WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump does not want to be a wartime president. He wants to be the president who, as he did at Mar-a-Lago in 2017, enjoyed “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever seen,” as he informed Chinese President Xi Jinping that the U.S. had just dropped bombs on Syria. Trump wants to be the U.S. president who uses military force sparingly. In 2017, the spark came from then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people. Trump also wants to be the president who brings back the sheen to the U.S. military’s image. This weekend’s brilliantly executed Operation Midnight Hammer rained missiles on three Iranian nuclear sites. For the time being, the threat of Iran’s nuclear ambitions appears to have been arrested. Iran responded by sending missiles toward the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The missiles were intercepted. There was no American body count. Just the way Trump likes it. It’s ironic that Democratic critics like Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., were accusing Trump of trying to gin up a “forever war” in the Middle East. To the contrary, Trump subsequently announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire after 12 days. Will the ceasefire pay off? Time will tell. Meanwhile, Trump pushed for negotiations, not warfare. At the same time, Trump isn’t afraid of a fight. As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Monday after U.S. forces struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, “Past presidents wanted to take this action, but they didn’t have the guts to make the decision.” Leavitt didn’t need to name the former presidents who declared Iran should not have nukes without acting decisively: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or George W. Bush. Trump doesn’t want to be another Bush. This president doesn’t want to deploy boots on the ground. (RELATED: Let’s Hope Trump’s ‘Spectacular Military Success’ Is Not Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’) Monday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei posted a portrait of a burning American flag and a pledge that Iran will not surrender — as he was hiding in a bunker. That was before the ceasefire announcement. Tuesday, as I write, Trump is flying to a NATO summit where Western European leaders seem genuinely in sync with Trump’s actions. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised Trump for his “decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do.” From Berlin, Politico reported, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz noted, “There is no reason for us and also for me personally to criticize what Israel started a week ago and also no reason to criticize what America did last weekend. It is not without risk, but leaving it as it was wasn’t an option, either.” NATO leaders are also praising Trump for pushing for them to increase their contribution to NATO’s defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. It turns out he was right to prod NATO to pony up during his first visit to a NATO summit, when, on paper, membership required a mere 2 percent of GDP. At the time, Trump’s remarks seemed a shocking breach of decorum. Now they have the ring of an alarm that needed to be sounded. READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: How Scary Is It Out There? Maybe World War III Scary Trump Isn’t Looking for a Ceasefire. He Wants a No-Nukes Iran. Protests Turn Violent. Democrats Blame Trump. Rinse Repeat Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM The post 12-Day War Shows Trump Is Not a Warmonger appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Hallow — a Catholic audio prayer app that seeks to compete with secular meditation apps like Calm and Headspace — reached a milestone this weekend when it logged the one billionth prayer prayed with the app. Alex Jones, Hallow’s CEO and one of its co-founders, posted on X that the achievement was “[a]bsolutely insane” given that it occurred exactly seven years to the day after he incorporated Hallow as an organization. Seven years is of note to the app’s founders given that, in biblical terms, seven represents perfection, completion, and a covenant with God. Jones wrote: 7 years ago…to the day…June 21, 2018 We incorporated Hallow as an organization. No app. No users. Just $10 I put in a bank account. Then today. June 21, 2025… We cross 1 billion prayers prayed. What. God is real. God is good. God be praised. Thanks be to God. Jones has long said how unlikely it is that he would be the one to bring millions of people to prayer. During his time in high school and college, at the University of Notre Dame, Jones had fallen away from his Catholic faith to the point that he considered himself agnostic or atheist, he later explained to the Irish Rover, a Notre Dame student newspaper. After graduating from Notre Dame’s business school in 2015, he went to perhaps the most common destination among those graduates: the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. In the spiritual void of McKinsey, Jones began using apps like Calm and Headspace to meditate. And yet, he told the Irish Rover, he “kept feeling a pull towards something spiritual, something Christian.” So Jones began to reach out to former professors and mentors at Notre Dame with questions about Christian meditation. Among them were the Rev. Pete McCormick, the former rector of his dorm, and John Cavadini and the Rev. Kevin Grove, both theology professors. “Fr. Pete laughed and said I must have slept through some classes,” Jones later told Notre Dame’s business school. It was then that he “began to discover this rich, beautiful world of Catholic contemplative prayer that honestly I’d never heard of before,” Jones told the Irish Rover. If Jones’s story — going from an atheist college student and a technocratic consultant to the igniter of one billion prayers — seems surprising, his co-founder’s story sounds even less likely. Erich Kerekes, who remains the company’s CFO, also worked for McKinsey after graduating from Notre Dame, but his role was to advise tech companies in Silicon Valley. “I was born and raised Catholic, but pretty much the epitome of culturally Catholic,” Kerekes explained at an event this April at the University of Notre Dame. “We would pray every once in a while, but it wasn’t super important to my family.” Kerekes began to learn more intellectually about the faith at Notre Dame after he began dating a girl who was more devout, he said. But by the time his friend Alex Jones asked him if he wanted to quit his job and join him in building Hallow, he “didn’t feel like a big part of the Church … even at that very moment.” Kerekes explained that Jones hadn’t offered him “a position, equity, co-founder status, or any money at all” — he had simply asked him to take the question of whether to join Hallow to prayer. Kerekes fully expected to say no and to stay in Chicago at McKinsey. He even applied to two rental properties in Chicago with his former roommates with the intent of doing so. And yet Kerekes left his lucrative job at McKinsey “right before a promotion, to stay in a city that didn’t feel like home, with no promise of equity or title at Hallow, to pursue a calling.” Jones and Kerekes were joined in founding Hallow in San Francisco by their friend Alessandro DiSanto, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, who had lived in the same dorm at Notre Dame as Jones, and who had not experienced the same alienation from the faith as his co-founders. The app launched in December 2018, from $25,000 raised on Kickstarter. The team then spent weeks pitching Hallow to “almost 100 venture capitalists,” Kerekes explained last month at Notre Dame, and yet they came up “nearly dry.” Kerekes recounted that, after their failure to get more funding for the project, “Alex truly fell to his knees and surrendered it all…. And he said, ‘If this thing goes well, we’re never going to take the credit for it.’” The next morning, Kerekes said, the group attended Mass and heard the Gospel account of Peter’s miraculous catching of numerous fish upon Christ’s command. Funding then “began materializing” over the next few days, Kerekes said. “It was as if God had been waiting for us to give it all up to Him,” he said. Several weeks later, the three traveled to the campus of the University of Notre Dame to try to make some business connections among fellow Catholics. While there, the three attended Mass at Jones’s and DiSanto’s former dorm, Keough Hall, where I happened to be attending Mass that Sunday. The dorm’s rector explained how the three had quit their jobs at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs to found this fledgling startup. To Notre Dame students — for whom visions of McKinsey and Goldman Sachs danced in their heads — quitting a life of financial security and success to make a Catholic app for zero salary just three and a half years after graduating sounded like the definition of insanity. As it was, it was not at all clear that this venture would achieve any success. Making the situation all the more surprising was the fact that it wasn’t as though the three were religious fanatics — Jones had until recently considered himself an atheist, after all. After the founders’ post-Mass talk, I downloaded the app. It looked much the same then as it does now, and the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet that come free with the app were voiced by the same Notre Dame graduates that the app still features. While on that Notre Dame visit, Jones also spoke at a conference about his nascent project. His comments there showed what a low bar of expectations he had for the app: “[I]f it can make a real impact in my life and the lives of my friends, it is worth it to at least try,” he said. Less than two years after launch, Hallow celebrated its first million prayers. Then, in 2022, the app celebrated 100 million prayers. Now, of course, they have celebrated 1 billion. Earlier this year, Jones, who is the largest individual equity holder in Hallow, announced that he would give all of his equity and ownership in the app back to the Catholic Church. “All of this was a gift given to me by the Lord and His Church,” he said. “It deserves to be returned.” In celebrating the one billion prayers in a message released to users of the app, Jones said, “A billion prayers prayed? I don’t even know how to wrap my mind around that. Glory to God. All thanks to God.” For his part, DiSanto quoted the gospel of Matthew: “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: Leftist IVF Doctor Gushes Over Trump Abortion Supporters Unleash Torrent of Hatred Against 1-Pound Baby Chance Major Left-Leaning Lutheran Seminary Announces Sale of Historic Campus The post Hallow Prayer App Reaches 1 Billion Prayers — 7 Years to the Day After Incorporating appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Comedy Samurai: Forty Years of Blood, Guts, and Laughter By Larry Charles Grand Central Publishing | 400 pages | $32.50 How could I not be intrigued by the prospect of a new memoir by Larry Charles? He’s Seinfeld at its best. “The Library”! “The Subway”! “The Bubble Boy”! He wrote all those episodes. And more. So I expected an entertaining romp through a career in comedy writing. I’d forgotten that Charles also directed Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentaries Borat and Brüno (both of which were intermittently droll but also unsettlingly exploitative of their unwitting targets of satire) and his movie The Dictator (which wasn’t amusing at all) as well as Bill Maher’s superficial, self-satisfied documentary Religulous. In any event, there’s not so much as a chuckle in Comedy Samurai. The first sign that it won’t necessarily be a laugh riot comes in the early pages, when Charles declares that he takes “a violent approach to comedy,” that he approaches it with “seriousness” and “intensity,” and that in his work he seeks out the “deeper codes of comedy.” What to think of this? Raised, as he puts it, on “the streets of Brooklyn,” Charles makes a big point of just how unpretentious he supposedly is. He doesn’t even “know how to be pretentious,” he insists. But the “deeper codes of comedy”? I’d call that a mite pretentious. And indeed, as this book progresses, we discover that Larry Charles considers himself not just a gifted joke-meister but a sort of philosopher-comic. For heaven’s sake, the biggest names in the field — Woody Allen, Mel Brooks — don’t talk about themselves that way. (RELATED: The Politics of Comedy) Then there’s this: during his Seinfeld years, Charles was, by his own admission, “one of the strangest-looking comedy writers at that time. I … wore sunglasses more often than I should’ve …. For a long time I wore only pajamas.” Pajamas? Yes, pajamas: “Not fancy Hugh Hefner pajamas. Just sturdy reliable Everyman pajamas.” In other words, not pretentious pajamas. “Sometimes matching sets, in light blue hues, like a mental patient who had escaped from a hospital. Sometimes, plaid flannel, which made me look like a Bay City Roller. I often wore a bowler like Alex in A Clockwork Orange. I also had hair and a beard each halfway down my torso. And a lot of beads.” Charles would have you believe that this bizarre look was just an aspect of his distaste for anything fancy or formal. I would submit that, on the contrary, it was a way of indicating that he was above ordinary manners and morals. Superior to mere mortals. I don’t know if it counts as pretentious, but it sure is obnoxious. Anyway, his career. His first writing job was on the short-lived late-night sketch show Fridays. He sold gags to stand-ups. He “punched up” movie scripts. And he served on Arsenio Hall’s writing staff. The Arsenio gig gives him the opportunity to decry “institutional racism” and to assert that America is “still naturally segregated” because like seeks out like — thereby obliging the government to force change by taking “extreme measures” such as “quota systems.” Well into his thirties when he worked for Arsenio, Charles had lived in both New York and L.A., but was — surprisingly — surprised that there were “striking” differences among the individual black writers on Arsenio Hall. He hadn’t realized “how complex black society is.” He thinks most white Americans still don’t realize it. In short, he’s a fool. A fool who, like many fools in Hollywood, regards himself as a profound thinker, even though his politics are standard-issue Tinseltown leftism. (RELATED: Politically Incorrect Comedy Still Survives) On to Seinfeld. He was the first writer hired. Co-producer Larry David, whom he’d met on Friday’s, had already written a few scripts, including “The Chinese Restaurant.” In an attempt to “get” the show, Charles “read and reread” them. But it wasn’t easy. David’s scripts “defied description.” They were about “morality, the question of ethics, questions of faith and belief, existence, ambiguity.” Displaying “a truth and honesty about human nature and life in the lower regions of both our mind and our economics,” they brought to mind “Bukowski and Pekar and even Zola and Gorky.” Some might call the Zola and Gorky references a bit pretentious, but I’ll let it pass. Seinfeld was, admittedly, unique. If it bore no resemblance to other sitcoms of the 1990s (Cheers, Roseanne), one reason is that the principals — David, Seinfeld, and Charles — hardly ever watched those shows. Instead, their influences were from decades earlier: Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges. The fixed rule was “No Hugging, No Learning”: “There were no false morality lessons or fake happy endings.” Charles’s own first Seinfeld script was “The Statue.” The story of its genesis was new to me. I’d forgotten that my grad-school friend John Mascaro had later been a neighbor of Larry Charles’s in West Hollywood. The idea for “The Statue,” it turns out, was from John, one of whose students had nabbed a cheap statuette from his home during a party. Although Seinfeld was a dream gig, Charles eventually began to feel out of place. By season four, the writing staff had expanded to include “a more affluent class of writers.” The result was episodes like “The Hamptons” (which gave us “shrinkage”) and “The Smelly Car,” about a parking valet with body odor. “This was a very ‘bougie’ LA problem,” Charles writes. Indeed. Written by Larry David, that episode, aside from arguably being the series’ weakest, would’ve been a better fit on Curb Your Enthusiasm, set in L.A., than on Seinfeld, set in Manhattan. Put off by the new vibe, Charles bailed. He spent two years at Mad About You, making it darker and more realistic. He wrote and directed a film for Bob Dylan entitled Masked and Anonymous. (Several of the comments on IMDb describe it as unfunny, pointless, and — yes — pretentious.) For a year he was executive producer of both Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Then Sacha Baron Cohen hired him to direct Borat. Charles was awed by Cohen’s acting: In my mind, his performance took the concept of acting to another level. Well beyond the groundbreaking styles of Laurence Olivier and even Marlon Brando. No one was doing what Sacha did. No one had ever done what he did. And no one has done it since. He should’ve been nominated for an Oscar for Borat. Neither Peter Sellers nor Jim Carrey nor Christian Bale nor Joaquin Phoenix nor Daniel Day-Lewis ever even attempted anything like this. It broke all the rules with “great success.” No, I didn’t make that up. Borat also allows Charles to bash Americans. For the movie is about how Americans are “either completely arrogant and ignorant of anything outside their borders or a smug condescension about it.” (Yes, I copied that sentence out correctly. Charles’s prose can be incredibly sloppy.) While they were shooting in the American South, he writes, “The Confederacy reared its ugly head everywhere we went. And quite blatantly. We met antisemites and neo-Nazis and secessionists.” Yes, because they sought them out for comic purposes! Borat was a hit. It was followed by Religulous, then Brüno. Both took Charles to the Holy Land. Writing about Maher’s movie, he sheds tears for Palestinians. For Brüno, he interviewed a terrorist from the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. Throughout his account of the interview, Charles puts the word terrorist in scare quotes, explaining that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” On the West Bank, we learn, he met “kind, gentle people, not terrorists, not criminals, not militants, but hardworking, peace-loving Palestinians,” who “were literally ‘imprisoned’ by the Israeli military, unable to move about freely and subject to their capriciousness of how the law was applied.” No mention of October 7. Charles tells us that if Brüno awakened him to the humanity of Palestinians, it exposed him, even more than Borat, to the hatefulness of Americans. In a bar on Election Day 2008, a patron told Cohen, in character as Brüno: “This is the worst day of my life. They just put a nigger in the White House.” “For me,” writes Charles, “this was America distilled in one sentence.” He seems to forget that it was Americans who elected Obama to the presidency. Twice. And that no other Western country has yet come close to electing a black head of state. Larry Charles is 68. If he never makes another movie or TV show, it will be fair to say that his career ended not with a bang but with a whimper. He directed Cohen’s terrible, scripted picture, The Dictator, but the shoot was plagued with disagreement, and he was denied the final edit. He was supposed to direct a film adaptation of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (which “was like a walk through the dark true history of America. An almost iconoclastic Howard Zinn-ish version of our country’s trajectory and the lies that we tell ourselves”), but it fell through. He directed Nicolas Cage in Army of One — “a dark metaphor about America’s imperialistic delusions” — but again had the picture taken away from him. His director’s cut is now on YouTube. In fact, he spends a lot of time on YouTube these days, mostly ranting about our current president. His case of Trump Delusion Syndrome rivals that of his old pal Larry David. On the 2024 election: The media would have you believe that Trump as president is no big deal but you know better. If he is allowed and not resisted, he will further rob you of your freedoms regardless of gender or age or ethnic or racial derivation. About COVID: Trump killed America … He is a psychopathic serial killer we’ve allowed to run rampant. That has eluded the authorities. We can’t leave it to history to judge him. Only we can stop him. And about — well — the entire Trump administration: We are watching the unraveling of the world in real time. Trump, Musk, Robert Kennedy Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and the other power hungry incompetent inept white supremacist fascist trash in charge. He’s come so close to threatening Trump directly that I’m surprised he’s not in prison. Talk about leaving comedy behind you as far as humanly possible! What to make of Larry Charles? He desperately wants us to see him as a rebel, a nonconformist, an enemy of the establishment — a man who, out of pure dedication to the art of comedy, has made war on commercialism and compromise, burned bridges (he’s no longer on speaking terms with either Larry David or Sacha Baron Cohen), and thereby done untold damage to his career and personal finances. In reality, he’s rich as hell, as Hollywood establishment as they come, and as reflexive in his mindless Left Coast progressivism as in the driving ambition that he tries unsuccessfully to hide. Put it this way: he tells us proudly that he considers Malibu to be “elitist and unnecessary.” He also acknowledges — rather sheepishly — that he lives there. READ MORE from Bruce Bawer: Meet the Rich Boy Who Loves the Estate Tax Jaws Turns 50 O Canada! The post Panjandrum in Pajamas appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I’ve been throwing punches and kicks for the better part of a decade now. Boxing, kickboxing, the usual rotation of compound movements in the gym — nothing revolutionary, just the steady accumulation of speed and skill that comes from consistent work. It’s meditative, really. The rhythm of training, the incremental progress, the quiet satisfaction of knowing your body can do what you ask of it. But something curious has happened in recent years, something that crystallized when my fiancée asked me a question that stopped me cold: “Is this what men find attractive now?” She was scrolling through Instagram, her feed flooded with images of women who looked less like athletes and more like anatomical studies. Delts that could slice fruit. Abs etched like marble. Veins snaking down forearms like wiring diagrams. Women built to look like men, for men, in a culture that no longer knows what either is supposed to mean. “It’s like a psyop,” she muttered. And she wasn’t wrong. There’s something eerily manufactured about it all. As if someone, somewhere, decided that this — a hyper-muscular, insanely jacked form — is what women should aspire to now. That femininity itself must be re-coded through the lens of male aesthetics: more angular, more vascular, more aggressive. There’s a crucial distinction that’s been lost in our current cultural moment — the difference between being toned and being overly muscular. Tone suggests function, health, capability. It’s the natural result of a body that moves well through the world. But what we’re witnessing now is something else entirely. Walk through any major city and you’ll see them — women whose physiques would’ve been considered overtly masculine, even jarring, just two decades ago. Square-jawed, thick-necked, arms like twisted rope. But this isn’t some natural evolution. It’s not organic. It’s algorithmic. Fueled by platforms that reward extremes and bury everything else. The woman with a balanced, athletic build — the one who eats well, trains consistently, lives a healthy, sustainable life — vanishes into the feed. She doesn’t spike engagement. She doesn’t go viral. But the woman who looks like she could hoist a sedan over her head racks up likes, sponsorships, and ad revenue. She becomes a product. The incentive structure is brutally clear: normal isn’t profitable. Men have lived with these pressures for generations: Be bigger, be harder, be impossible to ignore. It’s written into our evolutionary code, passed down through fathers, coaches, and brothers. The gym has long been a cathedral for men, the iron a sacrament we return to again and again in pursuit of size, power, and worth. (RELATED: Pumping Iron) At some point, women entered that cathedral and started demanding their own share of that power. And why shouldn’t they? If muscle equals status, and status equals survival in modern culture, then chasing muscle is just economic logic. It’s cultural math. Women didn’t invent the equation. They’re just playing the game we built. But the problem isn’t that women are getting stronger. Strength is good. Health is good. The problem is that they’re chasing an aesthetic that actively erodes what makes women attractive — both biologically and psychologically. And no, that isn’t some trad slogan dressed up as science. It’s just reality. A man with the physique of an NFL quarterback, the kind of body that looks like it was built to absorb impact, is textbook male appeal. Evolution wrote that script. Women are drawn to it not because they’re brainwashed, but because it signals safety, dominance, and reliable genetics. It’s attraction wired in by centuries of survival. Now reverse it. Picture a woman with that same body. Not graceful. Not athletic and feminine. But full linebacker. The proportions of someone built to inflict damage. Most men recoil, not because they hate strength in women, but because every internal alarm tells them this isn’t what female strength is supposed to look like. Yet this is what we’re supposed to be celebrating: women adopting the worst habits of male fitness culture — the obsession with hypertrophy, the cult of numbers, the idea that more mass equals more worth. They’ve inherited our most self-destructive traits and paraded them as liberation. And many in America and beyond are clapping, calling it empowerment. But men and women aren’t the same. That’s not bigotry; it’s biology. And when one sex tries to mimic the shadow side of the other in the name of progress, what you get isn’t strength. It’s distortion. Sexual attraction isn’t a social construct; it’s millions of years of programming that doesn’t care about your political opinions. Men are attracted to fertility signals: hip-to-waist ratios that suggest childbearing capacity, soft tissue that indicates adequate nutrition, and feminine features that signal genetic compatibility. Women built like Greek gods trigger the opposite response — confusion, discomfort, a deep biological unease that most men can’t articulate but definitely feel. Again, this isn’t misogyny. It’s reality. The fitness industry has redefined this reality, convincing women that they can override millions of years of evolution with enough pull-ups and dietary discipline. That if they just get big enough, shredded enough, they’ll somehow transcend the basic biological templates that govern attraction. It’s like trying to convince water to flow uphill, theoretically possible with enough artificial intervention, but fundamentally working against nature. The solution to combating the madness isn’t complicated, but it requires abandoning the lie that men and women are interchangeable, that what makes one sex attractive automatically applies to the other. Women can be appealing without looking like they’re preparing for a powerlifting competition. They can be fit without sacrificing everything that makes them feminine. (RELATED: Why Gen Z Is Giving Up on Sex, Love, and Each Other) The most attractive women understand that their power doesn’t come from looking like men. It comes from being confidently, unapologetically feminine while possessing the physical capability to handle whatever life throws at them. The iron doesn’t lie, but Instagram does. It lies about what men want, what strength looks like, and what empowerment means. Real strength knows when to stop. Real confidence doesn’t need to announce itself through excessive muscle mass. Real femininity is powerful precisely because it’s different from masculinity, not because it imitates it. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: AI Won’t Terminate Us. It Will Just Render Us Irrelevant. Loneliness Is the New Oil Soap, Sex, and Simulacra: Hollywood’s Latest Moment of Madness The post The Masculinization of the Modern Woman appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On May 22, 2025, the government of the United Kingdom signed the much-discussed treaty transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, which included a lease agreement for the strategically vital Diego Garcia military base, at a price of £101 million per year for 99 years (to be adjusted for inflation). The handover — described variously in the British press as a “lousy deal” that “essentially amounts to a massive gift from British taxpayers to the Mauritian government,” and a “shameful surrender” that “will go down as this nation’s foreign policy nadir,” representing the “perfect example of Britain ceasing to be a country that can be taken seriously” — was nevertheless inevitable, given the extent to which Keir Starmer’s Labour government is consumed with post-colonial guilt. After all, it was no less a figure than David Lammy, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom, who five years ago raised the prospects of reparations to come: “The starting point is truth and reconciliation … We’re no longer in a society where we question notions like white privilege. And then we get to a point where we have to discuss power and reckoning and repairing – and that to some extent is obviously financial.” It should hardly be surprising, then, to hear that another humiliating handover is in the offing. On June 6, 2025, The Critic reported that George Osborne, Chairman of the British Museum, has agreed in principle to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece, not permanently, we can assume, as the British Museum Act 1963 forbids the deaccession of collection items, but in the form of a permanent loan. The British Museum would not admit that its policy had changed, only that discussions with Greece concerning a so-called Parthenon Partnership are “on-going and constructive,” and that “We believe that this kind of long term partnership would strike the right balance between sharing our greatest objects with audiences around the world, and maintaining the integrity of the incredible collection we hold at the museum.” The debate over the rightful ownership of the Parthenon Marbles, which were excavated and removed from Athens by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, in the early years of the 19th century, and sold to the British government in 1816, has been raging for more than two centuries now. Lord Byron, in his narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, famously complained that Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed By British hands, which it had best behoved To guard those relics ne’er to be restored:— Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, And once again thy hapless bosom gored, And snatched thy shrinking Gods to Northern climes abhorred! Yet Lord Elgin himself initially had no intention of removing the marbles from the Athenian Acropolis, only wishing to document them; it was only after seeing that “Every traveller coming added to the general defacement of the statuary in his reach” that the Scottish diplomat and art collector decided to preserve the sculptures for posterity by taking them back to Britain, with the permission of the Ottoman authorities who held sway in Greece at the time. Contrary to Byron’s lament, it was not Lord Elgin doing the defacing. And there were cultural figures lining up with Elgin against Byron, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who delighted in the acquisition of the Parthenon Marbles, destined to inspire “a new age of great art,” while the poet Felicia Hemans wondered: And who may grieve that, rescued from their hands, Spoilers of excellence and foes of art, Thy relics, Athens! borne to other lands Claim homage still to thee from every heart? Thus did two camps form, the Restitutionists and the Retentionists, which exist to this day, their rhetoric less stirring, perhaps, but their fundamental arguments otherwise unchanged. We may begin with the premise that Greece, despite claims by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis that the marbles were “essentially stolen,” has no legal basis to contest British ownership of the Elgin Marbles. An 1816 parliamentary inquiry concluded that Elgin had purchased the sculptures fair and square, and although the Greek government has attempted to list the dispute with UNESCO, even that flawed agency has concluded that the issue must be addressed at the intergovernmental level. Greek attempts to contest the firman (an official Ottoman decree) allowing Elgin’s acquisition of the artworks, on the grounds that it is not really a firman but a buyuruldi (an official order from the Grand Vizier) or a mektub (official letter), are decidedly unconvincing, given that, as the British archaeologist and curator Dyfri Williams has rightly stated, “[w]hatever the exact form of the document was, it clearly had to be obeyed, and it was.” In the words of Daniel Hannan, “[f]ree contract and private property trump the superstitious idea that being descended from someone, or at least living in the same part of the world, establishes some kind of ownership right.” Most arguments for the return of the Elgin Marbles, of the sort found in Christopher Hitchens’ The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece? (1997), present a moral or aesthetic case. Greeks will maintain that Athens was under Ottoman occupation at the time, and thus the transaction was illegitimate, while a Turkish spokesman bizarrely argued in 2024 that the Ottomans had clean hands, since the excavations were actually carried out by “UK colonialists.” For the late Graham Binns, former chairman of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles, it was more a matter of making the Acropolis whole again: The advantages of having every surviving part of the monument in one place are obvious. The concept is that of a unity — a spacious, well-conditioned and well-arranged museum from which the visitor will leave by one of the old processional routes, to the rock itself. It is a concept that satisfies the requirements of research and scholarship, and it will make a visit to the Acropolis the vision that it should be, rather than the scattered jigsaw it has become. We have the missing pieces in London. Have we got the spirit to give them back? The same argument, of course, could be made of any number of artifacts in museum collections. Would there be advantages to having the Pergamon Altar, the centerpiece of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, shipped back to Pergamon? Would there be advantages to having the Rosetta Stone back in Sais? As Lord Strabolgi asked during a 1997 exchange on the subject in the House of Lords, “My Lords, is my noble friend aware that such a move would be an unwelcome precedent? If we started to return works of art to other countries, there would not be much left in our museums and galleries.” The Greek response to such a slippery slope argument is that the Parthenon Marbles represent a special case, and that the survival of the Parthenon — badly damaged during the 1687 Siege of the Acropolis, but still standing and therefore able to showcase the various friezes, metopes, pediments, and other sculptures in British possession — alone necessitates restitution. I will be the first to admit that the Elgin Marbles are extraordinary works of art. How many times have I visited them, just to see the marble head of one of the horses drawing the chariot of the moon goddess Selene, once located east pediment of the Parthenon, and now on display in Room 18 of the British Museum, its eyes bulging, its jaw gaping, its nostrils flaring, its mane stiff, its veins bulging, its skin taut. Yet in that same museum, one can find equally masterful works in a similar vein, like the marble forepart of a horse that belonged to another colossal chariot group, this time at the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, a sculpture of equivalent if not superior sensitivity and vitality. Even the marble forepart of a horse from the Lanuvium Rider Group, an object that is not at present even on display, rivals the Elgin Marbles’ Selene Horse. The case for the restitution of these works of art, to Turkey and Italy, respectively, is not much weaker than the Greek case, and should likewise be rejected. Tiffany Jenkins, a trustee of the British Museum and author of Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums and Why They Should Keep Them (2016), has maintained that the “mission of museums should be to acquire, conserve, research, and display their collections to all. That is all and that is enough.” The time has come “to stop revelling in the wrongs of the past, to stop the recriminations. Political grievances cannot be overcome through the manipulation of objects.” One defender of the British claim to the Elgin Marbles, Bijan Omrani, has attempted a sort of moral jujitsu, noting that the Parthenon was constructed by an imperial power, Athens, that extorted money from islands like Naxos and Thasos, and since “Athens’ amorality abroad paid for its cultural efflorescence at home,” then let the Marbles be loaded into some giant amphibious craft to roll from town to town around the Aegean, thus making reparation to the Delian cities for Athenian colonialism; or perhaps they should even be divided Solomon-like into an 150-odd pieces, one for each city: a reclining Dionysus for Naxos, Zeus on his couch for Thasos, perhaps a centaur grappling with a lapith for unfortunate Melos. It is a cute argument, and a welcome thumb in the eye of the blustering Athenians, but we needn’t overthink the matter. The British Museum has amassed its collection, one that has made it the most popular museum in the world, spreading knowledge of humanity’s shared cultural heritage more effectively than any other institution on earth. “That is all and that is enough.” The ancient Greek rhetorician Isocrates, in his oration Panegyricus, declared that “So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent.” Any member of Western civilization has a claim on the Hellenic inheritance. In the words of Felicia Hemans, And who can tell how pure, how bright, a flame Caught from these models, may illumine the West? What British Angelo may rise to fame, On the free isle what beams of art may rest? The confidence to create and exhibit encyclopedic museum collections is a sort of barometer of civilizational self-confidence. If the British government does indeed needlessly surrender the Elgin Marbles, we may regard it as yet another “example of Britain ceasing to be a country that can be taken seriously,” and becoming a self-flagellating country so subsumed with post-colonial guilt that it must invent it even in cases where none exists. READ MORE from Matthew Omolesky: A Dog’s Grave Chopin Intime Confronting the Shadows: Shūsaku Endō’s Rediscovered Masterpieces The post A Monumental Error: On the Potential Return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Trump administration has announced that it will defund a suicide and crisis hotline for queer-identifying youth. A statement released by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration on Tuesday confirmed rumors that it will no longer include the “Press 3” option, a crisis line singling out queer-identifying youth, as a part of the national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. History of “Press 3” The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was created in 2005 using funds from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. These funds were given to the nonprofit mental health and emotional support organization Vibrant Emotional Health, which has been the administrator of the Lifeline ever since.  In 2022, the Biden administration announced the creation of and funding for a new sub-hotline, the “Press 3” option. This was the result of a partnership with the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that counsels queer-identifying youth by affirming their identities.  Callers to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline could access the sub-hotline by pressing 3 or responding “PRIDE.”  Sub-hotlines within the Lifeline have precedent. In 2006, a subnetwork for Spanish speakers was created. Beginning in 2007, veterans have been able to press 1 for specialized assistance.  “Press 3” was created to serve a community much smaller than Spanish speakers and statistically far less vulnerable or unique in their needs than veterans. Its creation and operation were justified by the false assumption that LGBTQ-identifying youth were more susceptible to self-harm and suicide than others because of social stigma.  The Trevor Project Last year, the Trevor Project welcomed Jaymes Black, who uses the pronouns they, she, and he, as its new CEO. As a queer-identifying African American, Black believes that the more intersectional boxes an individual checks off, the more difficult it is for them to thrive in America.  “[Racial minorities] experience negative mental health outcomes due to multiple systemic and structural factors including lack of access to culturally competent mental health services,” said Black. She asserted that it is vital to recognize the specialized needs of individuals who “hold multiple marginalized identities.” Black makes it clear that the Trevor Project treats individuals who identify with the LGBTQ movement with more nuanced care than others. Thus, counseling and resources provided by the Trevor Project are driven by progressive gender ideology. From handbooks detailing the dangers of the gender binary to sexually explicit chat rooms, the Trevor Project provides minors with materials geared towards affirmation instead of healing.   While the Trevor Project pioneered “Press 3,” six more organizations have been welcomed aboard by Vibrant, including CommUnity, EMPACT, Solari, HopeLink, Centerstone, and Volunteers of America Western Washington (VOAWW).  Institutional Issues Through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal government has funded the ideologically driven endeavors of organizations like the Trevor Project for years. Under Joe Biden’s leadership, serious mental conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder were neglected in order to make room for radical pet projects. The Daily Caller reported data showing that hundreds of millions of dollars were granted by the federal government to projects that included “transgenderism” as a keyword.  A member of leadership at a state hotline affiliated with the 988 Lifeline explained this issue to the Department of Government Efficiency. He explained that people who are in serious need of mental assistance are ignored because the department “now prioritizes large-scale contracts and political agendas over the simple act of helping people.”  There is perhaps no better example of a large-scale contract than “Press 3.”  Defunding “Press 3” In its official statement confirming that “Press 3” will no longer operate within the 988 hotline, the Trump Administration reported the startling amount of federal dollars being spent on the program: “Federal funding in FY24 for the Press 3 services increased to $33 million. As of June 2025, more than $33 million in funds have been spent to support the subnetworks, fully expending the monies allocated for 988 Lifeline LGB+ subnetwork services.” President Trump has made his position on gender ideology clear. In January, the president made it the official policy of the United States that there are only two genders, male and female.   In its statement announcing the rescinded funds for “Press 3”, the administration decided to use “LGB+” instead of “LGBTQIA+”, stopping the acronym before the term “transgender”.    The Trump administration made it clear that all individuals who call the 988 Lifeline will continue to receive care despite their plan to revoke the “Press 3” hotline.  “Anyone who calls the Lifeline will continue to receive compassion and help,” the statement clarified. Outrage Ensues The reassurance given by the Trump administration was of no consolation to the Trevor Project. Black herself reacted to the decision in an Instagram post. “[LGBTQ+ youth]… need someone who knows that their identity is not a phase to be counseled away.” Black’s reaction only reaffirms what the Trump administration and concerned parents already knew: the Trevor Project and other supporting organizations would rather affirm youth’s mental challenges than fix them. READ MORE from Madison Fossa: Florida Announces Largest Child Rescue Mission in US History SpaceX Rocket Explodes During Test in Starbase Trump Organization Announces New Cell Phone Service The post Trump Administration Defunds Radical LGBTQ Hotline Connecting Children to Gender Activists appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

At least 25 people were killed and 60 wounded in a suicide attack at an Eastern Orthodox church in Damascus, Syria, on Sunday. A suicide bomber opened fire and subsequently detonated an explosive vest inside the Church of St. Elias in the Dweil’a district of Damascus, which was filled with parishioners during an evening Divine Liturgy. The perpetrator detonated his explosives at the church’s entrance when a crowd charged at him to remove him from the church. According to one eyewitness, parishioners had managed to wrestle the terrorist to the ground before the explosive went off. Father Fadi Ghattas, who was present at the attack, told the Associated Press that “there were 350 people praying at the church” who were “praying safely under the eyes of God.” Some testimonies said a second gunman participated in the attack, but those reports have not been confirmed. Although the terrorist attack follows months of sectarian violence in Syria, this was the first suicide bombing in a church in Syria since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011. Nonetheless, Christians have faced serious struggles in Syria for years. The Christian population in Syria before the start of Syria’s civil war was around 1.5 million, representing 10 percent of the country’s population. Since then, around four-fifths of Syrian Christians have been displaced, with reports estimating that as few as 300,000 Christians remain in Syria today. As Syria’s new Islamist President Ahmad al-Sharaa struggles to maintain security and retain support from minority groups such as Christians, several extremist groups still remain an active threat in war-torn Syria. During his overthrow of the Assad regime, al-Sharaa, though formerly a member of Al Qaeda, promised in December to protect minority groups and rule for the whole of the Syrian people. While no group claimed responsibility for Sunday’s terrorist strike, Syrian officials said the Islamic State carried out the attack. According to Syria’s state media SANA, the government carried out operations against ISIS-linked terrorist cells in the Damascus countryside. During the raid, they arrested a cell leader and five members, and killed two others affiliated with the terrorist attack on St. Elias Church. One of those killed was allegedly the main person who facilitated the suicide bomber’s entry into the church. Al-Sharaa condemned the bombing as a “treacherous terrorist attack” and offered “our deepest condolences and sincere sympathy for the families of victims who passed away in the criminal bombing that affected all the Syrian people.” He pledged to “apprehend all those who participated in and planned this heinous crime and bring them to justice to face their just punishment.” After Syria’s raid on the terrorist cells, the country’s Interior Ministry said in a press release that “these cowardly terrorist acts will only strengthen [the Ministry’s] resolve to pursue anyone who attempts to threaten the country’s security, and that its response will be firm and continuous.” The Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch issued a statement in which he commemorated “the lives of our loved ones who fell today as martyrs” and condemned the “heinous act and [denounced], in the strongest terms, this horrific crime.” He called for urgent action on the part of Syrian authorities, exhorting them to “assume full responsibility for what has happened and continues to happen in terms of violation against the sanctity of churches, and to ensure the protection of all citizens.” The patriarch concluded his statement with an assertion of resolute faith: “We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to our faith and, through that steadfastness, our rejection of all fear and intimidation. We beseech Christ our God to guide the ship of our salvation through the storms of this world, He who is blessed forever.” His Beatitude Patriarch John X visited St. Elias Church on Monday evening and offered prayers for the “repose of the souls of the martyrs,” the healing of the wounded, and the comfort for grieving families. READ MORE from Jonah Apel: Nobel Peace Prize for Trump? President Announces Congo–Rwanda Treaty After Nobel Peace Prize Recommendation What C. S. Lewis Can Tell Us About New IVF Eugenics Technology As Trump’s Federal Layoffs Continue, Critics Miss This Crucial Point The post Suicide Bombing in Syria Kills at Least 25 in Eastern Orthodox Church appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When President Donald Trump formed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he chose Elon Musk to lead the charge. The mission: eliminate $2 trillion in federal waste to help balance the bloated budget. When Musk’s 134-day tenure ended, DOGE claimed to have found “hundreds of billions” in waste. NPR suggested that the number would be closer to $2 billion. The House of Representatives just passed a bill claiming $9.4 billion in DOGE savings. In 2024, the U.S. spent $4.8 trillion on its healthcare system. A 1999 study found that 31 percent of healthcare spending went to regulatory overhead. Whatever the final amount, it’s a long way from the $2 trillion target. But there’s one place DOGE hasn’t touched, and it’s where more than $2 trillion in waste is hiding in plain sight: the U.S. healthcare system. Waste, as defined in management terms,  is “use or expenditure that is careless, extravagant, or to no purpose.” In healthcare, the end user is the patient. Money that doesn’t result in better access to care or improved outcomes is wasted. And based on well-established data, the amount of wasteful spending in American healthcare likely far exceeds $2 trillion per year. In 2024, the U.S. spent $4.8 trillion on its healthcare system. A 1999 study found that 31 percent of healthcare spending went to regulatory overhead. After the Affordable Care Act (2010), that share climbed to at least 50 percent. That means about $2.4 trillion went not to nurses or doctors but mostly to waste for what we call BURRDEN — bureaucracy, unnecessary rules and regulations, directives, enforcement, and noncompliance activities. Between 1970 and 2020, the number of practicing U.S. physicians rose by about 100 percent. Over that same period, the number of healthcare bureaucrats exploded by more than 4,400 percent! The result wasn’t better care — it was less access. BURRDEN siphons resources away from providers and burdens them with compliance tasks that reduce their time with patients and drive doctors out of medicine. (RELATED: Protect Healthcare for the Most Vulnerable) Many reforms could reduce the waste of both money and time caused by the federal healthcare bureaucracy. Three such reforms are the repeal of employer-sponsored health insurance, the consolidation of medical savings accounts, and federal Medicaid block grants to states. Here’s how it would work. Under the current FMAP (Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage) model, the more a state spends on Medicaid, the more it receives in federal matching funds. This open-ended structure creates a perverse incentive to over-enroll and overspend. For instance, when California added 700,000 illegal aliens to its Medi-Cal program, it triggered a $6.2 billion shortfall that had to be backfilled by taxpayers. By contrast, an unrestricted block grant would give each state a fixed amount of federal funding annually. That amount could be adjusted based on inflation, but it would be predictable and capped. Most importantly, states would gain the flexibility to design and administer their Medicaid programs according to the unique needs of their residents, without the shackles of one-size-fits-all federal mandates. (RELATED: Make Medicaid Great Again) Block grants would eliminate the incentive to expand Medicaid rolls to increase federal payments. It would also allow governors and legislatures to innovate, finding locally appropriate solutions that improve care and reduce costs. States could fund direct primary care clinics, wraparound services, or tailored benefits based on community health priorities without waiting on Washington’s permission, which is typically withheld. Unrestricted block grants would reduce BURRDEN. They would eliminate layers of wasteful spending on federal micromanagement and compliance, allowing resources to flow directly to patients and providers. They would also help Congress by enabling Medicaid allocations to be forecasted and constrained, making federal budgeting more rational and responsible. Beyond block grants, we’ve long argued for additional reforms like consolidating medical savings accounts into a single, no-limit Health Savings Account (HSA) and ending the outdated practice of employer-sponsored health insurance, which distorts the market and strips individuals of choice. In 2023, the average worker lost $23,968 in compensation to employer-paid health insurance premiums. That money should go directly to workers, tax-free, in an HSA they control. But even if DOGE did nothing else, simply targeting Medicaid’s flawed funding model and embracing block grants would represent a giant leap toward that elusive $2 trillion goal. The BURRDEN in healthcare is what the military might call a target-rich environment. If DOGE and Congress are serious about cutting costs, they should start with the biggest and most obvious source of federal waste — one that also happens to be one of the easiest to fix — simply empower patients. READ MORE from Waldman and Ginn: Rage Against the (Healthcare) Machine Federal Bureaucracy Is Biggest Healthcare Rent-Seeker Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is professor emeritus of pediatrics, pathology, and decision science; former director of Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former director of New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of 13 books, including the latest with Dr. Ginn, Empower Patients–Two Doctors’ Cure for Healthcare. Follow him on X.com @DrDeaneW or contact via www.deanewaldman.com.  Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is president of Ginn Economic Consulting, host of the Let People Prosper Show, and previously chief economist of the first Trump White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Follow him on X.com at @VanceGinn.   The post DOGE Is Missing $2 Trillion in Healthcare Waste appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Andrew Cuomo’s political comeback is officially dead. The former New York governor conceded Tuesday’s Democratic primary for New York City mayor to Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who rose a wave of far-left energy to victory. The message from Democrat voters was loud and clear: the old guard is no longer welcome.  Cuomo’s loss isn’t just about one race in one city; it is a warning sign for Democrats nationwide. It proves the deep rift within the party has only widened since their disastrous 2024 presidential bid, when party leaders pushed Joe Biden out of the race and hastily elevated Kamala Harris as their replacement candidate. That chaos left behind a party fractured between two very different visions for the future, and Mamdani’s win is just the latest skirmish in an ongoing civil war.  On one side is the activist Left, which is young, aggressive, and unapologetically ideological. These are the voters and organizers who idolize Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, chant for climate revolution, and see American capitalism itself as the enemy. They want change, not compromise. Zohran Mamdani, backed by a slate of progressive celebrities and campaigners, is one of their rising stars. He comes across to his constituents as a true believer. On the other side is the Democrat establishment — people like Cuomo, Harris, and Nancy Pelosi — who still think political power comes from working deals in backrooms and courting donors at cocktail parties. They’re increasingly out of step with their party’s base, and Cuomo’s defeat reaffirmed that. He didn’t just suffer a surprising loss; he got trampled by a woke movement that sees him as a symbol of everything wrong with politics: ambition without belief and power without principle. Cuomo thought he could stage a comeback by mimicking Donald Trump — portraying himself as a victim of political witch hunt, wronged by the media and betrayed by his own party. But unlike Trump, Cuomo doesn’t have a loyal base. Trump’s return worked because he never stopped speaking for ordinary Americans. Cuomo, by contrast, speaks only for himself. New Yorkers saw through it. His campaign for mayor was a transparent play for national relevance, a stepping stone for some future presidential run. He wasn’t running to fix New York City — he was running to bolster his resume.  Even his brother, former CNN host Chris Cuomo, couldn’t save him. After being booted from the network for advising Andrew behind the scenes, chameleon Chris tried to reinvent himself as an independent media figure on NewsNation. The supposedly fair and balanced “Fredo” fell flat too. The Cuomo brand is tainted, and both brothers seem unwilling to admit that the public — and their party — has moved on. The larger story here, though, isn’t just Cuomo’s failure. It’s what Mamdani’s victory reveals about the Democratic Party’s growing gap. This isn’t just about New York City — it’s about the future of their party nationwide. Mamdani’s wing of the party doesn’t just want to push a few policies leftward. They see people like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and yes, Andrew Cuomo, as obstacles — relics of a Democratic Party built on compromise, corporate donors, and incremental change.  Take what happened to David Hogg earlier this year. The anti-gun activist and Parkland survivor was abruptly removed from a leadership role as the DNC’s vice chairman. Why? Because Hogg had the nerve to question the party’s strategy and speak out against internal dysfunction. In today’s Democratic Party, there’s no room for independence or challenging geriatric authorities. Step out of line, and you’re gone.  They don’t want debate. They just want control. Democrats demand to control their candidates with puppet strings — they don’t like competing ideas and interests.  Compare that with the GOP. Yes, Republicans have their own divide between the Bush-era establishment and the populist MAGA movement. But at least there’s energy and clarity on one side — and room for discussion. The America First movement has tapped into something real: working-class frustration, a sense of cultural displacement, and a desire for a government that serves its citizens — not elite institutions. Perhaps progressive Democrats are taking a page from Trump’s populist playbook to overthrow their own side’s establishment elites. But there’s a crucial difference.  While the MAGA movement emerged from the grassroots — built by voters disillusioned with both parties and led by someone who tapped directly into their frustrations — the progressive movement inside the Democratic Party is fueled by elite academic theories, dark money, and cultural power centers like Hollywood. It isn’t speaking to the working class so much as reshaping the party into a vehicle for ideological crusades. Mamdani and his allies may call their campaign people-powered, but it often looks more like a close-knit revolution than a coalition that can win broad-based national elections.  Cuomo’s defeat is just the latest casualty in a party that doesn’t know who it is anymore. And the Democrats should be worried — not just because they lost another relic of their past, but because they’re letting a radical new faction steer the ship without a map. The GOP may be forced to find its footing after Trump’s second term, but at least they have direction. The Democrats, as of now, are busy eating their own — and pretending it’s progress. Julianna Frieman is a writer based in North Carolina. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is pursuing her master’s degree in Communications (Digital Strategy) at the University of Florida. Her work has been published by the Daily Caller, The American Spectator, and The Federalist. Follow her on X at @juliannafrieman. READ MORE: Kill the Tillis Tax! Trump Administration Defunds Radical LGBTQ Hotline Connecting Children to Gender Activists The post The Cuomo Comeback Is Dead — And So Might Be the Old Democratic Party appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.