Condescension has always been an effective sales strategy for the politically naive. Wrap radical ideology in the language of justice, present the speakers as virtuous defenders of the powerless, and enough people will overlook the obvious contradiction.

Jim Jones perfected the method decades ago, preaching racial equality, social justice, and communal living while consolidating absolute power and leading nearly a thousand of his followers to their deaths with a cyanide-laced grape drink. Fidel Castro followed a related path, born into relative privilege, he wrapped revolutionary expropriation in the language of justice and the people.

This pattern of inherited security and radical rhetoric is consistent, only the branding changes.

But what is rarely discussed is the quiet role of the guarantors behind this ideology of condescension, the parents who built real wealth through free markets and capitalism and who continue to underwrite the lifestyles of the children now demanding the dismantling of the very system that sustains them.

Not so long ago, an open allegiance to a system sought to overthrow American order carried real consequences. No greater example exists just of how seriously this country once treated the threat of communism than the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for passing atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union, they were executed in 1953, the only American civilians put to death for espionage in peacetime.

Today the communist ideology travels under a friendlier, phony brand, attaching itself to the social-justice umbrella and marketed like a youth trend. Little thought is given to consequences, and it is rarely met with more than a shrug.

But the hypocrisy of those who advocate for it is hard to miss. These young activists are the products of parents who thrived precisely because of free markets and capitalism, the very system their children now insist must be dismantled.

The upper ranks of the Democratic Socialists of America once again expose the same structural farce. They fiercely condemn the system while quietly depending on the unearned advantages and safety nets they publicly despise; advantages usually inherited or family-supported, and rarely matched by any independent achievement of their own.

Gustavo Gordillo, the 38-year-old co-chair of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, has spent recent months lecturing that no one has a “constitutional right” to double-digit returns on investment. “We don’t think that anybody should have the constitutional right to double-digit returns on their investment… No one has a right. That’s not in the Constitution,” he declared on Fox News while claiming New York landlords average 12% returns.

Gordillo has described his parents as having arrived with nothing, starting in fast food and house cleaning. In a New York Times profile he put it this way: “My parents came here, they had nothing… Their first jobs were in fast food and cleaning houses. They built success in this country. And they’re absolutely the exception.

That account is both a reckless distortion and wildly irresponsible. His paternal grandfather was a prominent Cleveland-area psychiatrist who emigrated from Peru in 1958, and his parents later built substantial wealth through the successful Florida engineering firm Draftpros Inc., founded by his father.

The couple, Peruvian immigrants who raised their family in South Florida, purchased and renovated a $1.5 million Brooklyn home for their sons through a family LLC.

The property was acquired in 2019 for under $1 million via Chucuito LLC and has since undergone extensive renovations, including facade work, landscaping, interior upgrades, and the addition of decks, while Gordillo continues to reside there, as reported by the New York Post.

His parents also own multimillion-dollar properties, including a more than 5,000-square-foot home in Boca Raton listed around $3.1 million and another valued near $3 million in Weston. The father confirmed that the LLC bought the Brooklyn property and that both of his sons live there after the renovations.

Gustavo Gordillo and the organization he co-chairs make the charade impossible to miss.

DSA’s housing platform does not merely call for more affordable units. Its official statement on social housing demands that social housing “must first be a redistribution of land from landowners to the landless,” that it “must expropriate property from capitalists and deliver it to the working class,” and that it must “abolish the exclusivity, extraction, and monopolization in housing and all of society.”

In a 2022 DSA Housing Justice meeting, Gordillo himself described housing court as merely “mitigating harm… It’s not abolishing landlords and rent which are our long-term socialist goals.” Coverage has placed him in the “rent abolitionist” current that treats private landlordism itself as the problem to be eliminated.

A Yale graduate with degrees in art, including a Master of Fine Arts focused on sculpture and video, Gordillo previously lived in a Lower East Side apartment whose $2,600 monthly rent was also covered by the family LLC between 2016 and 2019. He has described himself as a union electrician, though reports indicate he left an apprenticeship program.

A local neighbor went on record with the Post, and elected officials have called the arrangement hypocritical. Faith Smith, a 36-year-old Bed-Stuy renter, put it bluntly: “It’s a rich kid. That’s basically people who don’t have to deal with the struggles we have to deal with.” City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino and others noted the irony of a socialist leader benefiting from a parent-funded luxury conversion that reduced multi-family housing stock.

The masquerede continues with Morris Katz, the 27-year-old strategist closely associated with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rise, progressive candidate Graham Platner, and other progressive campaigns. Katz signed a roughly $6,500 monthly lease on a Williamsburg duplex but allegedly fell behind on payments, bounced checks, and accumulated about $14,000 in unpaid rent before moving out and leaving the apartment in disarray, according to the New York Post.

The building’s superintendent, Felix Barbosa said, “When you come from a rich family, you don’t have your priorities in order.” “He’s not a bad guy, but his priorities are all f–ked up.”

The identical dynamic is not hard to miss once you start looking. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the movement’s poster child, is the son of filmmaker Mira Nair and academic Mahmood Mamdani; the family maintains multiple homes, including a staffed compound in Uganda alongside residences in Manhattan and New Delhi.

Grace Ryan, the 25-year-old DSA organizer and self-styled “Lulu Lenin,” is the daughter of a man who built a multimillion-dollar chocolate business. She recently justified her lake-house summers and elite education by declaring it a matter of “noblesse oblige,” as reported by the New York Post.

Cea Weaver, who heads the mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and has described homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy,” all while coming from a household in which her mother owns a $1.6 million Nashville property.

Beyond their common obsession with this radical redistributionist agenda, they all share a clear consistency of comfortable contradiction. Every one mentioned is a byproduct of successful parents and elite pathways who now speak with the greatest confidence about dismantling the very system that made their comfort possible.

The biographies clash so violently with the sermons they spew that the whole performance comes off as ego-driven theater few will take seriously. The results, however, will not be theatrical. They will be deadly.

Those advocating for Marxism often share a common background of affluent upbringing and inherited advantage, masked under the umbrella of social justice.

These optics undermine their claims of solidarity with those facing genuine economic insecurity, particularly when the loudest voices calling for the expropriation of private property live in homes made possible by the very system they condemn.

What they are advocating is a society without ramifications for mistakes, one in which failure is subsidized, competence is optional, and the only real crime is refusing to pretend the arrangement is just. Such a system is not merely unjust. It is unsustainable and self-liquidating.

It selects against the very traits that produce surplus and resilience. Power concentrates in the hands of those skilled at narrative and extraction while the productive are steadily demoralized or driven out. The result is neither solidarity with those in genuine hardship nor with those living on the edge.

It is, instead, a managed decline in which the connected continue to live off the residual capital of a system they are actively dismantling, while everyone else learns that effort is optional and truth is optional until the residual runs out.

The final irony is generational. The parents of these activists still thrive inside the order their children denounce, living off the capital, institutions, and norms that made their security possible. The children serve as the public face, repeating the necessary language of solidarity and justice even as the arrangement that sustains them quietly erodes.

A society without accountability is not a society. Communism has failed everywhere it has been tried. What it requires in return is the surrender of fundamental rights, and the residual will not last forever.

In a display of recklessness and decay, Soros-backed Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner told a crowd at the President’s House site Tuesday he wants a piece of Trump’s White House ballroom “after we all blow it up.” He said that in 10 to 15 years he would keep it as a paperweight on his desk, that the demolition would happen “in an official ceremony,” and that pieces would be sold “to give the taxpayers their money back.”

The comments, first captured on video by NBC10 Philadelphia, were delivered at the 24th annual Slavery Commiseration at the President’s House in Old City, a National Park site already in a fight over how the history of enslaved people at George Washington’s residence is presented.

Construction is underway on the former East Wing site. The Supreme Court issued a stay allowing the work to continue.

Krasner skipped that record. He framed the ballroom as destined for erasure.

“There will not be a ballroom. There will not be a Kennedy Center renamed for a fool,” he said. He called Trump a “pain in the ass” and “the embodiment of hate, the embodiment of ignorance, and the embodiment of depriving people of their vote and education.”

Krasner’s remarks were not analysis. They were projections.

He assigned to Trump the charges that have followed his own career as DA: inflammatory rhetoric, untrustworthy presentations to courts, and a habit of treating institutional constraints as illegitimate.

Krasner’s office exists to prosecute crime in Philadelphia. On Tuesday he stood at a federal park site and talked about destroying part of the People’s House in Washington.

Attorney General Todd Blanche called him out Wednesday on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. “The ballroom is being built,” Blanche said. “And it’s disgusting that a district attorney in Philadelphia, who, by the way, has a city with its own problems, is so focused on what the president is doing in the White House.”

Blanche also called the project a national-security issue and said the Supreme Court’s stay allows construction to proceed. Asked later about the tape, Krasner said he stood by the remarks “100 percent,” because “when you demolish a building, you do it with explosives and/or wrecking balls.”

The sloppiest line on the tape is the rebate. Krasner told the crowd the wreckage would be sold “to give the taxpayers their money back.”

The White House has said the ballroom itself is financed with about $400 million in private donations. Krasner turned that into a line about “giving the taxpayers their money back.”

That statement sits next to his own property file. Tiger Building LP, a limited partnership in which Krasner held a reported 40% and whose officer entity listed him as president, had a $130,000 school-district Use & Occupancy judgment entered against it in 2016 and later entered a reduced payment plan.

Krasner, the man selling demolition of the White House as a taxpayer refund spent years explaining why an entity he co-owned was late with the school district.

This is not Krasner’s first turn on the national megaphone. First elected in 2017, he has long been the poster child of the progressive-prosecutor movement.

A Soros-funded independent expenditure committee, Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety, spent nearly $1.7 million supporting his first campaign, more than five times what Krasner’s own committee spent in that primary.

His campaigns and Real Justice PAC, tied to BLM activist Shaun King, later settled twice with Philadelphia’s Board of Ethics over contribution limits, embedded staff paid by the PAC and disclosure failures: $4,000 in  penalties plus $11,020 in disgorgement for the 2017 cycle, then $10,000 for the campaign and $30,000 for the PAC in 2021.

Real Justice also rented office space from Tiger Building LP, the limited partnership in which Krasner held a reported 40% stake. Emails reported by Broad & Liberty, drawn from records obtained by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, show the Wren Collective overlapping work for Krasner’s campaign, Real Justice PAC, and the district attorney’s office at the same time.

“Wren didn’t serve two masters; it served three,” said LELDF policy director Sean Kennedy. City ethics director Shane Creamer said Wren appeared to be a vendor for the Krasner committee and pointed to the 2019 and 2021 settlements.

Weeks after a jury convicted 52nd Ward leader Stephen Jones of aggravated indecent assault of a child under 13, Krasner appeared at a ward breakfast Jones hosted.

Opponent Pat Dugan called it an endorsement. Krasner said he did not know and called using the victim as a “political football” disgusting. Jones said he invited both candidates and endorsed no one. Jones later got a short jail term and long house arrest, far below what prosecutors sought.

This is the same Krasner the House impeached 107–85 in 2022 on seven articles that included dereliction of duty amid the homicide surge, mishandled cases, violations of victims’ rights, and obstruction of a House inquiry.

In coverage of the fight, the Inquirer reported office data showing dismissals and withdrawals rising from about 30% of offenses in 2016 to 67% in 2021.

Gun-possession conviction rates fell as Krasner’s early moves took hold: firing 31 assistant DAs, including prosecutors in homicide; declining or diverting some gun-possession and low-level cases; and changing cash bail for certain offenses.

The Senate never tried him. After courts questioned whether the charges met the standard for “misbehavior in office,” the state Supreme Court held that the articles died with the legislative session. He was never removed.

The ballroom line was more of the same projection. It followed a string of public confrontations, including one in which Krasner grabbed the phone of a 22-year-old Republican student activist who was recording him.

In January 2026 Krasner called ICE agents “wannabe Nazis” and vowed to “hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades.”

In March he stood at Philadelphia International Airport and warned agents that “the president cannot pardon you” and that he would put them “in handcuffs” and, “if necessary,” a jail cell. The January remarks drew calls from members of Congress for a Justice Department review.

Separately this year, a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court faulted his office’s handling of post-conviction concessions in murder cases, finding a pattern of unreliable concessions, lack of candor, withheld evidence, and a false stipulation, and requiring the state attorney general to receive notice before future Philadelphia PCRA concessions are granted.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed records on the office’s immigration-related charging practices after months of non-production.

Same playbook since 2017. Call the other side hateful and ignorant, treat courthouses and public buildings like a stage set, and promise taxpayers a rebate while a company he co-owned was late paying the school district. Institutions aren’t scenery. This was just for attention.

Disgraced former Congressman Eric Swalwell had his devices seized by the FBI this past weekend. Federal agents were waiting at San Francisco International Airport when he stepped off a flight on Saturday. They served him with a warrant and took his white iPhone and MacBook Pro. Court records show the devices were seized at 8:25 p.m. According to Just the News, he cooperated.

Source: FBI evidence inventory of devices seized from Eric Swalwell at San Francisco International Airport on August 15, 2026

This is the same man who spent years on nightly television trying to smear innocent Americans with the Russian Collusion narrative. Now he stands accused of rape by multiple women, and federal investigators have collected muliple electronic devices.

The following day agents showed up at his Northeast Washington home with another warrant. He and his wife weren’t there, according to Raw Story.

This traces back to the sexual assault allegations that blew up his career in April. Multiple women came forward within days of each other. A former staffer claimed he assaulted her on two separate occasions when she was too intoxicated to consent, the first time in 2019, while she was still on his staff.

The second was in 2024 in a New York hotel after a charity gala. She said she blacked out, woke up during it, and told him to stop. Other women described unsolicited nudes and explicit messages sent over Snapchat and text. Manhattan and LA County already had open probes.

A fifth woman, Lonna Drewes, held a press conference and accused Swalwell of drugging her drink in 2018 at a West Hollywood hotel. She said he then raped and choked her until she lost consciousness, adding that she thought she was going to die. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department later opened an investigation into her claim.

Swalwell denied everything. He called the main allegations false and political. He did admit to “mistakes in judgment” in a vague statement while announcing he was dropping out of the California governor’s race. Days later he resigned from Congress under threat of expulsion.

The whole thing collapsed fast.

All of this came after Swalwell had locked down strong Democratic establishment support. He’d been endorsed by Senators Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego, more than 20 members of Congress including his campaign chairs Jimmy Gomez and Adam Gray, plus major labor groups like SEIU California and the California Teachers Association.

Almost every one of those endorsements disappeared within hours of the Chronicle story. Gomez himself is now under a House Ethics investigation over separate sexual misconduct allegations.

Endorsements disappeared. Colleagues from both parties pushed for him to go. What had been a strong early position in the governor’s race evaporated in less than a week.

This is the same Eric Swalwell who went on national television to defend the women who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, demanding they be believed. He positioned himself as a champion of the #MeToo movement and voted to ban sexual relationships between members of Congress and their staff.

In public he lectured the country about protecting women from powerful men. In private, according to multiple women, he was the powerful man they needed protection from, sending unsolicited nudes, pursuing staff, and facing allegations of sexual assault when the women were too intoxicated to consent.

Airport stops and home searches are not something the FBI does lightly, especially with a former member of Congress. This weekend’s device seizures reveal the federal investigation is still active and is looking at possible violations of 18 U.S.C. § 242 (deprivation of rights under color of law), among other statutes.

This has nothing to do with the old Christine Fang file. The White House released earlier this week. In them, Swalwell admitted he had casual sex with the suspected Chinese spy more than once between 2012 and 2015. He told agents it was casual and that he never dated her. Fang had helped with fundraising and placed interns in his office; a significant security risk.

The timing is almost poetic. Days after the public learned the details of his relationship with a suspected Chinese spy, federal agents confiscated his devices. What remained of his carefully constructed public persona,the one that once allowed him to lecture the country on morality and democracy, collapsed four months ago. Now the evidence is in federal hands.

Swalwell, normally quite vocal, has for some reason stayed mostly silent since leaving office.

Assessing the Legitimacy of U.S. Elections

The vast majority of Americans, both Republican and Democrat, are in favor of commonsense electoral reforms, yet on the evening of July 16, the President gave a speech on challenges to election integrity in US elections, and ABC, NBC and CNN refused to carry it live. Politicians from both political parties, and their allies in the media and judiciary, are waging an all-out war against any reform aimed at increasing the transparency and credibility of elections. Plenty of Americans wonder why, and think (along with the President), “the only reason you wouldn’t do it (election reform) is because you want to cheat.”

If elections are not free and fair, or are conducted in ways intentionally designed to prevent effective monitoring and verification, should candidates and voters who lose elections in November accept those loses as legitimate? To try to answer this question, we should compare our elections to the norms and standards international election observers use to assess elections overseas. Since I spent almost 30 years supporting, monitoring, and assessing foreign elections, beginning in 1992 as a U.N. District Electoral Supervisor in Cambodia’s transitional election, and ending in 2021 as Director of the Center for Democracy Rights and Governance in the first Trump Administration, I have relevant background to consider this issue.

Voter Registration

The foundation of fair elections are clean voter rolls, as they insure only eligible citizens can vote. Unqualified voters on voter rolls (people who are non-citizens, dead, moved, or never existed) enable many types of election fraud, as their names can be used to cast illegal ballots. Typical questions used to assess voter registration are:

• Are voter rolls accurate and complete, including qualified voters and excluding unqualified people.
• Are voter rolls public and auditable?

Assessment: Voter rolls are grossly inaccurate, and actually auditing voters rolls is often illegal, so U.S. voter rolls are ineffective at ensuring only qualified citizens can vote, and in preventing election fraud. Internationally, error rates in rolls, revealed by voter roll audits, are typically 3-6%. In the U.S., no one really knows our actual error rates, as Democrat (and some Republican) politicians and officials have fought in the courts and in the streets any attempts to conduct voter roll audits or to clean voter rolls, but we do know that some localities have more than twice the number people on their rolls as eligible citizens that live in the constituency (i.e. at least 100% error).

Voter ID

Voter ID is considered an essential element in election security, and the provision of photo or biometric voter ID is a major part of many U.S.-funded election assistance programs overseas. A question we might ask on this issue is:

• Can every qualified voter easily obtain voter ID, and are unqualified voters prevented from obtaining voter ID?

Assessment: The situation is mixed, with Republican-led states more likely to meet this security standard, and Democrat-led states less likely. Although more than 80% of Americans (both Republicans and Democrats) support voter ID, and despite the fact that voter ID and proof of citizenship is required in every other democracy in the world, Democrat leaders continue to strenuously object to the universal introduction of photo voter ID and proof of citizenship to vote.

Early Voting

Many states now have early and extended voting periods, creating election seasons rather than a single election day. Extensive experience in developing democracies indicates that any time there is a break between voting and counting the votes caused by moving ballots or storing them overnight, transparency is interrupted, and public and candidate confidence in the legitimacy of the outcome decreases. A question relevant for this issue might be:

• Is polling conducted so that it can be effectively monitored by non-partisan observers and pollwatchers?

Assessment: Due to a lack of transparency introduced by overnight and weekend breaks in the chain of observation, and a lack of resources required to deploy observers for extended periods, it is not possible for non-partisan observers or pollwatchers to effectively monitor and verify extended voting periods. Extended voting periods decrease transparency and facilitate fraud (or the suspicion of fraud), and undermine confidence in the legitimacy of election outcomes, which may decrease voter engagement and turnout. Extended voting enables corrupt administrators to determine likely results by counting Republican and Democrat voters, and because it is impossible to monitor effectively, allows the easy addition or subtraction of votes and manipulation of outcomes. Both politicians and voters support extended voting periods, not understanding how they facilitate fraud and ultimately undermine confidence in election outcomes.

Postal Voting

Originally limited largely to absentee voting for soldiers, by the late 90s and early 2000s postal voting was becoming increasingly popular for ordinary voting, even though the 2005 Bipartisan Commission on Election Reform (led by former President Carter) identified postal voting as the least secure election practice. Questions relevant for this issue include:

• Does the polling process effectively prevent vote buying or selling?
• Are ballots securely stored and monitored to prevent theft and ballot box stuffing?
• Can voters cast their ballot in secret, free from influence or intimidation by family, employers or other powerful people in the community?

Assessment: Widespread or universal postal voting undermines the security and secrecy of the vote because it does not occur in a controlled environment, enabling vote theft, ballot box stuffing, vote buying and voter intimidation.

Voting and Counting Machines

Voting and counting machines have become ubiquitous in American elections, with proponents arguing they are cheaper, faster, and more secure than traditional voting and counting processes, while opponents argue the opposite, that they are more expensive, slower, and less secure. Questions relevant to assessing this issue include:

• Can observers and pollwatchers effectively monitor and verify polling and counting processes?
• Do polling and counting processes used in the election enhance or detract from voter confidence in the integrity of the process and legitimacy of elected representatives?

Assessment: Dur to their lack of transparency, it is not possible to effectively monitor and verify machine-based voting and counting, and this drives public doubt in the legitimacy of election outcomes. According to assessments by the intelligence community and essentially all cyber-security experts, voting and counting machines are extremely vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation by foreign and domestic bad actors. Prominent Democrat and Republican leaders have publicly blamed election losses on hacking of machines for decades, and a large portion of the voting population believe results are routinely manipulated.

 Overall Assessment of U.S. Elections

Based on the identification of severe shortcomings in election procedures, our hypothetical international observation mission would find it impossible to verify and certify electoral outcomes as accurate expressions of the will of the people.

In such cases, observers would deny the legitimacy of elected representatives, and urge the people to continue their struggle for free and fair elections and real democracy. The mission would also make a series of recommendations for reforms required to ensure transparent and credible elections, like those below.

An Agenda for Transparent and Credible Elections

A democracy depends on public confidence that the process is fair, and that its representatives and leaders in government were legitimately elected by a majority of voters. Currently, that confidence in the U.S. is at its lowest level ever, and experience overseas demonstrates that a loss of confidence in the legitimacy of government can lead to a loss of social cohesion, autocracy, revolution, and blood in the streets.

This slide into instability and conflict is preventable through election reforms that increase the transparency and public credibility of election processes. Even those who think there is nothing wrong with our elections should recognize that growing public doubt in current election practices will ultimately result in instability, and that replacing those processes with transparent and verifiable procedures will enhance public confidence in the legitimacy of government.

With that in mind, I would make the following recommendations, all of which align with international standards and norms for free and fair elections, and all of which could be implemented for federal elections before the midterms through legislation or a presidential declaration of a national security emergency. States would not have to follow these reforms for state or local elections, but would be encouraged to do so.

1. Allow and conduct voter list audits in every state (voter list audits are a standard tool used by both monitoring organizations and election administrations throughout the world to assess the accuracy of voter rolls). Decertify current election rolls for federal elections and conduct a new registration in every state, building off the Real ID process used for driver’s licenses to ensure voters are qualified. With proper organization, this re-registration could be conducted in as little as four weeks, making it possible to implement before the mid-term elections.
2. Limit postal voting for federal elections to actual need. Postal voting is inherently insecure, so the volume of postal voting is inversely proportional to confidence in the legitimacy of the process. Postal votes undermine the secrecy of the ballot, are easy to manipulate, and facilitate vote buying and voter intimidation (particularly affected are less powerful minorities and women). This reform could be part of a presidential order, and states could implement the policy by simply going back to their absentee ballot rules of several decades ago.
3. Limit voting in federal elections to one day. Voting seasons are impossible to monitor effectively, creating doubt in the legitimacy of election outcomes. This reform could be part of a presidential order, and could be accompanied by a decree making Election Day a national holiday.
4. Require voter ID and proof of citizenship to register and vote in federal elections, as is normal and expected in every other country in the world. This reform could be part of a presidential order.
5. Eliminate non-transparent and non-monitorable election processes. In practice, this means eliminating voting and counting machines, which are non-transparent and cannot be effectively monitored and verified, thus contributing to public doubt in the legitimacy of election outcomes. Manual voting and counting processes are simple by design, and can be developed and introduced within a few weeks by drawing on international best practices for free and fair elections.
6. Count the votes in public at the precinct and post the results for all to see. Moving ballots before counting, or counting in secret or in a non-verifiable way, creates doubt in the legitimacy of the election process.

Conclusion:

All of these reforms are necessary to enhance public confidence in election outcomes and ensure we remain a government of the people. All are possible to implement before the November elections. Without significant reforms, the number of election deniers will continue to grow, leading ultimately, I fear, to tyranny or revolution.

BY – https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/should-americans-deny-elections-this-november/

The so-called “fake electors” narrative has finally collapsed under the weight of its own fabrication.

The so-called “fake electors” narrative has finally collapsed under the weight of its own fabrication. One by one, the cases built by Democratic attorneys general against Republican alternate electors from the 2020 election have crumbled. The most recent example came in Nevada, where Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus dismissed forgery and false-document charges against the six Republican electors, including state GOP Chair Michael McDonald. The judge found no evidence they intended to deceive officials. They had openly announced their purpose, and the certificates they signed could not be legally accepted under Nevada or federal law. Prosecutors’ claims of secret fraud evaporated the moment a court examined them.

The pattern is now unmistakable. In Michigan, a judge appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer dismissed all charges against 15 alternate electors in September 2025, ruling that prosecutors failed to prove specific intent to defraud. The electors were exercising their constitutional right to seek redress—posing for a photograph and testifying under oath that they genuinely believed the election was stolen—actions inconsistent with perpetrating a criminal conspiracy. In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes’s sprawling indictment against 18 defendants, including Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Christina Bobb, and John Eastman, has been repeatedly rebuked. A trial judge found that prosecutors misled the grand jury by withholding the Electoral Count Act; an appeals court refused to revive the case; and the Arizona Supreme Court shut the door. AG Mayes now scrambles for a new grand jury, a desperate admission that the original case was improper. Similarly, the case against alternative electors in Georgia was dismissed last year as well in a blow to the disgraced low IQ Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

These cases were never about enforcing the rule of law. They were poorly constructed political theatre, assembled years after the fact by Democratic AGs who coordinated their efforts with far-left nonprofits. Norm Eisen’s States United Democracy Center supplied the blueprints, Marc Elias’s lawfare operation provided legal cover, and the Democratic Attorneys General Association funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost the prosecution strategy as it was being crafted. What looked like independent state actions was actually a national scheme designed to criminalize political opposition. Yet the most damning part of the story is not the collapse of the cases. It is how ordinary the alternate-elector strategy was portrayed before Democrats decided to retcon it as a crime.

In the fall of 2020, major news outlets treated the possibility of “dueling electors” as a serious contingency, not a conspiracy. Reuters published an explainer on how competing slates in battleground states with split partisan control of governors and legislatures could deadlock the Electoral College, citing the historical precedent of 1876. An election guide posted by Politico casually walked through Republican operatives discussing alternate electors if Trump lost and claimed fraud, and Democratic governors responding with their own slates. No one called it sedition. It was framed as a constitutional stress test.

Even more striking was the war game played by the so-called Transition Integrity Project. Former White House Chief of Staff and pizza party aficionado John Podesta, playing the role of Joe Biden, refused to concede a narrow electoral defeat. He alleged voter suppression and persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College. The New York Times reported the exercise without even an inkling of moral panic. It was treated as a genuine possibility that could come from either side of the political aisle in the case of a close or disputed election, not as some nefarious plot to overthrow the government.

Then after a disputed election marked by late-night ballot dumps, statistical anomalies, rule violations, and widespread distrust, Republican electors in several states signed contingent certificates to preserve their legal options if courts or legislatures later found the results invalid. They did not hide. They did not claim the certificates were the official ones. They acted in the open—doing everything in their power to draw attention to their efforts in the midst of a media blackout shuttering all fraud claims—consistent with historical precedent. For years, almost no one cared. The narrative only hardened into “fake electors” and “attempted coup” after the call came down from the permanent bureaucracy and progressive legal networks that President Trump and his supporters had to be destroyed.

What followed was lawfare at its worst. Democratic attorneys general in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and elsewhere dusted off obscure statutes and stretched them into felony charges that carried the threat of decades in prison. Ordinary citizens—many of them senior citizens, small-business owners, and longtime party activists—were indicted for the “crime” of believing the 2020 election was stolen and trying to keep legal options open. The goal was never primarily conviction. It was destruction: bankrupting defendants with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, terrifying them with federal scrutiny, isolating them from family and friends who bought into the media narrative, and sending a chilling message to every election-integrity activist in the Republican Party. The message was clear: challenge the official story and we will ruin your life.

These patriots endured more than most Americans will ever face from their own government. They lost homes. They watched savings evaporate. They were treated as domestic terrorists for the same contingency planning that elite Democrats had discussed openly months earlier. The most powerful institutions in the country—Democratic state AGs, progressive dark-money groups, the national media, and deep state operators—trained their fire on private citizens whose only offense was loyalty to a candidate despised by the establishment. Miscarriage of justice does not begin to describe it. This was an abuse seemingly right out of the People’s Court of the Soviet Union.

The alternate electors have been effectively vindicated. The charges have been dismissed or are collapsing. President Trump issued federal pardons to 77 alternate electors and associated figures. Now the victims are going on offense. In Michigan, former defendants have filed notice of their intent to sue Attorney General Dana Nessel for malicious prosecution, seeking millions in damages and personal accountability. They are right to do so. Officials who weaponize criminal law against their political opponents must pay a steep price, or the practice will continue unabated.

This is why President Trump must revive the Anti-Weaponization Fund, a brilliant idea that has unfortunately been shuttered due to political calculations. RINO Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis received assurances from Attorney General Todd Blanche that the Anti-Weaponization Fund was dead to secure votes for his confirmation. The senators extracted a formal order terminating the fund and narrowing the related IRS settlement. Perhaps after Blanche is settled into his role, he can issue another formal letter changing his mind. Tillis and Cornyn will be out of the U.S. Senate soon anyway, and their voices are not needed to sustain MAGA’s governing coalition. In other words: Screw ‘em.

The patriots who stood in the breach after 2020 and absorbed the full force of unprecedented lawfare deserve more than symbolic vindication. They deserve substantial compensation that makes clear the government will not escape consequences for political persecution. Elections have consequences. Restoring the lives of those who were bankrupted, isolated, and terrorized for defending election integrity should be chief among those consequences. The Anti-Weaponization Fund must be revived, and dramatic payouts must be made. Anything less continues the injustice, and as the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Let’s remedy this injustice, and make the Anti-Weaponization Fund great again.

As we start the new school year, the White House, together with President Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, are making a decisive shift in American education: away from the political indoctrination of the Biden-Harris administration and toward academic fundamentals, parental authority, and local control.

That same family-first approach has already produced the first-ever savings and investment accounts for American children, with dedicated Fostering the Future Accounts that give foster youth the same long-term financial footing as their peers.

On Monday, the Commander in Chief welcomed students, parents, and education advocates to the Rose Garden to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year and to showcase an administration that has moved quickly to expand educational freedom, restore parental rights, return power to the states, and put American students first.

“We’re putting the parents back in charge,” Trump said at the Rose Garden event. “They’re the ones that love our children. They’re the ones that should be in charge.”

Beyond the core K-12 reforms, the administration has aggressively advanced parallel efforts in higher education. It reached settlements and agreements with several major universities, including Columbia, Brown, Penn, and Northwestern.

These agreements require an end to certain DEI practices, the restoration of merit-based admissions and hiring, and stronger Title IX compliance on sports and facilities. At the same time, executive actions reestablished the 1776 Commission and promoted the restoration of patriotic education.

Beyond the university settlements and the revival of the 1776 Commission, the administration has also moved aggressively to expand educational freedom for families. At the center of these efforts is the Working Families Tax Cuts, which created the first-ever nationwide school choice program.

The Education Freedom Tax Credit offers taxpayers a credit of up to $1,700 for donations that fund scholarships covering tuition, books, and other educational costs at private and public schools. Nearly 52 million students are eligible, and more than 30 states have already opted in or signaled their intent to participate.

Some Republican states already offer their own scholarship programs, and this federal credit is designed to build on and expand those existing efforts.

The administration has also delivered the largest investment in charter schools in history, $500 million through the Charter Schools Program, to expand high-quality options.

President Trump further directed federal agencies to maximize school choice by enabling states to use Title I funds and other flexibilities in support of parental decision-making.

Supporting Every Child
First Lady Melania Trump’s Fostering the Future initiative expands support and educational opportunities for children leaving foster care. It does so through scholarships at a growing network of 26 universities, recently expanded by a $2 million donation supporting Indiana University and Purdue University.

The initiative also includes Fostering the Future Accounts, the first dedicated savings and investment accounts for foster youth, which are powered by the broader Trump Accounts program.

Eligible children born between 2025 and 2028 receive a one-time $1,000 contribution from the federal government, invested in low-cost U.S. stock index funds that grow tax-deferred. Families, employers, and others can contribute up to $5,000 more each year. State agencies can open these accounts for youth in their care, with access granted at age 18.

Additional elements include housing assistance via HUD’s Melania Trump Foster Youth to Independence program, bolstered by $30 million in appropriations, and a global coalition of first spouses focused on education and technology. These efforts offer pathways to independence, skills, higher education, financial security, and the American Dream.

Separately, the administration launched a Title IX investigation into the Los Angeles Unified School District in May 2026. The probe targets policies that allegedly reassign rather than remove teachers accused of sexual misconduct with students.

In February 2026, the administration also issued updated guidance strengthening protections for constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression in public schools. These steps reinforce every student’s constitutional rights.

Returning Education to the States
President Trump has directed the Secretary of Education to dismantle the bloated federal bureaucracy and return authority to states and local communities after decades of centralized control that failed to deliver results.

At the Rose Garden event, McMahon emphasizedthe stakes, saying: “What a travesty it is that Americans have invested $3 trillion in a federal Department of Education meant to improve student outcomes, and yet only 30% of our students can read or do math proficiently.”

The administration approved the nation’s first “Returning Education to the States” waivers. Iowa received the first waiver in early 2026, consolidating funding streams and freeing nearly $8 million from compliance costs for classroom use over four years. Louisiana followed, consolidating more than $18 million through 2029.

By summer 2026, six states held the waivers, redirecting over $100 million away from federal requirements. A record number of states also gained Ed-Flex authority, allowing local districts to bypass certain rules without prior federal approval.

The Department of Education has also awarded a record number of grants focused on advancing literacy, expanding access to credentialed school psychologists, emphasizing science-of-reading approaches, integrating AI in education, and demanding measurable academic results over ideology.

Ending Radical Gender Ideology and Restoring Parental Rights
President Trump signed Executive Order 14201 barring biological boys from girls’ sports and private spaces, prompting school systems and athletic associations nationwide to end the practice.

The Department of Education launched dozens of Title IX investigations into schools that allowed males in female sports and intimate facilities, enforcing biological reality and holding institutions accountable.

Separately, the administration cracked down on schools that socially transitioned students behind parents’ backs, rescinded unlawful Title IX guidance that punished districts for failing to use preferred pronouns, and reinforced parental rights under federal law, restoring fairness for female athletes, privacy for young women, and parents’ fundamental authority over their children’s education and upbringing.

Eliminating Waste, Fraud, and Divisive Indoctrination

The Trump administration terminated more than $2 billion in wasteful diversity, equity, and inclusion spending, shifting focus from dividing students by race and identity to uniting them around merit and excellence.

It ended $67 million in grants that funded sexually explicit material for minors, rejecting inappropriate and inaccurate ideological curricula with no place in classrooms. By enforcing immigration laws, the administration reduced the strain of non-English-speaking students on American public schools, allowing resources to prioritize American citizens.

Civil Rights Enforcement for Actual Discrimination
The Department of Education rescinded disparate-impact provisions from its Title VI regulations in 2026, requiring evidence of intentional discrimination rather than statistical disparities alone. New guidance directs schools to apply discipline even-handedly without considering race to achieve racial balancing.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights subsequently opened investigations into districts, including one in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that allegedly instructed staff to factor race into disciplinary decisions. Officials said the changes restore equal treatment and free teachers to maintain order without federal pressure based solely on demographic outcomes.

President Trump’s education agenda is clear and uncompromising. Educational freedom belongs to parents. Excellence belongs in the classroom. And America’s children deserve schools stripped of ideology, waste, and federal overreach.