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The uproar over Tucker Carlson’s interview with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes has sparked yet another round of MAGA civil war talk.

Full disclosure: I previously worked for Carlson at the Daily Caller, so I’ve had a front-row seat for this ongoing battle for a long time now.

In case you missed the latest: Carlson invited Fuentes onto his podcast. What followed wasn’t an interview so much as a warm bubble bath of mutual validation — the kind of “conversation” that helps launder extremist ideas.

Enter Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation — once the intellectual vanguard of conservatism, now something closer to an emotional support group for people who think President Reagan was too soft. Responding to whispers that Heritage might distance itself from Carlson, Roberts rushed out a video to reassure the faithful: Heritage will have no enemies to its right.

Roberts disagreed with Fuentes (good for him) but insisted Heritage didn’t become the top conservative think tank by “canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians.” He also called Carlson’s critics a “venomous coalition” who “serve someone else’s agenda” — which echoes one of the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book.

And then something surprising happened: People inside Heritage actually pushed back (a brave move, given Heritage’s Orwellian “one voice” policy). Some even resigned.

The broader right-wing commentariat weighed in, too. Ben Shapiro called Carlson an “intellectual coward.” Ted Cruz made some noise. The Wall Street Journal editorial board huffed. And talk radio host Mark Levin criticized Fuentes and Carlson during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. For a brief moment, it looked like accountability was actually trending.

But … why this moment? Why now?

Keep in mind: Then-former President Trump dined with Fuentes in 2022 and wrongly claimed immigrants were eating pets in 2024. As president, he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in 2020. And of course he launched his political career by questioning President Obama’s birth certificate. I could go on.

Despite all of this, Trump’s grip on the conservative movement only grew firmer.

Meanwhile, right-wing antisemitism has metastasized on Trump’s watch — despite his support for Israel.

Charlottesville, anyone?

The “alt-right” has shed its “alt.” They’re just “right” now.

This is especially observable when it comes to young conservatives who came of age during the Trump era. Indeed, one Heritage staffer told the New York Post that “a growing number” of Heritage interns “actually agree” with Fuentes.

And here’s the irony: The same conservative media figures now sounding the alarm helped build the machine.

Take Levin. Fuentes recently admitted that it was Levin’s radio show that first radicalized him. “He planted the seed, at least,” Fuentes told Carlson.

Likewise, aside from endorsing Trump in 2024, Shapiro made conspiracy theorist Candace Owens famous when his Daily Wire hired her to host a podcast on its platform after she became buddies with Kanye West and after she suggested the only problem with Adolf Hitler was that “he had dreams outside of Germany.”

So if these more mainstream Trumpers are horrified now, it’s probably because they helped create monsters — and those monsters are now coming to devour their creators, as monsters always do.

Rest assured, though, this rot is not limited solely to antisemitism. In recent months, MAGA figures such as Vivek Ramaswamy, FBI Director Kash Patel and even Vice President JD Vance (who is married to an Indian American woman) have all been targets of racist abuse online.

It’s important to note that none of these folks are considered “Never Trump” or Reagan conservatives. They are Trump allies. The revolution devours itself. (First they came for the Never Trumpers.…)

Again, this is far from the first skirmish in the MAGA civil war. But all of these internecine fights obscure the root cause of the problem: Trump. And yet, the orange emperor himself? Off-limits.

The fever won’t break while Trump’s still around, serving as a magnet for the worst people and cultivating the toxic ecosystem that made all of this right-wing racism possible, if not inevitable.

So by all means, conservatives: Condemn Carlson, denounce Fuentes and scold Heritage for failing to police the right and only punching left.

But as long as you avert your eyes from Trumpism, your righteous outrage is just theater — the political equivalent of aggressively mopping the floor while the pipes keep bursting.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

On Tuesday, I voted for the first time. Not for a president, not in a midterm, but in the California special election to counter Texas Republicans’ gerrymandering efforts. What makes this dynamic particularly fascinating is that both parties are betting on the same demographic — Latino voters.

For years, pundits assumed Latinos were a lock for Democrats. President Obama’s 44-point lead with these voters in 2012 cemented the narrative: “Shifting demographics” (shorthand for more nonwhite voters) would doom Republicans.

But 2016, and especially the 2024 elections, shattered that idea. A year ago, Trump lost the Latino vote by just 3 points, down from 25 in 2020, according to Pew. Trump carried 14 of the 18 Texas counties within 20 miles of the border, a majority-Latino region. The shift was so significant that Texas Republicans, under Trump’s direction, are redrawing congressional districts to suppress Democratic representation, betting big that Republican gains made with Latinos can clinch the midterms in November 2026.

To counter Republican gerrymanders in Texas, Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Democrats pushed their own redistricting plans, hoping to send more Democrats to the House. They too are banking on Latino support — but that’s not a sure bet.

Imperial County offers a cautionary tale. This border district is 86% Latino, among the poorest in California, and has long been politically overlooked. It was considered reliably blue for decades; since 1994, it had backed every Democratic presidential candidate until 2024, when Trump narrowly won the district.

Determined to understand the recent shift, during summer break I traveled in Imperial County, interviewing local officials in El Centro, Calexico and other towns. Their insights revealed that the 2024 results weren’t just about immigration or ideology; they were about leadership, values and, above all, economics.

“It was crazy. It was a surprise,” Imperial County Registrar of Voters Linsey Dale told me. She pointed out that the assembly seat that represents much of Imperial County and part of Riverside County flipped to Republican.

Several interviewees cited voters’ frustration with President Biden’s age and Kamala Harris’ lack of visibility. In a climate of nostalgia politics, many Latino voters apparently longed for what they saw as the relative stability of the pre-pandemic Trump years.

Older Latinos, in particular, were attracted to the GOP’s rhetoric around family and tradition. But when asked about the top driver of votes, the deputy county executive officer, Rebecca Terrazas-Baxter, told me: “It wasn’t immigration. It was the economic hardship and inflation.”

Republicans winning over voters on issues such as cost of living, particularly coming out of pandemic-era recession, makes sense, but I am skeptical of the notion that Latino voters are fully realigning themselves into a slate of conservative positions.

Imperial voters consistently back progressive economic policies at the ballot box and hold a favorable view of local government programs that deliver tangible help such as homebuyer assistance, housing rehabilitation and expanded healthcare access. In the past, even when they have supported Democratic presidential candidates, they have voted for conservative ballot measures and Republican candidates down the ticket. Imperial voters backed Obama by a wide margin but also supported California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage. This mix of progressive economics and conservative values is why Republican political consultant Mike Madrid describes Latino partisanship as a “weak anchor.”

The same fluidity explains why many Latinos who rallied behind Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2020 later voted for Trump in 2024. Both men ran as populists, promising to challenge the establishment and deliver economic revival. For Latinos, it wasn’t about left or right; it was about surviving.

The lesson for both parties in California, Texas and everywhere is that no matter how lines are drawn, no district should be considered “safe” without serious engagement.

It should go without saying, Latino voters are not a monolith. They split tickets and vote pragmatically based on lived economic realities. Latinos are the youngest and fastest-growing demographic in the U.S., with a median age of 30. Twenty-five percent of Gen Z Americans are Latino, myself among them. We are the most consequential swing voters of the next generation.

As I assume many other young Latino voters do, I approached my first time at the ballot box with ambivalence. I’ve long awaited my turn to participate in the American democratic process, but I could never have expected that my first time would be to stop a plot to undermine it. And yet, I feel hope.

The 2024 election made it clear to both parties that Latinos are not to be taken for granted. Latino voters are American democracy’s wild card — young, dynamic and fiercely pragmatic. They embody what democracy should be: fluid, responsive and rooted in lived experience. They don’t swear loyalty to red or blue; they back whoever they think will deliver. The fastest-growing voting bloc in America is up for grabs.

Francesca Moreno is a high school senior at Marlborough School in Los Angeles, researching Latino voting behavior under the guidance of political strategist Mike Madrid.

Zohran Mamdani, the progressive standard-bearer who could become New York City’s next mayor after Tuesday’s election, faces a public-safety trap that has entangled progressives nationwide: Voters want less cruelty, not less accountability. Confuse the two, and even progressives will vote you out.

Even before he has taken office, Mamdani is already fending off attacks from opponents, including former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other political adversaries. They seek to brand him as a radical by tying him to the national Democratic Socialists of America’s most controversial criminal justice planks, such as declining to prosecute misdemeanor offenses.

Yet, in distancing himself from those specific policies, Mamdani is cleverly navigating a political minefield that has doomed other reformers. His strategy demonstrates a crucial lesson for the broader progressive movement: voters want a less inhumane justice system, not one that is unenforced. If progressives are perceived as abandoning accountability for offenses like shoplifting and public drug usage, they invite a political backlash that will not only cost them elections (or reelections) but also set back the cause of reform nationwide.

Americans across the political spectrum support reducing extremely harsh punishments. They want shorter sentences, alternatives to incarceration and rehabilitation over punishment. The moral case against excessive punishment resonates with voters who see our system as unnecessarily cruel. The evidence is overwhelming: 81% of Americans believe the U.S. criminal justice system needs reform, and 85% agree the main goal of our criminal justice system should be rehabilitation.

But when it comes to deciding which behaviors deserve prosecution, the politics shift dramatically. Mamdani has previously aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that calls for ending the enforcement of some misdemeanor offenses.

This is precisely the kind of stance that can trigger backlash. The 2022 recall of San Francisco’s progressive district attorney shows why. About 1 in 3 “progressive” voters cast a ballot to remove the progressive DA from office. It wasn’t because they disagreed with his policies; in fact, these same voters supported his specific reforms when his name wasn’t attached to them. Their opposition was rooted in a fear that declining to prosecute low-level crimes would create a deterrence vacuum and incentivize lawlessness.

In Los Angeles, George Gascón’s trajectory offers a cautionary tale. As Los Angeles County district attorney, he survived two recall attempts before losing his 2024 reelection bid by 23 points. L.A. voters hadn’t abandoned reform — they’d supported it just four years earlier. But Gascón’s categorical bans on seeking certain harsher sentences or charging juveniles as adults triggered a revolt from his own rank-and-file prosecutors, creating the perception that entire categories of misconduct would go unaddressed. When prosecutors publicly sued him, arguing his directives violated state law, the deterrence vacuum became tangible. By the time Gascón walked back some policies, voters’ trust had evaporated.

This pattern repeats across the country. In Boston, DA Kevin Hayden has distanced himself so forcefully from predecessor Rachael Rollins’ “do not prosecute” list that he bristles at reporters even mentioning it. Yet Hayden’s office is still diverting first-time shoplifters to treatment programs — the same approach Rollins advocated. The difference? Hayden emphasizes prosecution of repeat offenders while offering alternatives to first-timers. The policy is nearly identical; the politics couldn’t be more different.

Critics are right to argue that the old model of misdemeanor prosecution was a failure. It criminalized poverty and addiction, clogged our courts and did little to stop the revolving door. But the answer to a broken system is not to create a vacuum of enforcement; it is to build a new system that pairs accountability with effective intervention.

Mamdani has already shown political wisdom by declaring, “I am not defunding the police.” But the issue isn’t just about police funding — it’s about what behaviors the criminal justice system will address. As mayor, Mamdani would not control whether the prosecutors abandon prosecution of misdemeanors, but what matters are his stances and voters’ perception. He should be vocal about how we thinks prosecutors should respond to low-level offenses:

• First-time shoplifters: Restitution or community service.
• Drug possession: Treatment enrollment, not incarceration.
• Quality-of-life violations: Social service interventions for housing and health.
• DUI offenders: Intensive supervision and treatment.

To be clear, this isn’t about ignoring these offenses; it’s about transforming the response. For this to work, the justice system must use its inherent leverage. Instead of compelling jail time, a pending criminal case becomes the tool to ensure a person completes a treatment program, pays restitution to the store they stole from, or connects with housing services. This is the essence of diversion: Accountability is met, the underlying problem is addressed, and upon successful completion, the case is often dismissed, allowing the person to move forward without the lifelong burden of a criminal record.

Mamdani’s proposed Department of Community Safety is a step in the right direction. But it must work alongside, not instead of, prosecution for lower-level offenses, and Mamdani must frame it as a partner to prosecution. If voters perceive it as a substitute for accountability, his opponents will use it as a political weapon the moment crime rates fluctuate.

New York deserves bold criminal justice reform. But boldness without pragmatism leads to backlash that sets the entire movement back. The future of the criminal justice progressive movement in America will not be determined by its ideals, but by its ability to deliver pragmatic safety. For the aspiring mayor, and for prosecutors in California and beyond, this means understanding that residents want both order and compassionate justice.

Dvir Yogev is a postdoctoral researcher at the Criminal Law & Justice Center at UC Berkeley, where he studies the politics of criminal justice reform and prosecutor elections.

Tuesday is election day, and, as usual, the pundits are breathless, the predictions are dubious and the consultants are already counting their retainers. But make no mistake: Off-year elections matter. Tuesday’s results will shape the political landscape for 2026 and beyond.

Let’s start in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has decided to fight Texas Republican gerrymandering with a little creative cartography of his own.

Proposition 50, which began as the “Election Rigging Response Act,” wouldn’t just help level the playing field by handing Democrats five House seats; it would also boost Newsom’s presidential ambitions. Polls suggest it’ll pass.

When it comes to elections involving actual candidates, the main attractions are in New York, New Jersey and Virginia.

In the New York City mayoral contest, Zohran Mamdani — a 34-year-old democratic socialist who seems like the kind of guy who probably buys albums on vinyl — is leading both former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (running as an independent) and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

National Republicans are already making Mamdani the avatar of everything Fox News viewers fear.

President Trump went so far as calling Mamdani a “communist” and threatening to send in the troops if he wins.

One thing is for certain: Mamdani is already a symbol. If he wins, he’ll be evidence for progressives that politics can still be interesting, exciting and revolutionary. To conservatives, he’ll be evidence that Democrats have gone insane.

If you’re paying attention, these arguments are not mutually exclusive.

Across the Hudson, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill (whose resume includes having been a naval officer and a federal prosecutor) is a very different kind of politician — the “I’m a competent adult, please clap” variety.

Her gubernatorial opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, is an ex-state legislator who radiates the kind of energy usually found at bowling alleys and diners. He’s the grandson of Italian immigrants, the son of blue-collar workers and the spiritual heir of every guy in a tracksuit yelling at a Jets game.

Ciattarelli came dangerously close to winning the governorship in 2021, which should be cause for concern for Sherrill, who’s sitting on a slim lead.

The main problem for Ciattarelli is Trump, who, despite his bridge-and-tunnel aesthetic, does more harm than good in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1988.

Trump’s termination of the Gateway Tunnel project didn’t help either. It’s one thing to be loud and populist; it’s another to cancel something that would make voters’ commutes slightly less horrible.

Speaking of commutes, a few hours south, down I-95, Virginia will also elect a new governor. Here, Democrat Abigail Spanberger — former CIA officer, former U.S. representative, professional moderate — is coasting toward victory against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the lieutenant governor.

Earle-Sears, a Marine, trailblazer and gadfly, is about to add “failed gubernatorial candidate” to her resume.

Her biggest headline was firing her campaign manager (a pastor who had never run a campaign before), which sounds like a metaphor for today’s GOP. Her best attack on Spanberger involved attempting to tie her to something someone else (the Democratic attorney general nominee) did (sending a violent text about a Republican politician).

Virginia has a history of electing governors from the party that opposes the sitting president, and Trump’s DOGE cuts (not to mention the current government shutdown) have outsize importance in the commonwealth.

Depending on how things shake out in these states, narratives will be set — storylines that (rightly or not) will tell experts and voters which kinds of candidates they should nominate in 2026.

For example, if Mamdani, who represents the progressive wing, wins, but Sherrill and/or Spanberger lose, the narrative will be that cautious centrism is the problem.

If the opposite occurs, the opposite narrative (radicalism is a loser!) will take root.

The postmortems write themselves: “Progressive Resurgence,” “Year of the Woman” and/or “The Return of the Center.” The problem? It’s unwise to draw too many conclusions based on Tuesday’s election results.

First, it’s misguided to assume that what works in New York City could serve as a national model.

Second, even if Sherrill and Spanberger both win, it’s impossible to know if they simply benefited from 2025 being a good year for Democrats.

Still, what happens on Tuesday will have major repercussions. Within a day of the election, everyone with a stake in the midterms and future elections will claim the outcome means what they want it to mean. Within a week, narratives will have congealed, while heroes and scapegoats will have been assigned.

And the rest of us will be right here where we started — anxious, exhausted — and dreading the fact that the 2026 midterm jockeying starts on Wednesday.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

California, described by one observer in the late 19th century as “the Jews’ earthly paradise” for the economic and social promise it held, seems to have become newly hostile to Jewish people in recent years. More than any other place on Earth, Jews have shaped much of California’s progress, from Levi Strauss and the founders of the entertainment industry to numerous other leaders in culture, science, real estate and finance.

The current assault expresses itself in politics, in schools from elementaries to universities, on the streets, in literary circles and in anti-Zionist graffiti.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley Law School (and my fellow contributing writer in the L.A. Times opinion section), expressed two years ago that “nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now.” The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness have filed a lawsuit against Berkeley, alleging “longstanding, unchecked” antisemitism.

This is not just a local issue. California’s population of 1.2 million Jews is roughly three times the size of each of the three largest Jewish diaspora communities outside the U.S. — in France, England and Canada. Los Angeles itself is the world’s third-largest Jewish city. Demographer Ira Sheskin noted recently that unlike New York City, which has lost roughly half its Jewish population since 1950, California’s Jewish populace has continued to grow, albeit more slowly in recent years.

Despite their relative demographic vitality, many California Jews feel increasingly isolated. Even in Hollywood, the Writers Guild, long a bastion of fashionable progressivism, suddenly decided to be neutral rather than making a statement on the Israel-Hamas war. Some leading figures, like Maha Dakhil, co-head of motion pictures at CAA, accused Israel of “genocide,” and others now refuse to work with Israeli film companies. Two thousand actors signed a statement outlining Israel’s “war crimes” with no mention of Hamas’ atrocities.

The political fallout has been considerable, and may become more so. Most California Jews are Democrats, according to the Pat Brown Institute; 20-30% tilt to the GOP. But the anti-Israel caucus, both here and nationally, is almost entirely made up of Democratic progressives. In a show of power, these activists even succeeded in disrupting California’s 2023 state Democratic Party convention. Many are justifiably uncomfortable with the GOP, citing the influence of antisemitism from the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, and some critics of Israel have found the Democratic Party too cozy with Jerusalem and its supporters, but generally the Republicans, including MAGA young people, are clearly more philosemitic than the Democrats.

At a local level, politics in many cities have sent a message to the Jews of California. Anti-Israel resolutions have passed in Oakland, Stanton, Burbank and Richmond, where the progressive-controlled City Council accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid.” Oakland called for an immediate ceasefire without mentioning Hamas’ atrocities. Demonstrators there even suggested that Israel murdered its own people as a pretext to attack Gaza.

And California’s youth are being groomed to hate Israel with hostile curriculums, setting up a whole new generation of antisemitism in the future and in the meantime putting Jewish teachers at risk. San Francisco has experienced anti-Israel walkouts in 10 high schools, organized by an advocacy group with access to student addresses.

At the same time, the drive to “globalize the intifada” affects California’s Jewish community directly. It has forced at least one L.A. synagogue to relocate its services; others have been vandalized. The Brentwood home owned by the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was attacked in 2023 with smoke bombs and red paint. More recently, two years after the bloody Hamas attack on Israel, supporters of Palestinians disrupted a commemoration at Pomona College, warning that “Zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly.”

These assaults make Jews more concerned about their safety and perhaps more likely to turn inward in their communities. Far less alluring under these circumstances is the Jewish notion of tikkun olam, or repairing the world. Although it is the driving force in many congregations, particularly Reform synagogues, in troubled times it can be eclipsed by concerns about safety.

This new environment favors the Orthodox, pioneers of a kind of “self-segregation,” notes writer Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal. And because of their higher birth rates and the below-replacement birth rates among non-Orthodox American Jews, the Orthodox could triple their share of the U.S. Jewish population by 2060. This trend plays out in California’s Jewish communities such as L.A.’s Pico-Robertson — epicenter of California orthodoxy.

The resurgence of California Jewry matters more today, given that voters in the traditional center of Jewish life, New York, have been supporting a mayoral candidate who was at least at one time sympathetic to “globalizing the intifada.” Many suspect that the once well-connected Jewish community in New York will likely face indifference, if not open hostility, from City Hall if Zohran Mamdani is elected.

Fortunately, the sun has not yet set on California’s Jews. The Golden State can still remain our “paradise” — true to its past. But this will work only by learning how to protect ourselves and make the case to our gentile neighbors so that we can continue to contribute mightily to the future of our common home.

Joel Kotkin is a contributing writer to Opinion, the presidential fellow for urban futures at Chapman University and senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas, Austin.

In recent weeks, American politics have stopped resembling a democracy and started looking more like a Manson family group chat, with a flag emoji right next to the “pile of poo” emoji in our bio.

First it was the Young Republicans (you know, the nerds who used to wear ill-fitting sports jackets and drone on about budgets) who were caught on Telegram saying things such as “I love Hitler,” calling Black people “watermelon people,” and joking about gas chambers and rape. Hilarious, right?

Then came Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s now-aborted nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel, who texted that he has “a Nazi streak” and that Martin Luther King Jr. Day belongs in “the seventh circle of hell.”

But the moral rot isn’t exclusive to Republicans. Not to be outdone, Democrat Jay Jones (who is currently running for attorney general in Virginia) was caught with texts from 2022 saying another Virginia lawmaker should get “two bullets to the head,” and that he wished the man’s children would “die in their mother’s arms.”

Charming.

Meanwhile, in Maine’s race for the U.S. Senate, old posts on Reddit reveal that Democrat Graham Platner — oysterman, veteran and self-described communist — said that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”

Did I mention that he called police officers “bastards,” broadly criticized rural white folks and had a tattoo on his chest that resembled Nazi imagery?

What we are witnessing is a trend: Bipartisan moral collapse. Finally, something the two parties can agree on!

Keep in mind, these are not randos typing away in their parents’ basements. These are ambitious young politicos. Candidates. Operatives. The ones who are supposed to know better.

So what’s going on? I have a few theories.

One: Nothing has really changed. Political insiders have always done and said stupid, racist and cruel things — the difference is that privacy doesn’t exist anymore. Every joke is public, and every opinion is archived.

It might be hard for older generations to understand, but this theory says these people are merely guilty of using the kind of dark-web humor that’s supposed to stay on, well, the dark web. What happened to them is the equivalent of thinking you’re with friends at a karaoke bar, when you’re actually on C-SPAN.

For those of us trying to discern the difference, the problem is that the line between joking and confession has gotten so blurry that we can’t tell who’s trolling and who’s armed.

Two: Blame Trump. He destroyed norms and mainstreamed vulgarity and violent rhetoric. And since he’s been the dominant political force for a decade, it’s only logical that his style would trickle down and corrupt a whole generation of politically engaged Americans (Republicans who want to be like him and Democrats who want to fight fire with fire).

Three (and this is the scary one): Maybe the culture really has changed, and these violent and racist comments are revelatory of changing hearts and worldviews. Maybe younger generations have radicalized, and violence is increasingly viewed as a necessary tool for political change. Maybe their words are sincere.

Indeed, several recent surveys have demonstrated that members of Gen Z are more open to the use of political violence than previous generations.

According to a survey conducted by the group FIRE, only 1 in 3 college students now say it is unacceptable to use violence to stop a speaker. And according to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, “53 percent of those aged 18-34 – approve of one or more forms of hostile activism to bring about change.” This includes “threatening or committing violence, and damaging public or private property.”

Of course, it’s possible (and probably likely) that some combination of these theories has conspired to create this trend. And it comes on the heels of other trends, too, including the loss of trust in institutions that began somewhere around the Nixon administration and never reversed.

Put it all together, and we’ve arrived at a point where we don’t believe in democracy, we don’t believe in leaders, and we barely believe in each other. And once you lose trust, all that’s left is anger, memes and a primal will to power.

Worse, we’ve become numb. Every new scandal shocks us for approximately 15 minutes. Then we scroll to another cat video and get used to it.

Remember the Charlie Kirk assassination? You know, the gruesome murder that freaked us all out and led to a national discussion about political violence and violent rhetoric? Yeah, that was just last month. Feels like it was back in the Eisenhower administration.

We’re basically frogs in a pot of boiling political sewage. And the scariest part? We’re starting to call it room temperature.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Congratulations are in order for President Trump. He said he would bring home Israel’s hostages and end the horrific fighting in Gaza, and that appears to be exactly what he is doing with this week’s deal. While many of the ideas that went into Trump’s 20-point peace plan predated his reelection, he and his team deserve a standing ovation for translating those ideas into a practical proposal, defining a first phase that was both big and digestible and putting together all the pieces that made its agreement possible.

Success, however, does have its downsides. Remember the Pottery Barn rule of foreign policy, made famous during the Iraq war? “You break it, you own it.” We now have the Trump corollary: “You patch it, you own it.”

Despite coming to office eager to shed America’s Middle East commitments, Trump just took on a huge one: responsibility for a peace plan that will forever bear his name. On Oct. 6, 2023, the day before Hamas’ assault, Arab-Israeli relations were poised for the historic breakthrough of Saudi-Israel normalization; two years later, Arab-Israeli relations — including Trump’s first-term Middle East peacemaking achievement of the Abraham Accords — are hanging on by a thread. By offering a plan that promises not just an end to fighting in Gaza but building a full and enduring regional peace, the president has taken on the task of repairing the damage wrought by Hamas’ unholy war. In other words: fixing the Middle East.

How Trump fulfills this not inconsequential responsibility has major consequences for America’s role in the region and in the world. The Chinese are watching whether, when the going gets rough, he will have the mettle to maintain a broad alliance. The Russians are watching whether the president will strictly enforce the letter of the deal or let certain unpleasant aspects slip. The Iranians will be watching whether Trump will find himself so drowning in the details of Gaza reconstruction that he won’t be able to stitch together a repeat of the highly successful Arab-Israeli coalition that protected Israel a year ago from Iran’s barrages of ballistic missiles and drones. And all these adversaries — and others — will wonder whether the intense U.S. focus needed to ensure implementation of this deal will distract the president from their own areas of mischief.

Those are some of the international stakes. There’s a difficult road ahead in achieving the deal itself. Some of the most vexing challenges will include:

• Implementing a highly complex Gaza peace plan that, in its requirements for disarmament, envisions Hamas to be fully complicit in its organizational suicide — or at least its institutional castration;
• Having the U.S. military orchestrate the recruitment, deployment and management of multinational forces to police the territory just as the Israel Defense Forces are withdrawing from it, a tricky maneuver fraught with risk;
• Creating and supervising a transitional administration that will oversee everything from humanitarian relief to rubble and ordnance removal to massive reconstruction projects, all the while preventing what’s left of Hamas from stealing goods to divert to underground weapons factories, an art that it perfected after previous ceasefires;
• Securing buy-in from the United Nations and its specialized agencies, which need to play an essential role in delivering food and medical services, without buckling under pressure to rehabilitate the deeply flawed U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, an organization that bears special responsibility for keeping the Palestinian-Israeli conflict alive for decades;
• Preventing Qatar and Turkey — longtime friends of Hamas who have emerged in recent weeks as diplomatic Good Samaritans — from translating their current status into a malign influence over the direction of Palestinian politics, which can only be worrisome to Israel and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and a long-term detriment to the cause of peace;
• And dealing every step of the way with an Israeli prime minister of a rightist coalition who will likely view every decision, great and small, through the lens of a fateful election he is expected to call very soon that will show whether the Israeli people want to punish him for the terrible errors that left Israel unprepared for Hamas’ 2023 attack or reward him for the impressive victories Israel’s military achieved across the region in the two years that followed.

Getting this far was a huge achievement. Ensuring effective execution — never a strong suit for a “big idea guy” like Trump — is a thousand times more difficult. This can’t be done with a small team of White House officials chatting on Signal. It will require an army of — please excuse the term — experts: experts in military command and control, experts in ordnance removal and disposal, experts in civilian rehabilitation and reconstruction, experts in communication and community engagement. Corporate subcontracting can address some of this, as can the impressive talents of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but don’t be fooled into thinking that a consulting company or a former foreign official can pick up the slack of the entire U.S. government. This plan, after all, has Trump’s name on it, not Deloitte’s or Blair’s.

The president has at least one more vital task in this matter. He must explain to the American people why we are doing this. For nearly 20 years, American presidents of both parties have said they wanted to pivot away from the Middle East, but they continually find themselves entangled in the region’s often byzantine conflicts and politics. Americans deserve to know why the “America First” president has decided that American interests are intimately bound up in the success of this peace plan. Our domestic divisions notwithstanding, fair-minded people on both sides of the aisle will be rooting for Trump’s success in this peace deal.

For now, sure, the president should enjoy the accolades and celebrate the coming release of Hamas’ hostages. The morning after will come soon enough.

Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement held a hiring fair last month in Provo, Utah, that drew hundreds of job seekers — in part with signing bonuses up to $50,000 and salaries of $50,000 to $100,000 a year. This follows recruiting events in Arlington, Texas, in August and Chantilly, Va., in June. Despite polls showing that most Americans do not like how the agency is doing its job, these expos were quite popular. “This is a highly desired career,” an ICE official told reporters at the Texas event. “A lot of people want to do this job.”

That seems to be true, which makes recent changes in ICE’s hiring and recruiting practices all the more troubling. Flush with cash from Congress, the agency is ramping up hiring while lowering standards for employment. ICE is using controversial slogans and imagery to attract new recruits. In its rush to expand, ICE is placing immigrants, citizens and its own agents in harm’s way.

Under the terms of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the president signed into law in July, Congress has given ICE an additional $75 billion in funding. The agency wants to hire at least 10,000 new agents as the administration seeks to fulfill its promise of deporting a million immigrants a year.

To meet this goal, ICE is lowering hiring standards. ICE agents can now be as young as 18, and there is no longer an age cap for new hires. The agency has also cut training time for recruits from 13 to eight weeks, by reducing Spanish lessons, firearms training and classroom hours. Working for ICE does not require a high school diploma, a military background or any law enforcement experience. An aspiring ICE agent only has to pass a background check, meet physical and medical requirements, and complete the abbreviated training course.

In contrast, many local police and sheriff’s departments have stricter hiring requirements. The Los Angeles Police Department requires its applicants to have a high school diploma, to complete six months of training and to be 21 at the time of police academy graduation.

ICE’s lower standards are alarming, given that agents have the power to make decisions with life-altering consequences. A teenager who formerly worked in a retail store or office workers bored with their daily routine could soon be out on the streets of L.A., carrying a gun and chasing anyone they think might be a migrant. New ICE agents might be placed in volatile situations without enough experience or judgment to make sound decisions. Immigrants — or anyone who looks like one — may be at risk of rookie ICE hires violating their constitutional and civil rights.

Unfortunately, we have been here before. Between 2006 and 2009, the Border Patrol scaled up quickly too. Hiring and training requirements were eased, with some agents rushed into training before background checks were completed. This resulted in drug cartel members being hired, corruption and a spike in agents being arrested for misconduct. With its ongoing rapid expansion, ICE is poised to repeat the same kind of mistakes.

ICE’s recruitment campaign is likewise problematic. “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out,” is one such appeal, which plays on false notions of “invasion” and immigrant criminality. On its official X account, Homeland Security uses images of Uncle Sam, as though joining ICE were akin to a military mobilization. In one post, the agency asks, “Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?” In another, it asks, “Which way, American man?” This meme appears to reference, “Which Way Western Man?” — a 1978 book by an avowed white supremacist.

ICE slogans urge job seekers to “Defend Your Country” and “Protect the Homeland.” But such language smacks of propaganda, not professionalism. Former ICE officials are rightfully concerned that such tactics might draw the wrong kind of recruits. Rather than attracting qualified applicants who want to serve in federal law enforcement, ICE may be appealing to people with antipathy toward immigrants, or who see themselves as helping defend the U.S. from demographic changes.

ICE performs a vital function for the government, with agents shouldering great personal risk and responsibility. Yet ICE’s current practices are far from ideal, with well-documented instances of agents using excessive force and engaging in physical and verbal abuse of suspected undocumented immigrants. So this is not the time for ICE to lower standards. The agency’s latest hiring and recruiting efforts will not bolster the agency’s image or effectiveness. Instead they raise serious questions about new agents’ readiness, ability and suitability for this line of work. To put it simply, do we really want teenagers participating in ICE raids?

To remedy the situation, ICE should slow down and properly train incoming agents. The minimum age should be reinstated to 21. More thorough Spanish-language instruction should be restored to curriculums. Otherwise, fast-tracked employees will be sent unprepared into communities that are already angry and fearful, which is potentially dangerous for everyone involved.

ICE’s hiring spree is reckless and irresponsible. As a matter of public safety, immigration enforcement should not be an entry-level job.

Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and contributor to NBC Latino and CNN Opinion. X: @RaulAReyes; Instagram: @raulareyes1

Donald Trump has made politics into a dystopian reality show he loves to host, but Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are playing by the old rules — and the mismatch may cause Democrats to get blamed for a government shutdown.

This is not because they’re dumb (they’re not) or incompetent (as the top Democrats of the Senate and House and as representatives of New York, both have risen to positions that require a Lyndon Baines Johnson-esque dexterity most of us couldn’t sustain for a single PTA meeting).

You can see it playing out in the government shutdown. Schumer and Jeffries seem almost neurologically incapable of operating in the world Trump has created — one where politics is less about governing or even persuasion, and more about staying on offense and generating spectacle.

Schumer exudes old-fashioned backroom politics and insider deal-making, which is another way of saying that he’s scripted, sweaty and stilted. It’s not that he’s bad at speaking; it’s that the kind of speaking he has mastered — the methodical, over-enunciated style that once charmed donors and editorial boards — is the equivalent of trying to fax something in 2025.

Jeffries, by contrast, is calm and disciplined. He speaks slowly, often channeling a rhythmic pattern that is reminiscent of a preacher or litigator. In a different era — the kind of era when “normal politics” still existed — this trait might have worked brilliantly. Today, it just feels tired. He’s supposed to be the hip one, once marketed as a “bad, brilliant brother from Brooklyn.” But his recent attempts at communication feel more like a corporate onboarding seminar.

And it’s not like he’s compensating for this shortcoming by electrifying the progressive base. Jeffries’ recent praise for New York Mayor Eric Adams (calling him a man who “served courageously and authentically for decades”) was a bit like praising Nickelback for artistic innovation. It’s not just inaccurate; it’s weirdly tone deaf to the moment.

To be fair, competing with Trump’s megaphone requires a skill set that is closer to professional wrestling than to 20th century politics. Trump is chaotic and often incoherent to the point of parody. But, and this is key, he never sounds like a normal politician.

In a game where authenticity — however poorly defined and cynically constructed — is the only real currency, the Democrats’ undynamic duo come across as high-functioning androids.

Countering Trump’s superpower calls for Democrats who can compete in the attention economy: leaders who feel authentic, actually enjoy picking constant political fights and understand that “going viral” is the new “getting quoted in the New York Times.”

Indeed, the only Democrats who have shown any capacity for being able to survive in this era have been Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Schumer and Jeffries do not have these skills, despite having plenty of material to work with.

Case in point: Republicans are about to make healthcare more expensive for millions of Americans. In theory, that’s a devastating talking point. In practice, it’s difficult to imagine Schumer and Jeffries delivering it in a way that can compete with Trump’s bogus assertion that the Democrats are shutting down the government because they want free healthcare for illegal immigrants and “transgender for everybody,” whatever that means.

Faced with these mistruths and the anemic response we’re getting from Schumer and Jeffries, the best-case scenario may be that Republicans — by virtue of being the “anti-government” party — take some blame for a government shutdown. But that’s not a strategy. That’s hoping partisan inertia is still on your side.

Regardless, the shutdown is merely the latest example of Democrats struggling to compete with MAGA. The larger problem is that the Democratic Party doesn’t really have a communicator right now. It hasn’t had one since Barack Obama left the stage.

It’s probably not fair to compare a congressional leader with a presidential candidate. But even by the standards of modern congressional leaders, Schumer and Jeffries are ill-equipped for the task at hand.

Democrats need someone with Newt Gingrich’s manic energy, revolutionary zeal and theatrical flair, coupled with Nancy Pelosi’s more pragmatic toughness and ruthless discipline. This is to say, someone who understands that politics is now a form of entertainment, but who still has the moral seriousness to prevent it from devolving totally into nihilism.

Instead, they’ve got two men who might as well be AM radio hosts trying to livestream on Twitch.

Ultimately, the Democrats’ communications crisis won’t be solved until they have a presidential nominee who can actually speak the language of the moment. Until they can find one, Democrats are stuck with two guys who are no match against a man who has turned political chaos into performance art.

And if Democrats don’t find one — and soon! — they won’t just lose the narrative: They’ll lose the country that depends on it.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

President Trump signed a proclamation that imposes a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, the immigration allocation set aside for highly skilled workers the U.S. economy needs. The new rules threaten the availability and deployment of human capital in the United States. This is misguided and will hurt U.S. growth and innovation, at a time when the global arms race for AI creates a vital need for the sharpest human talent and innovators.

We are professors who study and teach innovation-related topics at U.S. research universities. As immigrants to the United States from India and Panama respectively, we understand firsthand the sometimes painful discussions around H-1B immigration. Tensions around immigration routinely affect our academic institutions, our current students and former students now in industry. But there should be a lot of common ground on this polarizing topic.

STEM immigrants are creating substantial value in the United States. Immigrants play a significant role in entrepreneurial ventures in the United States and particularly startup innovation. Further, such immigrants are responsible for 23% of innovation output in the United States. This effect is in part based on policies that allow for foreign students to study and stay in the United States to work in startups.

H-1B immigration is like a natural selection process that benefits the U.S. immensely. Highly skilled immigrants in areas such as technology and medicine come hungry for hard work and full of ideas to better the world — to create new products, services and even markets as well as to cater to existing needs through more incremental improvement and optimization. Many of our best students are immigrants who are looking to stay in the United States and create work opportunities that would not be possible anywhere else in the world. In the United States, we recognize entrepreneurial success perhaps more than any other country. It is one of our greatest attributes as a society.

Nevertheless, we do have an immigration problem in the United States. The problem is that the distribution of benefits across the United States is highly skewed. Much of the wealth generated in terms of company creation and jobs has redounded to innovative clusters. But the idea to reduce the total number of H-1B immigrants by increasing the cost is exactly the wrong way to “solve” this problem — by dragging down the thriving parts of the economy rather than lifting up the rest.

To grow economic prosperity throughout the country, we need to offer more opportunities for more H-1B visa applicants. There are simply not enough trained U.S. nationals to take on the sort of labor required for the next wave of a tech-enabled industrial revolution.

Distributing the fruits of H-1B visa holders’ work more broadly requires a different approach than the U.S. has taken before. We should increase the total number of new H-1B visa recipients each year to 350,000 from around 85,000, with the additional visas apportioned across states so that locations like college towns — places like Lawrence, Kan., Gainesville, Fla., and Clemson, S.C., as well as cities such as Birmingham, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Boise receive sufficient numbers of H-1B workers. Visas could be allocated through a process akin to the resident-matching system for medical doctors, thereby sending workers to states where they would create greater value by filling economic and technological gaps. This infusion of labor would improve technological innovation in local economies and create local spillover effects in job creation and additional innovation.

Such immigration is necessary particularly now given a global push toward increased industrial policy, as China and others invest in AI and broader digital transformation. At a time when our national security is linked to technological innovation, it is shortsighted not to open ourselves to more immigration. If we do not, we will lose some of the best and brightest minds to Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and other countries.

Immigration is currently a volatile political issue in the U.S., as it has been at some other moments in the nation’s history. Although this is a country of immigrants, for people who feel insecure about pocketbook and cultural issues, continued immigration can feel threatening. As a percentage of people living in the United States, it has been more than 100 years since there were as many immigrants here as there are now. But as with past waves of immigration, productivity and transformation have followed.

This is particularly clear for H-1B visa holders, who create opportunities for people born in the U.S. and ensure the vitality of American innovation, security and democratic values. Increasing the costs of such visas would chill their use and reduce U.S. prosperity and innovation exactly at a time of great need.

Hemant Bhargava is a professor of business at UC Davis Graduate School of Management and director of the Center for Analytics and Technology in Society. D. Daniel Sokol is a professor of law and business at USC.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rendered obsolete the 4th Amendment’s prohibition on suspicionless seizures by the police. When the court stayed the district court’s decision in Noem vs. Vasquez Perdomo, it green-lighted an era of policing in which people can be stopped and seized for little more than how they look, the job they work or the language they speak.

Because the decision was issued on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the justices’ reasoning is unknown. All we have is Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s solo concurrence defending law enforcement’s use of race and ethnicity as a factor in deciding whom to police, while at the same time playing down the risk that comes with every stop — prolonged detention, wanton violence, wrongful deportation and sometimes even death. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her impassioned dissent (joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson): “We should not live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.” But now, we do.

The practical effect of this decision is enormous. It strips away what little remained of the guardrails that prevented police (including agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) from indiscriminately seizing anyone with only a flimsy pretext.

Now there is no real limit on police seizures. History teaches us that people of color will bear the brunt of this policing regime, including the millions of immigrants who are already subject to police roundups, sweeps and raids.

This decision is no surprise for those of us who study the 4th Amendment. The police have long needed very little to justify a stop, and racial profiling is not new. Yet prior to the Vasquez Perdomo order in most instances, police had to at least articulate a non-race-based reason to stop someone — even if as minor as driving with a broken taillight, not stopping at a stop sign long enough, or walking away from the police too quickly.

Now, police no longer need race-neutral person-specific suspicion (pretextual or real) to seize someone. Appearing “Latino” — itself an indeterminate descriptor because it is an ethnicity, not defined by shared physical traits — along with speaking Spanish and appearing to work a low-wage job is enough, even if you have done nothing to raise suspicion.

Some might believe that if you have nothing to hide there is no reason to fear a police stop — that if you just show police your papers or offer an explanation you can go on your way. Even if that were the case, this sort of oppressive militarized police state — where anyone can be stopped for any reason — is exactly what the 4th Amendment rejected and was meant to prevent.

Moreover, ICE agents and police are not in the business of carefully examining documents (assuming people have the right ones on them) or listening to explanations. They stop, seize and detain — citizens and noncitizens alike. If lucky, some people are released, but many are not — including citizens suspected of being in the country illegally, or individuals whose only alleged crimes are often minor (and the product of poverty) or living peacefully (often for years) in the United States without legal status. And as evidenced by plaintiffs in this case, even if eventually released, a single stop can mean harassment, violence, detention or a life permanently upended.

Even if the 4th Amendment doesn’t prevent them, can’t race-based discrimination and police violence often be addressed through civil rights lawsuits? U.S. Code Section 1983 allows individuals to sue officials who violate their rights. But the reality plays out differently. In a recent decision, this Supreme Court dramatically limited class-action lawsuits, the primary vehicle that would allow widespread relief. The court has created a world in which law enforcement can largely act with impunity under the doctrine of qualified immunity. And there is likely no recourse if a federal official such as an ICE agent violates one’s constitutional rights, as the Supreme Court has sharply limited the ability to sue federal officials for money damages even if they commit a clear constitutional wrong.

The recent decision virtually declaring that the 4th Amendment allows police to engage in express racial profiling may not be the final word on the matter. We hope it isn’t. But longstanding court doctrine had already allowed racial profiling to flourish under the guise of seemingly neutral language of “reasonable suspicion” and “consent.” By allowing a further erosion of the limits on seizures, the Court entrenches a system in which the scope of one’s constitutional rights depends upon the color of one’s skin. If the 4th Amendment is to retain meaning, it must be interpreted to constrain — not enable — the racialized policing practices that have become routine in America.

Daniel Harawa and Kate Weisburd are law professors at NYU Law School and UC Law San Francisco, respectively.

The first time Angel “Angel Baby” Rodriguez heard Art Laboe on the radio, he was 13, in his father’s garage in the City of Industry. Laboe was introducing “Nite Owl” (1955) by Tony Allen and the Champs. “His voice caught me first,” Rodriguez told me, “that very distinctive tone, and then I heard the listeners calling in. The rawness of connecting with a listener, of spinning the record, it was something.”

Rodriguez became a DJ himself, in the mold of Laboe, at first playing records for Radio Aztlan, the late-slot Friday program at KUCR in Riverside. “I didn’t sleep on a Friday night for over 20 years, from my 20s into my 40s,” he told me. Now he hosts “The Art Laboe Love Zone,” keeping alive his hero’s legacy — three hours of live radio, emanating five nights a week from a studio in Palm Springs, that bring “the music to someone,” in Angel Baby’s words.

I am one of those someones. I was a teenager when I first started listening to Laboe in the 1970s. I spent nights with him on the radio for the rest of his life, until he died Oct. 7, 2022. By then I’d already discovered Rodriguez, who took over the Laboe tribute broadcast in 2023, with his own old school “radio voice” and an oldies playlist suitable for dance parties, house parties, long-haul travel and anyone burning the candle at both ends.

Now, with algorithms curating Spotify and Sirius, with fewer live DJ voices anywhere, terrestrial American radio is said to be dying. But not Art Laboe’s voice.

The most beloved man I’ve ever met, hands down, was Laboe. He stood just over 5 feet but commanded theaters filled with thousands of people, standing onstage in shimmering sapphire or gold lamé suits, while four generations of fans screamed his name.

Born to an Armenian family in Utah, Laboe was always fascinated with radios and broadcasting. At the age of 9, he took a bus, alone, to Los Angeles to see his older sister, and eventually moved to California, attending Stanford, serving in the Navy and becoming a DJ on KRLA, the oldies station. His 1950s live music revues, at the El Monte Legion Stadium, were the first integrated dance concerts in California. He DJ’d on live radio continuously for 79 years, and emceed legendary music revues almost that long.

If Laboe didn’t invent the song dedication, he perfected it. Starting in 1943 on KSAN in San Francisco, Laboe read out dedications to loved ones sent to him by letter from wives missing husbands in World War II, and then later from call-ins sending songs to a lover lying next to them in bed, or sitting alone in the dark, separated by migrant labor, military service, a prison sentence or work.

DJ Angel Rodriguez, who carries on a tribute to Art Laboe, and a longtime fan, Proxie Aguirre, 82.

(Oscar Aguila for The Times)

Laboe’s resonant voice echoed through the Riverside neighborhoods where I grew up, from passing cars and open windows, a staple of la cultura in particular — the Chicano culture of lowriders, Pendletons and khakis. Even now, my neighbor Lydia Orta, 75, talks about going to his concerts in El Monte when she was 9, with her grandmother, while her son Johnny, 45, plays archived Laboe broadcasts through speakers in their yard.

On Aug. 9, at the Farmhouse Collective in Riverside, more than 500 Laboe fans from all over the Southland gathered to celebrate the man, two days after what would have been his 100th birthday. Onstage, Rodriguez, hosted in his own signature style — no gold lamé, but a fedora, black sunglasses and a white guayabera shirt. His handle, Angel Baby, derives from the iconic song of the same name recorded in 1960 by Rosie and the Originals, when Rosie Hamlin was just 15 years old, still a student at Mission Bay High School in San Diego, writing poetry about her boyfriend. Rodriguez is the Prince of Oldies now — Laboe is still the King — keeping la cultura, with its intense devotion to music and community, alive.

At the concert, I met Mary Silva, 73, who drove in with her daughter. “I grew up in East L.A.,” she told me, “and there were 14 siblings before I came. … We listened to Art Laboe in Florence. I still listen every night, on 104.7.” Her favorite song? “‘Tell It Like It Is,’ ‘cause I always tell it like it is.” The classic is by Aaron Neville.

Just at the stage edge were Elizabeth Rivas, 72, from San Bernardino, and her grandchildren Rene Velaquez, 34, and Raymond Velasquez, 16. Rivas has listened to Laboe and now Rodriguez for decades, and her favorite song is “Tonight,” by Sly, Slick and Wicked. Granddaughter Rene said, “She taught us to listen.” Rene’s pick was another by Sly, Slick and Wicked: “Confessin’ a Feeling.”

Near them was Henry Sanchez, 54, from my old neighborhood in Riverside, who grew up listening to Laboe on 99.1. His favorite? Brenton Wood’s “Take a Chance.” And Sal Gomez, 49, also from Riverside, loves Wood’s “Baby You Got It,” which he remembered from KRLA.

Onstage, Rodriguez — introduced by Joanna Morones, Laboe’s longtime radio producer — took the microphone and said, “Gracias a Dios that I am honored to be sitting in Art’s chair five nights a week, taking phone calls and dedications from all the listeners. It gives me chills to sit there.”

When Sly, Slick and Wicked took the stage, resplendent in three-piece suits and fedoras, their dance moves crisp and perfect, the lead singer told the crowd, “Art Laboe used to say ‘Confessin’ a Feeling’ was his most requested song at night, and for 50 years you all have kept us singing.” The audience joined in: “Baby, my love is real.” Time passes, love changes, but the song remains the same.

And yet these big gatherings are not where I hear the devotion. It threads through the dark, tracing the melancholy of separation and the intimacy of the night, as the voices of Angel Baby and Art Laboe come through radio speakers.

The Monday after the celebration, I listened from 9 p.m. to midnight, as always. At least eight terrestrial radio stations carry “The Art Laboe Love Zone,” and thousands of fans stream it in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and overseas.

Rodriguez, who drives the 110-mile round trip from Riverside to Palm Springs each weeknight after working as the head street sign maker for Riverside County, had gone through snail mail and DMs on Instagram and Facebook, collecting the dedications he’d read. Morones had chosen the recordings of Laboe for the night. From out of the past, Laboe spoke to a woman who wanted him to blow a kiss through the radio to a man far away.

Rodriguez read a letter from Papa Lito, from Wilmington, now in Delano. And then a dedication from Proxie Aguirre, who’d made an appearance at the birthday celebration. Aguirre is 83 now, a Laboe fan since she was 15. She was pictured on the cover of a Laboe compilation album, eyes sparkling, forever young. She was driven from Venice to Riverside by her sister-in-law.

“This is from the all-new Proxie, for her husband of 35 years, Eddie,” Angel Baby’s dulcet voice intoned. “She says, ‘Eddie, I love you mucho.’”

Then: “Let’s drop the needle on the record, baby bubba.”

Susan Straight’s 10th novel, “Sacrament,” will be published in October. It features a lowrider funeral in San Bernardino and a nurse who sings like Mary Wells.

Last year on the campaign trail, President Trump repeatedly promised to “slash energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months.” But actions speak louder than words. Since returning to office in January, the Trump administration has instead done everything it possibly can to drive up the cost of electricity. What is going on?

The damage starts with Trump’s attempts to prevent any new clean energy generation at a time when electricity demand is growing rapidly, caused by an explosion of new data centers and new housing, the expanding fleet of electric vehicles and a resurgence in American manufacturing. The U.S. needs more energy than ever, and 96% of electricity capacity added to the U.S. grid in 2024 came from clean energy. Why? Because clean energy is both the cheapest source of electricity and the fastest to produce. If we don’t rethink our energy future quickly enough to keep up with a growth in demand, then electricity prices will only continue to rise.

Then again, maybe the recent price spikes are part of Trump’s goals, because he’s done everything he can do to block new clean energy, including:

• Raising taxes on clean energy projects by at least 30% when Trump had all the renewable energy tax credits removed from his “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
• Blocking clean energy projects on federal lands, effectively creating a bureaucratic veto by requiring Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to personally sign off on permitting for every proposed clean energy project.
• Issuing “stop work” orders (with no significant justification) for two offshore wind projects that were fully approved and permitted — and, in one case, where construction was already 80% complete. This not only drives up the cost of constructing new electricity resources; it also creates a business climate in which no sane company would risk investing in new projects that may be torpedoed by an arbitrary and capricious federal government simply because the President thinks wind turbines mar his view.
• Canceling a Department of Energy loan commitment for the Grain Belt Express, a major transmission project designed to carry low-cost wind and solar energy from the Great Plains to Illinois and other eastern U.S. states where electricity prices have risen rapidly. This deprives those states of new energy and undermines the ability of Great Plains states to harness natural resources and grow their economies as energy exporters.
• Gutting federal agencies, such as the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which helps finance big energy projects, especially for innovative new technologies such as geothermal and new nuclear. Without government support for first-of-their-kind projects, these initiatives simply won’t happen and promising new energy technology will be delayed for years.

It’s not just the cost of building clean energy development that Trump has sabotaged. His high and ever-changing tariffs have also scrambled supply chains and raised prices for all types of energy. New tariffs, for example, have raised the cost of steel by up to 50%, which affects the cost of pipes needed for natural gas plants as well as towers for wind turbines and racks for solar panels. Every single kind of new electricity generation is now more expensive, and those higher material costs create higher prices for electricity on our utility bills.

Trump has also raised costs of existing energy resources, including supporting the oil industry’s efforts to dramatically increase U.S. exports of natural gas. This will reduce the supply available for heating homes and running power plants in America, raising prices on electricity bills and gas bills at once. Trump has also used emergency powers to force less-than-profitable coal plants to stay open, saddling customers with the extra costs to subsidize these old plants. In one instance, it cost locals $29 million to keep the J.H. Campbell plant in West Olive, Mich., open for just five weeks of extended operations. Analysts now estimate that Trump’s push to keep coal plants open could add between $3 billion and $6 billion per year to our electricity bills.

Is this sheer economic incompetence — not difficult to fathom given the rate at which Trump has driven businesses into bankruptcy — or part of his strategy to deliberately make electricity more expensive so people won’t switch to EVs and the oil industry won’t lose its customers?

Either way, electricity prices are already rising and Trump’s actions are clearly making it worse. Doubtless, Republicans will try to point the finger at renewable energy when electricity prices spike over coming years, but the real causes should be clear: Trump’s reckless decisions to block new clean energy production, raise tariffs on the energy supply chain, export our natural gas and force customers to subsidize struggling coal plants.

Americans need abundant, affordable energy to power our homes and grow our economy, and we need leaders who know how to support the clean energy revolution, not try to stand in its way.

Josh Becker is a Democratic state senator from Menlo Park and chair of the California Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications.

Four of America’s nominally closest allies — Britain, Australia, France and Canada — disgraced themselves this week by recognizing a so-called Palestinian state. In so doing, these nations didn’t merely betray their Western civilizational inheritance. They also rewarded terrorism, strengthened the genocidal ambitions of the global jihad and sent a chilling message: The path to international legitimacy runs not through the difficult work of building up a nation-state and engaging in diplomacy, but through mass murder, the weaponization of transnational institutions and the erasure of historical truth.

The Trump administration has already denounced this craven capitulation by our allies. There should be no recognition of an independent Palestinian state at this moment in history. Such a recognition is an abdication not only of basic human decency, but also of national interest and strategic sanity.

The global march toward recognition of an independent Palestinian state ignores decades of brutal facts on the ground as well as the specific tide of blood behind this latest surge. It was less than two years ago — Oct. 7, 2023 — that Hamas launched the most barbaric anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust: 6,000 terrorists poured into Israel, massacring roughly 1,200 innocent people in acts of unconscionable depravity — systematic rape, torture, kidnapping of babies. The terrorists livestreamed their own atrocities and dragged more than 250 hostages back to Gaza’s sprawling subterranean terror dungeons, where dozens remain to this day.

Many gullible liberal elites wish to believe that the radical jihadists of Hamas do not represent the broader Palestinian-Arab population, but that is a lie. Polls consistently show — and anecdotal videos of large street crowds consistently demonstrate — that Hamas and like-minded jihadist groups maintain overwhelming popularity in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria (what the international community refers to as the West Bank). These groups deserve shame, scorn and diplomatic rebuke — not fawning sympathy and United Nations red carpets.

The “government” in Gaza is a theocratic, Iranian-backed terror entity whose founding charter drips with unrepentant Jew-hatred and whose leaders routinely celebrate the wanton slaughter of innocent Israelis as triumphs of “resistance.” Along with the kleptocratic Palestinian Authority dictatorship in Ramallah, this is who, and what, Group of 7 powers like Britain and France have decided to reward with an imprimatur of legitimate statehood.

There is no meaningful “peace partner,” and no “two-state” vision to be realized, amid this horrible reality. There is only a sick cult of violence, lavishly funded from Tehran and eager for widespread international recognition as a stepping stone toward the destruction of Israel — and the broader West for which Israel is a proxy.

For decades, Western leaders maintained a straightforward position: There can be no recognition of a Palestinian state outside of direct negotiations with Israel, full demilitarization and the unqualified acceptance of Israel’s right to exist in secure borders as a distinctly Jewish state. The move at the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state torches that policy, declaring to the world that savagery and maximalist rejectionism are the currency of international legitimacy. By rewarding unilateralism and eschewing direct negotiation, these reckless Western governments have proved us international law skeptics right: The much-ballyhooed “peace process” agreements, such as the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, are not worth the paper they were written on.

In the wake of Oct. 7, these nations condemned the massacre, proclaimed solidarity with Israel and even briefly suspended funding for UNRWA, the U.N. aid group for the Palestinian territories, after agency employees were accused of participating in the attack. Yet, under the relentless drumbeat of anti-Israel activism and diplomatic cowardice, they have now chosen to rehabilitate the Palestinian-Arab nationalist cause — not after the leaders of the cause renounced terrorism, but while its most gruesome crimes remained unpunished, its hostages still languish in concentration camp-like squalor and its leaders still clamor for the annihilation of Israel.

Trump should clarify not only that America will not join in this dangerous, high-stakes charade, but also that there could very well be negative trade or diplomatic repercussions for countries that recognize an independent Palestinian terror state. The reason for such consequences would be simple: Undermining America’s strongest ally in the Middle East while simultaneously creating yet another new terror-friendly Islamist state directly harms the American national interest. There is no American national interest — none, zero — in the creation of a new Palestinian state in the heart of the Holy Land. On the contrary, as the Abraham Accords peace deals of 2020 proved, there is plenty of reason to embolden Israel. Contra liberal elites, it is this bolstering of Israel that fosters genuine regional peace.

The world must know: In the face of evil, America does not flinch, does not equivocate and does not reward those who murder our friends and threaten the Judeo-Christian West. As long as the Jewish state stands on the front lines of civilization, the United States must remain at its side, unwavering, unbowed and unashamed. Basic human decency and the American national interest both require nothing less.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer

Like that one friend who repeatedly promises to quit drinking after just one last round, the American government is staggering toward another shutdown. It’s starting to seem inevitable — because it looks as though neither side is going to swerve in this game of chicken.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate minority leader who somehow manages to perpetually look both tired and smug, can’t afford another political retreat. He’s refusing to give Republicans another blank check, aiming instead to wring out some key concessions in exchange for a few Democratic votes to get a funding bill through the upper chamber.

The problem? President Trump, who runs the show for Republicans, views a shutdown the same way Hans Gruber viewed the FBI in “Die Hard”: as a feature, not a bug. Shuttered agencies and mass firings of federal workers aren’t obstacles; they’re leverage (and sometimes the goal itself).

Schumer can’t back down, and Trump doesn’t want to back down. That’s why the shutdown feels more imminent than the last time we flirted with one, back in March, when Schumer and Democrats folded.

In fairness, their reasoning wasn’t crazy. Trump and Elon Musk were running roughshod with their Department of Government Efficiency, and a shutdown would have only given Republicans more discretion to decide which services (Space Force, a new White House ballroom and, I don’t know, a National Strategic Spray Tan Reserve) were “essential.”

Democrats also had a plausible reason to believe that Trump’s steep “reciprocal” tariffs would wreck the economy. They reasoned that if they just kept their heads down, the president would take all the blame for the crash — a reasonable idea that fell apart when Trump pumped the brakes before careening the economy off a cliff.

Since then, Trump has engaged in a campaign of authoritarian-tinged vengeance at such an impressive pace that the Democrats’ strategy of “playing possum” seems laughably passive and utterly naive — like assuming a hurricane will just get tired and stop.

So now Democrats are thinking, “Well, things can’t get any worse if we fight back.”

(Spoiler alert: Things can always get worse.)

Still, you can’t blame Dems for drawing a line in the sand, consequences be damned. Blocking government funding is one of the only mechanisms at the disposal of a minority party to demonstrate their opposition. Moral outrage and pride practically demand it.

Why help bankroll a government led by a man who doesn’t negotiate in good faith and seems intent on bulldozing democracy itself?

Why be complicit in normalizing — and funding! — Trump’s abnormal behavior?

Unfortunately, most voters don’t care about democracy in the abstract, and even fewer care about the inner workings of Congress. They care about kitchen-table issues.

So Democrats are trying to marry their righteous fury with something more practical and concrete — casting the shutdown as a battle to extend Obamacare subsidies and undo GOP Medicaid cuts.

If you’re keeping score, the opposition party is now trying to portray this looming shutdown as being about multiple things. And anyone who’s ever cracked a marketing textbook knows, that’s a fraught strategy. Dare I say “doomed”? If you can’t stay on one message, your opponent will control the narrative — meaning Republicans will blame the fallout on obstructionist Democrats.

Republicans have a simpler pitch that could almost fit on a bumper sticker: “We just want to keep things funded at the current level, plus toss in a little extra security for lawmakers.”

Which message will prevail? Who will take the blame if the government shuts down and Americans are suffering in myriad ways? Democrats say that Republicans control everything, so the buck stops with them. Republicans will say the Senate requires 60 votes and Democrats are withholding support to score political points. It’s not a slam dunk for either party. The American people just want the government to function, and neither side is making that easy.

You really have to squint to imagine a scenario where Dems could honestly declare “mission accomplished” when this is all over. Still, there is a growing sense that it’s better to go down fighting, even if you’re destined to lose (which they might be).

But make no mistake, a shutdown is very likely happening. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives isn’t even set to return to Washington until Wednesday (the day the government could be shuttered).

Meanwhile, Trump abruptly canceled negotiations with Democratic leaders, citing “the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats.”

The good news: We’re not talking about the debt ceiling or a possible government default; it’s just a government shutdown (something that has happened many times already). Social Security checks will still arrive. Federal workers will eventually get paid. Parks will close. Life will stagger on.

And so, barring some deus ex machina, we slouch toward another shutdown: a bureaucratic farce that everyone can see coming a mile away. It accomplishes nothing productive, yet feels destined to happen — like the “Austin Powers” slow-motion steamroller gag, except stretched out over weeks, costing billions of dollars and hurting millions of lives.

We’ve seen this movie before. We’re the ones being flattened.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom answering the Republican redistricting power-grab in Texas with a plan of his own is a powerful example of how Golden State Democrats are standing up to President Trump and firing up their base. But while the partisan fireworks draw attention, California Democrats are also quietly offering a different kind of model for the national party that may prove more meaningful in the long run. They’re not just resisting Trump; they’re actually governing.

Forget what you think you know about California and its lefty Democrats. They’re inching to the center, meeting voters where they are, and it’s improving people’s lives.

Just look at San Francisco, long seen as a dysfunctional emblem of failed progressive governance.

The city’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit leader and philanthropist, has shaken off left-wing taboos and focused on delivering results. Instead of defunding the police, he’s hiring more officers and cracking down on shoplifting and drug crimes. Instead of demonizing the business community, he’s partnering with them. He’s also reforming zoning laws to make it easier to build more housing, which should ease the city’s affordability crunch and the homelessness crisis. Lurie has been in office less than a year, but already crime is plummeting and his approval rate has reached 73%.

National Democrats can find a lesson here: Voters care about results, not just empathy and ideology.

In Sacramento, Newsom and legislative Democrats are taking a similar tack, with a stubborn focus on affordability and the courage to stare down opposition, even in their own coalition. For example, the Legislature recently reformed the California Environmental Quality Act, a well-intentioned 50-year-old law that had been twisted to obstruct construction projects, clean energy development and public transportation. This angered some powerful environmental activists, but it will ultimately help bring down costs for housing and energy.

CEQA reform is emblematic of California’s new, more balanced approach on some thorny issues, like energy and climate. The state recently announced that two-thirds of its power now comes from clean energy sources — a major achievement. At the same time, Newsom and the Legislature agreed to a package of bills that will increase oil drilling while extending the state’s cap-and-trade program. Together, the package can reduce energy costs for Californians and strengthen our state’s chances of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045. Some environmental justice advocates and climate purists oppose the deal, but it’s an example of how to make progress in the long term while addressing affordability in the short term.

Immigration is another example: Newsom and other leading California Democrats continue to stand up to the Trump administration’s inhumane immigration policies, including suing to stop the deployment of troops to Los Angeles. But they also recently passed a budget that pulls back on costly plans to provide health insurance to all low-income undocumented immigrants.

This reflects the new California model: principled resistance and pragmatic governance. The results speak for themselves. The Golden State recently surpassed Japan to become the fourth-largest economy in the world.

Democratic leaders are making these moves because they are listening to voters who consistently say that the high cost of living is their top concern.

In 2024, these concerns contributed to a surprising number of Californians abandoning Democrats, even with Kamala Harris, the state’s former U.S. senator and attorney general, on the ticket. Trump flipped 10 counties and boosted his support in 45. Since 2016, 72% of California counties have gotten redder, including many with heavy Latino populations.

Democrats are paying attention and are wisely changing course. Being responsive to voter concerns doesn’t have to mean sacrificing core values, but it does require new approaches when the old ways aren’t working.

Karen Skelton (whose father is a political columnist for the Los Angeles Times) is a political strategist, having worked in the White House under Presidents Clinton and Biden and at the United States Departments of Energy, Transportation and Justice.

The abrupt suspension of comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show on ABC might seem like the least of our worries amid the shuttering of government agencies, the collapse of congressional checks on executive power and bands of ICE agents detaining people on the basis of race or language. But humor matters.

While the news media is sometimes referred to as the fourth estate, alongside the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, few think of stand-up comedy as a pillar of democracy. But jokes allow a society to mock itself, spotlight uncomfortable truths, bridge differences and say what cannot otherwise be said. Humor is a crucial bulwark of a free society. To play that role, comedians need the leeway to embarrass, provoke and take risks, sometimes crossing the line into offense.

In the wake of Kimmel’s suspension it is hard to imagine any mass market humorist poking fun with abandon that biting satire demands. One of the most powerful salves for people under stress, and a particular lifeline during the Trump era, is the ability to laugh at the ridiculous or unfathomable. Lowering a curtain on comedy will not only dim one of our country’s most treasured cultural forms, but also accelerate the dark turn of American democracy.

Dating back to pre-revolutionary times, political satire has been a mainstay of American culture. Rebellious colonists skewered British taxation policies, military blunders and parliamentary pomposities through plays, songs and cartoons that rallied others to the cause of independence and made mass mobilization fun. Benjamin Franklin’s 1773 “Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One” used irony to lampoon British policy, undermining authority while avoiding direct flouting of the era’s harsh sedition laws. The juxtaposition of a lighthearted format with a pointed commentary has marked America’s comedic tradition ever since, encompassing literary humorists such as Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe, satirical magazines like Puck and MAD, political cartooning, vaudeville, radio satire, stand-up and the late-night juggernauts of variety shows, talk shows and, since 1975, “Saturday Night Live.”

While our 1st Amendment tradition has mostly protected satire over the years, it hasn’t prevented heavy-handed politicians from occasionally trying to silence their comedic critics. When Thomas Nast, known as the father of American political cartooning, took on New York City’s Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall political machine in the 1870s, Tweed reportedly said: “Let’s stop those damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me — my constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see pictures.” But Nast kept up a furious pace of cartooning, hastening Tweed’s downfall on corruption charges.

Charlie Chaplin’s satire of capitalism and authoritarianism in films including “Modern Times” and “The Great Dictator,” alongside his outspoken politics and alleged communist ties, drew FBI surveillance. In 1952 his re-entry permit to the U.S. was revoked, effectively exiling him for nearly 20 years.

Around the world, autocrats have recognized the power of comedians to puncture preferred narratives, undermine authority and stoke dissent. The Nazi regime’s Reichskulturkammer, or chamber of culture, tightly censored cabaret and comedy. Cabaret performer Werner Finck opened a club in 1929 and dared Gestapo members in the audience to write down his every word. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels ordered the venue shuttered in 1935 and sent Finck and his colleagues to a six-week stint in a concentration camp. In the Soviet Union, jokes about Joseph Stalin or the Communist Party were treated as serious crimes against the state, warranting time in the gulag.

In the age of international television and social media the potency, and the perceived threat, of comedy has only grown. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky built national stature as a television satirist playing a fictional president. His predecessor’s government, which did all it could to derail its political opponents, did not see Zelensky coming; until it happened, few imagined his leap from sound stage to presidential podium. In 2013 the Cairo government issued an arrest warrant for television comic Bassem Youssef, known as the Jon Stewart of Egypt, for jokes about President Mohamed Morsi and Islam. He was hounded into exile and has lived in the U.S. for the last decade.

In an increasingly polarized America, the place of comedy has been under attack from all sides. A decade ago Jerry Seinfeld said he would no longer do shows on college campuses because of ferocious politically correct backlash against his jokes. In 2019 the New York Times announced it would no longer publish political cartoons after apologizing for an antisemitic caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This year the White House Correspondents’ Dinner canceled a planned appearance by comedian Amber Ruffin, the latest in a series of kerfuffles over controversial emcees of that event. The rising cost of reprisals, in the form of offended constituencies, online outrage and direct threats, is increasingly rendering humor too hot to handle.

The public threats issued by Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr against Kimmel and ABC, based upon comments by the comedian that were neither incendiary nor menacing, marks a sharp escalation in the battle against humor. The immediate capitulation of Disney, one of America’s largest and most revered corporations, is a shocking sign of just how quickly private, independent institutions are melting down under heated threat by a vindictive administration. If a comedian as mainstream as Jimmy Kimmel is not safe from silencing, it is hard to imagine who is.

In helping audiences understand what is happening around them and reckon with their fears, comedy is both a collective coping mechanism and a catalyst for unfettered, clear-eyed thought. Autocrats around the world understand this.

Suzanne Nossel is a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy and international order at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the author of “Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All.”

In the days since Charlie Kirk’s killing, conservatives have embraced a phenomenon they previously called toxic: cancel culture.

The impulse to cancel some voices this past week is understandable: Celebrating murder is cruel. It’s gross. It’s wrong. But the irony is impossible to miss: Conservatives, who long treated cancel culture as an affront to the 1st Amendment spirit of open discourse, are now calling for people to lose their jobs and their livelihoods, all because of something stupid they said on the internet.

This is the same issue that drove numerous stand-up comedians, young men, podcasters and Silicon Valley tech bros into the arms of Donald Trump in 2024. But now, in an amazing turn of events, conservatives are now aping the progressive scolds and speech cops, only with red hats.

Actually, their version is worse. The left’s “accountability culture” mob might have been overbearing, but their agenda was (with a few notable exceptions) largely driven by hall monitors. Today’s “woke right” is executing things in a more overt, efficient and official manner — which for the record means it can violate not just the spirit of the 1st Amendment but the actual, you know … 1st Amendment.

As a case in point, JD Vance, the vice president of the United States of America, recently told Kirk’s radio audience: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer.”

Which raises the question, what if their employer is the government? That would be awkward. But no problem! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly telling staff to track down soldiers guilty of wrongspeak. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) is trying to get teachers terminated, tweeting: “We don’t fund hate. We fire it” — which feels like the sort of slogan Mao might have had printed on a T-shirt.

And speaking of printers, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has warned that the government can “prosecute” any professional printer who refuses to “print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil.” She also pledged to “absolutely target” anyone who targets anyone with “hate speech.”

Not long ago, progressives insisted bakers must bake cakes for gay weddings, and now a U.S. attorney general from a Republican administration is insisting that printers must print images for vigils. Funny how the tables turn.

Then, there’s the so-called Charlie Kirk Data Foundation, which claims to have a searchable list of tens of thousands of people who posted mean tweets after Kirk’s death. Collectively, this purge campaign seems to be working. A lot of scalps have already been claimed, including those of prominent pundits and late night host Jimmy Kimmel (who was suspended after making remarks about the motives of Kirk’s killer).

But — let’s be clear — opposition to cancel culture is merely the latest principle that Trump-era Republicans have conveniently abandoned. Indeed, almost every tenet that conservatives held dear a decade ago has been reversed.

And people are starting to notice. Oregon state Rep. Cyrus Javadi recently switched parties, citing the GOP’s abandonment of principles like “limited government, fiscal responsibility, free speech, free trade, and, above all, the rule of law.”

He has a point. Trump’s America now owns a chunk of U.S. chipmaker Intel (so much for small government), spends like a drunken sailor, slaps tariffs on everything that moves (bye-bye, free trade) and ignores laws he doesn’t like — most recently, the TikTok sell-off mandate that was passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, which Trump decided to treat like a menu item he didn’t order — until he found a suitable buyer.

But it’s not just normie Republicans who are worried about Trump diverting from the Reagan-Bush playbook.

Comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon recently observed that the Trump agenda looks suspiciously like the dystopia that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones used to warn us about between colloidal silver ads: “Military in the street, the FEMA camp, the tech company that monitors everything, the surveillance. This is all of that.”

So why is this happening? Why the contortions? I’m reminded of an old story Rush Limbaugh used to tell about the late actor Ron Silver.

As the story goes, Silver went to Bill Clinton’s first inauguration as a bleeding-heart liberal and was horrified by the military flyover. And then he realized, “Those are our planes now.”

That’s where conservatives are when it comes to cancel culture. They’ve finally realized that this is their cancel culture now.

And maybe that’s the grubby little secret about politics in the Trump era. Almost nobody cares about values or morals — or “principles” — anymore. Free speech, limited government, fiscal restraint — these are all rules for thee, but not for me.

Cancel culture wasn’t rejected, it was just co-opted. So go ahead. Drop a dime. See something, say something. Big Brother is watching.

Irony, meet guillotine.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Thursday found former President Jair Bolsonaro guilty of conspiracies related to his failed 2022 reelection bid. The court found that Bolsonaro tried to instigate a military coup and to poison his opponent, current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro, the former president of Latin America’s largest democracy and its wealthiest country, was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison and is barred from ever seeking public office again.

Bolsonaro is one among two dozen elected presidents and prime ministers in recent history around the world who used their time in office to undermine their countries’ democratic institutions. In addition to undermining confidence in elections, the Brazilian leader weakened public and scientific institutions by defunding them. Bolsonaro’s family and political associates faced repeated scandals. As a consequence, the president governed in constant fear of impeachment — a fate that had ended the careers of two prior Brazilian presidents since the country’s return to democracy in 1998. To avoid this outcome, Bolsonaro forged alliances with an array of legislative parties and strange bedfellows. Brazilian political scientists describe the implicit agreement: “The deal is simple: you protect me and I let you run the Country and extract rents from it as you wish.”

Curiously, the decision is also a setback for President Trump here in the United States. Trump views Bolsonaro as an ally who, like him, has been persecuted by leftists and subjected to retribution by courts. The American president tried hard to stop the Brazilian court from ruling against Bolsonaro. In August, Trump sent a letter to Lula, Bolsonaro’s nemesis. Trump threatened to hike most tariffs on Brazilian exports to the U.S. to 50% should his friend remain in legal peril.

Trump’s empathy reflects the two presidents’ parallel paths. Bolsonaro, like Trump, used his time in office to test democratic norms, weaken independent public institutions and vilify his opponents. Both men express a taste for political violence. Where Trump has often mused about beating up hecklers and shooting protesters in the knees, Bolsonaro was nostalgic for military rule in his country. On the campaign trail in 2018, he asserted that Brazil would only change for the better “on the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do: killing 30,000.”

Both Trump and Bolsonaro tried to cling to power after losing their reelection bids. Heeding their presidents’ claims of electoral fraud, Trump’s supporters rioted in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, as did Bolsonaro’s in Brasilia, the Brazilian capital, on Jan. 8, 2023. Bolsonaro’s involvement in these post-election acts was the basis of the legal peril that has consumed him.

Trump depicts the Brazilian judge most responsible for Bolsonaro’s prosecution, Chief Justice Alexandre de Moraes, with disdain. Trump describes the case against Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt” in support of a Lula government, describing the current president as a “radical leftist.”

In fact there is little love lost between Lula and De Moraes. Lula is the leader of the social-democratic Workers’ Party; De Moraes is closely associated with the center-right PSDB and is known for his tough-on-crime stances. De Moraes’ activism dates back to the Bolsonaro presidency, when Brazil’s attorney general, appointed by Bolsonaro, was less than energetic in upholding the rule of law. To transpose the Brazilian situation and De Moraes’ activism to the U.S. context, imagine that, viewing the Justice Department’s lack of vigor in prosecuting Trump, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had roused himself to encourage legal action against the president.

Many Americans will view Brazil and the Bolsonaro story with a certain envy. Here is a president who dealt with electoral loss by claiming fraud and by instigating his military and civilian supporters to violence, and who has been held decisively to account.

Accountability of public servants is at the heart of democracy. Voters can hold incumbents accountable in elections — political scientists call this “vertical accountability” — as can coequal branches of government, which we call “horizontal accountability.” Would-be autocratic leaders such as Bolsonaro try to escape both kinds of accountability, staying in office even when they lose (the end of vertical accountability) and undermining independent courts, agencies, central banks and whistle-blowers (there goes the horizontal version). In the end, Bolsonaro was held to account both by voters and by the courts.

Trump’s self-insertion into the Bolsonaro prosecution calls attention to another form of accountability, or at least presidential constraint, which has gone missing from our own governing administration. That is the constraint that presidents experience when advisors keep them from acting on instincts that are unwise.

If such advisors were to be found in today’s White House, they might have counseled the president not to threaten Brazil with high tariffs. Doing so risks exacerbating inflation of the prices of key consumer goods (coffee, orange juice), something that is politically dangerous because controlling inflation was an issue at the heart of Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign. The use of tariff threats as a cudgel to try to save an ally from legal peril also gives lie to the purported rationale behind tariffs: protecting U.S. manufacturers or correcting trade imbalances.

Gone, then, are the days when Americans might have served as a model of democratic governance. For all of its own problems, of which there are many, the second-largest country in our hemisphere is schooling us in what democratic accountability looks like.

Susan Stokes is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and faculty director of the Chicago Center on Democracy. She is the author, most recently, of “The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies.”

With this administration, it’s another day, another unwinnable fight. All with a real war coming over the horizon.

President Trump campaigned on ending the “forever wars,” but he’s since launched two new ones: a shooting war on drugs in the Caribbean and a symbolic war on crime in America’s cities. Neither will ever end and both will tie our military down, just as the most potent threat America’s ever known is rising and readying to fight.

Let’s start with the real war. China is America’s only real competitor, an adversary far more powerful than the Soviet Union ever was. President Xi Jinping has directed his military to be able to take Taiwan by 2027, and they’re nearly set. U.S. Admiral Sam Paparo, America’s military commander in the Pacific, testified in the spring that this activity against Taiwan grew 300% in 2024. These aggressive actions, he said, are “not just exercises; they are rehearsals,” adding that “we must be ready today.” China’s recent military parade put a missile-shaped exclamation on Paparo’s point.

But America’s not preparing for real war right now. And because the world knows that America’s not preparing, America’s not deterring.

Instead we’re sending the Navy to blow up a drug dealer and deploying the National Guard to walk around Los Angeles, Washington and maybe Chicago. These distractions degrade military readiness at a time when we need all the ready we can get.

Last week, the Trump administration killed 11 people when it struck a four-engine speedboat in the southern Caribbean. The president said it was transporting drugs from Venezuela to the U.S. There’s much to consider: whether the strike was legally justified, or possibly illegal murder; or whether the administration should have notified and gotten authorization from Congress.

Setting those aside for the moment, let’s focus on whether a war on drugs in the Caribbean is a prudent use of military assets. The Pentagon sent to the region three guided-missile destroyers (around 1,000 sailors), an Amphibious Readiness Group (4,500 sailors) and a Marine Expeditionary Unit (2,200 Marines), along with surveillance planes, special forces assets, and a submarine. All to destroy a single speedboat? One that may or may not have been carrying a few kilograms of cocaine, or may have been carrying people on a human smuggling run.

Last year, just doing its job, American law enforcement seized 63 metric tons of cocaine. At that rate, the same day as the strike, we could assume that American law enforcement seized about 172 kilograms of cocaine alone, all without an additional armada.

There’s a reason we don’t use blowtorches for brain surgery and knives with soup bowls. They don’t work. Neither will sending thousands and thousands of sailors and Marines — at enormous cost in taxpayer money and troop training — to fight a second war on drugs, one boat at a time.

Consider the American military’s most recent history with drug interdiction. We wanted drug production to go down in Afghanistan, but it tripled in our two decades there. Or take it from Nixon: Wars on drugs don’t end well. Because they simply don’t end.

Neither will the new symbolic war on crime in U.S. cities. Again, costly, when one considers we already have a tool in the box for crime. The National Guard and Marine deployment to Los Angeles cost America $120 million for approximately 5,000 troops over 60 days (some 300 remain today). Washington, as a federal city, has taken on approximately half those used in California, which brings the total bill closer to $200 million for these unnecessary additional measures.

But what’s worse, far worse, is what the soldiers are doing. CNN recently reported that one soldier’s mission in Washington is to walk around Chinatown from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. every day. Another from Mississippi said she’d been routinely cursed at. Yet another guardsman from Louisiana admitted confusion about what the military was even there to do.

The president has said he wants Chicago to be next (“Chipocalypse Now”). The city’s mayor and the governor of Illinois have stood against such a move. It appears the people of Chicago are considering even stronger opposition. This summer a research center at the University of Chicago found that 60% did not approve of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. It also found that 28% would “attend a protest against the Trump administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants, even if it became violent.”

With Chicago’s 2.5 million people, even if the survey counted too many tough talkers — if only 10% of the citizens there were willing to physically contest a deployment that was part of an immigration enforcement roundup — that’s hundreds and hundreds of thousands against handfuls of troops. Not one American soldier ever signed up to police Chicago.

Back in Washington on Friday, President Trump signed an executive order changing the Department of Defense’s title to the “Department of War” in large part because he believes it will get the country back to fighting “to win.” But when you start a new war on drugs and a new war on crime, when you send the ax instead of the scalpel — you’ll never win. You’re just signing America up for two more forever wars, two more unwinnable fights.

And the only one playing to win is Beijing.

ML Cavanaugh is the author of the forthcoming book “Best Scar Wins: How You Can Be More Than You Were Before.” @MLCavanaugh