All Poles recognize the likeness of Gary Cooper from the 1952 film High Noon. The Polish Cooper holds an election ballot over a backdrop of the Solidarity trade union’s iconic red letters. Below his feet appear the words “High Noon 4 June 1989.” The political poster appeared all over Poland that year, ahead of the first partially free elections of the communist Polish People’s Republic, and it became one of the most enduring symbols of the fall of communism in Europe. Sikorski and Wałęsa count among the Polish liberals clinging to 1989, unwilling to accept that the worldview they have served has become discredited. Last week, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister Radosław Sikorski presented a copy of the poster, signed by Solidarity leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Wałęsa, to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Miami. It should have been a banal gesture between politicians, but it will be remembered for its symbolism. Sikorski and Wałęsa count among the Polish liberals clinging to 1989, unwilling to accept that the worldview they have served has become discredited. (Ironically, this acceptance on the part of their communist predecessors is what permitted their ascent to power.) (RELATED: The Enduring Spirit of Solidarity: A Story Still Being Written) To the casual observer, the meeting of foreign ministers might have seemed a logical prelude to the next day’s more notable meeting between President Donald Trump and newly elected Polish President Karol Nawrocki at the White House. The American hosts greeted Nawrocki with a flyover of military aircraft and a warm, choreographed reception. Nawrocki’s camp and a handful of opponents proclaimed this inaugural foreign visit a success, as President Trump confirmed the United States would not withdraw troops stationed in Poland, and indeed had never considered doing so, and personally invited Nawrocki to this November’s G20 summit in South Africa. Buoyed by this success, President Nawrocki flew to Rome for meetings with Pope Leo XIV and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Sikorski, a leading figure in the current government coalition of liberals, leftists, and centrists (elected separately from the president), remained in the United States. The dueling visits of the Polish camps had been uncoordinated. Sikorski insisted his parallel visit was not meant to upstage Nawrocki’s, a claim that strains credulity. With the president back in Europe and the minister lingering in the United States, the pre-visit barbs continued across the Atlantic. Sikorski maintained he was responsible for the G20 invitation. Nawrocki contended that he alone can assure cooperation with the United States, as relations between Washington and Warsaw have been strained since Trump’s reinauguration. Both camps issued their interpretations of who was representing Poland, and how. Several days after the visits should have receded into diplomatic history, the saga took another bizarre turn when Sikorski posted a series of selfies in front of American government buildings in Washington. “It’s just a pathetic embarrassment,” summarized conservative journalist Stanisław Janecki. “Dear Minister Radosław Sikorski, I am already in Poland … I am unable to look at your album from Washington in any other form, but I appeal for seriousness,” wrote the president on social media. “This is not a matter of your good — albeit disturbing — mood. These are matters of state. I believe that as soon as I find the time, and you cool down a little, we will meet for a serious conversation about the disturbing state of Polish diplomacy.” Sikorski retorted, “Your people informed on the Prime Minister and the democratic government of free Poland in Washington, trying to block its access to the White House.” Sikorski’s apparent belief that he had a role at the White House illuminates his boundless ego. The minister has run in powerful circles for decades, and his public outbursts have included calling Trump a “proto-fascist” and inviting pro-Trump American populists to “f— off.” In 2014, a diplomatic scandal ensued when a news magazine published a recording of Sikorski opining that “the Polish-U.S. alliance isn’t worth anything” and “we [Poles] gave the Americans a b— job.” Americans might recall that Sikorski is married to journalist Anne Applebaum, who produces regular bombast for the Atlantic and publishes books on authoritarianism every couple of years for an aging coastal audience. Sikorski’s chief, Prime Minister and former President of the European Council Donald Tusk, is another of the liberal old guard with no prospects in Washington. He has previously accused President Trump of serving Russia, and a 2019 photo of him pointing a finger-gun at the U.S. president’s back has hardly facilitated reconciliation. This generation of Polish liberals assumed their worldview was a foregone conclusion in Poland and across the former Warsaw Pact. After watching its bitter rivals govern for eight years, the Tusk government has begun to flounder less than two years into its term, following Nawrocki’s victory in the presidential race this summer. Polls suggest its constituent parts would have no realistic path to forming a government if elections were held today. The government remains a patchwork coalition united only by contempt for the previous right-wing government. Restive agricultural voices cringe at radical social initiatives; restive leftists insist they are moving too slowly; and both are displeased with the European Union’s heavy hand in Polish markets. Young Poles were supposed to experience the fruits of a wealthy society and become good liberals, but that theory has unraveled. Nawrocki triumphed in both the 18-to-29 and 30-to-44 age cohorts, stymying the liberal Warsaw mayor with impeccable open-society credentials. Urban university-educated women gravitate more naturally to the Left coalition, with its emphasis on abortion and rainbow manifestations, than to the liberals. Young men aren’t convinced their European inheritance is all they’ve been promised. (RELATED: What Next for Poland After Nawrocki Victory?) Nor are the liberals’ key selling points particularly persuasive. Poland experienced unprecedented economic growth during populist-right governments from 2015-23. The two warring political camps are essentially indistinguishable on the topics of the war in Ukraine and the Russian threat. The current government is persona non grata in Washington, and its celebrity status in Brussels counts for less than it did before the damage of European liberal governance became so widely recognized. The narrative that the adults in the room should manage economic and foreign policy has lost its sting. There is historical precedent for this political theater. During World War I, socialist Józef Piłsudski jockeyed with nationalist Roman Dmowski in Great-Power capitals to shape the future of an independent postwar Poland. During World War II, the Polish government-in-exile sought to preserve its legitimacy in the face of a Moscow puppet regime. In both cases, the nationalists lost. Then, why look further than 1989? In that year’s partially free elections, non-communist parties were only permitted to contest 35 percent of parliamentary seats, in addition to all 100 in the Senate. Government strategists prepared for a scenario in which Solidarity would win few or no seats, but the upstart opposition secured all 161 contestable parliamentary seats and 99 of 100 in the Senate. By January 1990, the Polish United Workers’ Party had dissolved. “The postwar consensus trusted that a better future could be achieved by removing barriers, setting aside traditional mores, empowering individual choice, and letting markets decide,” writes American theologian R.R. Reno. This bright liberal future has resulted in Lech Wałęsa — a devout Catholic who famously signed the 1980 Gdańsk Agreement with an oversized pen featuring Pope John Paul II — supporting a government pushing abortion expansion, transgenderism, and depraved sexual “health” lessons for students. The Nobel laureate, whose fall speaking tour is advertised in several American print publications, would do well to reflect on these lessons. READ MORE from Michael O’Shea: What Next for Poland After Nawrocki Victory? Is Poland the Next Victim of Mass Migration? Time to Ditch the Media and NGOs’ Freedom and Democracy Rankings Michael O’Shea is an American-Polish writer and translator. He is a Danube Institute visiting international fellow.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has been hailing a forthcoming 1,000-page report on “what we did right and what we did wrong” during the COVID pandemic, compiled by independent “experts” the governor’s office did not name. That was in late July, and while the report’s release awaits, the governor has created what amounts to a new Centers for Disease Control. Those states imposed the “most draconian” mandates on masks, school closings, and vaccine coercion for children and employees. On September 2, Newsom, Washington State Governor Bob Ferguson, and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek announced the West Coast Health Alliance “to ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics.” As Katy Grimes of the California Globe notes, those states imposed the “most draconian” mandates on masks, school closings, and vaccine coercion for children and employees. In a joint statement, the governors proclaimed: President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists — and his blatant politicization of the agency — is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people. The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences. California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk. The tri-state alliance is based on the “Scientific Safety Review Workgroup,” which claimed to “confirm” in 2020 that “the Pfizer vaccine is safe and efficacious for public use.” The workgroup also “endorses the transparency and objectivity of the FDA and CDC review processes and the rigor, validity and reliability of their analyses” and “recommends that our states avoid any undue delay in providing access to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.” Such a ringing endorsement of a single medical product from a single pharmaceutical company gives the people cause to wonder. (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Three) Pfizer requested 75 years before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released the documents it relied on to license its COVID vaccine. In 2021, the FDA requested 55 years to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency on the vaccine’s creation process. That would put the revelation in 2076, the 300th anniversary of the American founding, and hardly a model of disclosure. (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Two) In August 2021, Joe Biden proclaimed COVID “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” and his administration “involuntarily separated from service” nearly 8,000 military personnel who declined the vaccination. As those discharged might have noticed, the vaccine failed to prevent infection or transmission of COVID, as the fully boosted Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci confirmed by testing positive. So did the fully boosted Gavin Newsom in 2022, yet the governor still recommended vaccinations and boosters as “the best way to protect yourself from COVID-19.” Dr. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), recommended the vaccine for children, the least vulnerable group. The vaccines boosted Pfizer’s profits to a record $100 billion, including $57 billion driven by its vaccine and antiviral pill Paxlovid. As people of a certain age may remember, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin gave away their vaccines, effective against the scourge of polio. None of these realities found their way into the tri-state declaration. The alliance might boast more clout if Newsom had first released his 1,000-page report on his own pandemic performance. Some reviews are already in. (RELATED: Dr. Anthony Fauci: What Exactly Did Biden Pardon?) As Luke Wake of the Pacific Legal Foundation explains, Newsom’s emergency order of March 2020 remained in effect into 2022, allowing him to wield unfettered power “without involving the legislature and without opportunity for public input.” Such a one-man rule is “anathematic to America’s free democratic system.” (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part One) People may disagree on mask mandates, social distancing, and so forth, but “we should agree that such policy issues are to be decided by elected lawmakers in the legislature, those who represent the diverse interests of all Californians.” Alexandra Orbuch of the Princeton Legal Journal had similar concerns. By his own account, through 71 executive orders, Newsom issued 561 proclamations related to COVID. After lifting more than 90 percent of his COVID executive orders, the governor did not terminate his emergency power at the “earliest possible moment.” As Orbuch noted, “checks and balances are a cornerstone of the American governmental structure” and prevent each branch “from overextending their authority.” In April of 2020, Newsom announced the spending of $1 billion on masks with the Chinese company Build Your Dreams (BYD), which makes motor vehicles, not protective medical equipment. The governor hid details of the deal even from fellow Democrats. Perhaps the lengthy report will explain what happened to the money. As Californians will recall, in November 2020, Newsom and colleagues partied sans masks at the upscale French Laundry, a clear violation of the governor’s own COVID protocols. Newsom has strong ties to the Brown, Getty, and Pelosi families. When he announced the state of emergency, he proclaimed the state was “blessed” to have the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, then House Speaker. The governor’s recent claim that the Trump administration has “politicized” the CDC calls for another look back. The federal government’s first spokesperson on the pandemic was Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). As the people should know, Dr. Messonnier is a member of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) tasked to prevent viruses from arriving on American soil. In early 2020, Dr. Messonnier delivered a series of press briefings about a “novel virus” from the “Wuhan market” that would spread across the country. When reporters asked about individuals returning from Wuhan, Dr. Messonnier said that was “not something I’m at liberty to talk about today,” and did not reveal who was laying down the rules. That would seem to signal political control of the CDC. Much more remains to be revealed than what Newsom did right or wrong, and his new pact with Oregon and Washington could have unintended consequences. Three states setting up their own health alliance could cause Americans to question the need for a federal CDC and push back against white coat supremacy in general. Let the debate begin. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: Newsom Launches Anti-Crime Crusade Reviewing the Smithsonian When Frank Met Friedrich Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

America’s immigration system was designed to embody the American social contract — a compact between the individual and the state, in which the government is impartial and bound by law. But when newcomers arrive from societies where government is degraded into barter, bribery, and patronage, they import with them a radically different conception of what citizenship and authority mean. That is the real danger revealed in Louisiana, where Chandrakant “Lala” Patel, an Indian-origin businessman, now faces a 62-count federal indictment for orchestrating a sweeping U-visa fraud. They are parables of how nations decay: not through sudden collapse but through the slow seep of alien civic ethics into their institutions. Federal court records leave little doubt about the scale of corruption. From December 26, 2015, to at least July 15, 2025, prosecutors allege that Patel, a Louisiana convenience-store proprietor, conspired with four law enforcement officers to fabricate police reports in exchange for roughly $5,000 per individual. These reports falsely labeled non-residents as armed robbery victims, enabling them to apply for U-visas — a status intended only for genuine crime victims who aid law enforcement — through fraudulent USCIS Form I-918B certifications. The indictment, handed down in July 2025, charges Patel with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, bribery, 24 counts of mail fraud, and eight counts of money laundering. Patel even secured a U-visa for himself in 2023 under these false pretenses. If convicted, he faces decades in prison and mandatory forfeiture of his ill-gotten gains. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Mike Flynn, Epstein, Trump, and the Scandal-Blob) In Massachusetts, a different Patel entirely — Rambhai Patel, 37, of New Jersey — was sentenced on August 22, 2025, in federal court in Boston for orchestrating a nationwide U-visa fraud conspiracy. Patel received 20 months and eight days in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and was ordered to forfeit $850,000; he is also subject to deportation. He had pleaded guilty in May 2025 to one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud. Prosecutors said that from March 2023, Patel and his co-conspirator staged at least 18 fake armed robberies across the country — including five in Massachusetts — so that “victims” could apply for visas. One participant paid $20,000 for the chance to be a “victim.” At least two fraudulent U-visa applications were filed. The scheme earned Patel more than $850,000. Though distinct from the Louisiana case, it revealed the same corrosive logic: U.S. immigration documents were treated not as solemn safeguards but as tradable assets, paving a pathway toward citizenship emptied of its civic weight. What the U-Visa Was Meant to Be Created by Congress in 2000, the U-visa was meant to shield noncitizens who are victims of serious crimes such as trafficking, sexual assault, or domestic violence. In return for helping law enforcement prosecute offenders, applicants receive legal status for up to four years, with a path to permanent residency and citizenship. The intent was noble: protect the vulnerable and strengthen prosecutions. Congress capped visas at 10,000 a year, but demand exploded. By 2023, there were more than 300,000 applications pending, with waits of over five years. That backlog — combined with the life-changing benefits — turned the program into fertile ground for fraud. Certification on Form I-918B, where police confirm a crime occurred, became the point of abuse. In both the Louisiana and Boston schemes, false reports were filed, victims invented, and staged crimes were used to generate petitions. A 2019 DHS Inspector General report warned that the program was “susceptible to fraud,” citing weak verification and forged police paperwork. The Patels did not find a loophole — they exploited America’s assumption of trust. Why It Matters These figures reveal more than graft. They reflect a civic culture where authority is never trusted as impartial but bargained, bought, or bypassed. A licence, a passport, access to education, even welfare benefits — all are understood as items for sale under the table. In such systems, “rule of law” has little traction; the bazaar is the governing metaphor. When people raised in that environment migrate without embracing America’s civic creed, they import not just corruption but a disregard for the very processes that underpin American civic life. For earlier generations of immigrants, American citizenship was the summit of aspiration, prized because it meant submitting to a higher civic order. For these offenders, it is something else entirely: a pawn in a game, a vehicle for schemes, a tool to be manipulated and discarded once its value is extracted. The U-visa became a ticket rack, police reports props in staged dramas. A century ago, Theodore Roosevelt warned against “hyphenated Americanism” and insisted newcomers embrace one civic identity. Early 20th-century America demanded assimilation into its public norms. The Patel affairs prove why. A country cannot remain a republic of laws if it admits those who see law, residency, and even citizenship as commodities. The civic order cannot hold if those joining it refuse to abandon the ethics of the bazaar. This is why the Patel cases matter. They are more than prosecutions; they are civic alarms. They are not just about a few businessmen or a handful of compromised actors. They are parables of how nations decay: not through sudden collapse but through the slow seep of alien civic ethics into their institutions. America’s immigration gate is not abstract. It is real, and today it is at risk of becoming a bazaar. America must harden its immigration system against those who arrive with incompatible civic assumptions. Fraud must be punished, transparency enforced, assimilation demanded. Otherwise, the very value of American citizenship will keep eroding until the social contract itself dissolves into barter. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: Denmark’s Hard Immigration Lesson — Data Over Illusions Import the Third World, Become the Third World Digital Landmines: Beijing’s Quiet Invasion

Over there on his podcast, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein was blunt. The topic was another potential government shutdown over spending issues. The question: Should Democrats partner with Republicans to prevent a shutdown and keep funding the government?  In his answer, Klein said this: I want to be very clear about what I am saying here. Donald Trump is corrupting the government — he is using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power. He is corrupting it the way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled. You could still, under Mafia rule, get the trash picked up or buy construction materials. But the point of those industries had become the preservation and expansion of the Mafia’s power and wealth. This is what Trump is doing to the government. This is what Democrats cannot fund. This is what they have to try to stop. Amazing. Mr. Klein seems to have developed a serious case of amnesia. Take this line from him on Trump: “…he is using it to hound his enemies….” Hello? As noted here back in January of 2024: As of March 2024, Donald Trump has been personally charged with 88 criminal offenses in four criminal cases. This total reflects charges related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, election interference in Georgia, falsifying business records in New York, and mishandling classified records after leaving the presidency. Donald Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to be criminally indicted. It has apparently skipped Mr. Klein’s memory that the record of the Biden government using the federal government (lawfare) to hound Trump — encouraging state and local Democrat prosecutors to do the same — is mind-boggling and completely without precedent. For the record: As of March 2024, Donald Trump has been personally charged with 88 criminal offenses in four criminal cases. On March 30, 2023, a Manhattan grand jury approved a thirty-four-count felony indictment against Trump….. On June 9, 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with thirty-seven felonies related to his handling and refusal to return hundreds of documents containing classified information. On July 27, 2023, a grand jury issued a superseding indictment alleging additional charges against Trump…. On August 1, 2023, Smith charged Trump with four federal criminal counts after a grand jury investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6th insurrection. On August 14, 2023, Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 others in a 41-count indictment Then there was this story — one of many similar stories: An IRS whistleblower on the Hunter Biden probe told Congress that the president’s son invoked his father to pressure a Chinese business partner and claimed the elder Biden was in the room while he was making deals. The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday released testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who said the Justice Department, FBI and IRS interfered with the investigation of the tax evasion case against Hunter Biden. One whistleblower, IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley Jr., who oversaw the IRS probe into the president’s son, said the IRS obtained a WhatsApp message dated July 30, 2017, from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, CEO of Harvest Fund Management, in which Hunter alleged he was with his father and named him to put pressure on Zhao to fulfill a commitment. In short? To use Klein’s own words: It was Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, who was “corrupting the government…. using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power.” It was Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, who was “corrupting it the way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled. You could still, under Mafia rule, get the trash picked up or buy construction materials. But the point of those industries had become the preservation and expansion of the Mafia’s power and wealth…” In short, Klein has it exactly backwards. Why? Who knows. But one can sense the aroma of Trump Derangement Syndrome rising here. Note. Donald Trump became a billionaire working entirely in the private sector, never having served a day in public office. Mysteriously — or not so mysteriously — Joe Biden and family became millionaires by using his public office to make those millions. Which is to say, the record speaks for itself. And it ain’t good for Democrats and their defenders. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Democrats Reject Law and Order Democrats’ Double Standard on Harris, GOP VPs, Losing Secret Service No One Elected Trump-fired CDC, Federal Reserve Bureaucrats

Trading cards have evolved dramatically over the past generation. What began as children trading baseball cards on playgrounds has evolved into a more creative and decidedly organized practice with collectors pooling their money to purchase an unopened box, pack, or case of cards — and then divvying up the cards according to teams or players individuals in the group picked ahead of time. Just as fantasy leagues transformed fan interaction … card breaking has given new life to an old hobby. Apart from saving money, the practice, known as card breaking, has become a social affair that brings people together in an online age to share the simple pleasure of opening a box of cards. Whether it be sports cards, Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, etc., the box is opened publicly — often live-streamed. At a time when it’s hard to get people to look up from screens, even when they’re all in the same room together, there’s a bubble gum and marble-shooting innocence to it. But that evolution has brought its own share of controversy. Some critics call card breaking “gambling,” likening it to casino slot machines. In fact, some states and organizations have called for regulation of the practice, arguing that its legal gray area leaves consumers vulnerable to abuse. But the comparison to gambling is simply wrong. Gambling is a game of pure chance in which bettors risk money — and unlike in Ocean’s 11, they almost always lose — but in card breaking, participants are reserving a guaranteed spot in the allocation of an actual product: specific team cards or player cards, that is. Consequently, the excitement in card breaking is not over the prospect of winning or losing money. It’s about discovering what cards exactly are contained in the sealed packs or boxes, as my fellow columnist Derek Hunter recently described. Imagine, for example, a buyer who reserves the Kansas City Chiefs’ spot in a football card break. That buyer’s anticipation builds around whether he or she will draw the card of, say, a likely future Hall of Famer like Patrick Mahomes or Travis Kelce. But the buyer need not worry about walking away empty-handed, like a gambler at a blackjack table would. This is why card breaking is much closer to the experience of owning a Costco membership than to a night at the poker table at MGM Grand. Just as a warehouse club guarantees members access to products at discounted prices, card breaking gives collectors access to boxes of trading cards that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. In short, it allows people to share both the high cost of cards and the thrill of a hobby that can otherwise feel a little isolating. There is no overstating how much card breaking fosters a sense of community, especially at a time when the internet has replaced many meaningful in-person gatherings with fleeting and sometimes shallow connections. Collectors don’t just come together to buy cards — they celebrate one another’s wins, commiserate over their disappointments, and occasionally even make trades right on the spot. Critics sometimes point to the fluctuations in card values as proof that individuals are essentially betting on a future price spike. But that’s a complete stretch. Collectors of any objects — comic books, vinyl records, stamps, watches, rare sneakers — understand that markets frequently fluctuate and are inherently unpredictable. Take rare coins, for example: a shift in commodity markets can raise or lower a coin’s baseline value overnight. This is not peculiar to card collecting. It’s simply the nature of collecting. As for a legal assessment of card breaking, all you need to do is apply common sense. Any bettor who has lost money at the roulette table knows exactly why: the outcome was never certain to begin with. But by reserving a guaranteed spot in a card-breaking gathering, a person secures the right to receive cards — not just a random chance to obtain them. To criticize card breaking as gambling misses a much larger cultural story: the evolution of hobbies from generation to generation, particularly with the advent of technology. Just as fantasy leagues transformed fan interaction from passive viewing into active participation, card breaking has given new life to an old hobby. The criticism also obscures the opportunity that the practice offers to draw more people into the world of collecting and foster a greater sense of community in the process. READ MORE from Jared Whitley: Stop the Biden Antitrust Agenda From Hijacking America First The American Economic Liberties Project Hurts Small Businesses Democrat Drug Shakedown

An early draft of the One Big Beautiful Bill included a provision to sell 2-3 million acres of federal land in the American West for the construction of homes and infrastructure. The Senate Parliamentarian stripped that provision, but supporters have vowed to revisit the issue. Future proposals should include “stranded lands” because their sale would improve public safety and forest health without diminishing recreational uses. More than six million acres of federal land in the western United States are surrounded by private land and lack public road or trail access, making them legally inaccessible under most circumstances. Blocked access prevents the public from enjoying the land and makes it harder to prevent and suppress wildfires. A 2021 study published in Environmental Research Letters found that such physical and legal inaccessibility exposes stranded land to larger wildfires. [F]or more than a century, insufficient thinning and controlled burns on public land allowed trees, underbrush, pests, and deadwood to accumulate. The researchers studied more than 258,000 ignitions on western public land over 23 years and found that wildfires on stranded land are 14-23 percent more likely to “escape” containment and grow. In Montana, Nevada, and Utah, stranded fires are two to three times larger than non-stranded fires, on average. Overall, stranded fires across the West are 18 percent larger than fires on accessible public land. Crews and machinery cannot be easily brought into landlocked areas to thin forests, cut firebreaks, perform controlled burns, or extinguish ongoing fires. Stranded land is 20 percent less likely to receive any treatments to prevent fires. The “checkerboard” nature of land ownership in such areas means that airplanes and helicopters are the primary means of access to avoid violating trespass laws. Stranded land should be transferred to private stewards, which would reduce wildfire risks through better land management and improved road access. Doing so would also facilitate the creation of mutual aid pacts, easements, and the bundling of land for optimal access and safety. Government Mismanagement Governments underinvest in land management because officials view land as a liability. Maintenance is seen as a pure expense, rather than as an investment generating future returns. Governments derive little revenue from their land holdings, and officials cannot personally benefit from land use, so the economic potential of government-owned land is seldom maximized. Unfortunately, the problem is more extensive than that. Leading environmental groups pressure lawmakers and bureaucrats to preserve public land in a “pristine natural state,” advocating for quick fire suppression and little or no fire-prevention measures such as vegetation thinning and prescribed burns. State and federal regulations have furthered those bureaucratic failings. As a result, for more than a century, insufficient thinning and controlled burns on public land allowed trees, underbrush, pests, and deadwood to accumulate, creating ideal conditions for conflagrations. That is especially true on stranded land, where “there are so few fuels treatments applied.” In contrast, private individuals and companies have strong incentives to ensure that their land is protected — whether they use the land for profit, conservation, or both. Private parties do not want their assets to go up in flames, so they tend to act as good stewards. Farmers and ranchers establish fuel breaks, create buffers, and manage the land for long-term productivity and wildfire resilience. Timber companies manage forests for sustainable growth, tree health, and wildfire prevention. Miners and loggers build roads deep into forests, which also serve as access points for fire prevention and suppression activities. Evidence indicates that road networks in areas with more privately owned forestland relative to government-owned forestland are denser and have better surfaces. Improved road access has been shown to reduce fire size and acres burned; reduce the risk of high-burn severity; and make it easier to produce fire control lines and extinguish fires. Private stewards also tend to have similar interests, which facilitate the negotiation of mutual aid pacts, such as voluntary fire protection associations and easements for fire management and recreation. With mixed public-private ownership, multi-party agreements are harder to reach and often get strangled by red tape across multiple agencies and levels of government. Special interest groups with divergent agendas also strive for control and slow collaborative responses. Through sales, transfers, and swaps, stranded federal land should be made available to private stewards who will consolidate fragmented land to extend road access, enhance public safety and forest health, and balance recreation and conservation with housing, infrastructure, and resource development. A measure that accomplishes those commonsense goals would be a “big beautiful bill” indeed. READ MORE from Lawrence J. McQuillan: How the Next Pope Can Liberate the Poor The Phantom National Homelessness Crisis Lawrence J. McQuillan, Ph.D., is a senior fellow and the director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. He is coauthor of “California Wildfires: Key Recommendations to Prevent Future Disasters.”

Season 2 of 'Happy’s Place' premieres this fall with plenty of surprises — and several TV legends popping by the bar. Continue reading…

While San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles collectively lost nearly a million residents, something remarkable is happening in America’s forgotten towns. Places like Superior, Arizona – population 3,000 – where a perfect storm of opportunity is brewing: It sits on federal land that could be the first target for Trump’s “Freedom Cities” initiative A vast copper deposit is on track to be approved, nearby A massive migration of Americans seeking affordable living is already underway Former CIA and Treasury advisor Jim Rickards believes this confluence of factors will trigger an economic boom unseen since the late 1800s. “What’s happening here isn’t just about housing,” Rickards told me. “We’re looking at potentially the greatest transfer of wealth in American history.” The implications are staggering. Americans who position themselves early could see massive wealth as these new boomtowns emerge. We’ve documented everything in our exclusive interview with Rickards, which you can watch, free of charge, right here. (Note: Thank you for supporting businesses like the one presenting a sponsored message in this article and ordering through the included links, which benefits WLTReport. We appreciate your support!  MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!)

Allen Blickle left Baroness after the band's horrific tour bus crash in 2012