In the real world, Star Trek Starfleet Academy would have marked the end of Hollywood — a hundred million dollars torched by the leftist dolts running what had been one of the great studios, responsible for such classics as Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments, Psycho, The Godfather, and the original Star Trek TV and film series. Paramount Pictures threw the fortune at a bunch of feminist idiots who knew nothing about Star Trek other than terms like warp speed, Federation, phasers, and Klingons. They could never have come up with these concepts themselves but had no problem using them to bash white men. Of course nobody watched the show. In one week, it fell off the Paramount+ chart entirely. Miller’s post may portend a more symbiotic relationship between a conservative government and the screen arts, a la theater at the Trump Kennedy Center. But Hollywoke is not the real world. It’s a land of limitless money wherein leftism trumps art. Where truth and beauty are white supremacist and sexist. And only those who cleave to the Marxist agenda will have an infinite shot at the screen. They will continue to be in a Phantom Zone like out of the Superman comics, churning out product as if they had an audience, when the only audience is themselves. While traditionalist film artists either scrounge for just enough funds to present their work or throw in the towel. Last week, the excellent actor Nick Searcy (Justified) appeared to do the latter, channeling the frustration of many on X. “I’ve tried,” Searcy posted. “Conservatives will not support us. They will not fund us. They do not think feature films and TV shows are important. Until they do, nothing will change.” Nick is absolutely right. And I’m pretty tired of crying in the wilderness myself. It’s bad enough that we who know how to tell a story in a book or interpret it for the screen never get the opportunity to do the latter. We have to watch feminist abominations like Starfleet Academy, Snow White, G20, (Star Wars) The Acolyte, plop before us with no end in sight. It recalls the best scene in Ayn Rand’s brilliant novel The Fountainhead, where outcast genius architect Howard Roark stands at the construction site of a monstrous building while Marxist architecture columnist Ellsworth Toohey — who helped deny Roark the contract — tries to taunt him. “There’s the building that should have been yours. There are buildings going up all over the city which are great chances … given to incompetent fools. You’re walking the streets while they’re doing the work that you love but cannot obtain. This city is closed to you. It is I who have done it! … Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.” “But I don’t think of you,” Roark says, and walks away. The Fountainhead has a positive ending. Despite Toohey’s campaign against him, Roark keeps finding men of vision who ignore the leftist media rot and hire him to design beautiful functional structures. Sadly, such men are woefully absent from the screen trade. Even one of the most visionary, Elon Musk, hasn’t made the financial investment in the narrative arts that could both save cinema and better the world. He’s pledged to pour millions supporting Republican candidates in the midterms, and hopefully they’ll win. But they won’t inspire anyone the way great movie heroes like John Wayne once did, as in his final film, The Shootist (1976). “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.” This simple code for men has more truth and impact than any impossible feat by any girlboss or beta male in any movie made this century. That is why John Wayne, to modern Hollywood, is more of an alien than a fey birdwatching Klingon in Starfleet Academy. The bridge between politics and entertainment culture is not lost on this White House. Last week, its most eloquent — thus Left-hated — spokesman, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, opined on the Star Trek disaster on X. “Paramount screwed up royally when they decided to kill off Kirk in Star Trek Generations. @WilliamShatner disagreed strenuously but was a team player and out-acted everyone in the film. But it’s not too late for Paramount to make amends with Shatner and save the franchise. Do it!” To which the legendary Shatner replied, “I am so on the same page with you @StephenM … Call me.” Miller’s post may portend a more symbiotic relationship between a conservative government and the screen arts, a la theater at the Trump Kennedy Center. The D.C. institution’s new name and administration caused liberal producers to cancel scheduled runs of Hamilton (blackened Founding Fathers), Fellow Travelers (an opera about a gay romance during McCarthyism), and Eureka (a play slamming the anti-vax movement). They’ve been replaced by timelier and timeless concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic and National Symphony Orchestras. I hereby volunteer to be the Executive Director of Trumpwood. In that role, I would greenlight the plethora of rich actually knowledgeable modern stories I have read — Andrew Klavan’s Cameron Winter mystery novels, Larry Correia’s Son of the Black Sword fantasy novels — and written — my Mark Slade-Neil Cork political thriller novels, the first of which, The Washington Trail, just got one of the wittiest book reviews I’ve ever enjoyed: “A world where men are men, women are women, horses are horses, and with any luck the cowboy kisses the right one.” These movies wouldn’t win any Oscars, but they would fill theater seats. READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: The Washington Toast Starfleet Academy: To Boldly Go Nowhere The Harpy Syndrome  

During the Cold War and the Vietnam War, a popular theory among the government strategists was the “domino effect.” It held that If one country fell to the communists, then many others would follow. President Truman was the first to engage in that theory to justify military aid to Greece and Turkey. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson used it to justify the Vietnam War. If Vietnam fell, the theory said, so would Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and others. Even Japan would be threatened. I have written often that we should not fight unless we have a vital national security interest at stake. We do in Iran. We need to think in these terms now because the fall of the ayatollahs’ Iranian regime would have major effects throughout the Middle East and probably all of these effects would be positive. We don’t know what President Trump is thinking and he could do far better by explaining what he is doing. He has positioned a large force off Iran. The USS Abraham Lincoln came into the Gulf of Oman in the past week. What should the American people think if he started a new war there? Trump has told the Iranians that they need to make a deal on their nuclear and missile programs and previously threatened to intervene militarily if the ayatollahs’ murders of protesters got past the point that we could tolerate. He has said that we were “locked and loaded and ready to go.” The number of protesters murdered by the regime is somewhere around 16,000. But the Iranians won’t make a deal and — judged by their past conduct — even if they did they wouldn’t live up to their obligations in it. In the meantime, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is reportedly lobbying Trump to cause regime change in Iran while both Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Turkey are lobbying against it. Our pseudo-ally, Saudi Arabia, has said it wouldn’t allow us to use its air space to attack Iran. The Saudis are terrified that if we attacked Iran again, their eastern province — which is about one-third Shiite — would rebel and possibly destroy some of the Saudis’ oil facilities. So what is Trump going to do? At this point, we don’t know. But we can foresee the after-effects of a regime change in Iran. For starters, the Houthis of Yemen would be out of money without Iranian support and arms. They would be highly vulnerable to regime change and it probably wouldn’t take much to do it. Next, the Iranian proxy terrorists of Hizballah would be entirely vulnerable without Iranian support. The Israelis would have a fight on their hands but Hizballah could, and should, be annihilated. They have American blood on their hands going back (at least) to the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut. Regimes that are semi-dependent on Iran — Syria is a prime example — would suffer regime change. The newest Syrian dictator — Ahmed al-Sharaa — is a former al-Qaida commander without whom the world would be a better place. He could fall if the Kurds launched a new round of attacks. Qatar is safer from regime change. Their government, headed by Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, depends on its own oil exports for survival and those are safe for the moment. Qatar’s support for Hamas, which has been obvious for at least a decade, wouldn’t stop. The Israelis, having recovered the body of the last Hamas hostage, should go back into Gaza and eliminate Hamas. The biggest question is China which takes in almost 1.4 million barrels of oil per day from Iran. The denial of Iranian oil could sink the Chinese economy and its ability to project power. That means China could, and probably would, fight to maintain the flow of Iranian oil. How it would fight is another question. China probably doesn’t have the capability to defend Iran unless it launched nuclear weapons. Its massive military is aimed, at this point, to conquer Taiwan. So what will China do? In 2023, CIA Director William Burns said that China’s plan was to attack Taiwan by 2027, and that Chinese President Xi Jinping set that year for an attack. Chinese “experts” in the West have said that while China could attack Taiwan by 2027, the year’s deadline was flexible because China may or may not be capable of an overwhelming attack by 2027. President Trump could be faced with an attack on Taiwan if he decided to cause a regime change in Iran this year. China knows that Trump has stripped our military of much of its presence in the South China Sea which could defend Taiwan. Can we both cause regime change in Iran and defend Taiwan at the same time? It’s highly unlikely that we could. Trump — faced with the likelihood of a multi-front war — might yet back down. An effort to cause regime change with Iran would be far less likely if Trump believed that China would attack Taiwan before its 2027 deadline. Trump likes to make deals. If he believed that Iran would live up to its obligations under any deal — which is extraordinarily unlikely — he might want to make a deal somewhat like the 2015 Obama deal on nuclear weapons. That would be a huge mistake. Unless the Iranians accepted unrestricted inspections of its nuclear facilities and its missile capabilities, Trump would be making a deal that obviously won’t be followed. And Iran won’t make any such deal. The president has put his credibility on the line by promising to aid the Iranian opposition and, by doing so, he has put the credibility of the nation at stake. He should undertake regime change in Iran but he — and we — need to understand what it will take to do so. It won’t be as easy as the Maduro snatch. It will take months — maybe years — to destroy the ayatollahs, their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and their missile capabilities. American lives will be lost in that effort. Is it worth that sacrifice? I have written often that we should not fight unless we have a vital national security interest at stake. We do in Iran, especially so in that the Iranians will — a few years from now, or sooner — achieve nuclear weapons. At that point, it will be too late to do anything but deter that threat. And our deterrence is failing across the globe. READ MORE from Jed Babbin: From Outrage to Agreement: Trump’s Greenland Gambit Trump and Greenland: A NATO Test A Dying Regime With a Loaded Gun  

The news from Melbourne is that Elena Rybakina beat Aryna Sabalenka in the women’s final of the Australian Open, and Carlos Alcaraz beat Novak Djokovic in four sets in the men’s. It was commanding win for the 22-year-old Spaniard who with it achieves a career Grand Slam. It does not take anything away from the 10-time winner from Belgrade. Djokovic overcame Janik Sinner in five hard-fought sets in the semis; but Alcaraz, who also played a five-setter in the same round, against Alexander Zverev, had more in the tank and could not be intimidated. One wishes the Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, and Kazaks could get along in political life with the same sportsmanship their lovely lasses show on the tennis courts. Miss Ukraine tennis, who is also Mme Gaël Monfils and a happy mom, had a terrific run through the women’s singles draw, but she went down to past champion and top seed Aryna Sabalenka in the semis.  It was not streamed — which, I will say, is definitely not the best way to watch sports. But we still should appreciate innovation in communications technology, so long as it is not abused and a detriment to literacy, which many think it is. Reports say that M. et Mme Monfils’s daughter Skai, who is three, made the trip to the southern hemisphere with them again this year, which, again, I mention not only because I heartily approve (les voyages font la jeunesse, as they say in French) but because it is right by my own parenting experience. Up to a point, of course. Sometimes you have to leave the child with the grandparents, or the aunts or the cousins. But I am sure it helped Elina, who always has Ukraine’s suffering on her mind and is always speaking and making donations to the cause and visiting her home. Her great run gives her moral strength, as well as a boost to her compatriots. She refuses to shake hands at the end of play with Russians or Belorussians, but she is correct, polite. Her husband supports her courage and comforts her sorrows, and the child is hope, life. Gael lost in the first round, but make no mistake, he is one of the greats and at 39, he is just a little older than Novak Djokovic. I hope he stays on the tour, not only because he — like his wife — is an inspiration, but also because he has one of the most artistic games in the sport. Where was I? What the French say about the educational value of travel. As it happens, Mr. and Mrs. Monfils speak English, as she is still learning French and he is still learning Ukrainian. Love is its own language, however, so it does not matter what they speak, and little Skai benefits from growing up multilingual. Gaël Monfils speaks an excellent, rather austere English which is music to the ears when you have been listening to one too many young tennis players — or one too many anything — explaining that, like, I mean, it’s a thing, you know.  What thing and what the listener is supposed to know get lost in a haze of whatever’s. This is very bad, because it is a reflection of a broader breakdown of communication that exposes a failure to think clearly.  Liberty is lost when language is hazy or corrupt. At the tournaments, it is customary for the winners, losers too, to spread a few thanks around following a match, their opponents, their coaches, the ballboys, the spectators, and sometimes — not often enough — the policemen and first responders. (Reportedly they were playing at temperatures over 100 degrees and there were quite a few injuries; Djokovic himself, who is the most fit athlete in the world, benefited from one and a half forfeited matches due to injury withdrawals.) Also they thank the spectators, who, I have noticed, are increasingly addressed collectively as “you guys,” applied to both genders.  The player thanks “you guys” for all their support, even though one cannot avoid the fact that sports audiences are often terribly impolite, shouting during points and insulting players. Sports etiquette varies from sport to sport. It is okay to scream and yell during a basketball game, but in tennis it is a serious faux-pas to let go even a mild burp during play, and the cheers and applause at the conclusion of a point should stop as soon as the server goes to the baseline to launch the next one. More and more often, you see breaches to this rule, to such a degree that players ask the umpire to remind people to show some manners. Just so, but then you get these “you guys are great” lines in the mishmashed English that is the international sports language and while surely it is nice of the players to try to express themselves and to thank the fans, is it right for them to say “you guys” when what they means is “all you guys and girls”? I mean, like, guys are guys and girls are girls, aren’t they? If the answer is not yes, we’ve got a serious problem. It would seem that, in fact, the threat of total and ubiquitous breakdown of norms and genders was well on its way to being blocked, averted, and we as a society were going to muddle through, once again, by the skin of our teeth. But the reality is that we are not out of the woods yet.  We are surrounded on all sides by Bidenism, a word I just invented. This is the phenomenon of constant gaslighting, which itself is not new, but which has reached an unprecedented level of toxicity, due to advanced communication technology and the decline of public education. I am confident both of these issues are being addressed. But in the meantime, we must beware. Which means we must be faithful to our own principles. You cannot, for example, say that people are lying to you about “undocumented migrants” when in fact they are law-breaking border-jumpers or illegal aliens. Ideas have consequences and words have meanings. By the same token, you cannot call people “domestic terrorists” and “assassins” when they are alleged lawbreakers.  Attacking law enforcement with spittle or vicious kicks is, I am fairly sure, at least a misdemeanor and possibly a felony in most states, including Minnesota. But if high officials make extremely serious charges against someone, such as accusing him, or her, of murderous intent or terrorism, then who is abusing the language? Frankly, I am disappointed when so eminent a writer and journalist as George Will accuses a collective group of law enforcement officers of being “louts.” This is completely unfair and imprecise and coming from Mr. Will it surprises.  Particularly as he has always been careful to expose problems and issues clearly and fairly. Agree or disagree with him, it is good that one of the essential conservative voices of our times should explain, as he has been doing for several years, why the Trump administrations, the first one and the present one, may be flouting the law and contributing to the undoing of the system of checks and balances by which we govern our republic. Precisely because so many newspaper readers closely follow his editorial commentary, it is unnerving when he seems to lose his steady grip on facts. It is not out of school to write that some border police agents, on the evidence available, appear to have acted with insufficient discipline or inadequate training and under poor command; but saying that does not mean you can go and make unproven generalizations about a lawless “loutcracy,” as he calls it. Particularly as it simply encourages the other side to misrepresent an appalling situation for which it bears considerable responsibility.  When high officials — governor of Minnesota, mayor of Minneapolis —  slander law enforcement with shocking references to Nazi Germany, they encourage people, under a false cover of engaging in free assembly and speech, to seek out unlawful confrontations which can only end in tragedy. Far be it from me to suggest that calling an audience that includes many women and girls “you guys” leads to calling American cops louts, or to brand Americans terrorists and assassins before they have even been charged. Abuses of language come in degrees and the damage is not comparable. In fact, popular usages like “you guys” in informal contexts contribute to our language’s vitality.  I call attention to it because it highlights the carelessness with which language is being used in contexts that demand the utmost accuracy and restraint. Elina Svitolina played a great tournament and, for those who admire her tactical finesse, her run to the semifinal was a treat.  It crashed against the strong groundstrokes of the tournament’s top seed and defending (2024, 2025) U.S. Open champion, Aryna Sabalenka, who also won at Oz in ’23 and ’24. In the final, Elena Rybakina played a tight match, for a set and a half, then Minsk’s favorite daughter took charge until 3-0 in the deciding set. Whereupon the Moscow-born Kazak who lives in Dubai rallied and held on to win, adding Oz to her 2022 Wimbledon trophy. One wishes the Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, and Kazaks could get along in political life with the same sportsmanship their lovely lasses show on the tennis courts, but there you have it, which is also why, far from Australia, this column could not help but digress into our own unfortunate political divisions and quarrels. However, it was nice to see an all-Anglosphere final in the men’s doubles, pitting Shreveport’s Christian Harrison and Liverpool’s Neal Skupski against Aussies Jason Kubler and Marc Polmans. The Anglo-American side took it in two sets. It was a reminder of 2017 in Paris, when Christian’s older brother Ryan won the doubles at the French Open, against American Donald Young and Santiago Gonzalez. Ryan teamed with his friend Michael Venus, a New Zealander who played at LSU and trained at the Harrison tennis school alongside Ryan and Christian under the guidance of their father Pat Harrison, himself a former tennis pro. We really have to get over this and concentrate on winning at whatever we want, but fair and square and without calling one another awful names. READ MORE from Roger Kaplan: Poles Apart? Thoughts Sparked by the Australian Open The Berber War Cry for Freedom Rolling Them Up in Iraq  

On January 28, 2026, the United States Department of Homeland Security released a short video honoring the life of Megan Bos, an Illinois woman whose death would otherwise have remained one more private tragedy in an age drowning in them. The timing was deliberate. The release came one year into the Trump administration, at a moment when immigration enforcement had ceased to be an embarrassed afterthought and was once again treated as a foundational obligation of the state. The message was not emotional. It was forensic. Megan Bos did not die because America lacks laws. She died because the state failed to enforce them when it mattered. One year into the Trump administration, the January 28 DHS report should be read not as a memorial, but as a verdict. Bos’s case involved no statutory uncertainty. The accused had been arrested, processed, and placed inside the criminal justice system. He was later released under Illinois’ SAFE-T Act, which sharply limits pretrial detention and reflects a policy judgment that custody itself should be exceptional. The release was not the result of a finding that the defendant posed no danger. It was the product of a framework that elevates release as a default. Federal authorities intervened later. By then, delay had already imposed its cost. The case illustrates a broader point often obscured in contemporary debate: non-enforcement is not a neutral condition. It is a decision. When an individual who is removable under federal law is released rather than transferred into federal custody, risk is not eliminated. It is reassigned — from institutions designed to manage it to the public, which never agreed to assume it. Megan Bos bore the consequence of that reassignment. This is the institutional role of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE is not a substitute for local policing or courts. It is the only authority with the mandate to remove non-citizens once state and local processes conclude. In a fragmented system — where police arrest, courts adjudicate, and legislatures set policy-ICE functions as the final integrating mechanism. When that mechanism is resisted or disabled, risk does not disappear. It circulates. Recent events in Minnesota offer a clear illustration of how this dynamic plays out. Over the winter, federal agents expanded targeted enforcement operations in Minneapolis and the surrounding Twin Cities region, prompting protests, political backlash, and public clashes between local officials and federal authorities. The controversy focused largely on optics and tactics. Far less attention was paid to the profiles of those actually being arrested. According to disclosures by DHS and contemporaneous reporting, individuals taken into federal custody during these operations included convicted perpetrators of aggravated sexual crimes involving minors, individuals with criminal sexual conduct convictions, offenders convicted of drug trafficking, and others with documented histories of domestic violence and assault. In one case, ICE arrested an individual subject to a federal warrant for the sale and distribution of amphetamines, alongside prior convictions that had not prevented his continued residence in the community. These were not first-time offenders, nor individuals awaiting adjudication. They were people who had already passed through local systems and been released — sometimes repeatedly — despite criminal histories already established. The Minnesota arrests did not create new risks. They revealed accumulated ones. This pattern is not confined to one state. During the Biden administration, independent and federal estimates converged on a population of roughly 10 to 11 million people living in the United States without legal status, many released pending proceedings, many never located again, and many existing outside any continuous monitoring framework. At that scale, assurances that “most are law-abiding” lose analytical relevance. Risk in large systems does not operate on percentages. It operates on absolute numbers. A system that loses track of millions is not exercising compassion; it is forfeiting visibility. No serious regulator would tolerate comparable opacity in aviation safety, financial markets, or public health. Yet in immigration enforcement, diminished situational awareness has often been defended as a moral achievement. ICE exists because scale changes responsibility. Local courts lack authority to remove non-citizens. States lack jurisdiction. Cities lack both capacity and mandate. Interior enforcement at this magnitude is not an ideological preference. It is a functional requirement of governance. When that requirement is treated as optional, the consequences follow predictably. Where enforcement is obstructed, failure follows. In December 2025, DHS publicly rebuked Fairfax County, Virginia, after local officials declined to honor an ICE detainer request and released a criminal illegal alien who committed murder the following day. DHS stated plainly that the killing was preventable. Similar failures have been documented elsewhere. In Minnesota and beyond, ICE arrests have included convicted child rapists and killers who had been living freely because local jurisdictions declined to cooperate with federal custody transfers. These were not clerical oversights. They were policy choices, repeated, defended, and predictable in outcome. Nationwide enforcement operations during the same period identified what DHS described as the “worst of the worst”: murderers, violent gang members, and child sex offenders apprehended only after slipping through local enforcement gaps. In one case, an Egyptian national accused of killing an elderly woman with an improvised incendiary device at a public gathering was detained only after cooperation had already collapsed. Even where ideology recedes, reality intrudes. In late 2025, federal prosecutors detailed the case of a twice-deported illegal immigrant who unlawfully re-entered the United States and later caused a fatal car crash that killed two teenagers. Removal orders had been issued. The law was settled. Enforcement was not sustained. The numbers tell the same story. In 2025, ICE conducted nearly 600,000 administrative arrests and carried out more than 600,000 removals, the highest one-year totals on record. According to DHS, roughly 70 percent of those arrested had prior criminal convictions or pending charges. This was not indiscriminate enforcement. It was triage. Where enforcement was obstructed, risk accumulated. Between 2022 and early 2025, more than 25,000 ICE detainers were declined nationwide. California accounted for more than half. Boston acknowledged ignoring every detainer request it received in 2025. These refusals did not eliminate risk. They displaced it. The final illusion is that enforcement is punitive rather than preventative. Yet as removals increased, DHS also recorded nearly two million voluntary departures — individuals choosing to leave rather than test a system that had resumed functioning. Deterrence rarely announces itself. It is measured in crimes that do not occur, victims who never come into being, funerals that are never held. Megan Bos’s death followed a familiar sequence: arrest, release, delay, irreversible harm. Every step complied with prevailing policy norms. Together, they proved fatal. ICE intervened too late not because it was unnecessary, but because it had been prevented from acting sooner. The January 28 DHS report should therefore be read not merely as a memorial, but as a verdict. A state that declines to enforce its own laws does not become more humane. It becomes less responsible. ICE exists because modern societies cannot govern through moral outsourcing alone. When enforcement is treated as discretionary, the costs do not vanish. They accumulate-until someone else pays them. Megan Bos was not an anomaly. She was the invoice. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: Drug Gangs, Child Gunmen and Antisemitic Abuse — Welcome to Marseille After the Illegal Immigrant Surge Britain’s Boat Crisis Comes Into Focus

Much has been made of how a federal judge last week struck down the Education Department’s guidance advising schools to dismantle their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives or risk losing federal funding. Supporters of DEI have seized on the ruling as proof that their cause is resilient. It began when institutions abandoned intellectual diversity, punished dissent, and elevated ideology over education. But the larger picture tells a different story. Whatever its legal status, DEI has already lost cultural legitimacy — on campus, among students, and even within the academic left itself. Consider the academic climate at one elite institution, which was captured in an interview of a highly-regarded professor, Jill Lepore. She has taught at Harvard since 2003 and no one would identify her as a conservative. She was asked by the New York Times if woke culture was a “real problem” and not just a “problem that the right has managed to … weaponize.” She replied that, “it just surprises me to no end when people are like: Well, there was really never a problem on campuses. I don’t know what college campus they’re talking about…. I just think the left has to admit that it has done a lot to make a lot of Americans feel like they do not belong.” When even a Harvard professor complains about the left creating a hostile environment on campus, and alienating a lot of Americans, you know you’re on the wrong side of history. Consider one such problem: the lack of ideological diversity among college professors. A self-reported survey of the political affiliation of more than 1,100 tenure track faculty in 2020 revealed a sharp preference for Democrats. Among sociologists, 86 percent identified as Democrats; less than 2 percent identified as Republicans. The numbers were similar among anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists, and economists. Another survey, also from 2020, looked at political contributions made by more than 12,000 university professors and broke them out by their discipline. The numbers were striking. For every contribution an English professor made to a Republican candidate, there were 244 contributions to a Democrat. The ratios were similar even in fields that would seem to have nothing to do with politics: chemistry (113-1), math (118-1), biology (149-1), and psychology (184-1). In such a homogenous climate, it’s hardly a surprise that students would become radicalized and agitate against even the most basic protections for free speech, which has been persuasively documented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). It was this environment in which the DEI mindset was allowed to run rampant across college campuses. The Trump administration has done yeoman’s work in cracking down on the DEI ecosystem, which was all about creating a culture of victimhood and rewarding people who trafficked in identity politics. How big was that ecosystem? The University of Michigan spent about $250 million on DEI initiatives from 2016-2024, according to a devastating article in the New York Times. The author of the article pointed out that while the school is “largely left-leaning … the most common attitude I encountered about D.E.I. during my visits to Ann Arbor was a kind of wary disdain.” Students “rolled their eyes at the profusion of course offerings that revolve around identity and oppression, the D.E.I.-themed emails they frequently received but rarely read.” Why wouldn’t anyone do anything to roll back this failed system? Because a culture of fear was pervasive on campus. One former dean at the school — herself a woman of color — was quoted in the article saying, “no one can criticize the D.E.&I. program — not its scale, its dominance.” Higher education has brought these problems on itself, and its public standing has declined. In 2015, 57 percent of those surveyed by Gallup said they had confidence in higher ed. By 2024, just 36 percent did — and only 15 percent of Republicans. Higher education is just one part of the broader American culture that is out of step with the views of millions of people. Another is the entertainment sector, which routinely peddles storylines that are hostile to the 37 percent of Americans who identify as “conservative” or “very conservative.” There’s a battle underway right now that will determine who will have the biggest platform for the distribution of movies in the United States. Netflix is the leading candidate to acquire Warner Brothers, though President Trump shared an article on Truth Social recently charging that the Netflix bid “is an attempt to consolidate unprecedented cultural power inside one of America’s most ideologically aggressive corporations.” The article’s author said Netflix “has repeatedly used its global platform to elevate progressive narratives while suppressing dissenting viewpoints,” and Congress — responding to constituent pressures — is aggressively challenging the merger. Which brings us back to last week’s court ruling. While DEI’s defenders may celebrate a legal reprieve, judicial decisions and federal guidance cannot restore credibility to an ideology that has already alienated students, faculty, and the public. DEI’s unraveling did not begin in a courtroom, and it will not end in one. It began when institutions abandoned intellectual diversity, punished dissent, and elevated ideology over education. Institutions that refuse to confront those failures should not be surprised when reform no longer comes from within, but from outside political forces willing to challenge the monoculture they allowed to take hold. READ MORE: Administering Colleges: 1960s and Today The Spectacle Ep. 318: DEI Ruined Universities. Conservatives Need to Save Them. A Different Midterm Milestone Herzog is a freelance writer for the Heartland Institute.

Recently, the United States of America (USA) successfully completed Operation: Absolute Resolve and, thereby, liberated the Venezuelan people from Nicolás Maduro’s brutal socialist regime. More importantly, it is readily apparent that Carney and other corrupt politicians do not have the luxury of delay, nor the time to bluff and posture. More importantly, Maduro’s rapid dispatch and America’s open pursuit of democracy’s resurgence have now forced a bevy of corrupt leaders and nations to scurry out and confront their sins in the light of the new American epoch. Unfortunately, it is clear that even the U.S’s historic ally, Canada, has been badly disfigured by its past decade of Liberal government and transformed into a fortress of hyper left-wing politics that now echoes many aspects of Maduro’s Venezuela. And therefore, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, must now begin to abandon the Liberal government’s own corrupt, neo-socialist, politics, if Canada is to escape the ire of Trump’s America and survive the U.S.’s modern renaissance as democracy’s champion. Firstly, throughout the modern era, Canada’s Liberal government has lapsed into fascism and forcibly imposed its own hyper left-wing ideology upon all of Canadian society. For example, for over a decade, the Liberal government has consistently oppressed fundamental human rights, such as free speech and religious freedom. In fact, the Liberal government has transformed the CBC, as well as the RCMP, into enthusiastic orifices of left-wing propaganda. In 2022, the Liberal government openly violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms itself, in a vulgar effort to oppress every ideology outside its own left-wing dogma during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, Canadian citizens have routinely been prevented from espousing right-wing political values at public forums,: “Nearly half of all Canadian university students are actively concealing their real opinions for fear of sanction or mistreatment,” due to the open climate of ideological oppression that his been cultivated within Canadian academia. Worse still, the Liberal government now seeks the power to punish any Canadian with a lifetime of imprisonment for a slew of vaguely defined hate-crimes that amount almost entirely to right-wing “wrongthink” and any values or ideology that are not utterly left-wing. Moreover, the Liberal government’s neo-socialist politics and hyper left-wing ideology have collapsed the Canadian economy and severely eroded quality of life. For instance, due to the fact that Canada has vainly sought to “[rely] on immigration to drive economic growth and plug labor gaps,” Canada’s GDP per capita has crumbled, and a slew of respected economic indicators have all concluded that the Canadian state is currently mired in “the longest decline in individual living standards of the last 40 years.” Even the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) itself has confirmed that Canada will actually boast “the single worst performing economy of all 38 OECD members” until 2060. Sadly, Canada’s unemployment rate has now also “jump[ed] to  a nine-year high, outside the pandemic” and youth unemployment has hit levels typically “seen during a recession,” as a result of Liberal initiatives such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFW). In fact, since 2019, food bank usage in Canada has increased by nearly 100 percent and over 25 percent of all Canadians currently suffer from food insecurity with “one third of food bank clients [now being] children.” Furthermore, the past decade of Liberal government has transformed Canada into an urgent national security threat to the United States of America. For example, the Rule of Law is collapsing in countless major cities across Canada and the Canadian state has started to become openly unsecure and unsafe. Astonishingly, Canada now displays the quintessential hallmarks of any failing or failed state, and the Liberal government’s shameful inability to secure Canada’s borders has permitted the violent insecurity that now menaces the Canadian people to bleed over into America and openly threaten the security of the America. In addition, the Canadian state has become an outpost of Chinese influence in North America and utterly beholden to the national interests of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In fact, the Liberal Party itself has long been corrupted by the PRC’s influence and rendered unto the Chinese state. Even Prime Minister Carney himself recently lauded the “new strategic partnership” between the PRC and Canada, and openly declared that “the progress [Canada and the PRC] have made in the partnership sets us up well for the New World Order.” Finally, Canada is itself a vital geo-strategic asset and home to vast reserves of oil, as well as countless other valuable resources. For instance, the Canadian nation is a major global energy supplier, and Canada actually possesses “the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves,” ranking only behind Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela, whose oil is already, effectively, America’s property. In fact, oil, natural gas, and other refined products “are a critical component of Canada’s exports, making up about 20 percent of Canada’s balance of trade,” and Canada is currently one of the largest producers of crude oil on the world stage. Canada is also an immense source of fresh water, as well as various Rare-Earth Elements (REE) and Critical Minerals, such as aluminum, that are all absolutely crucial to the American economy and industrial complex. In addition, any annexation of Canada and its northern territories will inevitably afford America with an immediate, invaluable, foothold in its current crusade to defend the international progress of Democracy and The West against the constant onslaught of communism and dictators, such as Putin and Xi. In fact, President Trump himself has already articulated his own intent to annex Canada and transform the nation into America’s 51st state. The Liberal government in Canada has now openly antagonized President Trump for over a decade. Even Prime Minister Carney has glibly pilfered and mis-purposed the phrase “elbows up” in a bizarre effort to highlight his own attempts to undermine Canada’s historic relationship with the U.S. and leverage its collapse towards his own personal gain and profit. In fact, Canada has been badly disfigured by its past decade of Liberal government and transformed into a grotesque fortress of hyper left-wing politics that now echoes many aspects of Maduro’s Venezuela. And therefore, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, must now begin to abandon the Liberal government’s own corrupt, neo-socialist politics if Canada is to escape the ire of Trump’s America and survive the U.S.’s modern renaissance as democracy’s champion. More importantly, it is readily apparent that Carney and other corrupt politicians do not have the luxury of delay, nor the time to bluff and posture. Maduro’s rapid dispatch has confirmed that President Trump is utterly committed to re-establishing democracy worldwide and that the Trump Administration will immediately endeavor to eliminate any threat to America’s own national interests. Even Canada. READ MORE from Will Barclay: The Spectacle Ep. 319: Exploring Venezuela’s Crisis and Canada’s Chinese Influence The Outbreak of Migrant-Related Crime and Rape in the EU William Barclay is an award-winning political theorist and policy expert, as well as one of Canada’s foremost young conservative voices. Follow him on Twitter/X @WillBarclayPCBG.

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