Think More: Thursday, June 4, 2026
A CIA officer’s $40 million in gold, the Tenderloin’s Honduran cartels, Maine’s Democratic mess, Trump’s AI order, and the religious-liberty fight.
Lead · Follow the Money
A CIA Officer, $40 Million in Gold, and a Faked Career
David Rush, a former senior CIA officer, was arrested after FBI agents seized more than 300 gold bars worth over $40 million, plus $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches, from his Virginia home. Prosecutors say he reached a top-secret post, and a Pentagon liaison role on a nuclear submarine program, by faking a Navy pilot record and degrees he never earned.
Follow the Money
A GOP Congress Lets Planned Parenthood’s Funding Flow
A Republican-led Congress is poised to let Medicaid dollars keep flowing to Planned Parenthood after Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski joined Democrats to defeat Sen. Josh Hawley’s amendment to defund the group. The Federalist notes Planned Parenthood drew $832 million in taxpayer funds in fiscal 2024-2025.
New Jersey Spends $8.2 Million to Defend Illegal Immigrants
A Campus Reform review of New Jersey’s 2025-2026 budget found the state appropriated up to $8.2 million to help illegal immigrants fight deportation, channeled in part through university law clinics at Rutgers and Seton Hall. The money funds removal defense even as citizens wait for legal aid.
Where the Money Went, by the Figures
$40M
Gold seized from a CIA officer
$832M
Planned Parenthood taxpayer funds
$8.2M
NJ to defend illegal immigrants
The Left’s Candidates
The Defund Champion Who Could Be Mayor of Washington
Janeese Lewis George rode a “Defund the Police” platform and DSA backing onto the D.C. Council in 2020. Now, as the socialists’ standard-bearer and a politician who calls policing rooted in white supremacy, she could become mayor of the nation’s capital.
Nobody Knows What “Working Class” Even Means Anymore
Allison Schrager | Bloomberg Opinion
Allison Schrager dismantles the central conceit of Graham Platner’s Maine Senate campaign. By his own definition, working class means anyone who earns wages, so the oyster farmer does not qualify, since most of his income comes from a veterans disability benefit. The term, she argues, has lost coherent meaning.
The Democratic Mess in Maine
Byron York | Washington Examiner
Byron York surveys the wreckage of Graham Platner’s campaign against Sen. Susan Collins: a Nazi-inspired tattoo, old racist and sexist Reddit posts, and now sexual texts to at least six women. If none of the earlier revelations ended it, York asks, why would this one?
The Border and the Blue City
Honduran Drug Gangs Rule the Streets of San Francisco
Christopher Rufo, Ryan Thorpe & Jonathan Choe | City Journal
Christopher Rufo, Ryan Thorpe, and Jonathan Choe spent three days and nights in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, where Honduran gangs known as the Hondos run an open-air fentanyl market supplied by Mexican cartels. Even former mayor London Breed once admitted that many of the city’s dealers were Honduran.
The Anti-ICE Protest Industry Comes to Newark
Victor Davis Hanson | The Daily Signal
Victor Davis Hanson watches the anti-ICE encampment outside Newark’s Delaney Hall detention center and finds it staged: elaborate tents, catered food, and supplies that no spontaneous protest enjoys. The demonstrations, he argues, run on manufactured outrage and untruths.
Campus and Conscience
At UT Austin, a DEI Ban That “Doesn’t Do Anything”
Leona Salinas | The College Fix
An undercover video caught a University of Texas gender studies employee admitting the state’s DEI ban “doesn’t do anything.” UT Austin insists it has fully implemented the law. The College Fix reports the footage raises fresh questions about whether Texas schools are quietly evading it.
How Democrats Turned on Religious Freedom
Thomas Farr traces how the Democratic Party moved from Bill Clinton’s bipartisan Religious Freedom Restoration Act to treating religious liberty as a cover for bigotry. He marks the turn through Obama and Biden, who elevated abortion and LGBTQ claims while casting the first freedom as an obstacle.
The Washington Ledger
Trump’s Executive Order Stakes Out the AI Frontier
President Trump signed an executive order, Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security, directing agencies to harden federal systems with AI defenses and to set up a voluntary window for government review of frontier models before their release. It is his most detailed AI action since rescinding Biden’s safety order.
Ron Johnson Convenes a Hearing on Vaccine Safety
Sen. Ron Johnson brought doctors to Capitol Hill for a hearing on possible links between Covid-19 vaccines and cancer, citing a figure of more than 39,000 deaths worldwide associated with the shots. The claims remain contested, but Johnson is pressing for federal scrutiny.
