea that establishment condemnation can increase rather than settle public doubt. Young men voted for him heavily in 2024 and extended the same instinct to figures such as JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The same appetite has helped independent journalists like Nick Shirley build audiences by pursuing stories local governments and established newsrooms neglected.

Alex WROBLEWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

This impulse can go wrong sometimes. Contrarianism is not the same as truth, and a historical figure does not become virtuous merely because liberal institutions despised him.

But the refusal to inherit conclusions without question is healthy.

Gen Z is treating history less like a museum exhibit and more like a cold case. It wants the documents, the motives, the context, and the arguments omitted from the standard account.

That approach will not vindicate every accused man. It may confirm some old judgments and overturn others.

The larger significance lies in who now claims the authority to decide.

Schools, television networks, universities, and political movements once expected younger Americans to accept their moral rankings of the past. A growing number of young people now insist on reopening the file themselves.

TMZ may fret that McCarthyism is making a comeback. It isn’t. Institutional deference, however, may be gone for good.

Jim Crow called — it wants its smear back

Opponents of the SAVE America Act have reached for the oldest smear in the election-law playbook: racism.

Sunny Hostin of “The View” recently said she opposed the bill because it would “disproportionately affect African-American voters.” She compared proof-of-citizenship requirements to Jim Crow devices such as literacy tests and jelly bean counting.

Election reform cannot proceed honestly while racial demagoguery substitutes for argument.

The comparison is historically illiterate.

Poll taxes, literacy tests, and arbitrary guessing games were designed to keep black Americans from voting. Requiring voters to prove identity and citizenship applies a neutral rule to everyone.

The SAVE America Act would require applicants for federal voter registration to provide documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, a REAL ID indicating citizenship, or qualifying military records. Related provisions would require photo identification at the polls.

Those are not instruments of racial exclusion. They are ordinary safeguards meant to ensure that only eligible citizens participate in federal elections.

Democratic politicians and media figures have spent years describing voter-identification laws as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, and others have portrayed routine verification as a deliberate attack on minority voters.

The claim insults the people it supposedly defends.

Polls consistently show broad support for voter identification, often above 80% overall, with strong majorities among black and Hispanic voters. Millions of minority Americans already use driver’s licenses, state identification cards, and other government-issued documents because modern life requires them.

Americans need identification to board a commercial flight, open a bank account, cash a check, buy alcohol or tobacco, rent a car, enter many offices and government buildings, collect some prescriptions, and check into a hotel.

Even New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an opponent of voter-identification requirements, recently announced that his taxpayer-funded grocery stores would require identification for entry.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The country accepts identity verification for countless transactions carrying far lower stakes than choosing its leaders. The idea that voting alone must remain exempt from basic verification makes no sense.

Critics next argue that noncitizen voting is rare and therefore unworthy of concern. Recent examples show why prevention remains vital.

In New Jersey, Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) disclosed last month that a software error at the Motor Vehicle Commission improperly registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024. About 400 of them cast ballots. The Trump administration believes the number may be much higher.

In North Carolina, authorities previously charged 19 foreign nationals with voting unlawfully in the 2016 elections. In Philadelphia, an illegal immigrant was arrested after allegedly voting in several federal elections.

None of those cases proves that noncitizen voting determines every election. They do prove, at a minimum, that registration systems make mistakes and that ineligible people sometimes vote. One can only imagine the depth of election fraud a DOGE-style investigation into all 50 states’ practices would uncover.

The most revealing feature of the opposition is its refusal to separate legitimate access concerns from the basic question of eligibility. Lawmakers can provide free identification, mobile enrollment services, and reasonable procedures for citizens who lack standard documents while still requiring proof that applicants are citizens.

That would expand lawful access and protect lawful votes at the same time.

Instead, critics invoke the ugliest chapters of American history to shut down discussion. They treat any identity or citizenship requirement as presumptively racist and imply that minority voters are uniquely incapable of complying with ordinary rules.

Americans of every race deserve elections in which every lawful vote counts and every unlawful vote is excluded. Proof of identity and citizenship is not an attack on democracy. It is the minimum a democracy owes its citizens.

Election reform cannot proceed honestly while racial demagoguery substitutes for argument. The people using Jim Crow as a shield against neutral safeguards should be shunned, not indulged.

Warning: This college course may be bad for your brain

Every August, families spend tens of thousands of dollars on college tuition, housing, meal plans, and textbooks. They compare degree requirements, graduation rates, and campus amenities. Yet many never ask the most basic consumer question: What is actually inside the classes they are buying?

Colleges already label the price. It’s time to label the product.

Americans would not buy food without reading the ingredients or take medicine without knowing something about the possible side effects. College courses, however, are often sold by title and catalog description alone. Students register for “Introduction to History,” “Ethics,” or even a science requirement with little idea of the intellectual assumptions the professor will bring into the lecture hall.

That information can be consequential. A course may pursue knowledge through evidence and argument. It may also subordinate the subject to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, critical theory, gender ideology, Marxist assumptions, or some other political project.

Ideological activism is not confined to philosophy, literature, or religious studies. It increasingly appears across the curriculum, including in professional programs and “hard” scientific fields.

Parents and students have every right to know whether a professor intends to teach the advertised subject, examine competing arguments, and permit disagreement — or use the classroom to promote a political worldview.

The concern is especially urgent at public universities. Faculty members at state institutions are government employees paid by taxpayers. In Arizona, for example, they undertake obligations to uphold the United States and state constitutions. Taxpayers are therefore entitled to ask whether professors are educating students for citizenship in a constitutional republic or teaching theories fundamentally hostile to it.

That’s why I developed what I call the “Intellectual Nutrition Label.”

The idea is simple. A nutrition label does not order shoppers to buy or reject a product. It tells them what the product contains so they can decide for themselves. The Intellectual Nutrition Label would do the same for college professors and courses.

Using public information — university biographies, curricula vitae, books, articles, interviews, lectures, and course materials — each label would summarize the intellectual content students are likely to encounter. Families should not need graduate training or weeks of research to understand what a professor openly teaches.

Angela Lewis/Bloomberg/Getty Images

A useful label might ask:

Does the professor encourage the pursuit of knowledge or deny that objective truth exists?
Does the course cultivate virtue and self-command or treat desire as its own justification?
Does it direct students toward goodness, beauty, and wisdom or toward resentment, envy, and contempt?
Does the professor teach students how to examine arguments or tell them which political conclusions a decent person must reach?

A label could also rate qualities such as intellectual honesty, knowledge, virtue, beauty, meaningfulness, and piety. A professor might rank highly for candor and scholarship while receiving a low rating for piety because he publicly rejects belief in God. The point would not be to uncover private opinions or publish anonymous accusations. The ratings would summarize what professors already say about themselves and their work.

Owen Anderson

That distinction is essential. An Intellectual Nutrition Label should not become a blacklist, an invitation to harassment, or a substitute for reading a professor’s work. It must rely on verifiable public evidence, represent a professor’s position fairly, and provide enough sourcing for readers to check the judgment for themselves.

The concept has predecessors. David Horowitz’s 2006 book, “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” documented ideological activism in higher education. The David Horowitz Freedom Center continues to track left-wing activists and organizations. Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist sought to alert students to professors who brought political activism into the classroom and briefly maintained a list of recommended faculty.

The Intellectual Nutrition Label would have a narrower purpose: consumer disclosure. It would tell students and parents what intellectual ingredients a professor publicly advertises, in a format ordinary people can understand before registration day.

If a professor teaches that the United States is inherently oppressive, advocates Marxist critical theory, rejects biological sex as fixed, or treats Christianity principally as an instrument of domination, those positions should be documented in the professor’s own publications, biography, lectures, or course materials. An accurate summary of publicly stated beliefs is not censorship.

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

The more serious objection may be that parents and taxpayers were never expected to notice. Academic language often conceals radical assumptions behind specialized vocabulary. Professors can signal their commitments to colleagues while students discover the course’s real content only after enrollment.

That arrangement is losing its protection. Parents increasingly ask what their children are learning. Taxpayers increasingly ask whether public universities are educating students or recruiting them into political movements. Those are legitimate questions, especially when a single semester can cost more than many families earn in months.

Throughout the coming semester, I will publish Intellectual Nutrition Labels evaluating professors from publicly available evidence. The labels will not decide which courses students may take. They will help families make that decision with their eyes open.

Readers can follow the project on my Substack and at intellectualnutritionlabel.com (coming soon).

When families spend tens of thousands of dollars on a college education, they deserve to know who is teaching, what that professor believes, and which intellectual ingredients will be placed before their children. Colleges already label the price. It’s time to label the product.

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Thank you, Sophie Cunningham

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Jim Crow called — it wants its smear back

Warning: This college course may be bad for your brain

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