The first round of the NFL Draft on Thursday evening from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, produced its share of winners and losers. Judging by reactions from fans and others, the ESPN broadcast […]

The post ESPN Slammed for 'Absolutely Embarrassing' Blunders During NFL Draft Broadcast appeared first on The Western Journal.

You can buy all kinds of things on Amazon, from sex toys to “Mein Kampf.” Yet last week, Amazon decided that Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel, “The Camp of Saints,” was beyond the pale of respectability.

Vauban Books, a small independent publishing house, had been selling a new translation of the book for months. Sales had been going well. But a number of media outlets, from Le Monde to New York Magazine, had noticed the new edition and condemned it. So, on April 17, Amazon removed the paperback edition, notifying Vauban Books on the 20th that its edition of “The Camp of Saints” had violated the company’s “offensive content” policy.

Vauban Books issued a press release protesting Amazon’s actions but wasn’t optimistic. However, a social media storm rose to its rescue. The story was picked up in mainstream media.

By the end of the day, Amazon had reversed course, claiming the removal was an “error.” Thanks to the attention the attempt at censorship provided, purchases of the book soared; as of Friday, it’s reached No. 5 on the list of bestselling books on Amazon.

Because I wrote the critical introduction for the new edition, this affair briefly turned me into a banned writer. I’m sure I’ll be speaking alongside Margaret Atwood at the next “banned books” conference in no time. But while I await the invitation, it’s worthwhile clarifying who Raspail is and why “The Camp of the Saints” is important.

By the time he died in 2020, Raspail was the author of 40 books—over a dozen of them novels—and winner of numerous prizes, including the Grand Prix de Littérature de l’Académie Française, which France’s most prestigious academic institution awards a writer for lifetime achievement. Raspail was a literary romantic. His books describe the sufferings of almost vanished nations and lost peoples from around the world.

Ignore the pull quotes from “The Camp of the Saints” about migrants that you see from the legacy media and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Raspail was perfectly capable of providing sympathetic portrayals of non-Europeans and indicting Europeans for their own moral failures.

His 1986 novel “Qui se souvient des hommes” (“Who Will Remember the ­People…”), which won two literary awards, details the struggles of one South American tribe to survive. One scene involves a British commodore; an admirer of native cultures, he welcomes them onboard his ship. But they smell. They act grossly. Face-to-face with the natives, the commodore recoils. Yet Raspail, the narrator, passes judgment on the commodore: “He denies himself,” as Peter denied Christ.

Such reflections would be at home in any more spiritually attentive 20th-century postcolonial literature. But Raspail committed an unpardonable offense. He wondered whether the fate of the Indigenous peoples of Europe would be similar to the peoples who had vanished in the wake of European colonization.

That’s the core scandal of “The Camp of the Saints”—to classify white Europeans as another “native” group, endangered by a new world.

The crucial difference between Europeans and other threatened peoples is that the danger comes less from without than from within.

“The Camp of the Saints” is best read as a long thought experiment. It imagines how Westerners would respond to a flotilla of 1 million migrants who intend to arrive on the shores of France. The novel is a fictional depiction of the civilizational consequences of Western self-loathing.

The targets of the novel’s mix of tragic plot and biting satire are several. There is the left-wing intelligentsia: They herald the coming of the migrants as the dawn of a new age of multiculturalism. There are the churchmen: They see the influx of migrants as the Second Coming, a final triumph of the weak over the strong that will atone for the West’s sins. And then there are the left-wing radicals: Now that the European empires are gone, they want to decolonize the home front as well.

“Our soil must be occupied by a formerly colonized people and we must starve of hunger,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in 1961. “The Camp of the Saints” shows the logical consequences of this decolonial creed. It culminates in violent reverse colonization. The process is helped along by Westerners who are taught to despise themselves and think the world would be better off if they didn’t exist.

This creed of self-annihilation ends up consuming the progressive intelligentsia and the church. In the novel, the World Ecumenical Council comes to the following conclusion:  “that modern Western society cannot be reformed and must therefore be destroyed so as to build upon its ruins a new world equitable for all, so help us God.”

Raspail is a fitting Cassandra for our era. When The New York Times reviewed “The Camp of the Saints” in 1975, the reviewer regarded its central plot as “preposterous.”  Now, as Western societies reckon with the consequences of mass migration that the book described too well, powerful actors such as Amazon work to limit its reach. But in a way, reading the novel in terms of current events misses its deeper themes.

“The Camp of the Saints” can be read as a political prediction of what would happen to the 21st-century West. But the more profound reading is to think of it as an exercise in “metapolitics,” what Joseph de Maistre called the “metaphysics of politics.” Such exercises show the intuitions and insights required to grasp our deeper reality, or at the very least, identify which ones are missing from the present.

For Raspail, the roots of our malaise lie in a deep spiritual sickness. We have lost the capacity to love ourselves, our people, and our culture. The power of “The Camp of the Saints” lies in how it uses the drama of mass migration to hold up a mirror to ourselves. It forces us to reckon with our moral cowardice and encourages us to defend what is good and noble in our own beleaguered civilization.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The identity of a mysterious "golden orb" scientists discovered in the depths of the ocean in the Gulf of Alaska has finally been revealed.

The post WATCH — ‘Secrets of the Deep’: Scientists Identify ‘Golden Orb’ Found During 2023 Ocean Exploration appeared first on Breitbart.

If the United States is serious about giving citizenship to worthy immigrants, we also need to be serious about revoking it from the unworthy.

More than 800,000 immigrants became American citizens in FY 2024, and a comparable number are expected in FY 2025, though the final numbers aren’t out yet. There are more than 25 million naturalized American citizens, which is about half the foreign-born population. Having delivered remarks at many swearing-in ceremonies, I welcome those—undoubtedly the majority—who followed the rules and took the Oath of Allegiance in good faith.

But many didn’t. That’s where denaturalization comes in.

The question of revoking citizenship from immigrants who lied on their applications or were otherwise ineligible is part of a broader debate about what membership in our national community means—a debate made especially urgent by the waves of mass immigration the political class has allowed into our country over the past 50-plus years.

A vigorous, ongoing, and unapologetic commitment to denaturalization is an important part of the effort to restore integrity to U.S. citizenship. It is not about restricting citizenship gratuitously, but about demonstrating that becoming an American citizen is a high privilege that should be accorded only to those who meet its lofty standards.

Historically, the number of people denaturalized has not been large. From 1990 until the first Trump Administration, fewer than a dozen immigrants a year on average lost their citizenship through a civil or criminal court process after immigration authorities referred them to the Department of Justice. The most notable targets were not ordinary fraudsters but war criminals, terrorists, and human rights violators who lied on their applications.

The focus broadened in the first Trump term. The Justice Department created a unit devoted to investigating and litigating denaturalization cases, and the number of cases grew to around 40 a year.

An increase in denaturalizations actually first started under Obama due to technological advancements. Old fingerprint records were on paper, allowing aliens with outstanding deportation orders or other problems to take on a new identity without the immigration authorities knowing. As the old records were digitized, the DHS Inspector General’s office reported in 2016 that there were more than 800 immigrants who fraudulently acquired citizenship—and tens of thousands of old records were still on paper. Over the next couple of years, hundreds more potentially illegitimate naturalizations were investigated.

The effort has been stepped up further in Trump’s second term. The Justice Department last year issued a memo promising, among other things, that “The Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence.” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the part of DHS that handles such matters, has set a target of referring 100 to 200 possible cases per month to the Justice Department. DOJ in March announced the denaturalization of a Ukrainian-born arms smuggler and a Cuban-born Medicare fraudster, with promises of more to come.

The Immigration Game

Our relatively easy citizenship process is generally a good thing. Whether the number of newcomers each year is high (as now) or low (as it should be), the overriding goal for admitting foreigners should be their full absorption into American society. George Washington said of immigrants that “by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, manners and laws:—in a word, soon become one people.” Admitting them to full political membership in the American constitutional order is a key part of that process.

This is manifestly not the way citizenship is handled in, say, the Persian Gulf states, where large foreign majorities are not part of the political community, and never can be. In a republic like ours, however, the chief goal of immigration—more important than any economic or humanitarian objective—must be to turn newcomers into Americans.

Though it also involves a lot of paperwork, becoming a citizen is not like getting a driver’s license or opening a bank account. A better analogy is that the immigrant is “marrying” America, or being “adopted” by her. Such an arrangement should not be entered into lightly, but once consecrated, it should not be dissolved lightly.

But if the candidate for citizenship lied about material facts or was never eligible for naturalization to begin with, the relationship must be annulled. A federal court ruling on the issue didn’t use the metaphor of annulment, but the parallel is clear: “Setting aside naturalization for failure to comply with the particular prerequisites to the acquisition of citizenship is not a punishment; it merely represents an undoing of that which should not have been done in the first place.”

Even now the number of denaturalizations is lower than you might think, given how pervasive fraud is in every corner of our immigration system. That’s because, as the Supreme Court has written, the government must provide “‘clear, unequivocal, and convincing’ evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt.”

Under current law, consistent with the parallel to annulment of a marriage, the reasons for denaturalization must predate the acquisition of citizenship rather than be based solely on conduct after the swearing-in ceremony, however repellent that conduct might be.

For instance, among the questions on the Form N-400, the Application for Naturalization, is: “Have you EVER committed, agreed to commit, asked someone else to commit, helped commit, or tried to commit a crime or offense for which you were NOT arrested?” (Emphasis in the original.) A “no” answer wouldn’t likely be refuted by a database check, assuming we even had access to data from the alien’s home country. But if “clear, unequivocal, and convincing” evidence came to light after naturalization that the person had committed such a crime, that could be grounds for revoking citizenship.

The same is true for a “no” answer to many other questions on the application, including whether the applicant has ever been a Communist, prostitute, pimp, bigamist, or smuggler of aliens, drugs, or guns, or whether he has ever used fake identification, lied to get welfare, engaged in green-card marriage fraud, or failed to pay child support.

Conduct after naturalization can indeed be considered, but only as evidence that the applicant was lying when he took the oath of citizenship. For instance, if you became a Nazi or Communist shortly after naturalization, you were likely lying when you swore to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”

But even during World War II, the Supreme Court held the government to such a high standard of proof that the Justice Department found it difficult to denaturalize Nazis. In response, Congress enacted a provision that affiliation with a group that would have precluded naturalization within five years of becoming a citizen is prima facie evidence that the person was not attached to the principles of the Constitution when he took the oath.

This provision has never been challenged in court, mainly because it has seldom, if ever, been used. But it might end up in court soon if certain congressional proposals succeed.

For instance, in response to the revelations of widespread fraud by Somali-born naturalized citizens, Senator Eric Schmitt introduced the SCAM Act (Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation Act) to facilitate denaturalization. The bill would expand the five-year window to ten years and widen the offenses that could lead to denaturalization. Within ten years after taking the oath, if the new citizen joins a foreign terrorist organization, defrauds the government, or commits an aggravated felony or an espionage offense, those facts would be considered prima facie evidence that at the time of taking the oath the person was not of good moral character, was not attached to the principles of the Constitution, and was not well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States—all bars to citizenship.

In other words, citizenship would not be revoked because a naturalized citizen stole taxpayer money to open the “Quality Learing Center”; to continue the metaphor, that would be more akin to divorce. Rather, commission of the crimes would be evidence that offenders were never eligible for citizenship in the first place, so their acquisition of citizenship would be considered void.

As far as I’m concerned, if you become a terrorist or spy even 20 years after naturalization, you were never a good candidate for citizenship. But the courts aren’t likely to see it that way. The Supreme Court ruled in the 1967 case Afroyim v. Rusk that the 14th Amendment prohibits the government from involuntarily taking away someone’s citizenship—America “divorcing” them, as it were—no matter what they did or whether the citizen is native-born or naturalized.

One way to minimize the issue of denaturalization is to do a better job at the front end and not approve applications from unworthy people. To this end, USCIS has resumed neighborhood investigations into certain applicants, “reviewing their residency, moral character, loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, and commitment to the nation’s well-being.” This is obviously labor-intensive, but it’s better to reject the citizenship applications of liars, fraudsters, and criminals than to try to denaturalize them after the fact, assuming we ever learn of their unfitness.

Taking Citizenship Seriously

Increased focus on denaturalization is but one front in the broader campaign to restore the integrity of American citizenship. President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order—declaring that children born to illegal aliens, tourists, foreign students, and other non-residents should not be citizens—was recently argued before the Supreme Court, which is expected to issue its ruling this summer. The president will likely lose, because such a reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause is the prerogative of Congress. But his action has raised the issue in the public debate like nothing else could.

Win or lose, the administration is also moving forward on an initiative to restrict birth tourism—where pregnant women enter on visitor visas specifically so their children will obtain automatic U.S. citizenship, and then return home to raise them abroad. This is designed to put some teeth in a regulation issued during the first Trump term requiring consular officers to deny visas to pregnant women whose primary purpose in coming to the U.S. is to obtain citizenship for their child.

Other changes necessary to restore the meaning of citizenship have not received the same attention. Foreign-language ballots, for instance, are an absurdity. Why even require candidates for citizenship to pass an English-language test if the core sacrament of our civic religion can be conducted in Korean, Spanish, or Armenian? But that will require amending the Voting Rights Act.

New citizens swear to “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” But that part of the oath is legally meaningless since the Supreme Court in the Afroyim decision ruled that taking away someone’s citizenship for expressions of dual citizenship—naturalizing in a foreign country, serving in a foreign government, etc., or what are known as “expatriating acts”—was unconstitutional.

But Congress has the power to put teeth in the renunciation oath. It will come as no surprise that Chief Justice Earl Warren joined the majority in Afroyim. But in an earlier case on the same issue, where he was on the losing side, Warren wrote in his dissent that while he thought stripping someone of citizenship for performing one of the expatriating acts was unconstitutional, Congress had it in its power to “proscribe such activity and assess appropriate punishment.” Congress has so far not chosen to do so.

While restoring the value of citizenship is not an issue confined to immigration, mass immigration exacerbates it in every way. Denaturalization would simply not be as pressing an issue if annual legal immigration were dramatically reduced. A smaller flow of new immigrants, and the consequent reduction in the number of applicants for citizenship, would allow more attention to be given to each application, and would reduce the number of mistakes and thus the need for denaturalizations.

As with almost every concern regarding immigration, part of the answer is always less, please.

The post The Case for Denaturalization appeared first on The American Mind.

A few years ago, I was eating breakfast in a DC hotel listening to two men talk about their schedule for the day.  Their business was decorating homes for Christmas, and they were discussing their heavy workload. As I listened quietly the men were describing premium rates for DC families who wanted their decorating services […]

The post Washington DC Now Has the Highest Unemployment Rate in the Country at 6.9 Percent appeared first on The Last Refuge.

President Donald Trump’s firm defense of the nation’s borders has caused roughly 75 million foreigners to abandon hope of migrating into the United States, according to a 2025 poll just released by Gallup.

The post Trump’s Deters 75 Million Migrants with Border Reforms appeared first on Breitbart.

The widespread availability of abortion pills in the years since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is one reason the total number of abortions has gone up since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Not only have 12 states enshrined unlimited abortion into their state constitutions, but blue states are undermining lifesaving policies in pro-life states. They’re sending abortion pills to women in states that are trying to protect women, girls, and unborn children. They’re also shielding abortion pill providers from legal consequences thanks to laws that prohibit cooperating with pro-life states.

In practice, abortions are still happening in every state, and pro-life state enforcement tools are limited.

It is clear that the fight for life won’t be won through state action alone. Federal policymakers must do more to protect the unborn.

Unfortunately, some policymakers have hidden behind the notion of federalism, deferring all responsibility for abortion policy to the states. In Dobbs, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not include a right to abortion. That means it’s up to the people to decide through elected representatives, but the court didn’t say “only state representatives.” Every level of government has a part to play in defending life.

Drug regulation and federal funding are two ways federal jurisdiction relates to abortion policy.

In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration stopped enforcing safety protocols for abortion pills, including a rule that they had to be dispensed in person (the agency pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse).  Then, in 2023, the agency made those changes permanent and formally gave a stamp of approval to abortion pills being ordered online and shipped through the mail without a woman ever seeing a doctor.

These changes effectively let blue states veto pro-life policies in other states. GOP attorneys general from over 20 states are currently challenging the FDA’s recklessness, citing dangerous side effects to drugs that harm women and girls in their states.

The Trump administration can and should immediately reverse the Biden administration’s policy and reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for dangerous abortion drugs. A larger review of abortion pills is currently underway at the FDA, and hopefully the agency will revisit the entire approval and postmarketing safety process. But it doesn’t take a full review to at least reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement. It’s a bare-minimum, common sense safety standard.

Drug policy isn’t the only area the federal government has a robust role to play. For example, there’s the Hyde family of amendments, which for nearly 50 years has prohibited direct funding for abortions throughout various annual federal spending bills. Most recently, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July 2025, contained a provision cutting Medicaid reimbursements for certain abortion providers like Planned Parenthood unless they would not perform—or provide funding to entities that perform—abortions. This major victory for the pro-life movement also included additional funding to community health care centers across the country to help pregnant women.

Planned Parenthood had been performing over 400,000 abortions a year, according to its 2023-2024 annual report, making it the largest abortion provider in the country. Most of its nearly $800 million in federal funding came from Medicaid reimbursements, so the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” defund provision was a massive blow to Planned Parenthood’s bottom line. Roughly 50 clinics have closed in the past year.

However, this victory is not permanent. The one-year moratorium on federal funding is expiring on July 4, so federal policymakers will have to decide whether to pass another reconciliation bill to extend this pro-life victory.

It is imperative that Congress extends this restriction on abortion providers so that Planned Parenthood doesn’t get a big payday on America’s 250th birthday.

This July 4, we should be reaffirming the founder’s vision for the country, where government secures our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One way to do that is by funding real health care that promotes and protects life—not Big Abortion.

Protesters were seen rallying outside Paramount CEO David Ellison's dinner with President Trump at the Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. on Thursday evening.

The post Video: Dem Rep. Raskin Leads Protesters Outside Paramount CEO David Ellison’s Dinner with Trump appeared first on Breitbart.

Senate leadership this week directed Republicans to pass a budget resolution narrowly aimed at immigration enforcement funding, but some congressional leaders say the scope should be widened to address abortion and transgender surgeries for minors.

While budget resolution talks have attempted to stay focused on funds for Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, House Republicans see this as an opportunity to broaden the budget bill to include directives to protect America’s children from transgender surgeries and abortion.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., declined to follow Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s instructions to keep the resolution “skinny,” and instead introduced an amendment to block transgender and abortion funding.

When that amendment failed in the Senate, Hawley told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “The ball is in your court.”

“Time is of the essence,” Hawley told Johnson in a letter. “As you well know, on July 4, the current federal bar on taxpayer payments to trans-treatment and abortion providers will expire.”

“As you work to pass a budget resolution for a new reconciliation bill, it must include a ban on any federal funding for these trans-treatment and abortion providers. I urge you to act without delay or hesitation,” Hawley wrote.

Last July, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which blocked billions of taxpayer dollars from going toward trans-treatment and abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. That provision is set to expire July 4.

“When that happens, billions of federal dollars will be diverted from Medicaid to pay for trans drugs and abortions,” Hawley continued.

In his letter, Hawley highlighted that between 2019 and 2021, the Government Accountability Office estimated that Planned Parenthood received over $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds diverted from Medicaid and Medicare.

As Hawley introduced this amendment to the budget resolution, he noted that this is money that is intended for “the most needy among us,” and that it should not include transgender surgeries or abortion.

Johnson has not publicly responded to the letter and could not be reached for comment.