Michael T. Lester

Congress just dishonored every American veteran. I served in the U.S. Marine Corps. I dedicated years of my life to this country, our way of life, and our beliefs. I lost friends. I watched wives hold their babies and choke back tears at my friends' funerals. For that sacrifice, our country recognizes service members. They can proudly say "I served" and carry the title of Veteran. Now Congress wants to grant that same recognition to service in a foreign military, for the sole benefit of that foreign country, in an ongoing military action being investigated for war crimes against civilians. That cheapens every veteran's sacrifice. It undermines the honor of military service. And it dishonors this country. Repost this. Americans need to know. Veterans need to know. The families of service members and veterans need to know. And Congress needs to know we are not ok with this.

Have you read the relevant sections of the NDAA? They don't use the word "merge." They say "joint development." When two organization, do something together, and both get equal access to the results despite funding source, or questions of use, what would you call that? The larger issue is: why won't congress even debate it? Anything voted on without allowing debate or questioning needs to be suspect.

@MichaelTLester Nothing is being merged.

T H I S M U S T N O T P A S S ! ! ! I analyze and comment on a lot of items, but on this one, I need to raise the alarm and raise it high at the top of my lungs. The worst action of Congress since the founding of the United States is giving up our independence and sovereignty by merging it with another country. A country that is a pariah on the world stage and faces charges of war crimes and genocide. Worse, doing it without even a debate by the same representatives we put in place to protect us. If this is a good idea, then debate it. Burying it into a military funding bill and denying multiple motions to debate it is underhanded and smacks of corruption. I'm referring to Section 224 of the NDAA (renumbered Section 219 in the House, Section 1217 in the Senate), the provision that merges U.S. weapons R&D and production with Israel. This comes weeks after the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency raised its counterintelligence threat designation for Israel to "critical," the highest tier in its system, over concerns about Israeli espionage against senior U.S. officials. Joint research. Co-production. Israeli technology built directly into American military systems. No treaty. No standalone vote. No debate. No autonomy. No independence. If this passes without even debate, every single congressman who votes for it should be removed from office for cause, for voting to end American independence. CALL your Senators and your Representative's offices and tell them you are 100% against this. Find your Representative at house.gov/representative… and your Senators at senate.gov/senators-conta….

Lindsey Graham's death will likely be mourned more by Israelis than Americans. He earned it. In a Sean Hannity interview he told Americans "I will be with Israel until our dying day," "I'm with Israel," and then said "I'm going back to South Carolina, I'm asking them to send their sons and daughters into the Mid East." He took over $1M from AIPAC, told them "Congress has your back," and repeatedly traveled to Israel to directly coach Netanyahu on how to persuade Trump to attack Iran. He was never a fair judge of anything involving American government either. Before Trump's first impeachment trial he told reporters his mind was made up, that he wasn't "trying to pretend to be a fair juror " and that he'd make sure it died quickly in the Senate. He impeached Clinton twenty years earlier on the opposite standard. Pick a side based on funding and emotion, and don't let facts and constituent desires change your position. That was his whole career in a nutshell. On an American national level, we are better off without his influence.

One correction on Spirit Airlines. Spirit had already gone through two bankruptcies before this war, worn down by a blocked merger and years of mismanagement. Their restructuring plan going into this year was built on jet fuel averaging $2.24 a gallon. By the time they shut down, it was over $4.50. The war didn't sink Spirit alone. It broke the plan that was supposed to save it. I want clear in that and I own it. On gas prices: that's the AAA national average. It moves by state and by week, so your pump price may not match the number in the post. The trend is the point, not the exact figure at any one moment. Everything else in the post stands on its own sourcing. The Michigan sentiment index and the Pentagon's own cost figures don't depend on Spirit.

The Iran war is changing American life. Gas is up from $2.98 to $4.50 a gallon. Household energy costs up $447 and climbing. Spirit Airlines gone. 45% of Americans skipping vacations with their family this summer. Analyst say this trend is going to continue because some effects of the war take time to be felt. Consumer confidence in the economy has cratered since the war started. The University of Michigan's sentiment index sat at 56.6 the week the war began. By May it hit 44.8, the lowest reading since the survey started in 1978. It took six years of Vietnam for a majority of Americans to call it a mistake. This war passed that level of disapproval in weeks. Our own intelligence community assessed that Iran was not a threat and was not building a nuclear weapon . We're not any safer. We're just poorer, unhappier, and with fewer choices. And it's going to get worse. Midterm elections are coming. If you want this to change, change who you send to Congress.

@Judynnc Thank you Judy. Happy 4th!

@MichaelTLester Wow, well done!! Thank you so much!! Very informative and greatly appreciated ~ ~ Happy 4th of July 🇺🇸

Happy Independence Day, America! Here are some things you may not know. Congress actually voted for independence on July 2, 1776. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that July 2 would be the date future generations celebrated, with fireworks and parades from one end of the continent to the other. He was right about the celebration, but wrong about the date. July 4 is the date printed on the document. Congress spent two days after the vote debating and editing Jefferson's draft. When they finished, they dated the final text July 4. That's the date that got printed and distributed, and that's the date that stuck. Most of the 56 signers didn't sign on July 4. They signed on August 2, once the formal copy was ready. John Hancock and Charles Thomson signed on July 4, but only in their roles as President and Secretary of Congress, on a rougher draft, not the engrossed document everyone pictures. One signer, Thomas McKean of Delaware, may not have signed until 1781, five years after the fact. The record on the exact date is genuinely disputed, McKean gave conflicting accounts later in life, but no signed copy exists with an earlier date next to his name. Britain didn't recognize American independence until the Treaty of Paris, signed September 3, 1783. Seven years after the Declaration. We spent almost a decade as a country the rest of the world, including the country we declared independence from, didn't legally recognize. Adams never forgave the country for getting the date wrong. As an old man he refused invitations to July 4 events on principle. He died July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary, within hours of Jefferson. If you've never read the DOI, you should! It's masterfully written, not that long, and some of the grievances against King George ring eerily familiar today! ----------------- The Declaration of Independence IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

SCOTUS based their birthright decision on a flawed1608 English law. In 1608, English law said a person born within the king's reach was his subject for life. Not a citizen. A subject. They were born and owed permanent allegiance whether they liked it or not. The Supreme Court just built America's citizenship rule on that case. Tuesday's ruling struck down limits on birthright citizenship, three days before the country marks 250 years since it renounced everything that 1608 ruling stood for. Here's the distinction the Court blurred. A subject has no choice. A citizen does, and so does the country that claims them. Citizenship is supposed to run both ways: the nation extends it, the person's status is legitimate, and both sides are bound by law, not by accident of geography. That only works if the starting point is lawful. A child born here to parents who are legally present is exactly who the 14th Amendment was written for. Most people agree with this. A child born here to a parent who is in the country illegally is a different question, and the Court's ruling pretends it isn't. Legal status cannot be the result of an illegal act. That's not a new idea. It's a basic legal precept that applies everywhere else in American law. You cannot launder an illegal act into a legal outcome just by adding a birth certificate to it. And before someone says "other countries do this too": about 30 do, and almost all of them are in the Americas. Nearly no country in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East grants unconditional birthright citizenship. This isn't the US defying a global norm. It's a hemisphere-specific policy the US is choosing not to examine. The Court didn't rule on the illegality question. It ruled around it, and called the difference between a subject and a citizen a technicality. It isn't a technicality. It's the whole argument. America needs Immigrants. All of us who are not native Americans come from immigrants. Immigrants enrich our culture, our creativity, and our prosperity, but we are a country of laws that citizens agree to abide by. If legal status can come from an illegal act, name one other place in American law where that's true. If you want a detailed breakdown of Thomas's dissent, @mattvanswol walks through the full 91 pages here: x.com/mattvanswol/st…

I wrote about this in 𝑾𝒆 𝑨𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑩𝒂𝒅 𝑮𝒖𝒚𝒔. Americans live algorithmically engineered information bubbles that feel like the whole picture because we never see the edges. We all live in those bubbles. The question is whether you recognize it.

Trust in news has hit 37%. But people keep watching the same outlet, reading the same feed, absorbing the same filtered version of events. A 2026 study found misinformation travels 70% faster than factual content and reaches audiences six times faster. What you're getting isn't the news, it's a calculated stream that will keep you angry, afraid, and engaged. That's their business model.

The most trusted news source in America is The Weather Channel. Not the Times. Not NBC. Not Fox. The Weather Channel. That's not a joke. That's a 2026 YouGov survey of 2,100 Americans. It makes sense. The Weather Channel can't tell you it's sunny when it's raining.

@linda23669165 The trend started in 2024, before mass deportations accelerated. Homicides dropped 15% that year. You can't deport your way to a crime drop that already happened.

@MichaelTLester Americans benefit. I don't care what their records are, if they are here illegally they need to go. I can wait for the worst of the worst. Crime is down, don't care who gets the credit or why. 18% in 2025? Wasn't Trump president then?

Trump just confirmed his ICE head to "make America safe again." Here's what's actually happening. Violent crime is at its lowest point since 1969. The FBI said so. Homicides dropped 15% in 2024. They dropped another 18% in 2025. America was getting safer before the mass deportations started. The people being swept up aren't the "worst of the worst." The government's own ICE data shows 73% of people in detention have no criminal conviction. Only 5% have a violent conviction. More than one in three people deported in 2025 had no criminal record at all. So who benefits?

The money went to no-bid contractors. The largest single contract, more than $200 million, went to a portable toilet company called Doodie Calls. Florida raided its hurricane emergency fund to pay for it. The federal government then reimbursed Florida $608 million through FEMA, the same agency that responds to disasters. At the closure press conference, DeSantis named fewer than a dozen serious criminals out of 21,000 people processed. His office did not respond when CBS asked for the full list. The former acting director of ICE, a Trump appointee, said ICE never wanted the facility in the first place, and called it "built for headlines" and "ripe for failure, mismanagement and corruption." Who exactly was this built for and why?

The facility was built for 5,000 people. It averaged 729 detainees per day. Over 350 days, 21,000 people passed through. Average stay: 16 days each. Total cost: $1.2 billion. CBS Miami did the math using ICE's own records: $3,571 per detainee per day. A night at the Ritz-Carlton Miami runs about $600.

An hour ago I posted about where the ICE money is wasted. Here's a concrete example.

This week, Florida closed Alligator Alcatraz. The tent city in the Everglades where people were held in sweltering heat with maggots in the food and fecal water on the floors. Cost to American taxpayers: $1.2 billion for one year. 71% of the people who died in ICE custody died in for-profit facilities. Crime was falling. The detainees aren't criminals. The money flows to companies that funded the campaign. What are we actually paying for?

GEO Group. CoreCivic. The two largest private prison companies in America. GEO Group recorded $254 million in profit in 2025. A 700% increase over 2024. CoreCivic was up 70%. Both companies donated millions to Trump's PACs and the Republican National Committee. Both got no-bid contracts after Trump declared a border emergency. GEO got a single no-bid, 15-year contract worth $1 billion. For one facility in New Jersey. ICE now has $29 billion a year to spend. The FBI has $8 billion. Let me get this straight. To "make America safe," we're spending more money rounding up people with no criminal record than we spend catching criminals? Then on CoreCivic's earnings call, an investor complained that ICE wasn't detaining people fast enough. "I think people thought we'd be at that 100,000 level. We're at a little over 70,000."

Pew Research Center, June 23, 2026 — pewresearch.org/global/2026/06…

83% of Americans believe the U.S. interferes in other countries' affairs. Republicans: 77%. Democrats: 89%. Pew surveyed 42,151 adults across 36 countries. Majorities in 16 of 17 nations agreed. The world sees us clearly. How do we turn awareness into accountability?