In this preview from the latest “Signal Sitdown” podcast with Bradley Devlin, Michael Knowles discusses how the MAGA coalition can stay together despite all the infighting on the right. The full interview premieres on The Daily Signal’s YouTube page at 6:30 a.m. EST on May 7. Bradley Devlin: And yet there’s this shift in the American lexicon that’s happened, I guess, over the last 100 years. I hate attributing everything to the progressives. Don’t get me wrong. Many bad things can be attributed to the progressives. Yes. But they’re not responsible for every single social evil that we face right now.  Michael Knowles: Right.   Devlin: But this really does kind of start with Woodrow Wilson, where politics in the American lexicon becomes a dirty word, whereas politics, according to the Western tradition, was the good thing.   Knowles: Yes.   Devlin: That was the good thing as opposed to mob rule, as opposed to perverted democracies, perverted aristocracies, oligarchies, things of that nature.  And so, I think you have to recover politics properly understood in order to get there. And so often I see on the right is a full-on rejection of politics for principle. Right? You see this all the time on social media everywhere, that, well, my principles forbid me from working with or building a coalition with somebody.  And it can be something rather serious, right? There are fences on the island where we need to protect those fences and make sure that we keep those unsavory characters out. But these issues are super petty. It’s like, I reject a 25% tariff on EU automobiles—rather than the 15% tariff. Like, that’s the type of level that we’re dealing with when we say ‘my principles forbid me from working with you!’ How do we go about shedding the right of this idea that politics is a dirty word?   Knowles: Well, I think you’ve gotten right to the heart of the matter, and it requires a restoration of the classical view of politics over the myriad errors that have set in, not just since the 1960s or not even since the 1910s, but that have set in since, I don’t know, the 16th century, the 17th century at the latest.  And the thinker that I come back to as, to immediately abstract it all the way out into the realm of theory, is Michael Oakeshott.   Devlin: You are a podcaster. This is okay. You’re not in the—  Knowles: Yeah, I get a pass, right? And I think Michael Oakeshott, the 20th-century British political philosopher, gives us a good sense of this.  In his essay “Rationalism in Politics,” he says that ideology is to be eschewed by the conservative because he defines ideology as the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition. A delightfully flowery way of describing this, but it bears repeating.  The formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth, only rational truth contained within the tradition. And he says that’s not what we do. At that point, you have such a thin understanding of the world. This is the manifesto of the liberal or the leftist that fits in five bullet points on the back of a napkin.  But you don’t want that. In a different essay, “On Being Conservative,” Oakeshott says that to be conservative is to prefer the actual to the possible, to prefer present laughter ultimately to utopian bliss. It’s a practical inclination, and that works for me.  So a lot of these debates that have broken out among the podcasters, one, involve, you know, you fired me from this job 10 years ago, and you said this mean thing about me on some other podcast. Like, a lot of it really is petty.   Inasmuch as it involves ideas, which I’m happy to debate, I delight in debating ideas, but a lot of that debate is taking place at too abstract, too high a level.  So one will say, well, this person is advancing, this podcaster is advancing through some nebulous means. I don’t know how. Through his microphone and magic, he is advancing a postliberal integralist paleoconservative, and that is completely unacceptable. I will never dine with this person because I, you see, am a pure libertarian neo-paleoconservative, who in the arrangement of Frank Meyer, but only from 1963, not 1965.  And you just say, can you—what are we talking about? What are we talking about?   Devlin: And that is actually what presents the real challenge, is for people at home who are watching this all play out, they think to themselves, the sky is falling. The sky is falling.  Now, I might be a little bit more black-pilled than you are on some of this stuff, because you’ve recently been touring the country doing speeches with TPUSA and YAF, and you said this experience has kind of been white-pilling, that there’s still a lot of really good youth energy—for as much as we talk about how young men in particular who swung heavily toward Trump in 2024 might be—not swinging back to the left, but not as enthusiastic about showing up for the midterms or in 2028.   Knowles: No, I was just in Idaho. It was with TPUSA. TPUSA decided to continue Charlie [Kirk]’s tour, and coincidentally, I was the first person to do that.  Charlie and I were supposed to do an event together at the University of Minnesota 12 days after he died, and they asked if I would come out and sub in on his radio show, because they still had the radio show when he was killed. You know, the show must go on, I guess.  They were getting a bunch of his friends to sub in for weeks afterward, and I show up there days later, and they asked me, hey, are you going to do that event in Minneapolis?  I said, guys, this is entirely up to you. It’s totally your thing. If you want me to do it, I will do it. I’ll do it alone with an empty chair. If you don’t want to do it, it’s your call. It’s your event. You make the decision. I don’t want to weigh in on it.  And they said, we think you should do it, which was obviously the right answer. Very much in the spirit of Charlie. And so we did that.   It was a good event up there. This was right in the wake of it. People were still quite traumatized. It was clear at that point that the left was celebrating Charlie’s death.  So we finished that one out, and then TPUSA decided to continue the tour.  I was a little worried, because the thing about assassinations is that they work, and no one wanted to acknowledge that. Everyone said, oh, well, you’ve struck Charlie down, and we’re devastated, but we’re going to come back 10 times stronger. And it’s like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, and that’s copium.  That’s actually not how it works. Assassinations do hurt people. That’s why people keep doing them.  I was a little concerned. The left also has been very aggressive in terms of reserving seats and then not showing up, or showing up and then leaving in the first 10 minutes. I’ve dealt with these tactics for 10 years now in my own tours.  So there was a real fear.  There were kerfuffles when the administration was helping them out. But anyway, [Matt] Walsh and I show up in Idaho, totally packed house, maximum capacity, very big venue, and then more than 1,000 people were turned away at the door.  Devlin: Yeah, you didn’t even know that many people lived in Idaho.  Knowles: Truly. It was just amazing. Some of the guys were following my car out of the venue. I was doing an event afterward at a cigar lounge, of course, and they were just stopping by the car as I got out and saying, “Hey, can you sign the hat? Can you sign this? Can we talk about this?”  But it was really great. It was really white-pilling. The questions in the room were great. I was waiting for it to be all sorts of inside baseball personality podcast nonsense like we were just discussing.  How could you work for that dastardly Ben Shapiro? Why won’t you denounce the evil Tucker Carlson? All of this kind of meta-political stuff. It really wasn’t that at all.  It was people asking what to do now, how to deal with the Iran war, which is controversial among the wonk class, the right-wing think tanks, and many rank-and-file conservatives, what to do about the economy.  We had one little kid show up, mention that he wanted to become a priest, and Walsh decided to grill him on it. Very Matt Walsh thing to do. He said, “Why do you want to be a priest?” And the kid said, “I think God is calling me,” which is the pitch-perfect answer.  You had people debating matters of theology, and it was just really substantive, really good, a very positive event.  And I thought, okay, I’m now reaffirmed in my previously held belief that I was doubting, that there is a distinction between Twitter and real life. There’s overlap, but there is a distinction.  And even to your point, that it’s not just affecting the podcast class, that’s true. It’s all over society.  But it occurred to me that 20 years ago, you say, what kind of Republican are you? Someone would say, I’m a John McCain Republican. I’m a Ron Paul Republican.  Sixty years ago, what kind of Republican are you? I’m a Barry Goldwater conservative. No, I’m a Rockefeller Republican. It was always referring to actual politicians who created public policy.  Now if you ask, you’re much more likely to get the answer, well, I’m a Ben Shapiro conservative, or I’m a Tucker Carlson conservative.  In other words, it now appears that the tail is wagging the dog, that the political media are really in the driver’s seat of prominence over the conservative politicians.  Which I guess is fine by me, because I’m in that class, so I’m fine to be the belle of the ball. But in a proper political order, that would not be the case.  You would have more of a focus on the real.  In some ways, the sociologist Jean Baudrillard has become very popular in certain corners of the right. The man who promotes society of hyperreality. wrote a famous book about how the Gulf War didn’t really happen. It was just a sort of illusory phenomenon on television.  Delightful writer if you’re into plausibly right-wing postmodernism. He’s a delightful writer.  But his idea that you kind of abstract and concentrate something so far away that it’s almost unrecognizable from the source material, I think that’s where we’ve gotten with politics.  And so you have to bring those things back together, or we will become frivolous. We will become superfluous. And the upshot of that will be that the left will actually do the governing, and we will all lose.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a House panel behind closed doors Wednesday that his interactions with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he met three times, were limited to being neighbors, according to a person familiar with the testimony. Lutnick told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he met three times with Epstein and never saw Epstein with any young women. He said he never witnessed anything inappropriate. The two were neighbors from 2005 to 2019.  Lutnick purchased the property near Epstein’s home in 1997 but did not move in until renovations were complete in 2005.  The commerce secretary told the committee that he and Epstein had no personal or professional relationship. Lutnick said he and his wife visited Epstein’s home for coffee and a short tour when they became neighbors, in a meeting that lasted about 10 to 15 minutes.  Lutnick said that’s where he saw a massage table, according to a person familiar with the testimony. He said he decided he didn’t want a personal or professional relationship with Epstein.  A massive batch of files released by the Justice Department in January included emails showing Lutnick had apparently visited Epstein’s private island for lunch in 2012. The emails also showed Lutnick invited Epstein to a November 2015 fundraiser at his financial firm for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Democrats on the committee were critical after the closed door testimony. “Howard Lutnick should resign. That was absolutely mindboggling what we just heard,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., told reporters. “He was evasive, nervous, dishonest. He says he was never in the room with Epstein again after the first time he met him, yet he then admitted he was in the room with Epstein. I had to ask him whether he and I were in the same room just now because I couldn’t understand his meaning of in the same room,” Subramanyam said. The commerce secretary said he and his family were invited to Epstein’s home for lunch when he was in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Lutnick said he didn’t know how Epstein’s assistant knew he was visiting the islands and thought it was unsettling. The families had a short lunch.  Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that Lutnick was transparent on Wednesday. “The only thing that I’d seen that Lutnick did wrong was [he] wasn’t 100% truthful on the brief visit to the island with his family. He corrected that in his opening statement,” Comer told reporters. Lutnick had previously stated he cut off contact with Epstein by the time of the island meeting. “If we find that there were any misstatements by Lutnick, it’s a felony to lie to Congress and he’ll be held accountable,” Comer said. Lutnick said he and Epstein met one time to discuss scaffolding in Epstein’s foyer.  Reuters contributed to this report.

“Would you push to deport undocumented farm workers?” CNN debate moderators asked this emotionally charged question to the seven California gubernatorial candidates Tuesday night. Democrats cited benefits to the economy and “racial profiling,” as valid reasons to not push deportations.  Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton pushed back, emphasizing the importance of fairness for Californians and preventing criminals from harming U.S. citizens. Let’s take a look at Democrats’ reasons for not wanting to enforce deportations in California. Reason #1: The Economy Former congresswoman Katie Porter touted that “immigration has been a major source of growth in the U.S. economy.” According to the California Budget and Policy Center, “California’s undocumented residents contribute nearly $8.5 billion in taxes.” However, many reports, including one from the Center for Immigration Studies say illegal immigrants have a “net fiscal drain,” meaning they receive more in government services than they pay in taxes. “This result is not due to laziness or fraud. Illegal immigrants actually have high rates of work, and they do pay some taxes, including income and payroll taxes. The fundamental reason that illegal immigrants are a net drain is that they have a low average education level, which results in low average earnings and tax payments. It also means a large share qualify for welfare programs, often receiving benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children. Like their less-educated and low-income U.S.-born counterparts, the tax payments of illegal immigrants do not come close to covering the cost they create,” said Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies Steve Hilton called Porter’s argument about immigrants stimulating the economy “very revealing,” saying, “I don’t think that’s the right way for us to be growing.” CNN CA GUBERNATORIAL DEBATE:California’s economy should be growing from new businesses, tourism, and new residents. One party rule has made life impossibly expensive and driven business out of our state. Enough! pic.twitter.com/Ah6HEQCsiM— Steve Hilton (@SteveHiltonx) May 6, 2026 Reason #2: ‘Racial Profiling’ Democrat billionaire Tom Steyer argued that deportations are “racial profiling—which is illegal,” and said he would support prosecuting former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem for sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement to California. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan added, “It is targeting the Latino community. It is disproportionately affecting our immigrant neighbors.” However, some experts push back, explaining that deportations have to do with percentages of people here illegally, not ‘racial profiling.’ “Of course, racial profiling is illegal. No one supports that. California is majority non-European, and Los Angeles is more than half Hispanic. Latinos are more than half the Border Patrol. The Los Angeles Police Department is 70% ‘people of color.’ Only 20% of immigrants in the US are white. So enforcing immigration law will catch some Europeans—but they are a smaller percentage of people coming in illegally, so it will be a smaller percentage of arrests or enforcement actions,” said Simon Hankinson, Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow at the Border Security and Immigration Center. Hankinson continued, “About 75% of “unauthorized” immigrants living in the USA are Hispanic, with nearly 60% from Mexico alone. So yes, enforcing immigration law against people here illegally would affect them at those percentages.” Former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra brought up Alex Pretti, saying, “There are two [protesters] dead in Minneapolis for doing their civic duty.” Republicans are absolutely DOMINATING in the California Governor Debate tonight over ICEBECERRA (D): "There are two [protestors] dead in Minneapolis for doing their civic duty"BIANCO (R): "Your civic duty is bringing a gun and FIGHTING with cops?! Your civic duty is trying… pic.twitter.com/VFDaKQNwBG— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 6, 2026 Reason #3: Violence Toward ‘Californians’ Porter argued that “It’s the job of the governor to protect every single Californian. Period. There are no qualifications on that.” Bianco questioned Porter, “Are you doing that by having a sanctuary state policy? Absolutely not!” Republican Chad Bianco just threw Democrat Katie Porter for a LOOP when he interrupted her answer about protecting illegal aliens.All he had to do was hold up the scoreboard on Democrat sanctuary policies.You could see the anger building on her face as Bianco took complete… pic.twitter.com/LtIjOrqR9D— Overton (@overton_news) May 6, 2026 It is estimated that there were 10.9 million+ inadmissible aliens encounters under the Biden-Harris administration, according to the Heritage Foundation Data Visualizations page. Records from the US Border Patrol show that over 9,055 pounds of fentanyl were seized between ports of entry, and there were a recorded 55,106 arrests of aliens with criminal convictions or outstanding warrants.  Warnings Not Heeded The debate ended with Sheriff Bianco firing shots at all candidates, saying, “Six of the people here don’t even know who deports anyone!” Chad Bianco: “Six of the people here don't even know who deports anyone!”“They just want emotions to rule the day, so you support them because they don't even know what the governor can and can't do.”pic.twitter.com/qgBbwFOdES— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) May 6, 2026 Bianco, who has worked in law enforcement for more than 30 years—spending seven of those as the Riverside County sheriff—has a history of being outspoken on immigration issues. In an interview posted to X, Bianco explained the warning he gave to officials back in 2017. “Democrats planned for ICE to have to come into communities…. That’s what we’re really seeing right now, is Democrats purposely knowingly made sanctuary states and cities to force ICE on the ground so they could create this.” California Governor candidate Chad Bianco says Democrats planned for ICE to have to come into communities, they did it on purposeHe says Democrats passed SB 54He warned before they did this that if they passed this, it would force ICE to have to enter communities“We… pic.twitter.com/w7rrRlpXcj— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 6, 2026

Seattle’s new socialist mayor Katie Wilson has been going viral quite a bit in the last few weeks and for all the wrong reasons. I know violent crime videos proliferate on social media these days, but this one is especially hard to watch. In a clip captured by a closed-circuit television camera in Seattle, two young men can be seen senselessly beating a 77-year-old man and leaving him face down in the street. 29-year-old Ahmed Osman from Bellevue has been charged in an unprovoked attack on a 77-year-old man at 3rd Ave and Pine in Seattle. Detectives are working to ID the second suspect. The victim suffered a broken knee and arm and was hospitalized for more than a week. pic.twitter.com/SEHy6Mc0f6— David Rose (@DavidRoseFOX13) May 5, 2026 Fortunately, the man survived his injuries, but he had to be hospitalized for a week. One of the alleged attackers, 29-year-old Ahmed Abdullahi Osman, was quickly detained by police after he tried to evade them. In the police body camera video of his arrest, Osman said that he worked for the “state” for “Katie, the mayor.” According to David Rose at FOX 13, Osman was released “on $5,000 bail for a separate fire alarm tampering charge two days after the attack,” as Seattle police conducted their investigation. They are now unable to find him after they put out a warrant for his arrest. The whole thing is infuriating to say the least, as Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts indicated on X. Ahmed’s pal, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, apparently came through for him. He was released shortly after his arrest.You may want safe streets, but for the Left, that can’t come at the expense of thugs like these beating people in the streets for entertainment. https://t.co/AbtpCenaeS— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) May 6, 2026 We can only hope justice will be done here, as it so often isn’t in America’s big, blue cities. But it’s important to note that if “Katie, the mayor” had her way the two suspects in this case would likely have never even been identified. Let’s rewind to last year. Here’s Wilson’s thoughts on those closed-circuit cameras before she got elected. “Turning on more cameras won’t magically make our neighborhoods safer, but it will certainly make our neighborhoods more vulnerable,” she said in response Seattle’s City Council expanding the CCTV program in 2025, according to KOMO News. It gets better. Wilson further said that she opposed adding more cameras because “Trump” could get the videos and they could be used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We are deeply concerned that the expansion of these tools will create an infrastructure where federal agencies can more readily target vulnerable communities, including immigrants and refugees,” she said. That’s the person who now runs the city. It’s actually impressive how poorly Wilson has performed during her short time in office. Businesses are fleeing Seattle and her response was to say “bye” and laugh despite needing their money to fund all her government programs. The self-avowed socialist, whose meager job qualifications amounted to little more than a few odd jobs and community organizing, seems to be totally in over her head to the point where her handlers frequently intervene when she’s asked mildly difficult questions in interviews. She’s been so hapless that even one of her big local backers is already bailing. Radio John Curley said Wilson’s socialist ideals were an “experiment” that’s going badly. “We’re really getting a chance to experience it. We’re driving out the job creators—they’re leaving. You have high vacancy rates. This city is now struggling to find money,” he said on KIRO Newsradio. “They haven’t had to start cutting yet. They still continue to promise a lot of stuff to people, and this is what you get.” Curley said he was willing to give it a shot, but if “it bombs, we can dig a nice little six-foot grave. We can stick socialism in there. We can cover it with dirt. We can put the gravestone on top of it and say, ‘We tried it. We didn’t kill anybody, but apparently, taking from one group of people and giving to another group of people fails as it always does.’” Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking. Socialism, for all its failures, has a remarkable knack for being pulled out of the ground, ambling around like a zombie, then eating the brains (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) of both the people who dug it up and innocent victims who had nothing to do with it. I will give a quick tip here for America’s crop of newly elected leftists. If you don’t want to immediately end up with approval ratings like Chicago’s feckless Mayor Brandon Johnson, don’t make lawlessness your priority. The clever ones would be wise to lead with all the other terrible stuff first before abandoning basic public safety. But they often don’t even understand that. Maybe that’s why they are socialists. I think we already have enough evidence to figure out that Wilson isn’t one of the clever ones. It’s hard to top the line by Ari Hoffman at the Post Millennial who said of Wilson on Newsmax that she’s an “empty vessel” and that “if she had an original thought in her head, it would die of loneliness.” Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson: "She's an empty vessel being used by the people around her … If she had an original thought in her head, it would die of loneliness."My latest appearance on @NEWSMAX with @BiancaDLGarza pic.twitter.com/Gi5kxaJv9q— Ari Hoffman (@thehoffather) May 6, 2026 Tough, but fair I’d say. Unfortunately, there will be very real, deadly consequences for the people of Seattle due to having such poor leadership. I feel like I keep writing this line over and over but it must be said: Seattle really is getting what it voted for here. It’s going to be a long four years in Emerald City.

Candidates for Georgia lieutenant governor who previously held public office are facing renewed scrutiny over whether they used taxpayer‑funded settlements to resolve sexual harassment claims while serving in government. All candidates deny that they have been involved in any sexual harassment scandals, especially while in office, and are even willing to provide documentation if it is truly desired. But that isn’t stopping the push for more information. “Georgians deserve leaders with integrity, not politicians hiding behind legal agreements and backroom deals,” State Rep. David Clark, who is running for the post, said last week. The attention follows newly filed open‑records requests seeking documents related to harassment complaints or monetary settlements, as well as passage of the so‑called “Epstein Amendment” during Georgia’s most recent legislative session. The amendment allows public access to settlement or non‑disclosure agreements involving General Assembly members accused of sexual harassment, discriminatory harassment, discrimination, or retaliation. Whether any records are ultimately released could carry major implications for the May 19 Republican primary, which will determine which candidate advances to face the Democrat nominee in the Nov. 3 general election. “They know what’s out there, and the public has a right to know,” said Drew Ashby, a Cobb County attorney who filed one of the records requests this week. “We just want Georgia citizens to know the whole truth before they elect someone to fill one of the highest offices in our state.” Ashby and Scot Turner, a lobbyist and former Republican state lawmaker, separately filed requests seeking records related to Rep. David Clark, Sen. Greg Dolezal, Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, former Senate President John F. Kennedy, and Sen. Blake Tillery—all candidates for lieutenant governor. Turner’s request seeks records of “any sexual harassment complaint, allegation, investigation, settlement, payment, personnel action or Human Resources file material” involving the five candidates. Ashby’s request is more narrowly focused. It names two candidates and seeks records alleging “sexually predatory behavior,” “sexual abuse,” “sexual harassment,” or “sexual impropriety of any kind.” Ashby is also seeking documents showing whether any claims were resolved through monetary settlements and names two individuals he alleges were paid as part of such agreements. He said he communicated those names directly to the office of Senate Pro Tem Larry Walker III. Walker’s office did not respond to questions about whether such records exist or whether they would be released. “I hope they produce the documents,” Ashby said. “But if they don’t, or if they try to deny that they exist, then we are prepared to take this fight as far as necessary. I don’t want to have to file a lawsuit, but I will.” Turner said his request is aimed at dispelling long‑circulating rumors rather than confirming wrongdoing. “I think this has been the source of rumors that are unhealthy,” Turner said. “There’s a huge value to eliminating any whispers so Republicans aren’t damaged by a rumor campaign in the general election. But if there is anything there, it will all be released.” Each of the candidates has denied being involved in harassment complaints or settlements. Gooch urged his fellow candidates to authorize disclosure quickly, saying voters should not have to “wait on the Epstein Amendment” to learn whether any records exist. Dolezal said the requests should yield no documents related to him. “No,” he said when asked whether any such records exist. “As a legislator, I spent my time focused on passing school choice, the Riley Gaines Act, and standing with President Trump against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.” A spokesperson for Kennedy, who served in the Senate from 2015 to 2025, also said no records exist related to him. “The answer is an unequivocal ‘no,’” the spokesperson said. “There are no such claims, complaints, allegations, or settlements.” Despite the denials, the outcome may ultimately hinge on whether Gov. Brian Kemp signs the Epstein Amendment into law. Named after disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the provision was added to House Bill 1247 and House Bill 1409, both of which passed on the final day of the legislative session. Kemp’s office declined to comment on whether the governor intends to sign or veto the legislation.