Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News

Until now, hard-left influencer Hasan Piker was perhaps best known for appearing to use an electric shock collar on his dog during a livestream. Now he's making news again—for addressing the College Democrats of America convention dressed as Mao Zedong.

Piker has called Mao "one of the great leaders of this world." Yet Mao's policies are widely estimated to have caused the deaths of between 40 and 70 million people.

Had Piker shown up dressed as Hitler, the outrage would have been immediate—and rightly so. Mao deserves no better. 

Piker’s appearance, and his den...

 New York has recently created their version of Canada’s assisted suicide regimen, and it has put religious providers squarely in its crosshairs. Several groups have banded together to stop the Medical Aid in Dying legislation as it forces them to participate in suicide. 

Hochul tried to deny this, claiming faith-based providers can opt out of the program. Catholic nuns discovered, however, that the law requires all providers to coordinate assisted suicide in their facilities and to give access to doctors performing it. 

Starting next month, any healthcare provider who declines to prescribe suicide pills could...

President Trump was a guest on my program last week. He put the number

of Iranians massacred by the regime over two days in January at 52,000! —so we know the ruthlessness of the men in charge in Iran.

In light of that, it is entirely understandable that the Iranian people are reticent to take to the streets again.

And this has become clear: the current public faces of the rump regime in don’t have any authority over the killers with the guns.

Eli Lake is among the most respected national secu...

A new Pew Research Center survey contains a shocking finding: Nearly half of Muslim Americans view Hamas favorably. That's right—Hamas, the terrorist group responsible for murdering at least 46 Americans and taking others hostage on October 7, 2023.

Overall, 44 percent of Muslim American respondents expressed a favorable opinion of Hamas.

This disturbing trend coincides with an increasingly assertive Islamist presence across the United States. In parts of Brooklyn, amplified calls to prayer now ring out from mosques beginning at 5 a.m.. They include the declaration, “There is no god but Allah.”

Religious liberty is a cheris...

The late philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that the power of toxic ideologies, like fascism and communism—once they take hold—can prove impossible to reform. Now add apocalyptic theocracy to that fascism and you have a rough understanding of Iran’s leadership. The West, and hopefully many in the Trump administration, are learning that now.

As the Wall Street Journal and others reported, Iranian leadership plotted its third assassination on President Donald Trump last week.  This, after the United States had already decimated Iran’s military.  Federal courts have previously identified two other plots to assassinate Donald Trump, as...

Graham Platner ended his bid to represent the people of Maine in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday night.

He would have done well to begin his consideration with earnest engagement with the Bible.

Really.

Specifically, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8, verse 17, where it says: “For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.”

Now more than ever, every candidate must be warned again about this truth and then again and again. Indeed, it’s inevitable for every candidate in eve...

Talking politics with your average young male these days, chances are you will hear all kinds of odd theories coming from the Pied Pipers of Podcastistan. You will hear them mentioning “experts” nobody heard of until about 10 minutes ago or until they were discovered by these podcasters because of their contrary, and often, conspiratorial thinking.

Young men, especially, are attracted to this novel “wisdom,” and they are so prone because, as they will tell you, mainstream institutions have been untruthful over the years. But because some institutions that we used to rely on and respect have been taken ov...

What happens when the Left plucks a ‘working class man’ from obscurity and pushes him for high office? In an era of Democratic desperation, mainstream media creates narratives to protect him, even at the expense of their stated values.

Graham Platner’s rise and fall stains all the institutions of the Left. Democrats and the media tried to bury or downplay Platner’s checkered past, including his Nazi SS tattoo, his record of disturbing public comments and his moral depravity.

Don’t be fooled by the sudden shift in media coverage. Everything that outlets like Axios and...

Teaching Constitutional Law is a joy.

Every semester since 1996, my students hear that Con Law ought to be their most interesting class during their three years of law school.

This year the Court issued 67 majority opinions.

Because district court judge issue bolts-from-out-of-the-blue on a regular basis, there’s a perception abroad that the judiciary becoming politicized. Our highest court, however, is an enormous force for stability in the country that just turned 250 years old.

The most significant of this term’s cases may well turn out to be NRSC v. the FEC...

A specter is taking over the Democratic party and haunting America...Marxist and Islamic Socialism.

A new crop of Democratic party candidates truly stand for and believe in the worst and most dangerous ideologies of the past.  These candidates are winning nominations and likely winning races for mayor, for Congress, and for Senate—from Los Angeles to Washington, DC; from Colorado to Michigan.

Even a cursory look at their platforms and speeches reveals admissions of support for Marx and Mao and Stalin, and Islamist organizations from Hamas to Hezbollah.

This juggernaut of alien and...

In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court has issued one of the most important administrative law decisions in years. It overrules a famous precedent called Humphrey’s Executor, which had protected some independent agency commissioners from being fired by the president.

President Trump removed two members of Federal Trade Commission over policy disagreements. But federal law says commissioners can be fired only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct. So the fired commissioners sued.

The Supreme Court held that the statutory limits on presidential removal violate the Constitution’s separation of powers. And the Court was...

Few issues have generated more controversy in America than whether biological males should be allowed to compete on girls’ and women’s school sports teams. Now, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that states may protect biological females from having to compete against biological males without violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause or Title IX.

It’s important to understand what the Court did—and didn’t—decide. The ruling doesn’t require states to adopt those protections. It simply says they are free to do so.

That matters because the decision explici...

As you celebrate this 4th of July weekend, I hope you get time to slow down and relax. Enjoy the day with friends, family, and loved ones in your world. As you do, remember that even these things are the fruits of freedom, the benefits of a stable government, civilizational order.

For 250 years—a quarter of a millennium now—our nation has benefitted from these gifts.

Yes: There is plenty to be concerned about as we look at the health of our nation in recent days. We are—and this is not hyperbole—more polarized today th...

As the nation approaches our 250th anniversary, it’s important for us to take a moment to recognize and appreciate the role that Christianity played in the foundation of the American experiment.

Broadly speaking, there is simply no question that the basic worldview behind the foundation of our republic was the biblical worldview of Christianity.

And it didn’t begin here exclusively, but it goes way back in history into the great foundations of Western civilization.

Is America a Christian nation in terms of explicit constitutional arrangement? No. But I think it's safe to s...

This week, the USA turns 250. It comes at a time when our nation has become more sharply divided than any other in living memory.  

One man’s wisdom calls to us from an even more bitterly divided moment in American history. Six weeks before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln spoke to the bitter divisions of his day and how the American soul could look to the Lord for grace to heal them. 

“With malice toward none with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to...

As America celebrates its 250th birthday, it’s worth honoring our glorious Constitution—the longest-surviving written charter of national government in world history.

Rarely have so few gotten so much so right. The Constitution protects our inalienable rights, reflecting the truth that our freedoms come from God, not government. It enshrines the principle of “We the People,” affirming that power belongs to citizens, not rulers, and that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

Because the Framers understood the temptations of power, they divided authority among three branches of government, each designed...

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is approaching quickly.

The document—as I often point out to my listeners—is, to quote Abraham Lincoln, an “apple of gold” protected by the “frame of silver” that is the Constitution he borrowed from Psalms there.

All Americans—indeed all the free world—have a lot to celebrate in this our 250th year of independence.

The Declaration asserted the existence of "rights" of individuals that exist before any government — no matter the form of that government— comes into being:

“We hold these truths to be self-evid...

As Americans celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, we’ve received a special and quite unexpected gift: a spontaneous outpouring of affection from the rest of the world.

Visitors from across the globe are attending World Cup matches here, and many are posting videos expressing their delight with what they’re finding, and what we so often take for granted. Our safe streets and parks. Our barbecue. Ranch dressing. The wonders of LongHorn Steakhouse. Unlimited refills. But above all, the kindness and friendliness of the American people.

Too often, tourists fly into New York or Los An...

Just recently, Ken Paxton secured the nomination for the GOP looking to represent Texas in the US Senate. Paxton will be facing a state senator and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico. The question is, as the New York Times put it, are Texans ready for Talarico's kind of Christianity?

Ruth Graham and David Goodman begin by talking about Talerico's pastor, Jim Rigby at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin. The article begins, "Jim Rigby, a pastor who rarely uses the word God, is a key to understanding the Senate candidate trying to pull off something unusual in Texas."<...

A recent report issued by British Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe documents the grooming and horrific sexual abuse of as many as 250,000 young girls across England,

These girls endured gang rape, brutal abuse, forced abortions and pregnancies, and even coerced Islamic conversion. And it happened while social workers, teachers, police and prosecutors looked the other way.

Now, the victims are being failed again—this time by America’s legacy media. Since the Lowe report was released, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSN NOW have devoted virtually no coverage to its findings.

Legacy media jour...

As America’s 250th birthday approaches, it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate the Declaration of Independence.

Today, many Americans take for granted the idea that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights — natural rights that no government may rightfully take away. It’s easy to forget just how revolutionary those ideas were when the Declaration was written.

Grounded in Judeo-Christian principles, the Declaration established the United States not on shared ancestry, geography, or history, but on devotion to a common creed.

Although America has not always l...

As we celebrate our 250th anniversary as a nation, it is worth reflecting on what got us here and has kept us going, living as we do under the longest-lasting constitution in world history.

From the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution, our country’s Framers set about establishing this most successful of political governing structures because they understood a few truths. Given low polling about American pride these days, they are truths about which we may need to ask: are they still self-evident?

We began this experiment declaring a recognition of something higher than ma...

“The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb” is a 2016 volume by Neal Bascomb. It tells the harrowing story of Norwegian commandos who attacked the German site at Vemork in World War II. It was the Nazis only plant for mass production of “heavy water,” on which they had placed their primary bet to produce atomic weapons during World War II.

I wish it had been converted to the film that it was optioned to be because it would be a short-cut for those who don’t understand why Donald Trump is singularly focused on ensurin...

Both chambers of the New York state legislature have passed legislation replacing the word mother and father with ‘gestating parent’ and ‘non-gestating parent.

C.S. Lewis famously decried what he called “verbicide” or more technically, “the murder of a word.” We can only imagine what he would think of with this development in New York.

As the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal notes, the effort is part of legislation intended to “purge gendered language from state family law.”

Just ponder that for a moment.

The natural family is predicated upon the fundament...

A new poll from NBC reveals another low percentage of Americans who feel proud of their country. One NBC reporter put it that we are seeing “a steady 21st century decline.”  The disappointment in these and similar results is exacerbated by the timing of our birthday as a nation, when national affections should be at their height.

If only more Americans would listen to our foreign visitors.  Ever since Marquis de Lafayette, many a foreigner has come here to show and remind us of our greatness.  In fact, it was another Frenchman—Alexis de Tocqueville—whose two-volume book about...

Just recently, Ken Paxton secured the nomination for the GOP looking to represent Texas in the US Senate. Paxton will be facing a state senator and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico. The question is, as the New York Times put it, are Texans ready for Talarico's kind of Christianity?

Ruth Graham and David Goodman begin by talking about Talarico's pastor, Jim Rigby at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin. The article begins, "Jim Rigby, a pastor who rarely uses the word God, is a key to understanding the Senate candidate trying to pull off something unusual in Texas."<...

The Iranian regime has waged war against the United States for nearly 47 years.

The president clearly thought that we had sufficiently weakened the regime—and he’d be able to strike a deal. Indeed, he spent 60 days trying.

But the shootdown of our Apache helicopter may have changed things.

The Iranian regime has given Trump plenty of reasons to walk away from the negotiating table, starting from the very first hours of the so-called ceasefire in the Persian Gulf. Vahidi violated the agreement from the very start, imposing an extortionate "fee" system for sail...

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is approaching quickly.

The document—as I often point out to my listeners—is, to quote Abraham Lincoln, an “apple of gold” protected by the “frame of silver” that is the Constitution he borrowed from Psalms there.

All Americans—indeed all the free world—have a lot to celebrate in this our 250th year of independence.

The Declaration asserted the existence of "rights" of individuals that exist before any government — no matter the form of that government— comes into being:

“We hold these truths to be self-evid...

Ronald Reagan used to ask: “if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”  But to have self-government, we must depend on many things, foremost among them: Trust. Over the past decade, credibility in major institutions has plummeted.

Given the delays and changing results in the recent California elections, we have another exhibit of the growing distrust in our elections. Alleging fraud in seeing Spencer Pratt sink to third place after the now-second place finisher had previously conceded her loss is said to be paranoid. But h...

Over the past couple of weeks, President Trump has shifted pressure for ending the war from Iran to Israel. He pressed for a ceasefire in Lebanon to incentivize the IRGC to make a deal. Hezbollah refused to comply, continuing to launch missile attacks on Northern Israel. That escalated over the weekend, with Iran launching missiles at Israel and the IDF responding.

Trump insists the attacks are distracting from a deal that—for two months—he’s promised is close to completion. Thus far, though, the IRGC refuses to comply with the terms of the current ceasefire.

Isra...

The Maine primary is this Tuesday.

Why is it that Democrats are sticking with their deeply flawed, Nazi-tattoo-wearing Graham Platner?

Drip, drip, drip come the revelations, but Democrats are standing proudly behind the deeply troubled candidate.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was pressed by reporters about his backing of Platner after the latest batch of awful headlines about Platner’s increasingly chaotic campaign.

“I met with Graham Platner today. We will beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.” Shumer went on to repeat that refrain four more times before...

The next few months are anniversary-heavy for our nation.

Before the fireworks of the 250th Fourth of July begin, try with family and friends to agree on what we are celebrating. Try as well to articulate how we defend what our country has long been committed to.

We’re also only three months away from the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda.

The great and the awful anniversaries are connected by that which the first proclaimed and which the second attempted to end: freedom.

We ought also to sp...

As we close in on our nation’s birthday, more and more data give us cause for great concern.

As Abraham Lincoln put it in his time, so too is it true today: “At what point is the approach of danger [to us] to be expected? [I]f it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Look around at our civic...

.America is celebrating its 250th birthday, but it's been hard to get the party started.

Many Americans remember our bicentennial in 1976. It wasn't long after Watergate and the Vietnam War. It was even a presidential election year, but we put all of that on hold to celebrate our great nation.

How long ago that seems. This year, the administration launched a nonpartisan freedom 250 initiative to give America a spectacular birthday party. But left-wing activist targeted artists scheduled to perform at the national concert, leading some to withdraw and turning what should have been a patriotic...

California’s progressives are eyeing other people’s money. Again. The proposed “Billionaire Tax Act” would amend the state constitution to impose a one-time five percent tax on residents with a net worth above a billion dollars.

Supporters say it’s just a one-time levy for worthy causes. But experience says “one time” rarely means one time, and the unintended consequences are real.

The measure has yet to go before voters, but the threat alone has already pushed almost forty percent of California’s billionaire wealth out of the state. Gone. Along with it: income taxes, sales tax...

We warned repeatedly when Canada began to adopt assisted suicide as part of its government-run health care. Socialized medicine combined with assisted suicide sets up foreseeable economic incentives that reward disposal of patients rather than chronic care.

But even we couldn’t have dreamed that Canada would grow so desperate to reduce costs that they would condone assisted suicide assessments in fast-food parking lots.

Yet that’s exactly what happened in Ontario, where a doctor diagnosed a chronic bowel problem and emotional issues outside a Tim Horton’s coffee shop—and took the ‘patient’ to be euthanize...

With the end of commencement season, it is worth considering what advice a generation of youth more in need of sober and serious advice than at any other time in our history should hear.

Professor Jonathan Haidt has pointed out, having given our children smartphones, we are now engaged in the largest uncontrolled experiment humanity has ever performed on its own children.  Major corporations now spend billions of dollars. Their primary mission? Getting as many children as glued to screens for as long as possible.  Humanity is being stolen from our youth. At great costs and great pr...

It’s commencement season again—another class of young Americans heading out into the world. But one statistic says a lot about what they’re leaving behind: at top universities this year, left-wing speakers outnumber others six to one on commencement stages.

That lack of viewpoint diversity point to something deeper: An intellectual climate marked by intolerance and conformity, not curiosity and debate.

There was a time when a college degree signaled that a student had learned how to think—and had encountered the ideas that shaped the Western tradition. Today, that’s no longer a safe ass...

As we watch the president navigate the ongoing interactions with the remaining leadership in Iran, it’s worth reminding ourselves: President Trump has done hundreds of deals. He also walked away from probably three times as many deals.

The thousands of commentators with little to zero knowledge of negotiations are just guessing.

Here’s what we know:

First: President Trump has the crucial experience, and:

Second: the D Team in Iran doesn’t.

No president in 47 years has dealt Iran blows like this. President Trump isn’t going to trade ma...

In 1976, Harry Jaffa wrote that in 1776 the United States was nothing, promising to become everything; and having become everything it was promising to become nothing.  This is truer now, on our 250th anniversary, than 50 years ago.

The state of our students’ civic understanding is abominable: we are at a record low of students knowing the basic fundaments of our constitutional and political formation and makeup.  This directly results from a deliberate mis-educating of our youth: an education system that teaches that America is a blight rather than a blessing on and to the world and its citizens. Who...