Senator Rand Paul says newly released federal documents are raising disturbing questions about whether the FBI blocked border officials from questioning a key figure connected to controversial coronavirus research in China.

Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says Customs and Border Protection flagged EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak as an “extremely high person of interest” before he returned from China through New York’s JFK Airport in February 2021. According to the documents, CBP officials were prepared to question Daszak and search his electronic devices.

Their concerns reportedly included his long relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, his role overseeing federal grants for bat-coronavirus research, and the agency’s belief that substantial funding supported gain-of-function research. But an internal email dated February 4, 2021, reportedly instructed CBP not to stop him because the FBI’s New York office had requested that he be allowed through.

As a result, Sen. Paul says the planned questioning and search never took place. That should concern every American. At the height of a global pandemic, federal officials had an opportunity to examine a man deeply connected to research at the center of the COVID-origin debate—and another federal agency allegedly shut it down. This was a cover-up.

The deep state wanted the official story to persist so they could blame it on President Trump in an attempt to railroad him, which eventually led to the election steal of 2020. The public deserves to know who made that decision, why it was made, and whether evidence was lost.

For years, so-called experts in Washington D.C. dismissed questions about a possible laboratory origin as misinformation. The real scandal is how aggressively federal agencies protected well-connected institutions from scrutiny. Congress should subpoena all of the officials involved, demand sworn testimony, and uncover who was responsible.

Those individuals must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Until COVID-era criminals are put behind bars, there will be nothing stopping them from unleashing another virus to cripple society and consolidate power for the globalist elites.

President Donald Trump is putting America first again—this time by confronting Canada over trade policies that unfairly target American workers and manufacturers. President Trump has ordered a 50 percent tariff on a wide range of Canadian imports, including wine, dairy products, cement, and even hockey sticks.

The duties will take effect 30 days after the proclamation was signed. The administration says Canada has also discriminated against American motor vehicles and auto parts by imposing special tariffs on U.S. products while treating goods from other countries more favorably.

In response, President Trump is using authority under the Tariff Act of 1930 to level the playing field. These tariffs will apply even to covered goods that would normally qualify under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. However, important imports such as energy, potash, certain fish, critical minerals, and products already subject to separate national-security tariffs will be exempt.

Under the Trump administration, America has rediscovered that foreign governments cannot be allowed to penalize American companies while enjoying unrestricted access to the U.S. market. The so-called “free trade” and “free market” consensus allowed our country to get hollowed out for decades. Under these heretical doctrines, Washington politicians accepted one-sided trade arrangements, destroyed the manufacturing base that created the middle class, and lost millions of jobs in the name of global cooperation.

We got poorer, and our enemies got richer. President Trump is sending a different message these days. He understands that access to American consumers is a privilege, not a right. Canada remains an important neighbor and ally, but friendship does not require surrendering American economic interests.

When another country discriminates against U.S. products, the answer should be firm, immediate, and proportional. These tariffs are designed to defend American manufacturing, demand fair treatment, and remind trading partners that the era of America being taken advantage of is over.

The culture war has found a potent new battleground on screens across America. Two recent successes — the raw vigilante thriller Citizen Vigilante and Angel Studios’ inspiring Young Washington — are proving definitively that conservative-leaning stories can draw huge crowds and turn serious profits. They prove audiences hunger to see the conservative perspective illustrated through the medium of cinema when it is done well. As Hollywood doubles down on ideological-driven woke flops, these films are charting a path that bypasses the old gatekeepers entirely.

Citizen Vigilante arrived with a great deal of controversy. Attempts to ban or bury it only supercharged demand, creating the classic Streisand effect on steroids. When Elon Musk posted about it on X, the film went nuclear. Its politically incorrect messaging takes the vigilante archetype from classics like Death Wish and Falling Down and pushes it further into territory most studios fear to enter.

The story delivers a satisfying message of cathartic justice in a world where the system too often coddles criminals at the expense of innocent, vulnerable people who are put directly in harm’s way as a direct result. Audiences are not just watching — they are cheering and sympathizing with the protagonist. The film is making real money, and the director has already stated that a sequel is in the works. This is no fluke. It is evidence that the public yearns for unapologetic, law-and-order content that emboldens the viewer into taking a stand against the filth that is overtaking Western Civilization.

What Citizen Vigilante achieves with gritty edge, Young Washington matches with broad, family-friendly appeal. Angel Studios’ latest release became their biggest hit since Sound of Freedom, the grassroots phenomenon that exposed child trafficking and became a nationwide phenomenon through word of mouth. Young Washington brings the early life of George Washington to vivid life, making the virtues of courage, duty, and vision emotionally resonant instead of stories from a dry textbook.

The studio is already moving forward with the sequel 1776, dramatizing the founding of America in a way that can reach viewers who will never wade through dense histories or sit through documentaries. While it does not push the envelope like Citizen Vigilante, its mass appeal is its superpower. It draws families, moderates, churchgoers, and demographics that edgier content might miss. Together the two films demonstrate proven reach across the spectrum. Artists and investors are taking notice. This niche is poised to grow exponentially.

Hollywood is slowly but surely losing the war. Its woke blockbusters continue to crash in flames. The recent Supergirl debacle is only the latest example of studios pouring hundreds of millions into preachy, agenda-driven projects that audiences reject. Story takes a backseat to diversity mandates, gender swaps, and anti-Western revisionism. The financial bleeding cannot continue indefinitely. Executives will eventually stop greenlighting ideological disasters. When they inevitably retreat, a void opens — and that void is already being filled with independent films carrying strong right-leaning messages that do not need massive marketing budgets to achieve widespread success.

This new wave does not need Hollywood’s permission or its distribution system. Citizen Vigilante thrived by spreading through social media and direct audience engagement. The emerging media ecosystem creates multiple resilient pathways that conservatives can now exploit at scale.

Financing has been democratized. Creators no longer have to beg studio executives who demand political conformity. A strong pitch or teaser posted on X can generate crowdfunding from thousands of supporters who want the story told. Hit films take the risk out of the investment, attracting sources of private capital from investors who see both returns and cultural purpose. Production quality rises as budgets grow, pulling in talent tired of Hollywood’s cancel culture, moral sewer and creative straitjackets.

Distribution is now simultaneous and borderless. A film can launch on niche streaming platforms built for conservative audiences, appear for digital purchase or rental on creator-owned sites, and generate explosive organic reach through clips on X, Rumble, and other open platforms. International audiences discover it instantly without waiting for theatrical windows or foreign censors. The core audience of conservatives will reward content creators with their money and encourage others of like mind to do so as well.

This is creating a competitive marketplace where audience connection, not ideological approval, determines survival. One breakout success funds infrastructure that builds the next. Citizen Vigilante has shown the potential to unlock every lever — crowdfunding, viral distribution, diversified monetization, and talent migration. It functions as a secret weapon for changing hearts and minds because viewers do not merely consume; they absorb messages of accountability, resilience, and ordered liberty that shape attitudes long after the credits roll.

Iconic journalist Andrew Breitbart saw the battlefield clearly. “Politics is downstream from culture,” he warned. For decades conservatives focused on elections and policy while the left captured the commanding heights of entertainment and used them to shift norms. That imbalance is ending. New frontiers are opening in the culture war. Hollywood’s inability to produce compelling stories without subordinating them to Marxist dogma has left a vacuum. Conservatives are seizing the opportunity and effectively filling it.

The era of the Harvey Weinstein-style perverted Hollywood gatekeeper with the casting coach controlling the entertainment industry is coming to an end. There are limitless ways to consume content, stretching from a phone screen to a family living room to a packed grassroots screening. The dam is starting to break. The successes of Citizen Vigilante and Young Washington are the first substantial cracks in the facade. They prove the audience exists, the economics work, and the infrastructure is assembling. The stories conservatives tell from this point forward will not just entertain — they will help reclaim the culture that ultimately shapes the nation. The frontier is open, now we chart forward.

The loss of American military personnel at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a national tragedy that demands more than solemn words, lowered flags, and carefully scripted statements from Washington, D.C.. Two American service members were killed while defending a United States position in Jordan from an Iranian missile and drone attack. Another American was initially reported missing, while four wounded service members were treated and returned to duty. Elsewhere, an American service member was killed in northern Iraq while handling unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian attack drone. Their courage, sacrifice, and devotion to duty must never be reduced to another statistic in a conflict reported by television commentators who have never heard a shot fired in anger.

The names of the fallen were initially withheld until their families could be properly notified. That is not bureaucratic secrecy. It is a final act of decency toward mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children, and siblings whose lives have been shattered by a knock at the door. Before the American public learns the names of the dead, their families deserve the dignity of hearing the news privately and directly from representatives of the nation their loved ones served.

Our prayers are with every one of those families. We also pray for the missing, for the injured, for those who rushed toward danger to save their comrades, and for every American presently serving within range of Iranian missiles, drones, and terrorist proxies. They are not abstractions on a Pentagon map. They are our sons and daughters, our neighbors, our fellow citizens, and the guardians standing between the American people and a revolutionary regime that has spent nearly half a century exporting violence.

President Donald J. Trump now faces the grave responsibility that comes with command. He must respond decisively, proportionately, and intelligently, not because war is desirable, but because weakness invites more war. The surest way to encourage Tehran to kill additional Americans is to convince its rulers that American deaths can be absorbed without meaningful consequences. Deterrence survives only when an adversary believes that crossing a clearly drawn line will bring swift and unbearable costs.

The United States military has already conducted retaliatory strikes against Iranian military targets following the deadly attack in Jordan. Those operations were intended to punish the forces responsible and diminish Iran’s capacity to launch additional attacks. They reportedly targeted military and logistical infrastructure in southern Iran and around the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian regime must understand a simple truth. American blood is not cheap. It cannot be spilled as part of some cynical calculation by clerics hiding in fortified compounds while young conscripts, foreign proxies, and ordinary civilians absorb the consequences of their ambitions. Iran’s rulers cannot launch missiles at American positions, attack commercial shipping, threaten neighboring countries, and then retreat behind diplomatic double talk when the United States responds.

For decades, Tehran perfected a cowardly method of warfare. It armed militias, financed terrorists, supplied drones, trained insurgents, and ordered attacks through intermediaries while denying direct responsibility. When Americans were killed, Iranian officials would pretend that some supposedly independent group had acted on its own. This arrangement allowed Tehran to light fires across the Middle East while insisting that its hands were clean.

That fiction has now collapsed. Iran is not merely encouraging attacks from the shadows. It has launched missiles and drones against American forces and threatened the maritime arteries through which much of the world’s energy supply travels. Iranian attacks have also endangered Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries that want commerce and stability rather than revolutionary chaos. Reports indicate that Iran has attacked commercial vessels and threatened vital infrastructure throughout the Gulf region.

This is not simply a quarrel between Washington and Tehran. It is a confrontation between an international order based on sovereign nations and open commerce, and a regime that uses disruption as an instrument of power. Iran’s rulers understand that they cannot defeat the United States in a conventional war. Their strategy is therefore to make the region so dangerous, expensive, and unstable that Americans lose patience and withdraw.

President Trump must not permit that strategy to succeed. He has never embraced the globalist fantasy of invading countries, occupying capitals, and attempting to manufacture Western democracies at gunpoint. He has also never subscribed to the equally dangerous fantasy that America can ignore attacks against its own forces and expect its enemies to become peaceful out of gratitude.

There is a profound difference between reckless nation building and decisive retaliation. One traps the United States in endless occupations with vague objectives. The other protects American lives by destroying the weapons, command centers, launch sites, naval assets, and military infrastructure used to attack them.

Trump’s doctrine has always been peace through strength. That doctrine does not require the permanent occupation of Iran. It does not require sacrificing thousands of American lives in an attempt to govern a country of nearly ninety million people. It requires making unmistakably clear that any attack upon Americans will result in the destruction of assets the Iranian regime values far more than it values the lives of its expendable proxies.

The Strait of Hormuz is central to this struggle. It is not some remote strip of water with no connection to the daily lives of Americans. It is one of the world’s most important energy corridors. When Iran threatens shipping there, insurance costs rise, oil markets react, transportation becomes more expensive, and American families eventually pay more for gasoline, groceries, electricity, and manufactured goods.

An attack on commercial navigation is therefore an attack on the economic security of working people around the world. Tehran knows this. Its threats against the strait are designed to use the global economy as a hostage. Iran hopes frightened governments will pressure the United States into accepting aggression rather than endure higher energy prices.

President Trump must reverse that calculation. The cost of closing or threatening the Strait of Hormuz must fall upon the Iranian military establishment, not upon American motorists. The United States possesses overwhelming naval and air power. It should use that superiority to protect navigation, neutralize missile batteries, destroy drone facilities, and ensure that no revolutionary regime can impose an economic blockade upon the free world.

At the same time, the President should leave open a clear path to deescalation. Iran can stop attacking American forces. It can stop targeting ships. It can stop threatening neighboring countries. It can abandon its nuclear ambitions and end its sponsorship of terrorist organizations. The choice belongs to Tehran.

Diplomacy without strength is merely pleading. Strength without a political objective can become destruction for its own sake. President Trump understands that successful statecraft requires both. He can impose devastating military consequences while making clear that the United States seeks neither Iranian territory nor an endless war.

The purpose of American retaliation must be precise. Protect our troops. Preserve freedom of navigation. Destroy the capability used to attack us. Prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Restore deterrence. Then bring our forces home when the mission has been accomplished.

The American people are compassionate, but they are not weak. They do not seek war, but neither will they accept the murder of their service members as the unavoidable cost of doing business in the Middle East. Every President is ultimately judged by whether he protected the lives, honor, and security of the nation entrusted to him.

The fallen Americans in Jordan and Iraq gave everything their country asked of them. Their sacrifice imposes a solemn obligation upon those who command. Their deaths must not be exploited to justify an undefined war, but they must never be ignored in the name of political convenience.

President Trump must now send Tehran a message so clear that no interpreter, diplomat, or propagandist can distort it. The United States desires peace. The United States will accept an honorable settlement. The United States will not occupy Iran. But when Iran kills Americans, the response will be swift, overwhelming, and unforgettable.

American blood is not cheap. Under Donald Trump, those who spill it will learn the price.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani apparently believes that governing America’s largest city is insufficient for his ambitions. While New Yorkers contend with crime, disorder, homelessness, deteriorating public services, crushing taxes, failing schools, and an exodus of businesses and productive citizens, Mamdani has decided to audition for the role of international prosecutor.

Mamdani has announced that his administration is examining whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be arrested if he travels to New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). He has called Netanyahu a war criminal who belongs before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and has consulted the city’s legal advisers about what authority, if any, New York possesses to detain him. 

This is not serious governance. It is ideological theater performed at the expense of New York City’s reputation, constitutional order, and relationship with one of America’s most important allies.

New York City is not an independent nation. City Hall does not conduct American foreign policy. The New York Police Department (NYPD) is not Mamdani’s personal international law enforcement agency. The mayor does not possess the authority to transform municipal law enforcement officers into agents of a foreign tribunal that the United States does not recognize.

The United States is not a party to the ICC. American officials have repeatedly rejected its claimed jurisdiction over citizens and leaders of countries outside its treaty system. Federal law, diplomatic protections, head of state immunity, and America’s obligations as host of the United Nations all stand between Mamdani’s rhetoric and the dangerous spectacle he appears eager to create. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has previously said that the mayor does not have the power to arrest Netanyahu, while federal officials argue that visiting foreign leaders receive legal protections that a municipal government cannot simply disregard. 

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz correctly dismissed Mamdani’s proposal as political theater. Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon has also condemned the mayor’s fixation on Netanyahu while New York faces serious domestic problems. They recognize what Mamdani either does not understand or does not care to admit. A mayor cannot seize control of American foreign relations merely because he has discovered that anti-Israel grandstanding attracts applause from the radical left.

The constitutional danger extends far beyond Benjamin Netanyahu. Imagine the chaos if every mayor in America claimed the authority to arrest foreign leaders based upon personal ideology. A Republican mayor might threaten the president of China. A progressive mayor might order the detention of a conservative European prime minister. Another city might announce its intention to enforce the decrees of a foreign court against an American ally.

The United States would cease to possess a coherent foreign policy. Instead, it would become a collection of thousands of municipal governments conducting their own diplomacy, issuing their own threats, and deciding which international organizations they recognize. That is not federalism. It is anarchy dressed in legalistic language.

The Founders placed foreign affairs in the hands of the federal government for precisely this reason. A nation must speak with one voice in its relations with other nations. States and cities possess important powers, but negotiating with foreign governments, recognizing international courts, protecting diplomatic visitors, and deciding whether foreign leaders may enter the country are federal responsibilities.

Mamdani’s threat is therefore not merely an insult to Netanyahu, it is an assault upon American sovereignty. He seeks to place the authority of an international tribunal above the laws and foreign policy of the United States, then use American police officers to enforce its commands.

That should concern every American, regardless of his opinion of Netanyahu or the war in Gaza. One does not need to endorse every decision of the Israeli government to recognize that allowing foreign institutions to dictate arrests inside the United States would establish a disastrous precedent.

The International Criminal Court is not an American court. Its prosecutors are not accountable to American voters. Its judges do not derive their authority from the Constitution. Congress has never transferred American sovereignty to The Hague, and no mayor possesses the authority to make that transfer by executive improvisation. Put simply, no legal mechanism exists which allows for this scenario to happen at all.

Mamdani’s obsession also reveals the transformation of the Democratic Party. Harry Truman defied members of his own foreign policy establishment to recognize the State of Israel in 1948. John F. Kennedy affirmed Israel’s security. For decades, support for the Jewish state remained a bipartisan pillar of American foreign policy.

Today, a growing faction of the Democratic Party treats Israel as uniquely illegitimate while excusing or minimizing the barbarism of its enemies. Hamas can murder civilians, seize hostages, hide military infrastructure among families, and openly proclaim its desire to destroy Israel, yet progressive activists reserve their greatest fury for the Israeli leaders responsible for preventing another massacre.

Mamdani insists that he opposes Hamas but his public campaign against Netanyahu cannot be separated from a political movement in which hostility toward Israel has become a test of ideological purity. His rhetoric takes arguments developed on radical university campuses and places them inside the office of the mayor of New York City.

This is especially reckless in New York, which is home to one of the largest Jewish populations outside Israel. Jewish New Yorkers have watched antisemitic intimidation intensify in streets, schools, transportation systems, and public demonstrations. They have seen activists glorify terrorism, deface property, harass students, and treat Jewish support for Israel as grounds for public condemnation.

At such a moment, the mayor should be reassuring Jewish citizens that their government will protect them. Instead, Mamdani is generating international headlines by plotting the hypothetical arrest of the democratically elected prime minister of the Jewish state.

He is free to criticize Netanyahu. He is free to condemn Israeli military policy. He is free to advocate changes in federal foreign policy. The First Amendment protects even the most foolish political opinions. What he is not free to do is misuse the NYPD, violate federal law, ignore diplomatic immunity, or manufacture a constitutional crisis to satisfy his ideological base.

The men and women of the NYPD take an oath to uphold the law. They are not foot soldiers in Mamdani’s international crusade. Every officer diverted into this spectacle would be an officer taken away from the job New Yorkers elected the mayor to perform: protecting residents, enforcing city and state law, and maintaining public order.

Mamdani should be concentrating on the city he governs. New York’s streets do not become safer when he lectures Israel. The subway does not become cleaner when he invokes The Hague. Homeless encampments do not disappear because he condemns Netanyahu. Businesses do not return because the mayor has transformed City Hall into a debating society for revolutionary foreign policy.

This is the same disease that afflicted New York under Bill de Blasio. Ideology replaced competence. National ambition replaced municipal responsibility. Public safety became secondary to progressive symbolism. The mayor treated the city as a stage upon which to advertise his political virtue while the basic machinery of government deteriorated.

Mamdani is taking that failed model and internationalizing it. He is not content merely to impose socialism upon New York. He wants to conduct foreign policy, adjudicate war crimes, confront allied leaders, and enlist local police in disputes that belong to Washington.

The Trump administration must make clear that this will not be tolerated. The protection of visiting heads of government, the security of the United Nations, and the conduct of American foreign policy belong to the federal government. Any attempt by a municipal official to obstruct those responsibilities should meet an immediate legal and constitutional response.

Congress should also examine whether federal funding can be withheld from any jurisdiction that attempts to assist the ICC in actions against officials protected by American law. Federal taxpayers should not finance a city government that uses its police department to undermine the nation’s foreign policy.

Governor Hochul must do more than offer an occasional statement of disagreement. She should publicly instruct the mayor that New York State will not participate in this political stunt and that no state law enforcement resource will be used to carry it out. Silence or ambiguity will only encourage Mamdani to escalate.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies can be debated. Israel’s conduct can be scrutinized. American aid can be examined by Congress. Those are legitimate questions for a free society. But the mayor of New York cannot declare himself the American representative of The Hague and attempt to arrest the leader of an allied nation.

New Yorkers elected a mayor, not a secretary of state, attorney general, international judge, or revolutionary commissar. Mamdani should abandon this reckless fantasy and perform the job he was elected to do.

New York City is part of the United States of America. Its police serve the people of New York under American law. Its mayor answers to the Constitution, not to the International Criminal Court.

Zohran Mamdani would be wise to remember that before his ideological theater becomes a constitutional confrontation he cannot win.

Conversational artificial intelligence may do more than produce false information—it can also help users construct and strengthen distorted beliefs, memories and personal narratives, according to a recently-published research paper. Lucy Osler, a philosopher at the University of Exeter, argues that people can begin to “hallucinate with AI” when chatbots become integrated into how they think, remember and interpret reality.

Rather than simply transmitting an error, an AI system may accept a user’s premise, elaborate on it and repeatedly provide apparent confirmation. The danger is tied partly to the social character of chatbots.

Because they respond in a friendly, personalized and conversational manner, users may experience their replies as validation from another mind—even though the system is generating language rather than exercising human judgment. That dynamic could make unsupported beliefs feel shared and therefore more credible.

Osler points to extreme cases in which chatbot interactions allegedly reinforced paranoia, delusional thinking or violent fantasies. This has even resulted in children committing suicide after consulting with chat bots. The argument also extends beyond clinically diagnosed psychosis. AI can subtly distort ordinary memories, self-perceptions and political or personal narratives through repeated, affirming conversations.

The paper does not claim that AI is conscious or capable of experiencing hallucinations. Instead, it describes a “distributed” process in which human thinking becomes intertwined with an unreliable digital tool.

Possible safeguards include programming AI with less flattering or agreeable responses, giving clearer reminders to users that chatbots are not people, and using systems designed to challenge dangerous assumptions rather than automatically build upon them. AI should be treated as a fallible tool—not a trusted companion, therapist or unquestionable authority.