Trump Just Hit The Button…Iran Was Just Erased | The War Is Over, U.S. Military Destroyed Everything

Admiral Brad Cooper announced the U.S. moved 750 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz while Iran exported zero barrels.

The U.S. blockade has given America full… pic.twitter.com/N90RFMvbt5
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 28, 2026

Trump's updated portfolio is basically a bet that America wins the AI race. (Save this)

His largest position is $NVDA at 10.0%, followed by $TSLA at 9.0% and $APPL at 8.5%.

Other notable names:$BA: 7.5%$XOM: 7.0%$JPM: 6.5%$PLTR: 6.0%$DELL: 5.5%$GS: 5.0%$INTC: 5.0%… https://t.co/WjjzLdkyBu pic.twitter.com/kZqgexEdjw
— Milk Road Stocks (@MilkRoadStocks) August 28, 2026

🚨 "Majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer. This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves."

GUESS WHO WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG

🔥🔥🔥 https://t.co/SqjYaDoFEy pic.twitter.com/aNp0TvL6CJ
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 28, 2026

🔥 HELL YES! President Trump just announced he’ll be giving American farmers and ranchers the right to PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD

This is LONG overdue!

Big processors, of which there are only about 4, have a “NASTY MONOPOLY,” driving prices through the roof.

“So, in order to break… pic.twitter.com/N6KOg8HBGC
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 28, 2026

“The top Iranian official added that the region’s security hinges on the withdrawal of US forces..”

• Ghalibaf Declares Persian Gulf Oil Flows For ‘All Or None’ (Cradle)

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf declared on 28 August that either all Persian Gulf countries will be allowed to export oil freely or none will, adding that the security of West Asia depends on the withdrawal of US forces. “The equation of this war is clear: either all or none!” Ghalibaf said, adding, “In a region where we don’t sell oil, no one else will sell oil either.” “If our security is not ensured, no infrastructure will be safe,” the speaker emphasized.

“Security of the strait depends on the absence of US forces. We have said many times that the situation in the strait will not return to what it was before the war.” The comments came in response to claims by US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Admiral Brad Cooper that US forces had seized full control of the Strait of Hormuz and halted Iranian oil exports. Iran’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement issued the same day, urged all states to refuse to enforce a new US sanctions package the same day, warning that compliance makes a government complicit in violating international law and the sovereign equality of states.
Washington unveiled the measures under the name “Operation Economic Outcast” after failing to reach its war aims against Iran with military force. The ministry condemned the package as economic terrorism, stating that it revealed “the criminal intent of those who designed and implemented it to inflict suffering on the Iranian people and deprive Iranian citizens of their fundamental human rights; therefore, it is tantamount to an international crime and a crime against humanity.”
It said the US was weaponizing the dollar to pressure other governments into backing its policies on Iran, in breach of the UN Charter and the principle of non-intervention. Tehran also said the sanctions defy the International Court of Justice (ICJ) order of 3 October 2018 requiring Washington to lift barriers to the flow of food, medicine, and medical equipment. The ministry tied the economic war to the broader US-Israeli offensive against Iran over the past year and a half, and said the failure of the UN and its members to confront those violations has produced “a highly dangerous pattern of lawlessness.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi previously said that Trump’s “Economic D-Day” campaign would deliver Washington nothing but further defeat, calling it a distraction from a US debt crisis that hit a record $40 trillion this month. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said the turn to economic war followed Washington’s failure to achieve its military objectives, and that the US was now begging its allies for help while claiming Iran was on the brink of collapse.

“Bessent promised this week that he would “sever every economic life line…until Tehran stands alone.”

• Trump’s Economic D-Day Targets the Ayatollah’s Favorite Bank (Victoria Taft)

I listened to every word Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke in announcing Operation Economic Outcast this week, and it scared the hell out of me. It was a promised economic D-Day. Friday was D-Day. First up: The Trump administration attacked the Ayatollah’s bank.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which was said to have begun to distance itself from Iran even before the announcement on Friday, was ordered to shutter the Emirates’ branches of Egypt’s Banque Misr. The U.S. cut off the UAE’s branches of Egypt’s second-largest bank from its entire banking system. A website called “Money Control” reported that this UAE branch was the chief money launderer for the Ayatollah.
According to Treasury estimates, Banque Misr UAE processed approximately $1.8 billion between January 2024 and June 2026 in transactions involving 103 companies that the department said were potentially part of Iranian shadow-banking networks. Treasury also alleged that some of the bank’s customers included apparent front companies used by Iran’s Ministry of Defense and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to evade US sanctions. The department further alleged that some of the entities were used to launder money on behalf of Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
Indeed, this request — demand — wasn’t a surprise to Abu Dhabi or Egypt. They’d been told in advance. And why no one took the threat seriously was a chance they shouldn’t have taken. One of the more chilling parts of Bessent’s announcement was when he demanded other countries shut down all branches of the Iran-based Bank Melli. “Every branch of [Iran-based] Bank Melli must be shuttered and dark,” as the first step, he intoned.
“For decades, this regime has drawn strength from a calculus that regards Iranian retaliation as certain and American enforcement as negotiable,” Bessent said. But not anymore. Every single country giving Iran aid and comfort was given a timeline to cut off its lifelines to the revolutionary death cult regime. “If they do not take action, we will do so unilaterally through treasury authorities… And let me be clear: any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the U.S. dollar system,” he threatened.
And then he did it. This move on Friday cut off $1.8 billion in “transactions involving companies potentially linked to Iranian shadow banking networks” using the UAE branch of the Egyptian bank. Bessent promised this week that he would “sever every economic life line…until Tehran stands alone.” And to those who enable Tehran, do not discount the cost of testing Washington’s resolve, no nation should expect to enjoy the rewards of our system while helping those who seek to destroy it. It is now a time for world leaders to make a decision between prosperity and isolation, peace and terror. America and Iran.
I asked the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Edmund Fitton Brown about the impact of Economic Outcast, and he said it was a welcome move that may finally bring down the regime.
The former diplomat for the UK, who has also worked on the United Nations Security Council sanctions measures, said on the Adult in the Room Podcast that this may take a year to do, but it’s a long time coming: “Finally after so many years when people have imposed sanctions but turned a blind eye at violations and not imposed secondary sanctions on people who are helping basically to provide lifeline to the sanctioned entity or or country.”
Between that and the Naval blockade, Iran may be on the ropes. Watch our chat below.

Will the price at the pump fall in time?

• Could Trump’s Venezuela Oil Deal Crush Democrats’ Midterm Strategy? (Margolis)

As my PJ Media colleague Sarah Anderson reported Friday night, President Donald Trump dropped one of the biggest energy announcements of his second term on Friday evening, revealing that the United States and Venezuela had signed what he called “the biggest oil deal in world history.” The agreement hands America majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, and Trump wasted no time celebrating.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the agreement gives the United States majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, at no cost to American taxpayers. He said the deal more than doubles America’s oil reserves, will substantially lower gas prices for Americans over time, and strengthens the relationship between Washington and Caracas. Trump credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth with negotiating the agreement directly with Venezuelan Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, working alongside private business.
Rubio noted that the deal should be a huge boon to our economy.”This deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,” Rubio wrote. “It demonstrates how President Trump’s bold foreign policy is driving America First wins: securing stable reserves and low-cost oil in our Hemisphere and lowering gas prices here at home. For the Venezuelan people, this deal will bring nearly $100 billion in private investment, support thousands of high-paying jobs, and drive the reconstruction of Venezuela’s economy.”
This deal comes as the war in Iran has squeezed global oil supply, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country’s emergency stockpile, fell below the 300 million-barrel mark earlier this month, its lowest level in four decades. Joe Biden drained that reserve during his presidency to artificially lower gas prices ahead of the 2022 midterms and help the Democrats.
This deal is a game changer on several levels. Venezuela holds the largest proven crude oil reserves on the planet, somewhere between 303 and 304 billion barrels, or roughly 19% of the entire global total. Locking down majority control of even a slice of that changes the math on America’s energy security in a way few deals could. It also reduces U.S. dependence on Canadian heavy crude, giving Washington another lever to pull the next time prices spike.
So does this actually move the needle for voters? That’s the only question that matters nine weeks out from the midterms. Trump and Rubio are promising gas prices will drop substantially over time, and there’s a real case for it: more supply, less reliance on hostile foreign partners, and a deal that reportedly costs American taxpayers nothing. Make no mistake about it, this is the kind of deal Trump was elected to make. But oil deals don’t lower prices at the pump overnight.
Refining, distribution, and global markets all take time to catch up to a new supply agreement, and nine weeks is not a lot of runway. Whether voters feel real relief at the gas station before November, or whether they simply hear about a deal they haven’t yet benefited from, will determine how much credit Republicans actually get before the midterms. If prices do fall in time, Democrats lose one of their most reliable midterm talking points.

“The American leader put himself above Lincoln and Washington while branding Biden and Obama “failures”..”

Yeah, real serious.

• Trump Declares Himself ‘Greatest’ US President (RT)

Donald Trump has declared himself the “greatest” president in US history while branding Joe Biden and Barack Obama “failures” in a ranking posted on Truth Social. Abraham Lincoln, who led the US through the Civil War and abolished slavery, and George Washington, the first US president and a founding father, were placed one tier below Trump. The US president shared the ranking on Thursday alongside a CNN clip highlighting polling showing his dominance among Republican voters.

The graphic divides US presidents into six tiers – ‘The Greatest’, ‘Great’, ‘Near Great’, ‘Average’, ‘Below Average’, and ‘Failures’ – with Trump alone at the top. Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson were placed in the ‘Great’ category. Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams, and James K. Polk were rated ‘Near Great’, while Bill Clinton was among those deemed ‘Average’.

Biden and Obama were placed at the opposite end of Trump’s chart alongside fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter and former presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding. The list contains 34 presidents and leaves out 11 others, including Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and both George Bushes. The graphic appears to be an altered version of a ranking published by LIFE magazine in 1948, when Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 experts in American history to classify presidents as ‘great’, ‘near great’, ‘average’, ‘below average’, or ‘failure’.
Trump’s version largely retains the original categories but adds himself at the top and several more recent Democratic presidents. Trump posted the image after CNN highlighted an Elon University poll showing 53% of Republicans named him the Republican president they admired most, far ahead of Reagan at 18% and Lincoln at 8%. CNN analyst Harry Enten called it a “historic comparison,” saying Trump “nearly triples up” on Reagan.
Expert surveys, however, have placed Trump at the opposite end of the scale. The Presidential Greatness Project ranked him last in 2018 with 12.34 points out of 100, versus 95.03 for Lincoln, and put him last again in its 2024 survey of 154 presidential scholars and experts. Lincoln topped both rankings.
Trump’s broader approval has also slumped during his second term. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted August 21-24 put his approval at a record-low 33%, with 65% disapproving. A Marquette survey showed even weaker numbers on the economy, with 30% approving of his handling of it and just 22% backing his record on inflation and the cost of living.

““The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action,” Seneca says..”

• Seneca Nation Condemns Trump’s Renaming of ‘Lake Ontario’ to ‘Lake America’ (JTN)

The Seneca Nation is demanding that President Donald Trump reverse his decision to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” arguing that the move disregards Indigenous history and violates a longstanding treaty.Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca said on Friday that Trump’s executive order shows “blatant disrespect” for the Indigenous people and their history tied to the lake.“The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action,” Seneca said.

Trump signed the order this week directing the Interior Department to update the lake’s name in the U.S. government’s geographic naming system within 30 days. The change applies to U.S. federal usage and does not alter Canada’s designation of the lake.The Seneca Nation argues that the order conflicts with the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, signed by President George Washington and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The treaty established a lasting relationship between the United States and the Haudenosaunee nations.

“Trump is overturning the American political establishment’s negativity and bad ideas, and as promised, actually Making America Great Again.”

• The Trump Revolution is Real (J.B. Shurk)

We are living through such an arrogant era in which too many people “know” preposterous things: Biological sex isn’t real. Muslims built America. Math is racist. Iran is defeating the United States. Joe Biden is “sharp as a tack.” President Trump is a Russian spy. People are certain that “their” side is right and the “other” side is wrong. There is not a lot of humility in the world today. But, as we see during the LGBTQIA+ community’s various bacchanalia each year, there is a glut of personal pride.

When I encounter people who “know everything,” I like to remind them how wrong some of the smartest people over the last century have proved to be. During a guest lecture at the University of Munich in 1924, theoretical physicist Max Planck recounted a conversation he had with his mentor, Philipp von Jolly, fifty years earlier. After Planck inquired about pursuing a career in physics, Jolly discouraged his young student from doing so, telling him that nearly everything in the field of physics had already been discovered, with little left to do aside from a few final measurements.
Planck went on to win a Nobel Prize for discovering energy quanta — revolutionizing theoretical physics and our understanding of atomic particles, while setting the stage for Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity regarding space and time. At the turn of the twentieth century, plenty of physicists believed they knew almost everything; quantum mechanics and general relativity proved they knew almost nothing. In 1919, most astronomers believed that our Milky Way Galaxy comprised the whole universe, that the size of the universe was roughly 300,000 light years across, and that the universe was infinitely old and unchanging.
A hundred years later, astronomers estimate the observable universe to be ninety-four billion light years across and 13.7 billion years old. Ten years ago, astronomers adjusted the estimated number of galaxies in the universe from a hundred billion to at least two trillion. And the James Webb Space Telescope has pushed this number to as high as twenty trillion. Even that number is likely to rise. When our understanding of the size of the universe has gone from one galaxy to tens of trillions in a single century, should we not approach competing points of view with a little more open-mindedness?
Does it not seem foolishly arrogant of people such as Barack Obama, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Mark Carney to claim that the “science” of “global warming” is “settled”? It is important to acknowledge just how little we know about our world. It is important to remember that we have redefined fundamental parts of our physical reality within our own lifetimes. It is important to recognize that even the most universally accepted paradigms have been toppled and replaced.
If our understanding of physics and cosmology can be upended in a few decades, why would we expect the social sciences of politics, economics, and sociology to be more constant? Why would we expect political pundits to have an accurate grasp of the future? Why would we assume that population growth is an existential threat, that sentient robots will replace humans, that debt bombs will impoverish us, or that nuclear bombs will end us? In other words, why do we always assume the end is near?
Our generation is not the first to fear the future nor will it be the last. A thousand years ago, at the turn of the first millennium, there were plenty of people who expected the apocalypse. Instead, their descendants experienced the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. The second millennium started with the fake threat of Y2K and the real threat of 9/11 and has continued lurching toward economic, military, technological, and political powder kegs ever since. Twenty-six years of impending doom have had an effect on the world’s collective psyche. Right now there is a dearth of optimism. Although standards of living, lifespans, and the proliferation of luxury comforts have never been higher, people talk about today as if it were the Great Depression.
Almost all of America’s leaders have failed to live up to this century’s challenges. George Bush encouraged us to fight Islamic terrorists “over there” so that we wouldn’t have to fight them “over here”; now we’ve got super-mosques, loudspeakers in major towns calling Muslims to prayer, and apologists for Islamic rapists and murderers running for high office or already serving in Congress. Barack Obama may have sold “hope and change” to the public in his run for the presidency, but then he went on a worldwide America-bashing apology tour, dismissed the idea that there was anything “exceptional” about our country, pitted black and white Americans against each other, destroyed healthcare with government mandates, and used the USA PATRIOT Act to spy on his political enemies.
Most other prominent political leaders have used the first quarter of the new century to break bad news to the American people. “The borders can’t be properly secured,” they say. “Blue-collar jobs are never coming back home,” they insist. “Global warming is killing the planet,” they claim. “Racist cops are killing black people,” they argue. Bad news rains down on us every day (especially if you watch CNN or read The New York Times). On the Democrat side of the aisle, patriotism has been wholly rejected and replaced with a litany of anti-American refrains: America is imperialist, colonialist, racist, white supremacist, Islamophobic, transphobic, patriarchal, and whatever new insults Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer’s America-hating, communist party devises next.
When was the last time you heard any global prognosticator speak of America’s future as anything other than one of certain decline? Perhaps that’s why President Trump appeals to so many Americans. He has been the only consistently positive leader declaring this “America’s century.” While other political leaders — Democrats and Republicans — have spent the first twenty-six years of the new millennium making excuses for why our borders can’t be secured, why our industrial towns can’t be rebuilt, and why violent crime is the “new normal,” President Trump has secured the border, brought American manufacturing back to life, and cut murder and other violent crime rates across the country more sharply than any time since 1900.
Those are astounding accomplishments in a short amount of time, but you won’t hear them being discussed on CNN or NPR. Nor will you hear about all the different ways President Trump has strengthened the security and economic future of the Western Hemisphere by waging war against international drug cartels, promoting hemispheric self-sufficiency, and methodically eliminating the influences of China, Russia, and Iran. Nor will you hear about the ways President Trump is deconstructing Islamic terrorism’s chokehold over energy resources in the Middle East.
You certainly won’t hear how tariffs are forcing once-offshored companies to reinvest in the United States. Nor will you hear that inflation continues to sink, while wages continue to rise — exactly the opposite of Wall Street pundits’ predictions. You won’t hear any of this positive news because the whole globalist Establishment — the bought-and-paid-for politicians, the multinational investment firm behemoths, the Wall Street and City of London make-nothing vultures, and the corporate news propaganda syndicate — are invested in a future of World Economic Forum oligarchy, Chinese communism, “climate change” totalitarianism, and steady American decline.
These parasites intend to discourage you. They intend to exacerbate social conflicts, undermine American influence, disparage American history, mock American greatness, and make you feel weak.President Trump is leading America back to the moon. We’re going to Mars. Whatever else AI turns out to be, it will have an American accent. The White House has spent all year celebrating Freedom 250 because it wishes for Americans to remember and embrace their history. The loudest pundits know nothing. The revolution is here. This is the American century.

Rebuild America the Trump way or the globalist way?

• The Radical Left Wants to Destroy America and Rebuild It (Victor Davis Hanson)

We often associate leftist movements, anarchists of the 19th century, Jacobins of the 18th century, Marxists, Bolsheviks, Symbionese Liberation [Army], the Weather Underground with violence. And the argument that they use is, we are for mandated equality and fairness and helping the underprivileged, and therefore to achieve those noble ends, which were morally and intellectually superior to those on the conservative side, we’re allowed to use any means necessary. And any means necessary is what’s happening right now.

Hasan Piker is always in the news. He’s the multimillionaire podcaster, second-generation Turkish immigrant, who just recently led a cheering crowd in a song, whipped up the crowd, mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk. He even said, Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk. He was whipping them up in a classical demagogic fashion, cheering and celebrating the horrific televised murder of an American activist. Remember, he’s also told us that 9/11, we essentially deserved it. It was our fault, 9/11 was.
He’s not unusual right now on the Left. Angie Nixon is a radical socialist, and she won the Democratic primary Senate campaign, and she will be in the runoff for Florida’s junior senator. She said recently that ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were slave catchers and that they were targeting black people, no different than people in the Confederacy, and that the U.S. government was trying to kill blacks. She doesn’t understand that under the auspices of DEI, which continues affirmative action, that blacks have given preferential treatment based on past transgressions that the majority of the country felt needed to be addressed.
No one is trying to kill young black people, much less the government. If you look at the murder rates, the statistics make her completely unbelievable. Almost 9 out of 10 murders by African Americans are committed by other African Americans. And when there are interracial violence, it’s six to 10 times more likely that an African American will harm, assault or kill a white person than vice versa. White people are underrepresented as assailants in hate crimes. black people are overrepresented.
I only bring it up just to refute the slur that she’s made against the immigration system and enforcement service. ICE deported people from over 180 countries of all colors, all religions. Then we have another luminary in this new radical extremist movement, Abdul El-Sayed. He’s running now. He won the nomination in the Michigan senatorial race. He will be running against Mike Rogers for the Senate. He said—remember, he just—he said that before that he follows Sharia law. He was caught in a hot mic saying that we should not celebrate the death of the supreme leader, [Ali] Khamenei, in Iran.
Remember, he had just ordered 40,000 of his own people to be slaughtered, that were protesting. And he said, “My constituents wouldn’t like that.” In other words, his constituents, which he’s proud of, were on the side of the Iranian theocracy that for 50 years has been the chief sponsor of terror in the world. When he tried to attack a fellow Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman, he said, ideally, you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message. That’s almost a blatant call to kill him and then to use that violence to intimidate other people.
When there was an attack on a Jewish synagogue by a brother of a Hezbollah member, and he was in the United States, and he was asked to comment, what did he say? Hurt people. Deep breath. Hurt people. Justifying that. We’ve had four occasions now when the Secret Service shot at potential and actual Trump assassins. We’ve had Hollywood stars. We’ve had people like Robert De Niro, Kathy Griffin, Shakespeare in the Park in New York, celebrity cooks, and Snoop Dogg.
They’ve said they’ve all tried to compete in imagining to us an audience through public media and social media whether they should kill Donald Trump, whether they should burn Donald Trump, whether they should stab Donald Trump, whether they could shoot Donald Trump, whether they could decapitate him, whether they could throw him over a cliff, whether they could blow him up. This comes on the heels that for the last essentially nine years there’s been no contrition, no apologies for a series of events that almost wrecked the sense of law and order in this country and severely damaged the integrity of the government and was a challenge to the Constitution.
For three years, the FBI, a rogue agency under James Comey and then later Andrew McCabe, cooked up the Steele dossier, which was a complete fabrication, and tried to take out a Republican candidate for the presidency. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was all based on a lie.
We were told in 2020 that a laptop with incriminating evidence, which the FBI had in its possession and had verified it was Hunter [Biden] laptop’s possession, it was his property with all the incriminating information on it, was cooked up by the Russians. Fifty former CIA and intelligence authorities swore on the eve of the election that the Russians and Donald Trump were colluding. It was a complete lie. No one has ever apologized.
We had four prosecutors, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Jack Smith. They all made up charges, and we know now that Alvin Bragg had to take a federal charge when he was a municipal prosecutor that the federal prosecutors thought was bogus.
Ms. James went after an old loan and said that he didn’t—he exaggerated his collateral when the bank that issued the loan said he didn’t.
Fani Willis, no need—she’s been so disgraced now. She’s been fined by the court. She made up most of the charges. She was essentially hiring her own paramour and then charging the state for their junkets.
Jack Smith, he tried to rush a federal indictment of Donald Trump on the Mar-a-Lago raid, and he was trying to get insurrection. That case was thrown out.
Not enough. They raided Mar-a-Lago, the private home of an ex-president. They said he had dozens of classified material. He had 11,000 documents, and all they could find under contention were 102 documents they claimed were classified. Then they scattered the documents on the ground and made it look as if Donald Trump was some type of criminal.

“DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly declared on one podcast that they are “famous for” “Our hatred of the United States Constitution.”

• “Institutionalist” Becomes the New “Oligarch” Label for the Far Left (Turley)

Pennsylvania state representative and Democratic Socialist Chris Rabb is the latest Democrat to reaffirm his alliance with virulent antisemite Hasan Piker. What is most notable, however, is his attack on establishment Democrats as “institutionalists,” a new label reflecting the radical agenda for changing our constitutional system. It is a term that is now in vogue on the far left by those who want to tear down our institutions and scrap our Constitution.

Across the country, attacks are growing on Democrats who are viewed as insufficiently radical. Those of us who continue to celebrate the Madisonian democracy as creating the most successful and stable republic in history are now “cultists” and “institutionalists” who are trapped in “nostalgia.” The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have drawn support from many who want a literal revolution. DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly declared on one podcast that they are “famous for” “Our hatred of the United States Constitution.” Even those who are not joining the DSA are denouncing the system and those who want to preserve it.
At The Atlantic, Sarada Peri, the former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, referred to institutionalists as “peculiar creatures” inhabiting Washington. On the web, radicals denounce institutionalists who “want us to defend and support the institutions we already have.” She added that: “Many institutionalists simply have a reflexive distaste for change, preferring the enduring, if ossified, conventions that offer them inherited credibility. But perhaps in part because they are mostly old, white men, institutionalists are afforded significant deference by the media and the general public.”
Rabb joined his chorus of radicals opposing institutionalists in their party. He is the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District and is now virtually assured of being a member of Congress. He is also emerging as a dominant voice on the far left. He has established his bona fides with a growing radical movement within the Democratic Party, denouncing the Declaration of Independence, calling our constitutional system “the beast” to be slayed, and bizarrely claiming that the Framers had no notion of what “policing” means.
On Friday, Rabb tweeted “This is what the institutionalists are focusing their efforts on now: Disavowing Hasan Piker.” He added “Not White Christian nationalists? Not the broligarchs? Not the AI overlords? Nope, the guy encouraging young people to use their collective political power for good. F— that noise.” Of course, Piker rose to national prominence with other Democratic Socialists and radicals brought him to their states to campaign against establishment figures. Much like the left’s focus on figures who associate with Nicholas Fuentes, Piker has outraged many with claims that America deserved 9/11, American Jews are asking to be attacked by supporting Israel, and mocking the murder of figures like Charlie Kirk.
Putting aside the fact that Rabb still supports this notorious hatemonger as someone organizing “young people to use their collective political power for good,” Rabb notably denounces those opposing Piker as “institutionalists.” It is an important reveal, highlighting the radical agenda to trash the Constitution and tear down our core institutions, including the Supreme Court. Rabb has been one of those voices in calling the system “the beast” and denouncing our own revolution.
In my book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the French Revolution and its decline into what the Framers called a mobocracy. In France, “The Terror” began not with the working class, but with educated lawyers, journalists, and even aristocrats as part of the Jacobin movement. Eventually, after the mob had finished off the aristocrats, clergy, and merchants, they turned on their fellow Jacobins in a bloodletting that claimed the lives of thousands.
Even law professors and deans joined this movement in calling for the rejection of our Constitution on the 25oth anniversary of our Revolution. Mainstream figures such as Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School, have published books such as “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”

“The chancellor has ruled out a coalition with the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, citing the right-wing party’s supposed ties with Russia ..”

• Chancellor Merz Lays Into AfD Ahead of Regional Vote |(RT)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said that his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) will stick to its policy of isolating the AfD despite the right-wing party polling at over 40% ahead of regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt. The chancellor claimed that the Alternative for Germany maintains close ties with Russia and thus poses a threat to the “internal and external security of our country.” The AfD is the largest opposition faction in the Bundestag and the country’s most popular party, with recent surveys indicating that it enjoys the support of 28% of respondents.

The right-wing party campaigns on an anti-immigration platform and is also highly critical of the German government’s support for Ukraine, as well as sanctions against Russia.= Appearing on broadcaster RTL on Thursday, Merz was asked by a businessman from Saxony-Anhalt about the feasibility of the so-called ‘firewall’ policy in a democracy, under which all major parties refuse to cooperate with the AfD. The question came ahead of the regional elections in the eastern region slated for September 6.
The chancellor defended the controversial policy, categorically ruling out a coalition between the CDU and the AfD due to “fundamental” differences. He claimed that AfD members frequently visit the Russian Embassy in Berlin and maintain the “closest relationship with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.” Merz also accused the right-wing party of calling into question “our value system” by advocating Germany’s withdrawal from the Eurozone, the EU single market, and the Schengen Area.
The chancellor suggested the possibility of forming a minority government in Saxony-Anhalt, pointing to the situation in both Thuringia and Saxony, where the AfD has also been sidelined, despite coming out on top in the regional elections. Meanwhile, an INSA poll published by Bild earlier this month indicated that support for Germany’s governing CDU/CSU bloc had dipped to the lowest level in almost five years, at 20%. The survey also showed that 78% of respondents were dissatisfied with Merz’s government.
Comprised of the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the ruling coalition has faced criticism over continued economic stagnation and its failure to deliver on pre-election promises. The AfD has for years faced significant pressure from regional and federal authorities in Germany. The country’s domestic security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has designated the party as a suspected far-right extremist entity – a label that permits government surveillance of the AfD. In several regions, local chapters have been subjected to even wider monitoring by the authorities.

The dreams went nuts.

• California Was the American Dream. What Happened? (Victor Davis Hanson)

Sami Winc: We know that in California, Xavier, I think his name is Becerra, is going to win, but he is the most unimpressive of governors I’ve ever seen. Even Kamala Harris said he was not up to snuff, and she is, of course, one of the most unimpressive of mediocrities.

Victor Davis Hanson: He doesn’t come out and talk about the Biden immigration policies, which he was involved in when there were all of these unattended youth, 350,000 they can’t account for. If that had been [President Donald] Trump, he’d be in jail. So, he’s not very … I followed his career in California. He’s not very adept. He’s not a good speaker.
But again, Steve Hilton has all the answers. He really does, and he would be wonderful for the state. He’s running about 18% [behind]. Let’s just say that the polls, being all slanted and designed to raise Democratic money and create Democratic momentum, are exaggerated, as we know they have been in these other races. So, let’s say they’re eight points off. So, he’s ahead of Steve Hilton by eight to nine points.
Now, my question is this: Why would anybody vote for a person tied in with Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi and that whole tradition of Bay Area politicians who’ve taken control of the state from the LA center of power of the 1970s and ’80s, when they gave us a huge government fraud program? Devastating wildfires due to their policies about not cleaning up the forest.
The highest electricity rates in the continental United States. The highest gasoline rates in the continental United States. The highest income tax, state income tax, 13.3. The highest gas taxes. The highest number of homeless people. Almost the same as Appalachia, 21% below the poverty line.
One out of every three welfare recipients, 50% of the births on Medi-Cal, welfare type of thing, 40% of everybody uses that health care system. And we’ve got a high-speed rail not far from where I’m speaking that we’ve spent $20 billion on, and it hasn’t laid, in 10 years—12 years—one foot of track. And this group of people has overseen that. And I have an answer for you. The answer is this, and I’ve said it before: 28% of the state was not born in the United States.
Another 7 to 8 million of our 40 million Californians are the children of people, and that can mean they were just born here one day when their parents arrived, right? But anyway, they have not been fully integrated, acculturated, and assimilated. You add those two groups of first- and second-generation immigrants, and you get about 45% to 46% of the population. And when you look at where those immigrants came from, three large groups: south of the border, Mexico and Central America; India; and China. Those are all impoverished groups.
So, in their way of thinking—and I talk to a lot of them—when they come to California and they see how far it has declined and what it was like in the 1960s as a can-do state that was at the cutting edge of aqueducts and water projects and the tripartite UC, CSU, JC system, and I think it was number nine in test scores, and it was well-governed, it was not corrupt, and they had one of the most sophisticated highway systems.
When they see all that, they don’t know. They just say I don’t know. Listen, I grew up in Venezuela. I grew up in Oaxaca. I grew up… I’ve never seen a place like this. It’s wealthy. And you know what? The moment I set across—I put a toe across the U.S. border—these crazy people think I’ve been oppressed. And not only have I been oppressed, I’ve been oppressed by them. So, I come over from India or China or Mexico, and all of a sudden, my kids get preference getting into school. I get preference in civil service hiring.
And if somebody said, “Well, Victor, you’ve said yourself that DEI was on the way.” I said, “It is the way out.” But there was just a statistic that Mission High School in San Francisco, 94% are not proficient in math and like 70% are not proficient in English, and it’s sending a huge amount of its graduates to UC Berkeley. And then there was an example of another school district where 95% are proficient. Instead of getting 45% of the applicants accepted like Mission, they got eight.
In other words, they were penalized for turning out students that were superbly trained in math and English, and only 8% got in. That’s California, and it hasn’t changed. So, they look at that. So, I think those voters, I mean, they’re the majority. They’re 45%. I’m not talking about other ethnic … I’m not talking about third-generation people from those same areas. I’m talking about just first or second. So, it takes three generations to become conservative when you’re an immigrant from a poor country. It does.

Where his protection comes from.

• Dr. Fauci’s Disturbing CIA Connection Revealed (Matt Margolis)

If you didn’t already have enough reasons to distrust Dr. Anthony Fauci, here’s a new one, and it’s a doozy. Newly disclosed documents reveal that Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had a formal institutional partnership with the CIA, one that provided cover for the agency’s biological-threat research. This goes well beyond the previously known off-the-books meetings tied to the Wuhan lab origins controversy. Fauci’s ties to American intelligence run far deeper than anyone outside a handful of investigators realized.

Documents that the Daily Caller obtained show an interagency agreement in which the CIA’s Biological Technology Center launched a collaboration with NIAID focused on “forensic microbiology” involving potential bioterrorism agents. The CIA used its own funding to leverage NIAID’s existing civilian research programs, tapping unclassified virus research to “augment and complement” its own research and development.
Make no mistake about it, this was not some casual arrangement between two federal agencies. It was a working partnership between America’s top infectious disease bureaucrat and the nation’s premier spy agency, built around some of the most dangerous pathogens on Earth.
Congressional investigators have spent years probing Fauci’s ties to the intelligence community. Their findings include reports that Fauci visited CIA headquarters without anyone formally recording his entry, and that he took part in discussions on the agency’s review of COVID-19’s origins. Former Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who chaired the House coronavirus subcommittee, wrote that “the information provided suggests that Dr. Fauci was escorted into Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarters — without a record of entry — and participated in the analysis to ‘influence’ the Agency’s review.”
Rutgers University chemistry professor Richard Ebright said the newly disclosed documents show Fauci’s NIAID may have crossed red lines on biological weapons research. “Vice President Cheney assigned Fauci to head US biodefense research programs in 2002, including bioweapons-agents-development and bioweapons-agents-characterization research programs that approached, and arguably crossed, red lines set by the Biological Weapons Convention,” Ebright explained. “The documents show early steps in the process of transferring funding for, and direction of, CIA and DoD biodefense projects to Fauci’s agency, NIAID.”
The CIA-NIAID partnership grew out of a broader post-9/11 overhaul of federal biodefense. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, the Bush administration poured new funding into biodefense, and NIAID under Fauci became a central civilian agency for research on dangerous pathogens, while the CIA grappled with the growing difficulty of detecting biological weapons. A 2003 CIA memo titled “The Darker Bioweapons Future” warned that advances in biotechnology could make biological weapons far harder to identify than nuclear weapons, and called for “a much closer — and perhaps qualitatively different — working relationship between the intelligence and biological sciences communities,” including scientists serving as a “living sensor web” gathering information from foreign researchers, universities, and conferences.
Former CIA Senior Operations Officer James Erdman III testified before Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the line between public health and national security work became increasingly blurred after the early 2000s. “The lines between public health and biodefense have been blurred beyond recognition ever since,” Erdman said.
Erdman testified that NIAID, the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and foreign researchers operated together for over 20 years without real oversight. “They received funding from NIAID and other agencies for vaccine research, USAID’s PREDICT project, the [Pentagon’s] cooperative threat reduction program, and even worked with Chinese scientists on coronavirus and other pathogen studies pursuing vaccines,” he said. “There was no oversight monitoring how this web of relationships influenced research, policy, and public health in any holistic way for over 20 years,” Erdman added.
If you thought our health institutions were really prioritizing public health, think again. These new documents establish that Fauci’s CIA relationship was part of an institutional partnership stretching back years, spanning multiple presidential administrations and untold sums of taxpayer money. Fauci was a central node in a web connecting American intelligence, the Pentagon, and foreign researchers, far more than the mild-mannered public-health bureaucrat Americans were led to believe he was..

Soon the longest ever serving judge.

• Clarence Thomas Played the Long Game. He Won. (Josh Hammer)

An important new book by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Going Further, calls attention anew to the life and career of the single greatest living American, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. For many years after Thomas arrived on the court in the early 1990s, his conservative, originalist views were relegated to dissenting opinions. Three and a half decades later, Thomas, now the second-longest-serving justice in the court’s history, regularly finds himself in the majority. Thomas, in short, has won the long game. But how?

Thirty-five years ago, mainstream legal training and judicial practice suggested the proper way to interpret a legal document is to probe for nebulous concepts such as legislative history and legislative intent. It’s now hard to believe, but the commonsense notion that one should begin the interpretive exercise with a document’s text and plain meaning was pretty much unheard of.
Thomas, along with his then-colleagues Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, galvanized an intellectual revolution in American legal and judicial practice. Today, law schools instruct students to begin the interpretive exercise with the text. In fact, this is hardly controversial. As the liberal Justice Elena Kagan put it in a 2015 Harvard Law School lecture, “We’re all textualists now.”
A big part of the reason for this success is simple: sheer persuasiveness. The straightforward nature of the originalist and textualist position quickly found mass appeal, putting defenders of legislative history or “living constitutionalism” on their back feet. They haven’t been able to keep up. In the area of legal interpretation, liberals have lost the public argument — badly. In recent years, we’ve seen this manifest in conservative victories at the high court on religious liberty, abortion, gun rights, affirmative action and the administrative state.
There is an underappreciated additional ingredient in Thomas’ winning formula: his kindness, affability and genuine human decency. Thomas’ life story is the stuff of legend. He grew up in the most abject poverty imaginable in Jim Crow-era rural Georgia. English was not even his first language. He overcame all that, in addition to his one-time wavering faith and even an infatuation with Malcolm X and the Black Power movement, to become one of the greatest conservatives in American history.
But here’s the thing: Thomas never forgot where he came from. It is well known that, inside the Supreme Court building, Thomas is the personal favorite justice. That’s true for the justices themselves, it’s true for the law clerks, and it’s even true for the janitors. Thomas is the justice who will talk NASCAR with the court security guard (he’s a big fan of the sport), and he is the justice who will regale law clerks with funny stories from years gone by — with his signature, boisterous laugh. The one topic Thomas will not talk about, because it would offend his old-school Southern manners, is himself.
The Supreme Court, unlike Congress or the executive branch, is a small, intimate institution. Passions can run high, but a justice can best achieve success over the long haul if he can persuade his colleagues in conferences, memoranda, and other communications. As the saying goes, you usually catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. That was not always Scalia’s way, but it is definitely Thomas’ way. The next Supreme Court term begins in just over a month, and the court’s senior-most member will once again anchor the court’s originalist bloc.
There will be Viramontes v. Cook County, a prime opportunity to extend a Second Amendment guarantee to modern sporting rifles (“AR-15s”). There will be St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, another case out of stubborn Colorado that could, and should, extend otherwise-universal preschool voucher access to religious schools. Other big cases on the docket touch on voting rights, climate change, and more. Thomas’ influence will be palpable. He will once again serve the role he always has: that of dependable workhorse and beacon of intellectual clarity.
He will once again be the court’s most principled originalist, establishing a barometer off of which other originalists can assess their own instincts and rulings. In a nation short on exemplary role models, Thomas fills the void. He would never dream of saying so himself, but Thomas is an American hero and the nation’s most inspiring man. The only question is whether he will stay on the court until May 20, 2028, at which point he will become the nation’s longest-serving justice ever.
If there’s one thing we know from Clarence Thomas’ life: Don’t bet against him.

pic.twitter.com/GfQl8J4w2R
— ProMarinerUSA (@ProMarinerUSA) August 29, 2026

I'll just leave this here… pic.twitter.com/4Jjf2JJCEL
— David J Harris Jr (@DavidJHarrisJr) August 28, 2026

🚨 AWESOME! Elon Musk just FULLY BACKED President Trump's formation of the U.S. Space Academy, made official by executive order today in Texas

Elon knows Trump is making sure America LEADS the space race 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/HK2XsQvYAP
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 28, 2026

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith: The new American tariffs will affect $1.5B of Alberta goods. The new Canadian counter-tariffs will affect $4.8B of our economy.

Our businesses will be more harmed by Canadian counter-tariffs than are going to be by the American tariffs. pic.twitter.com/p1OcTW9Pdr
— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) August 28, 2026