In the earliest days of the second Trump administration, Elon Musk vowed to take an Argentina-sized chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy and slash $2 trillion in government spending.

"If I listened to everything that people said or if I did everything everybody else did...it'd be shit”. The post ‘Everything Falls Apart’: Dissecting Hüsker Dü’s prescient “pop anarchy” anthem first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Last week’s hearings before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance took a dramatic turn with the testimony of Stephen Federico, father of Logan Federico, a 22-year-old college student murdered last May during a home invasion where she was staying with friends. Federico challenged the subcommittee members in the following terms: Think about your child coming home from a night out with friends, lying down, going to sleep, feeling somebody come into the room…and wake them. And drag her out of bed. Naked. Forced on her knees. With her hands over her head. Begging for her life, begging for her hero, her father, me. That couldn’t be there. The heartbreak spilled over in his every word, and also the heartfelt anger. After all, her killer was a 30-year-old repeat offender who had committed multiple crimes — an average of 2.65 per year — since turning 15. And yet he was out on the street once again — in fact, over the course of his 15-year criminal career, he’d only spent some 600 days in jail. The math itself tells an appalling tale, a tale of a broken justice system. This, of course, was the point of the hearings, which had been called in response to the belatedly well-publicized murder of Iryna Zarutska by a similarly uncontrolled violent criminal, someone who, by any reasonable standard, should have been taken off the streets years ago. Predictably — and unfortunately — the hearings, which should have produced a unified and bipartisan outrage, instead divided along partisan lines, with the Democrats calling for more money, as they always do when faced with an issue, while the Republicans pointed to fundamental policy failures. (RELATED: She Fled the Ukraine War for Safety. America Delivered Her to a Killer.) The policy failures should be obvious, and they speak to a two-tiered justice system, where the benefit of the doubt … has become the common coin of progressive criminal justice. The policy failures should be obvious, and they speak to a two-tiered justice system, where the benefit of the doubt — and a failure to incarcerate — has become the common coin of progressive criminal justice. Some still argue the need for better methods to separate the mentally compromised from the simply depraved, but the bottom line is that anyone with a track record of violence should — at the very least — be locked up. And we also need a frank and honest discussion about the return of the death penalty for those who’ve shown themselves to be an irremediable menace to society. (RELATED: NC Gov. Josh Stein Chooses Softness Over Safety) I’ve been haunted for weeks by the video images of Iryna Zarutska’s final moments, her obvious vulnerability, the brutal stabbing, her exultant killer, and the indifference of her fellow passengers as she curled up and then bled out, alone and without comfort. The mental picture conjured by Stephen Federico of his daughter’s final moments is equally haunting. There’s something horrifically compelling about the vulnerability of these young women and the brutality of their attackers. (RELATED: If You See a Girl Bleeding Out on a Train, What Would You Do?) But it’s not just young women who are vulnerable and, as another recent case reminds us, the victims of monstrous brutality. Consider the case from several weeks ago of Frank and Maureen Olton, 76 and 77 years old, respectively, residents of the New York borough of Queens. Apparently, out of kindness, they allowed their killer into their home, responding to some kind of “help me” scam, obviously unaware of his violent criminal history. He tortured the couple — the details don’t bear repeating — then, after five hours, set the house afire and left the couple to be consumed in the fire. Good people, loved and admired by their neighbors, their lives taken by a man who clearly shouldn’t have been out on the street. Once upon a time, a solution was offered to crimes such as these, the source an unlikely one, the renowned Chicago newspaper columnist, Mike Royko. It’s been nearly 30 years since Royko’s passing, but, in his day — a day that lasted 42 years — his columns and books held a mirror to the city he loved. Sometimes characterized as a “humorist,” Royko’s mordant wit and gift for satire reached far beyond mere entertainment. Royko was a liberal back in the day when “liberal” had not yet become a synonym for “batshit crazy.” Unsurprisingly, he hated the National Rifle Association and was a passionate voice for gun control — until one morning, he wasn’t. In November of 1989, Royko banged out one of his most famous articles, “Women should be able to carry guns.” (RELATED: Pritzker’s Projection Is Destroying His Prospective Presidential Race) The article begins by recounting the case of a young woman waiting late at night at a bus stop on the south side of Chicago — unwise, as Royko observes, but understandable given she needed to get home from visiting friends. A car pulls up, the driver grabs her with a knife, makes her get in the car, drives her to a side street, and rapes her repeatedly for two hours. Then he dumped her. She started to walk home, planning to call the police when she got there — no cell phones in those days. A second man accosts her with a knife, forces her into an abandoned building, and also rapes her repeatedly. Finally, she made it to a friend’s home, where she could call the police and be taken to a hospital. As Royko notes in his article, the hospital described her condition as “good,” absurd given the trauma she’d suffered. This double rape, perpetrated by random assailants, broke Royko’s anti-gun absolutism. In his words, “If that woman had a pistol in her pocket or purse, knew how to use it, and was alert to danger, it’s doubtful that the first rapist would have been able to get her into his car.” After discussing the deterrent effect that simply brandishing the pistol would provide, he concludes by observing that, if the rapist hadn’t backed off, “he would have had a new hole in his anatomy that would have discouraged further advances.” Royko’s conclusion: Women should be allowed to carry concealed. Bemoaning the fact that gun laws in Chicago would never change, he went further, suggesting that, even if illegal, he would still recommend that women who are required to go about the city alone should arm themselves, legally or otherwise. It’s safe to say that Mike Royko didn’t envision open season on rapists; his hopes, clearly expressed, were that, if enough women carried, bad guys would get the message. Implicit in this was the old refrain, “an armed society is a polite society.” I’m not so naïve as to imagine that the widespread arming of women would come without problems. I know that it opens a genuine, deadly force usage can of worms, particularly in the context of threats on the street, precisely the kind of threats that Royko envisioned in his article — precisely the kind of threat that loomed over Iryna Zarutska’s shoulder and killed her. More, it requires a level of situational awareness that is hard to maintain, day in, day out, as one goes about one’s life. Even in the rarefied atmosphere of professional executive protection where I once worked, keeping team members sharp and focused on potential threats was always difficult. People, sadly, let their guard down. A friend from years ago, Jenny May, was a superbly capable martial artist and a consummate security professional. And yet she was murdered on a Tel Aviv beach, taken from behind on a nocturnal stroll, and strangled. When it comes to home defense, the task is easier, since a home invasion carries — or should carry — an indication of imminent threat. I wrote about this in a previous American Spectator article, writing of my experience in a case bitterly similar to the murder of the Oltons. Chicago denizen Mike Royko might have made a similar argument in the notorious case of Richard Speck, who invaded a townhouse occupied by eight student nurses and killed them all, one by one. Had the first one shot him, they all might have lived. (RELATED: When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away) We can wish that a Daniel Penny might be present every time someone is threatened on public transport, trained, strong, and capable of taking down the aggressor. We can — and should — lobby as energetically as possible for a justice system that takes bad actors off the street and keeps them away from the rest of society. No more revolving door, no more “two-tiered justice,” no more excuses made for violent criminals, none, no more allowing the violent mentally ill to roam unconstrained, neither treated for their illness nor kept from hurting others. And we should applaud President Trump’s campaign to take back the streets of our most degenerate cities. (RELATED: Treating Insanity, Not Normalizing It) We can hope for all of the above, and more. In the end, however, the physically vulnerable among us, women, the handicapped, the elderly, should be encouraged to arm themselves against the predators, and society should support them should they be forced to act decisively in their own defense. If the next Iryna or Logan blows her attacker away, we should applaud her actions and shield her from the kind of mindless progressive persecution inflicted on Daniel Penny. (RELATED: Alvin Bragg Bears Blame for Iryna Zarutska’s Murder) We should listen to Mike Royko’s voice from the past. He was famous for the sardonic and penetrating humor he brought to bear on every social issue, but displayed none of that humor in his 1989 article about the rape victim. He was too angry, too outraged, to find anything to laugh about in the violent victimization of this young woman, and he stood his ground in later articles, even when his 1989 essay drew the ire of his usual liberal readers. Today, when it seems that each morning brings fresh reminders that we’ve lost control of the streets, we need to find a similar anger, a similar outrage. Say their names. Iryna, Logan, the Oltons — remember who they were, remember what happened to them. Remember, as I wrote in my previous article, “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” If things are to change, then the vulnerable deserve every equalizer. It’s high time they were given it. READ MORE from James H. McGee: Catholic Cognitive Dissonance Looking Back in Anger — With Hope The Ever-Evolving Terrorist Threat James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk find the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian-backed terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.

“Spooky Season,” editorial cartoon by Yogi Love for The American Spectator on Oct. 9, 2025.

It didn’t happen overnight, but it sure felt like it. My own copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard American reference book in the field — which is also the standard almost everywhere else in the world — is the fourth edition (DSM-IV), published in 1994. As I noted in The American Spectator’s fall 2022 print magazine, when I wrote on the explosion of transgenderism among children, the DSM-IV included an entry on gender identity disorder, whose sufferers experience the delusion that they are, as the saying went, “a woman trapped in a man’s body” or vice versa. The book treated this delusion quite frankly as a mental disorder that is an eminently suitable subject for psychiatric treatment. The book’s subsequent edition, the DSM-5, published in 2013, reflected a major change in the profession’s view of this phenomenon, and the “text revision,” DSM-5-TR, issued in 2022, contained further changes, largely involving the introduction of, in the publishers’ own words, “updated culturally sensitive language.”  Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our newly released fall 2025 print magazine. As the editors explained: “The term ‘desired gender’ is now ‘experienced gender,’ the term ‘cross-sex medical procedure’ is now ‘gender-affirming medical procedure,’ and the term ‘natal male’/’natal female’ is now ‘individual assigned male/female at birth.’” In short, by the time of the DSM-5-TR, gender identity disorder was no more; in its place was the newly redefined gender dysphoria, which had formerly been synonymous with gender identity disorder but was now defined as “the psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity.” In other words, if you think that you really belong to the opposite sex, then you are no longer considered to be suffering from a psychiatric disorder, unless you are experiencing distress as a result of the incongruence between what used to be called your biological sex (but which is now referred to as “one’s sex assigned at birth”) and your delusion (which is no longer viewed as a delusion but as a scientifically legitimate “gender identity”).  Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our latest print magazine. This radical transformation in the American psychiatric community’s official view of transgenderism reflected the burgeoning impact of an ideology that had been familiar in the academy for many years but that, during the years between the appearance of the DSM-IV and the DSM-5-TR, had exploded into mainstream Western society, largely thanks to the efforts of gay rights organizations, which, after the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, had become full-time propaganda organs for transgender ideology. Only a few years earlier, individuals who claimed to have a gender identity that differed from their biological sex, most of them biological males, were extremely rare, tended to keep a very low profile, and said they had experienced these curious feelings since childhood. Now being trans was, bizarrely enough, a fad among teenagers (and even preteens), especially biological females, many if not most of whom already suffered from other mental disorders (such as autism), and whose conviction that they were really boys often seemed to manifest itself between one day and the next (hence the coinage of a new diagnostic term: rapid-onset gender dysphoria).  Far from keeping a low profile, these young people shouted their alleged transgender identity to the world — often with the enthusiastic support of parents, teachers, counselors, classmates, and neighbors who had been informed by the media that the proper response to such self-identification was to affirm and to celebrate. To anyone with common sense, it was clear that these young people were being caught up in a dangerous new trend (a few years earlier, it had been cutting). It was also clear that “feminine” boys and “masculine” girls, who once would have been recognized as children who would likely grow up to be gay, were now being told that they were trans and being encouraged to pursue “treatments” — hormones, surgical butchery — that were once reserved for adults who had been through years of psychiatric treatment but that were now routinely being pushed on teenagers after a single brief consultation. In the last few years, mainstream publishers have put out countless books for children that don’t just normalize but actually romanticize and celebrate the idea of being trans, and even toddlers are being introduced to terms like “gender identity.”   As I noted in my fall 2022 piece for The American Spectator, many parents of kids who claim to be trans have bought into the ideology fed them by teachers, school counselors, psychiatrists, and others — some reluctantly, others eagerly. Nowadays, in progressive social circles, having a trans child is a badge of honor. This new, widespread brand of transgenderism seems especially common among the offspring of celebrities. Ally Sheedy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charlize Theron, Cher, and Annette Bening and Warren Beatty have all boasted that they have trans kids. For aging actors who fear being seen as has-beens, being the parent of a trans kid seems to be a surefire way of seeming au courant. Consider Cynthia Nixon, who announced at a protest for “trans health care” that was held last February at New York University that she was “the mother of a proud trans man” and “the aunt of a proud trans man”; also, “My best friend’s kid is trans, and my kid’s best friend is trans.” (A few years ago, such an assertion would have been dismissed as the statistically impossible raving of a narcissistic lunatic; at NYU, Nixon was cheered.) Not to be outdone, Marcia Gay Harden has said: “My eldest child is nonbinary. My son is gay. My youngest is fluid.” (Nonbinary — “Gender-wise, I’m some kind of intermediate thing”  — and fluid — “My gender identity shifts with the winds” — are just two of the many identity labels, all of them falling under the trans umbrella, that have proliferated since transgenderism became all the rage.) But not all parents are like Nixon and Harden. In 2022, I wrote that many of them are “in torment,” recognizing that their children are being led down a dark road but unable to do anything about it, given that “school authorities, medical institutions, and the judicial system” were “increasingly on the other side.” Fortunately, that is no longer the case — for many reasons. One reason is that parents around the country have shown up at school board meetings to protest the fact that trans girls (i.e., biological boys) are being permitted to use girls’ bathrooms and gym showers. Videos of these meetings that have been posted online have opened the eyes of parents across America to the dangers their children face.  Then there are the brave young female athletes, most notably the former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who, having been forced to compete with “trans women,” have spoken out eloquently about this injustice. In 2022, I noted that leading Democrats were on the side of William Thomas, a mediocre swimmer who had been collecting medals ever since changing his name to Lia. As of 2022, the Biden administration was entirely on the side of America’s Lias. Since then, it has become obvious that the overwhelming majority of Americans consider this whole business absurd and obscene.  In 2022, I noted in passing that “gay men and women who resent being yoked against their will to the trans phenomenon” were starting to speak up. As more and more of those gay men and lesbians have realized that in a world where trans ideology is taken seriously, sexual orientation is effectively rendered meaningless, their voice has grown into a roar. The group Gays against Groomers, founded in 2022, describes itself as “fighting back from inside the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children under the guise of ‘LGBTQIA+.’” More and more gays and lesbians, indeed, have finally seen through — and rejected — the label of LBGT that (along with its many variations) was forced upon them years ago by cynical activists who figured that by yoking the ancient phenomenon of same-sex attraction to transgender ideology, that modern concoction, they could convince people that if they supported gay rights they were also obliged to climb aboard this crazy train.  Also important for the trans debate in the U.S. during the last three years has been the growing clarity with which authorities in Europe have addressed the subject. In April of this year, for example, the British Supreme Court ruled that a woman is someone who was identified at birth as biologically female, period — this in a country that had for years been issuing “Gender Recognition Certificates” to biological men who claimed to be women. In addition, the rising numbers of outspoken detransitioners — people who’d been talked in their youth into “gender reassignment surgery” only to regret it afterwards — has made a positive difference in public concern about the issue, just as the lawsuits many of these detransitioners have filed against their former doctors have made at least some members of the medical community think twice about pushing young persons onto the trans assembly line. Since 2022, moreover, Americans have had more opportunities to witness the sheer aggressiveness of transgender activists — an aggressiveness plainly rooted in their mental illness. They are congenitally incapable of debate: Simply to challenge their delusions is to risk bodily harm, as Ben Shapiro discovered when, appearing on a TV show hosted by Dr. Drew Pinsky, he addressed a fellow guest, a bewigged man who calls himself Zoey Tur, as “sir.” In response, Tur placed his big hand threateningly on Shapiro’s skinny neck and growled: “You cut that out now, or you’ll go home in an ambulance.” The veneer of womanliness is apt to disappear very quickly when M-to-F people are confronted with their own flight from reality.  Also illuminating is that, as the number of self-declared trans people has ballooned, there has been an explosion — at wildly disproportionate rates — of violent crimes by trans people. On March 27, 2023, Audrey Hale (who called herself Aiden Hale) murdered three adults and three 9-year-olds at a Presbyterian school in Nashville. And on the very day that I am writing this — August 27 — the latest news is that a 23-year-old gunman named Robert Westman, who transitioned as a minor and changed his name to Robin, has killed an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old while they were attending Mass at a Catholic school in Minneapolis.  The statement made by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey should go down in infamy: “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community has lost their sense of common humanity.” More to the point was the comment by Fox News’ Jesse Watters: “Statistically, the trans population has been prone to violence. That’s not villainizing, that’s reality.” Steadily, the American public has become aware of this fact. In the last three years, more and more state legislatures, in a reflection of the overwhelming and increasingly vehement public consensus on the multitude of threats that transgender ideology poses to American life, have banned “gender-affirming care” for minors. Last but not least, there is Donald Trump. A not inconsiderable part of the reason for his landslide victory last November was parental outrage over the trans agenda. And Trump has wasted no time in overturning as much of this madness as he can. On the day of his inauguration, he signed several executive orders addressing the issue, such as one that eliminated the “White House Gender Policy Council” and another that was titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” On January 28, he signed an order called “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”  There’s much more. Trump banned trans people from the military. He prohibited “trans men” from playing on women’s sports teams, and he sued states for permitting it. Various Cabinet departments were instructed to seek out and eliminate pro-trans documents, policies, and practices that were under their purview. The effort to put a total end to “gender-affirming care” for children has been particularly comprehensive. Trump’s actions have even extended to the United Nations. Transgender ideology is, needless to say, an American concoction, but it has long since been taken up aggressively by the UN, and, since the beginning of his second term, Trump’s UN team has been crusading vigorously to remove words like “gender” and references to “transgender people” from UN documents.  Transgender activists and groups like the ACLU have reacted to these moves with predictable hysteria, depicting them as a full-bore attack on “LGBTQ+ rights.” Nonsense. For one thing, none of Trump’s actions will have the slightest negative impact on the LBG people — lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. For another, individuals who call themselves transgender still have all the rights they ever had. What they are increasingly losing, thanks largely but not entirely to Trump’s bold actions, are — among other things — the power to force their fellow Americans (under credible threat of legal punishment) to affirm a lie and the power to redefine words like “man” and “woman” that have meant the same thing since the beginning of time. Trans activists, some of them with degrees in medicine and psychology, are being put on warning not to propagandize children into opting for surgical butchery and a lifetime on powerful hormones. And the socially compelled practice of stating one’s pronouns at every turn is patently on the way out. No, it’s not over yet. The trans lobby is still raking in donor money, still has a lockhold on the Democratic Party, and is still regarded as authoritative by the mainstream media. Many circuit court judges, in acts that palpably extend beyond the reach of their powers, have sought to block Trump’s actions. Then there are judges like the one in New Hampshire who ruled in April for a school district that had jettisoned two men from their daughters’ soccer game for wearing “XX” wristbands to protest “trans male” athletes. The judge wrote that the symbol of female sex chromosomes “can reasonably be understood as directly assaulting those who identify as transgender women.” So, yes, there’s still a long way to go before we’re rid of this dangerous nonsense. But the tide has definitely turned.  Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine.

It’s been said of him that he straddles magical figuration and surrealism, and I’m not sure whether that description applies to his work or to him as a person. The painter Íñigo Navarro (Madrid, 1977) has just opened his first major exhibition in Spain, with a fascinating title that sounds as if Hunter S. Thompson came up with it after popping the wrong pill: “Yesterday a tiger trod on your shadow.” You may remember him because I was lucky enough to have Navarro illustrate my columns in The American Spectator for a couple of years, or perhaps you’ve seen some of his work in exhibitions in Washington in recent years. Navarro has found more success in Germany, the United States, and even China than in his own country — a great credit to him, but a sad indictment of Spain’s art establishment. Navarro is a curious mix of classicism and sharp humor — sometimes leading to irony, sometimes to surrealism, and sometimes to places no one can quite identify. But wherever it leads, the result is always inspiring and rewarding for the viewer. He has turned his work into a banner of freedom, because to admire the classics is not just to imitate them, but to create something new they themselves might be proud of. Just yesterday I spoke with him about the exhibition, which runs through October and November in Madrid, just a few steps from the U.S. Embassy, in the Pardo Bazán room of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum. He told me that in addition to the paintings, the show includes a central sculpture in polychrome wood and bronze, created in collaboration with Spanish fashion designer Marcos Luengo, who was responsible for dressing it. The sculpture depicts a young woman about to levitate, and I can’t shake the feeling that it might be autobiographical. The worst thing about nihilism isn’t that it’s wrong; the worst thing is that it’s boring. To better grasp the creative world of “Yesterday a tiger trod on your shadow,” one must look to Goya’s etching Mode of Flying, which serves as the thread uniting all the works on display. Somehow they always seem to float in a strange creative magma — sometimes literally. Navarro sees this as an allusion to transcendence, which also makes for a refreshing tribute in an era when so many artists insist on the ephemeral, the material, and tedious homages to nihilism. The worst thing about nihilism isn’t that it’s wrong; the worst thing is that it’s boring. And forgive me, art critics — many of you far wiser and more erudite than I — but Navarro is an entertaining painter. In fact, he’s a funny painter. I can spend ten minutes gazing at one of his canvases, and the smile simply won’t leave my face. If you’re fortunate enough to know the artist personally, it’s even more fun, because in his case, it’s impossible to separate the work from the man, just as has been true of every genius in the history of painting. “A Chalet in El Viso with the Smell of Tobacco,” by Iñigo Navarro (Courtesy of Museo Lázaro Galdiano) Yesterday I asked him whether he feared that AI might put painters like him out of business. Laughing, he told me no — that if anything, AI should be afraid of artists like him. With that kind of attitude, it’s only fitting that this exhibition should mark the beginning of something bigger, the moment when Navarro finally receives the recognition he deserves. Not for his sake alone, but because his art brings joy to those who see it — and there are plenty of good people who deserve that joy. Once again, Navarro surprised me with a detail from his new exhibition. He wanted to give the show a deeper atmosphere, and finally came up with something brilliant: commissioning an exclusive fragrance from perfume designer Valérie Aucouturier to scent the gallery. The perfume evokes a dark cypress forest, with incense, sandalwood, and a touch of rose — the latter a nod to the scent traditionally said to emanate from the bodies of saints. It’s a beautiful and strange idea, like everything Navarro does. The painter Iñigo Navarro in his studio (Courtesy of Museo Lázaro Galdiano) The problem, of course, is that the gallery isn’t very large. Navarro installed three or four scent machines, each blasting out a puff of fragrance every few minutes. Soon enough, he got an emergency call from one of the museum guards on duty in the room: “Either turn down the air freshener a bit, or I’m going to die.” Any other artist might have dug in his heels, insisting that the intensity was essential to the work — that the fragrance was part of it. Not Navarro. He burst out laughing, apologized politely, and promptly tossed out a couple of the machines. As the classic meme goes: tell me you’re a genius without telling me you’re a genius. READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: Another Ship of Fools A Column Against Myself: Confessions of a Walking Disaster Trump’s Speech Laughs in the Face of UN Globalism

WASHINGTON — In a better world, Democrats would be running at full speed away from Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee in the Virginia attorney general race. As the National Review reported Oct. 3, in 2022, Jones, a former lawmaker, actually fantasized about killing Todd Gilbert, the then-Republican Speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, because Gilbert had praised a recently deceased moderate Democrat lawmaker. In Jay Jones’s world, civility is a capital offense. In the 2022 texts Jones exchanged with a former colleague, Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner, he volunteered that if he had two bullets and could use them against Gilbert, Hitler, and/or Pol Pot, “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.” “Jay, please stop,” Coyner replied. But he did not stop. Jones also offered that he believed Gilbert and his wife, Jennifer, are “evil” and “breeding little fascists.” The National Review also reported that Jones wrote that he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her child die in her arms to see how parents feel when their children are victims of gun violence. He wrote, “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.” (RELATED: Yes, Virginia, Jay Jones Is Evil) So if Jones, 36, actually is elected to be Virginia’s top lawman, he would be the rare statewide officeholder who won’t only wish for awful things to happen to Republicans — but also to their children. No surprise. Jason Miyares, the Republican incumbent AG, told Fox News that Jones “is wholly disqualified for this office. Because when I took this office, I swore an oath not to a political party but to protect all Virginians — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.” Miyares did not say what I can’t help but think — that he, Miyares, is not an out-of-control nut job, unlike Jones, who is. This is where some readers might mention Donald Trump’s outrageous statements over the years. Point taken, but the media reported on Trump’s crude rhetoric about immigrants ad nauseam. So voters knew what they were getting and were free to interpret his statements for themselves. There has been little mention of the Jones story from major networks, other than Fox News. So the story is not the violent fantasies of a Democrat, but that Republicans are making an issue of it. One exception is The Associated Press, which ran two stories, one with the headline: “Trump’s GOP seizes on violent rhetoric from Virginia AG candidate as high-stakes elections loom.” So the story is not the violent fantasies of a Democrat, but that Republicans are making an issue of it. Jones has other skeletons in his closet. In 2022, he was convicted of reckless driving — he was driving 116 miles per hour. That’s 46 mph over the 70-mph speed limit. His sentence was a $1,500 fine and 1,000 hours of community service. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that he spent 500 of those hours working for his own political action committee. After the text story broke, Jones issued a statement in which he blamed President Donald Trump and Miyares, not himself. “Like all people, I’ve sent text messages that I regret and I believe that violent rhetoric has no place in our politics. Let’s be clear about what is happening in the Attorney General race right now: Jason Miyares is dropping smears through Trump-controlled media organizations to assault my character and rescue his desperate campaign. This is a strategy that ensures Jason Miyares will continue to be accountable to Donald Trump, not the people of Virginia. This race is about whether Trump can control Virginia or Virginians control Virginia.” His real mistake was revealing who he is deep down — and leaving a paper trail. Later, Jones posted a more contrite response. The deadline to remove a name from the ballot has passed, so fellow Democrats have little incentive to push Jones to get out of the race. Arlington GOP Chairman Matthew Hurtt noted that a recent poll showed Jones up. “I’m not a poll denier, but I will say, since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it’s hard to peg who are likely voters.” Kirk’s willingness to mix it up stands in sharp contrast to Jones’s shoot-‘em-in-the-head remarks. The Virginia Law Enforcement Sheriffs’ Association and Fraternal Order of Police of Virginia have called on Jones to get out of the race. Hurtt added, “As voters are starting to clue in, they’re realizing that Jay Jones is an untenable selection.” Hurtt also noted that, given Jones’s remarks about shooting a Republican in the head, gun control groups like Giffords PAC and Brady PAC, and Prevent Gun Tragedies PAC might want to rethink their Hurtt noted Americans have spent the last few weeks thinking about the Sept. 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk, the youthful conservative who loved talking with folks who disagreed with him and treated them with respect. Unlike the affable Kirk, when Jones reached across the aisle to Coyner, he wrote that he would like to shoot the speaker — “a POS” — in the head and hoped his wife could watch their child die. Did I mention Jones’s campaign slogan is “Fighting for Virginia families”? Really, his slogan should come from the very texts he wrote: “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.” READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: Two Years Later, ‘Much of the World No Longer Remembers Oct. 7’ Trump Targets UN — Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel Jimmy Kimmel Is Living in a Material World Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM

from Sputnik News: Speaking on behalf of the mediators of the deal, Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, underscored that the agreement “will lead to ending the war, the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the entry of aid.” Israel and Hamas have agreed on the first stage of Donald Trump’s proposed peace […]

by Mike LaChance, The Gateway Pundit: Julio Rosas is an excellent right leaning journalist who used to write for Townhall and now writes for Blaze Media. Rosas was part of the White House summit on Antifa today and provided some informative commentary. Rosas covered the border crisis under Biden, but before that he covered the […]

from And We Know: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/