President Donald Trump has signaled that if Iran’s clerical leadership refuses to abandon its nuclear and advanced missile ambitions, force remains on the table. The rhetoric has hardened. The deadlines are sharper. The warnings became more public.

Continues the Secretary: “Gratitude ultimately is a choice … We can change our attitude on a dime if we just say, ‘okay, instead of being fearful, instead of being anxious, instead of being worried, I’m going to be grateful.’ And it’s a much better use of your time.”

In the 1980s, I represented fishermen on the Hudson River. Polluters had captured regulatory agencies and externalized their costs onto the public. I later saw the same dynamic in pharmaceuticals and processed food. My mission at HHS is to end corporate capture.

Leadership is not merely dominating the news cycle. It is calming the nation. The country does not need another war speech. It needs a restoration speech. If Trump chooses that path, he could do more than win the next election cycle. He could help heal a divided republic.

He did not merely keep hope alive. He forced America to confront what hope demands: pressure, participation, persistence and the willingness to wrestle with our own imperfections while striving for something greater.

A nation that shrugs at repeated incursions invites more. America must respond with clarity, enforcement and consequences before normalization becomes negligence, and before biological or technological capabilities are misused in ways that could cost American lives.

Too often, the true trailblazers who advance history with moral clarity and quiet diplomacy are absent from history books and documentaries. Yet, in time, the wind of truth finds its way, giving credit long after they are gone.

At its core, the census debate forces the country to confront a question it has long avoided: Should political representation be grounded primarily in citizenship and voters, or in total population and residency? Until that question is resolved, the census will remain a proxy battlefield for immigration, border security and the future distribution of power in America.

Trump has not clearly articulated a limiting principle that defines where American intervention ends and restraint begins. Senior administration officials have argued that the United States must act unilaterally when international institutions fail or obstruct American interests.

The documentary does not need to persuade. It only needs to reveal. And in doing so, it reminds us of something unfashionable but essential: that dignity does not require permission, that loyalty is not shameful and that a woman’s strength need not be loud to be real.

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension officers stand on the scene where Alex Pretti was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Self-reliance is not an abstraction. It is practiced daily, deliberately and with discipline. Every morning, I awaken early and run six miles — not because the world demands it, but because mastery of the body strengthens mastery of the mind.

Children under the age of 17 should not be on social media. Not because technology is evil, but because childhood is fragile and social media is not built for moral development.

Difference does not imply superiority or inferiority. It simply acknowledges reality. Men and women are different, and those differences are precisely why sex-segregated sports exist.

Good does not need evil to define itself. Truth does not need lies to validate it. But corruption cannot survive without something good to exploit. The responsibility of our time is to stop feeding it with silence and complacency and to restore moral clarity as the foundation of leadership worthy of public trust.

The progressive movement, however, must confront its own complicity. A philosophy that treats enforcement itself as oppression, that excuses disorder as activism and that relies on media distortion to advance its aims is not reformist — it is corrosive. A society cannot function when laws are optional, authority is demonized and chaos is reframed as conscience.