RESOLVE

Big, beautiful immigration

By Steve Woodward

You need not be a golf aficionado to appreciate J.J. Spaun’s path to victory in the 125^th U.S. Open on June 15, 2025, Father’s Day.

He made four birdies down the stretch on a brutally unforgiving Oakmont Country Club course and secured his first major championship by rolling a 64-foot putt across a soggy 18^th green into the heart of the cup.

Spaun, 34, has toiled, largely in obscurity, on pro golf tours for more than a decade. His is a familiar story across the generations: an average couple finds themselves raising a child who catches “the bug” and never looks back.

In the Spaun family, J.J. is a fourth generation American with Filipino and Mexican roots. None of the adults in Spaun’s life asked for anything other than opportunities. And they embraced them to build a life near Los Angeles. His mother, Dollie, worked as an office manager. His father, John, was a hospital administrator. Both are recreational golfers. (According to Golf Week magazine, while pregnant with J.J., Dollie continued playing golf through the eighth month).

While this likely will be Spaun’s breakthrough season – he was co-leader of The Players Championship in May before losing to Rory McIlroy in a playoff – he has demonstrated that he is a closer. He won a tournament on the Korne Ferry Tour (golf’s professional minor league) and also scored a win on the PGA Canada Tour. Spaun has recorded 43 top ten finishes (and amassed more than $22 million in career earnings).

Spaun also is a college graduate. He was a four-year member of the golf team at San Diego State University, where he graduated in 2012.

Away from the rigors of pro golf Spaun cherishes fatherhood. He and his wife, Melody, were married in 2019 and are raising two daughters (photo nearby).

One of Spaun’s great grandfathers immigrated (legally) from the Philippines to California, where Spaun’s grandfather was born – a story repeated on countless occasions throughout America’s history. People arrive on our shores from every corner of the world, not to pursue fame and fortune, but to pursue a better life on a foundation of economic stability, accessible healthcare options and educational opportunities.

Occasionally one of these families hits the jackpot. A son becomes a millionaire pro golfer. A daughter finds stardom on the stage or screen. A grandchild launches a small business that becomes an empire.

J.J. Spaun was only one of the weekend’s big stories tied to Los Angeles. It is a distinctly American story. And it is a story in stark contrast to the frenzied, unhinged violence that is decimating the streets of downtown Los Angeles (and other cities).

The media report that L.A. rioters are protesting President Trump’s “immigration crackdown”, as if to infer that a coordinated effort to detain and deport migrants is targeting people like J.J. Spaun’s great grandfather.

To the contrary, millions of undocumented, unprocessed criminals who surged across the U.S.-Mexico border after Joe Biden’s regime seized power by leveraging China’s Covid-19 bioweapon did not enter our homeland to track down the best golf instructors. They’re not being bussed and flown into communities because there are plenty of empty seats in classrooms and beds in emergency rooms. They are not taking online civics courses to begin their journey toward legal American citizenship.

Many of the aliens were criminals in their countries of origin. They are not here to turn the page and leverage second chances. They are here to commit more crimes. Consider a partial roster of illegal migrants detained by a single June 2025 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Los Angeles:

Cuong Chanh Phan, 49, Vietnam (Criminal history: Second-degree murder)

Rolando Veneracion-Enriquez, 55, Philippines. (Criminal history: Burglary in Ontario, Calif.; sexual penetration with a foreign object with force and assault with intent to commit rape in Pomona, Calif., sentenced to 37 years in prison)

Armando Ordaz, 44, Mexico. (Criminal history: Sexual battery in Los Angeles; receiving known or stolen property in Norwalk, Calif.; petty theft in Los Angeles)

Victor Mendoza-Aguilar (photo nearby), 32, Mexico. (Criminal history: Possessing unlawful paraphernalia in Pasadena, Calif.: possessing controlled substances in Pasadena; assault with a deadly weapon: not firearm in Pasadena; obstructing a public officer in Pasadena)

Jordan Mauricio Meza-Esquibel, 32, Honduras. (Criminal history: Distribution of heroin and cocaine; domestic violence)

It strains every thread of logic we can muster to comprehend how anyone opposes detainment and deportation of thugs such as these. And yet the riots rage on in Los Angeles.

We began with a sports reference. Here is another. Los Angeles is scheduled to host eight soccer matches during the 2026 World Cup next summer. Los Angeles is the host city of the 2028 Olympic Games. At what point should those designations be reconsidered?

Trump did it

The Left has furiously managed the decline of our nation, domestically and globally, for the better part of 15 years. The consequences are coming to the fore. In order to distract from the carnage now so visible in the wake of three Obama terms in power, Trump and the Make America Great Again majority must be falsely and persistently accused.

By Steve Woodward

Everything is Donald Trump’s fault. Everything deemed unpleasant, unexpected, uncomfortable and unbearable. Everything.

It’s a demonstrable falsehood, of course. But it is perpetuated by a surging, media-fueled blame culture. It is the Left’s last best hope.

Covid-19. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. January 6. October 7. These are among the large-scale events for which President Trump is to blame. (He was not even in office in some cases).

But there are more. Americans are cancelling summer travel because of Trump’s tariffs, reports The Wall Street Journal (the intent of which are purposely distorted by coordinated media talking points). A high death toll after recent Kentucky tornados? That’s on Trump, squeals The Washington Post. Even pop culture is in decline, concludes The Atlantic magazine. It interviewed art critic Dean Kissick, who scolds that we’re living in “the long 2017”, which an Atlantic writer describes as “a period in which anxieties related to Donald Trump and Brexit (Brexit?) have smothered culture with moralism, navel gazing, and conformity.” (Why is it that “critics” always try to get away with making statements devoid of substance or meaning? Morals are evil?)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is Trump’s “modern day Gestapo,” says Minnesota Marxist and Gov. Tim Walz, thus Trump and Trump alone must be blamed if even one potentially lethal illegal alien is temporarily jailed with a hoard of really lethal guys after their deportation to El Salvador. The “Maryland man”, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, became collateral damage in America’s long overdue war on mass illegal immigration, a war fought on two fronts — at the U.S.-Mexico border and through active arrests and deportations. Collateral damage is the price of war.

In the Left’s war on American sovereignty under the Obama/Biden regime of 2021-24, we witnessed repeated collateral damage — raped and murdered innocent citizens such as Laken Riley, Rachel Morin and Kaitlyn Weaver. Weaver was killed in July 2024, the victim of a high-speed auto collision. The driver of the speeding car was an illegal immigrant minor, 15, who just last week was sentenced to probation (emphasis added) and community service by a Trump hating Colorado judge.

No one on the Left, not presidents, not governors, not judges, is to blame in the aftermath of these one-off tragedies. The blame culture is real enough, and the media corrupt and pervasive enough, that any assignment of blame directed at Trump/MAGA can be justified, even legitimized.

They’ll probably get around to pinning Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis on Trump’s mean “Sleepy Joe” comments.

As obviously absurd as that would be, look more closely at the “doomed summer travel narrative”.

A couple told the Journal they are cancelling a bucket-list trip to France owed to Trump’s tariff re-balancing strategy. (The Left calls it a trade war, which is accurate if the context is that war is what other countries have waged against the United States for decades).

“We’ve been talking about Paris as long as we’ve been together, which is 54 years,” said Don Pratt, 75.

The Journal reports, “The couple sketched out a two-week itinerary that included England and Scotland, where his ancestors lived centuries ago. ‘Then the tariffs sort of got everybody around the world mad at us’,” Pratt said. “He worried about a chilly greeting if he showed up hoping to meet long-lost relatives. So instead, they recently booked a trip to take their adult son and his family to Walt Disney World … ”

This is a truly sorry side effect of Trump Derangement Syndrome. These mentally warped seniors traded reunions with relatives, memories of fabulous landmarks, and world-class cheese and wine for woke Disney drag queens and long lines of poorly dressed Americans swilling 32-ounce sodas. Are they devoid of any hint of national pride that once was presumed to be wired into the DNA of American citizens? Apparently, yes. They’re fine with high tariffs imposed by the French on products inbound from the U.S. and never contemplate why, for example, you’ll rarely see a Chevrolet Suburban navigating Parisian thoroughfare, or an award-winning Napa Cabernet Sauvignon on a Lyon wine list. The trip to visit the relatives would have been worth it just to explain how fair trade actually works.

Meanwhile, it’s tornado and hurricane season, and while many Americans delight at tracking and “modeling” potentially deadly systems and where they might be headed, media fear mongers are salivating, anxious to fire up the climate change narrative machine. Naturally, Trump’s fingerprints will be everywhere in the aftermath of high winds and surging water. (In stark contrast, the Left’s media slaves never raised similar concerns about Biden or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper when thousands of the state’s citizens were abandoned after Hurricane Helene last September, and the devastation continues to roll off the back of Josh Stein, North Carolina’s latest Democrat governor.)

Severe tornadoes hammered parts of Kentucky on May 16, 2025. The Washington Post breathlessly reported that “Jackson, Kentucky, is four meteorologists short of what agency officials have deemed ideal staffing” and blamed that on sweeping, (overdue) audits of federal agency staffing and payrolls. Kentucky’s Lexington Herald Leader ran with an ominous headline — “Did staffing cuts at weather service affect Kentucky’s tornado response?” — but its reporter couldn’t find anyone on the scene who answered in the affirmative.

“As planned in advance, neighboring offices provided staffing support to the office in Jackson,” a spokesperson said. Read that closely. Resources, in this case human resources, were coordinated as needed under extreme circumstances. Is that not what taxpayers should expect from federally funded agencies and their field offices?

During his recent unhinged rants while “performing” in the United Kingdom, cranky, old Bruce Springsteen took blaming Trump to new depths, in once case decrying “residents” being taken “off American streets” and sent to “foreign detention centers”. These of course are dangerous illegals being returned to their countries of origin. In other words, definitely not “born in the USA”.

Springsteen finally calmed down and attempted poignancy, quoting writer James Baldwin, who observed, “In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.”

Is there enough? Where is the humanity in a nation overrun by illegal immigrants, mostly gang trained males, killing our citizens? Where is the humanity in gutting American manufacturing jobs in favor of cheap foreign labor? (Springsteen’s contemporary Billy Joel lyricized about “closing all the factories down [in Allentown]”, remember?) And where is the humanity in covering up Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis until even compliant media no longer could sustain the lie that he was mentally competent as a sitting President?

Dunces 2.0

By Steve Woodward

Amid my eternal quest to understand the deranged Left in 2025, a long-forgotten book title jarred my feeble brain as I inhaled the longleaf pine-infused air on a Spring evening.

“The Confederacy of Dunces”, published in 1980, was written in the late 1960s by an iconoclast named John Kennedy O’Toole.

“The novel offended the progressive sensibilities of publishers based in New York,” wrote historian Auguste Meyrat in 2024. “It took a fellow writer from Louisiana, Walker Percy, to agree to read the manuscript and advocate for the book’s publication nearly a decade after Toole committed suicide.”

And what happened next? The book was declared to be a literary classic. And what did it, and central character Ignatius C. Reilly, reveal that resonates today?

“There’s a whole generation of Ignatius’s today: vain, overeducated young adults who can’t hold a job, live healthily, own any property, or maintain a friendship or romantic partnership, and yet often feel proud of themselves,” writes Meyrat. “Like Ignatius, they feel qualified to deliver their opinion on a whole range of issues they have no clue about. Without a doubt, if Ignatius existed today, he would likely be an online influencer hosting a popular YouTube channel or podcast.”

Ignatius is the poster boy for today’s Democrats, in other words. Their narratives, compliantly advanced by an ever more corrupt media, never have been more absurd, or delusional. We need to call them out for what they are. Dunces. Consider:

Tariffs are imploding the economy to permit a few Trump cronies to short the stock markets and make billions. (The tariffs are, in fact, causing a flurry of requests for Oval Office visits and phone calls by freaked-out foreign leaders knowing the gig is up).

The economy is teetering (but never mind the easing of inflation as reflected by the March consumer price index).

The deportation of illegal immigrants tied to murderous gangs is just a pretext in a grand scheme to mass deport American citizens. (If true, start with Hunter Biden).

The Department of Government Efficiency ultimately plans to dismantle Social Security and Medicare to deprive American citizens of their “God-given” entitlements. (False, but at least DOGE will end Social Security payments to the deceased).

Luigi Mangione, who shot a UnitedHealthcare CEO in cold blood, is a brave martyr and, damn, he’s handsome, too. (Who knew the steely eyes of a crazed killer are a turn-on?)

Karmelo Anthony had to carry a knife to a Texas high school track competition and stab a fellow teenager in the chest because, like every black teen amid confrontation, an unarmed white kid is intent on killing him. (Media spin: the dead kid is not the victim).

Every business venture that became wildly successful under Elon Musk, especially electric vehicle production and space travel, is a threat to democracy and reminiscent of pre-World War II Germany. (And Trump is Hitler because if you repeat it often enough …)

Trump’s mass deportations are cruel and astonishing Executive branch overreach. And unprecedented. (Except Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden deported millions of illegal immigrants without inspiring one court injunction or Supreme Court intervention).

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a “Maryland man” who was deported to an El Salvadoran prison by a heartless Department of Homeland Security. He should be returned immediately to his wife and three children because he committed no crimes on U.S. soil.

(Entering the U.S. illegally 14 years ago was/is a crime. Maintaining ties to the notorious MS-13 gang – evidenced by Garcia’s identifying tattoos — poses a threat to Marylanders. And only a feckless Federal Bureau of Investigation spared Garcia from arrest and charges after he was pulled over for speeding in Tennessee in December 2022 with eight passengers in tow from Texas. They presented IDs showing the same home address but traveled without a single piece of luggage. Say it with me: human trafficking).

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) flew to El Salvador to score a photo op with Garcia (photo nearby), knowing there was no possibility he would be freed. But it turns out Van Hollen is not the most deranged among the apologists for thuggish gang members living in our homeland illegally.

A New Mexico magistrate judge was arrested and has been banned from the bench for life after homeland security officers raided his Las Cruces home, responding to a tip about who was living in the judge’s guest house. In March, officers arrested Venezuelan illegal immigrant Christhian Lopez-Ortega, 23, in the home of Judge Jose Cano, a Democrat. The Tren de Aragua gang member had been living with the judge’s family after his wife hired Lopez-Ortega to perform several home improvement chores.

The judge and his wife were said to be complicit in allowing their immigrant house guest to handle household firearms.

And what is the fate of the “adopted” Venezuelan? Another Democrat judge overturned his bail and suggested Lopez-Ortega be returned to the custody of his fellow judge because they, the two Dem judges, are friends. He remains detained while a hearing to decide the gang member’s fate is pending.

Did John Kennedy O’Toole contemplate dunces as extreme and pathetic as these? In 2025, who is the dunce? The illegal thug or the New Mexico judge? China’s hijacking of the U.S. economy or Trump’s overdue tariffs? Deported illegals or politicians who coddle them? The healthcare CEO assassin or the dead CEO? A knife wielding high school punk or his dead, unarmed victim?

Waiting.

Civility or ‘the streets’?

By Steve Woodward

The Pilot is a Moore County newspaper that caters to northern Yankee and California transplants, tormented devotees of the radical Left who love our moderate central North Carolina weather and relatively affordable real estate. Pilot management even allows some of these refugees to submit opinion pieces for publication without regard for the inherent risk of alienating the churchgoing, conservative, America First Republicans who comprise the county’s majority. Presumably, the calculation is that they long ago dropped their subscriptions or never subscribed in the first place.

When the nation’s voters handed Donald J. Trump a mandate last November and elected him to be the nation’s 47th President, many local guest columnists and all of the permanent scribes descended into a period of extended mourning, then denial and, ultimately, rage. Kamala Harris was going to be the ideal puppet president to finalize the American decline that Barack Obama initiated and that Joe Biden dutifully, if unknowingly, advanced. Until voters rejected that plan.

Fortunately, one Pilot contributor rises above the spittle spewing, teeth gnashing, end-of-democracy hysteria when assessing the ascendance of MAGA 2.0. Charles Luckey (photo nearby) is a gifted writer who, despite his thinly veiled dislike of Trump and his resurgence, does not engage in the usual comparisons of Trump to Adolf Hitler, or repeat the tired “convicted felon” refrain, or challenge Trump’s allegiance to country.

In the brief thumbnail bio on Luckey at the conclusion of his writings, he is described as a “seasoned soldier”. That’s an understatement. I looked him up. Luckey retired from the U.S. Army in 2020 having given a combined 43 years of service. His titles included Chief of Security Operations in Iraq, Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Reserve. At the time of his retirement Luckey was the Army’s oldest Green Beret.

This context is important toward understanding Luckey’s view of our nation’s state of affairs in 2025. In his March 22, 2025, column, he implores those we elect to “seek nonpartisan pathways back to statesmanship”. He observes that idealogical combatants are “doubling down on gracelessness.”

As is to be expected, the General can’t stomach Trump’s approach to ending the carnage in Ukraine (through diplomatic channels leading to Vladimir Putin). But he readily acknowledges that there is merit in Trump’s full scale assault on government bloat and waste. And on the topic of politicians behaving badly Luckey begins his column by scolding Rep. Al Green (D-TX) for his outburst amid Trump’s speech to Congress, and later admonished Biden’s pardons of family members for potentially inviting “ever more egregious abuses of official power”.

We can’t help but observe a stark contrast: Luckey’s measured barbs and cautionary notes about the decline of civility, on one hand, while, on the other, warnings delivered repeatedly by a roster of regional and national anti-MAGA flamethrowers who wonder why there is not more outrage, more resistance and, yes, more vandalized Teslas.

While Luckey urges Americans to arrive, ultimately, at a place of forgiveness, the reality all around us suggests a trend in the opposite direction. Underlying the mounting Trump/Russia/tariffs/DOGE hysteria is the still vivid memory of Trump’s brush with death last July and that rifle barrel protruding from a hedge on his West Palm Beach golf course soon thereafter. There has yet to be a satisfactory explanation as to how Trump was vulnerable to assassination and who, or what, was behind it.

And let us not delude ourselves into a belief that those threats are in the past. Even as Tesla vehicles, charging stations and dealerships are targeted around the country — with real bullets and real explosives — we see Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz publicly delighting in the decline of Tesla’s stock price and suggesting he will physically overpower conservatives if given the opportunity. (The most damaging vice presidential running mate to a ticket’s chances since Thomas Eagleton in 1972 was far less eloquent, of course. He said he would “kick asses”.)

Largely overlooked by corporate media have been a series of so-called swatting incidents in which police are called to a home on a false pretense that someone inside is about to commit murderous acts. The targets have been conservative bloggers and social media influencers, or their family members. (A “successful” swat in the minds of the deranged is a cop killed by a terrified homeowner who overreacts).

A staff member with Alex Jones’ InfoWars pro-American values digital media production company was shot and killed in Austin, Texas, earlier this month as he approached individuals attempting to burglarize his vehicle. It was ignored by most media outlets.

In February, the U.S. House minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), warned that Democrats are motivated to fight the MAGA agenda “in the courts” and “in the streets”. In recent days, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX; photo nearby) characterized fellow Texan, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), as an opponent who must be “knocked over the head … you go clean off on him.” This was after Crockett said she longed for a birthday present in the form of Elon Musk being “taken down”.

What is the end game? Jonathan Last, editor of The Bulwark, a Trump loathing, far Left digital media platform, has the answer. He is urging a surge of resistance to Trump that will end with conflict. He does not mince words:

“This movement should have millions of highly activated people attached to it by the end of 2025 … The goal should be a day when two million people show up in either New York or Washington and demonstrate that there is an unprecedented mass movement opposing the authoritarians … You dare Trump to do what he’s always wanted: To take the mask all the way off and use force against American citizens. … If you put two million people in the streets Trump will look weak if he doesn’t respond, but will look like a tyrant if he does.”

With due respect to Gen. Luckey, before we can restore civility, we just might need to defend the freedoms for which you fought, sir. Let Mr. Last assemble his two million-strong resistance brigade. I’m guessing a few million patriots will step into the breach so Trump doesn’t have to. He’s already taken a bullet.

Bye bye, DEI

By Steve Woodward

When the end is near, when the gig is up, and when the blinding light of truth pierces the darkest recesses, entrenched keepers of the status quo are reduced to tantrums and fear mongering.

Recall combative House Democrats, including unhinged Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), recently showing up at the Department of Education, demanding entry and a meeting with the acting secretary, and becoming agitated when access was flatly denied.

Why did Waters and fellow Democrats march over to the Department of Education? It seems that the Left is really quite concerned about Donald Trump’s pledge to weaken their grip on the Educational Industrial Complex.

At the core of their hysteria is the imminent demise of the ever pervasive phenomenon known as “diversity, equity and inclusion”. While American corporations have begun a rapid phase-out of DEI in their hiring and advertising — acknowledging that promoting unqualified people up the ladder and alienating customers eventually impacts the bottom line (did someone say Bud Light?) — academic institutions in some cases have doubled down on devotion to DEI infiltration.

But then along came the ascendance of Donald Trump and a tsunami of common sense executive orders during the opening hours of his second term as president. He first ordered DEI (and thinly veiled DEI programs with benign sounding names) abolished within all federal agencies, then turned his attention to federally funded institutions, including colleges and universities.

Other than its illegality under the Constitution, DEI is a vestige of affirmative action which has been nullified as a college admissions standard by a Supreme Court decision. A more accurate interpretation of the DEI acronym is: “Destroying Educational Integrity”.

Trump’s executive order laid bare why DEI must be DOA on college campuses: “Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity … undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement … (and promote a) pernicious identity-based spoils system.”

Even before the DEI death knell began to toll, defenders were complaining that “political influences” were becoming too burdensome for college faculty members to bear. A study referenced in a late 2024 article published by the academic journal Nature blamed crackdowns on DEI doctrine as the cause of declining “morale” within faculty lounges at Southern universities. Those darn conservative politicians who think federally funded schools should prioritize academic rigor are, instead, now threats to “academic freedom”.

Moore County’s local and heavily biased newspaper, The Pilot, ever the reliable mouthpiece for Leftist wrist wringing, recently published a letter submitted by a reader who laments that too many professors are being run out of southern schools or quitting academia altogether. The author fears “brain drain”. Yet, it’s unclear if an already damaged organ can be drained.

If so-called political interference is such a deterring force on southern campuses, what explains openly anti-Israel voices among faculty at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack in Israeli soil? Less than a month after the attack killed 1,200 Israelis and others, the Duke Academics and Staff for Justice in Palestine (DASJP) was quickly formed and had launched a web site.

All of the manufactured hysteria about the assault on DEI is merely posturing. What the academic elites really worry about is Trump making good on threats to shut down federal funding spigots and the many grants that coast along on autopilot.

An author who was among the first to expose entrenched woke agendas on college campuses, Christopher Rufo, is pulling for massive reform advanced by Trump’s edicts and under the leadership of his nominee for secretary of the Department of Education, Linda McMahon (whose first act would be to terminate her own department). But Rufo acknowledges it will not be easy to derail $50 billion in federal grants that universities receive annually.

“The Trump administration must renegotiate the deal between the citizens and the universities,” Rufo writes in a February 8, 2025, post at Substack.com (and accessible on X, where he has 782,000 followers), “conditioning federal funding on three popular demands: first, that the schools contribute to solving the student-debt crisis; second, that they adhere to the standard of colorblind equality, under both federal civil rights law and the Constitution; and third, that they pursue knowledge rather than ideological activism.”

The plot became a bit thicker when the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a letter on Valentine’s Day establishing a 14-day compliance deadline and issuing a clear reminder that federally funded institutions must adhere to civil rights laws.

“Under any banner (including DEI),” the letter cautions, “discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal.”

Has it come to this? The radical Left, always and relentlessly accusing its ideological foes of systemic racism at every turn, facing a deadline to denounce systemic racism?

What a time to be alive.