Ryan Routh will die in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sentenced the convicted would-be assassin to life without parole plus seven years on Wednesday in Fort Pierce, Florida, closing the book on one of the most brazen assassination attempts against a political figure in modern American history.
According to The Hill, Routh was convicted on all five counts — trying to assassinate a major presidential candidate, using a firearm in furtherance of a crime, assaulting a federal officer, possessing a firearm as a felon, and using a gun with a defaced serial number. The other sentences will run concurrently.
Judge Cannon did not mince words:
"Your plot to kill was deliberate and evil. You are not a peaceful man. You are not a good man."
On Sept. 15, 2024, while Donald Trump played golf at his West Palm Beach country club, Routh positioned himself in the shrubbery with a rifle. He had spent weeks plotting the attack. A Secret Service agent spotted him before Trump came into view — and when Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, the agent opened fire. Routh dropped the weapon and ran without firing a shot.
That a Secret Service agent's vigilance stood between a presidential candidate and a bullet is the kind of detail that should keep every American up at night. The system worked — barely.
Prosecutors laid out a portrait of a man consumed by obsession. Routh had a large online footprint demonstrating disdain for Trump. He self-published a book in which he encouraged Iran to assassinate Trump and wrote that, as a former Trump voter, he bore part of the blame for electing him. He had multiple previous felony convictions, including possession of stolen goods — meaning he was already barred from possessing firearms under federal law. The gun he carried had a defaced serial number.
Every layer of this story reveals another law broken, another guardrail ignored.
Routh treated his sentencing hearing like a stage. He read from a rambling, 20-page statement — so disconnected from the proceedings that Judge Cannon broke in and gave him five more minutes. She told him none of what he was saying was relevant.
Before sentencing, Routh had filed a motion that included this line:
"Just a quarter of an inch further back and we all would not have to deal with all of this mess."
And this:
"but I always fail at everything (par for the course)."
Cannon called the motion a "disrespectful charade" that made a mockery of the proceedings. She was right. Routh also offered to trade his life in a prisoner swap and invited Trump to "take out his frustrations" on his face. None of this is the behavior of a man grappling with what he did. It is the behavior of a man performing for an audience — any audience.
This was not Routh's first eruption. When the jury found him guilty on all counts in September, the courtroom descended into chaos after he tried to stab himself. He had represented himself for most of the trial, with former federal public defenders serving as standby counsel. Judge Cannon had signed off on that arrangement last summer, though she said she wanted to err on the side of legal representation. Sentencing was initially set for December, but was moved back after Routh decided to use an attorney during the sentencing phase.
Defense attorney Martin L. Roth asked for 20 years plus the mandatory seven for the gun conviction. His argument hinged on one claim:
"At the moment of truth, he chose not to pull the trigger."
He chose not to pull the trigger because a Secret Service agent shot at him first. Framing a failed assassination as an act of restraint takes a particular kind of legal creativity.
Roth went further:
"He's a complex person, I'll give the court that, but he has a very good core."
A good core. A man who plotted for weeks to kill a presidential candidate, aimed a rifle at a federal agent, previously encouraged a foreign adversary to assassinate on his behalf, and carried an illegally possessed firearm with a defaced serial number. Defense attorneys are obligated to advocate for their clients. But words still mean things, and "good core" does not mean what Roth needed it to mean.
In a filing, Roth argued:
"The defendant is two weeks short of being sixty years old. A just punishment would provide a sentence long enough to impose sufficient but not excessive punishment, and to allow defendant to experience freedom again as opposed to dying in prison."
Judge Cannon disagreed. Unanimously and permanently.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley framed the case in the terms it deserves:
"American democracy does not work when individuals take it into their own hands to eliminate candidates. That's what this individual tried to do."
This is not a complicated proposition. When a man with a rifle camps out near a golf course to kill a candidate, the political system itself is under threat. It does not matter which candidate. It does not matter which party. The act is a repudiation of self-governance.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi stated X, reinforcing the point:
"Ryan Routh's heinous attempted assassination of President Trump was not only an attack on our President — it was a direct assault against our entire democratic system."
Bondi thanked prosecutors for ensuring Routh will never walk free again.
Routh is the second person who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign. That fact alone should command sustained national attention. Two assassination attempts against the same presidential candidate in a single election cycle is not a footnote — it is a crisis.
Yet the cultural response has been curiously muted. The rhetoric that frames one side of the political aisle as an existential threat — not merely wrong on policy, but dangerous to human life — has consequences. When political opponents are described in apocalyptic terms, unstable individuals hear permission. Nobody forced Ryan Routh to pick up a rifle. But the temperature of the national conversation is not set by the most dangerous people in the room. It is set by the most powerful.
Routh himself acknowledged this dynamic in his own warped way, writing that as a Trump voter, he felt he bore responsibility. His logic was deranged. But the emotional pathway — from consuming heated political rhetoric to concluding that violent action is justified — is one that institutions, media figures, and political leaders have a duty to interrupt rather than accelerate.
Routh stood before the court and said:
"I did everything I could and lived a good life."
Judge Cannon — nominated by Trump in 2020 — saw it differently. Life without parole. No ambiguity. No second chance. No freedom, ever.
The prosecutors who built this case, the Secret Service agent who spotted a rifle barrel in the bushes before it was too late, and the judge who refused to treat attempted assassination as a complex personal journey all did their jobs. Routh spent weeks planning to end a man's life and alter the course of an election. The system caught him, tried him, convicted him, and locked him away forever.
Ryan Routh wanted to change history. Instead, he will spend every remaining day of his life in a cell, forgotten by the country he tried to wound. That is justice — not performative, not negotiated, not hedged. Final.
The Trump administration announced Thursday it has finalized a new rule creating a government employment classification called "Schedule Policy/Career"—a designation that converts a wide range of federal policy-related employees into a status similar to political appointees who can be fired at will. Up to 50,000 federal workers stand to be impacted by the change.
The rule takes effect on March 7, Just the News reported.
Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor framed the move as a straightforward accountability measure, not an ideological litmus test:
"This is not about people's views or ideas. This is about whether they are refusing to actually affect their duties on behalf of the American people consistent with the objectives of this administration."
That distinction matters. The federal bureaucracy has long operated under a comfortable fiction: that career employees merely execute policy rather than shape it. Anyone who has watched an administration's agenda die quietly in the rulemaking process knows better.
The American civil service was designed to insulate government workers from partisan spoils. That was a reasonable reform in 1883. Over the intervening century and a half, the insulation calcified into something else entirely: a nearly impenetrable shield that protects not just competent, nonpartisan workers but also those who actively sabotage elected leadership.
Every president discovers this. Directives travel from the Oval Office through layers of career staff who slow-walk implementation, rewrite guidance to blunt its impact, or simply ignore instructions they find disagreeable. The result is a permanent government that answers to no one—not to the president the voters chose, and certainly not to the voters themselves.
Schedule Policy/Career targets the specific layer of federal employees whose roles are inherently policy-related. These are not rank-and-file letter carriers or park rangers. They are the people drafting regulations, interpreting statutes, and making the discretionary calls that determine whether an administration's platform becomes reality or vanishes into interagency review.
Kupor addressed this directly:
"The only impact Policy/Career has is if their disagreement leads them to then try to actively thwart or undermine the execution of those priorities, then that [is] behavior that we want to declare to people is not acceptable."
In other words: think whatever you want. Vote however you choose. But if your job is to implement the policy direction set by an elected president, implement it—or find a different line of work.
The rule also changes how federal employees reclassified under Schedule Policy/Career can report waste, fraud, or abuse. Instead of taking complaints to the Office of Special Counsel, these employees will be required to make complaints of wrongdoing to their own agency.
This provision will draw the loudest criticism. Opponents will cast it as a silencing mechanism. But consider the dynamic it replaces: a system in which disgruntled employees could route policy disagreements through whistleblower channels at an independent office, dressing up insubordination as conscience. The Office of Special Counsel became, in practice, an alternative chain of command for bureaucrats who didn't like their actual chain of command.
Routing complaints through the agency itself doesn't eliminate oversight. It restores a basic organizational principle—that problems get addressed within the institution responsible for solving them, under leaders accountable for the outcome. Agencies still answer to Congress, to inspectors general, and to the courts. The avenue narrows; it doesn't close.
Unions have opposed the change, arguing it politicizes the federal workforce, which was previously intended to be neutral and expertise-oriented. No specific union representatives have gone on record with detailed objections in the available reporting, which tells its own story. The opposition is general, reflexive, institutional—the bureaucracy defending itself the way any organism defends itself against a threat to its survival.
The "neutral and expertise-oriented" framing deserves scrutiny. Federal employee unions donate overwhelmingly to one political party. The workforce they represent in Washington, D.C., votes overwhelmingly in one direction. The agencies they populate have spent years embedding policy preferences into regulatory structures that persist across administrations. Calling this arrangement "neutral" requires a definition of neutrality that no honest observer would recognize.
What unions are really defending isn't neutrality. It's permanence. The ability to outlast any president who challenges the bureaucratic consensus, knowing that civil service protections make removal so difficult and time-consuming that most administrations don't bother trying.
Self-government means something, or it doesn't. Americans vote for a president. The president sets a policy direction. The federal workforce exists to carry it out. When career employees substitute their own judgment for the elected president's—not on questions of legality, but on questions of policy priority and direction—they aren't exercising expertise. They're exercising power they were never granted.
This is the core tension that Schedule Policy/Career addresses. Not the tension between expertise and politics, as critics frame it, but the tension between democratic accountability and bureaucratic autonomy. A government that cannot be redirected by elections is not a democracy in any meaningful sense. It is an administrative state that tolerates elections as a formality.
The number—up to 50,000 employees—sounds large until you remember that the federal civilian workforce numbers over two million. This rule touches roughly two percent. The two percent whose jobs are, by definition, about shaping policy outcomes. If any subset of federal workers should be accountable to the elected leadership that sets those outcomes, it is precisely this group.
Legal challenges are virtually guaranteed. The same coalition of unions, advocacy groups, and sympathetic judges that has contested nearly every structural reform of the federal workforce will mobilize before the March 7 effective date. The question is whether any court will issue an injunction—and whether such an injunction could survive appeal.
The administration has the advantage of finalization. This is not a proposal or an executive order that can be characterized as hasty. It is a completed rulemaking process through OPM, the agency specifically charged with managing the federal workforce. That procedural foundation matters in court.
It also matters politically. Every legal challenge becomes a public argument about whether federal employees should be able to defy the president who signs their paychecks. That is not an argument the bureaucracy's defenders want to have in front of the American public.
There is a difference between punishing federal workers and holding them accountable. Schedule Policy/Career does not strip anyone of their salary for holding the wrong opinions. It does not create an ideological test. It establishes a straightforward proposition: if your role is to execute policy, and you refuse to execute it, your employer can replace you. This is how every private-sector organization on earth operates. It is how every state government operates. It is how the military operates.
The federal bureaucracy's exemption from this basic principle was always an anomaly, not a virtue. The anomaly survived because it served the interests of the people inside the system—and because reforming it required the kind of sustained political will that most administrations lacked.
That will now exist. The rule is finalized. March 7 is five weeks away.
Fifty thousand federal employees are about to learn what accountability feels like. For most of them—the ones doing their jobs faithfully—nothing will change. For the rest, the message from OPM Director Kupor is unambiguous: the era of bureaucratic resistance disguised as public service is over.
Heads are rolling across Europe. New documents released by the Department of Justice reveal that a string of European officials maintained ties to Jeffrey Epstein—not before his crimes came to light, but after.
The Hill reported that Peter Mandelson, the former U.K. ambassador to the U.S., resigned from the House of Lords on Tuesday. Norway's ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, Mona Juul, has been sidelined from her post. Slovakia's Miroslav Lajčák, a former president of the United Nations General Assembly and adviser to Prime Minister Robert Fico, stepped down after text messages with Epstein surfaced.
Three countries. Three officials. One convicted sex offender they all chose to keep in their orbit.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. That was supposed to be the end of polite society's relationship with the man. Instead, the DOJ files paint a picture of European elites who treated a child sex conviction as a minor inconvenience—something to navigate around, not a reason to sever contact.
The Mandelson revelations are the most politically explosive, and they trace back years. In 2003, Mandelson wrote Epstein a 10-page note calling the financier his "best pal." By December 2009—more than a year after Epstein's guilty plea—Mandelson was still in his inbox.
That month, Epstein emailed Mandelson, then the first secretary of state, about whether JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon should call Alistair Darling, the U.K.'s chancellor of the exchequer and head of the British treasury, to offer more money for a small business fund in exchange for a tax reduction during the global financial crisis. Mandelson's reply was two words and a conjunction:
"Yes and mildly threaten."
A sitting first secretary of state, corresponding with a convicted child sex offender about leveraging a major bank CEO to influence the British treasury. The casual tone is almost worse than the substance. This wasn't a man maintaining an awkward acquaintance—it was a working relationship.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer sacked Mandelson last September over his connection to Epstein. On Thursday, speaking in East Sussex, Starmer delivered a public apology:
"I am sorry. Sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson's lies and appointed him, and sorry that even now you're forced to watch this story unfold in public once again."
Starmer acknowledged that Mandelson had misled him directly, saying Mandelson "portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew." A 10-page letter to your "best pal" is a strange way to barely know someone.
The real question Starmer's apology raises is the one he'd rather not answer: what due diligence was performed before appointing Mandelson as ambassador to the United States in the first place? Epstein's conviction was public record. Mandelson's social connections to the financier had been the subject of media scrutiny for years. Starmer appointed him anyway—and now wants credit for firing him after documents forced his hand.
Mona Juul, Norway's ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, has been sidelined while the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reviews her relationship with Epstein. Juul's defense rests on her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, whose own relationship with Epstein she describes as the origin of any contact.
"It is important for me to clarify that the contact I have had with Epstein has originated in my spouse's relationship with him. I have had no independent social or professional relationship with Epstein, including not mediating or connecting contacts to Epstein."
She then offered a partial concession:
"However, in retrospect, I see that I should have been much more careful. This also applies to a short private visit in 2011, while I was on leave from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which I now acknowledge that I should have handled differently."
A "short private visit" in 2011, three years after Epstein's conviction. The framing is meticulous. She was "on leave." The visit was "short." She had no "independent" relationship. Every word calibrated to create maximum distance from a man she nonetheless chose to visit.
The DOJ documents also revealed that in October 2014, Camilla Reksten-Monsen sent Epstein an invitation to a dinner party on behalf of Juul and Rød-Larsen, intended for filmmaker Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn. Six years after the conviction, the couple was still routing social invitations through Epstein. That is not the behavior of people on the periphery of someone's life.
Then there is Miroslav Lajčák. The former president of the UN General Assembly exchanged text messages with Epstein in October 2018. They are difficult to read as anything other than what they appear to be.
"Don't you miss me there?"
"Why don't you invite me for these games?"
"I would take the 'MI' girl."
Epstein's reply:
"Who wouldn't. You can have them both, I am not possessive. And their sisters."
Lajčák resigned. There is nothing to analyze here that the messages themselves don't already make plain. A senior international official, texting a convicted sex offender about women as though browsing a catalog. Epstein sent Lajčák a photo in the same exchange—the contents of which are not viewable in the released documents.
The Epstein story has always been about two things: what he did, and who let him keep doing it. The DOJ releases confirm what has been obvious for years—Epstein's network of elite enablers didn't scatter after his 2008 conviction. They adapted. They communicated more carefully. They used intermediaries and euphemisms. But they stayed.
This is the defining feature of institutional corruption at the highest levels. It is not that powerful people didn't know. It is that knowing didn't matter. A guilty plea for procuring a child for prostitution was, for this class of people, a reputational speed bump. Mandelson kept emailing. Juul kept visiting. Lajčák kept texting. The conviction changed nothing about how they treated the man—only how carefully they documented it.
Resignations are not accountability. Mandelson leaving the House of Lords, Lajčák stepping down from his advisory role, Juul being "sidelined" pending review—these are political consequences, not legal ones. None of these individuals has been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The system is working exactly as designed: absorb the shock, sacrifice the most exposed figures, and move on before anyone asks harder questions about the broader network.
Starmer's apology was polished and contrite. It was also reactive. He believed Mandelson's misrepresentations, appointed him to one of the most important diplomatic posts in British government, and only reversed course when the documentary evidence became undeniable. The apology is directed at the people Epstein harmed. It should also be directed at the British public, who were asked to trust a government that put a man with these associations one handshake from the Oval Office.
The DOJ files have now reached across the Atlantic and toppled officials in three countries. The documents keep coming. The names keep surfacing. And the question that hangs over all of it remains the same one it has always been: how many more are there?
Europe's political class spent years assuring everyone that Epstein was someone else's problem. The receipts say otherwise.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sat in the audience of the 68th Annual Grammy Awards last weekend as performer after performer turned the ceremony into a rally against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
She was reportedly smiling and applauding throughout the show — an evening that featured acceptance speeches denouncing immigration law, pins reading "ICE OUT," and a standing ovation for open defiance of federal enforcement.
Jackson was nominated for Best Audiobook, Narration, and Storytelling for her memoir Lovely One, according to Just the News. She didn't win. The Dalai Lama did. But what she did do — attend, sit front and center with her husband, and participate visibly in an event saturated with political messaging — has raised pointed questions about judicial impartiality that she has so far declined to answer.
The Grammys have never been a bastion of political restraint, but last weekend's ceremony dispensed with even the pretense of subtlety. Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny, accepting the award for Best Música Urbana Album, opened with this:
"Before I say thanks to God, I'm going to say, ICE out."
The audience gave him a standing ovation.
Billie Eilish used her time at the microphone to deliver a different kind of message:
"I feel so honored every time I get to be in this room. As grateful as I feel, I honestly don't feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land."
Meanwhile, performers Joni Mitchell, Brandi Carlile, and Justin Bieber were all seen wearing pins that read "ICE OUT." The theme wasn't incidental. It was the event's throughline — a coordinated, unmistakable political statement against federal immigration enforcement.
And in the middle of it all, a sitting Supreme Court Justice.
There is no rule barring justices from attending award shows. There is no statute that says a nominee for Best Audiobook must skip the ceremony if the host cracks political jokes or the performers wear protest pins. But the Supreme Court doesn't operate on the bare minimum of what's technically permissible. It operates — or it's supposed to — on the appearance of impartiality. That standard exists precisely for moments like this.
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine argued that Jackson's visible presence at the ceremony, combined with the performers' political messaging, could raise legitimate questions about her impartiality — particularly with immigration-related cases pending before the Court. The argument isn't that Jackson endorsed any specific statement from the stage. It's that her enthusiastic participation in an event defined by one political message creates a reasonable perception of alignment.
Viral clips from the evening showed Jackson clapping during her nomination announcement. None specifically captured her responding to the anti-ICE statements. But that distinction, while worth noting, doesn't resolve the underlying problem. She wasn't ambushed by political content at a music event. The entire ceremony was drenched in it. She stayed. She smiled. She applauded.
Imagine for a moment a conservative justice attending a nationally televised event where speaker after speaker denounced, say, abortion or gun control — wearing pins, giving speeches, earning standing ovations. The calls for recusal would be deafening before the credits rolled. Every legal commentator on cable news would frame it as a constitutional crisis. The double standard isn't subtle. It's structural.
Eilish's remark deserves a moment of its own, because it captures something important about the current state of progressive rhetoric on immigration. The phrase "no one is illegal on stolen land" isn't a legal argument. It isn't even really a moral one. It's a bumper sticker that collapses two entirely separate debates — immigration enforcement and indigenous land claims — into a single slogan designed to make any enforcement of any border seem inherently unjust.
It's also a line that, taken to its logical conclusion, invalidates the authority of every federal institution in the country — including the Supreme Court on which Jackson sits. That's the kind of ideological territory a justice should want distance from, not proximity to.
Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin didn't mince words in a post on X:
"Kentanji Brown Jackson has been a disgrace to the Supreme Court, and her latest appearance at the Grammy's shows her loyalty is to the liberal elite, not the law. She should stick to audio books."
Martin's tone was sharp, but her underlying point landed with a wide audience: a Supreme Court Justice's presence at a politically charged spectacle isn't neutral, no matter how it's spun. Conservatives across social media echoed the concern — not because attending an award show is inherently disqualifying, but because the context made neutrality impossible.
The Supreme Court derives its legitimacy from the perception that its members rule on law, not vibes. That perception is fragile. It requires active maintenance — the deliberate avoidance of situations that could suggest a justice has already made up her mind on the questions before her.
Immigration enforcement is not an abstract policy debate. It is an active, contested legal battleground. Cases involving ICE authority, deportation procedures, and executive enforcement power cycle through the federal courts constantly. Some will reach the Supreme Court. Some may already be on the docket. For a sitting justice to attend — and visibly enjoy — an event organized around the premise that ICE should be abolished is, at minimum, a failure of judgment.
Jackson offered no public statement about the evening's political content. No clarification. No distancing. The silence is its own statement.
This isn't really about one award show. It's about a growing comfort among progressive-aligned institutions — and now, apparently, members of the judiciary — with treating opposition to immigration enforcement as a cultural consensus rather than a political position. When Bad Bunny says "ICE out" and gets a standing ovation, that's entertainment exercising its right to be political. When a Supreme Court Justice is in the room applauding, that's something else entirely.
The left has spent years insisting that the Court's legitimacy depends on public trust, that justices must avoid even the appearance of partisanship. They said it about Clarence Thomas attending conservative events. They said it about Samuel Alito's flag. They built entire news cycles around it.
Now a liberal justice sits beaming in the audience while millionaire performers chant for the abolition of a federal law enforcement agency — and the standard suddenly doesn't apply.
The rules never change. They just stop mattering when the right people break them.
Ukraine and Russia exchanged 314 prisoners on Thursday—the first swap of captives in five months—after three-way talks in Abu Dhabi that included U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the exchange was completed, with 157 Ukrainians returning home, most of whom had been held since 2022.
That's three years in Russian captivity. Soldiers, sergeants, officers, and civilians—finally coming home because someone sat down at the table and made it happen.
Witkoff announced the agreement and credited the sustained diplomatic effort that produced it:
"This outcome was achieved from peace talks that have been detailed and productive. While significant work remains, steps like this demonstrate that sustained diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results and advancing efforts to end the war in Ukraine."
He followed up in a post on X, making clear where the credit belongs:
"Discussions will continue, with additional progress anticipated in the coming weeks. We thank the United Arab Emirates for hosting these discussions, and President Donald J. Trump for his leadership in making this agreement possible."
The significance of this exchange extends well beyond the 314 lives it directly touches. For five months, the prisoner swap pipeline between Kyiv and Moscow had been frozen. Whatever backchannels existed were producing nothing. Then Witkoff and Kushner flew to Abu Dhabi, engaged both sides, and broke the logjam, the Daily Caller reported.
This is what American diplomatic leverage looks like when it's actually applied. No endless summits that produce communiqués and photo ops. No years-long "process" designed to manage a crisis rather than resolve it. A concrete objective, direct engagement, and a result measured in human beings freed from captivity.
The deal also yielded something arguably as consequential as the prisoner exchange itself. According to a statement from U.S. European Command, U.S. and Russian negotiators agreed to reestablish high-level military-to-military dialogue—communication channels that had been suspended since late 2021. Restoring those lines doesn't signal weakness. It signals the kind of serious, clear-eyed engagement between nuclear powers that responsible statecraft demands.
Zelenskyy's confirmation of the exchange carried the weight of a leader who understands that every name on a prisoner list represents a family in limbo. His extended post on X laid out the scope of what was achieved:
"We are bringing our people home—157 Ukrainians. Warriors from the Armed Forces, National Guard, and the State Border Guard Service. Soldiers, sergeants, and officers. Along with our defenders, civilians are also returning. Most of them had been in captivity since 2022. Today's exchange came after a long pause, and it is critical that we were able to make it happen. I thank everyone who works to make these exchanges possible, as well as everyone on the frontline who contributes to expanding Ukraine's exchange fund. Without the determination of our warriors, such exchanges would be impossible."
That last line matters. Ukraine's bargaining position in prisoner negotiations is sustained by the performance of its forces on the ground. Diplomacy doesn't operate in a vacuum—it's backed by the realities of the battlefield. Zelenskyy acknowledged as much plainly.
The prisoner swap didn't materialize in isolation. It sits within a larger diplomatic framework that has been building since early January, when the U.S. joined a coalition of major NATO allies in committing to long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. That coalition plan includes several pillars:
Note the structure. The Europeans lead the peacekeeping force. The U.S. leads the ceasefire monitoring. Military assistance flows long-term. This is burden-sharing with teeth—exactly the kind of arrangement that ensures American taxpayers aren't left holding the entire bill while European allies free-ride on Washington's security umbrella.
Territorial disputes and the details of long-term security guarantees remain sticking points, and Witkoff acknowledged that major disagreements are still unresolved. Nobody is pretending a prisoner exchange is a peace deal. But it is a brick in the wall. And bricks accumulate.
The Kremlin's posture, as usual, resists clean interpretation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that the discussions had not yet yielded a conclusion—a statement that could mean almost anything. Russia completed the prisoner exchange even as Peskov suggested talks were inconclusive. Actions and words pointed in different directions.
More telling was what happened just days before the swap was announced. Russia launched one of its largest missile and drone assaults of the war—hundreds of drones and 32 ballistic missiles striking at least five regions, knocking out power in parts of Kyiv, and wounding at least ten people. Zelenskyy himself described the barrage as massive.
This is the pattern. Moscow negotiates with one hand and escalates with the other. The barrage was almost certainly timed to maximize leverage heading into the Abu Dhabi discussions—an old Russian tactic of establishing "facts on the ground" before sitting across from diplomats. The fact that the prisoner exchange happened anyway suggests the American-led effort absorbed that pressure and pushed through it.
Witkoff signaled that additional progress is anticipated in the coming weeks. The reestablishment of military-to-military communication between Washington and Moscow creates a channel that didn't exist a week ago. The prisoner swap demonstrates that both sides can execute agreements when the diplomatic architecture supports them.
None of this guarantees a broader peace. The war grinds on. The missile barrages continue. The unresolved disagreements are real and deep. But the trajectory is unmistakable: American engagement is producing outcomes that years of European-led diplomatic theater could not.
One hundred fifty-seven Ukrainians who woke up Thursday in Russian captivity went to sleep in freedom. Most of them had been prisoners since 2022—through three winters, through countless bombardments, through diplomatic efforts that went nowhere. What changed was who was in the room.
The talks continue. The missiles may too. But for 157 families, Thursday was the day someone finally brought their people home.
Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York spent over a minute shouting at Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday, demanding a "yes or no" answer to a question he never actually let Bessent finish answering.
The confrontation centered on a firm in the United Arab Emirates that reportedly bought a stake in President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency company. Meeks wanted to know whether Bessent would launch a "complete investigation" into the matter. Bessent began to respond — and that's when the theatrics started.
Bessent attempted to explain the jurisdictional reality:
"The [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] is an independent entity. And I would note, congressman—"
He didn't get to finish the sentence. Meeks steamrolled him, escalating into a tirade that consumed his remaining time and then some:
"I'm asking you to do your responsibility as Secretary of the Treasury. You do not … He's the one that passed your time, Mr. Chairman. He did not answer my question. He wouldn't pass the time. It was a yes or no answer. I asked him, will he? Yes or no. Stop covering for the President! Stop being his flunky! … Work for the American people! Work for the American people! Don't be a cover-up for a mob!"
"Work for the American people," — screamed at a man who was trying to explain how the federal bureaucracy actually works. The OCC is, in fact, an independent entity. That isn't a dodge. It's the law.
What Meeks delivered wasn't oversight. It was content. The entire exchange had the energy of a man who knew his clip would circulate before the hearing even adjourned — and structured his questioning accordingly.
Ask a question. Refuse the answer. Claim the answer was refused. Accuse the witness of corruption. Move to the cameras. This is a formula, and it has nothing to do with getting information. Congressional hearings are supposed to function as a tool for legislative accountability. When a member of Congress demands "yes or no" on a complex regulatory matter and then physically won't allow the response, he isn't seeking the truth. He's manufacturing a moment.
Meeks demanded Bessent "stop being his flunky." He called the administration "a mob." This is from a congressman who never paused long enough for the Secretary to utter a complete sentence. If you want answers, you have to stop talking long enough to hear them.
Bessent, for his part, reportedly attempted to redirect the exchange toward Meeks' own record — specifically, his travel to Venezuela for Hugo Chávez's funeral and investigations into Meeks' finances, including non-profit dealings and donor-funded travel. Whether Bessent raised these points during the hearing itself or elsewhere, the underlying facts carry their own weight.
Meeks traveled to Venezuela to pay respects to Hugo Chávez, the authoritarian socialist whose economic destruction of one of Latin America's wealthiest nations produced a refugee crisis still reverberating across the Western Hemisphere. He faced investigations over his financial dealings. And yet on Wednesday, it was Meeks lecturing a Treasury Secretary about accountability and transparency.
That's the kind of contradiction that doesn't need editorial embellishment. It speaks plainly enough on its own.
The "yes or no" demand has become a favorite weapon in congressional hearings — but almost exclusively when aimed at Republican appointees. The trick works like this: pose a question that requires nuance, insist on a binary answer, and then treat any attempt at context as evasion. It's procedural bullying dressed up as directness.
Bessent's reference to the OCC's independence wasn't stonewalling. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency operates with statutory independence for a reason — to insulate banking oversight from political pressure. Meeks either doesn't understand this or doesn't care. Neither option reflects well on him.
The fact that Meeks' own outburst included an appeal to the chairman — complaining that Bessent "wouldn't pass the time" — reveals the game. He burned his own clock, screaming, then blamed Bessent for the clock running out. It's a closed loop of self-generated grievance.
The Wednesday blowup wasn't Bessent's first brush with Democratic hostility, and his responses elsewhere suggest a Treasury Secretary who doesn't shrink from the fight. In a separate exchange, Bessent called California Governor Gavin Newsom "Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken" and labeled him "economically illiterate." In an interview with Politico's Dasha Burns, Bessent went further, calling Newsom "a brontosaurus" with a tiny brain and saying Newsom brought "kneepads to the World Economic Forum."
The imagery is vivid — and deliberate. Bessent is operating as a Treasury Secretary willing to engage on cultural and political terms, not just fiscal ones. The kneepads comment pointed to something broader: that global elites who once dictated terms to American policymakers are now adjusting to a new posture from Washington.
That confidence clearly unnerves Democrats. The Wednesday exchange with Meeks wasn't the behavior of a caucus comfortable with its position. It was the behavior of a caucus that has lost control of the economic narrative and is compensating with volume.
There's a version of Wednesday's hearing where Meeks asks his question, lets Bessent explain the OCC's independent role, follows up with a pointed inquiry about interagency coordination, and pins down whether the Treasury Department has any advisory role in such reviews. That version produces information. That version serves the public.
Instead, what the public got was a minute-plus of shouting, zero completed answers, and a congressman calling the Treasury Secretary a "flunky" on camera. No facts were established. No commitments were extracted. No oversight was performed.
Congressional Democrats have spent years insisting that institutions matter, that norms matter, that the dignity of government proceedings matters. Meeks blew past all of it on Wednesday because the clip mattered more.
The question he asked may have been legitimate. The way he asked it guaranteed he'd never get an answer. And that, it seems, was the point all along.
Islamic terrorists descended on villages in western Nigeria this week and slaughtered at least 162 people — many of them Muslims whose only offense was refusing to submit to jihadist ideology. The dead include men, women, and children across the villages of Woro, Nuku, and Patigi in Kwara state, with additional attacks claiming lives in Katsina and Benue states. Some of the bodies are still being recovered from the bush.
Approximately 200 attackers stormed Woro alone. They burned homes, looted property, and killed indiscriminately. Nigerian lawmaker Mohammed Omar Bio told the Associated Press that at least 162 people were confirmed dead in Woro and Nuku, with the toll expected to climb. The Daily Trust reported that over 130 additional deaths were anticipated once damage assessments concluded across all affected areas, including Katsina and Benue.
The attackers have been identified variously as members of Lakurawa — an Islamic State affiliate — Boko Haram, and so-called "bandits," a term Nigerian officials often use for armed jihadist groups operating in the country's north and west, according to Breitbart News. Whatever name they carry, the result is the same: mass death inflicted on defenseless communities.
The motive behind the attacks carries a particularly grim clarity. Kwara Police Commissioner Adekimi Ojo told the Daily Trust that the terrorists had previously attempted to impose their ideology on the targeted villages — and were turned away.
"We learnt there was a time they wrote a letter that they were coming to preach, but the village head refused. I am sure this incident is a kind of reprisal for that refusal."
Kwara Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq shared that 75 "local Muslims" were killed in Patigi, and that police officials believed the massacre was a direct response to the community rejecting what he characterized as a "strange doctrine." President Tinubu's office described the dead as Muslims who had:
"rejected their [the terrorists'] obnoxious attempt at indoctrination, choosing instead to practice Islam that is neither extreme nor violent."
Read that carefully. These were not soldiers. They were not political operatives. They were villagers — faithful Muslims — who told jihadists "no." And for that, they were executed.
Alhaji Salihu Bio Umar, a village leader, offered a devastating account to the Daily Trust:
"75 people have been identified and some got burnt completely beyond recognition including Muslims and Christians. Others are yet to be traced up till this moment. We estimated about a hundred people with some corpses still in the bush and my palace was burnt. However we have information that some bodies are still in the bush."
His losses were not abstract.
"Two of my sons have been killed. They left with my Highlander Jeep. They also burnt all the shops in the community."
In Katsina state, at least 20 more people were killed. In Benue state, at least 17. Reports indicated that the scale of the carnage in Woro was aided in part by locals being afraid to alert government authorities — a detail that speaks volumes about the erosion of trust between Nigerian citizens and the institutions that are supposed to protect them.
An unidentified eyewitness to the Katsina attack captured the despair plainly:
"Is there really a government in this country? They have failed us."
Boko Haram formally declared allegiance to the global Islamic State movement in 2015. In the decade since, Nigeria has become one of the deadliest places on earth for civilians of all faiths. Jihadist groups operate with near impunity in vast stretches of the country's north and west, raiding villages, conscripting fighters, and terrorizing anyone who resists their ideology. The Nigerian government's inability — or unwillingness — to secure its own territory has been a running crisis for years.
What has changed is American engagement.
President Trump declared Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for religious freedom in October — a formal designation that carries diplomatic weight and signals that the United States views Nigeria's security failures as a matter of international concern. On Christmas Day, Trump ordered airstrikes on northwestern Nigeria with the cooperation of President Tinubu. Experts suggested the likeliest targets of those strikes were members of Lakurawa, the same Islamic State affiliate now blamed for the Woro massacre.
On Tuesday, U.S. Africa Command confirmed that a small team of American military officers had been deployed to Nigeria to aid in the fight against terrorism. That deployment, paired with the CPC designation and the Christmas Day strikes, represents a clear escalation of American involvement — one driven by the recognition that jihadist networks in West Africa pose a threat that extends well beyond Nigeria's borders.
President Tinubu announced on Wednesday an immediate military deployment to Kwara state. His office stated that a new military command would spearhead Operation Savannah Shield to, in his words:
"checkmate the barbaric terrorists and protect defenceless communities."
Tinubu condemned the attacks directly:
"He condemned the cowardly and beastly attack and described the gunmen as heartless for choosing soft targets in their doomed campaign of terror."
Strong words. But strong words have been issued after Nigerian massacres before. The question now is whether Operation Savannah Shield amounts to a genuine strategic shift or another temporary surge that fades once international attention moves on. The deployment of American military officers suggests this time may be different — that external pressure and partnership are backing the Nigerian government's stated intentions.
One detail worth noting: Nigerian officials cannot seem to agree on who carried out the attacks. Lawmaker Mohammed Omar Bio identified the attackers as members of Lakurawa. President Tinubu's office called them Boko Haram. Others used the catch-all term "bandits." This is not a minor discrepancy. Lakurawa and Boko Haram are distinct organizations with different command structures, even if both operate under the Islamic State's ideological umbrella. If the Nigerian government cannot accurately identify the enemy, the prospects for Operation Savannah Shield dim considerably.
Effective counterterrorism requires precise intelligence. Lumping every armed group into one category — or mislabeling them for political convenience — is how governments lose wars against insurgencies. American military advisors on the ground may help sharpen that picture, but the confusion at the highest levels of Nigerian leadership is not encouraging.
The scale of this week's attacks — at least 162 confirmed dead across multiple villages, with the true toll likely far higher — represents one of the worst episodes of jihadist violence in Nigeria in recent memory. It also exposes a grim reality: the Islamic State's global network is not contained to the Middle East or North Africa. It is active, lethal, and expanding in West Africa.
The Trump administration's approach — CPC designation, direct military action on Christmas Day, and now boots on the ground in an advisory capacity — treats the Nigerian situation with the seriousness it demands. That stands in stark contrast to years of diplomatic hand-wringing that produced no meaningful change for the people of Woro, Nuku, and Patigi.
Alhaji Salihu Bio Umar lost two sons this week. His palace was burned. Bodies remain uncollected in the bush. He is not a statistic. He is a man who watched his community destroyed because its members refused to bend to terrorists.
The villages said no. Two hundred attackers made them pay for it. Now the question is whether anyone with the power to act will ensure it never happens again.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday and declared that requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote is "Jim Crow 2.0." The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — a straightforward bill that would require voters to prove they are, in fact, American citizens — drew the full weight of Schumer's rhetorical arsenal. He promised it would die in the Senate.
Schumer didn't hedge. He didn't offer a narrow procedural objection. He reached for the most incendiary comparison in the Democratic playbook and wielded it against the concept of verifying citizenship at the ballot box.
Breitbart News reported his own words on the program:
"It's Jim Crow 2.0, and I called it Jim Crow 2.0, and the right wing went nuts all over the Internet. That's because they know it's true. What they're trying to do here is the same thing that was done in the South for decades to prevent people of color from voting."
That's the Senate Minority Leader comparing a voter ID requirement — supported by overwhelming majorities of both parties — to the systematic racial terror that defined the post-Reconstruction South. Poll taxes. Literacy tests. Grandfather clauses were designed to strip Black Americans of their constitutional rights. Schumer wants you to believe that showing a birth certificate belongs in the same sentence.
Co-host Jonathan Lemire, to his credit, put the polling squarely in front of Schumer before asking his question. He cited a new Pew Research poll showing that 95 percent of Republicans support requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote. That number is expected.
The one that matters: 71 percent of Democrats support it, too.
Seven in ten members of Schumer's own party back the basic principle behind the SAVE Act. And Schumer's response was to call it Jim Crow. Not to engage with the substance. Not to propose an alternative framework. Not to acknowledge that his own voters overwhelmingly disagree with him. He invoked the ugliest chapter in American history and dared anyone to push back.
Schumer then went further, pledging total Democratic resistance in the upper chamber:
"And I said to our Republican colleagues, it will not pass the Senate. You will not get a single Democratic vote in the Senate. We're not reviving Jim Crow all over the country."
Not a single vote. Not one Democratic senator is willing to break ranks on a measure that their own base supports by a nearly three-to-one margin. That tells you everything about where the power sits inside the Democratic caucus — and it isn't with the 71 percent.
Schumer offered two scenarios to justify his opposition. Both deserve scrutiny.
"For instance, if you change — you're a woman who got married and changed your last name, you won't be able to show ID and you'll be discriminated against. If you can't find a birth certificate, or a proper ID, you'll be discriminated against. This is vicious and nasty."
A woman who changed her name after marriage can't produce identification? Americans update their identification documents after name changes millions of times a year — for bank accounts, employment verification, passports, TSA screenings, mortgage applications, and every other function of modern civic life. The idea that this same population would be uniquely paralyzed by a voting requirement strains belief.
The birth certificate objection follows the same logic. You need documentation to drive a car, board a plane, buy a firearm, open a bank account, start a job, and collect government benefits. Democrats have never called any of those requirements "Jim Crow." The standard only becomes intolerable when it applies to voting — the one civic act where verification would reveal whether the person participating is legally entitled to do so.
That's not a coincidence. It's a tell.
Jim Crow laws were designed with surgical precision to exclude a specific racial group from the democratic process while maintaining a façade of neutrality. They succeeded because enforcement was deliberately unequal — white voters were waved through while Black voters faced impossible barriers.
The SAVE Act, as described by its proponents, applies a single, universal standard: prove you are an American citizen. It does not target a race. It does not create subjective tests administered by hostile local officials. It establishes a baseline requirement that every citizen can meet and that no non-citizen should.
Schumer's comparison doesn't just fail on the merits — it cheapens the real history it invokes. The men and women who bled on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, who were murdered for registering voters in Mississippi, who endured fire hoses and attack dogs for the right to cast a ballot — their suffering is not a rhetorical device to be deployed against voter ID. Using it that way diminishes what they endured and what they won.
Strip away the Jim Crow language and the hypotheticals about married women, and the Democratic position reduces to a single operational commitment: no verification of citizenship at the ballot box. That's the line Schumer drew. That's the hill every Senate Democrat will apparently occupy.
The question voters should ask is simple: Who benefits from a system that cannot distinguish between citizens and non-citizens at the point of voting? The answer isn't complicated, and the refusal to engage with it honestly is its own kind of confession.
Every legal American voter — Black, white, Latino, Asian, rich, poor — has their vote diluted when ineligible individuals cast ballots. Election integrity isn't a partisan concept. It's the foundation that makes every other political argument possible. Without it, the entire system runs on trust with no mechanism for verification.
Schumer is betting that the phrase "Jim Crow" carries enough emotional weight to shut down that conversation before it starts. For decades, that bet paid off. The polling suggests the house edge is shrinking.
Schumer's promise of zero Democratic votes means the SAVE Act faces a narrow path in the Senate without significant procedural leverage. But the political dynamics have shifted beneath his feet. When 71 percent of your own voters support a measure you're comparing to racial segregation, you are no longer leading your coalition — you are defying it.
That gap between Democratic voters and Democratic leadership will widen every time the issue surfaces. Every time a Senate Democrat echoes Schumer's line, they'll do so knowing their own constituents disagree. The question is whether any of them has the independence to say so.
Chuck Schumer called voter ID "vicious and nasty." Seventy-one percent of Democrats called it common sense. One of those positions will hold. The other will be remembered as the moment a party leader told his own voters they were wrong — and compared them to segregationists for good measure.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) just dropped a serious revelation about the Clintons and their connections to Jeffrey Epstein on national television.
On Wednesday, Burlison appeared on Newsmax’s “Bianca Across the Nation” to discuss Bill and Hillary Clinton’s alleged relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Burlison claimed the Clintons had significant involvement with Epstein and urged them to honor their agreement to testify before the House.
After facing threats of contempt of Congress for delays, Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state, is set to testify on Feb. 26, with Bill Clinton scheduled for the following day.
Burlison didn’t mince words, alleging a deep link between the Clintons and Epstein’s world. He pointed to specific claims, including interactions with victims and even a photograph of Bill Clinton receiving a massage from one of them, according to ABC News.
“With Bill Clinton, for example, there have been three victims who have publicly stated that they had interactions with Bill Clinton,” Burlison stated on Newsmax. It's important to note that no Epstein victim has said Clinton did anything inappropriate or abusive.
Burlison also emphasized how Bill Clinton’s prominence might have silenced those harmed by Epstein. The mere presence of a former president could intimidate victims, preventing them from speaking out. This “chilling effect” demands a closer look at how power protects itself.
“The fact that he was present gives a chilling effect to any of these victims to coming forward or trying to report their activities with Epstein,” Burlison argued. If true, this paints a troubling picture of influence shielding wrongdoing.
Further allegations from Burlison suggest the Clintons’ involvement didn’t end with Epstein’s conviction. He claimed interactions continued through Ghislaine Maxwell, described as an Epstein co-conspirator, hinting at a web of connections still unexplored. This isn’t a closed chapter—it’s a lingering question mark.
The Clintons only agreed to testify when a contempt of Congress vote loomed just days away, per Burlison. Such reluctance doesn’t inspire confidence in their willingness to come clean. It’s hard not to wonder what they’re so eager to avoid discussing.
Burlison also tied the Clinton Foundation to Epstein, calling it an idea born from the disgraced financier. This level of entanglement, if proven, could reshape how we view their public endeavors. Scrutiny here isn’t optional—it’s essential.
Adding to the skepticism, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA ) commented on Newsmax’s “National Report” that same day. Perry accused the Clintons of dodging accountability for months, predicting they’ll say as little as possible under oath. This gamesmanship frustrates those hungry for the truth.
Victims, as Burlison noted, feel let down by law enforcement and the Department of Justice. Their pain underscores why these hearings on Feb. 26 and the following day matter so much. We can’t let bureaucratic failures bury their stories again.
The public deserves to know if Bill Clinton, as Burlison alleges, enabled Epstein’s illegal activities through his association. Even the appearance of complicity from someone of his stature erodes trust in our institutions. This isn’t about politics—it’s about justice.
Burlison’s push for tough questions signals a broader conservative frustration with elites skating by on privilege. The idea that power can insulate against accountability grates against the principle of equal justice under law. It’s a fight worth having.
As the testimony dates approach, all eyes will be on whether the Clintons provide meaningful answers or hide behind evasions. Perry’s warning of them “playing” investigators only heightens the stakes. Conservatives will be watching, and they won’t settle for half-truths.
Ultimately, this story isn’t just about the Clintons or Epstein—it’s about whether our system can still hold the powerful to account. Burlison and Perry are right to demand clarity, especially for victims who’ve waited too long for justice. Let’s hope Feb. 26 brings revelations, not roadblocks.
Lee Hamilton, a towering figure in American politics and a longtime Indiana Democrat, has left us at the age of 94, passing peacefully in his Bloomington home this Tuesday.
Hamilton, a former U.S. Representative from southern Indiana, served in Congress for over three decades, rising to prominence as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees. He played key roles in major investigations, including the Sept. 11 commission and the Iran-Contra probe during the Reagan era. His death was confirmed by his son, Doug Hamilton, though no specific cause was provided.
In today’s political swamp, Hamilton had a reputation as a moderate, respected by both sides. His passing raises questions about whether such bipartisanship can survive in an era where ideological lines are drawn with a sledgehammer. Was he a relic of a bygone time, or a model we’ve foolishly abandoned?
Born in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1931, Hamilton moved to Evansville, Indiana, as a child, later becoming a small-town lawyer after graduating from Indiana University’s law school in 1956. He first won his congressional seat in 1964 at just 33, leveraging his roots and high school basketball fame. It’s a classic American story—hard work and local grit propelling a man to Washington, according to ABC News.
Once in Congress, Hamilton didn’t just sit on the sidelines; he became a Democratic heavyweight on international relations. His crewcut and calm demeanor masked a sharp mind that navigated tumultuous issues, though some critics later argued he wasn’t tough enough on Republican missteps. In a world obsessed with theatrics, his steady approach seems almost quaint.
Hamilton’s opposition to the 1991 Persian Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush showed his skepticism of military overreach, advocating for economic sanctions against Iraq instead. While some might call this naive in the face of aggression like Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, it’s worth asking if endless wars have really made us safer. Maybe he saw something we’re still ignoring.
In the mid-1980s, Hamilton co-chaired the Iran-Contra committee, probing the Reagan administration’s shady diversion of arms sale profits to Nicaraguan rebels. The report slammed an environment of secrecy, yet he faced pushback, with then-Rep. Dick Cheney dismissed it as a partisan hit job. Sounds familiar—powerful players dodging accountability while the truth gets buried in noise.
Hamilton himself noted the deception, saying, “There was too much secrecy and deception.” He added that vital information was kept from Congress and the public. That’s a warning we should heed today, as government opacity only grows under layers of bureaucratic doublespeak.
Fast forward to 2002, and Hamilton was vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, investigating the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans when 19 hijackers slammed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. The 20-month probe clashed with the George W. Bush White House over intelligence reforms. It’s no surprise—governments hate admitting they dropped the ball.
The commission’s 2004 report was damning, finding both Clinton and Bush administrations blind to terrorist threats, failing to slow al-Qaida’s plotters. Hamilton didn’t mince words, stating, “We just didn’t get it in this country.” That’s a gut punch—decades later, are we any better at facing hard realities?
After retiring in 1999, having declined reelection in 1998, Hamilton didn’t fade away; he led the Woodrow Wilson Center and taught at Indiana University, which named its School of Global and International Studies after him and Sen. Richard Lugar in 2018. His post-Congress call for America to be seen as a “benign power” full of optimism and generosity feels like a pipe dream in today’s cynical world. But should we dismiss it as weakness, or strive for it as strength?
Even Republican leaders like Indiana Gov. Mike Braun mourned his passing on Wednesday, praising his integrity and civility. Former Vice President Mike Pence echoed that respect, calling it “boundless” despite political differences. In an age of screaming partisans, this cross-aisle admiration is a rarity worth noting.
Hamilton’s personal life—married to Nancy for 58 years until her passing in 2012, survived by three children, five grandchildren, and a great-grandchild—paints a picture of stability absent in much of today’s cultural mess. His son Doug recalled Hamilton’s drive to do good for as long as possible. That’s a value system we’ve lost in the rush for clicks and clout.
President Barack Obama honored Hamilton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, lauding his honesty and bipartisanship. While some might roll their eyes at Obama’s praise, it’s hard to deny Hamilton’s record of putting country over party. Maybe that’s the real lesson for a nation drowning in identity politics and grievance culture.
So, where does Hamilton’s death leave us? His era of moderation is gone, replaced by a political battlefield where compromise is a dirty word. Yet, if we’re serious about fixing this mess, perhaps we start by remembering that even in disagreement, respect and principle can still guide the way.