Think More: Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Antifa in the dock, Newsom's $340 million, the watchdog that won't watch, the SPLC indictment, China's unaudited billions, and more.
Lead · The Justice Department’s Docket
Fifteen Indicted as Federal Agents Break a Minneapolis Antifa Network
U.S. Department of Justice | justice.gov
The Justice Department on Tuesday charged 15 members of Direct Action Minnesota, a Minneapolis network it ties to antifa, with conspiracy to impede federal officers, interstate stalking, and assault. Homeland Security Investigations arrested 12; two remain at large. Prosecutors allege the group tracked ICE officers by license plate, rammed a government vehicle, and blockaded a federal building. An indictment is only an allegation.
The Justice Department’s Docket
A Superseding Indictment Accuses the SPLC of Paying a Neo-Nazi Informant
A Justice Department superseding indictment, amplified by New York Post reporting, alleges that Heidi Beirich, the SPLC’s former intelligence director, helped route roughly $1.2 million in donor money to a National Alliance figure described as her partner, with about $140,000 reaching their joint accounts. The center calls the payments informant work. Beirich is presumed innocent.
Who Watches the Watchmen
Newsom Built a Corruption Crusade. He Also Solicited $340 Million for Allies.
Steven Richards | Just the News
As Gavin Newsom casts himself as the scourge of Trump-era corruption, Just the News tallies the $340 million he has solicited in “behested payments” since 2011, including $4.4 million to his wife’s nonprofit. Several donations came from a tribe seeking his help against a rival casino. He and his wife now face a Justice Department probe.
GAO Finds the Watchdog Over Inspectors General Flouts Its Own Rules
The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency is meant to police the watchdogs; a Government Accountability Office review finds it routinely misses the law’s deadlines. None of five sampled investigations met the 150-day limit, and some ran past 1,200 days. Of 16,245 complaints since 2021, its Integrity Committee finished 15 reports, and Congress often went un-updated.
The Long March Through the Institutions
The Tour Guide Wept at the Slave Block and Skipped Dunlap’s Press
Nate Weiland | The American Mind
Nate Weiland recounts a tour of Philadelphia’s Old City where a scholar choked up at the site of colonial slave auctions, then breezed past John Dunlap’s shop, where the Declaration of Independence was printed on July 4, 1776. The problem, he argues, is emphasis: institutions of memory dwell on the founders’ sins while burying their achievements.
The Party of the People Now Studies Ordinary Americans Like a Distant Tribe
John C. Eastman | The American Mind
John C. Eastman argues that Democratic and media elites increasingly treat ordinary Americans as anthropological curiosities, citing a Washington Post columnist’s bafflement at the crowds drawn to a White House UFC event. From Dukakis atop a tank to “basket of deplorables,” he traces a governing class that mistakes the faculty lounge for the kitchen table.
A Cited Study Linked Transgender Laws to Teen Suicide Attempts. A Critique Disputes It.
A 2024 paper in Nature Human Behavior claimed that state “anti-transgender” laws raised suicide attempts among trans-identifying youth, a result promoters cast as up to a 72% rise. Leor Sapir summarizes a critique, published in the same journal, tracing the effect to roughly 100 Idaho respondents under laws that courts had blocked. The authors dispute it.
Adversaries and Architecture
Washington Spent Over $1 Billion to Counter China and Never Checked If It Worked
U.S. Government Accountability Office | gao.gov
Congress has directed at least $1.6 billion since 2020 to counter Chinese influence abroad, and the State Department and USAID funded roughly 470 projects worth about $1.2 billion. Yet auditors found the agencies never assessed whether the spending worked, and could not produce reliable data on timelines or aims for many projects.
Comer and Timmons Press State and GAO on China’s Exploitation of Research Pacts
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform | oversight.house.gov
Chairman James Comer and Subcommittee Chairman William Timmons asked the State Department’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office to assess how Washington tracks science-and-technology agreements with foreign governments, China foremost. Agencies now decide for themselves which sub-agreements to report, the committee warns, leaving the United States blind to how Beijing exploits joint research to harvest intellectual property.
Heritage: Turn the Abraham Accords Into a U.S.-Led Regional Bloc
Victoria Coates & Asher Fredman | The Heritage Foundation
Victoria Coates and Asher Fredman urge America’s Arab partners to join the Abraham Accords as a bloc, converting bilateral deals into a U.S.-aligned regional architecture of security and trade. They note Israeli-Arab commerce rose again in 2025 despite the war that followed October 7, and point to new air-defense coordination in Qatar and the India-Middle East-Europe corridor.
Country and Hearth
On Bunker Hill’s Anniversary, How Abigail Adams Faced the War at Her Door
Christopher Flannery | TomKlingenstein.com
Two hundred fifty-one years ago today, Joseph Warren fell on Bunker Hill. Christopher Flannery retells how Abigail Adams, hearing the cannon from Braintree, climbed Penn’s Hill with her seven-year-old son to watch Charlestown burn, having already melted the family’s pewter into bullets. She taught young John Quincy to recite Collins’s ode to the fallen each morning.
On Father’s Day Weekend, 73% Call Fatherhood a Man’s Most Important Role
Scott Rasmussen | Napolitan News Service
A Napolitan News Service survey released today finds 73% of voters call being a father the most important role a man can play, a figure steady for years. An overwhelming 88% say children should be raised with both a mother and a father present, and 56% see a significant disadvantage for those raised without one.
Fatherhood by the numbers: Napolitan News Service, 1,000 voters, June 15-16
73%
Fatherhood a man’s top role
88%
Kids need a mother and father
56%
Fatherlessness a disadvantage
