Waging War on the Time Clock

Waging War on the Time Clock

Robert Spencer  

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump wrote:

When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement. They are aiding and abetting the enemy! All it does is give Iran false hope when none should exist. These are American cowards that are rooting against our Country. Iran had 159 ships in their Navy — Every single ship is now resting at the bottom of the sea. They have no Navy, their Air Force is gone, all Technology is gone, their “leaders” are no longer with us, and the Country is an Economic Disaster. Only Losers, Ingrates, and Fools are able to make a case against America! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The Islamic Republic of Iran is indeed nurturing hope, but it doesn’t appear to be based on the establishment media’s cheerleading for anyone, no matter how vicious or evil, who opposes Trump. Ali Khezrian, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Majles, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s legislative body, on Friday expressed the confidence that the United States would soon be driven out of the Middle East altogether.

Far-fetched? Undoubtedly. Unlikely? Absolutely. So is Khezrian just assuming a Baghdad Bob-like pose of braggadocio in the face of disaster? Possibly. Or he could be watching the election cycle in the United States.

Khezrian was so confident that events would turn in the Islamic Republic’s favor that he warned that the leaders of the Islamic regime would take revenge on the United Arab Emirates once the U.S. was gone and the crisis was over. “In the past week,” Khezrian declared, “the Emiratis have learned many lessons. However, compared to what they are yet to learn, the lessons they were taught so far are like preschool versus academic studies.”

Warming to his theme, Khezrian blamed the Emiratis for supposedly wishing to “escalate the tension in the region, in cahoots with the Zionists.” Of course! Who else could be behind it? He added: “They know that when the Islamic Republic of Iran emerges from this war, and the Americans are driven out of the region, [Iran] will put them through hell. Iran will not just let go of the UAE, and they know it.”

All right. But what was that bit about the Americans being “driven out of the region”? Nothing seems much less likely at this point, but at the same time, it must be acknowledged that the Americans could well stop attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran before the threat that it poses is fully neutralized.

There are several reasons why this could happen. One is that President Trump and his team would decide that the political cost of continuing the hostilities is too high. Another is if the Democrats win control of Congress in 2026 and the presidency in 2028, and start sending billions to the mullahs again instead of trying to end the danger they pose to the world.

Both of these possibilities revolve around the clock. The November election is coming, and Iran will be an issue. It could still be an issue in the 2028 presidential election. The Democrats are certain to claim, whatever is really happening, that Trump has gotten us mired in a needless “quagmire” there.

Meanwhile, Islamic jihadis are fighting what they consider to be a 1,400-year-old war to conquer and Islamize the world. If they lose now, they will be patient and trust in Allah, and pass on the fight to their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Our wars, meanwhile, have to be safely and happily concluded before the next election cycle, or before the new administration takes office.

American forces stayed far too long in both Iraq and Afghanistan, having no clear purpose or goal in either country, and now the bitter memory of those failures stops many from seeing clearly when it is important to respond to a serious threat, and to be patient in seeing the conflict through to a favorable conclusion.

Related: Trump to Iran: Time’s Up

The U.S. should not send ground troops to Iran or get involved in futile Bushian nation-building. However, Khezrian is right about the chance Iran has to win this war. All the Islamic Republic has to do to win is survive. If the U.S. leaves the region with the mullahs still in power, they will declare victory and resume their jihad as soon as they are able to do so.

The only way that the Islamic Republic of Iran can be prevented from continuing its jihad against the U.S. and Israel is by being toppled from power. But that may not be possible by this November, or by November 2028. Khezrian, and others within Iran and all around the world, is willing to be patient.

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2026/05/14/waging-war-on-the-time-clock-n4952876

A RedState Photo Odyssey: The Devastation of the Pacific Palisades Is America's Wake-Up Call

A RedState Photo Odyssey: The Devastation of the Pacific Palisades Is America's Wake-Up Call

By Bob Hoge  

    

Pacific Palisades, May, 2026. (Credit: The Hoge Family)

All personal photos courtesy of the Hoge Family.

In February, I attended a birthday party in the Malibu hills with my wife, and afterward, we realized that we weren’t too far from the Pacific Palisades, the Los Angeles neighborhood that was scorched to the ground in the apocalyptic January 2025 fires.

Almost 7,000 structures were utterly destroyed, and at least 12 people lost their lives. Ponder that for a moment: 6,837 buildings and homes turned to smoke. That’s the equivalent of several towns and neighborhoods abruptly erased from the earth.

“You haven’t seen it,” she said.

I realized with a pang of guilt that, indeed, I had not witnessed it for myself. I had written numerous articles about the disaster, I had smelled the smoke in the air, I had friends whose homes were destroyed, and I had watched the videos. But I hadn’t seen it in person.

She had, a mere month after the conflagration was finally extinguished, and she’d told me what she’d seen back then: “It was as if Godzilla had flattened half the town.”

This is what a lot of it looked like then:

So off we went, and the experience was gut-wrenching, even 13 months after the flames. The sheer scope of the damage is almost impossible to describe; yes, it felt like a war had transpired, but even that is almost too glib. House after house had been destroyed by the flames, neighborhood after neighborhood had simply vanished. Blackened steel girders stood at awkward angles at almost every corner, dark symbols of the homes and buildings that once stood there and the people who inhabited them. And, yet, weirdly, every once in a while, there would be a house or structure that had been spared, sitting surrounded by ruin yet remaining utterly unscathed. Unsettling, to say the least.

You could still smell the acrid scent of destruction in the air.

I wanted to document it at the time, but all I had was my phone. My little I-device just didn’t seem worthy of depicting the true (preventable) horror of what had transpired.

My son, however, has become quite the photographer, and I asked him the other day if he would accompany us to the Pacific Palisades — and bring along some of his high-tech gear — to see if we could try to capture what happened then, and what was happening now. He was on board. 

The good news: the landscape has changed considerably in the three months since I last visited. Despite what has been a glacial reconstruction phase, plagued by California’s Byzantine permitting rules and the reluctance of insurance companies to pay out, construction was clearly happening at a higher rate than before. The pounding of hammers resounded through the sunny afternoon, and pickup trucks loaded with supplies and ginormous construction vehicles dotted the town.

Away from the activity, however, it seemed like we were on an archaeological mission deep in the Cambodian jungle. (Note: We were very respectful of people's property and never trespassed or took pictures of anything that identified a specific residence.)

This was, until very recently, a presumably very large house, with an expansive backyard, but now it’s straight out of an Indiana Jones movie.

As Jeff Goldblum’s scientist character says in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way”:

See this slide? See this jacuzzi? This pool we came across had them both, but I don’t think anybody will be using them anytime soon:

Meanwhile, we found a door to nowhere on a hill leading to nothing, in a weird way evoking Gavin Newsom’s bullet train to nowhere:

Was this an indoor or an outdoor kitchen? Who knows:

The Palisades is part of the City of Angels, but it has a small-town feel. This little slice of Americana, however, was, quite simply, devastated. Here is the iconic Business Block Building, dedicated in 1924, right at the center of things and, ironically, across the street from the Palisades Village — Rick Caruso’s high-end outdoor mall that escaped the fires unscathed with the help of private firefighters.

It is no more:

Its Spanish Colonial Revival-style glory days are now in the past, thanks — not to global warming — but to the ineptitude of California’s single-party rule regime. This photo is from 1925, and the building had lasted through wars, previous fires, and earthquakes, only to be scorched one hundred years later by incompetence.

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MORE: Spencer Pratt's Mother's Day Ad Shows Emotional Aftermath of Palisades Fire

Fire Damage in LA Reaches Biblical Proportions—Is This What They Wanted? And Could It Be Their Demise? VIP

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We have friends from the Palisades, and they said that a local business had been asked to replace a tattered American flag atop their location with a brand-new one. They said, “That flag survived the fire. It stays.”

I actually respect that.

Numerous such flags are fluttering in the wind, a testament to the “Pali Strong” banners you can see while driving through:

This next photo was taken right in the center of town. What was this building? Whatever stood there, most of it has now vanished like smoke:

Meanwhile, a high-end Tesla Cybertruck stood in sharp contrast to the Berkshire Hathaway office wreckage behind it:

We here at RedState have extensively documented the disastrous failures of the one-party Democrat rule here in the Golden State, helmed by the governor with the worst record of failure arguably in the history of the United States, Gavin Newsom. Meanwhile, LA Mayor Karen Bass jetted off to Ghana despite being warned that a looming catastrophe was on the way, a key reservoir above the Palisades was left empty by highly-paid, inept Department of Water and Power (DWP) officials, the LA Fire Department was more concerned with DEI and LGBTQ than fire prevention, the forestry service told firefighters to stand down because they cared more about plants than people… the list goes on, and on… and on.

The notable increase in construction gave me hope, but there’s a caveat: there are many stories and rumors about foreign interests and investment bros snapping up properties and planning on radically changing what once were leafy, family-friendly neighborhoods. Some theorize that the real “progressive” plan is to turn the whole area into high-density urban housing — nothing like it once was.

I’d say all that they were all just tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, except that the two links I provided in the above paragraph show that they are most certainly not. Meanwhile, I’ve lived in the formerly Golden State long enough to know that, however devilish you think the Left’s plans are for the failing West Coast progressive juggernaut, the reality is always worse. My fear is that the Palisades will never again be the idyllic, wonderful area that mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt grew up in. He watched as his own house and his parents' were incinerated beyond recognition, and that trauma has inspired his once unlikely but now increasingly viable run for mayor.

I attended a gathering in 2022 at the home of some dear friends. This is what was:

Today, the house is gone. The porch from which I took the photo is no more. Taking that picture would no longer be possible, because the homes below are torched, the trees burnt to a crisp. Today, as we surveyed the aftermath, it is an empty, charred lot surrounded by fences, overlooking devastation — not sunsets.

It was a powerful journey — and we ended up not even having time to document Malibu, where the beachfront is littered by seemingly mile after mile of burnt-out pylons signifying where homes once stood. People can wrongly mock the families and citizens who once called this their home for being wealthy, and rightly for consistently voting for the Democrats who destroyed their state. However, one can also feel compassion for all the memories lost, all the hard work turned to ash, all the souls who have lost everything. Many of them are not in fact loaded Hollywood celebrities with basements full of cash — they’re old Californians who bought their dream houses decades ago and now have no hope of being able to afford to rebuild them.

In fact, at least 17 percent of former residents are reportedly never coming back. I would guess that the real number ends up being significantly higher, but only time will tell.

The California Dream has turned into a dystopian nightmare. Karen Bass, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Xavier Becerra, Tom Steyer, and all their union cronies want to bring this socialist hallucination to you, the American people. 

There is only one answer: vote different.

Rand Paul Hearing Explodes After CIA Officer Accuses Fauci of Steering COVID Probe

Rand Paul Hearing Explodes After CIA Officer Accuses Fauci of Steering COVID Probe

By Ben Smith  

    

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

A decorated CIA officer testified before the U.S. Senate on Wednesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci deliberately manipulated intelligence community analyses on COVID-19's origins, steering federal investigators away from the lab leak theory and toward a predetermined conclusion of natural origin. The fix was in from the beginning: Fauci hand-picked the experts, shaped the process, and leveraged a network of grant-dependent researchers to make sure the intelligence community reached the answer he wanted. The hearing confirmed what millions of Americans long suspected: The government lied, and it knew it was lying.

CIA special operations officer James Erdman III, a 13-year Agency veteran, appeared publicly for the first time before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee under a subpoena his own agency tried to block. No Democrats participated — not one. Every Democrat on the committee chose to skip a public hearing about a government cover-up that cost more than a million American lives. Make of that what you will. The hearing was chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). 

"Dr. Fauci's role in the cover-up was intentional," Erdman testified. "Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials and scientists."

Fauci's method was to hand-pick the experts the intelligence community would consult: scientists predisposed to reject the lab leak theory, including authors of the now-infamous 2020 "Proximal Origin" paper. Those authors initially believed the virus came from a Wuhan lab, changed their minds after a Zoom call with Fauci and NIH leadership, and at least one received a $9 million grant from Fauci's agency shortly after reversing his position.

CIA analysts reached the same conclusion repeatedly between 2021 and 2023: a lab leak was the most likely origin. Those findings never reached Congress or the public. Erdman rejected reports of direct bribes but said the outcome was arguably worse: "Six of the seven technical experts say, 'Yep, we still think it's a lab leak.' And they were sticking to their guns. Management changed the analytic line."

That management capitulation didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because the network was already in place, and the people running the investigation were answerable to the same institutional circles that built it.

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See Also: New NIH Letter Again Confirms That Fauci Lied, Funding Went To Wuhan Lab; Cancels Funding of Grant

Wuhan Lab Funder Daszak Served as Facebook Fact-Checker and on WHO Investigation Team

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The structural conflict ran deep, and it didn't start with Fauci alone. Fauci's agency funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Fauci was then invited into classified deliberations to assess whether that research caused the pandemic. Researcher Ralph Baric collaborated with Wuhan's Dr. Zhengli Shi to engineer gain-of-function coronaviruses, then sat on the Biological Sciences Experts Group advising the intelligence community on COVID's origins. Peter Daszak received hundreds of millions in U.S. government funding, worked with Shi on the same experiments, and was dispatched to China with the WHO to investigate the outbreak he may have helped cause. This is the network. The same people who funded the research, ran the research, and partnered with Chinese Communist Party-linked scientists were then handed the keys to the investigation. That isn't independent expertise — it's a closed loop, and it was built that way.

"It was not until after the 2024 election that the outgoing Biden Administration directed the CIA to issue an assessment — not because of new intelligence, but so officials could walk out the door claiming there was nothing left to find," Paul said. "That is not analysis. That is a cleanup operation."

The CIA's response was to attack the process rather than the evidence — calling the hearing "dishonest political theater" and dismissing Erdman as a subpoena witness rather than a truth-teller. It was a classic bureaucratic deflection: Impugn the messenger, ignore the message, and hope nobody reads past the first paragraph. It didn't work. The Agency's own statement contained the line that blew up the whole attack: "As the CIA has already assessed, COVID-19 most likely originated from a lab leak." Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) read it aloud and demanded a public apology from CIA Director John Ratcliffe. He didn't get one — but the contradiction was already on the record, in the CIA's own words. 

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Read More: GOP-CIA Showdown Over COVID Whistleblower As Dems Go Ghost

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Erdman further testified that the CIA is withholding up to 2,000 pages of classified COVID origins material in violation of a 2023 law requiring disclosure — and that whistleblowers conducting the review were illegally surveilled by the very agency they were investigating.

More than a million Americans died. Children lost years of education. Businesses were destroyed. Vaccine mandates were imposed under emergency authorities built, according to Wednesday's testimony, on an origins narrative the government had reason to doubt from the start. The American people are owed the complete record — and accountability for everyone who helped hide it.

https://redstate.com/ben-smith/2026/05/13/rand-paul-hearing-explodes-after-cia-officer-accuses-fauci-of-steering-covid-probe-n2202299?utm_source=rsmorningbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Press Is Attacking Pratt, Ignoring the Dems Attacking Courts, and Overlooking the IdiAOC About Virginia

Press Is Attacking Pratt, Ignoring the Dems Attacking Courts, and Overlooking the IdiAOC About Virginia

Brad Slager  | May 13, 2026

     

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

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News Avoidance Syndrome – POLITICO

• How do you tune your ears to only hear one side?!

At Politico, Josh Gerstein wrote a gushing piece on SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and in it, he opens with her defense of the courts from critical attacks:

You have to have an independent judiciary — one that is not beholden to the political branches or beholden to people. I just wish that people really focused on that and, therefore, stood up in some ways for the judiciary, when people — judges are being attacked and undermined, that is really an attack on our society.

Gerstein then helps her out and fills in the blanks. The attacks on the court come from a predictable (to Josh) President Trump.

Not mentioned at all by Gerstein are the lengthy examples seen from Democrats the past couple of weeks, as they had scathing outrage over the Louisiana redistricting decision, and, of course, the calls to impeach the members of Virginia’s state Supreme Court.

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Related:

     

Low-Octane Gaslighting – VARIOUS OUTLETS

• Look, gang – we expect this from her, but your ignorance is not excusable.

Speaking of attacks on the judiciary, we have this prime example. In an impromptu presser outside the Capitol, the deeply cerebral U.S. Rep Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) spoke on the matter of Virginia’s redistricting drama. She expressed dismay and disapproval that SCOVA ruled the new voting maps that were drawn were unconstitutional, specifically because the court ruled after the voters cast their votes.

Now we will leave it to interpretation whether it was willful deception by her or ignorance, but the Democrats had gone to the court and specifically filed to have them rule on things after the vote, and the court complied. Either way, she was peddling misinformation.

But none of the gathered journalists dared to challenge her on this detail in the matter.

Both Kinds of Standards – THE INDEPENDENTS

• History, once again, began with Trump’s inauguration.

There is an old chestnut spoken in legal circles that during a trial, you should never ask a question of a witness for which you do not already know the answer. This is wisdom that Mehdi Hasan could have heeded before looking bad. Another wise phrase is that it is never wise to repost Aaron Rupar.

In uttering his disgust with the way the president treats the press, Hasan asked when it became acceptable for the president to insult the media.

Now, I could get deep in the weeds with Hasan and point to the times our early presidents had contemptuous relationships with the newspapers, but instead, we just need to backtrack a couple of years. You remember Joe Biden, don’t you, Mehdi?

He was the president who saw journalist Steve Baker arrested, and he is on the record insulting Peter Doocy in Trumpian fashion. Just thought I’d help you with the research…you did not want to engage in it yourself.

Prose & Contradiction – POD SAVE AMERICA

• Suddenly, past comments are a serious matter…unlike what we were told weeks ago.

Many people are recognizing that in the race for Mayor of Los Angeles, Spencer Pratt is making waves and impressing more people. A sign that he is worrying the Left is seen in the Pod Save Bros deciding to try to lash out at the candidate. Jon Favreau dug up an old tweet from Pratt where he was touting Alex Jones – from about 15 years ago.

Not only is this the kind of exposé to cause shrugs across the country, but it is also particularly amusing to see this from the same guy who tried to platform Graham Platner and excused away his years of deeply problematic posts.

Body Checking the Fact-Checkers – POLITIFACT

• When you try recasting a Democrat by saying “that’s not what he said”, maybe don’t post what he said…?

In an effort to clean up for U.S. Rep. Democrat Hakeem Jeffries (NY-8) and to slam his critics at the same time, PolitiFact saw a need to clean up after the minority leader regarding his comments about “Maximum Warfare.” We get the trademarked methods of this site when it needs to recalibrate the facts to deliver a narrative. Republicans are taking his words out of context, and “The soundbite lacks larger context.”

The effort by Amy Sherman is to not give more, but less, as she narrows his words to mean only, and strictly, the redistricting efforts taking place.

Small problem for Amy, however. She not only gave Jeffries’ full quote, but her cleanup attempt also had his poster used at that presser displayed, where he distinctly says, “Maximum Warfare Everywhere All The Time.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/bradslager/2026/05/13/press-is-attacking-pratt-ignoring-the-dems-attacking-courts-and-overlooking-the-idiaoc-about-virginia-n2676050?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-mp8eKupvVt&utm_term=&_nlid=mp8eKupvVt&_nhids=ncrzZsxWINqDls

Democrats Doomed to Cling to Their Poisonous Policies, Says ... The Atlantic?

Democrats Doomed to Cling to Their Poisonous Policies, Says ... The Atlantic?

Ed Morrissey  

AP Photo/George Walker IV

The phrase "quit while you're behind" comes to mind ... for everyone else but Democrats, apparently. Now, even The Atlantic has begun sending warning flares.

The current freakout over Louisiana v Callais may fill up campaign coffers, but the party's determination to cling to racial set-asides in all areas of policy has alienated its former core constituency, warns Richard D. Kahlenberg. Working-class voters want policies that improve their lives directly much more than they worry about diversity, equity, and inclusion quotas in either the public or private sectors. Watching Hakeem Jeffries et al propose utter nihilistic destruction of public institutions as a response to color-blind policies and rulings will shortly spell disaster for Democrats:

Racial preferences in college admissions have long been deeply unpopular, and three years ago, the Supreme Court declared them unlawful, in a sweeping ruling that portended doom for other race-conscious policies to promote diversity or remedy past discrimination. Some research indicates that, in the aftermath of the civil-rights era, the achievement gap between rich and poor students now dwarfs the gap between white and Black students. Even so, well-intentioned blue-state Democrats keep pushing for race-based affirmative action, to their own political detriment, rather than supporting a much fairer policy of providing a leg up to economically disadvantaged people of all races.

In February, the California State Assembly passed, by a 54–14 vote, a measure seeking to place on the November ballot a change in the state constitution to allow racial preferences in K–12 education and in higher-education scholarships. (The state Senate has not yet acted on the measure.) In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a 375-page Racial Equity Plan last month that said, “New York’s history has been one of colonization, exploitation and racial oppression”; among other measures, the plan reaffirms the city’s intent to steer contracts to minority-owned businesses. Late last year, Democratic supermajorities in the Maryland House and Senate overrode Governor Wes Moore’s veto of legislation to study reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.

In huge swaths of the country, the Democratic brand has become anathema. The party will struggle to recapture the White House and reclaim the Senate unless it can persuade some red-state voters to take a fresh look at it. One obvious move would be for the Democrats, who have hemorrhaged working-class voters, to abandon their stubborn support for politically radioactive racial preferences. Significantly more Americans believe that economically disadvantaged people of any race deserve special consideration in admissions and employment decisions, and such efforts do not run afoul of laws against racial discrimination. Nevertheless, many Democrats cannot bring themselves to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling—or the public’s attitude—even when doing so would help their prospects immensely.

"Anathema" would explain the 2024 election results ... had Democrats nominated someone who could speak competently and coherently on policy. Unfortunately, Kahlenberg's eventual theory went untested because Democrats anointed Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden on the ticket after Biden's senility went on full display in the June 2024 presidential debate on CNN. Harris not only couldn't speak on policy, she also avoided policy entirely as part of the Democrat strategy to "disqualify" Trump and set up Democrats as the only alternative. That strategy blew up in their faces as Trump won the popular vote and all seven swing states to dominate the Electoral College, but Democrats have refused to change their strategic approach since then. 

We'll get back to that point again shortly. First, Kahlenberg wonders why Democrats won't listen to voters. He quotes a study from professors at UC Berkeley (!) and Yale that recognizes how unpopular their positions on DEI, LGBTQ, Israel, and social policies in general are with voters, particularly in the working class. A move away from these positions would generate enough benefit at the voting booth to make them competitive, but ... 

First, there is substantial variation across issues in the effects of moving to the elite middle. For  Democratic candidates,  the largest gains from moving to the elite middle tended to be on social and cultural issues, such as affirmative action and  LGBTQ  issues, where the party’s standard positions are relatively unpopular. For Republicans, the largest gains tended to be on economic issues (healthcare, minimum wage, and Social Security), where the party’s standard positions diverge most from voter preferences.

In other words, there's gold in them thar middles, for politicians willing to credibly stake their claims and policies there. Abigail Spanberger and Virginia Democrats succeeded by doing just that – only to betray voters with an extreme-Left power grab that blew up in their faces. Just because Spanberger lied through her teeth doesn't negate Kahlenberg's argument, although it does make it more difficult for voters to trust Democrats claiming to be moderates. 

So why won't Democrats give up support for these policies? The party has suffered an ideological capture by the Left, not through working-class liberal populism but by Academia-based, Queer Theory activists determined to rule rather than govern. John wrote earlier about Jamelle Bouie's argument, which explicitly makes the case for rule rather than governance. Bouie wants to save the democracy village by destroying it, to use the old Vietnam War reference; Democrats aren't interested in winning hearts and minds, to extend the analogy further. They are only interested in power, to impose their agenda on a populace that keeps rejecting it. 

If anyone doubts this, Virginia serves as an example again. Having violated the state constitution in their attempt to impose a gerrymandered map, Democrats now want to eliminate the state supreme court and the entire state government rather than appeal to voters legally and legitimately on policy. Instead, their approach can be summed up thusly: You will be made to care.

By any means necessary. 

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/05/13/democrats-doomed-to-cling-to-their-poisonous-policies-says-the-atlantic-n3814905?utm_source=twdailypmvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl