American Thought Leaders

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is stepping up its efforts to destroy a religious group in America that it sees as a threat to its rule, according to leaked information from multiple CCP insiders.Tactics include lawfare, bomb threats, smear campaigns, impersonation attempts, and bribing U.S. officials. The Department of Justice sentenced a Chinese agent for trying to bribe an IRS agent to target practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline.So what’s going on exactly? And why would this be a priority for the Chinese regime?Today, I’m sitting down with Erping Zhang, president of the International Falun Dafa Association.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“I think race is a very emotional issue with black America, and it can be very easily manipulated. And it has been manipulated for decades by people who use it to direct blacks to vote in a certain way.”In this latest episode in our special series on the U.S. presidential transition, I sit down with Bob Woodson and Joshua Mitchell. Woodson is a civil rights activist and the Founder and President of the Woodson Center. Mitchell is a professor of political theory at Georgetown University.“The partisan debate on race is driven by guilty whites who are seeking absolution from crimes they never committed, and entitled blacks who are seeking absolution from injustices they never suffered,” says Woodson.What does Trump’s victory mean for black America? Will Trump be the first post-racial president? And what is the role of mediating institutions and what Woodson and Mitchell call “invisible knowledge” in revitalizing American communities?“We have levels of despair and depression because the state has become this administrative behemoth, making citizen competence impossible,” says Mitchell. “We’ve got this invitation, literally, to return to the founders’ vision, where we have citizen competence. The only way you can have small government is if you have massive citizen competence.”“The biggest challenge we’re facing is a moral and spiritual free-fall that is consuming people of all races and all colors,” says Woodson. “But we’re not going to be able to find the source of this solution if we are separated by race, and that’s why we must become post-racial.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Vani Hari, known as the Food Babe, is an author and activist dedicated to exposing toxic ingredients in food. She discusses the alarming rise of artificial food dyes in American diets without proper safety reviews. Hari highlights the stark differences in food regulations between the U.S. and Europe, advocating for warning labels on harmful additives. She shares her personal journey towards nutrition and emphasizes the necessity for transparency and accountability in the food industry, pushing for a shift towards real, organic ingredients.

In this latest installment of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down with Nazak Nikakhtar, former assistant secretary of commerce for industry and analysis under the first Trump administration. She’s an expert on trade and national security and a partner at Wiley Rein LLP. In this episode, we dive into the debate surrounding the use of tariffs. How have China’s unfair trade practices destroyed American manufacturing? Will tariffs work? Or will they make things worse for the average American? And what other tools will Trump have at his disposal that can restore and protect U.S. industry?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Calley Means, co-author of "Good Energy" and a public health reform advocate, dives into the alarming truth about America's chronic disease crisis. He argues that 92% of deaths are due to chronic illnesses and critiques the profit-driven system maintaining this status quo. Means emphasizes the need for more patient-centered healthcare and transparency in public health decisions. He highlights the ethical dilemmas posed by corporate influence in health policies and advocates for a shift from managing sickness to promoting holistic health solutions.

“The science is out there: There have been 64 peer-reviewed studies that Linda Nielsen has reviewed. And they all come to the same conclusion—that children fare better with both parents.”After experiencing firsthand systemic problems within the family court system, in which one parent, typically the father, is relegated to weekend visits with his children in divorce cases, Mark Ludwig founded Americans for Equal Shared Parenting to raise awareness about the need for children to have equal access to both parents.“The opposition has done a great job of creating the narrative that this is just a bunch of angry dads who have anger management problems, conflict resolution problems, and maybe they shouldn’t even be a dad,” he says.Ludwig travels the country advocating for a 50/50 rebuttable presumption—legislation that presumes both parents will share equal custody in a divorce, so long as they are fit, willing, and able.“The No. 1 stability point a child needs is not where they live, but who they have a relationship with. And the stability of the relationship with both parents is more important than what house they live in,” says Ludwig. “I'll fight just as hard for mothers as I do fathers, because I’m not fighting for the mother or the father. I’m fighting for the child.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2“We do need to shrink our spending and we need to get a hold on the debt, but it needs to be done in a way that you have the growth go first. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with less revenue, which means you’re going to actually widen the deficit and create a worse problem—a ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ type of scenario.”As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down with Carol Roth, a former investment banker and author of several books—most recently, “You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back.”In this episode, we discuss the biggest financial challenges facing the incoming administration and how best to navigate them.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

More than 5,000 minors in the United States underwent transgender surgeries between 2019 and 2023 and nearly 14,000 had transgender-related treatments, according to research into insurance billing codes conducted by the advocacy organization Do No Harm. In total, these treatments and procedures cost at least $119 million.Dr. Stanley Goldfarb is a board-certified kidney specialist and the board chairman of Do No Harm, which recently released a national database on transgender-related services at medical facilities across America.The “gender-affirming” treatment model is based on flimsy evidence and has, in many cases, robbed children of normal lives, he says.Dr. Goldfarb says social justice ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion standards have taken over medical education, to the detriment of patients. Students are no longer taught to think critically and to properly evaluate medical research and statistics for weaknesses and flaws, 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.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has been advising President-elect Donald Trump’s national security team. At Turning Point USA’s AmFest conference in Phoenix, I sat down with him to discuss key challenges facing the incoming administration, such as how to address Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control of the Panama Canal.“Who’s controlling this very important waterway? It’s the most strategic waterway for the United States of America on the planet,” Flynn says. “China is the dominant player right now between us and them.”Lt. Gen. Flynn says the Chinese regime either owns or controls some component of 80 percent of the largest ports of our hemisphere. “And yet we have people in our government that go ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’”He argues that although America has always been a benevolent “nation of givers,” it must focus more energy on domestic policy, and that every citizen has a responsibility to engage in local action.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

America is facing an epidemic of loneliness, and it’s as bad for people’s health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, says U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy.In the past two decades, there’s been a marked rise in suicides and “deaths of despair.”What’s fueling these trends of social fragmentation, isolation, and atomization? And how are they linked to broader political and social trends?In this episode, two of the world’s leading thinkers on bioethics and group psychology join together with me for the first time.Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a former psychiatry professor and director of the medical ethics program at the University of California Irvine Medical School. He’s the author of “The New Abnormal.”Mattias Desmet is a professor of psychology at Ghent University and author of “The Psychology of Totalitarianism.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.