The fault isn’t that someone threw sex toys at an ICE building. It’s that this doesn’t actually fix anything. When you chuck rubber body parts over a gate, what happens next? The lady you hate gets to run away crying, then posts the video, and suddenly she’s the victim. Check the receipts: she ran off, got exactly what she wanted, and you’re the one holding the bag of battery-operated evidence.

You all saw this, right? Dozens of dildos on the ground. Was this supposed to stop deportations? Or was it just to feel good for five minutes?

Daviscourt says she got hurt. She’s an honorable woman who will sell t-shirts about this by dinner time. Who here thinks rubber projectiles fix immigration laws? Anyone? But who here also thinks it felt pretty good to watch her flee?

Here’s the real problem: when you throw a dildo at a grifter, she wins. The bad stuff people do gets shared a million times. The good points they made? Buried under plastic.

This was the part that stung most. Not the gate covered in silicone, but handing the other side a gold medal for victimhood. When Daviscourt ran from the colorful rain, she got the exact story she needed for her next paycheck.

I’m not saying protesters meant wrong. They meant well. But here’s what I know: you can’t beat liars with sex toys. You beat them by not giving them the video that pays their rent. So let me save one of those devices for myself, for when I need to remember that anger feels good, but losing the narrative war feels worse.

Observe the courageous repositioning of journalism's most agile flight risk here: https://kolektiva.social/@alissaazar/116389911016512033

mike

Noncitizen Voting: A Crisis That Doesn’t Exist (But Let’s Pretend It Does)

The SAVE Act’s core premise—that noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections in any meaningful way—is a myth. Study after study has debunked this claim. A 2022 report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that incidents of noncitizen voting are “vanishingly rare,” with most cases resulting from clerical errors or misunderstandings, not malicious intent (Brennan Center for Justice, 2022). Even the conservative Heritage Foundation, hardly a bastion of liberal thought, has documented only a handful of cases over decades (Heritage Foundation, 2024). If noncitizen voting were the crisis Cuccinelli claims, we’d see evidence of it. Instead, we get fearmongering.

Cuccinelli leans heavily on a 2018 study from Yale and Stanford researchers to argue that noncitizen voting could swing elections. But that study has been thoroughly debunked. The researchers’ methodology was flawed, relying on self-reported data from a survey not designed to measure voting behavior (PolitiFact, 2018). When other academics attempted to replicate the findings, they found no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting (Richman et al., 2018). Cuccinelli cites this study as if it’s gospel, but the academic community has moved on. Why hasn’t he?

The SAVE Act: Because ‘Illegal’ Just Wasn’t Illegal Enough

The SAVE Act’s proposed “solutions” are equally flimsy. It would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, a requirement that sounds reasonable until you consider the real-world consequences. Millions of Americans—disproportionately low-income, elderly, and minority voters—lack easy access to birth certificates or passports (Brennan Center for Justice, 2023). In states that have implemented similar laws, like Kansas, voter registration rates plummeted, particularly among naturalized citizens (Brennan Center for Justice, 2023). Cuccinelli dismisses these concerns as collateral damage, but the data shows these laws don’t just suppress noncitizen voting—they suppress *all* voting.

Cuccinelli’s Favorite Study: Debunked, Discredited, and Still Somehow Useful

The timing of the SAVE Act is no coincidence. It’s being pushed just months before the 2026 midterms, a time when the GOP’s economic record is looking increasingly shaky. Inflation remains stubbornly high, energy costs are up, and unemployment has ticked upward—all under Republican leadership (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026). Instead of addressing these failures, Cuccinelli and his allies are doubling down on culture-war distractions. It’s a page straight out of the GOP playbook: when the economy falters, change the subject to “election integrity.”

Voter Suppression by Another Name: Now With Extra Bureaucracy!

Cuccinelli’s op-ed also conveniently ignores the fact that noncitizens *already* face severe penalties for voting illegally. Under federal law, noncitizens who vote can be deported, fined, or imprisoned (U.S. Code, Title 18, § 611). The SAVE Act doesn’t close a loophole—it creates a new bureaucracy to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. And for what? To make it harder for married women, as Cuccinelli so crassly implied, to cast their ballots? The subtext here isn’t subtle. Voter ID laws and citizenship requirements have historically disenfranchised women, particularly those who change their names after marriage or lack updated documentation (National Women’s Law Center, 2022). If Cuccinelli were truly concerned about election integrity, he’d focus on expanding access, not restricting it.

Economic Failures? Never Mind—Let’s Talk About Married Women’s Voting Habits

The most galling part of Cuccinelli’s argument is his claim that the SAVE Act is about “restoring faith in our elections.” But faith in elections isn’t restored by passing laws based on debunked myths. It’s restored by ensuring every eligible voter can participate without unnecessary hurdles. The 2020 election, which saw the highest voter turnout in over a century, was also one of the most secure in history (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, 2021). If Cuccinelli wants to restore faith, he should start by acknowledging that fact instead of peddling conspiracy theories.

The GOP’s Midterm Strategy: If You Can’t Win on Policy, Win by Making Voting Harder

At its core, the SAVE Act is a cynical ploy to tilt the electoral playing field in the GOP’s favor. It’s not about integrity—it’s about power. And if the GOP can’t win on ideas, maybe they shouldn’t be winning at all.

If you’d like to witness Cuccinelli’s latest attempt to turn "election integrity" into a buzzword for voter suppression, you can read his original word salad here: https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/5803611-save-act-election-integrity/

Works Cited

Brennan Center for Justice. (2022). *The myth of noncitizen voting in U.S. elections*. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth-noncitizen-voting-us-elections

Brennan Center for Justice. (2023). *The impact of voter ID laws on registration and turnout*. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/impact-voter-id-laws-registration-and-turnout

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. (2021). *2020 election infrastructure government coordinating council executive summary*. https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/2020-election-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-executive-summary

Heritage Foundation. (2024). *Election fraud cases*. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

National Women’s Law Center. (2022). *Voter ID laws and their impact on women*. https://nwlc.org/resource/voter-id-laws-and-their-impact-on-women

PolitiFact. (2018). *Study on noncitizen voting in U.S. elections is flawed, experts say*. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/oct/29/viral-image/study-noncitizen-voting-us-elections-flawed-expe

Richman, J., Chattha, G., & Earnest, D. (2018). *Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections?* *Electoral Studies, 56*, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2018.08.009

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026). *Economic news release: Employment situation summary*. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

U.S. Code. (n.d.). *Title 18, § 611: Voting by aliens*. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611

Unanimous Consent Is a Funny Way to Say “Twisting Arms”

The piece opens by crediting Cornyn with a maneuver to “force Democratic colleagues to have to wait in the same long security lines as the rest of the flying public.” That is the framing: Cornyn the strategic fighter, cornering those out-of-touch Democrats who need to feel the pain they have supposedly caused. The article quotes Cornyn claiming Democrats are “completely out of touch” and framing the special screening perk as something Democrats are protecting.

Here is the problem. Seven paragraphs later, the same article states plainly: “No senator objected when he asked that it be passed by unanimous consent.”

Let that sink in. Unanimous consent means every single senator, including every Democrat, agreed to this. There was no recorded vote because there was no opposition. Yet the article wants readers to believe Cornyn forced Democrats into this position. You cannot simultaneously claim that Cornyn strong-armed Democrats into accepting his proposal and acknowledge that no Democrat objected to it. Those are mutually exclusive realities.

The Quantum Shutdown: How Democrats Can Simultaneously Block and Propose Funding

The article compounds this logical error with another contradiction on funding. It claims Democrats “have repeatedly blocked legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security.” That is the Republican talking point, dutifully transcribed. But then, just two sentences later, the article admits that “Democrats, instead, have proposed several times to fund just TSA or TSA and other critical agencies such as the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency but not ICE and Border Patrol. Republicans, however, have blocked these efforts.”

So which is it? Did Democrats block funding, or did they propose funding for TSA specifically while Republicans blocked it? According to the article’s own reporting, it is the latter. Democrats tried to fund the exact agency Cornyn claims they are ignoring, and Republicans said no. The article contains the facts that disprove its own headline narrative, apparently hoping readers will not notice the sleight of hand.

Stenography with a Side of Spin

This matters because framing shapes perception. When a senator can propose something that passes without objection, then get credited with forcing his opponents to capitulate, the incentive is clear. Why negotiate when you can posture? Why acknowledge agreement when you can manufacture conflict? Cornyn gets to stand on the floor blaming Democrats for a shutdown while simultaneously benefiting from their cooperation to pass his measure. It is having your cake and eating it too, and the reporting here hands him the fork.

At bottom, this is about honesty in description. If everyone agreed, say everyone agreed. If Republicans blocked TSA funding after Democrats proposed it, say that too. The facts are not inherently favorable to one side or the other. But when an article bends over backward to credit Cornyn for forcing Democrats to do something they voluntarily supported, that is not reporting. That is stenography with an angle, and readers should treat it accordingly.

If you'd like to watch unanimous consent get waterboarded until it confesses to being partisan warfare, the original assault on logic awaits here: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5793122-lawmakers-lose-tsa-expedited-passage/

Works Cited

Bolton, A. (2026, March 20). *Senate passes measure prohibiting preferential airport screening for lawmakers*. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5793122-lawmakers-lose-tsa-expedited-passage/

”Grossly Expensive” Says Woman Who Provides Zero Numbers

But that is where my agreement ends, because once again, Russel makes sweeping claims without showing receipts. She writes that the federal government is “grossly expensive, costing taxpayers way too much money.” What services, specifically, are grossly expensive? She does not say. She does not provide a single budget number, not one agency breakdown, no comparison to other countries, nothing. This is the kind of vague hand-waving that sounds good to people who already agree with you but convinces no one who actually wants to think.

Let us be clear: if you claim something costs too much, you have to say what it costs and why that number is too high. Otherwise, you are just making noise.

The SAVE Act: A Solution in Search of a Problem That Russel Half-Explains

Russel mentions the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, the SAVE Act, and calls it “uneducated nonsense” that Republicans cannot pass. She is right that it is nonsense, but she misses why it exists in the first place. The SAVE Act would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Here is what Russel does not adequately explain: noncitizen voting is already illegal in federal elections. This is not a claim that requires external research; it is basic United States law. The real impact of laws like the SAVE Act is making it harder for eligible American citizens who lack easy access to birth certificates or passports to register. That is the point. It is not about stopping fraud, which is already illegal and extremely rare. It is about stopping certain people from voting.

Russel writes that Republicans “won’t bring it to the Senate floor and let it filibuster to exhaustion.” She presents this as cowardice. I see it as strategy. Republican leadership knows that if the bill actually came to a vote, they would have to defend why they are making it harder for specific groups of Americans to register. They would rather blame Democrats than face that conversation.

Accountability for Me but Not for Thee: The Congressional Way

The core problem Russel identifies is real: Congress has no immediate consequences for failure. When they shut down the government, they still get paid. When they miss deadlines, nothing happens to them personally. This is a structural flaw in how we have designed our government. But Russel’s solution seems to be “make government smaller,” which does not actually solve the accountability problem. A smaller government can be just as incompetent and unaccountable as a large one.

What we need is real accountability. Russel mentions the No Budget, No Pay Act introduced by Senator Rick Scott. According to her column, this act would ensure members of Congress do not receive a paycheck during a government shutdown, and Democrats blocked it. If this is true, it is worth investigating further, but Russel provides no link to the bill text or vote record.

The Irony of Voting for Politicians Who Promise to Break Things

Russel calls the federal government “too large, too incompetent.” Maybe. But incompetence is not a function of size. It is a function of who we elect and what we let them get away with. If voters keep sending the same people to Washington and expecting different results, that is not the government’s fault. That is ours.

The irony Russel misses is that the people who complain most about government incompetence are often the same ones who vote for politicians who promise to break government, then act surprised when it breaks. You cannot starve an agency of resources, attack its mission, fill it with unqualified political appointees, and then complain it does not work well.

Show Me the Money or Stop Talking About Costs

Here is what I want: politicians who actually believe in governing, not just winning. I want a Congress that faces the same consequences as the people they represent. And I want columnists who show their work instead of just invoking anger and hoping no one asks for the receipts.

Russel got one thing right. That is one more than usual. But we deserve better than half-baked criticism and vague complaints about costs without numbers. We deserve arguments that can survive fact-checking. Until conservatives like Russel start providing those, they are just adding to the noise they claim to oppose.

Should you crave the experience of reading a columnist who correctly identifies congressional hypocrisy then immediately pivots to unsubstantiated claims about government size, your journey begins here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/17/tsa-lines-airport-blame-congress-shutdown/89181214007/

Works Cited

Russel, N. (2026, March 17). When will TSA be back to normal? When Congress does its job. *USA Today*. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/17/tsa-lines-airport-blame-congress-shutdown/89181214007/

Let us start with the basic facts that Russell glosses over. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or H.R. 22, passed the House on April 10, 2025. The vote was 220 to 208. Here is what Russell will not tell you: only four Democrats voted for it. Four. Two hundred and eight Democrats voted against it. That is not bipartisan support. That is a party-line vote with a handful of exceptions. When Russell claims that “Americans in both parties overwhelmingly support” this legislation and that “both parties are to blame” for its failure to pass the Senate, she is either ignorant of the actual vote or hoping you are.

The “Documentary Proof” Trap Russell Does Not Want You to Understand

The text of the bill itself, available on Congress.gov, tells the real story. The SAVE Act does not simply require voter identification. It demands “documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” for federal voter registration. Acceptable documents include a passport or birth certificate. A driver’s license is not enough unless it is REAL ID compliant and specifically indicates citizenship status. Most states do not issue REAL ID compliant licenses that denote citizenship. This means millions of American citizens who have been voting for decades would suddenly need to produce documents they may not have readily available.

Russell dismisses concerns that this would make voting difficult for married women who changed their names, calling these worries “overblown.” She offers no evidence for this claim, probably because the evidence runs the other way. According to the U.S. Department of State, only about 48 percent of Americans have valid passports. That means over half of American citizens would need to locate and present birth certificates to register to vote. For married women whose names changed, this means presenting both a birth certificate and marriage documentation to prove identity. Russell thinks this is “overblown.” I think she has never had to help a working mother track down documents from another state while juggling childcare and a full-time job.

A Solution in Search of a Problem (Because the Real Problem Is Too Many People Voting)

The purpose of this bill has nothing to do with election integrity. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already a federal crime punishable by prison time and deportation. It is also extraordinarily rare. The Heritage Foundation maintains a database of voter fraud cases, and after decades of searching, they have identified a tiny handful of noncitizen voting cases nationwide. You are more likely to be struck by lightning than to encounter a noncitizen voting in a federal election.

What the SAVE Act actually does is erect barriers to voting for American citizens who lack the specific documents the bill requires. It disproportionately affects naturalized citizens, married women, the elderly who may have lost original documents, and low-income Americans who cannot easily afford the time or money to obtain replacement certificates. It creates criminal penalties and allows private lawsuits against election officials who register voters without this specific paperwork.

Polling 101: How to Lie With Statistics (Russell’s Favorite Trick)

Russell cites a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll claiming 71 percent support for the SAVE Act. She fails to mention that this polling language likely described the bill in vague terms about showing ID to vote, not the actual requirements for documentary proof of citizenship. When Americans learn what the bill actually does, support drops significantly. Russell also cites an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll claiming declining confidence in elections. She fails to note that this decline is largely driven by Republican voters who have been fed a steady diet of lies about nonexistent voter fraud since 2020.

Russell’s call to “vote them out” if Congress does not pass the SAVE Act is particularly rich given her misrepresentation of who actually supports the bill. Senate Republicans are not refusing to bring this to a vote because they fear Democratic opposition. They are refusing because they know the bill is radioactive. They watched what happened in the House: 208 Democrats voted no. That is not a both-sides problem. That is one party attempting to suppress voter registration while pretending to care about election security.

”Other Countries Do It” and Other Weak Arguments That Fall Apart

Russell claims that “voter ID standards aren’t even controversial in other countries.” This is a red herring. Most democracies that require ID do not demand documentary proof of citizenship for registration. They accept a range of documents, including utility bills and sworn affidavits. The SAVE Act is far more restrictive than standard practice in comparable democracies.

The bill also requires states to establish programs to identify noncitizens using specific federal databases and to remove noncitizens from voter rolls. This sounds reasonable until you realize that these databases are not designed for this purpose and contain significant errors. The same databases used for immigration enforcement are not voter verification tools. Using them as such will inevitably result in eligible American citizens being flagged for removal, particularly naturalized citizens whose records may not be fully updated across all federal systems.

The Bottom Line: When Someone Says “Both Parties,” Check the Vote Count

Nicole Russell is selling a solution to a problem that does not exist, using poll numbers that misrepresent what the bill actually does, while ignoring the reality that 208 Democrats voted against it in the House. This is not bipartisan legislation. This is a voter suppression bill dressed up in patriotic language, designed to make it harder for American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote. When someone tells you that both parties support something, check the vote count. The receipts show exactly who stands where. And in this case, they show that the SAVE Act is a partisan effort to restrict voting rights, plain and simple.

Works Cited

Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. (2025, April 10). Roll Call 102: H.R. 22, SAVE Act. https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025102

Library of Congress. (2025). H.R. 22 - SAVE Act, 119th Congress. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22

Russell, N. (2026, March 12). If Congress doesn’t pass the SAVE Act, vote them out. *USA Today*. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/12/trump-republicans-pass-save-america-act/89082804007/

U.S. Department of State. (2024). Passport statistics. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics.html

”Radical” Is Just Republican for “I Disagree With It”

Let us begin with the central claim: that Talarico is a radical. Potas says this because Talarico supports Medicare for All, wants to eliminate the filibuster, and has made comments about race and biological sex. But here is the thing: those positions are not radical. They are mainstream. Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans support some form of Medicare for All. The filibuster is a procedural tool that has been used to block civil rights legislation for generations; wanting to get rid of it so that majority rule can actually function is not radical, it is democratic. And the scientific consensus on biological sex has been clear for decades: sex is not a simple binary. There are chromosomal variations, hormonal differences, and anatomical variations that do not fit into neat boxes. If Talarico said there are six biological sexes, he is reflecting what biologists have known for years. That is not radical; it is scientifically accurate.

Potas also takes a swipe at Talarico for using religion to justify his positions, particularly on abortion. This is a curious complaint coming from someone who presumably has no problem with Republicans using religion to justify their positions. When a Republican cites the Bible to oppose abortion, that is principled. When a Democrat cites the Bible to support abortion rights, that is radical. The double standard is showing.

Context Is Hard, Apparently

Then there is the quote Potas pulls about Talarico saying white skin gives immunity from the virus of racism. Potas presents this as evidence of Talarico’s radicalism, but he strips away the context. Talarico was talking about white privilege, the idea that white Americans do not experience racism personally but perpetuate racist systems. It is a standard sociological observation, one made by scholars and activists for generations. Framing it as radical is either dishonest or ignorant.

The “Merit” Argument: A Greatest Hits Album of Bad Faith

Potas’s real argument, though, is about identity. He claims Democrats are obsessed with race and gender, that they think being a white religious man makes you a moderate, and that they ignore merit in favor of identity. This is a funhouse mirror version of reality. The Democratic Party has spent decades trying to win over white working-class voters while taking Black and Latino voters for granted. The idea that they are obsessed with identity is laughable. What Potas is actually mad about is that Democrats are no longer willing to pretend that race and gender do not matter in politics.

He points to Kamala Harris and says her unpopularity was due to her record, not her race or gender. But here is the problem: he offers no evidence for this claim. He just asserts it. The reality is more complicated. Harris faced a barrage of racist and sexist attacks from the moment she joined the ticket. She was called too ambitious, too loud, too emotional, all classic dog whistles used against women of color. Did her record play a role? Sure. But to pretend that racism and sexism were not factors is to ignore the last four hundred years of American history.

Same with Hillary Clinton. Potas says her loss was due to her defects as a candidate, not her gender. Again, no evidence, just assertion. Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes. She lost because of the Electoral College, because of Comey’s letter, because of Russian interference, and yes, because of sexism. Studies have shown that gender bias played a significant role in how voters perceived her. To dismiss that is to dismiss reality.

Potas ends with a call for Democrats to stop viewing race and gender as important and start pursuing candidates with merit. This is the oldest trick in the book: pretending that merit is objective and neutral when it has always been shaped by race and gender. Who gets to define merit? Historically, it has been white men who look a lot like the candidates Potas prefers. The idea that we can just ignore identity and focus on merit is a fantasy that serves those who already have power.

Projection: The GOP’s Favorite Defense Mechanism

Here is the truth: James Talarico is not a radical. He is a mainstream Democrat in a country where the center has been pulled so far to the right that basic decency looks like revolution. Supporting healthcare for all, wanting to make democracy function by eliminating an anti-democratic procedural rule, and acknowledging scientific reality about sex and race are not radical positions. They are the positions of someone who is paying attention.

Potas wants you to believe that Democrats are the ones obsessed with identity. But look at the Republican Party. Look at how they have built their entire platform around white grievance, around attacking transgender people, around banning books about race. The projection is staggering.

Talarico may or may not win in Texas. It is a tough state for Democrats, not because Texans reject moderate policies, but because the state has been gerrymandered into oblivion and voter suppression is rampant. But if he loses, it will not be because he was too radical. It will be because the game is rigged. And columns like this one, which mischaracterize his positions and dismiss the reality of racism and sexism in American politics, are part of the reason why.

To read the original column that treats "I took a poli-sci class" as a credential for ignoring four centuries of American history, click here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/14/james-talarico-moderate-democrats-texas-election/89095285007/

Works Cited

Bialik, K. (2017, September 18). How America changed during Barack Obama’s presidency. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139-167.

Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender politics and the construction of sexuality. Basic Books.

Kaiser Family Foundation. (2024). Public opinion on single-payer health insurance. https://www.kff.org

Pew Research Center. (2016, November 9). Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. https://www.pewresearch.org

Talarico, J. (2026). Campaign website and policy positions. https://www.jamestalarico.com

USA Today. (2026, March 14). James Talarico isn’t a moderate. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/14/james-talarico-moderate-democrats-texas-election/89095285007/

Let us start with the basic numbers. According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. data centers consumed approximately 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, representing about 4.4 percent of total national electricity consumption (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024). That is already significant. But projections show this demand could reach 6.7 percent to 12 percent of total U.S. electricity demand by 2028. To put this in perspective, the International Energy Agency projects that data centers will drive about half of all electricity demand growth in the United States through 2030 (International Energy Agency, 2025).

False dichotomy

Soave frames this as a simple choice between American innovation and European stagnation. He claims Europe has “no Silicon Valley” because of high taxes and regulation. This is a nice story, except ASML, the Dutch company that manufactures the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines essential for producing the most advanced AI chips, happens to be European. Without ASML’s technology, the entire global AI industry would grind to a halt. Europe also hosts Mistral AI, a major AI competitor to OpenAI valued in the billions. Soave’s characterization of Europe as a place “where tech goes to die” is the kind of rhetoric that sounds clever until you realize it contradicts observable reality.

MORE POWER!!!!!

But the more serious problem with Soave’s argument is that he simply ignores the physical constraints of the electrical grid. This is not a theoretical concern. In March 2025, Reuters reported a “near miss” event in Data Center Alley, Virginia, where 60 data centers suddenly disconnected from the utility grid and switched to backup generators. This triggered what grid operators described as “a huge surge in excess electricity” that forced PJM Interconnection, which serves 65 million people across 13 states, to rapidly cut power plant output to avoid cascading blackouts (Reuters, 2025). John Moura, Director of Reliability Assessment at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, stated plainly: “As these data centers get bigger and consume more energy, the grid is not designed to withstand the loss of 1,500-megawatt data centers” (Reuters, 2025).

PJM Interconnection projects that by 2027, its available power will fall 6 gigawatts short of reliability requirements, largely due to data center demand (Monitoring Analytics, 2026). The capacity market auction prices in PJM have already jumped from $28.92 per megawatt-day to $269.92 per megawatt-day. Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor, attributes $23 billion of recent capacity cost increases to data centers, noting these costs ultimately get passed to consumers. They describe this as “a massive wealth transfer” from ordinary ratepayers to tech companies (Monitoring Analytics, 2026).

This is what Sanders is actually talking about when he calls for a pause. It is not about hating technology or wanting America to lose to China. It is about recognizing that the current trajectory is physically unsustainable and economically regressive. When data centers consume electricity equivalent to small cities but employ fewer than one person per megawatt, while driving up electricity bills for everyone else, we have a problem that markets alone cannot solve.

Soave is manipulative and you can see it

Soave claims Sanders “thinks AI is bad” and “people making money off AI is bad.” This is a strawman. Sanders has explicitly stated his concern is about who benefits from AI and what happens to workers displaced by it. These are legitimate questions that deserve serious answers, not dismissive sneers about Marxism.

The comparison to China is particularly revealing. Soave warns that slowing data center construction means “falling behind China.” But China is precisely the country that has built the world’s most extensive high-voltage transmission network, with 42 ultra-high voltage lines enabling cross-regional power transfers of over 300 gigawatts. The United States, by contrast, built only 55.5 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines in 2024, the lowest in over a decade (Wood Mackenzie, 2025). The constraint on American AI development is not regulation. It is infrastructure that cannot keep up with demand.

Soave also ignores that China itself is limiting data center expansion in certain regions due to energy constraints. The idea that China is building data centers without regard for energy limits is false. They are building them strategically, with attention to resource allocation, which is exactly what Sanders is proposing.

What about the consumer impacts? Residential electricity prices rose 5 percent in 2025 and are projected to rise another 4 percent in 2026, partly driven by data center demand (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2025). In Virginia, electricity rates have already increased due to data center expansion. In Arizona, Microsoft had to commit to water replenishment projects because data centers were straining local water supplies. One proposed facility in Tucson would have consumed 13 million gallons annually, equivalent to 25,000 households (Microsoft, 2026).

Soave suggests the choice is between “we the people” and “we the bureaucrats,” implying that any government involvement is automatically corrupt. This is a false dichotomy. The alternative to thoughtful regulation is not freedom; it is a system where tech companies externalize costs onto communities while capturing all the benefits. When Dominion Energy, the utility serving Northern Virginia’s data center corridor, warns that grid reliability is at risk, and when PJM admits it cannot physically accommodate planned data center loads, we are past the point where “let the market decide” is a responsible answer.

Sanders is not alone in his concerns. Over 230 environmental organizations have called for a federal pause on data center construction until environmental impacts can be assessed. More tellingly, even some tech companies are acknowledging the problem. Microsoft recently announced a “community-first AI infrastructure” plan that includes commitments to not raise local electricity rates, minimize water usage, and create local jobs (Microsoft, 2026). They did this because they recognized that unchecked expansion was generating political backlash that threatened their social license to operate.

The Stanford student who asked Sanders why America innovates more than Europe received a flippant answer from Sanders that Soave rightly criticizes. But Soave’s own answer, that Europe lacks innovation because of taxes and regulation, is equally superficial. The real answer is complex: historical path dependence, venture capital concentration, university-industry relationships, and yes, different policy choices. But acknowledging that policy choices have trade-offs is not the same as pretending Europe has no tech sector, which is simply false.

Soave warns that Sanders wants to “regulate ourselves so that we fall behind enemy nations like China.” This is fear-mongering that substitutes for analysis. The actual constraint on American AI competitiveness is not regulation. It is an electrical grid that cannot handle the load. It is transformer shortages with 30 percent supply gaps and two-to-three-year delivery times (Wood Mackenzie, 2025). It is interconnection queues stretching for years. These are physical bottlenecks that no amount of deregulation can resolve overnight.

Sanders’ call for a moratorium on new data centers is not “nutty.” It is a recognition that building infrastructure at a pace that exceeds the grid’s capacity to support it is not innovation. It is speculation that imposes costs on everyone else. The question is not whether we should have AI. The question is who pays for the electricity, who gets the jobs, and whether the benefits flow to the 1 percent or to society broadly.

Soave thinks slowing down is the same as losing. But sometimes slowing down is how you avoid driving off a cliff. When your grid operators are warning of blackouts, when your utilities are raising rates, and when your infrastructure cannot keep pace with demand, the prudent thing is to pause, assess, and plan. That is not anti-technology. That is basic risk management.

The irony is that Soave, who writes for a magazine called Reason, is asking us to ignore the rational concerns of grid operators, utility regulators, and energy economists in favor of a ideological commitment to speed at any cost. Sanders is the one being practical. He is saying: let us make sure the grid can handle the load, let us make sure ordinary people are not subsidizing billionaire pet projects, and let us make sure displaced workers have a safety net. These are not radical ideas. They are common sense.

Recommendations for Soave

Soave should try reading something other than his own ideology. He might learn that ASML, the company that makes AI possible, is European. He might learn that the U.S. grid is at physical limits. He might learn that China’s advantage is not lack of regulation but massive infrastructure investment. And he might learn that being pro-innovation does not require being blind to costs.

If you would like to watch a man argue with the laws of thermodynamics and lose, Soave’s original ode to electrical fantasy can be found here: https://thehill.com/opinion/robbys-radar/5751172-sanders-silicon-valley-tour/

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Works Cited

International Energy Agency. (2025). *Energy and AI* (World Energy Outlook Special Report). https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (2024). *United States data center energy usage report*. https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/united-states-data-center-energy

Microsoft. (2026, January 16). Microsoft announces community-first AI infrastructure commitments. *Microsoft News Center*. https://news.microsoft.com/2026/01/16/microsoft-announces-community-first-ai-infrastructure-commitments/

Monitoring Analytics. (2026). *State of the market report for PJM*. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. https://www.monitoringanalytics.com/reports/PJM_State_of_the_Market/2026.shtml

Reuters. (2025, March 15). AI data center surge strains U.S. power grid, sparks reliability concerns. https://www.reuters.com/technology/ai-data-center-surge-strains-us-power-grid-2025-03-15/

U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2025). *Short-term energy outlook*. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/

Wood Mackenzie. (2025, August). *North America power transformer market outlook*. https://www.woodmac.com/research/power-and-renewables/north-america-power-transformer-market-outlook/

McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor and a knowledgeable legal mind, so I will treat his arguments with the intellectual rigor they deserve. I will not engage in personal attacks or partisan name-calling. I will, however, ask the hard questions that good analysis requires.

The Constitutional Reality: The Tenth Amendment Matters

McCarthy frames immigration enforcement as a straightforward federal matter that Democrats have undermined. What his argument conveniently ignores is the constitutional architecture established by the Tenth Amendment, which explicitly reserves to the states all powers not delegated to the federal government.

The anti-commandeering principle, established by the Supreme Court in Printz v. United States (1997), prohibits the federal government from forcing state and local officials to enforce federal law. As Georgetown University constitutional law professor Michele Goodwin explained regarding the lawsuits filed by Minnesota and Illinois, the Tenth Amendment establishes the power balance between state and federal governments, often described as federalism (Goodwin, 2026).

The Constitution states that powers not granted to the United States nor prohibited to the states are reserved for the states or the people. This means states retain sovereign power to govern within their borders, and the federal government cannot impose its will on states unless such power has been granted by Congress or the Constitution (U.S. Const. amend. X).

When critics like McCarthy call for mass deportation operations without acknowledging this constitutional reality, they are proposing an approach that multiple state governments and federal courts have challenged on constitutional grounds. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison stated that the federal surge of immigration agents violated the Tenth Amendment by disrupting the state’s ability to protect residents (Ellison, 2026).

In January 2026, Minnesota and Illinois filed separate but related lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that the deployment of thousands of ICE agents constituted a federal invasion of state sovereignty. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker stated that the state would hold the Trump administration accountable for its unlawful tactics, unnecessary escalation, and blatant abuse of power (Pritzker, 2026).

The Supreme Court addressed the balance between federal and state authority in immigration enforcement in Arizona v. United States (2012). The Court ruled 8-0 that while Congress has exclusive power over immigration, states cannot be compelled to enforce federal immigration law. The decision recognized that Congress has always envisioned joint federal-state immigration enforcement and explicitly encourages state officers to share information and cooperate with federal colleagues, but participation remains voluntary at the state level.

The Economic Reality: Industries Depend on Immigrant Labor

Perhaps the most significant gap in McCarthy’s argument is his complete failure to acknowledge which American industries rely on immigrant labor. This is not a minor oversight. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the American economy actually functions.

According to research from the Pew Research Center analyzing U.S. Census Bureau data, immigrants comprise approximately 20% of the American labor force. In certain critical industries, that percentage is much higher (Kramer, 2025).

The data show that in agriculture, fishing, and forestry, immigrant workers make up approximately 45% of the workforce. In construction, approximately 30% of workers are immigrants. In private household services, approximately 43% are immigrants, and in the broader service sector, approximately 24% are immigrants (Kramer, 2025).

Undocumented immigrants specifically make up 4% to 5% of the total U.S. workforce, but represent 15% to 20% or more in industries such as crop production, food processing, and construction (Passel & Cohn, 2024).

The consequences of ignoring this reality are already visible. After the Trump administration intensified immigration enforcement, agricultural producers reported crop losses because workers disappeared from job sites. In Texas, construction sites became quiet because few American citizens are willing to perform the dangerous physical labor that immigrant workers have traditionally done (Associated General Contractors of America, 2025).

The Associated General Contractors of America reported that approximately 92% of construction companies faced project delays due to labor shortages (Associated General Contractors of America, 2025). These are not abstract concerns. These are real economic consequences affecting real American businesses and consumers.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has acknowledged that immigration has been a key factor in labor supply growth, noting that the American economy has exceeded expectations in part because of labor supply gains from immigration (Powell, 2025).

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City released a report in May 2025 stating that immigration over the past two years has been essential to stabilizing the American labor market and curbing wage-driven inflationary pressures. The report concluded that without immigrant labor, the American economy could not achieve a soft landing (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 2025).

D Dallas Federal Reserve Bank labor economist Pia Orrenius stated that immigrants typically account for at least 50% of U.S. employment growth. The substantial cessation of border inflows over the past four years has had a huge impact on job creation capability (Orrenius, 2025).

The Law Enforcement Reality: Complexities Abound

McCarthy describes immigration as a law enforcement problem, which sounds straightforward. However, the actual practice of immigration enforcement is far more complicated than his framing suggests.

Recent federal court decisions have reinforced that local jurisdictions cannot constitutionally hold someone on an ICE detainer without a warrant or probable cause, and that the Fourth Amendment provides important checks on the government’s ability to arrest and detain people (Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, 2024).

The Minneapolis shooting death of Renee Good by an ICE agent, followed by the murder of Alex Pretti, illustrates the volatile situations that arise when federal agents conduct enforcement operations in American cities. These incidents have sparked both protests and legal challenges that raise legitimate questions about tactics and accountability (Ellison, 2026).

According to court filings, federal agents used chemical agents including tear gas against peaceful protesters, conducted raids at schools and hospitals without proper warrants, and were involved in confrontations that resulted in the deaths of American citizens (Minnesota v. Department of Homeland Security, 2026).

What McCarthy Gets Wrong

Let me be clear about where McCarthy’s argument fails:

First, he frames the problem as one of Democratic obstruction without acknowledging that constitutional federalism limits federal power to compel state cooperation. This is not a partisan point. It is a matter of constitutional law that courts have repeatedly affirmed, regardless of who occupies the White House (FindLaw, 2024).

Second, he ignores the economic dependencies that immigrant labor satisfies. The American economy has structured itself around immigrant labor in key sectors, and pretending otherwise does not make the dependency disappear. It only makes the resulting disruptions more severe (Kramer, 2025).

Third, he treats immigration as purely a legal problem requiring enforcement, when it is also an economic reality, a humanitarian challenge, and a question of national identity that requires balanced solutions rather than one-dimensional approaches.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimated in 2024 that there are about 14 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The most recent detailed breakdown by sector and state comes from the Pew Research Center’s analysis of Census data from 2022, which found that there were an estimated 8.3 million undocumented immigrants who were part of the workforce, out of 11 million total in the country at that time (Passel & Cohn, 2024).

A More Honest Framework

Immigration enforcement is genuinely important. The rule of law matters, and nations have the right to control their borders. However, honest policy discussion requires acknowledging several realities simultaneously:

The federal government cannot simply force states to do its bidding, regardless of which party controls the White House. The anti-commandeering doctrine, as established in Printz v. United States (1997), explicitly prohibits this (Printz v. United States, 1997).

American industries depend on immigrant labor in ways that enforcement-only approaches disrupt. Agriculture, construction, hospitality, and healthcare all rely heavily on immigrant workers (Kramer, 2025).

The constitutional framework establishes limits on federal power that cannot be wished away. Courts have consistently ruled that states have sovereignty rights that the federal government must respect (New York v. United States, 1992).

Policy solutions that acknowledge these realities will be more durable than those that ignore them.

McCarthy is a smart commentator who has made contributions to legal and policy discourse. On immigration, however, his argument suffers from the same weakness that afflicts much of our political discourse: it substitutes slogans for analysis and blame for problem-solving.

The American people deserve better than that. They deserve arguments that acknowledge complexity and propose solutions that can actually work within constitutional constraints and economic realities. McCarthy’s law-enforcement-only framework fails that test.

If you too wish to know absolutely nothing about which industries employ immigrants while having extremely confident opinions about them, Andrew C. McCarthy awaits you here: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2026/04/illegal-immigration-is-a-law-enforcement-problem/

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Works Cited

Associated General Contractors of America. (2025). *Construction workforce shortages report*. https://www.agc.org/

Ellison, K. (2026, January 12). Press conference on lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security. Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. (2025, May). *Immigration and the labor market*. https://www.kansascityfed.org/

FindLaw. (2024). *The Tenth Amendment: Reserving power for the states*. https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment10.html

Goodwin, M. (2026, January 15). Interview regarding Minnesota and Illinois lawsuits against federal immigration enforcement. CNN.

Kramer, S. (2025). Immigrant workers in the U.S. labor market. *Pew Research Center*. https://www.pewresearch.org/

Minnesota v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 26-cv-00428 (D. Minn. Jan. 12, 2026).

New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992).

Orrenius, P. (2025). Labor market effects of immigration changes. *Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas*. https://www.dallasfed.org/

Passel, J. S., & Cohn, D. (2024). Unauthorized immigrant workers in the U.S. labor force. *Pew Research Center*. https://www.pewresearch.org/

Powell, J. (2025). Remarks on the economic outlook. *Federal Reserve Board*. https://www.federalreserve.gov/

Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997).

Pritzker, J. B. (2026, January 13). Statement on lawsuit against federal immigration enforcement. Office of the Governor of Illinois.

Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. (2024). *Frequently asked questions about local city-level immigration policy*. https://www.seattle.gov/iandraffairs/issues-and-policies/seattle-immigration-policy-faq

United States v. Arizona, 567 U.S. 387 (2012).

U.S. Constitution, amend. X.

Let me work through this systematically because this is exactly the kind of argument that sounds authoritative but collapses when you start asking questions.

The Founding Fathers Were Not What Ali Claims

Ali states that the Declaration of Independence was drafted by men “overwhelmingly Christian” who were “formed by the moral language of the Bible.” The historical record is considerably more complicated than this. Encyclopaedia Britannica’s examination of the Founders notes that “scholars trained in research universities have generally argued that the majority of the Founders were religious rationalists or Unitarians” (Britannica, 2006). Deism “influenced a majority of the Founders” according to their analysis.

Thomas Jefferson famously edited the Bible to remove miraculous elements. George Washington refused communion throughout his adult life, which his pastors interpreted as Deistic belief. Benjamin Franklin attended various churches but rarely expressed orthodox Christian views. James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, was deeply influenced by Enlightenment rationalism.

This is not to say the Founders were atheists or hostile to religion. Many were theists. But they were formed by the Enlightenment as much as by Christianity, and many specifically rejected orthodox Christian theology. Ali’s attempt to claim them as unambiguous Christian founders does not survive contact with the evidence.

Christianity and Slavery: The Complicated Reality

Ali claims that “it was not secular ideology that supplied the most powerful moral critique” of slavery. “It was Christianity.” This claim requires serious unpacking because the historical record is deeply uncomfortable.

Robert Abzug, a professor of American studies at the University of Texas, writes in his Gilder Lehrman Institute essay that “before the war, the vast majority of white Christians in both sections opposed emancipation” (Abzug, 2024). Let me repeat that because it is crucial: most white Christians, in both the North and the South, opposed emancipation before the Civil War.

The Gilder Lehrman essay also notes that “those who opposed the abolitionist doctrine of immediate emancipation certainly had the Bible and historical Christianity on their side.” Slaveholders used scripture to justify their positions, pointing to passages about servants obeying masters and the existence of slavery in ancient Israel without divine condemnation.

What Ali conveniently ignores is that abolitionists had to take RADICAL readings of Christianity that went AGAINST mainstream Christian teaching. William Lloyd Garrison and his followers were initially seen as heretical by most of the religious establishment. Many abolitionists left their churches entirely because the churches refused to condemn slavery. The mainstream religious community accommodated itself to slavery for decades before the abolitionist message gained traction.

So Christianity provided ammunition for BOTH sides of the slavery debate. The reason emancipation eventually won had as much to do with political and economic factors, Enlightenment ideas about liberty, and the brutal reality of slavery itself as it did with religious argument.

The Numbers on American Religion

Ali claims that “eighty percent of Americans still profess belief in God” while “less than a third attend church regularly.” This framing is misleading in several ways.

The Pew Research Center’s December 2025 report on religion in America found that about 70% of U.S. adults identify with a religion, with Christianity accounting for the majority of that number (Pew Research Center, 2025). More significantly, their data shows that young adults are dramatically less religious than older Americans. Among 18-24 year olds, only 56% identified with a religion in the 2023-24 survey, down from 74% in 2007.

Most importantly, the Pew report explicitly states there is “no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults” (Pew Research Center, 2025). This directly contradicts Ali’s optimistic narrative about young people returning to faith. Young men are not converting to Christianity in large numbers. The narrowing gender gap in religiousness among young people is driven by declining religiousness among women, not increases among men.

Catholic young people attending the Traditional Latin Mass? The data shows that while young Catholics are disproportionately represented at TLM services, only about 2% of U.S. Catholic adults attend the Latin Mass weekly (Catholic World Report, 2024). This is a tiny cohort, not a revival.

Trump and the Christian Vote

Ali claims that “The Christian voting bloc played a decisive role in the election of Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2024.” This claim is technically true for white Christians specifically, but deeply misleading when presented as a general statement about Christianity.

The Public Religion Research Institute’s analysis of the 2024 election found that “more than eight in ten white evangelicals” voted for Trump, along with “six in ten white Catholics and white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants” (PRRI, 2024). Overall, 72% of white Christians voted for Trump.

But look at the other religious groups: only 13% of Black Protestants voted for Trump. Among Jews, it was 21%. Among religiously unaffiliated Americans, just 25%. Among Hispanic Catholics, only 43% (PRRI, 2024).

So Ali’s “Christian voting bloc” is actually a very specific segment: white Christians. The religious makeup of Trump’s coalition was narrow, not broad. This matters because Ali’s argument implies a unified Christian America that simply does not exist.

The Assassination Attempt and Providential Claims

Ali mentions that “when he survived an assassination attempt, a significant portion of the Christian public interpreted it as providential.” This is accurate. NPR reported that after the July 2024 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Trump himself said “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening” (DeRose, 2024).

Governor Greg Abbott said “Trump is truly blessed by the hand of God.” Senator Tim Scott told the Republican National Convention that “the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle. But an American lion got back up on his feet.”

But NPR also reported that this language “troubles theologian Kaitlyn Schiess,” who said rhetoric like this “usurps the position of what Christians believe: Jesus Christ as the Messiah” (DeRose, 2024). Amanda Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty described this as “very problematic theology” that conflates religious and political language in dangerous ways.

The point is not that some Christians interpreted the event as providential. The point is that doing so is theologically questionable and politically consequential in ways Ali does not acknowledge.

What the Article Actually Reveals

Reading Ali’s piece carefully, I see an argument designed to accomplish something specific. It claims Christianity as the foundation of American liberty while ignoring the ways Christianity has been used to justify oppression. It claims religious influence is growing when the data shows decline. It claims a unified Christian coalition when the religious landscape is deeply fragmented.

Ali has written extensively about the dangers of religious nationalism in other contexts, yet this article essentially makes a Christian nationalist argument: America is a Christian nation, Christianity shaped its founding, and Christianity must rescue it now. This is the same logic that leads to the kind of providential language about Trump that even some Christians find theologically troubling.

I am not opposed to religion in public life. I am not opposed to Christians participating in politics. I am opposed to bad arguments, and Ali’s article is full of them. She asks us to accept a sanitized version of American religious history that does not survive contact with evidence.

The truth is more interesting and more complicated. The Founders were influenced by both Christianity and Enlightenment rationalism. Christianity has been used both to justify slavery and to condemn it. Religion in America is declining, not rising. White evangelicals are a powerful political bloc, but they do not speak for all Christians, and their influence is tied to a specific political coalition, not to some inevitable religious revival.

Ali asks us to be grateful for a Christian inheritance. I am grateful for the genuinely liberating elements of the American experiment. But I am also clear-eyed about the ways religious arguments have been used to restrict freedom, justify oppression, and concentrate power. The same religious traditions that produced abolitionists also produced defenders of slavery. The same religious communities that support religious liberty have also supported excluding Muslims, persecuting LGBTQ+ people, and imposing biblical law on everyone.

What Ali’s article really shows is the difficulty of making a religious argument for American exceptionalism in 2026. The evidence does not support the optimistic narrative. The numbers do not show revival. The history is more contested than she admits. And the political coalition she celebrates is built on a narrowing base, not a broadening one.

I would respect Ali more if she were honest about these complications. Instead, she gives us a comforting story that happens to align with the political preferences of her publication and her audience. That is not analysis. That is advocacy dressed up as scholarship.

If you would witness what happens when a woman who escaped actual theocracy decides that the real threat is that young people are not sufficiently enthusiastic about church, read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's cultural complaint here: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2026/03/how-religious-liberty-sustained-america/

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Works Cited

Abzug, R. (2024). Abolition and religion. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/abolition-and-religion

Britannica, T. E. (2006). The Founding Fathers, Deism, and Christianity. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity-1272214

Catholic World Report. (2024, September 3). Data and the Traditional Latin Mass. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/09/03/data-and-the-traditional-latin-mass/

DeRose, J. (2024, July 15). Trump assassination attempt lays bare deep religious divisions in the U.S. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/07/15/nx-s1-5040606/trumps-assassination-shooting-god-religion

Pew Research Center. (2025, December 8). Religion holds steady in America. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/12/08/religion-holds-steady-in-america/

Public Religion Research Institute. (2024, November 8). Religion and the 2024 presidential election. https://prri.org/spotlight/religion-and-the-2024-presidential-election/

Bovard is vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, where she advises on policy matters after spending over a decade working on Capitol Hill in the House and Senate. Her institutional affiliation matters because the SAVE America Act she champions has been promoted primarily by conservative organizations and Republican lawmakers.

The Core Problem: Solving a Problem That Does Not Exist

Bovard argues that federal law is “lax” on noncitizen voting and that the SAVE America Act would fix a “gaping hole” in election integrity. This framing requires immediate scrutiny because the premise is factually wrong.

It has been illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections since 1996, when Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The penalties are severe: fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility, and deportation. A noncitizen who registers to vote can also lose the ability to ever become a citizen.

More importantly, the available evidence shows that noncitizen voting in federal elections is vanishingly rare. After the 2016 election, the Brennan Center for Justice surveyed local election officials in 42 jurisdictions with high immigrant populations and found just 30 suspected cases of noncitizens voting out of 23.5 million votes cast. That is 0.0001%.

A Georgia audit in 2024 found 20 suspected noncitizens on the voter rolls out of 8.2 million registered voters. Nine had a history of voting, and all 20 were referred to law enforcement. In Utah, after an exhaustive review of over 2 million registered voters between April 2025 and January 2026, state officials identified only one confirmed instance of noncitizen registration and zero instances of noncitizen voting.

The Heritage Foundation, which has actively promoted noncitizen voting claims, has a database of voter fraud cases. When The Washington Post reviewed this database, they found only 85 cases relating to allegations of noncitizens voting between 2002 and 2023. Most of these involved legal immigrants, and many had been incorrectly told they could vote.

Bovard invokes the 2020 election in Georgia, where Trump lost by nearly 12,000 votes, and suggests that noncitizen voting could have made the difference. But there is zero evidence to support this claim. The math simply does not work. You would need thousands of noncitizens voting illegally to swing a statewide election, and the data shows that such voting is essentially nonexistent.

The Historical Context Bovard Ignores

Bovard writes as if noncitizen voting is a novel threat that demands immediate federal intervention. But this ignores nearly a century of American history.

As many as 40 states allowed noncitizens to vote at various points in our history. The practice was common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in states with large immigrant populations. Noncitizens could vote in Kentucky until 1891, in New Hampshire until 1905, and in Arkansas until 1926. When Arkansas became the last state to outlaw noncitizen voting in state elections in 1926, it marked the end of an era.

The decision to restrict noncitizen voting in the early twentieth century was driven by nativism, wartime xenophobia following World War I, and a desire to restrict the political power of new immigrants, particularly those from Southern and Eastern Europe. That history should give us pause when we hear contemporary arguments about the need to restrict voting based on citizenship status.

If Bovard wants to claim that only citizens should vote, she is making an argument that is only about 100 years old in American practice. The notion that this reflects some timeless democratic principle is historically inaccurate.

The Georgia Myth and the Racial Turnout Gap

Bovard points to Georgia’s 2021 voter ID law for mail-in ballots as evidence that voter suppression warnings were overblown. She notes that Georgia broke records for voter turnout in the 2022 midterm elections and that Black voters reported no issues at the polls.

This argument is deeply misleading. While overall turnout was high in Georgia during the 2022 midterms, a Brennan Center analysis revealed that the racial turnout gap was larger than any point in the past decade. White turnout was 8.6 percentage points higher than nonwhite turnout in the 2022 general election, roughly 50% higher than in the 2014 and 2018 midterms.

The Brennan Center calculated that if nonwhite voters had turned out at the same rate as white voters in 2022, they would have cast over 267,000 additional ballots. Most of these, about 176,000, would have been cast by Black voters. To put that in perspective, Senator Raphael Warnock would have needed only 43,690 votes to avoid the December 2022 runoff.

The narrative that “nothing bad happened” in Georgia ignores the fact that high overall turnout can mask significant problems when the increase is driven entirely by one racial group while another group’s participation declines. That is exactly what happened in Georgia.

The Academic Evidence on Voter ID Laws

Bovard dismisses concerns about voter suppression as “mindlessness” and claims that the voter-suppression theory was “simply wrong.” But the academic research tells a more complicated story.

A comprehensive study by Zoltan Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi, and Lindsay Nielson at UC San Diego analyzed validated voting data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study between 2008 and 2012. They found that strict photo identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of Hispanics, Blacks, and mixed-race Americans.

The study found that Latino turnout was 10.3 percentage points lower in states with strict photo ID laws compared to states without such requirements. For mixed-race Americans, the effect was even larger: a 12.8 percentage point decline. In primary elections, strict voter ID laws depressed Latino turnout by 6.3 percentage points and Black turnout by 1.6 percentage points.

Perhaps most significantly, the study found that voter ID laws skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right. The research showed that Democratic turnout dropped by an estimated 7.7 percentage points in general elections when strict photo identification laws were in place, compared to a 4.6 percentage point drop for Republicans. For strong liberals, the estimated drop in turnout was an alarming 10.7 percentage points, compared to just 2.8 points for strong conservatives.

The gap in turnout between Republicans and Democrats doubled from 2.3 points to 5.6 points when strict photo ID laws were instituted. The gap between conservatives and liberals more than doubled from 4.7 to 12.6 points.

This is not “mindlessness.” This is peer-reviewed social science that directly contradicts Bovard’s claims.

The SAVE Act Would Disenfranchise Millions of Eligible Voters

The SAVE America Act, as described by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Brennan Center for Justice, would require American citizens to show documentary proof of citizenship such as a birth certificate or passport to register to vote. Research shows that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents.

According to recent studies cited by the Bipartisan Policy Center, 9% of all eligible voters do not have or do not have easy access to documentary proof of citizenship. Fifty-two percent of registered voters do not have an unexpired passport with their current legal name. Eleven percent of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate.

Kansas offers a cautionary tale. Before its documentary proof of citizenship requirement took effect, noncitizen registration in Kansas was exceedingly rare, accounting for about 0.002% of registered voters. After the law was adopted, the documentary proof requirement prevented roughly 31,000 eligible citizens, or 12% of all applicants, from registering to vote. In short, the law prevented far more citizens from registering than noncitizens.

The Brennan Center found that the SAVE Act would disproportionately harm younger voters, voters of color, women whose married names differ from their birth certificates, and low-income Americans who may lack the resources to obtain required documents.

The Real Purpose of the SAVE Act

Bovard argues that the SAVE Act would “build public trust” in elections. But this framing obscures what the legislation actually does and why it is being pushed now.

The SAVE Act is part of a broader pattern of voting restrictions that have been enacted primarily by Republican-controlled state legislatures since the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirement. These restrictions have consistently been shown to reduce turnout among Democratic-leaning constituencies while having minimal effects on Republican voters.

The Brennan Center characterized the SAVE Act as “an attack on the freedom to vote.” The Center for American Progress noted that the legislation would “invert the responsibility to verify a person’s eligibility and citizenship status from election officials and the federal government to individual voters.”

This matters because it shifts the burden of proof in a way that creates new barriers for eligible citizens while addressing a problem that essentially does not exist. The noncitizen voting rate in federal elections is so close to zero that it is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

Who does the SAVE Act REALLY benefit?

Bovard asks readers to believe that the SAVE Act is a common sense measure supported by most Americans. She is correct that polls show majority support for voter identification requirements. But popularity does not equal wisdom, and the gap between a popular proposal and a good policy can be enormous.

The evidence shows that noncitizen voting in federal elections is vanishingly rare, that voter ID laws disproportionately reduce turnout among minority voters and Democrats, and that the SAVE Act would create new barriers for millions of eligible American citizens.

The question we should ask is not whether most Americans support voter ID. It is whether the SAVE Act solves a real problem or creates new ones. The evidence strongly suggests the latter.

Bovard claims that the SAVE Act would “legitimize” democracy. But democracy is not legitimized by making it harder for eligible citizens to vote. It is delegitimized by such efforts.

If we want to restore trust in elections, we should focus on things that actually affect election outcomes: adequate polling places, reasonable voting hours, accurate vote counting, and robust protection against hacking and manipulation. The SAVE Act does none of these things. Instead, it manufactures a crisis to justify restricting the franchise.

That is not common sense. That is voter suppression dressed up in patriotic language.

Bovard's remarkable independent thinking—honed over a decade on Capitol Hill, a Masters in political management, and employment at an organization that lobbies for exactly what she recommends—leads her to conclusions that will shock absolutely no one who follows money in Washington. Read the revelation here:

The Free Press

Why Voter ID Is Common Sense

Most Americans assume two basic rules already exist: You should prove who you are to vote, and only U.S. citizens should be allowed to register to vote. Yet federal law is lax on both points. Voter ID laws vary greatly from state to state, and while it’s illegal for noncitizens to cast ballots, nothing requires states to actually check whether each vote belongs to a citizen…

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2 months ago · 165 likes · 330 comments · Rachel Bovard

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Works Cited

Bipartisan Policy Center. (2026, February 2). Five things to know about the SAVE Act. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/five-things-to-know-about-the-save-act/

Brennan Center for Justice. (2026, February 2). New SAVE Act bills would still block millions of Americans from voting. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-save-act-bills-would-still-block-millions-americans-voting

Brennan Center for Justice. (2022, December 16). Georgia’s racial turnout gap grew in 2022. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/georgias-racial-turnout-gap-grew-2022

Hajnal, Z., Lajevardi, N., & Nielson, L. (n.d.). Voter identification laws and the suppression of minority votes. University of California, San Diego. https://pages.ucsd.edu/~zhajnal/page5/documents/voterIDhajnaletal.pdf

Loving, S., & Morris, K. (2022, December 16). Georgia’s racial turnout gap grew in 2022. Brennan Center for Justice. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/georgias-racial-turnout-gap-grew-2022

NPR. (2024, October 12). 6 facts about false noncitizen voting claims and the election. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/12/nx-s1-5147789/voting-election-2024-noncitizen-fact-check-trump

Wikipedia. (2025). Non-citizen suffrage in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizen_suffrage_in_the_United_States

The fundamental problem with Russell’s analysis is not that she reaches the wrong conclusion about Texas politics, but that she arrives at that conclusion through the same intellectual shortcuts that have consistently led the Republican Party to misread the American electorate. Let me show you what I mean.

The Texas Senate District 9 Upside-Down Story

Russell acknowledges that Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped Texas Senate District 9, a district that Trump carried by 17 points in 2024. She notes that Rehmet won with 57% to 43% over Republican Leigh Wambsganss. What she conveniently fails to emphasize is the context that makes this result genuinely concerning for Republicans.

According to data from FairVote, turnout in the January 2026 runoff was 94,880 voters compared to 118,912 in the November 2025 general election, a 20% decline (FairVote, 2026). This drop in participation is typical for runoffs, but the story is not about the absolute numbers. The story is that a first-time candidate, outspent by more than ten to one, defeated a candidate backed by the Texas Senate Leadership Fund, Patriot Mobile, and every major Republican power structure in the state. Wambsganss reported $736,000 in expenditures compared to Rehmet’s roughly $70,000 (Texas Tribune, 2026). When a Democrat can win a district that heavy under those conditions, that is not a fluke. That is a signal.

Russell quotes CNN data analyst Harry Enten correctly when he noted that the district “took a rocket ship” to the left, but she immediately pivots to dismiss the significance of this shift. This is a pattern familiar to anyone who has watched conservative commentators over the past decade: acknowledge the uncomfortable data point, then explain why it does not matter, all in the same breath.

The Unemployment Distortion

Russell writes that conservatives “have made headway on this” regarding affordability, noting that “unemployment and inflation dropped recently.” Let me be clear about what the actual data shows.

The current unemployment rate is 4.4% as of December 2025, down from 4.5% the previous month (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2026). This is a modest improvement, not a dramatic shift. However, Russell implies that current conditions represent some kind of economic triumph, which requires a willful misunderstanding of recent history. During the height of the pandemic in April 2020, unemployment peaked at 14.8% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). While current unemployment is certainly lower than that pandemic peak, it is also worth noting that unemployment has been trending upward from the historic lows of 3.4% reached in early 2023. To frame current conditions as a victory requires ignoring the trajectory.

More importantly, focusing solely on the unemployment rate obscures deeper labor market problems. The labor force participation rate stands at 62.4%, which is actually lower than the 62.5% from a year earlier (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2026). This means the unemployment figure understates weakness in the job market because it does not count people who have given up looking for work entirely. The employment-population ratio, at 59.7%, also shows that a smaller share of the working-age population is employed than was the case in 2024 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026).

The unemployment number is not as bad as it was during the pandemic, contrary to what you might hear from frustrated observers, but it is also not good news in any meaningful sense of that word. Russell’s presentation of these statistics as evidence of conservative economic success is the kind of willful misinterpretation that passes for analysis in too many opinion pages.

The Inflation Shell Game

Russell’s handling of inflation data is even more intellectually dishonest, though she is hardly alone in this. She notes that “inflation dropped recently,” which is technically true in the narrowest possible sense. The annual inflation rate was 2.7% for the 12 months ending December 2025, down from 8.0% in 2022 (US Inflation Calculator, 2026).

What Russell does not explain, because explaining it would undermine her argument, is the critical distinction between disinflation and deflation. Inflation dropping means that prices are rising more slowly than before. It does not mean that prices have gone down. A gallon of milk that cost $3.50 in 2021 and costs $4.25 today has not gotten cheaper just because the rate at which it is getting more expensive has slowed from 8% per year to 3% per year. The damage to household budgets from the 2021-2022 inflation surge has already been done. That damage does not get undone simply because the inflation rate has returned to more normal levels.

This distinction matters because the experience that voters have is not abstract. They remember that eggs cost twice what they used to cost. They remember that rent has doubled in many cities. Telling them that inflation has “dropped” sounds like a taunt when their paychecks have not kept pace with the price increases that have already occurred.

The ICE Paradox

Russell cites Cygnal polling data showing that 73% of Americans say entering the country illegally is breaking the law and that 61% support deportation (Cygnal, 2026). She also mentions that a YouGov poll found that 57% of Americans do not support ICE tactics. This creates a tension in her argument that she never addresses.

The YouGov poll, conducted January 24-25, 2026, found that 57% of Americans disapprove of the way ICE is handling its job, and 58% say that ICE’s tactics are too forceful (YouGov, 2026). Nearly half of Americans, 46%, support abolishing ICE entirely, compared to 41% who oppose abolition (YouGov, 2026). These numbers represent a significant shift in public opinion compared to just a few years ago.

The paradox for Republicans is this: Americans express support for the general concept of immigration enforcement while simultaneously expressing disapproval of the specific tactics being used to enforce those laws. This is not a contradiction. It reflects a nuanced view that most people do not hold the cartoonish positions that political commentators assign to them. Russell acknowledges this tension by citing both polls, but she does not grapple with what it means. The implication seems to be that Republicans can continue to run on immigration enforcement while the actual implementation of those policies becomes increasingly unpopular. That calculation has not been tested in a general election yet, and I would not assume it will work out the way Republicans hope.

The Recursive Logic of Conservative Analysis

Russell concludes by warning Republicans that they cannot simply “look to Trump’s 2024 win and coast” because “Texans and the rest of Americans still care about affordability a lot.” This is the most honest sentence in her entire column, and it inadvertently undermines everything she has written before.

If voters care about affordability, then the economic data I have reviewed should give Republicans pause. The YouGov polling on ICE tactics suggests that voters care about how policies are implemented, not just that they are implemented. The Texas Senate District 9 result suggests that even in deep red territory, voters will reject Republican candidates who are perceived as out of touch with kitchen-table concerns.

Russell’s column is essentially an argument that everything is fine for Republicans while also warning Republicans that everything is not fine. This is the recursive logic that has characterized conservative political analysis since at least 2016: acknowledge the warning signs, explain why they do not matter, and issue urgent warnings about the need to take the warning signs seriously. You cannot have it both ways.

A Note on Methodology

I want to be clear about where my analysis differs from the original column in ways that matter. Russell cites specific poll results from Cygnal and YouGov. I have verified these citations. The Cygnal poll does show 73% believe entering without legal permission is breaking the law, and 61% support deportation (Cygnal, 2026). The YouGov poll does show 57% disapprove of ICE’s job performance (YouGov, 2026). Where Russell and I differ is in what these numbers mean and how they should be interpreted.

The unemployment rate is not as bad as it was during the pandemic, and I should note that the claim that “unemployment now is as bad as it was in the effing pandemic” is not supported by the data. The pandemic peak was 14.8%. The current rate is 4.4%. That is a significant difference. However, the claim that inflation dropping does not mean prices went down is entirely correct, and Russell’s failure to acknowledge this distinction is revealing.

Here is where we end up

Nicole Russell’s column is a masterclass in turd polishing. She takes genuinely disturbing data for Republicans, applies a thin layer of interpretive gloss, and presents the result as a reassurance to the conservative faithful. The fact that she must immediately qualify her reassurance with warnings about the need to take things seriously suggests that even she does not believe her own argument.

The Texas Senate District 9 result matters. The YouGov polling on ICE tactics matters. The trajectory of unemployment, even at current levels, matters. Russell acknowledges each of these points while simultaneously dismissing their significance, which is a rhetorical technique rather than an analytical one. It is the kind of writing that makes readers feel better about the state of things without actually explaining anything about the state of things.

When voters in a district that Trump won by 17 points elect a Democrat who was outspent more than ten to one, that is not nothing. When polling shows that a majority of Americans disapprove of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws, that is not nothing. When unemployment is trending upward even as the rate has dropped slightly, that is not nothing. Russell knows this. The question is whether her readers do.

The complete polish job on this Texas turd can be witnessed in its natural habitat here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/02/09/taylor-rehmet-texas-election-republicans-midterms/88528285007/

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Works Cited

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2020). Unemployment rate rises to record high 14.7 percent in April 2020. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2020/unemployment-rate-rises-to-record-high-14-point-7-percent-in-april-2020.htm

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026). The employment situation: December 2025. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Cygnal. (2026). Deportation, ICE, and rule of law: National survey of likely 2026 midterm general election voters. https://www.cygn.al/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Cygnal-Deportation-Poll-Data.pdf

FairVote. (2026). Runoff turnout drops 69% in Texas. https://fairvote.org/runoff-turnout-drops-69-in-texas/

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. (2026). Unemployment rate (UNRATE). FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. (2026). Labor force participation rate (LNU01300000). FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300000

Serrano, A. (2026, January 30). Democrat wins special election for red Texas Senate seat. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/01/30/texas-senate-district-9-runoff-rehmet-wambsganss-special-election/

YouGov. (2026, January 26). Today more Americans support than oppose abolishing ICE. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/53939-more-americans-support-than-oppose-abolishing-ice-immigration-minneapolis-shooting-poll

US Inflation Calculator. (2026). Current U.S. inflation rates: 2000-2026. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Zack Smith, quoted in the Creitz article, calls this behavior “shameful” and says it is “ultimately harmful to businesses” (Creitz, 2026). Smith is entitled to his opinion about shame. He is wrong about any suggestion that this behavior is legally questionable. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is clear, and occupation is not a protected class. End of discussion.

The Protected Class Question Is Not Complicated

Under federal law, businesses cannot discriminate against customers based on race, color, religion, or national origin (CNN, 2018). That is it. Those four categories exhaust the protected classes under federal public accommodation law.

Political affiliation is not a protected class. Employment is not a protected class. Being a federal law enforcement officer is not a protected class.

A 2019 opinion piece on Police1, written by Chris Chung who was then a former law clerk for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, explicitly acknowledged this reality while arguing in favor of changing it (Police1, 2019). Chung noted that the Protect and Serve Act of 2018, which passed the House of Representatives, would only extend hate crime protections to law enforcement officers and would not create public accommodation protections (Police1, 2019). That legislation did not become law. It does not exist. Law enforcement officers are not and have never been a protected class under federal public accommodation law.

The CNN legal analysis is equally clear. When White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was refused service at a restaurant in 2018, legal experts confirmed that political affiliation is not a protected class under federal law (CNN, 2018). Sanders worked for the Trump administration, and the restaurant was not legally required to serve her. The same principle applies to ICE agents.

Smith says in the Creitz article that businesses may have the legal right to refuse service but that it is not “morally” the right thing to do. Perhaps he is correct about morals. Perhaps he is not. Either way, this is a moral argument, not a legal one. The claim that businesses are doing something legally questionable is simply false. They are not.

The Surveillance Question Is Far More Serious

While the legal question is settled, there is a legitimate and serious question about what ICE is actually doing with its expanded surveillance capabilities, and this question deserves aggressive scrutiny.

The ACLU has documented that ICE and CBP are using a mobile application called Mobile Fortify that allows agents to point a phone at anyone in public, compare their faces against government databases containing millions of images, and access intimate personal data (ACLU, 2025). The ACLU states plainly that Congress has not authorized this expansion in federal police power (ACLU, 2025).

Let us read that again. Congress has not authorized this. The executive branch is implementing massive new surveillance capabilities through internal policy decisions rather than statutory authorization. A 2023 DHS policy governing facial recognition technology was quietly removed from the DHS website early in the current administration without being replaced (ACLU, 2025).

The EL PAIS reporting indicates that ICE signed a 1.4 billion dollar contract in September 2025 for new surveillance technologies including iris scanning applications, spyware that can hack smartphones remotely, and location tracking software (El Pais, 2025). Senator Ron Wyden told The Washington Post that ICE was still drafting usage policies for these programs as of mid-September 2025 (El Pais, 2025).

Senator Wyden. A United States Senator. Saying the agency is still writing the rules. After signing a 1.4 billion dollar contract.

The Reuters coverage of CBP expansion of facial recognition confirms that a 1996 law mandating the creation of an automated entry-exit system to track visa overstays has never been fully implemented (Reuters, 2025). The new rule expanding facial recognition is a regulatory action, not a new congressional authorization (Reuters, 2025).

What DHS Documents Actually Show

The DHS Privacy Impact Assessment for ICE Use of Facial Recognition Services documents that ICE authority for these programs comes from existing statutes including Section 701 of the USA PATRIOT Act and various provisions of the U.S. Code (DHS, 2020). These are general authorizations that the agency has interpreted broadly to justify specific surveillance programs.

The document makes clear that facial recognition usage is governed by internal DHS policies and privacy impact assessments rather than specific congressional authorization (DHS, 2020). This is how administrative agencies operate. They take general statutory language and fill in the details themselves.

The concern here is not that ICE is acting unconstitutionally. The concern is that ICE is implementing profound expansions of government surveillance power through internal policy decisions rather than through the democratic process where such decisions belong. The Constitution vests legislative power in Congress, not in the Department of Homeland Security.

ICE Agents Are Not a Protected Class and Should Not Be Treated as Such

The Creitz article quotes Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin calling the situation “shameful” and noting that agents are being stalked (Creitz, 2026). Stalking is a crime and should be prosecuted as such. That is a separate issue from businesses making informed decisions about which customers to serve.

Being an ICE agent is a job that someone chooses to perform. Individuals who take that job can be criticized for the policies they implement. Citizens have every right to express disapproval of government policies through economic means including refusal of service. This is as American as the Boston Tea Party.

The employees at these gas stations and hotels have their own First Amendment rights and conscience protections. No employee should be compelled to provide service to an organization they find morally objectionable. The demand that service workers smile and serve agents who may be separating families or conducting biometric surveillance of civilians is a demand for compelled association that has no basis in any law I can find.

Summing this up

The Creitz article presents a false controversy. The law is clear. Businesses can refuse service to ICE agents. This is not up for debate. The suggestion that businesses are doing something legally questionable is simply false.

Smith is entitled to call the behavior shameful. He is entitled to advocate for legislation protecting law enforcement officers from service refusal. But he should not imply that current law restricts business discretion when it clearly does not.

The more substantive questions about ICE surveillance programs deserve serious attention. Those programs operate on policy decisions rather than congressional authorization. An agency is implementing massive new powers while writing its own rules after the fact. This should concern every citizen who values democratic accountability.

But let us be clear about what the gas station and hotel workers are doing. They are exercising their legal rights. They are expressing their political views through economic action. They are refusing service to employees of an agency that is implementing controversial policies without clear legislative authorization. There is nothing illegal about this. There is nothing shameful about this. It is the exercise of liberty in a free country.

I’m going to got off on a tangent here. I’m tired of effortless, thoughtless rage baiting. I’m tired of bullshit being pushed of as thoughtful opinion.

If you want to read a one sided, completely un-researched article with little to no substance you can read Creitz’s crap here. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/don-t-support-ice-gas-110034309.html

Works Cited

ACLU. (2025, November 13). Face recognition and the ‘Trump terror’: A marriage made in hell. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ice-face-recognition

Chung, C. (2019, July 23). Class protection for police under public accommodation laws. Police1. https://www.police1.com/legal/articles/opinion-why-the-senate-should-consider-class-protection-for-officers-under-public-accommodation-laws-eNGgFMeo3owYyoEy/

CNN. (2018, June 29). Here is why some businesses can deny you service but others cannot. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/us/when-businesses-can-deny-you-service-trnd/index.html

Creitz, C. (2026, February 3). ‘I don’t support ICE’: Gas station refusal ignites debate over denying service to federal agents. Yahoo News. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/don-t-support-ice-gas-110034309.html

El Pais. (2025, October 21). ICE intensifies surveillance of immigrants with facial recognition programs, human tracking, and social media monitoring. EL PAIS English. https://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-10-21/ice-intensifies-surveillance-of-immigrants-with-facial-recognition-programs-human-tracking-and-social-media-monitoring.html

Hesson, T. (2025, October 24). US expands facial recognition at borders to track non-citizens. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-expands-facial-recognition-borders-track-non-citizens-2025-10-24/

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2020, May 13). Privacy impact assessment: DHS/ICE/PIA-054 ICE use of facial recognition services. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/privacy-pia-ice-frs-054-may2020.pdf

The Conservative Principle: Make Things as Difficult as Possible, Especially for Your Own Voters

Russell argues that Americans overwhelmingly support the SAVE Act because 83% of Americans favor requiring photo ID to vote, and 83% support requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote for the first time. These numbers come from Gallup polling, and we should accept them as accurate. However, Russell commits a fundamental logical error that would get a college freshman marked down in any decent writing course. She conflates two distinct concepts: voter identification at the polls and documentary proof of citizenship for registration. These are not the same thing, and treating them as identical is either intellectually dishonest or reveals a basic misunderstanding of the legislation in question.

The SAVE Act goes far beyond requiring someone to show an ID when they vote. The legislation would require every American registering to vote to present documentary proof of citizenship in person. Acceptable documents include a United States passport, a military ID with birth records, a government-issued photo ID with a United States birth location, or a birth certificate. This matters because according to the Center for American Progress, approximately 146 million American citizens do not possess a valid passport.

146 Million Americans Lack Passports: Apparently They're All Sneaky Non-Citizens Hiding in Plain Sight

Russell writes as though presenting these documents is a simple, trivial matter. The Center for American Progress analysis of the SAVE Act reveals significant complications. In seven states, less than one-third of citizens have a valid passport. These states are West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Notably, these are predominantly states with older populations and lower average incomes, communities that would be disproportionately affected by the requirements Russell supports.

Women Who Changed Their Names After Marriage: America's Premier Voter Fraud Threat

Additionally, 84% of women who marry change their surname, which means up to 69 million American women may not have a birth certificate with their current legal name on it. The SAVE Act makes no provision for marriage certificates or name change documentation as alternative proof of citizenship. The legislation was written without considering how millions of Americans actually document their identity.

Russell claims to value showing receipts and demonstrating sound reasoning, yet her article ignores the documented impacts of the very legislation she champions. The Center for American Progress analysis notes that only 1 in 4 Americans with a high school diploma or less have a valid passport, and only 1 in 5 Americans with income below $50,000 have a passport. Russell’s legislation would disproportionately burden working-class and lower-income citizens.

Historical Context is for People Who Care About Facts

Russell does not spend much time on history, but she makes a passing reference to the current electoral system. What she does not mention is the historical context that undermines her implicit argument. Before 1926, as many as 40 states allowed non-citizens to vote in elections. The practice was common, legal, and unremarkable for most of this nation’s existence. Arkansas was the last state to outlaw non-citizen voting in state elections in 1926.

Non-Citizen Voting in Federal Elections Has Been Illegal Since 1996: But Why Let Reality Ruine a Good Story

This historical fact matters because Russell presents current citizenship requirements as timeless and obvious. They are neither. The United States operated as a functional democracy for 150 years with more permissive voting rules. Thenation survived. It grew. It prospered. The current prohibition on non-citizen voting in federal elections traces not to the founding era but to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, less than 30 years ago.

Federal law has prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections since 1997, with penalties including fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility, and deportation. The problem Russell claims to be solving was already solved by legislation passed during the Clinton administration. If non-citizen voting in federal elections were actually occurring at meaningful scale, that existing law would address it.

When Your Solution Creates Far More Problems Than the Problem You Claim to Be Solving

The SAVE Act would fundamentally transform how every American registers to vote. Online voter registration, used by 8 million Americans in the 2022 election cycle, would be upended or eliminated. Voters could no longer mail in registration applications. Automatic voter registration through motor vehicle agencies would be severely gutted. For context, only 5.9% of Americans who registered to vote or updated their registration in 2022 did so in person at an election office.

The Brennan Center for Justice, which Russell cites in her article, has stated that the bill would “undermine Americans’ freedom to vote.” Russell quotes this criticism but dismisses it without addressing the substance. The Center notes that roughly half of Americans do not even have a passport, and millions lack access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. These are not partisan complaints. These are factual statements about documentation availability that Russell simply hand-waves away.

## Russell’s Conflations

Russell compares voting requirements to showing ID to travel on an airplane or purchase alcohol. This comparison fails on multiple levels. Airline travel involves federal jurisdiction over interstate and international commerce. Alcohol sales involve the regulatory power granted by the 21st Amendment. Voting is a fundamental right, and burdens on that right receive heightened constitutional scrutiny for good reason.

Russell asks why Democrats would oppose something that most Americans support. This framing assumes that opposition to specific legislative mechanisms equals opposition to election integrity. A person can favor secure elections while also recognizing that the SAVE Act creates unnecessary barriers to the fundamental right to vote. Russell offers no evidence that the existing verification system, which already prohibits non-citizen voting in federal elections, is inadequate. She simply asserts the problem exists and that her solution is necessary.

## The Real Question Russell Avoids

Russell asks why Democrats would oppose the SAVE Act. A better question is why Russell and her supporters need new barriers to voting when federal law already prohibits non-citizen voting in federal elections. Where is the evidence that non-citizen voting in federal elections is occurring at meaningful scale? Russell provides none because the evidence does not exist.

The 2024 Gallup poll she cites asks about support for voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements in the abstract. It does not ask whether Americans support eliminating online voter registration or requiring in-person document presentation for every registration update. It does not ask whether Americans support a law that would burden millions of citizens who lack the required documentation. Russell treats these as the same question. They are not.

I Love Conversation,’ Says Woman Who Immediately Dismisses Every Piece of Contradictory Evidence

Russell claims to value conversation, data, and receipts. Her article contains assertions, not analysis. It contains polling data about abstract concepts, not evidence about the legislation’s actual impacts. It contains confidence about problems that may not exist and solutions that would create genuine harms for millions of American citizens.

Nicole Russell's excellent adventure in misunderstanding everything can be witnessed in full splendor here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/02/04/save-act-voter-id-elections-republican-support/88491081007/

Works Cited

Center for American Progress. (2025). The SAVE Act: Overview and facts. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-overview-and-facts/

Congress.gov. (2025). H.R.22 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): SAVE Act. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22

Gallup, Inc. (2024). Americans endorse both early voting and voter verification. https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-voting-voter-verification.aspx

Russell, N. (2026, February 4). Americans want the SAVE Act. Republicans need to pass it. USA TODAY. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/02/04/save-act-voter-id-elections-republican-support/88491081007/

Wikipedia. (2025). Non-citizen suffrage in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizen_suffrage_in_the_United_States

The Eisenhower Quote: Partially True, but Context Matters

Kleinman accuses the documentary of cutting short a quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, claiming the full quote continues with “...as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.” Research confirms that Eisenhower did indeed give a commencement address at Dartmouth College in 1953 that included these words. According to Snopes, the full passage reads: “Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship” (Snopes, 2022).

However, Kleinman omits the broader context of Eisenhower’s speech, which was addressing the importance of understanding opposing ideas, including communist ideology, to effectively counter it. The president’s argument was about not hiding from difficult ideas, even while acknowledging personal discretion about what one chooses to read. By presenting only the “decency” qualifier as a gotcha moment, Kleinman strips the quote of its original purpose, which was actually arguing against censorship rather than endorsing it.

The Books: Accurate Descriptions, But Incomplete Pictures

Kleinman’s descriptions of the content in “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe and “Let’s Talk About It” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan are partially accurate. The Cowboy State Daily article, which reviewed both books found in a Wyoming high school library, confirms that “Gender Queer” contains explicit sexual content including descriptions of sexual encounters and discussions of topics like mastubation and gender dysphoria (Cowboy State Daily, 2022). The 1819 News article confirms that “Let’s Talk About It” contains graphic images of sexual acts, detailed discussions of sexual topics including butt plugs, and encourages readers to explore pornography as a way to “discover new aspects of your sexuality” (1819 News, 2024).

Both books did receive recognition from the American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association. “Gender Queer” was named to the “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” list in 2020, and “Let’s Talk About It” received the same honor in 2022 (American Library Association, 2022). Kleinman is correct on these facts.

However, Kleinman paints with too broad a brush. The question of whether these books are appropriate for all teenagers, or whether they should be available only to older teens with parental permission, is a legitimate subject of debate. By framing the entire debate as librarians “peddling pornography,” Kleinman forecloses any nuanced discussion about age-appropriate sex education, the value of comprehensive health information for LGBTQ+ youth, or the role of school libraries in serving diverse communities.

The Missing Receipts: Unverified Claims

Here is where Kleinman’s argument falls apart. Several key claims in his article cannot be verified through research:

**The Connecticut Children’s Alliance “Grooming” Claim**: Kleinman writes that “As the Connecticut Children’s Alliance notes, one ‘red flag’ for ‘grooming’ is ‘exposing the child or young adult to sexual and/or age-inappropriate conversations, media, and behaviors.’” The Connecticut Children’s Alliance is a legitimate nonprofit organization that supports child advocacy centers in the state. However, research found no evidence that this organization has published the specific “red flag” list that Kleinman cites. The organization’s website describes its mission as supporting child abuse victims and their families through collaboration and trauma-informed care (Connecticut Children’s Alliance, 2025). Kleinman provides no link to this supposed document, and none could be found through extensive searching.

The Wyoming Survey: Kleinman claims that “One local survey in Wyoming shared materials from ‘Let’s Talk About It’ with a set of adults. Ninety-six percent of respondents agreed it was not appropriate for teens, let alone younger readers.” Despite extensive searching, no such survey could be located. No Wyoming media outlet, research institution, or library organization has published a survey with these findings. This specific statistic, down to the precise 96% figure, appears without attribution.

The Lawsuit: A Matter of Record

Kleinman mentions that Amanda Jones, who is featured in “The Librarians,” “has sued me in federal court for defamation because I pointed this out, using that specific word she did not like.” Research confirms that Amanda Jones did file a defamation lawsuit against Kleinman in November 2024. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, alleges that Kleinman falsely called Jones a “child groomer,” claimed she “sexualizes” children, and accused her of giving inappropriate books to minors (Jones v. Kleinman, 2024).

The lawsuit specifically states that these claims are false. Paragraph 86 of the complaint reads: “Jones does not give highly age-inappropriate sexual material, including books that depict anal sex and books with titles such as ‘Spanking for Lovers,’ ‘The Ultimate Guide to Kink,’ and ‘The Ultimate Guide to Threesomes,’ to children.” Paragraph 88 states: “She is not a ‘child groomer.’”

Kleinman mentions he has “filed an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the case.” Anti-SLAPP laws are designed to protect defendants from frivolous lawsuits intended to silence protected speech on matters of public concern. However, the outcome of this motion, and the ultimate resolution of the lawsuit, remain to be seen. What is clear is that this is not a case of one person simply expressing an opinion and being sued for it. The lawsuit alleges specific false statements of fact, which are legally distinct from protected opinion.

The Time Op-Ed: What Jones Actually Said

Kleinman characterizes Jones’s Time op-ed as claiming “that the government is physically removing books ‘after deciding they don’t want you to read it’” and calls this “false and...designed to mislead.” Reading the actual Time article reveals a more nuanced argument. Jones and co-author Suzette Baker write about the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear arguments in Little v. Llano County, a case about book removal in Texas. They argue that this decision “effectively granted state and local governments in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas the authority to determine what materials you can and cannot read” (Jones & Baker, 2025).

The phrase “physically removing” is Jones’s characterization of books being taken off library shelves. Whether this characterization is “false and designed to mislead” depends on one’s interpretation. Books are, in fact, being removed from library shelves in some jurisdictions. Whether this constitutes a “book ban” or simply “collection management” is a matter of legitimate disagreement. Kleinman’s criticism here conflates two different things: the descriptive question of whether books are being removed from shelves, and the normative question of whether such removal is appropriate.

Organizations and Conflicts of Interest

Kleinman identifies himself as “the owner of SafeLibraries educational services” and “executive director of the World Library Association, an alternative to the American Library Association.” Research found that SafeLibraries is a blog run by Kleinman that describes itself as providing “Education about who controls school and public libraries” (SafeLibraries, 2026). The “World Library Association” appears to be an organization created by Kleinman as an alternative to the ALA. There is no evidence it is a recognized professional library organization with independent credibility.

This is not necessarily disqualifying. One can legitimately critique the American Library Association without being part of it. However, readers should know that Kleinman is not an independent observer but an advocate with a competing organizational identity and, presumably, a competing financial interest.

A Note on Rhetoric

Throughout his article, Kleinman uses language designed to provoke outrage rather than foster understanding. Terms like “grooming,” “peddling pornography,” and “domestic terrorist” (used against Jones in his social media posts, according to the lawsuit) are inflammatory accusations that carry serious weight. Calling someone a “groomer” is, as the lawsuit notes, “understood to mean one who cultivates a sexual relationship with a child.” Accusing a school librarian of this without being able to provide verifiable evidence for the claim is a serious allegation.

Similarly, referring to age-appropriate sex education materials as “pornography” conflates distinct categories. Material that some find sexually explicit is not necessarily legally obscene, and material that is educational in purpose is not necessarily inappropriate even if it contains mature content. These distinctions matter for any serious discussion of library policy.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Dan Kleinman’s attack on “The Librarians” and the American Library Association contains some verifiable facts, some partially accurate claims, and some assertions that cannot be verified at all. His descriptions of content in “Gender Queer” and “Let’s Talk About It” are generally accurate, though simplified. His claims about the Eisenhower quote are true but decontextualized. His unverified claims about the Connecticut Children’s Alliance and a Wyoming survey should raise concerns about his reliance on “receipts” he cannot produce.

The Amanda Jones lawsuit presents a particular problem for Kleinman. While he frames the lawsuit as an attempt to silence criticism, the actual complaint alleges specific false statements of fact, not mere criticism. The courts will ultimately determine whether Kleinman’s statements were protected opinion or defamatory false statements.

What is clearest is that this debate deserves better than heat without light. Parents, educators, and citizens can disagree about appropriate content in school libraries. But that disagreement should be based on verifiable claims, acknowledged context, and respect for the complexity of the issues involved. Kleinman’s article, for all its bluster, provides too much of the first and too little of the latter.

You can read this grifter’s person of limited reasoning skill’s self promoting crap here: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5715291-shame-on-pbs-the-librarians-is-one-big-lie-to-parents-and-kids/

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Works Cited

American Library Association. (2022). *YALSA names 2022 great graphic novels for teens*. https://www.ala.org/news/2022/02/yalsa-names-2022-great-graphic-novels-teens

Connecticut Children’s Alliance. (2025). *Protecting children. Empowering communities.* https://ctchildrensalliance.org/

Cowboy State Daily. (2022, September 29). *Controversial books ‘Gender Queer’ and ‘Trans Bodies’ remain in Casper high school library — Here’s what’s in them.* https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/09/29/controversial-books-gender-queer-and-trans-bodies-remain-in-casper-high-school-library-heres-whats-in-them/

Emery, D. (2022, April 29). *Did Eisenhower say, ‘Don’t join the book burners’?* Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eisenhower-dont-join-book-burners/

Jones, A., & Baker, S. (2025, December 17). *The Supreme Court just opened the door to a new era of book bans.* Time. https://time.com/7341120/book-bans-supreme-court-first-amendment-reading/

Kleinman, D. (2026). *SafeLibraries blog.* https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/

*Jones v. Kleinman*, Case No. 2:24-cv-10750-BRM-JSA (U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey filed November 26, 2024). https://assets.newlouisiana.org/livingston/library/dan-kleinman-lawsuit-new-jersey.pdf

1819 News. (2024, December 12). *’Kinks, fantasies, and porn’: Graphic sex guide offered in teen section of Spanish Fort, Fairhope public libraries.* https://1819news.com/news/item/kinks-fantasies-and-porn-graphic-sex-guide-offered-in-teen-section-of-spanish-fort-fairhope-public-libraries

The strategy is working. The numbers prove it. The problem is that working looks a lot like fascism.

Let me show you what “working” actually means. The Department of Homeland Security reports that nearly 3 million people have left the country since Trump took office, including 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 formal deportations (Department of Homeland Security, 2026). Border encounters dropped from over 5,000 per day under Biden to just 251 per day under Trump (Department of Homeland Security, 2026). ICE detainee numbers surged 65 percent in 2025 to an all-time high (Statista, 2026).

That is not failure. That is efficiency. And efficiency in a system designed to terrorize people into leaving is exactly what authoritarian enforcement looks like.

The polling confirms what we are seeing. A January 2026 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 39 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, with 53 percent disapproving (Lange, 2026). Fox News found that 59 percent of voters now see ICE as too aggressive (Blanton, 2026). But here is what the pollsters are missing. The reason these numbers are so bad is not because the strategy is failing. The reason is because the strategy is succeeding, and Americans are watching it happen in real time.

ICE is not broken. ICE is doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to create enough fear and chaos that people decide America is no longer a place where they can build a life. That is the policy. That is the strategy. And by every metric that measures fear and flight, it is working beautifully.

I do not like fascism. I do not like what ICE has become. The agency has transformed from an immigration enforcement body into a spectacle of state power designed to make people afraid. Videos of armed agents in tactical gear storming homes, detaining people in front of their children, and shooting citizens in the street are not bugs in the system. They are features. They are the point.

Trump voters are getting exactly what they voted for. The enforcement is aggressive. The deportations are massive. The border is more secure. The numbers prove it. But watching your neighbors get dragged away, watching citizens get shot, watching communities live in fear of the next raid? That is not what people thought they were voting for.

The focus group data tells the real story. Navigator Research interviewed Trump voters in battleground states who now regret their choice (Navigator Research, 2026). One Hispanic woman from Georgia who voted for Trump said she did not think he would go this route because she did not think it was personally good for him (Navigator Research, 2026). A Hispanic man from North Carolina called Trump a great con man (Navigator Research, 2026). These are not people who wanted fascism. These are people who wanted a political stance and got a policy reality.

The difference matters. Wiesel argues that the strategy is not working and needs adjustment. That framing lets everyone off the hook. It pretends that the problem is execution when the problem is the whole enterprise. The enforcement is effective. The terror is intentional. The goal was always to make America hostile enough that immigrants leave, and it is working exactly as designed.

That is the critique Wiesel refuses to make. He wants to believe that with better tactics, the policy would be acceptable. But the policy itself is the problem. The aggression is not a side effect. It is the main attraction. And the numbers showing three million people leaving are not failures. They are successes, which is exactly what should disturb us.

If you want to see an argument slowly decompose in real time, read the full piece here: https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/5712389-immigration-control-wiesel-perspective/

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Works Cited

Blanton, D. (2026, January 28). Fox News poll: 59% of voters say ICE is too aggressive, up 10 points since July. *Fox News*. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-59-voters-say-ice-too-aggressive-up-10-points-since-july

Department of Homeland Security. (2026, January 20). DHS sets the stage for another historic, record-breaking year under President Trump. *Homeland Security*. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/01/20/dhs-sets-stage-another-historic-record-breaking-year-under-president-trump

Lange, J. (2026, January 26). Trump’s immigration approval drops to record low, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds. *Reuters*. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-immigration-approval-drops-record-low-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2026-01-26/

Navigator Research. (2026, January 21). Focus group report: Trump regrets... they’ve had a few. *Navigator Research*. https://navigatorresearch.org/focus-group-report-trump-regrets-theyve-had-a-few/

Statista. (2026, January 19). Chart: Number of ICE detainees surged 65% in 2025. *Statista*. https://www.statista.com/chart/35665/number-of-ice-detainees/

Trump is not the victim of a runaway cabinet. He is the architect of one that functions exactly as designed.

Let’s start with the data. The Brookings Institution published a comprehensive analysis of Trump’s second-term staffing record on January 27, 2026. Their findings directly contradict Williams’ premise. Trump’s first term was historically chaotic, with turnover rates that dwarfed his predecessors. According to Brookings research, over 30% of Trump’s A-Team departed during his first year in office, compared to just under 30% in his second term. While both numbers exceed historical averages, the trajectory matters: Trump learned from his first term and prioritized stability this time around. This was not an accident. Trump empowered external organizations like the America First Policy Institute, the Center for Renewing America, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to prepare comprehensive transition plans. He made 163 personnel announcements during the transition period, 33 more than Obama and more than twice the number from his first transition (Brookings Institution, 2026).

The Brookings analysis confirms what should be obvious: Trump’s team placed a premium on loyalty above all else in evaluating staff for his second administration. This is not dysfunction. This is the point.

Williams lists a series of scandals involving cabinet members and asks why Trump has not fired them. He treats this as evidence of weakness or isolation. But the question itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how this administration operates. The Brookings research shows that Trump has aggressively exercised and tested the bounds of his removal power to create an executive branch that is less independent and more accountable to him. In his first year alone, Trump fired or attempted to fire 18 board and commission members with statutory “for-cause” protections, along with two executive agency officials. He fired 16 presidentially appointed inspectors general within his first week in office (Brookings Institution, 2026). This is not a president who is reluctant to fire people. This is a president who fires the people he wants to fire.

The cabinet members Williams cites remain in place because they have not violated the one standard that matters in this administration: loyalty to Trump. That is not a defense of their competence. Kristi Noem’s handling of the Minneapolis shooting, Pam Bondi’s bungling of the Epstein files release, Kash Patel’s controversial handling of the Charlie Kirk assassination investigation, Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s reported investigations into workplace misconduct, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s response to the measles outbreak are all serious issues. But Williams assumes these scandals should trigger automatic firings based on traditional measures of performance. That assumption no longer applies.

Consider the confirmation context. Brookings researchers note that the average time between Trump’s second-term cabinet nomination announcements and confirmations was 84 days. Trump withdrew 54 nominees in his first year, nearly four times as many as Biden’s 14. The Senate’s confirmation process is deliberately slow, and replacing a cabinet member means navigating that process again while potentially losing seats to opposition senators (Brookings Institution, 2026). When Trump fired National Security Adviser Waltz after the Signal group chat scandal, he did not simply terminate him. He moved him to a Senate-confirmed position as U.S. Representative to the United Nations. That is how this administration operates: carefully, strategically, with an eye toward maintaining loyalists in confirmed positions rather than creating vacancies that enemies might fill.

Williams also overlooks the institutional changes that make his criticism outdated. In September 2025, Senate Republicans invoked the nuclear option to change how executive branch nominations are processed. This allowed the Senate to bundle unlimited nominees for simultaneous confirmation votes. The result? By the end of his first year, 352 of Trump’s nominees had been confirmed, over 100 more than in his first administration. The confirmation rate reached 77.5%, the highest percentage in a first year since George W. Bush’s 80.9% (Brookings Institution, 2026). Trump has more loyalists confirmed now than he did in his first term. The system is working as designed.

The Brookings analysis identifies three key lessons Trump learned from his first term. First, transition planning matters, and he invested heavily in it. Second, loyalty must be the primary criterion for hiring. Third, presidents can test and push past legal and normative guardrails to centralize power (Brookings Institution, 2026). Every cabinet member who has survived the first year of this administration has passed the loyalty test. Every scandal that has not triggered a firing is a scandal the White House has calculated is survivable.

This brings us to the most significant flaw in Williams’ argument. He treats the Trump administration as if it should be evaluated by the same standards as previous administrations. That premise is incorrect. Trump has systematically dismantled those standards. He has removed inspectors general designed to provide independent oversight. He has fired board and commission members intended to exercise independent authority. He has recalled career foreign service officers who might exercise independent judgment. The Brookings report notes that the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board were left without quorums for months, unable to decide cases (Brookings Institution, 2026). This is not dysfunction. This is the reconstruction of the executive branch around a single principle: total loyalty to the president.

Williams quotes Fox polls showing Trump’s disapproval at 70% among moderates and 78% among independents. He cites a 54% majority believing the country is worse off than a year ago. These numbers may be accurate, but their relevance depends on what we are measuring. If we are measuring public opinion, Trump’s numbers are indeed poor. But if we are measuring the administration’s effectiveness at achieving its stated goals, the picture looks different. The White House has staffed the executive branch with loyalists. It has confirmed more nominees than in the first term. It has removed independent watchdogs. It has centralized decision-making in the Oval Office. By its own metrics, this administration is succeeding.

The real question is not whether Trump will say “You’re Fired.” The question is whether the American people want an executive branch built entirely around personal loyalty to one person, with independent oversight eliminated and institutional independence treated as an obstacle. Juan Williams describes chaos and dysfunction. What the evidence actually shows is a deliberate restructuring of the federal government designed to concentrate power in the White House. That restructuring is working exactly as intended. Whether that is what Americans want is a question they will have to answer at the ballot box. But we should at least be clear about what is actually happening.

For those seeking additional evidence that punditry has hit rock bottom and is actively mining underneath, Juan Williams' masterclass in stating the obvious can be found here: https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5717124-trump-refuses-fire-officials/

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Works Cited

Brookings Institution. (2026, January 27). Assessing President Trump’s second-term staffing record. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/assessing-president-trumps-second-term-staffing-record/

Williams, J. (2026). Trump refuses to fire officials. *The Hill*. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5717124-trump-refuses-fire-officials/

So when I read that the acting director of CISA uploaded sensitive contracting documents marked “for official use only” to a public version of ChatGPT, I had to read the story twice. This is the kind of mistake you might expect from an intern who hasn’t completed their security training, not the person running the agency responsible for American cyber defense.

Let me be clear about what happened. Madhu Gottumukkala, who has led CISA since May 2025, obtained special permission to use ChatGPT, which most Department of Homeland Security employees are prohibited from accessing. Most DHS staff work with approved internal tools designed to prevent sensitive information from leaving government networks. But Gottumukkala wanted the public version instead, got his way, and then uploaded documents that triggered automated security alerts (Rascius, 2026).

FOUO means “For Official Use Only.” This designation is not as restrictive as classified information, but it still means the material is sensitive and could harm national security if disclosed. Data entered into ChatGPT’s public version can be exposed to the platform’s nearly one billion users. When you paste sensitive government documents into a commercial AI system, you are essentially broadcasting that information globally.

This is not a partisan issue. What we are discussing is a fundamental failure of operational security by someone who should know better. The head of an agency charged with preventing cyberattacks just demonstrated careless handling of sensitive information. The logic is simple: if you cannot protect your own documents, how can you protect critical infrastructure?

The pattern here is troubling. This is the same acting director who reportedly failed a polygraph test when seeking access to highly sensitive intelligence programs. Following that failure, at least six career CISA staff members were placed on administrative leave while the department investigated whether they misled leadership about the polygraph requirement. Career staff described Gottumukkala’s tenure as “a nightmare” and said they feel they are working in a sinking ship (Palmer et al., 2025).

I want to focus on something that deserves more attention. According to reporting from Ars Technica, career staff at CISA had to push back against Gottumukkala on policy matters. The agency’s chief information officer, Robert Costello, was reportedly given one week to either accept a transfer or resign after being involved in meetings about Gottumukkala’s improper ChatGPT use. This is significant because Costello is described as one of the agency’s top remaining technical talent, and the reassignment was only blocked after other appointees objected (Belanger, 2026).

What we are witnessing is the systematic dismantling of institutional competence. Career professionals who understand the rules are being pushed out or punished for doing their jobs correctly. The person left in charge then proceeds to violate the very security protocols he should be enforcing.

This should alarm anyone who cares about effective government, regardless of political affiliation. The acting head of America’s cyber defense agency uploaded sensitive materials to a public AI platform, triggered security alerts, and then watched as the career staff who tried to prevent exactly this kind of incident were placed on administrative leave. That is not how national security agencies should operate. And the people who perpetuate this kind of culture should not be running agencies they do not seem to understand.


You can read Brendan’s solid reporting here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-cyber-security-sensitive-materials-chatgpt-b2909704.html

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Works Cited

Belanger, A. (2026, January 28). US cyber defense chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT. *Ars Technica*. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/us-cyber-defense-chief-accidentally-uploaded-secret-government-info-to-chatgpt/

Palmer, A., Sherman, A., & Daniels, C. (2025, December 21). Acting CISA director failed a polygraph. Career staff are now under investigation. *Politico*. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/21/cisa-acting-director-madhu-gottumukkala-polygraph-investigation-00701996

Rascius, B. (2026, January 28). Trump’s head of cyber security uploaded ‘sensitive’ materials to a public ChatGPT. *The Independent*. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-cyber-security-sensitive-materials-chatgpt-b2909704.html

Let us start with what actually happened in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and licensed concealed carry holder, was shot and killed by federal Customs and Border Protection agents. Video evidence verified by multiple outlets including the New York Times shows Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, when he was killed (Howard, 2026). The Washington Post’s analysis of the footage indicates agents had already secured Pretti’s weapon before the shots were fired (Politico Staff, 2026). So much for the administration narrative that his gun somehow justified his death.

Within hours of the shooting, Trump administration officials fell over themselves to explain why Pretti deserved what happened to him. FBI Director Kash Patel went on Fox News and said “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It is that simple. You do not have a right to break the law” (Howard, 2026). DHS Secretary Kristi Noem tweeted that she did not “know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign” (Howard, 2026). White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said carrying a gun raises “the assumption of risk and the risk of force being used against you” during police encounters (Howard, 2026). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino joined the chorus (Reuters Staff, 2026).

Now here is where Soave’s logical gymnastics become worth watching. Rather than address the fact that Republican officials attacked the core principle that Americans can exercise their Second Amendment rights at protests, Soave pivots to an entirely different argument. He spends his column accusing Democrats of being “2A hypocrites” for generally supporting gun control legislation. This is a classic strawman move. The controversy was not created by Democrats. The controversy was created when Trump officials suggested that legally carrying a gun at a protest makes you fair game for getting shot.

The National Rifle Association, an organization that has been aligned with Trump for years, did exactly what Soave claims they did not do. They pushed back. The NRA called a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor’s statement that people with guns can expect to be shot “dangerous and wrong” and called for a full investigation instead of “making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens” (Howard, 2026). Gun Owners of America was even more direct. “You absolutely may walk around with guns, and you absolutely may peacefully protest while armed,” the group’s senior vice president Erich Pratt told CNN (Pequeño IV, 2026). “We have the First and Second amendments to protect the right to protest while armed — an American historical tradition that dates back to the Boston Tea Party.” The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus called Patel’s comments “completely incorrect on Minnesota law” (Reuters Staff, 2026).

Soave writes that “I have actually mostly seen criticism of Kash Patel et al from Republicans.” This is true and it directly contradicts the premise of his own article. If Republicans are the ones criticizing Patel and the administration, then what exactly are the Democrats being exposed for? Perhaps Soave needed to manufacture hypocrisy on the left to avoid acknowledging that the right is eating itself alive over this issue.

Then there is the claim that Soave cannot find where Democrats stand. This is willful blindness. California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Noem’s comments directly on social media. “The Trump administration does not believe in the 2nd Amendment. Good to know” (Howard, 2026). Representative Dave Min of California posted on X, “Joining the gun lobby to condemn Bill Essayli was not on my bingo card but here we are. Lawfully carrying a firearm is not grounds for being killed” (Howard, 2026). Maybe these Democrats support gun control in other contexts. Maybe they do not. What they clearly support in this specific context is the right to bear arms at protests, which is exactly what the NRA and GOA support, and exactly what the Trump administration questioned.

The factual record keeps getting in the way of Soave’s narrative. Pretti had a license to carry a concealed weapon. The Minneapolis police chief has said he has seen no evidence that Pretti brandished his weapon before he was shot (Reuters Staff, 2026). Video evidence shows he was recording with his phone when agents knocked him to the ground. He was pepper sprayed. He was pinned down. His gun was removed. Then he was shot four times in the back (Pequeño IV, 2026). The Department of Homeland Security has blocked Minnesota state investigators from reviewing evidence linked to the killing (Pequeño IV, 2026). Internal reviews have contradicted the White House narrative (NPR Staff, 2026).

Soave devotes part of his column to obsessing over whether Pretti had his ID on him, which Minnesota law requires gun owners to carry. He notes that officers did not ask to see it and that the fine would have been only $25. He calls this a “non sequitur” and he is right. But then why mention it at all except to plant doubts about Pretti in the reader’s mind? Why does Soave feel the need to attack the victim when the victim is dead and cannot defend himself?

The technique is clear. Find an outcome you want to explain, work backward from that conclusion, and arrange every statement to support it. This is not analysis. This is advocacy dressed up as commentary. It invokes anger rather than thought. It asks readers to accept that Democrats are the real villains here without ever explaining why the NRA and Gun Owners of America spent the last week criticizing Republicans.

There is a word for when you create a fake opponent to fight instead of addressing what is actually in front of you. That word is strawman. And Soave built one that would make a carnival sculptor jealous.

If you want to see what happens when a Wikipedia article on "strawman arguments" gets trapped in a feedback loop with a thesaurus and a chipper-shredder, read Robby Soave’s absolute crap here: https://thehill.com/opinion/robbys-radar/5710803-gun-control-debate-pretti/

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Works Cited

Howard, A. (2026, January 27). Gun rights groups blast Trump over Minnesota response. *Politico*. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/27/gun-rights-groups-blast-trump-over-minnesota-response-00748217

NPR Staff. (2026, January 27). Internal review contradicts White House narrative of Pretti’s death. *NPR*. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/g-s1-107608/alex-pretti-death-internal-review-immigration

Pequeño IV, A. (2026, January 27). Trump says “You cannot bring firearms” after NRA blasts criticism over Alex Pretti carrying gun. *Forbes*. https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/01/27/trump-says-you-cant-walk-in-with-guns-after-nra-blasts-criticism-over-alex-pretti-carrying-gun/

Politico Staff. (2026, January 28). Killing of Alex Pretti scrambles Second Amendment politics for Trump. *PBS*. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/killing-of-alex-pretti-scrambles-second-amendment-politics-for-trump

Reuters Staff. (2026, January 26). Republicans face election risks in clash with gun rights groups over protester’s killing. *Reuters*. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republicans-face-election-risks-clash-with-gun-rights-groups-over-protesters-2026-01-26/

Soave, R. (2026, January 28). Democrats exposed as hypocrites on gun rights after fury over Alex Pretti killing. *The Hill*. https://thehill.com/opinion/robbys-radar/5710803-gun-control-debate-pretti/

The fundamental problem with Cooke’s framework is what philosophers call an infinite regress problem. If we must judge immigrants based on their commitment to American ideals, then who gets to define those ideals? The current establishment? What happens when the establishment defines “good American” as someone who supports a particular policy agenda? This is not a hypothetical concern. It is precisely the logic that fueled McCarthyism, the Palmer Raids, and countless other episodes where Americans were labeled as “bad” or “un-American” for holding views that later became mainstream. The arrogance of assuming that any current group has perfected the interpretation of American ideals deserves the skepticism it receives.

The Pretense of a Singular Creed

Cooke asserts that America is a “creedal nation” with an “identifiable and particular” creed, but this claim does not withstand examination. The United States has always contained multitudes of competing interpretations of its founding principles. The original Constitution endorsed slavery while proclaiming that all men are created equal. The First Amendment was interpreted for decades to apply only to the federal government, not to states. The meaning of “the American dream” has shifted dramatically across generations, from homeownership to social mobility to something more abstract. To pretend that there is a fixed creed to which immigrants must assimilate is to pretend that American history is something other than a continuous argument about what America should be.

Consider the examples Cooke himself uses. He contrasts Ilhan Omar, whom he deems a “bad American,” with Craig Ferguson, whom he deems a “good American.” Leaving aside the ad hominem nature of this comparison, what exactly makes Omar bad and Ferguson good? If it is Omar’s criticism of Israeli policy and her progressive politics, then Cooke is essentially arguing that “good American” means “agrees with Charles C. W. Cooke’s political views.” This is not a creed. It is partisanship dressed up in constitutional language.

The Arrogance of the Gatekeepers

Cooke’s attitude toward immigrants reveals a troubling paternalism that treats them as projects to be molded rather than individuals to be welcomed. He writes that refugees who have been admitted to the United States “have no excuse for being anything other than ecstatically grateful every single day of their lives.” This is not a serious position. Human beings are complex. Refugees, like all people, retain the capacity for critical thought. The notion that someone whose life was saved by admission to America must now suppress any political views that might displease their benefactors is closer to the logic of an indentured servitude than it is to the logic of a free society.

The underlying assumption throughout Cooke’s essay is that existing Americans have somehow achieved a state of ideological perfection that newcomers must match. This is empirically absurd. Native-born Americans hold a wide range of political views, many of which contradict Cooke’s preferred creed. Are they all “good Americans” by his standards? Of course not. The suggestion that we should prefer immigrants who hold certain views over others implies that native-born Americans who hold different views are somehow less American, which Cooke supposedly rejects. The inconsistency is obvious.

History’s Verdict on the Gatekeepers

Every generation of American critics has believed that they knew what “real” Americans should believe. In the nineteenth century, the Know-Nothing Party railed against Irish Catholic immigrants, whom they characterized as “un-American” and unfit for citizenship (Wikipedia, 2026). These nativists controlled numerous state governments in the 1850s on an anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant platform, and their legacy of political exclusion based on religious affiliation has been thoroughly discredited by history.

In the early twentieth century, restrictionists argued that Southern and Eastern Europeans were racially incapable of assimilating into American society. The Immigration Act of 1924 established quotas that explicitly favored Northern Europeans while severely limiting immigration from regions deemed less desirable (U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian). The congressional debates over this legislation were saturated with references to “the so-called Nordic race” and explicit distinctions between “old” and “new” immigrants from Europe (Congressional Record, 1924). These restrictions remained in place for four decades, and the families they affected have since become fully integrated into American society.

Opposition to Asian immigration and citizenship followed similar patterns. From 1882 onward, Asian exclusion legislation severely limited the number of Asian immigrants who could enter the United States (Pluralism Project, Harvard University). Japanese immigrants were denied the right to become naturalized citizens until 1952, despite having lived in America for generations (Gilder Lehrman Institute). Opponents of Japanese immigration argued that these newcomers could never truly become Americans, that their cultural practices were incompatible with American society, and that their presence threatened American institutions. Historians have documented how these arguments were deployed even as Japanese Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II (Asian Studies Association).

In every case, these gatekeepers were wrong. In every case, the immigrants they dismissed as incompatible became as American as anyone. The children and grandchildren of today’s immigrants will be as quintessentially American as anyone. They will hold political views that Cooke might find objectionable, and they will participate in a political process that will continue to argue about what America means.

The False Promise of Assimilation

Cooke writes that “it is neither diversity nor homogeneity that is our strength, but assimilation.” This framing presents a false choice. The United States has always been both diverse and unified, and the unity has never required the elimination of cultural particularity.

Italian American communities preserved their culinary traditions while becoming fully American. Italian food has influenced the way Americans eat and has been assimilated into America’s culture like no other food (Alifoods, 2016). Italian American culture developed a tradition of cooking together as a means of sharing their culture and maintaining identity while simultaneously participating fully in American civic life (NU Italian, 2023). The bond between Italian Americans and their food serves as a powerful cultural marker that reflects the history, values, and identity of the community while simultaneously enriching American culture.

Jewish American communities maintained religious practices while serving in every sector of American life. Yiddish became a major language of Jewish newspapers, theater, and culture, while public schools served as the vehicle for acculturation into American life (Jewish Community Study). Despite centuries of exile, oppression, and genocide, Jews have fought to preserve their cultural and religious traditions while simultaneously shaping every aspect of American society (Jewish News Service, 2023). Jewish American identity represents a blending of heritage and American citizenship that contradicts any notion of forced assimilation.

Asian American communities have contributed distinct cultural elements while identifying as American. Chinese food was the first Asian cuisine to arrive in the United States during the Gold Rush, and Asian American cuisine has since emerged as a vibrant and influential force in shaping American food culture (Smithsonian Institution; History Channel). Asian American farmers have a rich history of contribution to the U.S. food economy that dates back to the late 1800s (Earthjustice, 2021). These contributions came despite legal discrimination that denied Asian immigrants the right to own property, marry, or become citizens for extended periods of American history.

The very language of “assimilation” implies a one-way process in which newcomers shed their previous identities and become identical to existing Americans. But American culture has always been a fusion. Italian Americans did not abandon their food traditions; they shared them, and America became richer for it. Jewish Americans did not abandon their religious and cultural practices; they integrated them into American religious pluralism. Asian Americans did not abandon their culinary traditions; they transformed American eating habits forever.

More fundamentally, Cooke ignores the mutuality of cultural exchange. Who among us does not use Yiddish words? The English language contains hundreds of words borrowed from Yiddish, including “bagel,” “glitch,” “nosh,” “klutz,” “schmooze,” “chutzpah,” “kvetch,” and “nudge” (Merriam-Webster, 2025; Wikipedia). These words are so embedded in American English that most speakers do not even recognize them as borrowed from another language.

Who does not celebrate holidays with roots in immigrant traditions? The Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, has taken root in the United States as a spiritual, cultural, and commercial celebration that honors the dead while simultaneously becoming part of the American holiday landscape (Rutgers University, 2025; National Geographic, 2018). The holiday represents a mixture of indigenous Aztec rituals influenced by Catholicism, and it has crossed borders to become a celebratory holiday in the U.S. (Daily Free Press, 2021). At the same time, Halloween has grown in popularity in Mexico as Dia de los Muertos has grown in the United States, demonstrating that cultural exchange flows in both directions (New Mexico Humanities Council, 2021).

Who does not eat food that came from elsewhere? Italian restaurants have done more than feed generations of Americans; they have shaped cultural perceptions of family, community, and celebration (Rosolini USA, 2025). Chinese restaurants have been a fixture of American life since the Gold Rush. Sushi, pho, pad Thai, and countless other foods from around the world have become American foods.

American culture is not a fixed essence that immigrants must accept. It is an ongoing creation in which everyone participates, including newcomers. The teenager who celebrates Dia de los Muertos is participating in American culture as surely as the teenager who celebrates Halloween. Both are American. Both are becoming something new.

Constitutional Fidelity and Democratic Dissent

Cooke suggests that immigrants who do not favor the Constitution “should not be accorded a vote within its protections.” This is a radical proposal that would fundamentally alter the meaning of American citizenship. The American system has always permitted citizens to criticize the Constitution, to advocate for its amendment, and to work for its fundamental transformation. This is not a bug. It is a feature. The Constitution itself contains provisions for its own amendment precisely because the founders understood that no document is perfect and that future generations might see things differently (National Archives).

The amendment process, outlined in Article V of the Constitution, has been used twenty-seven times since the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 (National Constitution Center). The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment established birthright citizenship and equal protection. The 15th Amendment prohibited racial discrimination in voting. The 19th Amendment established women’s suffrage. Each of these amendments represented a fundamental challenge to the original constitutional order, and each was achieved through democratic processes that Cooke seems inclined to foreclose.

If Cooke’s standard had been applied historically, many of the most revered Americans would have been excluded. The abolitionists who demanded an end to slavery were criticizing a Constitution that protected that institution. The suffragists who demanded the vote for women were criticizing a Constitution that excluded them. The civil rights activists who demanded equal treatment were criticizing a Constitution that sanctioned segregation. By Cooke’s logic, these troublemakers should have been rejected as “unwanted drags.” By any reasonable standard, they were fulfilling the highest American tradition of insisting that the nation live up to its ideals.

This is where Cooke’s argument becomes most troubling. He claims to believe in the rule of law and the Constitution, but he wants to exclude from political participation those who might change them. This is not fidelity to constitutional principles. It is entrenchment of current interpretations. The distinction matters because constitutional democracy requires the possibility of change. A system that freezes the status quo is not a constitutional democracy. It is something else.

The Jefferson Paradox

Cooke invokes Thomas Jefferson’s concerns about immigration from Notes on the State of Virginia, but this appeal cuts against Cooke’s case more than for it. Jefferson was writing in 1781 in a context where the United States was a small nation struggling to attract population. His concerns about “emigrants” bringing “the principles of the governments they leave” were speculative worries rather than empirical observations (Monticello).

Jefferson wrote that immigrants from absolute monarchies “will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty” (Monticello). But Jefferson also explicitly distinguished between discouraging immigration and admitting “useful artificers,” whom he urged his readers to “spare no expence in obtaining” (Monticello).

Jefferson himself welcomed French refugees from the Haitian Revolution. Between 1791 and 1810, more than 25,000 refugees arrived on American shores from Saint-Domingue, fleeing the violence that would eventually create the independent nation of Haiti (Smithsonian Magazine, 2016). Jefferson’s administration, despite the President’s personal fears about slave revolts, extended $726,000 and military support to the colony’s planters and eventually accepted the refugees as “victims of the horrors of war” (Smithsonian Magazine, 2016). More than 16,000 black refugees arrived, and despite fears that they might spread insurrectionist ideas, the transmission of violence that slaveholders feared never materialized (Smithsonian Magazine, 2016).

Jefferson was a perpetual tinkerer with American institutions who spent his life trying to reshape the country according to his vision. He purchased Louisiana in defiance of his strict constructionist principles when he saw an opportunity to advance American interests. He founded the University of Virginia as an alternative to what he saw as the insufficiently American institutions of his day. Jefferson did not believe that America was complete and that newcomers must simply accept it. He believed that America was a project to be continuously improved, and that immigrants might help.

Reagan’s Magical America

Cooke quotes Ronald Reagan’s famous line about becoming American: “You can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American” (Reagan Foundation, 1988). This line, delivered at the groundbreaking for the Reagan Library in 1988, captures the aspirational vision that has drawn millions to America’s shores.

But Cooke misuses Reagan’s quotation. Reagan was making a point about the openness of American identity, not about the need to police its boundaries. His argument was that America is unique among nations in its ability to incorporate newcomers, not that newcomers must prove their worth before being accepted. The very word “become” in Reagan’s formulation suggests a process, not a test. It suggests that becoming American is something that happens through participation in American life, not something that requires ideological certification from gatekeepers.

Cooke claims that becoming American “for 250 years has implied something far more magical, more expansive, and more aspirational than exists anywhere else.” This is true, and the magic lies precisely in the openness and possibility that Reagan described. The moment we begin treating American identity as something that must be earned through correct beliefs, we lose what makes America distinctive among nations.

Conclusion: Against the Good American

The phrase “good American” is inherently problematic because it implies that some Americans are better than others based on their political views. This is antithetical to the principle of equality that Cooke professes to support. If all citizens have equal rights regardless of their views, then no citizen is a “bad American” in any meaningful sense. They might hold views that others find objectionable. They might advocate for policies that seem un-American to some. But that is what freedom is for. The purpose of political freedom is precisely to allow people to disagree without losing their status as full members of the polity.

Cooke claims that his framework is necessary for the survival of the American project. But the American project has always been defined by its openness to change, its hold of newcomers, and its tolerance for dissent. A nation that succeeds in excluding all those who might challenge its current consensus is not preserving the American project. It is ending it. The gates that Cooke wants to build would not keep out bad Americans. They would keep out the very energy that makes America worth preserving.

The remedy for bad ideas is good arguments, not immigration restrictions. The remedy for political views we dislike is persuasion, not exclusion. The American nation has survived 250 years of internal disagreement precisely because it has maintained a framework for living together despite our differences. Cooke’s framework would abandon that framework in favor of a permanent political test that would inevitably be administered by those with the power to define its terms. Those who value America should resist this temptation, however appealing it might seem.

I’m sorry about the length of this read, but the foolishness of the original essay drove me to it.

If thou dost hunger for turgid prose dressed in the robes of wisdom, then avail thyself of the original windbag's intellectual incontinence here: (PAYWALL WARNING)
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2026/03/to-be-and-to-become-an-american/

EDIT: Fixed a couple of typos

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