Rapid Response

As children head back to school this fall, I’m writing with urgency in my heart. The values that built our nation—and the next generation’s love for our country—are slipping away. We cannot stand by and watch it happen.

Here’s the reality:

Across America, more and more children are growing up with little to no knowledge of our nation’s founding. The core ideals of faith, liberty, community, and life that set us apart are being replaced or erased by harmful agendas that distort the truth about our history.

It’s working.

Today, according to a recent Gallup poll, 60% of Generation Z and 40% of Millennials say they are not proud to be American. This is a dangerous trend and a direct result of what happens when we stop teaching the truth; we lose the very things that made America a beacon of freedom.

But there is hope. In classrooms, homes, and churches, truth-based education is sparking conversations, changing minds, and restoring pride in our nation. That’s why we created the Little Patriots history curriculum to help children rediscover their heritage and believe in America’s future.

Right now, we’re launching a nationwide effort to put our brand-new curriculum, “The Road to Independence,” into the hands of children everywhere. This five-day program brings history to life, telling the true story of America’s founding, rooted in faith and courage.

We’re committed to providing it for free to families, schools, and churches nationwide, but we can’t do it without you.

Our immediate goal is to have 100 fellow patriots step forward before September 15 to provide the resources needed to place this curriculum directly into the hands of teachers who are eager for their students to learn the truth about our nation.

Acting now ensures these lessons can be included in classrooms nationwide before the critical fall planning window closes.

Will you help ensure teachers have the tools they need to show the next generation the truth about our nation—before this school year passes them by?

Please join me right now and make your gift today to put this curriculum into the hands of teachers who are ready to help their students learn the truth about America—using this secure link:

And when you start a monthly gift of $10 or more today, I’ll send you a copy of my children’s book, Why America Matters, right to your doorstep—because true education begins at home, with people willing to stand for it.

With gratitude,

Dr. Ben Carson
Founder and Chairman
American Cornerstone Institute

The Intelligence of the Intel Equity Stake

The White House’s sudden decision to take a ten percent stake in Intel startled some observers as a surprising lurch to government overreach by a Republican administration. In truth, it looks less like a lurch and more like a pilot program for an idea economic nationalists have been refining for years.
Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs, has been arguing that America’s capital markets are structurally incapable of funding the industries the nation actually needs. Last week’s deal gave him a live-fire case study.
(Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
For decades, U.S. corporate strategy has been to maximize shareholder value, not profits, Krein has argued. The two overlap only sometimes. That’s why companies cling to hurdle rates of fifteen percent even when the true cost of capital is half that. A project that could return a solid seven or eight percent will be passed over, because it drags down return-on-assets ratios and puts the multiple at risk.
The result is chronic underinvestment in precisely the sectors that matter most: capital-intensive industries like chips, energy hardware, aerospace, and defense. Wall Street prefers “asset-light” software firms, where margins are fat and capital commitments small. Nikefication—separating design rents from the messy work of production—became the model. America congratulated itself on “tech dominance” even as it outsourced the industrial backbone to Asia.
The outcome is visible in the semiconductor market: Intel hollowed out, Taiwan’s TSMC in command. Conventional subsidies barely scratch the surface because the market structure itself tells executives not to invest no matter how much Congress appropriates.
Krein’s Fix: A Sovereign Wealth Fund
Krein’s answer is not just more grants but a new institution: a U.S. sovereign wealth fund or development bank, modeled on the “IFCUS” legislation Vice President Vance once championed. Instead of writing checks that vanish, such a vehicle would take loans, guarantees, or equity stakes in critical industries, recycle returns, and permanently crowd in private capital.
The logic is straightforward. A $50 billion appropriation, leveraged, could mobilize hundreds of billions. Unlike one-off grants, a portfolio fund adapts, experiments, and reinvests. It fills the “scale-up gap” where America excels at R&D only to watch commercialization flee overseas for lack of financing. In Krein’s words, “making America great again requires making investments in critical capital-intensive sectors attractive again.”
Intel’s deal looks improvised, but in substance it mirrors this template: convert CHIPS Act grants into equity, align taxpayer risk with taxpayer reward, and de-risk a scale-up stage that private markets won’t touch.
There Are Risks, But It Isn't Socialism
That doesn’t make the Intel stake flawless. A bespoke, personality-driven negotiation is a poor substitute for a rules-based fund with a clear mandate. Left in Trump’s hands alone, it can mutate into deal capitalism—leaning on Apple to use Intel fabs before they’re competitive, jawboning CEOs in the Oval Office, distorting rather than strengthening the sector. In the hands of a left-wing president, the equity stake could be used to pressure a company into sacrificing production to lower carbon emissions or chase a DEI quota.
But it is worth noting this was already a risk with the pre-existing system of grants, loans, and tax-breaks. Government funding always comes with strings, and the Biden administration was not shy about using its industrial policy to advance climate and diversity goals. There’s no reason why a non-voting equity stake should lead to more interference than a loan or grant. In fact, because the equity stake is permanent capital, it could mean less leverage over day-to-day business than a grant tied to annual reporting.
The other objections heard from self-styled capitalists on the right invite similar responses. Is the government “picking winners and losers” when it purchases an equity stake? No more so than when it hands out subsidies. Will companies innovate less if they think Uncle Sam stands ready with a bailout? That risk already exists in a grant-driven regime.
Some say equity stakes encourage reckless risk-taking. Perhaps—but that’s a feature, not a bug. America’s real problem is too little corporate risk-taking in hard industries, not too much. If government equity tips the scales toward bolder bets in semiconductors, it will have done something the market has conspicuously failed to do.
The charge that a government equity stake in a publicly traded company is, as some critics have said, a “hallmark of socialism” is deeply unserious. Socialists didn’t agitate for Washington to hold ten percent of Intel stock with no voting rights. They wanted the state to own and operate the means of production outright. A non-voting equity stake that recycles taxpayer risk into taxpayer return is not collectivization—it’s closer to what any hard-nosed investor would demand if asked to pony up billions. Calling this socialism is like calling a dividend check communism.
More concerning is the idea that the government may lose track of the national interest, chasing financial returns instead. The whole point of a sovereign wealth fund is not to maximize profit but to make viable those capital-intensive projects private finance won’t touch. The market can chase earnings quality. Government should be prepared to back ventures that might fail outright but still build capacity, deepen supply chains, and create national resilience. Sometimes we want the government to pick "losers" instead of "winners."
Similarly, there’s the risk government might hesitate to discipline its own investments. Would Washington bring a discrimination suit against Intel if it knew the settlement would ding its shareholding? It must—and it should be clear about those rules from the start. Transparency and guardrails are the difference between smart industrial policy and cronyism.
Looking Beyond Intel
The sovereign wealth fund model at least disciplines the process: transparent criteria, non-control minority stakes, performance metrics (yields, anchor customers, crowd-in ratios), and time-bound exits. Done this way, government equity isn’t socialism. It’s a financing innovation designed to overcome Wall Street’s allergy to capital investment.
The Intel move is best understood as a prototype. It operationalizes Krein’s long-running critique of American finance and his call for a sovereign vehicle to restore industrial scale-up. The caution is obvious: execution matters. An ad hoc stake taken by presidential fiat risks politicization. A permanent, institutional fund with guardrails could anchor a genuine techno-industrial revival. But you have to start somewhere, and this looks like a decent start.
If Washington can build an institution to carry the logic beyond one-off deals, the Intel stake may be remembered as the beginning of a financing revolution—not just another chapter in corporate subsidy theater.

		03/2003	04/2003	05/2003	06/2003	07/2003	08/2003	09/2003	10/2003	11/2003	12/2003
01/2004	02/2004	03/2004	04/2004	05/2004	06/2004	07/2004	08/2004	09/2004	10/2004	11/2004	12/2004
01/2005	02/2005	03/2005	04/2005	05/2005	06/2005	07/2005	08/2005	09/2005	10/2005	11/2005	12/2005
01/2006	02/2006	03/2006	04/2006	05/2006	06/2006	07/2006	08/2006	09/2006	10/2006	11/2006	12/2006
01/2007	02/2007	03/2007	04/2007	05/2007	06/2007	07/2007	08/2007	09/2007	10/2007	11/2007	12/2007
01/2008	02/2008	03/2008	04/2008	05/2008	06/2008	07/2008	08/2008	09/2008	10/2008	11/2008	12/2008
01/2009	02/2009	03/2009	04/2009	05/2009	06/2009	07/2009	08/2009	09/2009	10/2009	11/2009	12/2009
01/2010	02/2010	03/2010	04/2010	05/2010	06/2010	07/2010	08/2010	09/2010	10/2010	11/2010	12/2010
01/2011	02/2011	03/2011	04/2011	05/2011	06/2011	07/2011	08/2011	09/2011	10/2011	11/2011	12/2011
01/2012	02/2012	03/2012	04/2012	05/2012	06/2012	07/2012	08/2012	09/2012	10/2012	11/2012	12/2012
01/2013	02/2013	03/2013	04/2013	05/2013	06/2013	07/2013	08/2013	09/2013	10/2013	11/2013	12/2013
01/2014	02/2014	03/2014	04/2014	05/2014	06/2014	07/2014	08/2014	09/2014	10/2014	11/2014	12/2014
01/2015	02/2015	03/2015	04/2015	05/2015	06/2015	07/2015	08/2015	09/2015	10/2015	11/2015	12/2015
01/2016	02/2016	03/2016	04/2016	05/2016	06/2016	07/2016	08/2016	09/2016	10/2016	11/2016	12/2016
01/2017	02/2017	03/2017	04/2017	05/2017	06/2017	07/2017	08/2017	09/2017	10/2017	11/2017	12/2017
01/2018	02/2018	03/2018	04/2018	05/2018	06/2018	07/2018	08/2018	09/2018	10/2018	11/2018	12/2018
01/2019	02/2019	03/2019	04/2019	05/2019	06/2019	07/2019	08/2019	09/2019	10/2019	11/2019	12/2019
01/2020	02/2020	03/2020	04/2020	05/2020	06/2020	07/2020	08/2020	09/2020	10/2020	11/2020	12/2020
01/2021	02/2021	03/2021	04/2021	05/2021	06/2021	07/2021	08/2021	09/2021	10/2021	11/2021	12/2021
01/2022	02/2022	03/2022	04/2022	05/2022	06/2022	07/2022	08/2022	09/2022	10/2022	11/2022	12/2023
01/2023	02/2023	03/2023	04/2023	05/2023	06/2023	07/2023	08/2023	09/2023	10/2023	11/2023	12/2023
01/2024	02/2024	03/2024	04/2024	05/2024	06/2024	07/2024	08/2024	09/2024	10/2024	11/2024	12/2024
01/2025	02/2025	03/2025	04/2025	05/2025	06/2025	07/2025	08/2025

WEDNESDAY through SUNDAY, August 27 through 31, 2025

TUESDAY, August 26, 2025

MONDAY, August 25, 2025

FRIDAY through SUNDAY, August 22 through 24, 2025

THURSDAY, August 21, 2025

TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY, August 19 and 20, 2025

FRIDAY through MONDAY, August 15 through 18, 2025

MONDAY through THURSDAY, August 11 through 14, 2025

THURSDAY through SUNDAY, August 7 through 10, 2025

MONDAY through WEDNESDAY, August 4 through 6, 2025

FRIDAY through SUNDAY, August 1 through 3, 2025