Funding for the Department of Homeland Security resumed after a 75-day shutdown — but Democrats are already threatening to cut funding again in September if their demands are not met.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), a ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Democrats would “absolutely” shut down DHS again if Republicans do not agree to proposed reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — such as banning law enforcement officers from wearing masks and requiring judicial warrants for immigration-related arrests.
“In America, police shouldn’t wear masks while walking the streets,” Thompson said, ignoring the dramatic uptick in threats and violent assaults against immigration enforcement officers and their families. “They need identification, they need cameras, and they need judicial warrants.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
NEW: Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) says Democrats “absolutely” may shut down DHS again in September if the ICE/CBP reforms they demanded aren’t included in the next DHS approps bill. Dems failed to get any reforms with this shutdown &amp; GOP plans to go around them to fund ICE/CBP. <a href="https://t.co/FOjRZcXOvf">https://t.co/FOjRZcXOvf</a>
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) <a href="https://twitter.com/BillMelugin_/status/2050575956427891178?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The House of Representatives ended the record-setting shutdown on Thursday after passing a bill funding most of the DHS — including the Transportation Security Administration and the Secret Service — through the end of September. ICE and Customs and Border Patrol were left out of the measure. Republicans are relying on a reconciliation bill — which would let the Senate bypass the 60-vote procedural threshold and thus the Democrats’ demands — to move ahead with funding for ICE and CBP.
The shutdown began in February after Democrats refused to approve DHS funding unless Republicans agreed to include sweeping federal immigration enforcement reforms. Travelers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/travelers-spent-nine-hours-in-tsa-line-as-major-hub-becomes-dhs-shutdown-flashpoint?author=Cameron+Arcand&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Travelers+Spent+Nine+Hours+In+TSA+Line+As+Major+Hub+Becomes+DHS+Shutdown+Flashpoint">spent</a> hours in TSA security lines at major airports, and the Coast Guard <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-lights-go-out-coast-guard-faces-shutoffs-financial-crisis-as-dhs-shutdown-hits-day-75">faced</a> utility shutoffs at military installations.
Despite the hardships shouldered by everyday Americans during such shutdowns, Thompson was clear that Democrats are willing to trigger another shutdown if they do not get what they want.
CNN&#8217;s Victor Blackwell pressed Thompson on his answer, asking whether Democrats were willing to force government employees to go without pay again.
“When you say ‘absolutely,’ that suggests that there could be another shutdown, and there could be another lapse in pay for those TSA workers, the Coast Guard, if Democrats withhold those votes at the end of September,” Blackwell said.
“Absolutely. Victor, look, we have to stand for democracy. If we have to fight for it, there has to be sacrifice,&#8221; Thompson added, apparently unconcerned with the fact that it would be average American families making the &#8220;sacrifice&#8221; he was so quick to offer.

Rep. Bennie Thompson

Democrat ‘Absolutely’ Willing to Trigger Another Shutdown If Demands Aren’t Met

Bennie Thompson

Democrats

Federal Government

Government Shutdown

Politics

Across the board, trust in our institutions in the United States is at an all-time low.
Trust in the media is at an all-time low. Trust in church is at an all-time low. Trust in the scientific establishment is at an all-time low. Trust in government is at an all-time low. And, of course, trust in academia is at an all-time low.
Because of our lack of trust in institutions, Americans also mistrust one another.
You might think that it would be the opposite, that we mistrust one another, and therefore we mistrust our institutions.
That’s not the case. Our institutions shape us, and the way that we interact with the world is through the mechanism of institutions.
If you grew up in a religious community, going to church helped shape you. The rules of the church helped shape you. The people you spent time with shaped you. The institution of your family shaped you. Your school or university shaped you. 
As we lose faith in all of those institutions to shape us, we are incapable of coming together anymore.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-ep-2416-2-university-of-austin-speech"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Institutions tend to foster a common orientation, which is why Alexis de Tocqueville was such a big fan of them. It&#8217;s why in Democracy in America, he made the suggestion that one of the things that made America so different from all other countries was the plethora of social institutions in which Americans were enmeshed. He noted that in most other countries, people had formal institutions that they were forced to interact with, but in America, everybody was a member of a social institution or many social institutions — and that created this extraordinary social fabric that was durable, that allowed for innovation, that allowed for freedom. 
Without trust, there can&#8217;t be freedom at all. If the institutions that provide the shaping function that set the rules for our lives, the way we interact with the world, die, so does the social fabric. And then, when the social fabric dies, we stop attributing decent motivation to each other.
Instead, we start engaging in what the philosopher Alistair MacIntyre called “emotivism”: the belief that everybody except for you is motivated by something nefarious. Instead of having a political conversation, what you do is attribute a motive to the person&#8217;s policy.
You shouldn&#8217;t be attributing motivations to other people unless you have good evidence that their motivation is malign.
But that&#8217;s what we jump to when there is no trust.
I trust my wife. I&#8217;m not worried that when she criticizes me, it&#8217;s coming from a terrible place. I trust the people that I go to synagogue with. If they have a critique or we have a disagreement, I don&#8217;t immediately jump to, “They do it because they hate me.”
“You&#8217;re doing it because you hate me” is the death of politics, because if that&#8217;s the case, then how exactly are we supposed to live together and work together and create policy together?
Religious institutions used to be truth-making institutions, but the question of whether those institutions ought to pursue truth has been supplanted by the idea that they ought to do politics. In many cases, they have become progressive bastions where people go to eat pizza and play guitar rather than unite with some eternal value.
That is why many people don&#8217;t attend anymore. Why go there when you can go to a sports event instead?
We saw the scientific establishment move from evidence to narrative, most obviously during COVID. The result for an enormous number of people was to completely discard science in favor of nonsense that has zero evidence to back it.
The slide from truth to narrative is almost invariably followed by a slide from narrative to conspiracism or nonsense.
The move from seeking the truth at universities to “We are going to engineer a population of discontented people who believe that the system must be turned on its ear” led people to stop trusting the universities.
The American government was built to pursue one fundamental principle above all: epistemic humility, the idea that you might not be correct.
If you think you&#8217;re always correct, you might want to be a tyrant. 
Humility with regard to other people in your society, the idea that maybe they&#8217;re right on occasion, maybe you&#8217;re wrong on occasion, has to be rooted in trust of our fellow citizens.
We have checks and balances in the United States government to prevent it from swinging side to side to stop radical things from happening. That is legitimately the point of the American government. Unless we have a very broad agreement on something, it should not happen. That is why we have a bicameral legislature. It is why we have three branches of government.
But when that wears away, when we hate each other, what we end up with is a battle to the death in the blood sport of politics.
We get angry at the checks and balances because it&#8217;s not possible that people who oppose me are correct; those people are malign. “Those people want bad things to happen to me and to my family, and so I&#8217;m going to grab the government. I&#8217;m going to kill the filibuster. I&#8217;m gonna stack the Supreme Court. I&#8217;m going to add states willy-nilly to the United States Senate, and then I&#8217;m just going to run right over everybody.”
In the absence of rebuilding trust in the institutions, you end up with a war of all against all on the governmental level. And things will not go well.
When you get rid of the fundamental epistemic humility of the government, checks and balances give way to a centralized tyranny.
If you don&#8217;t trust your neighbor and you think your neighbor is taking advantage of you, you might say that the government should just do what you want it to do. Grab that brass ring and do exactly what you want with that power.
In order for a solid debate to take place, there must be a fundamental sharing of values and rules of the road. There ought not to be debate about fundamental propositions, because if you are having to debate individual value — such as the idea that individual human beings have individual worth — you&#8217;re arguing with something outside the system.
If you have to argue with somebody about the worthiness of truth, that is not an argument that can ever be won, because truth itself is an assumed value.
This is why, in the Declaration of Independence, when the Founders said that there are certain rights that are self-evident, they didn&#8217;t mean that they prove themselves. They mean that these are the fundamental building blocks of a society. And if you question them, the society crumbles.
Only a carefully cultivated moral culture that values truth and evidence and logic and moral decency, that actually protects free speech and property rights and equal rights under the law, is capable of restoring our institutions.
We shouldn&#8217;t be debating about fundamental moral matters, things like “lying is wrong.” If I have to debate you about that, there&#8217;s no debate.
Individual human beings have moral worth, and their autonomy has moral value.
Those are the values that we begin with, and those are the values that need to be embodied in institutions.

Rotten_Core

The Rot Spreading Through America’s Core

When A Nation Forgets Its Foundations

Ben Shapiro

Church

Family Values

Founding Fathers

Opinion

Religion

For Christians, Easter is not just another holiday. It is the central event of history: the day death was defeated, and the stone was rolled away.
In Jerusalem, in 33 AD, there was a violent earthquake. An angel rolled back the stone from Jesus’ tomb and said to the women gathered there: “Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said.” In that moment, everything changed. The Son of God won victory over death and secured salvation for all mankind.
Easter changed reality itself. It is the feast of feasts. The solemnity of solemnities. The highest and most important day in the Christian faith. For billions of Christians across centuries, that truth has shaped not only private belief, but culture, law, art, family life, and civilization itself.
That’s why we’ve introduced the Easter Monday Act, which would make the day following Easter a federal holiday. Currently, we have federal holidays on New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and many other wonderful celebrations. But as Easter always falls on a Sunday, we don’t set aside a day of celebration in federal law.
This is a problem, first and foremost, because the law is a teacher. It gradually habituates people, either toward the good, true, and beautiful or toward the bad, false, and ugly. There is no neutral. Law is not simply administrative or procedural, it shapes our very soul as a nation.
The current public calendar does not reflect Easter’s importance in the lives of millions of Americans. Our bill acknowledges Easter’s singular and extraordinary importance and makes it clear to millions of Americans that honoring the Resurrected Christ is a national priority.
This isn’t radical or partisan. More than 80% of Americans celebrate Easter. The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Australia, and Canada all celebrate Easter Monday as a public holiday.
<div id="attachment_1071491" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1071491" class="size-large wp-image-1071491" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1081577372-863x576.jpg" alt="Washington DC, USA - April 1, 2018: Many people walking by the basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Catholic church street road on Easter" width="863" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1081577372-863x576.jpg 863w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1081577372-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1081577372-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1081577372-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1081577372-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1081577372-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1081577372-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px" />krblokhin. Getty Images.</div>
Passing the Easter Monday Act would also have many practical benefits.
Currently, our law forces millions of American families who travel to celebrate Easter to rush home on Sunday to make it to work the next day. Adding to the chaos, many schools already give students Easter Monday off, which leaves working parents scrambling for childcare.
This bill fixes these problems. We envision giving families the breathing room to be truly present with their relatives, in their churches, and at their dinner tables.
That omission is especially striking for another reason: March and April are the only consecutive two-month block on the federal calendar without a legal public holiday, while Easter falls every year somewhere in that exact span. Easter Monday would fill that gap in a way that is both natural and rooted in the country’s deepest traditions, benefiting all Americans.
Most importantly, though, the Easter Monday Act will serve as a reminder that just as Christ continued appearing to his apostles for 40 days after his resurrection, our celebration of Easter does not end at the stroke of midnight.
That is one reason this legislation matters. It is modest, but it points in the right direction. It says that our public life should not be embarrassed by the Christian faith that helped shape our nation. It says that Christianity’s most sacred day deserves more than a hurried Sunday followed by a Monday morning scramble. And it says that families should have the space to mark Easter as something more than a weekend interruption.
Moreover, now is the perfect time to send that message, as we approach Easter Sunday.
In seven years, the world will mark the 2,000th anniversary of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When that moment arrives, it will be one of the most consequential events in the history of Christianity — a cause for tremendous celebration.
This anniversary should be an occasion for all Christians to come together and renew confidence in the faith that saved the world, the moral inheritance that shaped Western civilization, and the unique freedom in Christ that helped Americans create the most free and noble nation on earth.
Passing the Easter Monday Act represents a recognition of that tremendous opportunity — and a first step toward grasping the call the Lord has given our great nation.
* * *
Senator Eric Schmitt is currently serving his first term in the U.S. Senate representing the state of Missouri.
Congressman Riley Moore is currently serving his first term in Congress as the Representative of the 2nd district of West Virginia.

The crown of thorns symbolizes the crucifixion of Jesus Christ

The Holiday That Shaped America Still Doesn’t Get The Recognition It Deserves

Christianity

Congress

Easter

Academics who do not know what a woman is should not be the taxpayer-funded gatekeepers of women’s history. But ever since Congress authorized the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in 2020, the Smithsonian Institution has made it clear that gender ideology matters more than biological truth in its version of women’s history.
Congress’s next move on the project is to grant the Smithsonian federal land on the National Mall for the museum. In a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing last month on the subject, Congressman Tom Tiffany (R-WI) pressed a Smithsonian Institution representative with a simple question: “How can we be sure that the women celebrated in the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum are not men?”
The Smithsonian staffer dodged the question, and subcommittee members ripped the congressman for what they deemed a baseless inquiry. But the question hit the nail on the head: the Smithsonian pretends that men can be women.
While the brick-and-mortar Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum has yet to earn a permanent building, the Smithsonian’s mobile exhibits prove Rep. Tiffany correct. In its 2023 exhibit “<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/girlhood/gallery">Girlhood: It’s Complicated</a>”, the Smithsonian exhibited <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-troubling-case-of-jazz-jennings-the-medias-first-transgender-child">Jazz Jennings</a>, a trans-identifying male reality TV star.
Jazz was <a href="https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/jazz-jennings-was-transitioned-at-2-and-had-surgery-at-17-my-new-vagina-fell-apar">socially transitioned</a> by his parents at age two, pumped with puberty blockers at eleven, and surgically mutilated at eighteen.
<div id="attachment_566557" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-566557" class="size-large wp-image-566557" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204-864x576.jpg" alt="BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 28: Jazz Jennings attends the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards at Beverly Hills Hotel on March 28, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images</div>
Here’s what the Smithsonian has to say about Jazz:
<blockquote>For many, the rigid rules about what it means to be a girl are too small and too simple. Jazz Jennings is one of those girls. She shares her girlhood with millions of Americans on television and reminds us that girls can be assigned male at birth and that girlhood comes in many forms. Jazz always knew she “was a girl trapped inside a boy’s body.” As a toddler, she felt a roar of emotions at not being able to communicate what she was experiencing. But Jazz was lucky because her family listened, learned, and supported her.</blockquote>
First, Jazz is not a girl. He was deceived at just two years of age. Second, girls cannot be “assigned male at birth.” Girls are young human females; sex is immutable, not “assigned.” Finally, no toddler is &#8220;a girl trapped inside a boy’s body.” 
If the Smithsonian flunks a single-room exhibit, how can they be trusted with an entire building? The Smithsonian’s feature of Jazz in its “Girlhood” exhibit is flagrantly disqualifying.
The institution’s problem boils down to its own academics and advisors. On the website’s featured “Biographies: Every Woman Has a Story” page, Smithsonian-associated scholars hail men and historical “women.” First in the list is Roderick “Lavergne” Cox, a trans-identifying male actor described by the Smithsonian as “assigned male at birth,” and “the first openly transgender person nominated for an Emmy.” The Smithsonian made a distinct choice to acknowledge “Lavergne” as simultaneously male and “woman.”
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/what-is-a-woman?elementPosition=7&amp;row=7&amp;rowHeadline=Featured&amp;rowType=Portrait+Show+Carousel">WATCH: Matt Walsh&#8217;s groundbreaking documentary &#8220;What Is A Woman?&#8221; on DailyWire+</a></h3>
The Smithsonian also features seven other males: United States Congressman Timothy “Sarah” McBride and Biden-era Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Richard “Rachel” Levine, “the highest-ranking openly transgender government official in U.S. history,” <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/cecilia-chung">Cecilia Chung</a> (a California based advocate for sex-rejecting procedures), <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/marsha-p-johnson">Marsha P. Johnson</a>, <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/andrea-jenkins">Andrea Jenkins</a>, <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sylvia-rivera">Sylvia Rivera</a>, and <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/janet-mock">Janet Mock</a>. It is unacceptable that eight men are hailed as historical women on a taxpayer-funded “.gov” website.
<div id="attachment_1069997" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1069997" class="size-large wp-image-1069997" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900-864x576.jpg" alt="Visitors outside the Smithsonian Institute's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. The White House is raising the pressure on the Smithsonian Institution to turn over extensive internal records as part of a broader effort to assert control over how US history is presented - and threatening to withhold congressionally authorized funding if it doesn't comply by Jan. 13. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
If the Smithsonian Institution — with its hordes of PhD-clad ideologues — cannot acknowledge that a woman is an adult human female, it should not be trusted to narrate women’s history, especially with the taxpayer’s dime on federal soil.
The Smithsonian’s demonstrated radicalism must be top of mind as Congress works to authorize the construction of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. On March 18, the House Committee on Administration held a markup to advance the authorization, this time, however, with <a href="https://x.com/CWforA/status/2034336481561502017?s=20">an amendment</a> offered by Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) to prohibit the new museum from portraying men as women. The bill passed in committee, but Democrats uniformly voted “No.”
How ironic. Democrats care more about transgender ideology than a long-awaited women’s museum.
The Smithsonian Institution cannot be trusted with women’s history. If the Women’s History Museum goes up, Congress must do its due diligence to ensure that it operates under a strict, brazenly explicit federal authorization requiring that no male be presented as a “woman” in its exhibits — no exceptions. Better to have no museum at all than one that presents males as “women.”
* * *
Hannah Lape is Legislative Strategist for <a href="https://concernedwomen.org/">Concerned Women for America</a>, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. On X: @CWforA

35th Annual GLAAD Media Awards New York – Arrivals

Should Taxpayers Fund A Women’s Museum That Features Jazz Jennings?

American History

Gender Identity

Girls

Smithsonian Museum

Transgender

Woke Culture

Women

MAGA is breaking. Trump is losing. The sky is falling.
Our craven mainstream media are frothing at the mouth at the notion that MAGA could be fracturing. All of their juiciest, most lurid fantasies are coming true.
But as it turns out, MAGA is doing just fine — we&#8217;re just shedding some excess baggage here.
A brand new <a href="https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54342-americans-suddenly-more-likely-to-see-economy-getting-worse-march-13-16-2026-economist-yougov-poll">Economist/YouGov poll</a>, taken March 13-16, asked what President Trump&#8217;s approval rating was on the American attack on Iran. Among MAGA: Voters, 87% supported; 6% disapproved. How about sending ground troops to Iran if necessary? 35% of MAGA said sure; 36% said no: a dead even split. How about on whether to end the war quickly or to stay until the objectives are achieved in Iran? Only 30% of MAGA supporters said that we should end the war as quickly as possible. 58% said that we should keep fighting until all American objectives have been achieved.
No, President Trump is not losing MAGA.
And yet, according to those who have had their brains rotted out by X along with our usual duds in the mainstream media, the base is totally fractured. And they know this because they have found some new heroes, heretic MAGA, who are targeting the administration for destruction. 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2390-sub"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
And this brings us to Joe Kent.
Joe Kent is a former failed congressional candidate from Washington state who was elevated to the position of director of the National Center for Counter Terrorism — which you really had never heard of — by President Trump. Kent, a former Green Beret who served in the CIA, was serving under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Kent has a long political history. In 2020, he voted for Bernie Sanders. But then, in 2022, while running for Congress, Kent ran into a bit of trouble because of his associations with white supremacists. According to Nick Fuentes, Kent sought his support, but then was forced to disavow him when that support became public.
Kent has been, for a very long time, conspiratorially minded in the extreme. He suggested that the Secret Service might have been in on the assassination attempt on President Trump in July 2024, among other bizarre theories. He&#8217;s also been strangely supportive of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin&#8217;s aggression against Ukraine.
Before that, though, Kent had some bizarrely heterodox views. In 2020, after President Trump knocked off Iranian terror master Qasem Soleimani, Kent <a href="https://x.com/joekent16jan19/status/1214778671564611584">explained</a>, “We remain in striking distance by choice for no clear benefit. We should crush their ballistic and nuclear capes and get out of Iraq with sanctions to follow.”
Interesting, because that&#8217;s kind of what President Trump has been doing.
Way back when Kent was actually nominated to serve in the federal government, MSNBC was highly critical, <a href="https://www.ms.now/transcript/transcript-rachel-maddow-show-8-9-22-n1298426">saying</a>, “That man you heard speaking is a Trump-endorsed Republican who believes the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and he hired a member of the Proud Boys as a campaign consultant. He once told a white nationalist youth group, ‘I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group.’”
Then yesterday, Kent released a bizarre and paranoid letter announcing his resignation from the National Center for Counter-Terrorism. In the letter, Kent <a href="https://x.com/joekent16jan19">announced</a> that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
You know who he&#8217;s talking about, don&#8217;t you? You know, (nudge, nudge.)
He then stated that Trump had been duped by “high ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media who deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”
And then, just in case he wasn&#8217;t done blaming the Israelis, he blamed the Iraq war on the Israelis, too. And even then he wasn&#8217;t done, <a href="https://x.com/MelanieLatest/status/2033916987324137737">declaring</a> that his wife, who was killed by ISIS in Syria in 2019, was murdered “in a war manufactured by Israel.”
So to get this straight, according to Joe Kent, who was a Trump appointee in charge of the National Center for Counter Terrorism, President Trump is a dupe of the Israelis and unspecified media members, who knows? The Iraq war was the fault of the Israelis, even though it was opposed at the time by the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. And also the Israelis are at fault for his wife being murdered by ISIS in Syria somehow.
This is, to put it mildly, nutty.
President Trump himself dismissed the notion he&#8217;s been manipulated by the nefarious “Juden” <a href="https://www.c-span.org/program/white-house-event/president-trump-meets-with-taoiseach-of-ireland/675656">yesterday</a>, saying, “I was against Iran long before I ever thought about Israel being against Iran. I was, if you look back many years ago, I talked about Iran was a big threat to this country, to this world of ours.”
Kent’s take is unsurprising, to be honest. His wife works for far-left propagandist Max Blumenthal, who&#8217;s worked for a wide variety of foreign propaganda outlets.
All of this calls into question why Kent was selected for his job in the first place. Obviously, Kent and his Ron Paul-esque foreign policy preferences have some allies in the administration. According to Fox News, Kent was “a known leaker,” and he was cut out of the president&#8217;s intelligence briefings months ago.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said <a href="https://www.c-span.org/program/white-house-event/karoline-leavitt-speaks-to-reporters-about-war-in-iran/675767">this morning</a>:
<blockquote>It&#8217;s been a while since the president has seen him here at the White House. It&#8217;s been a while since he&#8217;s been involved in the process of the presidential daily briefs and he&#8217;s been actually present for the president&#8217;s intelligence briefings. This was an individual who was not involved in any of the discussions pre-operation and throughout this operation, I think the president views it as deeply unfortunate that this individual, who the president gave the privilege of working for the administration, put out this resignation on government letterhead with many falsehoods throughout, essentially accusing the president of being manipulated by foreign governments. That&#8217;s laughable, and it&#8217;s insulting.</blockquote>
Kent’s resignation letter basically calls Trump a dullard working at the behest of the Zionists. That was enough to earn Kent the royal treatment from our usual friends. He is slated to appear on all the leaders of the anti-Trump Grievance Party podcasts: Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and all the rest. MSNOW has discovered newfound love for Joe Kent with some strange new respect. CNN is suddenly incredibly happy with Joe Kent, a guy that CNN hated until five seconds ago.
President Trump responded to Joe Kent&#8217;s resignation with a proper level of dismissiveness, saying <a href="https://www.c-span.org/program/white-house-event/president-trump-meets-with-taoiseach-of-ireland/675656">yesterday</a>, “I read his statement. I always thought he&#8217;s a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security. I didn&#8217;t know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy. But when I read the statement, I realized that it&#8217;s a good thing that he&#8217;s out because he said that Iran was not a threat? Iran was a threat. Every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether or not they wanted to do something about it.”
And then, for good measure, the president decided to dunk on Kent, showing his rather inconsistent feelings about the Middle East. He reposted a 2020 tweet from Kent that stated, “We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran&#8217;s ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq — they are only targets now. No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and Intel professionals not Iranian restraint.”
So back in 2020 Kent was hawkish on Iran.
Leavitt released <a href="https://x.com/PressSec/status/2033932810709315865">a statement</a> detailing all the false allegations in Kent&#8217;s resignation letter.
She stated:
<blockquote>There are many false claims in this letter but let me address one specifically: that &#8220;Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.&#8221; This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over. As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first. This evidence was compiled from many sources and factors. President Trump would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum. Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
The Iranian regime is evil. It proudly killed Americans, waged war against our country, and openly threatened us all the way up to the launch of Operation Epic Fury. Iran was aggressively expanding their short-range ballistic missiles to combine with their naval assets to give themselves immunity – meaning they would have a degree of capabilities that would give them immunity to hold us and the rest of the world hostage.</blockquote>
The best comment came from Senator John Fetterman, who remains hilariously awesome. He told the Huffington Post, “I don’t really care. I know your readership loves that, and the New York Times love it. And then he&#8217;s going to be the national hero, you know, just like you made, MTG. That that was your mascot for a while. But now her crazy ass is now all about Tucker Carlson. … so, I don&#8217;t really care what he&#8217;s chosen to do, and I wish the best for him in his next life.”
Make no mistake: Trump is still very much in control of MAGA.
And when he wins the war, that control will solidify even further, as it should.

US-POLITICS-SHOOTING-KIRK

Media Hopes MAGA Is Fracturing. Not Even Close.

Donald Trump

Iran

Joe Kent

MAGA

Middle East

Republicans

It’s hard to comprehend the true scale of the fiscal disaster in Washington D.C. While most Americans feel the impact when gas or milk prices increase by even a nickel, Washington borrows almost $5 billion a day without batting an eye.
The difference between the ridiculous $18.1 trillion in debt from back in 2015 and the ludicrous $39 trillion debt of today seems inconceivable. Numbers this big just don’t seem real.
But if we think of our federal government finances in terms of a family budget, the problem becomes much clearer. So let’s talk about a hypothetical family – The Havernots. The Havernot family earns just under $66,000 a year, which is the same as the average American worker. That equates to a weekly paycheck of $1,266 or monthly earnings of $5,486, before taxes and other deductions.
Most families budget their income and expenses in a responsible manner – carefully allocating their money to basic necessities like housing, utilities, and groceries, while saving what they can for other purposes like retirement, unexpected expenses, and the occasional vacation. That’s the responsible way to manage your finances.
But that’s not how the Havernots live. They spend money in the same manner as the federal government. So for the purposes of this example, we have scaled down the federal government’s income (primarily tax collections) and expenditures (outlays for government programs and, increasingly, interest on the national debt), to match the Havernots&#8217; financial situation.
Once again, the Havernots earn nearly $66,000 and, like the federal government, spend far more than they bring in. In proportion to the federal government, they spend just over $86,500 a year, meaning they have to borrow more than $20,500 annually to cover their expenses. On a monthly basis, the Havernots bring in almost $5,500 while spending a little more than $7,200 a month, a recipe for financial disaster.
Of course, like the federal government, they’re already saddled with a hefty amount of debt due to many prior years of fiscal irresponsibility. The federal government is approaching $39 trillion in debt. That equates to a current debt burden of over $373,000 for the Havernots.
If, like the Havernots, you are currently $373,000 in debt and are adding $20,500 to that debt load each year, you had better have a good plan in place to get your finances in order, with Dave Ramsey on speed dial.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case for the federal government. Looking at projected finances for the federal government, things are going to get much, much worse. On a positive note, government revenue collections are projected to increase by 49.7% over the next ten years, and expenditures are expected to grow by 53.6% over that same period. The total federal debt will grow by 76%.
That means the outlook for the Havernots is equally depressing. Looking down the road 10 years, their income would increase from $66,000 to just over $98,500, which is great news. Until you realize that their annual expenditures grow from about $86,500 to about $132,950 over that same period, forcing them to borrow more than $46,000 annually. And their total debt burden has grown from $373,000 to more than $656,500. This is an unsustainable trajectory for the Havernots.
The silver lining for the Havernots is that some of their spending is being used to improve their financial standing. For instance, by steadily paying off their auto loan and mortgage, the Havernots will, in time, fully own their car and home. But the debt our nation is racking up isn’t putting us on a path to homeownership; it’s careening us toward homelessness.
The Havernot family’s disastrous situation should make it clear: President Trump and Congress need to work quickly to turn our nation’s finances around. There is no magic wand or silver bullet to reverse decades of fiscal irresponsibility, but there is hope.
The best option is a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as it would guard against the gimmicks and end-arounds that Congress regularly employs to skirt budgetary restraints.
A second-best option is creating a bipartisan debt reduction commission with the ability to push an aggressive plan directly to the floor of the House and Senate for a vote.
No matter the approach, it’s imperative for everyday Americans to make their voices heard in Washington if things are ever going to change.
And policymakers – just like the Havernots – need to gather around the kitchen table for an honest conversation about our current predicament and a sincere attempt at doing the right thing.
* * *
Brandon Arnold is Executive Vice President of National Taxpayers Union.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Month revenue of young couple

What America’s $39 Trillion Debt Looks Like On A Family Budget

Budget

Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

Dave Ramsey

Economy

finance

National Debt

Fraudsters are robbing America blind. The federal government <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833">estimates</a> fraud costs a family of four roughly $4,000 each year.
Fraud is the inevitable byproduct of a bloated bureaucracy that spends <a href="https://www.bea.gov/data/government/receipts-and-expenditures">$11 trillion annually</a> at the federal, state, and local levels. To conduct an audit, we would need an army of indefatigable accountants. In the past, we couldn’t raise such an army, but now we can. We simply need competent leadership in Congress to deploy it.
This system could have saved <a href="https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-fraud-feeding-our-future-medicaid-9911799c0d0149a64a042abed095be57">billions</a> in Minnesota alone. Instead of sending millions in taxpayer dollars to the <a href="https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/dr-oz-on-medicaid-fraud-fact-finding-mission-in-minnesota-2b-could-be-at-stake/">400 supposed</a> healthcare providers huddled in an industrial building in St. Paul, Minnesota, our government could have sent an FBI team. They would have stopped payments to “<a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/dozens-charged-in-250-million-covid-fraud-scheme-092122">Feeding Our Future</a>,” where fraudsters faked child rosters, randomly assigned ages, and reported meal volumes wildly inconsistent with site capacity — the kind of fraud that is easy for an AI to catch.
The technical solution is to use AI to spot and block fraudulent government payments, such as those to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/minneapolis-quality-learing-center-is-officially-closed-state-records-show">fake daycares</a> in Minnesota. Your bank already does it. If you live in Minneapolis and your card is used in Florida, your bank will deny the transaction and call you within minutes. By contrast, the government’s optional payment screening service has been branded <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/M-25-32-Preventing-Improper-Payments-and-Protecting-Privacy-Through-Do-Not-Pay.pdf">a failure</a>.
Modern AI tools can detect fraud patterns that fool humans, such as multiple nonprofits with the same address, beneficiaries, board members, and employees. These tools automatically flag anomalies like spikes in billing and implausible service delivery. When something is suspicious, these tools can stop the payment for further investigation by a human team.
Congress should require all agencies to run any payment over $10,000 through a fraud detection system and change the law to allow the government to pause suspicious payments. AI can adjudicate most cases quickly. Narrow exceptions should be made for cases where immediate payments are critical to national security. The system can exist within the Treasury, Government Accountability Office, or even report directly to Congress. Regardless of where it lives, we need an elite team of data scientists, engineers, and investigators who oversee our all-important tax dollars competently and ethically.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and state Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) testify on alleged misuse of federal funds in Minnesota at <a href="https://twitter.com/GOPoversight?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GOPoversight</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/OversightDems?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@OversightDems</a> – LIVE on C-SPAN3 <a href="https://t.co/LkMJ0ZVExm">https://t.co/LkMJ0ZVExm</a>
— CSPAN (@cspan) <a href="https://twitter.com/cspan/status/2029197002651701402?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 4, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Source: @cspan/X.com
But tech is not enough. We need the legal tools to stop fraudulent payments immediately. Would you keep paying the bill on a stolen credit card for years? That’s what the government does. When agencies suspect fraud, they often continue paying fraudsters until a court declares the “vendor” to be violating their contract. “Feeding Our Future” received $250 million of taxpayer money for years after the first <a href="https://www.governing.com/management-and-administration/minnesotas-inadequate-oversight-led-to-250m-meal-program-fraud?utm_source=chatgpt.com">allegations</a> of fraud. When Minnesota’s Department of Education slowed the payments on its suspicions, “Feeding Our Future” sued; the judge <a href="https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/judge-rebukes-walz-assertion-that-he-ordered-mde-to-resume-payments-to-feeding-our-future/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">questioned</a> whether the agency had followed the required administrative procedures, and payments to fraudsters resumed. This illustrates a general point — fraudsters know that even credible red flags rarely trigger an immediate stop-pay and criminal prosecution, because agencies lack <a href="https://www.governing.com/management-and-administration/minnesotas-inadequate-oversight-led-to-250m-meal-program-fraud?utm_source=chatgpt.com">investigatory tools</a> and fear losing in court.
Congress, however, lacks technical competence and leadership. While half of all senators are <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48535">lawyers</a> by training, there is only <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48535">one senator</a> with an engineering degree. The Senate is not representative of America’s immense economic growth, driven in large part by technologists. It’s time for us to harness that technology to make the government serve us better.
Our prosperity and freedom are at stake. Polarization and growing mistrust in our institutions, coupled with enormous peacetime deficits, are a combustible mix. We can quell it with technology and competent leadership. Stamping out large-scale fraud could cut our deficit by as much as a quarter. Addressing waste as well could eliminate our deficit entirely. Only when families feel the benefits of our prosperity in their own budgets — through lower taxes, cheaper childcare, and healthcare — will the political pressure cool and give us space to confront our most serious challenges as a nation.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans laid the foundation of the most successful democratic government in the world. Our government grew with our prosperity — eventually making full oversight impossible by human effort alone. Today, we have the technology to make our government the most upright and efficient in the world. We need leaders who are capable and willing to use it to protect our taxes, our freedoms, and our future. 

* * *
Mark York is a Harvard-trained computer scientist and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota. 

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Minnesota Gov. Walz And AG Ellison Testify At Hearing On Social Services Fraud

America Is Bleeding Billions To Fraud — How AI Could Shut It Down

Artificial Intelligence

Banks

Fraud

Minneapolis

Minnesota

Somalis

Technology

Tim Walz

Democrat Gov. Tim Walz (MN) just had millions of federal dollars cut off from the Small Business Administration (SBA) to his state, due to the multi-billion-dollar fraud scandal that occurred under the governor&#8217;s nose.
SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler sent a letter to Walz on Tuesday, telling the governor that her agency will &#8220;halt&#8221; more than $5.5 million in annual support in the state &#8220;until further notice,&#8221; Fox News reported.
&#8220;I am notifying you that effective immediately and until further notice, the SBA is halting the disbursement of federal funds to SBA resource partners operating in the state of Minnesota, totaling over $5.5 million in annual support,&#8221; Loeffler said in the letter.
&#8220;This action is the result of a fundamental breakdown in the public trust,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Under your leadership, Minnesota failed to safeguard taxpayer dollars, and SBA will not continue to place federal resources at risk in a state where oversight measures are ignored and accountability is abandoned.&#8221;
A recent jaw-dropping press conference confirmed that $9 billion – or potentially more – of taxpayer money could have been stolen during Walz&#8217;s tenure. 
As outlined by federal prosecutor Joseph Thompson, 14 taxpayer-funded programs in particular were found to be rife with fraud since 2018. Those programs cost $18 billion, and Thompson said it’s possible that half of that, or more, could have been fraudulently claimed. 
“I think we&#8217;re an outlier in a bad way,&#8221; Thompson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NirLDCHIpr0">said</a> of Minnesota. &#8220;You don&#8217;t see fraud on this scale in other states. &#8230; Every day we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme. That shouldn&#8217;t be the case in a state of our size. Certainly other states have problems with frauds, but I think our problem is unique.”
Thompson said Minnesota earned a reputation for being, essentially, easy to rip off, which sparked what&#8217;s called &#8220;fraud tourism&#8221; — or people moving to the state to commit fraud.
Fraudsters, he said, would create companies entirely dedicated to fraud, which is different from up-charging for services, which is typical in Medicaid fraud. 
Walz, who’s unsurprisingly in the hot seat over the scandal, says Thompson is engaging in “sensationalism” and says there’s “<a href="https://www.startribune.com/walz-says-theres-no-evidence-of-9b-in-fraud-exposing-rift-between-state-and-feds/601549681">no evidence</a>” the scope is $9 billion or more. 
As for the rest of the Trump administration, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services (CMS), has threatened to withhold federal Medicaid funds if Minnesota fails to address widespread fraud and implement corrective actions.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/minnesota-is-currently-paying-an-indicted-somali-fraudster-to-run-assisted-living-homes">Minnesota Is Currently Paying An Indicted Somali Fraudster To Run ‘Assisted Living’ Homes</a>

JD Vance And Tim Walz Face Off In Vice Presidential Debate In New York

Tim Walz Gets More Bad News From Feds After Massive Fraud Scandal Exposed

Tim Walz Gets Bad News From Feds After Massive Fraud Scandal Exposed

The Supreme Court is looking at the possibility of ensuring that the federal executive branch is a unitary executive.
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-independent-agencies.html">reports</a>:
<blockquote>As a young staff member in the Reagan administration, John G. Roberts Jr. was part of a group of lawyers who pushed for more White House control over independent government agencies.
The “time may be ripe to reconsider the existence of such entities, and take action to bring them back within the executive branch,” the future chief justice of the United States advised the White House counsel in a 1983 memo. Independent agencies, he wrote, were a “constitutional anomaly.”
Once he ascended to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts joined other conservatives on the bench in a series of rulings that have chipped away at Congress’s power to constrain the president’s authority to fire independent regulators.</blockquote>
The real question here is this: Where in the Constitution do you find the idea of independent regulators? It does not exist. We have three branches of government, and, in order of power, it’s supposed to be: legislative, executive, and judicial.
With that said, all of these are unitary powers. The president is not supposed to implement legislative power, which is why many of the regulatory agencies that currently exist should be ruled unconstitutional. If there are unelected agencies writing laws — which is what regulations are — there is no mode for that under the Constitution of the United States.
Simultaneously, there is no independent fourth branch of government set up by Congress that is not answerable to the executive branch, but only answerable to Congress. There&#8217;s nothing like that contemplated by the Constitution.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
There will be a case argued in the Supreme Court over whether President Trump can fire people across the federal government in defiance of laws meant to protect their jobs and shield them from politics.
The Court’s majority will likely side with Trump, which makes perfect sense because there is nowhere in the Constitution where it says Congress has the power to set up an agency inside the executive branch that the president of the United States cannot run.
This case revolves around whether President Trump can fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, simply because he says she does not align with his agenda. That firing would be despite a law that says the president can only remove commissioners for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.
The administration is asking the justices to toss out a 90-year-old precedent that said the Constitution allowed laws like that one and put limits on the president&#8217;s authority to dismiss some quasi-independent government officials.
There are two dozen other agencies charged with protecting consumers, workers, the environment, or nuclear safety. They have been insulated from complete presidential control by similar laws.
One of the points Trump makes is that he&#8217;s doing the obvious thing. Democrats have been firing these people by ginning up cases against them for a very, very long time. This is also how they manage to maintain control of the regulatory state even after they lost an election. This is what Trump would label the so-called “deep state.”
Trump has repeatedly ousted Democratic leaders — including at the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission —  to make way for replacements who share his policy priorities. That makes perfect sense. When you elect a president, you&#8217;re supposed to be able to shift regulatory policy along those lines.
It is why the Constitution was written the way that it was. Once you have a gigantic regulatory authority wedded to the executive branch, either the executive branch itself, run by the president, gains significant power, or you have to set up a fourth unregulated branch of government that is the regulatory state that actually runs the place.
Neither of those two solutions is good. Thus, the Constitution states that no lawmaking power lies with Congress. Executive power lies with the president.
We should hope that we return to the idea of a functional unitary executive, meaning everything that happens under the executive branch is run by the president.
If we go back to that, maybe Congress would actually legislate instead of kicking the can over to the regulatory branches of government to avoid responsibility.
The theory of the unitary executive is an idea that dates back to the Reagan administration. In a 2010 decision, Chief Justice Roberts said that the president&#8217;s power generally includes the authority to remove those assisting him in carrying out his duties. Without such power, the president could not be fully held accountable for discharging his own responsibilities.
That is exactly right, and I hope that the Supreme Court carries through on all of that. That would be a genuinely positive development.

Gemini generated Roberts Scotus Trump

Supreme Court Poised To Rein In ‘Fourth Branch,’ Restore Unitary Executive

executive power

John Roberts

Judicial Branch

Presidency

Supreme Court

Imagine tuning into a Sunday football game. Amid the flurry of touchdowns and tackles, the commercials are filled with familiar names — State Farm, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, and Farmers — vying for your dollars to cover your cars, homes, and personal liability. You have choices, and the competing advertisements are evidence of a robust marketplace where consumers benefit from price competition and innovation. But imagine if, alongside those ads, you could also shop for your health insurance — across state lines, no different than car or home coverage. Here lies a fundamental problem in American healthcare: you cannot buy most health insurance plans outside your own state. Unlike auto and home insurance, which have broad risk pools and interstate competition, health insurance markets remain balkanized, resulting in fewer choices and higher costs for consumers.
The roots of this uniquely American challenge date back to World War II, when the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration instituted wage and price controls to curb inflation. Employers, competing for talent but unable to boost salaries, <a href="https://www.aqpsearch.com/news/a-brief-history-of-employer-sponsored-healthcare">began offering health insurance as a fringe benefit</a> — a decision that intertwined employment and insurance in a way that persists today. At the time, it may have seemed like progress, but it has left countless Americans dependent on their employers for coverage. When jobs change, so does coverage, leaving those between jobs exposed and often without affordable options. Those ineligible for Medicaid — because their income is just above the cutoff — are especially at risk for being uninsured.
Decades later, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, commonly known as “Obamacare,&#8221; sought to address the coverage and affordability crisis — most acutely faced by people with preexisting conditions who previously found insurance unattainable unless provided through an employer. The ACA succeeded in expanding insurance coverage to millions, particularly through Medicaid expansion and the establishment of insurance marketplaces. However, for those who do not qualify for federal subsidies, premiums and deductibles have <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2025/10/14/how-obamacare-set-in-motion-todays-premium-crisis/">soared</a>. In many instances, families can face monthly premiums in the thousands, coupled with out-of-pocket costs so high that insurance feels more like catastrophic “coverage” than true protection. So while the ACA has done some good, it has not even come close to solving the affordability problem for which it is named.
The reasons for these persistent affordability issues are not mysterious. The underlying dynamics are straightforward, even as the system itself grows ever more complex. First, the ACA left state-level insurance monopolies untouched. Insurers still must navigate and adhere to rules that keep them within state lines, limiting the competitive pressure that could lower costs. Second, the oft-repeated promise from President Obama — “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” — proved optimistic at best. The law introduced <a href="https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/essential-health-benefits/">10 “essential health benefits”</a> that all compliant plans had to cover, forcing many consumers off less expensive plans that no longer met federal guidelines. As a result, they and many others have found themselves paying more for benefits they did not want or need, in effect <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/georgetown-law-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2018/07/GT-GGLJ180016.pdf">subsidizing coverage for others</a>. The state of California even <a href="https://californiahealthline.org/news/article/covered-california-record-enrollment-aca-obamacare-subsidies-jeopardy/">brags</a> that most of those who are subsidized are provided with “Silver” plans, but doesn’t say how this is on the backs of those who can only afford “Bronze” plans. This is due to how the subsidy thresholds and cross-subsidization mechanisms work, which is grossly unfair.
Third, the entire model of private health insurance negotiation keeps true prices obscured from patients. When a patient asks for the “cash price” for a procedure, providers often cannot answer because what any individual owes depends on secretive agreements negotiated between insurers and healthcare providers. This lack of transparency keeps patients in the dark and undermines genuine market discipline.
So why, after all these years, have costs continued to rise with little improvement in affordability? The answer lies in political paralysis and conflicting priorities. Democrats, many of whom see the ACA as a bridge to “single-payer” or “Medicare for All,” have settled for more federal entanglement in healthcare. They frame healthcare as a universal right; yet, rights in a constitutional sense do not compel one party to render goods or services to another. Insurance, whether for health or property, is fundamentally a contract — a product someone may buy, not an entitlement.
Republicans, for their part, have ardently opposed the ACA for over a decade, but rarely offer comprehensive, workable alternatives. Their efforts have focused on repeal rather than reform, missing opportunities to build consensus around real improvements in price transparency, portability, and increased consumer choice.
What might genuine reform look like? First, Congress should act to preempt state laws that prevent insurers from <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/reforming-health-insurance-competition-across-state-lines">selling across state lines</a>. This change would foster true competition, broaden risk pools, and, by analogy to auto and home insurance, drive down costs for most consumers. Second, policymakers should require transparent pricing from healthcare providers. Using the negotiated prices that already appear on every patient statement as a baseline, providers could set clear, upfront prices for services, allowing consumers to shop and plan accordingly. Third, the government should remove the “10 essential benefits” coverage requirement, letting consumers tailor plans to individual needs — just as with any other form of insurance — while maintaining the current requirement to cover those with preexisting conditions. High-risk pools, already used effectively in auto insurance for drivers with numerous or serious violations, could support those with extraordinary health risks without distorting the broader market.
In sum, addressing the high cost of American healthcare requires breaking up monopolies, shining a light on real prices, and empowering consumers to choose products that suit their needs, providing health insurance portability, and eventually ending employer-sponsored healthcare. Instead, employers could offer to cover or enhance existing employee policies as a fringe benefit, but the employee’s health insurance would no longer rely on any employer. Only then can Americans enjoy a health insurance marketplace as dynamic — and as affordable — as the ones that already exist for our cars and homes.
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Walter Myers III is a Southern California-based Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Democrats Fail To Extend Affordable Care Act Subsidies In Government Funding Deal

It’s Time To Say Goodbye To The Obamacare Failure

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Health Care

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Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced six interagency agreements (IAAs) with four federal agencies to take another major step forward toward fulfilling the promise of dismantling the 45-year failure of the astronomically expensive and ineffective department.
The agreements are with the Department of Labor, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of State. According to a <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-announces-six-new-agency-partnerships-break-federal-bureaucracy">press release</a> from the Department of Education, “by partnering with agencies that are best positioned to deliver results for students and taxpayers, these IAAs will streamline federal education activities on legally required programs, reduce administrative burdens, and refocus programs and activities to better serve students and grantees.”
The six agreements are as follows. First is the Elementary and Secondary Education Partnership between the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. Going forward, the Department of Labor will begin playing a larger role in the administration of federal K-12 education programs to enhance <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-labor-dol-elementary-and-secondary-education-partnership-112465.pdf">alignment</a> with workforce and postsecondary programs, resulting in “a cohesive, unified strategy for talent development.”
Second is the Postsecondary Education Partnership, which is also between the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. It will streamline the administration of postsecondary education programs and <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-labor-dol-postsecondary-education-partnership-112464.pdf">will</a> “create a better coordinated Federal approach to postsecondary education and workforce development to help more Americans achieve career success.”
Third is the Indian Education Partnership between the Department of Education and the Department of the Interior. This includes the Department of the Interior administering Indian education spanning from elementary, secondary, and higher education, as well as career and technical education and vocational rehabilitation. This will ensure Native American students are better served with education, training, and workforce programs.
Fourth is the Foreign Medical Accreditation Partnership between the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. It leverages the expertise of the Department of Health and Human Services to evaluate whether the accreditation standards for foreign medical schools are comparable to those of U.S. medical schools. According to a <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-health-and-human-services-hhs-foreign-medical-accreditation-partnership-112462.pdf">fact sheet</a> in conjunction with the press release, the “accreditation standards must be comparable between U.S. and foreign medical schools in order for American students enrolled in medical schools outside of the U.S. to be eligible for federal student loans.”
Fifth is a second agreement between the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, termed the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Partnership. The partnership <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-health-and-human-services-hhs-child-care-access-means-parents-school-partnership-112460.pdf">will</a> “promote innovation and process improvements in pursuit of better outcomes for parents and children” by streamlining policies and program requirements, and also <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-health-and-human-services-hhs-child-care-access-means-parents-school-partnership-112460.pdf">providing</a> “campus-based child care services to low-income students.”
Sixth is the International Education and Foreign Language Studies Partnership between the Department of Education and the Department of State. It enhances the efficiency of the Fulbright-Hays grant programs, which equip Americans with skills critical to our national security and interests.
Speaking of these partnerships, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said, “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.” The mission is nothing other than — with the votes necessary from Congress — to eliminate the ineffective U.S. Department of Education, which has wasted trillions of dollars without improving student learning.
Continuing, Secretary McMahon explained what lies ahead: “As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms. Together, we will refocus education on students, families, and schools — ensuring federal taxpayer spending is supporting a world-class education system.”
Since January, the Trump Administration has been focused on cutting wasteful spending within the U.S. Department of Education and removing harmful ideologies. For example, just three days after taking office, under the President’s direction, the <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-takes-action-eliminate-dei">U.S. Department of Education</a> took action to “eliminate harmful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.” This <a href="https://www.chalkboardnews.com/issues/cultural-issues/article_89d2f95a-da74-11ef-881f-c31173f69a5c.html?seyid=48320">included</a> placing U.S. Department of Education staff leading DEI initiatives on administrative leave, removing more than 200 web pages containing DEI resources that promote or endorse harmful ideological programs, and cutting over $2.5 million of DEI contracts.
<div id="attachment_1002607" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1002607" class="size-large wp-image-1002607" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285-864x576.jpg" alt="US President Donald Trump holds an executive order after signing it alongside US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon (R) in the East Room of the White house in Washington, DC, March 20, 2025. US President Donald Trump will sign an order March 20, 2025 to start dismantling the Department of Education, fulfilling an election campaign pledge and a long-held dream of American conservatives. By law, the Education Department -- created in 1979 -- cannot be shuttered without the approval of Congress, and Republicans do not have the votes to push that through. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Credit: Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images.</div>
In March, President Trump signed the “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/improving-education-outcomes-by-empowering-parents-states-and-communities/">Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities</a>” executive order <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-empowers-parents-states-and-communities-to-improve-education-outcomes/">directing</a> Secretary McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
President Trump <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjnoGgEJvLs">explained</a> and communicated confidence, stating, “We are going to be returning education very simply back to the states where it belongs. And this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it is a common-sense thing to do, and it is going to work. Absolutely, it is going to work.” Signing the executive order was a foundational first step toward eliminating the department.
Despite the opposition&#8217;s rhetoric, dismantling the Department of Education is about partnering with other federal agencies to improve efficiency, break down bureaucracy, and return education to the states where it rightfully belongs. This will give moms and dads a bigger voice while providing for greater accountability for academic results.
The recent 43-day government shutdown highlighted the lack of need for the federal education department. Just two days before the major IAAs partnership announcement, Secretary McMahon <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/11/16/school-funding-trump-dismantle-education-department/87251723007/">wrote</a> in USA Today on November 16, “The Schumer shutdown underlined just how little the Department of Education will be missed. As such, the Trump administration will work to end federal micromanagement of our schools and empower state and local leaders to create high-quality education programs that lead to a rewarding career. We know that the stakes could not be higher.”
These strategic actions under Secretary McMahon’s leadership mark a decisive departure from decades of federal bureaucratic bloat and chart the much-needed path forward toward making good on President Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-empowers-parents-states-and-communities-to-improve-education-outcomes/">executive order</a> commitment to return “power over education to families instead of bureaucracies.”
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Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, Director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a Senior Fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Correction: The title of this article has been updated.
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Trump Takes Steps Toward Dismantling Education Department

Trump Admin Delivers On Promise To Dismantle U.S. Department Of Education

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Well, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history is finally over, and many of you are asking questions like, “Why would Sydney Sweeney make a movie where she plays a fat boxer? What was she thinking?” Also, “Why do women play with their hair when they like a guy?” And here’s another one: “You know how the screen just went dark in the last episode of &#8216;The Sopranos&#8217;? What the hell was that about? I mean, they’re paying the screenwriter good money. Shouldn’t he be able to come up with some kind of ending? And don’t even get me started on &#8216;How I Met Your Mother.'&#8221;
And okay, some of you may have questions about the government shutdown and, holy moly, I can’t even imagine what your lives must be like. But hey, here at the Daily Wire, it’s not our place to mock you for being pathetic, so as part of our mission to give you an in-depth understanding of the news, we’re pleased to provide you with this handy Q&amp;A about the government shutdown.
Q: Why did the government shut down in the first place?
A: The government shut down because Chuck Schumer is the Senate leader of the Democrats, and he&#8217;s a demon.
Q: Wait, really?
A: Yeah! Look at him. With those dead eyes, and the widow’s peak you could cut your wrists with. The guy’s a hell dweller. Probably crawled out of a crevice in the earth somewhere.
Q: But weren’t there, like, political considerations?
A: I dunno. I’m still trying to figure out how Sydney Sweeney looked in the mirror and thought: “Oh good, I’m a super-hot white girl! For the next ten years, I can literally have anything I want. I know! I’ll make a movie where I’m a fat palooka. People will flock to the theaters to see that!” I mean, who knows why people do things?
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974735 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1024x171.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Q: Could we get back to the shutdown? 
A: Sure, you obviously have nothing better to do.
Q: What were the results of the shutdown?
A: During the shutdown, the government couldn’t perform its very important functions like — I don’t know — making speeches and putting up signs and whatnot.
Q: That’s it? They couldn’t make speeches and signs?
A: Signs are actually very important. Otherwise, they tow your car and you’re like, “What did I even do?”
Q: Well, what about healthcare?
A: Right. Democrats want to gradually lure the United States into a government healthcare system like they have in England and Canada, where more and more of your money goes into increasingly outdated medical treatments until finally they have to legalize medically assisted suicide so they can kill patients off in order to keep treatment expenses down. So then, you’re, like, twelve years old and you go to the doctor with a splinter, and he’s like, “Wouldn’t you rather just kill yourself?” The Republicans didn’t want to fund that, so Chuck Schumer closed the government.
Q: Wait, Chuck Schumer wants to suicide 12-year-olds, but that’s demonic… O-o-o-oh, I get what you’re saying.
A: This is why we provide these helpful Q and A’s.
Q: Well, what happens to stuff like taxes during a shutdown?
A: You still have to pay taxes during a shutdown so Congress can get paid.
Q: Get paid for doing what?
A: Well, the government’s shut down, so they’re not doing anything.
Q: So Congress doesn’t do anything, and we still have to give them our money?
A: Correct, and that continues even during the shutdown.
Q: So why exactly did the shutdown end?
A: The shutdown ended because the money for welfare payments ran out, so pretty soon, welfare recipients would’ve had to find jobs. Then to keep their jobs, they’d’ve had to improve their behavior, which would’ve helped them find spouses and start families and increase their sense of self-worth, until they wouldn’t even need Democrats. So basically, the Democrats needed to reopen or they’d become irrelevant.
Q: Well, frankly, I’m glad. I need to get home for Thanksgiving, and when I saw all the delays piling up at airports, I wanted to kill myself.
A: Unfortunately, if you want to kill yourself legally, you’ll just have to wait till the Democrats are back in power.
* * *
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>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is NOW AVAILABLE. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>
The views expressed in this satirical piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Longest Shutdown Tests Air Travel, Federal Workers And Patience

Here’s A Handy Q&A To Explain The Shutdown — Spoiler: It’s As Dumb As You Think

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