American Thought Leaders

From cutting programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development to putting Voice of America employees on paid administrative leave, the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been aggressively seeking to reduce government spending on international initiatives.But some such spending may be worth keeping.Cleo Paskal, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, breaks down how certain U.S. measures in the Pacific are vital to deter increasing Chinese encroachment in the region, but they may not be well-understood.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Fifteen or 16 percent of the population [is] now taking antidepressants … When they’ve gone out and asked people who actually use these medications whether they’re experiencing sexual dysfunction, approximately 60 percent of people will [affirm] it.”Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring is a board certified psychiatrist, former FDA medical officer, and director of the Taper Clinic. He treats patients suffering from post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD), and protracted withdrawal—two conditions becoming more common, and in some cases permanent, in people who have stopped taking antidepressants.“SSRIs and antidepressants are really popular drugs. Some people just don’t want to believe that they could potentially cause something so catastrophic,” he says. “We should only be using these medications after we’ve done everything else.”In this episode, we discuss how patients can safely discontinue psychiatric medications and regain control of their mental health, and why there needs to be more awareness about conditions that arise after people stop taking their drugs.“What I saw going through all of that ... as a drug safety officer ... was essentially that we really were practicing outside of what the psychiatric clinical trials and the evidence showed,” says Witt-Doerring. “Doctors have been led astray about the drugs to the point where they overestimate the benefits and minimize the harm.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Michael Lucci is the founder, CEO, and chairman of State Armor. He helps states enact policies and solutions that protect their assets from foreign adversaries like communist China.“They’re trying to invade our homeland, and they likely have developed the capacity to make life very difficult, to create crises within the United States—whether it’s power, whether it’s wastewater treatment, whether it’s telecommunications,” he says. “They have laws that require those companies to engage in espionage. So why are we letting them sell connected devices of any type into the United States?”In this episode, we dive deep into how the Chinese regime has managed to infiltrate our critical infrastructure and communications systems at the local, state, and federal levels.“It’s the largest military buildup since World War Two is what China is doing right now,” says Lucci. “If they’re just in our back doors, listening, reading, following everything we’re doing, following the pattern of life for important officials across the country, that’s a pretty deep problem.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Over the years, Pano Kanelos, the founding president of the University of Austin, observed a growing “homogenization” and “bureaucratization” of higher education. He saw school programs becoming more and more similar, administrators outnumbering students and young adults being taught that the pathway to success is dependent on censorship and adherence to the status quo.“We’ve created a culture of conformity at universities—a culture of conformity in higher education,” he says. “This just flattens out, I think, the potential for higher education to do great things and be dynamic.”So, in 2021, along with a group of similarly concerned individuals, he started the University of Austin, a private liberal arts university in Texas that emphasizes curiosity, risk-taking, and moral agency.“We’re trying to generate graduates who themselves are builders and creators. This is an important part of our curriculum,” says Kanelos.Three years later, he is the president of a fully operational freshmen class and a diverse faculty.“If anybody visits the University of Austin, they will see that it’s probably one of the most intellectually alive environments you'll ever encounter,” says Kanelos.The views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect those of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we sit down with Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), a decorated veteran who served over 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy as a helicopter pilot and a medical corps officer.As a lawmaker, he has co-sponsored legislation to challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rampant economic espionage and tech influence campaigns, and a resolution supporting formal recognition of Taiwan.“We now are in a new evolution of warfare where we’re heavily reliant on technologies. This has changed conventional warfare forever,” McCormick says.Three U.S. Army soldiers were recently indicted for stealing top-secret information for the Chinese regime. The U.S. has also charged 12 Chinese hackers and officials for cyber operations targeting U.S. agencies and media outlets, including The Epoch Times.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, we dive into President Donald Trump’s multi-pronged strategy to revitalize America’s economy, from aggressive reciprocal tariffs to massive DOGE cuts, and a large-scale deregulation effort to promote business growth.The Code of Federal Regulations is now over 190,000 pages long. A 2017 Auburn University study found that each federal regulator effectively “costs the U.S. economy the equivalent of 138 private sector jobs per year.” The researchers said that equated to a $11 million annual loss for the U.S. economy for every additional regulator.What will be the impacts of the Trump administration’s policies? Will they usher in economic prosperity or will America have to head into a recession first?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Half a million unaccompanied minors entered the United States between 2019 and 2023, and experts fear many of them have been trafficked. And that does not include the children who crossed the border with individuals falsely claiming to be their family members. So where are all these children now?Alina Habba, who is currently serving as counselor to the president, says she’s working with the different agencies involved to identify and rescue trafficking victims and prosecute the perpetrators.“I am drafting a couple executive orders regarding that currently that I think will be important to properly get this moving for those kids,” she says.In her role advising the president, Habba says she’s focused on human trafficking and Iraq. Habba is the daughter of Chaldean Catholics who fled Iraq in the 1980s.We dive into her work today and get an update on the status of the long-awaited Epstein files.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

There are few people who have played a more important role in broadly supporting the rights of religious believers in China than Marco Respinti, director-in-charge of the Bitter Winter magazine.“In the first six to eight months of our existence online as a magazine, some 40 people who were connected to us on the ground were arrested in China. … Half of them simply disappeared,” Respinti says.During the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, I had the great pleasure of finally sitting down with Respinti to discuss how the Chinese Communist Party systematically infiltrates, coopts, and destroys religious movements in China.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump has promised that he will bring back American manufacturing during his presidency. What if there aren’t enough Americans who want to work those jobs?“Every year for the last decade or so, for every five tradesmen who retire, two replace them,” says Mike Rowe, Emmy Award-winning TV host of the Dirty Jobs series.“If we don’t have a workforce who is disabused of the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that have kept millions of kids from giving these jobs an honest look ... you’re going to wind up in a pretty nasty feedback loop,” he says.“People still don’t believe me. Even when I show them, not just the stats, but the actual humans who are making $150-grand a year welding with an $8,000 certificate, they just don’t believe it,” he says.Rowe is the founder of mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which awards millions of dollars in work ethic scholarships for young people to learn a skilled trade.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump has been widely criticized for his “transactional” approach to diplomacy. But is that really such a bad thing?In this episode, I sit down with China expert and retired U.S. Marine Col. Grant Newsham, a senior research fellow with the Center for Security Policy, to discuss Trump’s approach to diplomacy and negotiations and how America can leverage what he describes as the “kryptonite” of the Chinese regime.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.