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    Forget China, You Can Now Take a Balloon to Edge of Space

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    0
    Image via Pixabay free images

    ANALYSIS – Until now, only billionaires could afford to enter sub-orbital space. And it needed to be by high-powered rocket (think Jeff Bezos in his Blue Origin, or Richard Branson in his Virgin Galactic). 

    Star Trek actor William Shatner also did a flight on a Blue Origin’s rocket.

    But now you too can see the earth from 20 miles high. It will cost you just over $120,000 and it’s by a high-altitude balloon.

    And, no, it’s not aboard a Chinese spy balloon. These will be private companies running the trips.

    The billionaires in rockets still have one treat we can’t get – they can briefly experience weightlessness. They also go twice as high.

    Space officially starts at the Karman line, 62 miles above the earth’s surface. But for most people there won’t be that much of a difference.

    And at half the price, no training required, and a much softer, smoother ride, these edge-of-space balloons will be far more accessible and may become popular among the slightly less rich.

    And unlike the rockets, these balloons will give you a much longer ride, with luxury amenities, food, and drink.

    There now appears at least two companies on the verge of launching these space balloon trips. One is American and the other is French.

    Both seem to avoid mention of the 1937 Hindenburg hydrogen-filled dirigible disaster.

    The French company Zephalto with its Celeste balloon will provide Michelin-starred fine dining. It is partnered with France’s national space agency.

    These balloons filled with helium or hydrogen will depart from France with two pilots on board and six passengers and rise 15.5 miles into the stratosphere.

    Once at peak altitude, the balloon, carrying a pressurized capsule, will stay aloft for three hours, giving guests a chance to take in views previously seen only by astronauts. While in the air, passengers will be served high-end French food and wines.

    These near-space rides will start at €120,000 ($132,000) per person in 2025, Bloomberg reports.

    The other option will be Florida-based Space Perspective, which is testing its own passenger balloon, designed to reach the edge of space.

    Eight civilians and a pilot will be able to comfortably travel up 100,000 feet (19 miles) to near space in a reusable pressurized capsule carried by a gigantic hydrogen-filled balloon called Spacecraft Neptune – because Neptune’s atmosphere is predominantly hydrogen.

    The company operates out of leased facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, but plans to expand to Alaska and Hawaii, and then possibly to other countries around the world.

    Flight will cost about $125,000 per person. And it plans to launch a year earlier than the Celeste.

    Neptune’s ride will be similar to the Zephalto balloons, ascending at a sedate 12.5 miles per hour. It will give passengers two full hours to observe 360° views of Earth rotating beneath them and space above.

    The overall ride will last six hours – two hours to ascend, two hours to float along the stratosphere, and two hours to descend into the Atlantic Ocean, where a recovery ship will be waiting.

    The capsule comes complete with luxury seating, refreshments, a restroom, and Wi-Fi (so you can post to Instagram or live stream on Facebook as you fly – because – of course). The company plans to offer flights for weddings, corporate events, and scientific excursions.

    Its flights are scheduled to begin in 2024, but the first batch of 600 tickets is already sold out.

    Bon voyage. No smoking aboard.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Agent Who Took Bullet For Reagan Backs Secret Service After WHCA Dinner Chaos

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    4
    By Series: Reagan White House Photographs, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989Collection: White House Photographic Collection, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989 - https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75856639, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96625804

    A Secret Service agent who literally took a bullet for President Ronald Reagan is now defending the agency after the shocking armed breach at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

    Tim McCarthy — the agent wounded during the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan — says critics need to cool it.

    “I think we need to ratchet down the rhetoric just a little bit and give the Secret Service at the moment quite a bit of credit for doing a hell of a good job,” McCarthy said on NewsNation Live.

    That’s no small endorsement.

    McCarthy was among the agents protecting Reagan outside the Washington Hilton in March 1981 when would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr. opened fire. Reagan was hit by a bullet that ricocheted off his limousine, piercing his lung and causing massive internal bleeding. McCarthy, along with Press Secretary James Brady and others, was also struck — Brady left permanently disabled.

    Now, more than four decades later, McCarthy is weighing in on another high-stakes moment at the very same hotel.

    On Saturday night, an armed suspect stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where President Donald Trump was in attendance — sparking panic and fierce backlash online over security failures.

    But McCarthy says the system worked.

    “This guy really didn’t get too far,” he said. “He ran through the metal detectors… exchanged gunfire… wasn’t even on the same floor… and was tackled by an agent, never got to the stairs.”

    Despite viral outrage — and even the suspect himself claiming there was “no damn security” — McCarthy emphasized the layered defense that stopped the threat cold.

    “Now, security is in layers,” he explained, detailing how multiple levels of resistance stood between the gunman and the president, including counter-assault teams and SWAT units.

    Bottom line: the shooter never got close.

    “Security was tested, security responded, and at this point it did pretty well,” McCarthy said.

    The Trump White House appears to agree.

    Officials praised the Secret Service for quickly evacuating the president, vice president, and cabinet, while Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is set to review protocols going forward.

    Still, critics have questioned whether more could have been done — including calls to lock down the entire hotel.

    McCarthy dismissed that idea outright.

    “Well, try finding a hotel with a ballroom if you’re going to shut the hotel down,” he said. “You’re not going to find one. No one’s going to want to do that.”

    He also noted that security included multiple layers — possibly more than the standard three — and that the threat never reached the ballroom floor.

    For McCarthy, who lived through one of the darkest days in presidential security history, the verdict is clear:

    “So far, based on what I know, I’m pretty satisfied with what the Secret Service did on this occasion.”

    The Washington Hilton hotel said is a statement Monday it was following “stringent” Secret Service protocols during Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

    “The ​hotel was operating under stringent security ​protocols for the property as directed by the ‌U.S. ⁠Secret Service, which led security,” a hotel spokesperson said in a statement, according to Reuters. 

    The spokesperson reportedly added that the Secret Service coordinated with numerous security teams, including the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in addition to hotel security. 

    John Kennedy here. The last fundraising deadline passed — and we came up short. Now the woke crowd is celebrating, saying “Kennedy’s finished.” Let’s prove them wrong. Chip in $25, $50, or whatever you can to close the gap and keep fighting.

    Amanda Head: Will Trump Be Arrested?

    By
    Amanda Head
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    1
    Arrest image via Pixabay

    Will authorities arrest former President Donald Trump this week?

    Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    GOP-led House to Force Out Horrible DHS Secretary Mayorkas Over Border, Other Disasters

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    7
    NEW YORK CITY (September 11, 2022) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas lays flowers for USSS Master Special Officer Craig Miller and participates in the September 11th Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City, NY. (DHS photo by Sydney Phoenix)

    ANALYSIS – The pressure on incompetent ideologue, Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s Homeland Security chief, is increasing daily. 

    His inability, or unwillingness to control the violent chaos at the border, and other major missteps, such as overhyping the ‘right wing’ domestic threat, are making him the lightning rod for the newly elected GOP-led House.

    As I wrote earlier, the House must aggressively investigate Mayorkas, and if needed, impeach him.

    He should be one of the first Team Biden heads to roll in 2023.

    Newsmax reports: “The White House will pressure Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign before House Republicans can push for his impeachment, but he likely won’t willingly step down…”

    “The White House sees the writing on the wall,”  said Mark Morgan, the acting Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner under former President Donald Trump, on Newsmax TV’s “Wake Up America.” 

    “They know what’s going on. I think they’re going to put pressure on Secretary Mayorkas to resign to prevent them the embarrassment of being dragged through hearings.”

    But Mayorkas’ “ego and pride” won’t let him “do what he needs to do in the best interests of this country,” Morgan added.

    Newsmax continued:

    His comments come after remarks by House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who hopes to become the House speaker after the new Congress is sworn in this coming January.

    Tuesday, McCarthy called on Mayorkas to step down and warned that the House might call for his impeachment after Republicans take over the majority…

    “We know Mayorkas has been this administration’s chief architect of the open border,” said Morgan. “He took the most secure border in our lifetime and intentionally un-secured it. In the last 22 months, we’ve had over 4.5 million encounters and 1.1 million known gotaways. 

    We know drugs are pouring into this country, literally killing Americans every single day. We know among the 1.1. million known gotaways are hardcore criminals, murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and gang members.

    But while McCarthy emphasizes the border crisis, Mayorkas is also guilty of falsely demonizing and targeting half of all Americans.

    As the Center for Security Policy (CSP) explains:

    Alejandro Mayorkas [has] parroted the oft-repeated line that the biggest terrorist threat America faces comes from “domestic ideologically motivated extremism.”

    This is a central assertion by the Biden Administration…They have even gone so far as to claim U.S. law enforcement and the military are riddled with domestic extremists despite the fact there has been no real evidence released to support this supposition.

    CSP continues:

    In order to hype the seriousness of the domestic threat, the Biden Administration has soft-pedaled the very real danger of international terrorism.  According to Forbes, Mayorkas reported “that since the September 11 attacks, the threat landscape against the U.S. has substantially ‘evolved’ to the point that foreign terrorism is no longer the chief concern of DHS.”

    In other words, the threat from jihad receded and now takes a back seat to domestic “extremism.” In fact, Mayorkas said that the main threat was now what occurred on January 6 at the U.S. Capitol.

    The actions by Mayorkas at the border, and by hyping the so-called domestic threat are nothing short of disgraceful.

    We can only hope his ego doesn’t allow him to resign. It’s time for a real prime-time Congressional hearing focused on all these critical Team Biden- created issues.

    And then, if Biden doesn’t fire him, he should be impeached. GAND

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    GOP Congress to Focus on Border, Crime, Inflation, and Investigating Bidens

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    3
    Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – We are just one day away from a major electoral shift with the Republicans expected to retake the House and possibly the Senate too. 

    That will put a hard brake on Joe Biden and the left’s radical agenda and make Biden more of a lame duck than he already is.

    It may even put an impeachment target on his back.

    So, what can we expect from a GOP-led Congress in January?

    According to current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the top priority of a Republican-led House would be addressing the horrible migrant crisis at the southern border.

    CNN reports: “The first thing you’ll see is a bill to control the border first,” McCarthy told CNN, when asked for specifics about his party’s immigration plans. 

    “You’ve got to get control over the border. You’ve had almost 2 million people just this year alone coming across.”

    Newsmax reported McCarthy as saying:

    “There’s a number of different ways” Republicans could tackle the migrant crisis, McCarthy added that party lawmakers would not present a bill to fix the broken immigration system until the border is secure — something that would help stem the flow of fentanyl.

    “I think ‘Stay in Mexico’ you have to have right off the bat,” said McCarthy, referring to the Trump administration’s policy that forced migrants to remain in Mexico while awaiting their immigration proceedings in the U.S.

    In fiscal year 2022, U.S. border encounters with illegal migrants topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.

    Most recently we saw a clash between flag-wielding and rock-throwing Venezuelan migrants attacking U.S. Border Patrol agents who in-turn fired pepper balls at the charging crowd.

    But tackling Biden’s border fiasco is just one of several GOP priorities. 

    The GOP to-do list also includes tackling Democrat-enabled, out-of-control crime and runaway inflation, 

    Republicans will also be investigating the hell out of Team Biden.

    And there is so much that needs investigating

    Newsmax added that “McCarthy said Republicans also would perform oversight and conduct investigations into administration behavior concerning the disastrous troop pullout from Afghanistan, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in dealing with parents and school board meetings.”

    I would also hope FBI and DHS politicization gets a top spot for oversight as well. Much needs to be done in that highly concerning area.

    And then they should dig into the increasingly ‘Woke Pentagon,’ and the extreme ‘Trans’ agenda.

    So, expect investigations galore, and Hunter Biden’s laptop and shady international business dealings will also take center stage.

    But what about impeaching Joe?

    While McCarthy insisted, “We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” he left the door open to launching eventual impeachment proceedings, when he added: “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”

    Biden should walk on eggshells for the next two years, if he makes it that far without having the 25th Amendment invoked to remove him for senility.

    The political power pendulum is about to swing back to the right, and karma is a b*tch.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Congress Reveals Stunning New Information on January 6 Attacker

    By
    Donny Ferguson
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    7

    Members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigating the federal government’s response to the January 6, 2021 incidents at the U.S. Capitol now reveal that a pair of pipe bombs planted at the Capitol Hill offices of the Republican and Democrat parties may have been a diversion to distract law enforcement from other events.

    They also reveal that while the bombs contained live explosives, it does not appear the timers were operable, and the FBI may not even have interviewed the witnesses who discovered them.

    In response, Chairmen Thomas Massie (R-KY), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray “revealing new information surrounding the FBI’s investigation into pipe bombs placed near the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) on January 5, 2021,” the Judiciary Committee reports.

    “On June 7, 2023, the Committee on the Judiciary conducted a transcribed interview of Steven D’Antuono, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO),” the Committee announced.

    “In that role, Mr. D’Antuono oversaw the WFO’s investigations into the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, including the placement of pipe bombs near the headquarters of the DNC and RNC on January 5, 2021. Mr. D’Antuono’s testimony provided new information about the FBI’s investigation into the pipe bombs and reinforces our concerns about the FBI’s handling of this matter,” the Committee revealed.

    In his transcribed interview, Steven D’Antuono “suggested that the FBI could not even determine whether the placement of the pipe bombs was a ‘diversionary’ tactic for the events of January 6,” the Committee also revealed.

    D’Antuono testified:

    MASSIE: Are you familiar with the diversion thesis, that these were set up to be a diversion?

    D’ANTUONO: Yeah, I’ve heard people say that, but if you watch – I’ve done a lot of media reports. I was trying to get the information out there, tips and stuff like that, right. I will not speculate. I’m not going to speculate on that. I think that’s speculation, at best, when people say that it’s a diversionary tactic. We’ll never know until we find the person that actually did – or persons that actually did it. So I can’t speculate on that. Could it have been? Yes, that’s one theory. Obviously, it’s one theory. But is it the only theory? I don’t – I really don’t know.

    MASSIE: It looks like the head Capitol Police [sic] believes it was a diversion.

    D’ANTUONO: So Steve Sund, chief of police, yes. I believe he wrote that in his book. Again, it’s pure speculation. There’s no intelligence – look, I ran the investigation for 2 years until I stepped out. We don’t know. We don’t even know the gender at this point as to – we could speculate, and there’s a lot of people that are speculating as to the gender.

    MASSIE: How confident are you that the individual depicted in the surveillance footage on January 5th set both of those pipe bombs in place?

    D’ANTUONO: So the video that we saw, I feel confident that by the video that we have, that that person planted those. 

    D’Antuono also testified on the “viability of the pipe bombs, which, according to reporting, were deemed to be ‘inoperable,’” the Committee reports.

    “D’Antuono referenced a report from the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, that the pipe bombs were viable, and ‘they could explode, and they could cause harm or death,’” the Committee notes, adding. “D’Antuono also acknowledged that the timer used on the pipe bomb could not have detonated the pipe bomb given the time already elapsed between placement and discovery.”

    He testified:

    MASSIE: Well, let me ask you this: Do you think it was technically possible for a kitchen timer . . . that has [a] 1-hour duration . . . to detonate a bomb 17 hours later?

    D’ANTUONO: No, I don’t. And I saw the same kitchen timer as you. I agree. I don’t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren’t supposed to go off. We can’t—we don’t know. We honestly don’t know, and that’s some of the pain . . . .

    D’Antuono’s testimony “provided additional details about the FBI’s use of geofencing technology to identify the pipe bomb suspect,” the Committee revealed.

    He testified:

    D’ANTUONO: So the – there’s a lot of phone data that came in. Yes, I’ve seen the same video. I’ve watched the same video. We put out the same video. It looks like a phone. Was it a real phone, a not a real phone, was it a ruse? Was it a – you know, I picked up my phone several times at meetings going, oh, yeah, I got to take this call, and walk out, right. The phone’s not on, right. So was the person just sitting there trying to pretend like they’re on a bench taking a phone call? We don’t know until we find the person, right, and ask them those questions.

    We did a complete geofence. We have complete data. Not complete, because there’s some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them, right. It just – unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I’m not sure – I can’t remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was, right. So maybe if we did have that – that data wasn’t corrupted – and it wasn’t purposely corrupted. I don’t want any conspiracy theories, right. To my knowledge, it wasn’t corrupted, you know, but that could have been good information that we don’t have, right. So that is painful for us to not to have that. So we looked at everything.

    D’Antuono also testified that he did not definitively know if the FBI had interviewed the individual who discovered the pipe bomb at the DNC.

    He testified:

    MASSIE: So just to . . . put a fine point on it, you do not know whether they interviewed the person that discovered . . . the [bomb] at the DNC?

    D’ANTUONO: I don’t know.

    The Committee notes “D’Antuono conceded that it would be ‘investigation 101’ to interview the individuals who discovered the bombs, yet he was unable to confirm whether the FBI had taken this basic investigative step.”

    He explained:

    MASSIE: So – but the person who found – you either haven’t identified the person who found the second pipe bomb, or did you?

    D’ANTUONO: I – honestly, sir, I don’t know the granularity of everything my agents and analysts did in that matter. It’s just – it’s a whole host of stuff that’s going on. As the [Assistant Director in Charge], as like any senior leader, I’m getting briefed on things, and that part never came up, so –

    “D’Antuono’s testimony raises concerns about the FBI’s handling of the pipe bomb investigation, more than 890 days following the placement of the pipe bombs. To date, the FBI has failed to respond to the Committee’s requests for a briefing regarding the investigation,” the Committee concludes.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Outrage Grows After Woke Navy Launched Drag Queen ‘Recruiter’

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    6
    Daniel Ramirez from Honolulu, USA, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – America’s Navy is sinking fast – last year, the world’s premier maritime combat service launched, then apparently scuttled, a new recruiting campaign led by an active-duty ‘non-binary’ sailor drag queen.

    And our nation’s enemies are likely quaking in their boots at the promise of even more drag queens being recruited to fight on the front lines by our armed forces.

    The Navy’s appointment of a gay cross-dresser as its first ‘digital ambassador,’ while struggling with recruitment, has sparked outrage, disbelief and mockery of the Navy and the entire Department of Defense.

    A Navy spokesperson told Fox News that the now defunct program was “designed to explore the digital environment to reach a wide range of potential candidates” as the Navy battles “the most challenging recruiting environment it has faced since the start of the all-volunteer force.”

    Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, whose stage name is Harpy Daniels, has a large following on TikTok (of course). He announced his role in November but has only recently been discovered by mainstream news sources.

    (NOTE: I don’t use preferred pronouns. He is either a ‘he’ or she is a ‘she,’ regardless of how they ‘identify.’ And ‘they’ is only used to refer to two or more individuals.)

    Kelley calls himself an ‘advocate’ for those who ‘were oppressed for years in the service.’

    Many have compared him to Dylan Mulvaney, the biologically male trans activist whose association with Bud Light sparked a PR crisis for the brand and sent sales plummeting.

    Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, tweeted that “Biden DoD’s [Department of Defense] recruitment is as good as Bud Light’s marketing.”

    Jesse Watters said on his Fox News show on Wednesday: “What’s wrong with the Navy? They looked at Bud Light and said: ‘Hold my beer?’ Harpy is the Navy’s Dylan. Dylan killed Bud Light sales. What do you think Harpy’s going to do to recruitment?”

    Kelley is not the Navy’s only digital ambassador (he is one of five). The Navy says that the ‘digital ambassador’ was a pilot program that ended in March 2023.

    According to surveys, only 13 percent of 18-29-year-olds in the U.S. are ‘highly willing’ to join the Navy, while 25 percent are ‘somewhat willing.’ Critics like me can’t see how a man made up to look like a caricature of a woman will help convince more of our youth to serve in a warfighting role.

    Unless the plan is to recruit even more cross-dressing young men with possible gender dysphoria to serve aboard warships, planes and tanks.

    Robert J. O’Neill, a decorated combat veteran who served as a member of SEAL Team Six, and was on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said on Twitter he “can’t believe [he] fought for this bulls**t.”

    “Alright. The U.S. Navy is now using an enlisted sailor Drag Queen as a recruiter,” he tweeted. “I’m done. China is going to destroy us.”

    His tweet quickly gained 1.1 million views and thousands of likes and retweets. 

    “Not this Navy veteran. I’m ashamed of the Navy,” wrote another veteran. “It’s an insult to every veteran. The army kept making me go to trans EO-type classes before I retired. Nope. Didn’t go.”

    Another veteran responded: “As a Navy veteran, I am ashamed on behalf of the US Navy. I hope that goes over as well as Bud Light did.”

    But another person – who can’t distinguish between freedom of expression in the civilian world and pushing a bizarre, fringe sexual agenda in our armed forces – mockingly commented:

    “Local man angry he fought for freedom of expression.”

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: Brutal Polls Numbers Are In For Biden!

    By
    Amanda Head
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    1
    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    Democrats didn’t expect it to be this bad…

    Weeks after Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign and pollsters are already showing massive red flags.]

    Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    America Ascendant: The Golden Age Nobody Saw Coming

    By
    Alex Muse
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    3
    Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    It is not hyperbole to speak of a golden age. The phrase has been cheapened by pundits and prematurely invoked by partisans, but now it fits. Something has shifted in the tectonic plates of American politics, culture, and global influence. And unlike prior inflection points, this one is not merely symbolic. It is empirical. Measurable. Concrete. We are not gazing at a mirage, but witnessing a renaissance. The agent of this change is President Donald J. Trump.

    In 2019, the New York Times launched the 1619 Project with a simple proposition: that the true founding of America occurred not with the Declaration of Independence, but with the arrival of the first African slaves. What followed was a coordinated attempt to reframe the country as irredeemably racist, its history irreparably stained. Under the Biden administration, this view metastasized. Patriotic symbols were treated as threats. The FBI circulated training documents labeling common American flags as markers of “domestic extremism.” Catholics were surveilled, not for terrorism, but for attending Latin Mass. And over 800 January 6 defendants were held for years, many for crimes more symbolic than violent. Meanwhile, across the country, statues of Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson were torn down by mobs or removed by local governments in the dead of night. Schools named after America’s founders were renamed for lesser figures more palatable to progressive tastes. Military bases, long-standing monuments to American history, were stripped of their names and given bland, ideologically approved replacements. The point was not justice. It was deterrence. It was ideological conformity enforced by state power.

    Then Trump returned.

    His re-election, certified on January 6, 2025, and his inauguration on January 20, marked not merely the return of a man, but the restoration of a nation. Within 100 days, Trump had secured the border, reversing years of open-border chaos. Migration flows dropped to levels unseen since the early 1990s. His decisive action became a global model. From England to Romania, political movements took note. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surged. The AfD in Germany crept into double digits. Marine Le Pen’s party is now the frontrunner in France. Elites sneered, but voters saw results.

    At home, Trump wielded his mandate like a scalpel. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, began a forensic audit of the administrative state. Within weeks, billions in funding were clawed back from useless programs and slush funds hidden in alphabet agencies. USAID, long a globalist piggy bank, is being dismantled. The FBI, purged of its partisan leadership, is now focused on actual crime. DEI offices, once metastasizing across government and corporate America like ideological tumors, were defunded. Wokeness, once a cultural juggernaut, is now a punchline.

    The military, gutted by social engineering and recruitment failures under Biden, is now over capacity. Credit belongs not only to President Trump’s message of strength and national pride, but also to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who moved swiftly to eliminate identity-based promotions and reinstate merit as the lodestar of advancement. Hegseth’s decision to end the inclusion of transgender individuals in combat roles and restore a focus on unit cohesion and battlefield readiness was met with predictable outrage from progressive quarters, but it worked. Military service is now admired again. Recruiters have lines out the door. The stars and stripes, once seen as fraught, are fashionable again. The American flag, once viewed with suspicion on elite campuses, is now trending in TikTok videos of patriotic Gen Z influencers. Coolness, that elusive cultural currency, has shifted.

    Internationally, Trump has turned the tide. China is back at the negotiating table, offering market access in exchange for tariff relief. For the first time in decades, Beijing blinked. Iran, isolated and bleeding economically, has returned to disarmament talks. The Abraham Accords have expanded to include Oman and Tunisia. Just today, Trump announced a new trade deal with the United Kingdom that will open British markets to American farmers, slash tariffs, and generate billions in revenue. It is the first of more than a dozen similar deals being negotiated with U.S. trading partners, all aimed at restoring prosperity and security to the American heartland. American prestige, once bartered away for UN resolutions and climate pledges, has been restored. Even the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church’s College of Cardinals seems to have acknowledged this new moral order.

    On May 8, 2025, for the first time in 2,000 years of Catholic history, an American was elected pope. The symbolism is staggering. For a Church whose demographic heart now beats in the Western Hemisphere, the election of an American Pontiff signals a new center of gravity. It is not just Rome that looks to America. It is the world.

    America’s 250th anniversary is now on the horizon. The semiquincentennial of 1776 looms not as a melancholy remembrance of faded glory, but as a celebration of resurgence. The events planned for 2026 reflect this. Trump has ordered a return to original principles: liberty, individual rights, national pride. Not apologies. Not guilt. Not equivocations. But more than that, he intends to use the anniversary as a global advertisement. A demonstration of American resolve. A reminder to our enemies that this is a nation of strength, unity, and enduring purpose. And a signal to our allies that America, once written off as declining or distracted, is once again the anchor of the free world. A nation built on the proposition that all men are created equal should not teach its children that they are born guilty because of their skin or their flag. Trump understands this, and his policies reflect it.

    Consider economics. In just over three months, Trump has attracted over $8 trillion in foreign investment back to American shores, revitalizing the heartland. Factories are reopening in Ohio, chip manufacturers are building plants in Texas, and manufacturing is surging with new, higher-paying jobs for American workers. Trump’s commitment to the American farmer is unwavering, with policies boosting agriculture, creating robust farming jobs, and safeguarding rural communities. AI and crypto, once fields dominated by offshore interests and regulatory chaos, are now firmly within American jurisdiction. His administration is protecting America’s supply chains from global threats, ensuring self-reliance in critical industries. Trump’s policy is clear: innovation without apology, regulation with reason, and a fierce dedication to bringing back manufacturing, mining, drilling, and farming. He is not afraid of technology or competition but is resolute against decay, acting decisively to secure prosperity for American workers and farmers.

    And yet, symbols matter. Culture matters. Which is why the upcoming twin spectacles of the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics cannot be dismissed as fluff. Trump’s personal involvement in securing these events was not mere vanity. It was strategy. It was signal. During his first term, Trump courted FIFA President Gianni Infantino with unusual persistence. Infantino credited Trump’s enthusiasm as pivotal to the U.S. winning the bid. “You are part of the FIFA team now,” he said in the Oval Office. That statement, once treated as flattery, now seems prophetic.

    The 2026 World Cup will be the longest in history: 104 matches across 16 U.S. cities. It will not be a tournament. It will be a coronation. The same applies to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Trump personally engaged with the IOC before even taking office in 2016, offering federal guarantees for security and logistics. He met with IOC President Thomas Bach in 2017. The result? A winning bid. The message is clear: if America is back, it must also be seen. And what better global stage than the Olympics?

    Critics will scoff. They always do. They did in 2016. They did in 2020. They did in 2024. They were wrong every time. Trump’s critics have spent years arguing that he is a fluke, a menace, an aberration. What they have missed, and what they still refuse to see, is that Trump is not the outlier. He is the correction. He is the pendulum swinging back. And this time, it is not swinging timidly. It is swinging with force.

    What makes this era a golden age is not merely policy success or economic growth. It is coherence. It is the re-alignment of institutions with the people they purport to serve. It is the re-legitimization of patriotism. It is the death of the idea that to love one’s country is to be blind, or bigoted, or bitter. America, like Rome at its height, is asserting its identity not through conquest, but through clarity. Through excellence. Through example.

    The left has spent years insisting America was founded on sin, sustained by oppression, and systemically incapable of redemption. Trump has answered not with theory, but with action. He has rebuilt the house while others argued about whether it deserved to stand. And now, the house is full again. Full of workers. Full of industry. Full of flags. Full of hope.

    That is what a golden age looks like. And for the first time in a long time, the gold is real.

    Sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping independent journalists overcome formidable challenges in today’s media landscape and bring crucial stories to you.

    2020 Election – DHS Colluded With Private Groups To Censor Conservatives

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    7
    NEW YORK CITY (September 11, 2022) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas lays flowers for USSS Master Special Officer Craig Miller and participates in the September 11th Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City, NY. (DHS photo by Sydney Phoenix)

    ANALYSIS – Yes, this was election interference. Under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) led the effort that colluded with major universities and Big Tech to censor free speech leading up to the 2020 election.

    As House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Monday, according to Newsmax: “This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefited one side of the political aisle: true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”

    How did they do this?

    An interim staff report by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government explained that DHS, so-called disinformation “experts” at universities, Big Tech and others colluded through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech during the 2020 election.

    “The federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes and political opinions.”

    Among the DHS targets was Newsmax, according to a summary of the report, titled “The Weaponization of ‘Disinformation’ Pseudo-experts and Bureaucrats: How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans’ Free Speech.”

    Newsmax reported: “The report revealed how the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Global Engagement Center (GEC) within the State Department coordinated with Stanford University and other entities to create the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to censor Americans’ speech in the lead-up to the election.”

    In a post on X, Jordan wrote, “according to one EIP member, the EIP was created ‘at the request of CISA.’ The head of the EIP also said that EIP was created after ‘working on some monitoring ideas with CISA.'”

    Newsmax added:

    It [the report] outlines how the EIP was created in the summer of 2020 to provide a way for the federal government “to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing the First Amendment and public scrutiny.”

    “The EIP targeted Americans across the political spectrum, but especially conservatives,” according to the report’s summary.

    The House committee found that EIP, using Stanford, encouraged social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, to declare conservative news as “misinformation.”

    Newsmax continued: “ EIP used a tactic known as “switchboarding” to refer to removal requests from state and local officials to Facebook, X and other social media sites, the New York Post reported Monday…the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana ruled in September federal officials colluded with Big Tech social media platforms to suppress speech.”

    And they didn’t just censor everyday Americans, they also targeted Republican politicians ranging from former President Donald Trump, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

    Among the media, the report noted, in addition to Newsmax, this corrupt political effort targeted conservative commentators such as Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Michelle Malkin and Mollie Hemingway, and “an untold number of everyday Americans of all political affiliations.”

    As an added note, I was permanently banned from LinkedIn, where I had a growing following in the tens of thousands, back in 2022.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

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