Catherine Herridge is one of the finest investigative journalists of her generation.

Catherine Herridge is one of the finest investigative journalists of her generation. An Emmy Award winning reporter with decades of experience covering terrorism, intelligence, national security, and law enforcement she built her reputation the old fashioned way: by cultivating sources, verifying facts, and publishing stories that powerful people often wished had never seen the light of day. Whether at ABC News, Fox News, or CBS News, Herridge earned the respect of colleagues and government officials alike because she was meticulous, fearless, loyal, honest, courageous, and relentless in pursuing the truth. Those very qualities have now made her the target of a legal campaign so evil and so vindictive that it should alarm every American who still believes in a free press.

Her legal ordeal began with a 2017 investigation she reported while at Fox News concerning Yanping Chen, a Chinese American scientist whose Virginia institution had received Department of Defense, now Department of War, funding while also attracting FBI counterintelligence scrutiny over alleged ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army. Chen was never charged with a crime but later sued the federal government, claiming officials had improperly leaked information about the investigation. When years of litigation failed to identify the alleged government source, the lawyers turned their attention to Herridge herself, demanding that she reveal the confidential sources who entrusted her with information. She refused, honoring the most fundamental obligation of any serious investigative journalist.

That refusal has come at a financially debilitating personal cost which Herridge described publicly on X. Rather than accept the principle that reporters must be able to protect confidential sources, the courts have attempted to force Herridge into submission through financial punishment. She was held in civil contempt and ordered to pay $800 a day every single day until she agrees to betray the people who placed their trust in her. Imagine that. Do you have $800 a day? Now there are efforts to increase those penalties dramatically into $5000 a day while preventing outside organizations from helping pay them. The strategy is as transparent as it is reprehensible. If they cannot force her to surrender voluntarily, they intend to bankrupt her into compliance. That is not justice. It is persecution.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that some people will not be satisfied until Catherine Herridge has been financially destroyed and living in abject poverty which is what these fines are designed to do to her. The objective is not simply to collect fines. The objective is to make an example of her. They seek to inflict such overwhelming economic and emotional pressure that no journalist will ever again dare promise confidentiality to a government source. They appear determined to hound her until she has nothing left, as though they will not rest until she is reduced to living in the gutter and eating garbage for the unforgivable offense of keeping her word.

This is nothing less than an assault on investigative journalism itself. Confidential sources are not some modern invention or legal loophole. They are the lifeblood of accountability reporting. Without confidential sources there are no Pentagon Papers. There is no Watergate. There are no whistleblowers exposing corruption inside intelligence agencies, federal law enforcement, or the national security establishment. Every major scandal involving government misconduct has depended upon brave individuals willing to speak only because they believed a journalist would protect their identity. Destroy that trust and you destroy investigative journalism.

Herridge’s reporting has consistently focused on subjects many establishment journalists either ignored or dismissed including terrorism, foreign intelligence operations, Chinese espionage, and government accountability. These are precisely the areas where confidential sources are indispensable. Every intelligence officer, law enforcement officer, and government official contemplating exposing wrongdoing is now watching her case unfold. The message they are receiving could not be clearer. If you speak to a reporter, the government may pursue that reporter relentlessly until your identity is exposed. That chilling effect is exactly what makes this case so dangerous. The victim is not merely Catherine Herridge. The victim is every future whistleblower who may now decide that speaking the truth simply carries too great a personal risk.

What makes the silence of much of the corporate media especially shameful is that the principle at stake transcends politics. Whether a journalist works for Fox News, CBS News, The New York Times, or an independent publication is beside the point. Either journalists have the ability to protect confidential sources or they do not. Once that principle is compromised, every newsroom becomes more vulnerable and every investigative reporter becomes a potential target.

Catherine Herridge could end her ordeal tomorrow. She could surrender the identities of the people who trusted her and spare herself mounting legal bills and crushing daily penalties. Instead, she has chosen honor over convenience and professional ethics over personal comfort. She has refused to break her word, despite extraordinary pressure designed to make that promise impossible to keep. That is courage. That is loyalty. That is sacrifice.

History has repeatedly vindicated those who refused to abandon principle when the cost became unbearable. Catherine Herridge is not merely defending herself. She is defending one of the cornerstones of a free society. If those determined to financially crush her succeed, they will not simply silence one courageous journalist. They will intimidate an entire generation of reporters and whistleblowers.

Every American who values the First Amendment should recognize exactly what is happening. Catherine Herridge is paying an extraordinary personal price to preserve a principle that protects all of us. She deserves our gratitude, our admiration, and our unwavering support, not a campaign calculated to bankrupt and break her.

A private examination of records associated with the 2025 New York City mayoral election has raised serious questions about the accuracy of the city’s voter rolls, but it has not established that 228,000 fraudulent ballots were cast or that Zohran Mamdani was improperly installed as mayor. That distinction is important. Election officials should not be permitted to hide behind procedural jargon when confronted with substantial anomalies, but election critics should also avoid presenting disputed data as a final verdict before the underlying records have been independently examined.

Mamdani defeated former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in the November 2025 general election. The certified results credited Mamdani with approximately 1,114,184 votes and Cuomo with 906,614, producing a margin of roughly 207,570 votes. Republican Curtis Sliwa finished a distant third. Mamdani subsequently took office in January 2026, becoming New York City’s first Muslim mayor and placing a self described democratic socialist at the helm of America’s largest city.

The controversy began with a private review conducted by election integrity activist Marly Hornik and organizations associated with NY Citizens Audit and RealAmerica.Vote. According to Hornik’s public presentation investigators examined roughly one million records from a universe of approximately 2.2 million voter records connected to the election. The inquiry concentrated heavily on recent registrants and attempted to compare names, birth dates, addresses, and Social Security information with commercial and publicly available databases.

Hornik’s team reported that approximately 68,441 records, or about seven percent of those examined, could not be verified through the databases used in the review. Another 59,104 records, representing roughly six percent, allegedly contained Social Security numbers within ranges the researchers considered invalid. Approximately 91,504 records were associated with individuals the reviewers believed did not reside within New York City, while another 9,340 reportedly contained no Social Security number. Combined, these categories produced 228,389 flagged records, a figure exceeding Mamdani’s certified margin by more than 20,000 votes.

That numerical comparison is politically explosive, but it is not dispositive. A flagged voter record is not automatically an illegal ballot, just as a discrepancy in a bank ledger does not by itself prove embezzlement. Commercial databases can contain obsolete addresses, incomplete identity information, typographical errors, name variations, and records that have not followed citizens through marriages, divorces, relocations, or other ordinary changes. Some voters may also lack conventional Social Security information for legitimate reasons. Each questionable record must therefore be investigated individually before it can be classified as unlawful.

There is also a fundamental difference between voter registration records and ballots. A defective or outdated registration entry does not necessarily establish that the person voted, that an unlawful ballot was accepted, or that the ballot was cast for Mamdani. To overturn an election, investigators would need far more than a statistical aggregation of mismatches. They would need to connect specific ineligible voters to specific ballots, establish that the votes were illegally cast and counted, and demonstrate that the number was sufficient to alter the result.

Hornik herself has stopped short of declaring that Cuomo actually won the election. Her more circumspect argument is that the available data prevents election administrators from affirmatively demonstrating the integrity of the voter rolls. That is a serious allegation, but it is narrower than the viral assertion that 228,000 fraudulent votes were discovered. The online narrative has moved faster than the evidence, turning a collection of warning lights into a declaration that the entire engine has failed.

Rudy Giuliani has embraced the broader accusation, stating that he believes Democrats cheated and describing the Democratic Party as “the most crooked enterprise in the history of the United States.” Giuliani’s skepticism is understandable. As mayor he confronted the entrenched political machinery that had governed New York for generations and he knows that the city’s bureaucracy can be opaque, obstinate, and fiercely protective of itself. His condemnation, however, remains a political judgment rather than a judicial or administrative finding.

At present, neither the New York City Board of Elections nor the New York State Board of Elections has validated Hornik’s categories as 228,389 illegal votes. No court has ruled that Mamdani’s margin was produced by fraud. No official canvass has determined that the questioned records corresponded to unlawful ballots, much less ballots cast for one particular candidate. The certified election result therefore remains legally intact.

That does not mean the findings should be discarded. The fact that a private organization could identify more than 228,000 records it considers questionable should prompt a transparent official response. Election administrators should explain the discrepancies, disclose their voter roll maintenance procedures, and permit qualified independent experts to test the competing claims. Confidence cannot be restored by demanding blind trust. It must be earned through records, procedures, and verifiable evidence.

New York’s election system is particularly vulnerable to suspicion because the state does not generally require photographic identification from voters at polling places. It also permits extensive early and absentee voting, while voter registration databases are maintained through multiple layers of state and local bureaucracy. None of these practices proves fraud, but together they create an environment in which incomplete records and administrative mistakes can accumulate like sediment in a neglected reservoir.

The appropriate remedy is not to proclaim Mamdani illegitimate before the evidence has been tested. Nor is it acceptable for election officials and their allies to dismiss every discrepancy as harmless. New York should conduct a genuine forensic review using official voter files, address histories, citizenship information where legally available, death records, duplicate registration checks, ballot participation histories, and documented chains of custody. The methodology and conclusions should be released publicly so that both critics and defenders can examine them.

The city should also adopt stronger voter identification requirements, improve residency verification, accelerate the removal of deceased and relocated voters, and establish recurring independent audits. These are not partisan demands. An honest voter should not fear accurate rolls any more than an honest accountant fears an audit. Secure procedures protect legitimate voters by ensuring that their ballots are not diluted by error, negligence, or fraud.

Mamdani’s ideology and governing agenda make the dispute even more combustible. His promises of government operated grocery stores, rent intervention, free public transportation, expanded social programs, and increased taxation have already made him a national symbol of the Democratic Party’s socialist wing. His political views deserve rigorous opposition, but ideological hostility cannot substitute for evidentiary proof that his election was stolen.

The 228,389 records identified by Hornik represent a legitimate basis for investigation, not a completed prosecution. The figures are large enough to demand answers because they exceed the certified margin, but their significance depends entirely upon whether the underlying classifications are accurate and whether the records can be connected to unlawful votes. Until that work is completed, the responsible conclusion is neither complacency nor certitude.

New Yorkers deserve to know whether their voter rolls are accurate, whether every counted ballot was lawful, and whether election administrators can document the integrity they routinely claim. The audit has not proved that Zohran Mamdani lost the 2025 election. It has proved that New York’s election bureaucracy faces questions too consequential to answer with silence.

From the moment he hit the campaign trail and took office, President Donald J. Trump has prioritized the armed forces and supported their forgotten families. This included expanded federal job opportunities for spouses, improved occupational licensing portability across states, and greater access to remote and flexible work.

On August 3, 2026, he built on that momentum by signing an executive order establishing the President’s Military Spouse Commission, the first of its kind.

The panel is tasked with advising and assisting the president on matters affecting spouses and families. It will serve as a direct liaison between families and the White House, identifying common concerns, developing recommendations on housing, employment, healthcare, education, and deployment support, and submitting annual reports plus a final report. It may form subcommittees and will end after two years unless extended.

An estimated one million children have at least one parent on active duty.

Trump signed the order in an Oval Office ceremony attended by Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt of Alabama, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and several spouses.

In his remarks, the commander in chief emphasized how vital of a role: “America cannot have the strongest military in the world without the love and devotion of our remarkable military spouses who make extraordinary sacrifices for our country.” He added that the panel “will provide recommendations for improving the quality of life for military spouses so that we can better support both our military families and the entire United States armed forces.”

Gen. Caine added enthusiastically, “You think we’re strong? American military spouses are ten times stronger.”

The executive order notes that spouses are intrinsically linked to the good order, readiness, and retention of the force. They face challenges from frequent relocations, prolonged deployments, limited housing, employment barriers, and managing households alone; all of which affect family well-being and the resilience of the fighting force. These challenges have been repeatedly flagged by military families, including in Blue Star Families surveys that rank spouse employment as the top concern.

Jennifer Hegseth, wife of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, will chair the advisory, Desiree Sayle will serve as Executive Director.

Membership includes spouses of senior leaders, the service secretaries, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, service chiefs, senior enlisted advisors, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, along with Christie Mullin, wife of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Members serve without compensation, tied to their spouses’ roles, with administrative support from the Department of War.

With hundreds of years of collective lived experience, the panel can address real-world issues with firsthand knowledge while delivering practical recommendations that boost retention and readiness.

This new panel builds on broader efforts to support service members and their families, including the one-time $1,776 “Warrior Dividend” paid to roughly 1.45 million troops in honor of the nation’s founding year, proposed pay raises of up to 7 percent for lower ranks in the fiscal 2027 budget, and a $1.5 trillion defense topline.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down with Lara Trump on Fox News this past weekend and revealed just how real foreign interference is on American streets.

Lara opened by noting that a recent State Department report describes Cuba’s goal as essentially seeking to erase the United States from the Earth.

Rubio revealed Cuba is an “influence and espionage superpower” capable of embedding agents and mobilizing sympathizers inside the United States.

“There’s nothing organic about it,” he said. “It is funded, it is organized, and Cuba is a part of that network, and in some cases a critical part of that network.”

The 72nd Secretary of State pointed to the same activist networks that appeared in the 2020 riots, campus protests, demands for the release of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and ongoing anti-ICE actions as clear evidence of a coordinated apparatus rather than spontaneous domestic dissent.

Rubio’s remarks are closely in line with the July 2026 State Department assessment titled, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.”

This 100-page document is a must-read for every American. It explains the enemy and the strategy, detailing how, for nearly seven decades, the Cuban government has waged a campaign of subversion against the United States.

The regime has recruited multiple generations of activists here on our soil, shaped far-left movements, and contributed to unrest ranging from the George Floyd riots to the rise of Antifa and anti-ICE demonstrations.

The release exposed the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), describing it as the “central nexus” of Havana’s intelligence and influence apparatus.

In June 2026, Rubio sanctioned ICAP, labeling it an instrumentality of the Cuban government that supports intelligence and counterintelligence activities. ICAP maintains ties with campuses nationwide, student groups, and activist organizations, according to the findings.

Working closely with ICAP is the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), an umbrella coalition of more than 60 U.S. groups including the Democratic Socialists of America, Code Pink, the Communist Party USA, the National Lawyers Guild, and others.

The State Department designates the NNOC as the critical link between the Cuban regime and the American far left.

That same month, the NNOC distributed a “National Rapid Response Plan.” The blueprint, available on their website, calls for “coordinated nationwide actions” outside U.S. military bases, ICE facilities, federal buildings, and recruitment centers within 24 hours of an “imminent threat” or actual U.S. military action against Cuba.

Its stated goal is to make any such conflict “politically and materially costly” for the U.S. government, while also linking Cuba solidarity work to anti-ICE organizing.

The State Department’s assessment details that Cuban influence helped shape earlier radical movements, including the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground, and continues today through modern groups that send delegations to Cuba, hold solidarity conferences, and maintain formal channels with Havana.

Rubio has consistently framed the exposure of these ties as essential for national security, insisting that the American public deserves to understand the full history of Cuban communist espionage and subversion on American soil.

J.D. Vance is not in sync with that crowd. That’s why they hate him.

President Trump hasn’t yet endorsed J.D. Vance for the 2028 Republican nomination, but the vice president got the next best thing: a rebuke from Bret Stephens and Marc Thiessen — in the same month!

In a piece of content for The New York Times last week, Stephens, who once called himself a “Biden conservative” and who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, confidently declared Vance “by far the worst person ever to hold the office.” Mind you, Stephens has called himself a conservative for decades, and yet as far back as 2012 was rooting against Republicans in every nationwide election, so there isn’t much worth considering here other than recognizing such a full-throated denunciation by Bret “Bed Bug” Stephens can only help whoever is on the receiving end.

Worth slightly more attention is what Thiessen wrote this week in The Washington Post. Recall that Thiessen is the Post content creator and former George W. Bush speechwriter whom Trump, for inexplicable reasons that may be explained in the future, has reportedly been reading and consulting privately about foreign affairs. Thiessen took an opportunity on Thursday to continue the very obviously coordinated attack on Vance planned by a slimy mix of neocons, lazy Republicans, and Israel Firsters.

Evaluating the Iran war, which has grown increasingly unpopular, even among Republicans, Thiessen wrote, “Perhaps it’s time for the president to take the advice of those who have delivered him success in Iran — not those like Vance who have failed him.”

Thiessen blames the failures in Iran not on what certainly look like short-sighted decisions by the commander in chief, but on Vance, whose primary responsibility in the conflict has been negotiating its end with Iran’s leaders. That’s at least honest. But let’s look at what Thiessen says a real victory, without any negotiation, would look like.

He wrote that the war’s objectives are: “eliminate remaining [Iranian] leadership figures; further entomb Iran’s nuclear sites; take out Iran’s remaining ballistic missile sites; destroy the economic and energy infrastructure that provides the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with a financial lifeline, as well as key highways, railroads, airports and seaports by which the regime gets financial assistance from bordering countries; and demolish Iran’s remaining defense industrial base so it cannot rebuild its destroyed capabilities.” Then, with presumably a straight face, Thiessen said, “That’s it.”

Oh, is that all?!

Well, not really. Thiessen, perhaps to his credit, didn’t even pretend to hide the ball. Though having concluded, “That’s it” — just the complete decimation of a global energy supplier’s entire transportation infrastructure and economy — Thiessen went on to do the equivalent of, But wait! There’s more! He then said the U.S. would simply have to commit to keeping American troops just off the shore of Iran in perpetuity and “provide covert support” to Iranian rebels, in hopes that they might fight their own government. You know, just like they are now! Wait, that’s not actually happening, is it? Oh well!

“Once these targets have been struck,” wrote Thiessen, “the president should announce an end to major combat, keep the blockade in place, open the Strait of Hormuz and then provide covert support to the Iranian people to help them undermine and eventually bring down the regime. …”

Furthermore, nearly half a year into this war, Thiessen said all of that would only take a “few weeks.” Well, why didn’t you say so?!

Marc, hold my hand when I tell you this: The president has already announced an end to major combat and said the Hormuz Strait is opening. Before saying the opposite. Multiple times. The problem is that, even though Thiessen in his piece credits the president for “decimating its ballistic missile capability” and “annihilating its conventional military forces,” Iran has managed to continue attacking U.S. targets and killing Americans. And whatever claims that the Strait is “open,” ship crews are still terrified of passing through it. And it’s not because of Jaws.

Bret Stephens and Marc Thiessen are Israel First neocons who care about their foreign allegiances and preferences for war. The public record, to date, is that J.D. Vance is not in sync with that crowd. That’s why they hate him. It’s why they’re faulting him for America’s deteriorating standing in this war. They want him destroyed.

By The Federalist – https://thefederalist.com/2026/07/31/the-burning-hatred-from-neocons-is-good-for-j-d-vance-in-2028/

American higher education’s credibility crisis is self-inflicted. According to the article, Gallup found that only 38 percent of adults retain “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in colleges and universities, while roughly one-third of respondents blamed partisan bias or indoctrination—the leading cause of distrust, even ahead of tuition costs.

That verdict should surprise no one considering how universities have served as the incubator for the woke plague. Universities have allowed ideological conformity to replace intellectual inquiry, staffing departments with overwhelmingly liberal faculties while marginalizing conservative, libertarian, and dissenting perspectives.

The result is not education but an echo chamber funded by students, parents, donors, and taxpayers who are increasingly unwilling to subsidize institutions that are aggressively hostile to their values. The damage extends far beyond politics. Americans also question whether colleges teach the practical knowledge graduates need for employment.

Meanwhile, falling enrollment, declining revenue, and school closures threaten the financial survival of institutions whose administrators appear more committed to ideological purity than reform.

Students understand the climate and increasingly have to submit biased information to be able to go along to get along in these captured institutions. Surveys cited in the article show widespread self-censorship, including at Harvard, where only about one-third reportedly feel comfortable expressing their views. Yet academic elites dismiss concerns rather than confront the culture they created.

These Marxist academics have gotten high on their own supply. We must reject the assumption that universities deserve automatic public support. Legislatures and donors should demand genuine intellectual diversity, institutional neutrality, free speech, and measurable reform before providing additional funding.

The Trump administration’s war against woke-ism in the school system is a good start, but every level of government must put this agenda in their crosshairs so we can root it out of the university system and public education for good.