Each day between now and the May 7 conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis, we are running a profile of a different “papabile”, the Italian term for a man who could be pope. There’s no precise way to identity these contenders; it’s mostly a matter of weighing reputations, positions held and influence wielded over the years. There’s also certainly no guarantee one of these candidates will emerge wearing white; as an old bit of Roman wisdom has it, “He who enters a conclave as a pope exits as a cardinal.” But these profiles will feature the leading names drawing buzz in Rome right now, at least making it very likely that they will get a look. Knowing who these men are also suggests issues and qualities other cardinals see as desirable heading into the election.

It’s one measure of how young Luis Antonio “Chito” Tagle was when he burst onto the scene as a cardinal in 2012 that he was a contender for the papacy in 2013 but seen as far too young, and now 12 years later he’s again a serious possibility but in some circles his age, 67, still counts against him.

Given that the last two popes were elected at the ages of 78 and 76, one understands the reaction, but that’s not stopping a wide swath of the chattering classes from hailing the Filipino prelate – who reportedly prefers to be called by his nickname “Chito” rather than by his clerical title – as tanto papabile, meaning a highly serious candidate.

Paradoxically, however, as often as Tagle is touted for the papacy by media outlets, external commentators and ardent fans, he’ll at the same time be dismissed by an insider, insisting that he lacks the gravitas for the office and that his Vatican career has had uneven results.

No matter how you slice it, though, the prospect of the “Asian Francis” taking the reins of the Catholic Church is an intriguing prospect.

Born in Manila in 1957, Tagle went to seminary in Quezon City and later did his doctoral work at The Catholic University of America in Washington. He also studied in Rome before returning to the Philippines to serve as a pastor and teacher.

Tagle’s doctoral dissertation at Catholic University, written under Fr. Joseph Komonchak, was a favorable treatment of the development of episcopal collegiality at the Second Vatican Council. Moreover, Tagle served for 15 years on the editorial board of the Bologna, Italy-based “History of Vatican II” project founded by Giuseppe Alberigo, criticised by some conservatives for an overly progressive reading of the council.

From the beginning, Tagle was seen as a rising star in the Asian church, evidenced by his appointment in 1997 to the Vatican’s main doctrinal advisory body, the International Theological Commission. (The story goes that when then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger introduced Tagle to Pope John Paul II as a new member, Ratzinger jokingly assured the pope that the youthful-seeming Filipino had, in fact, received his first Communion.)

Tagle was named bishop of the Diocese of Imus in 2001, where he became famous for not owning a car and taking the bus to work every day, describing it as a way to combat the isolation that sometimes comes with high office. He was also known for inviting beggars outside the cathedral to come in and eat with him. One woman was quoted describing a time she went looking for her blind, out-of-work, alcoholic husband, suspecting she might track him down in a local bar, only to find that he was lunching with the bishop.

Here’s another typical story. Not long after Tagle arrived in Imus, a small chapel located in a run-down neighborhood was waiting for a priest to say Mass at around 4 a.m. for a group mostly made up of day laborers. Eventually, a youngish cleric showed up on a cheap bicycle, wearing simple clothes and ready to start the Mass. An astonished member of the congregation realised it was the new bishop and apologised that they hadn’t prepared a better welcome. Tagle said it was no problem; he got word late the night before that the priest was sick and decided to say the Mass himself.

Much the same reputation followed Tagle to Manila, where he also became known for a broadly centred approach to matters of policy. He took strong positions against the Philippines’ Reproductive Health Bill, which included promotion of birth control. Yet his towering social concern was defence of the poor, and he also displayed a strong environmental streak.

There’s no doubt of Tagle’s charisma and ability to move crowds. He’s also a very 21st-century prelate, a sort of Cardinal-Influencer with a vast social media following – he’s got an active X account and a Facebook page, where he can be seen, among other things, swaying and gyrating to traditional Filipino dances.

Recently the right-wing LifeSite News dug up an old video of Tagle crooning the John Lennon classic “Imagine”, blasting him for singing what it termed an atheist anthem. (For the record, the clip does not actually include him singing the key line, “imagine there’s no heaven/it’s easy if you try/no hell below us/and above us only sky.”) The reaction illustrates that for every person charmed by such scenes, there’s someone else, possibly including among Tagle’s fellow cardinals, who finds them unbecoming.

In December 2019, Pope Francis named Tagle to head the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, effectively the Vatican’s missionary department. Tagle and then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had gotten to know one another at the 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, and clearly the Pope wanted the charismatic Filipino cardinal in the mix of his administration.

At around the same time, Tagle had been elected president of Caritas Internationalism, the Rome-based federation of Catholic charities around the world. Taken together, the two roles seemed to position him to be the de facto leader of the Church across the developing world in the name of the Pope.

Alas, things didn’t quite work out that way. Many observers found his tenure at the congregation, now the Dicastery for the Evangelisation of Peoples, to be uninspired, and his oversight of Caritas led to an actual meltdown in 2022 when he was removed as president and the entire leadership team basically fired.

What’s the case for Tagle as pope?

To begin with, he’s an effective communicator and evangelist at a time when everyone agrees that mission, meaning attracting people to the faith, has to be a top priority for the next pope. His simple, natural style, coupled with his gift for playing to crowds and stirring both laughter and tears in almost equal measure, would make him an immediate star on the global stage.

In addition, Tagle would also put a face and a voice on the dynamism of the Catholic Church across the developing world, including in Asia, which with 23 cardinal electors will be an important force in this conclave. At a time when almost three-quarters of the 1.3 – 1.4 billion Catholics in the world live outside the West, at least some cardinals might find the idea of an Asian pope attractive.

The fact that Tagle is of Chinese descent could be an asset in terms of the Vatican-China relationship, though it may also be of concern to some of the other Asian cardinals already a bit leery of Chinese hegemony in the region.

The case against?

To put it bluntly, there are a number of observers in the Church, including not a few cardinals, who privately believe that Tagle simply isn’t ready for prime time. They regard his public persona as superficial, and behind the scenes they say he’s had six years now to prove he can do the heavy lifting of real leadership in the Vatican without much to show for it.

That’s a special concern in a time when most cardinals feel the next pope has to be a strong governor, capable among other things of addressing the severe financial crisis facing the Vatican in the form of unfunded pension obligations and other deficits. If Tagle couldn’t effectively run Caritas, they may wonder, what hope does he have with the entire Vatican to oversee?

In addition, more conservative cardinals probably also don’t care for Tagle’s theology and politics, which they find a bit too much left-of-centre. Basically, the indictment for this group would be that a vote for Tagle is really a vote for Pope Francis round two, only expressed in Tagalog rather than the Porteño dialect of Argentine Spanish.

Those concerns may be amplified by the prospect that, at 67, one can easily imagine him sitting on the Throne of Peter for twenty years, which may strike some observers as simply too long for comfort.

Whether Tagle actually has a serious shot at the papacy remains to be seen. Merely contemplating the prospect, however, all by itself, is an education in the riotous global diversity of Catholicism on the early 21st century.

RELATED: Cardinal Müller warns Church risks split if ‘orthodox’ pope not chosen

Photo: Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle. (Credit: Vatican Media, via Crux.)

The post Papabile of the Day: Cardinal ‘Chito’ Tagle first appeared on Catholic Herald.

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Cardinal Gerhard Müller has said the Roman Catholic Church needs to stand up to the “gay lobby” as part of taking a stronger position “on doctrine” that resists ideologically driven pressures.

The comments from the German cardinal, who is viewed as a influential traditionalist and was one of the strongest critics of Pope Francis during his papacy, came shortly before it was announced that the conclave to elect the next pope will occur on 7 May, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Cardinal Müller told Italian media La Stampa in a 28 April article that the next pope needs to be “strong on doctrine” and “determined to stand up to ideological lobbies, including the gay lobby”.

He said the next pontiff should also have “a solid theological and doctrinal formation”, and called for a return to “orthodoxy, doctrine founded on Scripture and apostolic tradition, and against heresy”.

Focusing on the issue of marriage and the “gay lobby”, he pointed to the words of Jesus as providing clarity on this controversial and polarised issue that increasingly roils the Church.

“Doctrine is not the property of the pope, the bishops or the faithful,” the German cardinal said. “It must conform to the word of Jesus, no one can modify it.

“If Jesus says that marriage is between a man and a woman, no one can change this doctrine. The homosexual lobby wants to equate marriage with unions between people of the same sex, but this totally contradicts the doctrine of the Bible.”

The late pope’s 2023 decision to allow the blessing of same-sex couples sparked enormous controversy, with bishops in Africa and Asia refusing to permit the blessings. It was one of a number of decisions by Pope Francis with which Müller vehemently disagreed and as a result spoke out on.

Despite their apparent differences, though, Pope Francis himself also criticised the issue of homosexuality when it came to its influence in the Church.

Perhaps one of the least covered but most significant of Pope Francis’s controversies was his use of a crude slang term in referring to homosexuals during a session with Italian bishops in May 2024.

Francis was in the Vatican’s synod hall on 20 May to address the spring plenary assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference (known by the acronym CEI), with roughly 230 bishops present, along with other clergy and supporting staff.

One of the topics that arose was the question of the admission of homosexual men to Catholic seminaries. Soon afterwards, rumours began to circulate that Francis had used an off-colour term in the context of the discussion, saying there’s already too much frociaggine in seminaries, which translates roughly to “faggotry”.

Some argued that since Italian was not the Pope’s mother tongue, he may not have understood that the term in question was offensive, especially given his reputation as the Pope of “Who am I to judge?”

Francis built a reputation for being friendly toward the LGBTQ+ community and its related issues, so media at the time took the position that he must have used the term almost accidentally, without intending to shock or offend.

The flurry of immediate backlash from the comment prompted a Vatican spokesman to put out a statement apologising, saying the Pope “never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he apologises to those who felt offended by the use of a term, as reported by others”.

In a May 28 statement, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni reiterated previous statements from Francis that “in the Church there is space for everyone, for everyone! No one is useless, no one is superfluous, there is space for all. Just as we are, everyone”.

But Pope Francis used the term again a month later, in a June 2024 meeting with priests in the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome. The Italian news service ANSA reported that on that occasion, Francis said: “In Vaticano c’è aria di frociaggine” – meaning: “In the Vatican, there is an air of faggotry.”

That comment contradicted the initial narrative that the Pope did not know what he was saying when he used the term frociaggine. Instead, it indicated that Francis knew full well what the term signified and chose to employ a second time in public as he had a point to make.

What Francis demonstrated in the frocaggine fiasco, writes Crux Vatican correspondent Elise Ann Allen, was that despite his insistence on the need to be more welcoming toward members of the LBGTQ+ community, he clearly believed that there was an unhealthy gay element to clerical culture, and thought it was important enough to speak out about it.

On 7 May, Müller and his fellow cardinals – the so-called “Princes of the Church” – will gather inside the Sistine Chapel to pick a successor to Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday at the age of 88 years old.

The date of the conclave was decided at a meeting of cardinals behind closed doors on Monday, two days after Pope Francis’s spectacular funeral in St Peter’s Square, reports the Telegraph.

The term “conclave” is derived from the Latin that means “with key”, and refers to cardinals being locked inside the chapel. Coming in the wake of a successful movie depiction of a conclave, the forthcoming gathering of cardinals to decide who will lead the world’s roughly 1.4 billion Catholics is being portrayed by much of the media as a battle between, in the words of the Telegraph, “progressives who want to continue the inclusive legacy of the late pope and traditionalists who want to roll back his reforms”.

In total, there are 252 cardinals in the Catholic church, but only 135 – those aged under 80 – are eligible to vote. Two have dropped out for medical reasons, another due to controversy, reducing the number of cardinal electors to 132.

Pope Francis appointed 108 of the cardinals – about 80 per cent – which it is argued gives the College of Cardinals a more “liberal” character, thereby making it more likely, it is reasoned, that they will choose someone with a liberal and reformist attitude similar to the late pontiff.

At the same time, however, conclaves have a track record of defying expectations and producing a pope that few saw coming.

The length of this coming conclave could well be impacted by the historically high number of cardinal electors and the sharply divergent views they hold.

The Telegraph reports the former head of the Italian Bishops Conference, 83-year-old Gualtiero Bassetti, explaining that it is hard to predict how long the conclave will last, though he suspects it won’t be long.

“There could be some difficulties because there have never been so many cardinal electors and many of them don’t know each other,” Cardinal Bassetti said.

“I have the feeling that this will not be a long conclave. Even among cardinals that I don’t know, and among those who come from the far reaches of the world, I see a great love for the Church and the desire for it to have a new leader as soon as possible.”

The longest conclave in history, which took place in the 13th century, lasted two years and nine months, while the longest during the 20th century lasted for five days.

The last two conclaves – those that elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 and Pope Francis in 2013 – lasted two days.

The cardinal electors come from 71 countries, with 53 from Europe, 23 from Asia, 21 from Latin America, 18 from Africa and 16 from North Africa.

Cardinal Müller has also warned, speaking out recently on a separate and earlier occasion, that the Catholic Church risks a schism if it does not choose an “orthodox” leader.

He has also criticised the use of labels “liberal” and “conservative” within the Catholic Church, pointing out the divide in the Church is deeper. The new pope, he said, “must be orthodox – neither a liberal nor a conservative”.

He said that “the question is not between conservatives and liberals but between orthodoxy and heresy”, adding: “I am praying that the Holy Spirit will illuminate the cardinals, because a heretic pope who changes every day depending on what the mass media is saying would be catastrophic.”

RELATED: Cardinal Müller warns Church risks split if ‘orthodox’ pope not chosen

Photo: German Cardinal Cardinal Gerhard Müller attends the swearing in ceremony for new members of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard at the Cortile di San Damaso, Vatican City, 6 May 2015. The ceremony is held on May 6 every year to commemorate the 147 halberdiers who died defending the Pope in 1527. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images.)

The post Cardinal Müller says next pope must stand up to ‘gay lobby’ first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Cardinal Müller says next pope must stand up to ‘gay lobby’ appeared first on Catholic Herald.

2 Timothy 4:3

For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires.

Bergoglio's disciples stubbornly continue to rely on him to defy the laws of God and the Church.

Bergoglio's apostate "Bishop" Stowe Affirms Support for ‘Blessings’ of Same-Sex ‘Couples’

Apostate Stowe received New Ways Ministry Award  for his homosexual activism.  

Apostate Stowe’s Diocese Promotes Homosexual Pride Month

Heretic Bishop John Stowe Participates Catholic Dissenters’ Pride Month Event

“The Pope must be faithful to the Magisterium of the Church, he cannot do whatever he wants,” Cardinal Gerhard Müller told Abc.es (April 29). He added that the pope's authority is neither absolute nor can it contradict the Word of God.

His examples: A pope cannot say “that lay people can celebrate the Eucharist nor allow Communion in a state of mortal sin. Nor can he govern the Church without the bishops, which is a divine right.”

Regarding fiducia supplicans, Cardinal Müller said that it lacked a “clear theological basis”, to the point of being rejected outright by some bishops' conferences.

“Marriage between a man and a woman is the center and foundation of human existence.”

Cardinal Müller added that homosexual ideology denies the pillars of Christian anthropology.

Dr. Seifert sends an open letter to Cardinals Re and Farrell demanding an investigation into Bergoglio's heresy.

 "St. Pius V and Pope Paul IV have decreed that all cardinal appointments made by a heretical pope are null and void."

(1) Nick Donnelly on X: "Breaking News Urgent intervention concerning the invalidity of the Conclave by Prof. Josef Seifert "St. Pius V and Pope Paul IV have decreed that all cardinal appointments made by a heretical pope are null and void." Examine the accusation of heresy brought by Archbishop https://t.co/Wg3q51MGLv" / X

February 15, 2025
Special Edition
The Left Goes from Madness to Irrelevance,
By: Victor Davis Hanson
February 5-12, 2025

Various polls show historical lows of public support for the Democratic Party, ranging from 31 to 41 percent approval.

Yet, at the same time, during a recent Democrat leadership conference, various panelists unanimously claimed that racism and sexism alone accounted for the defeat of Kamala Harris.

Do they think, then, that white male Joe Biden would have defeated Donald Trump or at least done far better than Harris? In fact, as Biden exited the nomination, he polled worse against Trump than did Harris—a black female polling higher than a white male.

The same irrational disconnect was evident during the recent wild Senate confirmation hearings. Democratic senators, in raucous fashion, shouted down and interrupted nominees like Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Kash Patel—in a way that was not true of the past Republican audits of Biden’s 2021 nominees.

Senators Schiff and Warren were the most egregious in their rudeness and came off the worst for it. Their outbursts had some general themes.

All were utterly unaware of their own unethical past and current shortcomings. The more Adam Schiff screamed at Patel, ordering him to turn around in his chair as if he were some sort of minion, the more Republicans remembered all the reasons why Schiff had been censured by his House colleagues: for chronically lying about the Russian collusion hoax and for lying that he had not any contact with the whistleblowers and his accomplices that fueled the first Trump impeachment.

The so-called Schiff memo accusing the Nunes majority report of the House Intelligence Committee was itself fraught with lies. And so, as expected, Schiff was exposed as a mythologist long ago by the inspector general’s report detailing his untruths. In any state other than California, his record of falsity would have ended his career; but in California, his controversial lies that Trump was a Russian puppet won him a Senate seat.

Elizabeth Warren screeched at Robert Kennedy for suing the pharmaceutical companies—until he pointed out that she, the supposed leftwing heroine, along with socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, were, in fact, the two largest recipients of Big Pharma money.

Many of the Trump nominees were accused of wanting to weaponize the government. Apparently, the senators were afraid that once in power, the Trump cabinet would do exactly what the Biden IRS, FBI, CIA, Pentagon, and DOJ had done: use the powers of their offices to wage lawfare and bureaucratic harassment of Trump and his supporters. In other words, the senators knew that if they were Trump and had suffered what they had dished out to him, and if now they were again in power, they know they would retaliate against themselves.

Otherwise, the Democrats were clueless that nominees like Hegseth, Bondi, and Patel were frequent guests on televised news and podcasts. Thus, they were experienced interviewees who had mastered modern media repartee and impromptu give-and-take. All the nominees had prepped studiously for the confirmation hearings.

In contrast, the Democrats winged it, and most were inept auditors anyway. So, naturally, they came across as unprepared and arrogant. They remained clueless about how they grated and repelled in the televised hearings—like petulant adolescents assuming their heated screaming substituted for light and clarity.

What did the Democrats not ask or care about? None wanted to hear RFK, Jr.’s strategies to combat an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Few, if any, wished to listen to Patel outline his plans to reform a weaponized FBI. Bondi was not asked about her views of the most critical challenges facing the Department of Justice.

In sum, after the pathetic performance of the Democratic “lions” of the Senate, the already rock-bottom public views of the Democrats will only go lower.

In their limited self-reflection, the Left keeps looking for reasons why they have lost the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court—and both the Electoral College and popular vote.

In lieu of confronting the frightening truth that their message is largely antithetical to the values and wishes of the majority of American people, they search and search for quick fixes: just one more Trump-Hitler comparison, yet one louder, more gross outburst at Kash Patel, perhaps just a few more invectives like “racists!” and “sexists!” to explain their losses.

Yet deep down, they know why the American people are tiring of them. And it is not just their obnoxious messengers, senators Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, Mazie Hirono, and Tim Kaine, whose rudeness, ignorance, and incompetence during the nominee hearings were reminders of the Democratic descent.

Nor was the problem trying to get away with another four years of foisting an enfeebled Joe Biden on the country, to serve a second term as a waxen veneer for the hard Left revolutionary agendas of the Obamas, the Warren-Sanders neo-socialists, and the woke squad—open borders, millions of illegal aliens, unlivable blue cities, massive deficits, green extremism, woke venom.

So, it is not the off-putting or comatose messengers or even the obnoxious methods of the current Democrat hierarchy that explain the party’s historic low polls and recent losses. Had a Warren, Sanders, or Kaine headed the ticket in 2024, they would have still lost. Even a so-called moderate Democrat, Josh Shapiro, could not have saved them.

The message, not the messenger, lost the Democrats and the American people.

Democrats did not enjoy 50 percent approval on a single issue. A sane party would have recalled its 1996 Democratic National Convention agenda, which called for secure borders, legal-only immigration, support for law enforcement, strong national defense, and fiscal sobriety aiming at balanced budgets. All that won Bill Clinton an easy victory over Republican candidate Bob Dole.

Instead, Democrats since the beginning of the Obama era have figured that by veering hard left on social issues like abortion on demand, glorifying illegal immigration, transexual chauvinism, and the unworkable and dangerous new green deal, they would capture the youth vote for a generation.

Instead, they had no clue that their own disastrous record of high inflation, interest rates, insurance costs, and gas and food staple prices trumped cultural issues and led to splitting the youth vote almost evenly between Trump and Harris.

Democrats also felt that by normalizing illegal immigration and an open border, a new cohort of 12 million illegal aliens from south of the border would energize the Latino vote. The new influx would ensure that the massively changing demography of America would continue to flip red states blue, as it has in the past, with states like California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.

In fact, open borders had almost the opposite effect. The more the world’s impoverished swarmed border towns and Mexican-American communities—jamming health care services, flooding the schools, spiking crime, trafficking children, and empowering gangs—the more Hispanic Democrats would not vote like Democrats but instead punish them.

By parroting “abortion,” “abortion,” “abortion” nonstop, the more the Left figured they had locked up huge majorities of women voters. Clueless, they never understood that women know better than men what hyperinflation looks like at the grocery store and gas pump. They value safe streets and the freedom to be secure from random criminals.

As a result, Harris failed utterly to capture the margins in old Democratic constituencies needed to offset the party’s huge loss of male and white voters.

Democrats mostly see Americans merely as a conglomeration of separate tribes: blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, gays, women, transsexuals, and upscale bicoastal whites. In their tribalist views, all the groups are seen as more loyal to their own tribal members than they are either to other tribes or to America itself.

In what they call “intersectionality,” Democrats believe that they have to fuse and weld together the disparate bands by tailor-made concessions to each. So, Leftists, in the manner of Roman emperors bidding for the loyalties of the Praetorian Guard, then barter for the support of each tribe by promises of various entitlements, exemptions, and policies. They do not see voters as universally human with identical desires and aspirations, who embrace shared national wishes for affordable housing, food, transportation, power, fuel, and health care that transcend what differences they may appear to hold by their respective superficial appearances.

In contrast, Trump and the MAGA movement likewise appreciated the various tribal and special interest groups in America. But, in contrast to Democrats, they sought to unite all factions by their shared concerns over crime, inflation, affordable housing, border security, and deterring enemies abroad. Those worries would trump their individual racial or gender differences that then became incidental, not essential, to who they were. In sum, Trump, of all people, substituted class concerns for racial and sexual tribalism and mirabile dictu, and proved far more ecumenical in attracting new constituencies than past “moderates” like the Bushes, John McCain, Bob Dole, and Mitt Romney.

The more such Republican inclusiveness won out, all the more furious Democrats weirdly turned on their own tribalist constituencies to blame them for the November loss. So, the Obamas charged that blacks suffered from false consciousness—in Marxist terms of not knowing what “really” was good for them (unless they listened to their master tutors, Barack and Michelle Obama).

Party hacks blamed Hispanics for “selling out” their elite liberal patrons by voting to close the border and keep their communities safe and prosperous. Some clueless leftists thought Trump should close the border to punish apostate Mexican Americans, unaware that the majority of the latter wanted the border closed.

The hard-left women of The View damned “white women” for supposedly voting in ways that were too materialist—like ensuring safety for their children, affordability for their households, and honor and pride for the country. They, too, were in an echo chamber as their shrillness, quasi-racism, and incompetence bled their audiences. Indeed, for the first time in history, pay-to-watch Fox News in the Morning, hosted by African American Harris Faulkner (The Faulkner Focus), captured a larger audience than the free-to-watch The View.

In sum, the Democrats are atomized, each faction steadily smaller and shriller than a possible whole—all fighting with one another, none willing to conduct an autopsy of what went wrong.

Or is it worse than that—given the Democratic National Committee just elected hard left Minnesotan Ken Martin, known previously for tweeting that then President Trump was guilty of treason, by citing the demonstrably false story that Russians were giving the Taliban bounties for killing Americans and that Trump had done nothing about it? Martin comes to the DNC from running the Minnesota Democratic Party and on the recommendation of his close friend Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. However, note that Walz was one of history’s most inept vice-presidential candidates and contributed to the 2024 Harris defeat. And Martin did not reverse Minnesota’s bleeding of leftist viewers; in fact, Harris got fewer votes in Minnesota in 2024 than Biden had in 2020.

Perhaps the best simile is that the Democrats are acting like addicts and cannot break from their woke-DEI drug that they apparently must inject to survive—even as they accept that such fixations are lethal habits that are killing their own party.

Nevertheless, like all end-stage addicts, Democrats feel that perhaps just one more hot shot, just one more powerful, pure fix, will send them into nirvana rather than finally to oblivion. And so, they have forgotten nothing and have thus learned nothing.

If you do not take an interest
in the affairs of your government,
then you are doomed to live under
the rule of fools.
Plato

January 20—Novus ordo seclorum?
(New Order of the Ages)
By: Victor Davis Hanson

Part One – January 21, 2025
How do we explain that the world is turning upside down after November 5, 2024, and will continue following January 20, 2025?

Symptoms?

Take the media?
The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and others suddenly did not endorse their usual left/Democratic presidential candidate this election. So, many of their writers are now fired or resigned in anger or fear.

Owners claim their own papers are too biased. Changes are promised. But why now? Why did CNN lose its defamation suit? Why is CBS thinking of settling with Trump after editing an interview with Kamala Harris to help her chances in the waning days of the 2024 campaign?

Silicon Valley? What happened there?

Instead of Mark Zuckerberg’s $419 million invested in ensuring the Trump campaign did not win (as in 2020), why are he and the wealthiest tech lords in the world traipsing to Mar-a-Lago? Why did Mark blame his former CEO Sheryl Sandberg for Facebook’s DEI mindless McCarthyism?

There is to be no more Trump-Hitler?

Even Joe and Mika took their hajj to Palm Beach?

Snoop Dog is no longer cutting videos about shooting Trump, but praising his near hero?

Bezos’s rockets and Elon’s are now to be frenemies?

Why did MSNBC suddenly fire(?)—or see leave—its CEO Rashida Jones? Was it just ratings, or public disgust as well with the likes of Rachel Maddow (who why now took a pay cut?) and the protected racist rantings of Joy Reid?

Why now, all of a sudden, do the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report to us that Team Biden and the media who covered the White House all knew that he was cognitively challenged from the start of his tenure as they both conspired to smear and slander all who spoke the truth?

Why is everyone shocked that Joe Biden just declared that a mythical 28th Amendment is “the law of the land”?

Again, why now these about-faces? Why not last July; why not, say, February or September 2022 or perhaps 2023? Why do we hear only now that Joe Biden signed an executive order banning LNG exports to Europe—and claimed he did not know what he signed?

Also, suddenly, there really was a Wuhan Lab origin to the birth of Covid, after all. And mirabile dictu Peter Daszak is no hero and not deserving of a single dime of more federal money? Will there be no more bobblehead Dr. Faucis to buy? Why is there no longer a market for them and other Fauci paraphernalia?

Why is Liz Cheney no longer a folk hero? Was she not praised for coaching a witness and shutting out other Republicans from serving on the January 6 House committee?

Christopher Wray sent in his resignation and now suddenly warns us of cabals of Chinese espionage operatives in the U.S.? Again, did they just now appear?

Why is everyone from CEOs to the FBI abruptly shutting down their DEI departments? Would they have done so if Harris had won?

And did we not hear that the caravans heading northward to our border have been turning around? Why is Mexico so complimentary of the once diablo Trump?

Why is Trudeau gone?

For that matter, why did the Assad regime abruptly fall after the election, and why does Hamas wish to negotiate, and why does the current Iranian president suddenly swear Iran wants no bomb, no desire to assassinate Trump, no wish for a wider war with Israel?

As for the trivial, why did the Danish government just put Greenland imagery on its royal coat of arms? And why did it send $1 billion to Greenland, and why not 1, 5, 9 years ago?

So why is the world turned upside down, as the British played after their shocking defeat at Yorktown (e.g., “Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.”)?

Part Two – January 22, 2025
The obvious answer to all these disconnects, shockers, and paradoxes is not quite the whole answer: that Trump won in the greatest political comeback in U.S. history, that he might well be a Reaganesque president to Biden’s Carter, that his success will be his revenge and reveal to the country just how badly our John Gill Biden ruled in comparison.

Or even perhaps the answer is that the Left here and our enemies abroad know what they have done to Trump and, during the Biden dereliction, to the U.S. itself during the last four years. And thus, they know what these scoundrels would do if they were now in the place of an ascending Trump and a re-awakening U.S. if they had experienced from themselves what they did to Trump and us.

Another explanation is that we are waking up from a bad four-year dream, or recovering from a bad hangover, or have arisen from a coma, and for the first time have rediscovered confidence within ourselves.

What caused our slumber, or rather what were the goads that drove the U.S. absolutely insane from the summer of 2020 to January 20, 2025?

Was it the fatal combination of the insane Covid lockdown, and the hysterical, Stalinist reprisals to any dissent? Did that social isolation and economic ruin offer tinder for the George Floyd riots?

How otherwise would entire cities go up in smoke of 35 dead and $2 billion in arson and looting damage over the unfortunate death of a violent career felon? No one wished to remember that the deified Floyd once broke into a home and put a gun to a woman’s pregnant stomach, and at the time of his arrest was in self-imposed ill health, high on fentanyl, suffering heart disease, recovering from Covid, arrested for passing counterfeit currency, resisting arrest, and perished while a cop sneered as he kept him down on the pavement gasping for breath? To lament Floyd’s death but to disagree he should appear in murals with a halo and feathered wings, remember, was heresy, blasphemy, and grounds for firing.

Did all that warrant the deaths and destruction that followed, and would it have occurred had not the locked-up and quarantined population been first driven crazy by the pandemic and the reaction to it? Was all that the fuel that reawakened the woke/DEI virus and nearly fatally infected the country?

So, the four-year hiatus is over. And there is a sense of joy, or rather relief that abroad America will once again protect its friends and worry its enemies. We will try to forget the years of craziness of printing trillions of dollars, of retribalizing and fixating on our superficial appearances, of demanding from others the confession that there are three equal sexes, and the windmills and solar panels will keep us warm in winter and cool in summer, day and night, and China is merely a friendly rival, and that thieves steal from stores only because rich people made laws that it is bad to take things people need but they do not.

So, the pseudo-realities constructed during the years of madness have evaporated and left behind a foul-smelling vapor. Are we supposed to laugh even now about the eerie machinations of our “51 experts” who claimed the damming Hunter laptop was “Russian disinformation,” or that Joe Biden, our savior on January 6 and the defender of our Constitution can leave office declaring in his dementia that he alone has just ratified and put into law the 28th Amendment as he says, “the law of the land.”

So, what will follow now that we Americans have arisen from our four-year stupor and once again are masters of our own destiny?

How long will it take for the Left, now in their caves licking their wounds, to reemerge as they did during the Senate confirmation questioning? Then the hysterics, ignorance, and obnoxiousness of Senators Hirono, Kane, Schumer, Warren, or Whitehouse likely guaranteed the unanimous or near-unanimous votes to confirm all the nominees who endured their adolescent performance art rants.

Who knows such answers? But for now, perhaps there is a month, maybe three, to fuel a renaissance, a counter-revolution that will first return us to normality, as the last shall be first, the first last.

The final corruption of Joe Biden
With only 15 minutes to go as president,
Joe Biden snatched infamy from the jaws of obscurity.

By: Jonathan Turley
January 20, 2025
(Emphasis added)

With record-low polling and widely viewed as a “failed” president, Biden completed his one-man race to the bottom of ethics by issuing preemptive pardons to members of his own family. The pardons were timed to guarantee that the media would not focus on yet another unethical act by this president. He need not have worried. For four years, the media worked tirelessly to deny or deflect the corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family.

The pardoning of James Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens, and Francis Biden brought an inescapable clarity to the corruption of what is known in Washington as Biden Inc.

I have written about the Biden family’s corruption for decades. Influence-peddling has always been the favorite form of corruption in Washington, but this city has never seen the likes of the Biden family. Millions of dollars were secured from foreign sources and distributed to various Biden family members.

Biden repeatedly lied about the influence peddling. He long denied knowing about his son’s foreign clients or business. He denied ever meeting Hunter’s clients. Later, photos and emails showed that Biden had clearly met these clients and knew about the business deals. He was fully aware that his family was cashing in on his name and various offices.

Even Biden’s claims about handling the Trump cases were recently contradicted. While long claiming that he left these cases to the Justice Department and took no position on the merits, the Washington Post recently reported that Biden was irate over the failure to prosecute Trump before the election. He also reportedly lashed out at Attorney General Merrick Garland and said he regretted his appointment in light of the failure to nail Trump.

One of the most glaring lies was that he would never pardon his son. Few people believed him. Indeed, Hunter Biden’s bizarre criminal defense made no sense unless he knew he had a pocket pardon if all else failed.

Once he was forced out of the presidential race, Biden was freed up to sign a pardon for any and all crimes committed over a ten-year period by his son. He insisted that he really hadn’t been lying. He claimed that no ordinary person would have been tried for his son’s crimes — a manifestly untrue statement. He also emphasized that he had to take this step as a father of a son who was a hopeless addict and has now been clean for years.

However, the latest family pardon shatters even that rationalization. These Bidens are not even charged with any crimes, but Biden wanted to give them cover from any possible prosecution for anything. It was the ultimate sign of contempt for the American public’s intelligence and his office’s integrity.

Biden has long exercised situational ethics, and with his powers coming to an end, the situation demanded that he cash out before his credit ended. In granting these pardons, Biden was seeking to protect not just his family but also himself. He was the object of the influence peddling and repeatedly lied to bury the scandal. This insulation of his family serves to move the threat farther from himself.

Biden, however, may have been too clever by half this time. In the final moments of his presidency, he broke into the open and exposed not just himself but his allies in the media. Reporters are now fully visible as willing dupes in one of the greatest corruption scandals in this country’s history.

In his pardon statement, Biden insisted that:
“the issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”
Of course, that is the very opposite of what most people will conclude. More importantly, the pardons will not end the threat to his family.

Figures such as James Biden have been accused of lying to Congress about the influence-peddling operation. He can still be subpoenaed, and if he lies, he can be charged with a new crime.

Indeed, after James Biden’s pardon, it will be argued that he has less basis to claim the right to remain silent about any alleged crimes committed during the period for which the pardon applies. (He could argue that there is a danger of state charges, but that is less credible due to the running of statutes of limitation and other factors.)

The pardons, if anything, make such an investigation even more compelling for those seeking answers to longstanding questions of corruption.

Biden sealed his legacy with a finality that escapes most presidents. While his diminished mental capacity will remain an issue for historians, these pardons conclusively established his longstanding lack of ethics. It was Biden’s final act of corruption.

For a president who liked to call others “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” Biden proved that, in the world of political corruption, the ponies are entirely optional.

COMMENTS, QUESTIONS,
LESSONS AND THOUGHTS
ABOUT WHERE WE HAVE BEEN
AND WHERE WE ARE HEADED

By: E.P.Unum
January 20, 2025

When the history of the Biden Administration is written, I predict it will go down as the most inept, insensitive, unintellectual, ineffective, and corrupt four years in the entire 250-year history of the United States of America.

Consider the following as a preface to the major focus of this essay:

America is a nation unlike any other in the history of mankind. Our Republic was founded on the principle that the rights of its citizens emanate from God, not man. Among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our Constitution, created by our Founders, has endured for 250 years, and the bedrock of that Constitution is that we have a government that is accountable to We The People, not the Supreme Court, Congress, or the President…but to We The People, not the other way around! Americans believe that every life is sacred and worth defending, and millions of Americans dressed in brown, khaki, blue, and grey have traded their yesterdays for our future and paid for it with their blood and sacrifice.

Over the last four decades, there has been an intense effort by liberal Democrats, who call themselves Progressives, to alter our system of government. These individuals seek to expand the Supreme Court and pack it with liberal jurists, thus ensuring the decisions of the Court go in favor of liberal ideals. These people are hell-bent on creating a large centralized government that will control every facet of our lives because at the very core of their beliefs is the notion that individuals are incapable of making decisions about their future well-being. They seek to do this by frivolously spending taxpayer dollars without regard to the effects such spending holds for the people they are sworn to serve or the general economy, i.e., inflation. They have already bastardized Social Security by siphoning funds to launch the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, who also used funds from Social Security to help fund the Vietnam War. More recently, President Biden tapped these funds to help pay for the 15 million illegal immigrants that have invaded our nation, coming through our southern border and Canada to the north. Most Americans are not aware that funds provided by working Americans and ostensibly used to help provide funds for retirement are not for that purpose at all; instead, the Supreme Court back in 1960, in a not-so-well publicized case Fleming vs Nestor, ruled that funds collected by the Social Security Administration are merely a tax providing funds for the general treasury to be spent as Congress or the President sees fit. Stated simply, Nestor vs Fleming created a giant piggy bank for liberal pet projects. Far too few people in America realize this, but it is a fact.

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a major war in Ukraine, which we have funded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars; the Middle East in turmoil with Israel defending itself against proxies of Iran like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi Rebels in Yemen who are also firing on cargo ships carrying goods for nations around the world. None of this is a surprise given our feckless leadership and the ill-advised retreat from Afghanistan, where we left $85 billion in state-of-the-art weapons, tanks, APCs, aircraft, ammunition, night vision equipment, RPGs, machine guns, rifles, and pistols to the enemy. All of this was on the orders given by President Joe Biden, who is, in my opinion, singularly the most corrupt, incompetent leader our country has ever had and who, in my opinion, should have been tried for treason along with General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Our country finds itself in this situation as the sun sets on the Biden Presidency. Thank God, on November 5, 2024, we elected Donald J. Trump as our 47th President, who takes office today, January 20, 2025.

President Trump is by no means perfect, but at least he loves our country, and that alone is a marked departure from the past four years.

Now for some lessons, questions, comments and observations:
· Democrats are likely to continue to be obstructionists to anything and everything President Trump tries to do. A leopard does not change its spots, and Democrats refuse to heed the message from We The People. These uber-liberal obstructionists have clearly been following the gameplan cited by Saul Alinsky, a professor at the University of Chicago, in his book Rules For Radicals. His book offered ways to cripple our government and change society and garnered the support of many politicians, including Barack Husein Obama, Hillary Clinton, and many social activists.

Rules For Radicals provides eight steps to effect significant government and
societal change as summarized below:
1) Healthcare — Control healthcare, and you control the people
2) Poverty—Increase the Poverty level as much as possible. Poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you provide everything for them to live.
3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way, you can increase taxes, which will increase poverty.
4) Gun Control — Remove the ability of the people to defend themselves from the Government. That way, it will be easier to create a police state.
5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income). Transfer money from the wealthy to the poor in whatever way possible.
6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to and what children learn in school.
7) Religion — Remove the belief in God from the Government and schools.
8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent, and it will be easier to take from (Tax) the rich with the support of the poor.
· In reviewing these Rules for Radicals, does any of this seem familiar to you? Do you think this resembles a Republican Platform or a Democrat Platform? It is a Democrat Blueprint for disaster.

· Don’t you find it just a wee bit curious as to why President Joe Biden, on his last day in office, felt the need to pardon General Mark Milley, Liz Cheyney, a number of family members, including his brother Jim, and Dr. Anthony Fauci when no charges were ever levied against any of them? Maybe I am wrong, but I have never heard of pre-emptive pardons (until it was tried with Hunter Biden last summer and slapped down by a judge). It begs the question…what did these people do?

· I am so happy that Joe Biden’s granddaughter gave birth in Los Angeles last week, making him a great-grandfather. But announcing it while in Los Angeles with wildfires raging seems a tad bit insensitive and an inappropriate time to do so.

· Thanks to Israel, Iran is reeling. Its most potent proxy, Hezbollah, has been rendered impotent, and the Syrian Regime under Bashar Asad has collapsed and its military capabilities decimated by air strikes by Israel. Due to a powerful Israeli airstrike in late October that took out Iran’s most advanced air defense systems, leaving it naked to future raids, especially on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel achieved all of this despite the lack of support from the Biden Administration.

· It gives me no pleasure to say this. Still, we must face reality: people in the Biden Administration and the so-called journalists in mainstream media and talking heads on TV shows were all complicit in hiding that our President was struggling and in no condition to lead our nation. Why they failed to take action by invoking the 25th Amendment is a sign of incredible weakness and a total lack of integrity and character. Their failure to call this out and take action borders on treason.

· How do you run out of water in fire hydrants in a city like Los Angeles? Surely, there must be some explanation for this. Maybe Governor Gavin Newscom can address this. I haven’t heard from him about this recently.

· I do hope that President Trump issues pardons to many of the people in jail for their involvement (or lack of involvement) in the January 6, 2021, protest, many of whom were denied their due process rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. I did take note that the ladies on the View declared that the January 6, 2021, protest was “the equivalent to World War II and the Holocaust.” Those two global events left 100 million people dead, so their declaration was a bit out of touch. Wonder what they were smoking or where they learned their history!

· I can’t wait to read James Comer’s book All the President’s Money. An analysis of the Biden banking records, along with testimonies from Hunter Biden business associates before Comer’s committee, showed millions of dollars coming in from Chinese, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Kazhkhistan sources ($30 + million) all through a host of offshore companies controlled by Hunter Biden. Jason Galantis, a former Hunter Biden business associate now serving 16 years in prison for fraud, testified that “Hunter Biden’s primary goal was to make $billions for the family, not just millions.”

· I watched intently as President Biden boarded Marine One with his wife, Jill, and departed Washington, D.C. He leaves a mess and a cadre of people more interested in creating chaos and subverting the rule of law. But President Trump will get it fixed. I wish Biden well, but several health issues beset him, and the many lies and falsehoods he has promulgated over the years have taken their toll on him. His legacy, like his political career, is rooted in lies and deceit.

Our focus today needs to be on the future. And President Trump will do just that.

Full List of Donald Trump’s Executive Orders
Signed in the First Week

By: Andrew Stanton
January 21, 2025

President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders and other presidential actions on Monday, fulfilling a campaign promise to enact a sweeping conservative agenda upon his return to the White House.

Among other things, the president:
· withdrew from the landmark Paris Agreement,
· rescinded 78 Biden-era executive actions and
· implemented a federal hiring freeze.

He also signed several immigration-related executive orders and issued orders:
· curbing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,
· announced upcoming tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and
· issued pardons to more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes related to the deadly January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Trump signed his first few executive orders before the inaugural luncheon Monday afternoon. The orders appointed dozens of Cabinet-level officials and acting officials across the government, pending Senate confirmation of Trump’s Cabinet nominees. Officials who were appointed in acting capacities via executive orders include:
· James McHenry as acting attorney general.
· Robert Salesses as acting Secretary of Defense.
· Dorothy Fink as acting Secretary of Health and Human Services.
· Benjamine Huffman as acting Secretary of Homeland Security.
· Mark Averill as acting Secretary of the Army.
· Tom Sylvester as acting CIA director.
· Mark Uyeda as acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
· Andrew Ferguson as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

Trump officials also immediately shut down a Biden-era Customs and Border Protection app that allowed migrants to apply to legally enter the U.S. by seeking asylum.

Trump signed a number of other executive actions at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., where he addressed supporters in the late afternoon. The actions he signed included:
· The rescission of 78 Biden-era executive orders, actions, and memoranda.
· A regulatory freeze prevents bureaucrats from issuing more regulations until “we have full control” of the government.
· A freeze on all federal hiring except in the military and a number of other excluded categories.
· A requirement that federal workers return to full-time, in-person work.
· Directing agencies to address Americans’ cost-of-living “crisis.”
· Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and informing the United Nations of the U.S.’s withdrawal from the landmark climate treaty.
· A directive to the federal government “ordering the restoration of freedom of speech and preventing government censorship of free speech going forward.”
· A directive to the federal government “ending the weaponization of government against the political adversaries of the previous administration, as we’ve seen.”

Trump then headed to the White House, where one of the first things he did was pardon more than 1,500 people convicted in connection to the deadly January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Many of Trump’s campaign promises may be able to be implemented by executive order, but others will require support from Congress.

Republicans have a majority in the House and Senate. Still, their slim House majority and the existence of the Senate filibuster mean Trump will need cooperation from at least some Democratic lawmakers to pass parts of his agenda.

Many of these orders are likely to face legal challenges over the coming months, as liberal groups and watchdog organizations have pledged to sue the Trump administration over some of the president’s campaign pledges.

Immigration
Trump signed an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. The order will almost certainly face legal challenges since birthright citizenship is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

He also signed an order designating Mexican drug cartels and some other organizations to be foreign terrorist organizations.

He also declared a national emergency at the southern border, allowing him to use federal funding to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border without congressional approval.

“That’s a big one,” Trump said while signing the order. “People have wanted to do this for years.”

He also reinstated the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases went through U.S. courts. He suspended the Refugee Admission Program “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

Immigration, Trump’s signature issue, will be a focal point of several executive orders, especially during his first few weeks in office. He promised mass deportations starting the first day of his administration, though these efforts are also likely to be challenged in court.

Climate and Drilling
The president signed a number of executive orders withdrawing the United States from key agreements and agencies.

“I’m immediately withdrawing from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord ripoff,” Trump said Monday at the Capital One Arena. “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.”

He also withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization, which will deprive the organization of millions of dollars in funding.

Trump issued another order declaring a “national energy emergency,” which could allow him to unilaterally bypass certain environmental regulations.

Tariffs and Taxes
Trump fulfilled his campaign promise to impose steep tariffs on countries like Canada and Mexico, saying that as of February 1, there will be a 25 percent tariff on imports from both countries.

He also signed an executive order saying that a global minimum corporate tax deal supported by the Biden administration and negotiated with over 100 countries has “no force or effect” in the U.S. without an act of Congress.

Trump signed a pair of executive orders to boost oil and gas drilling. One order seeks to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve.

The second orders a review of policies that “burden the development of domestic energy resources” and eliminates the Biden-era “electric vehicle (EV) mandate.”

TikTok
On the social media front, the president signed an executive order extending the deadline for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app, just one day after a law requiring its ban took effect. The app went offline for a few hours in the U.S. on Sunday but became available again after the company announced that it believed Trump would block the ban from taking effect. Trump’s executive order gave ByteDance an additional 90 days to divest from TikTok to avoid a ban on the app.

Transgender Rights and DEI Efforts
The president also signed an executive order that could significantly curtail transgender rights, which Trump and Republicans made a focal point of their campaigns.

In one executive order, Trump said his administration will use “clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”
“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” the executive order said. “These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

The president also signed an executive order gutting federal programs to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workforce, describing them as “wasteful,” “illegal and immoral.”

Trump directed the White House budget office and the Justice Department to “coordinate the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”

The executive order marks a massive victory for conservative and right-wing activists, who have argued that DEI programs unfairly discriminate against those who are deserving of certain jobs and school placements. Advocates of DEI policies, meanwhile, argue that having a diverse and inclusive environment helps attract more talent, fosters creativity, and enhances overall performance.

Renaming Gulf of Mexico and Other ‘America First’ Priorities
The 47th president signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

He also reverted the name of Mount Denali, the highest mountain in North America, to Mount McKinley. The peak was called Mount McKinley until then-President Barack Obama changed it in 2015 to Denali, the traditional Athabascan name, in all federal documents.

Trump made these changes to “honor American greatness,” the executive order said.

The president also signed an order directing the secretary of state to “champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first.”

And Will Not Do

What the Trump Nominees Have Not Done

And Will Not Do

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

December 5, 2024

Deflated by the resounding November defeat, the left now believes it can magically rebound by destroying Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.

Many of Trump’s picks are well outside the usual Washington, DC, and New York political, media, and corporate nexus.

But that is precisely the point—to insert reformers into a bloated, incompetent, and weaponized government who are not part of it.

Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, is already drawing severe criticism.

His furious enemies cannot go after his resume, since he has spent a lifetime in private, congressional, and executive billets, both in investigations and intelligence.

Instead, they claim he is too vindictive and does not reflect the ethos of the FBI.

But what will Patel not do as the new director?

He will not serially lie under oath to federal investigators as did interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a current Patel critic.

He will not forge an FBI court affidavit, as did convicted felon and agency lawyer Kevin Clinesmith.

He will not claim amnesia 245 times under congressional oath to evade embarrassing admissions as former Director James Comey did.

He will not partner with a foreign national to collect dirt and subvert a presidential campaign as the FBI did with Christopher Steele in 2016.

He will not use the FBI to draft social media to suppress news unfavorable to a presidential candidate on the eve of an election.

He would not have suppressed FBI knowledge that Hunter Biden’s laptop was genuine—to allow the lie to spread that it was “Russian disinformation” on the eve of the 2020 election.

He will not raid the home of an ex-president with SWAT teams, surveil Catholics, monitor parents at school board meetings, or go after pro-life peaceful protestors.

Decorated combat veteran Pete Hegseth is another controversial nominee for secretary of defense.

What will Hegseth likely not do?

He will not go AWOL without notifying the president of a serious medical procedure, as did current Secretary Lloyd Austin.

He will not install race and gender criteria for promotion and will mandate diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

He will not insinuate falsely that cabals of white supremacists had infiltrated the military—only to alienate that entire demographic and thus ensure the Pentagon came up 40,000 recruits short.

He will not oversee the scramble from Kabul that saw $50 billion in U.S. military equipment abandoned to Taliban terrorists.

He will not watch passively as a Chinese spy balloon traversed the continental United States for a week.

He will not allow the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to promise his Chinese communist counterpart that the People’s Liberation Army would first be informed if the President of the United States was felt to issue a dangerous order.

He will not rotate from a defense contractor boardship into the Pentagon and then leave office to rotate back there to leverage procurement decisions.

He will not oversee the Pentagon’s serial flunking of fiscal audits.

Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is certainly a maverick. He may earn the most Democratic hits, given his former liberal credentials.

But what will RFK also not do as HHS secretary?

He will not oversee his agencies circumventing U.S. law by transferring money to communist China to help it produce lethal gain-of-function viruses of the COVID-19 sort—in the manner of Dr. Fauci.

He will not organize scientists to go after critics of mandatory masking and defame them.

He will not give pharmaceutical companies near-lifetime exemptions from legal jeopardy for rushing into production mRNA vaccines that have not traditionally been vetted and tested.

He will not leave office to monetize his HHS expertise and thus make millions from the pharmaceutical companies.

Trump’s Director of National Intelligence nominee, former congressional representative and military veteran Tulsi Gabbard, will soon be defamed in congressional hearings.

But what has Gabbard not done?

She did not join “51 former intelligence authorities” to lie on the eve of the 2020 election that the Hunter Biden laptop “had all the hallmarks” of a “Russian information/disinformation operation”—in an effort to swing the election to incumbent Joe Biden.

She did not lie under congressional oath like former DNI James Clapper, who claimed he only gave the “least untruthful answer” in congressional testimony.

She did not encourage the FBI to monitor a presidential campaign in an effort to discredit it—in the manner of former CIA Director John Brennan, who lied not once but twice under oath.

She did not fail to foresee the American meltdown in Kabul, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, or the Houthis takeover of the Red Sea.

We are going to hear some outrageous things in the upcoming congressional confirmation hearings.

However, we will not hear about the crimes, deceptions, and utter incompetence of prior and current government grandees.

The current crew, not their proposed Trump replacements, prompted the sick and tired American people to demand different people.

Voters want novel approaches to reforming a government that they no longer trust and now deeply fear.