Commentary: The Debate Americans Are Not Having

Voting Line

Tonight, the presidential candidates will have their first debate. But there is one critical election issue the American people are not debating at all. They agree that non-U.S. citizens should not vote in U.S. elections.

This is a convenient opinion for Americans to hold as it is also the law.

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Commentary: ‘Get Out Now– Inside the White House on 9/11, According to the Staffers Who Were There

George Bush

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I anticipated a busy but relatively calm day at the White House.

I was the special assistant to the president for management and administration, and President George W. Bush was in Sarasota, Florida, promoting the No Child Left Behind legislation. The senior official in the White House was Vice President Dick Cheney. First lady Laura Bush was scheduled to travel to Capitol Hill to brief senators on early childhood education. On the South Lawn, tables were being set up for that evening’s congressional barbecue.

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Commentary: Bad Climate Policies Cause More Deaths than Climate Change

Climate Protest

During Vivek Ramaswamy’s recent event at the Cato Institute, protestors derailed his presentation by getting on stage and chanting “climate con-man,” among other similar allegations. But it’s not just rabbles of unknown activists accusing Ramaswamy of climate falsehoods.

Last year, Ramaswamy said, “The reality is, more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”

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Commentary: The Real Reason Democrats Fear Losing in November

Donald Trump

Democrats understand that once you’re atop a tiger, you can’t get off. They understand that because they’re living it via their prolonged lawfare campaign against Trump. By pulling out all the stops to stop him, they have raised November’s stakes — and the possibility that their misuse of government offices for political purposes will be investigated — beyond those of a normal presidential election.

How worried Democrats are about losing this November’s presidential election is clear from the unprecedented actions they have taken to win. Going back to last year, they unleashed four legal cases against Donald Trump in separate states. When these did not derail him with the public (his support grew), they turned against their candidate and forced their duly elected nominee out of the race against his will.

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Commentary: Reasons Women Don’t Dress Traditionally

Long Dress

I wrote an article this past year detailing my experience of wearing exclusively dresses and skirts, due to symptoms of my third pregnancy. I am now on the other side of this experience—I delivered my third son and am healing very well postpartum. To my own surprise, I find I have not gone back to wearing my old favorite jeans! (Teenage me would gasp in shock.)

I continue to wear traditional clothes most of the time, to the point that I own mostly dresses now. I find myself looking back on the surprising discoveries this time has taught me. I used to have a myriad of reasons why I didn’t want to wear skirts, of course. Most women do. But now, I have experienced firsthand how inconsequential these arguments actually are. There are far fewer practical objections to traditional dressing than many of us think. Let’s go through three common reasons women cite as to why they don’t want to wear dresses, and why in reality, this type of wardrobe is still perfectly accessible.

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HHS Pushes Child Gender Transitions with Threats of Suicide

Transgender youth

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is using “Suicide Prevention Awareness Month” this September to push the lie that transgender medical interventions stop children from committing suicide.

The Daily Signal obtained a newsletter the HHS sent on Friday sharing resources on suicide prevention for “LGBTQIA2S+ Youth.” The resources promote the idea that LGBTQ+ children are likely to commit suicide if they don’t receive irreversible gender transition procedures, like surgeries and hormone replacement regimens.

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Commentary: The Hidden Vote

Illegal Immigrants

Former President Donald Trump is slightly ahead in the polls and, as in 2016 and 2020, he is drawing massive crowds at his rallies. Some knowledgeable observers have even speculated that Trump could be on the verge of a landslide electoral college victory.

But, while our attention is being drawn to the polls, the campaigning, and the strategies of the presidential candidates, what about the taxpayer-funded electoral apparatus that has been created over the past four years by the Biden-Harris regime?

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Migrants Reportedly Make Up Roughly 75 Percent of Arrests in Midtown Manhattan

NYPD

Migrants reportedly make up roughly 75% of arrests in Midtown Manhattan and a large bulk of other New York City (NYC) neighborhoods, according to the New York Post.

Illegal migrants and other foreign nationals living in shelters are flooding New York City’s criminal justice system, according to law enforcement sources that spoke anonymously with the Post. These migrants are being arrested for robbery, assault, domestic violence and other crimes across NYC.

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Commentary: The Sad Reasons Americans Give for Not Having Kids

Parents teaching child how to ride a bike

The baby bust is here.

The reality is clear: Americans are having fewer kids. In 2023, America had 2 percent fewer births than in 2022, hitting a record low, according to newly released finalized data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Commentary: This Labor Day, Remember the True Value of the American Worker

Mechanic

The American worker lives by the motto “an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.” While the attitude behind that adage is celebrated this Labor Day, it is important to remember that Americans work for more than just money — we take pride and purpose in what we make and accomplish.

American workers are not some cog in a machine. They are craftsmen, perfectionists, innovators and, most of all, worthwhile investments. Ipsos polling in 2023 showed that a majority of Americans believe it is “extremely important” that their work “helps people and society.”

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Northern Border Sector Continues to Break Records in Apprehensions

Illegal Borger Crossers

The busiest U.S. Customs and Border Protection sector at the northern border continues to break records in apprehensions with foreign nationals coming from 85 countries to Canada to illegally enter the U.S.

In less than 10 months, Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended 15,000 foreign nationals from 85 countries who all illegally entered the U.S. through Canada, the greatest volume reported in this time period in recorded history.

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Commentary: The Forgotten Meaning of Labor Day

Labor Day Celebration

Labor Day is a U.S. national holiday held the first Monday every September. Unlike most U.S. holidays, it is a strange celebration without rituals, except for shopping and barbecuing. For most people it simply marks the last weekend of summer and the start of the school year.

The holiday’s founders in the late 1800s envisioned something very different from what the day has become. The founders were looking for two things: a means of unifying union workers and a reduction in work time.

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Commentary: In with Teacher Apprenticeships, Out with Colleges of Education

Teacher and student

Two persistent problems beset American schools.

First, teachers must leave the classroom and become administrators or counselors to earn above the standard teacher salary.

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Commentary: The Grueling and Expensive Journey to Treat Vaccine Injury

Moderna Vaccine

$40,000.

That’s how much Kate Zerby has spent trying to put herself back together after the Moderna COVID vaccine wreaked havoc on her body.

As Intellectual Takeout reported back in 2022, Kate Zerby of St. Paul, Minnesota, suffered a serious adverse reaction to her Moderna shot, beginning the night after she got it, February 16, 2021. At 3:30 a.m., she awoke, gripped by a pervading sense of gloom and foreboding and the unsettling sensation that something strange was slithering through her system. At the same time, an interior voice seemed to tell her, “If you get the vaccine again, you will die.”

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Commentary: The Trump Revolution

Donald Trump

Call it “The Trump Revolution.”

The news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — scion of America’s most famous, not to mention one of its most historic, Democrat political families — was endorsing the GOP’s former President Donald Trump spoke volumes about the current state of American politics.

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Analysis: Kamala Harris Hasn’t Promised to Build a Border Wall

Kamala Harris at Border Wall

In an article titled “Harris Flip-Flops on Building the Border Wall,” Axios is reporting that Kamala Harris is suddenly pledging to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border.”

That claim is demonstrably false and is based on a misrepresentation of the Senate Border Act of 2024, which has been repeatedly misportrayed as a “tough” border bill.

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Commentary: Biden-Harris Admin Uses Loopholes to Expand Welfare Benefits, Again

Family using a Tablet

It seems reasonable that a program designed to assist those with low incomes should go only to low-income households. But the Biden-Harris administration is using a dubious mechanism to get around that expectation in a program designed to help low-income families pay for broadband internet service.

Congress created the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to provide broadband internet assistance to low-income households.

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Commentary: Cell Phone Bans in Schools Is a Growing Trend

Student with Cell Phone

Navigating the complexities of smartphone use in K-12 education is a collective effort that requires ongoing adaptation as technology evolves. We expect the Tennessee General Assembly to draft legislation on this issue in the next session. There is an increasing push to safeguard young individuals from spending too much time in front of screens.

States and public school districts are advocating cellphone bans in schools, driven by concerns about distractions and their adverse effects on student well-being. This growing trend should not just be about restrictions but about creating a more focused and conducive learning environment. Teacher buy-in is critical to this process.

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Analysis: 12 Percent of Bernie Sanders’ Supporters Backed Donald Trump in 2016; Predictions for Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Supporters in 2024

RFK supporters

Around 12 percent of Bernie Sanders’ supporters 13.2 million in the 2016 Democratic Party primary against Hillary Clinton ended up supporting former President Donald Trump in the general election, or almost 1.6 million, according to the Guide to the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey released by Harvard University in Aug. 2017.

That included 9 percent of Sanders’ 570,000 Wisconsin supporters, or 51,300, 8 percent of his 590,000 Michigan supporters, or 47,200, and 16 percent of his 732,000 Pennsylvania supporters, or 117,120.

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Court Watchers Look to Previous Term of Justice Appointments for Who Could on Trump’s New SCOTUS Shortlist

U.S. Supreme Court

While former President Donald Trump has yet to release an updated list of potential Supreme Court nominees, conservatives hope a second term would secure more originalist judges on the bench.

Trump’s appointments to both the Supreme Court and the lower courts have been frequently cited as his greatest accomplishment as president. He’s promised on multiple occasions to release a new list of possible nominees ahead of the election, but the names to be included remain up in the air, though many in the conservative legal world believe his appointees to the federal appeals courts are among the likely choices.

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Commentary: Irresponsible School Districts Force Teachers to Create Amazon Wish Lists

Teacher

For several weeks, social media has been flooded by teachers’ posts with Amazon wish lists, soliciting others to stock their classrooms with basic supplies. Creating these lists has been commonplace in recent years as teachers look outside their schools and districts to fill their supply needs.

Some of the most popular requested items are dry erase markers, Kleenex, Lysol wipes, erasers, tape, pens, colored copy paper, file folders, and pencil sharpeners. Others request educational items such as a microscope, map, or globe, which seem essential for student learning.

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Analysis: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Lost 300K Migrant Children

Group of immigrants at border

In 2014, Vice President Joe Biden was dispatched to Guatemala by President Barack Obama to implore Latin American countries and their citizens to stop smuggling unaccompanied children into the United States.

“These smugglers routinely engage in physical and sexual abuse and extortion of these innocent, young women and men, by and large,” Biden said in a speech in Guatemala City.

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Commentary: Solar Company Benefiting from IRA Has Forced Labor Problem

Solar Panel Installation

Vice President Kamala Harris was “proud to cast the tie-breaking vote” for the Inflation Reduction Act. Would she be proud if her administration’s solar subsidies fund supported forced labor in China?

That may be the case with Hanwha Qcells, a South Korean solar company operating in Georgia. Bloomberg recently reported that two Chinese suppliers of the company obtained polysilicon for solar panel components from companies sanctioned by the U.S. government for employing forced Uyghur labor. Hanwha and their Qcells plant leadership deny these allegations, but Bloomberg reports “that the company offers assurances but no public details of its polysilicon sourcing.”

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Commentary: Gen Z Is More Religious than You Think

Rosary

Many Americans believe our world’s becoming more secular. While that’s true, many of today’s fastest-growing religious denominations aren’t progressive—they’re traditional. Here’s what the data show.

In the 1990s, 90 percent of Americans identified as Christians on Pew surveys. Today, that number has fallen to about 67 percent. Among young adults, over 40 percent are religiously unaffiliated.

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Poll: Trump Leads Harris Among Independents by Double-Digits

Trump Rally

A new poll suggests that President Donald Trump has retained a strong lead over Vice President Kamala Harris among independent voters, a crucial bloc that could decide the 2024 election.

Just The News reports that the new poll, released by Rasmussen Reports, shows the former president with an 11-point lead among independents, with 51% supporting Trump and just 40% supporting Harris. In the same survey one week prior, President Trump’s lead among independents was 9 points.

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Commentary: Kamala Harris’ Tough Border Talk Conceals Radical Immigration Plan

Illegal Immigrants

Since Kamala Harris unseated President Joe Biden to become the Democratic presidential nominee, her campaign has spent the last few weeks trying to distance herself from the failed policies of the current administration where she holds the title of vice president and was dubbed “Border Czar.”

Despite being part of the administration responsible for an unprecedented 10 million (and counting) encounters of illegal aliens at our borders and at least 2 million “gotaways” who evaded the Border Patrol, our televisions have been bombarded for weeks with ads claiming that a President Harris will be tough on the border.

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New York Court Sides with Crisis Pregnancy Centers on Abortion Reversal Pill in Legal Blow to Letitia James

NY AG

A federal district court in New York ruled Thursday that pro-life pregnancy centers are allowed to promote an abortion pill reversal medication while the suit continues.

Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit in early May against 11 pregnancy centers, claiming the organizations were misleading pregnant women when talking about an abortion reversal medication. The court granted the preliminary order in favor of the National Institute for Family and Life Advocates and Gianna’s House Inc. and Options Care Center’s follow-up suit against James, stating that the First Amendment protects the right for the groups to talk about the abortion reversal pill.

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Commentary: Massive Tax Hikes Coming Without GOP Sweep in 2024 Elections

Woman doing paperwork at her desk

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) signed into law by President Donald Trump on Dec. 22, 2017, provided across-the-board income tax cuts for all income levels as well as significant tax relief for American taxpayers.  However, most of the tax relief expires on Dec. 31, 2025, which will result in significant tax hikes for most Americans in 2026.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are calling for new legislation in 2025 to make the TCJA tax cuts permanent. But this will only be possible with three election results this November: (1) Trump wins the presidency; (2) Republicans gain majority control of the Senate; and (3) Republicans maintain majority control of the House of Representatives. Failure to achieve a victory sweep for the presidency and both houses of Congress would be devastating for Americans’ pocketbooks, given Democrat animus towards extending the TCJA tax cuts.

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Tim Walz Gave Almost $100K in COVID-19 Funds to ‘Abortion Doula’ Trainers

Tim Walz

Presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz directed almost $100,000 in COVID-19 relief funds to an organization specializing in “abortion doula” services, state contracts show.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, spent almost $2 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds without the approval of the state Legislature, using his emergency powers, according to the Minnesota-based outlet Alpha News.

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Former Health Officials Slam FDA Duplicity on ‘Puberty Blockers’ in Light of New Evidence

David Gortler

Former officials in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration condemned what they described as the FDA’s duplicity in allowing off-label use of so-called puberty blockers while loudly condemning the use of far safer drugs to treat COVID-19.

“During the Trump administration, the media falsely accused us daily of ‘politicizing America’s public health agencies.’ Yet the same media is now silent on [Vice President Kamala] Harris and [President Joe] Biden’s FDA’s anti-science, purely political insanity,” Brian Harrison, former chief of staff at HHS and now a member of the Texas House of Representatives, told The Daily Signal in a written statement.

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Commentary: An Ancient Faith Grows in Modern Times

Eastern Orthodox Mass

As a journalist, it’s easy to turn around copy on any of the public policy and political debates of the day, but I struggle to write about religious issues in a meaningful way. My American Spectator columns detail the usual insanity in the California Capitol and Washington, DC, but what can I say about matters of faith, where my usual tool — reason — isn’t entirely useful?

I grew up Jewish, the son of a Nazi Holocaust survivor. Our religion was important, but I was raised in a secular home where religious observance didn’t reflect any deep expression of faith. That led me on a journey to try to make sense of this inexplicable world.

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Retired Border Patrol Chief Sounds the Alarm on Kamala Harris Border Crisis ‘Fix’

Rodney Scott and Kamala Harris (composite image)

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is attempting to cast her as a tough-on-the-border candidate, but a former leader of the Border Patrol is warning the public not to buy it.

The Harris campaign has released a slate of advertisements that claim the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate would “fix the border” and crack down on illegal immigration by increasing the number of Border Patrol agents. However, retired Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who led the agency while Harris served as “border czar,” says voters must look at her record to understand how she would really handle border security.

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Alex Soros Continues His Father’s Political Operation, and Is Aiming to Shape the 2024 Election

Since The Wall Street Journal first reported that Alex Soros had taken over his father’s political operation on June 11, 2023, he has pumped tens of millions of dollars into an array of efforts to sway the 2024 election, financial disclosures show.

Democracy PAC, the primary conduit through which the Soros family shuffles its wealth into electoral politics, spent roughly $40 million after the WSJ reported that George Soros had passed the reins on to his son, campaign finance records show. The PAC’s spending under Alex Soros signals somewhat of a departure from how his father operated it, with less focus on criminal justice and a greater emphasis on helping Democrats keep the White House.

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Commentary: Chronic Absenteeism Is a Problem, but Most Proposed Solutions Miss the Point

Classroom

Two weeks ago, three unlikely bedfellows joined forces to announce their intention to cut K-12 chronic absenteeism in half by 2029.

The right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, the left-leaning Education Trust, and the nonprofit organization Attendance Works revealed their plan in Washington, DC. The coalition hopes to combat chronic absenteeism, defined as students missing 10 percent or more of school days in a given academic year, by implementing a variety of initiatives, including home visits and similar interventions. Chronic absenteeism rates more than doubled during and after the Covid response. The goal is to reduce these rates to pre-pandemic levels, or around 13 percent.

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Commentary: Theater of the Absurd, Harris-Walz Edition

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz de-boarding a plane

H. L. Mencken apparently never quite said that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” He said lots of similar things, however, and I like to think he would have been proud of being the sort of chap to whom people attributed such astringent mots.

He would also, I feel sure, regard the theater surrounding the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign as a test case of the proposition.

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Male Students Do Better on ACT, Get Less Financial Aid

Male College Student

The gender gap in higher education is growing – and it may be due to how universities admit students and help them pay for school.

Men earn 42 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 38 percent of master’s, and 44 percent of doctorates, according to the American Institute for Boys and Men.

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Christian and Conservative Professors Divided over Louisiana’s New Ten Commandments Law

Jeff Landry

Political science professors at conservative and Christian colleges are split over the constitutionality of a new Louisiana law that requires all public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

The law already faces a legal challenge from several families as well as left-leaning and atheist activist groups while Christian and conservative Louisiana lawmakers applaud the law.

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Illegal Migrant Released into U.S. by Biden Admin Allegedly Committed 22 Crimes in Just Six Months

David Hernandez-Martinez

An illegal migrant from Venezuela allegedly committed at least 22 criminal offenses in the span of just six months and still may not be deported, a report from the House Judiciary Committee revealed Wednesday.

Daniel Hernandez-Martinez was released into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris administration in early 2023 before allegedly committing a slew of crimes, the report found. Despite the array of charges, the Venezuelan migrant — who is a suspected member of the “Tren de Aragua” gang — wasn’t detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) until his seventh run-in with the New York Police Department.

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Commentary: Forced Abortion Is Part of Dark World of Surrogacy

Brittney Pearson was a mother of four and 24 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with breast cancer—a tragic enough situation. To make a bad situation worse, though, the Sacramento native was pregnant as a surrogate mother for a gay couple.

Upon being informed of the cancer diagnosis, the two men demanded that Pearson abort the child.

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‘Beholden to Teachers Unions’: NEA and AFT Donated over $135K to Walz, Who Backs Their Far-Left Agenda

Tim Walz

Teachers unions are among the largest donors to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats’ vice presidential candidate, giving over $135,000 to his campaigns for governor and, before that, Congress.

Walz, who once taught high school social studies, sides with teachers unions instead of everyday Minnesotans, some parents say.

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Commentary: Social-Emotional Learning Is Hurting Students

Sad Student

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been in vogue in education circles for decades. Following its precepts, teachers, counselors, and administrators encourage students to look inward and focus on their feelings. The result?

A generation of young people who can’t stop thinking about their emotions, leaving them incredibly fragile. But that’s not what many of the experts will tell you.

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New Platform Aims to Halt CCP Influence on States

Ryan Walker

There’s a new tool available for lawmakers and American citizens to combat the threat of the Chinese Communist Party. Today, Heritage Action for America launched the website CounterTheCCP.com, exposing the ways in which China stands to harm America’s sovereignty and offering model legislation and resources to deal with that threat.

“To win the new cold war with China, the United States needs a comprehensive strategy,” Ryan Walker, Heritage Action executive vice president, said in a statement.

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Majority of Americans Would Not Advise Family Members to Join Military, Poll Finds

Boot Camp

The majority of Americans would not advise their family members to join the military, according to a Defense Priorities/YouGov poll released on Thursday.

Only 37% of respondents would encourage their family to serve in the military, while 63% would not, according to the poll. Several branches of the military have been plagued with recruiting and retention problems in recent years as the Pentagon continues to look for solutions.

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