by Julio Ricardo Varela | Sep 19, 2026 | Congress, elections, Opinion
Three years ago, before Donald Trump won his second term, I posed a question to Latino Republicans about their party’s growing nativist wing: How willing are you to break ranks with your party on immigration and place your community over partisan politics?
Now one of those lawmakers, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., has answered with a campaign ad that appears to break ranks with Trump.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar says to the camera, both in English and Spanish. “In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
In the first 14 months of this administration, immigration arrests have more than tripled in Florida compared with the final months of the Biden administration.
Salazar, an Emmy-winning journalist turned three-term House member, is not just any Republican distancing herself from an unpopular president. She represents Florida’s 27th Congressional District, which includes Miami’s Little Havana. The district is close to 75% Latino and has a history of supporting staunchly conservative causes, including fighting socialist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. In 2024, Trump won close to 60% of Florida’s Latino vote and became the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami. Salazar’s district played a key role, with Trump winning 57% of the vote.
Yet in Trump’s second term, his cruel immigration policies are directly affecting the very communities Salazar represents. In the first 14 months of this administration, immigration arrests have more than tripled in Florida compared
by Luke Russert | Sep 19, 2026 | Opinion
President Donald Trump has repeatedly downplayed the notion that America has any responsibility toward the rest of the world.
In a Truth Social post last month, as trade talks with Canada collapsed, Trump posted, “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” In March, when he was still insisting that combat with Iran would be over in a matter of weeks, he warned that other countries would have to “fend for themselves” in the Strait of Hormuz when the fighting subsided.
Trump wants the glory of being a global superpower with none of the responsibilities — and we’re beginning to see the impact of that ignorance abroad.
That delusion will be on full display next week in New York as Trump meets with world leaders for the United Nations General Assembly, with side talks planned on his war of choice with Iran, alongside global summits on the climate crisis and future pandemics. The U.N. acknowledged that much of the assembly’s diplomacy happens behind closed doors, but the global crises Trump’s policies are accelerating are forming right before our eyes. And soon, they will unfold right here on our doorstep.
The administration continues to act as though America exists in a vacuum.
The administration continues to act as though America exists in a vacuum. Trump seems to not know that our actions abroad do not stay abroad.
Last year, the Trump administration shuttered a State Department program where U.S. embassies independently monitored air quality in their respective cities. A 2022 study from the National Academy of Sciences estimated that this program prevented a median of 895 pollution deaths in the cities where it was implemented. A new study
by Zeeshan Aleem | Sep 18, 2026 | Congress, Opinion, White House
When I was about 8 years old, I was playing a game of Monopoly with my cousins when one of them misplayed his hand. Furious that he was set to come in last, he threatened to ruin the game unless everyone let him break the rules so he could get ahead. When we refused, he flipped over the board.
That’s likely a familiar scene from many childhoods. What’s less familiar, however, is watching that kind of petty destructiveness unfold with the brat being played by the president, and the stakes being our nation’s premier civic institutions.
Donald Trump appears to be threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after his attempts to affix his name to the building have been thwarted. And while it might be tempting to roll one’s eyes at it as childish immaturity, the president is displaying a troubling nihilism that could intensify in his final years in office.
Trump has spent much of his second term fixated on vanity projects, including turning the Kennedy Center into a bastion of MAGA propaganda. Last winter his handpicked board voted to add his name to that of the Kennedy Center. He also changed the programming to suit his personal political and cultural interests. But things quickly went south. Artists cut ties with the performing arts center en masse, and ticket sales and donations plunged. In May a federal judge determined that the renaming violated the law — and that it could only be changed by Congress. Trump’s name was taken off the facade.
Trump has lost the game, and he’s threatening to flip over the board.
Another attempt by
by Zeeshan Aleem | Sep 18, 2026 | culture, Opinion, White House
The Trump administration, bereft of any serious ideas of its own, excels at scaring up some concept or faction on the left — wokeism, DEI, socialism, communism — and then frantically warning it will trigger America’s descent into a hellscape. Now, in an unexpected twist, President Donald Trump’s government is turning its attention to “effective altruism,” a niche philosophical and social movement focused on the idea of maximizing efficient giving often by arguing against traditional charities and focusing on “doing the most good possible for the most people.” If a 2023 poll still holds true, the overwhelming majority of Americans know nothing about it.
As Axios reported, this week the Defense Department has posted messages on X calling for “Americanism, not effective altruism.” Defense Department Undersecretary Emil Michael slammed the ideology on Fox News, calling it “dystopian,” and then the Defense Department boosted the clip on X. The focus on hammering effective altruism appears to be part of Trump’s strategy for opposing regulation of artificial intelligence. Many figures in the effective altruism movement favor regulating AI toward the end of doing good for humanity, whereas Trump’s position is that no regulation other than the instincts of a “SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT” will ensure AI is used appropriately.
The administration’s focus on effective altruism is a head-scratcher. Effective altruism is not widely known. Moreover, the administration’s quest to try to fearmonger about it is likely to be a heavy lift and bound to make it look more callous and out of touch with Americans on one of the hottest policy issues of the day: how to rein in AI.
When explained in basic terms,
by Michael A. Cohen | Sep 18, 2026 | Congress, Opinion
On Wednesday afternoon, Speaker Mike Johnson adjourned the House and sent the 433 current members back to their districts. They won’t return until after the midterm elections.
It is a fitting end to what has been, undoubtedly, the most ineffective, underperforming and borderline useless Congress in American history.
This might seem like a harsh judgment, but the numbers bear it out. Since convening in January 2025, the 119th Congress has passed 108 major laws — and only 36 this year. Up to this point on the calendar, no Congress has passed fewer laws in modern American political history — except for the last Congress, which was also led by Johnson.
Johnson said in January, “I have no intention of getting in the way of President Trump and his administration,” and on this point he’s been a man of his word.
The 119th is on pace to pass fewer laws than any Congress since the Civil War. Even the infamous Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-1948 enacted more than 900 laws. Johnson has canceled 63 scheduled voting days. Through Aug. 31, the House was in session for 383 hours — an average of 48 hours per month. By comparison, the onerous Medicaid work requirements Republicans enacted in 2025 asked recipients to work 80 hours per month.
And this isn’t just an issue of quantity; it’s also one of quality. The only major bill the 119th enacted was H.R. 1, widely known as the “big beautiful bill,” which cut taxes, slashed Medicaid and remains deeply unpopular with Americans.
Beyond that, the 119th’s legislative accomplishments were the Laken Riley Act, which tightens immigration enforcement; the Genius Act, which regulates the crypto
by Howard Polskin | Sep 17, 2026 | culture, Opinion
Let’s come right out and state the obvious. “Run, Hide, Fight: Infidels,” the new film produced by the right-wing website The Daily Wire, isn’t going to be the crossover action movie hit that the right has insisted mainstream audiences want — if only their entertainment diet weren’t limited to “woke” Hollywood content.
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire and a producer of the film, said in August that this is the film “Hollywood refused to make.” Specifically, a film where Muslims are presented as the bad guys and, as he put it, “the type of folks who have perpetrated the vast majority of terror attacks on planet Earth and who are currently migrating en masse to the West with the help of a compliant left and now are infiltrating our institutions.”
Shapiro must view standard Hollywood fare as unsubtle political propaganda — because that’s what “Infidels” is. Despite decent action movie production values, its jackhammer political messaging will most likely limit its appeal to those already in the MAGA choir or teenage boys hooked on video games.
Perhaps the creators of “Infidels” think audiences are yearning for nonstop political signaling, because that’s what they provide.
The film centers on a small group of armed Muslim terrorists who invade fictitious Laughton University in Virginia and hold dozens of students and administrators hostage. Unsurprisingly, a good number of the hostages are cartoonishly portrayed as stock stereotypes.
In one of the opening scenes, far-left pro-Palestine student demonstrators have taken over the campus quad chanting “ICE Out, Gaza In” and “Free, Free Palestine.” The setup is so obvious they might as well wear T-shirts that read “Sitting Duck.”
