The terrifying scale of the data center land-grab



From the time of one’s childhood, a person learns a sense of proportion in addition to a sense of right and wrong. Even good things must be measured in the right proportion. It is this lack of proportionality that is missing from advocates of Big Tech seeking to build hyperscale AI data centers — often multiple facilities — in nearly every region of the country.

A recent Washington Post exposé of the data center fight in Archbald, Pennsylvania, exemplifies why the data center agenda is unprecedented, is unsustainable, and makes the entire generative AI concept economically insolvent.

We have never asked so many communities to give so much for abstract and speculative promises of return.

Tucked into the Pocono Mountains northeast of Scranton, Archbald is a mountain town of 7,000. Now, town council leaders have sold out to Big Tech and plan to build six sprawlinghyperscale data centers covering about 14% of the town’s land.

Those campuses would include 51 data warehouses — each about the size of a Walmartsupercenter — including seven buildings encompassing more than 1 million square feet. If all the data centers were built, they would occupy about 2.5 miles of land.

We have simply never done this before. And remember, this is playing out to varying degrees in thousands of places throughout the country. And of course, these campuses offer locals nothing but surveillance and slop relative to what edge computing can do with an infinitesimal footprint.

Over the past month,most members of theseven-person Archbald Borough Council, along with several planning board members, have resigned.

Keep in mind that Big Tech wants to rezone and buy up land that is exponentially larger than anything ever done before. Apologists for the industry within the GOP accuse some of us of being anti-growth and anti-infrastructure, but there is an obvious difference between this and every other infrastructure project: namely, the return on investment.

For a fraction of the space, a gas-powered plant supplies the power to an entire region and is a universal need. These behemoths, on the other hand, require exponentially more land, and rather than offering power, they suck it out — not to mention treating the neighbors to a constant 90 decibel humming. It is all being done on the promise of “artificial general intelligence,” which is nothing more than a scam.

It would be one thing if the scaling of large language models required that one region of our country get turned into a parking lot, such as what is being proposed in Archbald. But they are trying to do this with mega-hyperscale facilities in thousands of places across the country.

To provide some sense of proportion, let’s just take eight of the proposed hyperscales under contract in Indiana. Taken together, these data centers that will power cloud computing for Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon will consume 8,300 MWs of power. That is the usage equivalent of twice the number of households in the entire state.

RELATED: Republicans must reject Big Tech land grabs or start losing elections

Nathan Howard/Washington Post/Getty Images

If not for opposition from locals, Prince William County, which is already saturated with data centers, was going to permit a 2,100-acre, 37-building campus that would have been one of the largest in the world. To put that size in perspective, one could probably build well over 50 gas-powered plants in that footprint.

The Box Elder County, Utah, Commission is about to sign off on a mega data center project on 40,000 acres of private and DOD lands that, when completed, will eventually use nine GWs of power. To put that in perspective, the entire state of Utah uses four GWs.

The sheer unprecedented amount of power these leviathans would need also necessitates an unnatural and inordinate number of transmission lines that will cut through, distort, and disturb private property. For example, Dominion Power is proposing a $1 billion 765 kV high-voltage transmission line project that would span from Lynchburg to Culpeper County, Virginia. The project would impact nine counties with the most powerful lines, standing 135-165 feet tall.

It’s even worse in West Virginia, where the residents are being forced to fund projects that cut up their land with transmission lines to fund the Northern Virginia “Data Center Alley” that is not even in the same state!

Is it any wonder why there is a national bipartisan revolt against the ruling class of both parties on the sheer insanity of this model? We have never asked so many communities to give so much for abstract and speculative promises of return.

It’s more likely that we will be stuck with the surveillance state, a degraded quality of life, and a decrepit internet full of slop than that we will achieve any greatness in human progress from such sacrifice of land, power, and continuity of communities.

Never before have we had a technology that is supposedly so progressive and futuristic, yet its resource-stripping is so cloddish, archaic, and draconian.

Everyone knows the industry lacks the power and money to actually operate thousands of hyperscale data centers. Everyone recognizes that the scaling model of LLMs is unsustainable and is not the future of AI. But will we stop this madness before so much of our land is rezoned and re-owned by a centralized monopoly?

Remember, the land-grab is not the side effect, but the main point.

DEI went into hiding — but remains as dangerous as ever



Between January 2023 and May 2025, Fortune 100 companies reduced their use of the term "DEI" by 98%, according to an analysis by Gravity Research.

Within weeks of President Trump's executive order targeting federal DEI initiatives, major corporations including McDonald's, Walmart, and Target announced they were ending DEI programs.

Conservatives celebrated as one company after another backed away from the acronym that had dominated (and in many cases terrified) corporate America for years.

That celebration was premature.

The goal is no longer to showcase diversity initiatives. The goal is to make those initiatives invisible and permanent.

DEI is far from dead. According to “inclusion consultant” Lily Zheng, its disguise is now called FAIR: Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation. "It's not just a communications rebrand," Zheng recently told Time magazine. "It's not just that we're avoiding the letters DEI and trying to replace it with FAIR. It's that the work itself is evolving."

What Zheng calls "legacy DEI" focused on visible programs like heritage months, diversity training sessions, and demographic targets. These programs were public-facing, easy to identify, and therefore vulnerable to political pressure. The new approach abandons surface visibility in favor of work to change what Zheng calls "systems."

Instead of counting the number of women or people of color in leadership positions, FAIR focuses on changing institutional systems. Instead of heritage celebrations, FAIR embeds what it calls "inclusion" into hiring algorithms, promotion processes, and organizational structures.

The goal is no longer to showcase diversity initiatives. The goal is to make those initiatives invisible and permanent.

Progressives adapted after losing Virginia elections in 2021. Teachers' unions suffered a historic defeat. Rather than retreat, Data for Progress and similar groups spent millions analyzing voter habits and anxieties, then redesigned their campaign around different messaging. By 2023, Democrats won nearly every close Virginia race.

Progressives don't abandon goals when challenged. They simply adapt their methods. Similarly, when conservatives successfully challenged outrageously unconstitutional explicit DEI programs, the machinery wasn't dismantled. It burrowed deeper into institutional foundations, where it became harder to identify and harder to remove.

RELATED: How Republicans have failed to defund sanctuary cities for a generation

J. David Ake/Getty Images

Companies dropped "DEI" and adopted phrases like "universal fairness," "algorithmic bias mitigation," and "inclusion by design." The framing shifted from blatant identity-based preferences to much more subtle process-based interventions.

In my book, "The Political Vise," I describe group identity politics as organizing around grievance rather than achievement. This fact explains why DEI programs can never declare victory and dissolve. If equity were achieved, the machinery would become unnecessary. The system requires permanent grievance to justify permanent intervention.

Legacy DEI focused on representation metrics that could theoretically be satisfied. FAIR abandons those metrics in favor of systemic analysis that can never be completed.

There are always more systems to audit, more processes to redesign, more barriers to identify, and more marginalized people to uplift. A company can cancel a heritage month event, but it cannot skip the algorithmic audit hardwired into its hiring platform.

President Trump's executive order triggered the strategic retreat. The grievance lobby, however, wasn’t giving up without a fight. Its members demanded that companies and public institutions find other ways to keep DEI alive. By January 2026, when Zheng described the FAIR framework to Time magazine, the evolution was complete.

Trump’s March 2026 executive order requiring federal contractors to certify that they do not engage in discriminatory activities based on race or ethnicity suggests the Trump administration recognizes the evasion.

The order notes that "some entities continue to engage in DEI activities and often attempt to conceal their efforts." But just prohibiting "disparate treatment based on race or ethnicity" can't root out systems-based approaches that claim to focus on universal fairness while pursuing the same demographic outcomes through different methods.

RELATED: Trump’s antitrust policy is working for everyday Americans

Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images

DEI under any name serves the larger goal of institutionalizing learned helplessness. It teaches that your struggles result from discriminatory systems rather than personal choices, that flourishing depends more on institutional intervention than individual effort. Worst of all, it teaches dependence. And a lot of progressives are deeply invested in maintaining that dependence.

Eliminating DEI departments and scrubbing corporate websites of diversity language are satisfying, but not final a victory, not when the actual work of grievance culture continues under different names.

With the grievance machinery adopting ever more subtle disguises, the fight to defend merit requires more shrewdness and patience than ever before. We must ask direct questions.

When companies rebrand DEI programs as "universal fairness" initiatives, we must demand to see the metrics. When they tout "algorithmic bias audits," ask what disparities trigger intervention — and what outcomes those interventions produce.

The left hid the machinery underground because the surface became too costly to defend. It is critically important to drag DEI back into the light and destroy it once and for all.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.

When the caregiver needs care



I don’t get sick days, so the test results were posted to my chart while I was sitting in my office. I opened them before I ever saw the doctor.

I knew what I was looking at, but I checked it again. After researching what I already suspected, I sat there for a moment. The first thought came and went, then the one that remained: What about Gracie?

For 40 years, I have been my wife’s caregiver. After a catastrophic car wreck at age 17, doctors didn’t expect her to survive the night. No one imagined she would marry, have children, and live to see grandchildren.

Trusting Him does not remove the burden, but it defines how I can carry it.

But she did. What didn’t change was the crises.

When the surgery count approaches 100, a crisis is no longer an interruption. It becomes the environment. For 40 years, it has never plateaued.

The pressure doesn’t arrive once a month in tidy episodes. Sometimes it arrives daily. You live on alert, always vigilant, always calculating what could go wrong next. Choking. Seizures. Code blue. Falls. Wound care. Non-responsive. I’ve seen it all. This is the terrain we live in.

Our life runs on a system most people never see and few could imagine. Meals, medications, transfers, safety, transportation, finances, advocacy. I carry all of it. I speak when she can’t. I’m there when she needs something as simple as a glass of water.

It’s a highly specialized operation with no backup, no redundancy, and no margin for error. And like millions of caregivers across this country, I am the one running it.

Two days after I received my test results, sitting in the exam room, the doctor asked if I had any questions. I had the usual, plus two more: How much care will I need afterward? And how much care will I still be able to provide?

That’s how close this is.

RELATED: Life can be hard, but don't forget to laugh

Liudmyla Musiichuk/Getty Images

So when cancer enters the picture, the question isn’t so much about survival as collapse. If I go down, what happens to her?

That’s not fear; it’s just math.

We spend a great deal of time arguing about who is fit to lead this country. But across this country, there are millions of people quietly carrying responsibilities that would break most of the people we argue about.

Those responsibilities don’t come with cameras or talking, and they have no margin for error. There is just the weight of responsibility.

And when something like cancer enters that equation, the question isn’t political, but structural. What actually holds up when the person holding everything together can’t?

This diagnosis was caught early. That gives me time to deal with it.

Caregivers are told to take care of themselves. I have said that for years, and I meant it. But this case is no longer maintenance. It requires intervention, recovery, and being pulled away from the work. And that interrupts and affects everything: Health. Emotions. Lifestyle. Profession. Money. Endurance. Nothing is left untouched.

Spell that out, and it says what so many caregivers struggle to say: Sometimes we need help.

I need the system to hold while I step away long enough to deal with this current issue, and that means accepting care that won’t be done the way I would do it. It means training others and paying for help. It means absorbing the reality that things will go wrong, as they inevitably do.

But this is where conviction steps in. My wife has a Savior, and I am not that Savior.

But still, breakfast has to be made and the laundry has to be done. Trusting Him does not remove the burden, but it defines how I can carry it.

RELATED: Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest challenge of all

Francescoch/Getty Images

The question I have asked for years now returns to me: Christian, what do you believe?

If I believe what I say I do, then what is required of me in this moment? We sing hymns about trusting God, and times like this are when that trust is tested.

Years ago, a reporter asked me, “What would Jesus do as a caregiver?”

I don’t know what He would do. I know what He did do. From the cross, He looked at His mother and entrusted her to John.

Over the years, I have trusted surgeons I barely knew to take my wife into a room and do what I could not. I have signed the papers, handed her over, and waited. Not because I understood everything they were doing, but because I trusted that they did.

I trust surgeons I barely know. How much more can I trust the Savior whom I do?

In His hands, what looks severe is not careless. It is precise and purposeful.

I don’t get to step out of this, but I am not standing in it alone. So I take the next step.

How Jewish summer camp made me distrust Israeli propaganda



Like most American Jewish kids, I went to a Jewish summer camp. It was a good time: archery, canoeing, crafts, and a first kiss. I forget how many years I went. It was two or three summers in a row, I think.

Aside from the standard Jewish cultural stuff, such as singing, dancing, and Jewish-themed crafting, we did some historical role-playing.

The more they try to incite panic, the more suspicious you should be.

One of these role-playing exercises was when we had to “Escape the Nazis.” The camp counselors played the Nazis, while the kids played European Jews. We had to sneak around to reach the safe area without getting caught.

Looking back with the perspective of a parent, I don’t see the wisdom of this sort of re-enactment. I feel that just learning about the Holocaust was valuable enough. But we all had fun with it, and I don’t think it caused any harm.

But one night, they crossed the line.

In the early morning hours, the camp counselors woke us up. They said it was an emergency and gathered us in the dining hall. One of the lead counselors told us that the Arabs had gotten a nuclear weapon and destroyed Israel.

They told us everyone was dead — vaporized and turned to ash, like the Jews at Auschwitz.

Needless to say, we were pretty freaked out. Some of the kids — the kids who had family in Israel — were crying and wailing, screaming things like, “But what about Auntie Rachel??”

But the counselor calmed us down, and we all stood in a circle, held hands, said prayers, and sang some songs.

But then ... they told us (haha) that Israel did not get destroyed tonight and most of the Jews in the world did not, in fact, get vaporized, but it was important to remember that this was something that could happen, and that's why we — as Jews — need to remain hypervigilant about the people who hate us.

Then they put us back to bed. Good night, kids!

Needless to say, this was pretty traumatizing. Even today, when I see the words "Arab" and "nuclear" in the same sentence, that old anxiety comes roaring back.

However, that old anxiety is immediately followed by anger and resentment over what they did to us. Because this is what brainwashing is.

In the 1980s, when I was a kid at summer camp, no Arab state was even close to getting a bomb. And no Arab state is close now.

In recent memory, I have been told numerous times by authoritative sources that Iran is “two weeks away from a bomb!” so we must “act now!” But several years have gone by, and it doesn’t seem like Iran has a bomb yet.

For what it’s worth, I was also told — by the same authoritative sources — that we needed to remain in our home for “two weeks to stop the spread.” So I’m starting to think “two weeks” is a standard BS timeline. Just like when my wife says she’ll be home in “five minutes.”

And yes, some Arab states had (and have) secret weapons programs. But every competently governed country in the world (including Israel) has a secret weapons program, because they would be stupid not to have a secret weapons program.

But from a rational standpoint, Israel was safe that night. At least as safe as it can be, considering that it is surrounded by hostile neighbors who would, in fact, like to destroy it.

So yes, the threat to Israel is a very real thing. Any Israeli will tell you this. But it’s a complicated issue. Anyone who has delved into the geopolitics of the Middle East knows that it is a complicated issue.

The messy Middle East

For what it’s worth, I like Israel. I want to see Israel and the people who live there thrive. And Israeli children shouldn’t have to hide in bomb shelters while Iranian ballistic missiles are bombarding their cities. And they certainly shouldn’t be slaughtered or kidnapped like they were on October 7. Just like I don’t think anyone should be slaughtered or kidnapped.

Sometimes force is needed — as I believe it was in Gaza — but sometimes not. And often, it is just plain messy.

I believe we can calmly and rationally parse these complex issues. But the point of waking us up in the middle of the night was to remove calm rationality from the calculation and replace it with visceral fear.

They tried to break our little brains. And it probably worked on most of the kids.

Looking back, I suspect there were complaints from parents, because I don’t recall this happening in subsequent years. But my revulsion remains.

This was a counterproductive way to educate us about very real issues. Instead of illuminating the very real danger of anti-Semitism, the experience gave me a deep skepticism of Zionist propaganda and a distrust of Jewish-American cultural institutions.

Today, over 35 years later, I’m a fairly secular Jew. And while we celebrate holidays at home, I have never let my kids set foot inside a synagogue or Jewish Community Center.

Now, I’m sure most people in these institutions are, in fact, earnest and kind and would never intentionally traumatize a child. But the risk remains.

Because there are self-righteous zealots in this world — and it’s not just limited to Jews. They tend to congregate wherever there’s some sort of political cause. Environmentalists, socialists, trans/gay activists — they’re everywhere.

These people are dangerous, and I don’t want them anywhere near my children.

Many years later — long after summer camp, when I was a professional adult — I met a woman at a party. It turned out that she worked for the parent organization of my childhood summer camp.

I told her I went to one of her camps, as did she, and we had a nice conversation.

Then she asked me if I wanted to “get involved,” which really meant “would you like to donate?” I politely declined, and she asked me why.

So I told her. I told her what happened that night in the dining hall, that I don’t approve of those methods, that it’s counterproductive, and that I would hate for this to happen to other children.

She turned white. Just stark white.

Because I had broached a topic that was not to be discussed, she knew this had happened before. But it wasn’t something to be discussed. Awkward and sheepish, she stammered, “Uh, no. We don't do 'Experiential Learning' any more."

The thing they did to us had a name. It was called "Experiential Learning," and it’s quite the euphemism. I’m sure there are many research papers on the topic. But I'll take her at her word. Maybe, as she said, they don't do "Experiential Learning" any more.

They probably don't do it because those types — the self-righteous zealots — found something better. They discovered the media hoax.

Media malcontents

I’ve been around media for most of my adult life, and I knew this sort of thing happened, but the recent federal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center laid it bare.

It would seem, like a shady tire repair shop scattering nails on the street to cause flats, that the SPLC was allegedly paying neo-Nazis, the KKK, and other hate groups to hold rallies and commit crimes to raise funds and justify the SPLC’s mission of combatting “hate.”

Among other things, the SPLC allegedly funded the organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

How many brains were broken by a bunch of chuds carrying tiki torches in Charlottesville? Was it in the hundreds of millions? More?

It almost broke my brain. Because I watched the mainstream media coverage, and what I saw was blood in the streets. American blood. In American streets.

And I don’t like blood in the streets. Just like I don’t like Israeli blood in Israeli streets. Just like I don’t like to see any blood in any street.

But something didn’t add up. Something was off. Because Charlottesville was portrayed in the media as a morality play, as a simple story of good vs evil. But, as with Middle East geopolitics, nothing is that simple.

The so-called “organizers,” who were cast as the villains, were too cartoonish. There was something fake. The tone was off. It was inauthentic.

Just like the camp counselors were inauthentic that night in the dining hall.

I think about Charlottesville, Russiagate, January 6, COVID, and all the other media hoaxes. It’s all the same thing — with the same pathology. The camp counselors are all grown up now, but the self-righteous zealotry remains — as does their goal. They want you to feel fear. And they don’t want you to think for yourself.

So when you see something in the media that makes you afraid, stop and think. Not that you shouldn’t be concerned, but think it through first. Think about who’s trying to manipulate you and why.

The more they try to incite panic, the more suspicious you should be. Because what you’re probably seeing is just "Experiential Learning" for the rest of us. And it’s best to ignore it.

A version of this article was originally published as an X post.

The question IVF doesn't answer



Whenever someone criticizes in vitro fertilization, the same response tends to come quickly: pictures of smiling toddlers, grateful parents, and testimonies from couples who spent years praying for a child.

For many people, that response feels decisive. How can something that produced such a beautiful little boy or girl be spoken of as morally troubling or wrong?

The public image of IVF — one happy baby — hides an unseen reality: other babies who never made it out of the laboratory.

On the surface, that reaction makes sense. Infertility can be a deep heartache. It is the repeated pain of empty nurseries, unanswered prayers, and hopes that seem to die month after month. People who have walked through that kind of grief are understandably drawn toward anything that promises relief.

My wife and I understand that heartache more than we wish we do.

We have lost multiple children through miscarriage. We have walked through a decade of infertility. We know what it is to ask God for life and hear silence. We understand the deep inward pull toward anything that might finally bring hope into reality.

This conversation is difficult. No decent person wants to speak carelessly into someone else’s suffering.

But moral questions do not disappear because suffering is involved. Pain can explain why a person reaches for something, but it cannot, by itself, make the solution righteous.

That is where the public conversation about IVF has gone extremely wrong.

RELATED: IVF CEO says conceiving naturally is for those with 'genetic privilege'

Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile/Getty Images

IVF is almost always presented to Americans as a compassionate medical service. The happy nursery photos become the public face of the debate, and because those photos are emotionally powerful, very few people ever stop to ask what the IVF process itself actually entails.

Modern IVF does not only involve the creation of one embryonic child who is then implanted in the womb; it involves the creation of several embryonic children at once.

Some are chosen for transfer, some fail in the process and are discarded, and some are intentionally destroyed during testing. And more than a million embryonic children are now estimated to remain frozen in cryogenic storage facilities across the United States, suspended indefinitely because they were the extras in someone's attempt to have a baby.

That means the public image of IVF — one happy baby — hides an unseen reality: other babies who never made it out of the laboratory.

This is not a rare malfunction of an otherwise innocent process. In 2024, when Alabama courts recognized frozen embryos destroyed at a fertility clinic as children under wrongful death law, the fertility industry immediately panicked, and lawmakers rushed to shield IVF providers from liability.

The death of embryonic children is not an unusual accident hovering at the edges of IVF. It is the standard practice.

We should be willing to say clearly what that means.

When embryonic children are intentionally destroyed because they are unwanted or medically inconvenient, that is murder. When embryonic children are frozen indefinitely because they were not selected, that is not a harmless pause in treatment. It is human beings placed in suspended imprisonment.

At this point, defenders of IVF usually return to the same emotional appeal: “Yes, but look at the children it has produced.” Some will even say, “Look at my child.”

And this is where the deepest confusion is found. Because the children produced through IVF are not the issue under dispute. Of course those children bear the image of God. Of course they are worthy of every ounce of love their parents can give them.

RELATED: Fertility doctors are bullying women into IVF

Blaze Media

Their value is not diminished in the slightest by the means of their conception. But the value of the child is not the same thing as the morality of the process. We understand this distinction instinctively in other tragic circumstances.

A child conceived in rape is no less human because of the violence surrounding his conception. His life may be full of joy, dignity, and meaning. And he certainly has the image of God stamped upon him.

Yet no one would argue that the beauty of that child makes rape morally acceptable, because we know that a precious child does not retroactively justify wicked circumstances.

That same principle must be applied to IVF.

Yes, IVF has produced children who are deeply loved, but those children do not morally absolve a process that routinely murders some embryonic children, freezes others, and treats human life as laboratory surplus in order to obtain a successful outcome.

In fact, those surviving children prove the very point many people are trying to avoid.

If the child in the nursery photo is an image-bearer now, then the embryonic siblings destroyed, discarded, or frozen in the same process were image-bearers then.

The question is not whether children conceived through IVF have value. The question is whether the existence of those loved children gives us permission to ignore the murdered and imprisoned children involved in producing them.

A good gift does not justify an evil method. And gratitude for one surviving child cannot erase the moral guilt of the children that modern fertility medicine leaves frozen, discarded, and dead.

The case for denaturalization



If the United States is serious about giving citizenship to worthy immigrants, we also need to be serious about revoking it from the unworthy.

More than 800,000 immigrants became American citizens in FY2024, and a comparable number are expected in FY2025. There are more than 25 million naturalized American citizens — about half the foreign-born population. I welcome those who followed the rules and took the Oath of Allegiance in good faith.

But many didn’t. That’s where denaturalization comes in.

Becoming an American citizen is a privilege, not a right.

The question of revoking citizenship from immigrants is part of a broader debate about what membership in our national community means — a debate made especially urgent by the waves of mass immigration the political class has allowed into our country over the past 50 years.

A vigorous, ongoing, and unapologetic commitment to denaturalization is an important part of the effort to restore integrity to U.S. citizenship. It is not about restricting citizenship gratuitously, but about demonstrating that becoming an American citizen is a privilege, not a right.

Historically, the number of people denaturalized has been quite low. From 1990 until the first Trump administration, fewer than a dozen immigrants a year on average lost their citizenship through a civil or criminal court process.

The most notable targets were not ordinary fraudsters but war criminals, terrorists, and human rights violators who lied on their applications.

The focus broadened in the first Trump term. The Justice Department created a unit devoted to investigating and litigating denaturalization cases, and the number of cases grew to around 40 per year.

An increase in denaturalizations actually first started under Obama due to technological advancements, and the effort has been stepped up even further in Trump’s second term.

Last year, the Justice Department issued a memo promising, among other things, that “the Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence.” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the part of the Department of Homeland Security that handles such matters, has set a target of referring 100 to 200 possible cases per month to the Justice Department.

The immigration game

Our relatively easy citizenship process is generally a good thing. Whether the number of newcomers each year is high or low, the goal for admitting foreigners should be their full absorption into American society.

This is not the way citizenship is handled in, say, the Persian Gulf states, where large foreign majorities are not part of the political community and never can be. In a republic like ours, however, the chief goal of immigration must be to turn newcomers into Americans.

Though it also involves a lot of paperwork, becoming a citizen is not like getting a driver’s license or opening a bank account. A better analogy is that the immigrant is “marrying” America, or being “adopted” by her. Such an arrangement should not be entered into lightly, but once consecrated, it should not be dissolved lightly.

If the candidate for citizenship lied or was never eligible for naturalization to begin with, the relationship must be annulled. A federal court ruling on the issue didn’t use the metaphor of annulment, but the parallel is clear:

Setting aside naturalization for failure to comply with the particular prerequisites to the acquisition of citizenship is not a punishment; it merely represents an undoing of that which should not have been done in the first place.
Even now, the number of denaturalizations is lower than you might think, given how pervasive fraud is in every corner of our immigration system


Under current law, the reasons for denaturalization must predate the acquisition of citizenship rather than be based solely on conduct after the swearing-in ceremony, however repellent that conduct might be.

Conduct after naturalization can be considered, but only as evidence that the applicant was lying when he took the oath of citizenship. For instance, if you became a Nazi or communist shortly after naturalization, you were likely lying when you swore to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

But even during World War II, the Supreme Court held the government to such a high standard of proof that the Justice Department found it difficult to denaturalize Nazis. In response, Congress enacted a provision that affiliation with a group that would have precluded naturalization within five years of becoming a citizen is prima facie evidence that the person was not attached to the principles of the Constitution when he took the oath.

This provision has never been challenged in court, mainly because it has seldom, if ever, been used. But it might end up in court soon if certain congressional proposals succeed.

For instance, in response to the revelations of widespread fraud by Somali-born naturalized citizens, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) introduced the SCAM Act to facilitate denaturalization. The bill would expand the five-year window to 10 years and widen the offenses that could lead to denaturalization.

Within 10 years after taking the oath, if the new citizen joins a foreign terrorist organization, defrauds the government, or commits an aggravated felony or an espionage offense, those facts would be considered prima facie evidence that at the time of taking the oath, the person was not of good moral character, was not attached to the principles of the Constitution, and was not well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States — all bars to citizenship.

In other words, commission of the crimes would be evidence that offenders were never eligible for citizenship in the first place, so their acquisition of citizenship would be considered void.

One way to minimize the issue of denaturalization is to do a better job at the front end and not approve applications from unworthy people. To this end, USCIS has resumed neighborhood investigations into certain applicants, “reviewing their residency, moral character, loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, and commitment to the nation’s well-being.”

This is obviously labor-intensive, but it’s better to reject the citizenship applications of liars, fraudsters, and criminals than to try to denaturalize them after the fact.

RELATED: The homicidal empathy of the left’s immigration policies

John Moore/Getty Images

Taking citizenship seriously

Increased focus on denaturalization is but one front in the broader campaign to restore the integrity of American citizenship. President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order — declaring that children born to illegal aliens, tourists, foreign students, and other nonresidents should not be citizens — was recently argued before the Supreme Court, which is expected to issue its ruling this summer.

The administration is also moving forward on an initiative to restrict birth tourism — where pregnant women enter on visitor visas specifically so their children will obtain automatic U.S. citizenship. This is designed to put some teeth in a regulation issued during the first Trump term requiring consular officers to deny visas to pregnant women whose primary purpose in coming to the U.S. is to obtain citizenship for their child.

Other changes necessary to restore the meaning of citizenship have not received the same attention. Foreign-language ballots, for instance, are an absurdity. Why even require candidates for citizenship to pass an English-language test if the core sacrament of our civic religion can be conducted in Korean, Spanish, or Armenian?

New citizens swear to “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” But that part of the oath is legally meaningless since the Supreme Court in the Afroyim decision ruled that taking away someone’s citizenship for expressions of dual citizenship was unconstitutional.

While restoring the value of citizenship is not an issue confined to immigration, mass immigration exacerbates it in every way. Denaturalization would simply not be as pressing an issue if annual legal immigration were dramatically reduced. A smaller flow of new immigrants, and the consequent reduction in the number of applicants for citizenship, would reduce the number of mistakes and thus the need for denaturalizations.

As with almost every concern regarding immigration, part of the answer is always less, please.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.

The combination that can renew America’s defense industry



Millions over budget and years behind schedule have become defining features of the U.S. defense industrial base, and this dysfunction is colliding with a radically different character of war.

Asymmetric, robotic, and growingly autonomous systems are tactics being employed today by our adversaries. The shift in global security erodes the traditional advantages of scale, time, and mass that America’s defense industrial base was designed to deliver.

It also exposes an acquisition system that cannot move at the speed of relevance.

The fusion of established and startup contractors is the best strategic framework to reshore American manufacturing and reinvigorate our nation’s defense industrial base.

Rewiring these trends will depend on a new posture — one that should be defined by partnerships that marry the scale and sustainment power of established manufacturers with the speed and rapid system iteration of smaller but highly capable companies.

The influx of venture capital into defense technology has given rise to bold, disruptive upstarts that are leveraging agile, product-led engineering, operator-centric design, and best practices from the commercial ecosystem.

New, smaller companies like Palantir and Anduril rapidly iterate their systems and build breakthrough technologies on their dime — well before the U.S. government’s lengthy requirement-writing process plays out.

At the same time, established manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have reignited their innovation arms and reprioritized significant resources to meet the modern needs of the Department of War.

Innovation without scale is as risky as the other way around. That’s why the fusion of established and startup contractors is the best strategic framework to reshore American manufacturing and reinvigorate our nation’s defense industrial base. When they are brought together, this business model creates real results.

General Dynamics Land Systems and Epirus, for example, have partnered to develop two mobile counter-UAS systems for short-range air defense and critical asset protection. Lockheed Martin and Hadrian have inked an agreement to increase production of critical parts for missile systems. Northrop Grumman has invested in Firefly Aerospace to accelerate production of Firefly's launch vehicle. The list goes on.

These partnerships represent the epitome of American industrial excellence. Importantly, they also align with Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Warfighting Acquisition System by prioritizing the best practices from commercial technology development, AI integration into military technology, cloud-based architectures and system modularity, scalability, and software-driven upgradability.

Pairing establishment know-how and production capacity with startup integration cycles supports the War Department’s vision for rebuilding our military and is a tangible step the industry can take — and is taking today — to shorten the time between prototype development and operational deployment.

RELATED: The US military needs to adapt to modern warfare

USAF/Getty Images

America’s competitive edge always has come from partnerships: between industry and government, between commercial and defense innovation bases, and between engineers and operators. The next era of defense technology development demands the same alignment.

Established contractors and newer startups are not competitors in this race, and there is no need for them to offer competing visions for the future of defense. On the contrary, they share a mission as the co-architects of deterrence.

When America’s established defense contractors and new, cutting-edge startups work together, scale meets speed and innovation meets integration.

This is the industrial base the moment demands and the one we should focus on building together.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

Our election security is in dire need of an upgrade



On April 25, President Trump renewed his call to end the Senate filibuster in connection with the SAVE America Act, warning in a post on Truth Social that failure to move the legislation through the upper chamber would be a disastrous political mistake for Republicans.

He is right about the stakes.

The SAVE America Act is the most important election reform bill in a generation. For those concerned about election integrity, the bill addresses a serious weakness in America’s voting system: In numerous states, noncitizens can illegally register to vote with alarming ease, while state officials often lack the tools needed to determine how widespread the problem is.

The current rules make it easy for noncitizens and citizens alike to illegally register to vote.

Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. The trouble is that the law contains far too few meaningful safeguards to make sure that rule is actually followed.

Across more than 40 states, voter registration standards are so weak that election officials often have no reliable way to determine whether a person seeking to register is, in fact, an American citizen.

Oregon is a useful example. On the state’s voter registration form, applicants are given three broad options for proving identity. They may provide a state-issued ID such as a driver’s license, the last four digits of a Social Security number, or one item from a lengthy list of other accepted documents.

That system is deeply flawed. In 19 states, Oregon among them, illegal immigrants may obtain a driver’s license or another form of driving authorization. As a result, possession of a driver’s license does not establish citizenship. At most, it might help officials later identify a questionable registration if the state conducts a serious review of its voter rolls.

But an applicant does not even have to rely on a state ID. A person can choose instead to submit the last four digits of a Social Security number.

At first glance, that might appear to be a strong barrier, since illegal immigrants are not lawfully issued Social Security numbers. But that assumption ignores a serious and long-running problem: Many illegal immigrants have obtained and used Social Security numbers, and millions more Social Security numbers have been stolen and made available on the dark web.

RELATED: How Republicans have failed to defund sanctuary cities for a generation

J. David Ake/Getty Images

Earlier this year, researchers released a report uncovering a large illegal online database that included “2.7 billion records with Social Security numbers.”

It’s hard to tell how many of the records involved the same Social Security number or a false number, but the total number of records is so high that it’s possible that this one report shows that the vast majority of Americans have already had their Social Security number illegally taken.

The weaknesses in the system go even further than SSNs. People can also register without submitting either a state ID or a Social Security number. They can instead rely on various substitute documents, none of which establish that the applicant is a U.S. citizen.

Oregon again shows how reckless these rules can be. Its voter registration form permits applicants to use non-government photo identification. It also allows documents such as a paycheck stub, utility bill, or bank statement.

Under these rules, a person with a mailing address and a cable or gas bill could be placed on the voter rolls without ever having to provide a reliable form of identification.

Pretending these rules ensure elections are secure is nothing short of delusional. The current rules make it easy for noncitizens and citizens alike to illegally register to vote.

For example, in many states, there are few safeguards to stop a parent from stealing the identity of his or her adult child to cast a second ballot. All the parent would need to register in the name of a child is the last four digits of his or her Social Security number, information that nearly all parents have.

Although voter registration rules are dangerously weak in much of the country, the protections that exist at the ballot box differ widely from state to state. In places with strong voter ID requirements and widespread in-person voting, it is much harder for noncitizens and citizen identity thieves to cast ballots. But many states have failed to adopt those basic safeguards.

RELATED: Red states are not waiting for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act

Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Twenty-four states require voters to present photo identification when voting in person, while 12 additional states require some form of identification but do not require that the ID include a photo.

Fourteen states impose no voter ID requirement for most voters. That list includes large states with millions of voters, such as California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

The danger is compounded by the rapid expansion of mail-in voting. Many states now permit no-excuse mail-in ballots, and eight states run their elections entirely by mail.

Furthermore, there is evidence that suggests the problem could be far greater than most are willing to admit. A 2023 survey by the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports found that more than 1 in 4 2020 mail-in voters admitted to engaging in at least one activity that likely constitutes a violation of election law.

Similarly, in 2024, Heartland and Rasmussen conducted another survey that showed 28% of likely voters said they would be willing to engage in at least one form of illegal voting activity to help their preferred candidate win that year’s presidential election.

The facts are disturbing and clear: Many Americans are willing to commit voter fraud, and not nearly enough protections are currently in place to prevent them from doing so.

The SAVE America Act would finally make America’s elections safe and secure again, but only if Republicans in Congress stop making excuses and use the power voters gave them to pass it.

The pipeline from university radical to would-be assassin



Last weekend delivered yet another grim headline: political violence, an attempted presidential assassination, once again treated as a mystery by the left.

The alleged perpetrator, we are told, was not some fringe drifter living off the grid, but an award-winning teacher. This is a detail that would have seemed ironic a generation ago, but now seems almost predictable.

Reports indicate that the individual had a record of professional accolades and community involvement, the sort of résumé typically invoked to prove the impact of leftist ideologies.

If one wishes to understand what is happening to our country, there is no need to search for obscure explanations.

Alongside that résumé, there are early indications of ideological commitments and public expressions that fit comfortably within the increasingly militant strain of contemporary progressive activism and most university classrooms.

After such events, the public conversation follows a well-worn script. We are told this is an isolated incident. We are urged not to “politicize.” And yet, the same voices that warn against generalization in this context have no hesitation attributing sweeping moral guilt to entire categories when it suits the prevailing orthodoxy.

One is tempted to ask: How often must this pattern repeat before we permit ourselves the unfashionable act of noticing it?

It’s as if there are some mysterious places we send young adults to be indoctrinated to hate their country, hate their bodies, and hate God. The only thing worse is if we are footing the bill for tuition.

So let us ask, with due sobriety: Are there institutions in our country where young minds are being shaped, not merely to critique, but to despise?

Now that you mention it, yes, there are.

The university as moral re-education center

As a Christian and conservative professor, I have spent years calling attention to what occurs inside our universities.

Earlier this month, my college at Arizona State University formally adopted a Native American land acknowledgment as official policy.

These statements are often presented as benign gestures of historical awareness, but their actual function is quite different: They are meant to problematize the legitimacy of American land ownership and to “expose” what are called “structures of oppression.”

In practice, this language is not descriptive but rather accusatory. It does not invite inquiry; it prescribes judgment.

At the same time, faculty are encouraged to “decolonize” their curricula. That term, which sounds like a meaningless academic exercise, carries a very specific ideological payload. It teaches that Western civilization, particularly the United States, is not merely flawed but fundamentally illegitimate, built upon “white supremacy” and sustained by “structural violence.”

And if a system is fundamentally illegitimate, what follows?

Historically speaking, one does not reform such systems. One dismantles them. And so you find ASU professors calling for armed resistance to the United States.

From theory to rhetoric to action

This is not some abstract speculation. It is a demonstrable reality.

Across the country, we have seen:

  • Professors at American institutions openly defending or rationalizing political violence as a form of “resistance.” If intersectionality calls you “oppressed,” it’s fine to be violent.
  • University departments issuing statements framing America as inherently oppressive while praising movements aimed at its transformation.
  • K-12 educators using classroom time to advance ideological positions that portray students’ own nation, heritage, and even biological identity as sources of moral guilt.

Consider the broader pattern:

  • At Harvard and Columbia, student groups and faculty responses to recent global conflicts have included rhetoric that many Americans would recognize as moral inversion, where acts of violence are reframed as justified expressions of resistance.
  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across major universities and corporations routinely instruct participants to view American history through a lens of oppression, often discouraging dissent as a form of harm.
  • “Decolonization” and the anti-settler, anti-whiteness initiatives increasingly reject the very idea of objective truth, reason, and even science, casting them as instruments of power and white supremacy.

One begins to see the progression:

Step 1: Teach the youth that America and Christianity are evil.
Step 2: Teach that dismantling them is justice.
Step 3: Act surprised when someone takes the final step.
Step 4: Cash your state employee checks.

What of oversight?

All of this brings us to a question that is at once practical and unavoidable: Where are the Arizona Board of Regents and similar institutions in other states?

Is it merely a ceremonial body, an occasion for polite applause and catered wine and cheese receptions, or does it exist to provide actual oversight of the institutions entrusted to it?

Public universities are not private salons for ideological experimentation. They are taxpayer-supported institutions with a mandate to educate, not indoctrinate; to pursue truth, not enforce orthodoxy.

In Arizona, professors sign an employee contract agreeing not to undermine the Constitution. And yet, when faculty openly promote ideas that undermine the constitutional order they are employed under, the response is silence or, worse, complicity.

Meanwhile, those who raise concerns find themselves subject to scrutiny, marginalization, and, in some cases, professional penalty.

RELATED: The anti-Christian myth of First Amendment 'neutrality'

Zimmytws/Getty Images

What are we paying for?

American families send their children to universities like ASU at considerable cost. It is easily tens of thousands of dollars per year and sometimes far more when all expenses are counted and taxes are factored in.

What do they expect in return? An education in truth. Training in reason. Preparation for responsible citizenship. Maybe even a little wisdom and fear of God.

But that is not what they get. Instead, their kids receive instruction in grievance. Classes about envy and training to hate your neighbor. Formation in ideological hostility. Encouragement to view their own country, their own traditions, even their own families as objects of suspicion or contempt.

And occasionally, as we are now forced to confront, something worse: calls for violent resistance by professors on the state tax dime.

A modest proposal

If one wishes to understand what is happening to our country, there is no need to search for obscure explanations.

It is happening, in large measure, in our universities. And it is paid for by taxes in the very country these professors hate so much. Parents don’t know how bad it is and continue to send their children, paying tuition, into these ideological training camps.

And — this is the uncomfortable part — we don’t stop paying for it. It’s much worse than you think, and it is time to say enough is enough. No more state checks for those who hate America. They are free to start their own private university and teach their hatred there.

I have documented these trends extensively. I will continue to do so. If you would like to keep updated on what goes on within our universities, you can subscribe to my Substack as I report from within the belly of what some call the Devil’s University.

If you find yourself in conversation with someone who asks, in genuine bewilderment, “What is happening to America?” you might offer a simple reply: “Look at the institutions shaping the next generation.”

The homicidal empathy of the left’s immigration policies



Fairfax, Virginia, has had four homicides so far in 2026. Three out of the four were committed by illegal immigrants.

One, the case of Abdul Jalloh, underlines everything wrong with the approach the left has taken to illegal immigration. Jalloh, who hails from Sierra Leone, illegally entered the United States in 2012 and proceeded to commit dozens of crimes, including assault, rape, and theft.

Eventually, he was caught by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and locked up for roughly two years while awaiting deportation. But in 2020, a judge ruled he could not be deported to his home country. He was free to go, as ICE could not find someone willing to take him.

It is a recognition that Aztec-style sacrifice of the innocent is not necessary to make the rain fall that has empowered nationalists across the West.

Six years later, he killed Stephanie Minter, a mom waiting at a bus stop.

In the aftermath, Minter’s family and Republicans turned their attention to Fairfax County’s District Attorney Steve Descano for having refused to work with ICE and for his extraordinarily light sentences for illegal immigrants, with many highlighting his statement, “If two people commit the same crime, but only one’s punishment includes deportation, that’s a perversion of justice.”

Descano has been called to testify in front of Congress in mid-May to explain his policies. During his hearing, a particular term may be mentioned: suicidal empathy.

Suicidal empathy is a term, popularized by Dr. Gad Saad, commonly used by the Western right as a catch-all for the liberal idea that the importation of potentially dangerous immigrants is a good thing because not doing so would be cruel.

If you do not support mass immigration, legal or otherwise, the thinking goes, you don’t have a heart.

Politicians have been espousing this sentiment for a long time. In 2014, Jeb Bush famously called illegal immigration “an act of love.”

This way of thinking has also dominated Western establishments for some time, even though concerns were obvious. Right from the start of the migration crisis in 2015, new arrivals were causing trouble. Assaults, rapes, and murders that would never have occurred started happening with frightening regularity. Now 11 years later, migrant rape stories have become a part of life there.

And yet, establishments resist any sort of mass deportation because the countries from which they come are “unsafe,” and it would be inhumane to send them there.

Conservatives do themselves and their societies a disservice by portraying this supposed empathy as “suicidal.” It’s not: It’s homicidal. “Suicidal empathy” invokes self-sacrifice. The people are so empathetic that they are willing to risk their lives — the chance that invading migrants may hurt or kill them — or destroy their society.

But this is not really true, as your average pro-migrant liberal is likely not risking his or her life. While migrants rape and kill at startlingly high rates — as just one example, in 2023, foreigners committed 100% of “serious sexual crimes” in Frankfurt, Germany — the odds of any liberal voter being the person who is targeted is relatively low.

RELATED: My friend survived the Global War on Terror. Leftist immigration policies got him killed.

Kendall Warner/The Virginian-Pilot/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

For example, rape in England and Wales was once consistently low. But right when mass migration happened, it skyrocketed, rising over 300%. In 2024, non-German suspects committed nearly 40% of all rapes, over 4,430 — roughly 12 women a day. But because there are millions of English and German women, the odds of any single person being attacked is small.

However, it is going to happen to someone. Those who oppose mass deportations understand this on some level. But they dismiss its importance, as they believe it is the only way for society to function.

Conservatives often misunderstand where this thinking comes from, chalking it up to a secret plot by a combination of George Soros, his son, and other Antifa funders. To be clear, these networks exist. But they are not why your average liberal is OK with mass rape and murder having arrived on their shores.

To understand why, one must look to history. Specifically, the Aztecs.

The Aztecs sacrificed tens of thousands of people, often cutting the hearts out of still-living individuals. This was done to please the gods and to ensure everything continued as necessary. Children, burned alive, were first tortured so that they would cry, as their tears were believed to satiate the needs of the rain god.

Today’s liberal internationalism — the driving force behind allowing mass migration — is based on the same principles. Mass migration allows for UberEATS and Door Dash. It lets you hire cheap labor. The women of "The View" asking conservatives who will clean their toilets are not representatives of the extreme left-wing: They are in lock-step with the ideology that has ruled the West for the past 30 years.

RELATED: The liberal guide to committing national suicide

Blaze Media Illustration

In the minds of liberal internationalists, the UberEATS driver and the lawn mower have a better life because of their minimum wage (or lower) jobs. The Vietnamese child in the shoe factory is making 10 cents a day — five cents more than if he were working another job!

So it is with those who are sacrificed to migration. Yes, those few who are raped or killed are unfortunates, but they at least get to live in a melting pot after they’ve been sexually assaulted. As Piers Morgan recently argued, he gets to live in a society with tikka masala. (Morgan, of course, has paid security guards and is under no threat.)

It is a recognition that Aztec-style sacrifice of the innocent is not necessary to make the rain fall that has empowered nationalists across the West. Even when they have lost, in places like Poland or Hungary, their successors have mostly kept strict anti-migrant policies intact.

Abdul Jalloh should never have been in the United States, and deportation should have been easy. If Sierra Leone did not want him back, it should not have mattered.

The United States of America is the most powerful nation in the world. If Washington wants to return criminals to their home countries, it has the power to do so.

This homicidal empathy has real victims, and their numbers increase by the day. The right must not let its left-wing opposites get away with viewing themselves as suicidal. They are not risking their own lives. They are arguing for the homicide of others.