President Donald Trump returned to the office on Jan. 20 and made immediately clear that he expected federal bureaucrats to follow suit.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office indicated in a recent study that as of June 2024, over 200,000 federal employees — 9% of the federal workforce — worked remotely. Gallup survey data indicates that in the fourth quarter of last year, 61% of federal employees were working in a flexible hybrid work model.

‘That’s what we’ve been looking to do for many, many decades, frankly.’

Trump noted in a day-one memo to the heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch that “as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.”

“We think a very substantial number of people will not show up to work, and therefore our government will get smaller and more efficient,” the president later told reporters. “And that’s what we’ve been looking to do for many, many decades, frankly.”

Despite naysaying by academics, bureaucrats, and the liberal media, Trump’s effort to get workers back has yielded serious results besides the voluntary exit of tens of thousands of bureaucrats.

RELATED: Buc-ee’s gets rich by doing everything Wall Street hates

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

According to a new Gallup survey of 542 federal employees in “remote-capable” jobs, 46% of federal employees are now working in the office — up from 17% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and double the national average.

The percentage of federal employees engaged in hybrid work arrangements is now 28%, down 33 points since Q4 2024. Twenty-six percent of federal employees are reportedly engaged in fully remote capacities, said the survey published on Tuesday.

“In Washington, the hybrid era is over,” said Gallup’s Ryan Pendell.

Blaze News has reached out to the Office of Personnel Management for comment.

The survey further indicated that unlike the federal government sector, across the board, on-site work has not rebounded among full-time, remote-capable American employees. In 2019, over 60% of workers were in the office full-time. Now, 21% of employees are working on-site full-time. Fifty-one percent are engaged in hybrid work.

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​Opm, Office of personnel management, Working, Hybrid work, Remote work, Remote workers, Federal, Bureaucrats, Swamp, Donald trump, Winning, Politics 

I was on the ferry to Isle Royale National Park, sitting on a long, wooden bench, watching everyone else.

There were singles, couples, groups, and families. Watching a few kids slink along beside their parents, moms and dads making sure they had everything in the right place and everyone was coming along at the proper pace, I remembered the camping trips I used to take with my mom and dad.

None of us had cell phones, much less smartphones. When we were on the trip, we were on the trip and nowhere else. We were all there — wherever we were — together.

We were tent campers. We weren’t as hardcore as the people who do the deep backcountry stuff. You know, the trips where they hike in seven miles and set up their tent in the middle of the dense wilderness. But we were rustic enough for my parents to look down at RVs and any kind of electricity.

Scamps like us

Since then, they have moderated their stance. In their old age, they have acquired a small Scamp trailer — the smallest one you can buy, they assure us — and are constantly apologizing for its very existence, maintaining that they “put in their time.” We tell them that it’s OK, they are almost 70 years old after all. They can stop roughing it.

One summer when I was in middle school, we took a trip out to Maine. We camped the whole way from West Michigan to Acadia National Park. I was watching some old family videos the other day and saw some clips from that trip. We were packing up in the rain in New Hampshire. That’s rough. That video brought back all sorts of other memories from that trip. I remember my brother and I were so into skateboarding and almost killed ourselves every other day.

Dog days

When I was in 9th grade, we took a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We went over to the Apostle Islands off the coast of Wisconsin, too. We brought our dog along. Once, way up north, she jumped out of the car and right into a ditch. We thought her leg was hurt.

My parents were annoyed at the prospect of wasting a day (and money) trying to find a vet way up there. Then, all of a sudden, she miraculously started walking fine again. For the rest of her life (she lived to the ripe old age of 19), we always joked about how she was “faking it” on the U.P. trip.

I was getting really into music around that time and brought my trumpet because I swore I couldn’t take any days off. I would practice with a whisper mute around the campsite and sometimes in the car without a mute. If my parents were ever annoyed, they didn’t show it. They were always supportive, even when we didn’t have any room to spare in the blue Dodge Caravan and I was incessantly running the same passages over and over in the back seat.

In-tents experiences

After my sophomore year of college, we took a big trip, the biggest we ever took. We camped all the way out to California and back. We went to Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain National Park, and a bunch of other places along the way. I saw a video from that trip the other day, too. We were on the beach south of San Francisco. My dad was filming. My mom and sister were talking with one another near the water, and my brother and I were goofing off down the beach, acting like a couple of idiots.

My parents took us camping because it was cheap. They loved it, of course, they did it before we were born, but I know that a big reason for camping our way across the country in a tent was the affordability.

We almost never stopped for fast food. If we did, it was a crazy treat. Instead, we made sandwiches using soggy cold cuts drawn from the bottom of the blue-and-white cooler in the trunk. It was always half ice, half water in there. We would sit outside a rest stop with our sandwiches, a big bag of half-crushed Lay’s potato chips, and plastic cups filled with water from the drinking fountain near the bathrooms inside.

Some trips, my brother and I shared a small tent while my mom, dad, and sister slept in a bigger one on the other side of the campsite. Other trips, we all shared one big tent together, all five of us. I remember laying there at night, joking with each other, the cold dampness of the sleeping bag on my arms, my mom and dad on one side of the tent, us kids on the other.

IRL or bust

None of us had cell phones, much less smartphones. When we were on the trip, we were on the trip and nowhere else. We were all there — wherever we were — together. Crammed in the car, asleep in the tent, packing up the site in the rain, hotter than hell in Zion National Park in July, sitting around the fire in the morning, freezing after emerging from our sleeping bags in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Some of my most potent childhood memories are from those camping trips. They weren’t fancy or luxurious, we never went to Disney World or any big resorts, and I know I, in my foolish youth, sometimes wondered why my parents were so old-fashioned taking us camping in tents. But they really were special. I know it now, though I didn’t realize it for a long time.

It’s only as a dad that I now understand how much work those trips were and how much they mattered. Taking us three wild kids camping across the country in a tent, seeing all those incredible places. Spending all those days and nights together, just our family, camping. Our parents must have really loved us.

​Camping, Men’s style, Lifestyle, Tents, Family, Fatherhood, National parks, Acadia national park, Michigan, Upper peninsula, The root of the matter 

A Team USA Olympic legend went against the advice of “experts” and sold his coveted gold medals at auction.

In a revealing Facebook post, the former athlete said he used the money to move abroad, selling a house in California, too. Apparently in financial strain, the Olympic hero explained that after the sales, he picked up his life and moved to Central America.

‘I told the truth; I needed the money.’

A Wheaties box cover athlete and four-time gold medal winner, 65-year-old diver Greg Louganis said his career was mismanaged and he needed the money that auctioning off some of his medals would get him.

“I have auctioned three of my medals, which sold, I believe, because I went against what the ‘experts’ told me last time when I tried the first time,” Louganis wrote in a surprising Facebook post.

Louganis sold two of his four gold medals, along with a silver medal, the New York Post reported. The high-diver won gold in the three-meter springboard and 10-meter platform dives at both the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

His silver came in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada, for the 10-meter platform dive.

Louganis’ medals took in a reported $437,000 combined, the Post reported.

“I told the truth; I needed the money. While many people may have built businesses and sold them for a profit, I had my medals, which I am grateful for,” Louganis continued.

In the same post, the retired Olympian said goodbye to his home, while selling/giving away his belongings before moving abroad.

RELATED: Trump wins: US Olympic Committee bans men from women’s sports

Greg Louganis competes in the Men’s 10-meter platform competition at McDonald’s Olympic Swim Stadium at the 1984 Summer Olympics, August 11, 1984. Photo by Rob Brown /Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

“I decided to donate, sell what can be sold, give gifts, and give where things might be needed or appreciated,” Louganis explained, revealing that he had a lot to consider regarding shipping and import fees when moving.

Now calling Panama home, the former diver was forced to confront the idea that he would be lacking in possessions when he moved, but he kept friends in mind who had lost their homes in some of California’s wildfires, such as the Pacific Palisades fire in 2025 and the Woolsey Fire in 2018.

While Louganis’ remarks left questions unanswered, including why Panama was the destination of choice, he chalked up his future to needing a spiritual journey to redefine himself.

RELATED: Western Michigan sparks controversy with Arabic jersey during NCAA college football kickoff

Greg Louganis attends the Los Angeles premiere of ‘Strange Darling’ at DGA Theater Complex on August 19, 2024, in Los Angeles. Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

“Now I get to discover who is Greg Louganis? Without the distraction and noise from outside. At least this is my goal, and hey, I may not find that,” he wrote.

The Olympian added, “I think I may find it at times, in moments, my goal is to live it! Discover, allow, and nurture that human spirit through the experiences of life. To be joyful in the moments, embrace the grief, the anger, and the laughter, and embrace it all, feel it all in this experience we call our lives.”

In addition to his Olympic medals, Louganis won 11 more gold medals between the World Championships and Pan American Games from 1979 to 1986.

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​Fearless, Olympics, Seoul, Korea, 1980s, Los angeles, Summer games, High diving, Diving, Palisades, California, Olympian, Panama, Sports 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) said on Tuesday that the real reason why his city had a Labor Day weekend filled with shootings and other crimes is because Republican-run states have more gun rights than Illinois.

Johnson made his remarks after President Donald Trump confirmed that he will be sending National Guardsmen and federal law enforcement into Chicago to lower the city’s crime rate.

‘Chicago will continue to have a “violence problem” as long as Red states continue to have a gun problem.’

“We’re going in. I didn’t say when. We’re going in. … This isn’t a political thing. I have an obligation. When 20 people are killed over the last two and a half weeks, and 75 are shot with bullets,” Trump said, pointing to how his deployment of personnel to Washington, D.C., has made the city safer.

Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) have repeatedly said they do not want the extra help to address crime.

“Chicago will continue to have a ‘violence problem’ as long as Red states continue to have a gun problem,” Johnson reiterated on X. “The endless flow of illegal guns into Chicago can be traced to Red states like Mississippi, Indiana, and Louisiana. It is up to the federal government to step up and stop interstate gun trafficking networks.”

RELATED: ‘That is an outright lie!’ Chicago pastor rips into Democrats over crime

— (@)

Johnson said the “vast majority” of firearms used in crimes do not come from Chicago. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Firearms Trace Data for 2023, at 9,147, Illinois was the number-one source state of guns that were recovered. Indiana was number two at 2,796.

Johnson rallied protesters on Labor Day, telling the cheering crowd, “Are you prepared to defend this land? This land that [was] built by slaves. The land that was built by indigenous people. The land that was built by workers. Are you prepared to defend this land? I need you all to stand firm, to stand strong, if this president decides to continue to break this Constitution.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed on Sunday that extra immigration agents will be sent to the sanctuary city in a manner similar to what has been happening in Los Angeles, using U.S. Border Patrol agents.

RELATED: Federal judge says Trump unlawfully sent military troops into Los Angeles

— (@)

It remains to be seen where National Guardsmen will placed in Chicago after they are deployed there. Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez (D) suggested that the soldiers protect the tourist areas of the city so that Chicago police can go back to patrolling other areas of the city that have higher crime rates.

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​Politics 

During a Wednesday speech at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C., border czar Tom Homan outlined the Trump administration’s success regarding immigration enforcement.

‘I said two months ago, “We’re going to flood the zone,” and that’s exactly what we’re doing.’

Homan explained that President Donald Trump gave him three tasks as border czar: secure the border, run a mass deportation operation, and find missing unaccompanied migrant minors.

“We have the most secure border in the history of the nation,” he stated, giving credit to the president and Border Patrol agents. “Illegal immigration is down 96%.”

Trump’s success with the border proves that the Biden administration “unsecured the most secure border on purpose,” Homan declared.

“It wasn’t mismanagement. It wasn’t incompetence. It was by design,” he added.

RELATED: National conservatism is the revolt forgotten Americans need

Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Homan stated that Trump’s border policies have saved thousands of lives by reducing human trafficking, drug trafficking, and sexual assaults.

“They always say the Trump administration is inhumane,” he continued. “I’m a racist, supposedly. I’m a white nationalist. I read it all. I’m a terrorist.”

“Whatever you want to call me. I don’t give a s**t what people think about me, never have,” Homan remarked.

He explained that under Biden’s open border policies, a historic number of immigrants died making the journey to the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Americans died from fentanyl, sex trafficking was at an all-time high, and cartels prospered.

RELATED: Trump prepares massive immigration enforcement in sanctuary city

Border czar Tom Homan. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Homan also addressed sanctuary cities that are attempting to shield illegal aliens from federal immigration officials.

“I said two months ago, ‘We’re going to flood the zone,’ and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he stated. “In Chicago, it’s coming.”

“President Trump is going to make Chicago safe again,” Homan declared.

The Trump administration is reportedly planning a massive operation in Chicago that will involve 200 Department of Homeland Security agents and the use of the Naval Station Great Lakes.

“President Trump has been clear: We are going to make our streets and cities safe again,” a senior DHS official previously told Blaze News. “Across the country, DHS law enforcement are arresting and removing the worst of worst, including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and rapists that have terrorized American communities. Under Secretary Noem, ICE and CBP are working overtime to deliver on the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe again.”

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​News, Tom homan, Illegal immigration crisis, Illegal immigration, Immigration crisis, Immigration, Deportations, Trump administration, Trump admin, Donald trump, Trump, Border, Politics 

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump broke free of his usual pro-COVID vaccine sentiment and appeared to openly question pharmaceutical companies in a post on Truth Social.

“It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW,” Trump began in his post.

“I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not??? They go off to the next ‘hunt’ and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work,” he continued.

“I want them to show them NOW to the CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” he added.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention insider Dr. Robert Malone, who’s been on the front lines of the vaccine fight ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, has his own thoughts on the matter.

“In public health, I don’t think that we’ve ever had a period of time, a window of time, in which the underlying culture and a lot of the established conceptions of particularly the vaccine sector being challenged so actively,” Malone tells BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler in response to Trump’s post on “The Liz Wheeler Show.”

But the COVID vaccine isn’t even close to the only one that Trump should be questioning.

“There is a culture, and it really has earned the name of the term, being a cabal. There is a culture, an obsessive culture of vaccination. And let’s be real here. Vaccines are just another pharmaceutical. That’s all they are. They are not a magic bullet that cures all infectious disease,” Malone tells Wheeler.

“Influenza vaccination is something like less, well less than 50% effective. Sometimes it’s almost down in the single digit,” he continues.

However, the “experts” refuse to acknowledge this.

“They act as if they are untouchable, that their determinations are God’s truth and shall not be questioned,” Malone tells Wheeler, adding, “This is scientism.”

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​Upload, Sharing, Video phone, Camera phone, Free, Video, Youtube.com, The liz wheeler show, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Liz wheeler, Dr robert malone, President trump, President donald trump, Covid vaccine, Covid 19, Robert malone, Pfizer, Moderna, Truth social 

Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino attempted, and failed, to erase Highway America’s beloved country store. Masino’s doomed endeavor is just the latest example of refinement culture’s steamrolling homogeneity, but this felt different, somehow much worse, than previous flattenings of consumer couture. Cracker Barrel’s eccentricities and nostalgia kitsch turned a remodel into a reckoning.

Of course, the woke Millennialification is cringe-inducing. However, this is not the first overhaul of an established chain with pop culture power. Previous iterations of Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut also invoke nostalgia, with images from the 1990s and early aughts making the rounds online once a season or so. Cracker Barrel, clearly, had a different pull. In practical terms, it has always been a sit-down-first experience, but the backlash runs deeper than that.

The logo may have been salvaged, but if interior remodels continue apace, your roadside retreat will become a hospice grab-and-go.

Founded in 1969 as a purposefully nostalgic endeavor, the Cracker Barrel project set out from the get-go to tug on your heartstrings. It evoked a bucolic America already gone by, the decor a launching point for older relatives to spin yarns about the good old days. Pizza Hut nostalgia is down simply to a decade of construction and the passage of time.

Cracker Barrel’s true uniqueness is its emphasis on an ambience that says “stay,” inviting customers to settle in and reminisce. Whether you were playing the peg game over butter and biscuits or rifling through the wooden toy and Weasel Ball aisle, Cracker Barrel never motioned toward the door. Cozy and familiar, Cracker Barrel invited you into the tangible world of things: clutter, knickknacks, antiques, wood, gas lamps, and farm equipment. The walls were heavy. Stone hearths anchored every dining room. The Barrel presented itself as a destination, as the American grandparent par excellence, a barn-den of earthly delights.

Contrast this with the new interior. The tyranny of gray, of symmetry and 90-degree angles, becomes omnipresent. It is profoundly soulless: rolling pins arranged in perfect squares and sequence, kettles in fluorescent color affixed exactly upright in rows on bland canvas displays. In essence, Cracker Barrel’s simulacrum of a country home is abstracted even farther into its most literal parts and parcels, calling to mind cooking blog thumbnails and pallid pop art. It points toward the digital, to the representative over the real, and even worse, it pushes the consumer toward the exit. It seems to say “get in and get out.”

RELATED: Why Cracker Barrel’s disastrous rebrand was inevitable

Photo by Joe Raedle / Contributor via Getty Images

The digital is fundamentally temporary, the way in which we interact with essays, short-form video content, tweets, and the rest. The sign of this is the gray, the sleek, nostalgic props rendered in perfect lines like typeface, all blaring with the same refrain: EXIT. They’re razing the physical and replacing it with a digital reconstruction.

Everything is an airport. Everyone, everywhere, wants you out as soon as you walk in. The restful, the physical are stripped away in order to sap the hearth of its heat so you never get comfortable enough to stay. There is nowhere to stop and wait for a while. You have to keep moving, racing through a world of commodities blurring together into one long strand of gruel.

The last redoubt of color and clutter, Cracker Barrel is now just another franchise, flattened and homogenized. The logo may have been salvaged, but if interior remodels continue apace, your roadside retreat will become a hospice grab-and-go.

We still crave slivers of the real, of invitation and warmth, of the physical world. We desire escape from our escapes, entry into the real and exit from the digital. Cracker Barrel’s rebrand discarded the pleasant lie of highway stopover as home away from home. Venues will increasingly resemble the virtual as comfort food becomes uncomfortable.

​Culture, Cracker barrel 

National conservatism is an idea whose time has arrived. The battle for our future is not between democracy and autocracy, capitalism and socialism, or even “right” and “left,” in the old meaning of those terms. It is between the nation and the forces that would erase it.

For decades, many in power — not just here, but across the West — have been locked in a cultural war with their own nations. We see it across Europe today, where the immigration crisis threatens to transform the ancient fabric of those nations — and an increasingly totalitarian censorship state menaces all who object. America, too, is threatened by these elites, driven by the same interests and ambitions.

Settled, founded, and built by the most adventurous and courageous sons and daughters of the West, America realized the destiny of Western civilization.

They are the elites who rule everywhere but are not truly from anywhere. National conservatism is a revolt against this fundamentally post-American ruling class.

Revolt on the right

This revolt is from the right — but also within the right. For too long, conservatives were content to serve as the right wing of the regime. They waged foreign wars in the name of global “liberalism” and “democracy.” They rewrote our trade policies in service of global capital. They supported amnesty and mass migration.

The Washington Consensus was a bipartisan affair. Until President Trump, the mainstream right quibbled over the left’s means but hardly ever challenged its ends. Conservatives cheered intervention after intervention — not to defend America’s national interests, but to pursue the Wilsonian fantasy of a “world safe for democracy.”

They backed the North American Free Trade Agreement and welcomed China into the World Trade Organization, not because it was good for American workers, but because it served the vision of a borderless marketplace. On immigration, the old conservative establishment may have opposed illegality on procedural grounds, but it took no issue with the substance. If the same end were achieved “legally,” many celebrated it.

At this point, it should be clear that the fact that the government sanctions something does not mean it’s good for our country.

Immigration and the American worker

For decades, we were told “high-skilled immigration” was an urgent necessity. The H-1B visa, for example, was sold as a way to keep America competitive. But programs like H-1B have imported a vast labor force not to fill jobs Americans can’t or won’t do, but to undercut American wages, replace American workers, and transfer industries into the hands of foreign lobbyists.

Millions of foreign nationals were funneled in to take the jobs and futures that should belong to our children — not because they were more talented, but because they were cheaper and more compliant. While trade agreements kneecapped blue-collar workers, abuse of H-1B is kneecapping white-collar workers before our eyes.

For tens of thousands of Americans forced to train their foreign replacements just to get severance, the fact it was “legal” is little comfort.

A nation, not just an idea

For decades, the left and the right alike seemed to accept the idea that America was merely an “idea.” President Bill Clinton said in 1998 that immigration proved America was “not so much a place as a promise.”

But America is not just a proposition. Our founding principles are rooted in a people and a way of life. Take a trip to rural Missouri, and you’ll see that the Second Amendment is not a theory. It’s who they are. If you imposed a carbon copy of the U.S. Constitution on Kazakhstan tomorrow, Kazakhstan would not become America.

What makes America exceptional is not only our commitment to self-government, but also that we, as a people, are capable of living it. The left drained our principles of their substance, turning the American tradition into an ideological creed that demanded transformation of the nation itself. So the statues come down. The names are changed. Yesterday’s heroes become today’s villains.

On the right, too many accepted this worldview. Neoconservatives spoke as if the whole world were Americans-in-waiting. America, they said, was “the first universal nation.”

RELATED: They won’t admit it: Why Trump’s agenda is guided by a higher calling

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump rejected this. He knew America was not just an idea but a nation and a people. His movement is the revolt of the real American nation — a pitchfork revolution, driven by millions of Americans who felt like strangers in their own country.

They were the forgotten men and women, mocked as “deplorables,” sneered at as “bitter clingers,” but still loyal to their nation. In Trump’s defiance, they heard their own. In 2016, they discovered millions more felt the same way.

It is their interests, their values, their lives that the American right must defend, without apology, if it wants a future.

Our birthright

The Pilgrims at Plymouth, the Continental Army soldiers at Valley Forge, the pioneers of Missouri — they did not fight for a proposition. They believed they were establishing a homeland. America is their gift to us. It belongs to us. It is our birthright, our heritage, our destiny.

If America is everything and everyone, it is nothing and no one. But America is real, distinctive, unique — the most essentially Western nation. Settled, founded, and built by the most adventurous and courageous sons and daughters of the West, America realized the destiny of Western civilization.

For decades, elites tried to turn our past into a repressed memory. But we are done being ashamed.

That spirit explains why Americans mapped the genome, invented the microchip, built the airplane, and planted footprints on the moon. We are the nation of explorers, builders, and pioneers.

Yet for some time now, we’ve been taught to be ashamed. The left says our curiosity and ambition were sins. But the American frontier was not a crime. It was an expression of our pioneer spirit — a spirit that raised cities, cured diseases, explored galaxies, and forged new worlds.

We’re not sorry. America is the proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.

No more shame

On July 4, 2020, as riots raged, President Trump stood at Mount Rushmore and declared: “This monument will never be desecrated.” Mount Rushmore is who we are. Americans carved the faces of heroes into a mountain — not out of necessity, but because they could.

For decades, elites tried to turn our past into a repressed memory. They made shame our civic religion. But we are done being ashamed. We love our country, and we will never apologize for the great men who built it.

RELATED: Rekindling statesmanship to secure America’s golden future

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

To transform a nation, you must transform the way it understands itself. That’s why the left tears down statues, rewrites language, and mocks traditions. It wants a new America with new myths. But America does not belong to the left. It belongs to us.

This fight is about whether our children will have a country to call their own. It’s about whether America will remain what she was meant to be: the apex and vanguard of Western civilization.

A strong, sovereign nation — not just an idea, but a home, belonging to a people, bound together by a common past and a shared destiny.

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from a speech delivered on Tuesday, September 2, at the fifth National Conservatism Conference (NatCon 5) in Washington, D.C.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, National conservatism, National conservative conference, Senator eric schmitt, American heritage, Immigration crisis, Citizenship, Mount rushmore, The left 

A major charity providing healthy food to vulnerable seniors has had to close two sites in its home base of Portland, Oregon, mainly on account of crime.

Earlier this summer, Meals on Wheels People, linked to the national organization Meals on Wheels America, closed its Hillsboro and Elm Court Center locations. While Hillsboro closed because of low site traffic, the Elm Court site in downtown was no longer safe, CEO Suzanne Washington indicated.

‘If you’re out here by yourself, don’t come out here at night.’

“We couldn’t guarantee the safety of our staff and our volunteers. We’ve had many issues with drug dealing, threats of violence, and safety issues around needles and defecation,” Washington said, according to KPTV.

“Every day, they’re stepping over feces, and there’s needles and drug dealing and deaths,” she added, according to KOIN.

On at least one occasion, MOWP personnel had to step over a dead body to enter the Elm Court site. “We’ve been threatened with knives, and fires have been set,” she claimed. “It was time to close.”

Residents confirmed that crime and drug-use have become major problems in the area. Sean Meece, who rents an apartment above the shuttered Elm Court site and who used to dine there, said, “If you’re out here by yourself, don’t come out here at night. Because within a mile or two-mile radius, it’s not a fun place to be by yourself.”

The Elm Court location opened in 2007 and served more than 300 clients. Though the site stopped providing in-person dining during the government-imposed COVID lockdowns, it had still been used as a distribution center for staff and volunteers to pick up food to deliver to seniors in need.

“We got to the point where we were paying for space for congregate dining, but we couldn’t use it because people were afraid to come in,” Washington said.

Meals on Wheels America declined to comment on the specific situation affecting Meals on Wheels People, but it did provide Blaze News with the following statement:

Meals on Wheels providers across the country are having to make really tough choices every day given rising demand and inadequate funding. One in three Meals on Wheels providers has a waitlist while COVID-19 emergency funding has dried up. Meals on Wheels is proven to be the most effective solution to senior hunger and isolation, but the network of community-based providers needs more resources to ensure everyone who needs these services gets it.

RELATED: Woke Portland DA pushes for reduced sentences for violent offenders, including murderer, on his way out of office

aquaArts studio/Getty Images

While Washington and her team considered finding an alternative location, they ultimately decided to save the cost. “Instead of paying for someplace else, we want to keep people fed,” she said.

Washington noted that some of the COVID-era federal funding has since expired, and with further federal cuts looming on the horizon, MOWP has slashed more than $1 million from its 2025-26 budget.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is make sure the money we do have is going to feed people, not to pay overhead,” she explained.

So far, the new MOWP budgeting plans have worked. Despite increased demand, MOWP has continued to provide meals without waitlisting anyone.

Still, Washington added, MOWP is ever in need of donations and volunteers. “We do need help, we need it every year,” she said.

“Whether the Medicaid cuts impact us today or tomorrow, we need funding now to feed the seniors who are coming to us for help.”

H/T: The Daily Mail

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​Meals on wheels, Meals on wheels people, Crime, Portland, Oregon, Politics 

While the White House has tried to move past the Epstein files, some Republicans are reigniting the pressure campaign for transparency.

The commotion surrounding the Epstein files largely subsided in early August after Congress left Washington, D.C., for its annual five-week recess. Now that the Hill is back in full force, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is once again leading the charge to release the Epstein files.

‘They’re threatening anyone who helps bring true transparency.’

Massie filed a discharge petition on Tuesday as soon as Congress came back into session. The discharge petition, should it reach at least 218 signatures, would force a vote on his bill to make public all Epstein-related materials with minimal redactions.

Although Massie’s petition has gained traction with Democrats, a White House official warned Republicans that signing on to the petition would be viewed as a “hostile act” by the administration.

RELATED: Thomas Massie leads pressure campaign, forcing Congress to address Epstein

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“Helping Thomas Massie and liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” the official said in an email to NBC.

Within two hours of Massie’s filing, the petition secured the backing of 131 Democrats and three Republicans: Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Assuming all 212 Democrats back Massie’s petition, he will need six Republicans besides himself to meet the 218 signature threshold.

“I’m committed to doing everything possible for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein,” Greene said in a post on X. “Including exposing the cabal of rich and powerful elites that enabled this.”

RELATED: FBI, DOJ Epstein memo sparks right-wing outrage: ‘Nobody is believing this’

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“They’re threatening anyone who helps bring true transparency and justice for the survivors,” Massie said in a post on X. “This is a tacit admission the Oversight Committee data release is woefully incomplete.”

The data release Massie is referring to came from the House Oversight Committee Tuesday afternoon and includes over 33,000 Epstein-related documents that were made publicly available.

“As a survivor, I stand with victims demanding justice and full transparency,” Mace said in a post on X. “I also just signed the discharge petition to ensure the full truth comes out.”

House Republicans also scheduled a vote later in the week to allow the House Oversight Committee to “continue its ongoing investigation” into the government’s “possible mismanagement” of the Epstein case. Massie pushed back, calling it a “meaningless vote” meant to provide “political cover” for politicians who don’t want to support his bill.

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​Marjorie taylor greene, Thomas massie, Nancy mace, Lauren boebert, White house, Donald trump, Trump administration, House republicans, Congress, Epstein files, House oversight committee, House democrats, Epstein victims, Politics