China is winning the energy arms race — using tech we invented



Our economic realities as Americans are tied directly to energy. But those of us working outside the energy industry must be forgiven for not noticing that in 2022, China began construction on an experimental thorium reactor that requires no water, generates substantially less toxic byproduct, purports and appears be vastly safer than all other reactor designs, and all but eliminates the possibility of meltdown. American citizens should be forgiven for not noticing because in 2022, as you recall, we were suffocating in the various tendrils of psychological operations and captured government.

And when China operationalized the reactor and proved the design, firing it up last month, pulling a positive yield of uranium, Americans were again distracted. Our industries are still captured, corrupted, or sidelined. Our government is still dysfunctional, and it appears we are now, in some very official sense, losing the energy arms race.

Clickbait headlines have suggested that China outright stole the reactor design. The truth is probably even worse.

The Chinese reactor works. It delivers cheap, abundant, safe, clean energy. Congress is silent. Portions of our mainstream media only serve corporate (often energy sector-tied) interests, so they aren’t going to sound the alarm.

Here’s the kicker regarding the United States’ second-place status in this energy battle: Americans funded the entirety of the original research for the thorium reactor in the 1960s at Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory. This raises major questions about past, present, and future for the energy and tech sectors.

Of the successful test of the thorium reactor in China, the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics stated in a press release, “This marks the first time international experimental data has been obtained after thorium was introduced into a molten salt reactor, making it the only operational molten salt reactor in the world to have successfully incorporated thorium fuel.”

Clickbait headlines have suggested that China outright stole the reactor design. The truth is probably even worse. If you take blood pressure medication, be forewarned: There is malfeasance here, for sure, but the technology wasn’t stolen from either American corporations or Oak Ridge Laboratory. Oak Ridge Laboratory, in concert with the U.S. government, evidently declassified much of the pertinent research, according to researcher Kirk Sorensen.

RELATED: This city bought 300 Chinese electric buses — then found out China can turn them off at will

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Sorensen runs the website https://energyfromthorium.com, where portions of the material, now in the public domain, were published. Meanwhile, private American research into what turns out to be a highly feasible and safe energy source has been, at best, scattered and underfunded. What's more, the stultifying (false?) dialectic between environmentalism and first-world living standards has muddied the waters for decades.

Oak Ridge Labs partnered with the Shanghai Applied Physics Institute back in 2015. American research was just simply handed to the Chinese. Meanwhile, we have considerable energy issues in America: prices jumping 10%-20% per year in many states and services often approaching third-world standards in terms of reliability and transparency. We have the highly unstable and contentious AI industry building data centers at a heady pace and signaling orders of magnitude more energy demand in short order. Lastly, we have a contingent of right-aligned Americans squaring up to take on the potential re-industrialization of the country — automobiles, pharmaceuticals, microprocessors, and steel manufacture at all levels could and probably must be re-shored if we as a nation are ever to right the ship.

None of this happens without abundant, cheap energy.

Since the early 2000s, concerns over dwindling cheap oil have confused the public and stymied good-faith efforts to manage the infrastructure, source, and delivery problems that our grand techno-American plans seem to require. Elon Musk's grandfather, Joshua N. Halderman, was involved with M. King Hubbert in the original Technocracy Inc. endeavor, which signaled early alarms about exponential growth meeting finite oil capacity. Elon is a big fan of solar, but one wonders if perhaps now he’d be better off investigating thorium ... if American industry and government can get out of his way, of course.

Tolkien’s forgotten lesson: Evil wins when good men refuse to rule



Since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Auron MacIntyre, BlazeTV host of “The Auron MacIntyre Show,” has been calling for conservatives to get serious about crushing left-wing violence. Inaction, he’s warned, will only invite escalation. That’s why as a political party, we must insist that the Trump administration dismantle Antifa, impose severe consequences on those inciting or celebrating murders, and wage economic war via regulatory and legal levers against complicit media.

In other words, the Trump administration needs to use its power to obliterate left-wing chaos.

Auron gets quite a bit of pushback for this stance. Many will use J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy to argue against the use of power to quell evil. “The one ring is dangerous. ... You must reject the call of power because ultimately power corrupts and destroys and divides,” they say.

But Auron says this is a “shallow reading” of the father of modern fantasy’s three-volume series. “Ultimately, while yes, there is a message about power in there, there’s also a message about right authority. The last book is, of course, called ‘Return of the King,’ and this is seen as a good thing,” he counters. “So it doesn’t look like Tolkien is ultimately rejecting the use of power, but he does have some very important things to say about the nature of power.”

To discuss this important distinction, Auron speaks with Evan Cooney, the host and creator of “The Middle-earth Mixer” — a popular podcast that dives into J.R.R. Tolkien's lore, themes, and Middle-earth universe.

For starters, Tolkien was adamantly opposed to allegory, meaning that the one ring cannot be said to symbolize power alone. Further, in the books, “There is lawful use of lawful authority, which translates to power, that many characters have and have permissions to do so by the creator god Ilúvatar, and then there are characters who commit unlawful use of unlawful authority, and Sauron creating the one ring would be a perfect example of that,” says Cooney.

Auron points to Aragorn, the rightful king of Gondor, as an example. Initially, Aragorn, using the name Strider, runs from his destiny. “And because he's not in that position of the true king, there are others who are less worthy who are ruling in his place,” says Auron. This is seen by characters and readers alike as a bad thing. Aragorn must wear the crown and wield the sword and scepter, as this is what pushes back darkness and brings order to Middle-earth.

Cooney, unpacking Aragorn’s lineage all the way back to Isildur, who initially took the ring of power from Sauron, says, “This shirking of responsibility from everyone involved and [Arvedui’s, the last king of the North] inability to take power created the political disaster that made for why men were so weak by the time you get to the ‘Fellowship of the Ring.”’

“Ultimately, Tolkien recognizes that power will exist, that this void will be filled, and if it's not filled with the appropriate people, the worthy people, those who belong in the line ... you will be ruled by inferior men,” says Auron. “It's not that you won't be ruled; it’s that the stewards are there instead of the kings.”

In the kingdom of Gondor, Denethor — a steward charged with holding the throne in trust until the king returns — is consumed by pride and despair. He refuses to rally with allies, distrusts Aragorn’s claim to the throne, and abandons the city in its darkest hour.

In Rohan, however, King Théoden, who Cooney says is Denethor’s character foil, shows us what it looks like to wield power rightly. With the help of Gandalf, he exiles his corrupt adviser, Gríma Wormtongue — “the quintessential archetype for the sneaky government bureaucrat,” says Cooney — and rides out and meets Sauron’s army in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

The exile of Gríma, says Auron, is a lesson for our current government: “The council [of bureaucrats] is paralyzing. It's meant to be paralyzing. It's meant to stop you from taking your rightful authority and taking the honorable action, and you have to remove that influence.”

Once evil advisers have been banished, the next step is to step fully into the role of rightful power. After Gríma is exiled, the first thing Gandalf has Théoden do is pick up his sword. “Your fingers would remember their old strength better, if they grasped your sword,” he tells the old king.

“It’s a very moving symbol,” says Auron.

“What stirs the king back to a noble action is he has to feel the weight of the instrument of his office. The rightful sword he has been entrusted with as the civil magistrate has to be felt in his hand before he can once again truly return to who he is and behave honorably.”

To hear the full conversation, watch the episode above.

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Virtue, not power, is the true aim of politics



The great outbreak of evil in these past days stirred a memory of something I used to tell my freshman students on the first day of their introduction to politics class: Politics is about what is good.

We would read together the first sentence of Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”— an unrivaled introduction to politics:

Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good, and hence it has been beautifully said that the good is that at which all things aim.

Aristotle goes on quickly to observe in his usual empirical way that many goods exist along with many arts developed to achieve the different goods. The medical art aims at the good of health. The art of shipbuilding aims at building good ships. The military art aims at victory in war. The art of managing the household, which the Greeks called economics, aims at the good of wealth.

Virtue is the end or aim of political life.

Some arts are subordinated to other arts, because the good at which the art aims is subordinate to a larger good, the way the art of the cavalryman is subordinate to the art of the general.

Aristotle then introduces the subject of politics with a great hypothesis: If there exists some good, some end, that we seek for its own sake, and we seek all the rest for the sake of or on account of this one good — if, in other words, we don’t choose everything for the sake of something else, which would make all of our desires empty and pointless — this would be the good itself, in fact the highest good.

He asks: Would not an awareness of this highest good have great weight in a man’s life? Wouldn’t the art of attaining that good be the sovereign or master art encompassing all the ends or goods of the other arts? And isn’t this what we call the art of politics?

The good that the art of politics aims at, he says, is “the human good.” What name do people give to the human good that encompasses all others and lacks nothing? The Greek word, Aristotle says, is eudaimonia, which we usually translate as “happiness” in English. The art of politics is the art of happiness. But it gets even better.

The art of politics is a practical art. It aims not just at knowing what happiness is but at being happy. Thinking happiness through, Aristotle finds that it does not have primarily to do with the body. It is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue — in fact, in accordance with complete virtue. You can’t be a happy man without being a good or virtuous man. And in this sense, virtue is the end or aim of political life.

Aristotle goes on to distinguish between virtues of character and virtues of intellect, or what we usually call moral and intellectual virtues. He argues that the specific virtue or excellence of the statesman — the political man par excellence — is the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom, what he would call “phronesis.” Phronesis is the only intellectual virtue that is inseparable from moral virtue. According to Aristotle, a man cannot possess phronesis without possessing all the moral virtues actively and in their fullness. He is a man in full.

I would tell students that to make progress in their study of politics — this practical art — they would have to make progress in virtue; they would have to make progress toward the human good; they would have to make progress toward happiness. This is what our semester would be about.

Happiness and politics go together?

If I were lucky, at least one hesitatingly confident realist among the students — they were still too young to be cynics — would be brave enough on this first day of class to raise a hand and say deferentially and politely something like: “What! Have you read a newspaper lately?” (They had newspapers back then.) “Every page is filled with violence, crime, corruption, and somebody grasping for power! To call someone a politician is an insult.”

And so the semester would be off and running.

I would admit that though Aristotle in his “Politics” defines man as a “political animal” because man is a “rational animal” — an animal possessing logos, or reason — he makes an empirical observation at the end of his “Ethics” that will be familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper: Rational creatures though they are, men sometimes do not listen to reason and are carried away by their passions.

Aristotle would agree with Alexander Hamilton, or rather Hamilton agreed with Aristotle, when he wrote in Federalist 15:

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.” And with James Madison’s even more famous saying, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

In addition, working on our non-angelic human fallibility and culpability, bad education causes us to make mistakes about what is good. For these reasons, Aristotle argues that both education and coercion are central to the art of politics and, alas, that practicing the art of politics is not a leisurely activity. It is the burdensome art of inducing others to do what they ought to do for their own good and happiness, even when they don’t want to.

These days, our children learn in school and online that it is good to shoplift or try to change themselves from a boy to a girl or from a girl to a boy. A shockingly large percentage of them have learned that it is good to kill those who disagree with you.

From his first day in office in 2021, Joe Biden — our then-educator in chief — made it the central point of American politics that being trans was being good and questioning the goodness of being trans was evil. He thrust this bad education into the face of his country — marching trans heroes before the cameras to model the “goodness” that all Americans should admire and publicly praise if they wanted to avoid ostracism, public shaming and canceling, expulsion from school, losing their jobs, being put in jail, or being murdered in cold blood.

Politics requires goodness

Knowing what is good is not easy. A man in ancient Athens with the greatest reputation for wisdom knew only that he did not know what was good. To have what was good, to be good, was so crucial to Socrates — the one thing needful — that it made no sense to do anything else with his life than to try to find out what it was.

RELATED: We all knew political murder was coming home

Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

But we do not need to be philosophers to know that boys cannot become girls, that biological males should not be competing against biological females in sports or sharing their bathrooms, and that killing those who disagree with us is evil. Glenn Ellmers, Salvatori Research Fellow at the Claremont Institute and an old friend, published a short essay on the urgent need, in this increasingly deranged world, to hold on to our common sense.

Machiavelli — the infamous teacher of “realist” politics — seeing unflinchingly what we all could read in the newspaper, taught that in a world where so many are so bad, it is merely common sense that it is necessary for those who would succeed in the art of politics to enter into evil. I would suggest an alternative lesson to students, one that I think is in the spirit of Aristotle: In a world where so many are so bad, it is merely common sense that it is necessary for the good to be great.

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

Mass immigration means dependence, and dependence means control



Power always seeks to expand. It never halts for principles or words on paper, but only for rival powers strong enough to resist it. Those rivals must have deep roots, independent resilience, and the ability to demand loyalty. They must project sovereignty in ways the state cannot easily replicate, establishing spheres of influence that can resist government overreach without ever firing a shot.

Historically, strong communities provided this check. Their religions and folkways became the rhythms of life, passed down through generations. These beliefs drew authority from transcendent sources no earthly power could reproduce. Families built churches, schools, libraries, civic organizations, unions, and fraternities to preserve culture, transmit values, and care for members.

Communities with shared traditions can limit state commands. But diversity dissolves those limits.

Such communities formed spheres of sovereignty. They made competing demands on their members and provided services the state could not: spiritual grounding, mutual aid, a sense of identity. Membership required specific behaviors to remain in good standing, norms the state could not easily reshape. Because traditions were deeply ingrained, the state had to respect them or risk serious resistance.

Over time, these communities often accumulated wealth. Virtue and stability generated surplus capital, which supported robust institutions and provided safety nets. Their members no longer relied on government in times of need. They relied on each other. These were the kulaks — the middle class — people whose independence created natural barriers to state expansion. Not atomized “self-reliance,” but communal reliance: stability rooted in culture and habit. That is precisely why governments sought to break them.

High and low vs. the middle

The political theorist Bertrand de Jouvenel, in "On Power," described the classic formula: high and low versus the middle. The ruling class always wants more power, but the middle class resists. The poor, being dependent and disorganized, cannot mount opposition. Only the middle class, with property, institutions, and traditions, can stand in the way. To expand power, rulers must dissolve these spheres of sovereignty.

Their method is alliance with the dependent lower classes. Sometimes this means the domestic underclass. But that group still shares culture and traditions with the middle, making it less reliable as a tool. Importing a foreign underclass works better. Immigrants lack roots in the land or its traditions. They can be counted on to side with rulers against the entrenched middle.

Mass immigration delivers cheap labor to the wealthy while creating a new political client base. The upper class benefits from gardeners and nannies. Politicians gain millions of new voters to whom they can promise state benefits.

Dependence as a weapon

Immigrant groups rarely possess cohesive culture or resilient institutions. They lack roots, leisure, or unity to resist. They depend on the ruling class for entry, employment, rights, and welfare. Many don’t speak the language. They need the state to survive — and they reward the state with loyalty. This isn’t passive dependence. To succeed, they actively require the state to expand.

To serve this new underclass, rulers pillage the middle. Kulaks are blamed for inequality. They are guilted, taxed, or coerced into surrendering what they built. That wealth is transferred to immigrants, cementing the state’s power over both. The middle grows poorer, loses property, closes institutions, and becomes more unstable. Families that once resisted government control now depend on it.

RELATED: ‘Paperwork Americans’ are not your countrymen

Blaze Media illustration

Mass immigration also erodes culture, another obstacle to power. Communities with shared traditions can limit state commands. But diversity dissolves those limits. Forced to mingle with newcomers, the shared identity frays. Cultural separation becomes taboo. Institutions that once passed on values and provided aid collapse. Charities are drained. Public spaces decay. And those who maintained them see no reason to sacrifice for strangers.

The state ensures that escape is impossible. First taboo, then law, forbids communities to separate and reform. Those who try are smeared as bigots, then prosecuted. The middle is barred from reconstituting its way of life. Virtue fades. The spheres of sovereignty are gone. Everyone becomes a rootless dependent, giving the state a blank check to expand its power.

Why immigration became policy

This is why mass immigration became a priority across Western liberal democracies. It doesn’t just dismantle barriers to state power; it builds a machine to demand more of it. Rulers gain cheap labor, grateful voters, and excuses to raid the middle. The cost is cultural dissolution, but to elites that is a feature, not a bug.

If we want an elite that serves its people rather than undermines them, we must choke off this supply of outside populations. Stop importing clients. Stop dissolving communities. Restore the middle class and the spheres of sovereignty that protect liberty. Only then can the leviathan be caged.

Here’s A Rundown Of The Court Fights The Trump Administration Has Won So Far

The Trump administration has seen some significant wins in addition to many constitutionally untethered rulings.

‘Separation of Powers’ Is The Judiciary’s Bogus Justification For Anti-Trump Lawfare

The judicial branch, with all its courtly power, takes every opportunity to oppose President Donald Trump.

GOP’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill Act’ lets Big Tech and Big Pharma run wild



The Republicans’ bizarrely named “Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes two egregious provisions that would strip states of their power to regulate key agenda items pushed by globalist elites.

Anyone who still understands what the word “conservative” means can see the truth: The Republican budget bill is a mixed bag of deficit bloat, missed opportunities, and the odd policy win. Whether the House bill was worth passing as a “take it or leave it” deal depends on one’s political calculus. But the result is underwhelming and fails to rise to the moment.

Stripping states of authority and subsidizing green fantasies are the exact opposite of the anti-globalist message that won Trump the White House.

Supporters of the bill — particularly President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — argue that it’s the best possible outcome given a razor-thin House majority packed with RINOs from purple districts in blue states. Set aside that debate. If it’s true, then conservatives should focus their energies in deep-red states where Republicans hold supermajorities. That’s where we can — and must — do the work Congress won’t.

Instead, Republican leaders included two provisions in the bill that actively prevent red states from pushing back against green energy mandates, land-grabs, surveillance schemes, and a growing transhumanist agenda.

Green New Deal jam-down

Thanks to Republican Freedom Caucus stalwarts, including Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland and Chip Roy of Texas, much of the Green New Deal faces rollback — assuming, of course, the Senate doesn’t block the repeal. But one key subsidy survives: federal incentives for carbon capture pipelines. Worse still, the bill strengthens protections for these projects by stripping states of regulatory power.

Section 41006 spells it out: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law,” once the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission grants a pipeline license under an newly amended section of the Natural Gas Act, state and local governments can no longer block or delay the project using zoning, permitting, or land-use laws.

In plain English: carbon dioxide pipelines, backed by federal subsidies, get the same privileges as oil and gas pipelines. That includes eminent domain powers and “certificate of public convenience and necessity” status — bureaucratic code for “we’ll take your land whether you like it or not.”

But carbon pipelines aren’t oil and gas. Oil fuels the economy and delivers a clear public good. Carbon capture, by contrast, sucks up CO2 and buries it to appease climate hysterics. It serves no market need and survives only through government handouts. It exists to sanctify the fiction that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

This isn’t an oversight. It’s a direct response to South Dakota ranchers, who successfully fought to ban eminent domain for carbon capture projects. Lawmakers in Iowa and North Dakota have followed suit, targeting Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed pipeline, which would have plowed through private ranchland to serve a project with no public value.

The rebellion in South Dakota ranks among the most important conservative grassroots victories in recent history. Yet this bill spits in the face of those landowners. It overrides red-state laws and rural rights on behalf of globalist, green-energy profiteers.

A 10-year pause on state bans

Funny how Republicans said budget reconciliation couldn’t include policy changes. That was the excuse for not pursuing immigration reform or judicial restructuring. And yet when it suits the priorities of Big Tech and globalist interests, lawmakers found a way to insert sweeping federal mandates into the bill.

Out of nowhere, either the White House or GOP lawmakers added a provision banning states from regulating artificial intelligence or data center systems. Section 43201 of the bill states: “No State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”

That’s not compromise. That’s total pre-emption — no exceptions.

Florida and other red states have already passed laws prohibiting the use of AI in enforcing gun control or violating medical privacy. More states are following suit. Legislatures across the country are debating how to safeguard civil liberties and property rights from tech overreach. But this bill would kneecap every one of those efforts.

Then come the AI data centers — massive, power-hungry, water-consuming facilities that are cropping up in rural areas and harming communities in their wake. Bipartisan state efforts aim to regulate them through zoning and environmental protections. Yet under this bill, Congress could override even the most basic local safeguards. If a township tries to limit where these centers operate or how they’re built, that could be viewed as “regulating AI systems” and thus outlawed for a decade.

Why does this matter? Because tech moguls aren’t hiding their intentions.

RELATED: The Republicans who could derail reconciliation

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

At Trump’s January 22 launch event for Oracle’s Stargate platform, CEO Larry Ellison gushed about mRNA vaccines. “One of the most exciting things we’re working on ... is our cancer vaccine,” he said. “Using AI, we can detect cancers through blood tests and produce an mRNA vaccine robotically in about 48 hours.” That’s the model. AI plus big data plus biotech equals unregulated medical experimentation — powered by infrastructure no local government can block.

Red states have started pushing back, attempting to pass 10-year moratoriums on mRNA technology. But the federal budget bill would do the opposite: It could impose a 10-year federal moratorium on state bans.

So here’s the question: Do we really want Arab-funded special interests building AI spying centers in our heartland with no recourse for state and local governments to regulate, restrict, or place common-sense privacy guardrails on these new Towers of Babel?

That question raises another: Should localities be forced to accept carbon pipelines by federal decree, with no power to defend their land or water?

These policies — stripping states of authority, empowering transnational corporations, subsidizing green and biotech fantasies — are the exact opposite of the anti-globalist, America First message that won Trump the White House and won Republicans the House.

We deserve answers. Who inserted these provisions? And more urgently, who will take them out?

The real reason elites want to destroy Elon Musk



When protests erupt worldwide over an American staffing decision, it’s not outrage — it’s orchestration. And the people behind it don’t want you asking questions.

The recent wave of global protests against Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, defies logic. Demonstrators have gathered outside Tesla showrooms worldwide, setting cars on fire and destroying lithium batteries. But what exactly are they protesting?

The protests are not about environmental concerns but about control.

Policy decisions can spark domestic outrage in the United States, but why are people in Germany, Sweden, or Ireland suddenly mobilizing against Musk? He is not pushing for global war or implementing trade tariffs that would impact European consumers. His involvement in U.S. government affairs concerns federal budgeting waste, fraud, and abuse. Why would anyone overseas care about this?

Historically, large-scale protests have erupted over issues like nuclear weapons, war, and climate change. Yet, no precedent exists for international demonstrations aimed at a domestic U.S. policy decision — particularly one centered on budget efficiency. So who benefits from this manufactured outrage?

Green hypocrisy

Tesla revolutionized the electric vehicle industry, making sustainable transportation mainstream. Musk developed solar panels, battery storage, and charging infrastructure — technologies environmentalists have long championed. Yet now, the same groups that once hailed electric vehicles as essential to combating climate change are actively working to cripple Tesla.

How does burning Tesla vehicles and terrorizing EV owners advance the fight against climate change?

This contradiction reveals a deeper issue. If climate change truly presents an existential crisis, why would activists seek to dismantle a company leading the charge in clean energy? The only logical explanation is that the protests are not about environmental concerns but control.

Musk’s real ‘threat’

Elon Musk faced little controversy when he pioneered electric vehicles or launched reusable rockets. The backlash began when he became a vocal champion of free speech.

His purchase of Twitter, followed by revelations of government-backed censorship, changed how information moves through digital platforms. That shift marked the moment the outrage machine targeted him.

Opponents have resorted to labeling Musk a "fascist." But let’s examine this claim. Traditional fascism is defined by state control, forced conformity, and the suppression of dissent. Musk, on the other hand, advocates open dialogue, transparency, and reduced government interference. Calling him a fascist is not only inaccurate but also a deliberate attempt to stifle debate.

When people misuse the term "fascist," they dilute its meaning. Just as overusing the word "racist" has numbed the public to actual instances of racism, the indiscriminate application of "fascist" shields actual authoritarian behavior from scrutiny. This tactic is not about accurately describing Musk — it is about silencing him.

Who’s behind the protests?

Ordinary citizens do not spontaneously organize coordinated protests across multiple continents in response to a U.S. federal staffing decision. These demonstrations require financial backing, media support, and strategic messaging. So who benefits from damaging Tesla’s brand or silencing Musk?

We live in an era where perception is power. A viral video can ruin a reputation, and a well-crafted narrative can influence elections. If a movement can turn a climate hero into a villain simply for challenging an entrenched system, then it can manipulate almost any public discourse.

Before accepting any narrative at face value, we must ask critical questions: Do these protests help or harm the environment? Are they organic expressions of outrage, or are they carefully orchestrated? Is the term "fascist" being used to expose truth or to suppress dissent? Most importantly, are we sabotaging progress simply because we dislike one of the people leading it?

The manufactured outrage against Musk is not about policy; it is about power. And if we fail to recognize that, we risk allowing those who seek control to redefine reality itself.

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Complacency is killing the GOP — and Democrats are seizing the moment



The party’s over.

I hate being the bearer of bad news, but despite our historic victory this past November, the right hasn’t won the battle for America’s soul — not even close.

Republicans think Americans voted for right-wing philosophy, when in reality, they voted for Donald J. Trump. The two are not the same.

I get it — it’s been fun to be a Republican since November. The problem is, we’ve been so busy running victory lap after victory lap that now the left might lap us.

A warning from Pennsylvania

Just look at what happened this Tuesday, when Democrat James Malone won Pennsylvania’s 36th Senate District by a razor-thin margin. Just for context, this is a district that President Donald Trump won by 15 points in 2024 and whose electorate tilts Republican by 23 points. The last Republican to hold it ran unopposed. In short, it shouldn’t even have been close.

And yet the Democrat won, which raises a much more uncomfortable question, not just about this race but about the entire Republican strategy for 2026: How could this happen?

To me, the reason is clear. They won because we didn’t show up. Why didn’t we show up? We were lulled into a false sense of security by the crushing victory of 2024. And yes, Trump’s use of the full machinery of the state to strip away the left’s entrenched power — along with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency chewing through federal fat — makes it hard not to feel a bit giddy, even invincible. But while overconfidence breeds vulnerability, I don’t think that’s the real issue.

Trump won 2024, not ‘conservatism’

The real issue is that Republicans think Americans voted for right-wing philosophy, when in reality, they actually voted for Donald J. Trump. Whether you like it or not, Trump had an advantage that virtually no other Republican has: Everyone knew he was the living embodiment of a political approach that elites in bothparties had tried to stop. And what’s more, he was up against possibly the perfect candidate — or really, candidates — to personify what everyday Americans hatedabout those very elites. Plus, there truly is no one like Trump. It is only because so many people showed up to vote against those people — and for him — that they also pulled the lever for a Republican.

But most Democrats are not as bad as former Vice President Kamala Harris. And most Republicans, I’m sorry to say, are not Trump. In fact, most Republicans seem to have taken the exact wrong lesson from Trump’s victory. They’ve treated it as a vindication of conservatism. It wasn’t. Trump is not a movement conservative, and most Americans aren’t either.

Unfortunately, many GOP politicians still resemble the conservative brand of old. Worse, many have tried to use Trump’s “America First” agenda as a fig leaf for unpopular past stances and discredited old ideologies. This loud group has nothing to do with “America First,” and they’re making us look bad to normal Americans — precisely at the moment when everyone from Gavin Newsom to Bernie Sanders is falling all over themselves to try to appear “normal.” Americans voted for Trump to stop the ideological madness, not to invert it.

Time to wake up

But MAGA stands for more than that. We know it. Trump knows it. The real issue, as Trump himself often says, is that we’re not used to winning this much. And because of that, we’ve grown too comfortable. We’ve started coasting, assuming success will continue without effort.

We forget that many of our victories have come simply because voters oppose the radical left. As Mike Solana recently told Megyn Kelly, “We’ve decided what we don’t want to look like.” But rejection alone isn’t a strategy. If the opposition doesn’t implode, we have to give voters something to support — something real, clear, and positive. That requires more than deciding what we stand for; it requires showing it in everything we do.

Whatever that vision is, we need to define it now — and act on it — because time is running out.

We already lost a state Senate seat in a swing-state district with a Republican advantage of 23 points. If that can happen there, it can happen anywhere. The upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court race is a toss-up, and we cannot afford another defeat.

Yes, both the MAGA movement and Elon Musk have done more to nationalize the Wisconsin court race than they did with Pennsylvania’s 36th Senate district. But we can’t rely on billionaires or once-in-a-generation political talent.

The right must build a political machine that works — whether we’re in power or not. Democrats have one. They’re using it. And they’re not slowing down.

We shouldn’t either.

Trump demands construction of Biden-canceled Keystone XL Pipeline — but confidence to build may require big changes



President Donald Trump suggested Monday evening that he wants the Keystone XL Pipeline, which former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both sought to kill, built "NOW!"

"Our Country's doing really well, and today, I was just thinking, that the company building the Keystone XL Pipeline that was viciously jettisoned by the incompetent Biden Administration should come back to America, and get it built — NOW!" Trump wrote on Truth Social, roughly a month after telling the World Economic Forum that America does not need Canada's oil or gas.

Trump added, "I know they were treated very badly by Sleepy Joe Biden, but the Trump Administration is very different — Easy approvals, almost immediate start! If not them, perhaps another Pipeline Company. We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!"

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith welcomed the idea, stating, "That project should never have been cancelled. Lower fuel costs for American families is a big win."

The premier of the adjacent prairie province of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, suggested that the pipeline, unlike the 10% tariff Trump has threatened to place on Canadian exports of crude oil, is a good idea.

"The path to continental energy dominance is to increase non-tariff North American trade," noted Moe. "This includes the construction of new pipelines like Keystone XL."

Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of the energy advocacy organization Power the Future, told Blaze News that Biden's 2021 revocation of TC Energy Corporation's cross-border permission to build the pipeline has so shaken confidence in the American government's willingness and ability to honor deals with the private sector that it will take more than an optimistic social media post to make things happen.

The proposed 1,179-mile Keystone XL Pipeline would have carried Canadian crude oil from the province of Alberta, which has the fourth-largest proven oil reserves in the world, to Steele City, Nebraska, where an existing pipeline would route the profitable resource to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

The existing Keystone Pipeline System already sends over 590,000 barrels of crude oil daily to refineries in Illinois and Texas. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the proposed KXL pipeline would increase the system's capacity to at least 830,000 barrels of oil per day, add several billion dollars to America's GDP, reduce American reliance on production from South American and Middle Eastern countries, and create tens of thousands of jobs.

To the delight of climate alarmists, former President Barack Obama rejected the project in 2015, refusing to grant the cross-border permit needed to proceed. Obama claimed at the time that the pipeline "would not serve the national interests of the United States," even though his own State Department admitted months earlier that the project would create about 42,000 jobs.

'He put the faith and credit of the United States government in question when it comes to these types of projects going forward.'

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, also a climate alarmist, did not appear too bent out of shape by the bad news.

While the Trudeau government convivially accepted the costly decree from south of the border, TC Energy launched a $15 billion lawsuit seeking compensation under NAFTA.

Upon taking office in 2017, Trump reversed the Obama administration's decision and gave TC Energy the green light to proceed, stating, "It's a great day for job and energy independence."

TC Energy quickly dropped its lawsuit.

In the two years that followed, development costs exceeded $1.5 billion.

Despite the billions of dollars invested, the guarantee of greater capacity, and the construction of 93 miles of pipeline, President Joe Biden killed the project within hours of taking his oath of office in 2021 — a decision the America First Policy Institute indicated deprived nearly 60,000 people of direct and indirect construction and engineering jobs.

Turner noted in a Tuesday article in the Federalist that the same Democratic politicians and liberal media outfits now bemoaning the Trump administration for firing scores of bureaucrats then celebrated Biden's elimination of tens of thousands of pipeline jobs.

After 12 years of runarounds from Democrats and activist judges stateside, TC Energy finally threw up its hands in June 2021 and officially canceled the project. Alberta later filed for damages, citing the Biden administration's alleged breach of Canadian-U.S. trade agreements.

Turner told Blaze News that Biden "didn't just stop a pipeline. He put the faith and credit of the United States government in question when it comes to these types of projects going forward. I can't blame the operators of Keystone or any other company who doesn't trust the American government now for anything that's going to take more than one presidential term."

There are, however, two possible fixes that could restore private sector companies' confidence, suggested Turner.

"One, they should figure out some sort of bonding mechanism where the government floats a bond for the equivalent construction costs, and they are willing to forfeit the bond if they withdraw their permissions," said Turner. "If you did something like that where the government said, 'Look, we'll sign this contract to set aside or to reimburse you if we change permission,' well now you tie the hands of the future president — you let the government know if they reverse course, there are financial hardships."

Accordingly, if a Democratic president harboring the same climate alarmist sensibilities as Obama and Biden were to take office in 2028, then such a bonding mechanism would protect companies and regional stakeholders from losing billions of dollars in a White House-canceled project as the TC Energy and Alberta had with the KXL.

Turner noted that another potential fix would entail Congress reclaiming the authority the U.S. State Department now wields over pipelines that cross borders.

"Congress can just reclaim that authority and say, 'You know, this is something for the Commerce Committee, something for Senate Committee on Foreign Relations," said Turner. "Congress can put in the legislative fix so that it is the American people, through their legislators, who approve such permits moving forward."

Without such fixes, Turner suggested the risk for companies of sinking billions of dollars into projects that an ideologue could unilaterally annul with the flick of a pen is simply not worth it.

"It's going to take more than just President Trump saying let's start it up again. It's going to take an act of government to guarantee people that this will not happen again," said the energy advocate.

Until then, "It's easier to build a refinery in Dubai or China. It's easier to open up in Venezuela or somewhere else — the North Sea."

Bloomberg reported that South Bow Corp., the oil business spun off from TC Energy, indicated it is not interested in a revival of the project, especially since key permits have expired.

A spokeswoman for the company said the company has "moved on from the Keystone XL project."

Blaze News reached out to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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