The Transom

The Big Ben Show: Virginia's Dem Loss, Minnesota Corruption, and Can California be Saved?

Ben Domenech — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:38:13 GMT

The latest episode of The Big Ben Show is here, with Adam Carolla and Rachel Campos Duffy as our guests for the week — watch and listen:

Does Taiwan Care To Defend Itself?

The WSJ edit board struggles to admit the obvious: Taiwan isn’t paying anything close to their fair share.

Taiwan in recent days passed extra defense money that had been stalled in the narrowly divided legislature. The roughly $25 billion falls short of the $40 billion proposed by Democratic Progressive Party President Lai Ching-te, as he tries to move the island’s defense spending to 5% of its economy by 2030. But the opposition Kuomintang and a third party control parliament.
The defense package appears to exclude some missile defense and domestic drone priorities crucial to persuading Mr. Xi that an invasion would be a debacle. Depending on how the money is allocated, Taiwan could spend about 3% of its economy on defense this year.
Yes, that’s insufficient, given the increasingly aggressive Chinese Communist Party. A trip to China last month by Taiwan’s opposition leader fueled suspicions that the country’s political class isn’t serious about defending its political and economic freedom.
But President Lai has to socialize the threat without terrifying the public, in a country that held its first presidential election as recently as the Clinton Administration. That is one of the heaviest lifts in global geopolitics, and compromises and incremental progress are a feature of democracy.

Three percent. Three percent! And they gutted their domestic drone program. Great job selling the world on your stubborn defense strategy, guys.

The Post El Chapo Civil War

Wall Street Journal:

A man’s body, hands bound and covered by a blue tarp, lies by the side of the road where it had been dumped minutes earlier. A blood-soaked sign says he was a “Chapito,” a member of one of two criminal factions fighting for control of this city, the cradle of Mexico’s transnational narcotics industry.
Such macabre finds are common in Culiacán—a city of luxury car dealerships, fancy malls, and makeshift fentanyl labs—marking the shifting lines of nearly two years of relentless civil war between the two main clans of the pioneering Sinaloa cartel.
It’s a war that the Chapitos, the heirs of Mexican drug boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, appear to be losing, casting doubt on the future of a dynasty that once ruled vast swaths of the criminal underworld on its way to becoming the world’s top producer and smuggler of fentanyl.
The latest blow came last month with the U.S. indictment of Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha and nine other current and former state and local officials, charging them with taking bribes from the Chapitos to protect their criminal enterprise.
On one level, the fall of the Guzmáns marks a signal victory for Washington, which pursued them across four presidential administrations. Since his 2019 conviction in a Brooklyn federal court, El Chapo has been serving a life sentence plus 30 years in a Supermax prison high in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
On another, it has cost Mexico dearly. The fight among criminal pretenders to Guzmán’s throne has unfolded like a Shakespearean drama, sparked by betrayal, ambition, greed—and rivers of blood. Since 2024, when one of Guzmán’s sons kidnapped the veteran head of a rival faction and handed him over to U.S. authorities, some 3,000 people, gunmen from both sides and innocent bystanders, have been killed in the fighting. Another 3,600 are missing.

The Marriage Crisis Is Worse Than You Think

Daily Wire:

In 1960, nearly 85% of prime-age adults (those between 25 and 54) were married. Today, that figure has collapsed to roughly 54%.
However, the topline marriage data conceals that America’s marriage rate is propped up by immigrants. While 64% of foreign-born adults in America are married, fewer than 52% of native-born American adults are married. That’s a 12-point gap. Without the steady arrival of immigrants who still prioritize marriage, America’s marriage rate would be even lower and, consequently, so would the birth rate.

At first, one may think that immigrants are more likely to be married because many of them arrive through marriage. But two facts disprove this argument. First, there was no gap in the marriage rate between immigrants and natives as early as 1970. And second, when we divide immigrants by how old they were when they first came to the United States, it becomes clear that the younger immigrants are when they arrive in the United States, the more they look like the average American when it comes to marriage. Culture is driving the decline in marriage, and immigrants and their children are unfortunately assimilating into America’s low-marriage culture.
When you look only at immigrants who arrived in the United States before turning 18, and thus well before marriage-based immigration could explain their presence, they still marry at a higher rate than native-born Americans. But when you compare immigrants who arrived before age 10 to those who arrived as teenagers, the pattern is unmistakable: the more years an immigrant spends growing up in America, the less likely they are to ever marry. The marriage gap between native-born Americans and immigrants who arrived as young children has completely vanished this century.

This is what assimilation looks like, except in this case, it is a bad thing. Immigrants aren’t bringing some exotic disease called “low marriage rates” with them. They’re catching it in America.
It raises a question that should haunt every American who still believes families are the building blocks of a free society: What exactly are immigrants assimilating to?

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“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Trump Can't Fall Into Xi Jinping's Taiwan Trap

Ben Domenech — Wed, 13 May 2026 18:35:35 GMT

We’re all meeting presidents and leaders lately.

Meeting Taiwan’s president last month.

My warning to President Trump in the Daily Wire:

In a very literal sense, Taiwan is moving westward toward China, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. The tectonic plates that have shifted over millions of years, creating the island’s mountain terrain, are also driving it slowly and irrevocably toward the mainland. That notoriously craggy terrain is expected to act as a deterrent to any attack from the People’s Liberation Army from across the Taiwan Strait, a lane of the Pacific which runs as narrow as 100 miles and for the most part shallower than 100 meters. For the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan lies just out of reach. It is the military equivalent of skipping a smooth rock.
Taiwan’s position as a locus of China’s ambitions go beyond the temptation of seizing hold of the island’s burgeoning chip industry. It is the path to becoming a true ocean-ruling power, breaking out of the chain of Western-allied archipelagos that run along the Pacific Ring of Fire. To extend the PLA’s untested forces and grasp Taiwan isn’t just a matter of national pride to further the One China policy. It is a giant step toward the global dominance China’s leader, Xi Jinping, wants to transform into an inevitability — his lifetime’s legacy for the PRC.
For critics who have questioned the interests of the United States in its military support for Taiwan, the explosion of the semiconductor industry came at an unfortunate time. Beyond the obvious American interest in defending against the expansion of China’s brutal communist regime, Taiwan is now dominating the global foundry of chips — including more than 60 percent of the market overall, and 90 percent of the most advanced versions, central to the pursuit of artificial intelligence dominance. Taiwan’s innovations made their independence essential at exactly the same time protectionists and isolationists wanted to press the case the island is utterly dispensible.
How very inconvenient.
The question that confronts Donald Trump now as he wings his way to the long-anticipated meeting with Xi Jinping is how clearly he will make that importance known. There is no security, market, or historical incentive at this point to concede the long-held position of the United States toward Taiwan — bolstered most recently in a December package that included $11 billion in weapons for the island. But there is the question of how dedicated the Taiwanese are to their own defense, after the opposition to Taiwan’s president — who holds the largest portion of legislative seats — nixed a major package that would’ve significantly increased their defense spending, opting for a half measure that cut back on domestic drone production and their air defense systems. The opposition’s leader, Cheng Li-wun, has courted accusations that she’s working to diminish the island’s deterrence capability — a storyline that only grew after she chose to meet with Xi Jinping in person last month.
For the people of Taiwan, there is also the question of time. Opposition to the acceptance of China taking over their republic is largely the view of older members of society, and the youngest people on the island seem increasingly open to the idea. The constant influence of PRC-backed social media campaigns and outreach efforts to exert soft power over the minds of youths absolutely has something to do with this. For a population that is facing a gargantuan decline — their fertility rate fell to the lowest in the world last year at 0.7 — perhaps all China will have to do is wait them out.
The PRC has telegraphed its Taiwan-related intent for this meeting all along. It wants to tempt Donald Trump by appealing to his personal vision as a peacemaker — particularly in the context of the Iran conflict — by asking for an alteration to stated U.S. policy, or just to have the president declare publicly that he opposes Taiwan’s independence. The propaganda victory alone would send a shudder through the island’s political leadership and would be a coup for Xi Jinping, even if it may seem like a low-cost offering from President Trump for potential economic gain.
In this context, the meeting this week takes on a whole new importance when it comes to dictating the future — not just for AI in the West, but for Donald Trump’s legacy as a world leader. He has restored a hardened focus on America’s interests, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. As dedicated as he is to ending Iran’s chances at becoming a nuclear power, some of his advisors might use that effort’s uncertainty as a justification for sacrificing America’s interests in Taiwan.
If there’s one thing we know about this president, it’s that, as much as he listens to those around him, he keeps his own counsel on the right path forward. There is no wisdom in being remembered as the president who gave China what it craves most. And in a brutal sense, so long as the PRC’s energy is directed at this one infuriatingly productive mountainous island the size of West Virginia, it is spending less time on everything else it would like to do to become the global superpower of Xi Jinping’s dreams. Trump is a gambler, wagering the cost of breaking norms and diplomatic rituals on his, and America’s, strength. Today, that is a cost worth paying.

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What Did Fauci Know And Why Did He Hide It?

An explosive hearing.

A current CIA employee accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of “injecting” himself into the intelligence community’s investigation on the origins of COVID-19 — and said he played an “intentional” role in the agency’s scrapping of a plan in 2021 to announce the virus was leaked from a Chinese lab.
The whistleblower, James Erdman III, made the claim while testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning.
“Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for an emergency use authorization MRNA products being mandated by the former administration,” Erdman testified in his opening remarks. “Dr. Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional. Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to insure the IC consulted with the conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists.”
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) later asked him several questions about Fauci’s alleged meddling in the CIA probe into COVID.
“Your conclusion is changing from the scientific consensus of it being from a lab to a neutral position by the CIA was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci?” Paul asked.
“It was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci injecting himself into the IC,” Erdman said.
He continued, saying the CIA was “considering calling this a lab leak” on August 12, 2021, following a 90-day study.
“That changed on August 17, 2021,” Erdman said. “And unfortunately because the CIA would not provide us documentation that we asked for, we have no idea why that changed.”

More here in Daily Wire.

Trying To Run D.C.’s Hottest Restaurant While Surrounded By Weed Dispensaries

Bart Hutchins of Butterworth’s writes:

My restaurant in Washington, D.C., Butterworth’s, is in no danger of losing a Michelin star because we have none. But we sweep behind the refrigerators, pressure wash the sidewalk, and prepare food the hard way. Our french fries take three days to make. The sauce for our bone marrow escargot, two. When lamb is on the menu, it is usually a whole lamb, butchered in its entirety down to each cut. We do these things because we cannot help ourselves. Because we aren’t sure who we would be without it.
Next door is one of many cannabis dispensaries in D.C. Down the block, two more. One block further down Pennsylvania Avenue, three more. They have names like “BluntSlut” and “Highway420” in purple neon and QR codes taped crookedly to the glass. At eleven o’clock in the morning, men stand outside watching videos on their phones at full volume while smoke drifts through the front doors whenever a guest opens it. There have been plenty of nights when I am getting crushed by orders for tartare and steak au poivre while a man in pajama pants leans against a lime scooter and screams into the street.
Washington, D.C.’s marijuana laws exist in a state of deliberate confusion, which I know because I spent an unpleasant afternoon trying to understand them. In 2014, D.C. voters legalized personal possession. But Congress, which controls the city’s budget, blocked D.C. from licensing or regulating commercial sales. The result is a market that cannot legally exist and cannot be stopped from existing. For years, the city’s solution was the “gift economy,” where if you bought a sticker, marijuana appeared in your hand. It had the logic of children. Then the city cracked down, raided sixty-odd shops, and arrived at its replacement: declare yourself a medical patient by phone in four minutes, walk into a licensed dispensary, and buy whatever you like. The transaction is legal now. The logic is still childish.
It is so glaringly obvious that weed, as it is currently quasi-regulated in D.C., is not working. But no one seems interested in resolving the underlying issues. Congress lacks the attention span, and the city has only barely managed to replace one absurdity with a slightly less absurd one. One week, the city raided dispensaries only to have those same dispensaries reopen under different names with the same employees beneath the same neon the very next week. “Cloud9” became “ZaMuseum.” Somebody printed new menus, and the whole performance resumed. This week, we have “marijuana lounges” coming, so you can gather with fellow gentlemen and scholars to smoke your weed in person.
I do not especially care if people smoke weed. Civilization has always contained vice. Restaurants are vice. Alcohol certainly is. Butter and cigarettes and beautiful women in black dresses and staying out too late on a Tuesday are, too. Some of the best parts of life are. But D.C.’s haphazard weed culture is not a vice; it’s a cash grab by the dumbest people you’ve ever met, overseen by its laziest.
This malaise seems to be the entire working policy of D.C. Most days feel like the Do Lung Bridge scene in Apocalypse Now. The bridge keeps getting shelled. Music blares in the background. Martin Sheen’s character asks a soldier, “Who’s your commanding officer?” The kid with a machine gun in his hand asks: “Ain’t you?”
If you squint, there are times when Pennsylvania Avenue feels vaguely ceremonial. It feels like “The Capital,” “The White House,” “America,” and its great empire. But more soberly, it mostly looks like empty storefronts and a Reddit homepage come to life — a place where you can hand-cut potatoes while down the street somebody sells pre-rolled joints named after cartoon characters…
Congress says it’s a local matter. The city says Congress tied its hands. We are led by morons who do not care that the day-to-day exhaustion of this lack of leadership is absorbed by idiots like me, who still show up every day, still caring.

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“Let’s check in on California local politics, where the mayor of a town of ~55,000 people has just admitted to acting as a foreign agent for China, running a pro-CCP propaganda outlet with her ex-fiancé who prosecutors say was seeking to mold his double-agent lover into a political star capable of furthering China’s goals in the U.S. (no word on if “slide in Eric Swalwell’s DMs” was part of the plan). From 2020-2022, Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, apparently helped run “U.S. News Center,” a deceptively-named outlet on account of its marching orders came directly from… Beijing. In one instance, a PRC boss even praised Wang for getting a high viewcount on a piece of distributed propaganda, to which the lovely mayor replied, “Thank you leader.” Proposal: can we now investigate every other California mayor for foreign ties just to be safe? Particularly ones who flew to Africa while their cities burned.”

— Riley Nork

Virginia Ruling Throws Democrats Into Midterm Hell

Ben Domenech — Mon, 11 May 2026 17:13:00 GMT

My take on the failed Spanberger Gerrymander

In a massive blow to Virginia Democrats and the national party’s hopes for the midterms, the Virginia Supreme Court threw out the 10-1 gerrymander passed narrowly by voters last month as unconstitutional, finding its result “null and void.”
The Court’s 4-3 ruling is a vindication for critics like former attorneys general Jason Miyares and Ken Cuccinelli, both of whom were loud critics of the process that put the referendum on the ballot in the first place.
This wasn’t even about the bizarre nature of the Democrat-favoring map itself, with its now notorious lobster-shaped district. The court ruled that the General Assembly failed to meet the Commonwealth’s constitutional requirements, which include an intervening election. The fact that early voting had already led to almost half of Virginia voters casting their ballots meant the session that General Assembly Democrats used to spark the referendum process in an October 31 vote didn’t pass muster.
“While the Commonwealth is free by its lights to do the right thing for the right reason, the Rule of Law requires that it be done the right way,” Justice Arthur Kelsey wrote for the majority.
Everyone involved on the Democratic side now has egg on their face. The 10-1 redistricting referendum dominated the political conversation of Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s first months in office, squandering any goodwill among independents toward the faux-moderate. It set a pile of money on fire to the tune of more than $70 million from Democrats nationwide pouring into ads, promotions, and social media.
Spanberger isn’t the only victim of this hubris, caught as she was in an immediate flip-flop on the issue and forced by state Senate President pro tempore Louise Lucas — the most powerful Democrat in Richmond, who this week had her offices and businesses raided by the FBI — to accept such an extreme map. National Democrats flocked to push for the measure, including noted constitutional scholar Barack Obama.
The Democrats still have major backing heading into the midterms, and history says they should sweep into power in the House of Representatives. But their biggest investment and most extreme move in the redistricting game blew up in their faces, and Virginians can rejoice that the state Supreme Court found their methods to violate the rules and the law.
As for House Democrats, this statement to Axios, offered on condition of anonymity, is a good summary of their mood: “F*****ck!!”

More from me on Fox this weekend. Here’s Ken Cuccinelli, the former AG, who believed all along (and wrote this Daily Wire oped spiking the football):

More here:

On 250th, Pride in America is a Partisan Divide

Deseret News:

Americans and Utahns who took the surveys, conducted April 15-20 by Morning Consult, were asked if they plan to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.
Utahns (64%), more than other Americans (48%), said they were planning on celebrating the anniversary, and Republicans were far more likely than Democrats and independents to say they will celebrate. In Utah, 80% of Republicans plan to celebrate compared to just 31% of Democrats. Nationally, 65% of Republicans have plans to celebrate and 37% of Democrats say the same.
The survey found that both in Utah and nationwide, the youngest age group, 18 to 34, were the least likely to say they would celebrate. Nationally, 44% of that age group plan to celebrate, and in Utah, 58% say they plan to celebrate the 250th.

More at Daily Wire: Woke Parents Protest As School Dares To Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday

A Third of Democrats Believe WHCD Shooting Staged

The reality based community:

A recent survey conducted by YouGov and NewsGuard asked Americans about the three attempts on Trump’s life — the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, the thwarted attempted at the president’s golf course, in West Palm Beach, and the shooting at the Washington Hilton just weeks earlier. According to the survey, just 38% of respondents believed all three assassination attempts were legitimate. Additionally, 54% of respondents said all three were staged or that they weren’t sure.
Perhaps predictably, the numbers showed extreme variations between party lines. The report continued:
The contention that the three events may have been staged correlates strongly with party identification. Across all three events, Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to endorse the “staged” framing.
In total, 21 percent of Democrats responded that they thought all three events were staged, as did 11 percent of Independents and three percent of Republicans.
Of the 12 percent of Americans who said that all three attempts were staged, 55 percent were Democrats, 38 percent were Independents, and seven percent were Republicans.
Of the respondents who said that all three incidents were authentic, only 15 percent were Democrats. Thirty-eight percent were Independents and 47 percent were Republicans.
For the most recent event — at the April 25, 2026, White House Correspondents’ Dinner — 34 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans said it was staged, a 21-point gap.

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“I have seen much war in my lifetime and I hate it profoundly. But there are worse things than war; and all of them come with defeat. The more you hate war, the more you know that once you are forced into it, for whatever reason it may be, you have to win it. You have to win it and get rid of the people that made it and see that, this time, it never comes to us again.”

— Ernest Hemingway

The Big Ben Show: Plus, Kevin McCarthy Warns Republicans To Stand Against The Blue Wave

Ben Domenech — Thu, 07 May 2026 14:36:18 GMT

Here’s the latest episode of The Big Ben Show, featuring Michele Tafoya and Theo Wold:

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Kevin McCarthy: The GOP Can Fight the Blue Wave

The Daily Wire Interview:

Daily Wire: The cycle and the history is obviously against Republicans, especially in the House, which everybody has basically written off. What are the three things that you think Republicans and the House in particular should be doing differently?
McCarthy: First of all, you study history. So the party in off-year elections usually doesn’t do as well. If you look at New Jersey and Virginia, how those gubernatorial races go, it kind of gives you some indication. If Democrats win both, they usually flip. If Republicans win one, we flip. But there are some things internally that upset me that Republicans should be doing differently.
First, the use of discharge petitions. Now, a discharge petition is 218 people sign a discharge petition, your bill automatically comes to the floor. If you’re in the majority, that’s simply saying, “I’m going to turn the floor over to the Democrats.”
They should stop allowing that to happen. They have passed more discharge petitions in three weeks than happened in 30 years. They let a discharge petition authored by a squad member just pass.
Too many retirements; we’ve now set a new record. So that’s another indication. You’re not just running for higher office; you don’t like the job.
They’re fighting with the Republicans in the Senate too much. So what they’re doing in this is they’re setting every indication to the public that they can’t win or they can’t govern.
They should stick together. They should put an agenda together and they should stop recessing. Now, the Senate stayed in when the Democrats shut down the government, but the members of the Republicans in the House left.
Think about this. The voters gave you 24 months to be in the majority, and you just took two months of that and didn’t use it. If I was in the minority and I stopped the majority from being able to govern, that’s a victory. You could be in there passing bills that are 80 / 20 every day of the week. You gave up your majority for two months when you only have 24 months of it. This is the part that upsets me. And then I watched, like the week before, they fought on things that were never going to fly in the Senate, and they took up so much time with that. I want to see things that shift in the voters’ minds that they want to have you be in the majority. So you know what? Focus on the economy, focus on crime, and you can divide the Democrats on this and really show the public who they want to be governing.
Daily Wire: The complaints that you said are all complaints that I’ve heard from members, particularly leaving town. Why does that happen? Who in the architecture of power thinks that’s a good idea?
McCarthy: I don’t know, because I would not have allowed that to happen.
Because if you’re given this power for a short time, the public’s going to judge you on how you use it. If you’re in a sporting event, if you’re in a basketball game in the last seconds, are you going to quit? Are you going to set up and take that shot?
You want to show the public that, even if the Democrats are doing derelict things, that if you’re in charge, you don’t walk away. You put them in their place, and then you go show simple bills out there, and the Democrats vote “no,” you vote “yes,” and show the public the difference. I give the Senate credit. They stayed in session.
Daily Wire: The other one I hear a lot from members is frustration with the Senate, that they feel the Senate has expectations and priorities that aren’t aligned with theirs. I literally had a member last week saying, “The Senate’s going to screw us over on this particular thing again.” And my question is, why don’t Republicans in the House and Senate understand that voters in this midterm are going to vote based on you as a unit?
McCarthy: It’s always the old argument. The Senate is the enemy. The other party is my adversary; they get mad at us. You’re 100% correct. The public is not going to sit back and say, “Oh, it was the Senate. Oh, it was the House.” They could say, “Republicans, you were in charge. What job did you do?”
Recently, I watched as the Democrats shut down the government, and when the Senate passed the bill over to the House, the House Republicans voted no, and then a month later voted for the exact same thing by voice vote. But what they did there was take the shutdown. It’s a difficult job and a hard job to lead, but if you only take advice from the Freedom Caucus, you’re only going to end up in one or two places: in a cul-de-sac or in the minority.
You’ve got to understand the rules of the House are different than the rules of the Senate, but that’s why you’ve got to work together, achieve as many conservative aims as you can, pass that, and come back for what you didn’t get the next day. But fighting with each other lets the Democrats sit back and say, “They’re the problem,” instead of highlighting and putting the Democrats in a weaker position, or having them vote against popular bills.

Democrats’ Redistricting Fight Goes Sideways

Punchbowl News:

Every day of delay has Virginia and national Democrats growing more skittish. Yet Democrats could still win two of the contested four seats even if they lose in court.
If the new map doesn’t go into effect, Democrats still have a good chance at toppling GOP Reps. Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans. But GOP Reps. John McGuire and Ben Cline will likely be safe.
The GOP South. It’s been a week since SCOTUS ruled in Louisiana v. Callais. And Republican-controlled southern states — under pressure from Trump — have moved extremely fast in response.
GOP lawmakers in Tennessee have already circulated a map designed to draw Rep. Steve Cohen out of his Memphis seat with negligible impact to the state’s other Republicans.
Louisiana Republicans are likely to redraw at least one of the Bayou State’s two Democrats out of the House.
Alabama GOP officials are pressuring the Supreme Court to lift an order that forces the state to keep its congressional map until 2030. This would allow the Republican-run legislature to at least draw Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures out of his seat, stretching from Mobile to the Georgia border. In theory, Republicans could also go for Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, whose district is anchored in Birmingham.
South Carolina is mulling a new map to eliminate iconic Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn’s deep blue seat. Clyburn is the only elected Democrat remaining in the Palmetto State delegation.
Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Tate Reeves told the Daily Caller he’s considering a push to eliminate Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson’s seat in the western part of the state. Mississippi already had its primary, so this is very likely a 2028 move.
None of these Republican-drawn maps are final yet. The Florida map is subject to multiple lawsuits. Yet even if the map stands, Jeffries and Democratic leaders think they can snatch a few light red seats from the GOP. South Carolina Republicans are far from assured of passing their map.
Nationwide, a number of seats are trending in the Democrats’ direction. If the current political environment continues to worsen for the GOP, Democrats may even pick up or hold onto seats that Republicans redrew.

Faith, Partners, and Marriage Patterns

Graphs About Religion:

There’s this phrase I heard over and over again growing up in a Southern Baptist Church - “don’t be unequally yoked.” It’s a reference to a verse from 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” In my experience it is always used in the context of finding a spouse. The admonition is to find someone to marry who has the same faith background as you. The worry for my evangelical group leaders was that if one of us married a non-believer, our spouse might lead us down a path toward secularism.
But the general admonition is the same in many faith communities: try to marry someone who shares your faith background. That’s certainly a well-established norm in Jewish communities. According to Kiddushin 68b, marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew is prohibited under Jewish law. In Islam, there’s not an outright prohibition on marrying a non-Muslim, but the Quran only permits people to marry other “People of the Book.”
There are theological reasons for this, as was commonly invoked in my evangelical upbringing. Each spouse can edify the other’s faith and grow closer together as they grow closer to God. But there’s also a really important sociological reason for it, too: kids who are raised by two parents who share the same faith background are more likely to be raised in a consistently religious home. This likely increases the chances a faith is passed down from one generation to another. This is a powerful reason religious groups might discourage interfaith marriages.
The ARDA is hosting the most recent wave of the Pew Religious Landscape Study, which was conducted in 2023-2024 and it has a whole host of insightful questions about who folks are marrying and how much they talk about faith in their home. It includes a variable indicating whether respondents’ current religion matches that of their partner’s. If a Catholic married a Protestant, that would not be defined as a match. If a mainline Protestant was married to an evangelical, that’s still a match because they are both Protestants. A Muslim marrying a Jew wouldn’t be a match and so on. You get the picture.
The groups most likely to marry someone of the same faith background are Hindus (86%), evangelicals (83%) and Latter-day Saints (81%). They are followed closely by Black Protestants at 79%. Then there’s a pretty noticeable gap and a whole bunch of traditions are clumped right around 70% including Catholics and the non-religious.

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Premium: Is Dropout TV Antisemitic Copaganda?

This week on the Primo show, Jesse and Katie discuss Dropout TV, the successor to College Humor, and two controversies manufactured by a small subset of psychotic fans…

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12 days ago · 82 likes · 310 comments · Katie Herzog

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“This book will not tell you how to die. Some cheerleaders of war can always get out a pamphlet telling the best way to go through that small but necessary business at the end. PM may have published it already in a special Sunday issue with pictures. They might even have it bound up as a companion piece to the issue I read in November 1941 entitled ‘How We Can Lick Japan in Sixty Days’. No. This book will not tell you how to die. This book will tell you, though, how all men from the earliest times we know have fought and died. So when you have read it you will know that there are no worse things to be gone through than men have been through before.”

— Ernest Hemingway

The Right Stuff Doesn't Include Becoming an Influencer

Ben Domenech — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:57:46 GMT

Read Jenna Stocker’s latest at The Daily Wire:

“Fly me to the moon,” Frank Sinatra sang in 1964, “Let me play among the stars.” The song was recorded more than 100 times before Sinatra’s version appeared on his album, It Might as Well Be Swing. It was released one year after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In another five years, Sinatra’s recording would play on a Sony TC-50 portable cassette player on the Apollo 10 mission, which orbited the Moon in May 1969.
It was fitting that the biggest star in American entertainment — the Chairman of the Board, the leader of the Rat Pack, Mr. Las Vegas and Palm Springs — with those electric blue eyes and buttery voice, would lend his singular vocals to the mid-20th century’s consummate moment. Pop culture meets celebrity meets the American Space Cowboy in one bold, frontier-expanding, mind-blowing, breathtaking, victorious, seemingly impossible starburst adventure into the heavens themselves.
What happened to us?
Space, that final frontier, is overshadowed by the perpetual glow of screens and the mind-crushing, unimaginative “creator class” more interested in monetizing people’s brain synapses through cat memes and AI slop bots.
At one time, astronauts ruled the covers of glossy magazines, nightly newscasts, and film reels. The nation hung breathlessly on NASA updates during our Cold War battle with the Soviet Union. It was a unique convergence of nerd-meets-jock as America’s brightest minds built a pathway to space helmed by the country’s daredevil real-life rocket men who practically double-dog dared each other to blow Death himself a kiss behind the throttles of experimental planes as post-WWII test pilots. These men had the Right Stuff, and Americans were cheering them every step of the way because the very existence of the free world and the American way of life was at stake.
At the time, astronauts and just about anyone in NASA’s orbit could be included in the celebrity-hero category. Even astronauts’ wives piqued the American people’s curiosity and subsequent press coverage. They were the first “Real Housewives,” but with a more wholesome, patriotic plotline.
Now, famous-for-being-famous is the truthism of our time. Celebrity is not much more than a slurry of performative indulgence, self-important fame whoring, and personal branding. One needs to look at Jeff Bezos’s foray into civilian space travel to see this in action. It was a real cast of characters in the worst all-female remake of a space adventure imaginable. The Girl Power Space Cadets — launched into a few minutes of weightlessness via the Blue Origin spacecraft — were powered by Bezos, who seems plenty happy to orbit his wife’s celestial spheres and send her, in a nod to Jackie Gleason’s Honeymooners character Ralph Kramden, “To the moon!” in addition to making those same celebs angry about buying his way into Monday evening’s Met Gala. What’s a billionaire to do?
No, these aren’t heroes, and they barely qualify as celebrities, even by today’s standards. The real astronauts, the ones who should be cruising down New York City’s Fifth Avenue in a ticker-tape parade, who should be invited to speak at every college and university commencement address this graduation season, who should be the star of every party and never have to buy a beer at one ever again, are the Artemis II astronauts. Sure, they didn’t actually land on the moon, but they reached farther into the depths of space than any human ever. They witnessed the Earth set behind the moon. They didn’t listen to Dark Side of the Moon; they experienced it. It was the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and everyone just shrugged.
In fact, when the four-man crew (Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, and Reid Wiseman) recently appeared in the Oval Office standing behind President Donald Trump, not a single question was directed at them by the press. The late comedian-prophet Norm Macdonald is nodding with knowing disappointment from the great beyond.
Even when the press asks the Artemis II crew questions, they center on an identity-based narrative rather than the enormity of the accomplishment. To his credit, Victor Glover has redirected this messaging toward an American experience and achievement rather than on his being a black man. We should expect as much from the press and fame ecosystem, where what passes for being a celebrity or an admired entertainer is their “influencer” status.

Read the rest. It should not be lost on us that the Artemis II astronauts got 20 minutes in the Oval Office and no journalist even asked them a question.

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MAHA’s Farming Retreat

Pirate Wires:

What is regenerative agriculture? The name feels concerningly evocative of the corpo-slop buzzwords (sustainability, green bonds, climate change, ESG, etc.) that we left behind in November 2024, but it actually does mean something. It’s basically a way to keep soil healthy. These farmers aim to reduce chemical usage as much as possible and plant “cover crops” that act as “living mulch” — essentially keeping land more fertile over time, and producing much tastier food.
Sovereignty Ranch is a sandbox for these regenerative strategies. The enclave was founded in 2021 by siblings Ryland and Mollie Englehart, who had spent their past lives operating a series of vegan restaurants in Los Angeles and working at environmental NGOs and non-profits. In the midst of COVID, they renounced their Californian ways and moved east to Texas, where they now run a thriving cattle ranch, eat meat, and work to reduce chemical-intensive farming.
Like many MAHA touchstones (raw milk, vaccine skepticism), regenerative farming is kind of crunchy and countercultural — a feature reflected in their merchandise: a “2nd Amendment Hippie” shirt featured a wild-haired hippie girl holding up an AR-15. Another shirt: “Raw Milk: The Real White Privilege.”
Between regenerative organic cheeseburgers and speeches from MAHA evangelists, a group of male activists from Southern California asked me whether I’d ever done psychedelics. When I shamefully confessed that I had not, they provided a lengthy instructional tutorial on microdosing.
As I made my way to a presentation on clean butchery, I discussed King Charles’ support of regenerative agriculture with a well-dressed Englishman, who explained to me that he’d quit his corporate job to meditate in India for a decade before joining a bioherbicide company that sought to unseat the dominant herbicides of Glyphosate and Diquat and replace them with a MAHA-approved alternative.
Other conversations ranged from optimistic preaching about the newest superfood mushroom or supplement powder to angry rants about data center construction, Palantir’s recently inked deal with the USDA to centralize farmer data, and cloud seeding in the Great Salt Lake (featuring hats that read “Make Clouds Real Again”).

Taiwan’s Defense Budget Fight

The National Interest:

To understand this dispute, one must understand the three primary paths Taiwan takes to acquire weaponry.
The first path is Foreign Military Sales (FMS), overwhelmingly from the United States. This is a straightforward government-to-government transaction. Taiwan submits a request, the US government conducts political and military assessments, the State Department manages the diplomatic timing, and the Department of Defense, DSCA, and relevant services handle execution, pricing, delivery, and logistics.
The advantage of FMS is a clear chain of accountability. However, FMS has never been a purely commercial transaction; it is always a segment of the United States’ foreign policy. When Washington is engaged in strategic dialogue with Beijing, the announcement of sensitive sales may be slowed, segmented, or delayed without warning.
The timing of the FMS process is one major reason the defense budget is currently stalled. The portion of the budget with the most consensus consists of the items that have already gone through visible FMS channels, such as HIMARS and Javelin missiles. These are easier for the legislature to accept because the nature of the deals is obvious, the link to US government supervision is evident, and the accountability chain is discernible. The real friction begins as the budget moves toward the higher mark that is expected to include advanced FMS items like PAC-3 MSE and the Integrated Battle Command System. If these had already been formalized through the FMS process, the special budget would have high legitimacy, and the legislature might well have approved the funds by now. However, because these FMS cases have not yet been finalized, a political and procurement vacuum has emerged. Into that vacuum have stepped DCS proposals, domestic manufacturing schemes, and various middlemen.
The second path is Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), through which the Taiwanese government signs a contract directly with a US manufacturer. In a “true” DCS arrangement, the Taiwanese government contracts directly with a US defense manufacturer or exporter, rather than routing the purchase through a local prime contractor. Liability for delivery, warranties, maintenance, and upgrades remains with the US original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
DCS is more flexible and often faster than FMS. If the prime contractor is a reputable US firm, the chain of responsibility is clear, and the pricing is verifiable. This can be a viable solution that satisfies Washington’s demand for higher spending while avoiding FMS delays. The harder question is whether the State Department and the Pentagon are prepared to endorse newer or less proven defense contractors in sensitive DCS arrangements.
But the most critical issue Washington must address is the often-neglected third path: domestic commissioning and indigenous production.

The Cultural End of the Useless Dad?

Michael Knipp in Daily Wire:

Capcom’s recently released title Pragmata has already been dubbed a “dad simulator” by gamers. The game sold over 1 million copies (at $60 a pop) in two days. Pragmata follows Hugh, a man tasked with protecting and guiding a naive young (android) girl through a hostile environment. Beneath the sci-fi combat, players have been drawn to something more resonant: the protective instinct, the mentorship, and the pride of helping someone grow. In short, the best parts of being a dad.
This isn’t an isolated phenomenon. Games such as The Last of Us and God of War have already demonstrated how powerful fatherhood narratives can be. But Joel and Kratos are reluctant, grief-shaped fathers. They remain emotionally distant and walled-off. Hugh, by contrast, takes genuine joy in his pseudo fatherhood. The “sad dad” archetype is giving way to something warmer, and the market response to Pragmata suggests audiences are hungry for it.
Video games have always found success as power fantasies with aspirational characters. Now, a significant part of that aspiration includes fatherhood.
Why now? Traditional markers of male achievement, such as home ownership, seem unobtainable. The economy feels oppressive, and the cultural narratives that once gave men a clear sense of purpose have grown thin. Masculinity is demonized relentlessly, and young men feel it. Fatherhood offers something concrete: a person who truly needs you and values your very existence. It is no surprise that social media is filled with videos of fathers coming home to hugs from excited children, often captioned with the sentiment, “Other men may be wealthy. This man is rich.”

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Meet the Free Speech Warrior of the Trump Administration

Last Saturday, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton, Sarah Rogers—under secretary of state for public diplomacy—was sitting next to congressional leader Steve Scalise when she heard “shots fired” through the radios of Scalise’s protection detail…

9 days ago · 68 likes · 98 comments · Madeleine Kearns

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“Hello, Artemis II! This is Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. Welcome to my old neighborhood! When Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and I orbited the Moon on Apollo 8, we got humanity’s first up-close look at the Moon and got a view of the home planet that inspired and united people around the world. I’m proud to pass that torch on to you — as you swing around the Moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars … for the benefit of all. It’s a historic day, and I know how busy you’ll be. But don’t forget to enjoy the view. So, Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, and all the great teams supporting you – good luck and Godspeed from all of us here on the good Earth.”

— Jim Lovell

The Big Ben Show: Radicalism Has Captured The American Left

Ben Domenech — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:22:21 GMT

What’s the scariest thing about the latest would-be Trump assassin? His frustrations are average Democrat stuff.

Latest Big Ben Show features Byron York and Elizabeth Pipko. Listen here:

Is The Special Relationship Still Special?

Ben Domenech — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 18:11:13 GMT

Some notably soaring remarks from President Trump at the White House:

“For nearly two centuries before the Revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here, on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride… The American Patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.” (Watch)

A Wild WHCD For All The Wrong Reasons

Ben Domenech — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:41:21 GMT

Just another day.

Here was my take over the weekend:

For the ninety seconds when members of the media were diving under tables at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, watching as politicians and cabinet members were yanked from the room by security, you have to wonder how many had the honest thought: did we do this?
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The repeated media normalization of assassination fantasies on the American left hasn’t been a quiet trend. A decade after Kathy Griffin posed with Donald Trump’s severed head, their attitude is the same as Steve Schmidt’s in the immediate aftermath of this latest attempt: to the extent anyone is to blame for repeated attempts at Trump’s assassination, it’s the man himself — and then maybe his supporters for having the audacity to elect Orange Hitler twice.
Remember the Rutgers study that found more than half of Left-of-center respondents said it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Donald Trump? When the “radical Left” describes such a vast portion of the Democratic electorate on the question “should the president be unalived,” believe them.
The legacy media has declared who they want dead. They continue to platform the Left’s voices who urge his death. They rely on the violent Left’s bark being worse than their bite — even as those who bay for blood continually show their eagerness for the exact outcome that motivates the president’s would-be murderers.
Hasan Piker’s call to murder capitalists and drench the streets with their blood gets the New York Times and Conde Nast imprimatur. “Your cool murderous communist message is such a song of the summer vibe, tell me more, lol.” That casual endorsement of bloodshed isn’t fringe — it’s increasingly mainstream by the same people who claim democracy dies in darkness. Well, it almost died in the sun in Butler and West Palm and the bowels of the Washington Hilton. How many more cracks does the media want their psychotic fellow travelers to take at this? How long will they stand by Senate Democrats who have blocked security funding in the midst of war and blatant terror threats? Or should we just get used to a political reality where we refuse to treat violent rhetoric as the incitement it is?
The WHCD attack was not an isolated incident of random violence. It was the predictable outcome of years of rhetoric, glorified in newsrooms, popularized on campuses, featured on podcasts, and given serious, intoned consideration in the pages of glossy magazines by the same people who claim to be standing against hate. The Left’s open celebration of political murder did this, and it will continue to do it, fueled by a legacy media that knows a click is a click, no matter the motivation.

We offered broad spectrum coverage and are continuing today:

Live updates are available here, including coverage of the 1 PM White House presser and the DOJ presser following at 3 PM.

At least Michael Tracey had a fun time.

Against Virginia's Partisan Democrat Gerrymander

Ben Domenech — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 13:32:59 GMT

From the Editors of The Daily Wire:

Virginia voters will head to the polls this week to decide whether to make their Commonwealth the laughingstock of the nation when it comes to clumsy partisan gerrymanders. The Old Dominion should loudly reject Democrats’ attempt to carve the face of the mother of presidents out of mere spite for the persistence of Donald Trump.

For months, Virginia voters have been subjected to a deluge of television ads and direct mail flak backed by national Democrats who hew to an established narrative: the gerrymander, while it may seem extreme, is a necessary, temporary response to Republican agitation across the country to hold the House of Representatives despite the will of the people. It casts the gerrymander as not an obviously unrepresentative scrawl of a map, turning a competitive purple state into a hard blue stone, but as a desperate move motivated by GOP extremism. In this story, they are the heroes defending Democracy.

The Big Ben Show: Are Republicans Headed For November Doom?

Ben Domenech — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:31:01 GMT

The latest edition of The Big Ben Show dropped, featuring guests Rep. Elise Stefanik and White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan. Listen and watch here:

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Swallwell’s Stunning Downfall

Wall Street Journal:

Things were looking up for Rep. Eric Swalwell. A darling of the anti-Trump resistance, he was starting to gather momentum in the race to be the next governor of California.
He had received endorsements from top Democrats, including Sen. Adam Schiff of California and Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, his close friend and a potential 2028 presidential candidate. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he called his “work mom,” hadn’t endorsed Swalwell but had been a longtime mentor. Some of California’s industry and labor power brokers were consolidating around his campaign, as were top political consultants with connections to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
On Tuesday of last week, Swalwell bounded onto the stage at a Sacramento town hall, hugging attendees in the standing-room-only crowd as “California” by Phantom Planet played.
Then it all came crashing down. The San Francisco Chronicle and CNN last week published accounts from women accusing Swalwell of sexual misconduct, including an unnamed former Swalwell staff member who said he had sexually assaulted her. He suspended his campaign for governor and, under threat of an expulsion vote, resigned from Congress this week. He is now facing criminal investigations in New York and California.
Swalwell’s lawyer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A statement from his lawyer Tuesday posted on social media said Swalwell “categorically and unequivocally denies each and every allegation of sexual misconduct and assault that has been leveled against him.”
Swalwell’s rapid fall from grace is pushing some of the country’s most powerful Democrats to answer questions about what they knew and when.
The scandal has resurfaced age-old questions about Capitol Hill culture and the power dynamics between elected officials and their subordinates. It is a uniquely modern one, involving graphic photos sent on Snapchat and an online campaign against Swalwell by content creators.
Whispers that Swalwell, 45 years old, who is married and has three children, liked to party and had sent inappropriate messages to young female Democrats had long dogged him, but the assault allegations caught Democratic leaders off-guard. Some Democrats had privately dismissed rumors of his playboy lifestyle as unsubstantiated, according to people familiar with the conversations.
In late March, two content creators started posting allegations from women against Swalwell. With each post, new women reached out with allegations of abuse, said Cheyenne Hunt, one of the influencers. They helped connect the women with a lawyer and with reporters. Hunt said more than 30 women have now reached out to her to share experiences ranging from uncomfortable messages to sexual assault.

God, Death, and the Right to Choose

Graphs About Religion:

Several years ago, Canada began a program called Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). It’s a government initiative that’s beginning to reshape how Canadians are facing end-of-life situations. An article published in The Atlantic in August of 2025 titled Canada Is Killing Itself reports 5% of all the deaths in 2024 that happened in the country were through physician assisted suicide.
This is a topic that will garner increasing attention in the United States as medical aid in dying is already legally permissible in 13 states and Washington DC. And the March/April 2026 issue of Christianity Today includes a piece by Kristy Etheridge titled, “Death is Not a Right.” Given this interest, I wanted to see if I could provide some empirical background on how views of suicide have changed over time, particularly across the religious landscape in the US.
The General Social Survey has been asking a four question battery about suicide (with various justifications) for decades now. Luckily, the Association of Religion Data Archives makes it easy to search the codebook for the GSS and pull out the relevant questions. They all start with the same preamble - Do you think a person has the right to end his or her own life if this person…
There are four scenarios:

1. The person has an incurable disease
2. The person has gone bankrupt
3. The person has dishonored their family
4. The person is tired of living
Here’s the share of the entire sample who supported a person’s right to end their life given the above circumstances.
It is clear that the American public has been much more open to the idea of suicide in the case of incurable disease compared to the other three situations. In 1977, 37% of the sample supported someone ending their own life if they had a disease that couldn’t be cured. That rose quickly through the next 15 years, crossing the majority support threshold by the late 1980s and rising to 60% in favor by the mid-1990s. It stayed there for a while but then rose again after 2010 and it’s now at an all time high: 69% in favor.

The other three scenarios have never garnered anywhere near the same levels of support in the general public. The share who favors a right to suicide for people who go bankrupt or dishonor their family has never been robust: 6-7% back in the 1970s and creeping up very slowly over time to where it now stands, around 15%.

The question about suicide when a person “is tired of living and ready to die” gets a bit more support, though. It was 12% back in 1977 and that share has doubled in the last couple of decades. Now, a quarter of Americans favor an individual ending their own life if they just don’t want to live anymore.
As I was poking around this data, I had to wonder: is there some kind of combination between these four scenarios that is the most popular? Or are people pretty absolutist about this: they either favor suicide in all cases or reject it in all cases?
The most popular option was an individual saying that they would favor suicide in the case of incurable disease but in no other circumstances. That position comprised 42% of the sample. In second place, with 31% of the sample were folks who simply said “no” to each of the four circumstances. They were not in favor of suicide no matter the situation. That’s much higher than the portion of the sample who took a more libertarian view and would allow someone to end their life in all four scenarios previously described (14%).

Clarence Thomas on Progressives vs. The Declaration

Wall Street Journal:

Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.
You will not be surprised to learn that the progressives had a great deal of contempt for us, the American people. Before he entered politics, Wilson would describe the American people as “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn” and “foolish.” He lamented that we “do too much by vote” and too little by expert rule. He proposed that the people be ruled by administrators who use them as “tools.” He once again aspired to be like Germany, where the people, he said admiringly, were “docile and acquiescent.”
The century of progressivism did not go well. The European system that Wilson and the progressives scolded Americans for not adopting, which he called nearly perfect, led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based. Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people.
It was a terrible mistake to adopt Progressivism’s rejection of the Declaration’s vision of universal, inalienable natural rights. Wilson’s claim that natural rights must give way to historical progress could justify the greatest mistakes in our history. In Plessy v. Ferguson, my court upheld Louisiana’s system of racial segregation because “separate but equal,” it observed, was reasonable in light of “the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order.” It comes as no surprise that the progressives embraced eugenics. Progressives believed that Darwinian science—the idea of ever-advancing progress written into biology itself—had proven the inherent superiority and inferiority of the races. It was only a small step for Wilson to resegregate the federal workforce. It was only another step for the government to launch sterilization programs on those deemed by the experts of the day to be unfit to reproduce—upheld by my court in Buck v. Bell in an opinion written by no less a figure than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
We can argue over whether you believe in immutable, absolute natural rights or the Wilsonian idea of ever-progressing history. . . . But let me ask you to consider the consequences. European thinkers have long criticized America for remaining trapped in a Lockean world, with its weak decentralized government and strong individual rights. They say our 18th-century Declaration has prevented us from progressing to higher forms of government. Why has America never had a socialist party, one German sociologist famously asked. But we were fortunate not to trade our Lockean bounds for the supposedly enlightened world of Hegel, Marx and their followers. Fascism—which, after all, was a national socialism—triggered wars in Europe and Asia that killed tens of millions. The socialism of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China proceeded to kill more tens of millions of their own people. This is what happens when natural rights give way to the higher good of notions of history, progress, or, as Thomas Sowell has written, the “vision of the anointed.”
None of this, of course, was an improvement on the principles of the Declaration. Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” is largely about how America owed its superiority over Europe to its conscious decision to reject central planning and administrative rule root and branch. Progressivism, in other words, is retrogressive. As Calvin Coolidge said on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration:
“If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.”

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“Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.”

― Steven Spielberg

Ruthless: The Fall of Eric Swallwell

Ben Domenech — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:51:07 GMT

Happy to join the Ruthless guys on their variety progrum to talk about the fall of Eric Swalwell — couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Related links:

Pirate Wires: How the Military Is Using Palantir to Fight Wars

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The Hill: Newsom Policies Called Economic Disaster

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“The only power we have is the power to destroy, the power to disrupt.”

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The Big Ben Show: A Risky Ceasefire That May Not Last

Ben Domenech — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:58:17 GMT

New Big Ben Show dropped last night, and we’ve got a jam-packed episode, including interviews with Lucas Tomlinson and Rebeccah Heinrichs on the Iran ceasefire deal and the risks involved for the United States. Watch and listen here:

Washington Shouldn’t Compromise on Iran

Mark Dubowitz and Ben Cohen in the Daily Wire:

A ceasefire is not peace. It is not the formal end of hostilities. It is a pause.
General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made that unmistakably clear at a Pentagon press conference on April 8, his first since President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran the previous evening: “A ceasefire is a pause, and the joint force remains ready, if ordered or called upon, to resume combat operations with the same speed and precision as we’ve demonstrated over the last 38 days.”
Iran’s rulers should now understand that this president does not bluff. The United States and Israel remain, in Trump’s words during January’s anti-regime uprising, “locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Since that warning, the landscape has changed dramatically.
Domestically, more than 40,000 Iranians have died after the regime unleashed extraordinary violence against demonstrators. Militarily, Iran has been badly weakened by combined U.S.-Israeli operations: its navy crippled, air defenses penetrated, missile stockpiles and launchers significantly reduced, and key elements of its defense-industrial and economic-industrial base severely damaged. The supreme leader and 51 of his top commanders and advisors have been eliminated along with thousands of members of the IRGC, Basij, law enforcement, and intelligence apparatus.
Diplomatically, nearly six weeks of attacks on Arab capitals have shattered what little trust remained between Tehran and its Gulf neighbors, and Iran is increasingly isolated even from American allies who have their fair share of differences with President Trump. Psychologically, Iran’s leadership has learned that beneath Trump’s social media theatrics — offensive to many — lies a president willing to act.
As in many wars, both sides now claim victory. But Iran’s claim is far less persuasive. For now, the regime has achieved the minimum objective of survival. Yet survival under sustained military, economic, and political pressure is not strategic success. The possibility of an Iran freed from Islamic Republic rule remains very much alive.
As talks begin this weekend in Pakistan to solidify the ceasefire, Washington should negotiate from a position of maximum leverage, not compromise. None of the 10 points reportedly included in Tehran’s public proposal deserves serious consideration: lifting all sanctions, preserving Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, demanding war reparations, permitting continued uranium enrichment, and insisting on an indefinite halt to hostilities would amount to strategic surrender by the United States. Tehran’s original 10-point proposal was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable, and, as the White House put it, “completely discarded.”
That should remain the administration’s posture. The central reality has not changed during these volatile weeks: The Islamic Republic remains the most dangerous force destabilizing the Middle East and a direct threat to American security. Replacing it with a government that allows Iranians to reclaim their country should remain the central objective of U.S. policy.
That requires abandoning illusions about trade-offs. Unlike the Obama administration’s pursuit of the 2015 nuclear deal, the Trump administration should not seek to persuade, incentivize, or rehabilitate Iran’s rulers. It should present terms and insist on compliance.
That means no enrichment. It means surrendering Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile. It means intrusive, unannounced inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a prelude to dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and ballistic missile program. It means freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. It means maintaining all sanctions until Tehran proves over time that it has ended support for regional terror proxies and complied fully with American demands.

More here:

U.S. Fertility Hits Record Low

The Wall Street Journal:

The nation’s fertility rates hit record lows in 2025 as childbearing continued to shift toward older women, according to new federal data released Thursday. For the sixth straight year, the number of children born in the U.S. remained at roughly 3.6 million.
The number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44—the general fertility rate—reached a record low of 53.1 in 2025, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate has mostly headed down since 2007, a prerecession peak when millennial women started to enter their prime childbearing years.
One long-term trend driving the slide: a sharp decrease in birthrates for teens and women in their 20s. In 2025, birthrates for women in their late 30s exceeded those for women in their early 20s for the first time.
The lack of growth in births continues to be driven by uncertainty about the future, including concern over finances, relationship stability and the political climate, according to Wendy Manning, a demographer at Bowling Green State University. But research shows many women still desire to have children…
The teen birthrate fell 7% last year, extending a yearslong decline related to public-health campaigns and growing use of longer-acting contraceptives. Since 2007, the birthrate for 15- to 19-year-olds has fallen 72% in the U.S.
“We spent decades and lots of money trying to discourage early childbearing, saying, ‘This will ruin your life. This will ruin your kid’s life. Don’t do it,’ ” said Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

GOP Campaigns Embrace AI, While Democrats Bet Against It

Semafor:

In Democratic shops, the conversation about whether to use AI tools internally is quiet and cautious. One example: I’m told the Democratic National Committee has approved the use of only Google’s Gemini LLM, and not its competitors, for official work like data analysis and coding. Other Democratic groups have used AI tools to build campaign sites more quickly, replacing some hours of busywork.
But there is Democratic dread about the consequences of widespread AI use, like employment loss for visual artists and camera crews, that the GOP doesn’t share. While data center construction and favorable tax subsidies for the AI industry are politically unpopular, only Democrats have a faction that wants to stop the bulldozers. Democrats have introduced the sole successful proposals to restrict AI in political messaging.
Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Texas, author of a bill that would let candidates sue for damages if their opponents ran “materially deceptive” AI ads, told me that such deception was already a problem in her primary.
“It depends on if it’s based in fact, or if it’s just made up bullsh*t,” she said, a few days before being forced into a runoff with former Rep. Colin Allred. “Colin has done some AI-generated ads with my face in them; I don’t like it, but I don’t have a huge problem with it. That is, in fact, me. What I don’t like is using AI to create an image of me with Trump and Kristi Noem, because that’s just never happened.”
(Allred’s campaign distanced itself from the images Johnson was talking about; they came from The New Leadership PAC, which supports him in the May runoff.)
That defense of observed reality doesn’t have much power on the right, which has fully embraced AI image generation. The tears of liberal-leaning artists who won’t get paid to make those images are a bonus.
And it’s not just the Trump operation diving in. The president’s amplification of AI images has often happened in a political vacuum — replies on X, re-Truths on the president’s social media account. By contrast, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has used AI in ways that deeply anger Democrats. Not that they can do anything about it.

Yes, There’s a Problem With the Vrabel-Russini Stuff

Ethan Strauss:

Some of you were far more skeptical of the photographed duo and let’s just say…I now see your side. I received a lot of pushback from readers and people within the industry. The most common reply was something like this, via an anonymous tipster:
I looked at those pictures again today and they were taken from really far. No way paparazzi would give a fuck about those two. So where did these pictures come from. Was one of them being followed by a PI? Because their spouse did not trust them?
That’s not really what shook my belief in the defense, though, nor was it the avalanche of unearthed critical comments Russini made about her husband and marriage. It was top NFL reporter Adam Schefter on Philadelphia radio nimbly evading questions from the hosts. Schefty, who knows both people involved and likely has a lot more contextual information, did not laugh off this matter. Instead he grimly said:
I feel bad for the families involved. It’s unfortunate.
Well then. That doesn’t exactly sound like a response to some wacky innocent misunderstanding.
When the photos were published, I figured this situation would soon blow over because almost any Internet story does. Perhaps it will, but there’s a level of publicized unseemliness where, even with time, a topic never truly goes away for a public figure. Vrabel and Russini can return to their jobs that revolve around America’s favorite distraction, but people don’t forget. Russini’s latest output is reporting on the NFL referee labor situation and I suppose information based productivity is about the best move a reporter in this scenario can make.
Some additional thoughts…
This story is a good example of Aaron Sorkin’s take on bad publicity:
It’s like seasickness. You think you’re gonna die, and everyone else just thinks it’s funny.
Many are having fun with a salacious scandal, but, to Schefter’s point, there are families involved. If this is what it looks like, it’s also tragic for those involved.
I know it’s sports and not matters of extreme importance, but there is indeed a journalistic ethics component to all this. Out in aforementioned Philly, where Dianna Russini won “Eagles Insider of the Year” for Spike Eskin’s WIP, some fans are up in arms over this seemingly unconnected story. Why? Because Russini reported interest from the New England Patriots in chronically unhappy Eagles star wide receiver AJ Brown.
Russini isn’t the only person to have reported this. When New England Patriot legends Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski interviewed AJ Brown, the Eagles wideout winked when Edelman said, “We’re all Patriots.” Mike Vrabel was Brown’s head coach back in Tennessee, as discussed on the pod, so there’s a history there.
Still, you can’t fault an Eagles fan for wondering if there’s an aspect of the tail wagging the dog here. A reporter who broadcasts a star Eagle’s desire to leave just happens to have a close “relationship” with the coach of a team she names as potential suitor. I personally think AJ Brown would be doing all he could to leave Philadelphia for New England even if Russini had retired two years ago, but the optics aren’t wonderful.

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Trump's Iran Ceasefire Is Less of a Deal and More of a Ticking Clock

Ben Domenech — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:18:21 GMT

My take at the Daily Wire:

The markets are speaking, and their shaky nature means they’re optimistic about this deal. But it’s a bad one, short- and long-term, for an America First policy perspective. It’s certainly satisfying to swipe the chessboard clear of a bunch of bad guys. It’s another to expend significant resources to create a scenario in which the takeaways all speak to Iran’s ability to stand up to the Great Satan and survive, and to the advantages going forward for China that are impossible to fully estimate at this point.
The Trump approach to foreign policy and national security has, time and again, proven his critics wrong. He has ridden a hot hand repeatedly, to the great benefit of the American people. But he’s often done so by gambling and winning, often facing long odds. Eventually those odds may prove too long. Eventually the table goes cold. Or sometimes, you just need a break to go off tilt.
We’ll see which situation this is for the president in short order.

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Taiwan Diary, Day One

Ben Domenech — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:16:22 GMT

One of the first things you notice in Taipei is the children — and the lack thereof.

The city gives every indication of being a place where people are thriving, full of luxury shops and Michelin star restaurants, where the threatening presence of the PRC across the strait is an afterthought. People are festooned with European fashion labels as they zip around the city on well-kept scooters and motorbikes. At the hotels, a polite robot delivers your ice bucket.

The effect is jarring after a while. The number of stroller-type implements being used to haul goods and purchases far outnumber the ones with a child inside. Children are treated well — the restaurants make a big show of treating them like little honored guests — but the desire to be fruitful is just not present here.

The Big Ben Show: Jonathan Turley v. Thomas Paine

Ben Domenech — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:53:42 GMT

The latest Big Ben Show is here, featuring Jonathan Turley and Robby Soave! Watch, listen, and share with your friends.

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Big Ben Show: Champagne Socialists Go To Cuba

Ben Domenech — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:48:01 GMT

The latest Big Ben Show is here, for your listening and viewing pleasure:

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And be sure to check out what we’ve been publishing this week in DW Opinion:

Was The Metaverse Collapse Inevitable?

Ben Domenech — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:11:33 GMT

Spencer Klavan in The Daily Wire:

For now, Facebook is still technically called Meta. But the “metaverse,” Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious virtual reality project, is in shambles. Tech outlets reported last week that the company would be sunsetting Horizon Worlds, its VR social media platform. Then CTO Andrew Bosworth clarified that Horizon Worlds would rema…

The Trashy Awful Abusive Mormon Wife Isn't "Messy" Distraction, It's Real Life Tragedy

Ben Domenech — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:46:35 GMT

I’ve had it with reality TV. Competition shows, those are fine, but the escalating nature of this crap has gone too far when the central conversation surrounds an out of control shrieking drunk BPD swinger mom hurling a metal chair at her daughter for the entire internet to consume, and for that daughter to learn about as she gets older and have it foll…

The Big Ben Show: The Anti-War Right Cranks It To Eleven

Ben Domenech — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:55:22 GMT

The latest Big Ben Show is here! Listen and watch below:

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Joe Kent's Resignation Will Dominate D.C. Conversation

Ben Domenech — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 13:10:29 GMT

Wall Street Journal:

Sound advice in Washington is never to take a job unless you’re prepared to resign, and more people should heed it. The resignation Tuesday of a Trump counterterror official in protest against the Iran war is notable on those grounds, but why was he in the Administration in the first place?
“I cannot in good conscience support the ong…