TheBlaze TV host Dana Loesch reacts to her most recent death threat

On radio Wednesday, Glenn was joined by Dana Loesh who told Glenn she's been talking to the FBI since receiving a really nasty death threat.

Here's how Dana told the story.

"It happened on my birthday, and Sunday, some dude who was really bad at graphics put up this video where he edited the NRA video that I did, the 'Moms Like Me' video, and it shows this like weird hand coming up, you know, with a Glock in the hand. And it pulls the trigger and shoots me right in the face, and blood splatters on the screen, and I fall over," Dana said.

The video was posted and subsequently shared on Twitter, until Dana eventually saw it while watching a baseball game with her family. The creepy part is that this wasn't the first time the person who posted the video had tried to contact Dana.

"This guy has been trying to get my attention for a long time. Apparently he lives in Illinois. And I've never engaged," Dana said.

She decided to take action when she realized her 14-year-old son had seen the video on Instagram.

"I just thought, 'all right, that's it. I'm done.' And so I'm trying to pursue options and see what happens. Because I'm just done dealing with this," Dana said.

Dana explained she reached out to the FBI and they are now carrying out an assessment of the situation.

"Well, if you just gave up the gun, then you would not have this problem," Glenn said jokingly.

Dana's response?

"That's exactly why I carry because guys like [him] who are bigger than me and stronger than me in a number of different ways are threatening me physically, yes, you're right, that's exactly why I have a firearm. You just proved my point, thank you," she said.

Listen to the full interview or read the transcript below.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

GLENN: You are talking to the FBI because you actually have some really nasty death threats.

DANA: Yeah, it's been fun. It happened on my birthday, and Sunday, some dude who was really bad at graphics put up this video where he edited the NRA video that I did, the Moms Like Me video, and it shows this like weird hand coming up, you know, with a Glock in the hand. And it pulls the trigger and shoots me right in the face, and blood splatters on the screen, and I fall over. And he posted that to Twitter because Twitter has video now. Put it up on Twitter, and it kind of went from there.

So I'm at the ball field. My son plays fall baseball. I'm at the ball field on Sunday, and I see all this weird stuff. You know, I made the mistake of, "Oh, well -- you know, he had a double-header. I'm like, "Okay, we have a break, let's look at Twitter." Which you shouldn't do on a Sunday.

So I open my phone. I look at Twitter, and I see all these weird mentions in my mentions column. And it's this video. And so I play it, and I'm watching it there. And the crazy thing is my oldest son is now aware of it because my oldest son is 14. And he and his friends, they're all on the Internet. He had saw it before -- we weren't even going to say anything to him, but he had already seen it.

GLENN: I remember the first spooky video death threat I ever got were from 9/11 truthers. And they made -- they took the stuff that I had done on CNN and slowed it way down and then put driving rock music behind it, and then a disembodied computer voice said, "All traitors must die." And then they put underneath my face, the word "traitor."

"All traitors must die. All traitors must die." It was the spookiest thing. Now it's kind of like, "Okay, well, it's Tuesday." But it was really spooky.

DANA: Yeah, it was creepy. And this guy has been trying to get my attention for a long time. Apparently he lives in Illinois. And I've never engaged. If it doesn't advance a message I'm trying to get out, then I don't engage.

GLENN: Oh, you are evil.

DANA: If it doesn't serve my purpose in some way, then I never engage that person. And I've ignored him. And this has been going on for a very long time. And then I saw that video.

GLENN: Like, what's he trying to contact you for?

DANA: Oh, just on Twitter, constantly writing stuff.

GLENN: Nasty stuff about you?

DANA: Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, really ignorant. I mean, really trying to get a reaction out of me. And I ignored it. You know, I just muted him. I don't like to give them the satisfaction of seeing me block them, so God bless the mute button. So I just muted him, and that was about it. And then until this video came out.

And I don't know if it was the combination of me just being crabby, how you should have known it was my birthday. How dare you. You should have waited a day. Or it was the fact that, you know, my 14-year-old son had seen it because he's on Facebook as are a lot of kids who are 14 years old. And he's on Instagram, as are a lot of other 14-year-olds. Maybe it was that and the fact that he had seen it as well. And I just thought, "All right, that's it. I'm done." And so I'm trying to pursue options and see what happens. Because I'm just done dealing with this.

GLENN: Did the FBI reach out to you? Or did you --

DANA: Oh, I reached out to the FBI. I reached out to Cyber Crimes Division in Dallas. I also reached out to the FBI bureau here in Dallas. I heard back from them. I spoke with them today. They're assessing right now. They're in the assessment portion of, I guess, like a pre-investigation. So that's where it stands.

PAT: Hmm.

GLENN: Well, if you just gave up the gun, then you would not have this problem.

DANA: And that's the other thing because I had a number of grown adult males who were telling me yesterday online, yesterday and Sunday, that one of them said that he wants to beat my face in. The other one says that he wants to blank me up because I hide behind my guns. And I'm like, "Yes, that's exactly why I carry because guys like you who are bigger than me and stronger than me in a number of different ways are threatening me physically, yes, you're right, that's exactly why I have a firearm. You just proved my point, thank you."

GLENN: Where do you think this goes? I think we're headed with the Democratic Convention and everything else -- I was just up in the library today, and I was looking at some old Black Panthers stuff that we have up in the vaults in the Mercury library. And they're all old newspapers from 1968 and 1969 from the Black Panthers. It is Black Lives Matter. One hundred percent Black Lives Matter. I mean, word-for-word, Black Lives Matter.

And you know what the country was like in 1968 and '69. And I think we're headed for that. I think we'll see violence in Philadelphia. I hope I'm wrong. I think we'll see violence in Philadelphia and violence next year. Really bad violence. Assassinations I think are on our horizon. Because that's the only thing that hasn't been repeated. That's what happened in the early 1900s. It happened in the 1930s. It happened in the 1960s. And it will happen again. Whenever progressives really take root, it's a pattern. And the only thing we haven't done is riots in cities. We've started it, but not really. Riots in cities and assassinations.

DANA: Right. Right. I hope that's not the case. And I hope that our side can not take the bait on that. I mean, I think that there are people who just want to bait both sides really into exactly what you're describing, unfortunately. But I just -- it's always the people who preach nonviolence and unity that are the most unhinged and they're the most violent. And everything that they accuse everyone else of is everything that they commit themselves. They do all of this stuff. The Occupy -- the Tea Party never did anything bad. It's always been the Black Lives Matter and the Occupy people. They don't know how to live peacefully.

GLENN: Hang on just a second. I'm preaching peace and unity. So...

DANA: Yeah, but you're not going out there and like committing acts of violence or using violent rhetoric, or whatever that phrase is. You're not -- I mean, you're actually living it. I mean, you're actually going to help people. And, you know, you're traveling and visiting with people. I mean, it's like a big difference from what these people are doing. They're just there to start riots.

GLENN: Well, some people believe it, and some people use it as a slogan to hide behind.

DANA: A lot of people use it as a slogan to hide behind, yeah.

GLENN: So let's switch gears here for just a second. I don't know if you saw the Carly Fiorina -- or did you meet her when she was in the studio?

DANA: I interviewed her in your office when you weren't here one day.

GLENN: What do you think of her?

DANA: I think that she -- she's impressive. I haven't made up my mind yet because I -- she's impressive. I just have some questions about her business record. You know, I had asked her the question -- it was something to the extent of, "How are you going to be able to persuade Vladimir Putin and the religious leaders in Iran if you weren't able to win over the HP board? You know, how is that going to work out?" So, I mean, I think that -- she still needs to convince people on that end.

Her answer as to how she used to support the mandate for catastrophic coverage, I mean, great, we're all about liberty evangelism, right? If she comes out and says, "Okay, well, I agree with everyone now. I was wrong." Okay. Well, I can understand that. People do. They can become persuaded, and they can come around. I'm just a little hesitant to trust that answer because it seems like she just came around now because she's in the primary. So I think that she needs to persuade people a little bit more that that was a genuine reconsideration.

GLENN: I had a great conversation with her yesterday on the TV show. And I like her a lot. I'm still -- I'm hesitant to pull the trigger as well and say, "You know what, I back you 100 percent." She hasn't said anything that turns me off.

DANA: Right.

GLENN: She said many things that I really, really like.

DANA: Right.

GLENN: I think she's honest. At least that's the feeling I got from her. I'm just not sure on her pivot point on some of those things. She claims that she hasn't had those extreme views on very many things. But she did actually -- and I was surprised she didn't play this card. But she has had a massive pivot point in her life. You know, losing her child, and breast cancer in 2009, 2010, she -- that was a pretty major pivot point. She didn't tie that to anything, which surprised me.

DANA: I've appreciated how she hasn't really played the gender card because that would have been a huge turnoff.

I do think she has a commanding presence. You can tell she's a boardroom person.

GLENN: She is good.

DANA: When you meet her and she looks at you, you can tell that she's making some judgments right when she's looking at you and she's sizing everything up.

GLENN: Do you trust her?

DANA: I don't trust any of them, really. Honestly. Can I be honest?

GLENN: Who is your candidate?

DANA: I don't have one.

GLENN: You don't have one?

DANA: I do not have one.

GLENN: Not one that you're even, eh, you really like that person --

DANA: I mean, I like some of them, and then I really don't like some of them.

GLENN: Tell me the people you like.

DANA: I like Ted Cruz. But I'm not like endorsing Ted Cruz. I mean, I like Ted Cruz. I think he has the most small government record. He doesn't have a perfect record. But, you know, I like him. There's a few of them that I -- that I kind of like. All of them --

GLENN: How about Rubio?

DANA: I don't like him on amnesty. I don't like him on amnesty. That's a big thing with me.

GLENN: Have you sat down and talked with him?

DANA: No, I have not. He and Jeb Bush, shockingly, and John Kasich. I haven't spoken with those guys.

GLENN: There's only one of those three that I have spoken to and want to speak with. I had an hour sitdown with Rubio. Just without a microphone or camera, just two men sitting there talking.

I came away really liking him. Really respecting him. He's thought things through. He just disagrees with us on a few things, like the NSA. But he's -- he's worth -- he's worth looking at. I don't know if I trust him. You know, I don't know where his --

DANA: Right.

GLENN: -- where he really is when it comes down to the Constitution. But I think he's generally okay. He bothers me with his big government solutions on the war and --

DANA: Yeah. I don't know if it's an issue of trust. Or if I'm interested to see how easily they can be persuaded. Each one of these candidates can be persuaded to do the right thing by the Constitution and limited government.

GLENN: Do you think that's what the problem was with Rand Paul? That he started --

STU: You're talking about him in past tense. This is not a good sign. He's still in the race.

DANA: I know. But what is he? He's barely at 1 percent. He's not going make it after the next debate, if he makes it to the next --

GLENN: He's not going to make it.

DANA: And that's not to say that he's a bad person. He lost that momentum.

GLENN: No, I love him.

DANA: He lost the momentum.

GLENN: I think what happened with him is he shot himself in the foot by making that deal with Mitch McConnell.

DANA: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: As soon as he made that deal with -- he was -- for instance, Ted Cruz, with an exception of that one thing that he flip-flopped on, what was it?

PAT: It was TPT -- TPP or TPA.

GLENN: Right. He flipped on that. Everything else, he's been, nope, this is where I'm at. It doesn't matter. And I'm not playing ball with anybody. And that I think goes a long way with people. Rand Paul, I think the mistake he made is he shot himself in the foot by cozying up to Mitch McConnell.

DANA: Yeah, that was the start of it.

GLENN: Yeah, the minute he did that, you're like, "I don't know if I can trust him."

DANA: Right. And I understand why he did it. Everybody wants to have that backup. Everyone wants to have their little caucus, but there's a cost.

GLENN: Yeah. So Dana, you can listen to Dana on her radio program. And, of course, she follows my program on TheBlaze TV at 6 o'clock, Eastern time. You don't want to miss it. Thanks, Dana. Appreciate it. Stay safe.

When 'Abolish America' stops being symbolic

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Prosecutors stopped a New Year’s Eve bombing plot rooted in ideology that treats the US as an enemy to be destroyed.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced that four members of an anti-capitalist extremist group were arrested on Friday for plotting coordinated bombings in California on New Year’s Eve.

According to the Department of Justice, the suspects planned to detonate explosives concealed in backpacks at various businesses while also targeting ICE agents and vehicles. The attacks were supposed to coincide with midnight celebrations.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed.

The plot was disrupted before any lives were lost. The group behind the plot calls itself the Turtle Island Liberation Front. That name matters more than you might think.

When ideology turns operational

For years, the media has told us that radical, violent rhetoric on the left is mostly symbolic. They explained away the angry slogans, destructive language, and calls for “liberation” as performance or hyperbole.

Bombs are not metaphors, however.

Once explosives enter the picture, framing the issue as harmless expression becomes much more difficult. What makes this case different is the ideological ecosystem behind it.

The Turtle Island Liberation Front was not a single-issue group. It was anti-American, anti-capitalist, and explicitly revolutionary. Its members viewed the United States as an illegitimate occupying force rather than a sovereign nation. America, in their view, is not a nation, not a country; it is a structure that must be dismantled at any cost.

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

“Turtle Island” is not an innocent cultural reference. In modern activist usage, it is shorthand for the claim that the United States has no moral or legal right to exist. It reframes the country as stolen land, permanently occupied by an illegitimate society.

Once people accept that premise, the use of violence against their perceived enemies becomes not only permissible, but virtuous. That framing is not unique to one movement. It appears again and again across radical networks that otherwise disagree on nearly everything.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements do not share the same vision for the future. They do not even trust one another. But they share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed. The alignment of radical, hostile ideologies is anything but a coincidence.

The red-green alliance

For decades, analysts have warned about what is often called the red-green alliance: the convergence of far-left revolutionary politics with Islamist movements. The alliance is not based on shared values, but on shared enemies. Capitalism, national sovereignty, Western culture, and constitutional government all fall into that category.

History has shown us how this process works. Revolutionary coalitions form to tear down an existing order, promising liberation and justice. Once power is seized, the alliance fractures, and the most ruthless faction takes control.

Iran’s 1979 revolution followed this exact pattern. Leftist revolutionaries helped topple the shah. Within a few years, tens of thousands of them were imprisoned, executed, or “disappeared” by the Islamist regime they helped install. Those who do not understand history, the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it.

ALEX WROBLEWSKI / Contributor | Getty Images

This moment is different

What happened in California was not a foreign conflict bleeding into the United States or a solitary extremist acting on impulse. It was an organized domestic group, steeped in ideological narratives long validated by universities, activist networks, and the media.

The language that once circulated on campuses and social media is now appearing in criminal indictments. “Liberation” has become a justification for explosives. “Resistance” has become a plan with a date and a time. When groups openly call for the destruction of the United States and then prepare bombs to make it happen, the country has entered a new phase. Pretending things have not gotten worse, that we have not crossed a line as a country, is reckless denial.

Every movement like this depends on confusion. Its supporters insist that calls for America’s destruction are symbolic, even as they stockpile weapons. They denounce violence while preparing for it. They cloak criminal intent in the language of justice and morality. That ambiguity is not accidental. It is deliberate.

The California plot should end the debate over whether these red-green alliances exist. They do. The only question left is whether the country will recognize the pattern before more plots advance farther — and succeed.

This is not about one group, one ideology, or one arrest. It is about a growing coalition that has moved past rhetoric and into action. History leaves no doubt where that path leads. The only uncertainty is whether Americans will step in and stop it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

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The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

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Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

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Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.