Restoring America with Grace Reilly

A Massachusetts lesbian bar dropped its mask mandate in 2026 and its own woke patrons turned on it. The Last Ditch is socialism in miniature.

In this episode, I break down the Boston Globe story. Three idealistic housemates opened the bar last year, turned no one away for lack of money, and welcomed the poor and unhoused but not the police. Now two of them have left, and the one still standing is reportedly drowning in debt.

I also get into the basic economics, my suggested rebrand (Dire Straits), and the two lessons this bar teaches...

Grace hosts her first panel with Restoration News researchers Robert Rose, Dom Davis, and Sean Griswold to break down Wisconsin's November 3 governor's race between Tom Tiffany and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. They cover Crowley's tax record, Evers' 400-year property tax veto, Tiffany's day-one plan, the three constitutional amendments on the ballot, and what the race means for Gen Z and housing. Early voting runs October 20 through November 1. Resources: crowleylovestaxes.com and myvote.wi.gov.

Bella Dodd spent years in the Communist Party with one job: get into the schools. After she left, she told the Senate the communists would use every classroom from nursery school to university. Today 38% of Gen Z views communism favorably. I walk through the Cato numbers, the American Spectator piece on Florida's new History of Communism standards, and what Governor DeSantis says kids need to learn about Marxism. Then three takeaways, including my honest doubt that every teacher will teach it straight, and where to check your own state's schools at restoreedu.com.

For the first time in 112 years, no Atlantic hurricane formed by peak season. A former climate reporter says she knows why stories like this get buried.

In this episode, I get into Lucy Biggers' admission that she never covered positive climate stories because they would "muddy the narrative." We look at the record-quiet season, a Language Watch clip on how global cooling became global warming and then "climate change," and Bernie Sanders in 2020 saying we had six or seven years to act.

It's been six years. I keep thinking about the kids raised to believe...

The Trump administration wants to pay married stay-at-home parents $9,000 a year per child. JD Vance is pushing it, and conservatives are split.

In this episode, I get into where that $9,000 actually comes from (a fund that's existed since the Clinton years, not a new one), who would actually qualify for it, and why this has turned into a real fight on the right. Kevin Roberts, Michael Knowles, and Benny Johnson say it finally stops penalizing families for having one parent stay home. Mark Levin, Dana Loesch, and James Lindsay say it's still welfare, whatever you call it.<...

Should there be age or term limits for Congress?

Mitch McConnell just returned to Congress after 93 days away due to medical reasons. There are many similar examples of this happening, which has brough the question of age limits to the forefront.

In this episode, I go through what the true cost has been. Polling shows that 85% of Americans want term limits. It is not often Americans agree on something with such a big majority!

I also make the case that experience in Congress comes at a price, and that the price is usually...

Only 13% of pastors say they don't use AI at all. A quarter are using it to write or edit sermons, and I think the line should have been drawn well before that.

In this episode, I go through Barna's research on how pastors are actually using AI, why I'd stop at administrative work instead of brainstorming, and what gets lost when the silence before a sermon gets filled with a prompt instead of prayer. I also cover the bias problem and Barna's second study on AI as a spiritual authority.

I know I'm probably in...

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, Charlie Kirk said courage for his faith. A year after his assassination, Grace goes through the moments where he shared it, from the campus stops to his testimony to his advice on keeping a Sabbath. Then she takes you inside his memorial in Arizona, where she sat through hours of worship before anyone spoke, and closes in prayer for his family.

In this episode, I get into why Governor DeSantis ordered Flock cameras off Florida's state highways, what reporters found when they looked at how officers actually use the system, and why a Texas city of 68,000 cancelled its contract after outside agencies ran 1.6 million searches through its cameras.

I also cover the 1984 comparison, China's Skynet network, and the car legislation almost nobody is talking about. Then the question this whole thing comes down to: is a little more safety worth this much less freedom?

If you want the deeper dive on the vehicle side of this...

AOC rejoined the DSA after a seven-year lapse, and the DSA tied it straight to a 2028 run. Their Maoist caucus had already called her an opportunist.

In this episode, I get into why the timing matters, what the Liberation Caucus actually said about her, and why backing away from defunding the police is what set them off.

She didn't have to do any of this. She did it because she thinks socialism is mainstream enough now that the label helps her instead of costing her. That's the part worth sitting with.

The DSA's new platform calls for abolishing the Senate and putting the President and Supreme Court under Congress. Rep. Jeff Crank wants a vote.

In this episode, I'm back on a new set after getting married, and I'm catching up on the DSA. I go through the new platform, why democratic socialism has stopped being a softer word than communism, and what Mamdani is doing to private property in New York.

The choice now is socialism or America. Millions of Christians in this country still aren't registered to vote, and that's where this turns.

Paul Kengor says socialism stopped being a fringe position years ago. The Democratic Socialists of America figured out they never have to beat a Republican to win.

In this episode, I sit down with Paul in person at Grove City College to go through how it happened. The Obama-era polling that flipped, Bernie's two primary runs, the safe-district strategy, and the playbook that put Mamdani in charge of New York.

Paul also gets into why they fight so hard against the word Marxist, what Bella Dodd warned about the education system, and where young people...

Gen Z swung for Trump, then turned around and gave Mamdani New York. Sean Griswold says both votes came from the same instinct.

In this episode, I sit down with Sean Griswold, a Turning Point USA chapter VP at Jacksonville University and a Restoration News fellow, about why our generation keeps moving. We get into the "it factor," affordability as a word nobody has defined, Social Security running out before we ever see it, and what the response to Charlie's death showed us about our own neighbors.

He also makes the case for voting the...

In June 2018, Maxine Waters told a crowd to confront Trump officials in restaurants and gas stations, and to absolutely harass them. Republicans moved to censure her. Democrats killed it.

In this episode, I follow what came after: the string of restaurant confrontations aimed at Trump officials, the cover Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries gave her, and April 2021, when Waters told protesters in Minnesota to get more confrontational during the Chauvin trial.

Then set that against January 6th. Trump said marching peacefully and patriotically, and he's the one the left calls an inciter. Three conclusions follow...

Sen. John Kennedy is the funniest man in Washington, and he lands harder than most of the people who are actually trying to be serious.

In this episode, I sit down with Producer Clayton and go through Kennedy's best moments: the hearing-room lines, the cable hits, and the campaign ad where he told people who hate cops to call a crackhead the next time they need help. We get into why nobody can really argue with him, and why he might be the way people who can't stand politics end up paying attention anyway.

Then...

Bernie Sanders can't stop warning you about "the oligarchs." So I looked up the word and it describes him better than the billionaires he's attacking.

In this episode, I break down what an oligarch actually is: a small elite group where wealth and power converge, that controls state assets and uses political capital to bend outcomes its way. Then I hold that definition up against Bernie himself. He's one of the most powerful members of Congress and a textbook socialist who can't stop calling everyone else an oligarch.

Carl Trueman says we didn't drift away from God by accident. Once everything important in your life became a choice, external authority stopped being believable. God is the biggest external authority there is.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Carl Trueman at Grove City College about his new book, The Desecration of Man. We get into expressive individualism, why worship turned consumerist, what the internet did to the word community, and the online push telling kids to cut off their parents.

He also lays out the argument at the heart of the book...

In today's episode, I join Tiffany Meier and the panel on NTD in New York to rate the week's wildest headlines. We get into the migrant surge at Spain's border in Ceuta, RFK Jr. launching a cooking show as HHS Secretary, a Harris poll showing 73% of Gen Z now stay home on weekends, and Barna's new research on pastors handing sermon prep to AI.

Pastors are called to pray about what they preach. Putting AI in the middle of that should bother us more than it does.

In today's episode, I take the day's biggest stories in real time. The autopen pardon and Anthony Fauci pleading the Fifth after telling Chris Wallace he had nothing to hide. What Josh Hawley was digging at with the money, and what Dr. Peter McCullough says a doctor in that chair is supposed to do. Then my generation: how Republicans actually beat a message of free stuff, why the free market is the honest answer instead of a better bribe, and the birth rate nobody wants to name.

Same thread running through all of it. Who gets protected...

Mamdani quoted Margaret Thatcher on stage, got his laugh, then spent the rest of the answer arguing with the one part of it that's actually true.

In this episode, I take apart his rebuttal: Milton Friedman on why political freedom and free markets come as a package, what New York already learned the hard way about rent and price controls, and what happens to states like California and Connecticut when leftist policy gets lived out all the way.

He never answered Thatcher's actual claim. He went after it, the same way he went after Reagan...

Margaret Thatcher said socialists don't like ordinary people choosing, because they might not choose socialism. Today I'm going through some of the Iron Lady's best moments and why they land harder now than when she said them. Taxes and private industry. Politicians who think they can run everything. Budgeting a country the way you budget a household. Illegal immigration and what she called international chaos. And the U-turn speech that made her the Iron Lady. Underneath all of it she was making one argument, and it's the one we need most in our 250th year: liberty and economic freedom...

In recent years there has been an argument raised that America "doesn't have culture." Dr Jason Edwards, professor of Education and Humanities at Grove City College, and Grace Reilly strongly disagree. In this episode of Restoring America with Grace Reilly, Dr Edwards walks through our iconic history and culture, from the American West to our present political struggles today. He touches on why the American Dream is alive and well along with the core problems we are seeing in the education system today. The recent controversy at the Smithsonian is only one example of a much bigger problem.

The Republican Party was founded in a Wisconsin schoolhouse in 1854. Now the DSA is claiming the same state as socialist ground, and running to lead it.

In this episode, I talk with Dominic Davis, a Restoration News researcher who grew up in Wisconsin, about the governor's race and the history fight underneath it. We get into the Democratic primary, DSA state Rep. Francesca Hong, the "sewer socialism" talking point the left keeps reaching for, and a property tax fight that is squeezing farmers and families out of homes they have owned for decades.

Dom's argument...

A parent received a message inviting her kid into a school "Fellows program." It was really campaign work for a Democrat running for Congress, on the taxpayer's dime.

In this episode, I sit down with Victoria Manning, Senior Investigative Researcher at Restoration News and a former school board member, to talk through what she uncovered at a Virginia high school and why this keeps showing up in red districts, not just blue ones.

We get into the teachers unions behind the recent May Day walkouts, who's really funding and organizing them, Restoration News' new District...

The New York Post reported that the city's Department of Homeless Services plans to push out 55 families and move in roughly 110 single adult men, with no public hearing and no criminal background checks, in a shelter sitting directly across the street from a park where kids and families gather. In this episode, I dig into what Mayor Zohran Mamdani's homeless policy actually looks like on the ground in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

Councilwoman Inna Vernikov is sounding the alarm. Meanwhile the nonprofit set to run the shelter is under federal investigation, and the city just handed it close...

Wisconsin's governor race is wide open, and a DSA socialist is currently leading the Democratic field to run one of America's most important swing states.

In this episode, I sit down with Robert Rose of Restoration News to break down why a purple state Trump won by fewer than 30,000 votes could tip the whole country, and why the Democratic candidates are racing to out-radical each other. We get into DSA state rep Francesca Hong leading the pack, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a property tax increase sitting Democrats are defending, and how the next governor's power over...

For the next few weeks I'm taking you on the road with me from Florida to Connecticut, and when I'm back, Restoring America relaunches Season 2 with a brand new studio!

In this episode, I share what's coming: a stop at my alma mater, Grove City College, to sit down with professors like Paul Kengor and Carl Trueman at the Institute for Faith and Freedom. We get into economics, culture, and Marxism in a deeper format than usual, rolling out over the next few weeks along with some special edition episodes.

Season 1 grew more than I...

Before heading out on the road, Grace walks through the marriage wisdom that shaped her preparation, from Voddie Baucham on the war against God's design and the lie that marriage oppresses women, to Charlie Kirk on the Sabbath and a God-centered home, to Tim Keller on why the perfectly compatible soulmate doesn't exist. Along the way: why marriage is a covenant with God, why it comes before your kids, and why self-centeredness is the real threat to every marriage.

The radical leftists winning primaries call themselves "democratic socialists." The honest word is Marxists. The softer label is the strategy.

In this episode, I break down how the left manipulates language to manipulate you, from "pro-choice" to "climate change" to "democratic socialist." I get into why Marxist doctrine treats socialism as the transition and communism as the goal, the "permeation" strategy Sidney and Beatrice Webb laid out for infiltrating institutions, and a Students for Life debate that shows how to shut down the word games on abortion.

DSA candidates are on track to win deep-blue...

A new Brave Books study found libraries and publishers are scrubbing Christianity from kids' reading lists built for America's 250th birthday. Not one book about faith, religious liberty, or Christianity's role in the founding made the cut.

In this episode, I break down what the study found and why an omission this complete is no accident. The same lists found room for the 1619 Project and transgender activism. I walk through the history being erased, from John Adams to the Bible verse on the Liberty Bell, plus the American Library Association's role and the fight over Bibles and...

The republic hangs by a thread. That's the warning at the heart of The Thread of Liberty, Ned Ryun's new documentary for America's 250th birthday.

In this episode, I sit down with Ned, the founder and CEO of American Majority, to talk about the film and what keeping the republic asks of us. We get into Tocqueville's observation that religion was America's first political institution, how schools taught a generation to resent its own country, why breaking the administrative state comes before restoring the republic, and where virtue comes from in a self-governing people.

Ned's...

Why wasn’t slavery abolished at our founding 250 years ago? This is one of the most misunderstood questions about our country’s history— the relationship between the Founding Fathers and slavery. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, Paul Kengor and Grace Reilly attack this topic head-on in partnership with The American Spectator.

Special Guest: Paul Kengor.

America just turned 250, the greatest country ever created. So why are we having an identity crisis over what it even means to be American?

In this episode, I celebrate our 250th birthday and get honest about the moment we're in: a war on truth, a culture that acts like we've somehow outgrown God, and a country that can't agree on the principles that made it. We were founded on liberty, life, and rights that come from God, not the government. Most nations never make it this far, and whether we see another 250 years is our choice.

The founders went to war over taxes far lighter than what leaves your paycheck today. So how did a country built on "no taxation without representation" end up with a tax system this BIG? How did spending become so high and widespread?

In this episode, I dive into the establishment of the federal income tax from 1913, when the top rate was just 7% and the whole thing was sold as temporary, up to the 73% and 94% rates that came later under Woodrow Wilson and FDR. I get into what Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan understood about property and freedom...

47% of Americans think the American Dream is dead. William Hearn's new 250th-anniversary film, The Impossible Dream, asks whether we have lost the hope that made America possible.

In this episode, I sit down with William to talk about what the American Dream meant before it got reduced to a bigger house, a better job, or a more comfortable life. We talk about the founders’ understanding of happiness, the people William followed for the film, and why he believes America’s future cannot be separated from its Christian roots.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, William’s film...

Socialists just swept New York's primaries, and this is not a fringe story anymore. Mamdani-backed candidates beat establishment Democrats, while a Gallup poll shows 66% of Democrats view socialism favorably.

In this episode, I break down why I'm calling this socialism instead of the softer "democratic socialist" rebrand, what the Democratic Socialists of America polling above Democrats in Congress says about the party, and why Milton Friedman, Venezuela, price controls, and Reagan's old warning still matter now.

If Democrats keep moving left, conservatives have an opening and a responsibility to answer it clearly.

At a time where patriotism is decreasing it is important, now more than ever, to pass American values onto the next generation. As the 250th birthday of our great nation approaches, Amanda Martin has stepped in to make learning and celebrating American history fun through her new children's book: Henry the Star-Spangled Spaniel. In the book, Henry goes back in history to witness key moments and brings young readers along with him. 

In this episode, Amanda and Grace discuss the new book, literacy among young Americans, why patriotism should not be partisan, and how parents can make A...

America turns 250 this year, and a new poll says 29% of Democrats aren't proud to be American anymore. A lot of them won't even fly the flag on the 4th!

In this episode, I walk through the numbers, and some of them are genuinely hard to look at. Pride on the left has cratered. The two parties can't even agree on what the 4th of July is for. And there's the State of the Union moment Democrats refused to stand for. I also get into why it's happening, from what kids are taught in school to what the...

Democrats ask for photo ID at the door of their own events. But bring up voter ID at the ballot box and suddenly it's an attack on democracy.

In this episode, I break down the double standard at the heart of the election integrity fight: the DNC and the Obama Foundation requiring ID for their events while opposing it for voting. I also get into California, where ballots get counted for weeks and nobody will clean up the voter rolls, the Save America Act that's stuck in Congress even though 83% of Americans want it, Doug Truax's 10-point...

Elon Musk just became the world's first trillionaire and the left is furious. Jimmy Kimmel, AOC, Bernie, and Elizabeth Warren all reached for the same line: tax the rich.

In today's episode, I break down why "tax the rich" doesn't actually work, and why, as the Federalist's Brianna Lyman put it on Fox Business, the real problem isn't a revenue problem — it's a spending problem.

We look at the record-breaking SpaceX IPO that just made 4,400 employees millionaires, why 892 companies (and $47 billion) fled New York's socialist hellscape, what Venezuela's collapse should teach us, and what Madison, Fr...