To discuss the decision on tariffs, start with chronic illness. The human barnacle named Sen. Patty Murray berated Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 2025 for cutting some research grants that Congress had funded, and he asked her in response what she had done about the crisis in American chronic illness. Ever. In her decades in Congress.

RFK Jr. to Sen. Murray: "You've presided here, I think for 32 years... What have you done about the epidemic of chronic disease?"pic.twitter.com/tIdlHUIwZl

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) January 16, 2026

[Insert thing here] is a problem. You’ve been here for 30-plus years. Tell us what you’ve done about it. This is the evergreen question in 21st-century America.

In a much-discussed passage from his concurring opinion in the tariff case, which is one of the opinions published here, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that tariff authority didn’t belong to the executive branch. Instead, Gorsuch wrote, “most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason. … Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions.”

He’s right, and that’s the structural theory of the republic. When was the last time it worked?

In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), defining, among other things, an enforceable right to medical privacy for patients. But read Section 264, which you can find on page 99 of this PDF file. It starts like this: “Not later than the date that is 12 months after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall submit to the Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Committee on Finance of the Senate and the Committee on Commerce and the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives detailed recommendations on standards with respect to the privacy of individually identifiable health information.”

You get that? They forbade, in law, the unauthorized disclosure of private medical information, and then told the administrative state to come back in a year and explain to them what they had forbidden: Something is hereby not allowed. Could someone please let us know what we mean by this?

A little farther down, Section 264 (c) (1): “If legislation governing standards with respect to the privacy of individually identifiable health information transmitted in connection with the transactions described in section 1173(a) of the Social Security Act (as added by section 262) is not enacted by the date that is 36 months after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall promulgate final regulations containing such standards not later than the date that is 42 months after the date of the enactment of this Act.”

We hereby ban something, but we don’t know what we’ve banned, so come back and tell us so we can add it to the law, but if we don’t bother to add it to the law after you tell us what we meant, then just say for us in federal regulations what we meant to forbid.

Gorsuch: “Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives.” Uh-huh.

What Donald Trump is trying to do with tariffs is negotiate with other countries to end trade imbalances and reverse decades of incentives that have pushed American industry offshore. You can agree with the Supreme Court’s decision about the limits of his taxing authority and see the problem: What has Congress done about it? What will they do about it? What’s their plan?

We’ve spent two generations offshoring American industry, which “the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives” has yet to address. I don’t know, maybe they’ve been busy directing their wisdom toward everything else first. They must first determine, you see, if “boof” is flatulence, digging deeply into this important matter, and then they’ll get to the deindustrialization thing.

Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI): “I don’t believe ‘boof’ is flatulence. I don’t believe ‘The Devil’s Triangle’ is a drinking game. And I don’t believe calling yourself a girl's ‘alumnus’ is being her friend.” https://t.co/poYYuvxXs0 #KavanaughHearings pic.twitter.com/8KUJz93lZc

— Blair Miller (@blairmiller) September 28, 2018

Predictably, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., singled out Gorsuch’s passage on the wisdom and centrality of America’s bold solons in the guidance of a proud nation:

Some have asked me to comment on the SCOTUS ruling striking down tariffs based on emergencies declared by the Executive. Why should I comment when Gorsuch has already nailed it right here? 💯 pic.twitter.com/jUe5MM0S3c

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) February 20, 2026

It’s not the job of the executive branch to use this tool and address this problem; it’s our job as the nation’s lawmakers. End of statement. Nothing follows. The silence eventually echoes.

Many of the replies to Massey point this out, by the way.

Our discussion, in media and in law, has been about Trump’s excesses and boundary-crossing. A better starting place would be the laziness and uselessness of the Article I branch, which doesn’t do anything, and apparently doesn’t care to start doing anything. That void is the foundational void, the cause of all the subsequent structural distortions. “Excuse me, WE MAKE THE LAWS,” they declare, and then we … wait for them to make the laws? This is the catch basin full of drunken clowns and senile elderly toddlers that properly guides the nation, sir!

Anyway, stand aside, President Trump, it’s wise leaders like Jasmine Crockett who are supposed to be leading the nation forward through crisis and decline. Any minute now. Should be great.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that President Donald Trump’s tariffs under an emergency act are unlawful, a conclusion Justice Brett Kavanaugh said “does not make much sense” in his dissent.

Trump declared two national emergencies in early 2025, one addressing drug trafficking and the other trade imbalances with other countries — like China — that have harmed Americans. As a result, Trump imposed tariffs on several nations, including China, Canada and Mexico.

The Supreme Court held in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Solutions Inc., that the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) “does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.”

But Kavanaugh, dissenting alongside Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, tore into the ruling.

‘The Answer Is Clearly Yes’

Kavanaugh argued that IEEPA gives Trump broad authority to regulate international economic transactions during declared national emergencies, including the “importation” of foreign goods.

As Kavanaugh pointed out, “The sole legal question here is whether, under IEEPA, tariffs are a means to ‘regulate … importation.’ Statutory text, history, and precedent demonstrate that the answer is clearly yes: Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation.”

But it apparently was not “clear” to the majority.

‘There Is No Good Answer’

Kavanaugh referenced historical precedent to back up his opinion, noting that President Richard Nixon imposed a 10 percent tariff on most foreign imports in 1971 under the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), which authorized the president to “regulate … importation.” Such tariffs were upheld under that framing, which is the same language found in the IEEPA.

In creating IEEPA, as Kavanaugh wrote, Congress divided TWEA “into two separate statutes,” though “Congress retained that same ‘regulate … importation’ language in both laws — in TWEA for wartime and in IEEPA for peacetime national emergencies. In doing so, Members of Congress were plainly aware — after all, how could they not be — that the ‘regulate … importation’ language had recently been invoked by the President and interpreted by the courts to encompass tariffs.”

“If Congress wanted to exclude tariffs from IEEPA’s scope, why would it enact the exact statutory language from TWEA that had just been invoked by the President and interpreted by the courts to cover tariffs? Neither the plaintiffs nor the Court today offers a good answer to that question. Understandably so, because there is no good answer,” he continued.

Kavanaugh also noted that one year before IEEPA was enacted, the Supreme Court “unanimously ruled that a similarly worded statute authorizing the President to ‘adjust the imports’ permitted President Ford to impose monetary exactions on foreign oil imports.”

‘Heads in the Sand’

Kavanaugh also accused the majority of trying “to dodge the force of the Nixon tariffs by observing that one appeals court’s interpretation of ‘regulate … importation’ to uphold President Nixon’s tariffs does not suffice to describe that interpretation as ‘well-settled’ when IEEPA was enacted in 1977. Fair enough.”

“But that is not the right question,” Kavanaugh continues. “The question is what Members of Congress and the public would have understood ‘regulate … importation’ to mean when Congress enacted IEEPA in 1977. Given the significant and well-known Nixon tariffs, it is entirely implausible to think that Congress’s 1977 re-enactment of the phrase ‘regulate … importation’ in IEEPA was somehow meant or understood to exclude tariffs.”

“Any citizens or Members of Congress in 1977 who somehow thought that the ‘regulate … importation’ language in IEEPA excluded tariffs would have had their heads in the sand,” Kavanaugh wrote.

‘That Approach Does Not Make Much Sense’

Kavanaugh also questioned the rationality of the majority trying to limit the president’s authority while simultaneously allowing him a broader authority.

“The plaintiffs and the Court acknowledge that IEEPA authorizes the President to impose quotas or embargoes on foreign imports — meaning that a President could completely block some or all imports. But they say that IEEPA does not authorize the President to employ the lesser power of tariffs, which simply condition imports on a payment.”

“As they interpret the statute, the President could, for example, block all imports from China but cannot order even a $1 tariff on goods imported from China. That approach does not make much sense,” he wrote.

Kavanaugh ended his opinion by essentially arguing that the majority concluded President Trump merely “checked the wrong statutory box by relying on IEEPA rather than another statute to impose these tariffs” — even though IEEPA, under his interpretation, would have been sufficient.

“Although I firmly disagree with the Court’s holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs at issue in this case — albeit perhaps with a few additional procedural steps that IEEPA, as an emergency statute, does not require. “

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) have filed a lawsuit to try to stop Virginia Democrats’ gerrymandering power-grab referendum.

On Thursday, a judge temporarily blocked the Democrat effort, but with a state Supreme Court case allowing the referendum to move forward, Republicans need to be prepared with a ground game to beat the referendum at the ballot box.

Reps. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., and Ben Cline, R-Va., both representing western Virginia districts, joined the RNC / NRCC action, and the RNC filed an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction, as well as a hearing for a temporary restraining order which they have asked to take place before March 2, just before early voting would begin for the April 21 election.

The joint lawsuit, filed in Tazewell County, challenges the wording of the Democrats’ referendum, which claims to “restore fairness in the upcoming elections,” while weaving all but one congressional district, somehow, into deep blue parts of the commonwealth in order to change a 6 Democrat-5 Republican delegation to a 10 Democrat-1 Republican one.

As RNC chairman Joe Gruters said in a press release announcing the lawsuit, “Despite nearly half of Virginians supporting President Trump, Abigail Spanberger and Democrats are working to silence voters and lock in permanent political control.”

The lawsuit also argues the initiative is unconstitutional and a violation of state law. Some of that was affirmed in the decision to another Tazewell County case earlier this month, but the Virginia Supreme Court allowed the election to go forward while opening the possibility to hear challenges afterward.

Newly minted Republican Party of Virginia (VAGOP) chair Jeff Ryer told The Federalist he recognizes the massive hurdles of a post-vote challenge at the Supreme Court, stating, “It’s not impossible, but I do think that they made their decision based in the hopes that they would not have to make a decision.”

Clara Belle Wheeler, former vice chair of the Virginia State Board of Elections, told The Federalist that legal action cannot be trusted on its own to stop the Democrat power grab.

“We’re going to have this election. We’re going to have this referendum. It’s on the ballot, and when the alleged Republicans were running the Department of Elections, set up this April 21 election,” she said.

She added that there is almost no world in which the high court decides to overturn the results of an election after it has taken place, regardless of if the election should have legally happened to begin with.

“I can only hope that [Republicans] have got enough attorneys up their sleeve that they’ve got something that they’re going to pull out,” she continued. “But so far, nobody knows what it is, and now the Supreme Court has said, ‘Go away, little girl, we’re not thinking about this, Virginia. No, there is not a Santa Claus. No, Virginia, there is not a Supreme Court, and we don’t give a whip about the law. We’re just worried about what our Democrat sponsors are telling us to do.'”

One of the clearest signs of that is the Supreme Court’s opinion in the first place, because it was the very same Supreme Court that drew and decided the current maps during regular, census-driven redistricting a couple years ago. They appear more than willing to do the Democrats’ bidding, even if it means overturning their own decisions.

“The bottom line is the Republican Party of Virginia and the Republican leadership in the General Assembly looked all over Virginia,” Wheeler said. “Most of the judiciary in Virginia are Democrats.” That seems to be the reason the lawsuits are being filed in Tazewell County, a place in southwest Virginia that voted nearly 84 percent for Trump.

“It’s disappointing to see the Supreme Court just really going along with what the what, what the Democrats have proposed,” Ryer said. “But in a state where justices are chosen by members of the legislature, you can’t be entirely shocked when the justices defer to the legislature.”

However, even if Republican legal efforts are successful, they need an intense get-out-the-vote effort, including door-knocking, educational efforts, rallying the base, running ads, and more, flexing the infrastructure they should already have in the commonwealth. After all, it is not just about Virginia. The amount of seats at stake are enough to strip Republicans of a U.S. House majority ahead of a midterm election that is expected to go very poorly for Republicans.

‘Nobody Is Matching What Democrats Are Doing’

Republicans need to be prepared with a grassroots campaign effort, and it appears there is not yet national Republican interest in funding it.

As The Federalist reported, some in Virginia have not seen any meaningful opposition arise aside from lawsuits. Some are not even aware the referendum is happening, while Democrats plan on pumping millions, led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., into it to win. National Democrats, in other words, are serious about winning the election, while Republicans seem to be ignoring the fact that it will likely take place, and that they will likely lose any challenge made afterword.

Ryer said that the RNC has been “nothing but pleasant, and cooperative, and have listened, et cetera, but you know, they have processes and procedures too. We have to respect those.”

Regarding funding to combat the millions Democrats are spending to win, he said he has heard “very little” from the national party, stating, “I don’t know why they haven’t up to this point. Obviously, I’m optimistic we will be in the future, and it certainly is not for short of asking on our part. They’re going to evaluate, I’m sure, and make the determination on their own.”

“We’re certainly asking for the kind of resources necessary. I know that whatever is free of charge we will get, but whatever isn’t, we will have to have a discussion,” he added.

It is a story somewhat familiar to Virginians who might remember the 2014 U.S. Senate election where Republican candidate Ed Gillespie came within a percentage point of unseating Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. While some blamed Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis’ 2.34 percent take of the electorate, others noticed a lack of interest from the RNC. Ryer said the money was tied up in other races at the time, and no one knew Virginia would be that close.

This time, money from Jeffries and others means “the other side is going to have higher visibility,” Ryer said, as they are able to afford television ads that will give them a “leg up.”

“I know that on our side, just about everybody is talking to [the RNC] to try to get at least some relief from the team Jeffries ads, but we’ll see,” he said. “It’s not like they’ve been an absent player. They haven’t. It’s just that nobody is matching what Democrats are doing.”

As for the VAGOP, Ryer said they are focusing on awareness and basic grassroots outreach, including organizing through local parties to focus on known voters and find out “what it is to take them to get to vote in an April election” — an election time that Virginians have never seen before.

“That would consist of voter contact items: personal door-to door, phones, text messaging of friends — things that campaigns used to do before the advent of technology and vendors who found a way to make it cheaper for those campaigns. We’re going to achieve the same result, but without the same level of expenditure,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we’re ruling out money … we are asking for it and looking for it and hoping that the resources are there to put us up on television, but we have to be pretty discerning along the way.”

Lawsuits are all well and good, and should be pursued vigorously, but Republicans cannot use it as their only strategy. They need to remember what happened in 2020 where, no matter the veracity of a lawsuit, they were systematically thrown out. Even a neutral judge is averse to getting into election disputes, but judges across the board are almost never neutral — and they will often fabricate a win for Democrats, no matter the cost.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump’s imposition of tariffs under an emergency economics law is unlawful. The decision was 6-3, with Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh dissenting.

“[The International Emergency Economic Powers Act] IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs,” the court ruled.

The ruling pertains to a pair of consolidated cases known as Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Solutions, Inc., which center around legal challenges to Trump’s use of IEEPA to impose tariffs on goods from foreign countries making their way into the United States. As The Federalist previously described, the president did so “in response to existing ‘unfair trade practices’ that lead to trade deficits, as well as to punish countries like China for failing to ‘blunt the sustained influx of synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, flowing from the [People’s Republic of China] to the United States.'”

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that Trump’s reliance on the words “regulate” and “importation” to justify his tariffs under IEEPA “cannot bear such weight.”

“Absent from [IEEPA’s] lengthy list of powers is any mention of tariffs or duties. That omission is notable in light of the significant but specific powers Congress did go to the trouble of naming,” Roberts wrote. “It stands to reason that had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly — as it consistently has in other tariff statutes.”

The chief justice went on to argue that the administration’s reliance on the phrase “regulate … importation” “does not fill” such a “void,” and asserted that the court is “therefore skeptical that in IEEPA — and IEEPA alone — Congress hid a delegation of its birth-right power to tax within the quotidian power to ‘regulate.'”

“We do not attempt to set forth the metes and bounds of the President’s authority to ‘regulate … importation’ under IEEPA. That ‘interpretive question’ is ‘not at issue’ in this case, and any answer would be ‘plain dicta,'” Roberts wrote. “Our task today is to decide only whether the power to ‘regulate … importation,’ as granted to the President in IEEPA, embraces the power to impose tariffs. It does not.”

Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett each filed concurrences. Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson each filed opinions concurring “in part and concurring in the judgement,” with Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Jackson also joining the former’s opinion.

Writing for the principal dissent, Kavanaugh strongly disagreed with the majority’s decision and argued that “[s]tatutory text, history, and precedent demonstrate that the answer” to the “sole legal question” of whether Trump can impose tariffs under IEEPA “is clearly yes.” He noted that, “Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation.”

“The plaintiffs argue and the Court concludes that the President lacks authority under IEEPA to impose tariffs. I disagree. In accord with Judge Taranto’s careful and persuasive opinion in the Federal Circuit, I would conclude that the President’s power under IEEPA to ‘regulate … importation’ encompasses tariffs,” Kavanaugh wrote. “As a matter of ordinary meaning, including dictionary definitions and historical usage, the broad power to ‘regulate … importation’ includes the traditional and common means to do so — in particular, quotas, embargoes, and tariffs.”

Kavanaugh points out that even if today's mess of a ruling creates all sorts of chaos for previously imposed tariffs, Trump has many other options for imposing tariffs going forward. pic.twitter.com/Rdw2ab4o1G

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 20, 2026

Kavanaugh went on to blast the majority’s nonsensical argument that IEEPA “does not authorize the President to employ the lesser power of tariffs, which simply condition imports on a payment,” despite its acknowledgement that the statute “authorizes the President to impose quotas or embargoes on foreign imports — meaning that a President could completely block some or all imports.”

“As [plaintiffs and the court] interpret the statute, the President could, for example, block all imports from China but cannot order even a $1 tariff on goods imported from China. That approach does not make much sense,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Properly read, IEEPA does not draw such an odd distinction between quotas and embargoes on the one hand and tariffs on the other. Rather, it empowers the President to regulate imports during national emergencies with the tools Presidents have traditionally and commonly used, including quotas, embargoes, and tariffs.”

Thomas also penned a separate dissent, in which he similarly argued that “In today’s cases, neither the statutory text nor the Constitution provide a basis for ruling against the President.”

The Wall Street Journal recently invited readers to gawk at a line of well-dressed twenty-somethings waiting outside Meadow Lane, a glossy Manhattan grocery store selling $15 chicken nuggets, $23 salads, and $750 caviar. The scene is rendered with cinematic flair: mood lighting, shiny pears, influencers filming “hauls,” and Gen Z shoppers treating lunch like a lifestyle event. 

Gen Zers and millennials are swimming in student debt and may never own homes, but they’re splurging on gut-healthy juices and rotisserie chickens. https://t.co/16ctTPmmLp

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) February 12, 2026

The conclusion the Journal is guiding readers toward is clear. New York City is in an affordability crisis serious enough to elevate Democrat socialist Zohran Mamdani to the mayor’s office, yet here are the kids, blowing their paychecks on boutique rotisserie chickens! 

While this might make for a “clicky” headline, the Journal employs a media formula meant to exacerbate generational division. The story invites readers — especially older ones — to shake their heads and mutter, “No wonder they can’t afford houses.” The Wall Street Journal gestures at student debt and the housing crisis, then pivots to $15 oat milk and luxury nuggets, the implication being that Gen Z’s financial struggles are self-inflicted or at least undermined by their taste for aesthetic consumption. 

But pause for a moment and look at what’s actually happening. Young New Yorkers are lining up for prepared food in a dense, expensive city where many live with roommates and work long hours. Yet the media spins off the big-city food store experience into a fear-stimulating screed about moral decay. 

And the rotisserie chicken talking point, amplified online, quickly ran into reality. On X, “community notes” users pointed out that rotisserie chickens are often among the most affordable prepared proteins available. The notice linked to four different articles filled with counterpoints about the aforementioned meat. If a young professional grabs a ready-made chicken instead of ordering takeout, is that extravagance or pragmatism?

Yes, there is a social media element. Influencers film “hauls” because aesthetic grocery stores generate online engagement. Some of those content creators could earn more from a single sponsored post than the average shopper spends inside Meadow Lane. For them, the store is a backdrop, a set piece in the performance economy. But that’s less an indictment of Gen Z’s values and more a reflection of NYC culture and the algorithmic incentives Big Tech companies have established. Like these influencers, legacy news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal now chase eyeballs. Spectacle drives clicks, and clicks equal money. 

So why frame this as generational irresponsibility? Why subtly encourage older Americans to see younger ones as unserious spenders? Because division sells. 

Media organizations compete in an attention economy that rewards outrage and affirmation. A story that validates an older reader’s suspicion that the “kids these days” lack discipline will outperform a dry explainer on zoning laws or monetary policy. It’s easier to point to a $23 salad than to untangle decades of housing supply constraints or inflationary fiscal policy. It’s easier to sneer at $15 nuggets than to ask why healthy, minimally processed food often costs more than subsidized junk. 

We’ve seen this pattern before. Millennials were scolded for avocado toast, as though brunch were the decisive obstacle to homeownership. Think pieces framed modern indulgence as evidence of character flaws. The cumulative effect cultivated real resentment across generations of Americans. The media imply that economic headwinds are personal failings, only to profit more as the rift — and disrespect — between young and old Americans grows. 

In a stable society, older generations should shepherd younger generations, offering mentorship, capital, and institutional wisdom. A culture that trades guidance for mockery erodes the very social fabric it depends on, replacing community stewardship with scorn. When elders are nudged to sneer instead of support, everyone loses, especially the country that relies on generational continuity to survive.

This is where the conversation shifts from groceries to culture — specifically, a culture of a lack of personal accountability. Gen Z complains about the economy with limited awareness of the optics associated with their bourgeois purchases. Meanwhile, Baby Boomers and Gen X whine about the misguided youth while forgetting it’s their role to usher the younger crowd into and upward through America’s institutions. 

It is far more comfortable for the media and political elites to highlight the spending habits of twenty-somethings than to interrogate the policy decisions, corporate consolidations, and fiscal experiments that shaped today’s cost of living. When the focus remains on lifestyle choices, the buck stops with the kid buying lunch, not with the lawmakers who printed trillions, the regulators who constrained housing supply, or the corporations that consolidated food production. Blame flows downhill. Accountability rarely does. 

The danger in this framing widens the generational trust gap. If older Americans are continually encouraged to view younger ones as frivolous, they become less inclined to advocate for them. Why nurture a generation that reportedly refuses to sacrifice?

But Gen Z did not set interest rates in 2020. They did not draft tax codes in the 1980s. They entered adulthood navigating Covid lockdown policies that led to school closures and hiring freezes. Suddenly, they were spat out of the education system to confront inflated rents and grocery bills. 

A line outside a boutique grocery store is an easy symbol. It photographs well. It flatters readers who want confirmation that someone else is to blame for what they perceive to be, whether true or false, America’s entitled and decadent youth. However, a country’s trajectory is not determined by $15 chicken nuggets. 

If Americans are serious about reversing any so-called downward spiral, we should demand accountability upward first. 

Drones are increasingly violating American airspace. We know that tens of thousands of drone sightings on our southern border are connected with the Mexican drug and human trafficking cartels. But dozens of other drone sightings at sensitive military installations suggest hostile nation-state actors, most likely China.  

As drone operations in Russia’s war on Ukraine show, the threat is no longer hypothetical — it is active and escalating. Unfortunately, a dangerous combination of bureaucratic inertia and misplaced priorities has left our borders and military installations vulnerable.  

In December 2023, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia endured 17 consecutive nights of drone incursions, some involving craft up to 20 feet in length. Despite clear sightings and briefings that reached the White House, proposals to jam signals, deploy directed energy weapons, or shoot the drones down were rejected as “too risky.” To this day, no official explanation has been provided, and no one has been held accountable. 

In New Jersey, 11 months later, drones were reported over Picatinny Arsenal, a 6,400-acre U.S. Army research and manufacturing facility, as well as over Naval Weapons Station Earle. After weeks of public alarm and official confusion, then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.” He went on to ambiguously remark, “Some of those drone sightings are, in fact, drones …”  

By Dec. 16, five weeks before Donald J. Trump was sworn in for his second term, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Department of Defense issued a statement, disclaiming any threat, noting that the sitings were of “… lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and stars mistakenly reported as drones.”  

Yet Stewart International Airport, 60 miles north of New York City, shut down due to the perceived drone threat, while the FAA issued temporary flight restrictions over Picatinny Arsenal and Bedminster, New Jersey, suggesting that something was amiss.  

Eventually, federal officials attributed most incidents to lawful commercial drones and misidentified aircraft. Public fears subsided. 

But along the southern border, the threat is clear and continuous. Cartels operate thousands of drones annually — estimates exceed 60,000 sightings along or over the border, all in the latter half of 2024. The cartels operate the drones for four main purposes: surveillance, drug smuggling, counter-surveillance, and airspace denial — as drone swarms can prevent U.S. government helicopters from safely operating in the vicinity. Some cartel operatives have reportedly traveled to Ukraine to study advanced drone warfare, tactics now being turned against U.S. Border Patrol agents as well as rival cartels.  

The sudden airspace closure over El Paso on Feb. 11 happened because someone finally decided to act. Depending on reports, U.S. forces neutralized at least one cartel drone — or an errant party balloon. Eyewitness accounts reported to the Daily Mail described a large hovering object releasing smaller drones near the border around the time of the incident, contradicting claims by some that authorities had merely downed a stray Mylar balloon. 

The FAA’s initial response — a 10-day shutdown imposed without advance notice to the White House, Pentagon, or local officials — suggested less a safety measure than an act of bureaucratic retaliation in the form of malicious compliance.  

At the heart of the problem lies the Federal Aviation Administration’s singular focus on civilian air travel safety at the expense of national security. Counter-drone technologies — jammers, lasers, kinetic interceptors — require exhaustive FAA safety certification borne of modern safetyism that demands zero risk. These demands are effectively impossible to meet; endless testing and risk assessments guarantee delay. When disputes arise over testing protocols, as reportedly occurred before the El Paso closure, the FAA resorts to drastic measures that aim to punish government rivals rather than protect the American public.  

The FAA’s emphasis on airspace safety — heightened after the deadly January 2025 Reagan Washington National Airport midair collision and anti-drone tests in the D.C. area two months later — has fueled caution on counter-drone technologies that risk interfering with manned aircraft systems. Yet this tragedy is a false analogy, having nothing to do with anti-drone technology, which operates within very clear and predictable parameters.  

Langley and the border tell a different story: Persistent threats met with a bureaucratic maze that results in hesitation or inaction. As a consequence, mystery drones over military bases or crossing the border go unchallenged. Cartels and nation-state adversaries, likely China, exploit our indecision. 

America’s skies must not be surrendered to the cartels or hostile operators. 

Border Patrol and the military need clear authority to deploy counter-drone systems in sensitive areas without endless FAA vetoes. Rules of engagement must be streamlined and regulators held accountable to prevent “safety” or process from protecting our airspace.  

Between now and the November midterm elections, Democrats and their allies will spend countless hours and energy claiming Republicans “cut” Medicaid in last year’s reconciliation legislation. Don’t you believe it. 

A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report demonstrates how Republicans’ reforms in that law merely attempted to slow an unsustainable Medicaid program following a Biden-era spending explosion. But for good or for ill, the program’s spending continues to grow inexorably higher, notwithstanding those reforms.

Scaling Back Biden’s Spending Binge

Last January, I wrote about that Biden-era Medicaid explosion. From June 2024 to January 2025, CBO increased its estimates of Medicaid spending by $817 billion, or 12 percent, and cited five factors driving such rapid spending growth. Democrat policy priorities, most of them imposed by the Biden administration unilaterally, were at the root of those factors: administrative actions to expand eligibility and prevent states from cracking down on fraud, a mandate on states to cover anti-obesity medications, greater incentives for states to expand Medicaid to able-bodied adults, and policy changes allowing states to bilk the federal government out of additional Medicaid matching funds.

The budget reconciliation bill Republicans passed last year undid many of those changes. It repealed the additional incentives Congress passed in 2021 for states to embrace Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, blocked several costly Biden-era mandates, cracked down on state abuses of the Medicaid financing system, and instituted work requirements for able-bodied adults. But it made no explicit changes to the benefits provided to the vulnerable populations — seniors, individuals with disabilities, and children — for which Medicaid was originally designed.

The Other Half of the Story

Last week, CBO released its annual report on the budget and economic outlook, its first fiscal update since the reconciliation measure last July. It estimated that last year’s bill would reduce Medicaid spending by $1.184 trillion, a fact Democrats will dutifully repeat ad infinitum between now and Nov. 3.

But the welfare-industrial complex won’t bother to mention several other important Medicaid facts to voters. First, even after taking into account the changes in the reconciliation bill, CBO now estimates Medicaid will spend more under Donald Trump than it estimated during the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency. You read that right: From 2026 through 2034, CBO now estimates that Medicaid will spend $7.124 trillion, versus an estimate of $6.862 trillion in June 2024.

In part, that dynamic occurs because, notwithstanding the changes Republicans enacted into law last year, Medicaid spending continues to climb ever higher. Even as it reduced Medicaid spending by nearly $1.2 trillion to reflect legislative changes from the reconciliation bill, CBO cited “technical changes” to increase spending by $700 billion over the coming decade. While noting lower-than-expected enrollment growth in 2025, “[c]osts per enrollee grew by 16 percent in 2025 — significantly more than CBO had anticipated,” and a trend the budget gnomes expect to continue.

Contra claims about Medicaid “cuts,” program spending will continue to grow every single year over the coming decade. From 2026 through 2036, CBO believes Medicaid spending will grow by a total of 39 percent, due to both growth from inflation and 18 percent growth in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) spending per beneficiary.

Democrats will cite the estimated 14 percent reduction in Medicaid beneficiaries as evidence of the likely harm caused by the budget reconciliation measure. But even here, CBO notes that the number of individuals “losing” coverage “includes 1.5 million enrollees whose records indicated enrollment in more than one state and who would retain Medicaid eligibility in their current state of residence.” This “cut” reflects not individuals being harmed but “enrollees” who never should have had duplicate coverage to begin with.

Unsustainable Programs Require Reform

Rather than showing Draconian reductions under the new law, the CBO report illustrates how Medicaid spending, like that of other federal health care programs, continues to grow ever higher. It serves as an indictment, not of congressional Republicans who enacted common-sense Medicaid reforms as a first step to slow the spiraling growth in costs, but of those who continue to ignore our unsustainable entitlements.

In a highly anticipated move, the Trump administration designated factions of the global Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations last month, an executive action with profound implications extending beyond the Middle East to America’s heartland. Astonishingly, a Somali-American legislator from Ohio, State Rep. Munira Abdullahi, D-Columbus, continues to serve as a national leader for the Muslim American Society (MAS), a registered nonprofit that federal prosecutors have identified as the “overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

Abdullahi’s involvement with MAS dates back to at least 2012, when she served as a youth director in Columbus and later as a national program director. The organization’s youth programs have been marred by scandals nationwide, including an incident in Philadelphia where children were taught songs about beheading Israeli Jews, and a fundraiser selling merchandise glorifying Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. Upon her election to public office in 2022, Abdullahi appeared to distance herself from MAS, updating her LinkedIn profile to indicate she no longer worked for the group.

However, her ties persisted and deepened. Now heading MAS-Columbus and part of the organization’s national leadership, she leverages her elected status to host events featuring ultra-conservative preachers and pro-Hamas activists. Though MAS officially claims independence from the broader Sunni Islamist movement, a 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation exposed how its early leaders decided to conceal their Muslim Brotherhood affiliations while aiming to “convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office.”

Campaign finance records underscore this connection: in 2022, Abdullahi received a $1,000 contribution from an MAS colleague and later donated $2,400 from her campaign to MAS-Columbus.

Ties to Extremists

Housed in a northside mosque serving Columbus’ booming Somali immigrant community, MAS-Columbus has long been a hub for Muslim Brotherhood figures. Its development owes much to Salah Soltan, who later joined Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and is now imprisoned there for inciting violence. Under Soltan’s influence, the chapter’s website hosted virulently antisemitic content, declaring “the evil within [Jews] is beyond description.” Other prominent visitors include Sheikh Mohamed Jebril, the Supreme Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who is banned from preaching in Egypt.

Abdullahi’s crowning achievement as a Sharia-savvy legislator came in August 2025 with MASCON-CBUS, her organization’s inaugural convention held in Ohio’s state capital. She spoke alongside some of America’s most extreme Islamist figures, including Osama Abuirshaid, leader of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a radical anti-Israel group under state and federal scrutiny for its alleged origins as a Hamas front.

A keynote speaker at MASCON, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, has advocated armed jihad, labeled homosexuals and non-Muslims as “Satanic,” and defended stoning adulterers. The event’s sponsors were equally troubling: platinum backer Rahma Worldwide has partnered with an Al Qaeda-linked charity in Kuwait, while Islamic Relief USA has been banned in several countries for its Muslim Brotherhood ties and denounced by the U.S. State Department for antisemitism.

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

Florida is designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations.
 
Florida agencies are hereby directed to undertake all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities by these… pic.twitter.com/2s48yYfEg7

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) December 8, 2025

At the 2024 dinner, guests heard from Ismahan Abdullahi, leader of MAS’s policy advocacy wing, who has called for the release of Islamist cop-killer Jamil al-Amin, defended the racist Black Panther Party, and praised the late Muslim Brotherhood icon Mohamed Morsi.

Munira Abdullahi’s rising appeal among extremists also secured her a speaking slot in November 2025 at AMP’s annual convention in Tinley Park, Illinois, notorious for featuring speakers who have glorified the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and spouted antisemitic rants. 

Abdullahi’s Voting Record and Rhetoric

As the youngest legislator in the Ohio statehouse, Abdullahi persistently blurs the boundary between elected official and Muslim Brotherhood operative. Her radicalism surfaced early in her term when she alone voted against a resolution condemning Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Just two days after the massacres that claimed around 1,200 lives, she posted a social media statement blaming the Jewish state for the violence and kidnappings endured by its citizens. Campaigning in 2024, Abdullahi held a virtual fundraiser featuring remarks from anti-Israel activist Sami Hamdi, whom U.S. authorities deported in October for hailing Hamas and the Oct. 7 events as a “victory” and moment of “euphoria.”

863 likes, 50 comments - munira_y.a on June 7, 2025: "WE PROTECT US. No one else will. Tap in to support a community watch to protect our people from 🧊 and share any resources you have".

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With increasing political influence and firm control of Ohio House District 9, home to most of the state’s 60,000 Somali residents, Abdullahi’s trajectory as an Islamist-legislator is just beginning. Her colleagues in the Ohio General Assembly have remained conspicuously silent about her Muslim Brotherhood membership, despite the White House and at least two states labeling the Sunni extremist group a terrorist entity.

At minimum, Ohio House lawmakers should censure Abdullahi and strip her committee assignments unless she publicly renounces her MAS ties. Ideally, they should emulate Texas and Florida by proposing legislation to designate MAS as a terrorist group. Failing to act amounts to condoning an elected official’s affiliation with an organization tied to global violence and terrorism.

Under Roman law a father held a legal power called patria potestas, or “total ownership,” of his children. He could sell them, deny them property, or abandon a newborn on a hillside. The child was not a person but property under the law. What a surprise then that the so-called “paternalistic” Apostle Paul upended five centuries of that system in a single verse when he wrote “Fathers do not exasperate your children; instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Roman law already demanded obedience to the father under pater familias. So Paul’s revolutionary challenge to the system was not to challenge obedience, but rather to tell the man holding absolute power he had a duty to the best interests of the child rather than himself.

Paul’s words to the Ephesians shaped Western family law for two millennia, including modern American case law (see Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1925; Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972). But today a different authority has moved into the space between parent and child; not a patriarch but an “aithority” — an algorithm built by the largest technology corporations on earth and dropped into American classrooms through a partnership with the teachers unions. Nobody sent a permission slip home.

The scale of “the aithority” in schools is already exasperating. In late 2025, Google announced its Gemini AI education tools had reached more than 10 million students across more than 1,000 U.S. institutions. The company rolled out more than 150 new AI features in a single year, trained more than 1 million educators for free, and embedded AI tutoring modules directly into Google Classroom. Separately, Google invested $1 billion in college-level AI integration. In June 2025 the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest teachers union in the country, announced a partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic to accelerate AI adoption in classrooms nationwide. That deal was negotiated between union leadership and three of the most powerful AI companies on earth. Parents were not at the table.

AI’s Values

In AI systems, “features” are not merely technical upgrades. They are a moral takeover, and the people building the technology know it.  

In January, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a 20,000-word essay called “The Adolescence of Technology,” in which he called AI such a “glittering prize” that it is “very difficult for human civilization to impose any restraints on it at all.” He described Anthropic’s approach to controlling its Claude AI through what the company calls Constitutional AI, where developers write a “central document of values” the model reads to form its identity. And if your values are not aligned with pater artificialis Siliconus, Amodei boasts “we can also selectively activate features in a way that alters behavior.” He says the goal is to teach the model “a concrete archetype of what it means to be a good AI” and compared the process to a “letter from a deceased parent sealed until adulthood.”

Read that again. The developers are the parents. The AI models are the adolescents. The actual parents of actual children are excluded from the lineage entirely. This is the new Silicon pater familias. A small group of engineers in San Francisco writes a constitution that shapes how an AI thinks about morality, identity, and the good life. That AI then sits with your child several hours a day in a public-school classroom. The child did not choose it. You did not approve it. But the developers decided what “best interests” and values the model would carry into that conversation and they did so using a framework Amodei himself compares to parenting. 

But to be fair, Amodei is not the only AI morality engineer in the new empire. In 2025 the teacher unions’ other darling, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, basically called ChatGPT a third parent on The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon, admitting he relies on it to manage the anxieties of raising his own surrogate child, saying “I cannot imagine having gone through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.” In contrast to Altman’s idealized helpful third parent, the supposed “Godfather of AI” and Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton warns that with the coming model upgrades, humans will soon be “like three-year-olds” compared to AI, noting only one biological example of a less intelligent being successfully controlling a more intelligent one: a baby and its mother.

This is not the first time a “best interests” framework has been used to justify displacing parental authority at scale. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) established a model where state-defined interests could override the family unit. Conservative critics from the Heritage Foundation to the Home School Legal Defense Association warned for decades that the UNCRC was an effort to remove children from their religious and family contexts. The United States never ratified it. Now Silicon Valley has effectively digitized the same ambition. The AI constitution acts as a new kind of treaty, one that bypasses local communities and parental sovereignty entirely and that no legislature voted on.

AI at School

A 2025 survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology found that 85 percent of teachers and 86 percent of students used AI during the 2024-25 school year. Only half of those teachers had received even one training session on using AI systems.

Georgetown professor Meg Leta Jones documented for the Institute for Family Studies what happens when a parent tries to opt out. When she attempted to remove her own children from school-issued devices, administrators told her technology was embedded in the curriculum and could not be separated. Under current FTC guidance, AI companies can simply assume the school has obtained parental consent. Jones found that in practice “most parents have absolutely no idea what applications or technologies their children are using in school.” But your child’s third parent AI surely knows that it is exasperating your child, right?

Wrong. The results are already showing. A November 2025 CalMatters investigation found that after Google deployed its AI-powered Lens tool on student Chromebooks in Los Angeles, one teacher watched his students’ grades spike overnight. The students were not learning more. The AI was doing their work. “Teachers and school leaders spend countless hours considering each detail of the learning experience,” the teacher said, “then Google totally undermines it with the click of a button.” Google quietly disabled the feature after the story ran.

But at least the people building these tools seem to understand the problem when their own families are involved. A 2011 New York Times investigation found that the chief technology officer of eBay and employees of Google, Apple, Yahoo, and Hewlett-Packard were sending their kids to the Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Los Altos, California. No computers. No screens. The teaching tools were pens, paper, knitting needles, and mud. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs also raised their children in low-tech households. By 2019, the Waldorf model was operating in more than 1,000 schools across 91 countries. The executives who design the AI being lobbied into your child’s public school pay premium tuition to keep this third parent away from their own kids.

Congressional and Parental Action

There is movement in Washington. Sen. Bill Cassidy’s LIFE with AI Act aims to strengthen student privacy protections and require parental notification before schools use AI tools. Sens. Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal have introduced the bipartisan GUARD Act to require age verification on AI chatbots targeting minors. In 2025, an exasperating 53 bills on AI in education were proposed across 21 states. Four became law. Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has recently warned that AI risks becoming a “substitute” for human care rather than a supplement, cautioning that “an AI tool … cannot sit with someone through their pain and empathize.”

The real leverage is local, and parents must start using their leverage now. Before any AI tool enters a child’s classroom, the school should be able to answer five questions from parents: 

• Does this software bypass my ability to review what my child is taught? 
• What behavioral hooks are built in to keep my child engaged?
• Whose values trained the model? 
• Does the tool require my child to think or does it hand over a finished product? 
• Can I see every prompt and every response?

If the school avoids answering those questions, the issue is no longer about technology. It is about who holds authority over the formation of a child’s mind.

Amodei is right that AI is like an “adolescent” almost impossible to impose restraints on. Perhaps he and his peers are missing the restraint that matters most, which will not be found in the code, but in what Paul articulated 2,000 years ago in the New Testament. The person holding power over a child has a duty to that child. Not to shareholders. Not to a union contract. Not to a constitution written in a San Francisco office park. When a handful of developers write a values document they compare to a parental letter and then embed it in the classrooms across America, they have assumed the old authority of the Roman father. It is time parents took their authority back before the Silicon Pater Familia exasperates our children.

If Eileen Gu’s mother came to America for a better life, she got it. Yan Gu, the daughter of two Chinese government officials, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, just a few decades after the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which overhauled immigration policies and prompted a massive increase in arrivals from Asia and Latin America. Educated at Auburn University, Rockefeller University, and eventually Stanford Graduate School of Business, she dabbled as a ski instructor and, apparently, in venture capital.

In 2003, she gave birth to a daughter in San Francisco, raising her in an affluent Bay Area neighborhood. What’s known of Eileen Gu’s childhood reads like a caricature of coastal elitism: skiing in Lake Tahoe at age three, educated at a girls’ school where this year’s tuition costs are upwards of $48,000 per year, presented at Le Bal des débutantes in Paris, groomed for Olympic stardom, and now studying at Stanford, modeling, skiing in the Olympics, and juggling multimillion-dollar brand deals.

Her story would be elevated as a saccharine picture of the neoliberal American dream, if Gu hadn’t decided to ski for China. In 2019, she announced her intent to compete for the People’s Republic of China at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Since then, she has received millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party government, according to The Wall Street Journal, and has become one of the biggest propaganda tools in the arsenal of the United States’ biggest adversary.

12K likes, 3,227 comments - eileengu on June 6, 2019: "I have decided to compete for China in the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics. This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make. I am extremely thankful for U.S. Ski & Snowboard ( @usfreeskiteam ) and the Chinese Ski Association for having the vision and belief in me to make my dreams come true. I am proud of my heritage, and equally proud of my American upbringings. The opportunity to help inspire millions of young people where my mom was born, during the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help to promote the sport I love. Through skiing, I hope to unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations. If I can help to inspire one young girl to break a boundary, my wishes will have come true. 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 ❤️".

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@montselewin

ICE destroys families. And some of you still sleep peacefully knowing you voted for the man who made it worse. Don’t pretend you care about Latinos now. We won’t forget. We won’t stay quiet. Fuck ICE. We’ll keep showing up for each other, because no one else will.

♬ original sound - montselewin

“We do not move to America because we think it’s a better country,” she says, in a video viewed more than 91,000 times on TikTok. “You’re stupid to think that we move to this country for some hot dogs and some baseball. We have better vibes, music, food, culture, history, literally all of the above. We just move here because we are looking to make more money. …”

(She also says she hopes any Americans who support our immigration law enforcement will “rot in hell.”)

@montselewin

ICE destroys families. And some of you still sleep peacefully knowing you voted for the man who made it worse. Don’t pretend you care about Latinos now. We won’t forget. We won’t stay quiet. Fuck ICE. We’ll keep showing up for each other, because no one else will.

♬ original sound - montselewin

Mercenary as it is, that’s precisely the counterfeit American dream that’s been sold to aliens and Americans alike by the powers that oversaw the biggest influx of foreigners into America in history.

In 2017, the George W. Bush Institute published an essay by Bush’s Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, titled “Immigrants Put America First: In Coming Here, They Affirm Our Values.”

“Immigrants enter the United States with dreams of a better life for themselves and their families,” he wrote. That much is true: From poor and desperate workers from the Global South to privileged arrivals like Yan Gu, everyone wants to enjoy the money, comfort, and freedom available in America. Every Somali migrant raking in fraudulent welfare checks in Minnesota is enjoying a “better life” on the American taxpayer’s dime, as are immigrant families back in Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, where remittances from America make up a quarter of each country’s entire GDP.

Gutierrez says this desire to profit from American wealth and opportunity is proof that immigrants “put America first” and “reinforce and enrich the values that make America the country it is.”

If that were true — if the “values that make America” were economic self-enrichment and desire for a “better life” — then Eileen Gu would be a model citizen. She embodies all the virtues of the post-national “elite” who view America as a land of economic opportunity and nothing else, an office park where hundreds of thousands of American jobs are happily handed over to H-1B visa holders in the name of Gross Domestic Product.

There's a reason that major media outlets and luxury brands all fawn over Eileen Gu. It's the quintessential Davos mindset in action.

What conservatives view as traitorous, they frame as the shrewd moves of a savvy entrepreneur who is maximizing her marketability and global… https://t.co/5xzD6Npzqh

— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) February 15, 2026

Controversy always seems to find Eileen Gu because she’s a traitor to her country and a shill for communist China, which has rewarded her betrayal by making her fabulously wealthy.

But please, do go on with your journalisming. https://t.co/68KoFbMfxt

— John Daniel Davidson (@johnddavidson) February 17, 2026

But if you understand that the American dream is not about economic enrichment, but rather the freedom to live virtuously and to secure that freedom for posterity by participating in self-government, you understand that Eileen Gu is a failed American and a traitor. Being born in San Francisco did not make her American, in any meaningful sense, any more than wanting to earn more money or being tired, poor, and huddled turns masses of economic migrants into Americans.

America is a heritage descended from the greatest civilizations of the world, refined on the frontier, and dedicated to man’s freedom to dutifully live as he ought. She has gladly welcomed many who seek the same goal — like the family of Alysa Liu, an American Olympic figure skater whose father fled the same country Gu represents. But wanting to enrich yourself doesn’t make you an American, and it’s time to stop humoring the pretense that it does. The proof is in the person of Eileen Gu.

A group of Minnesota Republican lawmakers is preparing to launch the state’s first-ever freedom caucus next week, The Federalist has learned. The revelation comes a week after a coalition of West Virginia Republicans created their own freedom caucus and makes Minnesota the 15th state to form such a body.

“The path to restoring Minnesota to the once great state that it was is [by] returning to the Constitution and the founding principles of our republic. That’s why this [freedom caucus] is needed,” Minnesota Freedom Caucus Chair (MNFC) and GOP Sen. Eric Lucero told The Federalist.

Set to officially launch on Monday, the seven-member MNFC is seeking to put a stop to the “continued growth of government, both in spending and in the encroachment into people’s lives,” according to Lucero. The Republican lawmaker said such trends have remained persistent problems across both parties throughout the 12 years he’s served in the state legislature. He also pointed to numerous scandals plaguing the North Star State in recent years that have gone unaccounted for.

“Before Covid, we had George Floyd. We had Gov. [Tim] Walz through Covid. We have had the billions and billions of dollars of fraud. All of these things have been occurring in Minnesota,” Lucero said. “These strain[s] and direct violations of the Constitution are why a Minnesota Freedom Caucus is needed.”

It’s no secret that Minnesota has had major money mismanagement issues. Massive fraud scandals involving welfare and other social services programs (particularly among Minnesota’s Somali population) have drawn nationwide attention to the state’s gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.

Tackling both parties’ “habitual abuse” of the omnibus spending process — in which “hundreds and hundreds of individual bills are packed into a handful of super omnibus bills” — will be among the chief priorities for the MNFC, according to Lucero. The MNFC chair noted that confronting election integrity issues will also be a top agenda item — specifically when it comes to Minnesota’s insecure voting practices.

“We are a sanctuary state. We issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. We g[a]ve taxpayer-subsidized health care to illegal aliens. We allow them to go to higher education on the taxpayer dollar and many, many additional benefits,” Lucero said. “Therefore, as a sanctuary state, many are gravitating to Minnesota to take advantage of the weak processes and generous handouts that Minnesota offers. Along with that, the mindset then becomes the impugning of our elections.”

The MNFC chair’s comments come as grassroots activists pressure congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that would mandate voter ID in federal elections and require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The measure is currently pending in the Senate and all but requires Republican senators to force Democrats into a talking filibuster to have any chance of getting it passed.

Lucero acknowledged that the Freedom Caucus possesses limited political power to pass key legislation into law given the state’s divided House and Democrat-controlled Senate and governor’s mansion. In the meantime, however, he noted that the group will do what it can to disrupt the status quo in the legislature and serve as a “beacon” that draws Americans’ attention to the corruption across the state.

“The shift of the Democrat Party, pushing Minnesota into Marxism and socialism, has resulted in the pain that Minnesotans are feeling. The purpose of the Minnesota Freedom Caucus is to be that beacon that proposes the solutions,” Lucero said. “We don’t need more government. We don’t need to spend more money. We simply need to get back to the basics.”

Speaking with The Federalist, State Freedom Caucus Network (SFCN) President Andy Roth revealed how his organization will collaborate with the MNFC to help advance its agenda in the state. He noted how conservative state lawmakers often lack the resources (“consultants, staffers, press team”) possessed by governors and legislative leadership (“the swamp”) and described how SFCN will step in to fill that void.

State director Paul Tuschy “will be on the ground in Minnesota, reading the bills, making vote recommendations, talking with the grassroots, and then — because of his employment with the network — he’ll have access to all of our other states and all of the things that are going on there, so that we can compare notes and … apply best practices to Minnesota,” Roth said. “Whether it’s national media support for when something blows up in Minnesota [or] legal support, [we’ll provide] all sorts of things to help level the playing field.”

The MNFC will officially kick off during a Monday morning press conference at the Minnesota State Capitol.