American Thought Leaders

“What’s important for people to know is that the majority of California is actually not to the far left. We’re a very purple state,” says Elaine Culotti, a self-made entrepreneur, star of Discovery’s reality TV series “Undercover Billionaire,” and founder of the Mayors Matter project.
On a mission to understand the root causes of California’s challenges, Culotti recently went on a state-wide tour and talked to 50 out of California’s almost 500 mayors as well as countless regular Californians on the way.
“I’ve talked to people from Humboldt County, which is the very top of California, to Chula Vista, all the way into the Central Valley ... to Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades. ... And it does not matter if you have an R or a D,” Culotti said.
The fifty mayors she spoke to—on both sides of the aisle—have two overarching priorities for their cities: security and economic development, Culotti said.
But no matter how hard they try, they find it difficult to achieve either one. Why? Because of Sacramento, Culotti said.
Most taxpayer money goes to the state government with its over half a million employees, Culotti noted. The cities receive little money but lots of crippling orders from Sacramento, and fraud at the state level is rampant, she said.
When California’s top politicians “are pushing downstream what’s called unfunded mandates onto people, you create war in those city halls. You create war with those mayors because they are saying, ‘No, no, stop oppressing us with your mandates. We don’t want to do it,’” Culotti said.
“We’re all being boiled to death by Sacramento,” she said.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with Grace Jin Drexel, the daughter of detained Pastor Ezra Jin, the founder of one of China’s largest underground house-church networks.
Last October, Pastor Jin was arrested along with 27 other pastors and church leaders from Zion Church. It was one of the largest assaults on independent Christian congregations in China since the Cultural Revolution, said Drexel. She has since become a prominent voice speaking out against religious persecution in China.
State repression of Zion Church began in 2018 amid a broader wave of Communist Party efforts to subjugate faith communities, Drexel said.
“You saw the tearing down of crosses [and] putting portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong on church buildings,” she said.
Zion Church was deemed an illegal business operation, forcing them to shift to a hybrid online model of worship. Authorities also placed an exit ban on Pastor Jin.
“There’s so many parts of our lives that he has missed out on. He was not able to walk me down the aisle at my wedding. He was not able to attend my baby’s baptism,” Drexel said.
She sees her father’s detention as part of a new wave of persecution targeting not only her father’s church but also many other underground churches and religious groups as well. As in 2018, authorities are again installing pictures of Xi in churches again, sometimes even replacing crosses, to “showcase who is the true leader of the church,” she said.
Another sign of a new wave of suppression is the sentencing of Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old founder of Apple Daily and a practicing Catholic. He was recently given 20 years in prison, which marks the longest sentence handed down to date under Beijing’s national security law.
Since Pastor Jin’s arrest, he has not been allowed any family visits, phone calls, or even letters from his loved ones. He is also suffering from severe Type 2 diabetes, and Drexel is deeply concerned about his wellbeing.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

How polarized are Americans really? Are we really on the “brink of civil war” as some suggest?
That’s what I wanted to find out when I sat down with Jonathan Butcher, author of the recently released book “The Polarization Myth: America’s Surprising Consensus on Race, Schools, and Sex.”
“When we hear the term polarization, it makes us think that there’s 50% on one side and 50% on the other side. But that’s not what’s going on,” says Butcher, who is acting director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
Butcher conducted a survey of more than 2,000 Americans and asked participants for their opinions on contentious cultural and political issues.
What did he find? Contrary to what Americans are constantly told on social media and in legacy media, there is no deep divide on the issues that drive the so-called culture wars, he says. His survey found the following:
-Biological sex: A majority of respondents maintain that sex is unchanging -Gender and schools: 61% oppose teaching young children that they can change their “gender”​ -Sexual content in schools: 69% do not support access in schools to books that depict sexual activity -College admissions: 52% oppose the use of racial preferences in college admissions, which are central to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs​
The culture war, Butcher concludes from his survey findings, is a narrative propagated by a small faction of radical activists and amplified by the media to instill fear.
“It’s really like a majority of Americans and … a small minority of activists on the other [side] that just have a very loud voice,” he says.
The survey responses, he told me, also show a surprising degree of consensus among Americans on basic principles and core beliefs.
For example, he found that a large majority of survey respondents want their children to be taught about virtue and character at school. More than half favor increased civics education.
“The important thing to remind Americans is that on the issues, they’re not alone. If [you] think that individuals should be judged, promoted, accepted to school based on their merit instead of their skin color, right, you’re not alone. You’re not alone if you think that we should be protecting women from men accessing their bathrooms or locker rooms,” he says.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“People have misunderstood that [Greenland] is somehow a President Donald Trump issue, and it’s not,” says Alex Gray, who previously served as National Security Council chief of staff and deputy assistant to the president.
So why does Greenland matter? And why has it become such a massive issue?
In fact, Gray explained to me, multiple American presidents have tried to purchase or acquire Greenland over the last 160 years. Andrew Johnson was the first in 1867. Woodrow Wilson tried during the First World War. And Harry Truman tried right after World War II, Gray says.
In my deep-dive interview with Gray, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and co-founder of American Global Strategies, he lays out Greenland’s geostrategic importance to America’s national security and what it would mean if Greenland became dependent on China.
In 1952, the United States signed a treaty with Denmark, still in effect today, that provides America with extensive military access to Greenland. Gray’s overarching concern is what will happen when Greenland is likely to become independent in five or 10 years.
For many years, China has shown great interest in establishing dominance over the Arctic region and is regularly moving its submarines up to the North Pole.
Gray is convinced that after independence, Greenland is likely to fall prey to the Chinese Communist Party’s “well-worn playbook” to gain influence and eventually control the island. He calls it the “Solomon Islands scenario.”
“They start offering Belt and Road projects. They start buying dual-use facilities. They buy ports. They’re taking over airfields. Next thing you know, we’re hearing conversations about potentially having [China’s People’s Liberation Army] naval access to ports in the Solomons. … This is a well-worn Chinese playbook,” Gray says.
Beyond Greenland, we also dive into security threats related to America’s northern neighbor and the implications of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s overtures in Beijing.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Xi Van Fleet grew up in China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. She was too young to be a real revolutionary Red Guard, but old enough to observe the astonishing scenes of violence and ideological fervor around her during those terrible years.
I sat down with her to discuss her new book, “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.”
She says she felt compelled to write this book to help Americans understand the true nature of communism. Over the past hundred years or so, the United States has made one grave mistake after another because of this major blind spot, she says.
In our deep-dive interview, Van Fleet takes me on a tour of China’s history starting in the late 19th century and explains how America—over and over again—made decisions that helped the Chinese Communist Party: first to gain influence, then to defeat the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and eventually to rescue the CCP from certain collapse in the 1970s.
By visiting Beijing and re-opening US-China relations at a time when China’s economy was in shambles, President Richard Nixon effectively “saved the CCP from the ruins,” she says.
The history of how the United States helped the CCP survive is “hidden history,” as she calls it, one that is not taught in the schools and not discussed publicly: “A lot of people want to hide it. But in order for us to understand, we have to learn this very, very important piece of history that my book is all about.”
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.