June 3 2025
Boulder suspect overstayed visa; Suspect's immigration status, media narratives; Young Americans flock to Catholicism; Red states reshape curricula; Drone attack could reshape global trade
Boulder Attack Suspect Highlights Growing Issue of Visa Overstays
LOVING: Suspect's Immigration Status Spotlights Dueling Media Narratives
Driven by Internet and Discontent, Young Americans Flock to Catholicism
Red States Reshape School Curricula, Mandating Western Civics
Ukrainian Drone Attack Will Do More to Reshore US Manufacturing Than Any Trump Policy
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1. Boulder Attack Suspect Highlights Growing Issue of Visa Overstays
A. The suspect in the Boulder, Colo., attack highlights a type of immigrant who has been largely absent from the heated political messaging on immigration: a person who arrives in the United States legally, on a tourist or other temporary visa, and remains after their permission to stay has lapsed. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national accused of carrying out the attack in Colorado, entered on a tourist visa in August 2022 that would have allowed him to remain in the country for six months once he presented his passport to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official at an airport on arrival. Only later did he apply for asylum. Federal officials shared more information on Mr. Soliman’s immigration status on Monday. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said he had been granted a work permit in March 2023 after he applied for asylum with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within the department. But that permit had expired, she said, even as Mr. Soliman had not received a final decision on his application. In the fiscal year 2023, the government estimated there were about 400,000 such overstays, according to an official report issued by the Department of Homeland Security. That year, about 2,400 Egyptians in the United States had overstayed their visas, or about 4 percent of all arrivals from that country, the report said.
NYT
B. The Egyptian-born illegal immigrant suspected of firebombing a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday afternoon has the hallmark signs of a lone-wolf terrorist, adding to a worrying trend of solo attacks. Soliman first arrived in the United States on a non-immigrant visa in August 2022. That visa expired in February 2023, but he remained in the country. He received a work permit from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in March 2023 that was valid through March of this year. He once again overstayed his visa and was in the country illegally during Sunday's attack.
Fox News
2. LOVING: Suspect's Immigration Status Spotlights Dueling Media Narratives
Editor's Note: The Boulder story is also a media story. Every morning, I scan the WSJ, NYT, WaPo, and FT—major establishment newspapers that, on balance, lean center-left—for content to include in this newsletter. I also consume a wide range of other news content: podcasts, new media, Twitter/X, conservative media, and more. This helps me hear the whole national conversation. My goal is for this publication to be read by both Democrats and Republicans. Very few publications serve the center.
In conservative media, the refrain on repeat is that this terror suspect is an illegal immigrant, which is objectively true. While he didn't cross the southern border surreptitiously, his status was nevertheless not legal. This fact wasn't mentioned in the WSJ, FT, or WaPo, and the NYT story I led with was buried. All of these national newspapers, which collectively set the agenda for the entire "mainstream media," are subscription-based, and their readers are mostly liberal. There's no economic incentive to tell a centrist story because these newspapers' business models depend on satisfying their readers' preexisting views. This is why we have dueling conservative and liberal media ecosystems.
News used to be advertising-based, incentivizing outlets to maximize their audience. As Michael Jordan once said, he "wants to sell shoes to Democrats and Republicans." Big Tech destroyed the old newspaper business model by siphoning away most advertising spending from news. Until news returns to an advertising-supported business model, we'll continue to inhabit dueling liberal and conservative universes in America.
3. Driven by Internet and Discontent, Young Americans Flock to Catholicism
According to the National Catholic Register, some dioceses are reporting year-over-year increases of 30% to 70% in new converts. The Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, for instance, experienced a 72% jump in converts just from 2023 to 2024. The Post spoke to several young new Catholics who cite the pandemic, the internet and a distaste for “lax” Protestant alternatives as reasons for turning to the faith. The Rev. Raymond Maria La Grange of the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue confirmed to The Post that at least three-quarters of his new converts are in their 20s or early 30s and that “it was really after [the pandemic] that the parish in general started to grow.” “Some were Protestants, some were nonreligious, some were Catholics who never practiced the faith. Both men and women,” he said. “Some well-off, others living day to day. Some are intellectuals, some are mystics. Some got to know Catholics who brought them in, others came in on their own and hardly know any Catholics.” “It is a fun time to be a priest. It’s busy, in a good way,” La Grange added. Adrian Lawson found Catholicism via the internet. A 30-year-old software developer in Southern California, Lawson was raised nondenominational and was an atheist as a teen, but ultimately found the evangelical church in his early 20s when he was suffering. “I was wrestling with mental illness and the meaning of life, and those are questions that I could not answer without religion,” he said. “My mental health improved very quickly, and church showed me a different way of looking at life. I just became less self-centered, and that made me a lot happier.” he was moved to look into Catholicism after watching a buzzy online debate between a Catholic and a Protestant creator, Cameron Bertuzzi, about church history. Bertuzzi’s own very public conversion after that debate is often cited by young Catholic converts online as a “red pill” moment for them. The 38-year-old Houston native, who was raised as a charismatic Christian and has made Protestant content on YouTube for years, said the debate led him to the conclusion that he had no choice but to convert.
NY Post
4. Red States Reshape School Curricula, Mandating Western Civics
Lawmakers in conservative states are taking more control over what is taught and required at public colleges and universities, an effort that some faculty say threatens the foundation of higher education and academic freedom. New laws in Ohio, Utah and Florida are reshaping general education, the core classes college students take to meet graduation requirements. The laws mandate that students take civics courses focused on Western civilization and bar classes centered on race or gender from counting toward core requirements.
Washington Post
5. Ukrainian Drone Attack Will Do More to Reshore US Manufacturing Than Any Trump Policy
This is a follow-up to yesterday's story #5 on a Ukrainian drone attack deep inside Russia.
Greg Loving
Ukraine's recent drone assault on Russian military airfields, dubbed "Operation Spiderweb," may have far-reaching implications beyond the battlefield, according to technology analyst Ben Thompson of Stratechery. The attack, which reportedly destroyed over 36% of Russia's strategic bomber fleet, exploited a fundamental vulnerability in global trade: the standardized shipping container system. Ukrainian forces smuggled 117 drones into Russia concealed within modified shipping containers equipped with remotely operated roofs, launching them from locations near targeted airfields. Thompson argues this operation represents a watershed moment that "did more—we'll look back that this attack was much more meaningful to a reshoring of US manufacturing than anything Donald Trump did."
The implications extend well beyond military strategy to the heart of the global economy. Thompson explains that the container system, one of three key innovations that enabled modern globalization alongside telecommunications and transpacific flights, functions like "packets on the internet"—standardized units that move seamlessly through the global supply chain precisely because they're treated as trustworthy and rarely inspected. Any serious attempt to secure against such container-based threats would introduce massive friction into international trade, fundamentally undermining the efficiency that makes globalized manufacturing economically viable. "If it actually starts to be taken seriously that containers are implicitly untrusted, that is going to screw up a lot of stuff," Thompson warns, suggesting that the cascading security measures and inspections required to prevent similar attacks could effectively dismantle the frictionless trade system that has defined the global economy for the past 50 years.
June 3, 1889: America’s first electric power line carries energy 14 miles from Willamette Falls to Portland, Oregon, pioneering modern electrical transmission.
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Sources
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/us/visa-overstays-colorado-attack.html
- https://www.foxnews.com/us/boulder-terror-attack-suspect-showed-signs-growing-lone-wolf-radicalization-former-fbi-supervisor
- https://nypost.com/2025/04/17/lifestyle/why-young-people-are-converting-to-catholicism-en-masse/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/06/02/republican-state-laws-university-college-classes/