We were stuck by a post on X by Visegrád 24 stating, “The Gays for Gaza activist Cameron Capara has been shot dead in a random attack in front a gay bar in Tucson by an Islamist migrant from Gambia. The gay pro-Palestine activist was killed on August 31st along with a gay friend he had just left the bar with.”
Here’s the picture of the “Gays for Gaza” activist Cameron Capara and the Islamist migrant from Gambia Ousman Ceesay:
As we are just six days away from the attack on 9/11/2001 here’s the history of Islamists attacks.
We decided to remind our readers about the history of Muslim attacks in the USA.
Major terrorist attacks in the United States motivated by Islamist/jihadist ideology between 1990 and 2026 include:
1990s
1993 World Trade Center Bombing (Feb 26, 1993): A truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people were killed and over 1,000 were injured.
1997 Empire State Building Shooting (Feb 23, 1997): Palestinian gunman Ali Hassan Abu Kamal opened fire on the 86th-floor observation deck, killing one person and injuring six others before dying by suicide.
2000s
September 11 Attacks (Sep 11, 2001):Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers commandeered four commercial airliners, crashing them into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.The attacks killed 2,977 people and injured thousands.
2002 Seattle Jewish Federation Shooting (Jul 28, 2006): Naveed Afzal Haq opened fire at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, killing one person and injuring five others.
2009 Little Rock Recruiting Office Shooting (Jun 1, 2009):Abdulhakim Muhammad opened fire on a U.S. military recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas, killing one soldier and wounding another.
2009 Fort Hood Shooting (Nov 5, 2009): U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan opened fire at the Fort Hood processing center in Texas, killing 13 people and injuring more than 30.
2010s
2013 Boston Marathon Bombing (Apr 15, 2013):Brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev detonated two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing 3 people and injuring over 260.
2014 New York City Hatchet Attack (Oct 23, 2014): Zale H. Thompson attacked four NYPD officers with a hatchet in Queens, injuring two before being shot dead.
2015 Garland Attack (May 3, 2015): Two gunmen inspired by ISIS opened fire outside a Curtis Culwell Center event in Garland, Texas, injuring a security guard before being killed by police.
2015 Chattanooga Shootings (Jul 16, 2015): Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire at two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee, killing four U.S. Marines and a Navy sailor.
2015 San Bernardino Attack (Dec 2, 2015): Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik carried out a mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in California, killing 14 people and injuring 22.
2016 Pulse Nightclub Shooting (Jun 12, 2016): Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS before opening fire inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and wounding 53.
2016 St. Cloud Mall Stabbing (Sep 17, 2016): Dahir Adan carried out a mass stabbing at a shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, injuring 10 people before being killed by an off-duty officer.
2016 Ohio State University Attack (Nov 28, 2016): Abdul Razak Ali Artan rammed pedestrians with a car and used a butcher knife to attack people on campus, injuring 11 before being killed.
2017 New York City Truck Attack (Oct 31, 2017): Sayfullo Saipov drove a rental truck down a bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing 8 people and injuring 12 in the name of ISIS.
2019 Naval Air Station Pensacola Shooting (Dec 6, 2019): Mohammed Alshamrani, a Saudi aviation trainee inspired by al-Qaeda, opened fire at the naval station, killing 3 people and injuring 8.
The Bottom Line
Concerns regarding antisemitic incidents, rhetoric, and political friction in New York City related to Zohran Mamdani focus on several key developments:
Key Incidents and Criticisms
Central Synagogue Incident (August 2026):Following an attack where a suspect disrupted services, struck a congregant, and spat on a guard at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, critics and local community members held rallies accusing the administration’s rhetoric of fostering hostility toward Jewish institutions.
Park East Synagogue Protest (Late 2025):Protesters gathered outside the Manhattan synagogue chanting hostile slogans.The administration faced criticism for a statement that addressed both the protest language and the use of sacred spaces for political events, which opponents argued drew a false equivalence.
Neighborhood Demonstrations:Tensions arose during demonstrations outside various Jewish institutions and land-sale events in Brooklyn, leading to localized clashes and an increased police presence to separate rival demonstration groups.
Pro-Israel activists, community organizations, and political opponents argue that Mamdani’s vocal anti-Zionist positions, refusal to explicitly condemn phrases like “globalize the intifada,” and public calls to protest visiting Israeli leaders create a permissive environment for antisemitism and intimidation against Jewish residents.
Muslims like Mamdami follow shriah law that requires the the absolute domination of infidels, non-Muslims.
As we approach the 2026 mid-term elections many Muslim candidates are on the Democrat Socialist Party’s nominees.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-05 22:51:362026-09-05 22:51:36Muslim Terrorist Attacks in the United States — 1990 to 2026
By Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS)
I am quite sure y’all are looking at the title to this missive and asking, what is the ol’ Colonel talking about? Well, bear with me, please.
We can recall the maxim of Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung alluding to the “long slow march” towards communism. We know that this insidious and murderous ideology was first introduced to the world by one Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their book, “The Communist Manifesto.”
Here in America, communists introduced themselves into our country with the clever marketing rebranding of “progressive.” They at one point even went so far as to abscond with the misappropriated label of “liberals.”
Of course, the Father of Classical Liberalism, John Locke, would be utterly appalled to know that Marxists had kidnapped his philosophy, well, just the title, but none of his principles.
Marxists believe that they should have complete power, control, and domination of the life, liberty, and property of the individual. Matter of fact, they have vehement disregard and disdain for the individual, as Mamdani said, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
How did we get to this point?
Ahh, here is where the reasoning behind the title of this piece is to be revealed.
It was just a short eighteen years ago when an unaccomplished U.S. Senator, Barack Hussein Obama, a clear Marxist, gave his famed quote, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,”in Columbia, Missouri, right before the November 2008 presidential election.
There should be no surprise that Obama would say such a thing; all the indicators and warnings were there, especially his emanating from Chicago, just like Saul Alinsky.
But what was highly disconcerting was the response of the mindless lemmings, useful idiots, and, truthfully, an entire nation that did not stop and ask a simple question: “Transforming America to what?”
I remember the response from the Marxist leftist media that chided anyone who dared challenge Obama’s assertion as racist. Nothing new there.
See, the leftists had selected the perfect vessel to fully introduce Marxism into America, a skilled black rhetorician whom we certainly knew nothing about. We were not allowed to say anything, and some Republicans were simply too cowardly to speak out.
And so this deadly cancer was fully injected into our nation, and reelected, even after Obama disrespected the indomitable American entrepreneurial spirit, telling them that “If you own a business, you didn’t build that.”
How funny, Obama, a person with a razor-thin resume, an empty suit, would chastise American business owners, including small business owners, the backbone of this country.
We, this Republic, reelected him. Not to mention the fact that Obama, in 2012, was running against an American businessman, Mitt Romney, who could not capitalize on that statement.
Therefore, it is no surprise to me that eighteen years later we have Marxists running for elected office under the banner of the political party that introduced us to a Marxist presidential candidate.
That cancer that was injected into our Republic has fully metastasized and, if not treated immediately, will bring about the death of this nation in its 250th year of celebrating its independence.
These emboldened Marxists, who cleverly refer to themselves as Democratic Socialists, and who embrace all ten planks of Marxism, are telling us their intent in fundamentally transforming our Republic.
DSA leader Cliff Connolly, who is a member of their National Steering Committee, admitted that he and his organization have a burning hatred of the U.S. Constitution.
They view our rule of law as an “obstacle” that must be overcome by a socialist (Marxist) revolution.
Let’s unpack this for a moment.
These fine young cannibals, well, Bernie Sanders ain’t young, are openly advocating sedition and treason.
We all know that their so-called platform calls for the abolishment of Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches). They want to replace it with a pure democratic unicameral House of Representatives.
In essence, they want to undo what our Founding Fathers established: a representative democracy, designed to preclude the tyranny of a pure, majority-rule democracy.
See, America is a Constitutional Republic, as articulated in Article IV, Section 4.
What Comrade Connolly is saying is that our very system of governance inhibits the Marxists from executing, and they mean literally, as history has proven, their fundamental transformation of these United States of America.
Think about it. It is not just about restructuring our federal, and probably state, governments. This means that the individual Bill of Rights is also an “obstacle” that must be overcome by a Marxist revolution.
That means you will not have freedom of religion, speech, expression, peaceable assembly, or to petition your government for redress of grievances.
You will certainly not have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. It was Edward Abbey who stated, “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” It is kinda hard to do that when you have been disarmed, which is why April 19, 1775, is such an important day in our history and is known as Patriots’ Day.
However, to the Marxists, patriotism is defined as paying your “fair share” in their scheme called progressive taxation, which is one of Karl Marx’s ten planks.
If the Constitution is an “obstacle” to these Marxists, how can we expect them to take an oath as elected officials to the Constitution?
Talk about a constitutional crisis.
To me, it is simple: they are illegitimate political candidates and should be disqualified from holding elected office in our Constitutional Republic.
They obviously do not embrace any of this Republic’s fundamental governing principles, like individual rights, freedoms, and liberties.
And history has certainly proven everything I am stating as correct when it comes to Marxist rule. I mean, shall the day come when my writing a missive such as this gives cause for the new Brownshirts, Antifa, to show up at my door?
And if I am disarmed, well, I can easily end up just like those who protest against the totalitarian, tyrannical regime in Iran. Ever notice how these Marxists are not strongly supporting our efforts to end the terrorist regime in Iran? They would love to have that type of power, control, and domination.
Connolly expressed his view of our Constitution as “a few useless pieces of parchment.”
He stated, “Of the DSA caucuses that believe in democracy (America is a Republic) as an end goal, MUG (Marxist Unity Group) is the only one that sees revolution as a necessity to get there. And of the caucuses in DSA which see the necessity of revolution, we’re the only ones that see democracy as the end goal.”
Let me translate what Comrade Connolly is saying, which we first heard from Vladimir Lenin: “The end goal of socialism is communism.”
He and his Marxist choom gang can try and manipulate language, but what they are talking about is the economic model of socialism enabling the fundamental societal transformation of America to communism.
And that, folks, all got started eighteen years ago with Obama’s rant.
America is, no, it has entered into a Second Civil War.
It started as two competing ideologies, but we now have the open declaration of kinetic means to an end. There have been warning shots fired, federal officers attacked, assassination attempts on a president, and the assassination of a young man in an open free-speech forum.
We can choose to dismiss this, as we did eighteen years ago with Obama, or take it doggone seriously.
I choose to take it seriously. Matter of fact, I did back in 2012 at a town hall forum in Jensen Beach, Florida, when I stated that there were some 75-80 communists in Congress. It was, and is, called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The leftists went apoplectic, and Republicans ran and hid. Maybe that is why I only served one term in Congress.
You can’t have a strong constitutional conservative combat veteran calling out Marxists when there is a Black Marxist in the White House.
Leadership is about being prescient, visionary, and, as Sun Tzu would say, winning the battle before it has even begun.
Here’s what I have to say to Comrade Connolly.
There are many of us who took the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And we take that oath seriously and do not believe that it has a statute of limitations.
Don’t go asking for something, writing a check, that your ass cannot back up. If you are calling for a revolution to overthrow our Constitutional Republic, which you are, you and your ilk will meet a terrible fate.
No, Comrade, that is not a threat. It is a promise, one from an American Soldier. And there are many of us, as well as Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen, who will stand before you and your “goal.”
The Constitution of the United States of America is not an obstacle; it is the embodiment of the American people, a restraining document on the powers of the federal government, and our rule of law.
Neither you nor anyone else is going to replace or abolish it.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-05 22:51:352026-09-05 22:51:35Eighteen Years Ago
Hasan Piker & Abdul El-Sayed have become the greatest comedy duo since Abbott & Costello.
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello thrived from 1935 to 1957 in burlesque, radio, motion pictures, and TV—from their beloved “Who’s on First?” routine to their “7 x 13 = 28” sketch. Abbott & Costello intended to be funny. They worked hard at it and became legends.
Piker and El-Sayed are comedy naturals. They effortlessly earn laughs, especially when they are unintentionally hilarious.
Their latest schtick is called “Hasan who?” While running as the Islamo-Socialist Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, El-Sayed pretends not to know Piker and forgets the über-divisive, hard-left podcaster’s initial, affectionate, and touching words:
“Abdul El-Sayed is my guy, right? He’s a Rhodes Scholar. He’s a doctor. He’s a stud, too,” Piker swooned on “The Breakfast Club” on June 16. “He can do three plates on the bench press. And, I mean, that’s beside the point, but, you know, I like that personally.”
As for wooing voters with El-Sayed, Piker gushed, “He reached out to me. He said, ‘Oh, let’s go. Let’s do a campaign rally together.’ And I had already done stuff with him. I traveled to Dearborn. We worked out, played basketball—all this stuff.”
Piker and El-Sayed did even more stuff. Seemingly inseparable, they appeared jointly at campaign events, lifted weights together, and chuckled about men’s fashion at a pool party the day before the Aug. 4 Democrat primary.
Piker cheered at El-Sayed’s election night celebration.
But, ironically, El-Sayed’s victory intensified scrutiny of his relationship with Piker. Americans learned that Piker outrageously said, “America deserved 9/11,” “I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time,” and much more.
Suddenly, El-Sayed was not that into Piker. El-Sayed told NBC’s Kristen Welker on the August 9 “Meet the Press”: “I’m less concerned now with who I’m campaigning with and a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to.”
Signaling that he and Piker had grown apart, El-Sayed told Semafor’s Nicholas Wu on Aug. 26 that he had “no plans” to campaign again with Piker and ridiculed their defunct partnership: “The effort to make this race about a streamer in LA is actually kind of laughable.”
Since then, Piker has scored big laughs as a jilted-boyfriend type who ignores El-Sayed’s ghosting, listens to the silence of his non-phone calls, and yet dreams that the two never have been closer.
“He asked me to stump for him,” Piker recalled Aug. 28, also via Semafor. “I’ve already had the guy on, like, a hundred times on the broadcast. You know, I’ve fundraised for him. I like him a lot.”
El-Sayed dissed Piker anew on Aug. 29.
“I don’t want to have a conversation about a Twitch streamer in California,” El-Sayed told journalists in Lansing, Michigan. “That’s just not a serious conversation.”
The towering Piker soon chased down the fire-plug-like El-Sayed, and threw his long, loving arms around him. Piker then rebuked critics who, he claims, have mischaracterized his and El-Sayed’s previous comments. “ … At the same time they were doing it to me, and they did it to Abdul,” Piker told Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti on their Sept. 1 “Breaking Points” podcast.
Piker also applauded El-Sayed’s apologies for some of his earlier, provocative remarks: “I hope that people see that as humility and grace and understand that he’s not this like scary Islamist, jihadist guy that he’s being presented as.”
Audiences are roaring, from Denver to Detroit and from Manhattan Island to Mackinac Island. (As it happens, El-Sayed slammed the Northern Michigan vacation spot in a hot-mic knee-slapper: “I hate Mackinac SO much,” he said in 2020. “Every time I’ve ever come here, I’ve hated it. Why am I here?”)
Piker & El-Sayed are expected to dominate the airwaves through Tuesday, Nov. 3. After that, they either will be picked up for six years or canceled and soon forgotten.
Now that’s comedy.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.
We’re in another psychodrama, melodrama controversy, and that is that [President] Donald Trump has just renamed Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes, 55% of which is in Canada, 45% in the United States. He said as far as America is concerned, it’s now Lake America.
People got very angry about that and said it was to pay back Canada because it walked out on a trade agreement, and this is unprecedented. It’s unheard of that he would do that.
It’s not unheard of. Going back to the Roman age, every time an unpopular emperor died or was executed or was exiled, the Roman puppet Senate issued a damnatio memoriae. That means we’re gonna damn him to memory. And what that meant was all of his images and his name placards all over the empire, 70 million people, a million square miles, were erased.
They were very economical and practical, the Romans. They didn’t destroy the statue because most people’s bodies were portrayed in sculpture the same. They just wiped out the face and redid it or cut the head off and put a new emperor’s head. But the point was the same.
And it happens all over the world today. We call it the Persian Gulf. If you talk to the Arabs on the other side of the gulf, they call it the Arab Gulf. We call it the Rio Grande. I think the Mexicans often call it the Río Bravo. So, each country has a different name.
But getting back to the issue, did Donald Trump start this? No. He’s only reacting to a long tradition, and a tradition, I might add, that’s been very popular the last 15 years.
It was Barack Obama who changed Mount McKinley, that had been pretty much there for, oh, over 100 years, and he called it Mount Denali, the Indigenous name. And the state of Alaska had too. Trump changed that back.
I work at Stanford University. One day I came to the Hoover Tower and I looked around and I thought something was strange about the street sign. I couldn’t quite figure it out. It said Stanford Mall, Stanford Plaza, named after [university co-founder) Jane Stanford. And I thought, it was Serra Mall the last time, named after Junípero Serra.
It was, but Stanford had voted to take off the word Serra because supposedly this 18th-century Catholic priest who helped build California in some senses as we know it, and as far as when it was under Spanish control, he was integral in offering agriculture, introducing new crops, creating the El Camino Real, basically. And all of a sudden he was considered anti-Indigenous and mean to Indigenous people.
Of course, it was never symmetrical. We have places in California named Montezuma, athletic teams called the Aztecs. This is a culture that, in some years, what, sacrificed over 50,000 people on the great pyramid at Tenochtitlan in modern Mexico City.
You go to UC Berkeley. For years people talked about Boalt Hall. Suddenly, Mr. Boalt was considered politically incorrect. He was off. The Earl Warren Legal Institute, named after a Supreme Court justice and former governor of California, just became the Legal Institution. Why? Because Earl Warren signed the deportation of Japanese Americans.
So, the Left changes names all the time, and yet they get very angry when Donald Trump names the Gulf of America, which, by the way, if you look at the coastline of the Gulf of America and compare it with the coastline of Mexico that borders the gulf on the southern part, it’s about equal. In fact, there may be more American coastline, 1,750 miles versus 1,720 miles on the Mexican side.
Mexico calls it the Gulf of Mexico. Fine, we have no problem. We call it the Gulf of America. Fine, we have no problem.
If you’re going to object that Donald Trump names things, then it’s incumbent upon you to say that other presidents don’t do it. It is true that his name is on a lot of things. The co-name of the Kennedy Center now is Donald Trump.
But the only difference between [Joe] Biden and Obama and Trump is that they had surrogates, committees that renamed things, and a lot of them were liberally appointed, and that’s fine.
But if you look at the number of schools, the number of streets, the number of geographical places that were named after Obama versus Trump, it’s not even close.
So, it’s indicative of another artifact, though, and that is we apply a standard to this administration that we never applied to the others, or we never objected to precedents that they established that they thought were fine, but now the result is not what they want, and they want to claim that there was no precedent.
Think, for example, about the politicization of the attorney general. They said Todd Blanche is too close to Trump. He was his personal lawyer. We forget that Obama’s attorney general was his best friend, Eric Holder, who said, “I am … ” What did he say? “I am Obama’s wingman.” Wingman, as if he was on a military flight mission, protecting the president, not disinterestedly applying justice.
Same thing with JFK. He appointed Robert Kennedy. Nobody really objected too loudly. They didn’t stop that appointment.
Another example is Donald Trump took us into an illegal war in Iran. Barack Obama waged an undeclared war on the Afghan-Pakistan border and ordered 500 assassination takeouts with drones destroying targets on the ground. We thought they were mostly terrorists, but maybe they weren’t. There was a lot of collateral damage. There were some, two or three American citizens, that were killed.
He felt that we should join the French- and British-inspired effort to bomb Muammar Gaddafi, toppling the Gaddafi regime in Libya, and so we never declared war. He never even went to Congress to ask for that authorization. He bombed for seven months. He bombed on the last day in office.
Nothing really happened. The Gaddafi regime was gonna go anyway. All we did was create a mess that still has not been resolved.
Bill Clinton thought it was important to stop a genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo, so he decided to bomb the government in Belgrade, the Serbian government under [Slobodan] Milošević, and for 77, 78 days, he didn’t get near Congress. He never asked for authorization, and he bombed and removed, more successfully than Obama had in Libya, a genocide that was taking place, or he stopped it, I should say.
Finally, we say,”Why does Donald Trump have all these executive orders? It’s just unprecedented. He’s ruling by fiat. He’s a king. We have to have a No Kings march. He’s a tyrant. He’s a dictator. He’s destroyed democracy. He’s ruling by fiat.”
First of all, most of those executive orders, in a way that we have never seen before, have been challenged deliberately in lower courts.
Take the new construction on the East Wing of the White House. We’re told that historical groups objected and therefore they were not consulted. They have no statutory right to tell us what to do with the White House. They’re advisory committees. They’re not injured parties.
There’s enough law on the books, as the Supreme Court found, that the president, whoever he is, has the authority, without consulting Congress, to fix, repair, and even improve the White House as he sees fit. And it’s happened all the time in the past, whether it’s building a swimming pool or taking out the swimming pool and putting in a press room.
Nobody’s gone to Congress to ask permission, and if they have, they didn’t need to.
Finally, executive orders. The way to adjudicate whether a president has been excessive in executive orders, because they’ve all served different periods, four years, eight years, sometimes they’ve had their tenures abbreviated, is how many executive orders did they issue on average for each year in office?
If you look at Donald Trump, it’s quite high. It’s 171. So is it unprecedented? Hardly at all. William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, going back even before Roosevelt, [Warren] Harding, [Calvin] Coolidge, [Herbert] Hoover, all of these presidents used the executive-order facility per year much more than Donald Trump did.
So just to conclude, I’m not a big fan, and you’re not a big fan, of renaming things. We kind of honor tradition. But when it happens, it’s not an indication, any more than executive orders are, any more than the appointment of an attorney general is, that somehow Donald Trump has broken tradition or protocol and is acting as an uncontrolled autocrat.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-05 10:51:222026-09-05 10:51:22Victor Davis Hanson: Obama Changed Names. Trump Does It, and Suddenly It’s Tyranny.
, D.C. /PRNewswire/ — There has been a lot of misinformation and speculation about the Postal Service’s role in issuing a rule consistent with the policies set forth in Executive Order 14399, which concerns ballot mail for federal elections. We would like to set the record straight as to what the USPS is actually doing with respect to the order.
First and foremost, we are an establishment within the Executive Branch, whose job is to deliver the mail in a manner consistent with achieving the policies set forth by policymakers. In this situation, the Executive Order pointed out the need for additional measures concerning the sending of ballot mail in order to facilitate enforcement of federal law and address concerns about election integrity. It was fully appropriate for the Postal Service, as a part of the Executive Branch, to take action to help achieve the policy goals articulated in the Executive Order, by issuing the Federal Ballot Mail Ballot Rule that sets forth standards deemed necessary to ensure the faithful execution of federal law, and enhance the efficiency of postal operations. We have at all times acted within our legal authority to issue a rule to achieve those policies, but ultimately the courts will decide that question, and we will follow the court’s determination. It is that simple.
What is the Federal Ballot Mail Rule?
The Federal Ballot Mail Rule essentially has two parts. The first part is the requirement that federal ballot mail be prepared using unique barcodes and specified envelope designs. These requirements help greatly in the processing and transportation of the ballots. And the concept is not new. The USPS has recommended both aspects for years (see the USPS Kit 600). And many states, from Oregon to California to Arizona to Florida, and many others, prepare their ballots in a manner generally consistent with these recommendations. But it is not only the USPS that has recommended a unique bar code and designated envelope designs. The United States House of Representatives has considered and passed bipartisan bills requiring exactly that. In 2024 the House passed a bill requiring a unique barcode and specially designed envelop by a vote of 396-6, which is the very definition of bipartisan. Earlier this year a similar bill with the same ballot tracking elements was introduced on a bipartisan basis and passed the House Oversight Committee by a wide bipartisan majority. So, it is clear that our rule is not breaking new and uncharted ground but simply using our existing legal authority to implement policies that have previously received bipartisan endorsement.
The second part of the Federal Ballot Mail Rule involves the list of individuals who are receiving ballots through the mail. To be very clear, those lists will consist entirely of information prepared and submitted to the Postal Service by the States. The USPS does not edit, change, review or question the contents of the list—the list is merely a list of voters that a State says are receiving a ballot through the mail, along with the associated unique barcodes. The USPS will then verify mailings to ensure that they correspond to the lists provided by the States. So basically, the State provided list is a manifest identifying the recipients of ballot mail. The USPS receives manifests from customers all of the time, so matching a manifest to the actual shipped product is also not fundamentally new.
Status of Whistleblower complaint
Recent concerns raised by a whistleblower focused on the compressed project timeline and the potential risks associated with an accelerated development schedule. Employees expressed concern that the shortened timeframe could limit opportunities to fully validate system performance, security, and stability, potentially increasing the risk of issues following deployment.
The Postal Service takes these concerns seriously. From the outset, the project has been managed using a structured and adaptable development approach designed to respond to evolving court orders, policy guidance, and stakeholder requirements. Teams met daily to identify and assess risks, resolve technical issues, and surface questions requiring legal or policy clarification. Those matters were promptly escalated to the appropriate decision-makers. Throughout the effort, we followed established development and risk-management practices appropriate to the circumstances and complied with applicable court orders.
Although development proceeded on an accelerated schedule, our standards for quality, security, and system integrity were not compromised. Testing and validation have been continuous throughout the development lifecycle, and our process requires that deployment be delayed whenever significant defects or security vulnerabilities are identified, until those issues are appropriately resolved.
We stand behind both the rigor of our process and the resulting system. At the same time, we recognize that responsible system management does not end at deployment. We will continue to monitor performance, address issues as they arise, and make adjustments when warranted. The Postal Service remains committed to maintaining the security, reliability, and integrity of its systems.
Regardless of political party or perspective, we share a common goal: ensuring that Americans can have confidence that their election mail will be handled securely and delivered reliably should their election officials choose to use the mail for ballot delivery.
We welcome thoughtful questions and appropriate oversight, and we are committed to transparency, accountability, and working constructively with election officials, Congress, the courts, and all stakeholders.
We do however demand the same care and respect for the work we do, as we grant to those policymakers who govern our activities.
Postal employees take great pride in their responsibility to support the democratic process. We will continue to approach that responsibility with the care, professionalism, and dedication that voters and election officials expect from the United States Postal Service.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-05 10:51:212026-09-05 10:51:21Statement From U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General David Steiner On Mail-In Ballots Policy for Federal Elections
Hey y’all, welcome back to the Unfit to Print newsletter.
I asked Florida’s GOP nominee what Republicans are getting wrong about young voters, affordability, and the American dream.
THE BYRON DONALDS INTERVIEW
It’s not exactly breaking news that young Americans are angry about the economy.
What is interesting is who they’re increasingly willing to listen to.
On the left, DSA-backed candidates are winning support by promising to take on landlords, corporations, insurers and other powerful interests they blame for making ordinary life unaffordable.
On the right, James Fishback built a surprisingly energetic following among young Republicans by arguing that the economic system is failing people who want to buy a home, start a family and build wealth.
So I asked Rep. Byron Donalds, the GOP nominee for Florida governor, what both groups are tapping into.
“Young people want to know that there’s a plan for their success,” Donalds told me.
The three-term congressman said the appeal of socialist candidates is not particularly complicated to understand.
People want affordable prices and “a shot at building the American dream for themselves,” he said in a Thursday phone interview. The left, he argued, has figured out how to sell itself as the force willing to “fight for the little guy.”
The problem, according to Donalds, is what their policies actually entail.
“When you look into the details of what they’re going to do, the policy is ridiculous,” he said. “It simply will not work. And what you end up doing is you cause more problems for working families … not less problems.”
Donalds argues DSA-style candidates are asking voters to hand the government more economic power without demonstrating they have the experience or judgment to wield it effectively.
But his broader argument is that Republicans cannot compete with that message by offering young voters an anti-socialism lecture and little else.
Donalds’ own primary gave him a test case. Fishback built a coalition of young Republicans, particularly on college campuses. When I asked Donalds what he thought Fishback had tapped into, he said the appeal came down to whether young people believe there is still a path forward for them.
“I think if anything resonated, it is that young people want to know that there’s a plan for their success,” Donalds said. “Whether you’re going to college or not going to college, we want to make sure every child in our state, every young adult in our state, has a chance to build, you know, the Florida dream for themselves.”
Donalds said that starts with housing, where he wants to lower permitting costs for people “trying to get into the game of housing,” and with career pathways that don’t depend on a four-year degree.
“Making sure that teenagers and even if you’re out of high school, that they can get access to an internship and apprenticeship to be able to have a high-paying job when they graduate high school, or getting them into a training program right after high school,” he offered as an example.
The Florida Dream should mean more money in your pocket, more opportunity for your family, and the freedom to build a great life in the state you call home.
David Jolly would put all of that at risk with higher taxes, bigger government, and a far-left agenda that would make…
The Congressman also argued colleges need to be more honest about the economic value of what students are studying.
“Let’s make sure kids are graduating with degrees that have economic value,” Donalds said. “Just don’t give them a degree and say that they hit the lottery, and then when they go into the real world, they realize that it’s hard for them to make ends meet.”
Immigration is also part of the economic equation. Donalds reiterated his support for eliminating the H-1B visa program and said the U.S. needs to return to a quota system for legal immigration to make sure American workers are protected from foreign competition.
I also asked whether that “Americans first” approach should extend to employers, including industries such as agriculture and hospitality that have pushed back against aggressive worksite enforcement.
“I think with where the country is, we have to have enforcement across the board,” Donalds said. “The reality is that we have to make sure that immigration is working for the American people first.”
Donalds also argued that family formation is part of the economic answer.
“The last piece, and this is what only a young person can control, the number one way to make sure you’re not living in poverty: get married and have kids,” he asserted.
Donalds’ affordability pitch is also where he draws the clearest contrast with his Democratic opponent, David Jolly.
Jolly has likewise made affordability central to his campaign, but Donalds dismissed much of his agenda as heavy on rhetoric and light on details.
“The biggest difference is he says the word, but there’s no details,” Donalds told me. “It’s great to say the word affordability, but what are the details? What are the facts? What are you going to do?”
He pointed to Jolly’s proposal to take a state-backed approach to catastrophic property-insurance risk.
“If the state of Florida takes on all of that risk, what ends up happening is either you’d have to borrow billions and billions of dollars … or you’re going to have to, frankly, create new taxes in our state, create a hurricane tax,” he said.
As Governor, I’ll lower insurance costs, make it cheaper to build housing, and deliver real solutions to the pocketbook issues facing Florida families.
Democrats like David Jolly don’t know how to do these things — they just believe in making government bigger and raising taxes. pic.twitter.com/57plBTxl18
But winning that argument requires more than attacking Jolly. Donalds also has to explain how Florida itself can remain a place where young people can build wealth.
For decades, Florida benefited enormously from wealthy retirees moving south. I asked Donalds what happens as the Baby Boomer generation shrinks and that model becomes less dominant.
“We’re not a retirement state anymore. We’re an everything state,” Donalds said.
Donalds pointed to manufacturing, commercial space, finance, biomedical research, aerospace and defense as evidence that Florida’s economy is already diversifying.
“We’re the 14th largest economy in the world right now,” he said. “We’re on our way to being a top 10 global economy.”
And Donalds argued that the diversification of Florida’s economy should open up opportunities for people to actually build lives there.
Jobs alone, of course, do not solve the problem if young Floridians still cannot afford homes. Donalds wants to attack housing costs from several directions.
He told me roughly 30 percent of the cost of a new home is attributable to government regulation and said he wants to streamline permitting and reduce delays that drive up construction costs. He also wants to lower or potentially eliminate property taxes for homesteaded properties — a proposal I pressed him on because of the critique that it merely widens the wealth gap between older homeowners and young people trying to break into the market.
“I would say that criticism just doesn’t hold water,” he argued. “Number one, anybody that’s bought [a home], it’s not just a down payment on the house. It’s also escrow, and you have to escrow property taxes and, quite frankly, also insurance when you go to the closing table. Anything we can do to lower that burden for working families in our state, especially young families, that helps them be able to own a home for the first time.”
Donalds acknowledged that older Floridians have had more time to accumulate wealth, but said that doesn’t mean tax relief is unfair.
“When my wife and I started out, we didn’t have any money,” he said. “We had a 925 square foot apartment. We were working two jobs, both of us, before our first child was born, and that’s just what you did. You worked hard, and I think every generation has to go through that.”
Housing affordability does not have a single cause, Donalds suggested, when I asked whether insufficient supply is the biggest driver of rising prices.
“You have to examine each aspect of Florida’s housing economy and how can you make it more efficient and how can you make it better,” Donalds said. “We need a strategy of how we’re going to manage growth in our state over the next 10, 20, and 30 years. How are we going to build workforce housing? How are we going to build entry-level single-family home housing?”
TAMPA, FLORIDA – SEPTEMBER 01: Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) speaks as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and James Uthmeier (L), Attorney General of Florida, listen during a Leadership Forum at the TPepin’s Hospitality Centre on September 01, 2026 in Tampa, Florida. DeSantis hosted the forum with the leading Republican candidates running in the November 3rd statewide election. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The question of how to tackle Florida’s massive growth is hard to avoid. Florida has spent years absorbing rapid population growth alongside a steady influx of new businesses. Is there a point, I asked, at which Florida needs to pivot from attracting more growth to focusing on the people already there?
“There’s a lot of talk in Florida politics about building a wall between us and Georgia,” Donalds said wryly. “You can’t do that. We’re a part of the United States of America.”
People are going to keep coming, he argued, because Florida remains a “common sense state” built around law and order, family values and conservative policy. The better answer, in his view, is to build the infrastructure and housing necessary to absorb that growth.
“How do we efficiently build out the infrastructure we need when it comes to roads?” Donalds said. “How do you design and figure out where you’re going to put some of the entry-level housing, workforce housing that you need, so you have the inventory supply?”
Donalds is betting that Florida does not have to choose between remaining a magnet for growth and being a place where a young person can build a life. The challenge is proving it to young voters who increasingly feel both political parties are doing a poor job of addressing their ability to get ahead.
There are millions of Floridians who feel like today’s Democrat Party has left them behind.
Whether you’re a Republican, independent, or moderate Democrat, I hear you. This campaign is focused on the kitchen-table issues that matter: lowering insurance costs, keeping our… pic.twitter.com/wBp1Si3zaO
This economic anxiety was also part of the coalition Trump assembled in 2024. His gains among younger voters were not based solely on cultural issues. Trump increasingly framed trade, immigration and industrial policy around a simple question: Is the American economy actually working for Americans?
That marked a real departure from the older Republican habit of treating economic growth as the ultimate good. Trump’s version of the GOP asked a second question — who is benefiting from that growth?
Donalds believes that shift is permanent.
“I think having a conservative-principled, quasi-populist party — or movement, not even a party, movement — I think that’s here to stay,” he said.
What worries him instead is that some Republicans might grow “softer” without Trump’s example.
“You can push back. You can fight back,” Donalds said. “My hope is that the same level of toughness and courage remains.”
Toughness is important, but ultimately the GOP has to prove to a new generation of voters that it can do more than fight the left. It has to offer a convincing vision for how young Americans can get ahead.
“We got to be honest with young people. We got to tell them the truth. Be straight with them, and know that there is a way to be successful,” Donalds said.
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Regular readers of this column know that I have become a big fan of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
For many months I have been saying that Treasury’s efforts, under his direction, to undermine the Iranian regime’s ability to access international financial markets are a critical complement to our overall campaign against Tehran.
For sure, if our military had not totally disabled Iran’s air defenses and taken out huge numbers of missile launchers and production plants, our allies in the Gulf would be in a world of hurt. But if Treasury can pull off its plan to isolate Iran from international financial markets, the regime is likely to collapse.
This week, Bessent got a big assist from the European Union, which formally signed on to Operational Economic Outcast during talks at the G20 summit of finance ministers in Asheville, NC.
Europe has long had sanctions aimed at cutting off supplies to Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, but frankly that was mere lip service given that Germany, France, the UK, and Italy are largely responsible for having built the dual-use industrial base in Iran that allowed the regime to grow its military capabilities so dramatically over the past decade.
Bessent was effusive in his praise of the Euros this week. “We appreciate their strong and early stance,” he posted to social media on Thursday. “The world is sending a clear message to the Iranian regime: We will not stop until every remaining financial lifeline has been severed.”
But I would like to see the Euros take real action, starting by closing down all branches of Iran’s national bank — Bank Melli — which Bessent ticked off as an action item when he unveiled Operation Economic Outcast on August 24.
I’d like to see the Euros actually seize those “hundred million dollar mansions” owned by top Iranian regime leaders that Bessent said Treasury has located around the world. I’d like to see them shut down companies and banks owned by Iranian operatives or through Iranian shell companies, instead of allowing them to operate as domestic entities, as happens often in Germany and France.
The North Carolina confab gave Bessent the opportunity to have one-on-one meetings with his G20 counterparts, so he could lay out chapter and verse on the Iranian assets in each of their countries.
And remember: Economic Outcast is sweeping. In addition to all the earlier sanctions against Iranian banks, oil, construction, mining, and manufacturing companies, Treasury is now targeting five additional sectors of the Iranian economy: aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping, and technology.
Example; Iran is the world’s fifth largest gold consumer in the world. In 2022, it cut import tariffs on gold to zero “to facilitate the return of funds held abroad due to US sanctions,” according to a report from the Italian Trade & Investment Agency. It was believed to have imported around 200 million tons of gold between March 2024 to March 2025 (the Iranian year begins on March 21).
Iran’s main gold suppliers have been China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. But that’s just for semi-open gold purchases. Iran also operates a sophisticated oil-for-gold barter system to get around the international banking system where Treasury closely monitors its operations.
Already in April, Treasury exposed and sanctioned an IRGC-Quds Force network that smuggled Iranian oil to the Maduro regime in Venezuela in exchange for gold they shipped back to Iran or sold through intermediaries in Turkey.
Much of the illicit oil was moved through dozens of companies controlled by Iranian shipping magnate Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, the son of the now-deceased secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council on National Defense.
Since Shamkhani’s demise, his replacement, Mohsen Rezai, appears to have transferred the oil smuggling networks to his surviving son, Ali Rezai.
The younger Rezai was identified in an Iran International investigation earlier this year as one of nine “trustees” who managed the regime’s illicit oil sales, and who now stand accused of having pocketed $11 billion of the proceeds instead of returning them to the Iranian state treasury.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive.” — Sir Walter Scott.
Many Republicans facing tough re-election bids in November are sweating bricks over the continuation of the Iran war.
That may be why Vice President JD Vance told the White House press corps on Thursday that we are no longer “at war” with Iran. I guess we are just mowing the grass, as the Israelis used to say of periodic air strikes against Hamas.
But those Republicans are going to have to grow a spine and explain to their voters why we are in this fight, and why it is absolutely critical to the future of their families and this country. They are going to have to learn, and explain, why the Iranian nuclear weapons program is a threat to America, and to applaud President Trump for being the only American leader to take decisive action to destroy it once and for all.
When Iranian regime leaders chant “Death to America,” they are not just exercising their vocal cords. They mean it. And nuclear weapons were the means they had chosen to carry out that threat.
I discuss these subjects, as well as Putin’s meeting in Kyrgyzstan this week with Iranian president Massoud Pezeshkian, and Europe’s energy woes, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.
As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday in the Jacksonville, Florida, area on 104.9 FM or 550 AM, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. Later, you can listen to the podcast here.
Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue,can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here.
Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.
Reclassifying the Islamic Paradigm: Constitutional Supremacy, Parallel Legal Systems, and the Limits of First Amendment Protections
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes protections for liberty of conscience, private devotion, and voluntary spiritual association. It was never designed, intended, or structured to grant an extraterritorial legal shield to foreign or non-territorial geopolitical governance systems operating to supplant domestic constitutional authority.
When analyzing an ideology, the State is not bound by the group’s self-selected labels; rather, the state retains the authority to examine its structural, functional, and operational realities. As established in Welsh v. United States, 398 U.S. 333, 342 (1970), the judiciary may distinguish between protected, deeply held religious beliefs and non-protected “essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views.”
By applying standard American constitutional principles to the foundational, authoritative legal texts (Fiqh), international charters, and modern strategic documents of Islam, an absolute legal paradigm emerges: Islam does not operate as a private religion. Because there is no Islam without Sharia, and no Sharia that does not mandate a continuous geopolitical effort by Dar al-Islam (the Domain of Islam) to legally, institutionally, and territorially supplant Dar al-Harb (the Domain of Secular Law), the system functions structurally as an expansionist sovereign state order.
Consequently, active adherence to this paradigm sets up an irreconcilable conflict with Article VI, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution (The Supremacy Clause). Under standard common law principles and constitutional jurisprudence, this analysis outlines the unified legal case for stripping the Islamic system of religious non-profit protections and barring its submitters from executing the constitutional oath of public office or exercising franchise rights.
Defining the Legal Framework: Islam, Muslim, and Sharia Under Authoritative Sources
To ground this framework in objective jurisprudence, the state must define the target of regulation using the precise legal terminology found within the ideology’s own primary sources, international declarations, and domestic parochial curricula.
The Etymological and Juridical Meaning of “Islam” and “Muslim”
In classical Arabic and sacred legal text, the word Islam is a noun denoting “absolute submission” or “complete surrender.” Correspondingly, a Muslim is characterized textually and operationally as “one who submits” to that authority without reservation.
According to Reliance of the Traveller (Book A: Introduction to Sacred Knowledge, Section a4.0; Book O: Justice), a Muslim is legally defined as an individual who has reached maturity, possesses sanity, and has bound themselves to the execution of the sacred Law (Sharia). The primary texts establish that this bond represents a complete surrender of individual autonomy to a predetermined legal order.
The Indivisibility of Faith, Law, and Statecraft
Traditional Islamic jurisprudence rejects the modern Western concept of a separation between private faith and public law. Under Reliance of the Traveller (Book O: Justice, Section o1.0–o2.0), faith (Aqeedah), law (Sharia), and statecraft (Siyasah) are structurally indivisible:
The Legislative Prerogative (Hukm): Belongs exclusively to the divine authority, meaning human legislative bodies like Congress or state assemblies commit an act of fundamental illegitimacy by creating man-made laws.
The Constitutional Status of a Believer: An individual who actively identifies as a Muslim accepts Sharia as their supreme, unalterable legal and political constitution.
The Status of Secular Frameworks: Adhering to a system that functions as a comprehensive civil, commercial, and penal code means that a Muslim acknowledges an independent, transnational authority that overrides any municipal law or secular constitution.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as a Transnational Caliphate
The global posture of Islam is formally unified through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), an international confederation consisting of 57 member states, including all 56 Islamic sovereign nations and Palestine. Acting as a de facto global governing body or modern Caliphate, the OIC represents a unified Islamic geopolitical entity that asserts legal jurisdiction over the worldwide community of believers (the Ummah (nation)).
The OIC executed a binding international legal notice via the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (1990), formally presented to the United Nations. In Articles 24 and 25, the Cairo Declaration explicitly dictates that all civil liberties, human rights, and legal limitations are strictly subordinate to the Islamic Sharia as its sole source of reference, thereby officially rejecting secular international law and Western constitutional supremacy on behalf of the entire Islamic world. Note: There is unanimous consensus on one Islamic Constitution aka Shariah.
Domestic Educational Subversion: What Islam Is All About
The primary textbook utilized across full-time and weekend Islamic parochial schools (madrassas) in North America—What Islam Is All About by Yahiya Emerick—reinforces this totalizing, non-religious state framework for American youth:
Explicit Rejection of Religious Classification:Chapter 2 of What Islam Is All About is explicitly titled in bold type “Islam is Not a Religion,” instructing students that Islam is an all-encompassing social, political, and judicial system rather than a private faith.
Sharia as the Unalterable Constitution: The textbook defines the Sharia as the supreme, unalterable constitution for human society and explicitly commands students that their primary allegiance belongs to the Sharia and the global Ummah (nation), rather than to the United States Constitution or American national identity.
Parallel Governance Architecture: What Islam Is All About directly compares the governance branches of the Western constitutional model to the structural components of an Islamic state:
The Judicial Branch is equated to the Qadi (Islamic Sharia Judge).
The Legislative Branch is equated to the Shura (Islamic Consultative Council governing under divine law).
The Executive Branch is equated to the Caliphate (the executive head of the global Islamic state, led by a male Khalifa tasked with establishing Sharia worldwide).
Under a standard legislative evaluation, a Muslim is not defined as an individual practicing a private, voluntary matter of conscience. Rather, a Muslim is characterized as a citizen-subject who has formally bound themselves to a parallel, competing, and non-territorial legal-judicial state apparatus (Sharia).
Constitutional Jurisprudence and Legal Arguments for Reclassification
Argument I: The Doctrine of Structural Inseparability—Sharia as a Parallel State Constitution
Because Sharia regulates every aspect of statecraft, civil administration, commercial transactions, and criminal enforcement, shariah operates as a fully formed parallel legal system rather than a private religion.
While Western religions limit themselves to voluntary acts of worship and private conscience, Sharia jurisprudence integrates acts of faith directly with statecraft, judicial procedures (Book O), corporal sentences (Hudud), and commercial/taxation law (Zakat). This totalizing integration leaves no secular jurisdiction for municipal laws, local ordinances, or constitutional amendments.
Authoritative legal proofs within Islamic jurisprudence demonstrate this structure:
Reliance of the Traveller (Book O: Justice, Book P: Enforcing the Penal Law): Defines the judiciary, court evidence, and state governance as direct execution modules of divine law. It contains a complete penal code—mandating specific, unalterable physical punishments (Hudud) for actions like theft, illegal sexual intercourse, and alcohol consumption—entirely separate from and independent of the municipal laws of any host country.
Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Chapter 4: Jihaad in the Cause of God, p. 58): Qutb documents that any human system that creates man-made laws is an act of Jahiliyyah (barbaric rebellion against Allah/god). He directly writes: “Islam is not a ‘religion’ in the common Western sense… It is a universal declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men, which means the complete abolishing of human governance to establish absolute divine sovereignty (Uluhiyah).”
Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (1990), Article 19: Explicitly rules that “there shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Shari’ah,” completely invalidating the authority of secular criminal statutes and constitutions over an individual bound by the covenant of submission.
Fiqh Council of the Muslim World League (Jeddah Ruling on Governance): Affirms that political rule must be based strictly on Al-Hukmu bi-Ma Anzalallah (governing by what Allah revealed), declaring that democracy—by placing sovereignty in the hands of the people—is a direct violation of Islamic jurisprudence.
Supporting United States Supreme Court jurisprudence reinforces that parallel political and legal systems do not qualify for First Amendment religious shields:
Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 215 (1972): The Supreme Court held that for a system of actions to receive protection under the Free Exercise Clause, it must be rooted in purely religious beliefs, completely separate from political, sociological, or philosophical considerations: “A way of life, however virtuous and admirable, may not be interposed as a barrier to reasonable state regulation… if it is based on purely secular considerations; to have the protection of the Religion Clauses, the claims must be rooted in religious belief rather than political, sociological, or philosophical ideologies.”
Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. United States, 136 U.S. 1, 49–50 (1890): The Court established that when an organization integrates political, economic, or civil elements that challenge public law, the state has the authority to revoke its corporate protections and dismantle its assets: “The state has a supreme interest in ensuring that no organization uses the cloak of religion to establish a state within a state, or to introduce a separate legal code that subverts municipal law.”
United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 176 (1965): The Court defined the strict boundaries of religious belief, noting that while it protects internal concepts of faith and duty to a Supreme Being, it excludes “essentially political, sociological, or economic considerations” that seek to regulate temporal, public actions within the state.
Gillette v. United States, 401 U.S. 437, 461–462 (1971): The Court held that the state is not required to provide systemic exemptions from neutral laws of general applicability when an individual’s or group’s religious tenets overlap with political alignments and systemic assertions of state policy.
Argument II: The Geopolitical Imperative—The Jurisdictional Dichotomy and Mandatory Subjugation of Secular States
Because the Islamic system divides the earth into two warring domains and mandates continuous efforts to expand its legal jurisdiction, it operates as an expansionist political order that is fundamentally hostile to the United States Constitution. Fiqh splits the global surface into Dar al-Islam (Domain of Sharia) and Dar al-Harb (Domain of War/Man-Made Law), mandating a continuous state of structural transformation or state of war (Offensive Jihad) until secular frameworks are completely subjugated.
Primary legal proofs include:
Reliance of the Traveller (Section o9.0: Jihad, o9.1): Traditional Fiqh defines Jihad as “warfare against non-Muslims… to establish the Deen.” Section o9.1 confirms that the ruling authority must actively launch offensive operations against Dar al-Harb (the Domain of War/Secular Law) at least once every year to expand the jurisdiction of Sharia, explicitly rejecting peaceful coexistence with alternative legal frameworks. The term Deen—often mistranslated into Western parlance merely as “religion”—is defined in classical jurisprudence (such as the Tafsirs of Ibn Kathir and Al-Qurtubi) as a totalizing, all-encompassing way of life, a binding legal constitution, and a complete system of governance encompassing law (Sharia), judgment (Hisaab), and societal submission (Inqiyad). Therefore, establishing the Deen via Jihad mandates the structural expansion and political supremacy of the Sharia state apparatus over secular human governance.
Reliance of the Traveller (Section o11.0–o11.4: Non-Muslim Subjects of the Islamic State): Details the status of non-Muslims conquered by the Islamic state. They are classified as Dhimmis, stripped of political rights, required to pay a mandatory poll tax (Jizyah) as a sign of subjugation, and subject to rules designed to keep them socially inferior: “The non-Muslim subject is forbidden to openly practice their faith, build new places of worship, or hold any position of authority over a Muslim.”
Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Chapter 9: A Muslim’s Nationality and His Belief, p. 113): Qutb declares that modern borders, regional citizenships, and nation-states are illegitimate: “A Muslim has no nationality except his belief (Aqeedah)… Islam recognizes only two places: Dar al-Islam, where Sharia rules, and Dar al-Harb, where man-made systems rule. A Muslim must stand against Dar al-Harb until it submits.”
International Muslim Brotherhood, The By-Laws of the International Ikhwan (Section 2: Goals): Details the political intent to rebuild the global Islamic state (Caliphate), explicitly rejecting modern secular borders and mapping a path to unify all geographic regions under Sharia law.
Supporting United States Supreme Court jurisprudence directly addresses subversion under religious titles:
Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 333, 341–342 (1890): The Supreme Court forcefully rejected the argument that an ideology could use a religious title to shield doctrines that advocate against civil laws and societal stability: “To call their advocacy a tenet of religion is to offend the common sense of mankind… It was never intended that the First Article of Amendment to the Constitution should be a protection against legislation for the punishment of acts inimical to the peace, good order, and morals of society.”
Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 166 (1879): The Court established that while religious belief is protected, actions that challenge the state’s public laws must be regulated: “Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices…To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land.”
Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (1919): The Court affirmed that speech, advocacy, or organizational structures that create a clear danger to the state’s security can be restricted, confirming that protections do not apply to actions that threaten the constitutional order.
In re Summers, 325 U.S. 561, 572–573 (1945): The Court held that a state may deny admission to a position of public trust to individuals whose deeply held convictions prevent them from taking an unconditional oath to support and defend the state’s secular constitution.
Argument III: Civilizational Sabotage and the Institutional/Educational Pipeline
The operational reality inside the United States matches the aggressive assertions found in traditional Fiqh manuals. This pipeline uses religious immunity to fund, protect, and execute an explicit strategy of civilizational replacement through parochial curricula (What Islam Is All About), strategic cores (Explanatory Memorandum), and parallel tax shields (using non-profit status to build parallel legal, media, and banking centers shielded from oversight).
Authoritative Sharia and institutional evidence includes:
An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America (1991): Introduced as federal evidence by the U.S. Department of Justice in United States v. Holy Land Foundation, Case No. 3:04-CR-240-G, this strategic blueprint states: “[The mission] is a ‘Civilization-Settlement Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Yahiya Emerick, What Islam Is All About (North American Parochial School Curriculum, p. 248): Instructs youth that Western democratic society is corrupt (Jahiliyyah). It teaches students to reject integration and regional patriotism, explaining that Dawah (proselytizing) is a systematic method of statecraft designed to expand Sharia influence until it becomes the dominant legal framework.
The Underground Movement Plan (“The Project”, November 1982), Section 4: A strategic document found by international intelligence services detailing a clear plan to use the open, democratic legal systems of Western nations to build parallel financial, media, and legal institutions that shield the growth of the alternative sovereign state.
International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), The Methodology of Dawah:Frames propagation not as sharing a personal faith, but as a strategic tool to transform the legal, academic, and cultural landscape of non-Muslim nations from within.
Supporting United States case law demonstrates the authority of the state to protect itself from long-term institutional replacement:
Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, 509 (1951): The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of individuals organizing an ideological movement to overthrow the constitutional order, confirming that the state does not have to wait for an active rebellion to defend itself: “If a society cannot protect its foundation against a systematic, long-term conspiracy to replace its laws and values, then the constitution becomes an instrument of its own destruction. The state has an inherent right to act before the subversion is fully realized.”
United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78, 86–87 (1944): While Ballard prevents courts from ruling on the objective truth of a theological dogma, it preserves the right of the state to examine the sincerity and secular function of an organization. When an entity’s internal files (Explanatory Memorandum) reveal that its actual purpose is civilizational sabotage and the creation of a parallel political structure, the organization operates as a secular conspiracy rather than a protected faith.
United States v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Case No. 3:04-CR-240-G (N.D. Tex. 2008): This landmark federal case exposed how a network of domestic non-profit organizations, operating under religious tax-exempt status, funneled millions of dollars to militant groups abroad while establishing parallel political and social entities within the United States.
Scalise v. National Science Foundation, 315 F. Supp. 3d 85, 93 (D.D.C. 2018): This precedent affirmsthat administrative and educational entities cannot use religious exceptions to shield curricula or organizational practicesthat directly conflict with federal laws, national security, or established public policy.
Argument IV: The Integrated Blackstonian Definition—Law of Nature vs. Theocratic Subversion
To confirm these arguments within the history of Anglo-American common law, we look to Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (Book I, Chapter 1; Book IV, Chapter 4). Blackstone defines religion by its relationship to human conduct and the state:
Core Devotional Religion (Protected by Municipal Law):Encompasses matters of private conscience, enhances social and relative duties, and subordinates itself to public peace. Blackstone explains that human municipal law regulates “social and relative duties… as a member of civil society.” A religion qualifies for protection when its moral framework encourages citizens to fulfill their civil duties to the state.
Theocratic State Interference (Reclassified as Subversion):Rejects the authority of human law, claims separate civil and penal jurisdiction (Hudud), and directs actions against public peace. If an ideology commands its followers to reject the authority of municipal laws, enforce an independent penal system (Hudud), and view the secular state as an enemy domain (Dar al-Harb), Sharia mandates thatIslam moves past Blackstone’s common-law definition of religion. It becomes a political-military movement that the civil magistrate has a duty to regulate or restrict to preserve public peace.
Conclusion and Judicial Verdict
The legal conclusion is absolute and clear: Because Sharia is an expansionist legal system that claims supreme authority over human society (Muslim and Non-Muslim), it is in a permanent state of jurisdictional war with the United States Constitution. The argument is locked by an unyielding legal syllogism:
The textual definition of Islam is submission.
The object of that submission is Sharia.
Sharia mandates the legal elimination of all secular law or competing ideologies.
Therefore, any individual who submits to Islam (Muslim) necessarily submits to Sharia under all legal Islamic sources, and is fundamentally choosing a competing, adversarial sovereign power and foreign constitution (Sharia) over the American republic in direct competition with the U.S. Constitution.
When an individual makes the choice to prioritize a foreign legal order that mandates a “civilization-settlement process” to dismantle Western institutions from within, they choose to walk away from the protections of the domestic social contract.
Under the Supremacy Clause, the state has a clear constitutional right and duty to recognize this dual allegiance, strip the system of its religious protections, disqualify its adherents from public office, and strip them of voting franchise rights under Davis v. Beason to ensure the survival of the constitutional order.
The only thing America lacks is leaders with the moral fortitude and courage to fulfill their Oath of Office and to act in defense of America and the Constitution they swore to protect.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-04 20:51:442026-09-04 20:51:44Supremacy Clause vs Islam: The Legal Blueprint to Save America!
I was recently sent this video of former LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.
For late arrivals, I have been extensively involved with election integrity for several years (e.g., see this). For Substack readers, I put together a one-page list of numerous examples of highly suspect behavior that transpired in the 2020 presidential election.
In other words, I can personally assure you that most of what Spencer is saying is accurate.
This is better than the K-12 catastrophe in that a good number of people are actually doing something about it. A prime example is that attorney Cleta Mitchell has been conducting one-hour Friday morning Zoom meetings since 2021 — every week! There are 100± attendees from all over the US, and Cleta selects different people every week to discuss issues in their State.
The idea is to exchange information on what works so that election integrity citizens elsewhere are not reinventing the wheel.
Along the way, Cleta founded the Election Integrity Network (EIN). If you are serious about election integrity and you’d like to attend these online meetings (when able to) sign up at EIN.
FYI, President Trump is not pushing for the federal SAVE Act because he is stubborn, but rather because he has first-hand privileged information, knowing that there is meaningful corruption in our election process. That EVERY Senator is not 100% supportive of that legislation is beyond a disgrace.
All you need to know is that if the SAVE Act is universally opposed by the mainstream media and Left-wing organizations, then it is important to pass.
Here is other information from this scientist that you might find interesting:
I urge all readers to subscribe to AlterAI — IMO the absolute best AI option for subjective questions.
I will consider posting reader submissions on Critical Thinking about my topics of interest.
My commentaries are my opinion about the material discussed therein, based on the information I have. If any readers have different information, please share it. If it is credible, I will be glad to reconsider my position.
Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.
C19Science.info is my one-page website that covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.
Election-Integrity.info is my one-page website that lists multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.
WiseEnergy.org is my multi-page website that discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.
Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from climate to COVID, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2026 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time!)
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-04 09:51:172026-09-04 09:51:17Election Integrity — a California Case
Maybe we’re progressive regressives, and I don’t mean that just in the sense that progressives are regressive, and they are, but that one part of our society is advancing at lightning speed to the future and progressing. But the other part is regressing, and regressing at a phenomenal pace back to what I would call the medieval period.
Remember, the medieval period was roughly that area in time after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, roughly AD 500 to around AD 1300 to 1400, the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. In medievalism, we often talk about primitivism after the destruction of the classical world during the Dark Ages, the early medieval period, and it’s characterized by epidemics, bubonic plague, typhus, typhoid, smallpox, terrible sanitation in urban centers. They had forgotten the Roman use of sewage and aqueducts.
There were open borders. National states popped up that couldn’t defend themselves, so you saw castles and walls pop up all over the European countryside in a way you had not during the Roman period. In cities, they were walled, towns even, and the gates closed at dusk to prevent gratuitous crime.
But at the same time that this was happening, you had some of the greatest works of literature in the Western world. You had Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” Dante’s “Inferno,” St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica.” And if you look at the architectural expertise and scientific knowledge of architecture, it was progressing at a geometric rate when you look at the huge cathedrals at Seville or Cologne.
I should remind everybody that around 536, Santa Sofia was created, the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. It would be the largest church in Christendom for a thousand years. And everything from the mass production of crossbows to eyeglasses was a product of the medieval period, even if, as I said, the daily lives of most people were wretched.
Now let’s switch to the modern period. All of us now can call anywhere in the world in seconds on our iPhones. Anything you want to know, past, present, future, you can just get on a cheap computer and ask an artificial intelligence program from the many free platforms. You can watch movies, you can watch entertainment on satellites. Anything you want is at your fingertips.
The nation itself is exploring space. We’re getting close to conquering cancer. I can attest to that. Computers allow you to write without even speaking. You can, unfortunately, compose a whole term paper or a book with AI. You can make a movie with AI.
Yet at the same time that’s happening, look at what’s going on in Berkeley here in California or Los Angeles. We’re seeing outbreaks of medieval diseases that we thought had been conquered years ago, given our sophisticated knowledge of sewage and water treatment. We had a typhus breakout in Los Angeles. We had leptospirosis, a rat disease, in Berkeley.
You look at the homeless camps all over our major cities. People are just out in the open fornicating, urinating, defecating, injecting drugs. There’s tons of feces that has to be removed, and it’s so strange in this modern medievalism.
We have sophisticated researchers who go into a hospital in Chicago or go to a cancer center in San Francisco and have to check the bottoms of their shoes to make sure they don’t have feces as they go into their space-age laboratories.
It’s really funny. In the medieval period, public hangings and beheadings were sort of public events that people flocked out to see. Is that any different than our glorification of murderers?
And there is a difference. Luigi Mangione, they named an opera after him in California. The killer of Charlie Kirk brought people jubilation. I won’t even get into Lindsay Clancy, who strangled her three children and became every woman to the feminist left.
At least in the medieval period, they knew that the murderer had done something wrong and was being punished. In the post-medieval period, we are glorifying that murderer, and that’s really striking.
And so, what I’m getting at is we are the most regulated, the most advanced, the most modern, the most scientific society in history, even as we can’t solve problems that were solvable, and the medieval period would have died to know the solutions that we have in our hands to make sure we have clean water, to make sure there is no crime, to make sure there is no disease, to make sure that people don’t defecate on the street. But we don’t do it. We willingly don’t do it.
Now, the question to finish is why?
We have an elite that has embraced a very toxic ideology throughout history, and that is mandated, government-sanctioned equality of result. And they have divided, therefore, to further that ideology, the world into victims and victimizers, an arbitrary classification, sometimes based on class, but increasingly on race.
And once they identify someone as a victim who’s not responsible for his plight, then it’s the duty of the society to allow him to express himself. If you have a lot of teenagers who want to loot a jewelry store, then you say they were hungry and they needed food.
If you see homeless people living on the street, then it was because of something the majority culture did to them.
And the result of that is when people engage in very dangerous antisocial behavior, an elite will tell the rest of us that they’re not subject to law enforcement or they’re not subject to the laws that apply to the rest of us.
But there are two really pernicious addenda here.
No. 1, the people who do this on the left, who believe in this mandated equality and a binary of victim and victimizer, are never subject to the consequences of their own ideology. Nancy Pelosi‘s home is not surrounded by homeless people. Jane Fonda doesn’t have to trip over people injecting drugs when she walks outside her door. The Hollywood stars in Malibu who champion the homeless have very clear security. You can’t get near their homes.
In other words, we, the lab rats, are those upon whom they experiment.
And there’s another reason as well. It’s not just that they experiment on us. and this ideology is not applicable to itself, but more importantly, they believe that they are morally superior because most of them are agnostics or atheists. They have lost their God, but they have found it in a post-Enlightenment caring, abstract though it may be, for victims.
And when you put this religious element to it, because it makes no sense to allow medieval diseases and medievalism to dominate your cities in crime, filth and homelessness, but they do it. They feel morally superior, and it gives them meaning in their life in a way that we, the majority, find not morally superior, but morally repugnant.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-04 08:51:302026-09-04 08:51:30Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Is Dragging America Back to the Dark Ages
The Austin Roll Call: How Texas Is Exposing Foreign Financial Networks on American Soil
Most people look for foreign influence at the federal border, but on July 30, a paper trail inside the Texas State Capitol proved the real beachhead might be in the state’s banking system.
While legacy news cameras chased federal soundbites in Washington, the Texas House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Veterans Affairs quietly convened in Austin for something far more dangerous to the status quo: a methodical audit of foreign money in American backyards. This wasn’t political theater designed for a ten-second clip. It was a cold, calculated exercise in state power, laying down an evidentiary blueprint built to reclaim American land, lock down financial pipelines, and force federal agencies to answer for what they’ve ignored.
That strategy hinges on a unique Texas weapon: the interim charge. Because the state’s part-time legislature meets just once every two years, the real legislative warfare happens in these off-season hearing rooms long before the public ever sees a headline. This is where statutes are quietly pre-written, bulletproof evidence is locked into the public record, and next year’s sweeping state mandates are weaponized long before January’s opening gavel ever hits the bench.
The backdrop to this hearing was already historic. In November 2025, Governor Greg Abbott issued a landmark executive proclamation designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations within Texas. The order took direct aim at foreign influence operations by barring both groups from acquiring land anywhere across the state.
Although CAIR and the Muslim Legal Fund quickly mounted a federal court challenge, alleging first amendment violations, Texas leadership signaled that the state would not back down from defending its borders and banking systems.
Taking the witness chair was Sam Westrop, head of Islamic Watch at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Rather than offering political rhetoric, Westrop submitted a detailed, written filing directly into the official public record – a permanent document titled Sharia Finance in Texas.
The filing methodically detailed over a dozen financial entities operating within the state, highlighting major institutions like Guidance Residential, which reports over $2 billion in home financing, and Sharia Portfolio, with over $3 billion in globally managed assets. The record also named key operational firms and financial groups including Ijara CDC, University Islamic Financial, Amana Mutual Funds, and A Continuous Charity.Westrop’s testimony mapped out links between these domestic entities and foreign networks tied to radical Islamist currents – including Deobandi, Salafi, and Qutbist ideology – as well as state actors in Malaysia and Iraq.
More critically, the testimony traced the financial ecosystem back to the Islamic Development Bank, a multilateral financial institution whose major shareholders include the governments of Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. According to the filed record, this global institution has quietly funneled millions into state-level non-profits, mosques, and local educational institutions – including a $3.5 million expansion of the Austin Peace Academy, located in the heart of the Texas capital.
Following Westrop, senior fellow Ammon Blair outlined actionable enforcement mechanisms for state lawmakers. Recognizing that federal authorities hold exclusive power over international terrorist designations, state officials are turning to robust transparency laws – a domain where state authority remains unchallenged.
To counter foreign influence, the proposed Texas legislative strategy focuses on a three-tier framework centered on state-level oversight and financial transparency. First, the state would mandate full financial disclosure for local entities, requiring them to reveal their governance boards, corporate structures, and foreign backers. Second, lawmakers would establish systematic state-level vetting, subjecting any organization seeking tax privileges, state contracts, or land acquisitions to rigorous audits. Finally, the framework applies network-level enforcement, allowing regulators to track and restrict entire foreign-tied funding pipelines rather than evaluating entities in isolation.
The proposed framework urges state lawmakers to:
Build a State-Level Transparency Registry: Mandate comprehensive disclosures revealing who finances local institutions, who sits on governance boards, and where capital originates.
Implement Network Auditing: Require thorough vetting for any organization seeking state contracts, tax privileges, or land acquisitions, treating foreign-backed funding networks as unified systems rather than isolated entities.
Impose Strict Penalties: Enforce clear statutory consequences for organizations with verified ties to hostile foreign interests or designated foreign threats.
While representatives for the named financial entities maintain that their operations are fully compliant with standard commercial banking rules, and CAIR continues to dismiss state actions as political maneuvering, the official state record tells a clear story.
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s escalating lawsuit to strip CAIR of its ability to operate on Texas soil isn’t just local legal drama—it’s the frontline of a quiet revolution. States are finally realizing they don’t have to wait for Washington’s permission to defend their borders, their land, and their financial systems from unvetted foreign capital.
When the Texas Legislature gavels back in this January, lawmakers won’t be starting from scratch or relying on soundbites. Sitting on the shelf is a cold, fully documented financial paper trail—a line-by-line blueprint that hands states the exact model to police foreign influence on American soil.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-04 08:51:282026-09-04 08:51:28TEXAS BLOWS THE LID OFF SHARIA FINANCE: Texas Exposes Foreign Islamic Financial Pipeline Operating in America’s Heartland
The impressive post-October 7th achievements of the current government are often overlooked and undervalued.
One of the most recurring refrains that resonates in the Bibiphobic echo chamber that overhangs much of the political debate in Israel is the allegation that “Bibi has ruined the country.”
Indeed, the incessant repetition of the charge has given it almost axiomatic status — as if it were a self-evident truth requiring little substantiation on the part of its purveyors to establish its veracity.
Indeed, a wideranging array of achievements runs starkly counter to this grave accusation.
Impressive, if incomplete, security accomplishments
In the realm of security, many of the facts are largely well established in the public domain, so I will not dwell on them in any great detail.
Virtually all of the pre-October enemy leadership, devoted openly to the destruction of the Jewish state, has been “dispatched into the hereafter”, sending a clear message that following in their footsteps could be a risky path to tread. The array of those no longer with us includes the bloodthirsty Sinwar brothers, the once elusive Mohamed Deif, the hedonistic plutocrat Ismail Haniya, the boastful Hasan Nasrallah, and the brutal theocrat Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with a long entourage of cronies and henchmen.
On the battlefield, sustained IDF action has brought Syria to the brink of disintegration, but most importantly, has decoupled it from Hezbollah and Iran, effectively disrupting the longstanding Shi’a arc linking Iran to Lebanon. In Lebanon itself, Hezbollah, although still a formidable force, is no longer viewed as the protector of Lebanon, but by many as the enemy of Lebanon. In Gaza, much of the enclave lies in ruins, with 60-70% of it under the control of the IDF, and with the prospect of large-scale emigration of the inhabitants gaining momentum — albeit sluggishly. In Iran, much of the infrastructure—physical and human—on which its nuclear program was based, has been eliminated and, at the very least, set back for years.
Emphasis on Economics
But a word of caution is called for here.
Initial operational successes can turn out to be fleeting and ephemeral. Perhaps the starkest example of that is the case of Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas al-Musrawi, who was eliminated by the IDF in Lebanon in 1992, a measure that brought the arguably even more murderous Nasrallah to power, as well as resulting in a series of lethal terror attacks on Israeli personnel and installations – particularly in Buenos Aires.
However, for the remainder of the analysis, the focus will be on the economic performance of the country under the Netanyahu government —particularly in the post-October War period—which has received far less media attention than that allotted the security sphere.
Significantly, Israel’s overall economic performance has outstripped virtually all other leading Western economies across a wide range of major indicators.
GDP per capita:
Indeed, while traditional Western European economies have faced prolonged stagnation, Israel maintained a top-tier global position, with its GDP per capita rising to almost $70,000—surpassing major Western economies such as Germany, France, Japan, Canada and the UK — and even the petro-rich UAE.
The exchange rate:
The country’s economic robustness is reflected in the strength of its currency. Indeed, the demand for the shekel has propelled it to be one of the world’s strongest currencies in recent years. Moreover, despite the war and gloomy prospects that abounded in its immediate wake, the shekel has risen dramatically against the US dollar (around 36%) — from a low of just over 4 to under 3 to the dollar! Likewise. It has appreciated substantially against the Euro (over 18%) and Sterling (over 17%)
Direct foreign investment (FDI)
Direct foreign investment in the country has soared since the post-October War. Indeed, Israel has led the world in attracting foreign investments relative to GDP (which of course also contributed to the demand for the shekel and its high rate of exchange)
Moreover, cross-country comparison of FDI as a percentage of gross fixed capital formation shows that international investors see Israel as a distinctly profitable place in which to invest: Thus, in Israel, the rate of FDI in gross fixed capital formation is 13,7% over twice the overall World rate of 5,3% and three times that of the developed economies (4,7%) and of the US (4.4%).
The growth rate of GDP per capita:
In terms of the growth of GDP per capita (as distinct from the absolute levels discussed above), over the last three decades—for most of which Netanyahu was Prime Minister—in Israel this has been +275%, easily surpassing the US (215%) and almost doubling that of the UK and the EU (147% and 147% respectively)
Flawed but successful
Of course, none of this is to suggest that Netanyahu is above all reproach. Indeed, for all his manifest merits, he is a leader with profound faults, who has not done many things that he should have, and done many things that he shouldn’t have.
However, whatever his undeniable shortcomings are, they are apparently far fewer than any of his even remotely relevant rivals.
Accordingly, when coming to decide on how to cast one’s ballot in the upcoming elections, it would seem prudent to heed the well-known dictum: If it works, don’t fix it.
Jihad is at the core of the “religion of peace.” Jihad occupies most of Islam’s theology and concerns. Jihad is addressed in 9% of the Mecca Quran; 24% of the Median Quran; and in 67% of the Sira. True to form, Muslims claim that the emphasis on jihad is about the individual battling his own faults and flaws, the so-called “greater jihad,” and not that of battling others, the “lesser jihad.”
As a matter of fact, only 2% of the jihad of the Hadith refers to the greater jihad, while the other 98% is about the lesser jihad, or the jihad of the sword.
The Menace of Jihadism
Bewildered by what fanatic Muslims do, some conclude that they must be brainwashed. Otherwise, how can their totally irrational belief system and often self-destructive actions be explained? But the notion of “brainwashing” that is bandied about is the stuff of science fiction and Hollywood movies such as The Manchurian Candidate.
The human person arrives in this world with his brains already washed, in the sense of being what John Locke called the tabula rasa, blank slate — ready for experience to imprint its script on it. John Locke was only partially correct. The brain also arrives with numerous predispositions already in place. It is a combination of life’s influences and a person’s own decisions that determine which of these dispositions develop and which ones fail. It is through this process that a unique human being is formed.
Many animals come with already in-place programs that automatically run much of their lives. Birds’ migration, mating courtship and thousands of other complex behaviors are instances of this type of specific programming. A catchword for this type of behavior is “instinct.” As a rule, the higher the organism the less is its rigid pre-programing and the greater its latitude to exercise choices.
Making choices depend on what there is to choose from and to what extent a given choice appeals to that person. And the human newborn enters the arena of life without the means of being other than a passive recipient of “things” already chosen for him.
It is like the old joke by Henry Ford, who reportedly told his customers that they could have their choice of color for their new car as long as it was black. Things are almost as bleak for the new arrival. The newborn does not have any say in choosing his parents, his socioeconomic condition, his environment of birth and much more. All are already in place and he is to start in life from the context of his birth.
The development of a newborn in any family is importantly influenced by many factors, among them how hands-on the parents are; how religious they are, how severely they micromanage him in their efforts to make him not only a good person but also a person better than themselves.
Parents tend to live vicariously through their children by programming them, the best they can, so that children become or achieve much of what they themselves failed to become or to accomplish. This attitude covers all areas of life such as giving the child the education they didn’t have, helping him with fame and fortune, nurturing him to become a topnotch athlete and so forth.
It is a fact that early influences play a cardinal role in shaping the person. For this reason, for instance, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are born into Muslim families, Catholics into Catholic families, Hindus into Hindu families and so on. It is also a fact that the degree of religiosity ranges from mild to strong, with most people falling somewhere in between the two extremes.
Interestingly, two siblings raised by the same set of parents under the same influences may end up at the opposite extremes in their religious views and practices. It is here that the human dynamic of freedom of choice comes into play and steers one to one extreme and the other to the other extreme. Occasional extreme deviations notwithstanding, the great majority of siblings of a given family end up with various degrees of that family’s overall religious perceptions and other values. The same general principle of subscribing to a set of common values exists in all human groupings, in some cases with broad flexibility and inclusiveness while in others with rigidity and exclusivity.
In order to enjoy the privileges of belonging to a group, the person must also pay his membership dues.
The very young human faces, beginning the minute he can make some sense of the world, a bewildering array of mysteries, challenges, and enticements. There are questions at every step, fears, and hopes entangled with the need to survive and the hope to thrive.
Who am I? What is this world all about? What’s the purpose? What am I supposed to do and how? Where am I headed? People die. Where do they go? Endless questions with few clear and solid answers. The information booths available to him in the fairground of life provide him with answers that may help relieve his innate existential anxiety. And it is here that religion plays its critical role and holds great appeal. Religion provides a surefire answer to those who are willing to take it on faith.
And Islam is a powerful magnet for the masses that are unable to deal with the uncertainties of life and death on their own. It is from this population, many already thoroughly indoctrinated from birth, that most diehard jihadists emerge.
It is the bargain the jihadist makes. He surrenders totally to the religion of surrender in exchange for a blanket security. Islam gives him all the answers he really seeks for dealing with this world and promises him a most lush and eternal paradise of Allah once he leaves it—all of course contingent on being a male. And leaving this world in perfect submission as the foot-soldier of the paradise’s creator gives the faithful unimaginably glorious sensual eternal reward in his next life, he is promised. It’s a bargain that some buy in whole, some in part, some refuse and seek other means of dealing with their questions and the unrelenting existential anxiety.
The great majority of jihadists emanate from the ranks of those born into the religion of Islam, simply because they are the ones who are most thoroughly indoctrinated and influenced by Islamic dogma in their most receptive early years. Yet there are few others who embrace Islam in adulthood, on their own, and enlist themselves as devoted jihadists for the same rewards that Islam offers them.
Islam has a great advantage of the first call on the new arrival. It is an omnipresent system with masses of believers, mosques and madrasahs, and a host of other social and economic organizations that overpower the person and steer him into the same fold; it is a sea of people who seem to know what they are all about, what life and death are all about, and what one must also do.
Within this sea of surging humanity composed of some 1.5 billion Muslims, each individual believer — a drop — through a combination of choice and forces beyond his control, ends up in one of its many waves. It is the jihadist wave that is highly attractive to the thoroughly indoctrinated and poorly adjusted in dealing rationally and independently with life. Here he finds the ironclad perfect solution to his anxieties and perplexities.
To a jihadist, death is nothing more than the casting off a shell of the worthless earthly existence and donning the suit for winging joyously to the life of bliss promised by none other than Allah’s beloved final emissary, Muhammad.
Eradication of jihadism is a daunting task. Massive education efforts, combined with resolute confrontation of all sources and people that support and promote this deadly philosophy, hold the best promise of dealing effectively with this affliction of humanity.
In addition to the family, places such as mosques and madrasahs, Islamic associations and charitable organizations, prisons, and the like are incubators of jihadists. Massive efforts are required, on the one hand, to drain the breeding swamps of the Islamic virus, while on the other hand helping Muslims adopt an alternative perspective of life that addresses their perplexities and offers a degree of comfort that religions dispense without pitting one segment of humanity against another.
In the monumental task of dealing with jihadism, every individual, group and government must combine their resources and energies to prevail.
The destiny of civilized life hangs in the balance. It is an unpardonable act of shirking responsibility for anyone to adopt the attitude of “let Trump do it.” Trump, is you. Trump is I. Trump is every enlightened human being and organization who values human liberty and dignity.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-03 08:51:192026-09-03 08:51:19The Nature and Development of Jihad
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
We’re nine weeks from the midterm election, and we’re starting to see a lot of anxiety, frustration on the part of the Republicans. They fear the historical precedent will be the same in November, that the in-party loses seats in the House and Senate, and maybe both of them, and the Left is very triumphant.
And we’re getting a picture that I think is inaccurate. But one way to test whether that suggestion is accurate or inaccurate is just take a deep breath and look at the world, let’s say, at the beginning of the Biden administration compared to now.
Let’s just start with Canada. Canada is very angry. We’re in a trade dispute. Is Canada now making a serious effort? Does it promise that it will meet its NATO commitments? It hasn’t yet, or it barely has, but it’s making progress. It better do it. Is it trying to address, in a haphazard fashion, the idea that it can just dump product, or it can have these high tariffs and run $50 billion to $80 billion tariffs with impunity, as Mexico did? No.
Our relationship with Canada is changing for the better for us. It’s changing for the better for Mexico. Do they like it? No. Why don’t they like it? Because they had a pretty good deal at our expense.
Is the border closed? Yes. Is illegal immigration plaguing us at 10,000 a day? No.
How about Venezuela? Is it importing terrorism and narcotics to North America? No. We just signed a deal that will essentially allow the United States, for 100 years, to have access to 65 billion barrels of high-sulfur, thick, but very valuable Venezuelan oil. They get $19, no matter what, without spending a dime, off every barrel that the oil companies try to extract.
And if you do the math, the cost in Venezuela is not Saudi Arabia, not the United States. It’s not light sweet crude. It’s not easy. It’s a politically difficult place. It’s a geographically and climate-challenged place, and it will cost those oil companies anywhere from $30 to $40 to $50. And if oil goes below $65, it’s going to be hard to see how they make a profit.
It’s good for Venezuela. That’s why they agreed to it.
But more importantly, all of South America and all of the Caribbean and all of Central America is unrecognizable from five years ago when Joe Biden entered office. There is no problem now with the Panama Canal. Cuba is on the ropes. There’s only five governments in Latin America that are anti-American. The vast majority are capitalist, democratic, pro-American.
Go to the Middle East. One of the biggest problems we’ve had the last 50 years in the Middle East, one of the biggest, the biggest, is Iran. But not just Iran, its proxies: the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah. There was no Lebanon. It was kidnapped by Hezbollah.
You heard the Lebanese prime minister the other day. He said, for the first chance, there’s real opportunity in Lebanon. Why? Because Hezbollah has been defanged by Israel, but more importantly, it has no money. Why? Because we have the strictest sanctions, embargoes, that we’ve ever seen on Iran.
And as Iran, as we hear, is winning the war, they’re just about kaput. They’re strangled. We talked about an Anaconda program. Their military has been degraded by about 90%, but more importantly, they have no oil. No oil is getting in. They even have gas lines in their own country. Their currency is worthless. They’re the pariah of the world.
I heard not long ago a prominent political scientist say everybody was rooting for Iran and not for us. They may have said that, but they’re going to be delighted to see that country implode, which it will.
It’s not that the war is going bad or going good. It’s that the war is irrelevant. In other words, our life goes on and Iran’s doesn’t, and time is on our side. Maybe it’s going to be six weeks. Maybe it’s going to be six months. But it cannot survive the economic sanctions that are now in place.
And the entire Middle East is starting to wake up and see that there’s a really good chance to go to a normal regional atmosphere without that pernicious, toxic government.
The Strait of Hormuz is going to be irrelevant in two or three years. Pipelines are already in progress that will bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
And when you look at the oil situation in the world, everybody says, “Well, China has got the largest storage capacity of oil and it’s full.” Yes, but it’s finite. They’re not producing it. They’re storing it.
And in fact, they’re helping us out in an indirect way because the price of oil has not gone up because China is not on the market now, because it can’t get its hands on Venezuelan and Iranian oil.
But when Iran is out of the question, oil prices will not just drop, I think they’ll crash. And who’s going to control most of the oil in the world? The United States, because it’s got this good deal with Venezuela, and it’s already the largest producer of natural gas.
If you look at Russia, Russia’s a shadow of its former self. If you look at NATO, it’s rearming in a way that no one had thought would ever be possible.
You add it all up, and the EU model, if you look at the EU model of open borders, low fertility, 1.3%, radical green ideology trumping the use of fossil fuels, disarmament, it’s been thoroughly repudiated.
You’re going to see governments not just in Italy and Eastern Europe, but you’re going to see soon in France and probably in the U.K., governments that are going to look a lot more like the conservative government of the United States than they do their past liberal traditions.
In other words, the socialist model has failed all over the world, and it’s starting to implode. And it’s not gaining ground in the United States. It’s a last gasp of a frustrated urban elite and partly due to radical immigration.
Add it all up, and the United States is in a preeminent position. And the world today has nothing in common with the world just five years ago. That could be very bad.
But when you look systematically in a disinterested, rational fashion, and you look at the power of China vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Russia vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Latin America vis-à-vis the United States, you look at the Middle East vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Europe vis-à-vis the United States, you come up with either two conclusions, and they’re not incompatible.
No. 1, the United States is much stronger and in a much better position than those countries and regions I just mentioned.
And No. 2, whether they like us or not, they’re moving toward the United States, not because they want to necessarily, but because our system is producing spectacular growth economically, militarily, socially, culturally, and, more importantly, in the technologies to come in the future: AI, software, space exploration, satellites, bioengineering. We’re preeminent.
So, do not listen before these midterms that we’re in crisis, the loss of war. We’re in a world that is completely unrecognizable to the one five years ago. And the fact that we haven’t been able to appreciate it is largely because we’re right in the middle of the storm. We’re in the eye of the hurricane.
But the storm is passing, and it’s going to be very advantageous for the United States in the next decade.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2026-09-03 08:51:182026-09-03 08:51:18Victor Davis Hanson: America Looks Nothing Like She Did 5 Years Ago—And That’s a Good Thing
205 Democrats just voted against keeping the Supreme Court at nine justices. When Democrats don’t get their way, they don’t accept the outcome. They move to dismantle the Constitution, abolish the Electoral College, corrupt the voting system, and rewrite the law to rig the rules in their favor.
In case you didn’t think that they are going to try to pack the court if they take back power, they just gave us our answer.
When the Democrats can’t win the legitimate way, they rip up the Constitution and rewrite it.
The US House has failed to secure the votes needed to pass a Constitutional Amendment capping the number of Supreme Court justices at 9
Democrats just made crystal clear they intend to PACK THE COURT when they take power.
That’ll be the END of our republic.
Final vote tally: 212-206 (Two-third majority needed).
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Socialism is on the rise, and capitalism is on its back foot. The implications span all parts of our society but certainly include corporate governance. As is often the case, the corporate governance issue boils down to who makes decisions and to what end those decisions are — and should be — aimed.
Should corporations strive solely to maximize shareholder value? If the answer is “yes” — whether for reasons of law, economics, or philosophy — is it even possible to maximize shareholder value based solely on expected value and return-on-investment calculations? Or must other considerations inform the relevant decision-making?
And if one concludes that other factors are necessarily relevant, does that mean only a hypocrite could oppose “stakeholder capitalism,” or the use of “environmental, social, and governance” factors, or the pursuit of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” agendas?
To attempt to thread this needle, such that one might advocate for a combination of free market capitalism, shareholder wealth maximization, and principles like The Heritage Foundation’s “Four Cornerstones” as an effective basis for corporate governance, while at the same time rejecting ESG, DEI, and “stakeholder” capitalism, is sure to generate much debate.
However, for purposes of this op-ed, I am going to posit precisely that under the banner of “free enterprise.” Obviously, space limitations will necessitate merely flagging some relevant issues. But these debates are critical right now, and just marking the outlines of parts of the relevant landscape matters.
Focusing on free market capitalism generally (and shareholder wealth maximization specifically), a complaint one often hears is that it supposedly prioritizes shareholder wealth maximization at the expense of the environment, workers, consumers, and other stakeholders. However, several points should be considered before accepting that characterization.
First, the reason that free market capitalism has been so successful, including bringing us to the cusp of eliminating poverty, is that it incentivizes business owners to provide potential consumers with products and services that improve the purchaser’s life sufficiently to warrant the cost of obtaining that product or service.
In other words, rather than incentivizing exploitative behavior, free market capitalism promotes precisely the opposite, which is to say it promotes improving the lives of consumers, employees, and other stakeholders in order to be the most attractive seller possible.
Second, the minute that one imposes other goals on entrepreneurs beside profit maximization, one runs into the “many masters” problem. If your North Star is constantly found in a new place, you are essentially rudderless. One day you are maximizing shareholder value; the next you are setting that value on fire in pursuit of net-zero goals.
And this assumes the decision-maker is acting in good faith. Allowing the well-being of myriad stakeholders to serve as rotating justifications for corporate decision-making provides great cover for self-dealing insiders who are then able to brush off underperformance by claiming it was all to “save the trees.”
On top of that, the argument that one can’t avoid the “many masters” problem — because shareholders themselves have varying time horizons and interests — is foolish. Shareholders who want something other than profit can deploy their money accordingly via charities or public benefit corporations, and expected value calculations account for time differences.
Third, while adding ESG screens and pursuing DEI sounds admirable, what has been repeatedly demonstrated is that these initiatives seemingly can’t avoid being captured and weaponized by leftists who proceed to promote neo-Marxist and neo-racist ends.
Corporate managers using other people’s money for pet projects has long been a problem, but the problem becomes particularly acute when those projects include things like divisive racial quotas and utopian climate agendas that undermine national security and increase energy prices.
To see the truth about ESG, DEI, and stakeholder capitalism, one must look past the pleasant-sounding words and examine the substance of those regimes. Behind the newspeak lurks neo-racist and neo-Marxist leftism in myriad forms, whether promoted by radical true believers, opportunists, useful idiots, or cowards.
Fourth, while limited government is the best government, we still need some government. Accordingly, in assessing this debate, we should keep in mind that external regulation is available to protect society against exploitative externalities created by the pursuit of profit maximization.
If truly needed, this is far better than killing the goose that lays the golden eggs by distorting the signaling function of profit-seeking with myriad commitments to stakeholders. However, we must remain vigilant against the fabrication of externalities to support the market-distorting and value-destroying promotion of ESG via inefficient subsidies and otherwise.
Finally, it is important to note that defending free market capitalism against socialism does not undermine the importance of purpose and virtue. In fact, the “value” in “expected value” is arguably impossible to calculate optimally if one ignores the purpose of the product or service and whether the seller will be trusted as a virtuous actor or not.
At least two points are critical to differentiating the work we do from leftist ESG, DEI, and stakeholder capitalism.
First, lumping all arguments based on virtue or related concepts together constitutes a false equivalency. Merely because both left and right may point to implications and consequences that are difficult to distill into expected value calculations does not make conservatives guilty of hypocrisy for merely promoting “right-wing ESG.” Part of promoting free market capitalism includes defending the marketplace of ideas as capable of distinguishing truth from falsity and good ideas from bad ideas.
There may be a superficial equivalence between pushing corporations to adopt transgenderism or pushing them to defend biological reality. However, people can properly discern that if you are making corporate decisions based on the belief that a child can be born in the wrong body, then you are making a delusional rather than fully informed decision. This becomes particularly obvious when you are incapable of defining “woman” by anything other than a circular, non-falsifiable “self-identification” definition. A similar analysis applies to making corporate decisions based on the neo-racism of DEI or the utopianism of net-zero commitments.
Second, and arguably more importantly, we leverage the duties of care and candor within the shareholder wealth maximization regime rather than advocating for an overthrow of that regime. As just one example, we have asked whether the decision to adopt commitments to be a net-zero company by 2030 are fully informed on the basis of expected value and ROI calculations as opposed to demanding that net zero be accomplished regardless of the impact on firm value. A similar analysis applies to the use of related arguments rooted in federal and state antitrust and consumer protection laws.
This debate has a long history, but like many such debates, the need to go once more into the breach reappears with every new generation — if not every other administration.
And to the extent some conservatives might be tempted to argue that those of us defending free market capitalism against that assault of stakeholder capitalism, ESG, and DEI have won, I submit that we have achieved the equivalent of landing on Normandy Beach. We’ve achieved victories worth celebrating, but if the Allies had packed up and gone home after taking that beach all would have been lost.
What we have ahead is our own long march — not to Berlin but back to neutral for corporations that have been ideologically captured by the enemies of valuable and virtuous free markets.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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The Year of the Democratic Socialists took another twist Tuesday when the House went on the offensive to paint Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-N.Y.) party as a dangerous force of anti-Americanism. While the New Yorker has desperately tried to put some distance between Democrats and the DSA (somewhat unsuccessfully, others would add), the party’s drift toward mind-boggling radicalism is putting the entire country on edge.
The four-page resolution at the center of the House’s return to Washington this week “condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms, including the Democratic Socialists of America and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States.” The brainchild of Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.) spells out the wild ideas of the DSA, including abolishing prisons, ICE, the U.S. Senate, the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, and the presidency as we know it. Yet, despite those blaring red sirens, Jeffries’s rank-and-file are trying to dismiss the GOP’s concerns as “silly season.”
“Let’s scare people with yet another boogeyman and not do anything about it. Not really solve problems,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) argued. But others, like Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.), were quick to push back, reminding her that this is no hypothetical. “I’ve seen firsthand the alarming rise of socialism,” he said. “… Families in western New York have watched one-party rule in Albany pile on more taxes, more mandates, more government control, while hardworking taxpayers are left to foot the bill,” Langworthy warned. “And now downstate, we’ve watched the socialist left move more from the activist fringe into positions of real, serious political power. And anyone [who] thinks that these ideas are going to stay confined in New York City is sadly mistaken.”
“[S]cores of these candidates coming up through the system at the state level and congressional level,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) emphasized on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill” with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “Almost 40 of them now have prevailed and gone through these primary processes, because … the energy, the excitement, the grassroots, the money is on the side of the insurgent Left, sadly, in the Democratic Party. They’re taking the party over. And this is not a game,” he said somberly. “It’s not a flash in the pan. This isn’t a New York City thing. It’s happened in Oklahoma. It happened in Florida. It’s happening in red states, and it’s something that we must take into account.”
And this extreme makeover of Democrats is happening at warp speed, Johnson underscored. “… [A] few years ago, Republicans and Democrats in Congress [were] arguing over marginal tax rates and shades of regulation. We are now quite literally locked into a contest to determine whether we’re going to keep our republic — to keep the country as it is, or to break this thing down to the foundation and go [down] an entirely different road and set of principles towards communism. That’s the balance.”
The speaker, who’s been crisscrossing the country with this urgent message, pointed to a new website that Republicans put together called ContrastForAmerica.com that lays out the grim history of communism and socialism. “It always — every single time — has led to human suffering, misery, famine, even to death and the murder of tens of millions of innocent people in the 20th century alone. We can’t do it. It’s anti-American, and everybody needs to wake up right now. That is what is on the ballot almost 65 days from today.”
Johnson pointed to some of the shocking platforms embraced by candidates vying for some of the highest offices in Congress. There’s Abdul El-Sayed, running for Michigan’s Senate seat, who won’t disavow streamer Hasan Piker for blaming America for 9/11 or for calling Jews “bloodthirsty pig dogs.” The radical Muslim, whose own anti-Semitism has earned him the scorn of even far-Left Democrats like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), is frantically trying to make inroads to the state’s Jewish population despite more baggage than a Boeing 737.
Yet if he wins, El-Sayed will be one of the most powerful voices in Washington. These are people, the speaker cautioned, “who are so determined to rip the Constitution in half.” And when some of these candidates get elected, “and they will in some of these blue districts,” he concedes, “you’re going to have a number of effectively communists elected to Congress under the Constitution.” So what happens? “Will they disavow what they say if they raise their hand and they take an oath to uphold the Constitution? Someone would have to prove that they’re lying. It’s a very subjective determination. I mean, it’s a fascinating, untested, unprecedented question. Those are the times in which we live.”
At the end of the day, “They’re delusional,” the speaker shook his head. “They do not understand history. They do not understand how dangerous this is. And the idea that anyone who is currently sitting in Congress or the Senate, like [Senator] Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.] or any of them … would align themselves with this madness is crazy. … And I’m sad to tell you,” the Louisianan lamented, “I say this with great sadness, I think it’s too late for the Democrat[ic] Party. I do not think they can push back.”
Conservatives will continue to, despite allegations from the Left that anti-socialism resolutions like the one the House is pursuing this week are unnecessary. Yes, FRC’s Quena González acknowledges, some of this is political strategy. But that’s not to say the threat isn’t real.
“Republicans voting for a resolution condemning socialism less than two months before the midterms is a classic election-year maneuver to find the lowest of low-hanging fruit. It’s a clever ploy,” he notes, “because Democrats in Congress are watching members of the Democratic Socialists of America win primaries and can’t afford to condemn them without risking their chance of retaking the House majority.”
Obviously, González acknowledges, “It would be easy for Christians to throw up their hands, discouraged by the electioneering and paralysis in D.C. But thinking biblically means that we do not have the luxury of giving in to cynicism and despair. We are called to be salt and light, to act for the good of our neighbors, and to pray for our rulers. And in America,” he urged, “praying for our rulers included praying for wisdom for our fellow citizens. Americans choose our leaders, but less than half of eligible voters vote in midterm elections. Bible-believing Christians have an out-sized impact when they vote wisely.”
Speaker Johnson is also banking on reason and common sense to prevail. “You can trust the American people when they are given the facts. And [if] they’re informed, they will do the right thing. We’re still a center-right country,” he insists. “We’re still one nation under God — no matter [what] these crazy, radical, leftist, anti-God, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorism [people] say. This is still America. And I believe God’s not done with America yet. And people are going to rise up, do the right thing, elect the right people who love their country, and want to preserve it and continue to make it better. That is the challenge. That is the choice. That’s the election before us.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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Just in time for the one-year anniversary of the murder of evangelist and Christian activist Charlie Kirk, one of the left’s leading influencers mocked him.
Islamist and socialist influencer Hasan Piker recently made fun of Kirk and his death in front of an international audience, drawing “cheers and laughter from his audience.” Piker has the ear of DSA senatorial candidate for Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed.
These are cynical days. As we all remember, Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood on a college campus in Utah before the watching world on September 10, 2025.
About a year before his murder, I was privileged to interview him for Christian radio. We were discussing his anti-Woke book, entitled, Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West. The purpose of this piece, a year after his death, is to let Charlie speak from the grave.
In that interview, Charlie warned us about some of the dangerous forces in our society that threaten our very existence, if they continue to rise.
I asked Charlie, “Why should the woke control our lives, limit our destiny, and deny us our God-given liberties?”
He responded, “Well, they shouldn’t, and that’s what the book is all about. It’s about trying to reclaim our position in this country and to restore self-government. The woke, I believe, is the demonic. I believe it comes from a very dark place. The woke is a mixture of postmodernism, of nihilism, of deconstructionism all mixed together. The woke have taken control over almost every single major institution in this country.”
Kirk went on, “And it’s going to require an effort of people of all different sorts of backgrounds, but especially people of faith to rise up, to understand the enemy, and to fight for liberty, and to fight for righteousness….We need to fight in every way we possibly can, and this book lays out the path forward.”
I asked him if he wanted to define woke further than what he had just said. Charlie responded, “Well, the best way I could define it is it’s a group and an ideology that complains until they control. So they complain about certain injustices, inequities, inequalities until they control institutions.”
I asked him to contrast the views of the founding fathers—who said our rights come from God—with today’s woke crowd.
Charlie said, “The idea of inalienable rights is totally at odds with the woke. You see, they don’t believe in a God. They don’t believe in the eternal and transcendent purpose now. Instead, they believe that there is no purpose. There is no meaning. And again, the woke is just a filler term for what we have been fighting on the spiritual domain for the last couple-thousands of years. And the enemy comes to lie, steal, cheat, and destroy. But Jesus has come to give life and life more abundantly, as it says in John 10:10.”
Question. Have things gotten better or worse since Charlie said the following in our interview? “And if pastors and Christians start to rise up and speak out more, we can be ultimately successful. But right now it seems the church is largely indifferent towards the rise of Marxism in the West” [emphasis mine].
He added, “I call on Christians to start to really rise up and to start to understand the stakes in front of us. It’s easy to just issue forth negative criticism or complaints. It’s going to be the question of whether or not we do something constructive and whether or not we combine our forces together to fight for goodness, truth, and beauty.”
Charlie also addressed the source of our liberty—God. He said, “Liberty is not man’s idea. It is God’s idea. And that is a very important thing, that God wants us to be free. In the first statement of the Ten Commandments, God says, ‘I’m the Lord your God, who delivered you out of the house of bondage in Egypt’ [Exodus 20:2]. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty’[2 Corinthians 3:17]. In Leviticus 25:10, the Lord says—and it’s on the Liberty Bell: ‘Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.’ And so it is God’s heart for us to be free. The woke do not want us to be free. They want us to be controlled and afraid. And so we need to get the message out.”
I’m confident that if Charlie were alive today, he would warn us that much more about the rise of the woke Marxists in America and radical Islamists today, like those who mocked the anniversary of his murder. Thankfully, his widow, Ericka, assistant Andrew Kolvet, and others are continuing the vital work he started at Turning Point USA.
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An Obama-appointed judge once again temporarily barred the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out President Donald Trump’s restrictions on mail-in ballots in a Thursday ruling.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani lifted a preliminary injunction Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that some of Trump’s limits could remain in place. The judge issued a new ruling reversing the previous decision, arguing that USPS overstepped its legal mandate, which once again blocked Trump’s rule.
Trump signed an executive order on March 31 titled, “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” which established certain rules for the USPS regarding mail-in and absentee ballots. Section 3 of the executive order required all outgoing election mail to be marked as “Official Election Mail,” including a unique Intelligent Mail barcode and be pre-approved by the USPS for design and barcode placement.
“Where a state or local election official does not obtain envelope and return envelope design approval, or does not upload voter information, or does not include unique intelligent mail bar codes on ballot envelopes, the U.S.P.S. will not mail ballots to voters,” the ruling stated. Talwani argued that Congress did not delegate authority to the USPS to regulate election mail. She argued the rules would prevent citizens from voting by mail unless the USPS approved the ballots in a timely manner.
The judge further argued that imposing these rules on the states is unconstitutional. She placed a fourteen-day stay on the “implementation or enforcement” of the rules, which prevents USPS from taking these steps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. “The court finds Plaintiffs likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that (1) the USPS lacked authority to issue the Final Rule; (2) the Final Rule is unconstitutional in imposing these requirements on the States; and (3) the Final Rule is unconstitutional in prohibiting non-compliant State and local officials from using the United States Postal Service to mail ballots,” the judge said.
A court in California issued a similar injunction, which reached the Supreme Court in the case, Trump v. California. The high court stayed the injunction, allowing the administration to move forward with the executive order.
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Many Jewish democrat liberals would probably only feel rain if spat upon by antisemitic progressives.
The undeniable rise of vulgar antisemitism on the left and in the Democratic Party is a reality that has caused many liberal American Jews to finally take notice, though some go to great lengths to rationalize it as a reaction to President Trump and ignore the foundational influence of Jew-hatred in progressive ideology. Self-delusion is a powerful tool for maintaining political dogmas.
Unlike Jewish members of the British Labour Party who staged a protest exodus when antisemitism roiled their ranks under leader Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish Democrats cannot seem to muster the same resolve to chastise their own establishment, despite its embrace of radicals and socialists whose ideologies are steeped in hatred of Jews and Israel. Indeed, some even justify supporting radical candidates for the sake of party unity, as did those national Democratic leaders who endorsed Abdul El-Sayed — an anti-Israel Senatorial candidate — after he won the Michigan primary.
Only Alan Dershowitz seemed to get it right when he resigned his membership and described the Democrats as “the most anti-Israel, most anti-Semitic, most pro-terrorist, most anti-American party in modern American history.” He was so alienated over the Democrats’ embrace of radicalism that he registered Republican for the first time in his life.
In contrast, many Jewish liberals would probably only feel rain if spat upon by antisemitic progressives.
This point was underscored in a recent discussion with a friend who was outraged at the increase in Jew-hatred across the American political, cultural, and academic landscape, but felt compelled to blame Trump. While she conceded that neither Trump nor conservatives hold any sway over the academic establishment, Democratic party, or legacy media, she theorized that they are emboldened in their Jew-hatred because of Trump’s supposed antisemitism.
I pointed out the logical disconnect between statement and fact by challenging her to provide specific examples. She could not. And when I mentioned the Trump family’s decades-long charitable relationships with assorted Jewish institutions, she argued they were politically motivated – although these associations long predated Trump’s entry into politics.
Trump’s father, Fred, for example, donated land and funds for construction of the orthodox Beach Haven Jewish Center. He also contributed to Long Island Jewish Medical Center and numerous Jewish charities and was a longtime booster for Israel Bonds. Given the father’s longstanding support for Jewish causes and the State of Israel, it should not be surprising that the son would continue the family tradition, supporting among other institutions Beit El Yeshiva in Israel, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Jewish National Fund, and some Chabad centers in the United States.
I then subtly goaded my friend by asking whether, despite these connections, prejudice could be inferred from earlier associations with bigoted organizations and personalities, to which she replied “of course.” Thinking I had thrown her a lifeline, she asserted that relationships with antisemitic churches or anti-Israel zealots could clearly indicate Jew-hatred. I then informed her that Trump had no such associations, but Barack Obama did – for example, his twenty-year membership in the church of Jeremiah Wright (a well-known radical pastor criticized for antisemitic rhetoric and falsely accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing) and his validation of Israel-haters like Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, in whom he expressed personal pride.
If those criteria are suggestive of antisemitism, I asked, how could she justify voting for Obama twice, especially given his tendency to downplay hostility against Jews or falsely equate it with “Islamophobia,” and his failure to acknowledge the Jew-hatred that permeated his progressive base (and perhaps correlated with the more than seven-thousand antisemitic incidents and hate-crimes reported during his presidency)?
My friend had no comeback, so she declared our debate a stalemate — though such can only occur when neither side has a winning argument. Our colloquy ended, however, simply because she was confounded by facts she did not like but could not refute. That’s not a stalemate. I told her she is free to dislike Donald Trump for any reason or none at all – he certainly can be polarizing and is given to dramatic hyperbole. But faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she could not justify her dislike based on nonexistent antisemitism. Neither could she prove her thesis that liberal antisemitism is stimulated by Trump’s supposed hatred of Jews, considering his multigenerational history of philosemitism and support for the Jewish state.
Part of her problem — and in fact the problem of many on both left and right — is the inability to define Jew-hatred or recognize its uniqueness. Antisemitism is referred to as the “world’s oldest hatred” because of its breadth, scope, and antiquity; and though not exclusive to right or left, religious or secular, its meaning is shaped by multifarious ideological orientations.
Indeed, doctrinal antisemitism can be found in the scriptures of other so-called Abrahamic religions because of their foundational need to delegitimize the people and faith they claim to supersede. Jews are demonized throughout Christian scripture, for example, which depicts them as deceitful spawn of the devil (e.g., John 8:44-47), bloodthirsty murderers of Jesus and the Prophets (e.g., Matthew 23:31-33; 1 Thessalonians 2), bearers of hereditary blood guilt (e.g., Matthew 27:25), and denizens of “the synagogue of Satan.” (Revelation, 2:9; 3:9.)
And despite liberal claims of Muslim tolerance, Jews are likewise villainized in the Quran, which accuses the Jews of perverting their own scripture (e.g., Sura 3:71; 4:46), and Hadith, which contains eschatological passages foretelling the Jews’ end-times annihilation (Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 4, Book 56, No. 791). Muslim scripture also contains multiple references concerning the use of hudnas (false treaties) to facilitate belligerent conquest over non-Muslims.
Though progressives may be familiar with anti-Jewish themes throughout Christian literature, they tend to describe Islam as “a religion of peace.” However, they do so not because they understand the Quran (most have not read it) or the lengthy history of anti-Jewish persecution under Islam. Rather, progressives feel political kinship, particularly with Islamists who share their rejection of western values — even though their endorsement of feminism, gay rights, and trans advocacy would subject them to discrimination or death under Sharia law.
Jewish conservatives often downplay Christian hatred or ambivalence regarding Jews to avoid scuttling political alliances, particularly “friendship evangelism,” which uses affinity for Jews and Israel as subterfuge to proselytize. While evangelicals claim they do so out of love, they are guided by the belief that Jews are spiritually doomed unless “saved” by Christian doctrines that, in truth, are pagan in origin and opposed by Torah law. Moreover, their actions reflect profound ignorance of Tanakh and disrespect for the Jewish spirit. Yet, some conservatives turn a blind eye to preserve Gentile support for Israel, which may be an important policy, but should be judged with open eyes.
This can lead to uncomfortable situations, however, like one that occurred during a recent Christian Zionist conference featuring multiple speakers, including a “messianic Jewish” influencer whose presence offended Jewish guests and prompted some to walk out. When a rabbi explained to the organizers that “messianic Judaism” is not Judaism at all, but rather a deceptive Christian movement created by missionaries to evangelize Jews through the dissimulative use of misappropriated cultural symbols and customs, they could not satisfactorily explain the motivation for inviting this presenter in the first place.
Clearly, anti-Judaism is not always physically violent; sometimes it presents surreptitiously as goodwill to seduce Jews away from the faith of their ancestors.
Whereas doctrinal Jew-hatred can be expressed both physically and spiritually, the root cause is not always religion. It can arise from ethnic and economic stereotypes and tensions, folk myth, racial presumptions, or xenophobia, as well as secular intellectualism. Quite famously, Voltaire attacked the Jews’ religion and culture, Immanuel Kant depicted them as a “nation of cheaters,” Schopenhauer derided their moral values, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain demonized them as racial parasites (well before Hitler).
Hatred of Jews is so widespread and disparate that it would seem to be supernatural. And in fact, this is what Biblical prophecy suggests, as stated in the Torah: “The Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other…and among those nations, you will not be calm, nor will your foot find rest. There, the Lord will give you a trembling heart, dashed hopes, and a depressed soul.” (Sefer Devarim, 28:64-65.) However, the Tanakh in Nevi’im also prophesies the Jews’ collective redemption and integral role as a “light to the nations” during the messianic era. (Sefer Yeshayahu, 49:6.)
Perhaps what Jewish liberals fail to understand is the paradigmatic diffuseness of antisemitism and that no ideology or culture is singularly responsible for it or immune to it. Before they blame their political opponents for spewing hatred, they should hold a mirror to their own worldview and acknowledge that moral impurity knows no partisan bounds; and then they should rediscover the beauty and relevance of Tanakh.
