If Friedrich Hayek taught us to inquire about who should decide and Abraham Lincoln taught us to ask to what end, then the question of immigration compels us toward a third and inescapable question: Where is the line drawn?

The principles of subsidiarity and federalism demand that matters should be resolved at the lowest level of authority competent to manage them. Much of what the national government has usurped would be more wisely and justly managed by the states, local communities, families, and institutions of civil society.

A nation that treats its laws as optional, its borders as permeable, and its citizenship as devoid of meaning invites the very chaos that destroys liberty.

The Constitution itself was framed to embody this division of powers, preserving the vitality of local self-government against the dangers of centralized tyranny.

Yet subsidiarity is not an absolute doctrine, nor is federalism morally sovereign. America’s founders never regarded federalism as an end in itself, but as an instrument ordered toward justice, liberty, and the common good.

When the claims of federalism or local autonomy come into conflict with the equal dignity of the human person, federalism must yield. This is the profound teaching of the Civil War. That great conflict established beyond doubt that there are moral limits that no level of government — federal, state, or local — may transgress, even under the guise of divided sovereignty. The principle of human equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence sets a boundary that no appeal to states’ rights or local preference can override.

Before 1861, the defenders of slavery advanced an argument we hear echoing in our own day: that each state must be free to decide for itself the very foundations of republican government. The Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford lent its sanction to this view regarding slavery. But Lincoln repudiated it utterly.

He understood that the rights of man do not vary according to geography or popular vote. The self-evident truth that all men are created equal declares that no majority, no state legislature, no municipal council may lawfully decree some men unfit for liberty on grounds that deny their humanity. To enslave a man is to violate his natural rights; to nullify federal authority in matters essential to national existence is to dissolve the Union that secures those rights.

Lincoln did not abolish federalism — he preserved it by subordinating it to the higher law of nature. Federalism endures insofar as it is grounded in moral truth and serves to perpetuate a regime dedicated to equal natural rights.

This distinction becomes decisive when we turn to immigration. It concerns not merely internal policy but the very nature of the American political community: who may enter, under what conditions, and by whose authority.

The power over naturalization and the regulation of foreign entry are among the essential attributes of sovereignty, which the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) has expressly delegated to the federal government. Borders define the “We the People” whose consent forms the government. A people that cannot control its own borders or decide who can become a citizen cannot long govern itself justly or preserve equality under law, our regime’s moral foundation.

The federal government exists not to confer human dignity (which is inherent in every person) but to secure it among the specific members of the polity. Human dignity demands that no one be enslaved or deprived of life and liberty without due process; it does not entail an unqualified right to enter any political community or claim automatic citizenship.

The right to migrate is not the same as the right to enter any country of one’s choosing. Conflating the two dissolves the distinction between universal natural rights and the particular rights of citizens, a distinction the founders carefully preserved.

RELATED: Civil war chatter rises when Democrats fear losing power for good

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The real question for us is not merely whether authority is federal or local, but whether policy is directed toward justice, human dignity, and the nation’s common good. Lincoln saw that democracy unbounded by moral limits becomes incoherent and self-destructive. A nation that treats its laws as optional, its borders as permeable, and its citizenship as devoid of meaning invites the very chaos that destroys liberty.

Federalism is a means to the end of justice; it is not a refuge from moral duty. Local communities may not, under color of autonomy (sanctuary cities), nullify the Union’s authority over matters essential to its preservation — any more than Southern states could nullify the Fugitive Slave Clause or obstruct the enforcement of laws necessary to national integrity.

These acts of interposition — driven by radical professional activists and their followers in cities like Minneapolis — echo the nullification and secession doctrines Lincoln condemned as fatal to the republic. In his 1861 Annual Message to Congress, he accurately described the true nature of such “principles”: “rebellion thus sugarcoated” that has “been drugging the public mind.”

The lesson of Lincoln and the founders is unchanging: Decentralization without moral anchors descends into anarchy; centralization without moral purpose hardens into despotism. True statesmanship orders power toward the permanent truths enunciated by the Declaration of Independence. Only then can the American experiment endure as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people — and dedicated to the Declaration’s proposition “that all men are created equal.”

Editor’s note: A version of this article was published originally at the American Mind.

​Opinion & analysis, Abraham lincoln, Federalism, Immigration crisis, Immigration and customs enforcement, Mass deportations, Ice raids, Subsidiarity, Union, Anarchy, Rebellion, Civil war, Declaration of independence, Natural rights, Equal rights 

On a recent appearance on Fox News, Dave Landau poked fun at Bad Bunny — the Super Bowl’s halftime show performer of choice.

“What this comes down to is, you look at somebody like Bad Bunny, or you look at somebody like Trevor Noah. They don’t actually have the ability to talk trash in their own countries, so they come to America, make a great living, living the American dream, insulting our country, because they know in their homeland they would be killed for doing the very same thing,” Landau said to host Greg Gutfeld.

Media Matters caught on to Landau’s error — which is that Bad Bunny’s home country is the United States — and put him on blast.

But Landau isn’t concerned with their ire.

“They put out this so people would let me know that Puerto Rico is a territory ’cause I clearly would have no idea of such things,” he tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

Now, he tells Gonzales that he’s receiving death threats because “Media Matters is a horrible company.”

“Talk about how you are funded by George Soros. Do that, Media Matters. Keep complaining about white billionaires, too, to tell your people that white billionaires are a problem when you’re funded by white billionaires,” he says.

“Where did you think that Bad Bunny was from?” Gonzales asks.

“I thought Colombia,” Landau responds. “Here’s why. I don’t care. Even when I was here, I think it’s very obvious that I wasn’t actually watching the news. I was just trying to find stories. All I knew about Bad Bunny was they said he didn’t speak English. And the left, that is, was worried that ICE was going to take him at the Super Bowl because he’s an illegal.”

“That’s all I heard from the left,” he explains.

“Turns out he’s from Puerto Rico,” he says.

“God, you’re racist,” Gonzales jokes.

“Exactly. I’m a monster,” he adds.

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A study published Monday in the Milbank Quarterly, an esteemed peer-reviewed health policy journal, indicated that ultra-processed foods “share key engineering strategies adopted from the tobacco industry, such as dose optimization and hedonic manipulation.”

While the overlap in approach and fallout is striking, it’s also unsurprising given the industries’ entanglements. After all, tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris acquired food companies such as Kraft, General Foods, and Nabisco in decades past.

‘Not simply natural products but highly engineered delivery systems.’

UPFs are defined by the NOVA food classification system as “industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates or other organic sources (flavor enhancers, colors, and several food additives used to make the product hyper-palatable).”

Grocery stores are replete with UPFs, which include store-bought biscuits; frozen desserts, chocolate, and candies; soda and other carbonated soft drinks; prepackaged meat and vegetables; frozen pizzas; fish sticks and chicken nuggets; packaged breads; instant noodles; chocolate milk; breakfast cereals; and sweetened juices.

Numerous studies have linked UPFs to serious health conditions.

A massive peer-reviewed 2024 study published in the BMJ, the British Medical Association’s esteemed journal, for instance, found evidence pointing to “direct associations between greater exposure to ultra-processed foods and higher risks of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease-related mortality, common mental disorder outcomes, overweight and obesity, and type 2 diabetes.”

RELATED: ‘A giant step back’: Liberals rage against red meat after new food pyramid guidelines release

Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images

In the new study published this week, researchers from Harvard University, Duke University, and the University of Michigan noted that like cigarettes, UPFS “are not simply natural products but highly engineered delivery systems designed specifically to maximize biological and psychological reinforcement and habitual overuse.”

The researchers identified a number of commonalities between ultra-processed foods and beverages, which apparently now dominate the supply across much of the globe, and ultra-processed cigarettes.

The primary reinforcer in ultra-processed cigarettes is nicotine, which is optimized for rapid delivery. UPFs also have primary reinforcers optimized for rapid delivery, namely refined carbohydrates and added fats.

Just as the nicotine dose in ultra-processed cigarettes is standardized — 1% to 2% by weight — “to balance reward and aversion,” the researchers noted that refined carbohydrates and fats are precisely calibrated in UPFs to “maximize hedonic impact.”

“On a biological level, carbohydrates and fats activate separate gut-brain reward pathways. Refined carbohydrates stimulate dopamine release via the vagus nerve, whereas fats do so through intestinal lipid sensing and cholecystokinin signaling,” said the study. “When consumed together, their effects are supra-additive: the mesolimbic dopamine response can rise to 300% above baseline, compared with 120% to 150% for fat alone.”

“This makes UPFs with high levels of refined carbohydrates and added fats some of the most potently rewarding substances in the modern diet,” added the study.

In both ultra-processed cigarettes and food, the reinforcers are reportedly rapidly absorbed or digested; the reward is short-lived, leading to a desire for more; flavorants and sweeteners are added to processed ingredient bases to amplify appeal; risks of use abound.

The researchers noted further that both the tobacco and food industries have also worked diligently in their marketing to “create the illusion of reduced harm while preserving their core addictive properties.”

“Many UPFs share more characteristics with cigarettes than with minimally processed fruits or vegetables and therefore warrant regulation commensurate with the significant public-health risks they pose,” said the paper.

The researchers indicated that their analysis demonstrates “how UPFs meet established addiction-science benchmarks, particularly when viewed through parallels with tobacco.”

The apparent aim of such scholarship is to provide the “basis for policies that constrain manufacturers, restrict marketing, and prioritize structural interventions.”

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​Health, Ultraprocessed foods, Upfs, Food, Poison, Diet, Eating, Lifestyle, Cigarettes, Big tobacco, Obesity, Politics 

Although it received scant media attention, the FBI foiled a plot by members of the pro-Palestinian Turtle Island Liberation Front to bomb Southern California businesses on New Year’s Eve.

Most Americans have probably never heard of the term “Turtle Island,” a name said to be used by some indigenous communities to describe North America. “Turtle Island” proponents view the United States as a nation founded on stolen land and express solidarity with a host of anti-American positions and groups — most notably pro-Palestinian activists who support dismantling “colonizing” and “oppressive” power structures.

These ideas are being promoted by organizations that pressure school administrators to implement anti-American educational material.

TILF’s attempted terror attack shows the natural ends of the group’s subversive ideology: hatred, division, and violence. And unfortunately, teachers who view their role as agents of social change are now disseminating these ideas through the country’s K-12 schools in an effort to turn America’s students into child soldiers on the front lines of the country’s culture war.

Curricula such as liberated ethnic studies — a benign-sounding program that encourages students to view the world through an oppressor/oppressed lens and to treat their peers accordingly — is one such vector. Turtle Island is frequently cited in school curricula in the form of land acknowledgements, as well as in school meetings and school board notices on how to “support teachers of color.” The phrase also appears in lesson plans on “the social construction of race” that seek the “inclusion of Black and Latino studies in the public school curriculum.”

In 2021, a whistleblower provided Defending Education with photographs of a classroom at Los Angeles Unified School District’s Alexander Hamilton High School, where posters included “in 2020, make Israel Palestine again and make America Turtle Island again,” “F**k the Police,” and “F**k Amerikka, this is native land.” While those responsible ultimately removed the material under pressure, it is certain that those materials would have remained if not for withering public pressure.

Unsurprisingly, professors promote these ideas in college courses nationwide.

At the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, students can take a course called “Critical Indigenous Theory,” in which “indigenous” is described as a “comparative, interdisciplinary, and global project that exceeds the material conditions of Turtle Island …” One of the required readings for that class is “Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine.”

The University of Texas offers at least five courses with explicit land acknowledgements to Turtle Island, while at the University of California, Irvine, a doctoral candidate wrote a 300-page dissertation on the development of liberation schools on Turtle Island.

While examples abound of academics forcing radical ideas on impressionable university students, it is particularly galling for this to take place in the nation’s taxpayer-funded universities.

It is important to recognize that these ideas aren’t occurring organically. They are being promoted by organizations that pressure school administrators to implement anti-American educational material.

Consider the Great Schools Partnership, which provides professional development to K-12 school districts. The GSP’s self-proclaimed goal is “redesigning” public education with anti-American propaganda, including a 2020 blog post that preached about the need to “Decolonize Education” on “Turtle Island” while smearing Christopher Columbus.

There’s also the Zinn Education Project, a so-called history program coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change, which refers to Turtle Island in its abortion advocacy.

One of the most concerning examples of Turtle Island’s negative influence is through its connection to Teach Palestine, an organization corrupting K-12 education with anti-Israel propaganda. Teach Palestine’s sixth-grade lesson plans emphasize the need to “talk about Palestine and Turtle Island in the same breath.”

RELATED: Why are we playing by the rules with people who follow no rules at all?

Photo by Joshua Lott/Washington Post via Getty Images

Through incendiary rhetoric about the perceived injustices indigenous people suffer, Teach Palestine actively encourages students to believe that their country and its history are inherently evil. While the organization doesn’t explicitly endorse violence, its partisan framing, one-sided view of history, and portrayal of Israel and the United States as oppressive colonizers could lead some, like the suspected TILF bombers, to justify violent resistance.

We’re already seeing the effects of this brainwashing destabilizing America.

Anti-Israel protests erupted on college campuses in the wake of the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, resulting in Jewish students across the country being violently attacked by their peers. Many of the 18- to 21-year-olds complicit in these riots seemed to genuinely believe they had the moral high ground and that they were “liberating” their campuses from “oppressive” power structures.

Their skewed logic and hatred are the inevitable result of forcing anti-American ideological frameworks on young students, rather than encouraging pupils to think critically for themselves or teaching the basics of history, science, and mathematics — areas where American students are increasingly falling behind.

Without critical thinking and basic education, future leaders and voters become frighteningly easy to pressure into despising their country — and into treating violence as a legitimate answer.

The fact that 2026 nearly started with a Turtle Island-inspired bombing should be a wake-up call for our leaders to address this crisis in the months ahead.

​Education, Dei, Turtle island, Pro-palestine, Land acknowledgement, Critical theory, Great schools partnerships, October 7, Opinion & analysis, Leftism, Critical race theory in classrooms, Public schools, Colleges and universities, Anti-semitism, Diversity equity inclusion, Anti-american propaganda 

On Friday, January 30, the U.S. Department of Justice released a massive trove of over 3 million pages of documents, along with roughly 180,000 images and 2,000 videos, related to investigations into Jeffrey Epstein.

This third file dump — the largest to date — has drawn intense attention due to its massive scope and the unverified but sensational claims linked to high-profile figures, including President Trump, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and Prince Andrew, among others.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey shared her three biggest takeaways.

Allie first delivers an important preface: “Some of the files do mention prominent figures. … They have not been tied to any wrongdoing, any substantiated criminal activity in connection with this case. It is important to note that a mention of a famous individual does not necessarily mean that they were involved in Epstein’s nefarious activities,” she says, noting that much of what is currently going viral is “uncorroborated tips” from anonymous sources, many of which have been deemed “not credible” by the FBI.

That said, there are still plenty of lessons we can take away from the information we were given.

Lesson #1: “Notice the nature of sin.”

“Sin makes you stupid. Lust, envy, selfish ambition — they all have a way of arresting our thinking. And Satan does his most effective work by overplaying the benefits of sin in our minds and downplaying its eventual consequences,” she says.

“These powerful people in science, medicine, business, finance, and politics all got caught up in Epstein’s web, and they were enticed by this promise of connection and greater power and maybe unfettered pleasure in a lot of cases.”

“Some of them probably didn’t intend to be involved in a criminal enterprise,” says Allie, “but little by little and small justification by small justification, they found themselves connected to an evil person, and, in some cases, they themselves started practicing evil things.”

Lesson #2: “Recalibrate our definition of success.”

Allie cautions against chasing wealth, power, and fame, as they can be a slippery slope into “ruin and destruction.” Sometimes when we’re denied by man — a promotion, invitation, or endorsement that would have given us a boost — there’s a good chance that it ends up being “God’s protection” over us.

She points to Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 19:24: “Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God,” as well as Paul’s warning in 1 Timothy 6:9-10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pieced themselves with many pangs.”

“The seeking of wealth and power for the sake of wealth and power has a way of crowding out godly affections and replacing those affections with idolatry,” she summarizes.

“So we should thank the Lord for what he gives and what he takes away, knowing that his glory and our holiness is ultimately his goal. So we recalibrate the definition of success.”

Lesson #3: “Be grateful for a Christian civilization.”

“There are Jeffrey Epsteins throughout history across a wide variety of cultures. In fact, in many non-Western nations today, child marriage or raping underage girls is not seen as perverse. It’s not seen as criminal,” says Allie. “The reason the West and the United States has a general consensus around the evil of pedophilia is because of Christianity.”

In the ancient world, she explains, children were often aborted, left outside to die, killed after birth, or forced into labor or prostitution.

“They didn’t possess the physical strength that was lauded by Rome, and they didn’t possess the full intellect or the logos that was lauded by Greece, so they were treated as kind of subhuman,” says Allie. “And it wasn’t until Christians introduced the world to the imago dei and preached this radical message of equality before our creator that slowly but surely the world changed how it saw children — not as animals but as these vulnerable people in need of extra protection.”

“The revulsion to Jeffrey Epstein and his ilk, whose actions are incredibly common throughout history, is actually evidence of the vestiges of the Christian conscience that forged the West and inspired the words that we read in the Declaration of Independence.”

To hear more, watch the full episode above.

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