Trump’s back in the White House and off to the races! To celebrate the return to popular sovereignty, Victor Davis Hanson returns to explain the most extraordinary political comeback in the nation’s history. He identifies the agenda items Trump would do well to prioritize; he makes sense of the quick dissipation of the last decade’s progressive lunacies; and, perhaps most importantly, he offers suggestions of what to look out for when the radicals attempt their comeback.

Plus, Charlie, James and Steve pick through a couple of the noteworthy executive orders and cringe collectively at the reaction to Elon spreading some love at the Capital One Arena.

It’s the first GLoP of 2025, so we super-sized it. We’ve got everything from Oscar nominations, to AI everywhere, to David Lynch to Bob Newhart to Nosfertau, some Broadway, a manhood measurer, and even a bit of Bob Dylan. Enjoy!

With Trump’s Executive Order on the 14th Amendment (Protecting the Meaning and Value of Ameican Citizenship), a primer on the history of the law and some background on the federal judge that put a block on it.

Plus, thoughts on the mass pardon of J6 defendants including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

Preemptive Pardons: Biden’s Scarlet Letter

 

Well, now he’s done it. Biden has finally carried out preemptive pardons for the people he feared would be targeted by Donald Trump. He’s afraid that Trump will seek revenge for the actions that these people took during his presidency. It apparently hasn’t occurred to him that these people have nothing to worry about unless they broke the law.

Oops.

In the latest episode of the Microschooling Journeys podcast, Curious Mike interviews Meghan, a dynamic “Guide” at KaiPod Microschool in Nashua, NH. Meghan shares her transition from public school to microschool and how she creates a welcoming, warm environment for her 14 students with individually curated curriculums. Discover Meghan’s unique approach to education and stay tuned for more exciting episodes featuring Nick, a 15-year-old KaiPod student, and KaiPod CEO Amar Kumar.

It’s an Inauguration Week extravaganza! Pardons going out and pardons coming in as Joe Biden exits stage left and Donald Trump enters stage right. There’s executive orders galore and a major media meltdown. We have all the highlights.

Kristen Shaughnessy joins us to discuss what Trumpian government reform will mean for small investors. Will naked shorting finally stop?

Thank G-d for Trump’s Adversities

 

There is no doubt in my mind that had Trump won in 2020, we would not be seeing any of the amazing events that are happening right now. And everything that has happened to Trump since 2021 (the lawfare threatening ruination and prison, the boundless accusations, even the assassin’s bullets) has only served to make him (and all of his supporters) more convinced and hardened of the righteousness of their cause. Events are progressing at warp speed.

And it all came to be as a result of the last 4 miserable years. The hardships Trump – and honest American people – have suffered over the past four years have served to burn off whatever residual credence we used to give to talking heads or nattering nitwit nabobs. Nobody who is now in power gives a fig when some media figure tries to stir up nonsense over an exuberant hand in the air. Because we can see clearly now.

Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics’ Senior Elections Analyst and author of The Lost Majority, returns to share his insights on America’s versicolored electorate. He and Henry discuss the country’s small-C conservative disposition that Donald Trump won over with his “revolution in common sense”. They consider the profound difference between the start of Trump’s second term, exemplified by his day one preparedness, along with the challenges he’ll face in juggling his coalition’s disparate priorities. On the other hand, they consider the great task before the Democratic Party — an uphill battle with a let’s-rock-the-boat base whose preferred candidates don’t appeal to the center.

A New Generation

 

January 20, 2025, the two oldest men to ever be sworn in as President of the United States were within less than ten feet from each other. Despite their sharing advanced years, one truly represented the determined transition in the culture of governance at the federal level. The other represented an old-guard approach centered around an elite political class. The latter one sat in his chair as the man who was both his predecessor and successor outlined not just the abject failures of the old guard but an aggressive commitment to a change in both direction and method.

The casual observer might have thought the first individual was speaking only about himself and his new political moment in the sun. But they would have missed the true image of what the speaker intends. Election after election we have listened to promises of “change,” sometimes sprinkled with a little “hope” or even “joy”. But the promisers of either party had few changes in mind that would benefit anybody but the government itself.

Is a Trifecta Coming?

 

Trump has taken the US out of the Paris Climate Accords (take that, Lurch!). He also took America out of the World Health Organization (take that, Fauci, Xi, and Tedros!). Could he achieve a policy Trifecta, alongside his political Trifecta of House, Senate, and White House in Republican hands?

What would the policy Trifecta be?

Visiting Auschwitz

 

My wife and I went to Poland a few weeks ago, and part of our trip was a tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau. It’s a strange experience and hard to write about.

It starts out almost too normal: our tour bus pulls into a parking lot and drops us off at a visitors’ center, where we show our tickets and pick up headphones so our guide can talk to us. It’s busy – lots of tour groups, lines of people. Just like any number of historic places you can tour. But then it’s our time to enter, and suddenly we’re walking under a gate that says “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

Don’t miss this post-inauguration special! Ericka Redic and Jay Shepard take a look at Robert Chernin’s D.C. inauguration trip and discuss Trump’s executive orders and Biden’s pardons.

Brash, irreverent, and mostly peaceful!

Self-Absorbed and Self-Indulgent

 

When Simon Cowell was one of the judges on American Idol, he would sometimes characterize an egregiously bad performance as “self-indulgent”. The first time I heard him describe a performance that way, it surprised me a bit. It wasn’t a characterization that would have occurred to me. But as time went on, and the more he continued to characterize performances that way, I began to see what he meant. There were just some performances in which the singer came across as performing for themselves more than for the audience or the enjoyment of the music itself.

I thought of Simon’s critique as I watched this woman, Mariann Budde, hijack the Inauguration National Prayer Service and put it in service to her own progressive hobby horses.

A Matter Of Class

 

The media cultists and pundits, whose duty it is to explain the doings of the world to a much more simple-minded citizenry, are having a hard time translating the Second Coming of Trump in a way that they are comfortable with. It was not hard for them the first time around. It is never hard for them to talk down to us, knowing we will never quite grasp the insight they patiently but condescendingly share. I believe that they had in their collective mind visions of Andrew Jackson’s first inauguration, which saw a wash of back-woods types end up partying in the White House in their dirty shirts and muddy boots. But for fear that we common types were not well-read enough to know the reference, they just stuck with crude, rude and Russian collusion.

This time it is much harder to discount the election results as a stunning, one-off upset due to right-wing trickery, some easily fooled serfs in backward fly-over territory and, of course, Russian “disinformation”. There was, of course, no whiskey-fueled trashing of the White House as in Jackson’s time. As before, formal balls stretched well into the night.

As we mark another peaceful transfer of presidential power in America – and after an ugly, rancorous political campaign season – it’s worth looking back at perhaps the greatest story of political and personal reconciliation in our history. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: allies, then friends, then rivals, then political enemies, and then friends again in the closing days of their lives. Let’s take a moment and look at how this lifelong connection grew, went sour, and was rekindled, demonstrating then and now that so long as the “American Mind” is alive, people of different opinions can come together for the common and personal good.

#johnadams #thomasjefferson

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Sue Hamas

 

With the most recent images coming out of Gaza, the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo, have announced a class-action lawsuit against Hamas for copyright infringement. The lawsuit seeks $4.3 billion dollars in punitive damages for immeasurable reputational damage.

Exhibit A from the lawsuit

Elon is Still in; Vivek is Out

 

I hate to say I told you so (actually, I kind of enjoy saying that), but two brilliant, large ego and successful men have discovered that sharing the top job is not so easy. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are both men accustomed to being fully in charge and have earned the right to be called the “top dog.”

So what are the rumors? Essentially, Ramaswamy apparently shot himself in the foot—twice. One mistake was his support of the H-1B program. Although both Ramaswamy and Musk supported the program, they had distinctly different ways to describe their perceptions:

Quote of the Day: Basing Federal Policy on Truth

 

Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.

President Donald J. Trump, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, Executive Order, January 20, 2025

Allocution

 

I think the opportunity we’re maybe missing in all these pardons – or preemptive pardons – even is how useful they’ll be in providing transparency for investigators. A pardoned person no longer has a 5th Amendment protection, since they’re not at risk of prosecution… So drag them into Congress (or even grand juries) and ask for the allocution. What exactly have you been pardoned for? And with whom have you committed these crimes? And let’s see all the documentation in regards to the activity you’ve been pardoned for.

I don’t think it’s important to prosecute Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or even Dr. Fauci … But it is vitally important to get their minions and co-conspirators to understand what they conspired to do.

Another spontaneous post on a momentous day

 

I wasn’t planning on writing a post today, but just like after the election, it seemed one was in order.  I don’t normally pay attention to inaugurations.  However, I was actually at Reagan’s inauguration.  I had gone down to DC on winter break to see an exhibit at the Smithsonian and was scheduled to leave the day before the inauguration.  The cousin I visited said, “Umm, why don’t you stay for the inauguration?” I thought about it and it seemed that I should, so I did.  Clearly, though, it was not at all on my mind when I planned my trip.  But I found myself the last few days genuinely looking forward to the inauguration.  In fact, I was giddy at the thought of it.  I had a call scheduled during the swearing-in and was disappointed that I couldn’t watch it live, but I taped it and watched it right afterward.

Why am I so happy? Let me count the ways…

A Capella Is Better

 

For an awkward 1 minute 50 seconds, Carrie Underwood and the rest of America waited for the music to play at the inauguration. It started for a moment, then stopped. And it didn’t come back. The sound technician apologetically came up to Carrie and said something. She responded, “Let’s sing.”

Carrie asked the crowd to back her up and proceeded to belt out a beautiful a capella rendition of “America the Beautiful.” You could hear the crowd joining in.

Happy Inauguration Day! To celebrate, Peter and Steve sit down with speechwriter and presidential advisor Ken Khachigian to discuss his time working with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, as laid out in his newly published memoir, Behind Closed DoorsGoing through his start in politics by landing a job under Pat Buchanan in the ’68 campaign to drafting Reagan’s first inaugural and serving as an advisor during key moments in the ’80s, Ken shares a wealth of knowledge on the finer points of good statecraft. The guys also spend some time on the disaster in their beloved state of California and the prospects for national renewal under the new Trump administration.

In this special MLK Day episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy and U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng interview Prof. Lerone Martin, Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor at Stanford University and Director of the MLK Research and Education Institute. Dr. Martin offers deep insights into the life and legacy of Dr. King. He explores MLK’s role as a spiritual and political leader, advocating for nonviolent protest and “soul force.” Prof. Martin discusses the dynamic between Dr. King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and figures like Bob Moses and Fannie Lou Hamer. He highlights how MLK’s understanding of history, literature, poetry, and hymns influenced his iconic speeches, including the famous “I Have a Dream” address. Dr. Martin then delves into MLK’s struggles in Birmingham, the challenges he faced from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and his “Mountaintop” speech before his assassination. Prof. Martin also examines the Civil Rights Movement’s impact on both Southern and Northern cities and its place in contemporary education, urging policymakers, schools, and parents to learn from MLK’s teachings.