Analysis

Rand Paul’s Relentless Document War

The Paper Trail They Tried to Bury Rand Paul does not traffic in vibes. He collects documents. While most of Washington moved on, while the same officials who shaped the COVID response collected awards, wrote memoirs, and settled into think-tank sinecures, Paul kept prying open the record. One FOIA fight, one transcribed interview, one redacted package at a time. The result now sits in his Senate Homeland Security “Reading Room”: a growing archive that maps the distance between what the public was told and what the people in charge actually knew, funded, and protected. Follow the money. Follow the research. Follow…

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Thune’s Failure

Thune’s Weakness on the SAVE America Act The base already knows. Sean Spicer said it out loud on The Huddle: enthusiasm is soft, and the failure to pass the SAVE America Act is a primary reason. I am in that base. I work Texas Republican politics. I hear what people say when the cameras are off. Spicer is right. When voters who delivered unified government watch the House pass a core election-integrity bill repeatedly while the Senate finds reasons not to finish the job, the energy drains. That is not complicated. It is cause and effect. The underlying problem is concrete.…

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The Citizenship Act of 2026

A Constitutional Response to the Supreme Court Earlier this month, I wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara wouldn’t stand the test of time. Justice Thomas said as much in his dissent. The majority took the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, stripped it of its original meaning, and turned it into something approaching an automatic territorial grant: the very thing the Reconstruction framers never intended. The dissents from Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch laid bare the flaws. Justice Kavanaugh, while joining the judgment against the Executive Order, quietly left the door open for Congress. That door is now…

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New Jersey’s Voter Roll Failure

A Textbook Case for Passing the SAVE America Act On Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill stepped to the podium and admitted what Democrats have spent years denying: non-citizens had made their way onto the state’s voter rolls, and some had voted. Roughly 6,600 people who had explicitly answered “no” when asked if they were United States citizens still ended up registered between June 2023 and June 2024. Preliminary numbers showed fewer than 400 cast ballots. Sherrill blamed a software glitch at the Motor Vehicle Commission under her predecessor, Phil Murphy. She ordered removals, launched an investigation, and promised accountability. Then…

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Republicans Got Played

The Housing Bill That Gave Democrats Everything They Wanted Follow-on to “The DSA’s Housing Trojan Horse” and “¡Afuera!” I warned you. The ROAD to Housing Act was never a serious supply-side fix. It was a cash cow for sanctuary cities, fraudsters, nonprofits, and the Democrat Socialist machine bent on turning American housing into a government-controlled enterprise. Now it’s law. And Democrats are celebrating like they just won the lottery. Senator Elizabeth Warren and her allies are flooding their feeds, crowing about this “groundbreaking” victory. They call it the biggest housing bill in decades, claiming it will build more units, lower costs,…

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The Birthright Citizenship Decision

How the Majority Rewrote the Fourteenth Amendment and Why Congress Must Now Act The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara ranks among the most consequential rulings of the Term. In a 6-3 opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court struck down President Trump’s Executive Order limiting birthright citizenship for children of parents who are unlawfully present or only temporarily in the United States. The majority held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause demands automatic citizenship for virtually every child born on American soil, no matter their parents’ status. On the surface, the opinion gleams with scholarly polish: historical citations to…

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Federal Judge Strikes Down Voter Citizenship Checks

Privacy Protections or Roadblock to Election Integrity? On Monday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., blocked key federal tools meant to help states verify whether people on the voter rolls are actually U.S. citizens. The ruling in League of Women Voters v. Department of Homeland Security vacates the 2025 updates to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, better known as SAVE. For those of us who’ve spent years watching how government systems either protect or undermine self-government, this isn’t just another administrative-law skirmish. It strikes at the heart of federalism, election integrity, and whether outdated privacy statutes from the Watergate era…

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The Art of the Hammer

Kharg as Catalyst, MOU as Pause, and the Path to Enforceable Peace Well, here we are. Just days after President Donald J. Trump’s pointed Truth Social signaling on Kharg Island: the credible threat to seize Iran’s primary oil export terminal and redirect those flows under American leverage, Iran moved. High-level approvals followed. The naval blockade held until the “transaction” advanced. Now we have the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed, with a 60-day window for verification and deeper negotiations. The Strait of Hormuz prospects have brightened. Oil and gas prices have eased. Texas pump prices in competitive spots already sit in…

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The Art of Hormuz

Kharg Threat Forces Iran Back to the Table Well, here we are: once again witnessing realpolitik deliver where prolonged diplomacy alone had stalled. Just hours after President Trump’s Truth Social declaration that the United States would hit Iran very hard and move toward seizing Kharg Island and controlling their oil and gas markets, he called off the immediate strikes. High-level Iranian leadership approved key points for a framework agreement. Documents are in “pretty final shape,” with a potential signing as soon as this weekend in Europe, with Vice President JD Vance expected to attend. The naval blockade remains firmly in place…

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Trump’s Hammer on Kharg

Half-Measures No More: Kharg Island Falls, The Spice Flows, and America Secures the Future Well, here we are at last. President Donald J. Trump laid it out plainly on Truth Social today: The United States is hitting Iran very hard tonight. Their Navy, Air Force, radar, anti-aircraft systems, and much of their offensive capability: gone. And in the not-too-distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island and other critical oil infrastructure points, assuming total control of their oil and gas markets. Just as we have done with Venezuela, where the model is working out brilliantly for both nations and the broader…

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