Category: Opinion & analysis
My court fight over DEI at Arizona State isn’t culture-war noise
“Who will rid us of this meddlesome philosopher?”
Arizona State University hopes the Arizona Supreme Court will. I’m confident that my case against required diversity, equity, and inclusion training raises issues far larger than one professor or one ideological program. Fundamental questions about employee rights, public accountability, and the rule of law hang in the balance.
If I succeed in showing that ASU bears legal responsibility — and that employees can hold it accountable — the implications reach far beyond one HR program.
Why would the largest state university in the country defend mandatory DEI training in court? Why would it spend thousands — likely tens of thousands — defending its “inclusive communities” training, a program that teaches employees about the alleged moral and social failures of “whiteness” and “heteronormativity”?
The answer defies common sense. Yet ASU presses forward. In doing so, it has turned what many dismiss as a culture-war skirmish into an employment-rights case with statewide consequences.
Most people hear “DEI” and instantly map the political lines. This case deserves a different reaction. Required ideological training should make any employee — left, right, or indifferent — pay attention.
First, the training relies on racial essentialism. It instructs ASU employees to view themselves and others primarily through skin color, then assigns moral weight and collective guilt on that basis.
Second, it attacks traditional Christian moral teaching, especially marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Either flaw should have pushed administrators to retire the program long before I raised formal objections.
A third issue should unite every employee, regardless of where they stand on DEI: ASU treated this as an employment matter. The university did not admit error, revise the program, and move on. It hired Perkins Coie to defend racial essentialism. Yes, Perkins Coie — the firm widely associated with the Hillary Clinton-era Steele dossier controversy. ASU employs a full team of in-house attorneys. Why pay a nationally prominent and politically charged firm to defend a training program many already viewed as controversial — and, I argue, unlawful?
ASU’s posture gets stranger. The university has since taken down the required training, yet it continues paying lawyers to defend it in court. When this ends, Arizona lawmakers and taxpayers will want a number: How much did ASU spend on legal fees, and which administrators approved the contracts?
RELATED: Feds probe ASU for racial bias — will other universities be held accountable?
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ASU’s legal strategy aims at dismissal. The university claims I lack standing. Put plainly, ASU argues that an employee cannot hold his public employer accountable for violating state law. At that point, the dispute stops being about DEI and becomes about every employee in Arizona. If ASU wins at the Arizona Supreme Court, employees across the state lose a crucial tool for legal accountability.
Professors to my political left may sneer at my critique of DEI. They should still worry about the precedent.
Imagine a scenario pulled from their nightmares: A future administration takes over ASU and imposes mandatory ideological training from the opposite end of the political spectrum — required ICE-themed training, or MAGA-themed training. If that training violated Arizona law, those same professors would demand the right to sue. ASU’s argument would bar them. This case concerns enforceable employee rights, not just contemporary politics.
ASU’s first bid to dismiss the case failed. A lower court rejected the university’s argument. ASU appealed, and the appellate court sided with the university. That posture put the case on a path to the Arizona Supreme Court.
RELATED: A gay whistleblower just punked Colorado’s DEI machine
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Two facts matter here. The Arizona Senate and the state representative who authored the law I claim ASU violated have filed an amicus brief supporting my position. Their message is simple: A public employee has standing to hold a public employer accountable for breaking the law. The statute prohibits the kind of racial blame and collective guilt that ASU’s training promoted. The principle should not require explanation: Don’t assign moral fault to entire groups based on skin color.
So why does ASU defend this?
Because ASU does not view this fight as one training module that can be swapped out and forgotten. Race-based blame sits near the center of the contemporary left’s approach to education. If I succeed in showing that ASU bears legal responsibility — and that employees can hold it accountable — the implications reach far beyond one HR program. ASU’s initiatives aimed at combatting “whiteness” would come under scrutiny. Its embedded social justice goals face legal challenge and public examination. Students could follow with suits over race blame in a “decolonized curriculum.”
“Who will rid us of this meddlesome philosopher?” ASU really hopes the Arizona Supreme Court will.
Every employee in Arizona should watch what happens next. The outcome will determine whether public institutions answer to the law — or whether employees must comply silently, no matter what ideology administrators impose from above.
America should eliminate the H-1B and replace it with THIS
Every time immigration comes up, it’s painted as a choice of extremes. Compassion or common sense? No immigration or no rules?
That’s a false choice — and it’s one that benefits only the politicians who’d rather argue than govern.
Preferring immigration that strengthens our economy instead of undercutting it is just common sense.
The recent controversy over H-1B visas is a perfect example. Americans are waking up to the reality that this program, sold as a way to fill “critical skills gaps,” too often does the opposite. It replaces U.S. workers, suppresses wages, and gives leverage to corporations that have every incentive to choose cheaper foreign labor over American talent. That’s not America First. That’s America Last — with a diversity slogan slapped on top.
But here’s what the media and the political class won’t tell you: Not all immigration programs are created equal. And if we’re serious about prioritizing American workers, jobs, and communities, we should be talking a lot more about the policies that actually deliver.
Programs like the EB-5 investor visa system.
Unlike H-1B, EB-5 doesn’t take jobs from Americans. Instead, it creates them. It doesn’t offer handouts. It requires real skin in the game from applicants. And with a strict cap of 10,650 visas, it maintains a controlled influx of immigrants, keeping America stable and secure.
Here’s how it works: A foreign applicant invests at least $1.05 million — or $800,000 if the investment is in a targeted employment area, such as a rural community or a region with high unemployment. Returns are not guaranteed. If the investment fails, the investor loses his money.
In exchange, he gets a chance at a green card — only if he meets strict requirements and proves his investment generated American jobs.
That’s the key: EB-5 doesn’t promise success; it requires it.
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Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
EB-5 aligns incentives the way immigration policy should. Investors succeed only if American communities succeed. Jobs must be created here, projects must be built here, and money must stay here. That’s a far cry from visa programs that reward outsourcing, encourage dependency, and leave taxpayers holding the bag. EB-5 treats U.S. residency as something to be earned.
The results speak for themselves. Between 2008 and 2021, the program generated $43.9 billion in foreign direct investment. That money translates to real American improvement through projects like hotels, infrastructure, commercial developments, and housing. From 2010 to 2013 alone, EB-5 investments were responsible for creating over 100,000 American jobs.
Contrast that with H-1B, where companies can import foreign workers, often at lower wages, to the detriment of American citizens.
Critics love to point to early reports of fraud in the EB-5 program. What they conveniently leave out is that those cases were tied to bad actors running projects — not the investors themselves. The perpetrators were prosecuted. Reforms followed.
In fact, the program has been significantly strengthened over time. Investment thresholds were raised in 2019 to ensure only serious investors qualify. Then came the 2022 reforms, which added even more transparency, oversight, and accountability.
That’s how a healthy immigration system is supposed to work. When abuse was identified, Congress stepped in. Oversight increased. Standards tightened. Transparency improved. Instead of scrapping a productive program, lawmakers fixed it — proving that enforcement, not abandonment, is the answer when a policy shows real promise.
The compliance data doesn’t lie. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reported a 94% decrease in I-829 petition denials by 2015 — meaning the overwhelming majority of participants were meeting the program’s requirements.
That’s what responsible immigration looks like: high standards, strict enforcement, and real benefits for America.
RELATED: Chip Roy’s immigration blitz hits the lawless left and the squish right
Photo by Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
And let’s address another elephant in the room. EB-5 doesn’t fast-track voters. It doesn’t hand out political favors or rely on emotional blackmail about being “anti-immigrant.” It’s transactional, transparent, and limited by design.
You invest. You create jobs. You follow the rules. Or you don’t qualify.
That’s it.
For years, Americans have been told that questioning immigration policy makes them heartless. But there’s nothing heartless about asking whether a program actually helps this country. Preferring immigration that strengthens our economy instead of undercutting it is just common sense.
If Washington insists on talking about immigration, let’s at least talk honestly. Programs like H-1B deserve scrutiny — and reform — because they too often put corporations ahead of citizens. Programs like EB-5, when properly enforced, do the opposite.
America doesn’t need more slogans. We need smarter policy. And that starts with rewarding systems that put Americans first.
Trump’s economic agenda needs a Vegas test — and a Vegas win
Las Vegas is a mirror. When it works, America works. When it struggles, the problem isn’t local — it’s national.
Vegas was built on a simple idea: value. Give people a reason to come, treat them fairly, and let them choose how much risk they want to take. No lectures. No stupid political games. No government hand in your pocket every five minutes.
A great city doesn’t nickel-and-dime its customers. Value matters. People don’t expect cheap. They expect fair. That lesson applies nationally, too.
That formula built the entertainment capital of the world. And right now, it’s under pressure.
The neon lights have dimmed
Vegas is getting squeezed from both ends, and the pressure feels familiar because it’s the same pressure families across the country have felt.
Under the Biden administration, inflation surged. Housing costs jumped. Groceries, energy, airfare, and insurance rose together. Families didn’t get richer. Their dollars just bought less.
Reckless spending, energy restrictions, and regulatory overreach drove the damage. Washington acted like prices were somebody else’s problem.
Southern Nevada also felt the economic whiplash. Tourism collapsed during the 2020 lockdowns, wiping out billions and driving unemployment as high as 33% at its peak. Visitor spending returned slowly, then softened again in 2025 — after wages, rents, and debt had already risen on the assumption that demand would keep growing.
For locals trying to raise families, that meant higher baseline costs and less margin for error. Housing, rent, and transportation ate paychecks. Hospitality wages rose, but many workers still lost ground as commuting costs and rents climbed faster.
A gamble on progress
Under President Trump, the trend has started to reverse — not overnight, but directionally. Energy production is up. Supply chains have stabilized. Regulatory pressure has eased. Inflation cooled. Costs didn’t snap back, but the bleeding slowed.
That matters because affordability is competitiveness. Vegas shows what happens when value breaks.
For decades, Vegas understood the middle-class customer: a weekend trip, a decent room, a good meal, a show, maybe a little gambling — and you left feeling like you got your money’s worth.
That perception is cracking. Resort fees that feel like a second room rate. Paid parking where it never used to exist. Food and drink prices that make people stop and stare. Fees stacked on top of fees, revealed at checkout. The experience starts feeling less like entertainment and more like an airport terminal.
Visitors notice. And when people feel squeezed, they don’t just complain — they change their behavior.
RELATED: America tried to save the planet and forgot to save itself
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Vegas runs on volume. When fewer visitors come, fewer dollars circulate. The pain hits the dealer, the server, the bartender, the stagehand, the hotel staff, and the rideshare driver long before it reaches the executive suite.
Zoom out, and you see America facing the same dynamic.
The United States used to win because we offered the best value on earth. Not the cheapest — the best deal. A place where costs made sense and life felt attainable.
That edge has been eroding, especially in housing. When home ownership becomes a fantasy, workers can’t relocate, young families delay building stable lives, and talent looks elsewhere.
Meanwhile, competitors are building. Riyadh. Dubai. Macao. Singapore. They’re creating new tourism and entertainment hubs designed to pull dollars away from legacy markets like Las Vegas.
They’re betting America forgets how competition works.
Make Vegas Vegas again
Federal policy matters here. Washington still treats Vegas like a cash register, with outdated rules such as taxing gambling winnings and forcing IRS reporting thresholds stuck in the 1970s. That doesn’t just annoy visitors. It tells the world America doesn’t understand modern consumer behavior.
Ending the federal tax on gambling winnings isn’t radical. It’s strategic. Updating IRS reporting levels isn’t reckless. It’s realistic. Both would improve the visitor experience and help Vegas compete.
The industry also has work to do. A great city doesn’t nickel-and-dime its customers. Transparency matters. Value matters. People don’t expect cheap. They expect fair.
That lesson applies nationally, too.
America doesn’t win by lecturing consumers or ignoring affordability. America wins by making this country the best place on earth to live, work, build, and spend money.
Vegas is telling that story in real time. If Washington listens, the rest of the country benefits.
What’s Greenland to us?
The late, great Angelo Codevilla had a way of cutting through the fog of foreign policy.
In the Claremont Review of Books in 2019, he asked, “What’s Russia to us?” He didn’t ask because he had any special admiration for Russia. He asked because Washington had turned Russia into a utility: a convenient villain that justified budgets, scolded dissent, and kept the governing class in charge. Codevilla’s point was simple but brutal. Strategy begins with interests. Interests require discrimination. Most of what passes for “grand strategy” amounts to habit and vanity.
Greenland touches national defense. Greenland touches Arctic geography. Greenland touches the supply chain for advanced systems. Those facts don’t bend around Davos etiquette.
That question — his question — fits the Greenland uproar better than any of the Davos hand-wringing last week.
European leaders want this story to be about Trump’s manners and apparent recklessness. They want it to be about “norms,” about “tone,” about the precious feelings of the alliance. They want Americans to believe the true scandal lies in a U.S. president speaking too plainly or belligerently.
Trump did speak plainly. In Davos on Wednesday, he pushed for “immediate negotiations” to acquire Greenland and ruled out the use of military force. He also floated a “framework” tied to Arctic security after meeting NATO’s secretary general, while walking back tariff threats that had rattled allies and markets.
Fine. Trump being Trump shouldn’t surprise anyone.
But Europe’s reaction should surprise people, because it revealed how unserious the continent has become — even about something as serious as Greenland.
Instead of handling business like adults — hard bargaining among allies over a piece of real estate that actually matters — European capitals staged indignation, offered lectures, and then produced the usual substitute for seriousness: a symbolic “show of force” meant for domestic consumption.
The numbers tell the laughable story. Sweden sent three officers. Norway sent two. Finland sent two liaison officers. The Netherlands sent one naval officer. The U.K. sent one officer. France sent around 15 mountain specialists. Germany sent a reconnaissance team of 13. Denmark led with about 100 troops. Reuters called it “modest.” That word was kind.
But that’s the European governing class in a nutshell for you: Perform alarm, then perform resolve, then declare victory over a crisis they helped manufacture.
All of this theater tried to sell one idea: Greenland needs protection from the United States.
Preposterous.
Greenland matters because it helps defend the United States. Pituffik Space Base — some Americans may still know it as Thule — sits where U.S. forces can track threats coming over the pole. The Arctic doesn’t care about European speeches. Missiles don’t fly around Greenland out of respect for allied etiquette. Geography dictates capability, and Greenland sits where the map says it sits.
RELATED: Pressed on Greenland, Trump tells Davos the US has weapons he ‘can’t even talk about’
Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
Europe’s commissioners understand that. They just hate saying it out loud because it reminds them of the arrangement they prefer to obscure: America provides the real security; Europe provides the indignant boo-hoo commentary.
The Greenland tantrum exposed another reality that should make America’s sensible policy planners sweat, assuming they still exist: The industrial foundations of power have become strategic again, and the West has behaved like an empire that forgot how to build.
Rare-earths sound like an investor pitch until you remember where they go. Modern weapons systems and advanced electronics depend on them. We need minerals you have likely never heard of — neodymium, dysprosium, samarium, and yttrium — to keep our F-35s flying and our missiles precision-guided.
But the supply chain runs through the part nobody wants to talk about: processing and refining. China dominates that bottleneck — especially the heavy rare-earth elements that sit in the highest-end systems. One major estimate put China’s share of global heavy rare-earth processing at more than 90%. That’s a massive national security hole.
Greenland matters because it offers a way out — not a magic wand, but an exit. Greenland holds serious mineral potential. That potential shifts the long-term strategic balance only if development happens.
Greenland’s own politics have made development tricky. In 2021, Greenland reinstated a uranium ban that effectively froze the Kvanefjeld project, one of the world’s most significant rare-earth deposits, because uranium appears alongside rare-earth ore and triggers the political and regulatory trip wires that make major mining projects difficult to sustain.
Greenland’s voters have every right to weigh environmental costs. Strategy still counts consequences. But the practical result of the ban didn’t restrain Beijing. It protected Beijing’s advantage.
The Europeans, of course, love a green virtue-signal that imposes no serious cost on Europe. Through it all, however, the continent remains dependent on America’s military might, dependent on Chinese processing, and increasingly dependent on slogans to conceal both.
So yes — Trump’s aggressive posture creates complications. Acquisition talk puts Denmark in a public box and turns what should be an alliance negotiation into a freak show. It hands European leaders a stage they don’t deserve and an excuse to treat American interests as a moral problem.
RELATED: Trump announces ‘framework’ of ‘great’ deal with NATO on Greenland
Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty Images
But Europe’s leaders made fools of themselves by trying to address a strategic reality through choreography. A reconnaissance team, a few liaison officers, and a weekend of headlines don’t secure Greenland against anyone. Their “show of force” invited contempt, not respect.
Codevilla’s 2019 essay mocked the way our establishment inflates foreign threats to discipline the home front. The Greenland episode shows a mirror image: European elites inflating a U.S. negotiating push into a crisis because they can’t handle an America that talks like a serious country.
Greenland touches our national defense. Greenland touches Arctic geography. Greenland touches the supply chain for advanced systems. Those facts don’t bend around Davos etiquette.
So use Codevilla’s test. Strip away the moral fog. Rank interests and act like the answers matter.
What’s Greenland to us?
A hell of a lot.
The reform every society needs: Stop mistaking shock for success
Years ago, I worked in a large office building with a woman who walked with a terrible limp. Not a slight hitch, but a pronounced, jarring gait caused by a car accident that left her with significant bone loss in one leg. She was a delightful person, but no one could ignore the limp. It shaped how she moved through the world and, at times, how the world responded to her.
She lived that way for more than 25 years.
Liberation may begin with a D-Day assault or a precision, middle-of-the-night special-forces strike, but rehabilitation always moves slower.
Then one morning, everything changed.
She walked into the office upright and steady. No limp. No sway. Her posture looked different. Her face looked different. The transformation was so striking, people stopped what they were doing just to stare.
An orthotist had fitted her with a lift for her shoe. For the first time in decades, her body was aligned.
It felt dramatic. It felt hopeful.
Three weeks later, she showed up at work limping again.
When I asked what happened, she looked down and said quietly, “It was too painful.”
For years, that story stayed with me. I assumed she should have pushed through the discomfort. If she really wanted to walk straight, I thought, she would have endured the pain. I put the burden on her.
Decades later, while talking with the man who makes my wife’s prosthetic legs — who is also a certified orthotist — I mentioned the story. He didn’t hesitate.
“That was the orthotist’s fault.”
With that degree of limb difference, he explained, correction must happen in small increments over time. You do not force a body that has adapted to damage for decades into alignment overnight. The shock alone can undo the good you intend. Pain, in that case, isn’t weakness. It’s warning.
The problem was never the goal of walking straight. It was the pace. The change looked impressive, but it couldn’t last.
Had she been guided wisely, she might still be walking straight today.
That realization reshaped how I think about far more than posture and gait.
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Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP via Getty Images
We talk a lot about sustainability, but the word often gets treated as corporate jargon. In real life, it means something simpler: Can you keep going without being damaged by the very solution meant to help you?
The question isn’t whether disruption can be endured for a season. The question is what happens when it lasts long enough to reshape the body, the household, or even a culture itself.
The longer misalignment persists, the more people adjust to it. Not because it’s right, but because it becomes familiar.
I think of family caregivers who, like that woman, adapt to dysfunction. They normalize exhaustion. They compensate for imbalance. What once felt untenable becomes routine. The standard slowly drops, and despair and resentment find room to grow.
This pattern doesn’t stop with individuals.
It shows up in institutions and nations, especially those emerging from long seasons of corruption, fear, or misrule. The fraud being uncovered in Minnesota will not be corrected quickly. Venezuela didn’t unravel overnight, and it won’t be restored all at once. Iran won’t shed decades of tyranny through slogans or spectacle. Systems deformed over time don’t heal on announcement alone.
Liberation may begin with a D-Day assault or a precision, middle-of-the-night special-forces strike, but rehabilitation always moves slower. Hard ground is taken a little at a time. Institutions get rebuilt inch by inch. The work costs money. It lacks glamour. No one escapes it.
Trying to fix everything at once is like forcing a damaged body into alignment without preparation. The result may look decisive, but it often collapses under its own weight.
This is where leadership gets tested.
Not by how loudly change is declared, but by whether it can be endured.
RELATED: When human worth becomes conditional, caregiving becomes impossible
Photo by: Edwin Remsburg/VW Pics via Getty Images
Real leadership doesn’t just name what’s wrong. It requires patience and competence. It understands limits. It moves deliberately. It produces progress people can live with — and live inside — over time.
People can endure difficult change when it leads somewhere stable. What they can’t endure is repeated pain with no lasting gain.
A deliberate pace doesn’t mean abandoning the goal. Real leadership — whether for a caregiver or a nation — recognizes the trauma that brought us here. It refuses to confuse speed with progress. It commits instead to patient steps that straighten what has been bent without breaking what remains.
That kind of leadership doesn’t rush healing. It makes healing possible.
For caregivers, for communities, and for nations, alignment imposed too quickly can injure the very people it claims to help. Alignment applied with patience, competence, and resolve can change a life permanently.
That woman wanted to walk straight. She simply needed someone wise enough to guide her there.
Tomahawks look tough. Grid disruption actually wins.
As President Trump proposes a ceasefire-in-place to stop the meat grinder in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin appears to be doing what he does best: stalling. With the U.S. busy juggling Iran, Venezuela, and even Greenland, Putin likely figures he can drag this war out long enough to wear Ukraine down and force a surrender through attrition.
Meanwhile Volodymyr Zelenskyy is brooding over not getting Tomahawk cruise missiles — weapons that could strike deep inside Russia.
The goal is irritation, disruption, and humiliation — repeated so often that people start cursing the Kremlin for creating this mess.
But instead of fixating on Tomahawks, Zelenskyy should look at the position Putin is now in. It has a historical parallel worth taking seriously.
Putin resembles Czar Nicholas II in 1917.
In both cases, Russian treasure has poured into a black hole while generals kept ordering “meat attacks” that chewed through manpower by the hundreds of thousands. In 1917, the loss of blood and money turned the nobility against the czar and set the stage for the Kerensky Revolution.
Putin’s oligarchs now sit where the czar’s nobility once sat: close enough to power to profit and close enough to disaster to panic.
Ukraine should exploit that.
A weapon of mass disruption
The goal shouldn’t be a dramatic strike that makes Russians rally around “Mother Russia.” A Tomahawk barrage would do exactly that. It would unify the country behind Putin and hand him the cleanest propaganda gift imaginable.
Ukraine needs something else: a way to transfer the misery and frustration of war to the Russian public — especially in Moscow and other major cities — without creating a patriotic surge.
Russia’s population is insulated by propaganda. Ukraine should attack the insulation, not the borders.
Winter brings slower movement and fewer offensives. That gives Ukraine an opening to run a low-cost, high-annoyance campaign modeled on a little-remembered British operation from World War II.
RELATED: Pressed on Greenland, Trump tells Davos the US has weapons he ‘can’t even talk about’
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The British Royal Navy called it Operation Outward. Today strategists would call it a “cost-imposing” campaign: something cheap to launch that forces the enemy to spend far more to stop it.
The Royal Navy released nearly 100,000 weather balloons. About half carried incendiary bomblets. The rest dragged long wire strands designed to short out power lines and cause disruption across the German electrical grid. German forces had to waste time and resources trying to counter a swarm of cheap devices drifting across their territory.
Because winds in the northern hemisphere generally move west to east, the Germans couldn’t retaliate in kind.
(The Japanese later tried something similar against the United States with the Fu-Go balloons, launching roughly 9,300 of them toward the U.S. and Canada. They forced America to divert resources even though the overall damage remained limited.)
Ukraine’s geography makes this concept even more attractive. Ukraine sits southwest of Russia. That means a balloon campaign drifting into western Russia would give Moscow no easy, low-cost way to respond with the same trick.
And unlike the World War II version, Ukraine wouldn’t need incendiaries. The point isn’t to burn Russian cities or kill civilians. The last thing Ukraine needs is to create martyrs and rally Russians around Putin.
The goal is irritation, disruption, and humiliation — repeated so often that people start cursing the Kremlin for creating this mess.
The cost math
Peter Rosato of Kaymont Consolidated Industries, a major weather balloon manufacturer, estimates that an eight-foot diameter balloon costs about $5 to $7. A hydrogen generator could inflate them for only pennies more.
Using the British model, the balloon could carry a simple ballast mechanism that slowly lowers it while trailing a long tether: roughly 700 feet of hemp cord, tied to a thinner steel wire around 300 feet long. That wire drags across power infrastructure and can short out lines, forcing repairs and outages.
The British saw real success disrupting the German electrical grid. They also forced the Nazis to waste valuable fighter flight hours trying to shoot down balloons — an expensive response to a cheap threat.
Ukraine could buy 100,000 balloons at roughly $5 each and — even after adding wire and other components — build a unit for under $1 million.
Unlike the British, Ukraine also wouldn’t need the same complex altitude-control system used to guide balloons across the English Channel, France, and the Low Countries into Germany. A long, contiguous border allows Ukrainian launches to drift into Russian territory without the same navigation demands.
To improve the results, Ukraine could tweak the design. A better unreeling mechanism might outperform a simple trailing wire. A Ukrainian electrical grid specialist and a meteorologist familiar with conditions in the northeastern border region near Shostka could help optimize launch times for maximum impact.
Make it a war Russians can’t ignore
This isn’t just disruption. It’s information warfare.
The point is not only to knock out power lines but to make the disruption visible — balloons everywhere across western Russia, especially near Moscow — as proof that Putin cannot protect his own people from the consequences of his war.
Modern realities require modern execution. Ukraine couldn’t run this from fixed-launch sites. Russian reconnaissance drones would find them, and artillery or kamikaze drones would destroy them.
The operation would need to move.
A vehicle-borne launch system makes the most sense: military trucks large enough to carry inflated eight-foot balloons, gas tanks, uninflated balloons, payloads, communications gear, a generator, and basic workshop tools.
And for safety, Ukraine would likely need to use helium instead of hydrogen. Hydrogen is cheaper, but the risk of accidental detonation inside a truck is too high.
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Antonina Satrevica / Getty Images
Night launches would also matter. To avoid detection, the trucks and equipment would need to be compatible with night-vision operations.
Now picture the outcome.
Imagine 1,000 yellow-and-blue balloons drifting into Russia every day, dragging wires across electrical lines.
Imagine the manpower, equipment, and aircraft Russia would have to divert from the front to hunt them down — at night — every night — for the next hundred nights.
And for the final touch, imagine the optics when Russian crews find one of these balloons in daylight, wires draped across a shorted power line, with a huge portrait of Vladimir Putin half-naked on a horse and the Russian phrase for “I did that!”
That kind of mockery lands differently when you’re freezing in the dark because of Putin’s war.
Ukraine doesn’t need Tomahawks to hit Russia where it hurts. It needs a cheap, persistent campaign that turns irritation into anger — and turns anger into political pressure on the regime that started this catastrophe.
The sanctuary city playbook is spreading in red states
I live in a community that, not long ago, was a quiet town outside Austin — one of many places people fled in search of safety, order, and a better quality of life. Today, that same community is rapidly transforming into the very version of Austin many residents hoped to escape.
Growth isn’t the problem. Ideology is.
My community is changing, not because it is growing, but because it is abandoning the principles that once made it worth building a life here.
A dangerous idea has taken hold in America: that enforcing the law is immoral, that accountability is cruelty, and that penalizing criminal behavior matters less than protecting the feelings of those who violate the law.
This worldview didn’t emerge organically. Institutions taught it, activists repeated it, and public officials normalized it until many Americans came to believe the humane response to disorder is deliberate blindness.
Last week, that ideology went on full display in my town.
Federal immigration authorities conducted targeted enforcement operations in the area. Homeland Security professionals carried out lawful, focused actions while doing the job Congress — and the American people — have repeatedly mandated that they do.
Within hours, local social media erupted. Facebook groups, Instagram accounts, and self-styled “community leaders” posted warnings about ICE. Progressive elected officials piled on, condemning the operation and circulating tips on how to avoid federal law enforcement. Some encouraged demonstrations near ICE activity to “drive them out.” Others urged residents to honk at ICE vehicles to alert everyone nearby to the supposed “danger.”
Many Americans shrug this off as routine political theater. What followed was worse.
RELATED: Why ‘anti-ICE protesters’ are useful, delusional idiots
Tim Evans/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Instead of standing firmly behind the rule of law, our local government and law enforcement agencies rushed to distance themselves — not out of principle, but out of fear. City social media accounts quickly clarified that ICE had merely notified the city of a vehicle parked near City Hall and that the city neither supported nor assisted the operation.
The message was unmistakable: Don’t blame us.
Screenshot/City of Buda/X.com
Even more disheartening, the police department issued its own statement emphasizing that it was not cooperating with ICE enforcement activities, noting only that officers responded alongside an ambulance.
Again, the message was clear: We want no part of this.
Screenshot/Kyle Police Department/X.com
This didn’t happen in Minnesota or Illinois. It happened in Texas — a state known nationwide for being tough on crime and historically supportive of immigration enforcement.
It happened just miles from our state Capitol. Yet even here, local entities openly refuse to cooperate with the mandate Americans have repeatedly voted for: enforcing our immigration laws.
In doing so, these institutions accomplished two things — neither defensible.
First, they publicly disavowed the enforcement of federal law, as though lawful authority were something shameful.
Second, they compromised operational security by broadcasting where law enforcement was present and what it was — or was not — doing. In any other context, that would be recognized as reckless. Here, activists applauded it.
Texas leaders should treat this as a warning.
State government must hold every jurisdiction accountable for never becoming a sanctuary — whether by statute or by practice — for illegal immigration and criminal activity. The Texas legislature took a critical step by passing legislation requiring most county sheriffs’ departments to participate in ICE’s 287(g) program. That built a foundation. We need more.
Texas should require all local law enforcement agencies to enter the 287(g) program that best fits their department and to publicly commit to enforcing the law. Accountability cannot stop at county lines. It cannot become optional based on online outrage and activist pressure.
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Just one year ago, the country was overwhelmed daily by mass illegal border crossings. The effort to restore control through lawful enforcement and deportation has only begun. Texas will never address the scale of the problem if cities — especially in red states — can refuse responsibility and pass the buck.
A society cannot function if enforcing the law is treated as oppression and breaking it is reframed as victimhood. Compassion doesn’t require chaos. Justice can’t survive if the people tasked with upholding it feel compelled to apologize for doing their jobs.
My community is changing, not because it is growing, but because it is abandoning the principles that once made it worth building a life here. If we keep going down this path — where enforcing the law becomes controversial and officials fear activists more than disorder — we should not act surprised when the place we moved to becomes indistinguishable from the place we left.
The Supreme Court can protect families or protect corporate cover-ups
When you get pregnant, doctors warn you to avoid everything from coffee to deli meat. When you build a home — as a spouse, parent, or homeowner — you make careful choices about what comes through the front door, onto your table, and into your yard.
But what if those precautions don’t matter? What if the food you serve, the lawn your kids play on, or the weeds you spray carry a poison approved through fraud, sold without warnings, and protected from accountability by the Supreme Court?
We ask parents to obsess over lunch meat. We can demand at least as much honesty about what gets sprayed on the yard.
That isn’t paranoia. It’s the situation Americans may soon face.
The Supreme Court last week agreed to hear Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, a case pushed aggressively by Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant that bought Monsanto in 2018. The justices will decide one narrow but decisive question this term: Does federal pesticide law block state failure-to-warn lawsuits when the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning on the label?
Bayer wants the answer to be yes. It wants federal pre-emption — a legal shield that turns an EPA-approved label into immunity. If Bayer wins, state juries could lose the ability to hold companies accountable even when families prove they used a product as directed, got sick, and never received a warning.
That outcome would reward the very behavior the law should punish.
Juries across the country have already heard evidence in Roundup cases and awarded billions to plaintiffs who developed cancer after using the herbicide. Yet Roundup still sells without a cancer warning. Now Bayer wants the Supreme Court to slam the courthouse door on future victims for good.
Consider what that means in human terms.
Pregnant mothers avoid raw fish and unpasteurized cheese to protect their children, yet millions of families unknowingly expose themselves to chemicals linked in research to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers. A major meta-analysis published in the journal Pediatrics found that children exposed to residential pesticides face significantly higher risks of leukemia and lymphoma. Another peer-reviewed 2019 meta-analysis linked glyphosate-based herbicides to an increased risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
We get lectures about sushi, but weed killer gets a pass.
This fight should feel familiar. During COVID, Americans were told to trust emergency approvals as official guidance shifted rapidly. Those who raised concerns often got mocked or sidelined. Only later did many learn the story was more complicated than the public was allowed to hear.
We can’t undo that confusion. We can refuse to repeat it.
The evidence here does not revolve around a single labeling dispute. The deeper allegation is deception. Critics claim Monsanto relied on ghostwritten research and buried evidence to convince regulators glyphosate was safe — and that those approvals then became the foundation for selling Roundup without a cancer warning.
RELATED: The fruit of the US pesticide industry is poison
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In late 2025, a key study used for years to defend glyphosate was retracted over serious ethical concerns and undisclosed corporate influence. That retraction matters because it goes to the heart of Bayer’s argument: that the government approved the label, so the company should be protected.
Pre-emption should not become a reward for fraud.
If the Supreme Court sides with Bayer, the fallout will spread far beyond Roundup. The ruling could shield tens of thousands of pesticides from meaningful liability so long as companies point to federal “compliance” — even when compliance was built on manipulated research, regulatory capture, or withheld evidence. Families could lose their best tool for accountability: state courts and state juries.
That isn’t pro-business; it’s regulatory capture. In fact, it’s immunity for wrongdoing.
The court should reject this power-grab. Federal minimum standards should not erase state-level accountability, especially when the federal process can be gamed. Americans deserve warnings when products pose real risks. Families deserve the ability to seek justice when corporations hide dangers and regulators fail to act.
We ask parents to obsess over lunch meat. We can demand at least as much honesty about what gets sprayed on the yard.
The Supreme Court has a choice: protect public health, or protect corporate cover-ups. The country should insist that it choose public health — for our families and for generations yet unborn.
The US-Japan alliance keeps China from bullying the world into higher prices
China’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific no longer comes in bursts. It has become dangerous and systematic for America.
A recent long-range patrol by Chinese forces, conducted alongside Russia, prompted Japan to scramble fighter jets. It marked the latest in a string of incidents after months of heightened Chinese military activity around the Senkaku Islands.
If Washington and Tokyo keep strengthening this partnership, they can make the Indo-Pacific more difficult for Beijing to bully and far more stable for everyone who depends on it.
These shows of force don’t happen by accident. China uses them to normalize military pressure, probe red lines, and test the unity of U.S.-led alliances.
This latest episode also made one thing clear, at least: The Trump administration is watching closely.
In a visible show of solidarity with Tokyo, U.S. strategic bombers joined Japanese fighter aircraft for high-profile drills. Days earlier, Chinese military aircraft conducted takeoffs and landings inside Japan’s air defense identification zone and shadowed Japanese aircraft with their radar off near Okinawa. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s State Department expressed concern and reaffirmed its commitment to a “strong and more united” U.S.-Japan alliance.
Washington increasingly recognizes what Tokyo has understood for years: China’s behavior doesn’t just destabilize the region. It challenges the security order that has kept the Indo-Pacific from tipping into open conflict.
That reality puts a premium on reliable partnerships. No partnership matters more than the U.S.-Japan alliance.
Nowhere does that matter more than Taiwan. China’s large-scale military exercises, dubbed Justice Mission 2025, have pushed tensions in the Taiwan Strait to the highest levels in decades. Beijing aims to intimidate Taipei, warn off “external interference,” and alter the status quo through pressure rather than persuasion.
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy arrived in that environment. While headlines still focus on Europe and the Middle East, the document makes the administration’s priorities clear: The Indo-Pacific remains central to U.S. strategy.
The NSS describes the Indo-Pacific as a critical economic hub that accounts for nearly half of global GDP. It commits the United States to a “free and open” Indo-Pacific by securing sea lanes and upholding international law.
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That framework didn’t start in Washington. Japan first advanced the concept of a free and open Indo-Pacific, and the region later adopted it through partnerships such as the Quad — the informal grouping of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia.
Rather than announcing a new direction, the NSS reinforces a familiar one: Alliances form the core of deterring China. Unlike the Trump playbook in Ukraine, the administration treats alliances as the bedrock of Indo-Pacific security against Beijing’s expanding military reach.
Japan sits at the heart of that network.
China pressures Japan across its waters and airspace, making Tokyo a frontline state. Japan also serves as the United States’ indispensable partner in the region, with basing, interoperability, and shared strategy that no other ally can match at the same scale. Under new conservative leadership, Japan has begun acting with urgency.
Japan’s defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, has emphasized that urgency, warning that the country now faces its most severe security environment since World War II. Japan has deepened coordination with the U.S. and other like-minded partners while strengthening its military capabilities by accelerating security reforms and easing restrictions on defense equipment transfers.
Japan has also moved up its plan to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP — from 2027 to now. That headline matters less than where the money goes.
Tokyo has prioritized capabilities suited for a long-term, high-risk environment: unmanned aerial vehicles, expanded surveillance platforms, and submarines equipped with vertical-launch missile systems.
RELATED: Hypersonic missiles are the new arms race. Can America catch up?
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Japan’s objective looks straightforward. It aims to become a more capable military partner that complements U.S. forces rather than relying on them by default. That shift aligns with President Trump’s demand that allies reduce dependence on American power by strengthening their own defense industries and readiness.
The U.S.-Japan alliance has also moved beyond drills and declarations toward defense-industrial cooperation. Expanded maintenance and repair coordination, along with eased export controls, have begun laying the groundwork for a durable security partnership.
This collaboration marks a shift from rhetoric to endurance. Aligning strategy with industrial capacity won’t eliminate risk. It will raise the cost of Chinese coercion and reduce the chances that Beijing miscalculates.
Koizumi has stressed that 80 years after World War II, the U.S.-Japan alliance still embodies reconciliation and remains the best instrument to deter China’s rising aggression.
If Washington and Tokyo keep strengthening this partnership — in capability, production, and resolve — they can make the Indo-Pacific more difficult for Beijing to bully and far more stable for everyone who depends on it.
How pro-life groups are misleading you on abortion numbers
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned nearly four years ago, countless pro-life organizations have pushed new regulations on abortion. Many of those same groups have rushed to declare victory, claiming that conservative states are now “abortion-free.”
But when pro-life organizations declare any state “abortion-free,” they celebrate a victory that does not exist — and drastically overstate the impact of pro-life laws.
The preborn babies murdered under the cover of our laws deserve more than semantic victories. They deserve equal protection.
These claims don’t just mislead. They undermine the cause these organizations claim to champion.
Exaggerating victories
The claim that some states are “abortion-free” isn’t rare. It has become standard messaging.
Students for Life published a map three years ago declaring that 14 states are now “abortion-free.” Frank Pavone, who leads Priests for Life, has made the same claim about Mississippi. National Right to Life called Kentucky “abortion-free” as recently as last summer. LifeNews has become notorious for amplifying inflated or misleading abortion claims from pro-life groups at the state level.
These declarations suggest abortion has been eliminated in these states. The reality says otherwise.
Pro-life leaders do not make clear that in every state labeled “abortion-free,” abortions remain legal for women who want to kill their preborn babies.
Many conservative states shut down abortion clinics and imposed penalties on providers. At the same time, those states wrote explicit exemptions into law protecting women from prosecution for willfully obtaining abortions.
That wasn’t a mistake. Pro-life organizations crafted and promoted that policy.
Self-induced abortions
Legal immunity for women who murder their preborn babies created a massive loophole. It also opened the door to a surge in self-induced abortions.
Women in “abortion-free” states can order abortion pills online from telehealth providers operating under shield laws in blue states or from overseas providers.
In many cases, it remains perfectly legal to order these pills, possess them, and use them at home. The scale of this practice — even in conservative states — is staggering.
Consider Kentucky, which National Right to Life called “abortion-free.”
In Kentucky, more than 2,800 women in 2024 received mail-order abortion pills through telehealth providers alone, according to data from the Society of Family Planning.
That does not include the more than 4,300 Kentucky women who traveled to other states for abortions in 2024, according to the Guttmacher Institute. It also does not capture self-induced abortions outside the formal medical system.
Kentucky is not an outlier.
RELATED: How a pro-life law in Kentucky lets mothers get away with murder
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When all available data is considered, the 14 conservative states that have banned or mostly banned abortion — the same states pro-life groups often call “abortion-free” — saw at least 250,000 preborn babies murdered in 2024.
That number represents a sharp increase from the 181,000 abortions recorded in those states in 2019.
In other words, pro-life laws have not created states with fewer abortions. They have created states where abortion has shifted away from clinics and toward self-induced abortions at home — abortions that remain legal for the mother who commits them.
How can abortion increase while pro-life organizations claim success? Because many have misrepresented what they mean by “abortion-free.”
When these groups say “abortion-free,” they mean abortion clinics have closed. They do not mean abortions have stopped. It’s like calling a city “crime-free” because the district attorney refuses to prosecute criminals. The semantics conceal the reality.
Opposing abolition
Even more troubling, major pro-life organizations often oppose the bills that would actually abolish abortion.
When lawmakers introduce equal protection bills — proposals that would make abortion illegal for everyone, including pregnant mothers — pro-life organizations often mobilize against them.
This has happened dozens of times across the country. The reasoning stays consistent: Pro-life groups insist women are victims of abortion and should not face legal consequences, even when they deliberately order abortion pills and self-induce abortions at home.
When pro-life groups oppose equal protection bills and then claim their states are “abortion-free,” they don’t merely exaggerate. They sabotage.
Everyday anti-abortion Americans hear “abortion-free” and assume the fight is over. Activism slows. Political pressure fades. Donations and support shift elsewhere. Meanwhile organizations that should be pressing for equal protection instead suppress the only laws that would actually end abortion.
In the meantime, abortion continues unabated — simply moved from clinics to living rooms.
The pro-life establishment has redefined victory to fit what it has achieved, not what it claims to seek. It has declared victory over a substitute target — abortion clinics — while the killing of preborn children continues through abortion pills and interstate travel.
RELATED: Why the pro-life movement fails without a Christian worldview
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Demanding honesty
Americans who oppose abortion deserve honesty from the organizations claiming to represent them.
If abortion can still be performed legally in a state through mail-order pills, that state is not “abortion-free.” If abortion numbers rise rather than fall, victory has not arrived. If pro-life groups oppose laws that would make abortion illegal for everyone, they owe the public an explanation.
Abolishing abortion requires equal protection under the law: making the killing of any human being illegal for everyone, without exception or compromise.
Until major pro-life organizations support that principle, their claims of creating “abortion-free” states remain not just premature but dishonest.
The preborn babies murdered under the cover of our laws deserve more than semantic victories. They deserve equal protection — and Americans who oppose abortion deserve leaders honest enough to admit when that goal remains unmet.
