Commentary Culture Investigations

Watching the reactions to Wednesday’s “I Take The Fifth” Senate hearing starring Dr. Anthony Fauci was a good bit more illuminating than was the actual hearing.
I’m going to assume that’s an uncontroversial take — after all, with Fauci invoking the Fifth Amendment some 111 times, even to questions like “what day of the week is it,” “what color is your tie,” and “what color is the carpet in front of you,” the informational value of the hearing itself was close to zero.
And remember, that pardon only covers Fauci’s conduct through last January. Once he’s forced to testify … anything he says is fair game for examination as perjury.
And this, after Fauci opened the hearing with a statement whining about Sen. Rand Paul, who chaired the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs at whose hearing the cat got Fauci’s tongue, and his “obsession” with prosecuting the architect of our collective COVID nightmare.
But that alone has some value, and a lot of the people, particularly on the Right, who are grousing that dragging Fauci in front of Senate hearings to berate him about subjects he refuses to engage on doesn’t do any good may not quite see it. So accept this column as an attempt at illumination.
The most obvious consequence of the 111 instances of Fauci’s taking the Fifth is a contempt-of-Congress charge, and Paul made prodigious mention of that possibility.
Also, as Florida senator Ashley Moody, who had been the state’s Attorney General, noted that it’s possible he could be in legal jeopardy from state prosecutions.

🚨 IT’S OFFICIAL: Dr. Fauci will not only face a CONTEMPT vote by the Senate committee but now a FLORIDA AG investigation at the state-level — BOTH go around the pardon
SEN. ASHLEY MOODY: “I had to litigate to open back up entire industries and win in court. Everything we did to… pic.twitter.com/COLVhlPwR7
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 29, 2026

To be honest, though, the state-prosecutions angle is a tough one to make work. There aren’t a lot of readily-available state criminal laws which would adhere to Fauci’s conduct, coming as it did from his official capacity as head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease now as much as six-plus years ago. The things which appear to have been illegal and not made nugatory as crimes by the statute of limitations would pretty much all be federal laws.
But there is another path to legal problems for Fauci. It’s one that Judge Andrew Napolitano noted on his podcast, in a clip I saw scrolling through Facebook which has disappeared into the ether. And it goes like this.
First, Paul’s committee votes to authorize a civil action. This doesn’t stop them from also voting for a criminal contempt referral. Upon the civil action vote, the Senate committee’s counsel can go to federal district court and file suit seeking an order compelling Fauci to testify. You don’t see a “civil enforcement of subpoena” writ as often as you do a contempt referral — Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro can attest to that fact — but that writ is actually faster and cleaner as a means of compelling Fauci to answer those questions.
The problem with the contempt-of-Congress route is that it has to run through the Department of Justice. And while we assume DOJ would act on that referral, we can also assume that would be a very slow process. With this, Paul’s committee would be able to cut to the main issue very quickly.
Litigating the order to compel Fauci’s testimony and force him to stop invoking the Fifth Amendment gets interesting right away. The Fifth only holds as a protection against the committee’s subpoena where Fauci has a reasonable fear of prosecution. If Biden’s pardon is worth the paper it’s printed on, then there is no self-incrimination argument and Fauci has to testify.
What would be highly interesting is if Fauci’s lawyers were to argue that Biden’s pardon of their client is problematic based on the fact it was an autopen pardon from a non compos mentis president — my characterization, obviously, but theirs would have to read somewhat similarly. That would be their most direct defense of his Fifth Amendment privilege, but it would also be politically devastating for the Democrats, and at that point it would start to be interesting to see who might turn on him. I am not suggesting they would do this, but it’s conceivable — especially if Camp Fauci thinks that his contradictory statements put him at a greater disadvantage than does his underlying conduct.
Either way, in this scenario, you get a ruling from the judge, and the wheels begin to turn. Clearly, Fauci’s Fifth Amendment invocation isn’t appropriate when Sen. Josh Hawley asks what color his tie is, so there is almost certainly going to be a ruling compelling some testimony not covered by Fifth Amendment privilege. It’s a decent bet that a judge, either at the district court level or somewhere much higher up the judicial food chain, will rule that Fauci has to testify.
And after Wednesday’s struggle session, in which senator after senator — at least on the Republican side — lit into Fauci with the strongest possible language, and I mean that without any limits at all, given that Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio actually dropped an F-bomb on Fauci in rebuking him for the arrogance displayed in his diaries and actions as head of NIAID, you can imagine another bite at that apple would be very unappetizing for Fauci.
But here’s where the civil route gets ugly for him. Once a federal judge has ordered Anthony Fauci to testify, if he goes into that next hearing and starts taking the Fifth on questions within the scope of the judge’s ruling, that is now civil contempt of court, not just contempt of Congress. Civil contempt of court gets him corrective sanctions, like fines he’ll accrue every day he doesn’t cure the contempt by answering honestly, or even Fauci potentially getting himself locked up.
And remember, that pardon only covers Fauci’s conduct through last January. Once he’s forced to testify, assuming somebody along the judicial chain rules that the pardon grants him immunity from prosecution, anything he says is fair game for examination as perjury. Lying to Congress under an order to testify puts Fauci’s cheese in the wind in a major way.
This is a real problem for him, by the way, because he’s lied repeatedly to Congress — at least, according to those 1,100 pages of a diary he kept on government computers like an absolute blithering imbecile which Paul was able to get his hands on and promptly released to the public.
Naturally, that was the thing Fauci appeared most exercised about when he gave his little petulant monologue before clamming up. Given what’s in that diary, almost 20 percent of which is Fauci bragging about the famous people he was rubbing elbows with, complaining about Paul’s disrespect in releasing a public record just seemed 100 percent on brand.
Don’t think for a second that people won’t notice this. That hearing was an absolute, unmitigated disaster for the Senate Democrats, and if you want to see the definition of “they don’t know what time it is,” go and watch the tongue-bath that Dick Blumenthal and Maggie Hassan tried to give Fauci amid the carnage of that hearing.
Finally there’s one other lever that could drag Fauci into another disastrous hearing, this time with no protections at all from the Fifth Amendment. The Senate could vote to grant Fauci formal use immunity for any actions he took as part of his job performance at NIAID and then subpoena him to come back to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for a full tell-all session that gets watched awfully closely for any departure from full, maniacal candor and veracity.
That vote would look like a capitulation by the Senate GOP. Don’t think of it that way if you see it. It would be a way to put Fauci on the rack with no protections from the infamy of history — or a massive legal exposure for perjury.
Because he can’t exactly go in and testify that his diary is a lie. And the diary exposes him for things he’s said both publicly and under oath in front of previous committee hearings. It’s the classic case of, “So when were you lying, Dr. Fauci?” from which there is no escape.
If you’re a regular reader of this column or TAS in general, chances are you won’t be happy with much other than prosecuting Fauci for the core conduct of his which damaged millions of lives on — at minimum — bad science and even worse ethics. But remember, the feds took down Al Capone on tax evasion. We’ll get all the justice we can out of this and, if we’re smart, check it off our to-do list.
Of course, your other dismissal might be that you don’t think the Senate Republicans have the stones to actually do any of what’s outlined above. And that certainly remains to be seen, I agree. But that’s one reason why senators have phones you can call.
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We have a war that our people and our allies don’t want to support.

The initial populist calls to “Fire Fauci” came as early as April 2020

Throughout American history, economic, and population growth have paced together. A growing population means more workers, more consumers, more taxpayers, and more families investing in the future.
Today, however, two troubling trends are moving in opposite directions: as the population declines, the national debt continues to grow. It is a dual threat to which Americans must turn their attention.
A nation cannot endlessly borrow against a future that contains fewer people to pay the tab.
According to CDC data, the American birthrate continues its historic decline, with a one percent decrease in births in 2025, a trend that began in 2007. The total fertility rate is now 1.57 births per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1.
Moreover, the Institute for Family Studies said the U.S. population will begin shrinking by 2054. A shrinking population will affect nearly every aspect of national life, from economic growth and national security to retirement and community stability.
Economies depend upon a continuous supply of workers entering the labor force. When birth rates fall below replacement levels fewer fill jobs, start businesses, buy homes, and support an aging population.
Shrinking school attendance, aging communities, and slowing economic growth are all symptoms of the same demographic decline.
Japan, and most of Europe, are struggling with this reality. Americans have avoided this due to our historically higher birth and legal immigration rates, but the demographics are promptly changing.
Compounding the problem is the enormous debt of the federal government that grows unabated. Much of the national debt represents promises made today that future taxpayers must finance. The problem turns grave when the number of future taxpayers dwindles.
Social Security, Medicare, and numerous other government obligations rely on a large working population to support retirees. If fewer Americans are born while life expectancy remains relatively long, the ratio of workers to retirees shrinks. A smaller workforce must carry a larger financial burden.
This in turn will cause taxes to increase, while benefits would be reduced. None of these options are politically easy, yet demographic realities will force difficult decisions.
The combination of population decline, and mounting debt creates a dangerous cycle. Slower population growth reduces economic growth that makes it more difficult to service debt. Growing debt will limit the government’s ability to invest in infrastructure, research, and defense. Those reductions would make the country less competitive and less prosperous, further complicating efforts to encourage family formation and economic opportunity.
Beyond economics lies a broader cultural concern. A nation confident in its future invests in the next generation. Families, schools, churches, civic organizations, and local communities all depend upon the young to carry traditions forward. When fewer children are born, society is more focused on maintaining the present than building the future. Innovation and risk taking will decline.
None of this means America’s future is predetermined nor is the country’s decline inevitable. Demographic trends can change. Legislation can help make it easier for families to afford housing, childcare, and education. Economic growth can create optimism that encourages family formation. Legal immigration can help offset labor shortages.
A society that values children and plans beyond the next election cycle can rewrite its future.
Yet ignoring the facts would be a mistake. The report’s projection that our country will be shrinking by 2054 should serve as a wakeup call rather than just another headline.
A nation cannot endlessly borrow against a future that contains fewer people to pay the tab. Debt and demographics are not separate challenges; they are a collision course.
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MS NOW’s The 11th Hour on SnapStream

When it comes to political comedy or satire, the left only tolerates it from their side. As soon as someone makes a joke they don’t like, they bring out the cancel culture mob. This phenomenon is easily observable when the leftist media tries to cover President Donald Trump, which is what Ali Velshi did on Monday’s episode of The 11th Hour on MS NOW when he and Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp took issue with Trump joking about running for president a fourth time at his recent rallies and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “It’s a joke, but it’s not a joke,” Velshi said, putting on his frowny face.  Beauchamp answered by accusing Trump of using jokes to insert his sinister agenda into the political mainstream:I mean, this is a way in which something that was once in the mainstream or, sorry, excuse me, once out of the mainstream of politics is taken into it, right? You repeat it so many times as a joke. It’s, ‘oh, no, I couldn’t possibly be serious about this. I would never do this.’ And then it moves into – it becomes a normalized thing for people to accustom themselves to. He said Trump was essentially playing footsie with a presidential run as a way to normalize an unconstitutional act in the public’s minds. And yet, he admitted Trump had been favoring the not-running side:Now, in this case, I actually don’t think it’s working.It’s very interesting, right? Because Trump has been doing this 2028 trial balloon for a while, and a bunch of people in his own party have already come out and said they don’t believe it could happen, like they don’t believe it’s Constitutional because it obviously isn’t, right?And even Trump has said at times, ‘I don’t think I’m going to do it.’ So part of me thinks that even he recognizes that this is a ridiculous gambit, given, like, what the Constitution says. The text is very clear.So, which is it? Is Trump some evil genius, lowering the people’s guards with humor so he can slip in an unconstitutional third term, or was he joking, which was the whole point of the WHCD?“He thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants,” Beauchamp said. “And so he likes the idea of being able to say, ‘I can do this, I can run again. And what are you going to do? Who’s going to tell me I can’t?’”If Trump likes the idea of being able to say something, that’s just the First Amendment. Trump can say anything he likes with his freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean he’ll do everything he says. Trump often doesn’t do the things he threatens to do in a serious context. And this line about running again in 2028 definitely wasn’t exactly in a serious context.Sometimes it can be hard to tell if Trump is being earnest. This was not one of those times. So, how should the media respond to this? They should just laugh it off and not let Trump get under their skin so easily.The transcript is below. Click “expand” to read:MS NOW’s The 11th Hour7/27/2611:08:00 p.m. Eastern(…)ALI VELSHI: And for his part, Trump is showing little interest in convincing anyone of anything. His efforts are all aimed at seizing and holding on to power.[Cut to first video]PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m a little bit upset because in two and a half years you may have a different president. May. [Cut to second video]TRUMP: I won three times. Now I’m going to do it again. Thank you. I’m gonna do it. Should be easy.[Cut back to live]VELSHI: Joining me is Zack Beauchamp. He’s a senior correspondent at Vox. He’s the author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Traditions have Swept the World. Zack, thanks for being with us. You know, when you saw Donald Trump put that 2020 hat on, it was at the White House Correspondents Dinner redo on Friday night. He claimed he was joking. But, you know, he sells that merchandise. It’s a thing people wear. I’ve seen people with that hat and carrying those signs, Trump 2028, which, according to his math, would be four elections, I think, that he’s won because he’s won three, he said. It’s a joke, but it’s not a joke.ZACK BEAUCHAMP: Right. I mean, this is a way in which something that was once in the mainstream or, sorry, excuse me, once out of the mainstream of politics is taken into it, right? You repeat it so many times as a joke. It’s, ‘oh, no, I couldn’t possibly be serious about this. I would never do this.’ And then it moves into – it becomes a normalized thing for people to accustom themselves to. Now, in this case, I actually don’t think it’s working. It’s very interesting, right? Because Trump has been doing this 2028 trial balloon for a while, and a bunch of people in his own party have already come out and said they don’t believe it could happen, like they don’t believe it’s Constitutional because it obviously isn’t, right? And even Trump has said at times, ‘I don’t think I’m going to do it.’ So part of me thinks that even he recognizes that this is a ridiculous gambit, given, like, what the Constitution says. The text is very clear. On the other hand, I think he really would like to win again, right? He thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants. And so, he likes the idea of being able to say, ‘I can do this, I can run again. And what are you going to do? Who’s going to tell me I can’t?’ Right? And so it’s really interesting–[Crosstalk]VELSHI: So, he’s got – but he’s got the same numbers – he’s got the same numbers everybody else does, right? He’s running in the mid to low 30s in terms of popularity, which is not uninteresting given that a third of Americans don’t vote. I mean that’s – mathematically, Donald Trump could win an election. But all the things he’s doing right now aren’t the actions of somebody who’s trying to win an election. The gerrymandering, the SAVE America Act, the mail-in ballots, that’s all stuff that’s designed to keep people who you think don’t vote for you from voting for you–BEAUCHAMP: No, it’s–VELSHI: –or for voting for somebody else.BEAUCHAMP: –it’s a totally bizarre strategy, right? Because he could be doing things that could help shave on the margins. Like, if you look at authoritarians in other countries in similar circumstances, they don’t just try to throw the election. What they do is they try to run up the vote as much as they can in legitimate ways, and supplement it through the things that might rightly be called cheating, right? Gerrymandering, as you just mentioned, trying to disqualify people from the ballot, et cetera. Trump is, is like, it’s like he’s only interested in half of that formula. Because the policies that he’s pursuing on, like a sort of substantive level, are tanking his approval rating.

MS NOW/SnapStream

Before Dr. Anthony Fauci pleaded the Fifth Amendment at a Senate hearing after the release of his diaries from the pandemic, Wednesday’s Morning Joe gave a preview of the hearing where 8 AM host Jonathan Lemire defended Fauci and called much of it “taken out of context.” Lemire also minimized the possible Chinese lab origins of COVID-19 and possible U.S. funding of gain-of-function labs, which he called “unproven.”Just as the Senate hearing was set to begin, Lemire introduced the hearing as “Fauci is expected to face some tough questions about the origins of COVID-19 and the federal government’s response to the virus.” On Wednesday, Morning Joe finally reported on the Fauci diary release before he appeared at a Senate hearing and pleaded the Fifth.Unsurprisingly, Jonathan Lemire defended Fauci and his diaries, as he said: “Some of this is being taken out of context.” pic.twitter.com/rAwytdRe1x— Nick (@nspin310) July 29, 2026 The MS NOW host then detailed released pages of Fauci’s diary and focused on his talk of a “newfound celebrity status”:This comes just days after Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)released more than 1000 pages of Fauci’s diary entries from the early months of the pandemic. In some of the entries, Fauci does reveal how much he enjoyed his newfound celebrity status, calling it “flattering.” (…)After he omitted Fauci’s conversations with media personalities, like CNN’s Jake Tapper and others, Lemire gave a quick defense of Fauci and stated, “But he also called some of the attention very unnerving.”In a continued cherry-picked defense of the diaries, Lemire continued and talked about Fauci’s pandemic worries and conversations with President Trump. Lemire turned to talk about the Wuhan lab leak theory and possible US funding of the lab, which he was quick to label as “unproven” despite multiple U.S. agencies disclosing otherwise:Senator Paul has fought with Fauci for years over unproven claims that the United States government funded research at the Chinese lab that may have developed coronavirus there in Wuhan, which sparked that global pandemic back in 2020.Before he introduced MS NOW congressional reporter Kevin Frey, Lemire gave a more full-throated defense of Fauci and claimed the diary was “taken out of context”:The diary suggests he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. And I think some of this is being taken out of context. We know the Republicans have made Fauci a boogeyman for quite some time.Frey, in a moment of foreshadowing, started his report, “I mean, one of the outstanding questions is what exactly he will say. If anything, there is speculation he could try to plead the Fifth.”Fauci eventually did invoke the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions at the hearing.A larger focus on Frey’s report seemed to go after Sen. Paul, as he said, “Democrats that I’ve talked to, including one of the members of this committee, have essentially said that Paul has a vendetta against Fauci.”He continued with more Fauci defense, “and one could argue, and I imagine there will be some argument, particularly from Democrats, that this is part of his public awareness campaign that he was essentially documenting (…)”After Morning Joe waited to mention the Fauci diaries until the moment of the hearing, they and others in the media seem poised to be forced to discuss the topic after he pleaded the Fifth.The transcript is below. Click “expand”:MS NOW’s Morning JoeJuly 29, 202608:31:12 AM Eastern(…)JONATHAN LEMIRE: So, in a Senate hearing that’s scheduled to begin in just a few minutes, former White House Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci is expected to face some tough questions about the origins of COVID-19 and the federal government’s response to the virus. This comes just days after Republican Senator Rand Paul released more than 1000 pages of Fauci’s diary entries from the early months of the pandemic. In some of the entries, Fauci does reveal how much he enjoyed his newfound celebrity status, calling it “flattering,” and that the high people he was meeting, such as Julia Roberts, Joan Baez. But he also called some of the attention very unnerving. Fauci’s journal also documents his concern about the rising case counts, deaths, and questions about the spread of the virus. Other entries detail his conversations with President Trump, in which Fauci writes that the president pushed him to be more positive when he made his TV appearances.Senator Paul has fought with Fauci for years over unproven claims that the United States government funded research at the Chinese lab that may have developed coronavirus there in Wuhan, which sparked that global pandemic back in 2020. Paul, who arranged this morning’s hearing, argues that the writings prove Fauci discussed the origins of the virus differently in public than he did in private, and he has accused the scientist of destroying government records related to pandemic response efforts. Fauci, who retired in 2022, has strongly denied the allegations during previous congressional testimony. Let’s bring in MS NOW congressional reporter Kevin Frey, who joins us live from Capitol Hill. Kevin, I mean, Doctor Fauci, let’s first of all, let’s be clear. Has served the American people long before the COVID pandemic, already heralded as one of the nation’s top scientists and public servants. Unexpectedly put in the spotlight here in 2020,. The diary suggests he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. And I think some of this is being taken out of context. We know the Republicans have made Fauci a boogeyman for quite some time. So, with that as the backdrop, Fauci will appear, you know, there in front of the cameras in the hearing hall today. What should we expect?KEVIN FREY: Yeah. I mean, one of the outstanding questions is what exactly he will say. If anything, there is speculation he could try to plead the Fifth. We know that Paul has referred him to the DOJ under the Biden years previously. So, this threat is outstanding. And certainly Paul has made no – he’s not been exactly coy about his desire to potentially try to catch Fauci in what he describes as a lie. If you look at his Twitter account from the last few days, that is basically every other installment on his Twitter feed, which is essentially his don’t lie we’re going to hold him accountable. They are also expected to, as you mentioned, as they’re coming with this new diary of documents, go after him on this question of what Fauci knew and when he knew it. There is an entry from a few months into the pandemic. We are talking early February of 2020, so, before we even really saw massive shutdowns here in the United States, where Fauci is part of a call with several other scientists from around the globe, discussing where this could have originated. And there was disagreement on that call. Nonetheless, this is something that we have seen Paul highlight online. We expect him to try to corner him on exactly the origins of this. This has been one of Paul’s personal focuses for quite some time now, to the point where Democrats that I’ve talked to, including one of the members of this committee, have essentially said that Paul has a vendetta against Fauci. One other thing is you highlighted here that we expect him to at least be pressed on is this celebrity question. Throughout the diary entries, yes, he is documenting which interviews he’s doing and when he is doing them. And one could argue, and I imagine there will be some argument, particularly from Democrats, that this is part of his public awareness campaign that he was essentially documenting: “Okay, how am I getting out the word about the seriousness of COVID-19?But at the same time, he is touting his interactions with Barbra Streisand over the phone and playing music for her on his Amazon Alexa. That is likely to be something – just talking with Senator Ron Johnson, another Republican on this panel, he’s likely going to bring up. That he wants to highlight, yes, he was famous, but he needs to be, in Ron Johnson’s words, infamous. So, this is going to probably get very personal very quickly. But again, the question is precisely what Fauci decides to do. We’ve been given no clear indication. His team has been mum in the lead-up to this. One other thing, as you highlighted at the top there, Jonathan, this is quite the trajectory for Fauci, who for 40 years was a leading health expert within the United States. He is credited in a bipartisan fashion for his work on AIDS and HIV, both domestically and internationally, including under the Bush administration.And now he’s coming under scrutiny six years later, we should say, after COVID outbreak broke out across the globe. He’s coming under renewed scrutiny here on Capitol Hill.(…)

John Murawski, RealClearInvestigations What is human sexuality? In Western societies, the traditional understanding long shared by religious authority, textbook biology, and public opinion is…

Artificial Intelligence has become so important it has dominated everyday news, garnering responses worldwide even from the Pope, some responses good and others less so.
This author has been warning for years that AI is a special threat to today’s philosophical conservatism. This was initially made clear in reviewing a book three years ago by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, MIT Dean Daniel Huttenlocher, and Henry Kissinger, and clarified again a year later, using data evidence from formal studies.
The family is the source of the habits that we’re going to need to cultivate the next generation.
The American Enterprise Institute study testing large-language AI models was the most disturbing. The AI leaders OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, xAI, and DeepSeek were tested on how they would rate 26 prominent U.S. think tanks for accuracy on 12 criteria regarding their research quality, their institutional character, and their moral integrity. Center-Left tanks had the highest AI rated correct interpretative scores (3.9 of 5), Left and Center-Right tanks tied at 3.4, with Right AI accuracy scores trailing at 2.8. AEI’s evaluators concluded that the higher AI rating correlations for Left think tanks came from a bias within the AI models themselves, a conclusion somewhat conceded by Copilot 360 in referencing a MIT Press study.
My personal experience as a conservative scholar regularly searching AI responses to academic questions is that AI answers generally require many secondary questions to find serious conservative solutions. Without an extended series of specific references, searches do not identify books and articles I know exist and are available and relevant to the request.
Still, the basic AI problem is even more fundamental. AI is by its very nature backward-looking in time. Today’s conclusions meant to influence future action are exclusively based upon data from the past. Knowledge from the past may seem neutral in nature but AI models choose data from the “best” intellects. These data sources tend to be progressive analysts at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and company, from foundations like Gates, Open Society, Lilly, and Ford, and Left-leaning think tanks  generally. These are then interpreted favorably for consumption by the masses by the New York Times and the other elite mass media.
It was the philosopher Plato who taught that the “poets” — or we would say the intellectuals and those who popularize them — will always shape a culture and will rule by how they explain it to the masses. But the unique flaw of AI is that it only draws from past facts or past predictions to opine on solutions for future problems. And that past must be dominated by the sources the AI programmers consider the most valid — academic studies, government research, and so forth.
AI cannot rely on “forward facts” because they have not yet occurred. So all it can do is guess — and guesses for the future are simply guesses, AI or otherwise. With AI stocks recently hitting the lowest average values since April 2025, the market itself has begun to bring AI under some control. Yet, excessive control by government is the greater possibility, as Wall Street Journal conservative columnist Holman Jenkins has long feared, especially by the national government’s basically independent national intelligence community.
From a longer-term perspective, former conservative Senator and university president Ben Sasse has argued that an AI world is inevitable and “no matter what the illiberal Left or the increasingly illiberal” Right claim, the solution can’t be done with policy levers in Washington,” which by the subsidiarity principle he rightly claims represents the true conservative position.
There are optimistic scenarios, but Sasse argues that America today finds us in a new “civilizational-warping crisis of institutional decline,” of personal loneliness, of distrust for institutions and for neighbors. Until recently we lived in a world of measurable atoms but AI changes us into dealing with limitless bits. This will move us from a life of work to a life requiring much greater emotional balance and character development, only achievable by individual deep reading of serious books, through a new sense of hard work, and even engaging in technical sabbaths and world travel for broader understanding and social learning.
Sasse argues that the great divide in the future “will not be race, class, or income. It will be between people who master the tools of technology and those who outsource their affections and their habits to these tools and algorithms. The future will be awe-inspiring for the first group, and life will be miserable for the second.”
Most conservatives “grew up fearing the dystopian future of George Orwell, but it turns out the dystopian future of Aldous Huxley was much more likely.” In that AI dominated future world, “we face the tyranny of ubiquitous pleasure, of easy comfort — the soft despotism of ‘Brave New World,’ not the brutal authoritarianism of 1984.”
For most of us the challenge will start at home.
The family is the source of the habits that we’re going to need to cultivate the next generation. Nobody loves your kids as much as you do. Loves are local and creating the habits that foster the love of the good, the true, and the beautiful begins at home. The bad news of what I’m suggesting is that it’s deeply inconvenient. The good news is that parenting has always been inconvenient. It’s the ultimate inconvenience.
The general threat from an AI dominated world is to self-government, individual freedom, and limited national government power. Conservatives especially must take the AI challenge seriously as a fundamental threat that will require a serious and wholesale commitment to avoid that Brave New World future.
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Donald Devine is a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during his first term in office. A former professor, he is the author of 11 books, including his most recent, The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order, Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles, and Thinking About Freedom and Tradition, and he is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator.

Honda just let it slip that the Civic Si (and its Acura-badged fraternal twin, the Integra A-Spec) will soon be automatic-only, like pretty much everything else.
“Due to evolving business conditions, production of the 1.5-liter turbocharged engine paired to the 6-speed manual transmission (6MT) will be paused at the conclusion of the 2026 model year,” reads a statement.
Italics added.
The manual-equipped Si was among the last holdouts … , probably because even if most people bought the automatic, the availability of the manual gave it a ‘halo.’
“Evolving business conditions” is Honda’s way of politely saying government regulations. Manual transmissions can’t be programmed to shift at the same ideal moment for scoring high on government fuel efficiency and emissions tests as automatics; in fact, they can’t be programmed at all. They are thus an uncontrolled variable — kind of like the individual. Individual variability is always regarded with the ol’ fish eye by the government precisely because it’s not under the government’s control. So the government emits regs that (effectively) punish that individual variability and reward uniformity.
This goes far beyond the disappearance of the manual transmission. New vehicles are becoming increasingly uniform in appearance as well, because individual variation in design is constrained by government safety regulations that function as a kind of hidden template. The result is that the cumulative effect of these rules is a fleet of vehicles that seem, almost inevitably, to have been designed to look alike.
Honda is also uncertain what the regs will be in the future — come 2027 — and it’s hard to set up “certain low-volume powertrain combinations” to comply with regs without knowing what compliance will require. “Although EPA has indicated its intent to revise the applicable standards, the final requirements have not yet been established,” Honda says. “Accordingly, Honda is maintaining its current production plans at this time.”
Meaning, sayonara sticks.
Of course, it’s also true there’s not much demand for manual-equipped vehicles anymore — but it can be credibly argued this is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy; the result of so few manual-equipped new vehicles being available. People who never learn to drive stick are probably going to stick with automatic-equipped vehicles because that’s all they know how to drive. More specifically, because people tend to buy cars because they need to drive places, and what good is a car they’re not able to drive? It’s true they could learn — but how? On a brand-new car?
It was once true that most (or at least, a lot) of teenagers learned to drive a stick because the kinds of cars most teenagers had access to were economy cars and these always came standard with a stick. But economy cars no longer exist. Not in the new car market — and not for at least the past decade. They have been replaced by entry-level cars, all of which come standard with automatics (as well as AC, power windows, and locks). So — for at least the past decade — most new drivers learn to drive in an automatic car and for that reason never learn to drive a stick. The potential market for stick cars grows smaller and smaller.
In a very strange turn of events, the standard transmission — as manuals were once called, because that’s just what they usually were — has become a kind of luxury feature, by dint of being (typically) an option that’s often only available with an expensive trim. As a for-instance, the 2026 Toyota Tacoma I wrote about a couple of weeks ago is the only mid-size truck that even offers a manual and this option is only available in the TRD Sport with 4WD, which lists for $40,315 to start — or about $8k more than the base SR Taco. They’re also hard to find in inventory; you generally have to order (and wait for) one if you want the manual.
The Mazda Miata is pretty much the last new car that isn’t a very expensive car that still comes standard with a manual.
Cars like the Civic used to come standard with them — and not just the high-performance Si variant. Now the Civic comes standard with a CVT automatic, like most of the other once-economy cars. The manual-equipped Si was among the last holdouts, probably because even if most people bought the automatic, the availability of the manual gave it a halo, as they say in the car-selling business.
Now, Honda says this is not a cancellation but a pause — implying that the manual will return at some point in the future. But nothing specific has been said about that, which (to a cynic) suggests the “pause” will become permanent absent a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth sufficient to get Honda to reconsider. In either case, it’s likely to mean that the remaining inventory of manual-equipped 2026 Civics and Integras are going to cost more because dealers will be able to charge more now that the word is out that Honda won’t be making any more manual-equipped Civics or Integras (for this market, at least) after the end of this year.
Gather ye rosebuds — and third pedals — while ye may.
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Marco Rubio gunning for the ICC could take an object lesson from Trump’s learning curve. The longer he sought to make Tehran’s Mullahs and Mafiosi respect his MOM (Memorandum of Misunderstanding) the more he realised they were “scum” “liars” and “sick”
The Secretary of State has begun the sacred duty of dismantling the International Criminal Court. To make it succumb he must keep sneers from the lips of sour sceptics.
The directive is equally valid for the United Nations and craven diverse bodies, not forgetting The Hague. All were meant to make atrocities costly for monsters who commit or enable genocide among other crimes against humanity.
Could it be President Trump deftly realigning America’s allies and enemies?
“Meant to” is the operative term. In reality global bodies have played the shameless part of atrocity-enablers and abetters. A preeminent figure of this perfidy is the UN Secretary-General himself—António Guterres.
The Portuguese’s inbuilt revulsion for Jewish lives is free for the use of any terrorist group which wants to use it. Musing that “Oct. 7 did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres as good as told Hamas to adopt that theme for talking points.
As enabler of terrorism, British barrister and disgraced ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan isn’t much better. He stalled warrants of arrest for the masterminds behind Hamas: Mohammed Deif, Yahya Sinwar, and Ismail Haniyeh, until the mass murderers were safely deceased.
His arrest warrants for Israeli “warlords” conveyed their own point: Netanyahu and his war cabinet were as evil as the Oct. 7 perpetrators.
The ICC prosecutor, lately dismissed, was an ugly character.
For one thing, Khan was typical of the Israel-hating international lawyer who professes to act for the greatest good of humanity yet who covers for the greatest evil. Khan was not merely accused of serious sexual misconduct, but it is hard to contest his critics’ allegations that he sought political cover by pursuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders—a move they argue shifted the conversation from his own conduct to one of the world’s most contentious geopolitical disputes.
In other words, after the ICC became increasingly viewed as a “kangaroo court” as allegations of Khan’s sexual misconduct surfaced, Khan targetted Israeli leaders to divert attention from his own criminal conduct.
Impulsive swings between humanitarianism and putting himself at the beck and call of barbarity was all in the day’s work of the accused sexual harrasser. Dismissed for praying on a staffer, Khan’s exploits discredited the ICC more than ever. His victim had no motive to invent such a  complaint.
Hence it came as no shock when ICC’s member states voted to remove the baddy. Khan was the first chief prosecutor to be removed from office. The scandal won’t simply die and let the embattled court go on in the merry old way.
And the winners will be? The dirt bag out of the picture won’t invalidate the arrest warrants he issued, but Netanyahu in particular and the Likud party in general will breathe easier going into the elections.
Of course the ICC Japanese President glorifies her court as a bastion of the international rule of law. Bastion! Consider the ruling her court made that its jurisdiction extends to “Palestine” by reason of it being a state party to the Rome Statute.
Observe the offending falsehood that there exists a state named “Palestine.” Relegating international law to a fun amateur league puts the ICC in sync with its enabling partner, the International Court of Justice.
All of this defies common sense. Why would the ICC gamble with its already shaky standing and credibility? Any self-respecting law professor would poke gaping holes in the “state of Palestine.”
There must be — as indeed there are — embedded drivers permitting such legal junk to pass muster. No one has better explained the whys and methods than Shany Mor. In his  perceptive article, “A Special Dictionary for Israel,” Mor cuts through what seems plain insanity to explain three drivers behind “thunderous intonations about international law.”
The first of them “deflects any suspicion of bias against Israel.” Emotional outbursts at Israel’s crass conduct in Gaza aren’t due to animus, so we are led to believe. They simply reflect “neutral applications of international law.”
The second and third functions go real deep.
“For violators of international law our dominant image of ‘war criminals’ and ‘international tribunals’ is, of course, the Nazis. Attaching the terminology to Israel’s every military action over the decades, speaks to the fantasy of hauling the Jews before some tribunal where their guilt can finally be established.”
A third driver is more pathological.
In the world of global activists, there is a near-theological devotion to the postulate that Israel is uniquely evil, standing in the way of global brotherhood, and that good people everywhere would see that clearly if networks of powerful people weren’t using their money and influence to distort the truth and silence critique. The only way to make this pathology sound like a reasoned political program is to resort to international law. The argument is: there are laws and Israel is violating them, therefore my consuming hatred of Israel is just an application of these higher principles. It is necessary to stick to this conceit, otherwise their obsessive pathology starts looking like, well, an obsessive pathology.”
The Manufacturing of ‘Genocide’
Such perverted motives are disturbing, and the UN is an ideal proving house to apply and test them. Forgive the contradiction in terms but in September of 2025 a “UN-backed independent commission” produced the result anticipated: Israel in its war on Gaza had committed genocide.
“Israeli authorities deliberately inflicted conditions of life on the Palestinians in Gaza calculated to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza, which is an underlying act of genocide.”
The Commision didn’t bother to reconcile their findings with Israel’s well-documented evacuation warnings, humanitarian corridors, historic aid deliveries, medical assistance to Palestinians, and precision targeting. What’s worse is that this dubious conclusion was reached after two long and fraught years of war: the case of genocide was brought by South Africa in late 2023. In a separate investigation on Israeli “criminal” conduct in Gaza, the ICC began investigating war crimes in March 2021 — well before the Palestinians committed the Oct. 7 atrocity.
Why the delay? Why, if genocide and starvation were genuine, did the UN, ICC, and ICJ take their leisurely time? After many years of killing and starving there wouldn’t be too many people left alive in the Gaza strip. And, come to think of it, what made Israel so tardy, if not outright slovenly, in committing genocide? The Israelis purportedly possess nuclear weapons, after all.
Without fake law fake charges inevitably flop. Just how bogus can the law that The Hague  courts rely on be? After all they are venerated institutions of justice.
The answer is, very bogus indeed. Take the ICJ’s landmark 2004 “Advisory Opinion” on the so called “wall” that Israel constructed to stop the Arafat-inspired spate of horrific suicide bomber attacks.
The court begins its argument like so:
“The territorial boundaries of the Mandate for Palestine were laid down by various instruments.” Keep the eyes peeled — in graduated steps Occupied Palestine will be conjured up from the Mandate for Palestine which Britain governed from 1923 to 1948.
Step by false step from Par 17 on, the hackneyed fake, “Occupied Palestinian Territory” takes the identity of the Mandate, as “laid down by various instruments.” Evidently Marco Rubio is gunning for a court of law of great cunning.
And now he has picked the weaponry he’ll employ. To reinforce the levers  for dismantling the ICC, Rubio has threatened not only stubborn member countries with prickly penalties, but non-state actors if they continue working with the court.
A rush of withdrawals by member countries will surely follow his threatened sanctions and travel bans. Venezuela lost no time taking evasive action by withdrawing its membership of the ICC.
What appears to be driving Washington is more ambitious than Rubio’s gut objection to the court posturing as a, “world tribunal with near-unlimited reach” and powers.
Could it be President Trump deftly realigning America’s allies and enemies? Taking out a meddling international court would give a project like that a decisive shot in the arm.
READ MORE from Steve Apfel:
The War Israel Was Never Allowed to Win
No Pieces of Paper Ever Bound the Islamic Republic
A Cancer Within Diaspora Communities
Steve Apfel was a business economist, founder and director of the School of Management Accounting, who now writes full time. As a veteran authority on anti-Zionism his 2012 book, Hadrian’s Echo: the why and wherefores of Israel’s Critics was acclaimed by top Middle East scholars.