GLENN: Okay. Let's judge him on his actions, not what we fear. Can we do that?
STU: Of course.
PAT: It's fair.
GLENN: So just on this action, not what we fear -- because what I fear is the same thing you fear: We start putting up trade barriers and we start moving into the things that he's also said he's going to do and we move into the area of tariffs, and we're in real trouble. But he hasn't done that. On this, I think this is a good thing getting out of TPP.
STU: You know, there are risks to it.
GLENN: China will be able to write all the rules. Right.
STU: You know, obviously if our issue is China with trade, now China is going to be writing the rules likely for this entire group of countries, which will be their negotiating starting point for anything going further. Of course, you know, Trump would say that he's going to be able to negotiate better deals. And he may very well -- he might. So to this one, I'm not thrilled in that. But I know I'm in the minority for sure.
GLENN: You happy, Pat?
PAT: Yeah. I think that's a good thing.
GLENN: Reinstating a ban on funding some abortion services. Trump's order yesterday reimposes a ban initiated in 1984 by Reagan on government support for international aid groups that provide or counsel women on abortion services. To receive any US aid, nongovernmental organizations will now have to certify they do not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning. This ban is called the Global Gag Rule, lifted by Obama after he took office in 2009.
What it doesn't do, it doesn't affect family planning or abortion policy here in the United States.
I think it's a step in the right --
JEFFY: It's a start.
PAT: However, good for -- what the hell are we funding abortions anywhere, but especially foreign countries.
GLENN: Yeah, yeah.
STU: That's an A-plus for me.
PAT: That's huge.
STU: And also, you know, it's been one of those things that every Democrat has not enacted and every Republican has. So Reagan had it on. Then the Clintons took it off. Then Bush put it back on. Then Obama took it off. So this is very consistent with past Republican policy since Reagan. And obviously as somebody who is pro-life, it's important.
GLENN: Third, ordering a government-wide hiring freeze.
Here's what the order does: The Trump administration directed the leaders of all federal agencies and departments to freeze hiring of new personnel. Any vacancies in the federal workforce as of noon on Sunday must remain unfilled, and no new positions may be created, except in limited circumstances, the order stated.
The decision is meant to counter the dramatic expansion of the federal work force since the Clinton administration, from 1.8 million civilian employees, to 2.1 million. The cost in health and retirement benefits are unsustainable, says the administration.
There's, frankly, to some degree been a lack of respect for taxpayer dollars for a long time, says Spicer.
What the order does not do: Military is exempt from the freeze. Each department or agency can also exempt any position that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities.
I think that's good. Just through attrition, you will cut the size of the government down dramatically.
STU: Yeah, I'm certainly a big fan of this one as well.
The left is -- their point is, just so we know, because it's always important to know -- their argument is essentially, of all the things that have expanded during the Obama administration, federal employment hasn't really expanded.
A lot of that is to do with economic collapse and that kind of thing. But he left office about the same employment level federally as he got into office, which is sort of surprising, I think.
GLENN: Really surprising.
STU: Because it did drop initially. And then it has come back up to even. So that's just something to note, if you care.
But, I mean, as a principle, I think it's a good idea. We obviously know the federal government is way too big. And this is -- you're right, a way of doing attrition without having to lay people off constantly and have all those negative headlines
GLENN: And it's hard to fire people.
STU: It's hard to fire people. You don't want to fire good people. When people leave, you don't replace them. And that has to go along with obvious cuts in the structure eventually. But there's enough fat on there that you don't have to think about that for a while.
GLENN: Yeah. Going to turn the federal workers against because how many times have we worked in a company where they just didn't hire replacements, and then you get -- congratulations, no pay increase, you get to do their job too. And you're like, oh, crap. So it's going to be bad on the morale of government workers.
He has announced his intention to renegotiate or withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, with Canada and Mexico.
He is in conversations with Canadian/Mexican leaders. Trump has made clear his intention to renegotiate the deal, though no formal steps have been taken. He has also convened his generals and informed them that they have 30 days to submit a new plan for defeating the Islamic State group.
So these are the -- some of the promises that he made. Remember, he was out and he said, "We're not going to fight this the way -- I'm going to go to the generals, and I'm going to tell them, you scrap what you're doing and come up with something else. I'm going to do that day one." This is where TIME magazine is like, well, he didn't do that.
Well, he's informed them, and he's convened them. And he's telling them that they now have 30 days.
Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.
In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.
That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.
This was Marxism’s moment.
Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.
Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.
McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.
That mission soon found a useful symbol.
In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.
The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.
By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.
In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.
That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.
Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.
President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.
With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.
It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.
Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.
Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images
What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.
It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.
But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.
James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.
That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.
Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.
Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.
The list of political enablers is long but revealing:
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.
These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.
The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.
George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.
This system was not designed for transparency but for control.
Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.
The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.
The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.
Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.
USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.
The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.
The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.
Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images
The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.
According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.
What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.
This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.
With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.
At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.
The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.
Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.
Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.
Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.
And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.
When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.
Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.
The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.
Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.
That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.
Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.
When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.
Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images
Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.
So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
