NEW: Woman Identified and Arrested on Two Felony Charges After Vandalizing DC’s Sacred World War II Memorial – Faces Up to TEN YEARS in Prison

Melissa L. Farris. Credit: U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro

The wicked individual who spray-painted and dumped chemicals on DC’s WWII memorial has been identified and arrested.

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier, the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., was vandalized on Thursday with bubbly soap and graffiti containing a very nasty message to the military.

The memorial fountain bubbled over with suds, and a complete loser painted the words “Clean hands Dirty $” on one of its surfaces.

The area was also splattered with red and green paint.

The Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, vowed zero tolerance and a commitment to finding the person or people responsible.

Now, justice has arrived.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has just announced that authorities have arrested Melissa L. Farris and faces the following charges: Depredation Against Property of the United States and Destruction of Veterans’ Memorials.

Should Farris be convicted of both charges, she faces up to 10 years in prison.

Pirro also shared two photos of Farris. One shows her wearing sunglasses and looking into the camera.

The other shows her spray-painting words on the memorial.

“Vandalizing our World War II Memorial is a despicable attack on a sacred monument honoring the Americans who fought and died for our freedom,” Pirro wrote on X. “Those Americans include my father and grandfather.

“This morning, we are filing two felony charges, Depredation Against Property of the United States and Destruction of Veterans’ Memorial in Federal District Court against Melissa L. Farris, offenses that carry penalties of up to ten years in prison,” she added.

She is now in custody.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/new-woman-identified-arrested-two-felony-charges-after/

Margaret Brennan Exists To Speak Power To Truth

Image CreditIf anything bad happens in the second week of the month, this is proof that you should have remained silent and obedient in the first week of the month. You’re being dangerous!

Every family has a wine aunt who makes weddings and holidays a chore. Her second glass of Sauvignon Blanc turns her into a lawn sign with legs, and she starts repeating slogans: Why don’t you believe in science? America is a nation of immigrants! Trans women are women!

In her day job as an administrator for a nonprofit organization or an associate vice president of human resources, Aunt Madge is an enforcer. She lives to police boundaries. You can’t say that! She has no thoughts. She says the slogans. She is received wisdom, embodied, and she knows that what you said isn’t true, because she hasn’t seen it in The New York Times. Yes, she owns some version of this shirt.

Wine aunt’s mind, to the extent that she has one, is shaped by credentials and authority. Professors are very important. Doctors are never wrong, unless they’re doctors who question the party line. Experts must be trusted, because they are definitionally correct. They have a degree in that. And is there another bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the kitchen?

Margaret Brennan is America’s wine aunt. If you doubt this at all, watch her astonishingly dimwitted encounter last weekend with the longtime Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, who now runs the NIH. Bhattacharya has all the credentials, but public heterodoxy plus a job in the Trump administration take away all his credential points. The discussion is a witch-burning from the opening bell, and Brennan is fidgety and agitated in the presence of the witch.

As you watch, note above all that Brennan never says what she’s saying. She hints, she implies, she does the laziest guilt by association, but she never nails down any claim that she wants to suggest. Someone shot up the offices of the CDC, and he was influenced by “misinformation” — isn’t it bad that Trump, Trump, Trump?

Brennan doesn’t explicitly say that the shooter was influenced by any specific statement from any specific person. She takes two claims: The shooter was motivated by misinformation, and people in the Trump orbit spread misinformation. She then assumes that they’re both entirely true and connected by a bridge. (Bhattacharya, a gentleman to the point of being disadvantaged, never attacks her premise in a way that Marco Rubio or J.D. Vance would know to do immediately.) People questioned public health officials; isn’t that murder?

Every piece of underlying logic is insane. You can’t criticize a pharmaceutical corporation’s product, because someone might get shot. Government officials are not to be questioned, because someone might take it wrong and try to kill them. If anything bad happens in the second week of the month, this is proof that you should have remained silent and obedient in the first week of the month. You’re being dangerous!

Above all, Brennan is speaking for power and the status quo. She’s the voice of Albert Bourla and the GS-14. Weren’t you behaving very dangerously when you questioned the authorities? Incredibly, she carries this line through a conversation with a current authority without noticing that she’s eroding her own premise: How dare you question public health officials, Dr. NIH Director?

In the world of Wine Aunt Brennan, public health officials were right. They bravely fought the pandemic! No mistakes were made. No excesses occurred. They only wanted to stop the virus. To believe all of that in 2026, or at this point pretty much any of it, implies a level of self-hypnosis that brings to mind the Manchurian Candidate. Anthony Fauci is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.

There’s nothing in there. She’s not thinking about any of it. No cognition occurs. There’s a fortress wall, and she’s firing at people who cross the moat, armed with some words that somebody wrote down on a piece of paper for her.

The great open secret about the leftist establishment girlboss is that none of them know anything, and none of them wish to know anything. When you meet with them, you hear their slogans, but they can’t answer a question or explain a premise to save their lives. A follow-up question slays them.

The Italian writer Luca Dellanna has succinctly described the descent into a culture of “ritual over merit,” a social world he calls a “mimetic society.” In that kind of society, he argues, people regard themselves as important and high-status because they can perform the status-defining rituals with exceptional uniformity. “In mimetic societies,” Dellanna writes, “conversations are rituals where turns are taken to reassure the other that he is performing well.”

This is exactly what Brennan is doing. A reference to “misinformation” is supposed to trigger a response that agrees about the importance of trusting the experts. It’s not an interview or a discussion; it’s an enforcement mechanism, like offering the secret handshake to see if the person on the other end of it knows how to return the signal.

Bhattacharya failed, because he thought. And Margaret Brennan won’t tolerate that kind of irresponsible behavior. We still don’t really care, Margaret.

https://thefederalist.com/2026/08/11/margaret-brennan-exists-to-speak-power-to-truth/

How the Egypt-Ethiopia feud could upend Trump's plans in Africa

The US has no plan for dealing with the complex rivalries that threaten its strategy in the region

On July 19, President Donald Trump’s top Africa adviser, Massad Boulos, held a series of talks in Cairo with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia. The participants framed the discussions as an effort to bolster security in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.

These talks came as Egypt and Eritrea separately insisted that governance of the Red Sea should remain the exclusive responsibility of its littoral states, a thinly veiled warning to Ethiopia, a landlocked nation of 140 million people with growing maritime ambitions.

Later, on August 4, Boulos rejected speculation that Washington was assembling an anti-Ethiopian alliance, insisting it seeks amicable relations with all regional states. That rebuttal signals Washington’s delicate balancing act in an increasingly fractured region.

Indeed, just days after the talks in Cairo, Washington declared its interest in seeking deeper involvement by more American companies in Ethiopian Airlines’ planned $12.5 billion airport near the capital, Addis Ababa.

The U.S. may not be deliberately favoring Cairo over Addis Ababa, or vice versa. But without a coherent strategy, it is taking a scattershot approach to addressing thorny issues like the Egypt-Ethiopia Nile dispute, Red Sea access, and the African Union’s security mission in Somalia.

This risks hardening the very alignments from which Washington is trying to distance itself.

“I think Washington believes it can have its cake and eat it too: it can advance its own strategic objectives in the region around counterterrorism, critical minerals, maritime security and commercial diplomacy, while managing through ignorance the increasingly volatile regional competition playing out,” said Cameron Hudson, a former U.S. official who worked on Africa at the CIA, State Department and National Security Council.

At the heart of the dispute is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Despite Cairo’s protests since work on the dam began in 2011, it was inaugurated in September 2025, and is now Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam.

The $5 billion project remains contentious. Attention today has shifted to how Ethiopia will manage water releases to downstream Sudan and Egypt, especially during droughts, and whether any commitments will be binding.

In January, Trump informed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi he was ready to restart mediation between Egypt and Ethiopia, calling for Ethiopia to undertake predictable water releases during droughts.

But words alone may prove futile. During Trump’s first term, the U.S. suspended some assistance to Ethiopia after Addis Ababa refused to sign a proposed U.S.-brokered agreement. Trump later suggested Egypt might “blow up” the dam.

Given Trump’s prior support for Egypt, Ethiopia has been suspicious of American motives, David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia and adjunct professor at George Washington University, told RS.

“U.S. engagement with Eritrean officials in Cairo will add to Ethiopia’s concerns,” he said. Indeed, the contact was notable given decades of strained U.S.-Eritrea relations, and because it came amid heightened tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Addis Ababa’s wariness toward Washington will further complicate any U.S. efforts to soften the Egypt-Ethiopia rivalry, which has now spilled into the Red Sea.

Along with Eritrea, Egypt has sought to contain Ethiopia’s ambitions for maritime access in the Red Sea. In January 2024, Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with the governing authorities in Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia whose independence is recognized only by Israel. The agreement envisaged granting Ethiopia a 50-year lease for a 12-mile stretch of coastline near the Gulf of Aden in exchange for the eventual recognition of Somaliland as an independent state. Egypt responded by offering arms and troops to Somalia, while reaffirming its support for Somalia’s territorial integrity.

Amid increasing regional and international pressure on Addis Ababa, Turkish mediation in late 2024 helped restore diplomatic relations between Somalia and Ethiopia, effectively sidelining the MoU.

But Ethiopia remains determined to gain access to the Red Sea, which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has framed as an existential economic necessity.

Abiy has barely concealed Ethiopia’s ambition to secure access to Eritrean ports, particularly Assab, at times framing the port as historically Ethiopian territory that was lost when Eritrea seceded in 1993. His rhetoric has provoked deep alarm in Asmara, pushing Egypt and Eritrea closer.

Egypt and Eritrea signed a maritime transport agreement in May, announcing a shipping route linking their ports and again insisting that the maintenance of Red Sea security be reserved for littoral states. In response, Ethiopia accused Egypt of attempting “to encircle and obstruct our efforts to gain maritime access to the Red Sea.”

This has created a self-reinforcing cycle: Egypt views Ethiopia’s drive for a port as key to its ambitions to become the dominant regional power in the Horn, while Ethiopia sees Egyptian cooperation with Somalia and Eritrea as encirclement.

It would be a mistake to describe Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia as a fixed bloc, however. Somalia, after restoring diplomatic ties with Ethiopia, now seeks to balance its relations with Cairo and Addis Ababa. Meanwhile, Eritrea’s distrust of Ethiopia stems from the neighbors’ own deep history of conflict — including their devastating border war in 1998-2000, which killed tens of thousands — rather than Cairo’s influence alone.

Still, growing distrust could harden these alignments into lasting divides. And Washington’s cross-cutting diplomacy may worsen that risk by leaving regional governments unsure of its intentions.

In May, the U.S. pursued a reset with Eritrea after their long period of cold relations, including the prospect of sanctions relief, which can be read as an attempt to discourage Ethiopia from using force in its quest for maritime access.

At the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met his Ethiopian counterpart, Gedion Timothewos, for talks on security cooperation, commercial opportunities and promoting regional de-escalation.

Washington’s decision to withdraw support later this year from the United Nations logistics operation underpinning the African Union’s mission in Somalia adds a complication.

The mission has provided a unique multilateral mechanism for Egyptian and Ethiopian cooperation – in this case, in maintaining security in Somalia. Mogadishu may now seek to forge bilateral agreements with both countries that would encourage them to compete for influence instead of cooperating.

Washington’s initiatives in the region aren’t necessarily contradictory. But American outreach to Cairo and Asmara may reinforce Addis Ababa’s perception that it is being contained, while Egypt and Eritrea may see closer U.S. commercial ties with Ethiopia as a boost to their rival.

“Absent a real strategy, these are all zero-sum policies. It’s one reason why Boulos keeps having to try to defuse the conspiracies swirling around U.S. policy by denying their existence,” said Hudson.

“At some point, Washington needs to make clear to everyone what it is hoping to achieve.”

Now, Washington risks watching regional escalation outpace its diplomacy. The stakes extend beyond diplomatic tensions. Even though Abiy ruled out war with Eritrea last year, military mobilizations and hostile rhetoric have kept the risks of miscalculation and escalation alive.

Washington may also find working multilaterally with regional partners to devise a unified strategy desirable.

On the Nile, Washington could support an AU-led agreement on drought management, data-sharing and predictable water releases. On Ethiopia’s Red Sea access, it could build on Turkish mediation by backing a commercial deal under Somali sovereignty, while tying its outreach to Asmara directly to regional de-escalation rather than treating it as an isolated Red Sea transaction.

“Washington could encourage Ethiopia and Eritrea to engage in discussions for guaranteed Ethiopian access to the sea and even suggest some incentives that Eritrea might find attractive,” said Shinn, adding that other key players could participate in such an initiative.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/egypt-ethiopia-tensions

Insurrection Barbie Nukes Nutball, Antisemite Joe Kent From ORBIT and It's a GLORIOUS Thing

Joe Kent, the self-styled intel guru and former NCTC director, is treating a single anonymous Washington Post leak like gospel while pretending the rest of the evidence simply doesn’t exist. He’s peddling the “low-confidence Israeli intel” line as the smoking gun for how America supposedly stumbled into war with Iran, conveniently forgetting Trump’s own words about Secret Service and military warnings, the Reuters report on a credible missile threat, and the Biden DOJ’s own court cases documenting Iranian assassination plots against Trump. 

Selective memory much? 

When the leaks cut against the preferred narrative, Kent suddenly discovers the virtue of skepticism; when they don’t, he’s all-in on the unnamed sources.

Anything to screech about Israel, we guess.

Post continues:

... bias? Are they the same former intelligence people who had high confidence in Russiagate?

 “Low confidence” does not mean “false.” It means the intelligence was insufficiently corroborated for the agency to assign greater confidence. 

Also the part he conveniently ignores is that Donald Trump himself says the Secret Service and the U.S. military told him to change planes because of the threat.

Trump’s own words:

“I go by Secret Service and the military... They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane.”

Reuters has also reported, citing a source briefed on the incident, that what prompted the maneuver was a credible and imminent missile threat.

But you only mention one claim because you are selling a narrative and you don't even have the balls to say Trump is owned by Israel. You just keep insinuating it. 

The proposition that Iran wants to assassinate Donald Trump is not dependent on Israeli intelligence at all. And he knows it. 

In November 2024, the Biden Justice Department publicly charged IRGC asset Farhad Shakeri and alleged that the Iranian regime tasked him with surveilling and plotting to assassinate Donald Trump. That came from an American federal criminal investigation, not an Israeli intelligence briefing.

Then in March 2026, a federal jury convicted Asif Merchant of murder-for-hire and terrorism offenses. DOJ says Merchant was a trained IRGC operative who admitted at trial that the IRGC sent him to the United States to arrange political assassinations. DOJ further states that potential targets included Donald Trump and that Merchant understood Trump could be the target.

So:

Iranian assassination plotting against Trump documented before this incident.

A Biden DOJ case alleging the Iranian regime specifically tasked an operative with plotting Trump's assassination.

A separate IRGC operative convicted by a federal jury in 2026 after admitting Iran sent him to America to arrange political assassinations.

Trump saying his own Secret Service and military ordered the July aircraft change because of a threat.An elaborate real-world security operation carried out to conceal the President's actual aircraft.

A Reuters source describing the missile threat as credible and imminent.

And against all of that you have an anonymous official saying CIA analysts had low confidence in one particular Israeli-derived piece of intelligence.

Why do you treat anonymous intelligence officials as unimpeachable truth every time their leak undermines Trump or Israel, while discarding named officials, criminal prosecutions, operational evidence, and even contradictory intelligence sourcing when those facts interfere with the narrative?03/03, 03/07, 03/16, 03/30, 04/07, 05/07, 05/31, 06/25, 07/20 and now 08/12.

These leaks all cut against Trump's public case for the war, against Israeli assessments and against US-Israel military success. I wonder why that is.

Ooh, ooh, we know.

https://twitchy.com/samj/2026/08/14/insurrection-barbie-nukes-nutball-antisemite-joe-kent-from-orbit-and-its-a-glorious-thing-n2431289

Two More Democrat Politicians Caught for Lucrative Fraud

We can add a mayor from Massachusetts and a vice mayor from Mississippi to the list of Democrat politicians who committed fraud to enrich themselves personally. Turns out a political ideology of entitlement and dishonesty translates not infrequently into money laundering and theft of taxpayer funds.

IRS Criminal Investigation special agents helped the FBI to arrest Mayor Brian DePeña, of Lawrence, Mass., over accusations that he fraudulently obtained more than $1.5 million from the Small Business Administration (SBA) during the COVID-19 era. In an official statement, the FBI said DePeña was “cashing in on a public health crisis and blatantly defrauding a government program meant to keep businesses afloat during the pandemic.”

Instead of using the SBA loans as the law required him to do, DePeña applied them to his political campaign, his personal taxes, and even to $883,000 worth of high-interest mortgages that he had for more than one property in the area. The FBI and IRS arrested DePeña on August 14.

The FBI said of the SBA loans, “This was emergency financial assistance meant to be a safety net for struggling businesses, not Mr. DePeña’s own personal ATM. When elected officials misuse federal funds for personal gain, they’re breaching the trust of their constituents — and breaking the law. Together, with our partners, the FBI will continue to doggedly pursue anyone who defrauds the federal government. You’ll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that ‘easy money’ won’t seem so easy after all.”

Recommended: Chinese-American Warns Against Hiring Chinese Assets in Congress

The other story, from August 13, involves this ex-councilman who is reportedly a Democrat:

WCBI reported that Vice Mayor Mickens now faces charges of laundering a monetary instrument and Offering Inducements to Influence an Award of Contracts, based on information the local outlet received from the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office. The Lowndes County Grand Jury indicted Mickens and Marcus Trent Dawson Sr.

Dawson, owner of HVAC and Mechanical Company LLC, helped Mickens concoct a scheme to misuse city contracts for their own personal benefit.

[WCBI] Mickens is accused of conspiring with Dawson to manipulate city contracts for flooring contracts Mickens wasn’t eligible to receive, in exchange for future H-VAC contracts for Dawson, and cash payments that they would allegedly launder.

Mickens, a flooring contractor, represented Ward Two on the Columbus City Council from 2009 to 2025 when he was defeated for re-election by Roderick Smith.

This court case, like that of DePeña’s, is still in its preliminary stages. It is not clear if Mickens will plead guilty or try to deny all the charges. Last year, Mickens was in trouble with authorities for allegedly threatening a challenger for his office. He really sounds like a thoroughly unstable individual.

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2026/08/14/two-more-dem-politicians-caught-for-lucrative-fraud-n4956137

Biden-Era HHS Gave $80 Million to Islamist Groups With Terror Ties

Of all the things the United States State Department or Health and Human Services might choose to fund, groups supporting Islamic terrorism should not even be on the list. And yet, it's happened; both of those agencies have sent $2 billion in taxpayer money to a group that was convicted in an Israeli court of providing support to Hamas.

Why would we send money to people like that?

The State Department worked with World Vision to distribute $2 billion in global health foreign assistance even though an Israeli court convicted the nonprofit’s Gaza affiliate operations manager of sending up to $50 million to Hamas in 2022. Separately, the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) provided nearly $80 million to 14 organizations linked to terrorism and extremism.

In 2022, we might note, that was during the Biden administration. Anyone surprised? It would be easy to lay all this at Joe Biden's feet, but he may well have had very little idea what was going on, as by 2022 his obvious and apparent dementia had already taken hold. No, this is a stark example of what can happen when you have a leftist administration left to its own devices, with a chief executive that is incapable, incoherent, and incompetent.

Here's the onion:

The Middle East Forum (MEF) recently reported that 14 terror-linked and extremist organizations, led by CAIR, collected nearly $80 million from HHS through the Refugee Resettlement, Health, and Mosque Renovation grants. Through this fund, the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) California chapter received the most of any Islamist group, collecting $42.2 million in funding from the HHS to provide legal and social services to Afghan refugees.

And there's the Baby Ruth bar in the swimming pool: CAIR. To call CAIR a group with ties to terror groups is rather an understatement; they are vocal about claiming to condemn terrorists, penning frantic statements condemning violence with one hand while passing around American taxpayer dollars to support groups like Hamas with the other. They have a long history of doing just this:

CAIR has a long history of ties to terrorism, as The National Review has reported. The organization might not drop bombs, but it has a history with Hamas, a terror group designated by the U.S. government, having accepted money from a Hamas front group and raising money for that same group after 9/11. 

Since 2009, CAIR has included a statement on its website stating: “We unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the U.S. Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”

In 2004, CAIR settled a lawsuit it initiated while acknowledging that statements made by an anti-CAIR group were accurate, including that CAIR is a terrorist supporting front organization that receives some money from terrorists, and that the organization has links to and was founded by Islamic terrorists.

So, why were the State Department and HHS, under the administration of Joe Biden, sending billions in taxpayer dollars to CAIR and other groups aligned with Islamic terror groups? That's the real question here. Back in the bad old days of the Soviet Union, there was an old saying kicking around attributed variously to Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev that stated, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Now, in the case of CAIR and the other Islamist groups, it seems the United States is sending them money to buy the rope to hang us with, and make no mistake, that's what groups like Hamas would do, given half a chance.

Here's the thing: This and other suspect disbursements should prompt a top-to-bottom audit of exactly where our taxpayer dollars are going. That information should be made public, to boot. We have a right, after all, to know just who our government is sending our money to.

And, once again: Remember this in November, when it comes time to vote.

https://redstate.com/wardclark/2026/08/14/biden-era-hhs-gave-80m-to-islamist-groups-with-terror-ties-n2205597

Not Winning? Just Change the Rules

What binds the new Democratic Party to the new Democratic Socialists is a set of shared issues and values. That is, the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome — lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster — helped give birth to the socialists.

But the overriding commonality among those on the new Left is that if they do not get their way, they blame the "system." Then they seek to change the rules, no matter how hallowed those laws and conventions may have been or how much they themselves benefited from them in the past.

When the Left lost the White House, Congress, and, for the most part, the Supreme Court, it began clamoring to change the system. For left-wing Democrats, that angst also translated into calls to bring in two new blue states, weaponize the FBI and DOJ, ally with social media to suppress the news, and spy on congressional representatives. All the socialists and communists did was up the ante in destroying norms by calling for the end of the presidency, the Senate, the border, the police, and the Pentagon.

By 2021, it was time to destroy the southern border and welcome in some 10 million illegal immigrants — without audits, English proficiency, health checks, or the ability to support themselves.

Had Kamala Harris been elected in 2024, we would have had another four years and another five million illegal aliens. And perhaps America would have gone from 50 million foreign-born residents to 60 million, or about 18 percent of the population.

In this regard, the Left sees California as our most liberal — and most ideal — state and perhaps concludes that the reason is that 28 percent of its resident population is now foreign-born, with the majority arriving with vast needs for health, education, housing, and food subsidies.

Today, 50 percent of all births in California are paid for by Medi-Cal, which serves 40 percent of the population. When second-generation immigrants are added to the foreign-born population, the two groups together comprise roughly 45 percent of California's current population. This demographic transformation is one of the most profound in American history and came at a time when traditional civic education stressing assimilation, acculturation, integration, and knowledge of American traditions, history, and values was nearly nonexistent in California public schools.

So one way of achieving radical change was to alter the demography and welcome as many immigrants as possible who, in the first or second generation, might follow the examples of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

They represent an entirely new sort of immigrant who arrives — or is born to immigrant parents — with both complaints against and dependence on their host country. They can see only the sins of America, never the catastrophes of their homeland that drove them or their parents here. This strange demand to change the rules whenever they do not bode well for angry and aggrieved parties permeates every possible manifestation of the Left, but is especially egregious when demanded by immigrants who came originally as uninvited guests but almost immediately damned their magnanimous host.

It is strange for so many new immigrants to act on an elemental desire to reach America — only on arrival to profess that it is full of toxic, sinful people, living and dead. Yet the damned hosts have inexplicably welcomed total strangers like themselves, and have allowed them to share in the freedom, security, and prosperity created by the dead whom the newcomers nonetheless endlessly slander and smear.

If particular minorities statistically did not do as well on the SAT as Asians and whites did on average, the solution was certainly not SAT tutorials in the inner city or K-12 SAT outreach, demands for tougher classes in grammar, math, and analytics, or a return to the melting pot rather than the current salad-bowl tribalist model.

Instead, after the George Floyd riots, the call went out to abolish the SAT entirely — as if there had never been a purpose behind its creation. In fact, merit-based SAT exams were designed in the 1920s and 1930s to allow anyone, regardless of race, gender, region, or class, to enter college through meritorious performance on the tests — and, in particular, to overcome old-boy insider preferences and regional and ethnic prejudices.

Yet when the SAT was mostly abolished for four or five years, higher education thought it had solved the problem of minority underrepresentation.

In fact, its racialist war on standards only magnified its dilemmas. The SAT had once informed admissions officers not only about applicants' qualifications but also whether admitted students could do the work once enrolled.

But soon liberal professors learned that many of the newly admitted cohorts lacked the K-12 training necessary to do customary university coursework. Yet if professors maintained their regular courses, requirements, and grading, they might soon be labeled racists once particular minorities were shown to do less well than Asians and whites.

So universities inflated grades. They introduced new remedial and gut courses. And they reduced the required coursework. But again, racialism is never a solution to problems. Instead, it is a catalyst that fuels them — as we have seen with the new notion that plagiarism is not an actionable offense when the culprit can plead victim status, whether a former president of Harvard or a current professor at Cambridge. But there are ancient laws and norms that insist intellectual theft is a crime and should be punished, not rewarded or ignored.

Soon employers noticed that the reading, writing, and analytical skills of graduates from prestigious schools were proving dismal. Alumni complained both that the reputations of their almae matres were in decline and resting on the fumes of the past and that their own children, who had prepared diligently to ensure suitably competitive grades and SAT scores for admission, were being rejected solely on the basis of their race.

The Left likewise pushed for lower physical standards for the military's ground-combat brigades so that women, on average far less strong than their male counterparts, could join elite units. Again, the same ignorance and arrogance were evident. Physical standards were based on a century of combat experience in which morale, group discipline, and unit success rested on ensuring that all soldiers achieved a common level of physical strength and endurance.

This neo-Marxist-driven demand to mandate equality — albeit now substituting racial and gender consciousness for class consciousness — requires the destruction of established traditions, laws, and norms. The radical Left's key agendas — defunding the police, destroying the border, granting mass amnesties to illegal aliens, subsidizing wind and solar energy while waging a war on fossil fuels, and expanding racial essentialism in hiring and admissions — have never won more than 30 to 40 percent support among the general public. Yet the solution was not to ask why, and then to reflect, reboot, and recalibrate in order to discover how the Left had lost public support.

Instead, the solution was to alter or destroy the system that had denied them power.

So communists, socialists, and radical Democrats prefer moving the goalposts. When equality of opportunity was largely achieved, next they demanded a mandated equality of outcome.

With the ascendancy of a large, affluent middle class, the Left, in its eternal search for a victimized class, pivoted and replaced class oppression with racial victimization.

And when there were not yet enough victimized minorities to guarantee a majority constituency of the aggrieved, the Left redefined the victimized to include anyone who was not a white heterosexual male, regardless of income and privilege.

And when the people finally tired of the leftists' totalitarian social engineering, the Left sought to change the system by radically altering the way Americans vote, the manner in which government is formed and functions, and, finally, the very demography of America.

The common denominator? Human nature revolts at forced statism, coercive redistribution, and government-mandated equality of results. It instead yearns for liberty and freedom.

No matter how much deception, camouflage, or brainwashing is employed, statism, socialism, and communism can never sustain public support. Throughout history, the Left has therefore begun by changing the rules and altering the demography — if not initially through changes to election rules, bureaucratic fiat, and biased court orders, then eventually through sheer violence.

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2026/08/13/not-winning-just-change-the-rules-n2681199