FREEDOM GAINED INCH BY INCH: Family Research Council (FRC) chief Tony Perkins spent most of last week in Israel, a visit that inspired a Washington Stand meditation on underlying principle for both those Oklahomans who asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow a digital Catholic school to receive public funding and the prayers of a Jewish rabbi on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

“Religious freedom is seldom handed to the passive; it is claimed by those who exercise it even when a hostile culture says they may not. That reality came home to me this week as two very different arenas — Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and the marble halls of the U.S. Supreme Court. In both instances, they posed the same enduring question: Will people of faith fight for the liberties our Creator endowed, or will they surrender them to bureaucrats and bullies,” Perkins asked.

Read the whole column as it poses something worthy of extended contemplation by liberty-minded religious and non-religious folks alike.

TRUMP 142 – CONGRESS 5: That’s as in the Chief Executive has signed 142 Executive Orders since January 20, most of which directly advance the agenda voters overwhelmingly elected him to implement.

Meanwhile, Congress has approved and sent to Trump’s desk five, count’em, five bills. The Issues & Insights crew points to a disturbing pattern in congressional strategy planning:

“When Democrats controlled Congress at the start of Bill Clinton’s, Barack Obama’s, and Biden’s administrations, they cast votes on tax hikes, Obamacare, and Biden’s massive spending splurge – with no GOP support – knowing those votes would likely cost them their majorities in either the House or Senate. But they were smart enough to know that once you get a law on the books, it’s nearly impossible to get it off, and that they’d eventually regain control of Congress.

“So, Clinton’s tax hikes paved the way for more tax hikes. Obamacare is still the law of the land. And even Republicans are acting squeamish about Trump’s plan to simply cut domestic spending back to where it was before COVID, while wetting themselves over changes that would do the same for Medicaid.

“Every day that Republicans dawdle increases the odds that they will fail to get a good tax and spending cut bill across the finish line. Every delay causes more anxiety among businesses and consumers. Every misstep gives Democrats more time to rearm.”

FLOOR OR CEILING? Good question, especially in the context of how President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal is viewed, says OpenTheBooks CEO John Hart. As an “opening bid” in the congressional budget struggle, Trump has put down a marker in what should become a genuine negotiation about the future size and power of the federal government.

And as if to demonstrate just how serious he is about this, Hart offers this gem of a recommendation:

“My recommendation would be to reduce the number of agencies by 437 so we end up with four – the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury and Justice – just as Milton Friedman famously prescribed a quarter century ago. As a compromise, Congress could consolidate everything else into a Department of Interstate Commerce.”

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO COMMON SENSE? It sure seems to have left the Democrats behind, according to the crew at Issues & Insights.

‘SAIGON HAS FALLEN’ 50 YEAR LATER: It was half a century ago that Americans woke up to the news that the North Vietnamese Army had entered the capital of South Vietnam. Then came the haunting scene of the last U.S. helicopter on the roof of the U.S. Embassy with a long line of desperate people trying to escape.

Rod Martin reminds us today of what followed:

“What followed was not peace, but darkness. The swift collapse of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (turns out the Domino Theory was true) brought the subjugation of millions, and the opening act of a Communist bloodbath across Southeast Asia.

“At least a million were sent to the ‘re-education camps’ in Vietnam alone. Half a million were murdered. Another two million fled this brutal night by sea, on rafts wholly unsuited for the tumultuous ocean, in wild hope that an American aircraft carrier might happen upon them. Close to half a million died in the water.”

Thus was set a pattern enabled by failed U.S. leadership that is with us to the present era, as witnessed by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and what may be in the offing in Ukraine. Martin offers some bracing insights and recommendations.

DID THE LEFT’S CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY FAIL? Depends on the numbers and the strategic assumptions you make, as I demonstrate on PJ Media this morning. If success is defined as eliminating poverty, the answer clearly is no. But even more clear is that Cloward-Piven has been a roaring success if it’s real purpose was moving America toward a substantially socialist model.

WHY DIDN’T CONGRESS FIND THE MASSIVE WASTE BEFORE DOGE? The answer is the last time (2022) the Democrats controlled the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform they ignored the issue entirely, while the same committee under GOP control in 2024 repeatedly demanded from executive branch agencies  documents, memos, emails, text messages and reports on the issue that were never produced, thanks to the Biden Wall of Resistance.

For the specifics, check out my first news analysis for The Washington Stand.

DO NOT MISS DON SURBER THIS MORNING: Why? Because he takes apart the federal judiciary’s illegal immigrant deportation insanity more effectively and completely than I’ve read anywhere else.

OBAMA’S ENDANGERMENT FINDING MAY DIE SOONER THAN EXPECTED: Steven Milloy has been fighting the environmental zealots of the Left for decades, so the man knows a thing or three about how confrontations are likely to turn out. In an important Issues & Insights column, Milloy explains his optimism about killing the Endangerment Finding (EF) from the Obama EPA, used to justify every major federal environmental initiative since 2009:

“Before the Trump administration’s shock-and-awe approach to shrinking government commenced in January, my colleagues and I imagined that the EF would be reversed more less in the same way that the Obama administration had promulgated it, through the cumbersome Administrative Procedures Act. There would be a proposal seeking public comment published in the Federal Register, mandatory consideration of the likely hundreds of thousands of public comments, a final decision and then years of litigation with an uncertain outcome.

“But that has all now changed.

“On April 9, President Donald Trump issued an executive order, “Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations,” directing agencies to come up with lists of regulations that run afoul of recent Supreme Court decisions. Select illegal regulations, as determined by the Trump administration, will then be terminated without the notice-and-comment process of the Administrative Procedures Act. The rationale is simply that: (1) the regulations are illegal per the Supreme Court decision; (2) they are no longer operative; and (3) terminating them does not require any sort of due process, so to speak.”

In other words, forget about endless APA process, the EF could soon be no more, and, as Milloy further explains, those getting tax dollars under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — what Trump calls the ‘Green New Scam’ — would be well-advised not to count on  such future revenues.

ANSWERING THE MOST VIP EASTER QUESTION: It’s who got the body, where did they hide it and how come nobody ever found it? Check out my latest PJ Media column.

TRUMP’S CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IS BAAACCCKKKK!!!! It was called “Schedule F” late in Trump’s first Oval Office go-round, but the much-revised and improved version released late Friday in his second term is known as “Schedule Policy/Careers,” or SPC.

This could be the most significant step forward in managing the federal bureaucracy since President Ronald Reagan eliminated 100,000 civil service jobs and fired the striking Air Traffic Controllers. Details in my latest Substack column here.

NO, EASTER WAS NOT STOLEN FROM PAGANS: It’s Easter weekend, so odds are excellent you will hear or read that the early Christians “stole” Easter from various pagan holiday practices. Rod Martin observes:

“Every year, as Christians around the world celebrate Easter, skeptics revive a familiar claim: that Easter is just a repackaged pagan festival. They point to spring fertility rites, to goddesses like Ishtar and Eostre, and to symbols like eggs and rabbits, declaring Christianity guilty of cultural plagiarism.

“But these assertions, repeated so often they’ve become clichés, collapse under any serious historical scrutiny. The truth is simple: Easter isn’t pagan, and neither are its origins. Rather, it is the central celebration of the Christian faith, grounded in real events, rooted in Jewish (not pagan) practice.”

Martin, who was a member of PayPal’s pre-IPO startup team, then addresses each of the major variations of the “Easter was stolen from pagans” claims and demonstrates their utter improbability. It’s a bit lengthy, but well-worth the reading time for those who seek the facts.

SO MUCH FOR THE LIBERTIES OF ENGLISHMEN: Wintery Knight examines how freedom of speech, religion and family are all but extinct in the island nation formerly known as “this sceptred isle” of liberty.

NEW SONG IN TRUMP WHITE HOUSE: Sound the warning! Those evil Christian Nationalists have taken over the Trump White House and they’re singing “Amazing Grace.” They even let Franklin Graham talk about Heaven and Hell. Oh my god, the humanity!!!

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY? Is the Resurrection fact or fiction? The Colson Center’s latest video on HillFaith on this Good Friday provides three strong reasons why “yes” is the most logical conclusion, given the evidence.

IS SANITY COMPLETELY GONE FROM DEMOCRATS? Judging by events of the last couple of weeks, it’s easy to conclude that sanity has departed the Democratic Party entirely.

Even James Carville — he who confidently predicted a Kamela win over Donald Trump last November — favors absurdities like Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD.) El Salvador junket on behalf of an MS-13 terrorist.

The folks at Issues & Insights point to a new survey that graphically helps explain why things are going downhill fast for Democrats, despite the presence of a few remaining voices of something approximating political sanity:

“But this isn’t the 1990s, and there is no interest or appetite among Democrats in reviving Bill Clinton’s ‘New Democrat’ corpse. The party is now irretrievably in the grip of those toxic, party-sinking radical leftists. In the Survey USA poll, there wasn’t a single demographic group where even a plurality felt the party should be more moderate.

“More than half of young, urban, college-educated, well-paid whites – the very people who make up the “elite circles” and will never venture into “real communities” – want the party to move further to the left.”

In other words, the chickens are coming home to roost after multiple generations of children being indoctrinated in the public education system.

CHINA CENTURY THAT NEVER WAS: Over on Substack today, Rod Martin’s guest author is Yi Fuxian. Remember that name because this guy knows China like few others in the world. In “The End of the Chinese Dream,” Fuxian explains why two decades ago he described China as “A Big Country With an Empty Nest.” It’s even more relevant today.

AN UNGUARDED RESPONSE TO A CRITIC: Velkyn1 offered an usually detailed and lengthy critique of a video on the HillFaith YouTube channel. Take his critique and my response, put them together and you have an insight into the depth and detail of the present state of apologetical discussion of one critical detail from the Easter story, who were the guards Pilate commanded to keep watch on the tomb of Jesus to prevent His disciples from stealing his body and [falsely] proclaiming His resurrection?

CHINA’S WAR ISN’T JUST ON TARIFFS: Tony Perkins, Family Research Council (FRC) chief and the former Vice-Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), knows a thing or three about how and why the Chinese Communist regime in Beijing acts.

BUREAUCRATS BOUGHT OPULENT FURNISHING FOR EMPTY OFFICES: Why on Earth would federal bureaucrats think it made sense to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars on opulent new furnishings for offices that were mostly empty throughout the Covid Pandemic and in the teleworking boom of the following years? Openthebooks.com CEO John Hart provides searing testimony to the House DOGE Subcommittee.

SPEAKING OF SUBSTACK: Richard Pollock’s latest is up and asks a probing question: “Will the World let the Palestinians Vote With Their Feet?“

JESUS’ LAST WEEK AS YOU’VE NEVER HEARD. IT: It’s “Countdown Jerusalem” by EKO on Substack. Ya gotta read this one!

UNEXPECTED INSIGHT FROM UNEXPECTED SOURCE: Semafor Media’s Ben Smith Jr. looks at a National Press Club decision to reject a MAGA advocate’s membership application and offers an unexpected insight. He also appears to have muffed it on a related issue. See if you catch it. SCROLL DOWN TO “Journalism Organization’s Don’t Get it.”

DARK WEB TESLA DOXXERS: Exclusive report from the Daily Caller News Foundation points to the use of data from a 2021 data breach of ParkMobile info that included the make of vehicle being parked in particular spots and names of the owner.