The following is a lightly edited transcript of a speech delivered on May 28, 2026, at the “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” Reenactment at The Heritage Foundation. Britain’s seven year war with France came at a great cost. Its consequences would alter the world. England accumulated a substantial amount of debt throughout the war. Parliament began to look to the American colonies, long used to governing themselves, as a solution to its problem. It imposed the Sugar and Stamp Acts of 1764 and 1765 to raise revenue from their “subjects.” The Americans found the Stamp Act particularly grating. Not only was Parliament introducing taxation without representation, but colonial forms of communication—newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, and other documents—would need stamps to circulate. While the stamps were of little financial cost, they impeded freedom of speech and deliberation, beliefs and practices central to the American character—a character fit for citizenship, not subjugation. The back-and-forth between the colonies and Great Britain continued: with moves and countermoves, rising rhetoric, and emerging patriots. Tensions grew following the Boston Massacre of 1770, when British troops fired on a group of protesters, wounding 11 and killing five. In the final month of 1773, the Sons of Liberty dumped tea into the frigid waters of the Boston Harbor. With the Intolerable Acts, Parliament closed the port of Boston, infested Boston’s streets with British troops and forced their quartering, and replaced elected officials with ones appointed by the royal governor. American principles—freedom of speech, of representation, of consent—were being violated. And Paul Revere was at the ready. The Boston native rode for five days from Massachusetts to Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. In his hands was the response to the Intolerable Acts, the Suffolk Resolves. With him, he carried a question: Would the other colonies join Massachusetts against Great Britain? Was an attack on one part an attack on the whole? Other localities had passed resolutions against Parliament, but perhaps none were as substantive as the Suffolk Resolves. The people of Massachusetts urged their fellow colonists to form local militias and boycott British goods. But more than that, they contended that Parliament had committed “gross Infractions of those Rights to which we are justly entitled by the Laws of Nature, the British Constitution, and the Charter of the Province.” The ongoing dispute was not about mere manmade laws or the rights of Englishmen, but about natural law and the inalienable rights of mankind. On Sept. 17, a day that now lives in our memory as Constitution Day, the first Continental Congress unanimously endorsed the Suffolk Resolves. In 1774, George Washington, Patrick Henry, John Adams, and Sam Adams were there, uniting Virginia and Massachusetts in Pennsylvania. That brings us to Virginia. Many of the ideas of the Revolution spread through churches to the 70% to 80% of colonists who attended services on a regular basis. (The religious revival known as the Great Awakening had swept through America in the 1730s and 1740s, and the most referenced work of the Founding generation was the Bible.) On March 20, 1775, a month before Lexington and Concord, the Second Virginia Convention gathered in St. John’s Church in Richmond. Its main objective was to elect delegates to the Second Continental Congress. The course of that weeklong convention would further solidify America’s principles. Not to be out spirited by those Massachusetts Puritans, Anglican Patrick Henry introduced resolutions to form a Virginia militia. But that was not the only point of commonality between the Suffolk Resolves and Henry’s endeavors. By 1775, the question of Revolution was upon America. The Declaration of Independence describes the revolutionary act not simply as a right, but as a duty. A duty to whom? The Suffolk Resolves provides the answer: “[I]t is an indispensable Duty which we owe to GOD, our Country, Ourselves and Posterity, by all lawful Ways and Means in our Power, to maintain, defend and preserve those civil and religious Rights and Liberties for which many of our Fathers fought—bled—and died; and to hand them down entire to future Generations.” Knowing the same, Virginia’s orator spoke “freely and without reserve,” a “responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.” The Declaration of Independence was indeed an expression of the American mind, threading itself through Suffolk County, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Richmond, Virginia. It carries itself forward on the hearts of today’s citizens: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The recent Trump-Xi summit in Beijing featured grand ceremonies, red-carpet pomp, and diplomatic flair, but it produced no major breakthroughs. This has allowed some media and analysts to promote distorted narratives about U.S.-China relations, the Iran conflict, and global power dynamics. Here is a clear-eyed debunking of the three most misleading myths. Myth 1: The Iran War Weakened the US and Trump Sought China’s Help Critics claim the conflict bogged down U.S. forces, depleted munitions needed for a Taiwan contingency, kept the Strait of Hormuz closed, and drove up American gas prices, while China’s strategic reserves and green energy push supposedly insulated it and even strengthened its geopolitical leverage. President Donald Trump’s conciliatory language toward Chinese leader Xi Jinping is cited as evidence of a weakened president seeking China’s help. The U.S. has faced real costs, including higher energy prices fueling inflation. But it is misleading to ignore the war’s heavier impact on China. Despite its green energy investments, China remains the world’s largest oil importer, with consumption still rising. Most of its crude comes from the Middle East via the Strait of Hormuz. Since the start of the year, the Trump administration’s actions, including the removal of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and military operations with Israel against Iran, have limited Beijing’s access to discounted crude oil from key sources. Consequently, rising oil and gas prices have significantly impacted China’s manufacturing economy, slowing exports, triggering factory closures, and weakening consumer spending. It is reasonable to conclude that the Iran conflict has harmed China more than the U.S. This explains why China pressed Iran to reopen the Straits of Hormuz “as soon as possible” before the Trump-Xi summit. The war also showcased American military superiority while exposing failures in China-linked equipment. Just days before the summit, former defense Ministers Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu received suspended death sentences for bribery and corruption—a stark sign of Xi’s lack of confidence in the People’s Liberation Army’s fighting ability and loyalty. Trump’s flattering rhetoric toward Xi follows his first-term pattern: personal compliments paired with tough action. Back then, Trump praised Xi while launching trade wars against China and shutting down the Chinese consulate in Houston. Last week, while Trump was making flattering remarks to Xi, the U.S. took significant steps against Chinese agents: Arcadia, California, Mayor Eileen Wang agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for China, and Lu Jianwang was convicted in New York for running a covert Chinese “police station.” Before leaving Beijing, the U.S. delegation discarded Chinese-issued items, including badges, credentials, souvenirs, gift bags, and especially burner phones, into a trash bin at the foot of Air Force One. The directive was clear: Nothing of Chinese origin was permitted on the plane. This precaution was necessary to guard against potential hacking or tracking by Chinese operatives, especially considering that China is ranked as the most active and daring state actor in cyber espionage. These developments show that rhetoric is theater. President Trump and his team recognize China as a serious adversary and are prepared to meet this challenge head-on. Myth 2: China Is a Rising Power, the US Is Declining Xi referenced the “Thucydides Trap” (a concept popularized by Harvard professor Graham Allison) in remarks, evoking ancient Athens vs. Sparta to imply a declining America that is fearful of a rising China could potentially lead to conflict, especially over Taiwan. This framing ignores China’s mounting internal crises under Xi: a collapsing property market, crushing local government debt, a self-inflicted demographic disaster from the one-child policy, high youth unemployment, and a surveillance state that stifles innovation. While China leads in electric vehicles, solar, and some AI hardware, these gains have not offset the drags from the rest of the economy. All of these suggest China is in a structural decline more than inexorable rise. Xi’s historical analogy is also ironic: Athens was a democracy; China is an authoritarian one-party state. The U.S. retains clear advantages in energy independence, dynamic innovation, free markets, and the rule of law. Trump arrived in Beijing with roughly 17 CEOs whose companies represented a combined market capitalization of approximately $16 trillion—larger than many countries’ entire GDP. That is a powerful demonstration of American economic strength. Xi’s reception of Trump further undercuts his own “America is declining” narrative. Xi often treats leaders of perceived weaker powers as subordinates—see the recent diplomatic humiliation of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Trump, by contrast, received full state honors, including a rare personal tour of the secretive Zhongnanhai leadership compound. One Chinese netizen commented on X: “In fact, Chinese people should be grateful to Trump. If it weren’t for his visit to China, ordinary Chinese people would never have known what the Zhongnanhai looks like in their lifetime! You can’t even get into Xinhua Gate.” It seems that Xi’s flattering of Trump might have backfired. Myth 3: The Summit Was a Failure Because There Were No Major Breakthroughs Although Trump mentioned the potential Chinese purchases of Boeing aircraft and U.S. soybeans, the highly anticipated summit ended with no major breakthrough. Critics called the summit a failure due to the absence of sweeping deals on trade, Iran, Taiwan, or technology. Furthermore, no major announcements meant no unwise concessions on core U.S. interests. During the summit, Xi warned Trump that mishandling Taiwan could create “an extremely dangerous situation.” Yet neither Xi’s flattery nor threats altered the U.S. official position on Taiwan. Xi’s emphasis on Taiwan may even have backfired. On the flight home, Trump said he would speak with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te before deciding on a major arms sale package. A direct presidential call between the U.S. and Taiwan has been unprecedented since 1979, and would itself anger Xi. The recent summit between Trump and Xi illustrates how great-power diplomacy functions: surface-level flattery and spectacle masking underlying firmness and vigilance. Narratives of American decline and Chinese inevitability overlook concrete actions the Trump administration has taken, including energy leverage and enforcement against espionage, as well as Beijing’s serious domestic constraints. Given China’s track record of signing agreements it later fails to honor (as with the Phase One trade deal), tempered expectations, consistent pressure, and realistic engagement remain the wisest approach for long-term U.S. strategic success. Originally published by Confucius Never Said We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

GOP members in Congress are joining TikTok after years of speaking out against the app and are going viral. Following in the footsteps of Democrat lawmakers who have been on the app for years, Republican lawmakers are gaining millions of views and reaching the younger generation of voters. Last year, TikTok, the social media platform known for its short-form video content and addictive algorithm, was at the center of a data privacy concern. The platform was created and founded by a Chinese technology company, ByteDance, with links to the Chinese Communist Party. Many in the Republican Party were concerned the CCP had access to billions of Americans’ personal data. The Trump administration, along with conservative groups like The Heritage Foundation, saw this as an immediate threat. In 2025, Congress voted to force the sale of the company, which was finalized in January 2026. ByteDance sold 80% of the American app to TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, where Oracle owns the largest stake, at 15%. However, ByteDance still controls roughly 20%. “We shouldn’t underestimate [TikTok] as a tool for election [interference.] ByteDance has a vested interest in countless races across this country because their company is on the line.” – @RealJDenton This is your daily reminder to delete TikTok. pic.twitter.com/nfrR4vmSCX— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) February 2, 2024 Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., joined the app just a few weeks ago and has gained more than 500,000 followers, quickly surpassing Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has gained about 21,000 followers since joining in February. Clips of Kennedy and his quippy comedy often went viral on the app, so now he has his own account to collect them. “I’ve seen videos of where other people have recorded what I’ve said on TikTok. … So now I have a TikTok account. I just want to use it to tell you a little bit about me, to the extent that you care, and tell you a little bit about what it’s like to be a United States Senator,” Kennedy said in one video posted to the app. “My staff keeps telling me to make videos, [to] ‘just be normal,’ and I tell them, ‘Hell, nobody’s normal in the United States Senate.’ In fact, the United States Senate only works when everybody isn’t crazy at the same time,” Kennedy said in another. Listen some people gripe that Senator Kennedy doesn’t do enough to get the agenda we want passed. Maybe that is true. Is it wrong that I am grateful he isn’t living high on the hog, insider trading&lining his pockets with lobbyist money? I appreciate him&his humor pic.twitter.com/9zyL9v367C— Michelle Maxwell (@MichelleMaxwell) May 28, 2026 While most members use their accounts to repost news clips, Kennedy and his staff have found what really works on the video app: real, raw, original content. Just this week, he posted a video about his home decor and workout elliptical, which he named “Margaret,” after former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, because they both “kick butt and take names.” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., has also found his niche on TikTok. He often films daily videos explaining policy or a vote that just took place while he walks around the Capitol. Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, has a combined following of more than 400,000, where he often shares viral clips from congressional hearings and content with his family back in his district. Another House member on the rise on the platform is Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, who joined in January after the sale was finalized. The White House, President Donald Trump, and Vice President JD Vance have been on the app since August 2025 and have millions of followers. Former Vice President Kamala Harris launched an account during her campaign, quickly gaining millions of young followers. Democrat lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Elizabeth Warren also do well on the app. I’m voting NO on the TikTok forced sale bill.This bill was incredibly rushed, from committee to vote in 4 days, with little explanation.There are serious antitrust and privacy questions here, and any national security concerns should be laid out to the public prior to a vote.— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 13, 2024 The average TikTok user is age 18-34, a highly sought-after voter demographic. With campaign season upon us and midterm elections right around the corner, it’s no wonder that so many politicians are using the platform.

“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” -Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing” For more than two decades now, a handful of academics, led by John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, have been documenting what has come to be called “the replication crisis.” In brief, a considerable amount of academic scientific research fails one of the key tests of the scientific method: it cannot be reproduced by other researchers. In 2023, four German neuropsychologists attempted to quantify the incidence of “fraud” in the scientific research business, and what they found was disheartening to say the least. As Jeffrey Brainard at Science magazine put it, “After screening some 5000 papers, [lead researcher Bernhard Sabel] estimates up to 34% of neuroscience papers published in 2020 were likely made up or plagiarized; in medicine, the figure was 24%.” Even allowing some margin of error in Sabel’s methodology, those are shocking numbers. For obvious reasons, this is a massive scandal in the scientific community. In the hard sciences—medicine and neuroscience, especially—academic malfeasance can have serious real-world implications. If this research is fraudulent, if it is not replicable and, therefore, not “scientific” at all, then the consequences can be quite serious, even deadly. A similar condition exists in the social sciences as well and is likely even more prevalent. Nevertheless, this “crisis” is hardly even referred to as such and has received far less public attention. This is largely the result of the perception that social sciences don’t matter as much as hard sciences, and therefore, research malfeasance isn’t as big of a scandal. In many cases, this perception is true. In an academic universe where “publish or perish” remains dogma and which strives relentlessly to “create” “new” knowledge, the results of research are often absolutely irrelevant except in the battle for promotion and tenure. In other cases, however, that perception is false, and the lack of attention paid to the replication crisis has had widespread deleterious effects on markets, businesses, the economy, and society more broadly. Indeed, the accumulated evidence suggests that the irreproducible research has strongly influenced the rise over the last decade of ESG—environmental, social, and governance—investing. Consider, for example, a 2014 paper titled “The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance,” written by Robert Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou, and George Serafeim, three extremely prominent and well-respected finance researchers. Published by the prestigious journal Management Science, this study is one of the foundational studies underpinning the practice of ESG. Eccles, Ioannou, and Serafeim claim to have found that “high sustainability companies significantly outperform their counterparts over the long term, both in terms of stock market and accounting performance,” which, of course, suggests that sustainability is a characteristic investors should look for when choosing where to place their capital, as well as a behavioral outcome towards which all corporations should strive. If sustainability means better returns, then it’s great for investors; if it means better accounting performance, then corporate executives have a fiduciary obligation to adopt those practices. Case closed: ESG works—or so we were told. Andrew A. King, the Allen and Kelli Questrom Professor in Strategy and Innovation at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University, has noted that this study by Eccles and his co-authors is one of the most important and most cited studies in ESG history. The article’s publication, King writes, “preceded a massive growth in ‘sustainable’ investing,” and it “was used to promote these new investment strategies.”  He notes that Allison Herren Lee, the former acting chair of the SEC, cited the study “to support her claim that corporate sustainability assessment has become ‘a core risk management strategy for portfolio construction.’”  It’s even been referenced by the former vice president of the United States and one of the early prophets of climate change, Al Gore. King says that the study “quickly became a touchstone for the research community” and “has been used widely in testimony on policymaking.”  The study turned Eccles and his co-authors into ESG superstars. It made them heroes and made ESG acceptable—practically undeniable. But there’s a catch. The study is irreproducible. Actually, make that two catches, because it’s also wrong, as King proved and as its authors eventually had to concede (emphasis in original): “The article helped ignite the ESG boom. … But when I replicated the study, I discovered their method did not, and could not, deliver a sufficient number of closely matched firms. … Now, in a comment to JOMSR, Eccles, Ioannou, and Serafeim acknowledge that I am correct. … With this new correction, the article’s causal claims collapse, and all its estimates become ambiguous. “So, we now know: 1. ESG’s most influential paper does not replicate. 2. A “typo” caused a key result to be reported as ‘significant’ when it was ‘NOT significant.’ … 3. Its text misrepresented its empirical method as far stronger than it was.” The good news is that Andrew King is not alone in his fight to expose the shoddy and irreproducible research that has become part of the “legend” of ESG. Other researchers—notably Alex Edmans, a professor of Finance at London Business School—have also made it their mission to push back against poorly constructed studies that mislead and promote unproven ideas. The bad news is that much of the damage from these irreproducible claims has already been done. The “myths” that sustainability and diversity inevitably produce better business results are embedded in certain segments of the corporate and investment worlds, despite the unreliability of the evidence supporting them. Those of us who believe that corporations have an obligation to focus exclusively on their business missions are fighting an uphill battle. Again, the consequences of poor social science research here might not be life-or-death, as they are in the hard sciences, but they are serious. ESG has become standard practice across Western capital markets, in Europe especially, and throughout much of American business. Trillions of dollars in capital are now allocated based on a study whose authors have conceded its central claims aren’t valid. That is very serious. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

For years, much of the American media has operated under a peculiar assumption: that the best way to confront adversaries such as China and Iran is to accommodate them. If the United States applies pressure, the narrative quickly becomes that America is overextended, losing leverage, or somehow empowering its enemies. That narrative has resurfaced during President Donald Trump’s confrontation with Tehran and Beijing. According to outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, both Iran and China are supposedly emerging stronger from the current conflict. It is a difficult claim to square with reality. Iran’s senior military leadership has been decimated. Its regional proxy network has been weakened. Its economy remains in severe distress, and its military capabilities have been heavily degraded. Yet much of the media coverage treats Iran’s mere survival as evidence that it is somehow winning. The New York Times recently argued that Iran had “succeeded in confounding U.S. and Israeli expectations for a speedy victory,” suggesting that Tehran had created a kind of stalemate. But modern wars rarely end with formal surrender ceremonies or total collapse. By the standards of contemporary warfare, weakening an enemy’s military leadership, degrading its economy, and limiting its regional influence would traditionally be viewed as significant strategic gains. Instead, media coverage often defines victory so narrowly that any continued resistance by Iran becomes proof of American failure. The Times also suggested that Iran had “maintained control” over the Strait of Hormuz. But if Iran truly controlled the strait in any meaningful sense, it would be freely exporting its own oil and profiting from commercial traffic through the region. It is doing neither. Iran’s threats against shipping lanes reflect desperation and leverage-seeking behavior, not dominance. In fact, instability in the strait creates problems not only for the U.S. and its allies but also for China, which depends heavily on imported oil flowing through the Gulf. That reality complicates the simplistic narrative that Beijing somehow benefits automatically from chaos in the Middle East. To be sure, the Trump administration has exercised restraint in certain areas, particularly regarding direct attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure. But that restraint reflects strategic calculation, not weakness. Completely destroying Iran’s energy sector could devastate the Iranian population and eliminate the economic foundation for any future moderate government. The same pattern appears in coverage of China. The Post recently highlighted a reported intelligence assessment claiming that Beijing is exploiting the Iran conflict to maximize its advantage over the U.S. The report pointed to Chinese weapons sales, diplomatic messaging, and China’s ability to study American military operations. None of that is surprising. Great powers routinely study conflicts and attempt to exploit geopolitical openings. That does not mean they are winning. China still faces the same structural problems it faced before the conflict began: slowing economic growth, demographic decline, mounting debt, and heavy dependence on imported energy. Prolonged instability in the Middle East threatens Beijing’s economy as much as Washington’s. The Post also emphasized concerns that the conflict is depleting American munitions stockpiles that could be needed in a future Taiwan contingency. That concern is legitimate. But it reflects years of inadequate defense production and military downsizing under previous administrations, not some strategic triumph by Beijing. Critics of American foreign policy often argue that China can portray the U.S. as an aggressive power in decline. But China’s own behavior makes that argument difficult to sustain. Beijing continues threatening Taiwan, tightening control over Hong Kong, expanding military influence across the Pacific, and pressuring neighboring countries throughout Asia. The idea that China is positioned to win a global moral argument against the U.S. requires overlooking much of Beijing’s conduct. Ultimately, the broader media narrative reflects a longstanding tendency in parts of the American press to interpret nearly every assertion of U.S. power as evidence of American weakness. Military action becomes proof of overreach. Economic pressure becomes recklessness. Adversaries surviving become adversaries winning. But survival is not victory, and disruption is not dominance. Whatever criticisms one may have of Trump’s foreign policy, the central premise of his approach remains straightforward: American strength deters adversaries more effectively than accommodation does. History suggests that argument deserves more serious consideration than much of the current media coverage is willing to give it. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.