For weeks, students at hundreds of schools across the country have walked out of class to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions. At Rincon High School in Arizona, leaders of the Latino Student Union organized a walkout to oppose the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The next week, some of those same students demanded the removal of a Turning Point USA club from the Tucson Unified campus. Members of the Latino Student Union petitioned the school board to bar the conservative club from meeting on school property, claiming its presence made them feel “unsafe” and accusing it of a “track history of presenting hate and presenting fear.”

As American life grows more polarized, young people face mounting pressure to treat opposing speech not as something to answer, but as something to silence.

Arizona was not a one-off.

Last fall, students at Royal Oak High School in Michigan walked out over the formation of a Turning Point chapter. One protest organizer complained that the club “spreads conservative views … and those aren’t things that we promote in our school.”

That statement tells you plenty. Students increasingly invoke the language of safety and inclusion not to protect their own right to speak, but to suppress the speech of others.

Royal Oak Schools says the district aims to provide “an inclusive, diverse, safe, and student-first environment” in which students will be “embraced, accepted, challenged, and prepared.” Yet schools cannot claim to challenge and prepare students while teaching them that disagreement itself amounts to harm.

These incidents may still be relatively few, but they point to a broader problem: the spread of speech intolerance from college campuses into K-12 education.

A report released in September by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found alarming attitudes on college campuses. Among roughly 70,000 students surveyed, 34% said violence to stop someone from speaking can be acceptable, while 72% supported shouting down speakers in rare cases.

College pathologies do not stay on college campuses for long.

Through social media, ethnic-studies curricula, school speech codes, and the influence older students exert on younger ones, the campus habit of treating dissent as danger has moved into elementary and secondary education.

The results have already turned ugly.

RELATED: How liberals let America’s colleges collapse into illiberalism

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

After a walkout at Hayes High School in Ohio in February, one senior said the protest “went as peaceful as it could have gone with the amount of anger that we have.” In reality, an altercation between several protesters and one dissenter ended with three students charged with disorderly conduct. The confrontation appears to have begun when walkout participants repeatedly blew whistles in the student’s face.

In Kansas, student counterprotesters from Olathe Northwest High School were attacked while demonstrating across the street from an anti-ICE protest. Their offense? They merely supported the administration and current immigration enforcement.

Thankfully, these incidents remain uncommon. But the trend should concern parents, teachers, and communities. As American life grows more polarized, young people face mounting pressure to treat opposing speech not as something to answer, but as something to silence.

Whatever one thinks of school walkouts, defenders of these protests usually justify them as exercises in civic engagement and First Amendment expression. Fine. But civic engagement does not mean demanding a microphone for yourself and a muzzle for everyone else.

Students need to learn that free speech cuts both ways. They have every right to voice their convictions. They also have a responsibility to defend the rights of people whose views they dislike, distrust, or even find offensive.

If they do not learn that lesson now, student activism will become less about persuasion than coercion. And young Americans will be trained not to practice liberty, but to imitate the tyranny they claim to oppose.

​Opinion & analysis, Leftism, The left, High school, Student activism, Immigration and customs enforcement, K-12 education, Turning point usa, Tpusa, Violence, Censorship, Safe spaces, Conservative students, Liberal students, Latino student union, Anti-ice protests, Speech codes, Ethnic studies 

A mother and daughter from Kentucky have a simple message for artificial intelligence companies: Go away.

Ida Huddleston and her daughter Delsia Bare say their land has fed the United States for generations, and that isn’t going to change.

‘I’ll stay and hold and feed a nation.’

The quiet family are making headlines over their farmland, which they say has been in their family since the 1860s, after anonymous bidders have made plays to scoop up their property to erect a sprawling data center.

According to Bare, the potential buyers “will not reveal who they are,” telling local Lexington, Kentucky, outlet WLEX that the anonymity of the offer is a huge red flag to her.

The family have been offered $60,000 per acre for Huddleston’s 71 acres and $48,000 per acre for Bare’s 463-acre portion. This puts the total offer at roughly $26 million. WKRC says this is approximately 10 times the going rate for farmland in the area.

Huddleston said she has rejected multiple offers and that she’s not budging.

“What they’ve proposed and have carried on with us is not a business deal; it’s mind harassment,” the 82-year-old told WLEX.

“I said I don’t want your money; I don’t need your money. But I do feel sorry for everybody around us that they’re going to be affected by it.”

RELATED: Sam Altman tells BlackRock he wants AI on a meter ‘like electricity or water’

The economic development director for surrounding Maysville-Mason County previously told WLEX that the potential data center would create 400 full-time positions and over 1,500 construction jobs.

“As far as jobs would go, they would become, if not our largest employer, definitely top three,” director Tyler McHugh said.

However, Huddleston disputed the number of potential permanent jobs, saying, “My guess is you won’t have over 50, and they won’t even be there at this building when it’s said and done.”

The narrative surrounding the family’s lineage has remained very consistent throughout news reports, as have Bare’s reasons for refusing to sell.

“I’ll stay and hold and feed a nation,” she told WKRC. She added that for generations her family has “paid taxes on it, fed a nation off of it, even raised wheat through the Depression and kept the breadlines up in the United States of America.”

RELATED: Data centers are a hidden tax on your burger

Data center in Louisville, Kentucky. Tom Uhlman/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Much of the sentiment was the same for Huddleston, who said she recognizes a sinister pattern.

“They call us old, stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not. We know whenever our food is disappearing, our lands are disappearing, and we don’t have any water. And poison: We know we’ve had it.”

Her message to those who claim it will bring jobs: “I say they’re a liar and the truth ain’t in them. … It’s a scam!”

WLEX had previously reported on a different family who turned down offers of nearly $8 million for their land. In December, Andy Grosser and his father, Timothy, said they were also approached about selling their cattle farm to make way for a data center.

“We do not want to sell,” Grosser said. “The farm is my dad’s, and it means everything to him.”

As for Bare, she compared her love for her land to Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind:”

“As long as I’m on this land — as long as it’s feeding me, as long as it’s taking care of me — there’s nothing that can destroy me if I’ve got this land.”

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​Return, Farm land, Farmland, Kentucky, Big tech, Data center, Ai, Ai data center, America, Patriotism, Tech 

Anyone who watched the recent World Baseball Classic final in Miami — a thrilling matchup between the underdog Venezuelans and Team USA — saw a vivid display of national pride.

Before the game, both teams stood for the Venezuelan and American national anthems. Miami is home to the world’s largest Venezuelan diaspora community. The cheers were thunderous. Every Venezuelan player stood with his cap over his heart and sang every word with conviction. This from a nation scarred by decades of unrest, corruption, and more recently, liberation at the hands of U.S. troops sent by President Donald Trump. Through all that turmoil, they held fast to love of country. “It means everything. This is for our country,” starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez said afterward through tears.

A nation cannot survive on procedure alone. It needs loyalty, memory, gratitude, and a shared sense of belonging.

The contrast with the American team was hard to miss. Our players all looked stoic. No one sang. I wondered if they even knew the words.

That scene unfolded as the U.S. Senate debated the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID at the polls. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) framed the matter correctly. “Our republic was founded on a daring claim that free people could govern itself. Not that a free people could drift forever,” he said.

“Liberty is fragile and so it requires structure.”

America’s founders would have understood the point.

In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington urged Americans not only to respect the law but to love their country. “Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections,” he said. “The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.”

Benjamin Franklin believed immigrants should assimilate, learn the language, and adopt American customs if they wished to become good citizens. Thomas Jefferson tied citizenship to literacy, civic formation, and military readiness. “Every citizen should be a soldier,” he wrote. “This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state.”

The SAVE Act may never reach President Trump’s desk. Common sense rarely enjoys smooth passage in Washington. But Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has at least shown some backbone. “We’re going to stay on this bill until it damn well passes,” he said, even if that means “many, many weeks” of debate.

If the MAGA base roars loudly enough, maybe it will.

But the deeper problem runs beyond election law. It concerns whether Americans still understand citizenship as something more than legal status. A nation cannot survive on procedure alone. It needs loyalty, memory, gratitude, and a shared sense of belonging.

RELATED: America’s founders risked the gallows. What are we risking?

Daniel Shirey/WBCI/MLB Photos via Getty Images

That is why the contrast on display in Miami matters. The Venezuelans played as men who still believed their country — mess that it may be — deserved their love. Too many Americans now act embarrassed by their own inheritance.

If we do not protect our elections from illegal votes, we weaken our sovereignty. If we do not insist that new citizens learn English, we weaken national cohesion. If we cannot teach our children to love their country, sing its anthem, and thank God for its blessings, we will hand the nation to elites whose only loyalty is to appetite, profit, and power.

I saw the alternative recently at a Hillsdale College seminar. Before each meal, a student led us in prayer. Then we stood together and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. I had not spoken those words aloud in years. The moment carried real force — 800 voices joined in gratitude, memory, and common purpose. It reminded me that patriotism is not an abstraction. It is a habit.

We should bring the pledge back to schools. We should teach the Bible again. We should teach Western history and literature without apology. We should make English the official language of the United States.

After Venezuela beat Italy in the semifinals, President Trump posted on Truth Social, “Wow … statehood #51 anyone?” He understood something larger in the moment. America does not need another state. It needs more citizens with that kind of spirit.

These are the questions I explore in my new novel, “Trump’s Superpower: A Historical Novel About the Founding Fathers and One Founding Mother,” out in May. In it, the founders return for America’s 250th anniversary and confront what we have done with the republic they risked their lives to build.

Whether we still deserve it may depend on whether we are still willing to sing for it.

​Team usa, World baseball classic, Team venezuela, Save america act, National pride, National anthem, George washington, Trump, Opinion & analysis, Freedom, Socialism, Thomas jefferson, Mike lee, Eric schmitt 

Stand-up comedian Mark Normand believes in making fun of everyone, equally.

When asked about his latest Netflix special, Normand said he wanted to be “inclusive,” meaning he wanted to make fun of people from all walks of life.

‘I want you to admit on this call that they’re a dangerous people.’

Normand told podcaster Shannon Sharpe recently that he gave “equal opportunity” mockery to every group, including “trans, Mexican, black, gay, Muslim, everyone.”

It was one of those specific groups that executives confronted Normand about and wanted it removed from his hour-long set. The comic revealed a phone call he received from top brass recently, and while most would assume he was referring to Netflix — given that his “None Too Pleased” special was just released on the platform — a Normand voiceover told audiences multiple times it was actually Hulu he had the conversation with.

On the podcast “Tuesdays with Stories,” the New Orleans native recalled, “About a week ago or two weeks ago, they said, ‘Send us a couple jokes you like. We’ll chop them up and use that as promo on social media.'”

A week later, representatives allegedly asked the comedian to have a conference call, which he was not looking forward to because it’s “18 Jews on there with a speakerphone and my Jews,” Normand joked with co-host Joe List.

“They go, ‘Yeah, we got some bad news there. We reviewed the special again. We’d like to take out the Muslim joke.'”

Normand explained that staff told him that the last time “a comic did a Muslim joke,” they got bomb and death threats. But the 42-year-old said he refused to take it out.

RELATED: Comic’s hellish Ellen DeGeneres gig: How one word made her blow her top

“I like the joke. It kills. It’s a hot joke,” Normand said, adding, “And you know, no one touches ‘Muzz,'” referring to Muslims.

The comic said he fought for his joke, telling the platform, “You approved it. Now you’re going back.”

The platform allegedly then focused its battle on not removing the joke from the special itself but rather getting Normand to agree that it would not appear in social media promotions. The platform apparently believed social media was where most of the turmoil and backlash spawns from, not from people actually watching the special.

In response, Normand then gave the reps an ultimatum:

“OK. I don’t love it, but OK. I will take it off on one condition,” he recalled saying. Normand then said he told those on the call that he would only approve the social media plan if they admitted Muslims are dangerous.

“I want you to admit on this call that they’re a dangerous people. And they were like, ‘What? No. What, are you crazy?’ And I’m like, ‘You got to admit it, or I’m keeping it, or I’m posting it.'”

Normand said he could hear the commotion through the phone, until he was eventually told they would not adhere to his request, chiefly because it’s “offensive.”

That’s when Normand called out the studio’s hypocrisy.

RELATED: ‘There’s supposed to be freedom of speech’: ‘Saturday Night Live’s’ Kenan Thompson says movie studios suppress edgy comedians

Photo by Valerie Terranova/Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation

“That’s what the call is!” Normand remembered. “You’re calling about this, and I just need you to say it out loud.”

Remembering his phone call had Normand up in arms on the recent podcast, as he mocked the executive class for “signaling” about their beliefs but not standing behind them.

“You can say, ‘Hey, I love this group.’ But then you don’t live near them. You know, we’re all talk. We’re all signaling. We’re all virtuous, but you don’t actually act that way.”

“So they admitted it,” Normand said to his surprise; and while he did reveal he was “half joking” when he made his request, the comedian had a good time getting “a group of HR homos” to say, “All right, they’re dangerous. We’ll see you later,” before hanging up the phone.

As for which platform Normand spoke to, Netflix did not respond to a request for clarification; Hulu did not reply either. Normand seemingly had one special on the latter platform, “Out to Lunch” (2020), but it appears to no longer be available.

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​Comedy, Align, Stand-up comedy, Netflix, Hulu, Comedian, Muslims, Woke, Censorship, Virtue signal, Entertainment 

Republicans are facing yet another brutal electoral loss after Democrat Emily Gregory sailed through her special election in a deep-red district.

Gregory was elected to represent the 87th district in the Florida House Tuesday night, securing 51.2% of the vote while her Republican opponent, Jon Maples, won just 48.8% of the vote. This district, which includes President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, was previously held by Republican Mike Caruso.

Republicans have not flipped a single Democrat-held seat since Trump was elected.

Caruso, who vacated his seat in August to become Palm Beach County clerk of the circuit court and comptroller, won the seat by 19 points in 2024. Similarly, Trump won the district by 11 points in the 2024 presidential election.

Gregory’s victory is hardly an outlier. Since Trump was elected in November 2024, Democrats have managed to flip dozens of seats in key elections and have come uncomfortably close to defeating other Republicans in deep-red districts.

RELATED: Republican defends congressional airline perks as cost-savings for Americans

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In 2025 alone, Democrats flipped 25 state Senate and House seats previously held by Republicans out of the 119 seats that were up for grabs through special or regular elections. Democrats flipped 13 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates alone and another five seats in the New Jersey General Assembly, even breaking a supermajority in Mississippi.

Democrats flipped another nine seats, including local elections in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Arkansas.

With Gregory’s victory Tuesday night, Democrats have successfully flipped 29 seats previously held by Republicans.

RELATED: Jesse Jackson Jr.’s political comeback fails miserably after he served prison time

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

In contrast, Republicans have not flipped a single Democrat-held seat since Trump was elected in November 2024, offering a bleak forecast for the GOP going into the 2026 midterms.

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​Mar-a-lago, Donald trump, Deep red district, Flip, Emily gregory, Special election, Jon maples, 2026 midterms, Politics