MMN Editor

Imagine a world where Walmart only has five stores left.It’s unthinkable because the company has dominated retail for so long, and it survived the pivot from pure brick-and-mortar operations to an omnichannel retailer.Even if it sells explosive diarrhea lettuce, replaces its greeters with unsupervised raccoons, or puts the people behind Fyre Festival in charge of grocery pickup, the chain would suffer, but survive.Sears, arguably the chain that served as the Walmart of its day, did not make any single mistake quite as epic as any of the silly ones listed above. Instead, the chain, which was bigger than Walmart by sales until 1990, according to Business Insider, made thousands of little mistakes.The once-dominant retailer, founded in 1886, even survived the pivot from its catalog business to a store-based model.Since 1990, however, the chain has slowly dwindled, selling off assets such as its Craftsman, DieHard, and Lands End brands and using the proceeds for ill-fated ideas that did not reverse the slide.Now, while Sears has not shut down, the chain has five locations left and appears to have abandoned any realistic hopes of a comeback.Sears Chapter 11 was the beginning of the endSears actually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018, according to court documents filed on PacerMonitor.At the time, Global Data Managing Director Neil Saunders released a strong statement on the company.“Today is a day that will live in retail infamy. That a storied retailer, once at the pinnacle of the industry, should collapse in such a shabby state of disarray is both terrible and scandalous in equal measure. However, it is not surprising because this is a destination that Sears has been headed towards for many years, with virtually no serious attempt having ever been made to change the trajectory,” he wrote.Saunders called on the company to make big changes and made it clear that its current strategies were not working.“Over the longer term it is still unclear what Sears hopes to accomplish. We believe there is no clear path to success. The group has tried to shrink its way to profitability for years to no avail, so it is hard to see why pursuing the same strategy under the auspice of Chapter 11 would result in a different outcome,” he added.More Retail:Coca-Cola quietly hints at reinventing previously failed flavorBath & Body Works quietly gains a competitive advantageDollar General brings back old pricesHe also foretold what would happen down the road with many of the company’s owned-and-operated brands, which had not yet been sold. “Further asset sales may reduce debt, but they would not put the company on a sound financial footing nor would they solve the operating losses the group is racking up,” he shared.Many analysts trace the true beginning of the chain’s downfall not to its Chapter 11 filing, but to its post-bankruptcy purchase by hedge fund operator Eddie Lampert in 2004.Lampert merged the company with KMart in 2005, which Saunders also saw as a problem. “The solution to Sears’ problems was to buy another retailer not doing well, and that was Kmart. Then they got a bigger bad business,” Saunders told CNBC. “Sears wasn’t investing or changing, and they started to suffer because of that.”And while other retailers were investing, Sears was cutting back.A report from Susquehanna Financial Group had said Sears in 2017 was spending roughly 91 cents per square foot to make upgrades both online and in stores, while J.C. Penney spent $4.13, Kohl’s was paying $8.12, and Best Buy was forking out $15.36 per square foot to make enhancements, CNBC reported.“I think if it was any other retailer they probably would’ve already filed for bankruptcy,” Retail Metrics founder Ken Perkins told CNBC in 2018. “But in Sears’ case, someone with deep pockets is able to influx cash, extract real estate and sell off assets … the cupboard is running very bare and there isn’t a lot left.”At its peak, Sears operated more than 2,700 locations.Sears was sold off for partsSears did raise cash selling off its well-known brands.Craftsman went to Stanley Black & Decker, which now sells it at Home Depot and other chains. DieHard was sold to Advance Auto Parts, and Lands’ End was spun off and still runs independently.Some analysts have argued that Lampert’s only goal was to sell off Sears’ massive real estate holdings. Lampert also used those holdings to protect his investment in the company should it fail.“If they go bankrupt, he remains in control of the company because, though he loses his equity stake, he’s their principal creditor,” former Sears Canada CEO and Columbia Business School Professor Mark Cohen told CNBC. But Lampert has cordoned “off an enormous amount of assets through the loans he’s made, which have essentially protected him from what is eventually (going to) occur,” added Cohen.Sears’ owner sold off hundreds of the chain’s properties to Seritage Growth Properties, a company he controls.The problem is that “then you end up signing leases” and saddling the company with lease liabilities, Neil Stern, senior partner at retail consulting firm McMillanDoolittle, told CNBC.

Sears only has five locations left. Shutterstock

Lampert was sued over Sears’ salesSears creditors sued Lampert and other investors, a case which was ultimately settled. The settlement could resolved years-long litigation filed against Lampert and other defendants over allegations of asset stripping and “rank” self-dealing in the years leading to Sears Holdings’ 2018 bankruptcy, according to Retail Dive.The settlement paid plaintiffs $175 million, including $125.6 million from insurers, $41.9 million from the defendants, and $7.5 million from shareholding funds, reported News.Law.”By the time it filed for bankruptcy, many of Sears Holdings’ stores had closed, major assets — including property, beloved products brands and retail banners such as Sears Canada — had been sold or spun off,” the legal website shared.How those sales were conducted were the heart of the lawsuit against Lampert and other defendants. “Lampert and his hedge fund, ESL Investments, invested in and often took controlling stakes in many of the divested assets, including Sears Canada, Lands’ End, and Seritage Growth Properties (which included a large portfolio of Sears Holdings’ real estate),” the site reported.Sears has 5 locations leftFive Sears stores are still operating in the country, but they won’t be around much longer, industry experts predict, The New York Times reported.”Neither will Seritage Growth Properties, the real estate investment trust created to cash in on the value of the retailer’s properties. It abandoned its somewhat audacious plan to turn Sears’ rich real estate holdings into dazzling mixed-use properties. Today, Seritage is offloading the last of its assets as it pays down a $1.6 billion term loan from Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway,” the newspaper shared.That process will end soon, which could mean the formal end of Sears as a retailer.“The goal is to sell the remaining Seritage assets as quickly and profitably as possible, but we are also very open to an alternative transaction that could enhance shareholder value,” Adam Metz, chief executive of Seritage, said in an interview with the paper.RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino sees Sears’ saga as a sad tale that could have been avoided. “The Sears story is one of the biggest cautionary tales in retail history. It’s almost hard to comprehend how many wrong turns a company had to make to go from being America’s most iconic retailer to having only five stores left,” he told TheStreet.It was a demise that required a lot of mistakes, he shared. “The issue wasn’t one bad decision — it was a series of decisions that slowly disconnected Sears from its customers, its employees, and the future of retail. They had the brand, the real estate, the trust, and the history. In the end, it just wasn’t Amazon that killed them but a series of unfortunate events and decisions,” he wrote.Related: Costco drops a surprising new exclusive snack

We can protect animals from wrongful treatment without wrongfully redefining animals as legal persons ‘who’ are morally equivalent to humans.

McDonald’s revolutionized fast-food breakfast with the creation of the Egg McMuffin in 1971 and the item’s national rollout in 1975. Herb Peterson, a McDonald’s franchisee in Southern California, created the breakfast sandwich, which was meant to be a portable version of Eggs Benedict.”It was breakfast in a sack, and just the kind of finger-food that busy American consumers had been missing in the morning,” according to NPR.Bob Goldin, a food industry consultant with Technomic, shared how the seemingly simple product was actually revolutionary.”I don’t think there were a whole lot of products that fit that need at that point in time,” he told NPR. “Breakfast tended to be a sit-down occasion, eggs and bacon, cereal. And here comes this Egg McMuffin that people could eat on the go.”And while McDonald’s expanded the Egg McMuffin line to include bacon and sausage versions, the English muffin remained the chain’s signature sandwich bread offering. That changed in 1986 when the chain added biscuit-based sandwiches.Now, the fast-food giant has quietly borrowed from one of its biggest rivals for morning supremacy with its new biscuit sandwich.McDonald’s adds honey butterWhile biscuits aren’t new to McDonald’s, honey butter is. The chain has introduced the new Honey Brown Butter Bacon Egg & Cheese Biscuit at participating restaurants nationwide. “This breakfast sandwich is the perfect spin on the classic bacon egg and cheese, taking those ingredients and nestling them between two freshly baked biscuits with creamy, toasty Honey Brown Butter,” according to the McDonald’s website. Honey butter has long been a staple at Chick-Fil-A. It’s brushed onto every biscuit the chain sells, and at some locations, you can add even more as a dipping sauce. It’s not an official side item or sauce packet, so whether a store will give you extra depends on local management.For McDonald’s, the new biscuit continues its long-term innovation policy of offering new takes on familiar items. The Honey Brown Butter Bacon Egg & Cheese Biscuit was launched July 21 and will be available for an unspecified limited time.

McDonald’s has expanded breakfast well beyond the classic Egg McMuffin.Shutterstock

McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A battle over breakfastMcDonald’s does not break out its sales by daypart, and Chick-fil-A, as a privately held company, does not share financial information regularly. As both chains have faced increased competition from convenience stores, they appear to be winning that battle, according to Ian O’Neil, director of consumer intelligence for Rubix Foods.He said that while competition is intense, breakfast has been a bright spot for QSRs.“We’re seeing some interesting shifts in visitation by daypart, with QSRs gaining share at breakfast from C-stores,” O’Neil told Food Institute (FI).More Restaurants:74-year-old fast food giant closes 207 U.S. restaurantsIconic burger chain closes 89-year-old restaurant for good86-year-old nationwide ice cream chain closes 46 storesFast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A do have room to grow breakfast sales.”Despite a recent focus on the daypart, QSRs only represent roughly 23% of the market, while casual dining claims nearly 28%, suggesting its position as a growth lever in the year ahead,” FI noted, based on a report from Menu Data.McDonald’s admits the breakfast challengeMcDonald’s CEO Christopher J. Kempczinski, during the chain’s second-quarter earnings call, talked about the challenge in selling breakfast when consumers are worried about the economy.”You’re seeing people either skip occasions, so they’re skipping a daypart like breakfast, or they’re trading down either within our menu, or they’re trading down to eating at home,” he said. The morning meal, he noted, has been hit harder than the rest of the chain’s offerings. “The breakfast daypart is the most economically sensitive daypart because it’s the easiest daypart for a stressed consumer to either skip breakfast or choose to eat breakfast at home. And we, as well as the rest of the industry, are seeing that the breakfast daypart is absolutely the weakest daypart in the day,” he added.McDonald’s faces another key headwindIn addition to cost concerns, fast-food chains also face the growing number of Americans taking a GLP-1 weight loss drug.As one of those Americans, I can say my personal reaction to the medicine mimics what the data show. I’m skipping breakfast most days and replacing it with a protein drink.”The pullback in restaurant visits isn’t spread evenly across times of day, according to Dana Baggett, executive director of restaurant client strategy at RRD, which works with more than 200 restaurant brands,” CNBC reported.The morning meal has been hit hardest.”Lunch, so far, hasn’t been impacted,” she said. “But breakfast has taken a hit, particularly from high-income GLP-1 users, who represent a bigger percentage of current patients, she said. In practice, that means fewer sugary coffee drinks and doughnuts, although options like Starbucks’ protein cold foam could encourage those consumers to return.”A few years ago, before taking the medication, I probably would have tried McDonald’s new Honey Brown Butter Biscuit. Today, I’m the kind of breakfast customer the chain is trying to win back.Related: Taco Bell and Chipotle face a problem bigger than lettuce

People across the world are living longer, but they’re also spending more years coping with ill health, a recent study observed.The “morbidity gap” — the number of years people spend in poor health, typically struggling with chronic challenges such as low back pain, hearing loss and depression — widened across 203 of 204 countries analyzed, and was the most pronounced in America, the researchers found.”Globally in 2023, an average of 14·5% of life was spent in poor health, compared to 13·6% in 1990,” the researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington reported.JANE SEYMOUR, 75, SHARES HOW SHE APPROACHES AGING WITH VITALITY: ‘BEST I CAN BE’In the United States, the morbidity gap is about 14 years, or 17.8% of the expected lifespan.”Between 1990 and 2023, global life expectancy at birth increased from 64.6 years to 73.8 years, while healthy life expectancy rose from 55.9 years to 63.1 years,” the researchers reported in a news release.CLICK HERE FOR MORE LIFESTYLE NEWS”Because gains in survival consistently outpaced gains in healthy years of life, people are spending more years living with chronic disease and disability,” they wrote.The gap widened the most in the wealthiest countries where populations have access to life-extending resources, the researchers reported. Women are also living longer than men, but also spending more years in poor health, they found.”To me, the most important message of this study is not that people are living longer — it is that we have become far better at delaying death than delaying functional decline,” Dr. Antony Chu, clinical assistant professor at Brown University’s Warren Alpert School of Medicine, told Fox News Digital.”Modern medicine has achieved remarkable success in reducing mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancer, trauma and infectious illness,” he said. “Yet many of those additional years are now lived with chronic pain, disability, sensory loss, depression or reduced independence.”TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZResearchers analyzed Global Burden of Disease data covering 204 countries and territories from 1990 through 2023. In their report, published by The Lancet Public Health, scientists observed that a small number of chronic, largely non-fatal causes were the primary contributors to the morbidity gap.Musculoskeletal disorders, especially low back pain, mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety, hearing loss, falls and other non-communicable accounted for about 57% of all years lived in poor health worldwide. High fasting plasma glucose, obesity and aging populations were also important contributors.The researchers noted that the study points to broad health trends but doesn’t prove exactly what’s causing people to spend more years in poor health.”Our findings suggest that future gains in population health will come not only from helping people live longer, but from helping them live healthier,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine and senior author of the study.”Progress in healthy aging should be measured not only by lifespan, but by healthspan [the number of years spent in good health], with greater investment in prevention, long-term disease management and chronic care to reduce years lived in poor health,” Murray added.The goal should no longer be simply extending lifespan, but compressing morbidity and maximizing the number of years people remain physically, cognitively and socially well, Chu told Fox News Digital.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER”Ultimately, I believe the next frontier of medicine is not simply adding years to life, but adding life to years,” he said. “First, we need to focus on preserving function rather than simply reacting to disease.”The approach involves routinely assessing mobility, muscle strength, balance, hearing, cognition and overall physical resilience. Chu said this may prove just as important as monitoring blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose.”Functional decline often begins years before disability becomes obvious, providing an opportunity for earlier intervention,” he said.Musculoskeletal health also deserves much greater emphasis, Chu said.”Progressive resistance training, fall prevention, maintenance of muscle mass and early treatment of chronic back pain should become core components of preventive medicine rather than afterthoughts,” he said. “Preserving mobility may ultimately have as much impact on healthy aging as preventing heart disease.”Mental health and social connection are another vital component to healthspan, Chu said.”Hearing loss, depression, anxiety and loneliness frequently reinforce one another, accelerating physical decline while diminishing quality of life,” he said. “Addressing these conditions early may improve both longevity and independence.”Chu, who is the child of immigrants, said it’s his belief that Americans often overlook an important cultural dimension of healthy aging.”In many societies outside the United States, older adults continue to play an active and respected role within multigenerational families,” he said. “They remain mentors, caregivers, historians and sources of wisdom. This continued sense of purpose and belonging may provide meaningful protection against loneliness, depression and loss of identity.””By contrast, many older Americans experience increasing social isolation precisely when maintaining meaningful relationships may be most important,” Chu added. “Healthy aging is not determined solely by biology; it is also shaped by community, purpose and human connection.”

A Chicago resident speaks out after seven grocery stores close despite taxpayer funding. Credit: FOX 32 Chicago YouTube screenshot
The people of Chicago received hard lessons that crime and socialism have catastrophic consequences, as grocery stores are shuttering across the city.
As FOX 32 Chicago reported, seven Save-A-Lot stores on the Windy City’s South and West sides closed today. This news comes despite the stores receiving $13.5 million in city grant (taxpayer) money to stay open.
But Save A Lot previously cut ties with Yellow Banana, which operates the stores, leaving the operator with no choice.
In addition, Yellow Banana suffered a blow when CEO Joe Canfield died of a stroke at the age of 54 back in April.
Block Club Chicago also notes that Yellow Banana had a hard enough time opening the stores to begin with due to missed deadlines, protests, legal disputes, sudden closures, and scathing national headlines.
The closure of these stores will make it far harder for residents of the South and West to find fresh groceries. These are impoverished, crime-ridden areas that are already struggling with food insecurity.
Communist Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, of course, was quick to blame the federal government for the closures, citing ‘cuts’ to SNAP benefits, for example.
“You know what’s happening at the federal level? That’s what’s causing the disruption of the local market,” he said. “I’m going to continue to do my part to make these necessary investments.
“The hope is that our different leaders can come together to find a way.”
Several residents spoke to FOX 32 Chicago, expressing their exasperation at the closures and wondering where they would get their next emails.
“It’s bad, because this is the only reasonable store that we have around the neighborhoods,” one woman told the outlet.
“It (the store) just opened up, and now it’s about to close down again,” another said. “We got nothing!” I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Other residents expressed concern about what the closures would mean for the employees of the stores, noting that they all come from similar economic backgrounds.
“The majority of the people working (at the store) are like my family,” a man said. “Another blow to the community.”
WATCH:

Chicago sank $14M into a discount grocery chain and it went under.
This is progressivism in action: Overpromise, waste tax dollars, watch the project fail miserably, then shrug it off.
Progressives don’t care about a plan succeeding.
Progressives only care about being… pic.twitter.com/rbh8zh3Ya9
— Chicago Contrarian (@ChicagoContrar1) July 25, 2026

The post Chicago Residents Fume as Seven Grocery Stores Close Despite the City Spending Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Save Them (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Topline: Since 2019, school districts across 24 states and Puerto Rico have lost $225 million to fraud confirmed by the U.S. Department of Education inspector general’s semiannual report to Congress. No more than $67 million has been recovered.
Key facts: Open the Books and the State Financial Officers Foundation documented 74 instances of confirmed school fraud, averaging over $3 million each. There are far more that have gone unprosecuted or undetected.
Florida and Illinois schools each had the most instances of fraud with 11.
Indiana lost the most money — $44 million — due to inflated attendance numbers that increased state funding to two schools. The schools’ founder then allegedly sent the money to companies he owned. The schools closed in 2019, and four alleged conspirators were charged in 2024.
At Broward County Public Schools in Florida, information officer Anthony Hunter allegedly used district funds to buy $17 million worth of school supplies from a friend’s business, ignoring the competitive bidding process. In return, the friend hired Hunter and his son to work a security job and sold Hunter a house for $150,000 below market value, state prosecutors claim
Chicago Public Schools received $1 million of federal grants meant for Native American students, using an application that included more than 1,000 students of South Asian descent. The district was unable to verify how many students were actually in the program, and agreed to repay the money.
Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.
Fraud arguably hits small school districts the hardest because they have fewer budgetary resources to begin with. When Janis Bucknor, former head of Community Preparatory Academy in California, admitted to stealing $3 million from the school over five years, it amounted to one-third of all the school’s state and federal funding.
Bucknor spent $220,600 of the money on Disney vacations and also funded her internet shopping and private school tuition for her kids. She was sentenced to three years of home detention and ordered to repay the money.
Summary: The government loses hundreds of billions of dollars to fraud annually, but redirecting money away from children’s education is especially egregious.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

“Investors frequently receive only a small fraction of the shares they request — if they receive any at all.”

Private Forecasters Warn “New Heat Event” Will Target US East Coast

Folks across the Mid-Atlantic are enjoying a welcome stretch of mild weather today, with temperatures in the 70s following several rounds of extreme heat earlier this month that sent temperatures into the 90s and even into the triple digits. Enjoy the comfortable nights in the 60s and low 70s over the next few days, because another heat wave is already on the horizon.

“New heat event potentially targets East Coast Aug 5-7,” private forecaster Commodity Wx Group wrote on X.

New heat event potentially targets East Coast Aug 5-7. pic.twitter.com/GTwfR5pVrY
— Commodity Wx Group (@commoditywx) July 24, 2026
Bloomberg forecast data show temperatures beginning to climb by the middle of next week, with highs peaking in the mid-to-upper 90s during the first week of August. The incoming heat wave is not expected to match the intensity of the two earlier this month, when temperatures surged well into the triple digits.

Notably, temperatures in the Lower 48 have reached their seasonal peak and will begin trending downward.

Peak summer is a welcome relief for customers across the PJM grid, who are facing some of the highest power costs in the nation.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/25/2026 – 15:45

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was dealt a major legal blow Friday after a federal judge gutted key state laws providing in-state tuition, financial aid and scholarships to illegal immigrants, marking another win for the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration agenda.U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, a Trump appointee serving in the Southern District of Illinois, sided with the Justice Department, ruling that Illinois’ in-state tuition policies, the RISE Act and the Illinois DREAM Act are “unconstitutional and invalid” as applied to illegal immigrants.The ruling permanently prevents Illinois from enforcing the laws, although McGlynn delayed the order from taking effect for 14 days to allow the state to ask an appeals court to intervene.JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SUES COLORADO OVER IN-STATE TUITION AND FINANCIAL AID FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTSU.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft celebrated the ruling.”Illinois sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer’s dime by treating illegal aliens better than U.S. citizens living in other states, in clear violation of federal law,” Weinhoeft said in a statement. “This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.”The decision is the latest victory for the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle state laws extending higher education benefits to illegal immigrants and comes one day after the Justice Department filed a similar lawsuit against Colorado.NEBRASKA ENDS IN-STATE TUITION BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS UNDER DOJ DEALThe Justice Department filed the lawsuit against Illinois and a handful of colleges in September 2025, arguing that Illinois violated federal law by offering in-state tuition and financial aid to illegal immigrants without making those same benefits available to all U.S. citizens regardless of where they live.McGlynn granted the federal government’s motion for summary judgment and denied Illinois’ motion to dismiss.The ruling invalidates Illinois’ in-state tuition rules, the RISE Act, which provides access to state financial aid for certain students ineligible for federal aid, and the Illinois DREAM Act, which established scholarship opportunities for eligible students.DOJ ESCALATES BLUE-STATE ICE STANDOFF AFTER STATES REFUSE KEY FEDERAL REQUESTRep. Mary Miller, R-Ill. praised the decision on X.”This is a win for Illinois taxpayers and American students who were shut out while Pritzker prioritized foreigners in our country illegally,” Miller wrote.The Justice Department has won or reached settlements in similar cases involving Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Nebraska, with Nebraska agreeing to end in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants as part of a settlement. Lawsuits remain pending against Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey, Kansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and now Colorado.In its lawsuit filed Thursday against Colorado, the Justice Department argued the state’s ASSET Act and related policies unlawfully provide lower tuition rates and state financial aid to illegal immigrants while denying those same benefits to out-of-state U.S. citizens.”For three decades, Congress has made clear that Colorado cannot give education benefits to illegal aliens that it does not give to all American citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said. “By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, Colorado is not only violating federal law but subsidizing education for illegal aliens at taxpayers’ expense.””Our litigation efforts will not cease until we have fulfilled President Trump’s promise that illegal aliens will not obtain preferential treatment over our nation’s own citizens,” he added.Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ office defended the state’s policies.”The federal government seizing control of determining in-state tuition across the country is absurd,” a Polis spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital. “In Colorado, we are expanding access to education to provide students with the skills to get good-paying jobs and doubling down on strategies to save students money.”Fox News Digital reached out to Pritzker’s office for comment.

Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, threw his support behind President Donald Trump’s executive action targeting alleged ideological bias at the Smithsonian and called for museum officials to be fired over what he called left-wing influence at the institution.Speaking on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Gill applauded Trump’s directive to place warning signs along National Park Service walkways outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.”This is the first time, I think, that we’ve had a president who takes this stuff seriously, who doesn’t just look the other way and allow the left to continue their long march through the institutions and continue shoving leftism down our throats and down the throats of our children,” Gill said. “I think that’s what is so refreshing about the president here.”TRUMP ORDERS SIGNS OUTSIDE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM AMID ROW OVER ITS DEPICTION OF AMERICAN HISTORYOn Friday, Trump signed an executive order directing officials to install signs outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History informing visitors about the White House report that criticized the museum’s portrayal of American history.”Such signage shall notify visitors that the Museum exhibits should be renovated consistent with the findings in the Report and direct visitors to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history,” according to the executive order on the White House website.The order also calls for the creation of temporary exhibits or signage that “corrects inaccurate information presented in the Museum,” pointing to the museum’s alleged failure to properly commemorate America’s founding history during its 250th anniversary year.REP GILL CHALLENGES ‘GENUINELY INSANE AND OBJECTIVELY OFFENSIVE’ DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS AFTER VIRAL HEARINGGill echoed many of the administration’s critiques, calling for what he described as an objective telling of American history.”We need an actual objective telling of American history, not [looking] back on the American story and grouping different people into racial or ethnic groups or groups based on their gender or their sexuality or their immigration status,” he said. “We are one American people, and I think that’s what we need to see.”The congressman argued the Smithsonian needed to “clean house,” specifically calling for National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig to be fired. Gill added that the American public is exhausted by watching taxpayer dollars fund ideological agendas.THE WOKE LEFT CAPTURED THE SMITHSONIAN. AMERICA NEEDS A PATRIOT TO TAKE IT BACK”The American people are so sick of seeing the left take control of iconic American institutions,” he said. “They want to see a museum that’s funded by taxpayers that is promoting patriotism, that promotes American ideals and values, and instead they get this kind of woke nonsense.”Fox News Digital reached out to the Smithsonian for comment but did not immediately hear back.The controversy stems from the White House’s recent “Saving America’s Story” report. In the executive order, Trump said the report demonstrated that the museum’s leadership “does not present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated, but instead views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society.”Hartig defended the museum’s approach during a committee hearing earlier this week.”The museum does not take sides in America’s political debates. We preserve and document the evidence of American life in all its breadth so that the public can encounter the past and draw their own conclusions,” Hartig said.”When historians talk about reframing a traditional narrative, we do not mean erasing it. We mean adding the evidence, voices and objects that earlier tellings left out so that more Americans can see themselves in the national story. Examining the harder chapters of our history is not the same as hostility toward America,” she said.