In 1933, a Nazi propaganda magazine printed "Not yet hanged" beneath Albert Einstein's photo, a direct and public death wish against one of the greatest minds in human history. Einstein saw what was coming and fled Germany before it was too late, eventually finding refuge in America, the one country that still welcomed brilliant minds. But nearly a hundred years later, the parallels between that era and our own are impossible to ignore.

America is in the grip of a growing war on intellectualism. Scientists are mocked, doctors are called frauds, teachers are branded as dangerous, and expertise itself has become a dirty word. This isn't accidental. Anti-intellectualism is a necessary tool of authoritarian power, because fascist regimes cannot function in societies full of critical thinkers. When you discredit every outside source of knowledge, you leave yourself as the only source of truth.

Meanwhile, Trump bragged this week that wealthy immigrants are lining up to buy American citizenship with gold cards, making it clear that loyalty and money matter more than knowledge or merit. And yet, cracks are showing: new polling reveals that even his MAGA base is beginning to thin, with strong approval dropping from 78 to 70 percent among his most loyal supporters.

In the midst of it all, a story of extraordinary courage emerged from the horrific attack at Bondi Beach in Australia, where a Muslim man named Ahmed al Ahmed tackled an armed shooter to protect members of the Jewish community, reminding us that the violent extremists are the few, not the many.