In a significant development within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) has dismissed two senior officials following the unauthorized approval of Moderna’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Spikevax) for high-risk children aged 6 months to 11 years. The decision, made while RFK Jr. was on vacation, has sparked debate about internal oversight, vaccine policy reforms, and potential conflicts of interest. This report examines the timeline, key players, public reactions, and broader implications, drawing on recent news reports and social media discussions.
Background on the Vaccine Approval
On July 10, 2025, the FDA granted full approval for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in vulnerable children, a move that contrasted with RFK Jr.’s ongoing efforts to restrict mRNA vaccine recommendations for healthy youth and pregnant women.
RFK Jr., a vocal critic of certain vaccine practices, had previously removed COVID-19 vaccines from routine schedules for healthy children in May 2025 and dismissed the entire CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in June 2025. According to sources close to the matter, including vaccine researcher Dr. Robert Malone, the approval was expedited by HHS Chief of Staff Heather Flick Melanson and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Hannah Anderson without consulting RFK Jr. or his deputy.
This occurred during RFK Jr.’s absence on a working vacation, leading to accusations of bureaucratic overreach and possible influence from pharmaceutical lobbies. The move initially fueled public speculation that RFK Jr. had softened his stance, prompting backlash from supporters who viewed it as a betrayal of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
The Firings and Immediate Aftermath
Upon returning, RFK Jr. acted swiftly, firing Melanson and Anderson on July 16, 2025, as part of a larger HHS leadership restructuring. Reports indicate the dismissals were directly linked to the unauthorized approval, with one deputy allegedly reacting dramatically by crashing into RFK Jr.’s vehicle in a fit of privileged rage.
RFK Jr. has also reportedly referred the officials for criminal investigation, citing potential misconduct. This action aligns with RFK Jr.’s pattern of overhauling public health institutions, including replacing fired ACIP members with allies and vaccine skeptics. About time! It’s past time to address perceived corruption in regulatory processes.
Public and Media Reactions
The incident has generated widespread discussion on social media and in the press. Supporters praised the firings as a step toward accountability, with calls for further investigations into pharmaceutical ties. Detractors, including public health groups, have expressed concerns over the politicization of health decisions and potential disruptions to vaccine policy.
Implications for Health Policy
This event starkly exposes the relentless undermining of RFK Jr.’s leadership at HHS, where he is besieged by aggressive legal assaults on his bold reforms, such as a federal judge’s outright blockade of critical workforce reductions. Pharmaceutical powerhouses like BIO are waging an all-out lobbying war against him, funneling millions in a blatant bid to derail his agenda and preserve the status quo. Though the approval narrowly survives, it glaringly illuminates the formidable barriers to enforcing genuine transparency and reform amid a bitterly fractured regulatory arena. As RFK Jr. battles on to overhaul vaccine oversight, entrenched stakeholders from every corner clamor for “caution,” ostensibly to safeguard innovation, safety, and public trust—but in reality, often to thwart meaningful change. This saga is far from over, poised for intensified scrutiny, deeper probes, and seismic policy upheavals.
The Return of Merit: Why the Civil Service Exam Must Be Reinstated
The health of a republic depends not merely on the virtue of its leaders but on the competence of its administrators. A functioning government requires that those entrusted with the machinery of state be capable, informed, and accountable. That, in essence, was the animating ideal behind the federal civil service exam: to protect the American people from the twin perils of incompetence and corruption by ensuring a government staffed by merit. Yet over the past half-century, this ideal has been eroded, then discarded, not because it failed but because it succeeded too well in measuring ability, much to the discomfort of the politically fashionable.
The modern federal workforce was born out of the Pendleton Act of 1883, a legislative rebuke to the grotesque excesses of the patronage system. No longer would positions in the federal government be handed out like party favors to the politically loyal or the well-connected. A professional class would rise, chosen not by whom they knew but by what they knew. And for nearly a century, that principle held. The civil service exam functioned as a leveling mechanism, a barrier against cronyism and a gateway for the able.
But by the 1970s, a new orthodoxy emerged, one less interested in capability than in demography. The Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE), itself a refined instrument for identifying administrative talent, fell under attack for producing racially disparate outcomes. The case of Luevano v. Campbell marked a turning point. The plaintiffs did not allege that the exam was unfair in design or malicious in purpose. Rather, they contended that because different racial groups performed differently, the test must, ipso facto, be discriminatory. It was an argument of correlation over causation, but it carried the day.
The Carter administration, confronted with this challenge, might have defended the constitutional imperative for equal treatment, the statutory demand for merit-based hiring, and the moral obligation to hire the best-qualified. Instead, it capitulated. PACE was abandoned. Objective testing, the gold standard of fair evaluation, was replaced with subjective assessments: resumes, interviews, and “diversity-enhancing” hiring programs. Where once the federal government had demanded proof of ability, it now sought proxies. The result was a quiet revolution in hiring—a regression masked in the language of progress.
This abandonment of testing was not isolated. In 2010, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13562 (still in effect today), further distancing federal hiring from meritocratic principles. The rationale was revealing: written essays and similar assessments were said to disadvantage applicants from underrepresented backgrounds, particularly those whose written communication skills were not deemed sufficient. But to concede that writing proficiency is a disqualifier is not to justify removing the barrier, it is to highlight a deficiency that the job itself may require. In any reasonable domain, poor writing is a cause for concern, not a credential to be protected.
Critics of standardized testing often assert that exams are an insufficient predictor of job performance. This is a red herring. No test is perfect, but the proper question is comparative: Are structured, objective assessments superior to opaque, informal, and potentially biased evaluations? The answer, again and again, has been yes. A 2002 study by Schmidt and Hunter, published in Psychological Bulletin, reviewed 85 years of research and concluded that general cognitive ability tests are among the best predictors of job performance, outperforming unstructured interviews and resume reviews. In a government that administers everything from cyber defense to public health policy, the ability to reason, write, and analyze should be baseline qualifications, not optional enhancements.
Moreover, the move away from standardized testing has not made the hiring process more fair. It has simply made it more obscure. Informal interviews and resume screenings are fertile ground for implicit bias, favoritism, and credentialism. At least an exam can be audited. A panel interview cannot. At least a written test applies the same standard to everyone. A “holistic” hiring process applies no standard at all.
Some will argue that the disparities in test outcomes are too large to ignore, that such differences in performance indicate systemic barriers. Perhaps. But if the goal is equality of opportunity, then the proper remedy lies upstream, in education, in preparation, in mentorship. Lowering the bar of entry is not compassion, it is condescension. It assumes that certain groups cannot meet standards and therefore must be exempted from them. That is not equity. It is a quiet form of surrender.
Defenders of the status quo claim that modern hiring tools are more flexible, more “person-centered,” more conducive to creating a diverse workforce. But a diverse bureaucracy is not a competent one unless diversity aligns with ability. The federal government is not a social engineering project. It is a system of authority, enforcement, regulation, and service. It must be staffed by those who can perform these functions with precision and integrity. To suggest otherwise is to mistake the civil service for a campus diversity office.
Furthermore, the legal justification for abandoning standardized exams is tenuous. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment practices that have a disparate impact unless the employer can show the practice is job-related and consistent with business necessity. The courts have recognized that general ability tests can satisfy this requirement. In Washington v. Davis (1976), the Supreme Court ruled that a police entrance exam that disproportionately excluded black applicants did not violate the Constitution, as there was no discriminatory intent and the exam measured relevant job skills. The Luevano settlement, by contrast, was a political compromise, not a constitutional necessity.
President Trump, if he wishes to drain the bureaucratic swamp in more than metaphor, must begin with reforming how the swamp is staffed. The restoration of the civil service exam would do more than elevate standards. It would restore trust. Americans rightly suspect that their government is staffed not by the best and brightest but by the best connected, the most ideologically aligned, or the most demographically favored. An exam does not care what you look like, whom you voted for, or where you went to school. It cares only whether you can do the job.
This logic must apply not only to future hires but to current employees. The federal workforce is vast, powerful, and deeply entrenched. If we are serious about accountability, then every current federal employee should be required to pass a reformed civil service exam appropriate to their position. The goal is not to purge but to affirm. Those who are competent will have nothing to fear. Those who are not nor should not be on the public payroll.
It is time to end the experiment in subjective hiring. It has failed. It has produced neither a more competent government nor a more just one. It has diluted standards under the guise of equity and eroded public faith in institutions once deemed apolitical. We must reverse course. We must affirm once again that public service is not a birthright or a diversity quota. It is a trust, to be earned, not granted.
On October 4, 2021, the Attorney General of the United States issued a directive that would rattle the very foundation of American civil society. Parents, concerned about their children’s education, found themselves recast not as civic participants but as potential threats to national security. According to a memo issued by AG Merrick Garland, the Justice Department would coordinate with the FBI and US Attorneys to address a supposed spike in threats against school board officials. But the underlying claim was a fiction. And now, thanks to newly released internal DOJ documents obtained by America First Legal (AFL), we can say conclusively what many suspected at the time: the Biden administration orchestrated this memo as part of a political operation, driven not by law or evidence, but by ideology and electoral calculus.
Let us begin with a question. Why did the Department of Justice, whose jurisdiction is meant to guard against actual federal crimes, insert itself into a public conversation dominated by non-criminal speech? The answer, as the documents now confirm, is that it did so at the prompting of the White House, which viewed parents not as constituents to be heard, but as dissidents to be managed.
The initial spark came from a September 29, 2021 letter sent by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to President Biden. In this letter, the NSBA urged the administration to treat protests at school board meetings as akin to “domestic terrorism,” citing the Patriot Act as a model for possible federal intervention. The invocation of such a statute was absurd on its face. Protesting mask mandates or objecting to Critical Race Theory, however forcefully, does not rise to the level of terrorism. But what is more damning is what followed: a flurry of communications within the DOJ, indicating that officials were under pressure to respond.
On October 1, just two days after the NSBA letter, Tamarra Matthews-Johnson of the Attorney General’s office flagged the matter for Kevin Chambers at the Deputy Attorney General’s office, stating that the White House “has been in touch” about how DOJ might assist. At 8:17 a.m. the next morning, Sparkle Sooknanan, then of the Associate Attorney General’s office and now a federal judge, demanded an urgent review from the Civil Rights Division: were there any statutes, any authorities, that could justify a DOJ response? The request was extraordinary. It was a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. They had the political goal, and now needed a legal rationale to support it.
What followed was a quiet rebellion from within. Career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division, legal professionals whose job is to interpret law rather than bend it, pushed back. One stated explicitly that the behavior cited by NSBA “likely fall[s] outside of our jurisdiction.” Another said, unequivocally, “there is nothing specific” that could be applied. The attempt to find federal jurisdiction was, in the understated phrasing of another DOJ attorney, “ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently a non-federal conduct.”
In other words, the law said no. But politics said yes. So politics won.
By the morning of October 4, a draft memo was already circulating. Language referring to election interference was quietly stripped out, after concerns that it would appear overtly partisan. But the core premise of the memo, that DOJ would mobilize against parents based on a manufactured crisis, remained untouched. The final version went out that day to the FBI, US Attorneys, and law enforcement nationwide.
To understand the magnitude of this decision, one must consider the federal apparatus being invoked. We are not speaking of a local school district or even a state attorney general’s office. We are speaking of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the National Security Division. These are the institutions tasked with defending the United States from foreign threats, organized crime, and acts of terrorism. Now they were being mobilized against citizens speaking at school board meetings.
Some defenders of the memo have insisted that it was a neutral effort to ensure safety. But the internal documents tell a different story. Not only did the DOJ lack jurisdiction, but it also lacked data. One Civil Rights attorney reviewed the NSBA’s own sources and concluded that “the vast, vast majority of behavior cited cannot be reached by federal law” and that most of it “is protected by the First Amendment.”
At this point, any good faith rationale should have evaporated. The legal authority did not exist. The facts did not support intervention. And the lawyers responsible for enforcing civil rights said as much. But Garland’s DOJ, driven by political appointees, forged ahead.
Why? To chill dissent. To create a pretext for federal monitoring. And, most damningly, to tilt the political field in favor of Democrats ahead of the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election.
The timing is revealing. At the very moment when education was emerging as a major campaign issue in Virginia, the Biden administration intervened with a chilling federal directive aimed squarely at the parents who were driving that conversation. The effect, if not the intent, was to intimidate them into silence.
This was not merely a bureaucratic misstep. It was, as AFL President Gene Hamilton put it, an effort “to deprive parents of two fundamental rights—the right to speak, and the right to direct the upbringing of their children.” And it was done under color of law, through an administration that promised to restore norms while quietly undermining them.
What is perhaps most distressing is the downstream effect. The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, blindsided by the memo, was left scrambling to define what exactly it was being asked to do. Internal messages reveal confusion and concern, not just about the lack of legal basis, but about the very premise. Was this really what the federal government was now for?
A free society depends on more than the formal guarantees of its Constitution. It depends on the restraint of those in power. It depends on a culture of governance that distinguishes between disagreement and danger, between protest and threat. When that distinction is lost, freedom becomes a mere parchment barrier.
The Garland memo was not an isolated event. It was a signal. It told Americans that certain views, particularly those out of step with the educational elite, would not be tolerated without consequence. It told career DOJ attorneys that their legal advice could be overruled by political expedience. And it told the White House that federal power could be used to police ideology under the guise of law enforcement.
We must reject this approach categorically. Not because we are indifferent to the safety of public officials, but because we know that civil liberties are not things to be managed or balanced, but principles to be upheld. The right to speak at a school board meeting, however impassioned, is not a loophole in national security law. It is the beating heart of American self-government.
The documents released by AFL do more than expose a scandal. They illustrate the dangers of weaponized bureaucracy. They reveal a Justice Department more interested in political theater than legal fidelity. And they confirm, beyond dispute, that the October 4 memo was not about law enforcement. It was about silencing dissent.
In his inaugural address, President Biden claimed he would “restore the soul of America.” But there is nothing soulful about suppressing speech, circumventing legal advice, and intimidating parents for participating in democracy. That is not restoration. It is repression, dressed in bureaucratic prose.
The Biden administration must be held accountable for its actions. Congress should investigate not merely the memo itself, but the full extent of White House involvement, the decision-making process within DOJ, and the broader pattern of targeting political dissent. And the American people must remain vigilant, lest today’s memo become tomorrow’s precedent.
One of the major focuses of my consulting business was education. I was a senior consultant to two of the largest and most troubled school systems in America during a brief period of reform—Chicago and Detroit. I was on the strategic team for two major strikes. Other clients included Friedman School Choice Foundation and the Chicago’s Teacher Academy. I was also a board member of Chicago’s School for the Performing Arts. As a parent, I was deeply involved in school policy issues at the local level.
I have long considered the failures in the public school systems as among the greatest immoralities in public policy. Failing schools—especially those serving minorities in the segregated communities of America’s major Democrat-run cities—have destroyed the career potential and dreams of millions of young Black and Hispanic students – and sadly destroyed too many lives. It has also deprived America of the benefit of what those millions of students could have contributed to society. Reliance on generational welfare poverty and oppression is directly related to school quality.
I have also long believed the long-term decline in public education outcomes—and the resistance to meaningful reforms—has been due to the politics and policies of the school unions. They are not educational institutions, but rather politically partisan membership clubs. The primary function of the unions is to have as many dues-paying members as possible and to use that money for personal enrichment and political power.
To better understand why we should eliminate school unions, let us look at some facts.
Teachers’ unions were once formed to protect educators from unfair labor practices and to advocate for better working conditions. But over the decades, the two largest unions—the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—have evolved into powerful political machines. Their influence now extends far beyond the classroom. They are major funders of the Democratic Party and wield massive influence through their huge pension programs. Rather than working to improve classroom outcomes, the NEA and AFT actually undermine positive reforms—directly or by ambivalence.
Despite their failures, union officials are well compensated. NEA President Becky Pringle has a compensation package of $480,000 per year—8.5 times the median teacher salary. Randi Weingarten of the AFT earns $565,000 per year—9 times the median teacher salary. These figures do not include a number of indirect nonmonetary benefits. Also, the lucrative pensions enjoyed by union officials are often paid by taxpayers—not union funds.
Politicization of the NEA and AFT
The NEA and AFT have become deeply entangled in partisan politics. In recent years, both unions have taken aggressive stances on national issues that have little to do with education. Their political activity is overwhelmingly one-sided. In the 2024 election cycle, 98.96 percent of NEA contributions went to Democrats, while 99.9 percent of AFT contributions did the same. This lopsided spending suggests that the unions are not representing the diverse political views of their members or the public but are advancing a partisan agenda that primarily serves the political and financial interests of union leaders and the local political establishment.
Ties to Democratic Political Machines
The NEA and AFT have long-standing ties to Democrat political machines in major cities. Their influence in urban politics has helped elect progressive candidates who, in turn, support union-friendly policies. In cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, unions have become kingmakers, funneling millions into campaigns and lobbying efforts. In return, the political leaders work on behalf of union interests.
For generations, these same cities have suffered from chronic educational failure. Inner-city schools remain overcrowded, and plagued by low graduation rates. Despite their political clout, the unions have done little to address institutional racism and segregation in urban districts. Instead of fighting for reform, they often resist accountability measures and protect underperforming educators. (I have seen that many times in contract negotiations.)
The NEA
NEA’s Pringle has openly embraced an adversarial partisan political role. At the 2025 NEA convention, she declared that educators were “ready to engage with school boards, town halls, state legislatures, and even Congress” to advocate for their union’s politically partisan interests. Ponder that. Pringle’s vision of the union’s role is to fight against Congress, state legislatures, and even local school boards – those the people elect.
The NEA 2025 convention revealed just how far the union has drifted from its educational mooring. Delegates passed a resolution pledging to “defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism”—and to use the term “fascism” in NEA materials to describe his policies.
The NEA has also taken an official stand in opposition to the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—preferring to allow dangerous criminals to remain in American communities. Criminals who often prey on children. They have accused ICE of targeting student leaders.
The resolution was not only politically charged but also riddled with errors. The word “fascism” was ironically misspelled twice as “facism,” prompting widespread and well-deserved ridicule. Critics argued that the union, which claims to represent educators, could not even spell the ideology it was condemning.
The NEA’s ties to the radical wing of the Democratic Party were seen in another controversial move. The union recently voted to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a civil rights organization known for combating antisemitism. The union accused the ADL of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and claimed that the group was pushing a “radical, antisemitic agenda” on students. The resolution bans the use of ADL literature and speakers in school events. The ADL responded forcefully, calling the NEA’s actions “profoundly disturbing” and warning that the decision would further isolate Jewish educators.
They even changed the language from “deportation” to “kidnapping.”
The AFT
AFT President Randi Weingarten has similarly used her platform to push for progressive causes, from climate activism to gender ideology. She has become so politically toxic that some Democrat leaders have called for the Party to break ties with her. She was forced to resign her position on the Democratic National Committee. A position on the DNC? How partisan can you get?
Ben Austin, a former campaign aide for Kamala Harris and founding director of Education Civil Rights Now, published an op-ed urging Democrats to “break up with Weingarten.” He pointed to her following Biden’s school closure policies—which essentially “erased two decades of learning progress” and alienated working-class voters. Austin blames her for “gaslighting Democrats” into opposing school choice and described her partisan leadership as “tragic for American children.”
More Money, Poorer Results
Despite their massive increases in school funding, the NEA and AFT have failed to deliver meaningful improvements in public education. Since the rise of unionization in the 1960s and 1970s, educational performance has stagnated or declined. According to research, unionized districts tend to spend more on salaries and benefits but fail to outperform non-unionized school systems.
Studies show that low-achieving and high-achieving students perform worse in unionized districts. While the cost of education continues to rise, the return on investment—in terms of student performance—stagnates in better districts and declines in low-income minority communities.
Children Last
One of the mantras of educators is “Children First.” In fact, in labor negotiations the children’s needs come last—if considered at all. Both in my experience negotiating union contracts and from extensive research, I can safely attest that I have never found school unions proposing or supporting any contract provisions that benefited the classroom or the students that did not benefit the union — either increasing the number of teachers (dues-paying members) in systems with excessive deadwood; shortening teacher work schedules in hours or days; or increasing teacher pay and benefits at the expense of what I call “the children’s budget.”
In several cases—thanks to support from the local political establishment—unions won pay and benefit concessions that absorbed more than 100 percent of all new money coming into the school district. This necessitated cuts in “the children’s budget” that impacted directly on the classroom—cuts in school maintenance, supplies, and even elimination of some traditional subjects, such as music and art.
Unions vigorously protect bad teachers — essentially preventing dismissal of those failing to provide quality education in the classroom and other negative personnel issues. As a means of protecting their failures, unions work against standard testing of students and also teacher testing.
Unions are also the primary force against school choice, programs that would enable parents to remove their children from failing and dangerous schools and get them into schools where they can receive quality education. Union policies warehouse students in failing minority schools—denying them an education that can lead to college or productive careers. This is especially true of schools in segregated minority communities. School choice would not end the public school system, since it largely impacts schools that fail to meet the primary mission: to educate children.
Fighting Back
The good news is that there is a growing political constituency for effective education reforms. School choice is part of it—and the Trump administration has advanced that cause in his Big Beautiful Bill. Parent Associations are taking more interest and more control over educational quality. Congressman Mark Harris (R-NC) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have introduced the National Education Association Repeal Act, which would revoke the NEA’s federal charter.
A Broken System
The original purpose of teachers’ unions was to protect educators and improve schools. But today, the NEA and AFT function more like partisan advocacy groups driven by self-interest than a professional education organization. Their actions, whether it’s labeling political opponents as fascists, severing ties with civil rights groups, or funneling millions into one-sided campaigns—have undermined their credibility and effectiveness.
Public education is too important to hold hostage by political agendas. If unions cannot return to their core mission of supporting teachers AND students, then it is time to consider eliminating them altogether. The future of our schools—and our children—are too important to be allowed to fail in the future as they have failed in the past.
While most attention is being paid to the Trump administration’s efforts to secure U.S. borders and deport the millions of illegal aliens that have been allowed to roam our streets, there is an equally intense battle raging. This less seen war is over the degree to which the United States will continue to be the patsies of the global elite and their schemes to drive the entire world into a one world government.
Anyone who does not believe that such a war is happening or that there is a tiny cabal of people dedicated to the idea of one central power over the entire planet has not been paying attention or, worse, doesn’t want to see. Over the past 80 years a large infrastructure has been built that slowly has been grinding down the entire concept of national sovereignty. This multi-faceted structure is beginning to fall apart. There are many fissures and cracks that now offer national patriots — regardless of the country from which they reside — to begin the necessary work of dismantling these structures and returning real power to the people and national governments where it belongs.
One such structure that is showing signs of falling apart is the World Trade Organization (WTO). Recently two Professors with deep ties to the WTO and the entire globalist scheme wrote a petulant article that was reprinted by Yves Smith in Naked Capitalism advocating that the United States leave the WTO. The article, Why the US and the WTO Should Part Ways by Professors Petros Mavroidis and Henrik Horn, is a primal scream of the global elite in their self-recognized death throws.
President Donald Trump should take them up on their suggestion, the United States should simply leave the WTO and operate on a nation-to-nation basis — termed bilateral — and forget about the lunacy of global agreements (termed multi-lateral) that never seem to serve the interests of the American people.
A little history is in order.
As World War II was winding down, those in positions of authority sought to build systems that would bind the nations of the world into a system that led eventually to world government and control of all nations and peoples. While always presented in the most flowery and benevolent terms, the core was a total rejection of the principles of popular government, representation and decentralization of power to ensure the people retain the real power to government themselves. The globalists hate these concepts. They believe that the people are not capable of governing themselves, that only an elite group has the ability to exercise power.
That was the essence of those structures. Among the institutions deployed to build the World Government were the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and a host of lesser entities all designed to pull the policies and actions of free, independent governments into the web of control. One entity that did not get formed was a central controlling authority over trade.
As far back as 1944 — before the war was won — the gang of insiders were working on the outlines of their dreams. The head of the British delegation, John Maynard Keynes, advocated for something to be called the International Trade Organization. It was to have dictated all aspects of international trade, taking away much of the authority from national governments. The intent was that the ITO would fit into the web with the IMF and the UN to form an iron ring around governments, forcing them to comply with the demands and rules of the so-called “international community.”
Luckily for the United States and much of the world, the U.S. Congress refused to ratify the power grab. Finally, in 1950, President Harry Truman acknowledged that the ITO took far too much power and authority away for the elected government of the United States as he pulled the treaty and notified the world that the U.S. would not be part.
But those who scheme to take away the rights of the People for self-government always have a back-up plan. And in the case of global control over trade they had a second plan ready to go. That was called GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Far less intrusive and based on continuing negotiations, GATT was far less authoritarian than ITO and was seen as an acceptable way to move forward with the concept of “free trade” and international resolution of disputes.
Over time, however, GATT evolved into the 1995 establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Less than the nightmare envisioned by Keynes, the WTO still attempts to exercise authority over the decision of national governments on trade policy. But as with the other structures of the global enterprise, it has failed and become more of a joke than an asset.
President Trump and his team have documented hundreds of tariffs, taxes and scams that cost America jobs, market access and a level playing field. By moving to establish tariffs that tax the foreign countries for their predatory actions, the President is keeping his word on the America First Agenda. He is following the advice of President Ronald Reagan who said, “We are always willing to be trade partners, but never trade patsies.” Everything President Trump has proposed runs counter to the WTO and its nick-picking rules and regulations. And that is what resulted in the article suggesting the U.S. and WTO “part ways.”
The globalist Professors have three main reasons why they think the U.S. should leave the WTO. First, as pointed out, the very idea of two nations setting an agreement for themselves without the rest of the “world” butting in is the exact opposite of the reason for the WTO to exist. So, when the United States and the Peoples’ Republic of Vietnam agreed to trade relations recently, that violates the entire principle on which the internationalist cabal exist.
Second, the United State has not paid its “dues” since 2022. This has left the WTO near bankrupt and finding it difficult to continue operations. Good. Why should the U.S. pay for a body of international bureaucrats to hinder and restrict US economic policy?
And finally, the U.S. has exercised its authority by crippling the dispute settlement system by blocking appointments of new appellate body judges. This “dispute settlement system” is referred to as “the crown jewel” of the body. We have done this because of the biased and one-sided “judgements” of the foreign, anti-American functionaries.
So, it is fair to ask, why should the U.S. leave? We ignore the WTO whenever we want, undercut their very reason for existence at every turn, refuse to funnel more money to them and have essentially destroyed their power to issue judgements. The reason is simple. When the U.S. refused to ratify the League of Nations after World War I, the globalists never got off the ground, the entire thing failed and fell away. Now is the time to remember that lesson. Walk away from these entities. Without U.S. money and credibility, none of them — not the United Nations, none of the internationalist entities — will survive.
The America First movement is asserting American sovereignty in countless ways. The interests of American companies and workers must always come first. Any government that yields the authority given it by the consent of the American People is a traitorous shadow. The quislings that run them should go down in history next to Benedict Arnold. So, we need to thank Professors Henrik Horn and Petros Mavroidis for their timely suggestion. Yes, we should leave the WTO and then take bets on how long it lasts without the United States.
It is often said that silence speaks louder than words. But in politics, particularly in the realm of national security and institutional deception, silence can scream. This week, the Department of Justice issued a two-page memo attempting to close the book on the Epstein affair. It claimed, with bureaucratic finality, that there is no client list, no credible blackmail operation, and no intelligence connection to Jeffrey Epstein. In response, three people who once led the charge against deep state duplicity, who built their reputations torching the intelligence community’s darkest corners, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino, stood by and said, essentially, nothing.
DOJ/FBI Memo Regarding Jeffrey Epstein
This abrupt and telling quiet should give us pause.
To understand the full weight of their silence, we must revisit who these individuals are and the stakes of what they now decline to confront. Bondi, the former Florida Attorney General, earned acclaim for prosecuting high-profile criminals and exposing systemic corruption. Patel, an architect of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the Russia hoax, is one of the most legally precise and fearless national security officials of the past decade. Bongino, who served in the Secret Service and later as a conservative commentator, has made a career of unmasking the inconsistencies of the intelligence apparatus, none more frequently than Epstein.
In January 2024, Bongino played a clip on his podcast in which a journalist stated he was “100% convinced that Epstein was killed because he made his whole living blackmailing people.” Bongino added, “I’ve heard the same claims from another reporter and they are super important.” Patel has similarly echoed doubts about Epstein’s death and the intelligence community’s role in covering up his network. Bondi, during the election cycle and beyond, pledged that the Epstein saga was not over. Each built public trust on the promise that they would get to the bottom of it.
Now, they all plead ignorance. Or worse, they call for no further action.
When asked at a cabinet meeting whether Epstein was connected to US intelligence, Bondi responded she didn’t know and would “look into it.” Bongino has fallen silent on the topic he once described as the tip of an intelligence iceberg. Patel, in statements since assuming office, has offered little to nothing on the subject.
Given who these people are, that silence is not neutral. It is epistemically loaded. What explains it?
There are two plausible answers. First, they now know, beyond the veil of classification, that Epstein was in fact an asset of the US intelligence community. Not a rogue financier, not merely a criminal pervert, but a controlled contractor in a sprawling, state-sanctioned blackmail apparatus designed to secure kompromat on foreign and domestic elites. If this is true, then acknowledging it would expose ongoing operations, compromise alliances with other intelligence services such as MI6 and Mossad, and detonate diplomatic landmines too dangerous to handle.
The second possibility is more sinister. Perhaps they are not simply withholding in service of state interests. Perhaps they, too, are now targets of the very coercive mechanisms they once pledged to dismantle. Perhaps they are being threatened, pressured, blackmailed, directly or indirectly, overtly or subtly. Epstein’s apparatus, after all, was designed to survive him. The very system that protected him for decades still exists. And it is entirely capable of protecting itself.
The CIA is not merely a collector of secrets; it is a curator of silence.
That brings us back to the core of the matter: Epstein was not a lone predator. He was not merely a billionaire with an inexplicable passion for teenage masseuses. His operations were not accidental, nor could they have persisted without protection at the highest levels of intelligence and government.
Consider his early trajectory. In the late 1970s, Epstein was hired at the Dalton School by Donald Barr, an ex-OSS officer and the father of future Attorney General Bill Barr. This is not coincidence. Epstein didn’t even possess a college degree. His placement at an elite school known for educating the children of the Manhattan elite set the stage for everything to come. He gained access to power, and more importantly, to the children of power.
From there, Epstein transitioned into finance with a swift rise at Bear Stearns, where he managed sensitive accounts and was involved in insider trading schemes tied to prominent families. He exited the firm just ahead of an SEC investigation, unscathed, protected. In the 1980s, he partnered with Steven Hoffenberg in a massive Ponzi scheme at Towers Financial. Hoffenberg went to prison. Epstein did not.
In a court filing in 2019, Hoffenberg stated under oath that Epstein was the “architect” of the fraud. The US government never charged him. Again, protected.
In the 1990s, Epstein became deeply enmeshed with Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of L Brands and co-founder of the secretive Mega Group. Epstein was given full control of Wexner’s fortune, deeded Wexner’s New York mansion, and placed into direct financial and operational contact with Israeli intelligence. His closest confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, an Israeli asset who helped disseminate surveillance software to foreign governments was clearly put in Epstein’s orbit by MI6.
These are not happenstances. This is recruitment and operational integration.
Epstein moved weapons, money, and people. He brokered deals in the Middle East with known intelligence-linked arms traffickers. He used Southern Air Transport, a CIA shell company from the Iran-Contra era. He obtained a fake passport with a Saudi address. He spent time in intelligence-connected banking hubs like the Cayman Islands and Geneva. He was never arrested for these activities. He was protected, always.
His homes were wired with cameras. His girls were groomed to recruit more. His visitors were famous, influential, and often compromised. He catalogued everything. Digital kompromat for the post-Cold War age. Hundreds of hard drives and thousands of DVDs containing unknown volumes of potentially incriminating material were discovered in his properties, but inexplicably, the FBI left them behind and allowed Epstein’s people to remove them. When the agency later returned to retrieve them, they were gone, only to be returned by Epstein’s own lawyers. By then, who knows what had been copied, edited, erased, or weaponized.
So when the DOJ now asserts, with a straight face, that there is no “credible evidence” of a client list, we must understand what that phrase really means. It means nothing admissible, nothing declassified, nothing that would require official action. It does not mean the list does not exist. It means the regime will not recognize it.
To question this is not to indulge conspiracy. It is to recognize pattern. This is the same DOJ that refused to examine Hunter Biden’s foreign influence operations, the same FBI that sat on the Clinton email server scandal, the same intelligence community that lied about FISA abuse.
And so we must return to the question that animates this article: Why are Bondi, Patel, and Bongino protecting the very institution they once sought to expose?
If it is for national security, then fine. But tell us. Say that. Do not insult our intelligence with implausible denials and bureaucratic dodge. If they are under threat, then say that, too. Even obliquely.
Because the current silence is not just a betrayal of past statements. It is a betrayal of the people they once served. The American public entrusted them with the truth. They are now behaving like agents of the same concealment machine they once sought to dismantle. Don’t forget, I’ve been asking everyone to give them time to do their jobs.
One solution remains: appoint a special prosecutor. Not one tethered to the Justice Department. Not one embedded within the intelligence bureaucracy. An outsider, with full subpoena and prosecutorial power, to uncover the truth and bring justice to Epstein’s victims, to indict the protectors and profiteers of the system, and to restore credibility to institutions that have forfeited it.
Let the chips fall where they may. If the intelligence community finds that threatening, perhaps it should reconsider the wisdom of trafficking in children and kompromat.
The facts are stubborn. Epstein worked with and for intelligence. He was protected to the end. And if Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino will not say it, someone must.
It has become a familiar routine. A leak, a whisper, a headline: “Iran could build a bomb in five years.” Then the predictable symphony follows, Democrats feign alarm, the media conjures doom, and the public is offered a neatly packaged dose of FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. But this latest installment, suggesting that a post-strike Iran could reconstitute a nuclear weapons program from scratch and possess a bomb within five years, is not alarming because it is implausible. It is alarming because it is entirely reasonable, and yet is still being weaponized as if it were a revelation.
Here is the truth: we struck Iran’s enrichment facilities, and we destroyed them. The centrifuge halls are gone. The command nodes, the processing plants, the material stocks, all rendered rubble. What remains is ambition, not infrastructure. Yet Democrats now claim that because Iran can reconstitute its program and build a bomb in five years, the strike must have failed. That conclusion is not just illogical, it is dishonest.
Let us begin with the facts. Constructing a uranium enrichment facility is not easy, but it is also not the Manhattan Project. It is an industrial task, not a scientific miracle. The construction of modern enrichment plants, such as Urenco USA and France’s Georges Besse II, took between three and five years. Iran’s own Natanz facility, which was first revealed in 2002 but had been under construction for years, was partially operational by 2003. Fordow, which the West only learned of in 2009, was already close to operational. Thus, from a cold start, Iran could build a hidden enrichment site in three to five years. This estimate is neither speculative nor controversial, it is grounded in public record.
Enrichment itself is faster. To produce one nuclear weapon, Iran would need roughly 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, or HEU. That requires about 4,000 Separative Work Units (SWU). With 4,000 IR-1 centrifuges operating at 1 SWU per year, enrichment to weapons-grade would take approximately one year. With 2,000 centrifuges, the timeline stretches to two years.
If this sounds simple, it is because it is. Uranium enrichment is not alchemy. The science is known, the machines are understood, and the material requirements are finite. Any sufficiently advanced industrial state with nuclear scientists and a few hundred million dollars could do it. Indeed, Pakistan did it in the 1980s. North Korea did it in the early 2000s. Iran already has. The knowledge cannot be unlearned.
The cost? Roughly 250 million dollars. That figure includes underground facility construction (50-100 million), centrifuge production (around 100 million), technical expertise (somewhat less, given Iran’s extant knowledge base), and operations. In a world where US government agencies lose that much in annual accounting errors, the idea that a state sponsor of terror cannot marshal such resources over five years is laughable.
So let us clarify: Iran can build a bomb in five years not because our strike failed, but because five years is the standard timeline for anyone with money, expertise, and motive. To suggest this timeline proves futility is to mistake gravity for failure, the fact that a rock falls when dropped does not mean the act of lifting it was in vain.
This brings us to the real problem. The supposed bombshell, that Iran could rebuild its program and produce a nuclear weapon in five years, is now being presented by Democrats as evidence that our recent strike must have failed. But the conclusion does not follow from the premise. If anything, the fact that Iran could take five years to reconstitute its program affirms the success of the strike. We destroyed their facilities. They are starting from scratch. And five years to rebuild is not a sign of failure, it is the very definition of a strategic setback.
In other words, the five-year timeline is not a deterrent to action. It is a window of opportunity. If anything, it buys time, time that should be used to monitor, disrupt, and if necessary, strike again. There is nothing sacred or irreversible about a five-year head start.
This inversion of logic, treating the reasonable as unthinkable, is a recurring pattern in progressive foreign policy circles. It reflects a deeper flaw: the refusal to treat Iran as an adversary operating with agency, strategy, and goals. The FUD machine presents Iran as a ghost, capable of appearing anywhere, invisible to satellites, immune to sabotage. But Iran is not a spirit. It is a state. It has roads, budgets, scientists, and constraints. Its facilities leave traces. Its activities can be monitored. Its secrecy is limited by physics.
Consider the clandestine nature of construction. Critics claim that a hidden enrichment site might delay discovery and therefore delay interdiction. But the evidence says otherwise. Natanz was detected early enough to limit its progress. Fordow, despite being built underground, was discovered in time. In both cases, Western intelligence, aided by defectors, sensors, and satellite imagery, penetrated Iran’s veil of secrecy. The idea that a new site could be built from scratch, fully outfitted, enriched, and armed with zero detection over five years is not only improbable, it is incompatible with historical precedent.
There is also the question of intent. Iran is not merely developing nuclear technology for fun. Its interest in nuclear weapons is strategic. A nuclear-armed Iran would alter the regional balance of power. It would enable greater aggression by Hezbollah and other proxies. It would make Israel’s security calculus more desperate. It would imperil American forces and interests.
Therefore, allowing Iran a five-year glide path to the bomb is not prudence. It is negligence. Worse, it is disingenuous. The Biden-era strategy of appeasement was not borne of ignorance about Iran’s capabilities. It was an ideological commitment to diplomacy as moral posture, rather than strategic tool. This same illusion now resurfaces under the guise of concern: we must not strike, lest we trigger a rebuild. But Iran is always rebuilding. That is what adversaries do.
To be sure, building a covert enrichment site is not trivial. It requires excavation, materials transport, energy sources, and security. But none of these hurdles are insurmountable. They are merely challenges to be delayed, not impossibilities to be dismissed. And delay is enough. Every year of delay is another year of non-proliferation. Every disrupted timeline is a gain. That is why a strike that sets Iran back five years is not a failure. It is a success.
If this seems cold, recall the alternative. The path of least resistance, in which we do not strike, Iran does not stop, and the region careens toward a nuclear Middle East, is not peace. It is entropy.
The media’s presentation of the five-year scenario as a horror story misunderstands the nature of proliferation. The nightmare is not that it can happen in five years. The nightmare is that we pretend it cannot.
To summarize: it is not just plausible that Iran could build a bomb in five years. It is expected. The science permits it. The history supports it. The money is there. The knowledge is there. And so long as the West believes this is too quick to be possible, Iran is gifted one more illusion to exploit.
We must not allow the language of fear to displace the clarity of reason. Five years is not a myth. It is a metric. One that should inform our policy, not paralyze it.
The Nobel Peace Prize once meant something. For most of the 20th century, it functioned as a global marker of moral achievement, an international accolade reserved for those who, through sacrifice and diplomacy, bent history toward peace. Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Schweitzer, and the International Red Cross did not receive their laurels because they looked or spoke a certain way, nor because they offered vague gestures toward hope. They earned them by altering the course of conflict and history. The same cannot be said for Barack Obama, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a mere eleven days into his presidency. It is this episode, an award based not on actions but identity, not on accomplishment but anticipation, that marks the definitive DEI conquest of what was once the highest secular moral honor on Earth.
Let us be precise. Obama had done nothing when he received the prize. He had been in office for just over a week. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, in its public justification, cited his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” This, of course, refers to no act. It refers to rhetoric, a mood, a spirit, a branding. Even Obama himself admitted, rather sheepishly, that he had not “deserved” it, framing the award as a “call to action.” A call, we might add, for which there was no apparent need until the committee answered it.
Critics, including the Nobel Committee’s own former secretary, Geir Lundestad, later acknowledged the misstep. In his 2015 memoir, Lundestad admitted that the award had not achieved its goal and had instead provoked skepticism, even among Obama’s supporters. A Gallup poll taken shortly after the announcement showed that 61% of Americans believed the award was undeserved. The committee was not honoring peace, it was manufacturing it through the lens of identity and hope, two currencies central to the modern DEI movement. The prize, historically anchored in tangible outcomes, was now drifting in the subjective currents of aspirational politics.
This moment matters not just because it was absurd, but because it marked the end of the Nobel Peace Prize as a serious institution. Having crossed the Rubicon, the committee continued its descent into abstraction, symbolism, and ideological virtue-signaling. In 2012, the prize was given to the European Union, an organization beset by internal economic conflict and external border crises, and hardly a model of peace. The award prompted backlash from former laureates and European citizens alike, many of whom saw it as a nakedly political statement in support of the failing Eurozone experiment.
In 2016, the prize went to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for a peace deal that had just been rejected in a national referendum. In other words, the committee awarded a deal the Colombian people themselves did not want. This is no small irony. The Peace Prize, in this case, was not celebrating peace but defying democracy.
Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia received the prize in 2019 for making peace with Eritrea. But within a year, he was presiding over the brutal Tigray conflict, during which war crimes were alleged on both sides. Ahmed, once a darling of the international community, was now accused of leading one of the worst humanitarian crises of the decade. The Nobel Committee has never revoked a prize.
And why should it? It had already set the precedent in 2009, when it handed the medal to Barack Obama for the crime of being Barack Obama. A man of eloquence, yes, but also a man who presided over 563 drone strikes in non-war zones like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, killing as many as 807 civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. These operations, many of them carried out in secret, stained his presidency with a blood not easily scrubbed by lofty speeches. The expansion of America’s covert war machine under Obama further destabilized regions already on the edge and inflamed anti-American sentiment that persists today. This, too, is part of his legacy.
Consider also that Obama’s signature foreign policy promise, to close Guantanamo Bay, remained unfulfilled. His “reset” with Russia ended in Crimea leading to the current war in Ukraine. His Iran deal destabilized allies in the Middle East and funded proxy wars through Tehran’s terror tentacles. Where, then, was the peace?
Now contrast this with the latest news. On June 21, 2025, Pakistan announced its intent to nominate Donald J. Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. The reason? His decisive intervention in a rapidly escalating military conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. The ceasefire, publicly announced by Trump on Truth Social, was achieved after 48 hours of diplomacy led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance. It was a real act with measurable consequences. Bloodshed was averted. Stability was restored. This was not the issuance of hope, but the application of leverage and skill.
Now let me be clear: Trump does not need the Nobel Peace Prize. But the prize needs someone like Trump if it hopes to recover a shred of its former dignity. And yet, even if he receives it, it will ring hollow. It will be a medal forged in the fires of politics, warped beyond recognition. The rot began with Obama. The Nobel Committee signaled that race and rhetoric mattered more than outcomes. And the world has noticed.
The deterioration of race relations in the United States under Obama was not a side effect, it was a consequence of his governing philosophy. His administration trafficked in the very kind of identity essentialism that DEI now canonizes. From the beer summit to the Ferguson narrative, Obama chose sides before facts emerged, casting America in a permanently racialized light. His presidency did not heal the racial divide. It institutionalized it. Today, public trust across racial lines is lower than it was in 2008. That is not peace. That is entropy.
So when Pakistan nominates Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, the correct response is not applause, but irony. Of course he deserves it. But what does it mean anymore? When the prize went from honoring MLK’s courage to celebrating a freshman senator with no record, it forfeited its soul. When it chose political theatre over diplomatic substance, it ceased to be a reward for peace and became a prop in the global performance of progress.
If the Nobel Committee wishes to recover its relevance, it must begin again to anchor its awards in results, not ideology. The damage may be irreversible, but clarity demands the admission: Barack Obama did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. He never did. The committee gave it to him not despite the absence of achievement, but because of it. It was a ceremonial coronation of the DEI worldview, where appearance and aspiration eclipse record and result. In so doing, they did not elevate Obama. They buried the prize.
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Why would a president long derided as a reckless isolationist now contemplate US military intervention in the Middle East’s most volatile conflict? For those who have mistaken Donald J. Trump’s strategic instincts for impulsive belligerence, the answer may surprise them. He is not preparing to start a war. He is attempting to end one, the slow, silent war over Iran‘s nuclear ambitions, on terms favorable to the United States, and ultimately, to peace itself.
To understand what Trump is doing, one must understand what he values: results. The aim is not perpetual conflict but lasting leverage. He has long demonstrated an aversion to endless wars, having resisted escalations in Syria and Afghanistan, pulled out of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and brokered the Abraham Accords, a seismic shift in Middle Eastern diplomacy that eluded his predecessors for decades. His track record is that of a president who prefers peace but understands that peace is rarely won by appeasement.
Now, with Iran reeling from devastating Israeli strikes and its nuclear infrastructure reduced to rubble, Trump is positioning the United States not as an aggressor, but as the final arbiter. He is offering Tehran a choice: deal or doom. And to make that choice real, he is doing what the left-leaning press and even some of his MAGA supporters refuse to countenance, he is showing strength. Real, credible, force-backed strength.
Iran’s current situation is bleak. On June 13, 2025, Israel launched a barrage of coordinated strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, crippling deep underground enrichment sites once thought impervious to attack. Command and control infrastructure was obliterated. High-ranking Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders and nuclear scientists have either been killed or vanished. Iranian airspace, once defended with Soviet-era zeal, is now exposed. And the economy, battered by decades of sanctions and internal mismanagement, is gasping for breath.
Yet Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has rejected overtures. Despite Trump’s letter in March warning of severe consequences if no nuclear deal was reached, and despite a promising round of negotiations in April and May where Iran indicated a willingness to limit enrichment, the regime chose pride over prudence. It spurned the opportunity. It gambled that Trump, unlike Israel, would blink.
But this is not a president known for blinking. When Trump issued his two-week ultimatum, he was not setting a military timetable but a diplomatic countdown. The real clock is psychological, not operational. It is meant to signal resolve, to induce panic among the Iranian elite, to tempt the regime with visions of economic revival, foreign investment, and legitimacy, if only they renounce their nuclear aspirations. In short, it is vintage Trump: maximal pressure, minimal risk.
It is worth recalling that Trump has used this script before. In 2017, he threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” only to become the first US president to set foot in the Hermit Kingdom. In 2019, he called off a retaliatory strike on Iran just minutes before launch, not because he feared conflict but because he calculated that escalation would forfeit future leverage. The current Iran strategy follows the same logic. Military power is not an end. It is a means of forcing a decision.
To the casual observer, Trump’s rhetoric, calling for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and hinting at US control over Iranian skies, may sound like bluster. But to the trained eye, it is clear what he is doing. He is co-opting the expectations of the neoconservatives and Israeli hawks who have long pushed for war. By standing beside them rhetorically, he magnifies the threat to Tehran. Yet he remains fundamentally independent of them. He is not interested in a regional occupation, nor in endless entanglements. He is interested in Iran choosing survival over martyrdom.
Critics, particularly in the press, have misread his approach as reckless brinkmanship. They argue that threatening war only invites escalation. But they miss the essential logic of deterrence. To deter, one must be seen as willing to act. Promising restraint in advance neuters leverage. Telling adversaries you will never strike is not peacekeeping, it is preemptive surrender. Trump, unlike his predecessors, understands that.
Of course, there is risk. There always is. If Iran strikes US troops or assets, and there have already been rumblings of such intent, Trump will respond decisively. But that would be a reaction, not a choice. His posture is calibrated: avoid war if possible, win quickly if not. The red line is American blood, not Israeli. In this way, Trump avoids the neocon trap of fighting other nations’ wars. But he remains unafraid to fight when American lives are endangered.
It is also important to consider the internal dynamics in Tehran. Khamenei is aging. The regime’s legitimacy is fragile. Young Iranians are disillusioned. The economic pain is severe. In this context, Trump’s offer of sanctions relief and investment carries more weight than the mullahs care to admit. The threat of bunker-buster bombs may target their nuclear sites, but the real strike is psychological. The regime’s very survival is at stake. The promise of reprieve, if they capitulate, is real.
To critics on the right who worry that Trump is being lured into a neocon war, I would ask this: has he not shown, time and again, a disdain for that trap? His entire presidency has been a repudiation of the Bush-era foreign policy consensus. He does not seek to reshape Iran in America’s image, only to make sure Iran cannot threaten us or our allies with nuclear blackmail. That is a realist goal, not a Wilsonian one.
And to those on the left who claim that Trump is sabotaging diplomacy with saber-rattling, the question is: what diplomacy? The previous deal enriched Iran while delaying the inevitable. It relied on unverifiable promises and blind faith. Trump’s diplomacy is different. It is transactional, verifiable, and backed by force. It may offend elite sensibilities, but it has the merit of clarity.
The current moment is thus not a rush to war but a rare opportunity for resolution. Iran is weak, isolated, and cornered. The US, under Trump, is strong, resolute, and clear-eyed. The two-week window is not a countdown to bombs, it is a countdown to a deal, a better one, on our terms. The real danger lies not in Trump’s threats, but in the possibility that Iran fails to understand he means them.
My final thoughts. My personal thinking is also that Netanyahu has for the past 20 plus years been manipulating the US into Middle East Wars for its own devices, wanting to take control over the Muslim states while Israel has in total years, manipulated US presidencies for 70+ years. The US helping take out Iran will push for other Muslim, Chinese and Russian actors to bear down against the US ‘bully’. Iran closing in on nuclear weapon fears have been going on for over 20 years without those trepidations materializing, but now that Israel has led a preemptive strike against their top leaders and possible damage to some centrifuges in the process, Netanyahu’s act does nothing but support Iran for wanting nuclear options and that is directly because of Israel’s latest actions. There is an extreme danger to this entire situation, and it has been forced upon this current cabinet by Netanyahu. I see nothing good coming out of this if the US helps reduce Iran, thereby giving Netanyahu everything he’s been wanting over the Middle East for the past 20+ years. The state of Israel has been too embedded in this country ever since its founding.
The woke Left has been trying to cancel American history for years.
But they picked the wrong fight this time.
And Linda McMahon just delivered crushing news to New York officials who tried to erase this piece of American history.
New York officials get slammed for discriminatory mascot ban
The battle over the Massapequa High School Chiefs mascot has been raging for months.
New York’s Board of Regents tried to force the Long Island school district to dump its longtime mascot because it was supposedly offensive to Native Americans.
But the federal government just stepped in with a bombshell ruling that has New York education officials scrambling.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced that her department is referring the case to the Department of Justice for enforcement action.
The move comes after New York state officials rejected a settlement agreement that would have brought them into compliance with federal civil rights law.
“Both the New York Department of Education and the Board of Regents violated federal antidiscrimination law and disrespected the people of Massapequa by implementing an absurd policy: prohibiting the use of Native American mascots while allowing mascots derived from European national origin,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
McMahon didn’t pull any punches in her criticism of New York’s selective enforcement.
The Department of Education found that New York violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by banning Native American mascots while allowing other schools to keep mascots like the “Dutchmen” and “Huguenots.”
That’s discrimination pure and simple.
Federal investigation exposes New York’s hypocrisy
The Office for Civil Rights opened its investigation into New York’s mascot policy back in April.
What they found was a textbook case of government overreach and selective discrimination.
New York officials were perfectly fine with mascots that celebrated European heritage.
But when it came to honoring Native American culture and history, suddenly they had a problem.
McMahon visited Massapequa High School in May to announce the results of the federal investigation.
The Trump administration wasn’t going to let New York get away with this discriminatory double standard.
“We will not allow New York state to silence the voices of Native Americans, and discriminatorily choose which history is acceptable to promote or erase,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
The federal government offered New York a way out through a Resolution Agreement.
All the state had to do was rescind its ban on Native American mascots and issue an apology to Indigenous tribes.
New York officials turned it down flat.
New York doubles down on discrimination
New York’s refusal to accept the federal settlement shows just how committed they are to their woke agenda.
Even when faced with a clear violation of civil rights law, they’d rather fight it out in court than admit they were wrong.
The Office for Civil Rights gave New York officials 10 days to accept the Resolution Agreement or face referral to the Department of Justice.
They rejected it not once, but twice.
Now the Department of Justice will have to step in and force New York to comply with federal law.
This case perfectly illustrates the Left’s twisted approach to “protecting” minority groups.
They claim to care about Native Americans while simultaneously trying to erase their history and culture from public view.
Meanwhile, they have no problem with mascots that honor – or stereotype – other ethnic groups.
It’s selective outrage at its worst.
The real issue: government overreach vs. local control
The Massapequa Chiefs controversy highlights a much bigger problem with government bureaucrats trying to impose their values on local communities.
The people of Massapequa didn’t ask New York state officials to change their mascot.
This was a top-down mandate from Albany politicians who think they know better than the local community.
School mascots should be decided by the people who actually attend those schools and live in those communities.
Not by bureaucrats in the state capital who are pushing a political agenda.
The federal government’s intervention in this case sends a clear message that discrimination won’t be tolerated, even when it’s dressed up as progressive politics.
Linda McMahon and the Trump administration are standing up for the principle that all cultures and histories deserve equal treatment under the law.
New York’s mascot ban was never about protecting Native Americans.
It was about advancing a woke agenda that seeks to erase certain parts of American history while celebrating others.
What happens next
Now that the case has been referred to the Department of Justice, New York will face federal enforcement action.
The state could lose federal education funding if it continues to violate civil rights law.
That would be a costly mistake for New York taxpayers.
The Department of Justice has the authority to file a lawsuit against New York to force compliance with Title VI.
Federal courts don’t look kindly on government entities that discriminate based on race or national origin.
New York officials would be wise to reconsider their position before this gets even more expensive.
The Massapequa Chiefs case could set an important precedent for similar disputes across the country.
Other states that have tried to ban Native American mascots while allowing others might want to take a close look at their policies.
Selective enforcement of mascot bans based on the ethnic origin of the name or symbol is discrimination, plain and simple.
The federal government won’t stand for it under the Trump administration.
This is what happens when woke politics collides with civil rights law.
Like a long-overdue invoice finally landing on the doorstep, the consequences for months of anti-ICE chaos are about to hit where it hurts most: the wallet. While Democrat mayors have spent weeks grandstanding against federal immigration enforcement, playing to their progressive base with fiery rhetoric about “resistance,” a different kind of reckoning has been quietly brewing in Washington.
The riots that erupted across Los Angeles and spread to other major cities weren’t just spontaneous outbursts of anger—they were calculated political theater. And let me tell you, watching these mayors orchestrate resistance while their cities burned was something to behold. As ICE operations successfully rounded up violent criminals including child molesters, murderers, and drug dealers, Democrat-controlled cities responded not with gratitude for removing dangerous predators from their streets, but with organized resistance.
Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson called ICE raids “terrorism” and claimed Trump’s America looks like “the Confederacy won.” California Governor Gavin Newsom continues his defiant posturing, refusing meaningful cooperation with federal authorities.
But here’s what these political grandstanders apparently forgot: their cities don’t operate in a vacuum. Federal dollars flow through every major infrastructure project, every highway repair, every bridge renovation. And those dollars come with strings attached—strings that are about to be pulled tight.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy just delivered the news that should have every city budget director reaching for the antacids:
From Breitbart: The USDOT will NOT fund rogue state actors who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. And to cities that stand by while rioters destroy transportation infrastructure — don’t expect a red cent from DOT, either. Follow the law, or forfeit the funding.
This isn’t an empty threat or political posturing. Duffy has already demonstrated his willingness to use federal funding as leverage, previously warning that states giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants or maintaining DEI policies would lose transportation dollars. The difference now is the scale and urgency—major cities that have become synonymous with anti-ICE resistance are staring down the barrel of massive funding cuts.
Let me get this straight: cities that allowed rioters to destroy their own infrastructure while protecting criminals from deportation now want federal taxpayers to foot the repair bill? Los Angeles, which watched protesters wave Mexican flags while chanting about ICE, expects American citizens from Kansas and Alabama to pay for fixing their self-inflicted damage. It’s a level of audacity that would be impressive if it weren’t so infuriating.
The contrast between mayors tells the real story here. New York’s Eric Adams, despite his Democrat credentials, has instructed the NYPD not to interfere with ICE operations, telling reporters that protesters blocking federal authorities “is not going to happen in the city.” Meanwhile, Johnson and Newsom double down on their resistance theater, apparently believing their political posturing is worth more than the billions in federal transportation funding their constituents depend on.
What I find most satisfying about this approach is its elegant simplicity. No dramatic confrontations, no constitutional crises—just the quiet enforcement of a basic principle that conservatives have always understood: if you want the benefits of the system, you have to follow the rules of the system. Actions, as they say, have consequences. And for America’s most defiant cities, those consequences are about to become very real and very expensive indeed.
The collapse of viewpoint diversity on Bluesky is neither a fluke nor a recent regression. It is, rather, the predictable consequence of importing the cultural logic of elite academia, progressive journalism, and activist politics into a digital commons. What has emerged is not a neutral platform but a curated ideological enclave, a gated garden of enforced agreement. Far from modeling a healthy democratic discourse, Bluesky illustrates what happens when the infrastructure of debate is subordinated to the politics of purity.
Consider the origin story. Bluesky launched as a decentralization project initiated under Jack Dorsey, its purpose ostensibly noble: to build a more open, federated alternative to Twitter. But the timing of its mass adoption tells the real story. Following Elon Musk‘s acquisition of Twitter in late 2022, and the subsequent rollback of opaque censorship mechanisms that had disproportionately silenced conservatives, there was a liberal exodus. The appeal of Bluesky was never just technical. It was ideological. It became the place to be not because it offered better features or user interface, but because it offered a perceived reprieve from heterodoxy.
The stampede began in earnest after Trump’s reelection in November 2024. For many progressives, his return to power signaled not merely a political loss, but an existential crisis. Twitter, now X, had ceased to be the enforcement arm of consensus. What followed was a migration from a newly pluralistic platform to one where progressive assumptions remained unchallenged. Bluesky’s user base exploded from around 10 million in fall 2024 to over 35 million by spring 2025, most of whom, according to Pew and Business Insider, self-identified as left-of-center.
This demographic uniformity seeded the platform’s rapid ideological calcification. The environment quickly began to mimic the echo chambers of elite universities and major newsrooms. These institutions, as numerous studies show, already suffer from significant ideological skew. For instance, a 2023 Harvard survey found that more than 77 percent of its faculty identified as liberal, with just 2 percent identifying as conservative. FIRE’s 2024 national faculty survey revealed that 71 percent of professors believed a liberal colleague would “fit in” well in their department, while only 20 percent thought the same of a conservative one. Within such ecosystems, dissent becomes not only discouraged but pathologized.
Bluesky followed this trajectory with unsettling speed. Moderation policies and cultural norms effectively deputized users to enforce orthodoxy. Moderates were hounded, centrists were ignored, conservatives were banned. According to Newsweek and Politico, even users who aligned with 90 percent of the prevailing progressive views found themselves castigated for voicing a solitary note of dissent. What ensued was not dialogue but ideological inquisition.
Mark Cuban‘s disillusionment captures the dynamic in miniature. The billionaire investor joined Bluesky in November 2024 with the hopeful salutation, “Hello Less Hateful World.” By June 2025, he had reversed course. In a series of withering posts, Cuban described the atmosphere as toxic, dominated by users who weaponized moral language to silence disagreement. “Even if you agree with 95%,” he lamented, “if there is one point you question, they will call you a fascist.”
His criticism was not mere anecdote. It echoed a growing body of observations suggesting that Bluesky had become a “progressive bubble,” as the Washington Post phrased it, in which dissent invited mobbing and orthodoxy earned applause. That Cuban had financially backed a Bluesky-related application made his reversal all the more telling. Investment did not buy insulation from the inquisition.
Even on apolitical fronts, the consequences of this atmosphere were stifling. A Wharton professor researching artificial intelligence publicly announced his retreat from the platform after finding that any deviation from prevailing opinion, even on purely technical issues, elicited disproportionate backlash. The logic of purity had metastasized beyond politics, suffocating any form of nuanced discourse.
The irony is that while Bluesky was degenerating into a speech cartel, X was recovering. Despite breathless predictions of collapse, Elon Musk’s platform saw both advertiser return and user stability. As of early 2025, X boasted roughly 600 million monthly active users, with around 250 million logging in daily. According to Reuters and Finance Yahoo, ad revenue was projected to grow 17.5 percent in the US and 16.5 percent globally this year, reversing the post-boycott slump. The platform, now dominated by a rough parity of liberals and conservatives, had not devolved into chaos. It had become messy, yes, but it was free. And freedom, though often cacophonous, is what sustains democratic legitimacy.
Bluesky is what happens when speech is subordinated to civility. Or rather, when civility is used as a cudgel to enforce ideological conformity. The results mirror what we’ve seen in other progressive-dominated institutions. At The New York Times, dissenting editors like Bari Weiss resigned under pressure from internal cliques that policed language and punished transgression. At MSNBC, overt progressive bias has long eclipsed any pretense of ideological balance. Bluesky, built from the same cultural DNA, could not escape the same fate.
In fact, it amplifies it. For while a university campus is limited by geography and accreditation, and a media outlet by reputation and ratings, a social network like Bluesky can evolve into a micro-totalitarian regime in real time. There are no checks, no institutional constraints, no internal ombudsman. The result is the swift descent into purity spirals. Each user competes to be more righteous than the last. Each deviation, no matter how slight, is met with exaggerated condemnation.
To be clear, the problem is not that Bluesky is full of liberals. The problem is that it institutionalizes liberalism as an orthodoxy and punishes deviation, particularly deviation from within its own ranks. The right is not merely excluded, it is dehumanized, rendered so beyond the pale that any conservative presence is swiftly purged without ceremony. Yet the irony is that the most brutal penalties are reserved not for the outsider, but for the insufficiently orthodox insider. This is the slippery slope of ideological purity: disagreement from the right is unthinkable, while dissent from the left is treated as betrayal. In a healthy liberal democracy, disagreement is a feature, not a flaw. But Bluesky’s culture treats disagreement, even among liberals themselves, as an existential threat. That is the mark not of an open society but of an ideological sect.
One might argue that users self-select into platforms and that like-minded communities are inevitable. But this misses the deeper point. What Bluesky reveals is not merely digital tribalism, but a creeping authoritarianism within the cultural left. When faced with pluralism, this faction prefers segregation. When exposed to disagreement, it demands removal. This same instinct has crept into institutional politics, where Democrats have increasingly abandoned democratic norms in the name of saving democracy itself. They changed party rules to retroactively invalidate David Hogg’s election as Vice Chair of the DNC after realizing he might challenge the status quo. They denied Democratic delegates any choice by mandating a vote for Kamala Harris alone, with no write-ins or alternatives permitted. And they cheered on state-level efforts to keep Donald Trump off the ballot entirely, not through electoral means but by weaponizing bureaucratic technicalities. Bluesky, in this light, is not an outlier but a symptom. It does not want to compete in the marketplace of ideas; it wants to monopolize it.
This explains why, paradoxically, Bluesky’s rapid growth has not translated into cultural relevance. Despite an initial ballooning user base, its influence wanes because its ecosystem is self-limiting. The platform has begun shedding active users, and those who remain are posting with diminishing frequency. What is there left to talk about? You either agree or you are kicked out. There is no room for disagreement, so there is no reason for discussion. Echo chambers do not produce innovation. They produce repetition. And repetition, even when loud, cannot compete with the chaotic energy of a truly open forum.
Bluesky is the canary in the coal mine, signaling what digital speech looks like under progressive orthodoxy: aesthetically sleek, rhetorically inclusive, and intellectually inert. It functions not as a public square, but as a chapel of ideological conformity, complete with rituals of cancellation and catechisms of belief. Its growth is not a testament to its health, but to the deep yearning among many on the left to avoid disagreement at any cost.
fox files 
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