In an appearance that would make Machiavelli blush, Illinois Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker took to the airwaves to project the very authoritarianism he claims to despise onto his political rivals. Speaking on “Meet the Press Now,” the billionaire heir didn’t just criticize the Trump administration; he essentially promised a long-term “lawfare” campaign against officials who dare to enforce federal immigration law. Pritzker’s rhetoric was nothing short of a declaration of judicial war. He accused ICE and CBP agents of “invading” Chicago and “tackling” citizens. But rather than focusing on policy, Pritzker shifted into the role of a vengeful prosecutor. He touted an “accountability commission” tasked with gathering evidence for future trials. The target list? High-ranking officials like Kash Patel, Kristi Noem, and Tom Homan. Pritzker’s chilling promise — “We are coming after them” — sounded less like a champion of due process and more like a man orchestrating a political purge. He admitted that while he might not have the power today, he is willing to wait years for a friendly administration to weaponize the courts against these individuals. The irony reached a fever pitch when the conversation turned to the recent assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. When asked about his own history of inflammatory language, Pritzker suddenly transformed into a paragon of “civility.” He somberly lectured that “all of us need to be very careful about how we speak” and urged both sides to “bring the rhetoric down.” He insisted there is a “big difference” between his prior calls for “peaceful protests” and the “authoritarian” actions of his opponents. Today on Meet the Press Now, JB Pritzker calls President Trump an "authoritarian, and if we are not pushing back every single day, then we're doing it wrong." A few seconds later, Pritzker threatens Trump admin officials: "It may take us a couple of years, in fact, to go after… pic.twitter.com/UxrRHq1L6R — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) April 28, 2026   However, Pritzker’s newfound commitment to “soft rhetoric” is belied by his own recent history. While he stands on the national stage calling for peace, his record tells a different story of provocation. In April, 2025, at the McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner, Pritzker dropped the mask of the statesman, explicitly calling for “mobilization” and “disruption.” He told a cheering crowd, “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.” This is the Pritzker Paradox: a man who threatens to hunt down government officials through the legal system and tells his followers to harass his opponents, yet has the audacity to blame others for a toxic political climate. By vowing to prosecute his enemies while simultaneously calling for “softened” language, Pritzker isn’t fighting authoritarianism — he’s providing a masterclass in it. For the Illinois Governor, “civility” is apparently a one-way street, and the law is simply a tool to be stored away until it can be used to bury his enemies.

The easiest way to misunderstand Justice Clarence Thomas’s recent speech at the University of Texas is as a conventional swipe at contemporary progressives. His target was instead deeper and older: the capital-P Progressive challenge to the American Founding itself. Appearing in Austin as part of a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas framed the issue as one of first principles. “The Constitution is the means of government,” he said, and “it is the Declaration that announces the ends of government.” Indeed, the American system is bigger than mere elections or policy outcomes. It’s defined by a moral claim about human equality and natural rights, and by a constitutional structure designed to secure them. Thomas’s critics seem eager to collapse his argument into today’s partisan disputes. They miss the broader view of his speech, with its focus on the long intellectual revolt against the Declaration’s premises and the Constitution’s architecture. As Thomas put it, “At the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream.” Its leading apostle was Woodrow Wilson, and the movement was progressivism. Since then, Thomas said, progressivism has “coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration.” Because it’s opposed to those principles, “it is not possible for the two to coexist forever.” The original Progressives really did reject the Founding’s understanding of liberty, rights, and constitutional structure. Wilson proposed more than modernizing technical improvements around the edges. He argued for a different theory of government, based on his study of German bureaucracy. That view dates back to his 1887 journal article “The Study of Administration,” where he insisted that “administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics,” and that “Administrative questions are not political questions.” He praised expert administration as distinct from ordinary constitutional politics and suggested that Montesquieu did not “say the last word” on the distribution of authority — meaning there was more to governance than checks and balances. Thomas summarized the point bluntly. “Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government,” he said. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government.” That gets to the heart of the matter: a dispute over the nature of rights, not merely whether the government should act here or there. If rights are granted only by positive law, then liberty becomes contingent and revocable — and ultimately political. And structure is where that dispute cashes out. The Progressives regarded separation of powers, federalism, and bicameralism as mere impediments to enlightened administration. The New Deal accelerated that tendency, consolidating policymaking and enforcement inside sprawling agencies that would’ve struck the Framers as a dangerous concentration of power. Thomas was thus right to make an argument about regime-level principles. A country that forgets the Declaration’s account of man and government will not preserve the Constitution’s structure for long. Why bother, after all, with rival institutions, limited jurisdictions, and procedural friction if rights come from benevolent experts rather than from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”? That’s why the speech also matters given the increasingly fevered speculation over possible Supreme Court retirements. Justice Thomas turns 78 in June, while Justice Samuel Alito turned 76 earlier this month. Both men are at the top of their game, enjoying more influence than they’ve ever had — as the most senior associate justices, with Thomas set to become the longest-serving justice in history if he stays through May 2028. Neither has indicated a desire to leave and, while they’re aware of the crass political calculus, Republicans are still narrowly favored to keep the Senate in this fall’s midterms. But the actuarial tables underscore what’s at stake. A hypothetical replacement needs to be not just smart, credentialed, and temperamentally suited for the high court. He or she needs to understand our constitutional order: that government exists to secure pre-political rights, and that constitutional structure is itself a guarantor of liberty. The late Justice Antonin Scalia captured the point memorably: “Every tinhorn dictator in the world today has a bill of rights. It isn’t the Bill of Rights that produces freedom. It’s the structure of government that prevents anybody from seizing all the power.” Justice Thomas’s Austin speech was a reminder of that forgotten truth. The American Founding was a claim about human nature, political power, and the institutions needed to keep freedom alive. Any successor worthy of his seat should understand that, too. *** Ilya Shapiro is director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor of City Journal, senior counsel to Burke Law Group, PLLC, and author, most recently, of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites. He also writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter.

The President has had enough. Many of us have had enough.  Enough of the fake MAGA grifters who absurdly sought to hijack the political movement he created and, having failed miserably, now plot to destroy it. I don’t call them Woke Right because they are not Right, if by that we mean conservative. Indeed, their rantings and ravings, written screeds (to the extent they write), and platforming of preposterous and vile guests — when they’re not interviewing each other to reinforce their cackle-laced bigoted theories and crackpot conspiracies — are every bit as repulsive and foul as the racist and antisemitic poison spewed by the Klan and neo-Nazis. Hence, it’s more accurate to label them Woke Reich. Indeed, they have more in common with newly arrived Islamist insurgents, Trotskyite and Maoist college faculty, and present-day Democrat Party officialdom than anything akin to MAGA patriots. We are familiar with some of these individuals from their past broadcasting careers, which typically ended in public humiliation and abrupt firings. Others were largely unknown comics, backbencher politicians, or basement-dwelling recluses. Most have no real accomplishments or proficiencies, shallow experiences, and depthless knowledge. There is simply nothing profound or compelling about the Woke Reich, especially the biggest, loudest, and nastiest among them. In fact, the most memorable part of their daily diatribes is the many applications of their favorite word: f*ck. They use it so often that it’s as if they have a medical condition, like an uncontrollable tic or disorder.  They use it as a noun, pronoun, verb, and adverb, all in one spittle-fuming daily rant. Of course, there are those who try to deliver their sordid dingbat and Jewish conspiracy theories with high-toned, pseudo-sophistication, which can be extremely difficult when plagiarizing thoughts and ideas from Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And still others seek to present themselves as Socrates, always inquisitive and asking questions in the supposed pursuit of truth and facts when they are nothing more than thuggish, incoherent buffoons rewriting history and babbling incoherencies about the news, politics, or the culture, as if unwittingly imitating Professor Irwin Corey.  From time to time, they lurch into unhinged invectives about President Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Erika Kirk, or more rational and unneurotic broadcasters and podcasters. You wouldn’t think that this cabal could draw a crowd, other than curious rubberneckers. Yet, they do, albeit inclusive of foreign government-generated bots and assorted overseas American-hating audiences. But there are also those who are attracted to the cult of personality created by some of these grifters. Indeed, a word has been invented to describe them: “influencers.” Who do they influence? Poll after poll suggests they don’t actually influence anybody. It appears to be a word generated by the liberal media to exploit and promote the worst of them as foils against the president, MAGA, and the GOP, intended to create the false impression that these reprobates and miscreants hold enormous power over all of them. They don’t. For example, the Woke Reich podcasters almost uniformly oppose the president’s decision to preemptively attack the Iranian terrorist regime and eliminate its nuclear capabilities and 47-year history of murder and terrorism against our country. They are zealously opposed to virtually any American military action, stridently insisting on an unwavering adherence to an absolute pacifism and, hence, rote isolationism. America, they chant, is colonialist, imperialist, the geniture of immoral forever wars, and so forth, as if they are mouthpieces for Vladimir Putin or some other anti-American fascist or Marxist despot. They insist the president campaigned on that platform, ignoring his repeatedly stated “Peace Through Strength” foreign policy doctrine and first-term actions. Today, several of them have joined numerous congressional Democrats, leftist manipulators, and Islamist agitators in openly rooting for the genocidal Iranian regime against our own armed forces, despite the fact that it has killed and maimed thousands of Americans. And, of course, the Israelis — that is, the Jews — dragged us into this war, as they have manipulated all of our foreign policy decisions. The internet junkies and podcast fanatics who do swallow this up, as opposed to the mere onlookers and oddly entertained, seem to think these are the only forms of communication worth digesting.  For many, this is their entire communications diet. It’s not part of their world but all of it. They live in this bubble. All day long. Every day. It’s not a way to get information, communicate, and socialize. It’s a myopic existence. Cult followings develop. Many business models are developed around it. Many of the most successful are essentially grifters who are the best at manipulation — not persuasion — through communication techniques developed and honed by past propagandists. This is one reason foreign governments, particularly the most heinous governments, spend time and resources on the internet. There are no limits to what they can do. One of the best ways to demonstrate this is to look at the comments certain posts and posters attract. It doesn’t tell you everything, but it tells you a lot. It also explains how some of the biggest podcasters are among the least accomplished outside the internet environment, and even more succeed in preaching like old-time bigots, antisemites, and demagogues. Draw a crowd by any means, grow it, and maintain it. For too many, the more repulsive and cancerous, the more successful. The Woke Reich are the useful idiots of the Left, the Democrat Party, and even foreign adversaries. They have nothing in common with MAGA, the GOP, or conservatives. *** Mark Levin is a legal and constitutional scholar, host of The Mark Levin Show on the radio and Life, Liberty & Levin on the Fox News Channel, and the author of 10 New York Times bestselling books.

The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Moms For Liberty a hate group just days before its national conference, causing protests to descend on the event and inundate attendees with threats of violence. Over 600 parents, conservative leaders, and five presidential candidates — including Donald Trump — gathered for four days at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott Hotel for the Moms for Liberty National Summit 2023. Just three weeks before, the SPLC added the grassroots parents’ group to its list of extremist groups. Tina Descovich, co-founder and CEO of Moms For Liberty, told The Daily Wire that the pushback was almost immediate — and frightening. “Their label sent thousands of protesters to our event, protestors smashed in windows of the venue the night before, and spray-painted over historical displays,” Descovich said. “They surrounded the venue for days. Philly PD had to call in the riot force and extra equipment. The following months and weeks were filled with continued threats and harassment.” “Adding us right before our 2023 National Summit, where we hosted five presidential candidates, was not an accident; it was calculated and coordinated,” Descovich added. The SPLC has come under renewed scrutiny after the Justice Department last week released a sweeping indictment of the controversial leftist group. The SPLC is alleged to have funneled millions to hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan from 2014 to 2023. The group claims it was paying informants, but critics say the SPLC was simply propping up its own targets — most notoriously by allegedly helping fund the infamous 2017 “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Once the SPLC labeled us, it gave people in my community and even extended family justification for really vile behavior towards me. I tried to protect my kids from the hate I received, but it wasn’t long before even they knew I was a target for people’s hate,” Kit Hart, Moms For Liberty membership engagement coordinator, told The Daily Wire. “It’s something no innocent mom should be subjected to.” “A group of us had dinner reservations offsite and the moment we exited the building, we were berated and screamed at,” Hart recalls. “The protestors had been waiting all day for members of our organization to leave the doors of the hotel to shove signs in our faces, curse at us and show every sign of aggression you can think of. As we were walking to our Uber, we needed to be escorted by security.” An LGBTQ+ group called The Agenda PAC obtained the hotel room numbers of Moms For Liberty members, and while they slept, left door hangers on their hotel rooms that said “Please Disturb: Fascism In Progress. Did you know a designated hate group is staying at this hotel?” Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta, who is currently a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, chaired The Agenda PAC. A heavy police presence was stationed outside the hotel for the duration of the conference to keep attendees safe. Protesters, carrying pride flags and signs with hateful messages such as “Ban The Fascists,” “F*ck Nazi’s,” and “Klanned Kookie Karens,” camped outside the hotel for the duration of the conference and harassed women as they entered or exited. One group of moms was swarmed by a group of protesters when they tried to leave the hotel in an Uber. Several protesters were arrested. Despite the tensions and security concerns, the planned programming was uninterrupted, and President Trump commented on the SPLC label during his speech. “The radical Left is even slandering Moms for Liberty as a so-called hate group,” President Trump stated during his speech. “Can you imagine Moms for Liberty, a hate group? I’m telling you, these people are sick.” The conference gained attention from national media outlets, which consistently associated Moms For Liberty with the SPLC hate group label. A group of Democratic Pennsylvania state senators used the SPLC label to fuel their ongoing campaign to get the 2023 summit canceled. The politicians sent a letter to the Museum of the American Revolution, where a welcome event for the summit was held, asking that it cut ties with Moms For Liberty. “Moms for Liberty, put plainly, is a hate group. This is not hyperbole — on June 6, 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated Moms for Liberty a hate group, and specifically, as an ‘anti-government extremist group,'” the letter reads. “The Museum’s leadership has demonstrated a lack of judgment in agreeing to host a hate group. Fortunately, the mistake can be fixed with a simple and elegant solution: cancel the Moms for Liberty event scheduled for June 29.” This reporter was present at the June 2023 summit and can easily recall the throngs of protesters and increased security. To avoid harassment from the mob of protesters outside of the hotel, attendees exited the Marriott hotel from a discreet side entrance and were covertly bused to the museum, where we were greeted by a raucous crowd screaming from behind a metal barricade, “Get the f*ck out of here” and “Philly is a trans city.” Police officers acted as a human shield and formed a path that allowed us a safe entrance to the museum. The door hangers on each hotel room door in Philadelphia tonight where the Moms for Liberty hate convention is taking place are incredible. pic.twitter.com/KKREKXCLas — Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) June 30, 2023 The impact of the SPLC’s extremist label extended far past the summer of 2023 and continues to weigh on parents today. The SPLC has an interactive “hate map,” and Moms for Liberty chapters make up the single largest bloc of any organization on it, putting a target on the back of each local group. “Every day since the SPLC added Moms for Liberty to its hate map, our organization has had a dangerous target on our back. Members have been doxed, cancelled, and threatened,” Descovich told The Daily Wire. “The fabricated lies told by the SPLC have caused extensive harm to our organization and our members.” For the past three years, Moms For Liberty Wisconsin leader Scarlett Johnson has also been harassed, defamed, and feared for her own safety after being labeled a far-right extremist by the SPLC. “I lived this. I was harassed, doxxed, and even sued. And almost every article, every interview, every news segment about me included the same line — that I’m part of Moms for Liberty, a group the SPLC labeled as extremist,” Johnson told The Daily Wire. “That label followed me everywhere. It changed how people looked at me, spoke to me, and treated me.” “It was the slow, grinding loss of normalcy that no one ever gives back,” she added. Johnson said the SPLC label didn’t just draw the ire of leftists, but made some local Republicans hesitant to be affiliated with her and the group. Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research, reporting, and analysis at the SPLC, admitted that was the group’s goal in a June 2023 interview with NPR. “Carroll Rivas said she hopes that adding Moms for Liberty and similar groups to its extremist list will help inform communities, reporters and politicians who are just learning about them,” NPR reported. “And, perhaps, that it might tarnish association with those organizations.” Johnson told The Daily Wire she is thankful SPLC is being investigated, but the reputational damage they’ve caused can’t be undone. “Not everyone understands what the SPLC is or how those labels get used — but politicians and media repeated it without question,” Johnson told The Daily Wire. “And when you repeat something like that over and over, it doesn’t just shape a narrative. It hardens into something people act on.” The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.

A leftist podcaster grilled Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin on Tuesday over his refusal to release the highly anticipated post-election autopsy examining how Democrats lost the 2024 presidential race. The DNC had initially signaled the autopsy would be made public, but in December 2025, the party announced it would not release the report despite Chairman Marin publicly pledging to do so. The reversal ignited a firestorm among some Democrats eager to understand why more than $1 billion in fundraising failed to deliver the White House to Kamala Harris. The review of the party’s 2024 wipeout is said to have centered around hundreds of interviews with operatives across all 50 states, raising concerns within the Democratic Party about airing internal divisions, according to Politico.  For Jon Favreau, former Obama speechwriter and co-host of Pod Save America, the public explanation isn’t cutting it. “Why did you change your mind on that?” he asked Martin, point-blank. Martin defended the decision, arguing the party is focused on applying lessons rather than relitigating the past. “What I said all along, even when I ran for this position, is that we were going to focus on the things that will help us win the upcoming election, right, making sure that we learn the right lessons that could help inform our victories,” Martin said. “It’s not completely accurate to say that we didn’t release that. Where we’re keeping our focus is on the lessons that can actually help us win.” Jon Favreau questions DNC Chair Ken Martin on why he won’t release the DNC’s autopsy on the 2024 election. pic.twitter.com/cypRJcK2bh — Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) April 28, 2026 When pressed again, Martin insisted the report contains no single explanation for the loss. “There’s no smoking gun in the report. And I know that’s what everyone’s so eager to learn this smoking gun,” Martin said. Favreau pushed back: “But if there’s no smoking gun, why wouldn’t you just release it then?” “Because we want to keep the focus on the lessons,” an irritated Martin said. “Because what ends up happening here is that people, of course, want to weaponize the report in a way, to look backwards, to point fingers, place blame, in a way that actually doesn’t keep us focused on the upcoming election.” “Guess what, John? In the third-closest presidential election in the last 100 years, everything mattered. There’s nothing that didn’t impact that election,” he added. The contentious exchange comes as pressure mounts within the party to release at least part of the report. At a DNC meeting last week in New Orleans, attendees stood up and screamed at Martin, according to Axios, and leftist groups have deployed mobile billboards reading, “RELEASE THE AUTOPSY.” Leaked details of the report are said to have highlighted the party’s staggering losses with young voters, a defensive message on immigration, and outdated data infrastructure, according to Politico. “Democrats are allergic to accountability,” Briahna Joy Gray, former national secretary for the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign, posted on X.