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by Rod D. Martin
June 8, 2026

I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Cary Dunst to discuss the latest in the Iran war.

We discuss:

• The ceasefire violations and the differing aims of Israel and Iran

• What’s actually happening in Lebanon

• Where the peace talks stand, and Trump’s endgame

• How Iran hopes to game the U.S. midterms

• Winners and losers: Iran, Russia, China, and Texas

It’s nine minutes that quickly explain the latest developments and where we go from here. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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And don’t miss my wrap-up on the Beijing summit:

If you or your organization are facing a sex abuse or sexual harassment claim, or if you are yourself the victim, my friends at Chalmers Adams can help. Click here.

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NOTE: My friend Fred Fleitz is a former Trump National Security Council Chief of Staff, a former CIA analyst, and a former senior staffer with the House Intelligence Committee. He knows this topic better than most.

Which bring me to the point. Fred’s prescription for ODNI, combined with his credentials, make him a perfect candidate to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as DNI. And if you’ve been following his occasional essays here, you know that he’s enthusiastically supportive of Tulsi’s work to expose and imprison the Russiagate coup plotters.

Fred would finish the job Tulsi started to truly reform the Intelligence Community. And there’s no greater reform than eliminating the ODNI itself, a Deep State bastion and boondoggle from the start. As Sam Faddis constantly reminds us, the IC is bloated, ineffective, politicized, and almost entirely devoid of the operational muscle it needs to do the job. Fred would get us there (and if we can’t have Fred, can we please have Sam?). — RDM

The Next DNI Must Finish Tulsi Gabbard’s Work and Eliminate the ODNI

by Fred Fleitz
June 8, 2026

Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation as Director of National Intelligence, effective June 30, marks the end of a short but consequential tenure. Appointed in early 2025, she inherited an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that had ballooned since its post-9/11 creation into a bureaucratic behemoth of roughly 1,800–2,000 personnel, widely derided for politicizing intelligence and meddling in domestic politics.

Gabbard made real progress downsizing and depoliticizing the ODNI. But President Trump’s next DNI must finish the job and finally eliminate this huge redundant intelligence bureaucracy to give our country the lean and effective intelligence agencies we need to address the new and dire security threats facing our nation.

Gabbard’s “ODNI 2.0” initiative, launched in August 2025, delivered the most aggressive cuts since the founding of the ODNI. She slashed staff by more than 40 percent — to just 1,300 employees — closed or downsized duplicative centers such as the Foreign Malign Influence Center, revoked security clearances for officials who had weaponized intelligence against Americans, and projected more than $700 million in annual savings. These steps attacked the mission creep, “DNI taxes” on other agencies, and empire-building that had turned the ODNI into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy rather than the small coordinating staff the 9/11 Commission originally envisioned.

Those reforms were long overdue. For two decades, the ODNI has replicated analysis already done by the CIA and other agencies, mobbed congressional hearings with unnecessary staffers, and imposed politically correct fads — from climate change to DEI quotas — on the entire Intelligence Community. Gabbard began draining this swamp. But the office itself remains the problem.

The proof that the DNI is unnecessary is staring us in the face. In President Trump’s second term, CIA Director John Ratcliffe has served effectively as the president’s principal intelligence adviser. He has delivered unvarnished, actionable intelligence directly to the president without the ODNI’s layers of bureaucracy, groupthink, or politicized gatekeepers. Ratcliffe has shown that the CIA director can once again function as the president’s senior intelligence official — coordinating the Intelligence Community when necessary — without any need for a bloated 1,300-person (or even 650-person) ODNI staff.

This is exactly the model I have advocated for years: eliminate the DNI position and its bloated office, return core functions to the CIA, and let U.S. intelligence agencies do their jobs.

In an August 2025 American Greatness article, I praised Senator Tom Cotton’s Intelligence Community Efficiency and Effectiveness Act as a strong step in the right direction. This legislation would cap the ODNI staff at 650, transfer duplicative centers to the CIA and FBI, and refocus the National Intelligence Council on coordination rather than redundant analysis.

Nevertheless, Cotton’s bold plan still falls short of the full elimination required. A smaller ODNI is still an ODNI — still prone to the same bureaucratic inertia and political capture that have plagued it since 2004.

Gabbard scored important successes as DNI: she proved dramatic downsizing of U.S. intelligence agencies is possible through executive action, restored public trust by confronting politicization, and refocused resources on genuine threats.

But her too-short tenure still has agenda items left undone: above all, the ODNI itself survived. Key specialized functions were cut without fully reallocating them to other intelligence agencies, and momentum stalled once the most obvious bloat was removed. These partial reforms left the deeply flawed ODNI structure intact and probably will lead to future mission creep the moment a less reform-minded DNI takes over.

President Trump gave his Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, a bold mandate: shut down the wasteful and politicized Department of Education. He should give his nominee to be the next DNI a similar mandate: finish what Gabbard started and abolish the ODNI entirely. Restore the CIA director as the head of America’s Intelligence Community and return the position to the title it held for nearly sixty years: Director of Central Intelligence.

Use executive authority to transfer remaining personnel and functions back to the CIA, NSA, and FBI. Send the thousands of detailees from other agencies home. Sell the costly Liberty Crossing headquarters in high-priced Tysons Corner, Virginia. Move the president’s Daily Brief and strategic analysis where they belong — under the CIA director.

Congress should then codify these changes by repealing the relevant sections of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and passing legislation that makes permanent the lean, coordinated Intelligence Community we actually need.

As I argued in January 2025, it is time to make American intelligence great again. Our nation urgently needs nimble, modernized intelligence agencies to confront today’s grave and growing threats: China’s aggressive espionage and military buildup, Russia’s hybrid warfare, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terrorist proxies, and the rapidly advancing dangers of AI, cyberwarfare, and drone technology. We can no longer afford bloated intelligence bureaucracies that care more about domestic politics and internal empire-building than America’s national security.

Tulsi Gabbard disrupted the U.S. Intelligence Community status quo. President Trump should direct his next DNI to complete this mission. Eliminating the ODNI is not radical; it is common sense. It is the only way to deliver the lean, effective, and depoliticized Intelligence Community to protect our nation in an increasingly dangerous world.

— Fred Fleitz is a former CIA analyst and staff member with the House Intelligence Committee. In 2018, he served as the National Security Council Chief of Staff and as a Deputy Special Assistant to President Trump. This article appeared at American Greatness.

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NOTE: This year’s Southern Baptist Convention begins today in Orlando. I am republishing this article to remind you what’s at stake. Voting doesn’t start till Tuesday morning, so it’s not too late to go. — RDM

by Rod D. Martin
July 1, 2024

For many, the Southern Baptist Convention seems like a lost cause. From Critical Race Theory, to the leadership’s cavalier disregard for financial transparency, to sex abuse issues, to the heartbreakingly narrow defeat of the Law Amendment (61-39, with two-thirds required), many conservatives are at least considering leaving.

Don’t.

The SBC is worth fighting for. Maybe “God doesn’t need the Southern Baptist Convention,” as some always say. But you do. More than you realize.

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Southern Baptists make up 11 percent of America’s churches. But what you probably don’t realize is that the six SBC seminaries educate roughly 33 percent of America’s seminary students. 

We’re educating a lot more pastors than just our own. Losing our seminaries to the left would poison the pulpits of the planet. No, not just America’s churches, but the mission fields as well; countless lost souls across the world hear the name of Jesus, in many cases for the first time, but instead of receiving the Truth, they would get a woke false gospel.

Closer to home, if you’re a pastor and either retire or move elsewhere, odds are your church will pick one of the men trained by those seminaries to replace you. “Oh no, my church would never do that,” you might say. But in the real world, a pulpit committee made up of people who today may not even be members of your church will hire someone you probably don’t know. And maybe he’ll believe exactly as you do. But if he (or she, or “they”) was improperly trained, he could undo your entire ministry.

Examples of such are legion.

Now, those who believe we should give up claim that we can always build new seminaries. And maybe we can. But they don’t mention (or perhaps even realize) the following: when the PCUSA defrocked Gresham Machen almost a century ago, he left Princeton and founded Westminster Theological Seminary, which is certainly a fine institution. However today, ninety-five years later, Princeton still educates more seminarians than WTS.

Your SBC seminaries won’t go away if you abandon them. They’ll just replace you after you’re gone.

The logical retort, of course, is to ask why I am not suggesting we fight for Princeton? But there is indeed a reason, poorly understood by most Southern Baptists, but which is the philosophical and practical key to the whole argument. 

Princeton, like Harvard, Baylor, and countless other formerly faithful institutions, is governed by what the law calls a ‘self-perpetuating board’. That means its board members select their own successors. You and I aren’t getting into that club. God may well redeem Princeton someday. But we never will.

By contrast, the SBC’s institutions are what the law describes as ‘membership organizations’: their members elect their boards. And as it turns out, all these institutions have exactly one member, the same member: the Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

As a result, two things are true:

Those who show up at the Annual Meeting (‘messengers’) elect all the boards, and thus indirectly their professors and staff.

If conservatives don’t show up, they abdicate their stewardship duty and hand over these vital institutions to those who do.

“Those who do” tend to be people who have a dog in this fight. They’re often SBC or state convention employees, or people who’d like to be. Many are insiders or friends of insiders. They’re not prone to rocking the boat. And if there’s drift, that drift is always in the direction of the sin nature, because no one wants to take a hard honest look at their buddies, much less their bosses.

Just how bad is our stewardship? In an average year, just 7.2 percent of SBC churches are represented at the Annual Meeting. So it’s basically nonexistent. The club pretends to watch itself.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Any SBC church may send 12 messengers. No church, not even the giant ones like Prestonwood or The Summit, may send more. The formula favors small churches, which is a very good thing since 73 percent of all SBC churches have 100 members or less.

There’s absolutely no reason faithful Southern Baptists can’t steward their seminaries and thus protect their pulpits into the far future. All it will take is prayer, effort, and will. These things have been lacking for far too long. But we don’t have to continue in sloth. By God’s good grace, the Annual Meeting is annual.

For the sake of our grandchildren, let’s make the most of it.

— This essay originally appeared at ClearTruthMedia.com.

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NOTE: For this anniversary of the Battle of Midway, I am republishing this brilliant re-examination of the global consequences of the Japanese victory that, statistically speaking, should have happened. No matter how great a victory you believe Midway to be, the truth is greater still. But for this singularly improbable American triumph, the Allies likely would have lost the entire war. — RDM

by George Friedman
June 7, 2017

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Midway. The books and movies about this battle have been legion. They focus on the long odds facing the Americans, the luck and breathtaking courage, and the brilliance of American codebreakers that led to victory. They assert that the American victory sealed Japan’s fate in World War II.

But they rarely consider in detail the consequences if America had lost the battle, which it might easily have done. The Japanese were also extraordinarily courageous. Had they been luckier, and had they changed the Japanese code well before the battle as they should have, Midway could have ended in the destruction of three American carriers, with the Japanese navy intact.

On this anniversary, I want to consider the war had the battle gone Japan’s way.

The Pacific

The immediate consequence of a defeat at Midway would, of course, have been in the Pacific. The Japanese plan appears to have been to follow Midway with an assault on strategic islands in the South Pacific. They would have faced light forces on the islands and no naval threat. They would have taken islands, built airfields and constructed overlapping areas of air power that would have prevented merchant shipping from entering. The flow of U.S. troops and materiel to Australia would have slowed to a trickle or dried up altogether.

This would have meant that the U.S. could not have taken Guadalcanal and New Guinea until much later. It also would have given Japan much more time to consolidate a line, for example, from Samoa to Midway to the Aleutians, which was also part of Japan’s Midway strategy.

The United States, lacking a sufficient carrier force, would not have been able to launch a Pacific offensive until mid-1943, and that offensive would have had to be focused on the South Pacific rather than the Gilberts, Marianas and Marshalls. The cost in time, men and materiel of bringing Japan into range of American bombers would have been substantial. Submarines would have had to launch from Pearl Harbor rather than Midway, which is 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) longer, and much of the time would have been spent on submarine operations to interdict supplies instead of attacking Japanese warships. Japan would have had time and materiel to increase its strength.

The Americans’ problem in the Pacific would have been securing Hawaii as a forward base and maintaining the line of supply from the West Coast. The Japanese were unlikely to invade Hawaii, given that all operations there would take place within the range of U.S. air power. But the Japanese could have used submarines based in Midway to interdict supplies from the West Coast. If Hawaii ceased to be an effective base, then the Japanese would dominate the Western Pacific. They would have had options to strike the West Coast, and certainly to take Dutch Harbor in Alaska or even Anchorage. They already held the islands of Attu and Kiska. The Americans would have had to answer.

In 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic was at its peak, and that summer and fall, an extraordinarily high 10 percent of all Allied shipping in the Atlantic was being sunk. It is at this point that the United States would have had to decide whether to risk the isolation of Hawaii or reduce the number of destroyers based in the Atlantic. It couldn’t do both – U.S. production of naval vessels wouldn’t really be able to surge until mid-1943.

The shipping of supplies to Britain was meant to support Britain and the Soviet Union, an excellent long-term strategy for pursuing American interests. But this was a political problem. The immediate threat to the American homeland would likely trump long-term strategy.

Given the stakes in the Pacific, the odds against U-boats in the Atlantic and the delay in increased production of naval vessels, the U.S. would have had little choice but to transfer destroyers to the Pacific. But that wouldn’t be enough. It would also greatly increase land-based aircraft on the West Coast. The aircraft production program was beginning to gain steam in 1942, but most of that at the time was being assigned to the Royal Air Force, the U.S. Air Force buildup in Britain or the Soviet Union. That would have changed.

An Unthinkable Treaty

We must consider the impact of all this on Allied powers. Australia would have depended on its own resources. The Japanese were unlikely to invade, but the Australians couldn’t be sure of that. For things to change, the U.S. would have to launch a new Navy, fight its way through the South Pacific and then launch operations northward to push the Japanese away from Australia. To that point, neither the British nor the Americans appeared very effective allies. At the very best, the U.S. was a year away from offensive operations, and opening the line of supply to Australia might not happen until 1944, if ever.

Immediately upon the U.S. defeat at Midway, Australia would have had to demand that the last Australian forces in North Africa return home while the Suez Canal was still open. The battle of El Alamein was being fought from summer 1942 until the British victory in October. A British defeat would have enabled the Germans to take the Suez Canal and likely control the Mediterranean.

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Australian troops had been critical to this victory, and though the Australians had withdrawn many troops after Pearl Harbor, the 7th Division remained. The 7th Division proved to be the critical force in the final, victorious phase of El Alamein. Had the Australians withdrawn the 7th in summer 1942, which they would have had Midway been an American defeat, it is altogether possible that the British still would have won at El Alamein, but it would have been substantially less likely than with the Australians there.

But the homeland would have to take precedent. The Australians wanted to be certain that Australia was not occupied by the Japanese, but they had no military way to prevent it and no reliable allies. Their national strategy was hoping the Japanese had other plans. The Japanese had no real interest in Australia except for making sure it didn’t become a base for the Americans. The Japanese also wanted Australia’s raw materials. A peace agreement was possible. Australia, isolated and with no options, would have done what was unthinkable before Midway: signed a friendship pact with Japan guaranteeing neutrality, with a mutually beneficial trade agreement included.

Soviet Vulnerability

At about the same time of Midway, the Germans launched an offensive in the south that would evolve into the Battle of Stalingrad. The offensive surprised the Soviets, who were expecting the assault to come on Moscow. The Soviets had also underestimated Germany’s strength. At the same time, the Soviets would have seen the American defeat at the Battle of Midway and understood that it would mean a decrease in lend-lease, if not its complete disruption. The British, who also depended on lend-lease, would be in no position to replace it, and Soviet industrial production was not yet capable of providing for a powerful defense at Stalingrad by itself.

And the Soviets had a second problem. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the Soviets had feared, and the Japanese had considered, an alternative strike into Siberia. Russia’s maritime region had oil, and Japan needed oil. The Japanese attacked south toward the Dutch holdings instead, but the interest in Siberia was still there. With a victory at Midway, the Japanese could have halted operations in the Pacific and focused on building defenses on Pacific islands that would bog down the American counterattack in mid-1943 in island-to-island fighting, with a vast Japanese fleet to challenge the landing party.

But Siberia was open. Right after Pearl Harbor, the Soviets shifted to Moscow the force that had been protecting Siberia from Japan. It was this force under Gen. Georgy Zhukov that stopped the Germans. A Japanese victory at Midway would have reopened the possibility of a Japanese invasion. But the Soviets would not have been able to send Zhukov back. Until the defeat of the German southern thrust, which would happen in early 1943, everything had to go there.

The Soviet Union faced two problems. One was that it didn’t know that it could win at Stalingrad with the absence of lend-lease shipments. The other was that critical Soviet lands were at serious risk. If the Soviets couldn’t contain the Germans’ southern thrust, the best they could do was retain a rump state in the north. If they won but Japan attacked Siberia, they would still have lost the east, and the Japanese would control the Western Pacific, China and Siberia.

In 1943 and 1944, there were discussions between Germany and the Soviets on a peace agreement that never worked out. I don’t know that either side took these talks seriously. The Germans certainly wouldn’t have considered talks had Japan won at Midway, forcing the U.S. to shift its grand strategy away from the Atlantic, putting lend-lease in jeopardy and exposing the eastern Soviet Union to Japanese attack. I think without the assistance of the Americans in 1942, the Soviets would have lost the war. In our alternate history, the Americans probably would have thought the Soviets were going to lose anyway, but history proved them wrong.

Freak Outcomes

It is true that in the years after Midway, American productivity would grow to be enormous, but the enemy doesn’t wait for production to rise. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto’s intention was to destroy the U.S. naval force in the Pacific and to create an impregnable belt of islands to block American advances. That was the purpose of Midway, and had it worked, I think there would have been a different outcome in the global war. This is because the United States was the industrial foundation of the Allies, but in 1942, that production had not really gotten underway. A defeat at Midway would have forced a reallocation of industrial production and warships. This would have left key allies, Australia and the Soviet Union, in an impossible position.

The U.S. would have had towering production by 1943 or 1944. But the Soviets would not be there anymore. Nor, I suspect, would Australia. Britain would have made it so long as it won at El Alamein without Australia’s help. The problem was that massive production without Allied forces and forward bases would have left the U.S. fighting alone. And given the distances and multiple enemies, that wasn’t possible.

This all raises a serious question for me. My work is in finding the order and predictability in history. There was nothing predictable at Midway. The Japanese should have won even with the U.S. breaking their code. The numbers were so lopsided in their favor that their defeat was a freak. And that freak created the world we live in. The Japanese were as brave and as smart, their weapons as good if not better, and they had far greater numbers. They should have won, and the things I have described should have happened, and the history of the world should have been quite different.

-- Midway: The Battle That Almost Lost the War originally appeared at Geopolitical Futures.

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by Rod D. Martin and Frank Gaffney
June 5, 2026

My latest interview on Securing America with Frank Gaffney. Sign up NOW for Frank’s Rumble channel and don’t miss a single episode!

In this episode:

• Personal memories of Tiananmen Square from my college Chinese class

• The very different approaches to dissent of Gorbachev vs. Beijing

• Should America have reacted more forcefully?

• How Bill Clinton sold America to the CCP

• How China is deindustrializing Europe

• Why the Chinese economy, like Russia’s in the 1980s, is far weaker than it looks

• Is Scott Bessent trying to break the yuan?

• Trump’s Reaganesque strategy to contain and collapse the CCP

It’s 20 minutes of deep analysis you can’t get anywhere else. Watch, like, and share!

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by Roger Stone
June 5, 2026

For much of the twentieth century, Latin America served as one of the principal battlegrounds in the global struggle between communism and free market democracy. The Soviet Union and its allies invested enormous resources into cultivating revolutionary movements, socialist parties, and Marxist insurgencies throughout the Western Hemisphere. From Cuba to Nicaragua and beyond, the Left promised a future built upon economic equality, state control, and collectivist ideology.

For a time, many believed those movements represented the inevitable direction of history. Political leaders, academics, journalists, and activists throughout the region embraced socialist theories and revolutionary rhetoric. The collapse of the Soviet Union slowed that momentum, but it did not eliminate it. In the decades that followed, a new generation of left wing governments emerged across Latin America under what became known as the “Pink Tide”.

Today, a remarkable political transformation is underway. Across the region, voters are increasingly turning away from socialist and progressive governments in favor of conservative, nationalist, and free market alternatives. The shift reflects growing frustration with crime, corruption, inflation, economic stagnation, and governments that have failed to deliver on decades of promises.

Nowhere has this political reversal been more dramatic than in Argentina. Long regarded as one of the most economically troubled nations in South America despite its vast natural wealth and human capital, Argentina endured years of soaring inflation, fiscal instability, and declining public confidence. Faced with mounting economic hardship, voters elected Javier Milei, a self-described libertarian and fierce critic of government expansion.

Milei’s election represented far more than a routine change in political leadership. It reflected a broader rejection of the policies that many Argentines believe contributed to their nation’s prolonged economic decline. His promises of deregulation, reduced government spending, and economic liberalization resonated with voters who had grown weary of inflation and diminishing living standards.

A similar political struggle is now unfolding in Colombia, one of the most important nations in the Western Hemisphere. Colombia is currently governed by President Gustavo Petro, the country’s first left wing president, who is constitutionally prohibited from seeking another term. His administration pursued an ambitious progressive agenda focused on wealth redistribution, environmental reforms, negotiations with armed groups, and expanded government programs. While Petro retained a loyal base of support, his presidency also became increasingly controversial amid concerns about public security, economic performance, healthcare reform, and rising political polarization.

The Colombian presidential election has become a referendum on the future direction of the country. The candidate representing continuity with Petro’s movement is Senator Iván Cepeda, a longtime left wing activist and close ally of the current administration. Cepeda has pledged to continue many of Petro’s policies, including expanded social programs, greater government involvement in the economy, land redistribution initiatives, and a continuation of negotiations with armed groups.

Opposing him is Abelardo de la Espriella, a conservative lawyer and political outsider who has surged from relative obscurity to become the leading candidate in the race. De la Espriella has campaigned on restoring public order, strengthening law enforcement, confronting criminal organizations, rebuilding relations with the United States, and reversing many of the policies associated with the Petro administration. His rise has drawn comparisons to both Javier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.

The results of the first round of voting sent shockwaves through Colombian politics. De la Espriella finished first with approximately 43.7% of the vote, while Cepeda finished second with roughly 40.9%. The outcome forced a runoff election and demonstrated that a substantial portion of Colombian voters are prepared to move in a more conservative direction. Several center right political figures have already lined up behind De la Espriella, further strengthening his position heading into the decisive final vote.

The Colombian election is significant because it illustrates the broader debate occurring throughout Latin America. On one side stand political movements advocating greater state involvement in economic and social life. On the other stand candidates emphasizing public security, economic growth, free enterprise, and national sovereignty. The contest is no longer confined to academic discussions or ideological debates. It is being decided at the ballot box by voters increasingly focused on practical outcomes.

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Elsewhere throughout the region, similar patterns are emerging. In Ecuador, concerns over organized crime, cartel violence, and public security have become dominant political issues. Citizens increasingly demand stronger law enforcement and more effective government action against criminal organizations that have expanded their influence in recent years.

In Chile, enthusiasm for sweeping progressive reforms has diminished as voters express growing concern about economic performance and national stability. In Brazil, conservative and nationalist movements continue to command significant support despite intense political polarization and sustained opposition from many established institutions.

The changing political landscape reflects more than dissatisfaction with individual leaders. It represents a broader reassessment of the ideological assumptions that have influenced Latin American politics for generations. Many citizens have concluded that expansive government programs and centralized economic policies have failed to produce the prosperity and opportunity they were promised.

Venezuela stands as perhaps the most powerful example of this reality. Once among the wealthiest countries in the region, Venezuela became synonymous with economic collapse, hyperinflation, political repression, and mass emigration. Millions of Venezuelans fled their homeland in search of safety and opportunity. The consequences of that national decline have been visible across the continent, shaping public opinion far beyond Venezuela’s borders.

For many Latin American voters, these developments are not abstract political theories. They are lived experiences. Families have witnessed rising prices erode their savings. Business owners have struggled under burdensome regulations. Communities have endured growing insecurity. Citizens have become increasingly skeptical of politicians who promise transformative change while delivering disappointing results.

As a consequence, political movements that emphasize economic freedom, public safety, national sovereignty, and governmental accountability are gaining momentum throughout the hemisphere. While each country’s circumstances are unique, the broader pattern is difficult to ignore. The significance of this trend extends beyond Latin America. The issues driving political change throughout the region mirror many of the concerns that dominate political debates in the United States. Inflation, crime, immigration, government spending, and public trust in institutions remain central issues for voters throughout the Americas.

The outcome of Colombia’s runoff election will provide one of the clearest indications yet of where the region is headed. A victory by Cepeda would preserve the momentum of the Latin American Left and provide a successor to Petro’s political project. A victory by De la Espriella would represent one of the most significant conservative victories in South America in recent years and would add Colombia to the growing list of nations reassessing the promises of progressive governance.

The political realignment now unfolding across Latin America demonstrates that voters ultimately judge governments by outcomes rather than intentions. Grand ideological visions often lose their appeal when they fail to improve daily life. Citizens want secure communities, economic opportunity, stable currencies, and governments capable of performing their most basic responsibilities effectively.

The great political story emerging from Latin America is therefore not merely a series of election results. It is a profound reassessment of ideas that have shaped the region for decades. After years of disappointment with policies that promised prosperity but often delivered instability, many voters are embracing a different path. The consequences of that choice may shape the future of the Western Hemisphere for years to come.

— Roger Stone is a veteran of ten national presidential campaigns who served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents: Nixon, Reagan, and Trump. He is a speaker, pundit, and New York Times bestselling Author featured in the Netflix documentary ‘Get Me Roger Stone.’ This analysis first appeared at his Substack, StoneColdTruth.com.

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NOTE: Europe chose to get in bed with its enemies. It filled its cities with military-aged male Muslims who hate it. It made itself dependent on Russian energy while shutting down countless power plants and oil fields. Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, during which it has ceaselessly saber-rattled and hectored the U.S. to “do more”, it has literally sent twice as much money to Moscow for energy as to Kiev in aid.

And then there’s China.

Donald Trump warned the world that China was a predator, exporting its deflation and overbuilding its industrial plant to drive all legitimate competitors under and thereby dominate the consumer markets it lacks at home. The Beltway refused to hear that message, but the American people heard it loud and clear. Brussels was more obstinate than either.

Now, the awakening. It’s not too late. But it’s awfully late.

One of my all-time favorite writers, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, explains. — RDM

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
June 4, 2026

Europe’s leaders are waking up to the terrifying danger that China could obliterate much of their industrial base within less than a decade, shattering the old political order and the EU project itself.

The Rhodium Group says the Chinese Communist Party is digging in its heels, doubling down on a strategy of systemic over-investment and over-reliance on exports that cannot be absorbed by the rest of the world, and certainly not a Europe already in semi-slump.

The original “Made in China 2025” plan a decade ago targeted a clutch of specific technologies. Beijing is now expanding this into an “industrial policy of everything”: cars, machinery, chemicals, pharma, software, AI, you name it.

China is pursuing this ruthlessly, aiming to capture a larger share of global value added with vertical control of the entire lifecycle.

It is moving towards autarky in its home market while undercutting the West in its own market and in third countries — everywhere and in every product. It devours foreign technology without releasing its own. The Rhodium Group said the foundations of G7 manufacturing are under comprehensive threat.

The “China Shock 2.0” is bigger and more sophisticated than the original China Shock in the 1990s and early 2000s, which flooded the world with cheap goods and wiped out swathes of blue-collar manufacturing in the West.

America bore the brunt of the first shock. The pauperization of the Midwest Rust Belt set the stage for Donald Trump.

As much as China must have access to the giant U.S. consumer market, this time China can’t easily dump its excess capacity on the U.S. because of Trump’s trade barriers. The tsunami is instead being displaced into the softer target of Europe. It is hitting with even greater intensity. China’s trade surplus hit a record 1 percent of global GDP last year. No country has ever reached such an imbalanced position in modern economic history.

“Every day, China posts a €1bn trade surplus with the EU. If we do nothing, by 2027, our trade deficit will reach €500bn. That is not economically sustainable,” said Stéphane Séjourné, vice-president of the European Commission.

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“We can’t let Europe be the victim of a predatory strategy that is destroying our industry,” he told Le Monde.

Communist China is pursuing more or less the same policy of autarky and one-way trade as the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century. In that era it sucked up the world’s silver. Today is sucking up the world’s aggregate demand. China seems culturally unable to trade on normal footing of balance and reciprocity.

Note well: the 19th century did not end well for China. But it did a lot of damage first.

China is a contradiction, wrapped in a paradox, to borrow a Churchillian turn of phrase. The hyper-growth miracle of the past 40 years has hit a dead end, undermined by debt saturation, a burst property bubble, fiscal limits, and the vast wastage of malinvestments.

China’s share of world GDP has fallen for the past four years at market exchange rates and is near lows seen a decade ago. The economy is in structural decline. It has dropped to two-thirds of US levels despite electrotech supremacy.

Semi-bankrupt Chinese companies are trying to export their way out of the internal deflation. The Communist Party is abetting this as a survival strategy for itself, deploying an arsenal of opaque subsidies — 4.4 percent of GDP by the IMF’s estimates — to keep firms afloat and to divert its latent unemployment onto the rest of the world. The export surge is a function of the deep fundamental crisis at home.

But the consequences for Europe could be catastrophic. Here’s why.

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by Rod D. Martin and Erick Stakelbeck
June 3, 2026

Stakelbeck Tonight: Erick Stakelbeck and I discuss why Europe has allowed Islamists to conquer its formerly Christian civilization: how suicidal empathy is destroying the continent, bright spots in Sweden and Germany, and can the tide be turned?

We also discuss the latest on the Iran War: what are the two sides trying to accomplish in their diplomatic talks, how Trump is using the Hormuz closure to harm China and enrich Texas, and how all this relates to Russia.

Finally, the Midterms: Democrat gerrymaxxing and how the map is collapsing for the left, in 2026 and beyond. We also discuss the SAVE America Act: Speaker Johnson will attach it to the reconciliation bill. Will John Thune overrule the Democrat Senate parliamentarian?

Rod lays out what’s going to happen, with a batting average that’s second-to-none. It’s 17 minutes you won’t want to miss. Watch and share!

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NOTE: If you don’t follow Alexander Muse you are truly missing out. — RDM

by Alexander Muse
June 3, 2026

Earlier this year the state of Maryland mailed a lesson to the rest of the country, though it did not mean to. A vendor error sent voters the wrong party’s primary ballots, and when officials tried to repair the mistake they discovered they could not reliably tell which voters had received which ballot. More than 563,000 ballots had been requested, 447,000 of them by mail, and the state was reduced to reissuing ballots wholesale because it could not trace its own mail stream.

This was not fraud. It was something quieter and, in its way, more revealing. A blue state, using a vendor it could not control, committed an enormous error and then could not even measure the size of the error it had committed.

That is the status quo, and that is precisely what President Trump’s new postal rule is designed to end.

The proposal, published as a Federal Register notice on May 29, 2026, has been described by its opponents as a federal seizure of American elections. It is nothing of the kind. The rule does something far more modest and far more defensible. It declines to keep running federal ballots through the nation’s own mail system blind, untracked, and unaccountable.

Under the proposal, a state that wishes to use the federal mail to distribute and collect federal ballots must hand the Postal Service the names and addresses of the voters receiving them, along with unique barcodes affixed to the outbound and return envelopes. With that data the agency can compare how many ballots went out against how many came back and flag the gaps for further review. The states keep total control over who is eligible. What they cannot do is demand that the federal mail system carry ballots with no data, no chain of custody, and no way to distinguish a real ballot from a phantom one.

Consider how strange the objection sounds once it is stated plainly. An American can track a $9 phone case from a warehouse in China to his front porch in real time, watching it move from city to city, and no one calls this sinister. He is now told that applying the same logic to the most consequential thing the mail ever carries, a federal ballot, is somehow authoritarian.

The rule simply gives the ballot the same dignity that a retailer already gives a parcel. A barcode sits on the envelope and never on the ballot itself, so the secrecy of the vote is preserved exactly as it is today. This is not novel or frightening technology. It is the ordinary machinery of a modern logistics system, applied at last to the one object we have inexplicably agreed to ship without a receipt.

Does this let Washington decide who votes? Answer: it does not. The Constitution leaves voter eligibility to the states, and the rule leaves it precisely there. A state still draws up its own rolls, still decides who qualifies, still adds and removes names on its own authority. What the rule touches is not the franchise but the federal government’s own asset, the mail system, which Washington is under no obligation to operate as an unverified ballot-delivery service.

There is no contradiction in saying that a state owns its electorate while the federal government owns its post office. The scope confirms the modesty of the design. The rule reaches general, special, and runoff federal elections, and it expressly exempts primaries as well as ballots sent to military and overseas voters. That last carve-out quietly dismantles the central scare story. The troops are not being disenfranchised, because the troops are explicitly excluded.

The richest irony in this whole fight is that the left built the very tool it now denounces. Ballot tracking by intelligent mail barcode was pioneered in Denver and scaled across Colorado, a project championed by progressive election administrators who understood its value perfectly well. By 2020, 46 states had adopted some form of ballot tracking. The leading vendor now serves 19 states and nearly 400 counties, tracking roughly one in every four ballots cast in the United States.

The Brennan Center for Justice, an institution no one will mistake for conservative, concedes that most jurisdictions already use internal barcodes to follow mail ballots from issuance through acceptance, and that states such as California, Colorado, and Florida already equip their envelopes with intelligent mail barcodes. The technology is mainstream, bipartisan, and already in your mailbox. The only thing the proposed rule changes is that the standard becomes uniform and enforceable in federal contests.

The left loved this tool when it controlled the tool. It hates the tool now that the standard has slipped beyond its management.

Which brings us to the reaction, and the reaction is more illuminating than the rule. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called the order voter suppression, “plain and simple.” Senator Alex Padilla warned that tens of millions of eligible voters could be barred from voting by mail. Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi insisted the directives would force the Postal Service into an unprecedented gatekeeping role.

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Presiding over the broader panic, as he has presided over a decade of election litigation, is Marc Elias, the Democratic Party’s most prominent election lawyer, the man who served as Hillary Clinton’s campaign counsel and who has spent years fighting nearly every verification measure proposed in any state. When the attorney whose entire career has been built on contesting ballot safeguards reacts to a tracking rule with this degree of alarm, he is not concealing the soft spot in the system. He is pointing directly at it. A reluctant witness is often the most honest one, and the volume of the objection tells you where the vulnerability lives.

The objection also tells you something by what it does not say. Notice that the serious critics no longer argue the technology is unsound. Tammy Patrick, who leads an association of election officials and opposes the order, has conceded that ballot barcodes and official election-mail logos are legitimate best practices, faulting only the funding and the timeline.

That is a concession dressed as a complaint. The remaining objections are about money and speed, which are real administrative questions, and not about the principle of reconciling ballots sent against ballots returned. On the principle itself, the opposition has quietly surrendered.

Then came the legal news, and it was very good news indeed. Judge Carl Nichols of the federal district court in Washington declined to block the executive order that directs this rulemaking, finding the challenge premature and the plaintiffs unlikely to succeed on the merits. The suit had been brought by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NAACP, and the League of United Latin American Citizens. Nichols found their claims largely speculative, holding that they could show no irreparable harm because nothing had yet been implemented.

The opponents have promised to return the moment the administration acts, and a parallel case in Boston may be decided soon. The fight is not over. But the first round went to the side of accountability, and it went there cleanly.

The strongest legal frame, and the one most likely to prevail, is the simplest. The government is setting conditions on its own service. A man who declines to lend his truck to haul cargo he cannot inspect is not seizing the highway.

The evidence that makes all of this prudent rather than paranoid comes, fittingly, from sources the left cannot easily dismiss. The nonpartisan Pew Center on the States found that roughly 24 million voter registrations, one of every eight in the country, are invalid or significantly inaccurate, that more than 1.8 million deceased individuals remain listed as active voters, and that some 2.75 million people are registered in more than one state. A mail system that automatically ships ballots against rolls this dirty is a system shipping ballots to the dead, the moved, and the doubly registered, with no mechanism to count how many of those ballots come back.

History supplies the rest. In 1997 a Miami mayoral election was thrown out by a court that found a pattern of fraudulent and criminal conduct in the absentee balloting, where the in-person count had been clean and the fraud lived entirely in the mail. In 2018 a congressional seat in North Carolina was overturned for the first time in 40 years after an absentee-ballot trafficking operation was exposed, and it was exposed only by a statistical fluke, when 61 percent of mail ballots favored a candidate whose mail voters were merely 16 percent Republican. The Heritage Foundation’s database of proven cases now exceeds 1,400, and Heritage is careful to note what the number cannot include, namely the fraud that goes undetected precisely where states lack the tools to detect it.

If the historical record shows how rarely this fraud is caught, the architecture of the order shows how that is meant to change, and it is worth walking through the machinery layer by layer because the design is more careful than its critics admit.

The order erects three interlocking layers. First, the federal government assembles the evidence, as the Department of Homeland Security, drawing on Social Security Administration data, builds a state-by-state list of those U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote and delivers each state its list through that state’s own chief election official. Second, the states do the gatekeeping, since a state notifies the Postal Service 90 days before a federal election whether it will permit mail voting, then submits 60 days out the roster of voters it intends to mail ballots to, and the Postal Service will not transmit a ballot to anyone absent from that state-specific list. Third, the federal government enforces, because the order directs the Attorney General to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of state and local officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible individuals, and it directs agencies to withhold federal funds from jurisdictions that refuse to comply.

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The genius of this design is that it removes every excuse. Once DHS hands a state a federal list of its own eligible citizens, the old refrain that “we did not know our rolls were dirty” collapses as a defense. The state now holds the data needed to identify non-citizens, the deceased, and the doubly registered, and it is the state, not Washington, that decides whose names land on the list it submits.

The choice therefore sits squarely with the state. It can use the federal data to clean its list, or it can knowingly mail ballots to people the federal government has already flagged as ineligible. The order then makes the second choice expensive in two directions at once, since officials who issue ballots to ineligible voters become an enforcement priority for the Justice Department, and federal funding is conditioned on compliance.

This is not Washington ordering states around. It is Washington making sloppiness a liability that states can no longer afford, which is a very different and far more defensible thing.

The same machinery that delivers the ballot also generates a forensic record that has never existed at this scale. The unique barcodes on outbound and return envelopes, which the Postal Service says will help determine adherence to federal law and assist law enforcement, let officials compare ballots mailed against ballots returned and flag every discrepancy for review. The order layers evidence preservation on top, requiring states and localities to retain for 5 years all records of voter participation in federal elections, including the ballot envelopes themselves.

Put those pieces together and the Justice Department no longer has to reconstruct fraud after the fact from scraps. It has the federal eligibility list, a barcoded chain of custody for every ballot, a sent-against-returned reconciliation, and 5 years of preserved envelopes available to subpoena.

Recall how the cases in the record were actually caught. North Carolina’s stolen seat surfaced only because of a freak statistical anomaly, and Miami’s fraud required a full post-election trial to unwind. Under this architecture the anomaly is meant to surface automatically, and the preserved records hand prosecutors their evidence on day one rather than years too late.

Federal databases must, of course, be accurate, and a legitimate citizen should never be wrongly flagged and stripped of a ballot. That concern is real, but it argues for the rule rather than against it. The thing that makes any error correctable is data paired with a paper trail, and a system that hands states the federal list and preserves every envelope for 5 years is precisely the system in which a wrongful flag can be caught and reversed rather than quietly buried. The regime we have now — dirty lists and no record — is the one that actually disenfranchises people, because it errs in the dark and never has to answer for what it got wrong.

Strip all of this to its core and one principle remains. The absence of detection is not the absence of fraud. It is evidence of missing tools, and the order’s whole purpose is to supply them. Ronald Reagan gave us the principle that fits this moment exactly, when he said trust, but verify. He aimed it at Soviet promises, but it applies cleanly to a ballot. We can trust the voter and still verify the ballot, and there is no tension whatsoever between the two. Every improper ballot that slips through silently cancels the vote of an honest American who will never know his voice was erased.

Tracking the mail does not narrow the franchise. It protects it. The Postal Service is not taking over our elections. It is finally agreeing to count what it carries, and the people most upset about being counted are telling us, by their fury, that this was needed all along.

— Alexander Muse is a Fellow at the John Milton Freedom Foundation and publishes daily political analysis at amuseonx.com.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 2, 2026

I was pleased to join The Mom VIEW for a discussion of “the trifecta of evil”: Globalism, Islamism, and Communism.

Those are not three identical things. Nor should we blur important distinctions. Globalization — the free exchange of goods, capital, ideas, technology, culture, and opportunity across borders — has lifted billions, created markets, spread prosperity, and opened doors that no central planner could ever have designed. Globalism is something very different. Globalization is people trading. Globalism is elites ruling you without your consent.

That distinction matters.

Globalism is the ideology of supranational control: the belief that elected governments, national sovereignty, local communities, religious convictions, and constitutional liberties must all be subordinated to an enlightened managerial class. It is rule by experts who are not accountable, institutions that cannot be voted out, and bureaucracies that believe your freedoms are obstacles to their plans.

Communism is more direct, and more openly brutal. It abolishes private property, destroys civil society, wages war on the family and the church, and promises equality while delivering poverty, fear, surveillance, and slavery. And as Lenin taught us, Communism is simply the logical conclusion of Socialism.

Radical Islam — “Islamism”, a totalitarian political ideology such as that of the Iranian mullahs — seeks to subordinate every sphere of life to a religious-political order that leaves no room for liberty of conscience, equal citizenship, or the Christian inheritance of the West.

These are rival totalitarian systems. But right now, they are allied against us.

They differ in language, symbols, and constituency. But they share a common instinct: they hate limits on power. They cannot tolerate the family, the church, the nation, private property, free enterprise, or constitutional government as independent centers of authority. They must absorb them, corrupt them, or destroy them.

• I speak in the first and third segments, at 0:00 and 29:32.

• Gabrielle speaks in the middle segment, at 14:30.

In the first segment, I speak on Globalism, totalitarianism, and the difference between healthy globalization and elite transnational rule.

In the middle segment, Gabriela Blanco, a Cuban refugee and freedom advocate, gives a powerful testimony about life under Communism and the consequences of concentrating power in the hands of the few.

Finally, in the third segment, I discuss the Islamist threat and what parents must do to protect their kids from the trifecta of evil.

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When government becomes god, man becomes a slave. That is the warning. And it is not just a warning about Cuba, or Tehran, or Brussels, or Davos. It is a warning to America.

The American system was built on the opposite premise: that rights come from God, not government; that power must be divided, limited, checked, and accountable; that the family and the church precede the state; that property is not theft but stewardship; and that nations are not obsolete obstacles to progress, but the proper political homes of free peoples.

Every totalitarian ideology begins by denying one or more of those truths. Eventually, it must deny them all.

I’m grateful to Moms for America and The Mom VIEW for hosting this important conversation, and to the Herzog Foundation for supporting efforts to educate and equip Americans for the fight we are in.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 2, 2026

More than a year ago, both before and after Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, I told you that China could not win a trade war with the United States. My reasoning was straightforward: China’s economy is far weaker than its official numbers pretend, its demographic collapse is leading it off a cliff, and its only way out — even in the short term — is exports, particularly to the U.S. market.

Not long after I started sounding that alarm, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave a long-form interview explaining Trump’s tariff strategy. Buried inside it was something far more important.

China, he said, has the most imbalanced economy in modern history. It is trapped in a deflationary recession — perhaps depression — and trying to export its way out. Its own people do not trust the yuan. They want to get their money out. The Chinese Communist Party will not let them.

That sounds like normal economic commentary. It isn’t. Bessent was describing the anatomy of a currency regime under pressure.

If you understand who Scott Bessent is and what he once did, that should run shivers up your spine.

In 1992, Bessent was a leading member of the team at Soros Fund Management that “broke the Bank of England.” Britain was trying to defend the pound inside Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism. The official line was confidence, stability, managed order, and responsible policy. The SFM team saw something else: a government defending a position reality no longer supported.

Soros got the legend. Bessent helped him execute. Trump watched, and learned the lesson.

Speculators do not destroy sound currencies by magic. They attack when governments defend lies. They see the contradiction before politicians admit it, before central bankers explain it away, before the press corps discovers it three years too late and pretends it was obvious all along. Britain broke. The pound fell. The Bank of England lost.

Now Bessent is Trump’s Treasury Secretary, and the currency under pressure is not the pound. It is the yuan.

So here is the question the Enemedia will not ask, and probably won’t even think of: is Scott Bessent working to crash China’s currency?

Not by announcing it. Serious men don’t announce the trade before they make it. By doing something much larger: strengthening the dollar, hardening the American financial system, using tariffs to stop China from exporting its depression into our markets, and forcing Beijing’s unsustainable economic model into the open.

Presidents hire people for a reason. Trump did not put Scott Bessent at Treasury because he needed another Wall Street résumé. Trump hired a man who had helped break a major currency from the inside, who understood the role of confidence, leverage, capital flows, interest rates, debt, and political denial, and who knew that governments do not lose control of currencies because traders are clever. They lose control because reality finally catches up with the lie.

Bessent is not incidental to Trump’s China strategy. He is one of its central weapons.

China is not Britain in 1992. The analogy is not exact, nor does it need to be. Britain was defending a currency arrangement markets no longer believed. China is defending something far bigger: the fiction that an overbuilt, overleveraged, export-addicted dictatorship with too little domestic consumption and evaporating foreign direct investment can keep growing forever while its own people are trapped behind financial walls and its customers are shutting their doors.

That fiction is embodied, crystallized in the yuan.

The yuan is not a normal currency. It is not the dollar. It’s not even the euro. It is a managed instrument of Communist Party control. A real reserve currency requires trust. It requires convertibility. It requires deep and open capital markets. It requires the rule of law. It requires confidence that the government will not trap your savings the moment they become politically inconvenient.

China cannot offer any of those things without ceasing to be Communist China.

This is the place where all of China’s contradictions meet. Beijing needs a weak yuan because its economy is built around exports. If Chinese goods get too expensive abroad, factories slow, unemployment rises, debt problems worsen, and the Party’s claim to competent rule erodes. But Beijing also needs a strong yuan because the moment ordinary Chinese believe their currency will fall, they will try to get their savings out even faster than they already do. That means tighter capital controls, more fear, more distortions, and still less trust.

It gets worse. China needs loose money to keep its property sector, local governments, state firms, and zombie industries from collapsing under the weight of years of bad debt. But loose money weakens the currency. To defend the yuan, Beijing must burn reserves, tighten credit, squeeze banks, or impose still harsher controls on its own people. Each decision makes the next choice worse.

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That’s the trap. China wants export growth, currency stability, domestic stimulus, capital control, and global reserve-currency prestige all at the same time. It wants the benefits of a market without permitting a market. It wants the trust given to free systems while running a dictatorship. It wants foreigners to hold yuan while its own citizens would rather hold dollars. It wants to rival the dollar while treating money as an instrument of Party discipline.

For decades, Washington helped China paper over that weakness. Clinton opened our consumer market. Wall Street financed the dragon’s rise. Multinationals offshored factories and jobs. Politicians pretended that admitting China into the WTO would liberalize Beijing. Both parties told us engagement would make China a “responsible stakeholder,” because that phrase allowed everyone to sound sophisticated while getting rich.

But the underlying reality was very different.

China can bully Russia into taking yuan because Putin has no options. It can lure desperate countries into yuan settlement because sanctioned regimes will take whatever escape hatch they find. It can build payment rails, ports, pipelines, apps, and propaganda.

But China cannot manufacture trust, and through a series of predatory debt traps, it has squandered what trust it had. It certainly cannot order the world to treat the yuan like the dollar when Chinese citizens themselves do not trust it.

Lenin said the capitalists would sell the communists the rope with which they would hang us, and that they did, for decades. China manufactures more than its own people can consume. Beijing has long suppressed consumption because the Party prioritized production, exports, control, and obtaining hard currency. The Chinese people are not the customer. They’re the labor force, the savings pool, the collateral, and, when necessary, the hostage.

The real customer was always us.

Thus, the tariff war is a strategic weapon aimed at the heart of China’s economic model. If China tries to devalue the yuan to offset tariffs, it risks confirming to the world that Beijing is exporting deflation because its domestic economy is failing. If China defends the yuan, it must absorb the tariff hit, lose export share, tighten credit, or burn through financial ammunition.

Either way, Trump turns China’s favorite weapon — cheap exports — into a liability.

Trump isn’t just raising costs. He is forcing choices. He’s making China decide which lie it wants to defend first: the lie that its export machine can survive without unrestricted access to the American consumer, the lie that its domestic economy is healthy, the lie that the yuan is trusted, or the lie that Communist capital controls are compatible with global financial leadership.

A currency does not crack because one number moves on a screen. It cracks when the government behind it must defend too many lies at once. And Beijing is defending a lot of lies.

Trump has relentlessly used hard power to constrain China and increase its costs. Bessent’s job is to make sure the financial side reinforces that strategy. Strengthen dollar dominance. Bring crisis finance and even maritime risk under Washington’s direct control. Create dollar funding centers in the Gulf and Asia. Use swap lines to keep allies inside the American system. Rebuild confidence in America’s balance sheet through growth, energy, tariffs, spending discipline, and reindustrialization.

The world does not flee strength. It flees weakness. The dollar is not strong because central bankers like it. It is strong because it rests on the full weight of American power: markets, law, energy, technology, food, finance, sanctions, liquidity, and the only Navy capable of securing global trade. Trump and Bessent aren’t just strengthening that system. They’re taking command of it.

That matters because if the yuan cracks, money will not run to Beijing. It will run from Beijing. It will not run to BRICS. It will not run to some fantasy “petroyuan.” It will not run to some multilateral currency scheme cooked up by Davos panels and Chinese state banks. It will run where money always runs in a real crisis: to the deepest, safest, most liquid market on Earth, the U.S. Treasury market.

That may be the point.

America has enormous debt to refinance. A global flight into Treasuries would push capital toward the United States at the very moment Washington is rebuilding industry, expanding energy exports, financing the next American boom, and forcing the world back into dollar channels. China’s pain would become America’s liquidity.

What would a yuan break mean? Likely not some overnight cartoonish collapse. China is not a small emerging market with an open capital account. The Party can order banks to obey, punish capital flight, falsify numbers, jawbone markets, and pretend the problem does not exist long after everyone knows it does.

The problem is, it’s been doing that for quite some time already.

Bessent has seen, nay directed, this movie before. He understands exactly how a currency regime breaks, and Trump hired him at the precise moment America began applying pressure to every major weakness in China’s.

If the yuan cracks, it won’t be because America launched some secret attack in the night. It will be because China built the largest economic fiction in the modern world, and Donald Trump finally stopped paying for the illusion.

So is Scott Bessent working to crash the yuan? Yes. But he may not even need to.

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by Aaron Gifford
June 1, 2026

In the 1990s, New Orleans schools provided little respite from the lockdowns, the arrests, the drug use, and the violence seen and heard at home, Oscar Brown recalls.

Brown grew up in what was then among the poorest, most densely populated public housing projects in the nation. Most of its teenagers attended one crowded high school: George Washington Carver.

“The teachers cared about us and did the best they could,” Brown told The Epoch Times.

“But there was always a whole lot of disruptions. The teachers didn’t get enough time to educate us. Life skills — survival — were always more important.”

Nothing matters more than educating the next generation with the values we cherish. The Herzog Foundation is making that possible. Learn more here.

Fast-forward two decades—and past one of the most catastrophic weather events in U.S. history—and Brown’s son had earned an associate’s degree at the rebuilt high school on the very same lot in the Ninth Ward in 2020. That was even before he was handed his high school diploma.

Brown’s daughter, a rising senior at the school, is on track to complete a nursing certification that both qualifies her for a good-paying job immediately after graduation and helps contribute toward a four-year college program.

“It’s a clear night and day difference,” Brown said. “Schools here really dive deep into education now—they’re not just there to be your mom or your dad.”

The 2025–2026 academic year marked the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In unison with the city’s physical recovery that began after the 2005 disaster, its K–12 learning institutions experienced a sea change of their own, becoming the first all-charter system in the nation and potentially a model for others to follow.

High Marks in 2026

The most recent public education scorecard, released by researchers from Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth College on May 13, indicates that NOLA Public Schools consistently ranked in the 99th national percentile for reading growth between 2022 and 2025, and the 98th percentile for math during the same period.

Louisiana, as a whole, is the only state to surpass pre-pandemic performance levels in both subjects, according to the report.

Fateama Fulmore, NOLA Public Schools superintendent, said her students are accelerating at about 1.35 grade levels per year. She credits the children, families, and teachers for their “relentless focus.”

“While we still have work to do to close longstanding achievement gaps, the trajectory is clear: NOLA Public Schools is moving in the right direction, and our students are growing, achieving, and thriving at higher levels than ever before,” she said in a news release.

In 2005, more than 60 percent of the city’s public schools were considered “failing” and among the Bayou State’s lowest performing. Today, none of its public schools are failing; 92 percent of them now have an A or B grade from state and national organizations that rate academic progress, and the district overall just finished the academic year with a B grade, its highest ever, said Caroline Roemer, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools.

“This progress reflects what is possible when autonomy, accountability, and innovation are sustained over time,” she said.

The Rebuild

New Orleans’ move to an all-charter system was prompted by a situation unseen before anywhere in the United States.

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by Rudyard Kipling
Circa 1895

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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NOTE: Every Sunday, we shift from our normal geopolitical analysis to something more theological, as is fitting for the Lord’s Day. Some of our newer readers may not realize that I have served over the years in countless SBC leadership roles, including as an officer of the SBC’s Executive Committee, and in part as a result, many of our readers are pastors and lay leaders in the SBC. So as the Annual Meeting approaches, on Sundays at least, we publish a handful of items vital to the life of America’s largest Protestant denomination. This is one of them. — RDM

by Tim Overton
May 31, 2026

The Southern Baptist Convention stands at an important crossroads. Controversy has grown in recent years regarding churches within the Convention that employ female pastors. While some of these churches continue to cooperate with the SBC, others have been removed from Convention fellowship. The inconsistency of the current approach erodes trust and creates confusion.

The proposed “Truth and Unity Amendment” seeks to clarify this issue by requiring churches that affirm female pastors to either repent and conform to biblical teaching or be disfellowshipped from the Convention. It does not force a requirement on any church. It merely limits participation in SBC governance to those who share our stated beliefs.

In a video announcement on May 18, Dr. Albert Mohler (president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) previewed that he plans to offer this “Truth & Unity Amendment” to the SBC Constitution in Orlando at our Annual Meeting. It would add an enumerated 6th item to Article III, Paragraph 1, defining composition (exactly where the Law Amendment was attempting to amend the SBC Constitution), and the text is as follows: “Does not act to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of pastor/elder/overseer, such as preaching to the assembled congregation.”

This amendment is not about hostility toward women. Men and women are equally created in the image of God and possess equal dignity, value, and worth before the Lord. Christianity has historically elevated and honored women in ways many cultures never have.

However, Scripture also teaches that God created men and women with distinct responsibilities and complementary roles within the family and the church. The issue before the SBC is ultimately whether the Convention will uphold what it has historically believed the Bible teaches regarding the office of pastor.

There are at least three reasons why the Truth & Unity Amendment must pass. This article will present the reasons from the least compelling to the most important.

Third, passing the Truth & Unity Amendment would provide much-needed clarity and direction for denominational leadership. Over the last several years, confusion and inconsistency have emerged regarding how Convention leaders should respond to churches that openly employ female pastors. Some churches have been disfellowshipped, while others have not, even though similar practices were involved. This inconsistency creates uncertainty, controversy, and division.

The amendment would establish a clear standard for cooperation. It would eliminate ambiguity and ensure that Convention leadership applies the SBC’s beliefs consistently and fairly. More importantly, it would help protect the denomination from future theological drift. Historically, nearly every major denomination that moved into liberal theology first embraced feminism and rejected the biblical distinctions between men and women. Once a denomination abandons biblical teaching on male and female roles, broader doctrinal compromise inevitably follows.

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Complementarianism that never affects real-life church practice becomes functional egalitarianism. If churches claim to believe Scripture’s teaching on pastoral qualifications but ignore those teachings in practice, doctrinal statements become meaningless. The SBC must decide whether its convictions will remain theoretical or actually shape church life.

Second, the Truth & Unity Amendment should pass because the Baptist Faith & Message is crystal clear on this issue. The Baptist Faith & Message 2000 plainly states that the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. This statement represents the agreed-upon doctrinal standard for cooperation within the Convention.

To allow churches to openly violate that standard while remaining in friendly cooperation — which means participation in governance and voting on funding — creates confusion and undermines trust. Cooperation among Southern Baptists depends upon honesty and doctrinal integrity. Churches give sacrificially through the Cooperative Program because they believe they are partnering with churches and entities that share common theological commitments. When Convention leaders fail to uphold the standards the SBC itself adopted, confidence erodes.

This matters greatly for missions and ministry. The Cooperative Program has enabled Southern Baptists to support missionaries, seminaries, disaster relief, church planting, and evangelism efforts in the U.S. and around the world. Trust is essential for this cooperative system to function effectively. If churches begin to believe doctrinal standards are selectively enforced, unity and giving will inevitably suffer. In short, compromise means less money for missions.

If you or your organization are facing a sex abuse or sexual harassment claim, or if you are yourself the victim, my friends at Chalmers Adams can help. Click here.

The Baptist Faith & Message should not be treated as a symbolic document with no practical authority. It should be respected, upheld, and consistently applied for the sake of cooperation and integrity.

First and most importantly, the Truth & Unity Amendment must pass because it reflects the Bible’s own teaching. Scripture is the inerrant Word of God and the final authority for faith and practice. Southern Baptists have historically stood firmly upon biblical authority, and this issue is ultimately about whether the SBC will continue to submit to Scripture even when cultural pressures push in the opposite direction.

1 Timothy 2:12 states, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.” Paul grounds this theological statement in the creation order by saying, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” The qualifications for pastors given later in Scripture refer to the pastor as the “husband of one wife.” Jesus Himself selected twelve male apostles. Throughout Scripture, the pastoral office is consistently presented as a male responsibility within the life of the church.

Again, this does not diminish the importance of women in ministry. Women serve vitally throughout the Kingdom of God in discipleship, missions, teaching other women and children, hospitality, mercy ministry, evangelism, and countless other forms of service. The church could not function faithfully without godly women. But Scripture distinguishes between valuable ministry service and the pastoral office itself.

At its core, the debate over the Truth & Unity Amendment is not really about politics, power, or public relations. It is about biblical authority. Do Southern Baptists truly believe the Bible means what it says? Or will cultural trends ultimately determine doctrine and practice?

The SBC has already fought major theological battles over biblical authority during the Conservative Resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s. Southern Baptists should not have to refight those same battles generation after generation. Instead, the SBC should move forward with doctrinal clarity and unity so that it can focus on evangelizing a lost culture that increasingly rejects even the most basic biblical truths about human value, marriage, and sexuality.

In a society that struggles to define what a woman even is, the SBC must remain anchored to Scripture. Passing the Truth & Unity Amendment would affirm that Southern Baptists still believe the Bible, still honor their statement of faith, and still desire to cooperate together in Truth for the sake of the Gospel.

— Tim Overton is the pastor of Kingston Avenue Baptist Church in Anderson, Indiana. He is also a graduate of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Home Education Association (SBCHEA.com), and director of the Indiana Prayer Caucus. This article first appeared at the Center for Baptist Leadership, which you should follow.

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by Rod D. Martin and Frank Gaffney
May 30, 2026

My latest interview on Securing America with Frank Gaffney. Sign up NOW for Frank’s Rumble channel and don’t miss a single episode!

In this episode:

• The slow strangulation of Russia, and the shape of a durable peace

• Why Xi Jinping won’t approve Putin’s desperately-needed gas pipeline

• Can Putin survive?

• The future of Russian-U.S.-Chinese triangulation

• Why China (and Russia) won’t lift a finger to help Iran

• China’s great reversal: how Trump flipped the script in East Asia

It’s 20 minutes of deep analysis you can’t get anywhere else. Watch, like, and share!

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NOTE: My friend Jack Wheeler asked me to write his weekly Half-Full Report this week, as I have done many times over the years. But it occurs to me: maybe what our Members need is exactly this sort of weekly roundup. Would you do me a favor, read tonight’s HFR, and tell me your thoughts at the bottom (there’s a poll and everything)!

You will note that the HFR has a bit of a different style and tone than our normal stuff. It’s all the info, twice the attitude! — RDM

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by Rod D. Martin
May 29, 2026

Welcome to another exuberant Half-Full Report! I’m Rod Martin, filling in for the irreplaceable Jack Wheeler, with lots of good news to share. Let’s get started.

We begin with our HFR Loser of the Week - John Cornyn (RINO-TX). What can you even say for an incumbent U.S. Senator — since 2002! — who dropped $111 million dollars, outspent his opponent nearly 10-1, and still lost by 2-1?

Oh, that’s easy. You can say Donald Trump now owns the Republican Party.

This graphic actually understates the win. Ken Paxton, after unending persecution and demonization from within and without his own party, stomped Cornyn — who only recently was a contender for Senate Majority leader — by an incredible 64-36, roughly the margin by which LBJ annihilated Barry Goldwater in 1964.

I went to law school in Texas, so I remember when we thought Cornyn was the great conservative hope for Texas Republicans.

Yeah, not so much. Cornyn has been a consistent RINO obstructionist in the Senate, much like the awful Thom Tillis (RINO-NC) and Bill Cassidy (RINO-LA). But now Tillis is “retiring”, Cornyn and Cassidy are retiring involuntarily, and even Mitch McConnell is getting replaced by the America First Andy Barr (R-KY).

No sitting U.S. Senator has lost to a primary challenger since Dick Lugar (RINO-IN). Now Trump just took out two in two weeks. But that’s not the half of it: Trump is now 117-0 in 2026 primary endorsements!

It’s RINO season. The taxidermists are getting rich.

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It’s important to understand. Trump made this possible. But it isn’t just about Trump.

Conservative hero (and my dear friend) Phyllis Schlafly told us we must be “a choice, not an echo.” But generations of Republicans disagreed. It was so bad that in the aftermath of Newt Gingrich’s speakership, one senior House Republican told me that “we’re going to beat the Democrats by out-porking them.”

And that’s exactly how you got the debacles of 2006 and 2008.

The Tea Party changed all that. Trump amped it up. And the increasing radicalism of the Socialist Democrats poured gasoline on the fire. Remember: Trump was supposed to lose to the “inevitable” Hillary by 12 points. Not only did he win, he ushered in a new era:

Those numbers are still too close for comfort. But they’re the difference between one-party rule by a Socialist censorship machine, and a fighting chance.

But the map just keeps getting better for Republicans, in part because Democrat fraud keeps getting exposed. Turns out the Census Bureau “accidentally” overcounted blue states and undercounted red states in 2020 to the tune of 16 Electoral Votes and 15 House Seats shifted to the Ds.

That’s before you consider the cheat of counting illegal aliens for apportionment, massively inflating blue state House seats and Electoral Votes at everyone else’s expense. Why do Democrats create “sanctuary cities”? It ain’t compassion.

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Likewise, racial gerrymandering was never about race. The obscene twisting of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court in Callais padded Democrat numbers by at least 21 seats. This wasn’t ever about electing blacks, unless Steve Cohen (D-TN) counts. It’s just another way Dems have rigged the system. And now it’s going away.

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This creates a problem Democrats are going to struggle to recover from. Because their blue state victims are voting with their feet.

“Those numbers for New York, California, and Illinois look too small,” you might think, and you’d be right. The bluest states have compensated for their losses with as many of Biden’s 10 million illegal aliens as they could attract. But there are mass deportations coming to a state near you, and none of that’s going to help the Ds in 2030.

Meanwhile, unfortunately for the Socialists, they aren’t allowed to build Berlin Walls to keep their citizens (and tax base) in. America’s newspaper of record, the Babylon Bee, summarized perfectly:

If Republicans stay the course, force reform, and don’t give in, the coming realignment is going to make Democrats an unelectable minority for a generation.

But for that to happen, first comes the RINO hunting.

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Over in the Tucker Carlson-Candace Owens wing of the party (but are they part of the party anymore, now that they’re all saying they’re going to work to elect Democrats?), people are mighty put out over Trump helping Thomas Massie “spend more time with his family.”

Even some “very fine people” continue to tell us how principled Massie was. But it doesn’t bear up under scrutiny. First, Massie was happy to vote for Joe Biden’s debt ceiling increase when the President called him. But he consistently voted against Trump’s signature legislation, voted TWICE for the biggest tax hike in history, and even voted to defund ICE.

I guess those are some kind of principles. AOC’s principles.

The fact is, Massie purports to represent a Trump +40 district. His voters like Trump a LOT more than they like him. Scott Jennings said it well:

But not shockingly, Catturd said it even better:

And since he brought up the Joooos, supposedly AIPAC owns America, and Netanyahu has Trump on a leash, which makes every bit as much sense as the prior claim that Trump is Putin’s puppet.

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But here’s the problem. AIPAC did spend heavily to beat the pro-Islamist Massie. But they spent even more to help Cornyn and Cassidy. Trump opposed both, both lost primaries that should have been unlosable, and in Cornyn’s case (let me say it again) he outspent his opponent nearly 10-1 and lost 2-1.

The Joooos are everyone’s favorite scapegoats. They aren’t the reason these RINOs lost.

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By the time you read this, Donald Trump may or may not have signed a peace deal with Iran. Some of you are worried he’s going to give away the store.

Do you even know this man?

The Enemedia is convinced that Trump is desperate to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. They’re convinced that he has to bring a swift end at any cost or lose the midterms. And of course, they want YOU to be convinced that America has lost the war.

Some of that is just blatantly stupid. None of it is true.

Since visual aids can help, here’s a satellite image of oil tankers streaming toward the Gulf of America since the closure of the Strait:

Kinda puts things in a different light, doesn’t it?

Trump has been on a mission he calls “energy dominance” from the first. Far from being OPEC’s poor victim as we were when I was a kid, we now outproduce Russia and Saudi Arabia combined. We’re the world’s largest exporter of refined product and the world’s third-largest exporter of crude.

Donald Trump means for us to be number one.

Have you noticed? Every trade deal struck includes enormous purchases of U.S. energy. In Bush’s last year, America “exported” $700 billion to its enemies in energy purchases. In Trump’s final year, America will dominate the energy markets of the world: more tax revenue, more high-paying jobs, and the end of America’s trade deficit.

Yes, you heard that right. Consider this:

Trust me, Trump has. So the question is, in what respect does Trump “need” to reopen the Strait? I can certainly tell you why Europe needs that. Nationwide gas lines can tell you why China needs that. But Trump? Not so much.

Trump wants a long-term U.S. economic boom: the tax cuts Massie voted against, the tariff deals that exempt companies who build plants in America, the shifting of long-term energy contracts to the Gulf of America, the $18 trillion in foreign and private investment he’s recruited. That’s before we even talk about the maritime risk business.

Trump is establishing U.S. dominance over every global chokepoint. He’s flipping the script on China, which under Biden had allies in Venezuela and Cuba and control of the Panama Canal, and now finds itself more constrained behind the First Island Chain than ever.

He’s not playing for November. And if you read the first half of this HFR, you know he’s got November better squared away than the Enemedia thinks.

************

Which brings us back to Iran. Trump’s most basic aim? Eliminate any possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon. His second aim? Eliminate the mullahs’ ability to fund, arm, and direct every conflict in the Middle East. That will allow the U.S. to draw down forces in the region (as in Europe), and better deploy them to deter current threats.

Those aims have already been largely achieved.

Trump’s perfect world outcome? A Lion and Sun Revolution that frees Iran, makes it a staunch U.S. ally, and makes it the top investment opportunity of the 2030s. But that’s not something he can guarantee without the cooperation of the Iranian people. Expect it, but more than that, pray for it.

In between those things? Trump is encouraging our regional allies to diversify energy transport away from the Strait. Saudi Arabia can already ship 7 million bpd through its East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea. By 2027, the UAE will be able to ship all of its exports by pipeline through Oman. That results in stable oil markets for years to come, no matter what happens in Iran, and again, less need for U.S. forces.

But in the meantime, every day that passes with the Strait closed is another day U.S. suppliers sign 20-year contracts Russia and the Arabs will never see again.

Trump isn’t in a hurry for a deal. Trump is pushing for a politely-worded surrender.

************

All of this is straight out of Reagan’s playbook. Use energy markets against the enemy, contain it, tie it up with problems on its own turf, and slowly watch the internal contradictions of Communism tear it apart.

Once you understand that, the data points no longer look random.

The South Koreans are investing fortunes in the U.S., including upgrading the Philadelphia Shipyard to build nuclear submarines (and train U.S. workers). That will increase American capacity by 50 percent, and supply attack boats to the U.S. Navy, Australia, and South Korea.

Japan and the Philippines strengthened defense ties while Marco Rubio met with previously “non-aligned” (but actually Russia-aligned) Indian leaders, who are suddenly (in Rubio’s words) a “key U.S. strategic partner” and even a “key U.S. ally”. The Indians seemed to agree, and joined in a joint Quad (U.S.-India-Australia-Japan) project to build a vital port in Fiji.

All this comes just a month after the U.S. signed a defense pact with previously “non-aligned” Indonesia, thus taking effective control of the straits through which 80 percent of China’s oil (and nearly that much of its trade) have to flow.

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The map is closing in on China. That’s why Xi won’t approve Putin’s desperately needed gas pipeline from Siberia, even though it would insulate China from American control of Malacca. Xi knows the pipeline isn’t enough, his tanking economy needs the U.S. consumer market more than he needs Russia, and buying American LNG — even at the cost of greater dependency on his enemy — is the smart move.

************

After years of fearmongering about wholesale job destruction, OpenAI’s Sam Altman now agrees with my AI thesis. The Jevons Paradox is undefeated.

What did you just say, Rod? Glad you asked. The Jevons Paradox is that when technology makes a resource cheaper to use, total consumption of that resource tends to increase, not decrease. This tends to result in much greater employment, even in the affected industries (e.g., the doubling of the number of bank tellers — at higher pay — after the introduction of ATMs). William Stanley Jevons observed this with coal in 1865. It applies to knowledge work in 2026.

In any case, here’s Sam:

You don’t say? George Gilder and I have been telling you this for 25 years.

The Golden Age is nearly here, if we don’t hand America to the Socialists.

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But we don’t have to. The world is beginning to heal.

This week, Bolt’s CEO fired his entire HR department. His reason? “They were creating problems that didn’t exist.” Yeah, DEI does that. No more.

Likewise, ExxonMobil shareholders overwhelmingly voted to re-domicile from Delaware to Texas. Delaware is the legal home of 68 percent of all Fortune 500 companies. But that number is dropping fast after a Delaware chancery judge voided Elon Musk’s entire five-year pay package — twice! — effectively forcing him to work for free as compensation for leading Tesla to one of the highest valuations on Earth.

Those of you who’ve done business overseas are familiar with the term “political risk”. That’s not supposed to exist in America, and especially not Delaware, where hardly anyone is headquartered but everyone is incorporated. They choose Delaware for its pro-business legal code and predictable courts.

But obviously that was never going to last in Biden country. DEI, ESG, and political weaponization override all other considerations for the “Democratic Socialists”. And in typical Socialist fashion, they have killed Delaware’s goose that laid the golden egg.

Texas and Florida are the chief beneficiaries. And New York better watch out: the new Texas Stock Exchange launches in Dallas this spring. They’re calling it Y’all Street.

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And speaking of Florida, my one-of-a-kind Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) — who just signed a redistricting plan shifting the state from a 20-8 map to 24-4 — is now taking on property taxes.

Property tax means you never own your home. You are a permanent renter from the state. Miss a payment, lose your house, even if you’re a 91-year-old widow. It’s serfdom, really. It’s also immoral.

The Special Session begins Monday. Expect to see a $250,000 homestead exemption right out the gate, with full abolition phased in for primary residences over several years.

Critics ask where Florida will make up the money. But in a state that runs surpluses nearly every year, has an enormous rainy-day fund, and regularly CUTS taxes, do you really have to ask? And anyway, those 143 million tourists who come every year will happily pay sales tax to fund our highways and school vouchers.

But it shouldn’t matter. No state should balance its books by evicting widows. Everyone should be secure in their own property. And Florida leads yet again.

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Honestly, this issue of the HFR should be the All-Full Report. But all good things must come to an end. Let’s enjoy the weekend, thank God for Donald Trump, and come Monday, jump right back in the fight for our America.

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by Rod D. Martin
May 29, 2026

The Supreme Court just put dozens of artificially Democrat House seats in play. That could produce an earthquake in November. But the 2030 Census may be even bigger.

For decades, Democrats have been protected by a map that inflated their strength. Racial gerrymanders spotted them dozens of deliberately non-competitive seats. Illegal aliens padded the population counts — and thus both House seats and electoral votes — of states their own citizens are fleeing. On top of that, the 2020 Census shorted red states and inflated blue ones.

That’s three huge, systemic cheats that are cracking all at once. And it gets even worse: America continues to move south, west, and right. The 2030 Census is going to be ugly for the blue states.

The left screeches that the Callais decision is a “threat to voting rights” and “Jim Crow 2.0.” That’s not true, and it’s not why they’re upset. It’s a “threat” to Democrat power.

They can’t admit that. So everything has to be “voter suppression.” Voter ID is “voter suppression.” Cleaning voter rolls is “voter suppression.” Requiring citizenship is “voter suppression.” Ending racial gerrymanders is “voter suppression.” Refusing to count noncitizens for representation is “voter suppression.”

All of which is pure projection. The party of the Confederacy, Jim Crow, filibustering the Civil Rights Act, the KKK, CRT, DEI, and the SPLC desperately wants you to believe that you’re the racist.

But at some point, the Democrats’ endlessly crying wolf wore off.

No one actually thinks Voter ID — required in virtually every country on Earth except ours — is “voter suppression,” not unless they believe that black people are too pathetic to function in society. Everyone has an ID: they can’t even buy cough syrup without it.

Likewise, no serious person believes racial gerrymandering is necessary in a country that voted twice — by huge margins — for Barack Obama. Indeed, twice as many blacks are elected from competitive districts as from racially gerrymandered ones. The whole argument is nonsense. It’s also slander.

But increasingly, it’s also desperation. The Democrats’ map is collapsing. The Woke NPCs don’t know it. Their leaders certainly do.

The NPCs were promised that “demography is destiny”, that “a brown America will be a socialist America.” Democrats racialized everything, to pit people against each other and rule the ruins. But as it turns out, white people aren’t the only Americans who can think for themselves and not just as some pre-defined group.

It also turns out that, when living under Democrat misrule, far too many of them vote with their feet, taking countless Dem House seats and electoral votes with them. Add in mass deportations and the numbers get ugly, fast.

That’s the story: the map is catching up with reality. Democrats have lived for decades on stolen representation. Now comes the reckoning. When it’s over, Republicans may find themselves with a generational majority, and Democrats in a wilderness of their own making.

But first, we have to understand the three frauds that wrongly inflated Democrats’ power.

1. The 2020 Census Stole 16 Electoral Votes and 15 House Seats By Itself

Start with the 2020 Census: the Deep State bureaucrats made sure the playing field wasn’t level from the first.

The Census Bureau’s own post-enumeration survey found that it had significantly undercounted Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. It also significantly overcounted Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah.

“Oh, this was just one of those things! See? There’s a blue state in the first group and a red state in the second!” Yeah, sure. Never mind the net result: large numbers of House seats and electoral votes shifted to Democrat strongholds well before the Census Bureau’s self-audit, and well after those thefts were set in stone.

How convenient.

Apportionment is how population translates to political power. When Texas and Florida are undercounted, they are shorted representation, in Congress and in the Presidential vote. When New York and Minnesota are overcounted, their votes count for more than yours. And lo and behold, the Bureau says post-enumeration survey results “cannot” be used to change the official 2020 Census counts — who gave them that authority? — so the country just has to live with their fraud.

This is just one of oh so many ways the Deep State’s unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats tilt the board in their own favor against you. This is a republic?

Seth Keshel describes this in fascinating detail here. He shows that the 2020 Census errors alone shifted at least 16 electoral votes and 15 House seats to the Democrats. He demonstrates that House Republicans would not have been saddled with a razor-thin majority, but would likely have held a robust 236-199. Trump’s Electoral College win would have been similarly magnified.

The current map was built on a count even the Census Bureau admits was materially false — “but oops! it’s too late to do anything about it!” — with virtually all the errors working in exactly one party’s favor: the party whose members dominate the ranks of the Census Bureau.

That’s the first fraud. The map Democrats are defending was rigged before the first votes were cast.

2. Counting Illegal Aliens Ran Up the Score

Of course illegal aliens vote. But they don’t have to lift a finger for Democrats to use them. The Census just has to count them.

That is the dirty little secret of the apportionment fight. Under current Census practice, citizens and noncitizens alike — including illegal aliens — are counted as part of a state’s population for purposes of representation. That count determines House seats. House seats determine electoral votes. So a state can lose citizens, import illegal aliens, and actually expand its power in Congress and the Electoral College, all at the expense of actual citizens.

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Why do you think so many blue areas are “sanctuaries”? It ain’t compassion.

That’s why Democrats become hysterical about citizenship questions. That’s why they fight deportations with religious zeal. That’s why they oppose every serious effort to distinguish citizens from noncitizens for purposes of representation.

Back in the Clinton era they hadn’t figured out the scam. They were still busy protecting union jobs and wages. But Obama “fundamentally transformed” all that. Illegal immigration stopped being about the Chamber of Commerce’s cheap labor. It became about padding blue-state population. Population meant House seats. House seats meant House majorities and electoral votes. Electoral votes meant the entire executive branch and the judiciary with it.

This is not some abstract constitutional debate. It is the mechanism by which blue states converted an open border into inflated majorities and raw power. It is how the people who broke immigration law become political ballast for the party that invited them in, protected them, subsidized them, and dared anyone to remove them.

Trump’s deportation campaign changes the math. So would a citizenship question. So would excluding noncitizens from apportionment calculations. The Democrats know exactly what’s at stake. If millions of illegal aliens are removed before 2030, and if the next Census stops counting noncitizens for representation, the blue-state map will collapse faster than almost anyone in Washington is willing to admit.

That’s why deportation is not merely a border issue. It’s a representation issue. It’s a citizenship issue.

It’s an issue of whether we believe in “one man, one vote” or Orwell’s far darker “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

3. Racial Gerrymandering Was Never About Race

The third fraud is racial gerrymandering. And as racist as it is, race is just the weapon. Partisan power is the sole objective.

This has been the Democrats’ playbook for a century and a half. Jim Crow — racial segregation — was no different. Its purpose was to thwart the rising Populist Movement that had already swept countless incumbents out of power across the Midwest. The Southern planter class took one look at that and said, “Not here!” They invented segregation, which had not previously existed in the South, to divide poor whites from poor blacks, pitting them against each other and thus preventing them from uniting against their collective masters.

And it worked, for most of a century.

Then the country turned against them. So they needed a new scam. And just as they turned MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech on its head with Critical Race Theory, they twisted the Voting Rights Act from an application of the Equal Protection Clause into at least 21 guaranteed Democrat House seats (and lest we miss the point, Steve Cohen is living proof that electing blacks was incidental at best).

Under this corrupt system, decade after decade, Democrat judges transformed the Voting Rights Act into a command to do exactly what the Equal Protection Clause forbids. The theory was simple: racial groups vote as racial blocs, racial blocs must be given racially engineered districts, and any state that fails to produce the desired racial outcome can be hauled into court until it does.

The fact that this packed blacks into ghettos and diluted their voting strength in the rest of the country never troubled Democrats at all. Why would it? Like illegal aliens, blacks were just pawns. Race was nothing more than a means of distracting you from what they were really doing, and of demonizing anyone who called it out.

The Court ended all that with Callais. The political implications are enormous. If states, particularly in the South, are no longer required to maintain racially engineered Democrat seats, Republicans can redraw maps according to political reality instead of racial command-and-control. Dozens of seats are likely to come into play, beginning as early as this fall. The Justice Department has made clear: it will enforce the ruling with immediate effect.

That is why the left is shrieking.

Voting With Their Feet: The U-Hauls Are the Coup de Grâce

Even if Democrats had kept all their scams intact — the rigged Census, the illegal-alien “bonus,” and the racially gerrymandered seats — there’s another problem for which they have no solution.

Americans keep fleeing Democrat policies and moving to red states.

From 2020 to 2025, Texas gained more than 2.56 million people. Florida gained more than 1.92 million. North Carolina gained more than 756,000. Georgia gained nearly 589,000. Arizona, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington all grew substantially as well.

Meanwhile, the old blue pillars still finished underwater or badly lagged the red-state boom. New York lost more than 201,000 people. California lost more than 200,000. Illinois lost more than 102,000. Even D.C., the nerve center of the Deep State, lost population.

Texas and Florida alone gained roughly 4.48 million people. New York, California, and Illinois together lost more than 504,000. In other words, even after Biden's open borders flooded blue-state sanctuary cities with masses of illegal aliens, the map just kept moving south, west, and right. And from Mamdani-style socialism to the California wealth tax, the left just keeps pouring gasoline on the fire.

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Democrats love to compare the border wall to the Berlin Wall. They deliberately miss the point. The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in, not out, because too many were fleeing socialism.

Democrats can’t build walls around New York or California to keep their golden geese from flying south. The geese simply refused to be carved.

The left told us Texas was turning blue. Florida was slipping away. The suburbs were gone. Hispanics would vote forever as a permanent Democrat bloc. The Sun Belt was the future of progressive politics. Demography was destiny.

Then Americans packed the U-Hauls.

They left high taxes, collapsing schools, crime, COVID authoritarianism, housing insanity, energy madness, sanctuary-city chaos, and the suffocating contempt of ruling classes that despise the people they govern. They moved to Florida. They moved to Texas. They moved to Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona. They moved for jobs, homes, churches, safety, schools, taxes, dignity, and opportunity.

And when they moved, they took power with them.

Population becomes House seats. House seats become electoral votes. Electoral votes become presidential power. Tax base becomes influence. Businesses become donors. Families become communities. Churches, workers, retirees, entrepreneurs, tradesmen, and young parents become the foundation of a different America.

This is why the 2030 Census matters so much. It will not merely count people. It will count consequences, the consequences of Democrat rule.

It will count the refugees from California. It will count the businesses that fled New York. It will count the families who escaped Illinois. It will count the voters who were promised a socialist paradise, looked around at the wreckage, and moved to Florida.

The Democrats thought they had built an emerging majority.

What they actually built was an exodus.

A Generational Republican Majority

That’s what Democrats see coming. The NPCs don’t, of course. Their leaders do.

They’re not looking at a bad cycle, or a few lost seats. They’re seeing a generational Republican majority, built not by consultant magic or Beltway scams, but by the map itself, a map that could lock in large House and Electoral College majorities for decades to come.

That’s why Democrats are running on court-packing — literally changing the number of Supreme Court justices so they can appoint their own majority — and D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood. They’re panicking. Their totalitarian dream is slipping away.

Democrats aren’t trying to persuade the country. They are trying to change the rules before the country finishes rejecting them.

That is why this is not merely a redistricting story. It is not merely a Census story. It’s the map phase of the Fourth Turning. The old regime is losing the ground beneath its feet. The Deep State is under assault. The border is being restored. The courts are enforcing constitutional limits they spent generations erasing. The states are sorting. The people are moving.

One possible future is the left’s preferred future: an elitist socialist regime, insulated from voters by bureaucrats, judges, censorship, imported population, permanent racial politics, packed courts, new states, and lawfare against opposition leaders.

The other is a constitutional renaissance: citizenship restored, representation tied to the American people, borders enforced, racial distinctions dismantled, federalism renewed, the administrative state made accountable, and political power returned to voters who still believe America is worth saving.

One view is that elections don’t matter. The other is that elections have to matter.

That’s the fight.

Democrats wanted a permanent majority. They built it through coercion not persuasion, demonization not debate. They engaged in lawfare. They rigged the map. They stole elections. They imprisoned political opponents. They censored social media. They showed who they really are.

The map is turning red because Democrats made blue America unlivable.

And when the 2030 Census counts the country Democrats created, the jig is up.

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NOTE: Daniel Hess’s work on the growing demographic implosion — and what to do about it — is excellent. Be sure to follow him on X. — RDM

by Daniel Hess
May 28, 2026

Demographic collapse is getting real. Fertility numbers have been moving relentlessly downward in the last decade, and the latest figures are shocking: 0.88 births per woman in Chile, 0.73 in South Korea, 1.25 in Canada and 0.92 in China. The United States, once comfortably close to replacement, now has a fertility of just 1.6.

Meanwhile the religious, from traditionalist Catholics to the Amish, from the Laestadian Lutherans in Finland to Orthodox Jews in Israel, from pious Muslims to devout Africans, are the ones still having children in high numbers. For countries and U.S. states, and all the way down to the level of individuals, religiosity is a strong predictor of fertility.

This isn’t a new story either. Secularization as early as the 1700s in France explains why the French population stagnated in the 1800s while Victorian England, which did not secularize until much later, remained fertile and growing.

At the same time, America had extraordinary fertility and grew from 2.5 million people in 1776 to 76 million in 1900, with a backdrop of religious fervor propelled by a series of Great Awakenings.

A lot of very brilliant people, like my friend Robin Hanson (a longtime atheist), have come to appreciate the value of religious belief a whole lot more in a world of collapsing birthrates. That’s not to say he has suddenly come to believe religious doctrines are true. But he has a newfound respect for cultures that have what it takes to endure in a world that seems to be succumbing to fertility collapse.

What is it about religiosity that leads to higher fertility? There are several causes. Let’s explore.

1. Religion as source of transcendent meaning and pronatal belief

As evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller explains, physical attraction and the sex drive were once all that was needed for high fertility. But now with a range of techniques and tools for contraception, people can follow their innate drives without having any children at all. Means for avoiding pregnancy have existed for centuries but have been perfected much more recently.

In this brave new world, children are a choice rather than a byproduct of our biological impulses. Religion, which provides beliefs that lead people to want more children, matters even more than in the past.

Demographer Lyman Stone, conducting a large study of religiosity and fertility in Canada, found enormous differences in family ideals and intentions by religious attendance.

When you take into account the fact that people tend to have fewer children than they want, only the religious in Canada are near replacement.

2. Religion as a cultural bridge between men and women

A little over a year ago, data scientist John Burn-Murdoch published a graph that shocked the world. He showed that a huge ideological gap has opened between men and women in many countries.

This is a big hindrance to marriage and family formation because most people are very reluctant to partner across an ideological divide. In fact, an analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that only about 4 percent of new marriages in the U.S. are between Democrats and Republicans (versus 20 percent of new marriages that are interracial)!

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Meanwhile, the rise of online dating (which would seemingly make it easier to find partners) has actually made things a whole lot harder.

I explained why online matching services are so bad at making couples in this X post. Click for details:

As demographer Stone explains, religious communities offer a dating pool that is already pre-screened for common belief and purpose, making it far easier for young people to find a match.

Common belief is apparently a very big deal. Family studies expert Brad Wilcox reports in his 2024 book that religious couples are having a lot more sex, suggesting greater relationship success. It also can’t hurt the business of baby making.

3. Greater happiness and mental health

The Baylor Religion Survey found that those who are religious tend to have far lower rates of depression than those who are not religious.

This is a finding that has been confirmed by numerous other studies such as Fruehwirth, Iyer and Zhang (2019).

This matters because as a report by the Institute for Family Studies showed, happier people are much more likely to go for more kids.

Philosopher and poet Elon Musk recently made this point in verse.

4. Faith communities are a social network that makes it easier to raise kids

Journalist and author Tim Carney emphasized in his 2024 book Family Unfriendly that religious communities make parenting a lot easier. They do this, he says, by creating thick support networks of like-minded families. Demographer Stone explains that alloparenting (childcare help by people other than parents) is a big reason why fertility is a lot higher in faith communities.

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Relatedly, studies show that having children is socially contagious. Women are much more likely to get pregnant if their friends and acquaintances are pregnant. And a religious community is a great place to catch the baby bug!

5. Faith groups confer status on mothers and big families that the rest of society does not

In 2024 I wrote a viral thread on Mongolia, showing how women will have a lot of children if motherhood is considered high status.

Motherhood isn’t especially high-status across society these days. But for certain religious groups like the Amish and the Haredi, it is high status to have a lot of kids. And so, their fertility is high.

And that is a big part of what pronatal culture means.

Some caveats:

1. Not every faith is pronatal

The Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all urge the faithful to have more children. For Christianity and Judaism, this starts at the very beginning of the bible, with the command, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the Earth and subdue it.” All three of these faiths are associated with higher birthrates.

But Buddhism, the fourth-largest faith, seems to have a low or even negative correlation with fertility (Skirbekk 2015), lacking clear pronatal teaching. Enlightenment in Buddhism is a solitary affair. Hinduism, the third-largest faith, is more complicated. Although less ideologically pronatal than the Abrahamic faiths, traditional Hinduism celebrates marriage strongly, and that is pronatal in effect.

The Amish and the Haredi are notably a lot more pronatal than the ancient traditions they derive from. That suggests that belief systems are movable on a pronatal axis, and can be changed to be much more pronatal!

2. Repressing faith is a bad idea, if you care about birth rates

Below is a map of countries that are already falling in population, meaning that they have had low fertility for a very long time, not merely that their current Total Fertility Rate (TFR) points that way.

Compare that to a map of the current and former Communist world, where religious practice was intentionally suppressed.

These maps are pretty close! Notice Eastern Europe and also Cuba in the Western Hemisphere. The case of China is especially notable. Demographer Yi Fuxian explains that traditional Confucianism, which is very pronatal, was stamped out over many years by the CCP.

3. A challenge for the rest

Can secularists also create a pronatal culture? There is hope. In Mongolia and Israel, secular people have high fertility, because the national culture positively celebrates having children.

Meanwhile, the lesson of modern fertile sects is that faith groups that are only weakly pronatal can become a lot more so. In a world of crashing fertility, everything helps.

— This essay originally appeared on X. Be sure to follow him there as well as on Substack at .

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NOTE: Yesterday, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) called a special session, beginning next week, to abolish Florida’s property tax on primary residences. The proposal would immediately exempt 92 percent of Florida homeowners, with full elimination phased-in over time.

You can read the Governor’s annoucement here. It’s good to live in the Free State of Florida, believe me.

Property tax makes you a renter. A serf, really. It means that an 80 year old widow who paid off her house 25 years ago can be evicted at any time by the state if she misses a single payment. It’s immoral.

It’s also ending. Florida Republicans aren’t the only ones taking up the cause. But as is so often the case, they’re leading. — RDM

by Craig Bergman
May 28, 2026

If you must pay the state to stay on your own land, you don’t own it — you rent it. That simple truth is finally breaking through the noise. Across the country, a new courage is rising from governors’ mansions, statehouses, and kitchen tables. Florida is about to end the property-tax trap. Texas is moving more slowly toward zero. Ohio’s citizens are organizing for abolition, which could come as early as November. Indiana is rethinking the lien that never dies.

This feels less like a policy tweak and more like a restoration, a finishing of the American Revolution at the local level: no income tax, no property tax — fund what government must do with transparent sales taxes, trade duties, and tariffs.

I don’t speak here in theories.

Nine states already live without an income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, and New Hampshire. Look where the economic gravity sits — Texas, Florida, Washington — among the largest, most dynamic state economies in America. No wonder seven more states are actively considering joining them.

People vote with their feet, their families, and their capital, and they consistently choose places that respect their liberties. The lesson is not complicated: prosperity follows liberty, and liberty begins with the state taking its hand out of your pocket before you get home from work.

The next step is to take its hand off your deed.

Property tax is a soft phrase for a hard reality. It is perpetual tribute attached to your address. It does not care if you lose a job or bury a spouse; the bill arrives because you dared to live under a roof. Miss the payment and the government’s claim precedes your own. That is not ownership; it is occupancy by sufferance. A free people should not fear a letter from the county treasurer more than a thunderstorm.

There is a simpler, cleaner way to fund local services without placing a rent meter on homeownership. Pay when you buy — then you own it. At the closing table, a visible, one-time sales tax is collected and recorded on the statement. When the keys hit your palm, the tax is done.

The Courts have taken liberties with the Constitution for far too long. Take 30 seconds to listen to my friend Mark Meckler on how an Article V convention could close the loopholes. Learn more here.

No annual levy. No reassessment because you built a nursery or added a garden shed. Your sweat and stewardship are yours, not a signal to raise tribute. And when you pass that home to your children or your spouse, the law ought to treat it as what it is — love and legacy — not a taxable event.

Be Honest About Taxation

Shifting to this model is not an act of austerity; it is an act of honesty. Sales taxes, retail and broad-based, are transparent. You see them at the register. You choose when to pay by choosing when to buy. They capture everyone who participates in the marketplace — residents, tourists, businesses, even illegals — without interrogating your private papers or threatening your living room.

Add in trade duties and tariffs, as Trump has been proving again and again, that align with the nation’s founding framework, and you have a system that funds the public square without trespassing into the private home.

Some will ask: what of schools, safety, roads? The answer is as ordinary as a paycheck stub and as sturdy as a county fairground. Dedicate a clear share of statewide sales revenue to students and public safety, backed by voter-approved local options with hard caps and sunset clauses. Use state budget surpluses to buy down old levies on a glide path to zero.

Put every proposed rate change in plain English on a ballot that citizens can read without a lawyer. When taxpayers actually see the price of what they buy, trust rises, waste falls, and compliance becomes less a threat and more a habit.

We have a Bill of Rights for a reason.

There is a constitutional and moral arc to this. The Bill of Rights does not read like a set of suggestions; it reads like a fence line — “No farther.” The Fourth Amendment secures our houses, papers, and effects. Compelled annual confession of one’s finances under an income tax, and perpetual valuation and seizure threat under a property tax, cut against that security.

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The Fifth guards due process and the dignity of the individual against compelled self-incrimination. The Ninth and Tenth remind lawmakers that not every power the state can imagine is a power it may take. Indirect taxes — consumption and duties — were the constitutional default for a reason: they fund the necessary without invading the intimate.

Obey the Word of God

Scripture points in the same direction. Leviticus’ Jubilee returns land to families; it assumes that the natural state of a nation under God is stewardship, not servitude. Proverbs blesses the man who leaves an inheritance to his children’s children; it does not counsel rulers to nibble away their inheritance.

When Samuel warns Israel about kings who will “take” fields and harvests and sons, it is not a verse about monarchy alone; it is a picture of government that forgets its place. And the commandment against stealing is not suspended by letterhead. A civil order worthy of the people will fund itself honestly and openly, not by fastening a permanent claim on the hearth.

We are often told that complexity is the price of modern life — that a tax code must sprawl, that ownership must come with conditions, that liberty must be negotiated with forms in triplicate. But the best reforms are the ones a child can explain.

Own it. Really.

You work; your paycheck is yours. You buy a home; you pay the sales tax once and then you own it. You build a life; the government does not penalize your care or your craft, and it does not tax your grief when you pass your home to those you love. You participate in the marketplace; you see the tax plainly when you choose to make a purchase.

Florida isn’t waiting for Washington to rediscover common sense or moral decency. They’re practicing it. They are telling their citizens: we trust you to live, to build, to raise families, to trade, to give, to save — and to pay for public goods in a way that is as visible as a receipt and as constitutional as a town square.

This is our moment to end the feudal system. We need voices willing to lead like DeSantis: Shall your home be yours? Replace the annual lien with a one-time, closing-table sales tax. Protect owner-occupied improvements from being treated as taxable “events.” Treat inheritance as what it is — an act of love, not an opportunity for confiscation. Abolish the income tax where it lingers. Fund the necessary with sales taxes, trade, and tariffs that everyone can see and understand.

A nation and a state that believes in property must let its people truly own it. A people who believe in liberty must not be made to purchase it anew every year. We can write a better story on our deeds and in our laws — one where the government serves without snooping, where the citizen pays without fear, and where a family’s roof is not a ledger line but a blessing.

End the property tax. Let free families own free homes in a free nation.

— Craig Bergman is a nationally syndicated radio host, political consultant, and technology entrepreneur from Des Moines, Iowa.

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by Rod D. Martin and Stephen Gardner
May 27, 2026

My recent interview with Stephen Gardner got half a million views! Don’t miss it!

In this episode:

• The Trump-NATO conflict: why, and what’s next?

• Trump’s new global alliance model

• The demise of OPEC, and how the UAE became an A-list U.S. partner

• The Trump economy: what’s happening, and how will it impact the midterms?

• How the new economic order will enrich American blue-collar workers

• Growing American energy dominance and how it reshapes the world

• Election reform, the end of racial gerrymandering, and why the SPLC got caught funding the KKK and the Nazi Party

It’s 25 minutes you don’t want to miss. Watch and share!

The Courts have taken liberties with the Constitution for far too long. Take 30 seconds to listen to my friend Mark Meckler on how an Article V convention could close the loopholes. Learn more here.

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