Politics/Religion Consolidated Megathread Extravaganza

[DKG]

After winning the 2024 Republican primary for Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, Rep. Thomas Massie cleaned up in the general election, securing 99.6% of the vote. Yet his political career still may not survive 2026.

The MIT-trained engineer proceeded to force the issue of the Jeffrey Epstein files' release, speak out against the joint U.S.-Israeli entanglement in Iran, and pad his 86.79% lifetime Turning Point Action score. He also managed to once again draw the ire of President Donald Trump, who faulted Massie for being "an automatic 'NO' vote on just about everything."

Months after vowing in March 2025 to "lead the charge" against Massie, Trump officially named his champion: Navy SEAL veteran Ed Gallrein.

Gallrein — who not only enjoys the president's backing but the support of numerous powerful individuals and organizations, including War Secretary Pete Hegseth, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — is now poised to possibly oust Massie from the congressional seat he has held since 2012.

[Lokmar]

GTFO Massie.

[Brent]

Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński: "We don't need your doctors, we don't need your engineers. Take them all, and pay for them. We don't need them. You know why? Because there are zero terrorist attacks in Poland. Why? Because there is no illegal migration in Poland."

Poland is becoming one of my favourite countries.

[Thiel]

The German populist party AFD is seeing rising support from gay men.

[Herman]

Trump endorsed Ken Paxton in a Texas senate race.

[Herman]

A May 2026 AtlasIntel national poll found that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now leading the 2028 Republican field with 45% support, ahead of Vice President JD Vance (30%), who was leading the same poll by 24 points in December 2025.

On a recent episode of the "Steve Deace Show," Deace and his panel of co-hosts Todd Erzen and Aaron MacIntyre along with Rob Eno, Blaze News managing editor, addressed the legitimacy of the "Rubio surge" and what it means for the MAGA movement.

[Herman]

The U.S. Supreme Court on May 18 ordered lower courts to reconsider rulings in two redistricting cases that concern whether private individuals may sue to enforce a federal law that bans discriminatory voting practices.

The court directed the lower courts to take another look at the cases from Mississippi and North Dakota in light of its recent landmark ruling limiting the use of race in redistricting efforts.

Justice Ketanji Brown jackassson dissented from both new rulings.

In Louisiana v. Callais, a majority of the court had said April 29 that race may not be the predominant, overriding reason for how congressional district lines are drawn. The case focused on the Pelican State's decision to add a majority-black district after a lower court said omitting the district would violate the Section 2 nondiscrimination provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act.

[Herman]

Former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan appears to be a washed-up politician without a party after Democrat voters showed on Tuesday they want nothing to do with him.

Duncan spent nearly a decade in state elected office as a Republican. He was a representative in the Georgia House from 2013 until 2017 and lieutenant governor from 2019 until 2023, so he was an executive in charge during the controversial 2020 presidential election.

A month after the 2020 race in Georgia was called for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, Duncan claimed that persistent GOP challenges to the results would damage the Republican Party. "I'm very, very worried that this affects our brand of conservatism," he said at the time.

By 2024, Duncan had morphed into an ardently anti-Trump activist. Not only did he endorse Biden for re-election as well as Biden's replacement, Kamala Harris, but Duncan even made an appearance at the Democratic National Convention, begging voters to "dump Trump."

In January 2025, the Georgia Republican Party formally expelled Duncan, prohibiting him from entering party events or property, banning him from running for state office again as a Republican, and expunging its endorsements of his previous campaigns.

By mid-September, Duncan had fully transitioned into a donkey, declaring his candidacy to run for Georgia governor as Democrat in 2026.

It didn't go well.

In the Democratic primary on Tuesday, Duncan finished a humiliating fourth, garnering just 7% of the total vote.

Trump, meanwhile, claimed victory after victory Tuesday night as his preferred candidates in Georgia, Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Oregon either won their races outright or at least advanced to an upcoming runoff.

[Herman]

The American trucking industry has been plagued by companies that rack up safety violations and penalties, then shut down and quickly reopen under a new identity to evade regulatory enforcement and hide poor safety records. Such companies have become known as chameleon carriers.

But the Department of Transportation is taking action to prevent chameleon-carrier fraud by rolling out a new, modernized registration system.

The DOT and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced on Tuesday the live launch of Motus, a system that "replaces a decades-old network of loosely connected applications rife with fraud, waste, and abuse."

FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs called Motus "a major advancement."

"This system improves efficiency for legitimate carriers while strengthening FMCSA's ability to detect fraud, improve data quality, and identify unsafe operators," Barrs stated.

The previous "fractured" registration system allowed bad actors to easily exploit loopholes and "game the system," according to the DOT.

"This outdated registration system operates on a low-barrier, minimal-validation framework — making it alarmingly simple for fraudsters to register as motor carriers. All they needed was an email, name, and physical address," the DOT stated.

The department estimated that there are "several thousand suspicious registration numbers tied to fraudulent carriers."

The DOT's new unified registration system will rely on biometrics and data analytics to verify the identities of carrier applicants. Motus mandates identity verification protocols, such as government-issued identification and digital facial scans.

[Herman]

Germany's AfD leader Alice Weidel: "We will leave the European Union. We will send back illegal immigrants and increase border security."

[DKG]

White House-designated border czar Tom Homan said in an interview published on May 20 that the administration is working to increase the number of deportations amid a slowdown following a leadership shakeup.

"We are after everyone, but again, you've got to prioritize those who are the biggest threats to our national security, public safety," Homan told the Washington Examiner, referring to illegal immigrants who are being targeted for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Homan acknowledged that "numbers are slightly down, but there's a plan" within the administration to "get them back up and even higher."

[Brent]

The discovery of 10,000 "phantom employees" exploiting a federal work program has helped spur Republicans to tackle the financial incentives behind a foreign worker pipeline costing Americans hundreds of thousands of jobs per year.

Under current federal law, hundreds of thousands of foreign students and employers participating in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension program are exempt from paying Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, which companies are required to pay for domestic workers. This has led to the creation of a "significant financial incentive" for employers to hire foreign OPT workers over Americans.

Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin introduced a bill Thursday, titled the "OPT Fair Tax Act," that eliminates that incentive by requiring employers to pay the same Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes paid for American workers. By closing the loophole, Grothman believes the bill "helps create a more level playing field for American graduates entering the workforce."

[Brent]

Breaking news: Tulsi Gabbard resigns

She is done effective June 30.

[DKG]

Breaking news: Tulsi Gabbard resigns

She is done effective June 30.

Tulsi Gabbard is very capable. This is not a good look for the Trump administration.

[DKG]

An ominous editorial written by political theorist and policy expert William Barclay.

China's quiet takeover — how Beijing is bending democracies to its will

Since the outset of his tainted election in 2025, South Korea's President Lee has degraded the Korean state and forced it inevitably towards the cold embrace of communism and the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Unfortunately, Lee is not the only President or Prime Minister that has recently started to regurgitate Xi Jinping's talking points and indulge in the politics of the PRC.

Rather, it is clear that various democratic nations and political 'leaders' have been successfully corrupted by the PRC and transformed into festering nodes of Chinese influence and communist politics.

Firstly, various European states have been betrayed by their politicians and casually subverted by the PRC.

For example, France's "top diplomats" and "political elites" have long been enraptured by the PRC's United Front Work Department (UFWD) and "under CCP influence." In addition, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has openly attempted to interfere in elections and manipulate political discourse throughout French society. Even France's President, Emmanuel Macron, has been forced to begrudgingly admit that, in spite of his own facile attempts to court Xi and ingratiate France with the PRC, France is now at "risk of foreign interference [by the PRC] ahead of [its 2027] elections."

Furthermore, in the United Kingdom (UK), the PRC has brazenly "conduct[ed] state-threat activities," such as "industrial espionage, cyber-attacks, and spying on politicians." In fact, the "husband of a lawmaker from Prime Minister Keir Starmer's ruling Labour party" was recently arrested "on suspicion of spying for China." Worse still, France and the UK are merely "the latest in a growing list of Western countries" that are actively "seeking to reset ties with China," despite the PRC's litany of human rights violations and avid attack on all democracy worldwide.

Moreover, under the auspices of President Lee and his DPK government, South Korea has rapidly become synonymous with Xi Jinping's politics and the national interests of the PRC.

For instance, countless left-wing political actors in South Korea have been exposed as happy bedmates of the PRC and international vectors for the CCP's communist ideology. In addition, South Korea's 2025 elections were marred by open fraud and foreign interference by the People's Republic of China. Even Morse Tan, the USA's former Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, has warned that South Korea "now faces a deepening crisis that threatens its constitutional integrity and the will of its people" and that "South Korea as we know it is about to be lost."

Furthermore, over 50 members of Congress recently "blasted South Korean leadership over a left-wing government closely aligned with China" and declared that "The stakes for American economic and security interests are enormous." In fact, President Lee has repeatedly exposed his own venomous anti-American ideology and abandoned South Korea's historic relationship with the United States of America, in order to, instead, openly embrace pro-Chinese policies, such as the infamous 'One China Policy' and pursue an explicit relationship with Xi.

Finally, since 2015, Canada's Liberal government has laboured tirelessly alongside Xi Jinping and the PRC in order to transform the Canadian nation into a bastion of Chinese influence in North America.

For example, Canada's Foreign Interference Commission has itself confirmed that the People's Republic of China has consistently interfered in electoral processes at various levels of government, in an attempt to manipulate political discourse and ensure the election of Liberal politicians that are beholden to the PRC. Furthermore, the internationally renowned Jamestown Foundation has "identifie[d] Canada as an extreme outlier for Beijing-linked 'united front' organizations" and recently warned that Canada is now home to "nearly five times the per-capita density of [UFWD organizations as] the United States."

In addition, Canada's Liberal government has long remained intimately intertwined with the PRC. In fact, during his own time in Office as Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau's personal relationship with the CCP and status as the PRC's "favoured leader" was repeatedly exposed. Moreover, Canada's current Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has explicitly insulted and imploded Canada's historic relationship with the United States of America, in order to broker a "secret police agreement" and "new strategic partnership" between the PRC and Canada.

Unfortunately, it is evident that South Korea is not the only nation that has recently been betrayed by its political class and colonized by the CCP.

Rather, it is clear that various democratic nations and political 'leaders' have been successfully corrupted by the PRC and transformed into festering nodes of Chinese influence and communist politics.

More importantly, the PRC's ability to co-opt politicians and commandeer elections throughout the international political system has forced countless beleaguered societies to confront the grim reality that all democracy is contingent upon the modern era's most fraught and tattered thread: personal integrity.