GLENN: Hopefully we'll have Mike Lee on with us for a second. He has a tax proposal that he's working on. We'll talk to him about it.
STU: There's some ridiculous things going on, arguments against the tax bill. And there are arguments against it. Good ones, in that, it's not as good as it should be. It's not as bold as it should be. Mike Lee is trying to do some things to it, that may help depending on your perspective. But some of the arguments against it, are also unfair. National Review has four of them that they feature today. People are calling it a middle class tax hike. This is an interesting thing. Because what they're trying to do with this is play with the numbers.
Tax policy center analysis on the Senate bill reveals that three-quarters of all families would get a tax cut. Twelve percent will see a tax increase, and they're concentrated around the rich. Now, to me, that's annoying because no one should be getting any increase. But the idea it's a middle class tax cut, you're seeing that on Facebook. You're seeing that on mainstream media. The average middle income family would receive a tax cut of approximately $850 through 2025. Now, what they're doing is, they're looking at the year 2027, and they're seeing lots of tax increases in that year.
The Senate bill is structured to make these middle class tax cuts expire in 2025. They do this for a dumb budgeting gimmick. The idea is, in 2025, no one is going to say, well, we should raise taxes on the middle class. No one will want to take that position, so they'll all keep the tax cuts. That's risky. I don't like it. But even if you say that they don't extend them, what you would have is a 7,000-dollar tax cut in the earlier years, followed by a 100-dollar annual tax increase later.
GLENN: I'll take it.
STU: It's still a big cut over time, they're just focusing on --
GLENN: No one is going to do it at that time anyway.
Mike Lee is with us. Senator Mike Lee, how are you, sir?
MIKE: Doing great, Glenn. Good to be with you.
GLENN: Can you help us make sense and heads or tails of the tax plan and tell us what's going to happen. And I want to talk about, you and Rubio have gotten together. And you're asking exactly, what?
MIKE: We're asking to make the child tax credit more meaningful to everyone that works and everyone who pays taxes. What we want is a tax credit. People can take advantage of up to 13.3 percent of their earnings. This is a tax -- payroll tax is something that almost every American worker pays. And our tax system fails to take into account what we call the parent tax penalty. Our child tax credit proposal, would address that.
Now, Glenn, I've been accused justifiably in the past of being really poor on your show. Talking about this proposal subjects me to that accusation.
GLENN: No. We're going to let you go. It's just that you get turned on by numbers and clauses in the Constitution, that most people don't --
MIKE: Don't we all?
GLENN: No, we don't. But I appreciate that in a senator.
MIKE: Well, thank you. And I appreciate the chance to come over and talk about it. Because it's really important.
Look, America's working moms and dads contribute to our senior entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare twice, once as they pay their taxes and a second time to incur the cost of child rearing.
Because of the pay-as-you-go nature of Social Security and Medicare, working parents are contributing to Social Security and Medicare twice. By increasing the child tax credit and making it refundable, up to 15.3 percent of earnings, what we're doing is we're making sure we provide necessary tax relief to offset this penalty.
GLENN: Mike, is this going to pass?
MIKE: It will. And we'll make sure. Look, it will pass because it has to pass. And I'm not sure what form the tax bill is going to pass. But it's going to pass. I and my Republican colleagues in the Senate are going to make sure.
STU: Mike, they were talking about potentially as an offset to an increase child tax credit of having to increase the -- the proposed corporate tax. So it was 20 percent. They're talking about 21, 22 percent. Is that going to be necessary to do the changes you're talking about?
MIKE: This is one method of paying for it. We're not necessarily wedded to that method of paying for it. We're open to other suggestions. I'd love to leave the corporate rate at 20 percent rather than 22.
But as of right now, we got to keep in mind, that as President Trump himself explained to us at lunch the other day, 70 percent of tax relief in this bill is for corporations, leaving 30 percent of the bill for individuals.
This is one way of shifting more of that relief to individuals, especially to America's most important entrepreneurial class of investors, that is America's parents.
GLENN: Do you believe that America's corporations feel comfortable enough in investing that money in -- in capital expenditures or investment and employees, or are they just going to roll those tax savings into the market?
MIKE: I think they will invest in a lot of things that will create jobs. That's why I'm pleased of corporate tax relief. The corporate tax itself is kind of a devious thing because it disguises the cost of government. People think taxes on corporations don't cost workers any money. They do.
In fact, according to some economists, it may well be that half or so of corporate taxes end up coming out of workers wages. In any event, we know that taxing corporations would slow economic activity. And that affects everyone, including America's middle class taxpayers.
GLENN: Is McCain going to stick with you guys? I saw a story yesterday afternoon. Looks like McCain is at it again was the headline. Is McCain --
MIKE: Yeah. I saw that story too. It gives me nightmares, had nightmares ever since that fateful night in July when he left his thumb hanging in suspended animation, leaving us in -- turned the thumb down. Want to make sure that doesn't happen again.
Look, I think he'll vote with us at the end of the day. Even if he doesn't, we can lose him and still pass the thing without him.
STU: Mike, I'm glad you're talking about the payroll tax. I think it's something that conservatives don't get fired up enough about.
Here's a tax that is a regressive tax, meaning that people on the poor end of the scale pay more than people on the high end of the income scale, which is something I can't believe any progressive ever defends. But they seem to defend it. And not only it locks us into this -- this idea, and a lot of conservatives, I think, fall for it, which is, these long-term giant programs that are supposedly funded through this, when in reality, it kind of all goes into a big pot anyway. These big programs are owed to us because of this separate tax. We don't look at any other giant program the way we look at these entitlement programs. And I think it's a real problem. Is there any hope of attacking this payroll tax even more boldly?
MIKE: Well, I think you made the point well. And this leads to a point I've been meaning to use in messaging with this, which is the best way to understand the Rubio/Lee amendment is that it basically provides a tax cut with respect to payroll taxes. And for some of the reasons you identified. We have to focus on this more than we do. And just as importantly, a related point is that the people who would benefit most acutely from the Rubio/Lee proposal would be those workers who are perhaps most at risk of falling out of the work force and choosing instead to go on welfare. You know, parents with young children, who are right at the edge economically of whether or not they're going to decide, make sense to continue working and instead stop and take welfare benefits. We want to keep them in the workforce. We want to give them plenty of opportunity to stay in the workforce so they can benefit themselves and their families so that they can get promotions, and continue to make more and be contributing members of society. This would incentivize them to do that remove some of the incentives for them to just go on welfare and SNAP.
GLENN: Mike, I want to switch gears with you, and then I'll let you go. You know, Matt Lauer was just let go. Garrison Keillor was just let go. And it's -- it's a little disturbing to me that, A, we're letting people go without any kind of real due process. It seems like this could get out of hand quickly, if we're not really careful. I mean, I'm glad bad guys are going away, and I want this to be solved, but it concerns me that there's no due process here.
However, the only ones that don't seem really affected by it are those in politics. You know, on the Republican side, Roy Moore and Donald Trump. On the liberal side, it's John Conyer and Al Franken.
They're not going anywhere. Does that concern you, Mike?
MIKE: Yeah. In politics, some things operate differently, quite tragically. The meaning of the word "politics," break it down to its Greek roots, poly, which means many, and ticks, which are blood-sucking parasites. A lot of what happens here.
Look, as to your first point about due process, in the case of Matt Lauer, for instance, look, he was fired by a private, for-profit corporation. I assume he was an at-will employee, or if he wasn't an at-will employee, that he had some kind of provision in his contract, allowing his employer to take this action when they did this.
So speaking literally, in constitutional terms, that means there isn't a due process issue. Due process in the lowercase sense of the word, I assume that NBC, being well-represented by capable attorneys, made sure that they dotted their i's and crossed their t's and that they made sure the facts were adequately substantiated before taking this step. Firing someone who holds public office is a little bit different because normally, in most circumstances, to fire them, you have to wait until the next election.
But I suspect that there will be a whole lot of people getting fired by their voters as these things continue to come out.
GLENN: You believe there's more to come out, Mike? You've been there a while.
MIKE: Sadly, I come to suspect that there are. I've been saddened and surprised by some of the horrible things that have been happening. And it seems to arise in circumstances where men will do really bad things in circumstances where they think they can get away with it. There aren't enough reasons that they see not to do it. And it's tragic. It should not be that way.
GLENN: Which makes --
MIKE: But we've seen that -- news entertainment, media entertainment, and government and politics. And it's really sad.
GLENN: And it makes me a little nervous that if the people don't vote those people out, if they decide that it doesn't matter, we're going to end up with some of the worst people in the world, even worse than we have now in Washington, showing up, because you'll literally be able to get away with anything.
MIKE: Yeah. I think that's right. And that would be an absolutely unacceptable outcome. Fortunately, Glenn, I don't think that will happen for two independent reasons. First, I think a lot of people are going to take themselves out of contention. Perhaps most or all of those people who are in government right now, who are subject to these accusations are going to decide, it's time to hang it up. Secondly, I really don't think their voters are going to put up with it. This is unacceptable. They shouldn't elect people who will do awful things like this.
GLENN: Senator Mike Lee, thank you very much. Good luck.
Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?
For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.
The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.
Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.
In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.
That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.
Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.
Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.
We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.
Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.
Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images
This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.
We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.
For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.
Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.
To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.
We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.
We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.
A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.
That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.
Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.
Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.
But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.
Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.
When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.
Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images
So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.
Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.
The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.
Will you join it, or will you stand against it?
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”
Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.
Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.
Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.
The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.
Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.
Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.
The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.
Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”
The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.
Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.
Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.
A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.
Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images
That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.
Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.
Both are traps.
The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.
Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.
They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.
This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.
