One Young American’s Dark Path

Meet Calla Walsh. Politically active in high school, she was the youngest delegate at the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Convention four years ago.

Now 21, she acknowledges that she has since experienced a “pretty rapid radicalization.”

That’s for sure. On her 2024 presidential election ballot, she wrote in Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar. “Death to America, death to Israel,” she has stated. She considers the label “terrorist” a “badge of honor.” After the murder of Charlie Kirk, she posted, “Thoughts and prayers for the bullet.” She toured the Iranian National Aerospace Park, where she praised the country’s drones and missiles and described the experience as “the greatest honor of my life.” And she helped found Palestine Action US, a group modeled after Palestine Action UK, which the British government recently designated a terrorist organization.

“Figures like Walsh and her allies are exploiting digital platforms to amplify authoritarian narratives, glorify violence, and undermine democratic institutions,” Stu Smith writes. “They coordinate with hostile regimes, promote terrorist propaganda, and seek to destabilize the country from within.”

Read his take on what the U.S. can do to counter these types of threats.

Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom of California vetoed legislation that would have enabled jurisdictions to spend a portion of state funding on abstinence-focused housing for people recovering from addiction. “That means that every taxpayer dollar spent on reducing homelessness in California will continue funding Housing First programs,” Keith Humphreys writes, “which let addicted residents consume methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine, alcohol, and other drugs without jeopardizing their housing status.”

Read his take.

As the United States faces a life-expectancy and chronic-disease crisis, it’s more pertinent than ever for researchers to be able to access health data. But to do so, they have to navigate through a maze of inconsistent procedures and rules as they wait for approval, which takes months.

That’s why Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should create a centralized database that consolidates Americans’ health data, Josh Morrison and Alastair Fraser Urquhart argue. “Such a dashboard could form the basis for evidence-based health policymaking,” they write, “similar to how the Bureau of Labor Statistics anchors economic policy with its employment and inflation data.”

Read their analysis.

“The 2010 Affordable Care Act established the biggest federally funded entitlement for Americans in the labor force,” Chris Pope writes. The law initially offered assistance to those reporting the lowest incomes, which, the thinking went, would help focus spending on those who needed it most. “But as the government expanded these and other benefits during Covid,” Pope observes, “it has increased the incentive for workers to claim additional funds by hiding income.”

Read more about the growing shadow economy.

“As a traditional patriotic American, I have no racial or religious test for who should be allowed to immigrate.

My test is quite simple: Can you swear to uphold our Constitution, which respects the rights of others, including women, gays, Jews, Christians, atheists? Or do you seek to impose your tyrannical, backward, theocratic, and corrupt way of life from the Medieval country you came from on our free and modern society?

If the former, you are welcome, my new neighbor. If the latter, you are not welcome here and are unfit for our society.

If leftists actually believed in a free society or preserving our constitutional democratic republic, they would easily adopt this test. But they don’t. Worse, they’re using the migrants as a demographic electoral battering ram to defeat the modern democratic republic.”

Photo credit: EYAD BABA / Contributor / AFP via Getty Images