As America approaches its 250th birthday, one might expect to see a nation eager to celebrate its inheritance. Instead, American pride has fallen to new lows, and the reason runs deeper than politics. A cultural phenomenon has taken hold within our institutions, eroding national pride at its root.
The problem comes down to a matter of loyalty versus hatred for one’s country.
Both phenomena have a name. The former is patriotism, expressed by a love of home, a national attachment shaped by loyalty to the values and goals of a country.
The latter is seldom identified, but the great British conservative thinker Sir Roger Scruton gave it a name: Oikophobia.
Sir Roger defined it as “the repudiation of inheritance and home.” The Greek root oikos denotes a dwelling place or a home in the fullest sense, which encompasses one’s home country and its inheritance: its history, culture, beliefs, and institutions.
And today, there is a tangible rise of oikophobia.
<div id="attachment_1087107" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1087107" class="size-large wp-image-1087107" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846-864x576.jpg" alt="EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - AUGUST 15: Roger Scruton attends the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 15, 2016 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Edinburgh International Book Festival is one of the most important annual literary events, and takes place in the city which became a UNESCO City of Literature in 2004. (Photo by Awakening/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Awakening/Getty Images</div>
A <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/692150/american-pride-slips-new-low.aspx">2025 Gallup poll</a> asked adults, “How proud are you to be an American — extremely proud, very proud, moderately proud, only a little proud or not at all proud?”
In 2001, 87% answered extremely or very proud. Today, that has fallen by a third to a disheartening 58%.
The remaining 40% certainly fall short of patriotism — 9% claimed they were not at all proud to be American, 11% attested to be only a little proud, and 19% were moderately proud. Nothing to boast about, for this is the grip of oikophobia. And it is exacerbated in certain groups.
Pride in America varies vastly between political parties, pointing to perhaps the root of the problem. Among Republicans, 92% were extremely or very proud to be American, and the figure for independents was 53%. But among Democrats, the rate plummets to 36%.
These numbers reflect a curious trend. For Democrats, their pride seems to fluctuate with current events and politics: President Trump in office, George Floyd’s death, January 6 — the list goes on.
Conservatives, on the other hand, appear to derive their pride from America’s history, its traditions, and its achievements — the unshaking character of our nation.
This is the difference between oikophobia and patriotism.
However, it is important to understand that oikophobia is not just a lack of pride or the expression of criticism. In fact, a healthy nation ought to reflect on its past and seek improvement. Oikophobia, by contrast, rejects national inheritance. It reframes history as something to be dismantled rather than understood.
Since the oikophobe — better, the oik — is so consumed by repudiation, one might expect him to simply leave the home he so thoroughly disdains.
Oddly, they instead choose to rule it. And they can be found across the most critical cultural institutions — museums, academia, and media, to name a few.
But these oiks are not working for the sake of public benefit, mind you. They infiltrate the public sphere and act as operatives of the Culture Wars, bending, or rather reframing, American history to their will: to paint America as systemically racist, oppressive, and cruel, all in order to tell what can only be described, in Scruton’s own words, as “a tale of shame and degradation.”
This tale is told in different ways depending on the institution.
Take first the Smithsonian — the home of America’s national museums that attract visitors from all over the country. As an institution that is nearly two-thirds publicly funded, it bears a responsibility to American taxpayers.
Yet it fails in nearly every way. The National Museum of American History, for instance, cannot even deliver an objective narrative of American history. Instead, it indoctrinates visitors with left-wing ideology and sows shame among Americans, all in an attempt to make them reject their national identity. It treats slavery, imperialism, political polarization, and identity politics as the defining characteristics of the United States.
<div id="attachment_936715" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-936715" class="size-large wp-image-936715" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221-864x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 29: A view of the Smithsonian Institution near the National Mall on May 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Roy Rochlin/Getty Images</div>
Undeniably, these are elements of our history, some more important than others, but when elevated above all else, they cease to inform and instead distort the American narrative. 
And this is where oikophobia becomes most visible — through omission, interpretive framing, and moralizing language. What is emphasized, what is forgotten, and how the story is told is a much more insightful story. 
Institutions like the Smithsonian are respected worldwide, and for them to show such blatant disrespect to the very heritage it is meant to preserve is nothing short of disgusting.
Its leaders also make it abundantly clear that they are oiks themselves. 
Dr. Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, never misses the chance to recite lines about how the Smithsonian Institution resides on the stolen land of native tribes or how her white privilege has afforded her her station in life. Both statements are meant to signal that the American story begins and remains in illegitimacy rather than achievement.
Nothing is further from the truth.
Like museums, academia too has been affected. Critical race theory tells young, impressionable students that institutions are not to be trusted, for they are inherently racist. Campuses not only allow but even enable protesters who threaten Jewish students and faculty, harass law enforcement, camp out on shared student grounds, and chant violently, anti-American sentiments. Conservative students self-censor so as not to be canceled. 
The media is not free either. An excellent example of this is the ongoing conflict in Iran. Just a few weeks ago, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called out the press for its lack of discipline and honesty, for its habitual practice of sowing shame and fear.
Referencing Operation Epic Fury, Hegseth asks why no one has run a story on the bravery and tenacity of American soldiers. Not MSNBC. Not CNN. Not even Newsmax.
Hegseth shamed the press corps for being irresponsible and for “undermining the success” of the American military. “How about we talk about how special America is,” he said, “that only we have these capabilities.” And then he even conceded, “I think it’s too much to ask.”
<div id="attachment_1074159" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1074159" class="size-large wp-image-1074159" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867-865x576.jpg" alt="US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on April 8, 2026. The United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire on April 7 barely an hour before President Donald Trump's deadline to obliterate the country, triggering global relief alongside apprehension. Tehran has agreed to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil, gas and fertiliser passes, easing concerns for the battered global economy." width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Credit: Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images.</div>
Unfortunately, he may be right. This is yet another example of the ways in which oikophobia now permeates the most influential institutions, degrading national unity by diffusing doubt.
In the 2004 essay <a href="https://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/NeedForNations2020.pdf">The Need for Nations</a>, in which he coined the term oikophobia, Scruton quotes Goethe’s Faust, “What you have inherited from your forefathers, earn it, that you might own it.”
Though he was writing about Europe of the early 2000s, Scruton’s analysis applies almost perfectly to contemporary America. He says that we must “earn again the sovereignty that previous generations so laboriously shaped from the inheritance of Christianity, imperial government and Roman law. Earning it, we will own it, and owning it, we will be at peace within our borders.”
The trouble with oikophobia is that it makes such ownership impossible. It breeds a class of followers who, set in their ways to redefine the nation according to their disdain for it, feel entitled to reject the very inheritance of their birthright. Thus, they will never earn it. And they will never own it.
Where gratitude should exist toward our forefathers, oiks replace with grievance. They say that America is not a nation striving toward its ideals, but one defined solely by its failures. And when that story is perpetuated through museums, classrooms, and the media — the very venues tasked with shaping national attachment — it does not remain abstract. It becomes formative. It becomes defining. It reshapes how Americans see their country, and ultimately, whether they believe it is worth loving at all.
This is the cost of the rise of oikophobia — a battle to define what it means to be American.
But the answer is simple: our American inheritance is worth conserving.
* * *
Anna Gustafson is a Research Assistant in the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation. 
Savanna Donaldson is a former member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.

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The Department of Justice has released a <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1436006/dl">report</a> documenting how the Biden administration weaponized the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act against pro-life Americans. More than 95% of its 882 pages are actual documentary evidence: emails and texts, memos, you name it. But even that does not tell the whole sordid story.
President Bill Clinton signed the FACE Act into law in May 1994. Attorney General Janet Reno told a Senate committee that it was needed to combat a nationwide campaign by pro-life activists to shut down abortion clinics through “blockades, sabotage … stalking … arson, bombings, and finally …murder.” One senator at that hearing accused pro-lifers of “terrorism.”xxxxx
Rahm Emanuel, Clinton’s political director in 1993, would later famously counsel not to let a crisis go to waste. The abortion zealots used the controversy over some activities to create a weapon they would aggressively use to target and suppress the entire pro-life movement. <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/LM373_0.pdf">Here’s how they did it</a>.
The first version of the FACE Act, introduced by then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY) in February 1993, focused specifically on what the bill’s title said, protecting access to abortion clinics. It prohibited physical obstruction of facilities with the intent of preventing individuals from obtaining “reproductive health services.” It allowed civil suits only by private plaintiffs who had been concretely affected by such obstruction and did not permit punitive damages.
The House Judiciary Committee, without holding any hearing, began the process of radicalizing the Schumer bill. Physically obstructing a building became intimidating or interfering with any person or class of persons who were obtaining or providing reproductive health services. The bill neither defined intimidation nor interference nor limited where, how, or when it may have occurred. It allowed civil suits not only by anyone “aggrieved” by this undefined activity, but by any attorney general (federal or state) who believed that a “group of persons” had been so aggrieved. Oh, and the House Judiciary Committee added punitive damages to the plaintiffs’ arsenal.
Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) introduced the FACE Act in the Senate in March 1993, merging into this radicalizing traffic. His version even had language that would specifically exclude pro-life pregnancy centers from the act’s coverage. As if allowing both private and public plaintiffs to sue over being “aggrieved” was not vague enough, the Kennedy bill would allow suits whenever the attorney general believed that a person or group “is being, has been, or may be” aggrieved by pro-life activities. Before you ask, no, the bill put no time limit on a past grievance nor did it provide any way of determining whether or how a group “may be” aggrieved.
The FACE Act that Clinton signed into law bore no resemblance to the bill Schumer had first introduced, but, then, that was the plan all along. Put something – anything – in the legislative hopper that could be morphed and twisted into a weapon that is so vague, and carries such draconian potential penalties, that it can be used to target and suppress ordinary pro-life expression and activities.
The new DOJ report documents that abortion radicals got exactly what they wanted, detailing several ways in which the Biden administration weaponized the FACE Act. These include biased enforcement, collaboration with pro-abortion groups to track and monitor pro-life activity, blatant anti-religious bias by prosecutors, treating peaceful pro-life activists much more harshly than violent pro-abortion activists, and even helping funnel money to pro-abortion groups.
Weaponizing the FACE Act happened by design, not by chance. And to top it all off, Congress did not have authority to enact it in 1993 and certainly lacks any authority to maintain it now. Reno testified back then that the FACE Act was “crucial to ensuring that women have an unobstructed opportunity to choose whether or not to have an abortion.” The so-called “right to abortion,” in fact, is by far the most frequently cited basis for Congress’s authority to enact the FACE Act. 
In 2022, however, the Supreme Court told us what we really knew all along, that the Constitution does not, and never did, confer any right to abortion. Congress has no authority to enforce a right that does not exist or to fashion weapons to suppress rights that do.
The FACE Act was an abuse of power when it was enacted, and the Justice Department has now documented the fruit of that poisonous tree. Congress should repeal this unconstitutional fraud.
* * *
Tom Jipping is a senior legal fellow at the Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law at Advancing American Freedom Foundation.
Jonah Wendt is the communications director at Advancing American Freedom Foundation.

Doctor used an Ultrasound  3d sonogram  monitor for  the fetus 22 weeks young adult patient pregnant

The History Behind This Abortion Law Reveals Who It Was Built To Target

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A human rights tribunal in British Columbia recently <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/barry-neufeld-former-chilliwack-bc-trustee-pay-hate-speech-tribunal-2slgbtq-9.7098536">fined</a> a man $750,000 for public statements he made opposing a school board’s promotion of gender ideology. The tribunal found his comments, speeches, and social media posts brought &#8220;injury to their dignity, feelings, and self-respect.&#8221; The same tribunal <a href="https://thenewamerican.com/world-news/canadian-womans-former-landlady-fined-10000-for-saying-transphobic-things-to-her/">fined</a> a woman $10,000 for privately disagreeing with a friend’s gender transition.
In Canada, enforcing gender ideology comes at a steep cost: the suppression of free speech, the erosion of medical integrity, and harm to the wellbeing — perhaps even the future fertility — of young Canadians. And it is all justified as a necessary sacrifice for the “greater good” of a tolerant society, an ideal now woven into Canada’s national identity.
The scientific evidence against so-called gender transition, however, is mounting. Most countries around the world are beginning to realize it — except Canada.
In 2024, the United Kingdom moved to <a href="https://londondaily.com/the-indefinite-ban-on-puberty-blockers-for-minors">ban</a> puberty blockers outright. Australia’s state of Queensland <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/28/queenslands-controversial-puberty-blocker-ban-overturned-by-supreme-court">prohibited</a> puberty blockers in January, while New Zealand <a href="https://www.health.govt.nz/regulation-legislation/puberty-blockers">imposed</a> strict controls in November. In February, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons <a href="https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/health-policy/positions/2026-gender-surgery-children-adolescents.pdf">released</a> a position statement on gender surgery, warning against its potential harms.
Yet every Canadian health agency claims affirmation is the default solution for gender dysphoria. The Canadian Pediatric Society recommends accepting one’s gender identity as valid — even <a href="https://nationalpost.com/health/canadas-pediatricians-advised-to-support-affirming-gender-questioning-six-year-olds">six-year-olds</a>. The same organization explicitly <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canadian-paediatric-society-vows-to-continue-prescribing-puberty-blockers">dismissed</a> the findings of the Cass Review, a landmark <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/im-bloody-angry-j-k-rowling-scorches-critics-in-the-wake-of-cass-review-on-child-gender-transitions">study</a> that discovered the weak evidentiary basis for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
Such stark defiance of evidence-based care is nothing short of negligence — not surprising for a country that now includes <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/movement-barrels-forward-to-euthanize-12-year-old-children-in-canada">death</a> in its definition of health care. But negligence alone is an insufficient explanation. Canada is not catching up with the rest of the world to dismiss medical transition because their commitment to it is rooted in ideology, not science. And it is propagated by elites through a centralized system of top-down planning.
First, legislation enforces affirmation of gender identity. Canada <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8434497/conversion-therapy-ban-canada-royal-assent/">passed a ban</a> on so-called conversion therapy in 2021, defined as a practice designed to “change a person’s gender identity to cisgender.” But the “conversion therapy” of changing a person’s body to match their gender identity — which is defined in a circular way — is allowed. In fact, it’s effectively mandated. Those convicted under this law can receive up to five years in prison. There are no carve-outs for adults seeking sex-affirming therapy to help them with gender dysphoria.
Where there is no law directly prohibiting speech, Canadian courts create one. The latest examples both come from British Columbia: the man fined $750,000 for public statements and the woman fined $10,000 for a private conversation.
Such outrageous penalties have a chilling effect on speech. Absent any serious dissent, the monolithic worldview promoted in Canadian schools, hospitals, and traditional media will continue unchallenged. And the children don’t stand a chance.
Consider Julia Malbogat, a Toronto mom who <a href="https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/opinion/stop-asking-me-if-my-eight-year-old-trans-kid-is-just-going-through-a-phase/">wrote</a> in 2021 about her daughter “coming out” as transgender. During a family trip to their cottage, her daughter said that she’s a boy, to which Julia replied with a simple “ok.” When asked how she knew, the child pointed to the school’s Rainbow Alliance, a grade 4-6 club teaching “sexual and gender diversity.” Julia dismissed the possibility her child was mistaken and noted that surgery wouldn’t be an option until 16. By then, she assumed the dysphoria would be “insistent, persistent, and consistent” enough to justify medical intervention.
But how could someone’s gender dysphoria be anything except persistent if they are affirmed from the moment it is expressed? Gender-confused children rarely hear a serious alternative from schools or clinicians — though some later wish they had. Ask the detransitioners.
The largest <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2025.2538744">study</a> of detransitioners in Canada and the United States suggests that many who reversed a gender transition wish doctors “took a more neutral approach to care.” The participants reported feelings of alienation, emphasizing the high social cost of detransition. One woman <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=detransitioners%20ghosted%20&amp;qs=n&amp;form=QBRE&amp;sp=-1&amp;ghc=1&amp;lq=0&amp;pq=detransitioners%20ghost&amp;sc=6-21&amp;sk=&amp;cvid=4BE657D5CF8D46BFA48C72A857DF33F8">said</a> she was “ghosted” by the doctor who did her mastectomy. Treating gender identity as immutable and patients as infallible leaves minors, who are already going through emotional and physical changes, at risk of serious harm.
Look no further than their chosen cultural symbols. Publicly funded spaces across the country are decked out in pride flags, including city halls, legislative assemblies, walkways, libraries. This imagery is so pervasive in places of cultural importance that a first-time visitor might mistake it for the national flag.
In the absence of their rich traditions, Canadians have united around a new vision of the good. This new orthodoxy is summed up well in Bill C-4’s preamble, which states that conversion therapy “propagates” the myth that “cisgender identity is to be preferred over other gender identities.” While Canada elevates the dubious idea of an inner, gendered essence, it denounces the view that our bodies are essential to who we are.
That is a philosophical claim, not a scientific one. Science can’t disprove it.
Until Canada re-examines its commitment to this new orthodoxy, it will keep ignoring the warnings — until the damage is too widespread to dismiss.
* * *
Liana Graham is a research assistant in domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation.

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He Spoke Out Against Gender Ideology. It Cost Him Nearly A Million Dollars.

How Pushing Back On Gender Ideology Cost One Man $750,000

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In recent years, sharp-eyed parents and investigative reporters have exposed the racial resentment and antisemitism prevalent in DEI. But as public opinion and policymaking turn against this racial discrimination in disguise, a large association of private schools continues to push the radical agenda.
If the biased activity at these elite schools remains unchecked, legal advocates and policymakers will be fighting the same civil rights battles with the next generation of college students.
Today’s battles are certainly yielding good fruit. Lawsuits exposing segregation in schools under DEI’s banner have prompted state and federal lawmakers to reinforce civil rights laws. These laws have helped snuff out mandated “affinity groups” (where participants are separated by race, ethnicity, and/or sex), illegal hiring quotas, and doctrinaire DEI statements required by so-called diversity staff in K-12 schools and universities.
Curiously, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), a K-12 private school association, is not moved by the lawsuits and new legislation — nor by DEI’s racial preferences. Later this month, on <a href="https://www.nais.org/events/nais-meetup-for-dei-practitioners-8">April 29</a>, NAIS will even hold a “meetup” for DEI staff working at the association’s institutions.
NAIS is a membership organization for private schools. The group holds conferences and posts job openings for its member institutions on its website and otherwise provides resources on what NAIS deems as best practices.
Some of the “practices,” though, are little more than exercises in segregation. Member schools tout race-based <a href="https://www.merion-mercy.com/about/blog-posts/single-blog/~board/blog/post/what-is-an-affinity-group-and-why-do-they-matter">affinity groups</a> on their <a href="https://www.tescharlotte.org/diversity/affinity-groups.cfm">websites</a>, and NAIS advertises diversity staff positions at its member schools via its <a href="https://careers.nais.org/jobs?keywords=diversity&amp;place=">job bank</a>.
Institutions infused with DEI crowd out competing opinions and create radical echo chambers of a biased orthodoxy. Small wonder that NAIS had to issue an apology in 2024 when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/nyregion/antisemitism-conference-private-schools.html">speakers</a> at one of the association’s DEI events “characterized Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide and the establishment of the state of Israel as a racist project.”
The American Jewish Committee and Prizmah, an organization for Jewish day schools, were among the groups that wrote to NAIS, saying, “The pervasiveness of this rhetoric and the absence of any alternate perspectives created an atmosphere that was hostile for many Jewish students and faculty members in attendance.”
In 2025, NAIS <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/12/us-news/private-school-group-axes-dei-events-over-political-landscape/">canceled</a> its “People of Color Conference,&#8221; but resources on its website suggest DEI remains a priority. NAIS simply <a href="https://www.nais.org/events/gather">renamed</a> the conference, now calling it the “Gather: A Convening for Renewal and Growth, Belonging, and Impact.” This title sounds benign, but NAIS specifically describes the event as a reinvention of its People of Color meeting. The conference will feature more “affinity group work,” as well as sessions on “inclusion and belonging,” a new title for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
NAIS remains out of step with civil rights laws. The U.S. Department of Education has been ferreting out racial discrimination in K-12 schools across the country. In February, the agency announced it is investigating Portland public schools because the district operates a racially <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-educations-office-civil-rights-initiates-title-vi-investigation-portland-public-schools">segregated</a> academic program.
The federal agency has opened similar cases over the last year. In 2025, the Education Department canceled some $600 million in grants to schools for teacher training because the grant applications contained racial preferences, some in the form of DEI initiatives.
State lawmakers in Arkansas, Ohio, and Kentucky <a href="https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/education/dei-a-state-legislation-tracker/">adopted</a> prohibitions on DEI in 2025, following earlier legislative activity in Florida, Idaho, and Texas. Today, there are nearly two dozen states with such legislation.
NAIS member schools are preparing the next generation of college students, likely students at elite universities. Faculty and staff at schools like Harvard and Columbia have been among the worst violators of civil rights, allowing antisemitism to persist. DEI offices on these campuses and others have done nothing to stop such activity. Just last month, the Education Department opened yet <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-educations-office-civil-rights-opens-two-new-probes-harvard-university-continued-discrimination-campus">another</a> investigation into Harvard for racial discrimination.
Independent schools are private institutions, but that does not exempt them from all civil rights laws nor does it excuse antisemitism. Racial discrimination should be exposed to withering scrutiny in public schools, universities, and yes, even private schools.
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Jonathan Butcher is Acting Director of the Center for Education at The Heritage Foundation.

Trump Administration Freezes Federal Funding To Harvard And Threatens School’s Tax-Exempt Status

Elite Schools Insist It’s About ‘Belonging’ — Critics Say It’s Discrimination All Over Again

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On the surface, Pierre Poilievre’s recent appearance on the Joe Rogan <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtbGgSwuE_U">podcast</a> had more good than bad. The Conservative leader came across as likable, down-to-earth, and clear. He stressed the need to unleash Canada’s energy potential. He called for cutting regulations that have suppressed innovation. He pushed for lower government spending. These are all sound ideas and Canada would surely benefit from them.
But one key moment showed the real substance of Poilievre’s platform: empty individualism. This view defines human dignity as absolute self-expression. It not only cheapens human life, it weakens the institutions that support Canadian culture.
The moment happened when Rogan critiqued the current state of Canada’s euthanasia program.
Rogan expressed a reasonable concern. He noted that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j1z14p57po">1 in 20</a> Canadian deaths now come from so-called assisted suicide or Medical Aid in Dying (MAID). Poilievre replied that he believes people should “have the choice” to be euthanized. His main concern was the idea that it would be offered to kids or to people whose only condition is mental illness.
In other words, his issue is not with Canada’s current euthanasia rules. His issue is only with suggestions that have not yet become law.
Canada’s euthanasia regime is abhorrent, with or without amendments. Track 2 euthanasia lets individuals apply for MAID based on an incurable physical condition. This includes a disability. The Atlantic recently <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/0">published</a> a piece on the ethical and practical questions facing “providers.” A more accurate word would be deprivers. These providers must interpret euthanasia rules on their own. One story described a doctor who euthanized a man in his 30s. The man had a treatable form of cancer, but he had refused all other treatment. This made his condition “irremediable.”
Human dignity should be the first commitment of any conservative. Poilievre often touts individual rights. Yet he ignores the most fundamental one: the right to life. To say someone has an intrinsic right means they possess it simply because of who they are. It does not depend on what they do.
But Poilievre’s willingness to allow euthanasia for those who are suffering and dying sends a clear message. It says the value of human life depends on personal judgment.
His criticism of euthanasia for the mentally ill is confusing. If people should have a “freedom” to die on their terms — in Canada that includes the terminally ill, disabled, and chronically sick — why must those symptoms be physical? In fact, we know they often are not.
Stories abound of individuals struggling with depression who have applied for MAID. One <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/kiano-vafaeian-medical-assistance-in-dying">example</a> is 26-year-old Kiano Vafaeian. He was struggling with vision loss and depression.
At the heart of Poilievre’s blunder on euthanasia is a false understanding of human dignity. Ironically, it is the same understanding that drives the woke excesses of the Liberal elite. They see dignity as absolute self-expression. This empty individualism separates life’s meaning from the broader context of nature, community, and tradition.
When applied to culture, this leads to a cheapening of human life. It is no surprise that places that legalize assisted suicide see an increase in overall suicide rates. Chosen or not, Poilievre fails to understand one key point. Euthanasia is a symptom of a sick, depressed, and lonely culture.
A culture that is killing itself is not going to be saved by lower housing costs. Economic prosperity can certainly help but it is not the sole solution.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Joe Rogan Experience #2470 - Pierre Poilievre" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JtbGgSwuE_U?start=706&#038;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>
Poilievre’s wholesome vision for Canada is admirable. He wants a future where families enjoy the fruit of their labor without government interference. Ideally, they live in a white-picket-fenced home that they can afford. But this vision is unachievable without cultural renewal. The expressive individualism of the Liberal and Conservative elites will not deliver that renewal.
Canadian culture is not only suicidal it is also sterile. Nearly <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/11638221/canada-ultra-low-fertility/">one in four</a> Canadian women in their 40s have no kids. Last year, Poilievre was absurdly <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pierre-poilievre-biological-clock-1.7499220">reprimanded</a> by Liberal MPs. They criticized him for recognizing that unaffordable housing causes couples to run out of time to start families before their “biological clocks” expire. The idea that government should be completely impartial to marriage and fertility rates is ludicrous.
These rates can give a glimpse into the hope people place in their future. Economic strain can suppress this hope and so can a nihilistic culture that has cheapened human life. The family is not merely an economic unit. It is a legacy-making enterprise. A culture that sees no value in life beyond individual expression makes the self-sacrificial reality of marriage seem absurd.
Unlike Poilievre, a true conservative recognizes that dignity is not rooted in our personal judgment. It is intrinsic to who we are. Our identity should be understood in reference to the people, institutions, and traditions that shape us. We should seek economic prosperity. But we should not seek it at the cost of the integrity of those institutions.
Poilievre has an impressive ability to explain those institutions. One of the best moments from the podcast was his explanation of the Westminster tradition, which is deeply connected to Canada’s British heritage.
What Poilievre takes for granted is this: hopelessness grows when people feel isolated. Yet the political elite — both Conservative and Liberal — expect the average Canadian to accept this isolation without complaint. Canada has some of the highest immigration rates per capita in the world. Conservatives claim to support assimilation into Canadian culture but they lack the ability to identify and preserve what is exemplary of that culture.
At Confederation, Canadian culture wasn’t divorced from a broader religious and moral consensus. It was founded against the backdrop of a predominantly Christian society. The 1871 census showed over <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-religions-in-america/religion-in-canada-18671945/3AA29A820C78AB35B6F22D2F4F763E65">98%</a> of the population as Christian. All 36 Fathers of Confederation were raised in a Christian tradition. This included Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Presbyterianism. Yet Poilievre’s policies, especially on immigration, fail to take this into account. His view is that anyone can “become” Canadian. He defines it loosely as a belief in “freedom.” This view will not produce the assimilation needed for cultural unity. It will lead Canada further down the path of cultural decay.
Does this mean that people of non-Christian faiths should not come to Canada? Not at all. But it does mean that policymakers should protect the shared morality, customs, and traditions passed down from the time of Confederation. They should make judgments on immigration policy with prudence. They should keep the interests of Canadians in mind. Those interests should not be measured only in economic output. They should include cultural unity.
Poilievre’s discussion was typical of the decades-long drift of the Conservative establishment. It has moved toward a “balancing the budget” style of liberalism. This style redefines human dignity. It has cheapened human life. It has undermined the family. It has squandered Canada’s cultural inheritance. It has failed.
Moving forward, the Conservatives should let their party’s name guide their ideology. Canadians do not just want lower costs, they want flourishing families. They want a unified nation and a culture of hope. That is the true mission of conservatism. The Conservative establishment would do well to remember it.
* * *
Liana Graham is a research assistant in domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation. She is originally from Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

jre poil

The Most Telling Moment Of Poilievre’s Joe Rogan Interview

Assisted Suicide

Conservatives

Euthanasia

Joe Rogan

Pierre Poilievre

Wayne LaPierre

Sometimes a news event comes along that is so chillingly horrific that it confirms the presence of the devil in our midst. Thursday’s murder of a young woman by the state through euthanasia certainly qualifies.
This particular case also contains a warning: it is happening in Europe as a result of societal trends that are also gathering speed in America. These include family breakdown, secularization, the growth of the state, and the resulting embrace of a culture of death by the bureaucracy, the media, and the Left.
And this was not a one-off. Noelia Castillo Ramos, in Spain, is the second young woman in less than three years to be euthanized by a European state.
In fact, the two cases are alarmingly similar. Noelia and Milou Verhoof, who was euthanized in the Netherlands in 2023, were both raped as mere girls, understandably fell into depression, and eventually asked the state to help kill themselves. And the state was only too happy to oblige.
The case of Noelia — killed at a hospital near Barcelona — has drawn worldwide attention online, which is itself proof that the desire to cling to life is a basic human instinct.
Noelia suffered a lot in her life. The Spanish government took custody from her parents 12 years ago when she was just 13, after they divorced, fell into hard times, and lost their house. Her father, Gerónimo, drank at the time, according to news reports.
The Catalan regional government, of which Barcelona is the capital, then placed her in a state-supervised youth center. It was there that Noelia was gang-raped by three young men who were reportedly illegal aliens.
Nothing happened to her aggressors, but Noelia was never the same. She plunged into a severe depression, and suffered as well from borderline personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
In 2022, Noelia tried to end her life by throwing herself from a fifth-floor window. She survived, but ended up a paraplegic, stuck in a wheelchair and suffering great pain.
She then demanded euthanasia, which Spain’s current government of Socialists and communists legalized in 2021. Noelia’s father opposed it, arguing that her many disorders prevented her from making an informed decision, and pursued the case till the end in the courts.
On Thursday, a Barcelona judge denied a last-minute request to halt the proceedings. Around 6:00 pm, doctors at Hospital Residència Sant Camil in Sant Pere de Ribes, near the Catalan capital, gave her a lethal injection that stopped her breathing and her heart.
Noelia, in other words, was asphyxiated by the same state that took her away from those who loved her — and then either could not or would not protect her.
For the Left, this was a victory. The newspaper El País wrote caustically about the Abogados Cristianos, the Spanish Foundation of Christian Lawyers, which worked with Noelia’s father to stop the euthanasia. In typical lapidary style, the paper wrote:
<blockquote>For a year and a half this organization [Abogados Cristianos] has been behind the father’s legal battle to prevent the assisted death of Noelia, who suffers from paraplegia. … Advised by the ultra-Catholic group Abogados Cristianos, the man has entangled his daughter in a legal maze that has kept her alive, against her will, for 601 days.</blockquote>
For Spain’s main leftist newspaper, this was about “dying with dignity.” The court battle “prolonged the suffering of a young woman who has never wavered in her decision and who has received scientific endorsement from the independent professionals who make up the Catalan Guarantee and Evaluation Commission (CGAC).”
And this has indeed been a battle between those who believe that the state, led by technocrats, has the right to impose its choices on the family, even to make life-and-death decisions, and those who believe in a higher order. Good and evil, some might say.
Bestselling Spanish author Irene Gonzalez, a friend and insightful observer of Spanish life, called it a “state execution.&#8221; She wrote on X:
<blockquote>The State separated her from her parents — who loved her — yet failed to protect, shelter, or provide her with psychological or emotional support. She was a vulnerable young woman whom the State left in a state of absolute defenselessness; its solution is simply to get her out of the way. Euthanasia appears to be the execution — the final step in a case involving abduction and torture — carried out with the haste of a system eager to erase the traces of what the “State” is truly doing in the name of a dignified death.</blockquote>
America, look at Europe — and beware.
* * *
Mike Gonzales is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

A Barcelona Judge Refuses For The Third Time To Suspend Euthanasia For Noelia Castillo

The State Took Her From Her Family. Then It Decided She Should Die.

Child rape

Europe

Immigrants

Rape

Spain

Women

When President Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for HHS Secretary in late 2024, some <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5099888-advancing-american-freedom-opposes-kennedy/">Beltway Republicans</a> tried to tank his nomination. For conservatives, these critics’ strongest argument was that Kennedy was for decades a liberal Democrat who supported abortion on demand.
I’m a pro-life conservative. So why did I, along with millions of others like me, support Kennedy’s nomination and tell skeptical pro-life critics to give him the benefit of the doubt?
For me, the story starts with the COVID lockdowns in 2020. I spent the better part of that year co-authoring <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Price-Panic-Tyranny-Pandemic-Catastrophe/dp/1684511410/ref=sr_1_1">the first book</a> to make the case that locking down the population would do far more harm than good. COVID was the greatest test of wisdom and courage in a generation. Most public officials, from both parties, failed the test. Kennedy aced it.
The raspy-voiced lawyer helped millions of Americans see the dangers of a “biomedical security state” that blurred the binary mental map of free versus communist countries that had served us well during the Cold War. That framework was of limited value for fighting this new, domestic threat to our civil and medical freedom: a corporatist state.
Post-Covid, millions of Americans realized our problem was not just Big Government or Big Business. The problem is, in effect, a cartel that blurs the lines of public and private — one often enabled by a corporate media too dependent on ad revenue to speak truth to the real power.
The lockdowns and draconian vaccine mandates taught another lesson: past partisan ties do not guarantee good future results. For many of us, resisting the COVID-inspired assaults on our liberty was a better credential than party affiliation.
This is one of several reasons millions of conservative voters began to warm to Kennedy, even if they planned to vote for Donald Trump in the general election. And that latent support for Kennedy <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/polls-show-americans-conflicted-on-robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-his-health-stances">exploded</a> after he announced his support for Donald Trump on August 23, 2024.
This was no mere marriage of convenience. It was the first sign of a political realignment. No doubt many staunch progressives <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/08/23/as-rfk-jr-exits-a-look-at-who-supported-him-in-the-2024-presidential-race/">abandoned Kennedy</a> when he endorsed Donald Trump. But many independents and disgruntled Democrats stayed. A new MAGA-MAHA coalition was born.
What made Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump truly historic was the topic he chose to elevate — one of deep concern to tens of millions of American families across the political spectrum but mostly missing from our two major party platforms: the staggering rise of chronic diseases among American children.
As HHS secretary, Kennedy has made the fight against childhood chronic disease his lodestar. And despite constant efforts by critics to paint him as extreme, almost everyone is now taking chronic disease seriously.
But what about the year-old charge that Kennedy would be a cheerleader for abortion? It was wrong. As HHS Secretary, he lacks the power to stop all abortions or close every Planned Parenthood clinic. Kennedy must also work within the constraints of the president who nominated him. But within Kennedy’s remit, his actions have been encouraging.
Last September, for instance, he announced a new FDA review of the safety and approval process of the abortion pill mifepristone. Abortion advocates <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/health-secretary-rfk-jr-launches-review-abortion-pill/story?id=125908299">are not pleased</a>. After all, in a Post-Roe world, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/03/medication-abortion-accounted-63-all-us-abortions-2023-increase-53-2020">most abortions are chemical</a>, not surgical.
In late January, <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/conscience-dlc.html">he beefed up federal conscience safeguards</a> for healthcare workers. This protects providers from being forced to participate in abortions or other procedures. This includes new policy guidance and investigations into violations.
Most dramatically, <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/wtas-hhs-bars-research-using-human-fetal-tissue-from-elective-abortions.html">he has just barred</a> HHS-funded research from using human fetal tissue from elective abortions. Pro-life Americans have asked for this ban for decades. The practice continued even during the tenure of NIH director Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian, who <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/18/anti-abortion-groups-francis-collins-nih-1068724">explicitly defended</a> it.
Like Nixon visiting China, I hope Kennedy will do more to defend pre-born human life. It’s not a vain hope. During one telling interview last year, Kennedy denounced a CDC publication that listed “abortion” as one of the top 10 health achievements of the 20th century.
The press “fact-checked” the comment, since <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm4812.pdf">the document</a> he likely had in mind listed “family planning” rather than “abortion.” (Pro-life advocates recognize the family planning as a euphemism for abortion.) But most missed the crucial “tell”: Kennedy recoiled from the notion that abortion could be cited as a health care achievement.
For pro-life conservatives, supporting Kennedy’s nomination posed some risk. One year in, however, my choice to support Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is an easy one.
* * *
Jay W. Richards, PhD, is Vice President for Social and Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

FDA Unveils New Framework To Speed Ultra-Rare Drug Approvals

I’m a Conservative. Here’s Why I Support Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

COVID

Department of Health and Human Services

MAHA

Opinion

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump Administration

For many people, Saint Valentine’s Day is a time for beautiful flowers, fancy dinners, and sentimental cards. But its origin tells a tougher story. St. Valentine is remembered not for romance alone, but for risking his life to solemnize marriages at a time when commitment was discouraged. Valentine’s Day was never meant to be only about feelings. It was meant to be about choosing responsibility.
That message is especially relevant for men today – single, married, childless, or empty nesters.
If you are a single man and not dating anyone, the advice is simple and uncomfortable: be brave and ask a woman out in real life (“IRL”), not through an app. Courage is not optional. It is a skill and character trait, and like any other skill or habit, it improves with practice. Real men do hard things not because success is guaranteed, but because avoidance slowly erodes confidence.
Despite the dominance of dating apps, most marriages began face-to-face. Data show that most couples meet through friends, work, school, religious communities, or social settings. Apps promise efficiency, but they often deliver paralysis. The illusion of infinite choice makes commitment feel premature and rejection feel catastrophic.
Asking someone out in person clarifies things quickly. You get a real answer. You gain real confidence. Even a “no” strengthens you. Bravery practiced in dating carries over into every other domain of life such as work, leadership, and family. Men who avoid small risks rarely rise to meet large ones.
If you have been dating for a while, Valentine’s Day is a moment for honesty. Indefinite dating is not neutral, nor is it kind. It is a decision that disproportionately affects women, and stringing someone along in the name of flexibility is neither kind nor mature.
Many American couples date for a few years before engagement and marry within a year or so after that. While there will always be exceptions, the norm points in one direction: clarity. If you see a future, say so. If you do not, say that too. Ambiguity disguised as thoughtfulness is still avoidance.
Marriage, done seriously, is not a trap. It is an accelerator. St. Valentine knew that the first command in scripture is for men to be “fruitful and multiply.” That must have inspired his work to one degree or another. We shouldn’t be surprised it’s good for us to follow God’s commands.
And if you don’t believe the Bible or St. Valentine, at least consider the data.
For married men, the <a href="https://aibm.org/commentary/why-marriage-is-good-for-men/#:~:text=Married%20men%20are%20richer%20men&amp;text=That%20sounds%20like%20exactly%20the,similarly%20credentialed%20but%20unmarried%20peers.">evidence</a> is striking. Married men earn more over their lifetimes than their unmarried peers, even after controlling for education and background. They also live longer and report better health outcomes. Marriage tends to push men toward steadier work, better habits, and longer time horizons. In short, it civilizes us.
Happiness data tell the same story. Across decades of survey research, married men with children are significantly more likely to describe themselves as “very happy” than single men (35% vs. 14%, according to <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/who-is-happiest-married-mothers-and-fathers-per-the-latest-general-social-survey">research</a> by the Institute for Family Studies). This advantage persists across income levels, racial groups, and age cohorts. Marriage is one of the strongest predictors of long-term well-being available in the data.
That does not mean marriage is easy. It means it is formative.
In a modern working world, it is increasingly difficult to see the lasting results of your labor. Projects end. Companies change. Metrics reset. Even success feels temporary.
Family is different. In raising children, effort produces visible, enduring outcomes. You can watch values take root. You can see growth unfold year by year.
Men with children often discover that legacy is not an abstract idea. It sits across the dinner table. Passing on what you believe — discipline, faith, responsibility, restraint — requires proximity and patience. It also requires sacrifice. That is not a bug of family life; it is the feature that shapes men into something sturdier.
So, married men with kids, are you passing this wisdom on to your children? Not many are. According to a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/01/24/parenting-in-america-today/">Pew Research Center</a> poll, nearly 90% say it’s extremely or very important for their kids to have financial independence and jobs they enjoy, while only 20% say it’s extremely or very important to get married and have kids. Use this holiday to teach, even if your kids have left the nest.
This brings us back to St. Valentine.
According to early Christian tradition, Valentine secretly officiated marriages in defiance of imperial orders because he believed commitment strengthened society and formed men. His resistance was not sentimental. It was purposeful. He treated marriage as a moral institution that oriented men toward duty, continuity, and love grounded in action.
Valentine’s Day was never meant to celebrate perpetual adolescence or provide an excuse for a nice date.
So this year, men, take inventory. If you are single, work toward being marriageable: able to earn income, willing to put others ahead of yourself, and ready to lead through sacrifice. If you are marriageable, go on a date — one you initiate, in real life. If you are dating, get serious about marriage. Make a decision. If you are married, move toward children and invest deliberately in the next generation.
Valentine’s Day does not ask for grand gestures. It asks for forward movement.
Love that lasts is not accidental. It is chosen. Repeatedly. Bravely.
That was St. Valentine’s wager. It remains a good one.
* * *
Derrick Morgan is executive vice president of The Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Medium shot man kissing girlfriend on cheek in taxi filled with flowers

The Part Of Valentine’s Day No One Talks About

Relationships

Valentine's Day

Alex Pretti died amid a breakdown of public order in Minneapolis, where local authorities — just as they did in 2020 — allowed unrest to steadily escalate without effective intervention.
We’ll never know exactly what went wrong in the chaotic melee of organized harassment, noise, and obstruction of federal agents by bodies and vehicles in Minneapolis. But the circumstances were there, day after day, that made serious injury or death inevitable at some point. If not Pretti, then someone else.
Senior federal officials made assertions about Pretti’s intent before waiting for the full facts. Meanwhile, the national media instantly presented him as a hapless observer expressing his free speech rights, ruthlessly gunned down by out-of-control agents. A more complicated picture emerged later, with <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/new-video-appears-to-show-alex-pretti-interaction-with-ice-officers-over-a-week-before-his-death/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!1YWglO78AoKLMmCbIp5LYqidTnqAKyS7FBZyDlg1tU-Sndjw0XJyRSPD1VXk0ps5dvD4NajfhN3cuENrujMsSSHEfFA$">video</a> of Pretti some days earlier spitting on a DHS car and kicking out the taillights. Independent reporting also revealed national <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nypost.com/2026/01/08/us-news/heres-whos-really-behind-the-minneapolis-ice-resistance-movement/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!1YWglO78AoKLMmCbIp5LYqidTnqAKyS7FBZyDlg1tU-Sndjw0XJyRSPD1VXk0ps5dvD4NajfhN3cuENrujMsTAbAYVE$">funding</a> and <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/minnesota-signal-gate-did-lt-134523155.html__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!1YWglO78AoKLMmCbIp5LYqidTnqAKyS7FBZyDlg1tU-Sndjw0XJyRSPD1VXk0ps5dvD4NajfhN3cuENrujMsMiUYchA$">organization</a> of the supposedly organic and local anti-ICE protests.
Politicians in Washington opportunistically pounced on this premise to attack DHS funding.
With the chaos on the ground, it’s easy to lose track of the big picture. The strategy of the Left, led by its most extreme activists but now supported by mainstream elected officials, is to neuter or end enforcement of immigration law inside the country.
Gone are the days of Bill Clinton, who signed a 1996 law that increased penalties for entering the United States illegally and made it easier to deport illegal aliens. Even Obama mostly accepted his duty to enforce United States immigration law, admitting that he couldn’t wave a magic wand and allow every illegal alien to stay.
Joe Biden’s presidency changed all that. Emboldened by their success under Obama with DACA and other measures to weaken enforcement, and unrestrained by Biden’s out-to-lunch management, Left-wing activists went to town.
Catch-and-release at the border, unlawful mass parole, and billions of taxpayer dollars to grease the machinery brought millions into the country over four years.
Back in office, Trump quickly shut down the open border. Things got stickier when it came to interior enforcement to carry out the deportations ordered by immigration judges after due process. In states where local law enforcement honored ICE detainers, criminal aliens could be picked up safely inside government facilities. In “sanctuary” jurisdictions — which include many major United States cities — it was extremely difficult.
The Trump administration chose to go in hard, with high-visibility arrests in resistant Democrat-run cities that energized his base voters but made uncomfortable viewing for many Americans who want law enforcement but don’t like seeing how it sometimes must be done.
The legacy media would have you believe that the Pretti shooting changed people’s minds in Washington and led Democrats to call for defunding ICE — and even some Republicans question continued funding without certain changes. But don’t be fooled — even before Minneapolis, immigration activists and the politicians they elected did not accept the deportation of any foreign national, whatever the law said or the courts decided.
If you asked the protesters in Minneapolis whether any alien should ever be deported from the United States, and if so, for what reasons, I doubt they would admit to any. “<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.wpaonline.org/black-female-leaders-in-the-criminal-justice-reform-movement/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!1YWglO78AoKLMmCbIp5LYqidTnqAKyS7FBZyDlg1tU-Sndjw0XJyRSPD1VXk0ps5dvD4NajfhN3cuENrujMsDWhzCXI$">Abolitionists</a>” on the Left want to end criminal justice as we know it, and that includes immigration law.
Minnesota politicians like Tim Walz and Jacob Frey speak of all migrants as “<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/minneapolis-protests-and-the-role-of-state-controlled-national-guard/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!1YWglO78AoKLMmCbIp5LYqidTnqAKyS7FBZyDlg1tU-Sndjw0XJyRSPD1VXk0ps5dvD4NajfhN3cuENrujMsBZuKjpA$">neighbors</a>,” and “<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/doj-launches-investigation-into-walz-frey-for-allegedly-impeding-law-enforcement-minnesota-minneapolis-ice-shooting-renee-nicole-good__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!1YWglO78AoKLMmCbIp5LYqidTnqAKyS7FBZyDlg1tU-Sndjw0XJyRSPD1VXk0ps5dvD4NajfhN3cuENrujMssic7YgU$">fellow Minnesotans</a>,” as if those are attributes conveyed simply by physical, and not legal, presence. They do not accept a distinction between legal and illegal aliens.
Indeed, that is now the underlying philosophy of the “progressive” Left. They believe everyone should be allowed to enter the country and apply for asylum, and that even those unqualified should not be deported. They want all the “newcomers” to be able to tap into federal welfare programs. (And if they commit fraud to get benefits to which they are not entitled, we should go easy on them because to prosecute non-Europeans for crime is “<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ilcm.org/latest-news/targeted-ice-enforcement-of-somali-community-in-minnesota-is-racist-and-islamophobic/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!1YWglO78AoKLMmCbIp5LYqidTnqAKyS7FBZyDlg1tU-Sndjw0XJyRSPD1VXk0ps5dvD4NajfhN3cuENrujMspQSBMJc$">racist” or “Islamophobic</a>”).
In Minneapolis, hundreds of people, led by well-funded political activists, are deliberately pushing the envelope of free speech beyond protest into physical action.
What is their goal? It is not to be heard, because everyone knows their views. It is not to have a conversation, because they are aware that the tactical-level agents they confront have no authority to stop operations.
The goal is to intimidate the federal government to stop enforcing laws in Minneapolis — to nullify federal law. The physical confrontations are designed to provoke a reaction — ideally not lethal, but some photogenic verbal or violent response to elicit sympathy. Whistles, screaming, throwing objects, blocking roads, and insulting armed officers at close range are orchestrated mayhem with a purpose.
In Minneapolis, the tactics may have worked, for now. President Trump may have concluded that the political benefit of urban confrontations is outweighed by the risk of defections from vulnerable Republicans and the alienation of swing voters marinating in mainstream media.
Political reality often outweighs objective truth and black-letter law. Trump’s border has been a massive success. And while the battle over interior enforcement isn’t over, in Minneapolis, the open-borders Left won a skirmish.
* * *
Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center and author of “The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)” from Academica Books.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
This article has been edited for clarity.

US-IMMIGRATION-ICE-SHOOTING

How The Left Turned Minneapolis Into A Test Case For Nullifying Immigration Law

Donald Trump

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Leftists

Minneapolis

Minnesota

When the Food and Drug Administration announced that the agency would be removing the black-box warning from hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, women everywhere threw their hands up in celebration.
And rightly so. America’s health agencies are finally acknowledging that women are not simply “little men,” and that research and clinical care must account for a woman’s unique biology and hormonal fluctuations across every stage of life.
But amid the cheering, some important nuance is being overlooked. The FDA’s decision to remove the black-box warning from HRT is just one example of how recommendations offered without adequate context or distinction may do more harm than good.
The idea that estrogen supplementation is a cure-all for the symptoms women commonly experience during perimenopause and menopause — hot flashes, disrupted sleep, fatigue, muscle aches, inflammation, weight gain, bloating, and mood swings — is a myth.
Often, women are not suffering from a lack of estrogen, but from what <a href="https://www.healthygutgirl.com/">Kitty Martone</a>, a holistic health educator who works with women to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1426024567689906">navigate perimenopause and menopause</a>, refers to as <a href="https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/what-is-estrogen-dominance/">estrogen dominance</a> — a state in which estrogen outweighs progesterone, producing symptoms that look identical to low estrogen.
Estrogen does not act in isolation, but the details are rarely explained to women. To be tolerated well, estrogen must be balanced by adequate progesterone and supported by a healthy metabolic rate. For many women, progesterone is the first hormone to decline — often years before estrogen meaningfully drops — due to chronic stress, under-eating, thyroid suppression, and blood sugar instability.
This creates a common paradox: estrogen may appear “normal,” or even low, on a lab test, yet functionally feel excessive in the body because there is not enough progesterone to counterbalance its effects. Women are then told they are estrogen-deficient and prescribed more estrogen, while symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, migraines, heavy or irregular bleeding, bloating, and inflammation intensify rather than improve.
In these cases, simply prescribing more estrogen does not resolve symptoms. In fact, it can make them worse.
These mechanisms were not understood properly during the Women’s Health Initiative study, which was abruptly halted in the early 2000s upon a suggested correlation between HRT and breast cancer as well as heart disease. In an effort to recover from the fallout of the highly <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10758198/">flawed study</a>, which caused millions of women to abandon hormone therapy altogether, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.
Cue the pharmaceutical ads: dancing women in sunflower meadows, singing about how wonderful life is with the latest HRT option. The fine print instructs women to “ask your doctor if it’s right for you,” but many doctors may not be properly equipped to offer nuanced guidance.
Over the past few decades, medical visits have been reduced to 15–20 minute symptom reviews that are translated into billing codes entered into a computer. While this system serves insurance and data collection, it fails to treat women as whole individuals. It leaves little room to explore how diet, stress, thyroid function, gut health, or metabolic status influence hormonal symptoms — particularly in perimenopausal women.
Martone argues that this system has created an environment where estrogen is prescribed casually, without sufficient context. “Doctors now essentially have carte blanche to prescribe estrogen for any hormone complaint — without evaluating detox pathways, metabolism, liver function, or estrogen clearance.”
Some clinicians have been cautioning against this oversimplification for decades. <a href="https://raypeat.com/">Dr. Ray Peat</a>, who studied hormones, metabolism, and stress physiology extensively, <a href="https://raypeat.com/articles/aging/aging-estrogen-progesterone.shtml">wrote about</a> how estrogen tends to accumulate under conditions of chronic stress and low thyroid function, while progesterone plays a stabilizing, protective role for both the nervous system and bodily tissues.
In plain terms, how a woman feels on hormones can have less to do with hormone levels and more to do with improper functioning of the liver, metabolism, and stress load at the time therapy is introduced. Two women can take the same prescription and have completely different outcomes — not because one is “doing it wrong,” but because their internal terrain is different.
This helps explain why so many women feel dismissed when HRT is presented as a simple solution. When symptoms worsen, they are often told to increase the dose or switch brands, rather than step back and ask whether the body is prepared to handle additional estrogen.
Martone emphasizes that women often need to experiment with hormones to discover individualized therapies that are right for them. Even low doses may require careful adjustment, alternative delivery methods, and significant trial and error — an experience that can be costly, frustrating, and far from straightforward.
Meanwhile, big pharmaceutical companies are circling middle-aged women like sharks around blood. With the FDA’s decision, they’ve gained an expanded customer base — one encouraged to start hormone therapy earlier and remain on it for decades.
The truth is no one — not even a doctor — can predict exactly how a woman will respond to HRT. Hormones are powerful biological signals, not cosmetic fixes. Their effects depend heavily on the body’s metabolic health, stress physiology, and ability to process and clear them.
The renewed interest in hormone therapy reflects a real and valid desire for relief for women. But before removing warning labels and declaring HRT a universal solution, it’s worth asking why those cautions existed in the first place.
Hormone replacement therapy is not a magic bullet. Women deserve care that honors complexity, not just convenience.
* * *
Jennifer Galardi is a Senior Policy Analyst for Restoring American Wellness in Heritage’s DeVos Center.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Nurse talks with female patient about prescription medication

What The FDA Doesn’t Tell Women About Hormone Replacement Therapy

Big Pharma

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Health Care

Pharmaceuticals

As a member of Gen Z, I am often told my generation is a lost cause for conservatism — too cynical, too progressive, or just too far gone.
That assumption couldn’t be more wrong. Gen Z isn’t rejecting America; we’re demanding that it work again. And if conservatives are serious about reclaiming the soul of the nation, the path forward runs directly through the issues my generation lives with every day.
Gen Z came of age at the crossroads of stability and uncertainty. 
During President Trump’s first term, we witnessed a strong economy, interest rates that opened the door to homeownership, an end to forever wars, and a return to policies that prioritized the family.
Under President Biden, however, millions of young Americans graduated college and took entry-level jobs that barely covered their student loan payments, even as the cost of everything rose faster than their paychecks. They were told to follow the rules — go to college, take on loans, delay adulthood. Then, when those rules failed them, they were blamed.
What frustrates my peers isn’t tradition or responsibility; it’s a system that feels rigged against them. 
That’s precisely where conservatism, properly articulated, can meet the moment.
<h3>Homeownership</h3>
For Gen Z, homeownership feels less like a milestone and more like a fantasy. Sky-high rents that prevent us from putting money into savings, zoning restrictions that choke supply, and inflation driven by reckless federal spending have priced young people out of opportunity. 
Conservatives should call this what it is: a policy failure. Government rules make it harder to build homes, while bad monetary policy drains savings and pushes the dream of stability further out of reach for young families.
If we believe in ownership, stability, and opportunity, then we should lead on reforms that make it easier — not harder — for young Americans to buy homes and build wealth.
<h3>Student Debt</h3>
Then there’s student debt. Gen Z didn’t invent the student loan crisis; we inherited it.
Many borrowers were reckless, and they should repay what they owe. But recklessness was enabled by a federal loan system that treated teenagers as capable of signing six-figure contracts while shielding universities from the consequences of failure.
Subsidies have fueled tuition inflation and reduced institutional accountability, leaving students to bear the full cost of bad decisions — both theirs and the systems.
Conservatives should reject blanket loan “forgiveness” that shifts the burden to taxpayers, but we must also offer real solutions: ending the federal government’s role as a blank-check lender so private institutions once again have incentives to lend responsibly, expanding alternatives like apprenticeships and credentialing, and breaking the cartel between the federal government and higher education. Responsibility cuts both ways—and universities should finally be forced to bear some.
<h3>Building A Family </h3>
Most surprising to pundits — but obvious to anyone paying attention — is Gen Z’s renewed interest in traditional family values. After watching the loneliness, instability, and social breakdown of the last two decades, many in my generation are rediscovering what older generations once took for granted: marriage matters, family matters, and children are not obstacles to fulfillment but central to it. This isn’t nostalgia; it’s realism. Gen Z wants meaning, not just mobility. We want strong relationships, safe neighborhoods, and a culture that doesn’t sneer at commitment.
Conservatives should lean into this—not with lectures, but with policies that make it possible to start and raise a family. That means an economy where a young family has the chance to create a home and build a foundation for the future, a tax code that doesn’t treat marriage like a liability, and leaders who value faith, responsibility, and strong bonds across generations. When conservatives defend the family, we aren’t clinging to the past — we’re offering a future Gen Z actually wants.
The fight for America’s soul isn’t about writing off an entire generation. It’s about proving that our ideas can meet real needs in real lives. Gen Z is open, skeptical, and looking for answers. If conservatives are honest about the economic realities we’re dealing with and defend the institutions that make life meaningful, my generation won’t just listen — we’ll lead.
* * *
Jake Matthews is a communications manager for technology, economics, and energy at The Heritage Foundation.
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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Gen Z Isn’t Lost. We’re Looking For A Conservatism That Works.

Gen Z

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Real estate

Ben Shapiro called out Tucker Carlson as a threat to conservatism in a Wednesday afternoon speech at the Heritage Foundation, insisting the movement must enforce “ideological borders” to protect its principles.
At the event promoting Shapiro’s new book, <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/products/lions-and-scavengers?srsltid=AfmBOoonYJHNmiP35yYGqIkWBO9rzLFPL09ofn0cdFkM4V7onvKM09U3">Lions &amp; Scavengers: The True Story of America</a>, the Daily Wire Editor Emeritus argued that conservatism without clear boundaries risks being co-opted by voices who are opposed to core conservative principles.
“The conservative movement requires a border,” Shapiro said. “A conservative movement without a border is no conservative movement. We are a welcoming movement, but those who seek to undermine the character of conservatism must never be granted legitimacy as voices of our movement.”
Shapiro&#8217;s comments came weeks after the Heritage Foundation defended Carlson’s interview with self-proclaimed Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin admirer, Nick Fuentes. At the time, the think-tank&#8217;s president Kevin Roberts slammed the “venomous coalition” that was trying to cancel Carlson for having the conversation. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@benshapiro</a> joins Heritage President <a href="https://twitter.com/KevinRobertsTX?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KevinRobertsTX</a> live for remarks and in-depth discussion of his New York Times bestseller, Lions and Scavengers.
Together, they examine the cultural, political, and moral challenges shaping the nation.
Watch now ⬇️ <a href="https://t.co/sVBFKn3Stm">https://t.co/sVBFKn3Stm</a>
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/2001396030567227609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
Roberts later said he made a “mistake” with his initial speech defending Carlson, and that the term “venomous coalition” was a “terrible choice of words.” 
Shapiro said that Heritage must play the role of “ideological border control” to keep the movement aligned with its mission statement: “Heritage’s mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”
Shapiro went on to describe why he believes Carlson is an “opponent of conservatism,” an “outsider masquerading as an insider” who is “destroying the character of the conservative movement in the process.” He examined how Carlson’s positions measure up against the Heritage Foundation’s mission statement.
According to Shapiro, Carlson opposes the free market, citing his stance against self-driving trucks, high-interest credit cards, and mergers that result in layoffs, and has labeled venture capitalists “vulture capitalists.”
“It is why he has praised left-wing figures ranging from Elizabeth Warren to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Zohran Mamdani,” Shapiro said. 
Shapiro criticized Carlson for rejecting limited government, accusing Carlson of telling his audience the United States is controlled by a conspiratorial elite and praising feudalism over the Constitution. Shapiro argued that true conservatism defends the Founders’ system of checks and balances and federalism.
“To Tucker Carlson, the Constitution is a mere ruse, a sham. Instead, Carlson promotes a conspiracy theory by which the American people have lost total control of their lives and have no ability to shape policy,” Shapiro said.
On the principle of national defense, Shapiro argued that Carlson abandoned the “peace through strength” approach in favor of one that excuses or rationalizes hostile regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela, citing his soft or sympathetic interviews, his downplaying of adversaries’ aggression, and his repeated criticism of the United States and its allies.
Shapiro said that Tucker treats Qatar as “America’s foremost ally in the Middle East, dismissing its financial support for terrorist groups like Hamas, ties with Iran, and anti-American propaganda networks like Al-Jazeera.”
“Carlson just announced he is buying a house in Qatar, as a show of American-ness. Which is strange, since Qatar does not allow public displays of Christianity by churches, and currently holds tens of thousands of people from foreign nations in slave labor conditions,” Shapiro added.
Shapiro went on to make the case that Carlson opposes traditional American values, arguing that while he may agree on issues like same-sex marriage and transgenderism, he consistently prioritizes speculation, conspiracy theories, and uncritical promotion of figures like Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, and Nick Fuentes over truth and moral integrity.
“Truth is simply not Carlson’s priority. He likes speculation; he likes conspiratorial question-asking. But evidence and truth are not of value to Tucker Carlson,” Shapiro said. “And so Tucker has trafficked in nearly every conspiracy theory under the sun.”
Shapiro slammed Tucker for accusing the Trump administration of “covering up a Mossad-run child sex trafficking ring run by Jeffrey Epstein,” adding that Carlson is a “coward” for not mentioning Trump directly while making such allegations.
Shapiro has a long relationship with the Heritage Foundation, beginning when he was just a teenager, when Town Hall — which was at the time associated with Heritage — published his column.

Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro At Heritage: The Conservative Movement Needs To Enforce Its Borders, Too

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