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The United States Coast Guard (USCG) on Tuesday said only one boater, a 15-year-old, was rescued alive after three individuals went missing earlier this week.

Rescue personnel found the teenager "clinging to the capsized vessel" Monday off the coast of Alaska. Officials said crews found him in the midst of a medical emergency.

The "survivor was rescued from the overturned skiff experiencing symptoms of hypothermia," officials said.

TWO DEAD, INCLUDING INFANT, AFTER BOAT CAPSIZES IN NEW YORK HARBOR; 12 RESCUED

The two other mariners were found dead after the 18-foot fishing vessel they were aboard overturned about 4 miles east of St. Lawrence Island, according to authorities.

The Coast Guard said crews initiated a search mission early Monday after Alaska State Troopers notified the Coast Guard of an overdue boat Sunday evening. The vessel was expected to return Sunday at 3 a.m.

Officials said crews were unable to launch a rescue mission until Monday morning due to weather and poor visibility.

US COAST GUARD SAVES 8, INCLUDING INFANT AND CHILD, AFTER VESSEL CAPSIZES OFF FORT MYERS BEACH

After launching an aircrew, personnel spotted the survivor and deployed a raft with survival equipment.

Officials said a good Samaritan vessel also stepped in, rescuing the 15-year-old survivor and recovering the bodies of the two deceased mariners from the water.

The two mariners and the teen survivor were then brought to Nome, Alaska, officials said.

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Democratic Gov. Dan McKee of Rhode Island is fighting for his political life in the smallest U.S. state's primary elections on Wednesday as he faces potential downfall stemming from the nearly three-year partial closure of a crucial bridge.

McKee first assumed office in March 2021 when then-Gov. Gina Raimondo stepped down to become U.S. commerce secretary he was then elected four years ago for a full term. Now, McKee is trying to avoid becoming the nation's first elected governor in a dozen years to lose renomination.

The governor is facing off in a primary rematch with Helena Buonanno Foulkes, a former longtime executive with CVS, which is based in Rhode Island.

THESE 12 MIDTERM RACES WILL DECIDE WHICH PARTY CONTROLS THE SENATE

McKee narrowly edged Foulkes, who is the niece of former Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of neighboring Connecticut, in a multi-candidate field in the 2022 Democratic primary before winning the general election in the solidly blue state.

As he fights for renomination, the governor has been outspent by a nearly two-to-one margin by Foulkes, according to Rhode Island campaign finance records.

Also working against McKee is his handling of the reconstruction of the Washington Bridge, which was shut in December 2023 after officials spotted critical structural flaws.

The bridge connects Providence to East Providence and before its westbound span was shut, it carried roughly 100,000 vehicles per day. Westbound and eastbound traffic share the reconfigured eastbound span with reduced lanes.

State officials originally estimated the bridge would reopen this year, but the completion date was later pushed back to November 2028.

The bridge has become a top issue in the gubernatorial primary, with McKee and Foulkes battling over the bidding process for reconstruction and the pace of rebuilding.

While pushing back on criticism over his handling of the bridge, McKee has slammed Foulkes as an out-of-touch corporate executive trying to buy herself an election win.

DEMOCRACY ’26: STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE FOX NEWS ELECTION HUB

But also working against the governor in an anti-incumbent year are the high electricity rates Rhode Islanders pay and the state's severe shortage of affordable housing.

The winner of the Democratic primary will be considered the clear favorite in the general election against either Aaron Guckian, a state trade association executive and the 2022 GOP lieutenant governor nominee, or former actress and first-time candidate Elaine Pelino, who are vying for the Republican nomination. The state GOP has endorsed Guckian.

In the race for the Senate, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, who has served for three decades, faces two longshot challengers in their party's primary.

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Raymond McKay, a former president of the Rhode Island Republican Assembly and a former leading state GOP official, is the presumptive Republican Senate nominee.

Democratic Rep. Gabe Amo faces no opposition for renomination in the state's 1st Congressional District, while entrepreneur Kellie Keenan is the presumptive GOP nominee.

Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner is the presumptive nominee in Rhode Island's 2nd Congressional District.

Businessman Victory Mellor and physician Stephen Skoly are facing off in the Republican primary.

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As we approach the 25th anniversary of 9/11, there are many in our country who want us to pretend that the greatest attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor never happened. They want us to look away from the Muslim terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and who drove another plane full of innocents to their deaths in a grassy Pennsylvania field. They want us to forget that on that day in 2001, Americans came under attack for reasons that few understood, from a far-away people who loathe our culture, our freedoms and our country.

When Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., dismissively says, "Some people did something," she is trying to erase the truth. She wants us to forget who it was who purposefully killed 2,977 people who were going about their daily lives, unaware of the Saudi jihadis who schemed and plotted for years to cause as much death and suffering as possible to our great nation.

Sorry, Ilhan — I remember.

AMERICA’S HEARTLAND COMES FACE-TO-FACE WITH 9/11 HISTORY AS 25TH ANNIVERSARY NEARS

I remember my young daughters calling home terrified that the planes had hit their father's office, which was across the street from the Twin Towers. I remember my husband's colleagues witnessing the panicked souls jumping to their deaths from the towers, and the rain of ashes that blanketed the entire downtown area. He was in midtown at the time of the attack, but his co-workers were not so lucky, navigating the pitch-dark stairwells of the neighboring building and wading through the debris-darkened chaos. Some walked miles to our uptown apartment, stranded by the closure of the city's bridges and tunnels; they arrived frightened and exhausted, covered head to toe in ashes.

Life stood still, as New Yorkers watched on television the frantic recovery efforts at Ground Zero. The city's ambulance drivers gathered to help the injured, but most returned home empty-handed; there were few survivors. We watched the heroic efforts of firefighters and police officers who raced into the falling buildings as others tried to get out; most were trapped and died there.

FRANK SILLER: 'I LOVE YOU, BROTHER' -- THE 9/11 LOSS THAT INSPIRED A MISSION OF SERVICE

I recall the horror of the buildings collapsing, knowing what it meant for those left inside. In the days that followed, I remember calling friends and slowly piecing together who we had lost, and who had survived. Everyone knew someone who perished — a husband, a son, a friend. Lives were forever changed, darkened by hateful strangers.

People forget that in the days after 9/11, other attacks were expected. The enormity of the coordinated strikes suggested a military-type offensive. Everyone stayed home, avoiding Grand Central Terminal and other possible targets, not knowing whether it was safe to venture out. No major events took place in Manhattan for weeks; the city went dark except for the fires that smoldered for months where the Twin Towers once stood.

I LOST MY WIFE ON 9/11. PLEASE LET THIS 25TH ANNIVERSARY BELONG TO THE FAMILIES

Several weeks later, the New York Philharmonic performed the Brahms Requiem before a crowd that included Mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York Gov. George Pataki and other officials. My husband and I attended that concert, nervous — as was everyone — that so many luminaries gathering in one place might attract the next assault. It was the first time we had walked through body scanners, the first time our bags were searched. Life in America had forever changed, thanks to Muslim extremists who threatened our way of life.

That night, the audience stood and sang our national anthem; the orchestra played under an historic 48-star American flag that had been used in Carnegie Hall concerts during World War II. At the conclusion, as requested, there was no applause. Everyone filed out in silence, many in tears.

NEW 9/11 MUSEUM EXHIBIT AIMS TO CONNECT YOUNGER AMERICANS TO THE ATTACKS THROUGH POWERFUL ARTIFACTS

So yes, Ilhan — I remember. I remember Americans learning the significance of the date 9/11, which some said commemorated a battle in 1683, in which the king of Poland waged war against the Ottoman Empire's advance into Europe. Muslim jihadis, including mastermind Usama bin Laden, reportedly viewed this as a seminal event in the long conflict between Islam and the West. Most Americans had little idea that such a conflict existed.

Today, 25 years later, leftist educators are erasing this history, encouraging those who blame America for the horrifying mass murder. At least 40 states require public schools to address the 9/11 terror attacks, but the "provisions vary widely in scope, specificity and framing," the Associated Press reports. According to one survey of Middle East professors, the majority of college students have no idea why nearly 3,000 Americans died on that day.

TEXAS EDUCATION BOARD APPROVES CONTROVERSIAL CURRICULUM CHANGES TYING 'RADICAL ISLAM' TO 9/11 ATTACKS

A curriculum from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, which has been picked up by several Democratic-run states, includes this: "On the 11th of September, 2001, 19 hijackers flew two airplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one airplane into the Pentagon in Virginia and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania. A total of 2,996 people were killed, including the hijackers." The lesson further says, "The U.S. accused Saudi national Osama bin Laden…of being the mastermind behind the attacks." No mention of bin Laden's confessions, or his well-documented jihad against the U.S. Not a word about who those 19 hijackers were.

ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE REACHES DEADLIEST LEVEL SINCE 1994, NEW GLOBAL REPORT FINDS

Instead of teaching about Muslim terrorists, radical Israel-hating teachers in the U.S. focus on Islamophobia, a bigotry barely witnessed but much touted on the left. So far this year in New York, there have been 27 hate crimes against Muslims, about 6 percent of the total, compared to 229, or 54%, targeting Jews. Islamophobia is not the problem.

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Why the concerted effort to bury the truth about 9/11? Muslim Democrats, like Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for the Senate in Michigan, or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, want to distance themselves from the horrific murder of nearly 3,000 Americans, but it is not their religion that earns them opprobrium; it is their contempt for the United States and hatred toward our ally Israel.

Americans must not tolerate this rewriting of recent history. We must also not tolerate antisemitism. Those who say Israel is our enemy should answer this: When was the last time Jewish terrorists attacked Americans?

Twenty-five years later, we still mourn the friends we lost, the brave first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice, and thousands of others who died at Ground Zero. Not speaking out about what really happened on 9/11 and who was responsible is to dishonor those tragic souls. 

That is unacceptable.

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A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld an injunction blocking the Internal Revenue Service from sharing personal information such as the addresses of taxpayers with immigration authorities, ruling the Trump administration's policy was unlawful.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the IRS unlawfully disclosed taxpayer information in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's request for the last known addresses of 1.28 million suspected illegal migrants. The court said the IRS failed to ensure that ICE's requests met the "stringent conditions" required under a federal tax-confidentiality law adopted in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, which generally bars the IRS from sharing tax-return information with other federal agencies.

Last year, the IRS shared roughly 47,000 taxpayer addresses with ICE under a policy that aims to assist President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. The IRS had adopted a policy that allowed ICE to collect taxpayer information, sparking lawsuits over allegations that the practice was unlawful.

A lower-court judge sided with the plaintiffs and blocked the policy, although by that time the IRS had already shared 47,289 taxpayer records with ICE.

IRS ERRONEOUSLY SHARED CONFIDENTIAL IMMIGRANT TAXPAYER DATA WITH DHS: COURT FILING

The administration appealed, arguing the ruling hindered federal law enforcement.

"But that's a gripe with Congress, not the court," U.S. Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard said in the appeals court's ruling on Tuesday.

Pillard said the IRS procedures violated federal law in several ways, including "most egregiously" by not requiring ICE to provide an actual taxpayer address, as the law requires.

"The IRS failed to require ICE to provide a 'specific reason' why the requested return information 'is or may be relevant to [a qualifying] proceeding or investigation,' as the statute demands," Pillard wrote.

"It entirely fails to ensure that ICE lists a federal employee, let alone one ‘personally and directly engaged’ in a qualifying investigation of a particular taxpayer," Pillard continued. "That failure has serious consequences. When ICE requested information on 1.28 million taxpayers in the summer of 2025, ICE identified the same person as the point of contact for every single request."

The practice "automates the review of millions of records without any individual review or any other means of ensuring compliance with the legal prerequisites to releasing each individual taxpayer's information," the judge added.

The three-judge panel also ruled that information sharing would violate privacy laws.

NEW MAINE LAW LIMITS POLICE COOPERATION WITH FEDERAL IMMIGRATION OFFICIALS

"The Data-Exchange Procedure reduces noncitizens’ privacy rights in their tax returns. By providing a distinct, automated pathway for ICE to request noncitizens’ information, the Data-Exchange Procedure deprives noncitizens of the protections that section 6103 guarantees to all taxpayers," the court found.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to Reuters that it disagrees with the ruling and "will continue using every lawful tool available to locate and remove illegal aliens with final orders of removal."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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The direction of the Democrat Party is the talk of the 2026 midterms. Will it go farther left or somehow moderate? The simple answer is that Democrat Party will move even farther left.

As the nation considers this question, it is a mistake to look at the current Democrat Party in a vacuum. We should not be focused on individual candidates. The focus should be on the trend.

What is happening in the modern Democrat Party is the natural progression of parties on the left.

HOW THE 'LONG MARCH' THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS LED TO SOCIALIST TAKEOVER OF DEM PARTY: 'NEED TO WAKE UP'

Consider this: In 1887, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, vetoed a drought relief bill stating that "Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people."

Cleveland’s message was stark. Government was not our brother’s keeper.

A half century later, however, the times and the Democrat Party changed dramatically, with government support of the people at the center of their policies. The first major step toward occurred when Democrats used taxpayer dollars to provide government jobs under Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

A decade later, when passing the Employment Act of 1946, the Democrat Congress declared: "that it is the continuing policy and responsibility of the federal government to use all practicable means…to promote maximum employment."

The second major step came during the 1960s with the Democrats' passage of Great Society legislation, which changed Democrats’ focus from jobs to welfare. Since then, the size of the welfare state has exploded. All the while, the Democrats have convinced voters they could vote themselves rich.

Here is why there will be no turning back from that for the Democrat Party.

Government is the largest industry in America today – by far. Tech is less than 10% of the economy. Government spending, local, state and federal, is around 35% of the economy.

HOUSE GOP LAUNCHES PROBE INTO 5 MAJOR LABOR UNIONS OVER DEM SPENDING DESPITE MAGA MEMBERSHIP BASE

Our governments are also the largest employers in the United States. One third of all those government employees are unionized. Their bounty of union dues is then used to make campaign contributions to Democrats. Indeed, over 95% of government union contributions go to Democrats.

The Democrats know that unions seek to grow their ranks, which would result in even larger amounts of political donations for Democrats. The Democrat Party is not going to bite that hand that feeds them. As a result, the Democrats will remain the party of ever larger government employment.

SCANDALS, SOCIALISTS AND TRUMP ROIL PRIMARIES, SEND INCUMBENTS PACKING AT NEAR-RECORD PACE

As I wrote recently, the political parties have lost control over campaign spending. We live in the age of the super PACs, which includes union PACs.

MEET THE FAR-LEFT INSURGENTS WAGING WAR ON THE DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT IN 2026 MIDTERMS

In the olden days, before 2010 and Citizens United, the political parties were the super PACs. The parties received the vast majority of contributions and decided which candidates got money and endorsements.

Now super PACs fund the candidates more than the political parties. As a result, socialist/communist candidates like New York Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who were not favored by the Democrat Party establishment, can overcome the party influence and win major offices and primaries.

'SQUAD' SOCIALIST SCORES RE-ELECTION NOD AS RADICAL WAVE CONTINUES TO SWEEP PARTY

This cycle, the success of candidates not preferred by the Democrat Party is almost exclusively on the left, in significant part, because the party lost control to super PACs and the reasons below.

It is the nature of political parties that (a) the base of each party is more to the left or right of their party’s establishment, and (b) is more politically active and motivated than their party’s establishment.

They also show up in greater numbers to vote in party primaries than the moderate voters of their party. That has always been so.

That gives the edges of both parties a greater say on who wins primaries. In today’s Democrat Party, that means the far left of their party is deciding primaries. They also want to move the party further left.

According to a 2025 Gallup poll, among liberal Democrats, 45% wanted their party to become more liberal, 22% wanted it to stay the same and 30% wanted it to become more moderate. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overall, however, 45% wanted the party to become more moderate, 29% wanted it to become more liberal and 22% wanted it to stay the same.

Among liberal Democrats, that means 67% wanted the party to remain as liberal as it was or become more liberal.

According to a 2025 Gallup poll, "Liberal Democrats would prefer that their party become more liberal (45%) or stay the same as it is now (22%) rather than be more moderate (30%)."

That means 67% of liberal Democrats like how liberal the Democrat Party is now or want it to be more liberal.

Elections are about the future. Almost all voters want to know what you are going to do for them tomorrow.

For Democrats, who have been promising government assistance to voters for 90 years, with each new election and each new candidate, the only path to victory has become promising more than whatever was promised yesterday.

They are not alone in that addictive spiral toward socialism.

That was the path of the Labor Party of England over the last century. Long before that, it was the path of those on the left just before the end of the ancient Greek Democracy and the left in the years before the end of the Roman Republic.

Stated simply, there is no path to victory for a Democrat candidate who promises to spend less. History also demonstrates that today’s socialist is never extravagant enough for tomorrow’s socialist.

Finally, socialists and communists rarely change their stripes. Note how the 1901 platform of the first Socialist Party of America reads like the DSA platform of today, including this 125-year-old pledge: "The collective ownership of all means of transportation and communication and all other public utilities as well as of all industries controlled by monopolies, trusts, and combines."

Also, reaching the socialist goal has always meant ever greater government control of the economy. As that occurs, the economy weakens under the burdens of big government, employment then lags under weak economic growth and the calls for ever-larger welfare state grow louder.

That is a lesson of history.

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At the center of that dynamic has always been the Party of Government. That is the Democrat Party of today, which is repeating an age-old pattern in pursuit of power.

So, do not expect the modern Democrat Party to change direction. It has been more than 100 years in the making, and it is gaining steam towards its destination – the Party of Socialism.

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The Texas Board of Education gave final approval to changes to the state's high school social studies curriculum, a controversial move that will impact how students are taught about Islam and Christianity.

The amended social studies curriculum, which covers U.S. history, government and world geography, comes after dozens of people gave public testimony, with most expressing their opposition to the finalized version.

The board approved language asserting that "radical Islam" motivated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks rather than taking a more narrow focus on the terrorist groups involved in the attack.

The material also requires students to study early Islam through Prophet Muhammad's "brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes," the "normalization of slavery" and the taking of female captives as "harem slaves."

NBA CHAMPION JOSH HART CELEBRATES TEXAS BOARD OF EDUCATION'S VOTE TO MAKE BIBLE PASSAGES REQUIRED READING

Several Democratic State Board of Education members pushed back against the wording, but the Republican-majority board still approved that section and the other changes on Friday.

Muslim groups and students, as well as multiple curriculum experts, also spoke out against the new changes.

"I feel attacked, as if my religion doesn’t belong," Habiiba Quresh, a 15-year-old Muslim student, told the board, according to The Texas Tribune. "I shouldn't have to defend my religion in the middle of history class because of one sentence someone on this board wrote."

At least three of the board-appointed curriculum experts also warned against the new language.

TED CRUZ, CONSERVATIVES RESPOND AFTER TALARICO CRITICIZES BIBLE-RELATED EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS AS 'PROPAGANDA'

Andrea Hutchison, a social studies curriculum coordinator for Prosper ISD, argued the material did not "hold up to close historical scrutiny," according to the outlet. Robert Koons, a philosophy professor at UT-Austin, said most nonreligious scholars find the source of the claims "not very reliable," adding that he would warn against including material that is "not based on well-established secular sources."

The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the board’s decision to "single out and denigrate Islam, minimize the brutal realities of slavery and segregation, and entirely erase Palestinian history is an affront to our system of education and the First Amendment."

"No credible scholar of history validates the bigoted caricatures of Islam this curriculum teaches," CAIR Texas and CAIR Action Texas said in a joint statement. "Even the board’s own appointed experts warned it doesn’t hold up to historical scrutiny, yet the board voted against removing it. Texas students of every background deserve an education that tells the truth about their history and their neighbors’ history, not propaganda that teaches them to see each other as threats or erases them from the story altogether."

State Board of Education Chair Aaron Kinsey pushed back on criticism of the revised standards, saying opponents had "sensationalize[d] all these topics and [made] them seem more divisive than they actually are." He added that board members "worked through, democratically, how to make those choices on behalf of our constituents" and said he believed they "did an exceptional job overall.

But Republican school board member Julie Pickren boasted about the material's final approval, according to Fox 7.

"This social studies law that got us here, I've been working on for over 10 years with the House and the Senate, the Texas House and Texas Senate ... and so this is such a huge accomplishment; this vote kind of bookends 12 years of life's work," Pickren said.

The approved curriculum is expected to be phased into classrooms during the 2030-31 school year.

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We all remember how bad it got. Just a few short years ago, it felt like every major institution — from corporate America, to media, to universities, to Hollywood, to our own government — had decided that half the population was the enemy. Speech was policed, businesses were pressured, and ordinary Americans found themselves locked out of basic services for holding the wrong opinions.

A lot of people are now saying that chapter is closed. "Woke 1 was crazy," Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said recently, laughing. Others have triumphantly declared that "woke" has been defeated. I understand the desire to move on. But those of us who lived through the mayhem shouldn’t be so quick to agree. Here’s what actually happened, and why the danger hasn’t disappeared.

The woke ideology that pervaded nearly every aspect of public life did not conquer American institutions by force of argument alone. Rather, it spread so rapidly because corporate America, in particular, became a willing and enthusiastic partner.

GOP FRESHMAN FIREBRAND TARGETS GLOBAL CONSULTING GIANT OVER 'PLAINLY ILLEGAL' DEI PRACTICES

Technology companies censored ordinary citizens for what amounted to thought crimes, major financial institutions stopped doing business with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, de-banked Donald Trump, and refused to serve lawful gun manufacturers. "Green" initiatives became official policy, with nearly every major financial institution committing hundreds of billions to pursuing renewable energy, and refusing to do business with coal companies and others that were on the "wrong side of history."

Public displays of progressive orthodoxy became the price of admission across large swaths of the private sector. Companies understood that those then in political power were prepared to make life difficult for any entity that refused to fall in line, to say nothing of their own employees who could cause immeasurable headaches if executives strayed from the progressive worldview.

What we continued to call free enterprise was, in practice, something closer to totalitarian social control administered at the corporate level. A concentrated group of technology platforms, financial institutions, and cultural gatekeepers enforced a political narrative against large portions of their own user base. And rather than face a market cost for alienating half their user base, the sheer scale of these companies, and the regulatory barriers that protected them from true competition, made the costs of ideological experiments nearly invisible to those imposing them. When a handful of firms control the infrastructure of speech, payment, and distribution, market power and narrative power become one and the same. Dissent does not have to be answered — it can simply be excluded.

DAN GAINOR: WE GOT TWITTER/X AS A PLATFORM 20 YEARS AGO AND GLOBAL CENSORS STILL HATE AND FEAR IT

The only reason this apparatus was interrupted is that the American people changed the occupants of power.

President Trump’s 2024 victory put the technology companies on notice. Several of their leaders appeared at the inauguration, some even helping underwrite the event. One major platform executive later publicly conceded that his company had made serious mistakes. But we should not be lulled into thinking these companies have learned their lesson. What we are seeing isn’t repentance, but merely temporary accommodation. The true believers remain inside these institutions: corporate boards, human-resources departments, and mid-level management structures are still populated by people deeply committed to racial quotas , oppression hierarchies, green fantasies, and the denial of basic biological reality. Should political power shift again, the incentive to reimpose a more aggressive and better-organized version of the same project — Woke 2.0 — will be overwhelming.

THE WOKE LEFT CAPTURED THE SMITHSONIAN. AMERICA NEEDS A PATRIOT TO TAKE IT BACK

This is the deeper danger. When the guts of capitalism can be ideologically weaponized, the ordinary corrective mechanisms of competition stop working. Incumbents no longer have to persuade customers or improve their products; they can simply close the gates. A free market depends on the ability of new entrants to challenge established players on the merits. A free society depends on the open contest of ideas. Both are undermined when concentrated private power decides which competitors and which viewpoints are allowed to exist.

DUKE LAW'S ALLEGED RACE-BASED ADMISSIONS ACCUSED OF DEFYING SUPREME COURT RULING: DOJ

What ultimately checked this power was not the market itself, but the marketplace of the ballot box. The policies that followed the change in administration — ending race-based preferences in federal contracting and employment, restoring the principle of equal protection under the law, and ending the use of federal funds for irreversible medical procedures on minors – restored a measure of sanity and forced corporate America to adjust its public posture accordingly. Without that governing sanity, there is little to prevent the return of the previous regime on an even larger scale.

That is why the coming midterm elections matter so greatly, and voter identification is essential. Secure elections are the last reliable check ordinary citizens possess against concentrated power, whether public or private. Political leadership is not a luxury in a free society – it’s the thin line between a country in which the people still rule and one in which a handful of unaccountable institutions decide who may speak, who may bank, and who may participate in public life.

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We have been given a reprieve in the current moment. The American people demonstrated that they still possess the power to correct course when they choose to use it. But, as the saying goes, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Institutions that spent years enforcing ideological orthodoxy have not suddenly discovered the virtues of pluralism. They have simply calculated that the political climate has temporarily changed. The moment that calculation reverses, the pressure will return – more sophisticated, more coordinated, and more confident that it can succeed where it previously overreached.

The founding generation understood that freedom of thought and freedom of expression are not ornamental. They are the fundamental operating system of self-government. When those freedoms are systematically constrained by private institutions that face no meaningful competition and no democratic accountability, the fabric of society itself begins to fray. We cannot afford to treat the recent interruption of this process as a permanent victory when it is really just a pause. What we do with that pause will determine whether the next generation inherits a free country or a managed one.

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