China’s AI strategy could turn Americans into data mines



“The future of AI will either be ruled by American values or by China.”

That warning came last month from Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. It may sound abstract. It is not.

The question is no longer whether China seeks technological supremacy. It is how far it is willing to go — and how much Americans are willing to tolerate.

The Chinese Communist Party already appalled the world with its industrial-scale harvesting of organs from living human beings. Now it is pursuing something even more invasive: the exploitation of the human brain itself to power artificial intelligence and enforce political control.

This year, President Trump’s team prepared a national plan to secure American dominance in AI. At the same time, Guthrie and his colleagues — Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) and Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.) — have been pressing government agencies and private firms with urgent questions about China’s activities and the risks to U.S. national security.

The evidence is alarming.

The CCP has harvested brain-wave data from some of the world’s highest-performing athletes, including a Formula 1 driver and elite alpine skiers. It has built systems to collect brain-wave data from Chinese schoolchildren at scale. Now concerns are mounting that it may be harvesting the brain-wave data of unsuspecting Americans through wearable headband devices sold openly on Amazon.

These devices represent a primitive form of brain-computer interfaces.

BCIs are an American innovation with legitimate and profound medical promise. Brain-computer interfaces allows paralyzed individuals to control prosthetics, smartphones, and computers using their thoughts. Physicians use BCIs to address cognitive impairments affecting memory, learning, and focus. Researchers see potential applications for treating depression, epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease.

Elon Musk’s company Neuralink helped pioneer BCI development to restore autonomy to patients with severe neurological conditions. Musk has also argued that such technology could help humans keep pace as artificial intelligence grows more powerful.

The CCP’s motives are different — and far less virtuous.

Beijing views BCIs not as a therapeutic tool, but as a strategic weapon. By collecting and analyzing human brain-wave data, Chinese researchers have made advances in mind-reading and behavioral control designed to enforce obedience to the Communist Party. The regime is now exploring the use of this data to develop what it calls “super soldiers” — or humanoid combat robots integrated with human cognitive input.

Disturbingly, some of this progress has been enabled by elite American research institutions.

“China is working on pairing humanoid robotics with BCI,” said Sam Koppelman, publisher of the investigative research firm Hunterbrook. His team conducted a six-month investigation into BrainCo, a company founded at Harvard, funded by a People’s Liberation Army-linked entity, and later relocated to China.

In response, Guthrie, Bilirakis, and Joyce formally urged the Justice Department to investigate “potential national security risks posed by BrainCo.”

Their concerns followed Guthrie’s probe into DeepSeek, another AI company that his committee said maintains a “close relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.”

"DeepSeek admits to sending Americans’ personal information to servers in China, where it is undoubtedly accessed by officials connected to the Chinese Communist Party," Guthrie said in a joint statement with Bilirakis.

According to Koppelman, China now prioritizes what it openly calls “cognitive warfare.”

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“This technology, as it develops, will be able to do things like read your brain,” he explained on a podcast. “They’re going to hack the human brain. That’s the idea.”

Hunterbrook reports that BrainCo and DeepSeek are among the CCP’s so-called “Six Little Dragons” of high-tech development.

BrainCo’s consumer-facing products include wearable EEG headbands marketed for meditation and focus. Its OxyZen and FocusCalm devices promise to help users “train your brain for better focus and a calmer mind.”

But critics warn the process may work in reverse — using American brain-wave data to train China’s planned army of super soldiers.

BrainCo disputes the allegations. Its FocusCalm website features a pop-up statement denying military ties and threatening legal action against critics.

The Trump administration is now weighing how to respond to what increasingly resembles a nightmarish penetration of American high-tech research and consumer markets. This month, the administration formally defined AI dominance as a “core, vital national interest.”

The question is no longer whether China seeks technological supremacy. It is how far it is willing to go — and how much Americans are willing to tolerate.

If the CCP can harvest our data, map our thoughts, and manipulate cognition itself, what will it do next?

The ‘blue-slip block’ is GOP cowardice masquerading as tradition



President Trump and Vice President Vance have every right — and every reason — to call out Republican senators who hide behind the so-called blue-slip tradition to block nominees for key executive positions, especially U.S. attorneys.

The effect is simple and damaging: Trump is denied the full exercise of his constitutional authority over the executive branch. Without aligned U.S. attorneys across the country’s 94 districts, the administration’s de-weaponization agenda stalls. In some cases, it collapses outright. So far, the Senate has advanced just 18 of the 50 U.S. attorneys nominated by the administration.

That is the real function of the blue slip. It is not institutionalism. It is careerism. It lets senators hide.

The blue slip is a Senate custom requiring the consent of both home-state senators before certain nominees — U.S. attorneys, judges, U.S. marshals — can advance to committee. In practice, it operates as a hack of the Constitution. The Senate’s role is advice and consent by the full body. The blue slip transfers that power to two senators, and often to just one, who can halt the process without explanation or accountability.

Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has insisted that the Republican Senate will not reconsider the practice despite the abysmal pace of confirmations. “There are many Republican senators — way more Republican senators who are interested in preserving that than those who aren’t,” he said. What he has not explained is why.

The answer is avoidance. The blue slip spares Republican senators from taking difficult votes. The fewer Trump-aligned U.S. attorneys brought to the floor, the fewer public positions senators must take. The blue slip allows them to kill nominations quietly rather than oppose them openly.

Despite years of rhetoric about party realignment, the Senate remains dominated by politicians hostile to Trump’s agenda. Some were forced out. Many more learned to mimic an America First accent without embracing America First policy. They do just enough to deter primary challengers while staying safely aligned with donors, lobbyists, and institutional power.

Forcing senators to vote up or down on Trump-aligned prosecutors like Alina Habba in New Jersey or Julianne Murray in Delaware — both of whom were serving as acting U.S. attorneys until the Senate ran out the clock — would expose those evasions. So the Senate stalled them instead.

I watched this play out firsthand during the failed confirmation of Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. Because D.C. is not a state, the blue slip did not apply. Senate leadership attempted a different maneuver: delay until time expired.

When the base demanded a vote, Senator Thom Tillis (RINO-N.C.) stepped in and tanked Martin’s nomination outright. As a judiciary committee member, Tillis effectively wielded a one-man veto by shifting the committee balance back toward Democrats.

That decision carried consequences. Shortly afterward, Tillis opposed advancing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in its existing form. Trump threatened a primary. Tillis burned through his remaining political capital and soon announced that he would not seek re-election.

Had Tillis been able to blue-slip Martin, he might have avoided that outcome.

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Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

That is the real function of the blue slip. It is not institutionalism. It is careerism. Cloaked in collegial language, it operates as a mutual defense pact among Republican senators to shield one another from accountability. It lets senators hide. A six-year Senate term has become a financial asset in a hyper-funded political system. Assets avoid risk. Votes create risk. Fewer votes mean greater protection.

Defenders of the blue slip claim it preserves the Senate’s unique institutional character. That argument belongs to another century. Today’s Senate is neither deliberative nor restrained. It lurches between performative hearings and massive spending bills, punctuated by social media sound bites. Any appeal to Jeffersonian dignity at this point borders on parody.

Notably, the blue slip never restrains Democrats. When Democrats want nominees confirmed, process does not stand in the way. For Republicans, the blue slip amounts to unilateral disarmament dressed up as principle.

Trump and Vance should keep attacking this practice publicly. The only antidote to procedural cowardice is exposure. Voters who support a mandate deserve to see whether their senators will carry it out — or hide behind tradition while returning to business as usual in Washington.

Even if Republican senators ultimately vote against these nominees, at least the votes would happen in the open. Accountability begins there.

Charlie Sheen changed his politics by changing the channel



About six years ago, I started a simple experiment. Each evening, instead of relying on a single news source, I watched both sides of the political spectrum — MSNBC and CNN on the left, Fox on the right. The goal was not balance for its own sake. It was triangulation: getting closer to the truth than any one outlet seemed capable of providing.

The pattern emerged quickly. The full story almost never lives on a single channel. It lives in the gaps — in what one side omits, what the other exaggerates, and what only becomes visible when competing narratives collide. Stepping outside a single media ecosystem sharpened my understanding of events and exposed how much emotional steering hides behind what passes for “objective” news.

If a Hollywood actor immersed for decades in elite cultural assumptions can break free simply by pressing 'channel up,' that should give the rest of us pause.

I was reminded of this after reading Megyn Kelly’s interview with actor Charlie Sheen.

Pick up the remote

For years, Sheen embodied Hollywood’s loud, theatrical hostility toward Donald Trump. He embodied Trump derangement syndrome. Then he startled people by admitting that he had begun to change his views. Not because of a grand ideological awakening, but because of something mundane.

"I'm going to change the channel," he told Kelly. "I'm gonna do my own research, like I've done with everything my entire life. I'm gonna listen to other voices. I'm gonna explore just hearing both sides of the g**d**n story."

Sheen described realizing that he had been “hypnotized” — his word — by the media he trusted. What once felt authoritative and neutral began to look curated, repetitive, and manipulative.

“What I was so hypnotized by,” he said, “in some ways can be described as state-run media. ... Legacy media is very much like that.”

How narrative replaces reporting

That charge matters, because it is not rooted in party loyalty. It is rooted in recognition. More Americans sense that the information they consume does not simply inform them — it conditions them. It trains emotional responses, assigns villains, and narrows acceptable conclusions.

As Sheen flipped channels, he discovered how incomplete his worldview had been. Then came his most striking admission: “I felt really stupid. I don't have a fancier way to describe it. ... Some of the stuff I’d bought into … some of the people I was hating because I was told I was supposed to hate them.”

That kind of honesty is rare. In today’s culture, changing one’s mind is treated as treason rather than growth. Sheen’s shift is not primarily about moving from left to right. It is about reclaiming agency — refusing to let a single narrative dictate who deserves trust or contempt.

For years, Americans have been sorted into hardened political tribes by outlets that no longer report so much as reinforce. Each network offers a prepackaged worldview with designated heroes, enemies, and emotional cues. The longer someone consumes only one of them, the more certain — and less informed — he becomes.

This is how democracies fracture. Not because citizens lack reason, but because they are denied the full range of facts required to reason well.

Regret isn’t the point

Sheen even expressed regret over his 2024 vote for Kamala Harris, a decision he now believes was made inside an echo chamber he did not recognize at the time. The regret itself is not the point. The awakening is.

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Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

If a Hollywood actor immersed for decades in elite cultural assumptions can break free simply by pressing “channel up,” that should give the rest of us pause.

It suggests intellectual independence remains possible. It suggests curiosity can overpower conditioning. And it suggests Americans are far more capable of balanced judgment than our media landscape assumes.

The most patriotic habit left

The lesson is not complicated. If you want to understand what is really happening in this country, do not limit yourself to the channel you already agree with. Change it. Listen to the other side. Sit with the discomfort.

The clarity that follows may surprise you. It may challenge your assumptions. It may even change your mind.

In today’s America, that may be one of the most constructive — and patriotic — acts left to us.

Conservatives face a choice in ’26: realignment or extinction



The elections of 2026 and 2028 will be “Flight 93 elections,” but not in the way Michael Anton envisioned in 2016. Anton famously compared supporting Donald Trump to charging the cockpit of a hijacked plane: reckless, dangerous, but preferable to certain death.

Nine years later, the metaphor has inverted. The forces that once stormed the cockpit now control it. They have locked the door, fortified the controls, and flown the Republican Party in widening circles toward disaster. No one inside can change course. The GOP plane is rapidly losing altitude, and everyone aboard can see it coming.

Continuing down this path does not preserve conservatism. It buries it inside an irredeemable party.

At this stage, the only rational move involves grabbing a parachute and jumping. Staying seated guarantees political death.

The gamble failed

Anton wrote his essay when the Republican Party had already revealed itself as corrupt, inert, and incapable of reform. That decay produced Trump. He appeared as something new: a transactional, deeply flawed outsider promising to smash the uniparty and deliver for workers and small businesses long ignored by corporate Republicanism.

Many voters tolerated Trump’s personal failings and erratic behavior because he represented a rupture. At least it was different.

Nine years on, Republicans carry all the liabilities of Trump’s image and record without securing the benefits that justified the gamble. His better policies stall in court. His worst instincts endure. Meanwhile, Republicans lose elections in territory that once leaned safely red.

Trump obsesses over his ballroom project, courts tech and crypto bros, cuts deals with China and Qatar, and waves away economic pain that millions feel daily. Consumers face rising prices. College graduates struggle to find work. Small businesses buckle under costs. The White House insists the economy is strong.

It is not.

History repeats

This failure did not begin with Trump. The Tea Party quickly collapsed because it tried to reform a party that could not be reformed. The GOP long ago ceased functioning as a conservative party. It exists to serve corporate donors while marketing fear of the left to a skeptical electorate.

History offers a warning. The Whig Party collapsed once it became obvious that it stood for nothing relevant to its era. The Republican Party replaced it. Today’s GOP has perfected the art of symbolic resistance paired with practical surrender. It’s fake opposition.

Trump’s rise looked like a break from that pattern. Sadly, it was not. He has spent five election cycles endorsing establishment Republicans, preserving the very faction that produced the crisis. His rhetoric attacks “RINOs,” but his endorsements entrench them.

His current agenda reflects the same contradiction: Big Tech, techno-feudal economics, Qatari pandering, Chinese student visas, and government-backed industrial schemes sold as innovation, paired with denial of inflation and hardship.

All the liabilities, none of the benefits

The result proves electorally poisonous. Republicans repel suburban voters and working-class voters simultaneously. They project the aloof corporatism of the pre-Trump era mixed with cultural coarseness and denial of obvious hardship.

Since 2017, Republicans have compiled a grim down-ballot record, interrupted only by Trump’s 2024 victory against a weak opponent in a terrible economy. Rather than consolidate that win, Trump chose to own the economy outright and burn political capital.

Conservatives now die on hills that are not their own. They inherit Trump’s liabilities without achieving the promised purge of the party’s corporate class. The GOP and Trump’s coalition increasingly merge into a single structure that offers spectacle instead of reform.

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The case for a clean break

As Republican candidates face double-digit swings toward Democrats even in light-red districts, the choice sharpens. Conservatives can continue propping up a failed party and risk discrediting their ideas permanently. We could embrace the “aristopopulism” of JD Vance and his circle. Or we could force a realignment.

A new party could channel distrust of techno-feudalism, mass surveillance, foreign labor exploitation, and a K-shaped economy engineered through government favoritism. It could ground itself in tangible productivity, property rights, sound money, privacy, small business, and national sovereignty.

Every decade or so, Republican dysfunction becomes obvious enough to provoke rebellion: Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, MAGA. Each time, the insurgency gets absorbed and neutralized by the same structure.

We have reached that moment again.

Continuing down this path does not preserve conservatism. It buries it inside an irredeemable party. The Republican Party has reached the end of its rope. The only question is whether conservatives recognize it before the fall becomes irreversible.

Trump forced allies to pay up — and it worked



In the fifth century B.C., a group of Greek city-states formed a defensive alliance known as the Delian League to protect them against the Persian Empire.

Athens, the most powerful member, gradually increased its power. Its rulers moved the league’s common treasury from the island of Delos to Athens (to keep it safe, of course), attacked allies that attempted to secede, and started casually referring to the alliance as “our empire.”

If you want good allies, you need to be a good ally.

The most brazen assertion came when the Athenian leader Pericles raided the league treasury to fund building projects in Athens (including the Parthenon).

When the other league members objected, Pericles insisted that the treasury was less like a common military budget and more like protection money: As long as the Persians aren’t breaking down your doors, we can spend league funds however we want.

Obviously, this is no way to treat one’s allies. It is not just exploitative; it is counterproductive. During the ensuing Peloponnesian War, Athens spent as much time fighting its own rebellious allies as it did fighting Sparta.

The United States, however, has spent the last several decades conducting its foreign relations on the opposite principle. We have the same hegemonic role Athens held, but instead of robbing our allies, we let them rob and betray us.

A few months ago, the government of Kuwait — a country hundreds of Americans died to defend just a few decades ago and that continues to rely on us for protection against Iran — launched a “Kuwait-China Friendship Club” to strengthen military ties with Beijing.

And if cozying up to our biggest geopolitical rival weren’t enough, Kuwait is also ripping us off.

The United States played a huge role in building Kuwait’s massive Al Zour oil refinery, and the country’s government still owes us hundreds of millions of dollars.

Closer to home, Mexico — which Bill Clinton bailed out to the tune of $20 billion — takes in more than $60 billion a year in remittance money from the United States, all while its socialist oil company refuses to pay the $1.2 billion it owes to American contractors.

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Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

The NATO countries are even worse. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, just six of the alliance’s 32 members spent the required 2% of GDP on defense.

Meanwhile, these countries used the money they weren’t spending on guns to build massive welfare states (their equivalent of Pericles’ Parthenon). They also eviscerated their domestic energy production and became increasingly reliant on oil from Russia, the country the alliance is supposed to keep in check.

Thankfully, a combination of Vladimir Putin’s aggression and Donald Trump’s bullying has increased the number of countries meeting the 2% threshold from six to 23.

If you want good allies, you need to be a good ally.

That means no more meddling in the name of “international development” or “advancing democracy.” Just mutual clarifications of national interest and frank discussions about how to advance those interests.

Athens’ focus on its own self-interest was its undoing. America’s neglect of it might have been ours. Under President Trump, however, it looks like that is starting to change.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination demands your courage, not your sympathy



I have lost grandparents, childhood friends, and college friends. As you age, death becomes familiar. Each loss shakes you briefly, reminds you that life is fragile, and then fades. You drift back into the illusion that tomorrow is guaranteed. That you will have time later to become a better Christian, husband, and father.

That illusion shattered on September 10, the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a leftist.

Charlie Kirk showed us how a Christian lives and how a Christian dies. His race is finished. Ours must now begin.

I did not know Charlie personally. I worked as his publicist last summer for what became his second-to-last book, “Right Wing Revolution,” but we never spoke directly. Still his death devastated me in a way no other loss had.

I had to understand why. Answering that question became the genesis of this book, “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.”

On the day Charlie was killed, I joined my wife to pick up our 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter from preschool. The day before, she had asked again and again, “Dada in car? Dada here?” This time, I wanted to be there when she came running out.

As we pulled into the parking lot, my phone lit up. Charlie Kirk had been shot. My stomach dropped.

I had felt that dread once before. On July 13, 2024, I was rocking my daughter to sleep when an alert flashed that President Trump had been shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. Minutes later, dread gave way to relief. Trump survived.

This time, the dread did not lift.

While my wife walked toward the school entrance, I sat frozen in the car, refreshing news feeds. Then I saw the video. The moment the bullet struck Charlie.

One look told me no one could survive that wound.

Then my daughter appeared.

Her face lit up when she saw me. Pure joy. The same joy Charlie’s daughter would never experience again.

As my little girl ran toward the car shouting, “Dada!” another child had just lost her father forever. His daughter. His son. His wife. They would never again live a moment like the one unfolding before me.

Nothing had changed for my daughter. Everything had changed for me.

That night, I slept on the floor beside my oldest daughter’s crib. I lay awake for hours, listening to her breathing and thinking of Charlie’s children and of Erika, facing the impossible task of explaining why their father would never walk through the door again.

In the days that followed, I cried more than I ever had. I am not a man who cries. But something in me died with Charlie, and something else was born.

I began studying Charlie’s words, speeches, debates, and sermons. Not as content but as testimony. What I saw changed me. Charlie possessed a maturity beyond his years, a steadiness most men twice his age never reach. He knew who he was and whom he served. He knew his mission and the cost of it. He accepted that cost.

In Charlie, I saw the man I wanted to be. Strong yet gentle. Courageous yet humble. Unmoved by hatred because he feared God more than man. That recognition exposed an uncomfortable truth. I shared many of Charlie’s convictions but not his courage.

I had spoken boldly only when it was safe. I avoided conflict when it was convenient. The wounds of losing lifelong friends in 2020 because I voted for Trump still stung, and I carried a residual fear of losing more.

Charlie did not hesitate. He lived Matthew 5 and Mark 8 not as verses but as marching orders. He carried his cross onto hostile campuses and into debates before crowds that despised him, knowing exactly what it cost.

When that hatred finally culminated in a sniper’s bullet, it ended his life but not the mission that made him a target.

His death exposed my compromises. It forced me to confront the gap between the man I was and the man God was calling me to be. It demanded that I stop postponing courage and start living the truth now. Costly truth. Dangerous truth. Biblical truth.

Charlie’s life and death were not political events. They were spiritual ones.

He defended the family because God commanded it. He rejected identity politics because every person bears God’s image. He championed fathers because fatherlessness destroys nations. He defended black Americans by insisting on their dignity as individuals created by God, not as pawns of a political movement. He confronted transgender ideology because lies about human nature are lies about God Himself.

For that, he was vilified, dehumanized, and finally murdered.

The ideology that killed Charlie did not emerge overnight. It grew in the silence of those who knew better but feared the cost of speaking. Evil advances when good men retreat, and too many of us did.

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Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Charlie did not retreat. Now none of us can afford hesitation.

The man I was — cautious and hesitant — died with Charlie. In his place stands a man who understands that truth requires sacrifice, that silence is surrender, and that the only approval that matters comes from God.

My daughter deserves a country where political murder is condemned, not excused. Where truth is spoken even when it is dangerous. Where courage is not outsourced to a handful of men like Charlie Kirk but lived by millions.

That is why I wrote “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.” Not simply to remember Charlie but because his death demanded my transformation and now demands yours.

Charlie Kirk showed us how a Christian lives and how a Christian dies.

His race is finished. Ours must now begin.

The torch is ours to carry — for Christ, for country, and for Charlie.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from the author’s new book, “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk” (Bombardier Books, Post Hill Press).

The people carrying addiction’s weight rarely get seen



What happened Sunday at the home of Rob and Michele Reiner is a family nightmare. A son battling addiction, likely complicated by mental illness. Parents who loved him. A volatile situation that finally erupted into irreversible tragedy.

I grieve for them.

Shame keeps families quiet. Fear keeps them guarded. Love keeps them hoping longer than wisdom sometimes allows.

I also grieve for the families who read those headlines and felt something tighten in their chest because the story felt painfully familiar.

We often hear the phrase, “If you see something, say something.” The problem is that most people do not know what to say. So they say nothing at all.

What if we started somewhere simpler?

I see you. I see the weight you are carrying. I hurt with you.

Families living with addiction and serious mental illness often find themselves isolated. Not only because of the chaos inside their homes, but because friends, neighbors, and even faith communities hesitate to step closer, unsure of what to say or do. Over time, silence settles in.

Long before police are called, before neighbors hear sirens, before a tragedy becomes a headline, people live inside relentless stress and uncertainty every day.

They are caregivers.

We rarely use that word for parents, spouses, or siblings of addicts, but we should. These families do not simply react to bad choices. They manage instability. They monitor risk. They absorb emotional whiplash. They try to keep everyone safe while holding together a household under extraordinary strain.

In many ways, this disorientation rivals Alzheimer’s. In some cases, it proves even more destabilizing.

Addiction is cruelly unpredictable. It offers moments of clarity that feel like hope. A sober conversation. An apology. A promise that sounds sincere. Those moments can disarm a family member who desperately wants to believe the worst has passed.

Then the pivot comes. Calm turns to chaos. Remorse gives way to rage. Many families learn to live on edge, constantly recalibrating, never certain whether today will be manageable or explosive.

Law enforcement officers understand this reality well. Many domestic calls involve addiction, mental illness, or both. Tension often greets officers at the door, followed by a familiar refrain: “We didn’t know what else to do.”

Calling these family members caregivers matters because it reframes the conversation. It moves us away from judgment and toward reality. From, “Why don’t they just ...?” to, “What are they carrying?” It acknowledges that these families manage risk, not just emotions.

The recovery community has long emphasized truths that save lives: You did not cause it. You cannot control it. You cannot cure it. These principles are not cold. They bring clarity. And clarity matters when safety is at stake.

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Photo by Gary Hershorn / Getty Images

Another truth too often postponed until tragedy strikes deserves equal emphasis: The caregiver’s safety matters too.

Friends and faith communities often respond with a familiar phrase: “Let me know if there’s anything you need.” It sounds kind, but it places the burden back on someone already exhausted and often afraid.

Caregivers need something different. They need people willing to ask better questions.

Are you safe right now? Is there a plan if things escalate? Who is checking on you? Would it help if I stayed with you or helped you find a safe place tonight?

These questions do not intrude. They protect.

Often, the most meaningful help does not come as a solution, but as a witness. Henri Nouwen once observed that the people who matter most rarely offer advice or cures. They share the pain. They sit at the kitchen table. They walk alongside without looking away.

Caregivers living with someone battling addiction and mental illness often need at least one safe presence who sees clearly, speaks honestly, and stays when things grow uncomfortable.

We have permission to care, but not always the vocabulary.

Shame keeps families quiet. Fear keeps them guarded. Love keeps them hoping longer than wisdom sometimes allows. One of the greatest gifts we can offer is the willingness to penetrate that isolation with clarity, grace, and tangible help.

Grace does not require silence in the face of danger. Love does not demand enduring abuse. Faith does not obligate someone to remain in harm’s way.

Pointing a caregiver toward safety does not abandon the person struggling with addiction. It recognizes that multiple lives stand at risk, and all of them matter.

When tragedies occur, the public asks what could have been done differently. One answer proves both simple and difficult: Stop overlooking the caregivers quietly absorbing the blast.

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Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images

Welfare checks should not focus solely on the person battling addiction or mental illness. Families living beside that struggle often need support long before a breaking point arrives.

If you know someone whose son, daughter, spouse, or partner struggles, do not look away because you feel unsure what to say. You do not need to solve anything. You do not need to analyze anything.

Start by seeing them. Stay with them.

I see you. I see how heavy this is. You do not have to carry it alone.

Ask better questions. Offer practical help that does not depend on their energy to ask. Check on them again tomorrow.

This season reminds us that Christ did not stand at a safe distance from trauma. He came close to the wounded and brought redemption without demanding tidy explanations.

When we do the same for families living in the shadow of addiction and mental illness, we honor their suffering and the Savior who meets us there.

Trump v. Slaughter exposes who really fears democracy



In the recently argued Trump v. Slaughter case, most of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to affirm what should be obvious: The president has a constitutional right under Article II to dismiss federal employees in the executive branch when it suits him.

That conclusion strikes many of us as self-evident. Executive-branch employees work under the president, who alone among them is chosen in a nationwide election. Bureaucrats are not. Why, then, should the chief executive’s subordinates be insulated from his control?

When the Roberts Court overturned Roe in 2022 and returned the issue to the states, many voters responded with fury. The electorate did not welcome responsibility. It resented it.

A vocal minority on the court appears to reject that premise. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor warned that allowing a president — implicitly a Republican one — to control executive personnel would unleash political chaos. Jackson suggested Trump “would be free to fire all the scientists, the doctors, the economists, and PhDs” working for the federal government. Sotomayor went further, claiming the administration was “asking to destroy the structure of government.”

David Harsanyi, in a perceptive commentary, identified what animates this view: “fourth-branch blues.” The administrative state now exercises power that rivals or exceeds that of the constitutional branches. As Harsanyi noted, nothing in the founders’ design envisioned “a sprawling autonomous administrative state empowered to create its own rules, investigate citizens, adjudicate guilt, impose fines, and destroy lives.”

Yet defenders of this system frame presidential oversight as a threat to “democracy.” Democrats, who present themselves as democracy’s guardians, warn that allowing agency officials to answer to the elected president places the nation in peril. The argument recalls their reaction to the Dobbs case, when the court returned abortion policy to voters and was accused of “undermining democracy” by doing so.

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Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

On that point, Harsanyi and I agree. Judicial and bureaucratic overreach distort constitutional government. The harder question is whether voters object.

From what I can tell, most do not. Many Americans seem content to trade constitutional self-government for managerial rule, provided the system delivers benefits and protects their expressive preferences. The populist right may bristle at this arrangement, but a leftist administrative state that claims to speak for “the people” may reflect the electorate’s will.

Recent elections reinforce that suspicion. Voters showed little interest in reclaiming authority from courts or bureaucracies. They appeared far more interested in government largesse and symbolic rights than in the burdens of republican self-rule.

Consider abortion. Roe v. Wade rested on shaky legal ground, yet large segments of the public enthusiastically embraced it for nearly 50 years. When the Roberts Court overturned Roe in 2022 and returned the issue to the states, many voters responded with fury. States enacted expansive abortion laws, and Democrats benefited from unusually high turnout. The electorate did not welcome responsibility. It resented it.

This reaction should not surprise anyone familiar with history. In 1811, Spaniards rejected the liberal constitution imposed by French occupiers, crying “abajo el liberalismo” — down with liberalism. They did not want abstract rights. They wanted familiar authority.

At least half of today’s American electorate appears similarly disposed. Many prefer guided democracy administered by judges and managers to the uncertainties of self-government. Their votes signal approval for continued rule by the administrative state. Republicans may slow this process at the margins, but Democrats expand it openly, and voters just empowered them to do so.

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I anticipated this outcome decades ago. In “After Liberalism” (1999), I argued that democracy as a universal ideal tends to produce expanded managerial control with popular consent. Nineteenth-century fears that mass suffrage would yield chaos proved unfounded. Instead the extension of the franchise coincided with more centralized, remote, and less accountable government.

As populations lost shared traditions and common authority, governance shifted away from democratic participation and toward expert administration. The state grew less personal, less local, and less answerable, even as it claimed to act in the people’s name.

Equally significant has been the administrative state’s success in presenting itself as the custodian of an invented “science of government.” According to this view, administrators form an enlightened elite, morally and intellectually superior to the unwashed masses. Justice Jackson’s warnings reflect this assumption.

I would like to believe, as Harsanyi suggests, that Americans find such attitudes insulting. I am no longer sure they do. Many seem pleased to be managed. They want judges and bureaucrats to make decisions for them.

That preference should trouble anyone who still cares about constitutional government.

The real question isn’t war or peace — it’s which century we choose



Our world stands at a civilizational crossroads. Again. Nations must decide whether they intend to live in the 21st century or the seventh century. That choice may sound melodramatic, but anyone watching events in the Middle East, across Europe, and increasingly inside the United States understands the stakes.

On the eve of Thanksgiving in Washington, D.C., two National Guard troops were shot by a Muslim jihadist shouting “Allahu Akbar.” One of the soldiers, a young woman from West Virginia, later died. The other survived but has a long road of recovery ahead. Americans once again asked how such an attack could occur in the nation’s capital.

The choice is not between peace and war. It is between confronting an ideology that sanctifies domination or allowing it to advance unchecked under the cover of pluralism.

The answer begins with ideology.

Jihadist doctrine divides the world into two irreconcilable spheres: Dar al-Islam, the “House of Islam,” and Dar al-Harb, the “House of War.” The House of Islam consists of territories governed by Islamic law. The House of War includes every land not under Sharia. That category encompasses Israel, Europe, the United States, and vast portions of Africa and Asia.

For jihadists, this division is not theoretical. The ultimate objective is global submission to Islamic rule. The methods vary. Demographics, migration, political participation, and violence all qualify as legitimate tools of jihad, depending on circumstances.

Modern Sunni jihadist ideology draws heavily from Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood theorist whose book “Milestones” remains foundational. Qutb argued that Muslims should adapt their strategy based on their position within a society. When weak or outnumbered, they should emulate Muhammad’s early period in Mecca, focusing on persuasion and coalition-building. As power grows, they should advance to the next stage, asserting political authority and preparing for dominance.

That framework explains why jihadist movements operate differently across regions. We see the political phase at work in Western cities and institutions, including London, New York City, and Dearborn, Michigan. We see the violent phase in Israel, Nigeria, Europe, and parts of the Middle East.

Qutb held that the Quran justifies violence against non-Islamic governments. That claim draws on classical Islamic jurisprudence and has been codified in influential texts. Sunni and Shia jihadist groups alike act on this logic.

Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran’s Islamic regime wage war against Israel under its banner. Jihadist violence devastates Christian communities in Nigeria. Terror attacks across Europe and the United States follow the same ideological thread.

The question is not whether this ideology exists. The question is how nations respond.

Governments and citizens must decide whether they will confront a violent, medieval worldview or accommodate it in the name of tolerance and stability. That choice applies both abroad and at home.

Some regimes have already chosen regression. Iran’s rulers prioritize hatred of Israel over the welfare of their own people. The country’s severe water crisis stems not from natural scarcity but from ideological fixation and mismanagement driven by revolutionary dogma.

In Gaza, support for Hamas continues to rise. In Judea and Samaria, Hamas cells plot new attacks. Hezbollah smuggles weapons through Syria while Lebanon’s leaders face a stark decision: Embrace modern statehood or remain trapped in perpetual conflict.

American policy toward the region often sends mixed signals. The proposed sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and its elevation to major non-NATO ally status were promoted as diplomatic successes. Yet the real measure will come in actions, not assurances. Will Saudi Arabia confront jihadist networks within its borders? Will it normalize relations with Israel? Or will it offer symbolic gestures while tolerating extremism?

Qatar presents an even sharper test. Through Al Jazeera, it shapes anti-Western narratives across the region. It has funded or enabled radical activism abroad and provided safe haven to Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Any serious strategy against jihadist ideology must address Qatar’s role directly.

President Trump took a step in that direction by issuing an executive order calling for the designation of Muslim Brotherhood chapters as “foreign terrorist organizations.” That order, however, excluded the International Union of Muslim Brotherhood, based in Qatar, and U.S.-based Brotherhood-linked organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) went farther last week by designating CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations under state authority. That move reflects a growing recognition that ideological warfare does not stop at America’s borders.

The West must choose whether it will dismantle Muslim Brotherhood networks domestically and demand that its allies do the same. It must decide whether it will confront Iran, which remains the central destabilizing force in the region. Five months after a U.S. strike on Iranian targets, the regime continues to threaten Israel, the Gulf states, and Western interests.

These decisions carry consequences beyond diplomacy. They shape the world our children inherit.

The choice is not between peace and war. It is between confronting an ideology that sanctifies domination and violence or allowing it to advance unchecked under the cover of pluralism. The path forward demands clarity, resolve, and an honest reckoning with reality.

The century we choose will determine whether the future belongs to modernity and peace or to ancient grievances enforced by terror.

Congress strips merit from the military and shackles the president in one bill



The Trump administration recently released an extremely promising National Security Strategy — but the same cannot be said about the proposed National Defense Authorization Act for the 2026 fiscal year.

The House and Senate’s compromise NDAA appears to be in tension with the goals of the administration’s strategy. While the National Security Strategy prioritizes a hemispheric defense of the American homeland, the NDAA locks decision-makers into maintaining unnecessary overseas troop levels. Despite President Trump’s stated strategic aims, Congress seems intent on safeguarding the national security priorities and infrastructure of previous eras.

The NDAA represents the ‘deep state,’ a combination of entrenched interests, committees, lobbies, and bureaucracies that value continuity over strategy and reform.

Restricting the drawdown of troops stationed overseas, increasingly murky foreign entrenchment through legally binding efforts to sell arms, and dubious clauses requiring congressional approval at every turn, all serve to bind the commander in chief’s hands. All of this reeks of a shadowy order desperately trying to maintain the status quo at the expense of the will of the people who elected Donald Trump in 2024.

This cannot stand.

Section 1249 of the NDAA states that U.S. forces in Europe cannot fall below 76,000 for more than 45 days without presidential certifications to Congress. This is supposed to ensure that troop reductions present no threat to NATO partners or U.S. national security. (Absurdly, the bill requires the U.S. to consult with every NATO ally and even “relevant non-NATO partners.”) But stripping the president of essential discretion through ludicrous legislative roadblocks categorically subverts his authority under the Constitution.

Section 1255 states that troop levels cannot dip below 28,500 in the Korean Peninsula, nor can wartime operational control be transferred without an identical trial by fire of congressional approvals and national-security certifications.

Shifting our military focus to our own backyard was a stated goal of the National Security Strategy. If this vision is to be implemented, Congress cannot serve as a bureaucratic middleman that hinders deployment flexibility through pedantic checklists.

Americans need to understand that the NDAA would obstruct the execution of President Trump’s agenda. As written, it functions as a deliberate statutory barrier to presidential decision-making. This denotes a redistribution of war powers from the elected executive to a sprawling and unaccountable institutional structure.

The NDAA represents what Americans call the “deep state,” a combination of entrenched interests, committees, lobbies, and bureaucracies that value continuity over strategy and reform.

This continuity becomes clear when you look at what the House and Senate didn’t include in the compromise NDAA. The Senate’s original bill contained a provision barring the use of DEI in service-academy admissions — a measure that would have required merit-only standards and prevented racial profiling. Congress stripped that section out. The final bill includes a few weak gestures toward limiting DEI, but none of them meet President Trump’s goal of a military that rejects race and sex as factors altogether.

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As written, the NDAA gives a future Democratic president the opportunity to reintroduce woke indoctrination in the military with the stroke of a pen. And laws favoring DEI at our nation’s most vital institutions could resurface on a whim, using typical “diversity is our strength” platitudes.

Despite its name, the NDAA functions less like a defense bill and more like the legal backbone of America’s global posture. Whatever promises the National Security Strategy makes, they cannot be realized so long as the current NDAA pulls in the opposite direction. Strategy should shape institutions — not the other way around.

In Washington jargon, the NDAA is treated as “must-pass” legislation. That label has no legal or constitutional basis. And even if it must pass, no one claims it must be signed.

The National Security Strategy reflects the will of voters; the NDAA reflects bureaucratic inertia. That is why the Trump administration cannot, in good conscience, approve this bill. Our escape from stagnation, mediocrity, and endless foreign entanglements depends on rejecting it — and time is running out.

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