Ryan: A Kamala Harris sermon

Photo by Sean Ryan

Disclaimer: This was originally supposed to run last month, when Harris ended her bid for President. Somehow it got lost in the drafts folder. My bad on that one. The message of the story is as relevant as ever. - Kevin

The 11:00 a.m. Sunday service at Corinthian Baptist Church was a little more crowded than usual.

Not much.

It was the same half-empty room as always, same congregants, in their dayglow blouses and deacon greys.

Only, that Sunday, a dozen-odd journalists and photographers lurked the pews, angling for a glimpse of Kamala Harris as she sat with good posture in the front near the pulpit.

Counting Harris, her sister, and her secret service — wherever they were — the church was about 18 people more crowded than usual, and that was everything.

Harris often speaks at churches. Growing up, she went to a Black Baptist church, 23rd-Avenue Church of God in Oakland, California. She and her sister Maya sang in the choir. Other days, they attended temple with their mother, a breast cancer researcher from the Brahman Caste, the highest level of Indian society and domain of Hindu priests and supreme beings.

*Who knew that Kamala Harris would slowly torch herself and begin an inevitable decline into Bidenisms and choked laughter, as, somehow, she started transforming into Biden 2 right before our eyes?

Not many in Iowa.

There was a real fervor in the air, centered on Harris. She was everywhere. She looked unstoppable.

The lesson was, politics has the agility of a game, and nobody — no one — ever truly knows who will win.

*

Light environed Harris as she strode to the clear-plastic podium at the side of the stage.

Tendrils of stained-glass light all around her, green and yellow and red and white and purple, all writhing in bright shifting dayglow, with a Black Jesus surrounded by people of every color, three glinting crucifixes over his shoulder.

"It is the church where we go, in times of need," she said, pausing so that the phrase could hum and the congregation could agree.

"Yes," they shouted. "Yes, Lord."

"It is the church where we go, when we need upliftment. It is the church where we go, when we need inspiration. It is the church where we go, when times like these test our faith and we need to be reminded of all of Christ's teachings, and what Jesus has taught us."

"Hallelujah," someone shouted.

"And we will fight evil, when it appears. Like what we're talking about this week, what we saw in El Paso and Dayton. We talked about the hate that displayed itself, that took on lethal proportions, and, as we all know, Lord, if we ever needed you, we need you at a time like now.

The congregation clapped wildly, churning out spastic cries.

"But we also know in Romans, 'Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.' So this is one of these moments."
She added that she and her sister Maya grew up in a home of faith. She repeated the word "faith." Then she waved toward Maya, who sat upright, looking ahead in her all white-outfit, contemplative, awake, like a Renaissance painting of an angel.

"We were raised to understand that we must live our faith. We were raised to understand that your faith, you should think of it as a verb."

"All right," shouted a woman in a pastel red dress. "Live it," shouted her neighbor.

"Faith is going to be displayed, not just in your words, but in your actions. And when I think about moments like this, I think we all know this is an affliction in the history of our country. This is a moment of time that is challenging us to look in a mirror and ask a question. That question being, 'Who are we?'"

A chorus of "mm-hm"s, instinctive agreement.

"At church, I think we know part of the answer to that question is 'We. Are better. Than. This.'"

"Oh, now." "Better, better, better than this."

"So this is a moment in time that requires us to fight. For the best of who we are. And fight we will."

"Amen. "Hallelujah." "Go on."

"You know, my sister and I, we were raised by a family of fighters. My parents met when they were active in the Civil Rights movement in Oakland in the 1960s. We joke that we grew up surrounded by adults who spent full-time marching and shouting. About this thing called justice."

Laughter, laughter, then a fulsome "Right on."

"And the heroes included not only Dr. King, who by the way was in his early 20s when he led the boycott — he, together with John Lewis and so many others, they were youth when they were driving and running that movement — but those heroes, including Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston and Constance Baker Motley, who understood the skill of the profession of law and transferred the passion from the streets to the courtrooms of our country, to do the work of reminding folks of that promise that we articulated in 1776, that we are all equal, and we need to be treated that way."

"Go ahead."

"That's why I went to Howard, went to law school, and decided to do the work that I've done, believing that one of the ways we will live our faith is to fight for justice."

"Whoop!"

"Scripture tells us, 'We must shine a light on the path, toward justice.' And so this is one of those moments in time where our faith is being challenged. And we must fall back on all of Christ's teachings, to remind us of what we are capable of."

Silence.

"One of my favorite parables is the story of the good Samaritan. When we talk about the good Samaritan, when Jesus talks about it, he challenges us to define 'neighbor.'"

"Mm-hm." In coordinated murmurs. "Yes yes mm-hm."

"So the Commandments tell us to love each other as we would our neighbor. But let's challenge ourselves to define 'neighbor.' The parable of the good Samaritan tells us, 'well you may think your neighbor is just someone who lives next door to you. Drives the same kind of car as you. Has kids who go to the same school as your kids. Same zip code as you.' But, no."

"No, no." "Yes, yes." "Mm-hm."

"Your neighbor includes when you're walking down the street and you see that person by the side of the road, in need of comfort. They may be drug-addicted, they may have fled harm in a country that is one of the murder capitals of the world, they may be out-of-work and in need of support. Jesus tells us, 'That is our neighbor, too.' And it is incumbent on us, if we are going to live our faith, to stand with and give dignity to that person."

"Amen." "Amen." "Amen."

"To give them support and to lift them up, and to speak out against hate and all that has driven them to be all that they are, and to stand with them."

"Yep!" "Stand with them!"

"So it is so wonderful to worship with you this morning. Now, I am here to worship. I am not here to preach, I'll leave that to the pastor. But I do wanna say, as a member of the United States Senate, and as you all know I am running to become the next President of the United States…"

Uproar, uproar, yips and whoo's, loads of clapping, a whistle or two.

"... Let our faith guide us, at moments like this. And guide us in a way that also lets us know that, as history has always proven to us, if we have faith to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, we will move mountains."
In the stale room that smelled like old closet, a wave of voices surged toward Harris, and she let it all wash over her, three glinting crucifixes over her shoulder.

*

A couple weeks earlier, Harris wound up on the same D.C.-to-Detroit flight as conservative firebrand and borderline troll Candace Owens. At the airport, Owens did what Owens does best. She grilled. She prodded. She spoke fast and had an answer for anything. She even photobombed.

Owens has been viciously critical of Harris, scathing. Like Harris, she is a natural performer.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in March, 2019, Owen said that Harris thinks that "black people are stupid."

In the past few years, Owens has catapulted to political stardom. For a while there, she was close with Kanye West. And most of us assume that she'll make a run for President herself at some point.

I had seen her in Dallas that April, three months earlier, at a Blexit rally, on the eve of her 30th birthday.

At both sides of the room, bartenders glared and muttered and slouched into cash registers. Onstage, people prayed over Owens and called her the Martin Luther King of our time, then balloons scattered down over a mostly-Caucasian crowd in a mostly-unpeopled ballroom, red-tipped by MAGA hats. Then she marched around to "Jesus Walks," the song that will keep Kanye West out of Hell.

*

Kamala Harris began her 2020 Presidency campaign on January 21st, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at a rally in Oakland.

"People in power are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other," she told the crowd of 20,000. "But that is not our story. That is not who we are. That is not our America."

As much as Owens dislikes her, Harris is paving the way for black women in politics.

Many of Harris' anecdotes are sayings from her mother. A favorite goes something like, "My mother always told me, 'Be the first to do many things. But don't be the last.'"

*

Lopsided, broke, unsalvageable. The cold cinder of the news cycle playing out in a church in a busy neighborhood under a highway.

Earlier that morning, several journalists and photographers had slumped off the Hawkeye Stages bus designated for Harris' press, but not many. My dad and I were two of fewer than 10 white people in the room, all but one journalists.

The service had different stages. Sing for a bit, standing. Listen to a hymn, seated. Then a song. Then a sermon.

Now was song.

On the screen, lyrics for "God's Gifted Voices."

The program's daily devotional concluded,"Corinithian opens wide her door, And says in the name of Jesus our Lord … WELCOME."

Maybe there was a shift in the air, but something jolted the place with a vague desperation. It shook the winds of the church, past the voice of the perceivable. Nobody seemed to care. Maybe it was the air conditioner.

The half-choir sang, "That's my heart, full of praise."

The band was having fun. They gave stage to the Holy Spirit. Piano, drums, 5-string bass. They were performing with the bounce of Funkadelic, the religiosity of Chance the Rapper, the confidence of David Bowie.

Quotations scattered the back of the church program.

Matthew 11:28. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Under the section labeled Prayer Ministry, 1 Chronicles 16:11. "Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always."

From somewhere, someone cried out, asking "Whose attention are you seeking?"

Then the congregation joined in, "Everywhere I go, I'm gonna let it shine."

Church services always have those awkward hand-offs between one speaker or one event and the next.

An elderly man in a rain-burnished blazer took the stage, leaned into the microphone, and began hurling his gravel voice around. It spun and spun, until it cut into a ruthlessly powerful version of "Amazing Grace." The man sang like everything was at stake. He ignored almost everyone.

I stood and sang. You would have to. Only a monster would have avoided crying. Not too much just a little.
"By and by, when the morning comes."

Between songs, someone advised, "Father stretch your hand, the way we sing when we're alone."

A multiplying spirit had overtaken the air. It was the opposite of suction energy, or at least quite different. If suction energy draws the entire room toward one person, this energy expanded each person toward the shore. It brought together instead of pulling in or rending apart. It overcame the indifferent softness of each person's selfhood and mesmerized us into a luminary belch of one thing, one life.

But the spirit receded when the song collapsed, stumbling into a tanglement of drums and bass wimpers. For no reason at all, the keyboard player soloed into the Mario underground level song. Dun-dun dun-dun Dun-dun. I kept expecting the "ping" sound of a coin, which, coincidentally, the collection plates were being passed around.

"Ping!"

Everyone there, we were no longer some dove in a swell of light, we were were a contagion, caught in the web of better manners, like Adam and Eve ashamed of their love handles. Stuck together like so much rice packed into licks of seaweed.

We felt like a shifting tide, sometimes perfect, sometimes ugly.

Then a tiny procession of girls took the stage. Six, barely more than 10 or 11 years old, falsely stern in their Sunday outfits beside rows of empty blue chairs. All of it was so empty.

It was the second Sunday of August and the children's choir sings on the second Sunday of every month. So here they were, singing.

They began sheepishly. They were scared, crowding around a shadow. One girl held her own microphone. She was the leader. She sang the loudest. She had a ponytail. She wore a red dress with white flowers.

"Sing babies," shouted people in the pews, "yes yes sing, babies."

The girls sang "Sunday Morning Heroes," a song I thought I knew but have been unable to find anywhere.

Their confidence grew and their voices got louder. And people cried out.

They repeated what sounded like "You didn't stay too long."

Harris nodded and smiled and positively glowed as she sat front row in a tan blazer.

After the girls finished and people squatted back down into their pews, a deacon said a prayer.

It bore the first mention of politics. Clumsy, the way he stumbled into policy. And, for the first time that morning, you could hear the outside world, police sirens braying past, maybe close, maybe far.

And the weather, all morning a lurking rain and mist held to the air. Fog so thick you couldn't see the speed-limit signs, which means you have to drive slower than whatever number is on them.

The weather wouldn't change much by the end of the service. But it would be a little bit brighter, as all the stained glass cars spat through the residue of a downpour along Interstate 235.

Hop hop hop to a Koji Kondo "Mario Bros." soundtrack.

*

Harris' sister Maya glided down the rows. She stalked along the aisle. Then she locked into the rostrum and spoke.
It was the best speech of the entire week. I recorded it with my Maranze

Then, she sang.

By God, it was fabulous. Scorching. Was this what it felt like to see Aretha back in the day? To watch Sam Cooke sing "Change Gonna Come"? To hear Björk or Chaka Khan in person?

Maya Harris is two years younger than Kamala. She officiated Kamala's wedding in 2014. She chairs Harris' campaign, and was a policy advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential campaign. Her husband, Tony West, served as Associate Attorney General under Obama.

The band fumbled boredly. A woman in a green sweater sat down at the drums.

Maya sang like everything depended on it in the old-room heat. Below the sundance of ocean-bright reflections from the stained glass window. The emotional force of her delivery kept the congregation waiting for whatever came next. And how she started low and quiet then let the song lift her and lift her and lift her and lift everyone, by God, I found myself yipping and going "yes, yes" like the rest of the congregation.

It was the wrong thing to ask but, anywhere you looked all you saw was the stained glass window, and did Jesus really look like that, like Superfly surrounded by feathers?

*

"Kamala" means "lotus" or "pale red" in Sanskrit. It is also another name for Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity, fortune, and beauty.

In Buddhism, the lotus flower symbolizes purity of word and body. There was a trail of lotuses behind every step Siddhartha Gautama Buddha took.

According to Hindu belief, our soul resides in the heart of the lotus, the flower of awakening, of spiritual enlightenment.

The lotus appears throughout Hindu texts as a symbol of divinity. Growth, purity, genesis. The pink lotus is a pendant of the gods.Brahma, the god of creation, was self-born from a lotus flower. He emerged from the navel of Vishnu on lotus petals at the beginning of Time.

*

After the collection plates traversed the last row, the pastor said a word. Some word that all of us know.

He gripped his pulpit. He started with a whisper. Barely audible, quoting Psalms 85:1-17:

Restore us again, God our Savior, and put away your displeasure toward us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger through all generations? Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your unfailing love, Lord, and grant us your salvation.

When someone starts out that quiet you know what kind of bullshit they're about to pull.

Then he built and built, his voice rose and rose until it quaked the room and, once or twice, caused a squeak of feedback.

It felt like we were inside Noah's ark, adrift on a flooded planet, the last humans alive. Or maybe we were the water, having overtaken the earth, too deep for ourselves.

"Our spiritual climate is off," shouted the pastor. "And the only way we fix a spiritual climate is to turn to God. If you want to live life, go to the one who gave you life, the one who breathed into man's nostrils."

The pastor shook his head. "Nothing makes me happy, people say. Well I am happy. You can't make me what I already am. No one can sell you when you know who you are."

He mentioned Abraham Lincoln. The Emancipation Proclamation. He implied that President Trump had launched us back, way back, back before all men were actually treated as equals. He painted Trump as a devil. A white supremacist, which was awkward, considering the racial dynamics of the room.

And then he snarled and said, do not hiss with blame, do not glare outward, because so much of the world's problems arise from a disconnect of fellowship.

"Whatsoever you choose on earth," he said, then he flared his nostrils and nodded and fought back a powerful emotion, then said something about the worlds that rampage within us.

"Your life is layaway," he said. "Ya'll remember layaway, right? It's yours but it ain't yours."

Then everyone went around and shook hands and hugged and smiled. I greeted the woman in front of me, a young black woman with her 9-year-old daughter and her husband. I leaned down to shake the daughter's hand, and her mouth dropped when I introduced myself, as in, "What is this that you're doing? Who are you? And why are you, a white dude, here, at black church?"

The mother asked me, "Is Kamala friendly? Does she talk for a while, you know, after a speech? Do you think she'll stick around?"

The family shuffled up to Harris and never returned, and there I was in the back pew all by myself.

People greeted Harris like they were taking Communion.

She dropped a closed envelope into a wooden bowl, relaxed because she knew what was inside it.

A scattered man hunched down at the pew, five feet to my left.

The pastor was humming into the microphone. "Remember what Sister Harris said about the people beside us," he said. "Treat them with kindness. Because when we mistreat someone, we're mistreating someone who belongs to God. We are mistreating the family."

What a load of horseshit, I thought.

"Now," he said, "let us pray."

It got quiet. I bowed my head. I nodded. And you better believe I held the hand of my neighbor.

New installments of this series come out every Monday and Thursday morning. Check out my Twitter or email me at kryan@mercurystudios.com

The Left's war on Tesla owners

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Across the country, Teslas are being torched by the very people who, just a few years ago, championed them as the future of sustainable transportation.

Recently, Glenn highlighted the heinous actions targeting Tesla owners and dealerships. He reached the same conclusion as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi: these are acts of domestic terrorism. Tesla owners are being doxxed; a dealership in Las Vegas was firebombed, vandalized, and shot at. Similar attacks have struck South Carolina, Oregon, and Colorado, where Molotov cocktails destroyed multiple Tesla vehicles.

But this isn’t really about cars—it’s a symptom of a deeper rot that has eroded any principles the Left once held. Just as they celebrated the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the attacks on Tesla reflect a lust for destruction—a self-righteous anger that disregards decency and the sanctity of life.

For them, the ends justify the means.

A Pattern of Lawlessness

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The attacks on Tesla owners and dealerships aren’t random; they form an emerging pattern that exposes the Left’s true motives.

A quick look at the alleged grievances of the protesters, vandals, and arsonists harassing electric vehicles and their owners reveals a thin veneer masking their deeds. Their motives range from semi-rational—disagreeing with Elon Musk’s actions and the goals of DOGE —to outlandish, like labeling Musk a Nazi or fascist. Yet, rational or not, their actions far outweigh the severity of their complaints. Their crimes include keying and spray-painting privately owned Teslas, vandalizing dealerships (including firing rounds into a Tesla service center in Las Vegas), and using Molotov cocktails to ignite Teslas in cities nationwide. As noted, these aren’t the acts of disgruntled voters but of domestic terrorists.

Glenn recently tied this Tesla terrorism to the brutal murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last December. Just as liberals rejoice over burning Teslas today, they cheered when Thompson was gunned down in New York’s streets, leaving his children fatherless days before Christmas. Much like the Tesla attacks, the Left justified their jubilation with half-baked critiques of the U.S. healthcare system, sandwiched between callous jokes about the slain CEO. It’s not about cars or insurance—it runs deeper.

Hypocrisy Exposed

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Rules for thee, not for me.

This theme keeps resurfacing. Remember when the Left was obsessed with climate change? “It’s the biggest threat to humanity,” they declared, warning we couldn’t drive cars or eat beef because their emissions would doom us all. They once praised Musk, hailing Tesla as the future of transportation. But now that Musk defies their ever-shifting liberal orthodoxy, Tesla must die—environment be damned. It’s a replay of the pandemic’s peak: while they preached staying home, wearing double masks, keeping six feet apart, and “following the science,” they burned, looted, and rioted through nearly every major U.S. city—rules for thee, not for me.

Owning a Tesla no longer earns eco-warrior cred—it marks you as a closet Nazi, liable to get your car keyed. The same crowd that once fretted over cow farts endangering the planet now sets electric cars ablaze. One can hardly imagine that the fumes from hundreds of pounds of burning lithium, plastic, and chemicals in a Tesla are eco-friendly.

Tyranny of Anger

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What’s the takeaway? What’s the common thread?

The Left isn’t bound by values—not even their own. Nothing is sacred to them; destruction is all they crave. Climate change, the sanctity of life, and “following the science” are mere excuses for outrage, discarded when they obstruct their lust to destroy. Their twisted ideology preaches that building, improving, or creating is evil—only taking and tearing down matter. They seethe at the sight of creation. From Tesla’s burning hulks to Thompson’s blood on the pavement, their anger trumps your rights every time.

Glenn has been warning of the collapse of our common values for years. If we don’t fight this moral rot and defend the values that built America—law, life, liberty—we’ll lose them to the flames of their rage.

Grim truth behind Mexico's death camps and cult of Santa Muerte

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Behind the iron gates of Izaguirre Ranch lie buried horrors that reveal the heinous acts committed within its boundaries.

Over the weekend, the volunteer group Buscadores Guerreros de Jalisco Collective, dedicated to finding missing people, uncovered human remains at the now-abandoned ranch after receiving a tip about a mass grave. Their grim discovery included more than 200 pairs of shoes, clothes, suitcases, farewell letters, and children’s toys buried among cremation ovens and fire-scorched bone fragments. No official count of victims has been released, nor have any bodies been identified, but the sheer volume of artifacts suggests hundreds may lie within the mass grave. Perhaps most disturbing is that local police raided the ranch just months earlier, in September 2024, making arrests and freeing two hostages—yet failed to detect (or deliberately ignored) the gruesome scene beneath their feet.

Earlier this week Glenn covered this story on air and explained that this is the sad reality in Mexico: missing people and mass graves are becoming normalized. Since 2006, more than 90,000 individuals have vanished, with cartels and other malicious groups presumed responsible. The Mexican government offers little help, often conspiring with these cartels to perpetrate and conceal these crimes.

Mexico is being devoured by a festering evil within its borders. No longer the land of tacos and beaches, it’s a place where the dead don’t rest, and the living can’t escape.

The Death Camps

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The full scale of the atrocities at Izaguirre Ranch may never be known. It’s believed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) used the site as a training facility for recruits. The role of the victims buried there remains unclear, but their fate was undoubtedly nightmarish.

Izaguirre is not an isolated case. In 2022, an abandoned house near Nuevo Laredo was found concealing charred human remains, with one room blanketed by two feet of compacted ashes and bone fragments. In 2009, a man in Baja California nicknamed “Pozolero” or “The Stewmaker,” confessed to dissolving up to 300 bodies in lye for his drug-lord boss, disposing of the remains in dumps or graves—a task he wasn’t alone in performing.

These sites are just the beginning. Dozens of similar mass graves have been identified across Mexico. This isn’t the mark of a healthy country—it’s a hallmark of nations engulfed in war or gripped by dark forces. The Mexican government has lost control, leaving chaos to reign.

The Corruption

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Does anyone in Mexico’s government still serve its people?

The scale of these atrocities can’t be dismissed as mere incompetence—complicity is evident. From local police overlooking the mass grave at Izaguirre Ranch to active conspiracy with cartels, such as in the case of a 2014 mass abduction, the evidence is damning. In 2014, 43 students in Guerrero were abducted and presumed killed, with independent investigations implicating police, military, and courts in the crime.

Glenn has uncovered further proof of corruption: the Mexican military is arming the cartels. An ATF whistleblower recently revealed that, despite Mexico’s claims that U.S. manufacturers supply cartel weapons, these firearms are first sold to the Mexican military by the U.S. government—only to be resold to the cartels. Add to this countless bribes and hush money, and it’s clear why Mexico’s soft stance has allowed cartels to seize control of the country.

The Cult of Death

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Perhaps the most terrifying sign of Mexico’s collapse is the rise of the Santa Muerte cult, or “Holy Death.” This cult venerates a skeletal figure—often robed in red or black, wielding a scythe and scales—promising protection amid Mexico’s harsh realities. Since the early 2000s, Santa Muerte has grown to seven million followers. Once a fringe belief, it’s now a mainstream force, filling the void left by a government too weak to shield its people.

While this mass embrace of death worship is alarming, its adoption by cartels is horrifying. Rather than seeking protection from violence, cartels offer bloody sacrifices to Santa Muerte—pyramids of burnt heads, ritual disembowelments, and grisly rites—to embolden their atrocities.

Temples and altars honoring death dot the landscape, signaling the decay of Mexico’s soul. This isn’t just superstition—it’s a dark religion fueling a nation’s descent into chaos.

Conclusion

Mass graves, corrupt officials, and a death cult are not anomalies—they’re symptoms of a failed state. Mexico’s government has ceded power to cartels, leaving its people trapped in a nightmare. As Glenn has warned, this isn’t just a distant tragedy—it’s a wake-up call for Americans. This isn’t just an issue south of the border; it’s a warning to America about the cost of ignoring evil at our doorstep.

Trump's 3 BIGGEST border victories

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The Southern Border is healing!

Just hours after his inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border. A little over a month later, the tide of migrants pouring into the United States has been significantly stemmed. Trump is delivering on his major campaign promises: stopping illegal crossings, rolling back Biden-era border policies, and using every available resource to fortify the border against future challenges.

In his recent congressional speech, Trump highlighted these border security successes—achievements often overshadowed by the flood of other news stories this past month. To spotlight this monumental progress, we’ve compiled a list of Trump’s three most significant border victories.

1. Significantly reduced border encounters

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When Trump took office, it was clear—the sheriff was back in town. According to the Department of Homeland Security, daily border encounters have plummeted by 93 percent since his inauguration. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ramped up its efforts: in the past month alone, ICE doubled arrests of criminal aliens and tripled apprehensions of fugitives at large. This dramatic shift stems from reinstating strict border policies, restoring common-sense enforcement, and unleashing the full capabilities of ICE and Border Patrol.

2. Major policy changes

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President Trump has also made sweeping strides in border policy. He reinstated the “Remain in Mexico” policy, requiring immigrants to wait in Mexico during their immigration proceedings instead of being released into the U.S. He also terminated the controversial “catch and release” practice, which had allowed millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the country pending court dates. Additionally, Trump signed the Laken Riley Act, mandating detention for all illegal immigrants accused of serious crimes.

Another key victory was designating cartels like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as terrorist organizations. This classification empowers law enforcement and border agencies to tackle these ruthless gangs with the seriousness and resources they demand.

3. Deployed major muscle

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Trump is doubling down on border security—and he’s not holding back. He deployed 1,500 U.S. troops to secure the southern border and restarted construction of the border wall. Among the forces sent is a Stryker Brigade, a rapid-response, high-tech mechanized infantry unit equipped with armored ground and air vehicles. This brigade’s mobility and long-range capabilities make it ideal for patrolling the rugged, remote stretches of the border.

Fort Knox exposed: Is America's gold MISSING?

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President Trump promised that we would get a peek inside Fort Knox, but are we ready for what we might find?

In this new era of radical transparency, the possibility that the Deep State's darkest secrets could be exposed has many desperate for answers to old questions. Recently, Glenn has zeroed in on gold, specifically America's gold reserves, which are supposed to be locked away inside the vaults of Fort Knox. According to the government, there are 147.3 million ounces of gold stored within several small secured rooms that are themselves locked behind a massive 22 ton vault door, but the truth is that no one has officially seen this gold since 1953. An audit is long overdue, and President Trump has already shown interest in the idea.

America's gold reserve has been surrounded by suspicion for the better part of a hundred years. It all started in 1933, when FDR effectivelynationalized the United States's private gold stores, forcing Americans to sell their gold to the government. This gold was melted down, forged into bars, and stored in the newly constructed U.S. Bullion Depository building at Fort Knox. By 1941, Fort Knox had held 649.6 million ounces of gold—which, you may have noticed, was 502.3 million ounces more than today. We'll come back to that.

By 1944, World War II was ending, and the Allies began planning how to rebuild Europe. The U.N. held a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where the USD was established as the world's reserve currency. This meant that any country (though not U.S. citizens) could exchange the USD for gold at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce. Already, you can see where our gold might have gone.

Jump to the 1960s, where Lyndon B. Johnson was busy digging America into a massive debt hole. Between the Vietnam War and Johnson's "Great Society" project, the U.S. was bleeding cash and printing money to keep up. But now Fort Knox no longer held enough physical gold to cover the $35 an ounce rate promised by the Bretton Woods agreement. France took notice of this weakness and began to redeem hundreds of millions of dollars. In the 70s Nixon staunched this gushing wound by halting foreign nations from redeeming dollars for gold, but this had the adverse effect of ending the gold standard.

This brings us to the present, where inflation is through the roof, no one knows how much gold is actually inside Fort Knox, and someone in America has been buying a LOT of gold. Who is buying this gold? Where is it going and for what purpose? Glenn has a few ideas, and one of them is MUCH better than the other:

The path back to gold

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One possibility is that all of this gold that has been flooding into America is in preparation for a shift back to a gold-backed, or partial-gold-backed system. The influx of gold corresponds with a comment recently made by Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who said he was going to:

“Monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.”

Glenn pointed out that per a 1972 law, the gold in Fort Knox is currently set at a fixed value of $42 an ounce. At the time of this writing, gold was valued at $2,912.09 an ounce, which is more than a 6,800 percent increase. If the U.S. stockpile was revalued to reflect current market prices, it could be used to stabilize the dollar. This could even mean a full, or partial return to the gold standard, depending on the amount of gold currently being imported.

Empty coffers—you will own nothing

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Unfortunately, Glenn suspects there is another, darker purpose behind the recent gold hubbub.

As mentioned before, the last realaudit of Fort Knox was done under President Eisenhower, in 1953. While the audit passed, a report from the Secretary of the Treasury revealed that a mere 13.6 percent was checked. For the better part of a century, we've had no idea how much gold is present under Fort Knox. After the gold hemorrhage in the 60s, many were suspicious of the status of our gold supply. In the 80s, a wealthy businessman named Edward Durell released over a decade's worth of research that led him to conclude that Fort Knox was all but empty. In short, he claimed that the Federal Reserve had siphoned off all the gold and sold it to Europe.

What would it mean if America's coffers are empty? According to a post by X user Matt Smith that Glenn shared, empty coffers combined with an influx of foreign gold could represent the beginning of a new, controlled economy. We couldstill be headed towards a future where you'll ownnothing.