David Horowitz died on Tuesday at the age of 86.
I knew David really, really well. I used to work at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Truth Revolt, which was a precursor to The Daily Wire, began at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
I knew David for more than a decade before that. He was truly a formative person in the modern conservative movement, a person who spoke the truth no matter the cost.
David started off as a radical communist. He wrote a book in 1996 titled “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Son-Generational-David-Horowitz/dp/0684840057?ref_=ast_author_dp&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey</a>.” In it, he talks about how his parents were communists and that he was a “Red Diaper Baby.”
He began his career as a far-Left writer for Ramparts magazine. He turned to the Right when his friend was allegedly killed by the Black Panthers. Then, basically all of his old friends disowned him and decided he was “untouchable.”
David then turned into one of the most effective conservative activists of his generation. He used to call the David Horowitz Freedom Center a “battle tank” rather than a think tank. Pretty much everybody who&#8217;s anybody in modern conservatism had some initial connection with David Horowitz. I met Charlie Kirk, for example, at a David Horowitz Freedom Center event back when Charlie was maybe 18- or 19- years old and was first getting started with TPUSA.
And that remains true for a huge number of people who got their start in the conservative movement in the 1990s and 2000s. His books are worth reading. He was really an amazing writer, a terrific speaker, and a strong voice.
There are many videos of him online that are really worth watching. Here is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuqTKXZjffE">just one</a>, for example:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="WILL YOU CONDEMN HAMAS: David Horowitz Goes Toe-to-Toe With Terrorism Apologist" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JuqTKXZjffE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
<blockquote>Horowitz: Will you condemn Hamas here and now? 
Radical Student: I&#8217;m sorry, what? 
Horowitz: Will you condemn Hamas? Will you condemn Hamas as a terrorist and genocidal organization? 
Radical Student: Are you asking me to put myself on a cross?
Horowitz: So you won&#8217;t. I actually have had this experience many times. You didn&#8217;t read the pamphlet because the pamphlet is chapter and verse. The main connection is that the MSA is part of the Muslim Brotherhood network, as revealed in the document.
Radical Student: I don&#8217;t think you understood what I meant by that. I meant if I say something, I&#8217;m sure that I will be arrested for reasons of Homeland Security. So if you could please just answer my question.
Horowitz: If you condemn Hamas, Homeland Security will arrest you?
Radical Student: If I support Hamas — because your question forces me to condemn Hamas — if I support Hamas, I look really bad.
Horowitz: Well, if you don&#8217;t condemn Hamas, obviously you support it. Case closed. I&#8217;ve had this experience at UC Santa Barbara, where there were 50 members of the Muslim Students Association sitting right in the rows there. And throughout my hour talk, I kept asking them, “Will you condemn Hezbollah and Hamas?” And none of them would. And then when the question period came, the president of the Muslim Students Association was the first person to ask questions. I said, “You know, before you start, will you condemn Hezbollah?” And he said, “Well, that question is too complicated for a yes or no answer.” So I said, “Okay, I&#8217;ll put it to you this way. I&#8217;m a Jew. The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn&#8217;t have to hunt us down globally — for it or against it?
Radical Student: For it.
Horowitz: Thank you. Thank you for coming and showing everybody what&#8217;s here.</blockquote>
David was extremely clear in his approach to the world. He understood the morality of many of our foreign adversaries. He was an advocate for Americanism and American strength and security. And he will very much be missed.

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David Horowitz: The Most Effective Conservative Of His Generation

Ben Shapiro

Books

Communism

Conservatives

David Horowitz

Obituaries

Republicans

I believe that America’s core ideals are very much linked to its Christian faith. So as Easter has just passed, I thought this would be a good time to take a closer look at the state of the American church and then weep quietly and say it was a great country while it lasted.
Now, according to a Pew poll, 62% of Americans identify as Christian. This is a slight drop from the 1697 poll which showed 99.9% of Americans were Christian with one heretic hiding in the woods hoping some long-haired guy with a buckle on his hat wouldn’t blow his head off with a blunderbuss.
But today’s religious landscape looks different depending on political affiliation. For instance, on the political Left, 43% of those who identify as progressives say they have abandoned Christianity and become Episcopalians. Fourteen percent of progressives say they have renounced the corrupt beliefs of colonizing white men, have returned to the innocent and beautiful natural religion of indigenous peoples, and were preparing to sacrifice a virgin to the volcano God until they realized that by the time they were sure she was a virgin, she wasn’t a virgin anymore, and if they threw her into a volcano there’d be no one left who knew how to make breakfast.
Other progressives say they are sick of the sort of restrictive religions that ruined the 1950’s by making everything so great. Instead they have turned to more modern faiths with practices that reflect the moral progress of mankind. These practices include yogic meditation, ritual mindfulness, and tantric sex followed by butchering any unborn babies conceived during tantric sex, then celebrating the mass slaughter by dancing around a pole in a wild blood-drenched frenzy, getting a full body tattoo featuring goat-headed demi-gods with flaming eyes, then running naked through a forest while grunting inarticulately and listening to music that’s mostly composed of drumbeats and shrieking because classic rock is just the best.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h3>
Among Christians on the political Right, 17% say they believe in Christ so hard they’ll kill anyone who disagrees with them, 14% say their faith is so strong they might even be willing to go to church as long as porn is provided, and 8% say their worship mostly involves posting unspeakably cruel remarks on social media to people who aren’t as Christly as they are. Four percent of conservative Christians say they have abandoned their own egos for Christ’s sake and have thus elevated their souls into a state of suffering-yet-serene agape love, and are now hiding in the woods hoping some long-haired guy with a buckle on his hat won’t blow their heads off with a blunderbuss.
The remaining 57% of Right-wing Christians spend most of their time sobbing and whispering, “Oh God, I suck so bad, please, please, please have mercy on me and don’t send me to hell or California.”
As far as other American religions go, 94% of limousine drivers identify as Muslims, 16% of Christian women pretend they’re Buddhists, and 82% of Jews control 90% of everything except which parts of Ivy League campuses they’re allowed to walk on without one of their professors pointing at them and making that awful insect noise like Donald Sutherland at the end of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
Approximately 29% of Americans have no religion whatsoever and they say that makes life much easier because they&#8217;re able to rotate their heads 360 degrees and spider walk across the ceiling, which comes in very handy when they’re trying to escape from the exorcist.
Around the world, the religious landscape is much more varied. For instance, in Great Britain, while 47% of the people identify as Christian, 70% of them say that Islam is also absolutely great, totally fine, really wonderful and not a problem at all, no, really, it’s fantastic, they’re not just saying that because they’d be arrested for telling the truth.
In France, 49% of the population were excited because they thought they belonged to a dark, obscure, mystery cult with elaborate secret rituals until they found out they were actually just Catholics.
And in China, 23% of high-ranking Communists identify their kidneys as Uiger.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan
Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fourth installment, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613165536?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_3&amp;storeType=ebooks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A Woman Underground.</a>” His most recent nonfiction release is “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Cain-Finding-Literature-Darkness/dp/0310368340/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=nMYjR&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&amp;pf_rd_p=bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&amp;pf_rd_r=133-8344803-2786917&amp;pd_rd_wg=7a8J3&amp;pd_rd_r=5791ea0f-6d96-4732-9d6a-3a4e6b348bb5&amp;ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness.</a>” (May 2025, Zondervan/HarperCollins).

US-ENTERTAINMENT-FILM-FESTIVAL-CARTOON-COMICCON-RELIGION

Progressives Abandon Christianity, Become Episcopalian

Andrew Klavan

Bible

Christianity

Easter

Episcopal Church

Humor

Progressivism

Satire

Buckley vs. Vidal. Frost Vs. Nixon.
Smith vs. Murray?
Everyone is still talking about the extended debate between Libertarian comic Dave Smith and author Douglas Murray on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
The Spotify superstar set the chat in motion, knowing the two had extremely different views that would make for a compelling exchange. It’s a sad sign of the times when a debate between two well-meaning adults is increasingly rare in pop culture.
The chat did more than let both pundits share their views. It reminded Rogan of an old saw that Uncle Ben taught a budding web-slinger long ago.
With great power comes great responsibility.
<div id="attachment_909815" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah6kirkSwTg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-909815" class="size-large wp-image-909815" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-23-PM-2662-1024x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: Joe Rogan Experience #2303. Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. PowerfulJRE. YouTube.com" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-23-PM-2662-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-23-PM-2662-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-23-PM-2662-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-23-PM-2662-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-23-PM-2662-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>Screenshot: Joe Rogan Experience #2303. Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. PowerfulJRE. YouTube.com</div>
The underlying message in the chat? Rogan’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah6kirkSwTg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hugely popular show</a> has been letting some cranks share his podcast microphone. That might not have mattered a few years ago, but now “The Joe Rogan Experience” has the power to shape the political landscape.
Many pundits suggest Donald Trump’s appearance on the show, along with Kamala Harris’ unwillingness to do the same, played a role in the real estate mogul’s victory.
Letting “historians” in Rogan’s studio who resist that label, spread erroneous facts, and refuse to take on their critics, may not be the best way to flex his podcast muscle.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-rogan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rogan</a> has played podcast footsie with conspiracy monger Alex Jones for some time. Now, he’s expanding that practice to the format’s detriment. Think Ian Carroll and Darryl Cooper as two recent examples.
The latter called Winston Churchill, <a href="https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/cooper-koureas/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“The chief villain of World War II.”</a>
“I feel you’ve opened the door to quite a lot of people who now got a big platform, who have been throwing out counter-historical stuff of a very dangerous kind,” Murray said early in the conversation. “These guys are not historians. They’re not knowledgeable about anything.”
“I just think, ‘I’d like to talk to that person.&#8217;” Rogan said of his guest choice.
The far-Left Hollywood Reporter, sensing a weakness in Rogan’s podcasting armor, called the podcaster’s recent tilt, “Dangerous.” That’s overstating it, but <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/joe-rogan-douglas-murray-podcast-1236192416/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">it’s neither healthy nor helpful.</a>
A week later, Darryl Cooper arrived to perform his act, which can be described as offering outrageous provocations he then half walks back so he can repeat them all again tomorrow. In September, Cooper had appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast to say that Churchill was the real villain in World War II and that Nazis didn’t want to kill Jews in concentration camps; Jews only “ended up dead” because Germany didn’t have the resources to take care of them.
Murray and Smith didn’t name call or insult one another during the often-tense exchange. Rogan proved an avuncular host, trying to keep the parties on an even keel. The two sparred over foreign policy, the Ukraine war, and, most passionately, the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Murray’s silky-smooth delivery and impeccable grasp of the facts mattered. Smith brought an Everyman’s perspective to the party, often appearing overmatched in the dustup.
<div id="attachment_909817" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-909817" class="size-large wp-image-909817" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-13-PM-5832-1024x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: Joe Rogan Experience #2303. Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. PowerfulJRE. YouTube.com" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-13-PM-5832-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-13-PM-5832-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-13-PM-5832-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-13-PM-5832-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-13-PM-5832-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot: Joe Rogan Experience #2303. Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. PowerfulJRE. YouTube.com</div>
Who “won” depends partly on who you were rooting for prior to the exchange. Both landed some blows, from Murray detailing the horrors of October 7 to Smith sharing the devastation in Gaza from the extended conflict.
It’s increasingly rare to watch these kinds of debates play out on the pop culture landscape. Hollywood’s near total domination by the Left means there’s little appetite for these healthy exchanges. 
Consider today’s late-night hosts. They all sing from the same progressive hymnal and invite progressive guests on to nod along with the audience. The host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” just raged against President Donald Trump in a Rolling Stone interview. Here’s part of his <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/jimmy-kimmel-trump-late-night-future-interview-1235315906/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">jeremiad against all things GOP</a>.
&#8220;There’s no decency. It’s just a bunch of animals [emphasis added], and it’s disgusting… I mean, on the Fourth of July, I still put up a flag, and I’m never going to stop doing that, because I’m never going to let them have that symbol.&#8221;
Does that sound like someone willing to host a free and fair debate on his platform? Why can’t Kimmel invite someone like Dr. Jordan Peterson or Greg Gutfeld on his show for a civil conversation? It would make for compelling TV and might boost the show’s ratings.
Plus, audiences might take away something valuable from it beyond demonizing those with whom they disagree. It’s increasingly clear folks on the Left aren’t interested in that kind of exchange.
There is an exception, though. Classical liberal Bill Maher, both on his HBO talk show and “Club Random” podcast, routinely invites Right-leaning guests to talk out their differences. Think Dave Rubin, Kid Rock, and actor Zachary Levi, to name just three.
<div id="attachment_909819" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-909819" class="size-large wp-image-909819" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-36-PM-7260-1024x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: YouTube/Club Random Podcast. " width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-36-PM-7260-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-36-PM-7260-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-36-PM-7260-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-36-PM-7260-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-36-PM-7260-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot: YouTube/Club Random Podcast.</div>
Rogan probably didn’t like to hear someone like Murray, well-regarded in many circles, dressing him down on his own show. He needed to hear it all the same. It’s reminiscent of another pivotal moment from the show’s past.
Rogan invited then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on his show for what appeared to be a tepid chat that let Dorsey slink away from his platform’s censorious ways. Rogan got an earful from his fans who felt he had let the CEO off too easily. So he invited Dorsey back on the show, but brought backup.
He added journalist gadfly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tim Pool to the conversation</a>. Pool brought some unflattering receipts, and the exchange proved far more illuminating than the first interview.
Perhaps Rogan needed a reminder of why his show matters and the consequences of having one of the biggest podcasts in the country.
Uncle Ben would be proud if he took that lesson seriously.
* * *
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-04-07-PM-2073

Joe Rogan’s Smith-Murray Debate Shows The Power And Risk Of Platforming

comedian

Debate

Douglas Murray

Entertainment

Joe Rogan

Libertarian Party

Podcast

Pro-Israel

Pro-Palestinian

Spotify

Ukraine-Russia War

Winston Churchill

World War II

YouTube

A French court has now banned Marine Le Pen, who is highly likely to win the next election in France, from seeking public office for five years. The court convicted her of misusing European Union funds.
&#8220;The court ruled that Le Pen and other members of her party illegally used 4.4 million euros, equivalent to $4.8 million, in EU funding that was earmarked for assistants helping lawmakers in the European Parliament with their work,&#8221; The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/frances-marine-le-pen-found-guilty-of-embezzlement-b8c42dac" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. &#8220;Monday’s sentence bars Le Pen from seeking public office for the next five years, thrusting her far-right party into limbo. Le Pen also received a four-year prison sentence. Half of that term was suspended, judges said, adding that she could serve the remaining two years by using an electronic bracelet or other alternatives to jail time. The ruling takes Le Pen out of contention for the 2027 race, unless she can win a swift appeal. Le Pen had been expected to enter that contest as a front-runner as President Emmanuel Macron will be term limited and other prominent contenders have yet to emerge.&#8221;
This is crazy — but this is part and parcel of the broader attempt by Left-wing judiciary activists across the globe to stop “populist politicians” from being able to run.
We saw it with President Trump, where the DOJ went after him for supposed crimes, the same crimes for which they let Joe Biden off the hook. We saw it in New York, where a New York attorney general filed a civil fraud lawsuit in an attempt to stop then-candidate Trump.
We have seen it in Brazil, where the entire judicial apparatus has been brought down on the head of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, in favor of Lula da Silva, who was then freed by that same exact judiciary.
We&#8217;ve seen it in Romania, where Cǎlin Georgescu won the election in 2024 and then the judiciary decided the election had been rigged by the Russians and annulled it. 
We have seen it in Israel, where the attorney general of Israel has been targeting Benjamin Netanyahu on specious charges for literally years, and the judiciary keep saying that Netanyahu can&#8217;t perform the basic functions of an executive, such as fire his attorney general or fire anyone in the executive branch.
And now we are seeing it in France.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2169-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
It is absolutely amazing to watch these unelected officials going out of their way to thwart the will of the people in supposed democracies. It&#8217;s really insane.
You want to talk about undermining democracy itself? This undermines democracy because the reaction to this is, “Okay, what if we just overthrow the judicial institutions?”
Why do I feel like this is a put-up job? Because it takes effect immediately. The point is to get her out of the elections. Thus they&#8217;re suspending her jail sentence but they are not suspending her ban from running.
Le Pen had denied the charges, “testifying in court that it was appropriate for the assistants to perform other party-related work because they were political aides, not direct employees of the European Parliament,” the Journal noted.
In other words, if the European Parliament didn’t want them focused solely on party-related tasks, perhaps it should have hired them directly, rather than paying the party to handle some of its work. That sounds like a strong defense.
Is the idea here that Marine Le Pen desperately needed a couple of million euros in order to pay off her political party? I feel like she probably could have raised it. Her party&#8217;s pretty big in France.
This is just the latest NATO member to reject a populist candidate by some sort of judicial intervention.
If you want to talk about undermining the argument that democracy must flourish in Europe, this would be a great way to do it.

FRANCE-POLITICS-JUSTICE-TRIAL-RN

Marine Le Pen Banned From Running

Corruption

Europe

European Union

France

Judiciary

Leftists

Marine Le Pen

Opinion

Parliament

Populism

Prison

President Trump’s Tariffs On Aluminum Imports Impact Price Of Beverage Makers’ Aluminum Cans

Paid-Off ‘Conservatives’ Are Fighting For Your Right To Use Food Stamps For Soda

Paid-Off 'Conservatives' Are Fighting For Your Right To Use Food Stamps For Soda

Coca-Cola

Department of Health and Human Services

Food

Food Stamps

Matt Walsh

President Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Twitter

There are a lot of things I&#8217;m willing to do for my podcast — a lot of sacrifices I&#8217;ve made over the years, both big and small. And usually I don&#8217;t like to draw attention to these sacrifices because no one tunes in to listen to my personal problems. But today I have to make an exception to my normal practice. And once you see the footage I&#8217;m about to share with you, you&#8217;ll see why.
I just endured what could be the single greatest trial of my podcasting career, if not my entire life on this planet. Without the assistance of any mind-altering substances or the YouTube fast-forward button or anything like that, I just listened to multiple minutes of Michelle Obama&#8217;s new podcast called &#8220;IMO.&#8221; Each episode is a full hour, and it features Michelle Obama, her brother Craig, and sometimes, if you&#8217;re lucky, a special guest.
The special guest, however, isn&#8217;t an important part of the formula. Whether the guest is there or not, you can expect to listen to approximately one hour of Michelle and her brother talking about themselves. It&#8217;s actually impressive, the degree to which the entire show is about inane, completely uninteresting details of these two people&#8217;s lives.
Here&#8217;s just a sampling of the first episode. And frankly, it&#8217;s an impressive achievement if you can even manage to get through this short montage of the most banal and uninteresting footage ever recorded. Here it is:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="007 FIRST EPISODE MONTAGE" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8bcFAL93VHE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
When she says &#8220;blah blah blah&#8221; at the end of that clip — that was the one moment, in this entire hour-long episode, that really resonated with me on a deep level. That was when I thought she recognized that actually, people didn&#8217;t want to hear about her inferiority complex at Princeton, or her mom giving her an alarm clock as a kid, or the precise educational credentials of her husband. Maybe this would mark a pivot point in the podcast, where she starts talking about something remotely interesting. But it never happened. It never even came close to happening.
By far the best part of the first episode was the comments section, which included lines like: &#8220;This should be called “Drop the Mike” with Michelle Obama&#8221;; &#8220;Remember when this guy drowned his chef in a lovers quarrel?&#8221;; and &#8220;Joan Rivers was Right.&#8221; And then Mark Dice chimes in with, &#8220;Which one is Michelle?” — which is, credit where it’s due, one of the funnier YouTube comments I’ve read in quit some time. Then there&#8217;s a bunch of people wondering why she&#8217;s unwilling to be seen in public with her husband anymore. And then there&#8217;s this observation: &#8220;Someone here has got some serious balls, by that I mean whoever hasn&#8217;t disabled the comments yet.&#8221;
And that last person makes a particularly good point. You will not find a single positive comment anywhere on the page. As of Wednesday afternoon, a full 24 hours after this episode launched, it managed to rack up just 65,000 views. And more than half of that figure is from trolls. In the first 15 hours, it had under 20,000 views. Now everyone&#8217;s flooding in to mock it — but in the first two days it did not come close to 100 thousand views, which is the bare minimum you&#8217;d expect a podcast like this to achieve. Overnight it seems to have made it up to 160 thousand views, which means they’re almost certainly paying for views now. But all in all, this show has not resonated, to put it mildly.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1555-michelle-obama-and-dylan-mulvaney-both-flop-in-the-same-week-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
It&#8217;s actually incredible, if you think about it. Someone as famous as Michelle Obama launches a podcast that&#8217;s been so widely promoted and publicized, and yet no one&#8217;s watching it. The media tells us that Michelle is highly popular and would be a shoo-in if she ran for president. But the numbers suggest that the public isn&#8217;t all that interested in her.
Just to be sure I wasn&#8217;t missing anything, I subjected myself to the second episode of the podcast, which was also released on Wednesday. This one features an actress as a guest, but it doesn&#8217;t remotely change what they talk about, which is themselves. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="008 SECOND EPISODE MONTAGE" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zSzl5i6oYbs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
The lack of self-awareness is genuinely breathtaking, and at least a little hilarious. That last clip came at the very end of the episode, by the way. She spends the whole time talking about herself. And then she nosedives into astrology, and she claims she&#8217;s really interested in trying to understand other people. Having discussed herself for two hours across two episodes, Michelle Obama wants you to know that she&#8217;s really interested in understanding other people. That&#8217;s what this is all about. And once again, the comments are full of people asking what Big Mike did to the chef. This episode has about 75 thousand views in two days. Just for comparison sake, Joe Rogan released an episode on the same day. It has a million views.
Unfortunately for anyone hoping the misery would end here, there was one more video — a &#8220;digital exclusive&#8221; — that they uploaded along with these episodes. Picture the most cliched, trite content imaginable. And somehow this will probably exceed your expectations. Even if you managed to get through the other two clips, there&#8217;s a very good chance this will take you out. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="009 DIGITAL SHORT HOTDOG" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qJ8pAk4ROqk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Whatever focus group they paid to come up with segments like this, they need to get a refund immediately. It&#8217;s like if you asked AI to generate a relatable podcast. It would come up with exactly this segment, and have everyone say exactly what these people are saying, and then it would give the podcast the name &#8220;IMO.&#8221; This is what Michelle Obama — who again, some people still pretend is major star and a potential presidential contender — is capable of producing. By the way, that video about hotdogs has 25 thousand views.
This is not just a problem that Michelle is facing. This is a broader crisis on the Left. The trans activist Dylan Mulvaney, for example, has just launched yet another effort to get himself some publicity, after falling off the face of the Earth. Specifically he released a new book that promises a &#8220;modern lens to womanhood,&#8221; even though it&#8217;s written by a man who decided he was a woman a couple of years ago. And predictably, his book launch has been a complete disaster, like everything else he&#8217;s ever been associated with. The word &#8220;flop&#8221; does not begin to describe this particular publication. It sits at number 1,081 on Amazon at the moment, just a few days after its release. A day after it’s release it had not cracked the top 500. This probably translates to maybe a few hundred books sold, at most. To go along with a rating of 2.9 stars on Amazon. So it&#8217;s an unmitigated failure.
Initially, I wasn&#8217;t even aware that Mulvaney&#8217;s book had come out. But then I saw that, like Michelle Obama&#8217;s podcast, pretty much every major media publication in the country has been covering it. CBS News, for example, had a friendly sit-down with Mulvaney. They asked him a bunch of softball questions which he somehow couldn&#8217;t answer. Getting a sit-down interview on CBS to talk about your book is the kind of promotion most authors can only dream about. Conservative authors especially. But this is the sort of assistance Mulvaney, as the great trans mascot, gets. And it has not moved the needle for him even one inch.
But maybe Mulvaney&#8217;s most embarrassing media appearance came on &#8220;The View,&#8221; when he didn&#8217;t seem capable of articulating a coherent thought. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="010 MULVANEY RANS SPORTS" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FxwVHZBl9vA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
So &#8220;Whoopi Goldberg&#8221; begins by distancing herself from Gavin Newsom, because he dared to suggest — dishonestly — that he doesn&#8217;t think men should compete against women in sports. And then she asks Mulvaney about his thoughts on the topic, and it turns out that he has no thoughts. He can&#8217;t defend the idea of men competing against women, because it makes no sense. So instead, he defers to someone named &#8220;Schuyler&#8221; who he says is a &#8220;trans athlete.&#8221;
From what I can tell, Schuyler was a top-performing female swimmer at Harvard. Then she decided during a &#8220;gap year&#8221; that she&#8217;s really a man, so she swam with the men. And in that capacity, she went from a record-breaking swimmer to one of the worst athletes on the team. Somehow this is supposed to be proof of something, I guess. If you ask Schuyler, it&#8217;s proof that men don&#8217;t have any advantages over women in sports, even though Schuyler herself is living proof that the opposite is true.
But as the interview continued, Whoopi offered her own assessment of the situation, in an attempt to pick up the slack for Mulvaney. 
Here&#8217;s how that went:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="011 WHOOPI TAKES OVER THE DISCUSSION" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Glx6e1B8M6g?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
What Whoopi pretends not to understand is that no one&#8217;s &#8220;assuming&#8221; that women are weaker. We know that it&#8217;s true. It&#8217;s true in every relevant respect. This is why high school boys can defeat the best women&#8217;s soccer team on the planet. It&#8217;s why women don&#8217;t play in the NFL. And it&#8217;s why no one is watching &#8220;The View&#8221; anymore, or buying Dylan Mulvaney&#8217;s book, or listening to Michelle Obama&#8217;s podcast. People are tired of being lied to, in the name of a political ideology that becomes more discredited by the day.
We could add to this list the total failure of Meghan Markel’s Netflix show, and her Spotify podcast that was just canceled. These are all people — all leftists — who have been heavily promoted by the media and Hollywood. They get the kind of mainstream exposure that nobody on the Right has ever gotten or will ever get. And yet the audience doesn’t care. They can’t sell books or a podcast. The public is totally disinterested.
In fact, just about the only success the Left has had lately is with Gavin Newsom&#8217;s new podcast. That&#8217;s actually doing fairly well. But it&#8217;s only doing well because his guests are all Republicans. If Gavin Newsom were doing a solo show, or talking to other Leftists, it would do about as well as &#8220;IMO.&#8221; In other words, the Left has the same problem culturally that they have politically. 
They have no stars. No leaders in the culture or on the political scene. There&#8217;s a reason nearly all of the most popular political podcasts are right-wing. No matter how aggressively the Left tries to force demented actors and disingenuous politicians and incoherent ideologies on the public, it’s just not working. They can shove all of these people in our face, but what they’re discovering is that they can’t make us care.

IMO Live: Michelle Obama, Craig Robinson & Dr. Laurie Santos – 2025 SXSW Conference And Festival

Michelle Obama And Dylan Mulvaney Both Flop In The Same Week

Dylan Mulvaney

Legacy Media

Michelle Obama

The View

President Donald Trump turned a 47-year-old song into a dance craze. Even NFL stars couldn’t resist doing Trump’s “YMCA” dance in their end-zone celebrations.
What a difference one White House term makes.
Trump’s first four years in office found all of Hollywood turned against him, from late-night TV to shows and movies.
Now, pop culture is veering in MAGA’s direction, a moment the Right never expected. And it’s possible thanks to the democratization of the media, from YouTube to podcasting.
It helps that the public’s trust in legacy media outlets, Trump’s entrenched enemy, has never been lower. More people are willing to give the unusual politician a look through a pop culture filter.
Right-leaning artists like Tom MacDonald can crush the iTunes charts without a major label behind him. The rapper’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kGpohEpuTE">Facts</a>,” featuring Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, crashed the music charts without the press’ help (number one on the Billboard Rap chart). The same happened when MacDonald gave canceled comic Roseanne Barr <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/roseanne-barr-drops-daddys-home-rap-video-with-tom-macdonald" target="_blank" rel="noopener">her rap closeup with “Daddy’s Home”</a> a tribute to President 45/47.
<div id="attachment_891745" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-891745" class="size-large wp-image-891745" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-1024x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: YouTube/Tom MacDonald &quot;Facts&quot; feat. Ben Shapiro" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/MixCollage-14-Mar-2025-10-16-AM-4499-2048x1153.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot: YouTube/Tom MacDonald &#8220;Facts&#8221; feat. Ben Shapiro</div>
Those aren’t aberrations.
“Justice for All,” credited to Trump himself, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2023/03/21/donald-trump-lands-his-first-no-1-hit-on-a-billboard-chart/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">debuted at no. 1</a> on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart in 2023.
Trump has been very good to Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” The late-night showcase routinely outdraws its broadcast competitors, although it airs an hour-plus earlier in the evening. The show’s ratings hit their zenith when Trump appeared on the show’s avuncular panel.
The president’s episode gave host Greg Gutfeld <a href="https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/donald-trump-gutfeld-ratings-5-million-viewers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his highest numbers to date</a> – 4.9 million viewers. Most nights, the show’s willingness to praise Trump’s policies while mocking the Democrats’ responses have kept the show’s ratings strong.
Trump’s own reality series “The Apprentice” made a sudden return to streaming this month. Prime Video is releasing the first seven episodes of the Mark Burnett-produced show, and season one instantly hit the platform’s Top 10 chart.
<div id="attachment_891725" style="width: 894px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-891725" class="size-large wp-image-891725" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-138441695-884x576.jpg" alt="SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE -- Episode 16 -- Air Date 04/03/2004 -- Pictured: (l-r) George Ross, Donald Trump, Carolyn Kepcher during &quot;The Apprentice&quot; skit on April 3, 2004 (Photo by Mary Ellen Matthews/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)" width="884" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-138441695-884x576.jpg 884w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-138441695-300x195.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-138441695-768x500.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-138441695.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 884px) 100vw, 884px" />Mary Ellen Matthews/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images</div>
The show played a critical part in Trump’s branding principles while introducing the country to his now-grown children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump, Jr. Now, millions want to rewatch that evolution from the beginning. 
The legacy press told Americans that Tony Hinchcliffe’s raw routine at October’s Madison Square Garden Trump rally marked the end of his presidential hopes. We were told that Hinchcliffe’s “racist” joke about Puerto Rico’s garbage problem would ensure GOP Latino voters stayed home.
Journalists covered the story at great length, making it a key media narrative in the days before Nov. 5.
Except Latino voters, by and large, didn’t care.
And what happened to Hinchcliffe? He just snagged a major Netflix deal to bring his signature “Kill Tony” podcast <a href="https://x.com/NetflixIsAJoke/status/1899113010997661879" target="_blank" rel="noopener">to the streaming giant</a>.
<div id="attachment_891771" style="width: 820px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-891771" class="size-large wp-image-891771" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2180711933-810x576.jpg" alt="US comedian Tony Hinchcliffe speaks during a campaign rally for former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on October 27, 2024. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)" width="810" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2180711933-810x576.jpg 810w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2180711933-300x213.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2180711933-768x546.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2180711933.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px" />ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images</div>
The pro-Trump label isn’t foolproof. Dinesh D’Souza’s “Vindicating Trump” earned $1.3 million at the US box office late last year, below most of his previous films. It’s still a solid amount for a documentary – most nonfiction films fail to crack the $1 million mark in theaters.
So what changed? How did pro-Trump content gain so much ground?
Independent media kept maturing after Trump’s first term, outpacing mainstream platforms in many regards. New media artists can create content and do it at a much smaller price point.
And, more importantly, a Right-leaning ecosystem of podcasts, YouTubers, and social media types can now spread the word more effectively. Credit Elon Musk’s X takeover for keeping more conservative voices on the platform.
Meanwhile, legacy outlets continue to shrink both in size and cultural clout. And the downsizing continues as <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/amy-robach-cries-tj-holmes-podcast-abc-layoffs-2042630" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more media layoffs</a> rock the industry.
Anti-Trump art is having a similarly tough time.
While far-Left late-night shows have mostly maintained their audience shares, the same isn’t true at the local movie house.
Last year’s anti-Trump drama “The Apprentice,” released at the peak of election season, seemed primed to draw the anti-MAGA faithful in record numbers. The film’s cartoonish look at an ‘80s era Trump (Sebastian Stan), under the alleged tutelage of fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), was catnip to the president’s detractors.
If only they lined up to watch it.
<div id="attachment_891733" style="width: 838px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-891733" class="size-large wp-image-891733" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2177860859-828x576.jpg" alt="LONDON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 15: Sebastian Stan attends the Headline Gala screening of &quot;The Apprentice&quot; during the 68th BFI London Film Festival at The Royal Festival Hall on October 15, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Dave Benett/WireImage)" width="828" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2177860859-828x576.jpg 828w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2177860859-300x209.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2177860859-768x534.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2177860859.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 828px) 100vw, 828px" />Dave Benett/WireImage</div>
The critically hailed film flopped with a $4 million haul stateside. That’s despite endless, fawning media coverage. Few films generated more free press, however, than “The Apprentice.”
More recently, another anti-Trump film is struggling to cover its exorbitant budget. Director Bong Joon-ho says his sci-fi thriller “Mickey 17” <a href="https://ew.com/bong-joon-ho-donald-trump-inspired-mark-ruffalo-mickey-17-villain-11688849" target="_blank" rel="noopener">isn’t a direct attack on Trump</a>. Many disagree, noting co-star Mark Ruffalo’s politician character has Trumpian traits and his followers wear red hats.
Subtle.
The film made $19 million domestically during its opening frame. That’s a solid number for some projects, but not one carrying a $118 million budget. Some suggest the film could cost Warner Bros. <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/wb-mickey-17-cut-tested-151954129.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$100 million</a> by the end of its theatrical run.
The most surprising moment of Trump 2.0 from a pop culture perspective? The recent Oscars telecast didn’t feature his name, and host Conan O’Brien indirectly referenced the 47th president once, and via a late-in-the-show quip.
All of the above opens up new opportunities for Right-leaning artists. Their voices are harder to ignore, and the tools at their disposal have never been greater.
Two potential red flags to consider.
If President Trump fails to fulfill his pre-election promises the country may have less appetite for MAGA-aligned content. Hollywood progressives may rise up anew, smelling blood in the political waters.
And if creators think a pro-Trump veneer will make audiences swallow sub-par content, think again.
* * *
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

US-POLITICS-CPAC-TRUMP

Riding On Trump’s Pop Culture Coattails

Riding On Trump's Pop Culture Coattails

Amazon Prime

Donald Trump

Hollywood

Social Media

The Apprentice

Tom MacDonald

Working in corporate engagement, I often hear questions about why the ‘long game’ matters in changing woke company policies. If executive orders can instantly push companies away from DEI or ESG initiatives, why take other pathways? The answer is clear: lasting change takes time. JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, just proved this with a major policy shift — one that speaks louder than any theory ever could.
In 2022, JPMorgan Chase <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/03/10/opinion/i-was-debanked-by-jpmorgan-chase-but-fought-back-and-won/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">debanked</a> former U.S. Senator and Ambassador Sam Brownback, after Brownback opened an account for the newly-formed National Committee for Religious Freedom. The son of a Kansas farmer, Brownback refused to back down. When Brownback asked the bank for its rationale in shuttering his account, he was met with conflicting (and incorrect) explanations as to why.
Brownback’s debanking experience was the start of a major wave of scrutiny over exactly what conditions a bank will close a customer’s account. Victims range from nonprofit organizations like Indigenous Advance, an organization serving Ugandan widows &amp; orphans debanked by Bank of America in 2023, to Melania &amp; Barron Trump, who Melania <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-01-24-Letter.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">described</a> as having been debanked in her memoir, prompting further inquiry from the House Committee on Oversight.
Yet JPMorgan consistently ranked as one of the major bad actors in the debanking saga, closing not only Brownback’s account (and actually <a href="https://www.ag.ky.gov/Press%20Release%20Attachments/23.5.2%20Letter%20to%20Chase.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asked</a> for his org’s donor list for restoring service) but several other conservative nonprofits. The biggest bank in America was quickly racking up hits on its record of political neutrality and customer equality.
This trend might have gone unaddressed had the Right simply let the issue lie. Luckily, some of the most influential names in both the conservative legal, financial, and government worlds stepped up to the plate. Pressure for increased transparency and commitments to ditch any policies that could lead to a client being debanked for political reasons has come from all directions, from legal giants like <a href="https://adfmedia.org/press-release/19-states-chase-stop-misleading-customers-commit-equality-treatment/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alliance Defending Freedom</a> to <a href="https://www.viewpointdiversityscore.org/news/statement-on-debanking-and-free-speech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">notable financial professionals</a> to <a href="https://www.ag.ky.gov/Press%20Release%20Attachments/23.5.2%20Letter%20to%20Chase.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">state financial officers and attorneys general</a>. As that public pressure mounted, shareholder pressure has been growing from the inside for the past three years, spurred on by organizations like the firm I work for, Bowyer Research, with Chase investors like financial advisor David Bahnsen spending literal years <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bahnsen-takes-the-fight-today-to-jpmorgan-chase/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">urging</a> the company to clarify its approach to debanking — and fix its spotty track record on political neutrality.
And Chase listened.
In 2023, JPMorgan made the decision to axe its “social risk” policy from its payment processing arm, no longer allowing vague terms like “intolerance” and “hate” to determine whether a customer was fit to continue doing business at Chase. But the biggest win so far came several days ago, when Chase agreed to a policy change explicitly protecting customers and employees from discrimination based on religious or political views.
This is huge. Many stories about companies ditching woke policies consist of the company putting out a public statement (and often the controversy that follows). Statements are great, but they’re not the ideal. Companies can hide behind statements — and do. Several companies that have publicly made statements supporting political neutrality clearly have work to do when it comes to actually putting their policies where their mouths are.
But companies can’t hide behind policy changes. That’s why they’re a sign of both real progress and good faith. Shareholders like Bahnsen, and groups like ADF &amp; Bowyer Research, have been engaging with Chase for years to get this change. Make no mistake: Chase’s willingness to protect against future political/religious debanking is the result of real shareholders using real influence to create real change. It’s a victory for Chase’s customers and shareholders, but also for the company itself. It’s a win for a company to clear up concerns about corporate bias, a win that’s been a long time coming, and a win that hopefully many other banks will find instructive.
* * *
Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Opinion, C-SPAN, and The Daily Wire. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacWillour" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@IsaacWillour</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Major US Bank Bosses To Discuss Debanking With Senate Committee

Major Win: JPMorgan Chase Ends Political Debanking

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Banking

Banks

Bias

Censorship

Christians

Corporations

debanking

Jamie Dimon

JP Morgan

Woke Culture

This is the second part of an edited <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/michael-knowles-live-at-yaf-ordo-amoris-the-hierarchy-of-political-love" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speech</a>, titled “‘Ordo Amoris’: The Hierarchy of Political Love,” delivered by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michael Knowles</a> at the YAF Freedom Conference in San Diego, California.
* * *
Saint Thomas’ reasoning is, as always, clear and persuasive in his discussions of the order of charity. In the “Summa Theologiae,” Secunda Secundae, Question 26, he writes, “There must needs be some order in things loved out of charity, which order is in reference to the first principle of that love, which is God.” This expression alone proves editor of The Yale Review James Surowiecki had no idea what he was talking about when he <a href="https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1885302779058557080" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed</a> that the ordo amoris is not in the Gospels.
Not only is the ordo amoris in the Gospels, but it is also the principle articulated in the most famous line of the Gospels, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022%3A37-39&amp;version=ESV" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matthew 22:37-39</a>: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
There is, in other words, an order of charity — a hierarchy of love — and this order is the very foundation of Christian morality. We must love God first, and only then and upon that basis do we love everything else. And this order does not just comprise two categories. It isn’t just “God” and “everyone else.”
We find further scriptural evidence of the order of charity in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%205%3A8&amp;version=RSV" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1 Timothy 5:8</a>: “If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” A man does not necessarily disown the faith — he is not necessarily worse than an unbeliever — if he does not care for some random guy on the other side of the world. We have greater obligations to those who are closest to us.
This moral insight is attested to both by philosophy and religion — reason and revelation — and yet many liberals deny it. And we know they deny, not just because of their snarky tweets about JD Vance, but also from social science. Shortly after the ordo amoris debate kicked off, a graph went viral on social media.
<div id="attachment_886629" style="width: 678px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-886629" class="wp-image-886629 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/41467_2019_12227_Fig5_HTML.jpg" alt="Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Note. The highest value on the heatmap scale is 20 units for liberals, and 12 units for conservatives. Moral circle rings, from inner to outer, are described as follows: (1) all of your immediate family, (2) all of your extended family, (3) all of your closest friends, (4) all of your friends (including distant ones), (5) all of your acquaintances, (6) all people you have ever met, (7) all people in your country, (8) all people on your continent, (9) all people on all continents, (10) all mammals, (11) all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds, (12) all animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae, (13) all animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms, (14) all living things in the universe including plants and trees, (15) all natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks, (16) all things in existence. SOURCE: “Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle.” Adam Waytz, Ravi Iyer, Liane Young, Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham. National Center for Biotechnology Information. National Library of Medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31558713/" width="668" height="281" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/41467_2019_12227_Fig5_HTML.jpg 668w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/41467_2019_12227_Fig5_HTML-300x126.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 668px) 100vw, 668px" />SOURCE: “Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle.” Adam Waytz, Ravi Iyer, Liane Young, Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham. National Center for Biotechnology Information. National Library of Medicine.</div>
It’s from a 2019 <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31558713/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a> titled, “Ideological Differences in the Expanse of the Moral Circle.” The graph depicts heat maps “indicating highest moral allocation by ideology.” The “moral circle rings” extend from the center outward. Care for “your immediate family” is in the center, followed by “all of your extended family,” then “all of your closest friends,” then “all of your friends (including distant ones),” then your acquaintances, people you’ve ever met, your countrymen, people on your continent, all people, all mammals, all other animals, all living creatures (including amoebae), all potential life in the universe (including aliens), all living things (including plants and trees), all non-living things (including rocks), and finally all things in existence.
The study found that conservatives, being normal, tend to care more about the things closest to them; they tend to care more about their immediate families than they care about rocks. Liberals, being the sort of people who hug trees and hate their dads, tend not to care more about things closer to them. The study found that “the more liberal people were, the more they allocated equally to humans and non-humans.” A distinguishing feature of Right-wingers is that they are more likely “to morally prioritize humans over nonhumans.”
Some libs have attempted to argue that conservatives simply misunderstand the study. They argue the study shows that conservatives don’t care more about their families than liberals do; it’s just that liberals care more generally. Now, even if that were true — and it’s a perfectly plausible hypothesis given liberals’ frequent inability to control their emotions — it would still be extremely disordered to care more about strangers than about one’s own parents. Even if they cared more overall — which, it turns out, they don’t.
Liberals really do care more about rocks and trees than they do about their own families. We don’t need a chart or study to show us that. Just ask a liberal about climate change and abortion. Liberals will rend their garments over environmental threats to the coral reef, but they’ll dance in the streets to celebrate the murder of their own children through abortion.
And, it turns out, the study shows as much. Because the study “constrained the number of units that participants could assign to each group, forcing participants to distribute moral concern in a zero-sum fashion” (i.e., the more concern they allocate to one circle, the less they can allocate to another circle). And the researchers did this because research suggests that’s how people really do distribute “empathy and moral concern.” Of course: It’s a finite world. We only have so many hours to worry. We only have so many tears to shed.
But just to prove how deep this moral perversion runs on the political Left, the researchers conducted another study to test what would happen if they did not constrain people to zero-sum moral thinking. And what they discovered was that “even when participants’ allocations were not constrained, the same pattern replicated.” Conservatives, the researchers showed, exhibit “greater concern and preference for family relative to friends, the nation relative to the world … and humans relative to non-humans.”
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show</a></h3>
So what conclusion are we to draw from this? Is it just a matter of preference? “Conservatives love their family and friends; liberals love trees and rocks” — de gustibus non disputandum est! No accounting for taste! I don’t think so. Any reasonable person knows that one should care more for his children than for rocks and trees. If liberals do not, it is because they have made a moral error.
And the liberals didn’t even necessarily fall into this moral error because they’re wicked. More likely, I think, they fall into it because they’re trying (and failing) to be good. I suspect most of the time it actually comes from a place of love. But that love is misplaced. It’s out of order. And disordered love tends to evil, just as the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
G.K. Chesterton explains the phenomenon with regard to his friend, the socialist atheist George Bernard Shaw.
“Bernard Shaw,” Chesterton <a href="https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/439/orthodoxy2-3.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “has a heroically large and generous heart; but not a heart in the right place. And this is so of the typical society of our time. The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues.”
“When a religious scheme is shattered,” he concludes, “it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad.”
Our nation’s — our whole civilization’s — religious scheme has obviously been shattered. The vice president invoked Thomas Aquinas, and our political elites were left drooling and scratching their heads.
The scheme has been shattered, the virtues have wandered, and these wandering virtues — these errant loves — have caused our present political ills. The only remedy is to restore order — not just to our streets and our communities but to our loves — if for no other reason than that without order, without caring for ourselves and our own, we can’t properly care for anyone else either.

MixCollage-04-Mar-2025-09-54-AM-7123

Restoring The Order Of Love: The Remedy To Political Ills

Catholics

Environmentalism

JD Vance

Liberals

Michael Knowles

U.S. Politics

Young America's Foundation

One of the easiest ways to tell you&#8217;re dealing with an honest person is seeing how they react when some of their most basic, fundamental assumptions are proven to be completely wrong. A few weeks ago, for example, we talked about how some Flat-Earthers responded when they went on a trip to Antarctica that debunked their entire belief system. They sat there and watched 24 hours of sunlight, and they realized that the Earth has to be rotating in space. And to their credit, a few of these Flat-Earthers admitted their mistake, on-camera. They said that, from that moment forward, they would be whatever the opposite of a Flat-Earther is. Sphere-earthers, I guess.
On the other hand, malevolent liars will never admit that they&#8217;re wrong. Even when they&#8217;re confronted with the reality of the situation — which is that everything they&#8217;ve been saying for years was actually wrong — they&#8217;ll find some way to deny it. They&#8217;ll absolve themselves of any responsibility for their deception. And if they can, they&#8217;ll blame you for challenging them. These are people who are not interested in the truth. They have no integrity whatsoever. And therefore they have no business being in any position of power or authority. Trustworthy leaders will admit their mistakes. Corrupt and incompetent leaders will obfuscate, deny, and double down.
With that distinction in mind, recent events have made it abundantly clear that our neighbors to the north in Canada are ruled by the latter group of people. These are people who have no interest in the truth. They are driven entirely by an ideology that, it just so happens, is explicitly anti-Christian and anti-American. And as I&#8217;ll explain in a moment, that has significant implications for the United States, as Canada becomes increasingly hostile towards our country.
But before I get into those implications, I need to explain what exactly the Canadian government has just done. As you may remember, for several years, Canada&#8217;s government, along with the country&#8217;s state media, has been advancing an extraordinary claim as if it&#8217;s the truth. They&#8217;ve said, again and again, that unmarked mass graves had been found at Canada&#8217;s &#8220;residential schools&#8221; — which were boarding schools for Indian children that existed for around 100 years, peaking in the early 20th century. And the discovery of these unmarked mass graves was significant, Canadians were told, because Christian churches were running these residential schools.
In other words, for years, the dominant narrative in Canada has been that Christian schools were so horrific that Indian children died all the time, and they were just tossed in unmarked graves when they expired. Therefore, Canadians were told that Canada is a genocidal state, and Christianity is bad. So predictably, dozens of Christian churches burned. And in response, the country&#8217;s outgoing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said the arson was &#8220;understandable.&#8221; They only made one arrest in the wake of those arson attacks on churches, by the way — some of which were within a few miles of the U.S. border. Canadians, for the most part, stopped celebrating their independence day, out of shame over this story. Canadian secondary schools put images like this one up on the wall:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-884523 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-432x576.jpeg" alt="" width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-432x576.jpeg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GipULN0XwAAM5jF.jpeg 1512w" sizes="(max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" /></div>
As you can see, it tells students that nearly 2,000 &#8220;unmarked graves&#8221; have been found. This has been an all-out, all-encompassing narrative in Canada. But to be clear, this narrative about the residential schools was not simply pushed by Canadian state media. In fact, the narrative actually had its origins in U.S.media — including in outlets that, we now know, were taking money from the Biden administration.
The New York Times, for instance, was one of the <a href="https://quillette.com/blog/2024/09/20/when-will-the-new-york-times-correct-its-flawed-reporting-on-canadas-unmarked-graves/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first outlets</a> to report back in 2021 that <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-year-of-the-graves-how-the-worlds-media-got-it-wrong-on-residential-school-graves" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;unmarked graves&#8221;</a> had been discovered in Canada. They did a whole series of reports on the topic over the summer, all of which were premised on the idea that &#8220;ground-penetrating radar&#8221; had discovered evidence of grave sites. 
Then &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; joined in, with reports like this one. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 60 Minutes Graves" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YKHM1uLs_zc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
So Anderson Cooper is very concerned about the hundreds of unmarked graves that have supposedly been discovered. He specifically mentioned the hundreds of graves that were allegedly discovered at a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. And Canada&#8217;s state media said much the same thing. The CBC for example <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tk-eml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>: &#8220;Preliminary findings from a survey of the grounds at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School have uncovered the remains of 215 children buried at the site, the Tk&#8217;emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation said Thursday.&#8221;
When you see television segments and news articles like this, you might assume — naturally — that some amount of vetting has been done to ensure that these claims are at least potentially accurate. These are obviously incendiary claims that are being made, so presumably, you might think that someone would have looked into them before publishing. But that was never true in this case. More than three years later, not a single body has been found in an unmarked grave at any residential school in Canada. And they certainly haven&#8217;t been uncovered in Kamloops. It turns out that, in fact, the alleged &#8220;unmarked grave site&#8221; in Kamloops was, in reality, a 2,000-foot long, 3-foot deep trench that was established in 1924 as a septic field to store sewage from the school. As the Dorchester Review <a href="https://www.dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/the-kamloops-discovery-a-fact-check-two-years-later?srsltid=AfmBOopXCdjxqY3JXETULV7I9BJZfAioMCrMF0Bv2anSJXCnX9tSnsUe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>, &#8220;Ground penetrating radar cannot distinguish between a trench lined with clay tiles and a putative child’s grave.&#8221;
This is the kind of information that, if you&#8217;re dealing with honest people, would lead to mass resignations and terminations, for starters. Obviously, no one with any self-respect in the Canadian media or in the Canadian government should keep their job after spreading an anti-Christian lie that caused dozens of churches to go up in flames. But instead of admitting they were wrong, Canada&#8217;s government is of course taking the dishonorable approach. They&#8217;re slowly slinking away like the cowards they are.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1545-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-4-years-of-searching-and-0-bodies-found-canada-cuts-funds-on-search-for-unmarked-mass-graves" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a> that: 
<blockquote>Canada is pulling funds from groups still searching for alleged bodies buried at Indigenous residential schools funded by Catholics and other Christians. An organization and a committee of experts formed to search for the elusive remains have both lost funding in the past month, following four years of searches that have found zero remains.</blockquote>
We&#8217;re talking about organizations that have received millions of dollars from Canada&#8217;s massive, 300 million-dollar &#8220;Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund.&#8221; These nonprofits have fancy names like &#8220;Survivors&#8217; Secretariat&#8221; and the &#8220;National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials.&#8221; And now, after collecting millions of dollars in taxpayer money, they&#8217;re finally getting cut off, because it turns out that the entire animating idea behind their &#8220;nonprofit&#8221; was in fact a scam. The Canadian government is now rolling back its financial investments in this deranged and destructive lie. For all intents and purposes, the residential schools hoax is finally dead.
But that does not mean that the Canadian government is admitting, outright, that it was wrong. That would take an ounce of integrity that they simply do not have. So instead, both political parties in Canada are now rallying around the idea that no one should be able to question the narrative that they&#8217;re now retreating from. In other words, Canada has now entered a kind of reality distortion field, where everyone knows the government was wrong for the last several years, but no one can admit it.
This is footage from just a couple of days ago. It aired on CBC. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Conservative MLA" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/965JEm88974?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Those were conservative politicians in that clip. That&#8217;s Canada&#8217;s conservative party — supposedly the opposition to the liberals. They&#8217;re telling this politician to retract her factually accurate statement about unmarked gravesites in Canada. No one in that clip actually refutes anything she said. Instead, they just tell her that it&#8217;s inappropriate to state the truth about these unmarked graves, because it contradicts a broader narrative they want to establish.
As tempting as it may be to think that nothing in Canada affects us here in the United States, the truth is that we can&#8217;t ignore what&#8217;s happening there. And that&#8217;s not just because of the cruelty that&#8217;s been inflicted on Christian Canadians in recent years. That&#8217;s because, at the same moment that Canada is uniting behind malicious, anti-Christian defamation, the country&#8217;s leaders are desperately seeking to expand their power globally.
In particular, some of Canada&#8217;s most prominent politicians — like Chrystia Freeland, who could be the country&#8217;s next prime minister — are openly suggesting that Canada should join a nuclear alliance to handle the &#8220;threat&#8221; that, in her view, is posed by the United States. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Chrystia Freeland" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QujvvfrP4C4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
This is the same woman who gleefully froze truckers&#8217; bank accounts when they committed the crime of peacefully protesting her government&#8217;s unlawful COVID mandates. She cheered as journalists were arrested and elderly women were trampled with horses in Ottawa&#8217;s downtown core, as a result of her declaration of martial law. She was one of the leading proponents of the mass-graves hoax. And she&#8217;s never apologized for any of it. Instead, now she wants Canada to join a hostile military alliance with foreign powers, while she&#8217;s contemplating the use of nuclear weapons against the United States. And at the moment, it&#8217;s not a stretch to say that she could replace Justin Trudeau as the leader of Canada&#8217;s liberal party — a party that, as we just saw, isn&#8217;t much different from the conservatives.
What this means is that, while the conclusion of the mass-graves hoax was anticlimactic at best, Canadian leaders actually see it as a springboard for more authoritarian crackdowns and more overt anti-Christian, anti-American hostility. Whatever credibility Canada had as a staunch American ally, or a legitimately Christian nation, is now completely gone. Canadian leaders would rather lie than admit the truth that everyone can clearly see. No country can survive for long when it&#8217;s committed, to such a great extent, to the denial of reality. And though they don&#8217;t seem interested in admitting it, that is the commitment Canadian politicians have now made.

Liberal Party Of Canada Leadership Debate

The ‘Mass Graves’ Hoax Is Officially Dead, And No One Will Be Held Accountable

The 'Mass Graves' Hoax Is Officially Dead, And No One Will Be Held Accountable

60 Minutes

Canada

Hoax

indigenous

Justin Trudeau

Last week, Gwynne Wilcox, former Chair of the National Labor Relations Board <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/former-nlrb-member-sues-trump-administration-over-firing-2025-02-05/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> President Trump, demanding her reinstatement. She believes her firing is unconstitutional because long standing precedent protects heads of independent agencies from removal.
Unfortunately for Wilcox, the conservative majority Supreme Court is unlikely to rule in her favor as President Trump’s action falls in line with the legal Right’s long term goal of ending independent agencies and establishing robust executive control over the federal bureaucracy.
Wilcox is relying on the 1935 case <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/295us602" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Humphrey’s Executor v. US</a>, where the Supreme Court held that heads of agencies which yield “quasi legislative or judicial” power cannot be removed without cause. Humphrey’s Executor and its successor case, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/487/654/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Morrison v. Olson</a> are the bedrocks of modern administrative law. In Morrison, the Supreme Court further limited the President’s removal power by expanding Humphrey’s Executor’s ruling to nearly all officers of the United States.
But the Court only achieved this by inventing a legal test that prioritizes independent agencies&#8217; technocratic role over the Constitution’s structure, which solely vests the President with the executive power — including the power to fire federal bureaucrats. At the time, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia was the lone dissenter in Morrison and argued that the removal power was imperative to check abuses of government.
Scalia’s iconic dissent in Morrison represents the legal Right’s historic skepticism of independent agencies and shows how they <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/us/politics/conservative-legal-movement-supreme-court.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">favor</a> expanded executive control of the federal bureaucracy — a view they have held since the Nixon administration. This skepticism has resulted in the rise of the Unitary Executive Theory: a theory of executive power that argues that because the Constitution solely vests the President with executive power, the President exclusively wields power over all executive agencies.
Under the Unitary Executive Theory, independent agencies aren’t really independent because they are executive agencies utilizing executive power — meaning they are subject to executive control. Unitary Executive Theory has become popular in conservative legal circles, notably within organizations like the widely influential Federalist Society.
Conservatives have good reasons to oppose independent agencies. Historically embedded bureaucrats have fought against conservative presidents’ attempts to deregulate by stalling the deregulatory agenda.
In the first Trump Administration, bureaucrats <a href="https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-bureaucrats-resisted-president-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">worked</a> to stall Trump’s agenda by withholding expertise or by refusing to inform superiors of relevant litigation. Conservatives dislike this because they think the federal bureaucracy should not work against the people’s elected executive. They also believe there is a democratic interest in enhanced executive control over agency personnel. Conservative thinkers like political scientist John Mariani warned that agencies which are not<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/us/politics/conservative-legal-movement-supreme-court.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> accountable</a> to democratic pressures create rules harming constituents they try to serve, resulting in tyranny.
The conservative legal movement’s hope is that by restoring executive removal powers over independent agencies, they will restore democratic pressures to administrative agencies and create better policies in line with the public’s needs.
Their influence was apparent in 2020, when the Supreme Court chose to roll back Morrison’s expansive holding in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-7_n6io.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Seila Law v. CFPB</a>. In Seila, the Court limited Morrison’s good cause protections to independent agencies with multi-member boards. What’s notable is that some members of the Supreme Court’s conservative block were dissatisfied with Selia’s outcome, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch calling Humphrey’s Executor’s survival, ““[A] direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people.” Because Amy Coney Barrett is now a Justice, the Court has become more conservative than it was when Seila was decided. This means the Justices are ready to take a renewed challenge to independent agencies as the legal Right has cemented its place on the Supreme Court.
Fortunately for the legal Right, President Trump won’t face much resistance at the high court on his decision to fire Chairwoman Wilcox, as Justices Gorsuch and Thomas already want Humphrey’s Executor and its successor cases overturned. Furthermore, with Barrett on the Court, Chief Justice Roberts can no longer dilute the conservative bloc&#8217;s decisions. President Trump has rightly assessed that this Court is poised to overturn Humphrey’s and its progeny and acted swiftly to achieve this goal.
Gwynne Wilcox’s lawsuit provides the Supreme Court’s conservative wing the chance to finish what the conservative legal movement has sought for decades and overturn Humphrey’s Executor. By doing so, they will fulfill the conservative legal movement&#8217;s aim of restoring democratic accountability to an administrative state which has long been disconnected from the elected executive.
* * *
Ryan Silverstein is a J.D. Candidate at Villanova University and a fellow with Villanova’s McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy. His work has appeared in Fox News, the New York Post, and the Daily Wire.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

United States Supreme Court at Twilight

A Gift To The Conservative Legal Movement

Courts

Federal Government

SCOTUS

Supreme Court

Trump Administration

Wikipedia, once heralded as the internet’s neutral hub for knowledge, has taken a hard turn to the Left. Initially constructed to be the digital public square where ideas, history, and current events were to be explained in a balanced fashion, the online encyclopedia has emerged as yet another battleground in the war against President Trump, his administration officials and conservatives writ large.
The latest report from the <a href="https://www.mrc.org/">Media Research Center’s</a> (MRC) <a href="https://mrcfreespeechamerica.org/">Free Speech America</a> division exposes a systematic blacklisting of right-leaning media outlets, further cementing the leftist control over online information. The bottom line: 84% of Left-leaning outlets have Wikipedia’s stamp of approval, while 0% of right-leaning outlets even get a wink from the tech giant.
The implications of this bias cannot be overstated as Wikipedia’s self-proclaimed &#8220;neutral point of view&#8221; (NPOV) policy is supposed to guarantee objectivity. Yet, in practice, the policy is being selectively applied to sideline conservative viewpoints.
Wikipedia’s cutting room floor includes influential right-leaning outlets such as The Daily Wire, Breitbart, Newsmax, One America News, The Daily Caller, and even the MRC. Meanwhile, Left-leaning publications such as Jacobin, Mother Jones, Pro-Publica, NPR, The Atlantic, and The Guardian are deemed “reliable,” despite their documented history of inaccurate reporting and radical ideology.
This imbalanced treatment is intentional and tactical. It is a deliberate effort to exclude right-of-center perspectives from the online discourse, with the obvious goal of disparaging, slandering and maligning anyone who opposes the radical Left agenda.
The evidence of this malicious treatment comes from Wikipedia itself. Its “Reliable Sources/Perennial Sources” page confesses its culpability like a guilt-torn defendant who blurts out in the courtroom, “I did it, I did it, I killed the victim!”
This page serves as Wikipedia’s gatekeeping tool that literally “blacklists” some of the most popular media on the right. Any outlet on Wikipedia’s naughty list is not allowed to help shape Wikipedia’s content.
This manipulation of information extends beyond just blacklisting certain sources — it actively distorts political narratives. Due to the systemic bias in Wikipedia’s sourcing policies, the pages on Trump’s appointees are overwhelmingly shaped by Left-leaning media, presenting a skewed, and often hostile, portrayal of these individuals. The same treatment is not applied to Democratic figures, whose pages benefit from friendlier coverage and selective omission of controversies.
The MRC report found that out of 44 media outlets classified as Left-leaning by AllSides, a staggering 84% are deemed reliable by Wikipedia. Meanwhile, virtually every prominent conservative outlet has been blacklisted or labeled unreliable.
The bias extends beyond media sources to broader political issues. The Hunter Biden laptop scandal is a glaring example. Initially dismissed by Left-wing outlets as “Russian disinformation,” the story was later verified by mainstream publications. Yet, Wikipedia’s coverage continues to reference the debunked narrative while downplaying the legitimacy of conservative outlets that reported the truth from the outset.
Similarly, the Wuhan lab leak theory — once ridiculed by Left-leaning media but now considered the most likely source of COVID-19—has not been accurately updated on Wikipedia. This selective curation of facts ensures that Wikipedia remains a tool for leftist narrative control rather than a genuine information repository.
One of the key figures responsible for this shift is Katherine Maher, who led Wikipedia&#8217;s parent company Wikimedia, from 2016 to 2021. Under her tenure, Wikipedia moved further into ideological bias, enforcing sourcing policies that favored leftist perspectives while suppressing conservative viewpoints. Maher’s public statements indicate an embrace of Left-wing activism, further solidifying Wikipedia’s transformation from a neutral information source to a partisan tool.
The consequences of this bias are severe. Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world, and it is regularly produced by Google as one of its highest ranked search results. So, its content influences not just your average Joe but journalists, researchers, and policymakers. The site’s Left-wing slant ensures that students, voters, and the general public are consistently fed a one-sided perspective, warping public perception and reinforcing media narratives that favor the political Left.
This should alarm anyone who values intellectual diversity and open debate. The internet was supposed to democratize information, allowing users to access multiple viewpoints and reach their own conclusions. Instead, Wikipedia’s editorial policies are steering the online discourse toward a singular ideological perspective, eliminating the voices of half the country in the process.
It is time for accountability. Wikimedia, Wikipedia’s parent company, is a 501(C)(3) not-for-profit. Trump’s IRS should investigate it and end its tax-free status if it does not immediately come into compliance with the law. Every federal agency should also terminate all contracts and grants they have been awarded to Wikipedia. American taxpayers should never be forced to turn over their hard-earned income to politicized organizations.
The battle against censorship and for free speech is one of the most critical fights of our time. Nobody is saying that Wikipedia cannot have a radical point of view. But conservatives should never confuse Wikipedia for what it once was, and Americans should never have to subsidize the radical arm of a radical political organization.
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Dan Schneider is the Vice President of Media Research Center&#8217;s Free Speech America.
Luis Cornelio is Associate Editor of Media Research Center&#8217;s Free Speech America.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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