Think More: Friday, May 8, 2026
Kremer on the American Creed at 250, Bing West on the debt as national security, the SPLC blacklisted by its own rule, and six more stories worth reading.
The American Creed at 250
Mark Kremer • The American Mind
Kremer of Hillsdale College defends the Declaration of Independence (1776) against the 1619 revisionists and the multiculturalists who treat rights as narratives of power. Drawing on Lincoln’s reply to Roger Taney and Stephen Douglas, on Tocqueville’s warning about China, and on Jefferson’s last letter to Roger Weightman, he argues American freedom will die not with a bang but with a whimper, surrendered to an ever-growing state.
Bing West Reads the Debt Clock
Bing West • Hoover Institution
The federal debt stands at $38 trillion, with 161 million Americans drawing benefits from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act of 2010, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. West predicts a bond selloff equivalent to the 1929 crash within the decade, when debt service reaches twenty-five percent of all federal revenues. The historical referent is the late Roman senate shaving silver from the coins of the realm.
The WPATH Files Set Up a Generational Malpractice Case
Internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, released in March 2024 by Environmental Progress, show clinicians authorizing hormonal interventions for patients with schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, and homelessness. Subsequent state litigation revealed that WPATH leadership had attempted to suppress Johns Hopkins University reviews contradicting its pro-medicalization line. Moran calls it malpractice on a generational scale.
The SPLC Is Blacklisted by Its Own Rule
William A. Jacobson • Legal Insurrection
The Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on financial-crime charges in late April. Within days, Fidelity Charitable and Vanguard Charitable suspended pass-through donations to the organization, citing the federal investigation. Since 2023, the SPLC had pressured those same fund sponsors to debank groups on its politicized “Hate Watch” list, which conflated Klan chapters with Alliance Defending Freedom and Moms for Liberty.
Yale Narrows Its Mission and Ducks Its Own Role
Helen Raleigh • The Federalist
Yale’s new mission statement, adopted after the April 2026 report of its Committee on Trust in Higher Education, drops “improving the world” for a single sentence on knowledge, research, and teaching. Days later, the Yale Political Union hosted streamer Hasan Piker, who has called for the streets to soak in capitalist blood, for a debate on ending the American empire. The 2025–26 Yale sticker price reached $94,425.
Hanson on the Left’s High-Rise Creed and Lakefront Exemption
Victor Davis Hanson • Daily Signal
Four million Reagan, Deukmejian, Wilson, and Schwarzenegger Republicans have left California in fifteen years, leaving a 13.3 percent top income tax, the continent’s highest gas and electricity costs, and gubernatorial candidates proposing new excise taxes on electric vehicles. Hanson notes that Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and the late Dianne Feinstein each maintained multiple homes, several of them on lakes.
MacArthur Park, Thirty Seconds After the Police Leave
Chris Bray • Tell Me How This Ends
Bray walked through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles minutes after a federal-local raid involving Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) armored vehicles and the Los Angeles Police Department. Within thirty seconds of the last patrol car clearing the curb, dealers returned and pipes came back out. The fences the city installed in January 2025 to limit pedestrian access from Alvarado Boulevard now show ragged openings every twenty feet.
ShinyHunters, Canvas, and the Higher-Education Stack
Michael Haak • The College Fix
The extortion group ShinyHunters brought down Instructure’s Canvas learning-management platform on Thursday with a ransom demand keyed to a May 12 deadline. The outage struck during finals at Liberty University, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Duke, UCLA, Northwestern, and the University of Pennsylvania. Roughly nine thousand schools depend on the single platform for grades, course materials, and the actual administration of the academic calendar.
The UAP Files and the Case for Transparency
Kevin Killough • Just the News
The Trump Administration released a fresh tranche of materials on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena to a Department of War-hosted website at war.gov/ufo, including videos, photographs, and original source documents. Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, the most persistent congressional voice for full disclosure, signaled the rolling release on Friday.
