The Trump administration is taking steps to ensure that Americans aren’t being cannibalized for their organs while still alive and kicking.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decertified Network for Hope, or NFH, a federally designated “organ procurement organization,” on Wednesday following a damning independent investigation exposing allegedly “disturbing practices” associated with the organization.

‘Why did they want my organs?’

According to the decertification notice issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “No Medicare and Medicaid payments will be made with respect to organ procurement costs attributable to Network for Hope on or after November 3, 2026.”

“Americans who choose to become organ donors deserve a system that honors their gift and protects every patient,” said Kennedy. “Today’s action reflects the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting the sanctity of life. Organizations that repeatedly fail to meet federal standards and put patients at risk will be held accountable.”

Crying on the carving station

Anthony “TJ” Hoover II was admitted to Baptist Health Richmond’s emergency room on Oct. 25, 2021, suffering an overdose. Things looked bleak but were about to get much worse.

“We were told TJ had no reflexes, no responses, no brainwaves, no brain activity,” Hoover’s sister, Donna Rhorer, told WDKY-TV. “And we were told that on the 26, 27, 28, 29. … We made the decision as a family to remove him from life support because, you know, he was brain dead.”

When the process to harvest Hoover’s organs was initiated, his family members and multiple medical professionals claimed they noticed signs that he was not only alive but alert.

“His eyes started to open, and not just open, he was checking around, looking to see what was going on,” said Rhorer. “And we were told that was just reflexes, just normal instinct, and he’s not there.”

RELATED: Disembodied human brains kept ‘alive’ for drug testing by controversial American startup

Bernard Weil/Toronto Star/Getty Images

Nyckoletta Martin, a surgical preservation coordinator who was working at the time with Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates — which merged with LifeCenter Organ Donor Network in 2024 to become NFH — witnessed the moments leading up to the scheduled organ harvesting.

Martin testified to Congress late last year that Hoover regained consciousness during his cardiac catheterization, but upon waking, he “was paralyzed and sedated.” The family was never informed that Hoover had regained consciousness, alleged Martin.

The former KODA employee told WDKY that while Hoover was allegedly thrashing around, knocking the would-be harvesters’ hands out of the way, and crying, “They were trying to prep and drape him for surgery.”

“This was no ordinary movement,” Natasha Miller, an organ perfusionist with KODA at the time and witness to Hoover’s case, told CNN. “He was very aware.”

Fortunately, the doctors refused ultimately to go through with the organ procurement.

“TJ knows what happened. TJ says, ‘Why me? Why did they want my organs?’ And TJ feels guilt still about he did not die so that people could get his organs to save their lives,” said Martin. “That’s horrific to me. Nobody should ever be put in that position. That’s not what his mission is about.”

Regarding the Hoover incident, Baptist Health Richmond told NPR, “The safety of our patients is always our highest priority. We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure our patients’ wishes for organ donation are followed.”

NFH said in response to outrage over the incident:

It is very important to understand that an organ procurement organization (OPO) is not involved in patient care, and we do not declare death. OPOs only have the authority to proceed with organ recovery after a patient’s independent health care provider has declared death. At any time, if a patient’s condition improves or a death declaration does not take place, the family is informed that the donation cannot take place, and the OPO team does not proceed with organ recovery.

State and federal officials looked into the matter and found that Hoover’s seemingly horrific dealings with the Kentucky-based OPO were not exceptional.

Hundreds of horrors

Following an independent investigation into Hoover’s case and other potential issues with NFH, the Health Resources and Services Administration alleged in July 2025 “clear negligence after the previous [Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network] Board of Directors claimed to find no major concerns in their internal review.”

The HRSA examined 351 cases where organ donation was authorized but not ultimately completed. According to the HHS press release,

103 of the cases “showed concerning features, including 73 patients with neurological signs incompatible with organ donation”;at least 28 of the patients whose cases were reviewed “may not have been deceased at the time organ procurement was initiated”; and”evidence pointed to poor neurologic assessments, lack of coordination with medical teams, questionable consent practices, and misclassification of causes of death, particularly in overdose cases.”

“This is horrifying,” Kennedy stated at the time. “The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable.”

The HRSA subsequently launched an assessment of whether NFH had adequately corrected the issues identified by the agency. The CMS separately assessed whether the NFH continued to meet federal requirements, including the minimum requirements for Medicare certification.

The organization was found wanting.

“HRSA, through its oversight of the OPTN, worked closely with Network of Hope [sic] over the past year through intensive monitoring and corrective action to address serious patient safety concerns,” HRSA Administrator Tom Engels said on Wednesday. “Despite those efforts, the organization did not demonstrate the improvements necessary to meet federal standards.”

“When organizations entrusted with the care of potential organ donors fail to meet those standards, we have a responsibility to act,” added Engels.

Barry Massa, the CEO of NFH, said in a statement that the organization “strongly disagrees” with Kennedy’s decision and will launch an appeal.

“NFH is compliant with all OPTN policies and has implemented a first-of-its-kind ‘pause in procedure’ process,” continued Massa. “This pause process is now Kentucky law and NFH proudly worked hand-in-hand with legislators and regulators by providing input in the drafting both of the new law and its implementing regulations. Despite this, and despite NFH’s demonstrated dedication to improving organ and tissue donation outcomes across its service area, Secretary Kennedy has acted to decertify our OPO that serves seven million people across four states.”

Massa further suggested that the decertification will negatively impact over 3,000 people waiting for an organ transplant.

Network for Hope, Baptist Health, and the HHS did not respond to Blaze News’ requests for comment.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Health and human services, Organ donor, Organ transplant, Robert f kennedy, Kentucky, Politics 

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) recently asked the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into the abortion group Plan C.

According to Hawley’s complaint, Plan C teaches Americans how to obtain chemical abortion drugs in violation of state law and advises users to conceal their activity through privacy-focused browsers, virtual private networks, and encrypted email.

Lawmakers are rewarding an industry that treats the isolation of women as empowerment and the removal of medical oversight as progress.

The complaint raises a larger question: How much risk is the abortion industry willing to impose on women and girls in pursuit of unrestricted access?

Recent cases have shown how easily men can obtain mifepristone online and use it to coerce or drug women. Yet the industry continues pressing to remove safeguards, minimize medical supervision, and treat mail-order abortion as ordinary consumer health care.

Congress, meanwhile, recently allowed taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood to resume, despite sustained public opposition to federal support for the abortion provider.

That decision is especially troubling after the New York Times reported last year that Planned Parenthood was “in crisis.” The story described understaffed clinics, poor conditions, inadequate care, and botched procedures. Planned Parenthood has offered little public evidence that those problems have been corrected.

The pattern is difficult to ignore. Again and again, the abortion industry’s demand for fewer restrictions comes at the expense of basic standards of safety, medical care, and accountability.

Republican lawmakers should follow Hawley’s lead. Organizations that facilitate illegal access to abortion drugs or help users evade state safeguards should face scrutiny. Congress and the administration should also restore protections abandoned in recent years.

Chemical abortion offers the clearest example of what deregulation has produced.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration removed the long-standing in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone. Women and girls may now obtain the drug through online providers without first seeing a doctor.

That convenience carries serious risks.

RELATED: ‘Like an Amazon shopping experience’: New investigation uncovers mail-order abortion for teens

YouTube/AAPLOG Pro-Life Medical Experts

Mifepristone can produce dangerous complications when used later in pregnancy or by women with certain medical conditions. It cannot treat an ectopic pregnancy, which may become life-threatening without prompt diagnosis. An online questionnaire cannot perform an ultrasound, conduct a physical examination, or reliably detect coercion.

Many online providers do not require proof that a patient has received an ultrasound or an in-person medical evaluation.

My colleague Dr. Christina Francis, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, recently tested one such system. She told an online abortion provider that she was 13 years old and had a history of ectopic pregnancies, cesarean sections, an intrauterine device, and other serious complications.

Any one of those disclosures should have prompted further screening. Her stated age alone should have raised immediate concerns about abuse, consent, and parental involvement.

Instead, the provider accepted her payment and mailed the drugs.

Women and girls have a right to understand what can go wrong before they are left to experience the consequences alone.

The mail-order system has also enabled horrifying acts of coercion and abuse.

An Army captain was convicted after impregnating a subordinate and giving her mifepristone without her consent. A Texas attorney repeatedly slipped abortion drugs into his wife’s drinks. In Louisiana, a young man used his girlfriend’s information to order mifepristone and then isolated and pressured her into taking it. An Ohio doctor forced the drug down his girlfriend’s throat.

Those are just the cases that became public. How many other women have suffered in silence? How many have lost pregnancies without knowing that a partner drugged them? How many were pressured into abortions while isolated from family, doctors, or anyone positioned to recognize the abuse?

Mail-order abortion removes the very people most likely to detect coercion: physicians, nurses, clinic staff, parents, and trusted family members.

It also leaves women to manage bleeding, pain, fear, and possible medical emergencies without direct supervision.

Research cited by pro-life advocates indicates that many women report feeling pressured into abortions they did not want or that conflicted with their values. Whatever the precise scale, coercion is a real and documented danger. Policies should make it easier to detect, not easier to conceal.

RELATED: Takeaways from the latest Supreme Court abortion intervention

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Yet prioritizing access over safety increasingly appears to be a feature rather than a bug of the abortion industry’s model.

Plan C says it seeks to “transform access to abortion in the U.S. by normalizing the self-directed option of abortion pills by mail.” That mission statement emphasizes access and normalization. It says nothing about medical screening, coercion, abuse, or the risks of taking the drugs without an examination.

A website that teaches users to order abortion drugs secretly and evade state laws does not merely serve women seeking abortions. It may also serve abusers looking for a discreet way to obtain drugs they can use against women.

The beneficiaries are obvious: organizations that sell or distribute the pills and men willing to use them as instruments of coercion.

Lawmakers have tolerated this system for too long. They have permitted the weakening of medical safeguards, restored funding to Planned Parenthood, and resisted efforts to require in-person care for chemical abortion.

They are rewarding an industry that treats the isolation of women as empowerment and the removal of medical oversight as progress.

Hawley and a growing coalition of pro-life groups are right to demand accountability.

Congress and the Justice Department should investigate organizations that knowingly help users violate state law. Federal regulators should restore meaningful medical safeguards for mifepristone. Lawmakers should also ensure that minors, abuse victims, and women with dangerous medical conditions are not abandoned to an online form and a package in the mail.

Women and girls deserve better than an abortion system built around secrecy, isolation, and plausible deniability.

​Biden administration, Department of justice, Planned parenthood, Abortion pills, Abortion, Pro-life, Abortion by mail, Josh hawley, Chemical abortion, Covid, Opinion & analysis 

President Trump’s approach to AI regulation has been mixed. First, he limited states from making their own laws in favor of a national framework. Then, despite proposed laws to protect consumers, no federal bills have passed yet.

Now, as advanced AI threatens the cybersecurity of government institutions and private corporations, Trump is moving forward with a government-sanctioned review process for frontier AI models, and employees at the major AI giants are all begging for it.

Trump chose not to share the details of his AI review framework with the public.

Here’s how the White House finalized its AI review framework.

Behind the curtain

The government review process was originally announced in June. At the time, each major AI company could willingly allow the government to review its latest AI models to check for potential cybersecurity risks before they were released broadly to the public. Fast-forward a couple of months later, and now a more official structure is in place.

For whatever reason, President Trump chose not to share the details of his AI review framework with the public.

Leakers will leak, however, so we’re not left completely in the dark. Axios spoke with three sources connected to the executive order and uncovered several key points.

Targeted AI models: The framework is aimed at reviewing closed-source frontier models with advanced capabilities that could pose a risk to national security. Open-source models are exempt from review.Limited access: New AI models set forth for review will be hosted in secure environments. While multiple administration officials will have access clearance, AI company employees are limited from using the new models for 30 days during the review cycle.Classified details: The process that the Trump administration will use to test AI models, as well as the AI review framework itself, will remain classified and kept from public knowledge.

As it stands, the review process is still voluntary. However, the exemption of open-source models makes it sound as if compliance for closed-source frontier models is strongly encouraged.

Arbitrary guardrails spell trouble for American AI dominance

Trump’s AI review framework comes at a time when employees at some of the largest AI companies in the U.S. have banded together to demand government regulation. In an open letter, workers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta urged the government to “deliberately pace” the development and progression of AI due to the recent security implications spurred on by Anthropic’s Mythos and other emerging threats.

Of course, slowing the pace of AI development is a double-edged sword.

RELATED: Rand Paul exposes the government’s cozy covid links to Bill Gates

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

On one hand, arbitrary pauses, like the 30-day review period enforced by Trump’s AI review framework, would give institutions more time to protect themselves against potential vulnerabilities from new AI models. With a heads-up from the government, they can learn about any problems identified during the review and shore up security to ensure bad actors who get ahold of the latest models can’t use them to hack and exploit our most precious agencies, institutions, and establishments.

A tough spot

On the other hand, the pause window gives competing nations like China more time to steal from American tech companies and potentially overtake America as the leader in the AI race. At this point, our nation would become a prime target for foreign cyberattacks capable of breaching our systems before we even know what happened, leaving us with inferior intelligence and little-to-no means to stop it.

The only way to combat threats posed by Chinese AI is to speed up development instead of slowing it down, ensuring that American technology is always ahead of the nations that would rather see us fall.

The choice isn’t easy, as there are stark pros and cons to both sides. However, President Trump clearly believes that cyber threats posed by America’s homegrown AI models are a bigger problem for the nation than China overtaking the United States in AI development. There may be some merit to this decision, too. Considering that most of China’s AI innovations came from copying American AI companies, the former may not be as advanced as they want us to believe. If American AI companies suddenly stopped progressing as quickly, China’s development would likely slow down, as well, in which case, 30-day pauses to review new frontier models are undoubtedly the right call.

​Artificial intelligence, Tech 

A hospital surveillance video shows a nurse taking on a violent patient and taking him down to the ground after getting attacked.

The harrowing incident unfolded at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Emergency Department in Queensland, Australia, according to WFLA-TV.

‘I don’t think he anticipated the nurse having an obsession with jiujitsu for over 10 years.’

The nurse, Daniel Nelson, described what led to the alleged attack.

“He’d been spitting on the floor, abusing staff, and generally behaving like an absolute grub,” Nelson said about the patient. “Was asked to leave; I opted to escort him out.”

The video shows Nelson escorting the patient through the lobby toward the doors when the patient turns around and throws various objects at the nurse.

Nelson confidently squares up against the man and swings him over his shoulder onto the ground.

“I don’t think he anticipated the nurse having an obsession with jiujitsu for over 10 years,” Nelson added.

The nurse grapples with the patient on the ground before finally being able to get him into a headlock. Four security officers eventually come to assist Nelson and take control of the patient.

RELATED: Husband and wife intervene after seeing Florida mom discipline 4-year-old son — then police arrest the couple

“Violence against health care workers isn’t ‘just part of the job.’ It’s unacceptable,” Nelson said. “Alcohol is no excuse. To all my colleagues who continue to show up despite this sort of behavior: I see you, and I appreciate what you do every day.”

Although the incident occurred in Oct. 2024, Nelson published video of the incident on July 29.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Viral video, Hospital, Australia, Jiu-jitsu, Crime 

Every great action story begins the same way. Someone is in trouble. The clock is running. The police cannot — or will not — solve the problem.

Then comes the name.

This is not simply another detective recounting old war stories. It is a portrait of a disappearing breed: the independent lawman who covets justice and is willing to deliver it.

If Hollywood were casting the role, it might once have chosen Tom Selleck. Today, maybe Chris Pratt. The man walking through the door is not chasing glory. He is there because everyone else has run out of options.

In real life, that man was Nils Grevillius.

“The Last Lawman” does not read like a memoir. It reads like the first season of a television series you cannot stop watching.

Imagine “The A-Team” without the wisecracks. Imagine “Bosch” without the bureaucracy. Imagine film noir stripped of romance and dropped into the unforgiving streets of Los Angeles, where every decision carries consequences and nobody gets to yell, “Cut.”

Before most memoirs have finished introducing the author, Grevillius is chasing an armed robbery suspect through Watts with eight rounds in his pistol and no backup coming.

The danger is not manufactured to hook the reader. It was simply another day on the job.

That authenticity separates “The Last Lawman” from nearly every private-investigator memoir on the shelf.

Josiah Thompson’s “Gumshoe” remains a respected classic, offering an intelligent account of investigative work and the detective’s craft. Grevillius takes the genre somewhere darker and more visceral.

His stories are not puzzles reconstructed from a safe distance. They are unfolding crises in which one mistake can cost a client everything — or cost the investigator his life.

For decades, Grevillius worked in places most people wisely avoid: organized crime, fugitive recovery, surveillance, missing-person cases, violent offenders, and the criminal world just beyond the edge of ordinary life.

His résumé includes military intelligence, Pinkerton investigations, and some of the toughest assignments Southern California could offer. The result is a memoir with an authority no novelist can manufacture.

RELATED: America needs heroes who do not apologize for being heroes

Heritage Art/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Yet the greatest surprise is not the danger. It’s the humanity.

Beneath the stakeouts, foot chases, interrogations, and close calls lies a thoughtful examination of what decades spent confronting evil do to a man.

Grevillius writes candidly about discipline, loyalty, courage, and the emotional cost of making a career out of walking toward situations everyone else is trying to escape. His reflections never seem imposed because he earned every one of them.

The early chapters reveal a man shaped by formidable influences: a father, decorated for service in the Korean War, who remained haunted by combat; a mother, a demanding attorney with an uncompromising sense of justice; Cold War military service; and years spent learning the patience required for surveillance before applying those skills as a private investigator in Los Angeles.

The path is not linear. That is precisely why it rings true. Life rarely follows a screenplay.

Grevillius also possesses what many memoirists lack: the ability to tell a story.

He introduces colorful characters without reducing them to caricatures, explains complex investigations without killing the pace, and adds dry humor at exactly the moment the reader needs relief.

His prose has the cadence of a man who has spent decades telling impossible stories to skeptical audiences — and winning them over.

Advance praise calls “The Last Lawman” “a blast of a book” and compares its pace to the great detective stories. It also describes Grevillius as the sort of lawman you want beside you when everything goes sideways.

All of that is true. It still does not quite capture what makes the book distinctive.

RELATED: ‘BURN IT ALL DOWN’: Firebrand feminist filmmaker calls for violent revolution

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

This is not simply another detective recounting old war stories. It is a portrait of a disappearing breed: the independent lawman who covets justice and is willing to deliver it.

Modern policing and investigation are increasingly constrained by bureaucracy, technology, institutional caution, and politics. The investigator who relies on instinct, observation, experience, and personal courage has become an endangered species.

Grevillius represents that tradition at its highest level. Reading his memoir feels like spending time with one of the last practitioners of a craft that once defined American crime-fighting.

Hollywood has spent decades trying to create believable action heroes. Most are invincible. Most are predictable. Most survive because the script requires it.

Nils Grevillius survived because he had to.

That is why “The Last Lawman” is so compelling. The stories are cinematic not because they were embellished, but because reality occasionally produces men no screenwriter would dare invent.

Truth can be more powerful than fiction.

When the credits finally roll, readers will not simply close the book. They will wonder why nobody has turned it into a television series — and they may find themselves longing for a time when Americans still believed men like Grevillius could bring bad actors to justice.

​The last lawman, Nils grevillius, Private eye, Crime movie, Law enforcement, Hollywood, Detectives, Josiah thompson, Detective novel, Opinion & analysis 

President Donald Trump issued two executive orders on Thursday intended to end birth tourism to the U.S. and narrow birthright citizenship.

The president signed the orders with his top aide, Stephen Miller, at his side at the White House in front of reporters.

‘What that means is that no one in the world is anymore allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose.’

Miller explained that the first order would “expand the definitions of people who were ineligible for birthright citizenship” in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that kept the policy active.

Those who are newly excluded from birthright citizenship include “alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations, and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments.”

He went on to explain the second order.

“The second action that he’s taking, which is especially historic, is for the first time ever in American history to ban birth tourism,” Miller said.

“The idea that people come here pretending to be a tourist, pretending to be a visitor, saying they want to go to Disneyland, they want to go visit a monument or go to a national park,” he added.

“But the real reason they’re here is to have a child, to make that child an automatic citizen,” Miller said, “to leave our country, and then have a U.S. citizen child that gives them access under this broken system to welfare benefits, ultimately to the voting booth, and all the other rights and privileges that belong solely to Americans.”

Miller touted all of the president’s actions to safeguard American citizenship and listed this order as one of the top three decisions.

“So that practice of birth tourism is, as of the signing of this order, hereby banned,” he continued. “And what that means is that no one in the world is anymore allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose.”

Trump also criticized the Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship.

“I thought we were going to win it at the Supreme Court,” he said. “Unfortunately we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because of it. And we’re ending it a different way.”

RELATED: Texas AG Paxton sues Chinese ‘birth tourism’ center for allegedly orchestrating abuse of birthright citizenship

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council immediately criticized the orders.

“This new order is far less sweeping than the original, but like the first order, seemingly violates the Constitution,” he said on social media.

“As an initial matter, the new EO aims to deny citizenship to children born to two noncitizen parents where ONE parent (not both) falls within one of the EO’s new categories,” he added. “This alone may well be a violation of the 14th Amendment, which cares about the status of both parents.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Birth tourism, Birthright citizenship, Executive orders, President donald trump, Stephen miller, Politics 

A resurfaced video of a female Marine drill instructor is making the rounds online, and BlazeTV host John Doyle doesn’t just find the clip awkward — he believes it’s a “humiliation ritual.”

And one user on X agrees.

A special operations veteran who goes by Woden the Wanderer reacted to the video, writing: “This is nothing more than a mockery of the warrior class. A humiliation ritual for the masculine warrior spirit that modernity needs to destroy.”

In the video, the drill instructor yells at the top of her lungs, instructing new recruits on what to do if they are being abused by other recruits or Marines.

“I’m definitely not the cloth of a Marine, and so, seeing this happen, I can’t perceive it as anything other than humiliating, especially because they’re not even allowed to laugh about it ’cause they’ll get in trouble,” Doyle says.

Doyle also points out that historically, men have always been the ones to go to war.

“It makes no difference what you think of war or if you think women should even be a part of it. War simply is. It’s been around for longer than civilization has. It will be around long after civilization has existed,” he says.

“Modern thinking cannot be transposed onto war. War has to be taken and understood at its base level. And something you’ll find across human history, across basically all of civilization, women rarely, if ever, are found in militaries directly serving,” he explains.

“It’s pretty much always been male,” he adds.

And the clip of the female drill instructor, Doyle says, appears to be more like payback for historically excluding women from masculine roles like the Marines.

“It’s done basically to shame the history of the military for not allowing women to participate. Really just like shove your face in it,” he says.

“And these kinds of humiliation rituals are plentiful,” he adds.

Want more from John Doyle?

To enjoy more of the truth about America and join the fight to restore a country that has been betrayed by its own leaders, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Special operations veteran, Marines, Drill instructor, John doyle, Women, Army, Masculinity, Blazetv show 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently promised to focus immigration enforcement on criminal aliens. At a National Governors Association forum with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), Mullin also noted that the United States had naturalized nearly 900,000 immigrants during the previous 12 months.

That number should have set off alarms.

The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.

Republicans are consumed with preventing noncitizens from voting illegally. That problem is real, but the much larger electoral transformation is occurring legally, as millions of immigrants become citizens and acquire the right to vote. The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.

As I have argued before, an immigration moratorium would do more to shape the country’s political future than the SAVE America Act. The White House, however, has shown little interest in confronting legal immigration at that scale.

After Mullin cited the latest figure, I reviewed the Department of Homeland Security’s naturalization data by year, country of origin, and demographic trend. I have long examined the size and composition of America’s green-card flow, but naturalization is the point at which immigration becomes electoral power.

Naturalization is a lagging indicator. The Hart-Celler Act drove immigration sharply higher beginning in the 1970s, but naturalizations did not surge until the mid-1990s. Since 1996, the United States has naturalized roughly 21 million people. From 2015 through 2024 alone — excluding the nearly 900,000 Mullin cited for the latest year — the total was 7.9 million.

Outside the COVID disruption, annual naturalizations have climbed from roughly 500,000 to 700,000 toward a range of 750,000 to 900,000.

The historical contrast is striking. As recently as 1984, fewer than 200,000 immigrants became citizens. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the annual average remained in the low 100,000s.

Even after the great immigration wave of 1880 to 1920, annual naturalizations generally peaked between 100,000 and 200,000. The high points were 217,000 in 1919, 233,000 in 1928, and 224,000 in 1929.

During the 39 years from 1908 through 1946, the United States issued about 6.2 million naturalizations. During the 39 years from 1986 through 2024, it naturalized 24.1 million people — nearly four times as many.

The modern citizenship wave has therefore dwarfed the one that followed the great wave, and it has continued for three decades with no end in sight.

The top-line numbers tell only part of the story.

RELATED: Ceuta is America’s border warning

Marcos Moreno/Anadolu/Getty Images

Roughly 90% of immigrants during the great wave came from Europe. In 2024, by my estimate, only about 10% of the 818,000 people naturalized came from Europe or Canada.

Mexico supplied the largest single group, with 107,670 new citizens. Latin America as a whole accounted for roughly 348,000, or 43% of all naturalizations. That four-decade pattern has helped make Spanish a durable second language across large parts of the country.

India supplied 49,700 new citizens and China 29,200. Those flows have remained substantial for decades. The United States is not merely adding population. It is importing millions of people shaped by political systems, religious traditions, and social assumptions far removed from the country’s historic norms.

The same question applies to immigration from Muslim-majority countries. DHS does not report naturalization by religion, so no precise count exists. But tabulating immigrants from the 49 predominantly Muslim countries I have identified previously yields 119,170 naturalizations in 2024 — about 15% of the total — and roughly 1.15 million over the past decade.

The largest 2024 totals included 12,200 from Pakistan, 11,600 from Bangladesh, 8,100 from Iraq, 7,100 from Iran, 7,000 from Egypt, and 6,800 from Afghanistan.

These numbers have not necessarily crested. The central question is whether naturalization policy is producing citizens with a durable attachment to the Constitution, the nation, and the obligations contained in the oath of allegiance.

One imam in Sterling Heights, Michigan, recently boasted that concentrated Muslim voting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan could swing a presidential election. He was describing the political power that large-scale naturalization fosters.

Many naturalized immigrants become patriotic Americans. But a country naturalizing close to 900,000 people each year cannot assume assimilation will occur automatically, especially when so many arrive from societies with different political values and weak traditions of constitutional government.

This is all legal! It is also why the Republican fixation on a relatively small number of unlawful noncitizen votes misses the larger question.

The figures do not include the long-term electoral effect of birthright citizenship among children born to illegal immigrants, temporary visa holders, and legal permanent residents.

Pew Research estimated that 240,000 babies were born in 2023 to families in which neither parent was a legal permanent resident. The Center for Immigration Studies estimated that 72,000 children were born to tourists, foreign students, and other visitors in 2016. A separate CIS analysis suggests that 225,000 to 250,000 children were born in 2023 to families with at least one legal permanent resident.

RELATED: Trump-hating Republican governors conspire with Democrats to smuggle in even more migrants

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Those estimates come from different years and categories and should not be treated as a precise annual total. They nevertheless show how mass immigration, combined with automatic birthright citizenship, extends the electoral consequences for generations.

Legal immigration is producing as many as 900,000 new voters each year through naturalization. Birthright citizenship may add hundreds of thousands more future voters annually. Even if Congress shut off immigration tomorrow, the naturalization wave already in the pipeline would continue for years.

Illegal voting can decide a close election and should be prevented. But the scale of legal electoral change produced by immigration dwarfs the problem the SAVE America Act is designed to solve.

Any politician who campaigns on the SAVE America Act while refusing to support an immigration moratorium is missing the forest for the trees.

The SAVE America Act addresses a game of inches. An immigration moratorium addresses a game of miles.

​Assimilation, Birthright citizenship, Department of homeland security, Illegal voting, Markwayne mullin, Republicans, Save america act, Opinion & analysis