The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the sanctuary state of New Jersey after its governor banned Immigration and Customs Enforcement from some state property.

On Feb. 11, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) signed Executive Order No. 12, which declared that federal immigration agents cannot access “nonpublic areas of State property for the purpose of facilitating federal enforcement of civil immigration law” without a judicial warrant or order.

‘Federal agents are risking their lives to keep New Jersey citizens safe, and yet New Jersey’s leaders are enacting policies designed to obstruct and endanger law enforcement.’

The governor claimed that the action would “protect against ICE raids on state property.”

“I take seriously my responsibility to keep New Jersey residents safe, and as a Navy veteran and former federal prosecutor, my commitment to upholding the Constitution will never waver,” Sherrill stated. “This executive order will prohibit ICE from using state property to launch operations. To strengthen public safety, we will also give New Jersey residents the tools to report ICE activity to the attorney general’s office and ensure residents know their constitutional rights.”

The governor’s office accused the Trump administration’s ICE agents of “violently abusing power and violating Constitutional rights.”

The DOJ responded to Sherrill’s executive action by filing a lawsuit against New Jersey on Feb. 23, stating that the state’s leadership has insisted “on harboring criminal offenders from federal law enforcement.”

RELATED: ‘She is putting a target on their backs’: New Jersey governor launches online portal to track ICE agents

Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The complaint claimed that Sherrill aimed to “intentionally obstruct federal law enforcement,” adding that she “celebrates thwarting the constitutional obligation of the President of the United States to take care that federal immigration law be faithfully executed.”

The DOJ argued that Sherrill’s executive order obstructs and intentionally discriminates against the federal government. Prosecutors also claimed that the action violated the Supremacy Clause, which “prohibits a state from usurping Congress.”

“Federal agents are risking their lives to keep New Jersey citizens safe, and yet New Jersey’s leaders are enacting policies designed to obstruct and endanger law enforcement,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said. “States may not deliberately interfere with our efforts to remove illegal aliens and arrest criminals — New Jersey’s sanctuary policies will not stand.”

RELATED: Exclusive: ‘Best of the best’: DHS torches leftist media myths about ICE training

Mikie Sherrill. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Sherrill reacted to the lawsuit, stating, “I think what the federal government needs to be focused on right now instead of attacking states like New Jersey working to keep people safe is actually training their ICE agents with some modicum of training, like any law enforcement officer in the state of New Jersey would have, so they can operate better and more safely.”

New ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

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President Donald Trump awarded several honors and medals during his historic State of the Union Tuesday night. Here is every honor Trump awarded during the joint address.

‘He was a legend long before this evening.’

1. Connor Hellebuyck, Presidential Medal of Freedom

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images

As goalie, Connor Hellebuyck played an integral role on the USA men’s hockey team that brought home the gold for the first time in 46 years. Trump hosted the team at the White House on Tuesday, just days after their historic victory, later inviting them to attend the State of the Union.

During his joint address, Trump announced that he would bestow Hellebuyck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. Trump also noted that he took a vote from the team members in the Oval Office as to whether he should award Hellebuyck the medal, and they unanimously supported the idea.

Trump’s address was a beacon of patriotism, and this moment was no exception.

“What special champions you are,” Trump said.

2. Andrew Wolfe, Purple Heart

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Andrew Wolfe was one of the two National Guardsmen who were ambushed and shot, allegedly by an Afghan national, just feet from the White House in November. Wolfe was not expected to survive, but he miraculously pulled through and appeared at the State of the Union alongside his mother.

To commend his service, Trump awarded Wolfe the Purple Heart.

“It was a solemn and unforgettable moment, one that ensured their courage and sacrifice were honored not only by West Virginia but also before the entire nation,” West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) said in a statement.

3. Sarah Beckstrom, Purple Heart

Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Sarah Beckstrom was the second National Guardsman recognized at the State of the Union and was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. Beckstrom was serving alongside Wolfe when she was ambushed and fatally shot in November at just 20 years old.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Beckstrom’s parents accepted the award on behalf of their late daughter Tuesday night, marking a solemn moment.

“West Virginia will never forget their service, their bravery, or their sacrifice,” Morrisey said.

4. Scott Ruskan, Legion of Merit

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Scott Ruskan, an aviation survival technician and rescue swimmer for the United States Coast Guard, was recognized for saving nearly 170 people during the floods that devastated central Texas back in July. Those rescued included children attending Camp Mystic.

Trump awarded Ruskan the Legion of Merit for his “extraordinary heroism.”

Ruskan accepted the award alongside 11-year-old Milly Cate McClymond, one of the girls he rescued from Camp Mystic.

“As the waters threatened to sweep her away, 11-year-old Milly Cate McClymond closed her eyes and prayed to God,” Trump said. “She thought she was going to die. Those prayers were answered when Coast Guard rescue swimmer Scott Ruskan descended from a helicopter above … and he lifted not just Milly Cate but 164 others to safety.”

5. Eric Slover, Medal of Honor

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover was recognized for his role in capturing Venezuelan ex-dictator Nicolas Maduro in January, successfully piloting the Chinook mission despite being shot several times and sustaining severe injuries to his legs.

Despite being severely wounded, Slover stood up in a walker to accept the highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor.

“Chief Warrant Officer Slover is still recovering from his serious wounds,” Trump said, “but I’m thrilled to say that he is here tonight with his wife, Amy.”

“The success of the entire mission and the lives of his fellow warriors hinged on Eric’s ability to take the searing pain. It was unbelievable, what’s happened to his legs,” he continued.

6. Royce Williams, Medal of Honor

Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images

Retired Navy Captain Royce Williams was also awarded the Medal of Honor Tuesday night, commending the 100-year-old veteran’s service in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. First lady Melania Trump, who sat beside Williams, bestowed the award on the war hero during the address.

In 1952, Williams found himself in a 35-minute dogfight against the Soviets, where he downed four enemy aircraft, survived a 37mm cannon, and still returned to the deck of the USS Oriskany just off the coast of North Korea. His fellow servicemen later counted 263 holes in the frame of his F9F-5 Panther.

“Tonight, at 100 years old, this brave Navy captain is finally getting the recognition he deserves. He was a legend long before this evening,” Trump said.

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Governor Kathy Hochul recently slowed, but did not stop, Waymo’s march into New York, blocking expansion beyond city limits while leaving the door wide open inside them.

These aren’t simply cars without drivers. Waymo’s robotaxis are mobile intelligence machines. They map infrastructure, catalogue faces, record ambient sound, and track movement patterns across entire cities — continuously and autonomously. Unlike a fixed security camera or an app you can delete, these vehicles move freely through neighborhoods, past hospitals, around government buildings, silently collecting everything in their path. The data never sleeps, and the cars never stop.

China’s strategy for technological dominance is anything but subtle.

No small matter, then, that Waymo’s next-generation fleet is manufactured by Zeekr, a Chinese electric vehicle company with deep, documented ties to China’s Communist Party. Zeekr is a subsidiary of Geely, one of China’s most powerful automotive conglomerates — a company that operates, as all major Chinese corporations must, in full alignment with Beijing’s strategic interests. Under Chinese national security law, any firm can be compelled to hand its data to the state. No appeal, no refusal. No exceptions.

Zeekr carries the fingerprints of a government that has spent decades playing a patient, precise long game, embedding itself in Western supply chains, Western infrastructure, and now Western streets. Part of the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, an automotive behemoth with stakes in Volvo, Polestar, and other Western car companies, Zeekr took off with significant state backing via the Yuexiu Industrial Fund and the Xin’an Intelligent Manufacturing Fund. Zeekr benefits from CCP-linked subsidies, even abusing the system to inflate sales, and exists within a corporate ecosystem where the line between private enterprise and party directive is deliberately blurred.

Hiding in plain sight

When the Waymo-Zeekr connection began attracting serious scrutiny, Waymo’s response was telling. Rather than address the security concerns directly, the company quietly rebranded the vehicles — scrubbing Zeekr’s name from its marketing materials entirely. “Waymo’s official explanation,” TechCrunch reported, “is that the company determined the U.S. public isn’t familiar with the Zeekr brand,” adding that, “of course, in the U.S. it might not hurt to ditch the name of a Chinese automaker either.” The cars didn’t change. The supply chain didn’t change. The data architecture didn’t change. Only the name did.

But China’s own strategy for technological dominance has been anything but subtle. Huawei was waved into Western telecommunications networks for years before governments finally acknowledged the obvious. TikTok spent the better part of a decade harvesting behavioral data on hundreds of millions of Americans while its ultimate obligations remained rooted in Beijing. The playbook is consistent: embed early, expand endlessly, extract continuously.

Waymo’s robotaxis are the next chapter. Former CIA analyst Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)) cut straight to it when asked about Chinese autonomous vehicles operating on American roads: “I know what I would do with that data if I was at the Pentagon.” From someone who spent years inside America’s intelligence apparatus, that is a warning worth taking seriously.

Utopia with Chinese characteristics

That’s on top of the more, shall we say, pedestrian dangers. A Waymo vehicle recently struck a child in Santa Monica, exposing the technological fallibility that the industry and its urban density-obsessed allies prefer to obscure. When they do fail, as some inevitably will, there is no driver to bear responsibility, no human instinct to override an algorithm in a fraction of a second.

RELATED: Hollywood lawyers up against Chinese AI ‘slop’ as Seedance 2.0 sweeps the internet

Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/Getty Images

To be sure, robotaxi advocates are right to observe that taking humans out of the driving loop likely leads overall to significant reductions in accidents. There’s a certain tempting logic to the riddle of improving our quality of life by taking ourselves out of the loop. But when you’re actually just looping out Americans, leaving Chinese humans with the goods and the control, what becomes of that utopian vision? A child struck by a robotaxi, as serious as that is, remains a local tragedy. A foreign government harvesting precise, continuous intelligence on American cities, American citizens, and American infrastructure is a national security crisis — one unfolding in slow motion, in plain sight, with a Waymo logo on the door.

Why hack America’s surveillance systems when you can drive right through them? To allow cars manufactured by a company with direct ties to Beijing to roam freely on American streets is, at best, breathtaking naivete. At worst? It’s the most efficiently delivered intelligence haul since the Cold War, although China’s own Typhoon hacks are a very close second.

Elon to the rescue?

While Waymo shamelessly rebadges CCP-aligned hardware and hopes no one looks too closely, Elon Musk has recently announced via a post on X that the Tesla Cybercab will retail for under $30,000 before the end of next year. It’s American-designed, American-developed, built without Beijing’s fingerprints anywhere in the supply chain. The autonomous future doesn’t have to arrive with a foreign intelligence apparatus riding shotgun. If America intends to remain the greatest nation on earth, it should probably stop subcontracting its surveillance vulnerabilities to the country most eager to exploit them.

Sadly, New York is not alone in this reckless endeavor. California has welcomed Waymo with equal enthusiasm and equal indifference to what’s underneath the hood. Together, two of America’s largest, most strategically significant states are rolling out the red carpet for a fleet built by companies that answer to a foreign flag. Both can still course-correct. Both can demand honest answers — about the hardware, the software, the data flows, and the loyalties embedded in every vehicle they’ve so eagerly waved through.

The Trojan horse isn’t somewhere outside the gates. It’s right at the curb, with a five-star rating and a pickup time of four minutes.

​Tech 

The New York City Police Department released photos of two people wanted in Monday’s mob attack on cops amid a snowball fight, which reportedly caused multiple injuries to officers.

The NYPD Facebook post indicates that “two uniformed police officers were inside Washington Square Park when two individuals intentionally struck the officers multiple times with snow and ice causing injury to their head, neck, and face. Anyone with information is asked to contact @NYPDTips or 800-577-TIPS.”

‘That doesn’t look like a snowball fight to me, Mamdani.’

The NYPD post adds that the pair are “wanted for assault on a police officer.”

Police told WABC-TV that officers responded to the park around 4 p.m. for a report of a number of people atop a roof — but officers were soon hit with snowballs, and multiple officers were taken to a hospital with facial cuts.

RELATED: ‘Despicable attack’: Brazen mob pelts NYPD officers with snowballs, multiple cops reportedly injured — and it’s all on video

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) faced criticism Tuesday over the assault on officers, with a number of political figures noting that the mayor’s history of anti-police rhetoric contributed to the mob attack.

When asked at a news conference if he supports the police department’s intention to criminally prosecute suspects in the case, Mamdani replied, “I don’t. From the videos that I’ve seen, it looks like a snowball fight.”

RELATED: ‘This is disgraceful’: Mamdani raked over the coals for attack on NYPD

The NYPD’s Facebook post concerning the two individuals wanted in the matter has received more than 17,000 comments as of Wednesday morning — and it appears after a cursory read that many of them actually mock police over the incident. One wrote, “They showed up for a snowball fight. What did they expect? I’m sure there were mass casualties.”

Others, however, weren’t happy with those caught on camera attacking cops:

“That doesn’t look like a snowball fight to me, Mamdani,” one commenter noted.”A snowball fight is when you have 2 opposing sides,” another user stated. “NYPD was not throwing snowballs as far as I can see.””The cops didn’t think it was funny. They push a couple of people who were very aggressive,” another commenter wrote. “This idea that is being pushed by some that we do not have to respect or obey law enforcement is getting out of control. Those officers showed tremendous restraint.””The mayor would demand the arrest of the officers if they threw snowballs back at the thugs,” another user observed.

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On the question of President Trump’s emergency tariffs, the Supreme Court has spoken. In the court’s view, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose tariffs during a declared emergency, namely, the massive trade deficits that threaten our economic security.

But the court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump was highly fractured. Only three justices — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — held that the law, under normal principles of statutory construction, does not give the president authority to impose tariffs.

A tariff wears two hats. It can function as a tax, but it can also operate as an instrument of foreign policy.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, quite persuasively demonstrates why that is not the case. As Justice Thomas noted in his separate dissent, the power to “regulate … importation” has throughout American history “been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports.”

The other three justices who formed the majority — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — resorted to the major questions doctrine. This principle of statutory interpretation holds that Congress must speak with super clarity on issues of “economic and political significance” for the Court to approve a delegation to the executive.

The turn to the major questions doctrine implies that the statute, under normal principles of statutory construction, authorizes the president’s action, a point that Justice Gorsuch explicitly conceded in his concurring opinion.

But here’s the rub. The court has never previously applied the major questions doctrine in the foreign policy arena — and for good reason. Under Article II of the Constitution, the president has the core responsibility for foreign policy. Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged as much, stating in the part of his opinion that garnered only three votes that “as a general matter, the President of course enjoys some ‘independent constitutional power[s]’ over foreign affairs ‘even without congressional authorization.’”

That’s quite an understatement. The failure to recognize the full measure of that fundamentally important piece of constitutional law is the first fatal flaw in the chief justice’s opinion.

The key Supreme Court case on this point is United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1936), which Roberts does not mention. In that case, Justice George Sutherland, writing for a near-unanimous court, articulated the principled distinction between foreign and domestic powers: “In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation.”

Then, quoting John Marshall’s “great argument of March 7, 1800, in the House of Representatives,” Sutherland added, “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.”

The main issue in the case was whether Congress could delegate to the president the authority to prohibit the sale of arms to either side in a war between Bolivia and Paraguay. But Sutherland did not rely solely on the act of Congress. He wrote:

It is important to bear in mind that we are here dealing not alone with an authority vested in the President by an exertion of legislative power, but with such an authority plus the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations — a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress.

In other words, President Roosevelt had the power to ban the sale of arms even without the act of Congress at issue.

The same should be true in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. Thomas’ dissenting opinion convincingly demonstrates why that is the case. While the chief justice claimed that Solicitor General D. John Sauer conceded that “the President enjoys no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime,” that’s not exactly what Sauer said. Rather, he argued that the statute delegated such authority to the president. Under Curtiss-Wright, a claim of inherent authority over foreign policy should still be viable.

In the part of the Curtiss-Wright opinion I elided above, Sutherland noted that the president’s power over foreign affairs, “like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution.”

For Roberts, the fact that the taxing power is vested exclusively in Congress — and that any bill “for raising revenue” must originate in the House of Representatives — further confirmed that Congress had not delegated to the president any authority to impose tariffs. The point lands a bit oddly, given Roberts’ earlier willingness to treat Obamacare as a tax even though the bill originated in the Senate.

RELATED: ‘Even stronger’: President Trump optimistic even after SCOTUS strikes down tariffs

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

That move exposes the court’s second fatal flaw: a tariff wears two hats. It can function as a tax, but it can also operate as an instrument of foreign policy.

President Trump’s tariffs plainly fell into the latter category, even if they also happened to raise substantial revenue. This dual character is not unique to presidential tariffs; the Constitution itself recognizes it in a related provision. Article I, Section 10, Clause 2 provides that “No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws.”

That clause reflects the same two-hat reality. An impost or duty — akin to a tariff — can be a revenue measure, but it also can serve a regulatory end tied to a state’s police power. Congress’ exclusive authority to impose taxes under Article I, Section 8, does not erase the states’ limited ability to levy duties for a different purpose: enforcing inspection laws to protect health and safety.

So too with tariffs. The fact that duties and imposts fall within Congress’ taxing power does not negate the president’s authority to use tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy — a “plenary and exclusive” power that Curtiss-Wright describes as vested in the president as the nation’s “sole organ” in external affairs.

That distinction drives Thomas’ characteristically insightful dissent. He points, in effect, to a path by which the president may continue using tariffs while negotiating with and responding to foreign nations in his role as the sole organ of American foreign policy. Time will tell whether the court, if the president takes that route, will remain faithful to its landmark Curtiss-Wright precedent. It should.

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

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Democrats desperate to take the wind out of President Donald Trump’s sails and torpedo his State of the Union address Tuesday with heckles, boycotts, and low-energy critiques may be upset to learn that the Americans who tuned in were overwhelmingly receptive to the speech and its contents.

A CNN poll found that a near-supermajority of “speech-watchers” said that Trump’s policies will move the country in the right direction.

‘Look at the growth President Trump made over the speech.’

David Chalian, the network’s political director, told talking head Jake Tapper, “64% say Trump’s policies would move the country in the right direction, 36% say the wrong direction.”

“Look at the growth President Trump made over the speech,” said Chalian. “So pre-speech, it was 54% of speech-watchers said his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction. After the speech, that number goes up 10 percentage points. So Donald Trump made some progress with people watching the speech from their pre-speech expectations to what they saw in the speech itself.”

Trump said a great deal on the policy front:

his tariffs might one day “substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax”; legislation should be passed “barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens”; he is “restoring American security and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism, and foreign interference”;he prefers a diplomatic resolution to mounting tensions with Iran;he is “ending the wildly inflated costs of prescription drugs”;his administration is leaning on major tech companies to provide for their own power needs;he is “making it easier for Americans to save for retirement”; andhe is keeping “large Wall Street investment firms from buying up, in the thousands, single-family homes.”

In an apparent effort to reassure the network’s liberal viewers, Chalian suggested that “it is a much more Republican universe that got polled here because Republicans tune in in greater numbers for a Republican president’s State of the Union address.”

Chalian added that CNN’s “poll of the overall electorate is the exact opposite of that.”

A CNN poll conducted last week found that 38% of respondents said that the policies being proposed by Trump would move the country in the right direction, and 61% said they would move the country in the wrong direction.

RELATED: ‘You should be ashamed’: Ilhan Omar melts down when asked to support Americans

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

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Ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) provided his Democratic peers with two options: either “attend with silent defiance” or boycott the event.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) was among the Democrats in attendance on Tuesday who apparently missed, misunderstood, or chose to ignore Jeffries’ instruction.

The Somali-born ethno-nationalist did her apparent best to interrupt the American president’s address, repeatedly screaming in concert with the radical seated beside her, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

‘Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA.’

While visibly agitated throughout the address, Omar appeared particularly unhinged when the president asked lawmakers to stand up if they agree that the “first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

Rather than stand to support the people of her adopted country, Omar repeatedly screamed, “You have killed Americans” — apparently referring to anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement activists Renee Good, who died driving her vehicle into a federal agent, and Alex Pretti, who died while interfering with a Customs and Border Patrol law enforcement operation.

Trump, responding to Democrats’ refusal to stand in support of their countrymen and the heckles from the peanut gallery, said, “Isn’t that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

RELATED: Trump recognizes little girl grievously injured, allegedly by truck-driving Indian illegal alien

Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As Omar continued screaming, Trump asked lawmakers to “end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals” and to “enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens.”

Omar also appeared vexed by Trump’s criticism of Somalis, particularly when the president said,

The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception. Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA, and it is the American people who pay the price in higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes, and perhaps most importantly, crime. We will take care of this problem.

While Omar has branded Trump a “liar,” the president’s critiques of Somalia and some of its exports are rooted in fact.

Somalia is a Sunni Muslim nation with a population of just over 19 million, a high rate of female genital mutilation, a GDP of $12.94 billion, and an adult literacy rate of 54%.

It is a haven for crime and terrorism, ranking 34th out of 193 countries for criminality on the Global Organized Crime Index.

In the state Omar purports to represent, approximately 54% of Somali-headed households received food stamps and 73% of Somali households had at least one member on Medicaid, according to a December report from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Numerous members of Minnesota’s Somali community have in recent months been charged and/or convicted for fraud.

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For the first time in nearly five decades, the U.S. men’s hockey team has an Olympic gold medal proudly around their necks. Last Sunday at the Milano Cortina Winter Games, Team USA defeated rival Canada 2-1 in overtime, with Jack Hughes scoring the golden goal.

The victory has sparked nationwide celebrations and displays of unapologetic patriotism — a stark contrast, BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock says, to the “anti-American sentiment” that’s characterized American sports for the last decade.

“The reason why it feels so big is because it was so patriotic at a time when athletes are being pushed to be anti-American. We’ve been dealing with this at least since 2016 when Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee,” he says.

The left, he argues, has been “trying to define” the Winter Olympics with America and Trump hatred — asking athletes, “How can you compete when Donald Trump is posting mean tweets and when ICE is trying to kick Somalians out of Minnesota?” — but their efforts were put to shame with this U.S. hockey victory.

The heart of this victory is captured in the iconic photo of Jack Hughes smiling with bloodied, chipped teeth, the American flag draped patriotically around his shoulders.

“This is going to be one of the most memorable … pictures in sports,” Whitlock says, calling Hughes’ grit and determination to keep playing despite broken teeth “a great moment … in male masculinity.”

While many are calling the victory “Miracle on Ice 2.0,” Whitlock says it’s closer to “the empire striking back.”

He plays a montage of various American Olympic competitors, including freestyle skier Hunter Hess, figure skater Amber Glenn, and alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, expressing conflicting emotions over competing for the United States.

But despite these “woke white athletes,” Whitlock says, the dominant feeling of this Winter Olympics is one of pride, largely due to the men’s hockey team and its historic victory.

“They wanted to woke up this Winter Olympics, and the empire struck back,” he says.

“This hockey team, Team USA, and the patriotic national anthem and the whole feel-good moment going on in sports — that’s what we’ll remember.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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