by Elias Aboujaoude, opinion contributor – 03/30/26 10:00 AM ET

Birthrates are collapsing across the developed world, and the numbers are stark enough to unsettle most demographers. Nearly three‑quarters of humanity already live in countries with fertility at sub-replacement levels, according to the United Nations. A 2024 Lancet forecast goes further: 97 percent of countries are projected to fall below replacement fertility by 2100, a demographic inversion without historical precedent. 

These declines imply shrinking workforces, depleted pension funds, increasingly isolated older adults and a worsening of the politics around immigration, often seen as the only realistic remedy in Western societies. Familiar forces have been blamed — delayed parenthood, wider access to contraception, the rising cost of childrearing and existential angst that spans climate change, war resurgence, and how AI will transform the future. 

But something more intimate is also contributing, rooted less in macroeconomics and anxiety than how digital life is rechanneling libido. Its consequences may be civilizational.

The smartphone is now the closest relationship many people have. It is the last thing they touch before falling asleep and the first thing they reach for upon waking up. According to a survey by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 87 percent of Americans regularly sleep with their smartphones in the bedroom. 

The device has colonized that most personal of spaces, turning the bed into a workstation and turning notifications, likes, shares and algorithmically curated content into a preferred source of dopamine hits. As a result, many couples spend their time side by side in distinct digital bubbles. More than distraction, this is a kind of fetishistic displacement that redirects desire. As the device becomes the primary source of stimulation, the partner is “phubbed” (for phone snubbed), with reproductive sequelae. 

Pope Warns against AI exploitation, compares tech to Tower of Babel | RISING

The smartphone is the portal to many potentially problematic behaviors, from social media overuse to those related to gaming, shopping, gambling and pornography. Among them, the latter is particularly relevant here. Data suggest pervasive use: In one survey of adults under 40, 16 percent of men reported viewing pornography at least once daily. But what they are consuming is not simply sexual content. It is a hyper‑stimulating simulation thereof, designed to maximize arousal through exaggeration and novelty. 

Real intimacy — negotiation, vulnerability, emotional and physical effort — cannot compete with the frictionless gratification of unrealistic content. In a study that analyzed 3,419 men aged 18 to 35, 21 percent had some level of erectile dysfunction during partnered sex, and higher pornography consumption was significantly correlated with erectile dysfunction, even after adjusting for confounders.

The proposed mechanism seems straight-forward: As the brain becomes accustomed to a certain intensity of stimulus, expectations are distorted, and bodies and practices that are not representative of typical human anatomy or sexuality become normative. The result is a growing cohort of individuals who prefer virtual arousal to actual intimacy because the digital alternative is easier, more reliably available and more exciting.

One might expect online dating platforms to counteract these trends. By dramatically extending the pool of eligible people one can connect with, dating apps should make it easier than ever to find partners. But research suggests otherwise. 

Our study of Tinder, the world’s most popular dating app, suggests that about half of users are not seeking offline dates at all. Our interpretation is that many use the app for validation, ego boosts and distraction — in other words, like any social media platform and not as a pathway to real relationships, let alone family formation. This experience has become so demoralizing that serious users are abandoning these platforms in droves; up to 1 million Gen Zers deleted their dating apps in 2024 alone.

The rise of AI companions may exacerbate the problem. Platforms such as Replika and Character.ai allow users to form emotionally rich, non-demanding relationships with artificial partners. These systems are designed to be “perfect” — micro-tuned to meet one’s every last taste, and they are never disappointing. They are also always available and happy to recede when not needed. It is intimacy without expectation and companionship without conflict or commitment. 

2023, 40 percent of Replika users were engaging in romantic partnerships with their bots. Do human partners stand a chance? Perhaps not, if you consider the story of the man who “married” his AI chatbot. Should these relationships become more normalized, they may represent the final decoupling of companionship from anchored biological reality.

A digital revolution that has virtualized life may end up doing away with it. The decline in birthrates is not merely a policy problem; it is a symptom of a digital culture that successfully competes with human connection. By displacing partners, rechanneling desire and offering the illusion of perfected, commitment-free companionship, we are eroding the foundations of partnership and child-rearing. 

The “fertility crash” can be seen as the demographic bill coming due for a decades-long shift toward digital individualism. Proposed solutions such as mandating parental leave or tax credits will not be sufficient if the fundamental need for human intimacy continues to be outsourced to the screen. To address the crisis, we must also recognize that an insidious competitor to the next generation may be the glowing rectangle in our hands.

Elias Aboujaoude is a clinical professor, technology researcher and writer at Stanford University’s Department of Psychiatry, where he is chief of the Anxiety Disorders Section. He is also the director of the Program in Internet, Health and Society at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Joi AI says it will pay people $2,000 a month to masturbate. Yes, you read that right.

The AI companion startup is hiring 10 “masturbation consultants” to test a feature called Daily Guided Masturbation, which uses mood-matched AI voice sessions to guide users through the experience. Participants would document how regular use affects stress, sleep quality, mood, and confidence. The four-week role is open to adults 18 and older in the U.S. and the U.K.

“The role is real, and we’ve had great responses since the posting went live,” Joi AI Head of Brand and Communication Julie Levin told Decrypt.

The listing describes ideal candidates as “articulate, observant, and impossible to blush”—people who can describe sensations “better than a sommelier describes a wine.” The posting also promises flexible scheduling, and “the most interesting ‘What do you do for a living?’ answer at any party.”

Joi AI is an online platform that includes AI-generated avatars, voice interactions, and personalized chat experiences built around companionship and intimacy. Joi AI describes the new consultant role as structured product testing tied directly to its new feature.

“The role involves testing and giving feedback on the mood-matched AI voice-guided sessions, and providing feedback on the overall user experience,” Levin told Decrypt.

The hiring push also comes as studies suggest AI companion use is becoming more common among people already in relationships, often without their partner’s knowledge.

A new report from the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies found that among dating, engaged, and married young adults who regularly used AI romantic companions, nearly 3 in 10 said their real-life partner did not know about it.

Israel is condemned for surviving a massacre while regimes guilty of actual ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter escape outrage and scrutiny.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Since October 7, we have been lectured nonstop about the supposedly singular sins of Israel.

The campuses, the left-wing media, and the new Democratic Socialist officials, both federal and state, following the cue of student activists and professors from the Middle East, have painted Israel and their Jewish supporters as Nazis, fascists, and among the worst murderers in today’s bloody world.

This is nonsensical. The medieval-style massacre of 1,200 Jews in their homes on October 7, during a time of peace, should have increased awareness of the existential dangers Israel faced. Instead, it spawned a gathering storm of antisemitism.

What Was Israel Supposed to Do?

Note that leftists and pro-Hamas students and faculty were shouting the eliminationist slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in euphoria almost immediately in response to the news of the slaughter. Hundreds of dead Jews set off a Pavlovian spasm of glee from the Middle East to American campuses.

Indeed, during the three-week hiatus following the mass killings—well before the IDF entered Gaza on October 27—Israel and its supporters were damned in ways we have not seen for years. Even as Israel sought to negotiate a release of the 251 hostages and a surrender of all those in Hamas responsible for the massacres, the international furor at Israel only mounted. Or was it instead an ebullition of anticipation that still more slaughter of Israelis would follow?

Yet Israel’s demands were met with more defiance. Hamas, and its delusional supporters, both in the Middle East and in the West, saw October 7 not as the end of bloodletting but as the beginning of far more slaughter—and of the hoped-for end of Israel altogether.

Again, that dream explains the giddiness among the Democrat Socialist/pro-Hamas leftists. In their unhinged hatred, they assumed that Iran’s vaunted “ring of fire” (the terrorists of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis and scattered contingents in Syria and Iraq) would now ignite Israel from all sides.

The master planner of the attacks, Iran, had concluded that Israel would eventually be overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of incoming drones, missiles, and rockets—the very reason why Iran had spent years arming its Arab terrorist clients.

Yet when Israel finally invaded Gaza on October 27, it was almost immediately damned for conducting “genocide.” None of its libelers offered alternate pathways for how Israel might stop the Hamas slaughterers or get the hostages back.

So how exactly was Israel supposed to restore deterrence, punish the guilty, and prevent such future mass butchery?

Go to the UN Security Council and beg China (one million Uighurs in Chinese camps) and Russia (engaged in a Verdun-like invasion of Ukraine) to examine the facts empirically.

Ask Hamas to shed their civilian shields and fight Israelis head-to-head?

Fly to Geneva to have European premiers and presidents like Pedro Sánchez, Emmanuel Macron, and Keir Starmer oversee “negotiations”?

What Would America Have Done?

Alternatively, consider this hypothetical: the United States is roughly 34 times larger than Israel, with roughly 340 million to Israel’s 10 million citizens. Apply that asymmetrical magnitude to a thought experiment about how Americans would react to a proportional slaughter of their own.

Suppose that some 200,000 Sinaloa cartel killers (34 times the size of Hamas’s 6,000) swarmed across the southern border. They then began massacring 40,000 American civilians (34 times the Israeli number of 1,200 dead)—as well as torturing, dismembering, raping, and beheading. And then they were followed by thousands of tag-along civilians eager for loot and torture themselves.

Further imagine that the killers returned south across the border with 8,500 American hostages (34 times the 251 Israeli hostages). Once there, they then descended into a vast multibillion-dollar labyrinth of cartel tunnels beneath the cities of Sinaloa, protected by supportive and sympathetic citizens. Their tunnel entries and exits would be built beneath hospitals, schools, and churches.

So what exactly would the U.S. do if neither the Mexican government nor the cartel planners agreed to hand over the hostages and surrender the killers?

Take our case to the UN?

Ask NATO member Spain to chair talks?

Go to Geneva to negotiate with El Chapo and his henchmen?

Further, imagine that after three weeks of American inaction, the cartels grew even more defiant, as their crimes won applause among the anti-Western media and throughout the hemisphere.

Indeed, the intelligentsia and the hate-Yanqui crowd would likely then claim that Americans, as “settler-colonialists” from Europe, had earned such an overdue slaughter slap, given their supposed historical maltreatment of the indigenous peoples of “Aztlan” on both sides of the border.

Knee-jerk joy at killing Americans is not just a Mexican hypothetical.

In 2024, former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador bragged that Pancho Villa’s brief invasion of the U.S., some 108 years earlier—which targeted Columbus, New Mexico, and killed 18 Americans, including 10 civilians—was “a symbol of resistance against imperialism—and we should thank Villa . . .”

(Note that the progressive President Wilson, in response, sent 100,000 soldiers to the border and not long after ordered General Pershing with 12,000 troops to invade Mexico and find the perpetrators.)

Of course, in such an imaginary scenario, America’s critics would add the usual boilerplate about the Mexican War and the theft of Mexico’s former North American holdings.

Nonetheless, the U.S. would no doubt issue ultimata to the terrorists to surrender the guilty and the hostages. And if stonewalled, it would then start with an air campaign to hit some 200,000 cartel members, while exercising caution not to harm tens of thousands of the cartels’ civilian shields—a near-impossible task.

Who Are the Real Ethnic Cleansers and Settler-Colonialists?

Moreover, do we ever hear to what degree these libels of genocide and ethnic cleansing apply far more accurately to a host of other nations, some of which are also recipients of U.S. aid?

Over the decades, we have sold arms and given billions of dollars in military aid to Turkey. Yet between 1915 and 1920, the Turkish government conducted a genocidal policy of ethnic cleansing against their Armenian population, for which it has never apologized and which it continues to deny. And that was not just ancient history.

None of our current critics of Israel seems worried that Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and ethnically cleansed Northern Cyprus of its Greek inhabitants. The Turks then sent thousands of their own “settler colonialists” to help the Turkish minority population occupy the north to this day and alter Cypriot demography. There are no demonstrations anywhere in America on behalf of the far more recent “Nakba” of the Cypriot Greeks.

For that matter, did any of the loud campus Left demand distance from American ally Turkey when its president, Recep Erdoğan, recently cheered on Azerbaijan’s 2023 ethnic cleansing of some 120,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh—oddly, at almost the same time as the October 7 massacre.

Did Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil rally his armies of idealists to damn the Islamic-driven ethnic cleansing of this ancient population of Christian Armenians, or to call for the U.S. to sever joint arms deals with Turkey?

Before the 1967 war, there were nearly one million Jews whose ancestors had been living for centuries in the Arab and Muslim Middle East.

But during the serial Arab–Israeli wars of the last century, they were almost entirely ethnically cleansed from Arab countries. Today, almost none remain in the Arab Middle East. None appear today before television cameras, shaking the keys of their confiscated homes in Algiers, Amman, Baghdad, or Cairo.

By contrast, when Israel was founded in 1948, some 800,000 Arabs lived within its borders. That number shrank to 150,000 during the violent wars that immediately followed. Yet today, the size of the Arab population has rebounded to 14 times its original post-1948 numbers, to include roughly 2.1 million Arab citizens of Israel.

Note that the current Arab population of Israel is close to 77 times larger than the remnant of 27,000 Jews who remain in Muslim-majority Middle Eastern nations.

So, who are the real ethnic cleansers, and who are the displaced persons and refugees?

Of course, no one dares to say Arabs “ethnically cleansed” almost all their Jewish citizens. Instead, that charge is reserved only for Israel, where its Arab population has swelled to 21 percent of the current Israeli total.

Who Shall Cast the First Stone?

Between 1987 and 1989, the Somali Marxist dictator Mohamed Siad Barre—a member of the powerful Darood clan and a former American ally during the Cold War, when the Soviets backed Somalia’s traditional rival, Marxist Ethiopia—began slaughtering entire rival Somali clans. The eventual death toll may have reached nearly 200,000. When Barre’s murderous regime finally imploded, many Somali refugees had either supported Barre or belonged to the Darood clan and its several affiliate tribes. Fearing retribution from the regime’s victims, thousands fled to the once-despised West, especially the United States and Europe.

Among those pro-Barre refugees—many of whom belonged to either Barre’s Darood clan or to subordinate clans—were apparently members of Representative Ilhan Omar’s family. Her father was a colonel and regimental commander in Barre’s army, which had fought both Ethiopians and fellow Somalis for over a decade. It is a bitter irony that Omar is now such a sharp critic of Israel and the United States, given that America granted refuge to many of the former regime’s supporters and associates after Barre’s collapse.

Yet we are not aware that any Somalis today are now being accosted by strangers—as are Jews—and lectured about what their former leader’s regime did to the thousands of innocent civilians.

After October 7, we were also lectured that Israel was not just guilty of various war crimes but illegitimate in its very existence. Indeed, it became chic to condemn Israeli Jews as “settler colonialists”—despite residing in the 3,500-year homeland of the Jewish people.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an immigrant from Uganda, is not just a fierce critic of so-called “white neighborhoods” and one-percenter billionaires and millionaires. He also seems to loathe Israel. In that context, his supporters and would-be appointees have damned the Jewish state as an illegitimate settler-colonial enterprise.

But under those very reductionist left-wing definitions, should not the Indian community in Uganda—which made up at most a wealthy 1 percent of the population—be defined as settler-colonialists (in addition to suspect rich one-percenters)?

The wealthiest man in Uganda is an Indian-Ugandan billionaire. And the minuscule Indian population today in Uganda continues to exercise power and influence, disproportionate to their numbers—in stark contrast to the impoverished indigenous population. The Mamdani family certainly was not representative, in terms of money and status, of the average Ugandan.

Is such privilege also a mortal sin in Mamdani’s eyes?

Should Mamdani himself, born in Uganda among “settler colonial” exploiters, then have to defend himself as a son of “interlopers,” as is often said of the Jews in Israel?

Certainly, Indians had no historical claim to Uganda analogous to that of the Jews in Israel. (Was there ever a four-millennium-long history of Indians living in Central Africa?)

The list of these absurd asymmetries could be expanded endlessly:

The furor over Gaza is accompanied by the silence over the recent 30,000 unarmed Iranians murdered by a theocratic dictatorship, one often cheered on by the Left for its resistance to the US.

Or the disgraceful and mostly covered-up history of France in Chad, where French repressive measures over the course of their 20th-century colonial occupation led to as many as 300,000 deaths. The cruelty was emblematized by the Coupe-Coupe (“cut-cut”) Massacre of 1917, when French soldiers beheaded some 150 local nobles and Islamic scholars. Does Macron ever recall this massacre amid his lectures on Israel’s supposed sinful past and present?

In short, the tell-tale sign of antisemites is not necessarily opposition to Israel.

It is instead an endless fixation on the supposed “crimes” of Israel, when far greater documented horrors elsewhere never merit a word from them.

American Greatness

In another major win for President Trump’s efforts to right the wrongs of the weaponized Biden DOJ and FBI, and to fully restore the rights of all January 6 defendants, the Department of Justice filed a motion late Friday night, May 22, asking D.C. District Court Judge Amit Mehta to dismiss with prejudice the underlying indictments against the eight innocent Oath Keepers defendants whose sentences were commuted (but not fully pardoned) by President Trump.

They were released from prison on Inauguration Night 2025, just as four Proud Boys leaders likewise had their sentences commuted rather than pardoned, and were released from prison.

On May 21, 2026, the D.C. Court of Appeals granted the DOJ’s earlier request to vacate the eight Oath Keepers’ convictions and remand the cases back to the District Court.

With the appeals court’s order in hand, the DOJ has now moved to fully dismiss the cases — mirroring the recent D.C. Court of Appeals order vacating the convictions of the four remaining Proud Boys and remanding to their trial court for consideration of a DOJ motion to dismiss their underlying indictments.

This relief comes as President Trump and his DOJ have established the new $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund (also referred to as the 1776 Fund), created through a settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. The fund is designed to compensate Americans who suffered under the weaponized Biden DOJ and FBI.

Once the dismissals are granted, these eight Americans will no longer be felons and their records will be wiped clean. Their Second Amendment rights and all other civil rights will be restored.

Among them are four service-connected disabled military veterans who lost critical VA benefits due to the convictions. Those benefits will now be reinstated.

(Three of the four commuted Proud Boys — Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola — are also veterans who lost their VA benefits and will now have them restored as well).

So now all twelve of the remaining J6ers who were commuted rather than pardoned will have their rights restored.

The eight Oath Keepers defendants are: E. Stewart Rhodes, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Robert Minuta, David Moerschel, Joseph Hackett, and Edward Vallejo.

Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit

The failures of socialized medicine stem not from malice, but from inherent incentives: monopolistic structures, political allocation of resources, and suppressed innovation. 

Kevin Finn | May 26, 2026

I am regularly astonished at how many people — often younger folks — praise the supposed benefits of socialism and single‑payer health care. Despite extensive evidence to the contrary, and despite daily tragedies in systems that have adopted these models, the calls for more government intervention never seem to stop.

Socialized medicine, exemplified by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), was founded on noble ideals: universal access to care “free at the point of use,” funded collectively as a national treasure. Yet the system now struggles with chronic shortages, soaring wait times, and structural failures that disproportionately harm the elderly and the disabled. Similar patterns are emerging in Canada with Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). These systems illustrate how government monopolies — despite high spending — often produce rationing, inefficiency, and desperation rather than dependable care.

Millions of people in England sit on waiting lists, including “unseen patients” referred by general practitioners (GPs) but never contacted for treatment. This is not a temporary post‑COVID anomaly; it is a systemic breakdown. Thousands wait more than 12 hours for emergency admission, and ambulance response times for strokes and heart attacks routinely exceed targets, contributing to rising excess deaths.

Elderly Britons are especially affected. Reports describe seniors feeling “fobbed off,” struggling to access GPs, facing canceled operations, and falling through gaps in social care. Surveys show that two‑thirds of people over 50 doubt the NHS can cope, and many express despair. Patients battle phone queues and online portals, often without ever seeing a doctor.

Backlogs also endanger older patients with sight‑threatening conditions such as macular degeneration or glaucoma. Many must wait months — or pay privately — to avoid permanent vision loss. Clinics reportedly prioritize simpler, better‑reimbursed cataract procedures, leaving complex cases to languish. One patient described waiting 16 weeks instead of the usual eight for essential injections.

The first objection from defenders of the NHS is almost always funding. Yet spending has risen dramatically for decades, now consuming roughly 43.1% of government expenditures on goods and services and growing faster than the economy on a per‑capita basis. Despite this, productivity lags, bed availability has fallen, and fewer patients are treated — largely due to bureaucracy and poor coordination with social care. One source states that, “If the NHS itself were a military, it would have the third-highest budget in the world, surpassed only by the U.S. and China.”

Social‑care bottlenecks worsen the crisis. Elderly patients who are medically ready for discharge often remain hospitalized for weeks because home‑care support is unavailable. This blocks beds, inflates costs, and strains staff. Care‑work wages are so low that retail jobs often pay more, leaving chronic vacancies in a rapidly aging society.

Canada’s experience with MAiD reveals different but related risks. Disability‑rights groups report disproportionate impacts: 42% of MAiD deaths from 2019–2023 involved people needing disability supports, and more than 1,000 never received those supports at all. In Ontario, disabled individuals were the most likely to die via MAiD, with nearly half citing loneliness or feeling like a burden. In another case, Canadian military veteran Christine Gauthier applied for a home chair lift from Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC). She claims they offered her MAiD instead.

In the United States, some Democrat‑led states required nursing homes to accept COVID‑positive patients, resulting in thousands of elderly deaths. While not an example of fully socialized medicine, these policies reflect centralized decision‑making that can prioritize political goals over vulnerable lives.

Ultimately, there are only two ways to allocate scarce resources: by time (rationing) or by price. In systems without profit motives or competition, incentives favor high‑volume, simple cases over complex elderly care. Aging populations increase demand for chronic and end‑of‑life services, but fixed budgets and political priorities lead to underinvestment in diagnostic equipment, beds, and staff. Public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen to historic lows — around 21% in some surveys — and the system underperforms peer nations in avoidable mortality and cancer survival.

Elderly patients, who have the least time to wait, bear the heaviest burden. They face worsening frailty, preventable blindness, untreated pain, and loss of dignity. Systems that promise “everything for free” often deliver long lines, denial of care, or — in extreme cases — pressure toward death. By contrast, countries that incorporate market‑oriented elements tend to show better responsiveness, more choice, and superior outcomes at similar spending levels.

The failures of socialized medicine stem not from malice, but from inherent incentives: monopolistic structures, political allocation of resources, and suppressed innovation. The elderly — who built these societies and rely on them most — pay the price in suffering, lost independence, and shortened lives.

Reform toward competition, patient empowerment, and realistic funding is essential if we hope to restore care worthy of the name.

American Thinker

Americans see through the smokescreen, and rendered their verdict in November 2024.

Jim Davis | May 25, 2026

The Democrats and the media (but I’m repeating myself) are profoundly dishonest, and there are a lot of “experts” they hire, with our tax dollars, who are even more dishonest.

I have degrees in statistical analysis and political science. I’m not an expert at anything, except research and eighth-grade math. But I’ve spotted a basic disconnect between the Democrats, common sense and the truth.

We had a president issue blanket pre-emptive pardons on his way out the door, to his entire family and his closest political allies, for crimes that nobody even knows about, that may or may not have been committed.

And for all the pardons except his son’s, there’s no indication that he even read them. He was hopelessly senile. A POC/LGBTQ committee, operating him like a Muppet every day for four years, signed those pardons with an Autopen.

Basic common sense dictates that it stinks like three-day-old roadkill in August. And the left-wing propaganda minions at CNN and MSDNC roll down the window, let the stench pour in, and don’t bat an eyelash.

In the waning days of the Muppeteer Committee’s frantic efforts to cling to its remaining shreds of power, Americans witness yet another stunning victory for accountability, as the Department of Justice reached a settlement in the long-running saga of illegal IRS targeting of Donald Trump.

Far from the corrupt enrichment scheme peddled by the Democrats’ propaganda bureaus, this outcome represented a principled stand against weaponized government. Trump could have pocketed $10 billion in statutory damages (26 U.S.C. § 7431) for this breathtaking breach of his private tax records while a private citizen.

Instead, he directed those resources toward an Anti-Weaponization Fund. It isn’t an “insurrection slush fund,” as detractors claim. This $1.7 billion fund will aid ordinary Americans, regardless of their political party, who are victimized by the same bureaucratic tyranny.

The lunatics of the left-wing fringe, predictably apoplectic, spun this as some unprecedented sweetheart deal. Yet once again, the facts tell a different story.

Trump received zero dollars personally. The audits against his businesses were dropped only for pre-settlement conduct — not some blanket immunity. The fund itself offers relief to citizens across the political spectrum who suffered under the politicized assaults of Lawfare apparatchiks.

Compare this restraint to the Biden Crime Syndicate’s Autopen orgy of self-dealing. Blanket, pre-emptive pardons shielded Hunter and James Biden, Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, the entire January 6 Committee and all of its staff and witnesses from scrutiny over crimes both known and unknown, complete with an 11-year window of protection and zero public accountability.

The Trump settlement wasn’t corruption; it was restitution.

Previous administrations, including Obama’s (Keepseagle v. Vilsack, $760 million), funneled massive tax-funded settlements through the Judgment Fund without congressional appropriation — often against the advice of career officials — and received glowing coverage from the usual suspects.

When Trump employs the same mechanism to shield past and future victims, rather than enrich himself, suddenly it’s a constitutional crisis.

The sheer hypocrisy reveals the 11 years of Lawfare waged against the former — and future — president: endless tax-funded investigations, prosecutions, civil lawsuits, choreographed leaks, and impeachments designed not to pursue justice, but to badger and cripple a political opponent.

The Democratic Party Deep State (DPDS) and its media allies have long treated the tax code, intelligence agencies, and courts as weapons.

• Discriminatory denial of tax-exempt status to Tea Party groups, followed by Lois Lerner’s mysterious hard drive crash, erasing all her emails? The press says, “We’re not interested.”
• Unauthorized leaks of Trump’s returns? Crickets from the press about the leaker’s federal felony, but what he leaked induced a media feeding frenzy.
• Biden family influence-peddling, documented across continents, bringing in untaxable millions from hostile foreign governments — even terrorist groups and drug cartels? “Nothing to see here.”

The pattern is unmistakable: one set of rules for the DPDS ruling class, another for everyone else.

Trump’s decision to forgo personal gain in favor of a compensation pool for Jan. 6 defendants, FACE Act targets, and other victims of political persecution exposes the fraud at the heart of the “democracy dies in darkness” crowd.

Congress has shown zero appetite for legislating remedies for these citizens. This fund was the only practical path forward.

The propaganda bureaus for the Democratic Party, of course, demand “judicial oversight” now — as if the partisan Democrats in judicial robes, who delivered one anti-Trump decision after another, only to be reversed on appeal and sometimes unanimously scolded by the Supreme Court, are impartial arbiters.

No prior president has ever endured this volume of simultaneous legal warfare, financial record leaks, and targeted audits. Pretending this is business as usual requires a suspension of disbelief that only the most devoted Useful Idiots of the DPDS regime can muster.

Ultimately, this settlement underscores a deeper truth. While the lunatics of the left-wing fringe hyperventilate about “threats to democracy,” the real danger has always been the unaccountable DPDS administrative state, operating as an extension of one political party.

Eleven years of Lawfare have failed. Americans see through the smokescreen, and rendered their verdict in November 2024.

True leadership means rejecting personal windfalls, to protect innocent “little guys” from past and future abuses — the exact opposite of the Biden model of “family, cronies and political tribe first, country last.”

The American people, exhausted by this spectacle and the parallel LGBTQ, transgender, DEI and “climate catastrophe” sideshow freaks, are poised to deliver their verdict at the ballot box once again this fall.

Jim Davis has written about dishonest Democrats, in Chicago and across America, from a safe distance in the Northwest Suburbs for half a century. His work has appeared in Daily Caller, Newsmax and American Thinker. You can find him as RealProfessor219 on Rumble.

JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH, 2026
Proclamations
May 4, 2026

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

This Jewish American Heritage Month, we honor the countless contributions of Jewish Americans throughout our Nation’s 250 glorious years of independence, and we celebrate their unwavering commitment to the values that make our country great — faith, family, and freedom.

In his letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, President George Washington beautifully said, “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Since the earliest days of our Republic, Jewish Americans have helped build the cause of liberty and sustain the greatness of our Nation. Among them was the iconic Haym Salomon, an early supporter of the war for independence. As stories tell us, Salomon was instrumental in the success of our Continental Congress and Founding Fathers, and rallied support for freedom. He was a zealous advocate against tyranny, and even after imprisonment by the British Crown, he continued his work in defense of freedom. In the end, he gave everything to the success of the American Revolution. Like so many Jewish Americans who follow in his footsteps, Salomon’s legacy stands as a testament to the unshakable belief in the American promise.

In the same letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, President Washington proclaimed that the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Under my leadership, we are aggressively fighting the violence against Jewish Americans that increased under my predecessor, prosecuting hateful criminals to the fullest extent of the law, and working to end the scourge of anti-Semitism throughout our institutions, especially on college campuses. As President, I will never stop fighting to protect our birthright of religious freedom — a sacred right that continues to guide our Nation, drawing us closer to the Almighty each and every day.

Throughout this historic year, we rejoice in the triumph of the American spirit and rededicate ourselves to the cause of liberty and justice for all. In special honor of 250 glorious years of American independence and on the weekend of Rededicate 250 — a national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving — Jewish Americans are encouraged to observe a national Sabbath. From sundown on May 15 to nightfall on May 16, friends, families, and communities of all backgrounds may come together in gratitude for our great Nation. This day will recognize the sacred Jewish tradition of setting aside time for rest, reflection, and gratitude to the Almighty.

This month, we celebrate the contributions that Jewish Americans have made to our way of life, we honor their role in shaping the story of our Nation, and we remember that religious devotion, learning, and service to others are enduring pillars of a thriving culture. Through every trial and triumph, the contributions of Jewish Americans have shaped our past, have strengthened our communities, and will continue to inspire American greatness for generations to come.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 2026 as Jewish American Heritage Month. I call upon Americans to celebrate the heritage and contributions of Jewish Americans and to observe this month with appropriate programs, activities, and ceremonies. I further call on all Americans to celebrate their faith and freedom throughout this year, during this month, and especially on Shabbat to celebrate our 250th year.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fiftieth.

​​​​​​DONALD J. TRUMP

Story by Jason Lemon

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is facing a new impeachment resolution put forward by a House Democrat.

The long-shot effort was introduced on Thursday by Representative Steve Cohen. The Tennessee Democrat announced last week that he would forgo his reelection bid after it became clear he was unlikely to win, as the state moved swiftly to gerrymander following a seismic Supreme Court opinion in late April that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Thus far, no co-sponsors have supported Cohen’s resolution. Given that Republicans narrowly control the House, the resolution is not expected to advance, but it signals the level of frustration many Democrats feel with the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

In a statement announcing the resolution, Cohen said that Roberts has led the court to be “understood as biased: with decisions designed to benefit Republicans at the expense of representative government, seemingly contradictory and unexplained orders, and a pattern of ethical breaches that raises questions about the role of the wealthy.”

“I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that while John Roberts remains Chief Justice, correcting this misconduct and ensuring the Justices and the Court itself comply with their legal obligations will be impossible,” the Democrat said.

In recent years, after the appointment of three justices during President Donald Trump’s first term, the court has shown a willingness to undo a series of controversial precedents tied to abortion access, voting rights, affirmative action and more. While many Republicans support these moves, most Democrats are critical and believe the court has become overtly partisan.

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In 1787, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams’s Son-in-law, wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” This was not, by any means, just a cavalier comment. Thomas Jefferson, along with George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and others, as stoic observers of history, experienced firsthand the reality, depth and dimension behind the need to petition a King, the need to confront his empire, and the cost of confronting that empire for independence and freedom. That was an extraordinarily significant and revolutionary thing. No one had done that before and spun off their own independently sovereign country in the history of the world.

What is fascinating about the dynamic of independence and freedom is that ordinary people were willing to step up and step in to battle, either to subdue or defeat an aggressor or a threat asserted by one. When the United States was under attack or its status of a free country was under threat, the offense enraged, inspired, emboldened, and moved to action people who were loyal to their nation and families. That said, millions of Americans put their lives on the line in order to secure the future of both. Whether it was the Revolutionary war, or whether it was the attack on Pearl Harbor, or September 11th 2001, Americans have in their blood a “fight or flight” reaction that echoes the sentiments of the delegate/Governor of South Carolina at the time of the revolution, Patrick Henry, who resoundingly and passionately stated, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Memorial Day is a day set aside to pay respect and honor the lives of the fallen in battle; those who took heed to answer that call to arms, placed their lives on the line to protect our nation, their families, and our way of life, but didn’t make it. Where the call to war demanded a response, they answered it, and even though they didn’t make it, their vacancy left behind an aura of heroism that rings loud and clear forever and ever. That said, Jefferson’s words, at their core, means that dire situations and circumstances that threaten the cause of freedom, calls for action, and that action in turn becomes a force, a force that “waters” that tree of liberty, in order that this country and all of its inhabitants can remain free and continue to grow. In that growth, it offers each and every one of us a chance towards fighting for something that needs to be fought for, which is a critical dynamic that needs to be kept maintained. And it is in this lively spirit that we honor the spirited who gave their lives to keep freedom available to all.

SP/4 Jeffrey Haerle was a Morse Intercept Operator (as I was) for the Army Security Agency (ASA) The ASA was the Army’s signal intelligence (SIGINT) component. The specific job of the the Morse Intercept Operator in Vietnam was to search for, and copy, the messages sent in morse code, via the shortwave radio band, by enemy forces in order to derive intelligence information and in some cases, to assist in the use of radio direction finding to locate the enemy. Although hardly used today, during the 60s and 70s, morse code was one of the primary means of communication used by the NVA and Viet Cong.

After serving a year in 1967/1968 at the ASA installation located at Phu Bai, Republic of Vietnam, I was sent to the ASA Field Station on Okinawa where I met Jeff. After a few months there, Jeff requested to go to Vietnam on TDY (temporary duty) status. His request was granted and Jeff was sent to a tactical unit located in Tay Ninh Province. On the night of May 13, 1968 while performing his job on Nui Ba Den mountain, he was killed in action when the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese communist guerillas) launched a rocket into his unit location. He was 21 years old.

Although not a “combat arms” soldier, Jeff performed the ultimate sacrifice for his country.