Oprah Winfrey’s glitzy hour-long special with Vice President Kamala Harris Thursday night was not a feature of a serious presidential campaign, but instead a celebrity-obsessed public relations program intended to win what’s become a popularity contest.

If anyone tuned in to hear a few substantive questions about why Harris has changed so many of her policy positions, it should have been obvious what to expect by Oprah’s first question.

“Can you feel the joy rising in here?” she asks after screaming Harris’ name.

“Kamala Harris!!!!!!!!!!” Oprah to Momala: “Can you feel the joy rising in here?” Harris: “I can!” Unite for America Rally with Vice President Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey. pic.twitter.com/TbKeRfOAV3

— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) September 20, 2024

The virtual rally in Michigan marked one of Harris’ few media appearances since she became the nominee. She had only previously done one joint interview with her running mate on CNN, one brief 10-minute interview on a Pennsylvania television station, and one daytime forum with journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).

On CNN, Harris barely got pushed on anything; in Pennsylvania, she barely got asked anything; and at the NABJ conference in Philadelphia, she was merely warmed up for the town hall about girl power with Winfrey. Her first question at the NABJ summit was also about how “joy” makes Harris feel all sweet, cute, and cuddly inside.

“Why is joy important to you to insert into this election?” was literally the first thing moderators

In the wake of tragic school shootings like Apalachee High School in Georgia, our nation grapples with a critical question: How do we best protect our children? 

Sadly, too often, the debate devolves quickly into partisan talking points. The Biden-Harris administration seized on this tragedy to call for more laws that would restrict Americans’ right to self-defense, but which would have done nothing to stop this shooting. In fact, at both the federal and state levels, it is already illegal for a 14-year-old to purchase and possess a firearm, but, neither those laws nor others, like the Gun-Free School Zones Act, deterred this evil.    

More recently on the debate stage, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris attempted to amend her clear anti-gun record, despite previously voicing support for confiscating guns as a candidate in 2020.

It’s crucial to set politics aside and approach this debate with facts.  

The reality is that many of our schools remain soft targets, vulnerable to those intent on causing harm. “Gun-free zone” signs offer false security, deterring only the law-abiding. We need a multifaceted strategy that hardens schools as targets while empowering responsible adults to protect themselves and those in their care.

A cornerstone of this approach should be allowing trained, willing school staff to carry concealed firearms. To be clear, this isn’t about forcing guns into unwilling hands but about giving educators a choice. Law enforcement or even trained security personnel cannot be everywhere simultaneously, and when seconds matter, even a tiny percentage of armed

How bad was the scale of fraud — and the governmental incompetence that permitted it — during Covid? Unfortunately, prosecutors and federal officials are still tallying up the damage.

The House Oversight Committee recently released a report summarizing its own findings on the proliferation of pandemic scams. While other federal analyses have focused on the effects at the federal level, the committee report showed how incompetence at the state level, where unemployment benefits actually get administered, sowed the seeds for the Covid-era grifts.

Invitation to Criminals

The House investigation examined how numerous state decisions made identity fraud and other scams a near-certainty. For instance, the report references this nugget from a federal Justice Department press release announcing that a married couple had agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud charges:

According to court documents, Tiffany [Pacheco] was hired by the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) in April 2020, shortly after her release from federal prison following a conviction for aggravated identity theft. While employed by DUA, Tiffany allegedly misused her position to submit fraudulent [unemployment] claim information on behalf of herself and her husband, Arthur, who was incarcerated in Texas until September 4, 2020, and thus ineligible for [unemployment] funds. (Emphasis mine.)

The only natural response consists of one word: Really? One can read that paragraph over and over again to try to make sense of it — a government agency hiring someone just out of prison after a federal identity fraud conviction and placing her in