Gas Prices Need to Drop this Summer

American Thinker 

For the Iran war to be a political plus for Republicans in the midterms, it needs to end soon enough so gas prices start dropping this summer. President Trump knows this. After 11 years in national politics, if you aren’t convinced that Trump is a master politician, nothing will convince you.

Crushing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions wins thumbs up. In and of itself, though, it won’t win many votes for congressional GOP candidates. Reality is reality. The Iranian threat is too many steps removed from voters’ daily lives. Paychecks and family budgets dominate. The projected median household income in 2026 is approximately $89,000. That’s not a fortune today. And it’s not parroting a Democrat talking point to express concern about costs. The president has acknowledged concerns. He’s assured voters that higher energy prices are temporary.

Trump swears that gas prices will “drop like a rock” when the war ends and the Strait of Hormuz opens fully. The catch is, when? Perhaps it’s an oversell for Trump to claim that prices will plummet, but they need only start declining to boost voter confidence.

During the Beijing summit, the president sat down for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. Baier pressed Trump on gas prices and costs generally. The president emphasized the economy’s good performance. He highlighted the stock market’s surge and benefits to retirement accounts. All true, but a lot of working people have modest retirement investments. Filling gas tanks and getting out of grocery stores without running up credit cards are weekly challenges.

Those concerns matter because working-class and middle-income voters are the Republican Party base now. Trump has been remaking the GOP for a decade. The likes of John Thune, Lisa Murkowski, and Bill Cassidy are repelled by what’s happening to their party. They miss all the country clubbers.

Recent Republican primary results in Indiana (six state senators who opposed redistricting lost their seats), Kentucky (Thomas Massie was ousted), and Louisiana (Cassidy was humiliated) demonstrates that the GOP marches to the beat of Trump’s drum. Texas awaits. John Cornyn is a likely loser to Ken Paxton, Trump’s pick.

Fact is, the very voters who are helping Trump reshape the GOP represent a broader voter segment who need energy costs to drop. Primary voters alone can’t swing general elections in competitive districts, which The Cook Political Report estimates as 35 CDs in lean/toss-up categories. The GOP has more toss-ups than do Democrats.

The president and White House advisors are keenly aware of the dilemma, and appreciate that a pivot by the summer is optimal. But the president needs to finish the war on satisfactory terms, meaning the Iranians stop nuclear weapons development and leave the Strait of Hormuz free to transit. Opening the Strait fully is key to cutting energy costs.

Democrats can’t afford to be smug. Public perception of the party is low. Theirs is a party of strange ideas, led in blue states and cities by incompetents and left-wingers whose connections to ordinary life are tenuous. Case in point, the mayor of Seattle Katie Wilson, who said, “Like bye,” when Starbucks announced it’s moving to Nashville. Wilson’s flippancy -- or idiocy -- guarantees that more Seattle businesses flee.

Just one other example, because Democrat Party screwballs are too numerous to cite.

James Talarico is the Texas Democrats’ nominee for the U.S. Senate. He’s a state rep and Presbyterian seminarian who proclaimed that “God is nonbinary” on the Texas House floor. He must have thought that this was his Martin Luther moment. Talarico’s proclamation conveniently dovetails with claims by woke apostles who believe God was created to conform to their daffy worldview. Most Texans don’t buy his tripe.

There’s also the endlessly unfolding massive fraud in Minnesota, Tim Walz’s turf. Taxpayer dollars were funneled to Somalis for their votes and, perhaps, to gain kickbacks. Gavin Newsom’s California appears plagued by worse corruption.

If Democrats and their corporate media cheerleaders believe that a blue wave is in the offing, it’s another example of how out of touch they are. Remember the 2022 midterms, when conservatives anticipated a red wave? Joe Biden’s presidency was sticking it to working folk, yet Republicans netted just nine House seats. The partisan divide is such that large gains by either party are unlikely.

Here’s the Republicans’ problem: Democrats don’t need a blue wave to capture the House. They only need to swing three seats to win control. Yes, redistricting has changed the equation some. More on that in a moment. Republicans’ thin margin, however, makes holding the House problematic even with falling gas prices. The outcomes of a handful of seats might hinge on local factors and personalities more so than national issues. In any event, Republicans need to buck history. A president’s party typically suffers some losses.

To buck history, Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are, in part, counting on wins in new Republican districts to offset any losses in competitive seats.

Republican gains over Democrats in the redistricting war loom large. Red state legislators drawing new lines have boosted GOP chances. According to CNN’s redistricting tracker, so far, Republicans hold a 15-6 edge in the fight. That’s a nine-seat swing. Democrat failures to convert seats in Maryland, New York, and Virginia -- an epic botch -- were gifts.

Yet despite more favorable districts, turnout is critical. It always is, but especially in nonpresidential election years. Turning out your base voters and a slice of independents are keys to the GOP hanging onto the House. The Senate appears in better shape. The fear isn’t Trump voters switching allegiance. It’s that discouraged MAGA backers stay home.

This autumn will be a battle of the bases, and it can’t be overemphasized: Republican candidates need ground games second to none.

Take away energy costs, and Democrats really have nothing going for them. “Affordability” loses steam as a rallying cry if energy prices decline.

Democrats are against border security, soft on crime, shrug at government corruption, and want us to believe that gender can be changed like clothes. They’re for unlimited abortion. They’ve never met a Somali or illegal who doesn’t deserve government largess. Once, they claimed that Iran with nuclear weapons was unacceptable. Today, they decry the “inhumanity” of waging war on a regime that promotes “Death to America” as a cornerstone policy.

Trump, never shy of a fight, will take to the hustings this fall. The president and his team understand that the base will be more motivated to turn out for himthan your garden-variety Republican congressional candidate. It’ll be the second-to-last time that Trump on the stump matters to GOP fortunes. The last time will be 2028.

The guy who wrote The Art of the Deal is maneuvering to get a deal done with the Iranians by the summer. If he succeeds, and gas prices start to slide, Republican prospects to defy history brighten. Holding the House is tough, but never count out Donald Trump. Never.

Podcast thread for May 22

 

Hopefully you have a quiet weekend

King Trump and the Looming MAGA Challenge

Townhall 

Donald Trump is the undisputed king of the Republican Party. Earlier this month, Trump exacted revenge on Indiana state senators who had opposed his call to redistrict the Hoosier State; his endorsees won a majority of races against incumbents. Last weekend, Trump successfully nuked Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) from political life, relegating the incumbent to a shocking third place in his statewide primary. And this past Tuesday, Trump-endorsed candidates across the nation won every primary race — 37 victories and zero defeats. Overall, Trump's approval rating among members of his own party sits around 81 percent — down from last year but higher than comparable second-term approval metrics for either Barack Obama or George W. Bush.

On the one hand, then, things could not possibly be going better for Trump within the GOP fold. It is only when one considers the generational divide among Republican voters, especially on matters of foreign policy, that things begin to look a bit bleaker.

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll reveals some startling age-based demographic splits within the MAGA coalition. Sixty percent of Republicans 18 to 44 want an overall new direction for their party beginning in 2028; only 33 percent want to follow Trump's course. Seventy percent of young Republicans want the post-2028 GOP to chart a new course when it comes to U.S.-Israel relations; only 20 percent want the party to continue Trump's close embrace of the Jewish state. Fifty-six percent of young Republicans want a new direction on Iran; just 35 percent want to follow Trump's antagonistic stance.

Young voters shifted notably to the right in the 2024 election. Trump's political challenge, in this midterm election year, is to keep these new MAGA voters firmly in the coalition while not alienating the loyal older MAGA voters who have served as his core base since 2016 — and who overwhelmingly approve of his second-term job performance. Given the consistently greater reliability of older voters in turning out to vote, simply pandering to the younger generation's various desires would be foolish at the most rudimentary political level.

So, what to do? The answer is to lead with vision, conviction and confidence, as great men of history do.

Consider foreign policy, which is the most divisive cross-generational issue within the GOP. There is an undeniable foreign policy chasm between Republican boomers, who often get their news from cable TV, and Republican millennials and zoomers, at least some of whom get their news from "Podcastistan" subversives. The explanation for this divide is that many older Republican voters have been around long enough to see actual American military success in the world. Many younger Republican voters, by contrast, spent their formative years in a milieu wherein the failures of 21st-century American foreign policy were all but universally acknowledged. In short, older voters have seen foreign policy success, but all younger voters know is failure on the world stage.

The solution is to alter the entire paradigm and flip the script on its head by demonstrating unambiguous success on the world stage.

All younger voters have seen is endless boondoggle after endless boondoggle. There are numerous reasons for this, including the mission creep inherent in the failed neoconservative/liberal humanitarian project of "democracy promotion," overly restrictive and self-defeating rules of engagement, and transnational institutions (such as the United Nations) that take a tendentious view of "human rights." Regardless of the causes, there have been no decisive military victories to speak of. And that is the reason our "forever wars" go on, well, forever.

So how about showing younger voters what a real, decisive victory looks like?

Trump came closest to doing that with the astonishing extraction of Venezuelan strongman (and illegitimate leader) Nicolas Maduro in January. Iran has been a bit of a different story. What began as an extraordinary shock-and-awe campaign has become a quagmire. Voters are understandably concerned about rising gasoline prices, but the solution is not to repeat the cardinal sin of decades of American foreign policy blunders: starting a war and then failing to finish it. The debate over whether the Iran war is wise may have been a worthy discussion before it started. But at this point, it's irrelevant.

The easiest way for Trump to stabilize oil markets while saving political face is to keep on pushing — with force — to achieve the four key goals of the Iran operation: an open Strait of Hormuz, the cessation of Iranian regime funding to its regional terror proxies, the end of the regime's ballistic missile and drone programs, and the successful ferreting out of the regime's enriched uranium stockpile. Unless and until those four things happen, the Iran operation will have achieved only partial success.

Even better, younger Republican voters will finally get a taste of real victory over a hardened adversary. Gas prices will come down. The MAGA coalition would yet again coalesce. Trump would yet again be king of all of MAGA. And for the GOP, the midterms could be saved.

But it depends on Trump leading with conviction and confidence by ripping off the proverbial Band-Aid and finishing the Iran job once and for all.

What the Reflecting Pool Reflects About America

What the Reflecting Pool Reflects About America

Trump Derangement Syndrome in liquid form.

Daniel Greenfield for Frontpage Magazine.com

Over the last two weeks, the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial has been mentioned over 600 times in various news media outlets. During the same period, the Islamic terrorist massacres of Christians in Nigeria have only been mentioned around 40 times.

Why is the status of the algae in the reflecting pool more important than the lives of dozens of human beings? Part of the answer may lie in the inconvenient truth about who is doing the killing in Nigeria and who is being killed, but the other is Trump Derangement Syndrome in liquid form.

The renovation of the reflecting pool should be as apolitical as anything gets. Critical race theory has thus far failed to connect the reflecting pool to systemic racism (though no doubt if asked, its professors will claim that it was built by slaves), gender critical theory has nothing to say about the reflecting pool and ‘heteronormativity’ and the Marxists have failed to connect it to capitalism. Even the Hamas supporters have failed to show up waving their terrorist flags.

Unlike White House renovations and the battles over the renaming of the Lincoln Center, fixing the reflecting pool offers no specific benefits to Trump. And renovating it ought to have been a completely apolitical bipartisan issue with Democrats and Republicans agreeing to fix it up.

When the pool was previously renovated under Obama, Republicans did not jeer or complain even though the repairs proved woefully inadequate and shortly after the pool opened, it had to be closed again and cleaned of a massive algae outbreak that turned the whole pool green.

Republicans and conservatives did not view the algae outbreak as some sort of vindication and FOX News did not run minute-by-minute coverage of the color of the reflecting pool because they wanted a good, clean reflecting pool, and understood that a nearly century old pool was difficult to maintain, and that the challenges were not reflective of a particular administration.

That’s in sharp contrast to the media mania surrounding Trump’s renovation of the pool.

What the reflecting pool really reflects then is Trump Derangement Syndrome in its purest state. There is nothing to muck the waters with except the obsession with opposing anything that President Trump does simply because he’s doing it. And the fact that the media has provided more coverage to the reflecting pool than some regional wars shows what its base looks like.

The media is now filled with headline coverage from major media stories such as “What Color Is the Reflecting Pool? An Investigation” from The Atlantic, “Reflecting Pool woes: Trump administration turns to hydrogen peroxide in latest bid to beat back algae” from CNN, “Why the Washington DC Reflecting Pool became a global talking point” from the BBC and “What I Saw at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Monday Afternoon” from the Wall Street Journal.

Two weeks of relentless media coverage of the reflecting pool reflects the fact that the media caters to a demographic that is obsessed with the most minute and petty score settling with Trump and that any story no matter how objectively unimportant can be blown up for its sake.

The media’s radical leftist turn has left it dependent on two demographics, the smallest one of leftists, and the larger one of older white liberals who are obsessed with social media narratives about Trump even while caring very little about the socialist policy agitprop that drives the Left.

It’s this latter demographic that pushes the media into orgies of idiocy that have to be seen to be believed. The Left wants to contend that Trump is a manifestion of heterocapitalist white supremacy, while the TDS’ers want stories about how Trump lies about his weight, has trouble walking down the stairs, drinks too much diet coke, raped everyone between New York and California, and how he ruined the reflecting pool. And since this is the demographic that keeps the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC (MS NOW) and CNN afloat, the end result is not only a wildly biased media, but a fundamentally malicious and unserious one.

Jeering the renovation of the reflecting pool isn’t progressive: it’s the kind of thing done by those who no longer know the difference between defeating their political opponents and defeating America. Leftists hate Trump because they hate America while TDSers hate America because they hate Trump. It’s why polls show that this particular demographic answers that it’s not proud of America when Trump is in office, but has pride in America when Democrats take power.

The leftist hostility to America at least reflects a consistent philosophy while TDS is a kind of social contagion primarily manifesting among older white female liberals whose worldview is derived from social media and whose politics comes down to opposing anything Trump does.

That includes renovating the reflecting pool.

The Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool have arguably played more of a cultural role in liberal events with numerous rallies trying to recapture the spirit of MLK’s speech. Liberals should want to see the pool restored to its original reflective quality, ‘reflecting the heavens’ and the Washington Monument, testifying to George Washington’s role in envisioning reflecting pools in the local architecture, and providing a majestic setting for national events.

When liberals root for the restoration of the reflecting pool to fail, they’re telling on themselves.

The reflecting pool started life as a vision, but also as a way to drain the swamps of D.C. and capture the excess water. The difficulty in maintaining the massive pool has posed a challenge for over a century, but it’s also a testament to the idea that Washington D.C. could be cleaned up. Today, liberals seem to celebrate the idea that it has to stay dirty and jeer Trump for trying to clean up its crime problem, its filth and waste and the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.

But the pool is also a promise. It offers us a chance to see America and some of its greatest landmarks as they should be. The pool can reflect the petty hatreds, the small-minded malice and miserable schadenfreude of Trump Derangement Syndrome or a bright American future.

Jeff Bezos Just Destroyed the Left's 'Tax the Rich' Line

Jeff Bezos Just Destroyed the Left's 'Tax the Rich' Line

Dmitri Bolt for Townhall

AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File

The founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, pushed back on calls from Democrats to tax the wealthy, particularly New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has made it a centerpiece of his platform to go after the city’s rich to ensure they pay their “fair share.”

The left seems to think the problem with the country is a lack of tax revenue, and that if they could just collect more taxes, they could fix all Americans’ problems. The main way Democrats propose this is by taxing America’s wealthy. However, not only does that idea stem from flawed logic, but it simly doesn't work. And Bezos was quick to point that out, arguing that even if his taxes were doubled, the person Democrats picture struggling to feed their family or live comfortably wouldn’t actually be helped. 

Why? Because government is terrible at actually helping people and is better at wasting money and making things more expensive.

🚨 JUST IN: Jeff Bezos just TRUTH NUKED Ugandan Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the socialists, he's about to throw them into a frenzy

"You could DOUBLE the taxes I pay — and it's NOT gonna help that teacher in Queens!"

🫳🏻🎤

"You can't connect those two things. It's not LOGICAL."… pic.twitter.com/w76Oi8IhZ3

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 20, 2026

"I pay billions of dollars in taxes, and it's a perfect...again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend, you know, that this...that that's going to solve the problem," Bezos said. "You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you."

"So you can't connect those two things, not logically. You know, there are more examples," he said. "Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently saw somebody blame it on Airbnb. OK, Airbnb is not the cause of expensive rent. In fact, it's already been outlawed in New York City, and rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb isn't causing high rents. What's really causing high rent is government intervention."

Taxing the wealthy doesn't work, and providing the government with greater tax revenue doesn't either. If the government has yet to master the art of even running a beneficial program, why bother flooding it with more money?

Democrats, still, have encouraged many Americans to look for things to blame for their struggles, whether that be as Bezos said, Airbnb for high rent prices, businesses and corporations for high costs, and greed for why low-skilled workers get paid minimum wage instead of a "livable wage."

The blame has only one place to go, and that is back at government.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

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No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

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Tulsi Gabbard resigns as US director of national intelligence

 

Tulsi Gabbard has said she is resigning from her position as the US director of national intelligence in the Trump administration, citing her husband's recent bone cancer diagnosis.

"His strength and love have sustained me through every challenge," she wrote in her resignation letter obtained by CBS News, the BBC's US partner. "I cannot in good conscience ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming position."

President Donald Trump said in a social media post that Gabbard "has done an incredible job, and we will miss her". 

 

 

Her resignation is effective 30 June. Aaron Lukas, the principal deputy director, will step in as acting director, Trump said.

Gabbard, a loyal supporter of Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign, was confirmed as one of the most powerful figures in US intelligence-gathering weeks after he returned to the White House in 2025. As head of the intelligence community, Gabbard coordinates among multiple intelligence agencies and advises the president.

But this year she has largely been out of public view as the US has taken military action against Iran, put pressure on Cuba, and notably removed Venezuela's president.  

 

 

In her letter Gabbard said her husband, Abraham, "faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months."

Trump posted on social media that Gabbard "rightfully, wants to be with him, bringing him back to good health as they currently fight a tough battle together. I have no doubt he will soon be better than ever." 

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgj2gkv1x1o   

 

 

 

 

 

The Left's Lack of Moral Compass Leaves It in a Perpetual State of Conflict With the World

RedState 

If you watched the series finale of "The Boys," then you were probably as let down and annoyed as everyone else was. If you didn't watch it, or don't even know what I'm talking about, then let me sum up what went down. 

The main villain of the show was turned into an allegory of Donald Trump, and he was killed off after pathetically begging for his life with promises of sexual favors and eating feces. He was a Superman kind of figure. A man with super strength, laser eyes, and flight, and his name was "Homelander," just to drive the point home that he was kind of America's superhero. 

It was pretty clear to everyone that the writers were living out an anti-Trump fantasy, but what was interesting about this one is that they made this allegory an all-powerful demigod-like figure, took his power, and then killed him in a way that exposed his "true" character. Without his power, he's a cowardly brat, which is something that's more or less spoken aloud by the protagonist before he deals the final blow. 

I'll spare you the clip because the show isn't really the point; it's what was represented. 

It's a common theme you see throughout many leftist creations, and it's that power is ultimately evil and anyone who has it is ultimately villainous. 

In the leftist mind, there is no good or evil. Morality is wholly subjective. The only thing that is black and white is power structures. The haves are bad, the have-nots are good. The have-nots cannot be evil because they sit at the bottom of the power structure, and as a result, anything they do is fine. 

They can steal, assault, even rape and kill, and justifications will be made to keep the holiness of the have-nots intact. 

A good example of this is Luigi Mangione, who stands accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. As I wrote back in April of 2025, Taylor Lorenz called the act "revolutionary":

“You’re going to see women especially that feel like, Oh my God, right? Like, here’s this man, who, who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who’s young, who’s smart. He’s a person that seems … like this morally good man, which is hard to find.”

And I think that word is very poignant, because to the left, revolution is kind of the only thing they see as the "ultimate good." 

Revolution means displacement of the powerful, who are the "ultimate evil." So revolutions or revolutionary actions like murder are, in the minds of the left, moral actions. 

The issue is that the lack of a real moral compass doesn't give them a point where they've accomplished their ultimate fix for their ultimate problems. 

If they do succeed in killing the powerful people in charge, they would just be replaced with a new set of powerful people. If they collapsed the system they see as oppressive, they would only replace it with a system that promoted a different group of people to be more powerful than the rest. They will never see an end to the enemies they have to defeat. There will always be a new group of haves lording over the have-nots. 

Brian Thompson was murdered, and UnitedHealthcare just replaced him with Tim Noel. Mangione ultimately accomplished nothing, except maybe getting the next guy in line promoted. The company is still going. No revolution actually took place, but in the minds of the left, they truly think they did something great. A murder took place, but that murder resulted in the death of someone considered powerful, so this "revolutionary act" was a moral practice. 

The cycle cannot end. They're locked into this perpetual state of "fighting the man" that logically cannot end until there's one person on Earth. 

It's anti-civilization, but the left has made it very clear that civilization is a problem on many levels. It is the same left that champions anti-natalism, after all. 

If the ultimate good is to kill everyone a little better than you, then leftism is truly a selfish and disgusting ideology.

Teachers' Union Leaders Plan Violent Protests While Schoolchildren Can't Read

Teachers' Union Leaders Plan Violent Protests While Schoolchildren Can't Read

Jeff Charles for Townhall.com

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

A group of teachers’ union leaders advocated for using political violence to advance their agenda during a recent webinar.

Leaked video of the webinar shows several individuals from various teachers’ unions across the country discussing how they might push back against the Trump administration. A Milwaukee-based nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization called Rethinking Schools hosted the webinar.

The North American Values Institute, which exposed the content of the webinar, reported that the leaders were discussing setting up long-term protest infrastructure in their cities, along with midterm-election organizing.

Maya Suzuki Daniels, an organizer with United Teachers Los Angeles, said “people are getting a tiny bit burned out” by using tactics such as sending postcards and holding rallies. “It’s very evident that our politicians and our elected leaders are not listening to us,” she said. “So how do we make them listen, right? How do we get their attention? How do we say, well, we're going to be out here putting ourselves in harm's way.”

Marcia Howard, president of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, said, they “need to stay organized” through online chatrooms where they collaborate on strategy and tactics and be ready to “burn it if somebody gets arrested and start another one.”

Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union and a longtime education activist, claimed the Trump administration is “setting the stage for some kind of military coup, whether it’s calling for martial law or the Insurrection Act, or not seating representatives if they lose in November.”

He continued, “So it's going to mean that we've got to replicate some of the things we've seen our siblings do in other countries that are effective at challenging and defeating authoritarians that most Americans aren't comfortable with, because probably most people have been to a baseball game but not a protest, right? Let's be real. So we got to get them there.”

Howard chimed back in, boasting about what she and her allies did in Minneapolis. “And there's this grand arc through the uprising,” she said. “We burned down an entire police precinct. And did not rebuild it. I have taken six city streets and have not returned it. We don't say ‘no justice, no peace.’ We say ‘no justice, no streets.’ And I dare them to arrest me.”

EXCLUSIVE: Teachers' Union leaders plot violent resistance.

During a recent webinar, leaders from the major teachers' unions in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles suggested pivoting from "postcards and rallies" to more VIOLENT tactics used in other countries to "defeat… pic.twitter.com/R4MOkYQkYc

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 20, 2026

Meanwhile, schoolchildren are struggling to learn how to read, write, and do math because of the abysmal state of America’s education system. Reading, writing, and math scores plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic and have not recovered since. 

Yet, these teachers and their unions are focused more on pushing their far-leftist agenda than they are on setting students up for success after they graduate. It’s almost as if this is by design — the dumber the populace, the easier it is for the elites and the government to manipulate young people into granting them more power.

A Culture Of Defamation Breeds A Culture Of Political Assassinations

More and more, Americans attack one another’s character and accuse each other of the most egregious crimes in order to win political battles.

The Federalist 

New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), once revered as a landmark First Amendment ruling, has become controversial in recent years. Leading political figures on the American right, such as President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have lamented its influence on our public discourse. Leading jurists, such as Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have called into question its constitutional legitimacy.

This is a welcome development. The Sullivan opinion and its famous “actual malice” doctrine never deserved their celebrated status. They are fruit of the Supreme Court’s most activist era, during which the justices routinely substituted their own policy preferences for the original meaning of the Constitution. 

Traditionally, all Americans could defend their reputations through libel law when falsehoods damaged them publicly. The Sullivan court changed this by introducing a two-tier system of libel law. Its “actual malice” standard applies only to public figures, requiring them to prove not only that defamatory claims were false, but that those who published them either knew they were false or recklessly disregarded the truth. In practice, this standard is extraordinarily difficult to meet, which is why public figures almost never prevail in libel suits, even when devastating accusations prove untrue.

In charting this new course, the court departed markedly from the understanding of libel and the freedom of the press held by those who wrote and ratified the First Amendment. Where the modern court says that libel cases involving public figures raise a First Amendment problem, the founders held that libel was simply outside the scope of the freedom of the press and therefore unprotected by that vital constitutional principle. The founders’ understanding of libel included nothing like the contemporary “actual malice” standard. Instead, for them the plaintiff would rightly prevail if the published charges were false and harmful to reputation.

Sullivan Precedent Has Proven Harmful

The present majority of the Supreme Court has shown an admirable willingness to correct earlier instances of judicial activism and return our constitutional law to traditional standards rooted in the original meaning of the Constitution. It would be fitting for them to carry this good work further and revisit the doctrine of New York Times v. Sullivan. The justices will be understandably reluctant to do so, however, because of the Sullivan case’s status as a longstanding precedent. For them, such precedent should not be reversed merely because it was wrong in the first place, but only if the error has also proven harmful.

The Sullivan Court’s doctrine, however, has proven very harmful. 

One of the most alarming aspects of contemporary American politics is our growing culture of assassination. Attempts at political violence are becoming more frequent, and public expressions of sympathy for or approval of such acts are growing more common as well.

A 2025 PBS News/NPR/Marist survey found that nearly 30 percent of Americans believe violence may be necessary to “get the country back on track,” while a Harvard youth poll found that nearly 40 percent of young Americans believe political violence can be justified in certain circumstances. This should alarm us all in an era of growing political hatred, dehumanization, and increasingly open calls for violence against ideological opponents.

Culture of Defamation and Assassination

Donald Trump was nearly killed twice while running for president in 2024. Late in that same year, insurance executive Brian Thompson was shot to death as an act of political protest. Last year, Charlie Kirk was publicly assassinated while peacefully speaking to a crowd. Most recently, a gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner with the aim of shooting the president and others in attendance. 

Each of these acts of violence has called forth a legion of ghoulish cheerleaders. In the wake of the attacks on Trump and Kirk, social media was flooded with cries of approval. Just this week, left-wing journalists in New York City publicly made light of Thompson’s death. 

This growing tendency toward violence is fueled by another diseased part of our political culture: our culture of defamation, which has also been growing in recent years. Americans are less likely to debate the merits of political ideas and public policies. Instead, they increasingly attack one another’s character and accuse each other of the most egregious crimes in order to win political battles.

It should come as no surprise that a culture of defamation would foster a culture of assassination. Widespread defamation leads many Americans to believe that their leaders are hopelessly corrupt or irredeemably evil. Is it any surprise that the relentless popularization of such beliefs would drive some of the more unhinged and reckless among us to violence?

This connection between defamation and assassination was made evident recently in the manifesto of the alleged WHCA shooter. He justified his actions by claiming that President Trump is “a pedophile, rapist, and traitor.” In truth, Trump has never been convicted of any of these heinous crimes. He has, however, been accused of them repeatedly by his political enemies and their enablers in the partisan press.

This culture of defamation — and the culture of assassination arising from it — are the poisonous fruit of the Supreme Court’s constitutional error in New York Times v. Sullivan, which enables defamation by weakening the wholesome legal restraints that once kept it in check. This is more than sufficient harm for the contemporary court to revisit and correct Sullivan. A free society cannot survive indefinitely if public life becomes a contest of reckless defamation, moral hysteria, and political demonization. The peace of our society and the stability of our republic may depend on restoring the legal and cultural restraints that once kept those impulses in check.

Party of Lies and Murder

Party of Lies and Murder

85% of Democrats don’t believe the Democrat attempts to murder Trump were real.

Daniel Greenfield for Frontpage Magazine.com

After the nation and the world watched an assassin’s bullet clip President Trump’s ear in Butler, Pennsylvania, 42% or nearly 1 out of 2 Democrats believe the assassination was staged.

Now after the latest assassination attempt by a liberal armed with a shotgun, a handgun and a knife at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, whose manifesto was posted online, 34% or 1 out of 3 Democrats believe that assassination attempt was also staged. As new social media conspiracy theories circulate, those numbers will grow just as they did after Butler, PA when enough liberals watched Facebook conspiracy videos and freeze frames of Trump’s ear.

Another 26% or 1 out of 4 Democrats believes that another assassination attempt at a golf course was staged. 21% or 1 out of 5 Democrats believe that all three were staged.

The numbers are actually worse than this because Newsguard, a liberal ‘fact checker, claims that less than half of Americans believe that each assassination attempt was real, with the rest being made up of those ‘unsure’, but did not break down this group by partisan lean.

However, only 15% of Democrats admitted that all three assassination attempts were real. That means 85% of Democrats don’t believe or are ‘unsure’ the assassination attempts were real.

Despite photo and video evidence, manifestos and admissions in court, the vast majority of Democrats deny that President Trump has faced systematic assassination attempts from their side. The various conspiracy theories circulating on BlueSky, TikTok, and X are not their reasons for denying it, they’re pretexts for covering up how violently insane their side has become. It’s not about the state of Trump’s ear, but the state of their hearts and minds.

Democrats lie about President Trump’s assassination attempts for the same reason Muslims claim that they don’t believe that Al Qaeda carried out the attacks of September 11 and at the same time celebrate and take pride in those very same attacks. They want the end result, but they also want to evade the blame for it and claim that the attacks were made up by the victims.

Do Democrats really have trouble believing that one of their own would want to kill a man that they routinely describe as a tyrant, a traitor and the next Hitler? Merchandise calling for President Trump’s death is so popular that it appears as an Amazon search listing on Google.

Who exactly is buying t-shirts and lawn signs reading “Is He Dead Yet?” Or merchandise featuring Trump’s tombstone?, “RIP Trump postcards” with a dead Trump with X’s over his eyes in clown makeup. “It won’t solve everything when he exits this mortal stage, but it will feel f*cking great,” one description reads. An ‘Anti-Trump’ wine label features a skull and the motto “open drink, dance on grave.” There are stickers with an orange toupee on a skull, a “we’ll be grateful when he’s dead” sticker of dancing skeletons, and a scented soy wax candle titled “Smells like his funeral”. Is this the kind of thing a movement that doesn’t want someone dead puts up on its lawns and wears to ‘No Kings’ rallies that happen to turn into minor riots?

The same people tagging their social media with ‘8647’ as they fume from their Northern Virginia bedroom communities over federal government reforms can hardly claim that they don’t want Trump dead. It’s as implausible as their companion claim that Iran’s chant of ‘Death to America’ is a metaphor for geopolitical change and not a call for war and destruction. They’d like us to believe that they want Trump dead badly enough to buy a $12.95 ‘Made in China’ sign wishing for that happy outcome, but that they don’t actually want to see it happen.

They’re not denying the three official Trump assassination attempts by their own faction (not counting the Iranian ones) because they don’t want Trump dead, but because they don’t want their side to suffer the political fallout and they don’t want Trump to pick up political sympathy.

It’s not the murder they object to, it’s taking the blame for it, and the victim becoming a martyr.

Some of the same lefties playing this loathsome game with the Trump assassinations also simultaneously deny that Luigi Mangione did anything wrong and cheer for him. But if he really didn’t kill anyone, why are they so enthusiastic about him? What did he do to merit the fan club?

The Democrats play this game because they’ve become a party of lies and murder. Terrorist groups have a violent arm that carries out attacks and a political arm that covers up for them. Democrats increasingly act as the political arm of a terrorist movement, offering excuses, engaging in distractions and cover-ups of Marxist, BLM, Islamist and other violence coming out of their camp. The Trump assassinations are only the most overt symptom of their party’s descent into terrorism. And that was inevitable once leftists took control of the Democrats.

The Left believes in taking over institutions, societies and countries by any means necessary. Democracy is only a means to a one-party state that eliminates all political opposition. If elections, no matter how they are rigged, and gerrymandered, are insufficient to achieve a totalitarian state then the radicals turn to political violence to stamp out any and all opposition.

When Democrats allowed their movement to be taken over by leftists, they ceased to be a democratic movement and became a revolutionary extremist organization willing to use violence to achieve their ends. The assassination attempts on President Trump may not have been officially approved, but they are the inevitable consequence of what the party is becoming.

85% of Democrats refuse to accept that, not because they reject the idea of killing Trump, but because denying the ugly truth about themselves is foundational to extremist narratives.

A party of lies and murder needs both murderers and liars. The murderers kill and the liars then lie about them. The vast majority of leftists are not up to killing, it’s one reason that they import, fund and defend Muslim terrorists, but at least 85% of them are ready to lie for the killers.

Trump Supporter Beaten to Within an Inch of His Life — As the Left Pretends Rhetoric Has No Consequences

RedState 

The Left has been calling for violence relentlessly since Donald Trump re-assumed his presidency — and once again, they’ve got it.

It’s a horrific story, and we warn readers that there’s disturbing content ahead.

The facts:

The wife of the elderly San Diego man brutally beaten outside his MAGA-inspired “Trump House” said there’s “no hope” for her husband after the vicious attack left him fighting for his life.

Kerry Sheron, 69, was in critical condition following the violent assault outside his Escondido property on Wednesday afternoon.

His wife, Maria, revealed to The California Post through tears that her husband isn’t expected to survive.

The alleged assailant, 32-year-old Escondido resident Thomas Caleb Butler, was arrested on attempted murder charges and faces life in prison if convicted.

Profanity alert:

ALERT: Owner of ‘Trump House’ fighting for his life after neighbor beats him almost to death in his own driveway.

A 69-year-old man in Escondido, California, known for having his house covered in Trump and American flags, was beaten by Thomas Caleb Butler, 32.

Police responded to the assault and found the owner "suffering from significant injuries" and a good Samaritan that interviened [sic] also injured.

Butler had fled the scene when police had arrived, but was found about a half mile away and apprehended.

It was revealed that Butler lives just around the corner from the victim.

The ‘Trump House' has become a target of hostility, with one online comment reading, “My buddy lived down the street from him. Whenever I went to visit I made sure to swing by that place and shout stuff at them.”

The photos of Army veteran Sheron’s injuries are sickening:

Yes, the man was loud and proud, and openly showcased his support of the duly elected president. That’s enough to get you (almost and maybe) killed in today’s America? Leftists need to do some serious soul-searching. Or maybe we need to do it for them.

Conservative California state senate candidate Mike Netter had thoughts:

🚨BREAKING: Homeowner of Famous “Trump House” in Escondido California Brutally Assaulted, Left Fighting for Life in ICU

Just 11 weeks after pro-Trump signs at the residence were attacked, the homeowner of Escondido’s well-known “Trump House” — covered in large Trump flags and patriotic displays — was violently assaulted outside his home and rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

He remains in the ICU battling for his life.

Escondido Police responded to the assault around 2:14 PM Wednesday and quickly arrested a suspect nearby. He has been charged with attempted murder. Motive has not yet been released.

The home has long been a local landmark for its bold pro-Trump and America-themed displays.

Prayers for the victim’s full recovery.

This one is personal to me

Please re post and do the job the mainstream should do

This is one of those stories that leaves me speechless, and I pray for Kerry Sheron and his wife. Although there may be circumstances that we don’t know about yet, I firmly blame the Left for incidents like these. They have ratcheted up their violent rhetoric to levels we’ve rarely seen before, and the results are clear: three assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the cold-blooded ("alleged") assassination of a UnitedHealthcare executive by Leftist hero Luigi Mangione, the savage killing of Charlie Kirk.

And now a man lies in the hospital, fighting for his life. This is just plain wrong, and Democrats need to pay the price at the ballot box in November — and far beyond.