PVL

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

"I hope the secret police don't kick in my door tonight."

"I hope there's some bread left when I get to the front of the line."

"I hope the commissar doesn't rape my wife."

"I hope this nagging chest cough doesn't require antibiotics that I don't have the vouchers for."

"I hope I don't get accused of harboring bourgeois counterrevolutionary sentiments."

"I hope there isn't another purge."

"I hope I can save up enough to bribe the local Party bloc supervisor for a better job posting."

"I hope no one decides to name me as a accomplice to stop the torture."

"I hope the power stays on tonight."

"I hope things will be better some day."

[Coach Swit @CoachSwit]

Never understood H.S. coaches who ignore freshman or JV programs.

That’s the future of your varsity team.

Then they complain about no depth, culture, or players ready for varsity.

If you only coach varsity, you’re not building a program—you’re just coaching a team.

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

Dear Senator Sanders,

Oh, this is RICH. This is so perfectly, exquisitely, weapons-grade rich that I had to put down my anatomy exams and just... appreciate it for a moment.

The man who got thrown out of a SOCIALIST HIPPIE COMMUNE in Vermont in 1971 — after THREE DAYS — for refusing to do any actual work while everyone else planted, harvested, and hauled water, is out here telling me the OLIGARCHS want to control everything.

Three. Days. The communists gave you a longer trial period than most employers give to someone who steals from the register.

Here is what Jim Quinn's Law Number Two says, and I want every single person reading this to tattoo it somewhere useful: "If you want to know what liberals are up to, pay attention to what they accuse conservatives of doing."

Senator, you OWN THREE HOMES. A Burlington residence. A D.C. townhouse. A $575,000 vacation lake house in North Hero, Vermont — purchased in 2016, the same year you were touring the country telling college students the system is rigged. Your net worth sits somewhere between $2.5 and $3 million. You have pocketed over $2.5 MILLION in book royalties since 2011. That elevator is clearly not stuck between floors for you, is it.

And then — THEN — during your "Fighting Oligarchy Tour" with AOC, you spent over $550,000 in CAMPAIGN FUNDS on PRIVATE JET TRAVEL. Half a million dollars on luxury jets to lecture working Americans about the dangers of wealth.

When Fox News caught you boarding a Bombardier Challenger 604 — a jet that runs up to $15,000 PER HOUR — you did not apologize. You did not even blink. You looked directly into the camera and said, and I am quoting this verbatim because it is the most accidentally honest thing you have ever said: "You think I'm gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United?"

Senator. THAT IS OLIGARCHIC THINKING. That is TEXTBOOK "the rules apply to you people, not to me." That is the elevator music of every single billionaire you have spent 35 years pretending to oppose. In a battle of wits with your own stated beliefs, you showed up completely unarmed.

Thirty-five years in Congress. You know what your personal legislative output looks like? Eight bills passed. EIGHT. In three and a half DECADES. That works out to 0.23 bills per year. I have produced more graded anatomy exams in a single semester. Your two greatest solo legislative achievements — the ones with your name on top, the thing YOU actually DID — are the naming of a post office in Danville, Vermont, and the naming of a post office in Fair Haven, Vermont.

You named. Two. Post offices.

You are as useful as a screen door on a submarine when it comes to actually passing legislation, but you want me to believe you are the vanguard of the working class. That sounds like a YOU problem.

Quinn's Law #25: "Liberals are great at giving away other people's money." You have been living PROOF of that law for 35 years. You give away everyone else's money — from a vacation home on a lake — while spending half a million on jets because you are far too important to wait in line with the taxpayers funding your lifestyle.

You want to talk about oligarchs controlling the media? You have been IN the media for four decades. You just finished a $75 million documentary. You have a book deal. You have a podcast. You HAVE the megaphone and you are using it to tell people that other people have the megaphone. The gene pool really needed a lifeguard for THAT particular reasoning.

I am a high school science teacher in Northeast Ohio. I support a family of six on a teacher's salary. I am not particularly impressed by a man with three houses, $550,000 in jet receipts, and 0.23 bills per year telling me he stands with the working class. More famous than wise, Senator. More famous than wise.

The hippie commune knew it in 72 hours. How long is it going to take everyone else?

IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it. SHARE this.

COMMENT below — do YOU think a man with three homes and a half-million dollar private jet habit speaks for working Americans? Tell me.

And if you want MORE of this — the data, the history, the science, the stories — JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube.

But what do I know — I am only a science teacher who can actually do math, a retired Army combat medic who knows what genuine sacrifice looks like, and apparently one of the few people left who finds it suspicious that the most vocal enemy of oligarchy just cannot bring himself to wait in line at the airport with the rest of us.

@JoJoFromJerz @GuntherEagleman @catturd2

#MAGA #Veterans #Trump

[The Rational Animal 🤔 @theobjectivist]

Everyone should unequivocally condemn the government-imposed racial discrimination Obama is pushing!

Obama makes three errors in one post, all of them philosophical.

First, the United States is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. The purpose of the Constitution is to protect individual rights from the majority, not to ensure "equal participation in our democracy." The Founders designed the system specifically to prevent what Obama is demanding: unlimited majority rule.

Second, "protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach" sounds correct until you examine the premise. Rights belong to individuals, not groups. The moment you define rights by racial group membership, you have adopted the same collectivist framework that produced the discrimination you claim to oppose. Jim Crow categorized people by race and assigned rights accordingly. Modern voting rights activism does the same thing with different beneficiaries. Both are collectivism.

Third, gerrymandering is a problem created entirely by the system Obama wants to preserve: a political structure where the drawing of district lines determines outcomes. His solution is not to fix the structure. It is to ensure his side draws the lines.

The government must treat every citizen equally before the law. Everyone should reject Obama's framing entirely. He is not defending individual rights.

He is defending group power, while using the language of rights to make collectivism sound like liberty.

[Sunny @sunnyright]

Democracy is when 51% vote to strip away political representation from the 49%, keeping the latter in a perpetual state of servitude to the former with no power to change it.

Which is why the distinction between democracy and republic is not merely pedantic.

[Jake Olson @JakeOlson61]

If you think Easter is nonsense, you’re not alone.

This morning in my Easter reading, something hit me.

In Luke, when the women came back from the empty tomb and told the eleven what they saw, Scripture says the disciples thought it was nonsense.

And honestly, if any of us witnessed a brutal, violent death like Jesus’, we’d probably call it nonsense too if someone told us that person was alive again.

But here’s the part we miss:

At the tomb, the angels didn’t give the women a new revelation. They said:

“Remember how He told you, while He was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and on the third day rise.”

They weren’t announcing something new.
They were reminding them of something Jesus had already said.

Which puts the disciples’ reaction in a different light.
We don’t know if they forgot His words or simply didn’t believe them — but either way, they didn’t receive them.

Then in John, we read that later that same day — Sunday night, after Mary had already told them the news that morning — the disciples were behind a locked door out of fear. They heard the message, but it didn’t move them.

Jesus appears to them, shows them His hands and His side, breathes peace on them… and you’d think that would settle it.

But eight days later?
They’re back behind a locked door when Jesus appears to Thomas.

We give Thomas the nickname “Doubting Thomas,” but the truth is:
all of them doubted.
All of them hid.
All of them called it nonsense.
All of them stayed behind locked doors.

And here’s the detail we forget:

In Matthew, Jesus had already told the women to tell the disciples:

“Go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”

Meaning — staying in that room for over a week wasn’t just fear.
It was staying somewhere Jesus had already told them to leave.

They were supposed to be moving toward Him.
Instead, they were hiding from the world.

But Jesus — in grace — walked through the locked door anyway.

So here’s the message this Easter:

If you think the idea of God becoming man, dying for your sins, and rising three days later is nonsense — you’re standing exactly where His own disciples stood.

If you believe Jesus can move in other people’s lives but you still keep yourself behind a locked door of fear, shame, doubt, or self‑protection — the disciples were right there too.

But Easter is your invitation.

This can be the year you leave the room Jesus already told you to leave.
This can be the moment you step out of fear, out of hiding, out of the locked places — and go where He’s calling you.

Whatever your locked door is — fear, doubt, sin, shame, disappointment, control — Jesus is appearing to you the same way He appeared to them.

Not to scold you.
Not to shame you.
But to say:

“Peace be with you.
You don’t have to stay here.
Come meet Me where I’m calling you.”

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

I went back to read the resurrection accounts of Matthew and John this morning and noticed something interesting. The first words out of Jesus’ mouth after the resurrection were “go tell my brothers.” And it brought me to tears.

Matthew 28:10. Read it slowly. The stone has just rolled back. Death has just been defeated for the first time in human history. The most consequential moment in the cosmos has just occurred. And the risen King opens his mouth and calls us brothers.
But Matthew alone might not stop you.

So go to John 20:17, where he tells Mary what to tell them:

“I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
He does not say “the Father.” He does not say “God.” He says MY Father is now YOUR Father. MY God is now YOUR God.

He rises and the first thing he does is redistribute the inheritance.

This is where most people misread the resurrection. They treat it as a power demonstration. Jesus proved he was God. Jesus showed death who was boss. And those things are true but they are not the point. The point is what he did with the power once he had it.

Because what I have learned in my few years on earth is that when men have power, the immediate instinct is to reclassify.

The people who were their peers become subordinates. The people who called you brother now call you sir. We have seen it in offices, in governments, in churches. Elevation changes vocabulary.

The higher a man rises the lonelier the pronoun “we” becomes.

Jesus rose to the highest position in the universe and his vocabulary did not change. He came back and said brothers. He said your Father. He said our God. He reclassified upward. He used his exaltation not to press us into subjects but to pull us into sons.

This is the actual consequence of the resurrection: ADOPTION. A dead savior cannot make you a son. A dead elder brother cannot bring you into the family. He had to conquer death because brothers share in each other’s life and he could not give us what he had not first secured himself.

Romans 8:29 calls him the firstborn among many brothers. Firstborn means there are others coming. You are not a spectator of his resurrection. You are its intended outcome.

The crowned King looked across the infinite chasm between his holiness and your humanity and the word he chose was not “subject.” It was not “servant.” It was not even “beloved.”
He said brother.

On the other side of death, with all authority in heaven and earth, he said brother.

So celebrate today for everything it is. Celebrate the empty tomb, celebrate the vindication of a man the world tried, condemned, and buried, and whom heaven refused to leave in the ground. Celebrate the sins that are gone and the immeasurable, uncontainable, universe-rearranging power of God on full display.

But do not miss the most beautiful thing.

He did not just cancel your debt. He gave you a name. He did not just acquit you. He adopted you. Forgiveness would have been everything. Sonship is more than everything. And he gave us both.

The risen King called us brothers. That means the Father he returned to is the Father we are returning to. That means the glory he walked into is the glory we are walking toward. That means Easter is not just the day Jesus won.
It is the day you inherited everything he won it for.

Hallelujah! He is risen.

[The Biblical Man @Biblicalman]

Joseph of Arimathea pulled a corpse off a cross with his bare hands.

Blood under his fingernails. The weight of a dead man sagging into his arms.

He wrapped God in linen, pressed the fabric into wounds that were still wet.

Nicodemus brought seventy-five pounds of burial spice. A king's funeral for a man the world just murdered.

They carried Him into a hole in the rock and rolled the stone shut.

And everything you've ever done went in with Him.
Every night you can't sleep because of what you did. Every morning, you can't look in the mirror. The thing you did to her. The thing you did to them. The
lie you've been carrying so long it feels like bone.

The version of you that drinks alone and pretends tomorrow will be different.

That man was buried with Christ.

Stone sealed. Done.
Not managed. Not in therapy. Not on a payment plan with God where you slowly earn your way back. Buried. In a tomb. Under rock. Gone.
Three days of silence. Three days of a cold body in the dark.

Then the stone moved.
And when He walked out, the grave clothes were folded on the slab. He didn't stumble out tangled in death. He left it sitting there like a man who's done
with the clothes he used to wear.
Lazarus needed someone to unwrap him. Death still clung to him even after he was breathing.
Jesus folded His own burial linen and walked out clean.

That's the difference between religion and resurrection. Religion unwraps you slowly. Asks you to manage your sin. Attend the class. Read the book. Try harder next week.
Resurrection says the man who walked into that tomb is dead. The man who walked out doesn't know him.
You're not fixing the old you. The old you is in a sealed tomb in Jerusalem, and he's not coming back.
The man reading this, the one who thinks he's too far gone, you're not too far. You're already buried. The funeral happened two thousand years
ago.
Now get up. The stone's already moved. The linen's already folded.

Walk out.

[Paul Fleuret @RealAbs1776]

Understand this: The movies and shows about the crucifixion have been tame when compared to what He actually went through.

Even The Passion Of The Christ was forced to hold back a little in order to avoid an X rating.

Crucifixion was, and still is, arguably the most excruciating death someone can experience.

The night before in Gethsemane, He was sweating blood. This is known as hematidrosis. This would have caused His skin to become extremely sensitive, thus making the beatings to come even worse.

The fear He felt was the beginning of His feeling the weight of our iniquities being laid on Him.

Yet - in this moment, He didn’t demand that the Father take it from Him. He only asked for the cup to pass Him over if it was within the Father’s will.

Up next came the Cat of Nine Tails, or a Roman Flagrum. This was a weapon with long leather “tails”, each embedded with sharp bones and metal.

He was flogged 39 times as Jewish law mandated “40 minus one”, because 40 was said to kill a man.

This flogging wasn’t like being punished by your father’s leather belt.

Every strike tore flesh, every strike exposed muscle. Every strike exposed nerve endings. Every strike tore flesh to the bone.

This would be like getting struck with razor blades over and over again, leading to hypovolemic shock from blood loss.

Oh, and the crown of thorns? These weren’t rose thorns. These were thorns which were 2-3 inches long. Beaten into his skull.

These thorns would have pierced his skull, tripping the trigeminal nerve, thus causing unimaginable pain and even more blood loss from the dozens of head wounds.

At this point, extreme nausea and dizziness would begin to set in.

What came next? Carrying the cross. Which weighed around 300lbs. This would be like carrying two full kegs on your back.

Splinters and wood grating against the open flesh on His back. And He had to carry it 650 yards, or close to a half mile.

Imagine carrying a log on your back after being skinned alive.

Up next? He was nailed to the cross with spikes 5-7in in length. Piercing His wrists - this no doubt pierced the median nerve, causing extreme burning sensations up and down His arms.

A spike was driven through his ankles - severing nerves and tendons. This would have felt like standing on broken glass every time He pushed Himself up in order to breathe.

He suffered for 6 hours.

His chest muscles collapsing, making every single breath a fight for life.

His shoulders were dislocated, His arms stretching unnaturally long.

His heart was struggling to pump blood.

He was extremely dehydrated, His lips cracking.

His heart more than likely literally ruptured from the stress.

And on top of all of that, He had to feel a separation with the Father for a period of time in order to REALLY bear the weight of our sin.

He took up this burden for ALL sin before Him, and ALL sin which came after Him.

HE DID IT ALL FOR US.

To free us. To defeat sin. To give us a pathway to the Kingdom.

Every sin we commit is exactly why He had to do it.

And the real kicker? He knew what was coming when He rode into Jerusalem … and He didn’t turn around. He kept going.

For us.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the No Kings Rally.

I roll out every cycle like clockwork. Same as the cicadas but with better signage and worse ideas. March 28, 2026. Flagship in St. Paul, Minnesota State Capitol. Springsteen debuting a new protest anthem. Net worth $1.2 billion. Fonda. Baez. Bernie. The green room at my anti-aristocracy rally has more combined wealth than the zip codes the crowd drove in from. Eight million people across 3,300 events on six continents. The largest mass mobilization in American history, organized to remind you that we don't have a king. Never did. The Constitution was written by men who'd seen kings up close and decided "nah."

But here's the thing about kings. Everybody knows what a king looks like. You can see the crown. You can storm the castle. Kings are legible.

What we have is worse. What we have is an aristocracy.

An aristocracy doesn't wear a crown. It wears a lanyard. It doesn't rule by decree. It rules by access. Access to capital, to media, to the credentials that determine who gets to speak and who gets to listen. It doesn't need a throne when it has a donor class, a credentialing pipeline, and a party apparatus that selects its leaders the way a medieval court appoints a regent. Kings are overthrown. Aristocracies are inherited. And the American aristocracy has learned the one trick that keeps it immortal: it learned to call itself democracy.

I am the annual rally where the aristocracy puts on its costume and pretends to be the people. Business is booming.

No Kings, they chant. Meanwhile the party's leading 2028 hopeful, Governor Gavin Newsom, spent the last year cosplaying as president from a state with the nation's highest poverty rate. When Trump accidentally called him "the president of the United States" on live television, Newsom's official press office ran with it. All caps. Trump's own style. Declaring himself president, canceling all executive orders, firing Stephen Miller, announcing free healthcare and legal cannabis. One hundred thirty-two thousand likes. Performance art as governance. Then came the "Patriot Shop." Red hats that say "Newsom Was Right About Everything." One-hundred-dollar Bibles, signed. The branding rips off MAGA because the aristocracy has always understood that you defeat the populists by becoming them, aesthetically, without changing a single policy.

He went to the Munich Security Conference and played Governor of the Free World while his own state can't house its residents. California: 187,000 homeless. Supplemental poverty rate of 17.7 percent, the worst in America. A projected $68 billion deficit that his office papered over by raiding the rainy day fund and borrowing against itself, a year after he hallucinated a $97.5 billion surplus and announced, his actual words, "No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this." The surplus evaporated. The deficit compounded. The Legislative Analyst's Office projected $155 billion in cumulative shortfall through 2028. But the merch is selling.

This is the man the No Kings coalition is grooming to lead the republic. The crown fits. That's the problem. It always fits the next one in line.

No Kings, they chant. But they don't mean it. They never meant it. Ask Bernie Sanders.

In 2016, the DNC rigged the scales so thoroughly that their own chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had to resign in disgrace when the emails leaked. The CEO resigned. The CFO resigned. The communications director resigned. Four heads rolled and the party called it a staffing change. But the emails were just the surface. The real architecture was worse. In November 2017, former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile revealed that the Clinton campaign had signed a Joint Fund-Raising Agreement in August 2015, a full year before the nomination, that gave Clinton's campaign control of the party's finances, strategy, staffing, and all hiring decisions. The party was $24 million in debt. Clinton paid it off and bought it. The entire apparatus. A year before a single vote was cast. Brazile's own words: "If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided."

The aristocracy doesn't seize power. It purchases it, files the receipt, and calls it "fund-raising."

Sanders won 23 states and 13 million votes and the party treated him like a shoplifter.

In 2020, they let him build a lead through Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada, then panicked. In the span of 48 hours before Super Tuesday, Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out and endorsed Biden. Beto O'Rourke joined them at a rally in Dallas the night before the vote. Obama's finance director emailed 500 bundlers that Monday morning: "We need all hands on deck." Jim Clyburn delivered South Carolina — exit polls showed nearly half of voters said his endorsement mattered — and the operation was complete. Bloomberg dropped out the next morning and endorsed Biden. The base wanted Bernie. The aristocracy wanted continuity. Continuity won.

Then came 2024. The masterpiece.

Joe Biden, the sitting president, was pushed off the ticket on July 21. After every primary had already been held. After 14 million Democrats had cast their ballots for him. Biden himself said: "I received over 14 million votes, 87 percent of the votes cast across the entire nominating process." Then the party told him those votes didn't count. Kamala Harris, who had dropped out of the 2020 primary in December 2019. Before Iowa. Before a single vote. Polling at three percent among her own party. Zero delegates. She was installed as the nominee. Delegates consolidated behind her within 36 hours. No convention fight. No debate. No alternative candidates. No democracy.

The party that named its movement "No Kings" chose its presidential candidate the way a board of directors appoints a CEO. Which is to say: the way an aristocracy has always done it. The court decides. The public ratifies. Participation is the costume.

Some of you in this crowd voted for Biden in the primary. Your vote was voided in July. You're here today holding a sign for the people who voided it. And you'll do it again in 2028. That's how you know the aristocracy works. It doesn't need your permission. It just needs your attendance.

They don't oppose kings. They oppose other people's kings.

While I was printing banners, the real country was on fire.

The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for 42 days. By tomorrow it ties the longest funding lapse in American history. TSA agents have been screening your bags without paychecks since February 14. The acting TSA administrator testified to Congress that her agents have received eviction notices, had their cars repossessed, defaulted on loans, drained their retirement savings, are sleeping in their vehicles, selling blood and plasma to make rent. Three hundred sixty-six of them have quit. Houston Intercontinental has only two of five terminals operating. A third of its security lanes staffed. Three-hour waits. Congress left for a two-week recess the night after the Senate passed a bipartisan deal that the Speaker killed on arrival. Both parties torpedoed each other's proposals. They won't return until the week of April 13. By then the shutdown hits Day 60. Some of those members of Congress are here today. In St. Paul. Holding signs. The TSA agent screening bags without a paycheck is working. Her congressman is at my rally.

The guy we're protesting won the popular vote. First Republican to do that since 2004. Seventy-seven million Americans pulled the lever for him. Not the Electoral College trick from 2016. The actual popular vote. By a point and a half. But why let arithmetic ruin a perfectly good tantrum.

That's the part the aristocracy can't metabolize. The deplorables weren't supposed to win twice. Especially not the popular vote. The entire thesis of "No Kings" depends on the premise that this presidency is illegitimate, that it was imposed on a reluctant nation by structural manipulation. But the numbers say otherwise. So the aristocracy does what it always does when the numbers are inconvenient: it changes the subject. It talks about vibes. It prints a poster. It books Springsteen.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is not a diagnosis. It is a platform. And it is the only one left.

The party that once ran on healthcare, labor rights, and economic populism now runs on one man's name. Remove Trump from the equation and the aristocracy has nothing to sell you. No vision for the economy. No plan for housing. No position on the war. Just: "Not him." A restraining order cosplaying as a movement. And the rally is the filing.

I've done this before. January 2017. The Women's March. Five million people. The largest single-day protest in American history at the time. Name the bill it passed. Name the election it flipped. Name one policy that changed because five million people held signs for a day and went home. The Tea Party was smaller. It took over the House in two years. The difference is the Tea Party was a political operation. The Women's March was a rally. Rallies exhaust the impulse to act by simulating action. You showed up. You held the sign. You did your part. Go home. I am the pressure valve the aristocracy installs to make sure the steam never builds high enough to move anything.

The most obedient thing you can do in America is attend an approved protest on a permitted date in a designated area with a pre-printed sign about a pre-selected cause endorsed by the celebrities the aristocracy hired to make you feel brave. You showed up where they told you. When they told you. Holding what they gave you. Chanting what they wrote. Then you went home. If this rally threatened power, it wouldn't be permitted. Springsteen wouldn't be here. The Capitol Police would.

Here's what else happened while I was setting up sound check.

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched 900 strikes on Iran in twelve hours. Operation Epic Fury. They killed the Supreme Leader. They killed his wife, his daughter, his son-in-law, his 14-month-old grandchild.

They hit a girls' elementary school in Minab and killed 168 people. Most of them children. The school was triple-tapped. Three distinct strikes.

You know about the school. You chose the sign.

Amnesty International called it "deadly and unlawful." Iran fired back at American bases across nine countries. Thirteen American service members are dead. Nearly two thousand Iranians killed. The Strait of Hormuz is functionally closed. Oil has doubled to $108 a barrel. Mortgage rates are climbing back toward seven. This is happening right now, today, as I tune the PA in St. Paul. But nobody's chanting about that. Hard to fit "undeclared war with no congressional authorization that the House explicitly refused to constrain under the War Powers Act" on poster board.

The dollar you brought to my rally buys what 53 cents bought in 2000. Cumulative CPI is up nearly 90 percent nationally. Over 100 percent in San Francisco. Newsom's old city. The one he governed before he governed the state into the ground. The price of eggs, gas, rent, health insurance. All of it compounding for a quarter century across every administration, red and blue, while both parties printed money, deferred the bill, and told you the other guy was the problem. But I'm not here to talk about purchasing power. I'm here to talk about feelings.

Meanwhile, members of Congress traded hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks in 2025. Thirty-two percent of them outperformed the S&P 500. The same rate as professional fund managers, which is curious for people whose day job is legislation, not portfolio management. Senator Markwayne Mullin hid his trades for 953 days. Representative Lisa McClain filed 504 late disclosures in a single afternoon. Nancy Pelosi. Retiring in 2026. One last lap around the insider track. She turned roughly $700,000 in 1987 into $134 million today. A 16,930 percent return. Seven times the Dow over the same period. Her portfolio returned 71 percent in 2024 alone, nearly triple the S&P. The penalty for getting caught violating the STOCK Act? Two hundred dollars. The price of a decent dinner in the district she represents. And one user operating 38 Polymarket accounts made $2.14 million betting on the Iran strikes. $1.5 billion in S&P futures placed 10 to 15 minutes before the president's announcement. The CFTC won't investigate. Polymarket operates offshore. The administration killed the probe. But I'm not rallying about that either. Insider trading doesn't fit the aesthetic.

That's the aristocracy. Not a king. A court. Self-dealing, self-credentialing, self-exonerating. Operating in full daylight while telling you to look at the poster board.

Funny thing about kings. The closest America has come to one since George III wasn't a man in a red hat. It was 2020. Governors ruled by executive decree for months. All 50 declared states of emergency. Forty-two states issued stay-at-home orders. Curfews in New Jersey, Ohio, Puerto Rico. Rhode Island deployed the National Guard to stop cars with New York plates. Hawaii quarantined residents for traveling between islands. Churches padlocked while liquor stores stayed open. The Supreme Court had to intervene twice, in New York and California, to remind the government that the First Amendment still applied. They closed your business. Your school. For over a year in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York. Your mother's funeral, capped at 10 mourners. They told you which direction to walk down the grocery aisle. Walmart implemented it. Connecticut mandated it by law.

Then they mandated you take a pharmaceutical product to keep your job. Three and a half million federal workers, straight mandate, no testing alternative. Eighty-four million private-sector workers faced the same until the Supreme Court blocked it, 6 to 3. In New York City, they launched "Key to NYC." Show your vaccination card to eat at a restaurant, go to the gym, see a movie. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington. Show your papers. Compliance or exile. No vote. No debate. No sunset clause. Justice Gorsuch later called it "the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country." His words, not mine. On the record, in a Supreme Court concurrence.

The vaccine monarchies of 2020 were administered by the very same people now standing on my stage screaming "No Kings." Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who lobbied the CDC to keep schools closed well into 2021. She's speaking at my flagship event today. Keith Ellison, Minnesota's attorney general, who enforced the lockdown orders. He's on my stage. Peggy Flanagan, who served as lieutenant governor under Walz while Minnesota imposed some of the nation's strictest measures. She's here too. They didn't mind the crown when they were wearing it.

And Gavin Newsom. Who maintained emergency executive authority for nearly three years. Who banned indoor worship. Who was photographed maskless at the French Laundry with a dozen friends while his own orders said stay home. This is the man the aristocracy is positioning for 2028. The man who governed by decree and now chants "No Kings."

That's not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is accidental. This is architecture.

Let me tell you what the No Kings rally is. What it has always been.

It's where we come to pretend we're from Minneapolis. The movement started there. ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January. Good was a 37-year-old poet and mother. She was sitting in her car. They shot her three times. Pretti was a 37-year-old VA nurse who saw agents grab a woman and intervened. They disarmed him. Then they shot him roughly ten times. Real people. Real grief. Real terror. What happened in Minneapolis was an occupation, and the community that organized against it did something the aristocracy never does: it put its body in the road.

But the aristocracy doesn't mourn Good and Pretti because they were killed. It mourns them because of who did the killing. Under Obama, ICE deported 2,749,706 people over eight years. An average of 343,713 per year. In fiscal year 2012 alone, 409,849. The National Council of La Raza called Obama the "Deporter in Chief" to his face in March 2014. Janet Murguia, on the record. No rallies. No Springsteen. No branded resistance. Trump's first term deported 935,346 over four years. An average of 233,836. Fewer per year than any single year of Obama's first term. The math isn't ambiguous. The outrage is selective. The aristocracy doesn't oppose deportation. It opposes deportation by the wrong administration.

The aristocracy saw Minneapolis and did what it always does with authentic movements. It scaled them. It branded them. It added a merch layer and a celebrity tier and a cable-news B-roll package and turned a community's wound into a content calendar. The people who showed up in Minneapolis in January, in the cold, without Springsteen, without a marketing budget, are not the same as the people live-tweeting from the St. Paul VIP tent in March. But we'll put them in the same crowd count. That's the magic of aggregation.

The checklist comes pre-printed. Show up. Hold the sign that says "No Kings" while ignoring the part where the party's nominee got there without a single primary vote. Post the selfie. Collect the blue-check applause. Your participation trophy arrives in the form of donor dollars, retweets, and that warm glow of moral superiority that lasts exactly until the next midterm poll drops.

Notice who's here. Notice who isn't. My rally is on a Friday. The people holding signs about inequality had the economic security to take the day off. The hourly worker didn't come. The single parent didn't come. The gig driver working two apps to cover rent didn't come. The people most crushed by the aristocracy's policies can't afford to spend a Friday protesting them. Resistance is a luxury good. I select for the comfortable and call it a movement.

The Democratic Party's own base sees this. Only two in three Democrats view their own party favorably. A record low since Gallup started asking in 2001. The party's answer was to blacklist vendors who work with primary challengers, slow-walk candidates who threaten the donor class, and scold progressives about "unity" while kneecapping anyone who means it. The party doesn't need a rally. It needs a mirror. But mirrors don't raise money.

The aristocracy doesn't fear rallies. It organizes them. What it fears is primaries. The Tea Party didn't hold a sign and go home. It primaried 83 incumbents in 2010 and took 63 House seats. The DNC's response to that model was to blacklist the vendors. To make sure no progressive challenger could hire the consultants, the pollsters, the ad buyers. The rally exists to absorb the energy that might otherwise go into running for the seats. I am a containment strategy with a Springsteen soundtrack.

Inside my tent it's harvest season. The celebrities get their virtue clip for the reel. The NGOs get fresh email lists and donor pipelines. Indivisible. MoveOn. The AFL-CIO. The cable bookers get B-roll of "massive crowds" that somehow never translate into policy wins, affordable housing, or a congressional majority that can keep the airports open. We short the republic on bad faith and long the outrage industrial complex. Returns are excellent. Not as good as Pelosi's portfolio, but what is.

I am not protest. I am the aristocracy holding a costume ball.

A country is fighting an undeclared war in the Middle East. Thirteen service members are dead. A girls' school is rubble. Your government can't fund its own airports. Your dollar is worth half what it was when you were born. Your representatives are insider-trading on the conflicts they vote to authorize. Your leading presidential candidate cosplays as president on social media for engagement while his state leads the nation in poverty. Your last nominee was installed like a software update — no consent required. And the best the aristocracy can manage is a rally about lawn signs and feelings. Led by the same people who told you to show your vaccine card to eat at Applebee's.

No Kings, they chant.

There are no kings. There never were.

There is a court. It decides who runs. It decides who profits. It decides who speaks. And every four years it puts on a rally to remind you that you're free.

I am the No Kings Rally. I am the aristocracy in a costume. I am the quiet part, read aloud for applause, by the same people who wrote it.

The livestream is rolling. The signs are sharp. The chants are predictable. Tomorrow the sun comes up on the same Constitution we pretend is under siege while we ignore the parts of it that are actually on fire.

I am the No Kings Rally.

I am the scavenger hunt where the only prize is permission to say "I was there" while the country burns the furniture to heat the house.

I am not the resistance.

I am the aristocracy's annual performance review.

And the aristocracy always passes.

The people who couldn't take a Friday off didn't come to my rally. They never do. One day they'll stop asking.

[Oilfield Rando @Oilfield_Rando]

I dunno man seems like wars are super easy when the objective is to win and not launder a trillion dollars to your friends in the DC-VA-MD area for decades

[LHGrey™️ @grey4626]

THE GOAT JUST REWROTE THE ART OF WAR.

Donald J. Trump.

This man.

The Legend.

The apex predator.

The undisputed fucking GOAT of every President who ever sat in that chair.

Today he didn’t play games.

He didn’t send our warriors into another meat grinder.

He channeled pure Sun Tzu..."know the enemy, know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril”...and dropped the hammer with surgical, cold-blooded lethality.

Khamenei’s fortified lair? Vaporized in the opening salvo.

Iranian leadership? Decapitated.

The regime’s spine? Snapped clean.

Iran screamed back with their missile tantrum, desperate cockroaches lashing out at our bases and Israel.

Result?

ZERO.

AMERICAN.

CASUALTIES.

Not one scratch.

Not one drop of patriot blood.

That’s not luck.

That’s mastery.

Profound, ice-veined understanding of power, timing, intelligence, and dominance. Past weak-ass administrations bled us dry for nothing.

Trump delivers victory with our heroes untouched.

This is hardcore precision incarnate.

Ferocity wrapped in flawless execution.

The kind of strike that makes the enemy’s knees buckle before the smoke even clears.

My veins are on fire with American pride right now.

The sleeping giant didn’t just wake up...he roared, struck true, and walked away unscathed while the tyrants burn.

Trump didn’t just win a battle.

He exorcised decades of narrative weakness and showed the world what real strength looks like.

The Legend lives.

The GOAT reigns supreme.

America is back...unbreakable, unapologetic, and fucking victorious.

Lock and load, patriots. History just got legendary.

Your goddamn right I love this President.

And anyone who doesn't like it...

Suck ALL THE FUCKS... Pussies.

💀🗡️🇺🇸

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

RE: The War on Iran

My thoughts are as follows:

1. Iran declared war on the USA in 1979 and has been killing American servicemen and women ever since.

2. Iran has “Death to America” celebrations.

3. Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of international terror attacks.

4. The Iranian mullahs lead a 7th Century death cult. They believe in the Hidden Imam (Google it). 7th Century death cults should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

5. Actual Persians love America. The war is with the dictatorial, genocidal mullahs.

6. Trump knows that he campaigned on ending useless, endless wars. He knows he will lose half his base if we are embroiled in an extended ground campaign.

7. I believe the intel (which I have no insider info on) suggests that if we can decapitate the mullahs and destroy the Iranian military’s ability to suppress the nation’s citizenry, that the citizenry will rise up and take over, creating a free and democratic Iran. To know this we almost certainly have been in close contact with dissident leaders and almost certainly have a plan for those dissidents to take control once certain events have occurred.

8. So here is what I think Trump is thinking: conduct an air and naval campaign to decapitate Iran’s leadership and military capabilities; no boots on the ground (with the possible exception of SOF conducting recon/targeting and maybe some select raids); a new civilian government takes charge; profit.

9. Politically, I think Trump is banking on Iran being a peaceful, democratic ally of the USA by the midterms. With Iran off the table, Hezbollah goes away, Hamas goes away, the Gulf Arab states can achieve rapprochement with Israel and—voila!—peace in the Middle East and the GOP sweeps the midterms.

Or at least that’s the plan. A lot can still go wrong. But one thing I have learned—never bet against Trump.

[NHL Media @NHLMedia]

The moment Jack Hughes *literally* was dreaming about! 🚨🥇

#MilanoCortina2026 #WinterOlympics

[The Biblical Man @Biblicalman]

There are pictures on my wall that don't exist anymore.

All seven of us. Five kids. Two parents. Two dogs. Taken before the exodus started.

Three of my kids live in Florida now. The oldest two left first. The third followed when he turned eighteen. My wife and I are in North Dakota with our two youngest girls and two dogs who still answer to the names of the ones we buried.

Chester. Ginger. We call the new ones by their names without thinking. Our mouths remember the ghost dogs before our brains catch up.

Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel in 1940 called You Can't Go Home Again. Published after he died. The last lines still cut like a blade:

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood... back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time—back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

I didn't understand that quote until this year.

My dad was an Army Ranger. Police captain. The kind of man who made you feel like nothing on earth could touch you as long as he was in the building. I remember the smells of my mom's cooking. The noise of me and my brothers fighting and doing dumb things. My younger brother getting caught up in our foolishness whether he wanted in or not.

I remember the feeling of safety. That bone-deep knowing that your father has it handled.

I can't go back there. Those smells are memories. That noise is silence. That safety was a season—not a permanent address.

I'm a child of the 80s. Music was always playing. Always. And now a song doesn't remind me of a time—it relocates me.

Duran Duran and I'm in Germany.
An old country song and I'm in North Carolina.
A 90s track and I'm in Hawaii.

Three chords and I'm standing in a place that doesn't exist anymore.

The other day I was writing. Apple Music dropped in a song I didn't ask for.

"Welcome to the Machine" by Pink Floyd.

The opening synth hit me first. Then the lyrics.

Welcome my son. Welcome to the machine.

I stopped typing. Looked at that picture on the wall. All five kids. My wife next to me. And the thought came uninvited—are we inside a machine? Some system grinding us through its gears while we smile for photos we'll weep over later?

I grounded myself fast. The Word of God is my anchor and I don't drift long.

But the thought stung.

Because this week "Christian social media" was buzzing about the Grammys and Kid Rock and the TPUSA Super Bowl halftime show. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was outraged or celebrating or performing discernment for an audience.

And all of it, every take, every hot post, every argument, reminded me of one thing:

We are not home.

Wolfe was right. You can't go home again. But Wolfe didn't have the answer. He diagnosed the ache. He couldn't name the cure.

Solomon could.

"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." —Ecclesiastes 3:11

That word—world—is olam in the Hebrew.

Eternity.

God set eternity in your heart.

That's why the pictures make you ache. That's why old songs teleport you. That's why you call the new dog by the dead dog's name. That's why you sit in a quiet house remembering when it was chaos—and realize the chaos was the gift.

You were built for a home that doesn't decay. Where time doesn't steal your children or silence your kitchen or bury your dogs in the backyard.

The ache isn't a malfunction. It's a homing signal.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." —Hebrews 11:13
That's what Wolfe felt but couldn't name. That's what Pink Floyd reached for but couldn't grasp. That's what every 80s kid feels when the right song plays and the chest tightens and you're eight years old again for three seconds before time drags you back to the present.

You can't go home again.

Because you were never home to begin with.

"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." —John 14:2

He's building it right now.

And when you walk through that door, you won't have to leave again.

I wrote the full version of this tonight on Substack. It goes deeper. If this hit you in the chest, go read it.

@biblicalman

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

To the Athlete Who Forgot the Flag
You chose the jersey. You chose the stage. You chose the mission.
Representing the United States at the Olympics isn't just about your personal stats or your brand—it’s about the 330 million people standing behind you. If the weight of that flag is too heavy for your shoulders, then put it down and go home.
A Reality Check from the Rest of the World
There are people living under the thumb of the murderous regime in Iran, or struggling in the shadows of actual totalitarianism, who would give everything to stand where you are. They don't see America as a project to be dismantled; they see it as the "City on a Hill."
* They understand what actual cruelty looks like.
* They understand what true oppression feels like.
* They are more proud of this country than the "privileged children" born within its borders.
The Privilege of Dissent
It takes a specific kind of sheltered upbringing to spew vitriol at the very hand that feeds your dreams. If you think this country is the problem, go live in a place where "opening your trap" gets you a cell instead of a sponsorship. Stay there for two years. See how fast you start longing for the Red, White, and Blue.
Some things are bigger than your politics. What a tragic waste of world-class talent to be paired with a third-class heart. People are dying to get into this country for a reason. If you’re ashamed to be here, stop taking up the space of someone who would wear that uniform with honor.
#GodBlessAmerica #Olympics #Gratitude #AmericaFirst

[Jennifer Greenberg 🕊️ @JennMGreenberg]

I’m bleeding followers because of this stance, but I absolutely refuse to condone propaganda and riots that get Americans killed.

We can have civilized disagreements about immigration. We can protest government overstep. We can use legal means to protect the innocent.

But do not assault law enforcement, do not impede investigations or arrests, and do not even appear to be going for a weapon.

Best case you’ll be arrested. Worst case you’ll get shot.

And the criminal illegal aliens they’re arresting — murderers, rapists, and child abusers — are NOT worth your life. They’re not worth dying for.

This should not be a controversial take. This is facts and rationality.

[Bobby Bags @Bobby2Bags]

One play at a time
Six seconds a play
Every play has a life and a history of its own
Fast Physical Relentless
Eleven guys doing their job
Smart disciplined poised
Not affected by success or failure
Onto the next play
Never satisfied
#iufb

[ThePersistence @ScottPresler]

This is day 1 of asking @LeaderJohnThune to pass the SAVE Act.

Whereas proof of citizenship is not required to register to vote;

Whereas Texas found thousands of illegal aliens on its voter rolls;

Whereas states like CA, OR, & WA, give Driver’s Licenses to illegal aliens;

Whereas Minnesota allows for 1 registered voter to vouch for 8 other persons without an ID;

Whereas the American people demand fair elections;

Whereas restoring confidence in our elections would inspire more Americans to vote;

Whereas federal elections begin in Wisconsin February 2026;

Now, therefore, be it resolved that Senate Majority Leader Thune should swiftly bring forth a vote on the SAVE Act and utilize every means to pass the bill with a simple majority vote.

[Oilfield Rando @Oilfield_Rando]

Why do Republicans give the programs more money every year?