In a show of tradition and diplomatic goodwill, President Donald Trump and King Charles III exchanged symbolic gifts on Tuesday during the British monarch’s state visit. King Charles gave Trump a historically significant, high-quality reproduction of the 1879 design plans for the Resolute Desk, which sits in the Oval Office. The 1,300-pound desk was crafted from salvaged timbers from the British ship H.M.S. Resolute, as The New York Times reported. The original design plans are housed at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. In return, Trump gifted the British Monarch a framed copy of a 1785 letter from then-U.S. ambassador to Britain John Adams to John Jay, who was serving as U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Adams, who would later become the nation’s second president, described in the letter a meeting with King George III in which both sides agreed to move forward amicably despite lingering bad feelings from the Revolutionary War.  The exchange was widely seen as a symbolic nod to the enduring relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. First lady Melania Trump and Queen Camilla also exchanged gifts. Melania Trump presented the queen with a set of six engraved silver spoons from Tiffany & Co., while Queen Camilla gifted the first lady a designer brooch. It was also revealed this week that Trump and King Charles share a distant familial connection, as The Daily Wire previously reported. Research cited by The Daily Mail traces both men’s lineage back to the 3rd Earl of Lennox, a great-grandson of King James II of Scotland, making them 15th cousins. The official White House X account highlighted the discovery, sharing a chart tracing back the ancestry research along with a screenshot of Trump’s reaction on Truth Social: “Wow, that’s nice. I always wanted to live in Buckingham Palace!!! I’ll talk to the King and Queen about this in a few minutes!!!” King Charles and Queen Camilla are visiting the United States as the country approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence from Britain, a milestone both sides are marking as a sign of the continued strength of the transatlantic alliance. The royal couple arrived in the United States on Monday and is scheduled to visit Washington, D.C., New York, and Virginia.

Try as I might, I occasionally get sucked into the online doom-scroll and recently, I’ve been genuinely rattled by the pure hatred people carry for me on the internet. Not me as an individual, but my entire perceived identity. I am Republican, therefore I am an evil, worthless, unlovable person. Obviously. This is evident in the way we are discussed online.  Take applesauce.eater37. He posted a video of him and his friend with the caption, “When me and my Republican bro both interested in the Latina so I ask him who he voted for again.” In slow motion, with the song “Hemorrhage” playing in the background, the liberal (less attractive) male gets the girl and walks away with the Latina looking back in disgust at the morally depraved Republican. 689,000 likes. Ten million views. A comment section turned Republican roast sesh. “Why you have a republican friend in the first place?” “No one smart is attracted to republicans” “Let’s normalize this because I don’t want to date a guy who doesn’t care about women or anyone other than themselves.” “Who has a republican bro anymore? No more tolerance” “republican friend? in the MAGA era of politics? hell naw. i don’t even have republican family today” They deride Republicans as inhuman. Unworthy of friendship, beyond saving, deplorable. In another video, a man (with painted nails) explains that he left the conservative party, and you should too. The comments that followed? “Men learning empathy is so funny.” “Oh so you learned to critically think” Apparently, Republicans lack empathy and the ability to think critically.  This is coming from the same crowd that laughs when conservatives are shot, mourns when the bullet misses, and openly wishes for the next one to land. If we think critically about the irony there, we see that the party of supposed “empathy” and “tolerance” is often the most apathetic and intolerant crowd in the room. I believe in this case, culture is downstream from politics, and our politicians have been stripping Republicans of their humanity for years, all so they never have to engage with our arguments, our policies, or us in general. When Hillary Clinton calls us “deplorables,” when Hakeem Jeffries says our policies are “violent,” when Joe Biden calls MAGA Republicans “semi-fascists,” when too many in the mainstream left repeatedly call Trump supporters “Nazis” … they are delegitimizing us. Stripping us of human virtue. Belittling us, so that when we are harmed, it registers as a net positive. Nazis taken out! Good!  If our leaders are telling voters and constituents that the most powerful man in the world is a pedophile, a rapist, and a traitor, and his followers are child-harming, women-hating, country-loathing sympathizers — well, the culture will quickly turn against Republicans, who make up half the country. Where that stream turns into a waterfall is online. Hateful, polarizing, emotionally charged rhetoric is promoted and pushed algorithmically much farther than neutral language on social media, and who consumes most of that content? Young people. They are first taught that it is necessary to hurt or kill those who are preventing social change — in fact, it is morally obligatory — and then they are taught that Republicans are evil. So take out the evil, and you are good. This is reflected in the data. Politicians, pop culture, and online creators have spent years insisting corporations are evil, capitalism is to blame for everything, conservatives are morally bankrupt, and Christianity is useless. The old moral code — the Ten Commandments we inherited from Judaism and Christianity — disappears. Suddenly, capitalists deserve to die. Forty percent of Americans with graduate or professional degrees now say “violence is often necessary to create social change.” Forty percent of Gen Z said the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO was acceptable. And 22% of liberals under 44 say it’s okay to feel happy when a political opponent dies. When you strip certain people of their morality, throw the entire moral compass out the window, and then argue that in your shiny new worldview violence is good if it’s aimed at the bad — then it is okay to kill Republicans. In fact, it’s encouraged. We saw this in the manifesto of Trump’s most recent alleged assassin, Cole Allen. A normal, nerdy Democrat, radicalized by MSNOW, CNN, and Bluesky, who decided it was his moral duty to kill the president. He was doing us all a favor. The other problem is that many on the Left have no higher power reeling them in, hitting the pause button, or telling them “No.” They answer to no one but themselves. And they’ve decided we are beneath contempt, so it’s best to block, banish, and spray us with bullets. Politics used to be about ironing out our differences. Now it’s about throwing away anything that doesn’t fit their ideal mold. The only way for them to see us as human again or even worthy of life is a return to faith and a shared moral code: thou shalt not murder, steal, bear false witness, covet, or dishonor your parents. You know, the Ten Commandments. Pretty solid rule of thumb. Will the Left accept it? Will they see us as created in the image of God, just like they are? Or are we too egregious beyond reckoning? The party that values the unborn, the living, and the dead. The party that rescued more than 62,000 unaccompanied migrant children from sex trafficking and forced labor in the last year alone. The party that launched Trump Accounts and expanded the Child Tax Credit to build generational wealth for low-income families. The party that expanded school choice and educational freedom. The party that puts violent criminals behind bars to protect its citizens. Could the Left ever extend such a party even one iota of respect? Well, Leftist judges are now blocking the Commandments from classrooms. They’re publicly lamenting that the shooter missed. Heck, I’ve already been labeled a racist and a bigot by people who’ve never met me. So no, I don’t think they’re coming around anytime soon. I suspect they would celebrate my death on Instagram — and the comment section would cheer.

What is the kind of speech that promotes violence?  The First Amendment protects a wide range of speech. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be social consequences for what someone says. So what kind of speech deserves social consequences?  Jimmy Kimmel is America’s poster child for all idiotic political discourse. Long ago, Jimmy Kimmel ditched comedy in favor of smug lectures and fake tears. He’s not funny. He’s not clever. He’s just an annoying left-wing agitprop creator.  But when Jimmy Kimmel and his ilk on the Left and in the legacy media start pushing genuinely conspiratorial speech, their rhetoric is no longer just about bad jokes on television. Should he be on the unemployment line? Let’s discuss three basic standards when it comes to political speech in the United States. First: the illegal. There actually is illegal political speech in the United States. If you say, “I want to go kill the president of the United States,” that’s illegal. It’s either incitement or it’s an active threat. It came out of your mouth. It may be a form of speech, but it is also an active threat.  Under the Brandenburg test, incitement is any speech that is intended to and likely to incite imminent lawless action.  If I say, “You should go kill the president,” I’d probably have to say for it to be an illegal incitement, “I want you to go kill the president right now.” If I said that  — (obviously I’m using this as an example. No one should ever do political violence) — in that particular scenario, that would be incitement.  Second: Typical inflammatory rhetoric. This would be stuff like “Fight, fight, fight” or the Sarah Palin map of districts that targeted particular congressional districts. One of the targeted districts happened to be Gabby Giffords’ district. The Left tried to claim that because of that map, somebody tried to shoot Gabby Giffords. That’s silly. When people say, “We need to go to war with the Democrats,” or “We need to go to war with the Republicans,” is that going to lead to actual violence? No, because that sort of rhetoric is pretty typical of normal inflammatory rhetoric in politics. And we should not conflate that with incitement.  Third: The permission structure for violence. We have been talking about that a lot over the past couple of years. That stuff is truly dangerous. This is the conspiracism, the justification of violence. This is how you get crazy people to believe the president is a pedophile, meaning a threat to children, a rapist, meaning a threat to women, and a traitor, meaning a threat to the country, and in charge of all of the systems of power, and therefore can only be stopped through violence. But conflating these things leads to confusion that leads to inaction. If you try to lump together “We should go fight the Democrats” or “We should go fight the Republicans” with “The Democrats are pedophiles attacking children at a pizzeria,” or “The president of the United States is running a pedophile grooming gang,” those are not at all the same. Treating them as the same leads to inaction and an inability to agree on what is appropriate and what is inappropriate.  When you create insane theories about people being corrupt and evil and using their power in corrupt and evil ways, and those conspiracy theories suggest those people are a threat to you, it is not a gigantic surprise when somebody attempts to assassinate the president.  I think Jimmy Kimmel is awful. Kimmel has been terrible at his job for years. I think that he has surrendered laughter in favor of applause from his left-wing friends. If Jimmy Kimmel were to get fired, after he said before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that Melania Trump had “the glow of an expectant widow,” I would shed zero tears.  Zero. I think that he is a propagandist. I do not think that he is funny. I think that he has betrayed his audience in surrendering humor in favor of left-wing agitprop.  But, in this particular situation, I will say, I think that if Jimmy Kimmel were to be fired over his comments about Melania, it would be like arresting Al Capone for tax evasion. You’re hitting him with the wrong charge. I think that Melania has every rationale for being furious at Jimmy Kimmel for being a scumbag.  I also think what Jimmy Kimmel was joking about was the idea — which is egregious enough — that Melania hates the president, would be happy if he were dead, and could inherit his wealth — was disgusting, but was not, in fact, a call to violence.  Kimmel defended his joke by saying it was a joke about their age difference, adding, “I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house. And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.” His defense is actually worse than the original joke, which was tasteless. First of all, suggesting that Melania having stressful weekends is akin to somebody trying to kill her husband is insane and ridiculous. And for a person who tries to brand himself as Captain Empathy, Kimmel lacks true empathy in any realistic sense. And then, of course, he turned, swiveled, and clocked the president for his political rhetoric. It is amazing how our world has changed. The kind of hatred that has become commonplace in our politics is so clear. Back in 1981, somebody tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, a few days before the Oscars. And Johnny Carson, who was then the dominant late-night host — and a Democrat— was hosting the Oscars. He said, “Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure that all of you here, and most of you watching tonight, understand why we delayed this program for 24 hours because of the incredible events of yesterday. That old adage, ‘the show must go on,’ seemed relatively unimportant. The Academy, ABC television, and all of us connected with the show felt, because of the uncertain outcome as of this time yesterday, it would have been inappropriate to stage a celebration. But the news today is very good, as you know. The president is in excellent condition. At last reports, he’s been conducting business.” The audience applauded. Do you think that you’d get anything like that from Hollywood today if the president had been shot in the chest?  I think that Kimmel’s jokes are terrible. I think they’re unfunny. I don’t even believe his woke politics. This is a dude who used to do “The Man Show” with Adam Carolla, in which women bounced around on trampolines without bras. Do I believe the new woke Jimmy Kimmel? I don’t, but again, bad jokes, tastelessness, being bad at his job, that’s not the reason why Jimmy Kimmel should have been fired long ago. If you want to talk about the kinds of rhetoric that lead people to try to kill the president, the answer is not his joke about Melania or making light of the idea of the president passing away or something of that ilk. That is not what leads to violence.  What leads to violence is pretty obvious: the actual conspiracism. Jimmy Kimmel has spent years calling the president a pedophile. He has accused him of being involved with Epstein. That is also what is in the actual shooter’s manifesto.  Kimmel has said, “He’s coming after our right to vote. He’s protecting pedophiles and won’t explain it. He’s lining the pockets of billionaires, all while neglecting the sick, the poor, the hungry, in the name of Jesus, by the way.” Also: “When your best friend was a pedophile and you’re losing bigly in the swing states with an election coming up, what do you do? I’ll tell you what you do. You fire the weapons of mass destruction. And that would mean he’d have to come up with another distraction from the war. And if you do need that, Mr. President, I got a good one for you; you know what would distract us from the war? Release the unreleased Trump Epstein files.” Also, to Trump: “Thank you for watching. I’m surprised … . Isn’t it past your jail time?” Also: “And by the way, if Trump wants to send a rapist somewhere, he can just jump on a bus himself, you know.” It was Jimmy Kimmel calling Trump a cover-up artist for pedophilia and a rapist, and all the rest — that is the permission structure for the violence.  So should Jimmy Kimmel lose his job? If we’re going to talk specifically about the kinds of rhetoric that need to be called out, that should have social consequences, conspiracism, anti-evidence idiocy that imputes evil to an opponent without evidence: That’s the kind of stuff that’s bad.  I’m not blaming Melania for being deeply upset with that joke from last week, because obviously, if you hear that joke and time flattens and then somebody tries to shoot your husband, you should be beyond furious. But the kind of rhetoric that we all should be fighting is the rhetoric that encourages conspiratorial thinking.

Nonprofit hospitals are facing intensifying scrutiny on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers questioned whether the billions in tax breaks they receive are justified — and whether some systems should risk losing that status altogether. The House Ways and Means Committee hearing Tuesday, which followed a targeted campaign by watchdog group Consumers’ Research, exposed a growing bipartisan unease with how nonprofit hospital systems operate at a time of rising costs and persistent complaints from patients. At the center of the debate was a stark indictment from Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), who argued that the nonprofit designation no longer reflects reality. “For-profit hospitals are legally required to put shareholders over patients, but so-called nonprofit hospitals rarely act much different,” Smith said in his opening statement. “Tax-exempt hospitals deliver charity care that is consistently worth less than the tax breaks that they receive. These nonprofit hospitals receive a $28 billion tax break while only spending roughly $16 billion on charity care a year. The difference fuels a spending spree totally unrelated to providing health care, like real estate investments, stadium naming rights, green energy initiatives, and political activism.” That imbalance, tens of billions in tax advantages compared to significantly less in direct charity care, became one of the central tensions of the hearing, raising the question: What exactly are taxpayers subsidizing? Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA) pressed hospital executives directly on whether the nonprofit designation still reflects reality. “I don’t know that I see a lot of difference between a for-profit and a nonprofit,” Smucker said. “Mr. Hazen, you’re the for-profit [CEO on the panel]. Do you think there’s much difference in the way hospitals that are designated for-profit operate differently than a nonprofit?” “The short answer is no,” replied Sam Hazen, CEO of HCA Healthcare. Smucker then turned to executive compensation, questioning non-profit CommonSpirit Health CEO Wright Lassiter. “Your compensation was $21 million last year. Is that correct?” Smucker asked. “That’s not correct,” Lassiter responded. “What was it?” “Fourteen,” Lassiter said. “Fourteen million,” Smucker replied. “Do you think that’s on par with what a for-profit would be receiving?” The exchange underscored a broader theme running through the hearing: if nonprofit hospitals operate like corporations, lawmakers want to know why they’re still treated differently in the tax code. That question extended beyond compensation into how hospitals use their resources. “$718 million invested in publicly traded securities … $134 million gained by those securities?” Smucker asked. “Yes,” Lassiter said. “So can you explain to me why you should be granted nonprofit status?” Smucker pressed, however, his time then expired. While hospital leaders later defended their “community benefit” spending, lawmakers questioned whether the current standards are too vague to enforce. “Nonprofit hospitals receive a significant tax benefit, and in return, we expect them to meet certain obligations,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY). “However, those requirements are relatively broad and fall under the community benefits standard.” That lack of clarity drew further concern from Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), who questioned how regulators can even measure compliance. “How can the IRS determine if an individual facility is satisfying the community benefit standard?” Hern asked.  The hearing followed directly on the heels of a campaign launched by Consumers’ Research, which has accused major nonprofit systems, particularly NewYork-Presbyterian and CommonSpirit Health — whose CEOs were both present — of drifting away from core patient care and toward political and ideological initiatives. That campaign highlighted public statements from hospital leadership that critics argue reflect a broader institutional shift. Ray Dalio, a trustee of NewYork-Presbyterian, said the institution aims to advance “equal healthcare and equal education,” while CEO Dr. Steven J. Corwin emphasized that the hospital seeks to be “a leader in health justice.” Following Tuesday’s hearing, Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild issued a statement about the proceedings. “Tax-exempt hospitals are betraying patients by diverting resources to woke ideological agendas while people endure long waits, surprise bills, hidden prices, and in some cases outright failures in care,” Hild said. “Backed by generous public subsidies, these nonprofit systems are prioritizing activism over affordability and accountability, including spending on controversial programs like DEI and transgender treatments for kids, while patients are left to deal with rising costs. Nonprofit status is a privilege, not a right, and hospitals must be held accountable to refocus every dollar and every decision on delivering clear, affordable, high-quality care to the communities they are meant to serve.” That outside pressure is now converging with growing frustration inside government. A former White House official familiar with healthcare policy told The Daily Wire that nonprofit hospitals have effectively blurred the line between charity and corporate enterprise. “These aren’t charities; they’re greedy megacorporations that have been taking home hundreds of millions of dollars a year in profit and tens of millions in executive compensation,” the former official said. “Meanwhile, they’re fleecing patients by overcharging and ripping off taxpayers by claiming massive subsidies. The Trump DOJ paved the way for taking on hospitals by suing New York-Presbyterian for its antitrust violations, and it’s refreshing to see Congress follow suit.” That sentiment was echoed by a current senior White House official, who emphasized the administration’s broader focus on healthcare costs. “Hospitals account for two-thirds of every healthcare dollar Americans spend on healthcare,” the official said. “The goal of this administration is to drive down those costs and address provider waste, fraud, and abuse. We will make sure that healthcare is affordable.” For now, the Ways and Means hearing stops short of immediate legislative prescriptions. But it marks a clear shift in tone — and potentially in direction. After years of rising costs, opaque pricing, and growing questions about priorities, nonprofit hospitals are no longer just defending their practices, they are defending the very tax status that underpins their business model.

On Monday this week — only six days after Virginia’s gerrymandering referendum — the Virginia Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the alleged constitutional and statutory offenses Democrats in Virginia’s General Assembly committed in 2025 in bringing their attempt to amend Virginia’s constitution to get rid of our bipartisan redistricting commission. There is a second case on appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court that addresses Democrats’ alleged 2026 violations of Virginia’s constitution and laws. Finally, there is a third case, still in trial court in Richmond, addressing whether the Democrats’ proposed new map is so extremely gerrymandered that it violates Virginia’s constitution. If the Virginia Supreme Court throws out the referendum, the map case will be mooted and dismissed. Recognizing how important it is to have maps in place, the Virginia Supreme Court has moved with a speed I have never before observed. Two days after last week’s referendum, briefs were filed, and four days after that, oral arguments were held. One can only assume that the Court will issue a ruling at a similar pace. As a 30+ year litigator, it’s important to realize how little you can often glean from oral argument. In Monday’s hearing, only three of the seven justices asked anything, and most of that came from just two: Justices Russell and McCullough. A note on these two: Most people will observe that they are among the more conservative justices. That is true, but both of them also have a rare depth of experience dating back before they became judges, more than a decade ago, in interpreting and litigating Virginia state constitutional issues. There are very few state constitutional experts — they are both such experts in Virginia. Notably, current Democrat Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones’ public comments defending the referendum since the three-point win by the “yes” folks have exclusively focused on the importance of the vote. “The people have spoken,” and therefore the court should not invalidate the referendum. No reference to the constitution or laws of Virginia, just raw mobocracy. So, it was almost hilarious to hear the very first question to Jones’ own lawyer, along the lines of “counsel, does the outcome of last week’s vote have any bearing on the legal issues before us today?” Answer: “No.” Jones’ own lawyer gutted his public posturing with his answer to the very first question asked in oral argument. Ouch. A little election law history in Virginia: the last time the Democrats controlled Virginia’s state House, Senate, and Governorship, they gave Virginia 45-day elections. It is thus ironic that early voting is causing the Democrats’ biggest problems with their bum-rushed attempt to amend Virginia’s constitution to gerrymander the state into oblivion. To amend Virginia’s constitution, the General Assembly must pass a proposed amendment twice — once on each side of an intervening election. Simple enough, right? Not when you’re in a race to rewrite maps to “get Trump” in the midterms. The Democrats didn’t pass their gerrymandering amendment for the first time until Halloween last year — during the election that gave us Governor Abigail Spanberger. Their problem? Voting began six weeks earlier, on September 19, 2025. Over one million Virginians had already voted by Halloween. The lawyer for the Democrats’ response? Too dang bad. Seriously. Jones’ lawyer said that early voters vote early at their own risk, basically stating if there’s an October surprise, too bad for you, you shouldn’t have voted early. Isn’t this the party that raises early voting and mail-in voting to a religious-like level? Aren’t you an automatic racist if you oppose the nobility of early voting? And now that the 45-day election stands in the way of their power grab, they are throwing those voters under the bus. One of the plaintiffs in the case is a Democrat early voter who strongly supported the bipartisan redistricting amendment that passed just over five years ago by a 2-to-1 margin. Not only that, her own delegate proposed the gerrymandering amendment to undo the bipartisan redistricting. She had no idea they might do this, and if she had known, she would have voted against her delegate. The Virginia attorney general, who has been spewing pablum about how much he wants to protect voting, doesn’t care about this woman’s vote, nor the other million+ voters in 2025 who voted, having no idea of the power play that was about to be rammed through by the Democrats. Considering the more lenient approach taken on the other two issues during oral argument — namely, whether the Democrat-controlled General Assembly could shift the focus of its special session from the state budget to adding a constitutional amendment unexpectedly, and whether Virginia’s law requiring court clerks to post potential constitutional amendments 90 days before an election was violated (which was impossible here since the amendment didn’t exist until near the end of the 2025 election) — I anticipate that this Court will swiftly declare the referendum unconstitutional. *** Ken Cuccinelli is the former Virginia attorney general and former acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.