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The ‘Choice’ the Left Hates: Our Children’s Education

September 2, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Democrats speak constantly about choice. But when parents want to choose where their children are educated, and where the public money assigned to those children is spent, the party and its most powerful education allies suddenly discover the virtues of monopoly.

There is perhaps no government service in America for which failure would be more consequential than education. A school can lose money and recover it. A district can replace a superintendent. A legislature can rewrite a curriculum. But a child gets only one fourth grade, one eighth grade and one senior year. When a school fails him year after year, government cannot return those years at age 25 and allow him to try again.

That is the moral case for school choice, and it is far more important than the institutional arguments surrounding it.

For most of modern American history, the public education system has operated on a principle that would be considered strange almost anywhere else: government assigns a child to a school largely according to the family’s home address, sends enormous amounts of taxpayer money to the institution, and then asks parents to trust that the institution will deliver. Wealthy parents have always possessed school choice because they can move to a desirable district, pay private-school tuition or hire tutors. The families most thoroughly trapped by geography have generally been those with the fewest resources.

Arizona decided to challenge that model.

The result is one of the broadest educational marketplaces in the country: traditional district schools, open enrollment across district lines, charter schools, private schools, homeschooling and Empowerment Scholarship Accounts that allow eligible families to direct state education money toward an educational setting they choose.

The operating principle is almost embarrassingly simple:

Fund the child, not the building.

Arizona Turned the ZIP Code Into a Starting Point, Not a Sentence

Arizona’s public-school open-enrollment law says families can seek admission not merely to another school within their district but to schools in other districts, subject principally to available capacity and specified enrollment preferences. Districts must publish capacity information and accept students throughout the year when space exists.

That alone changes the relationship between school and family.

A neighborhood district school no longer possesses a guaranteed customer simply because a child lives within a particular boundary. If parents believe another district school offers better academics, discipline, athletics, special education or simply a better environment, they can pursue it.

Arizona then added one of America’s largest charter-school sectors. State financial data show approximately 231,660 students were enrolled in Arizona charter schools in fall 2024, across roughly 560 schools. And the state went further still.

Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program is now universally available to resident K-12 students who satisfy the program’s requirements. Instead of automatically directing the child’s state education allocation to the neighborhood school, an ESA permits qualifying educational expenses such as private-school tuition, tutoring, curriculum and other approved services. As of August 31, 2026, the Arizona Department of Education reported 104,644 students enrolled for the 2026-27 ESA year.

That is not a pilot project anymore. It is an alternative education system operating alongside the traditional one.

For decades, the political answer to disappointing educational results has been remarkably consistent: spend more money. Yet the states themselves provide a natural experiment demonstrating the limits of that prescription.

New York spends roughly three times as much per public-school student as Arizona. $30,000 vs just $11,000 per student. Arizona operates under this fiscal constraint familiar throughout the West: enormous portions of its territory remain under federal ownership and therefore outside the normal state and local property-tax base. Congress makes Payments in Lieu of Taxes to Western communities partly because those governments cannot tax federally owned land the way communities elsewhere tax private property.

Yet, Arizona has built one of America’s broadest educational marketplaces on a comparatively very lean public-education budget. District schools compete with other district schools through open enrollment, with charter schools, and increasingly with private and alternative educational arrangements through Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.

What Happens When Schools Have to Compete?

The economic argument for school choice is one conservatives will immediately recognize. Competition normally disciplines providers.

A grocery store that provides bad food at high prices loses customers. A restaurant that treats patrons contemptuously eventually closes. A manufacturer that ignores what consumers want watches a competitor take its business.

Traditional public education largely insulated schools from that feedback mechanism. A chronically underperforming school could lose the confidence of thousands of parents while retaining most of those parents’ children because geography, transportation and finances left them nowhere else to go.

School choice changes the incentive.

When money follows students, losing families eventually means losing revenue. At that point, parental dissatisfaction is no longer merely an unpleasant school-board meeting. It has financial consequences.

Arizona’s experience is especially interesting because most educational competition does not involve private schools at all. An earlier Goldwater Institute examination found that, in sampled Maricopa County districts, more than 30 percent of students were attending a district school other than the one assigned by residence; combined with charter attendance, roughly 47 percent were attending something other than their geographically assigned public school. That analysis predates today’s universal ESA program, but it illustrates something frequently lost in the voucher debate: school choice often means choosing another public school.

And there is evidence that competition can improve the schools students leave behind.

Research on Ohio’s voucher program, for example, found academic improvement among students remaining in public schools close to the threshold for voucher eligibility—a competitive effect also found in earlier Florida research. That does not prove every choice program produces the same result, but it undermines the assumption that choice can benefit only the child who leaves.

That point deserves more attention. A school-choice program does not have to destroy public education. Properly structured, it can force public education to compete for the privilege of educating the public’s children.

The Charter Evidence Is Particularly Difficult to Ignore

One of the strongest arguments for choice comes not from a conservative think tank but from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

CREDO’s major national charter-school study compared charter students with demographically and academically similar students in traditional public schools. Nationally, charter students showed greater average progress in both reading and mathematics.

Arizona’s results were notable. According to CREDO data summarized by the Goldwater Institute, Arizona charter schools produced stronger reading growth than comparable district schools in about 35 percent of comparisons while producing weaker growth in approximately 12 percent; the remainder were statistically similar. In mathematics, Arizona charters were stronger in about 38 percent of comparisons.

Those numbers do not say every charter school is excellent. Some are not, and bad charter schools should close.

That is the point. Choice should never mean replacing a government monopoly with an entitlement for private or charter operators. It should mean permitting schools to compete, measuring results, giving families useful information and allowing unsuccessful institutions to lose students.

Accountability through choice is meaningful only if failure carries consequences.

America’s Educational Results Give Parents Every Reason to Demand Something Different

The backdrop to this debate is a national educational performance crisis that neither political party should minimize.

On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress—the Nation’s Report Card—only 31 percent of fourth-graders were at or above NAEP Proficient in reading. Sixty percent reached at least Basic, meaning roughly four in ten did not. Fourth-grade reading performance actually declined from 2022.

Mathematics was somewhat better but hardly reassuring. Thirty-nine percent of fourth-graders reached Proficient in 2024. Among eighth-graders, only 28 percent reached Proficient in mathematics, while 61 percent reached Basic or above.

Then there is civics. The most recent national eighth-grade NAEP civics assessment found only 22 percent of students at or above Proficient. The average score fell from 2018 and was statistically no better than it had been when the assessment began in 1998.

This is the context in which defenders of the educational status quo ask parents to be patient. Parents have already been patient. Children are still failing to read. Millions struggle with mathematics. Basic understanding of American government is frighteningly weak.

At some point, insisting that every family continue patronizing the same institution ceases to look like loyalty to public education and begins to look like loyalty to the institution itself.

Detroit Is Paying Children to Show Up

One of the articles that prompted this discussion captures the dysfunction in an almost surreal way.

Fox News reported this morning that Detroit-area public schools are experimenting with incentives of as much as $1,000 in gift cards for perfect attendance, an attempt to combat severe chronic absenteeism. The same segment discussed districts elsewhere lowering academic standards in attempts to improve reported performance.

It would be unfair to blame teachers for all of this. Chronic absenteeism has enormous causes outside school—family instability, poverty, post-pandemic habits, neighborhood conditions and parental disengagement among them.

But the spectacle still tells us something. An education system in which government must pay students simply to enter the building is not suffering from too much parental choice.

It is suffering from a collapse of confidence and accountability.

Seattle Offers Another Window Into the System

Seattle Public Schools entered this school year facing an estimated $100 million budget gap while its teachers union considered a strike.

According to reporting cited by Fox, 91 percent of participating Seattle Education Association members authorized a strike if negotiations failed to produce a new contract involving higher compensation, benefits and special-education provisions. Superintendent Ben Shuldiner, hardly a conservative school-choice activist, publicly rebuked the union and said the district was “broke.” The district reportedly has roughly 5,000 fewer students than in 2019.

The union’s position deserves to be represented accurately. Its concerns include compensation, working conditions and special-education supports, and unions argue that recruiting and retaining competent teachers requires competitive pay and manageable workloads.

But Seattle exposes the structural problem. What happens when enrollment declines but the institution’s financial and labor obligations do not decline with it? The traditional answer is usually more money.

The school-choice answer is different: ask why families are leaving.

Why Teachers’ Unions Fight Choice

The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers make no secret of their opposition to private-school choice.

This summer the two unions jointly urged Democratic governors to reject the new federal private-school scholarship initiative, calling it a threat to public education. The AFT adopted a 2026 resolution declaring that public funds should remain in public schools and arguing that vouchers divert resources, disproportionately subsidize families already using private schools, increase segregation and permit private institutions to operate without the same obligations imposed on public schools.

The unions’ fundamental premise is that public education is a public institution with obligations no private school necessarily shares. District schools must accept the children who arrive at their doors, including students who are expensive to educate. Private schools may charge tuition above the value of a voucher, enforce admission standards or offer fewer services for students with significant disabilities. Critics also argue that widespread ESAs can subsidize families who were already paying private tuition rather than induce students to leave public schools.

Arizona’s own data give that last criticism some substance. For FY2025, Arizona’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee reported 87,602 ESA participants and $872.2 million in awards. State data also show that among newly entering universal ESA students in grades 1-12 during a reporting period, 57 percent had been enrolled in public school immediately beforehand—meaning a substantial share had not.

School-choice advocates should not duck that debate. Universal eligibility costs money, and lawmakers have a legitimate responsibility to prevent fraud, audit expenditures and determine whether the program is delivering value to taxpayers.

But there is an enormous philosophical difference between regulating a choice program responsibly and declaring that parents should not have the choice at all. The unions consistently favor the latter when public money would follow a student into private education.

Democrats Have Made Their Position Official

The alignment with the Democratic Party is not speculation.

The Democratic Party’s most recent national platform explicitly opposed “private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships” and similar programs that transfer taxpayer-supported education funding outside public schools. Democrats argue that these programs drain public-school resources and lack sufficient transparency and nondiscrimination protections. The platform simultaneously called for greater investment in teachers, public schools and increased charter-school accountability.

So the divide could hardly be clearer. Democrats generally seek to strengthen the existing public-school system through more funding, staffing, collective-bargaining protections and government-directed reforms.

Republicans increasingly seek to strengthen education by giving families leverage over the system. Those are fundamentally different theories of accountability.

One says experts, elected boards and governments should improve schools from inside. The other says parents should have the ability to walk away.

Follow the Child

There is a revealing phrase used repeatedly by opponents of school choice: “Taking money away from public schools.”

But whose money is it? If a school receives money because James is enrolled there, and James leaves, why should the school continue receiving the portion intended to educate James?

We do not normally say a restaurant was robbed because a customer ate across the street. We do not say a university was defunded because a student enrolled somewhere else. The public-school system exists to educate children. Children do not exist to finance the public-school system. That reversal of priorities may be the most important idea in the entire school-choice debate.

Choice Is Especially Important for Families Without Money

The wealthy will always have educational choice. They can buy a house beside the best public school. They can pay $20,000 or $30,000 in private tuition. They can hire tutors. They can move. They can homeschool with one parent staying home.

The child trapped in the worst school is disproportionately the child whose parents cannot do those things. That makes opposition to educational portability strangely regressive.

A politician who sends his own children to private school while telling a poor mother that public money must remain with her failing neighborhood district is not defending equality. He is defending his choice and denying hers.

The Conservative Reform Should Be Choice Plus Accountability

There is one place where conservatives should resist ideology of their own. Simply handing money to any educational provider and declaring victory would recreate the same problem in another form.

Arizona and other choice states should insist upon aggressive financial auditing, transparent academic information, swift prosecution of fraud, easy comparisons among schools and consequences for providers that consistently fail students. Parents cannot exercise meaningful choice without meaningful information.

Universal choice should be accompanied by rigorous measurement. Reading. Mathematics. Science. History. Civics. Writing. Parents should know whether a school is teaching them. And taxpayers should know what they are buying.

That is not an argument against school choice. It is how a serious school-choice system should work.

The Institution or the Child?

At bottom, the argument isn’t really about charter schools, ESAs or vouchers. It is about who possesses the presumption of authority.

The education establishment begins with the institution: this is the public school, this is its funding, this is its staff, and reform must occur within its walls.

School choice begins with the child: this is the child’s education, and the institutions must earn the family’s confidence.

One system asks parents to wait while professionals repair failing schools. The other gives parents an exit. America has been waiting for decades.

Only 31 percent of fourth-graders are proficient readers. Only 28 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in mathematics. Only 22 percent of eighth-graders were proficient in civics on the latest national assessment.

At some point, protecting the system from competition becomes harder to justify than protecting children from the system’s failures.

Arizona has chosen competition. Other states increasingly are following. At least 18 states now have education-choice programs with universal eligibility, according to the Education Commission of the States.

The question for the rest of America is increasingly straightforward. If a public school is excellent, why should it fear choice? It should attract families. It should grow. It should prosper.

And if another school can teach a child to read better, calculate better, understand American history better and leave school better prepared for citizenship and adult life, why should government prevent his parents from choosing it?

The purpose of public education is not to preserve a particular collection of buildings, bureaucracies or bargaining units.

It is to educate the public.

And when the interests of the institution and the interests of the child diverge, there should be no question which one comes first.

The Red Line Moves: The Socialist-Islamist Insurgency No Longer Hides at the Democratic Party’s Fringe

September 1, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Abdul El-Sayed insists he isn’t a socialist. ‘Socialist’ may be too weak for a man who seems more enamored of an Islamist Caliphate. From Michigan to New York to Florida, candidates once relegated to the ideological fringe are defeating establishment Democrats—and beginning to look less like a faction than a possible future of the party. Totalitarian candidates are on the rise in the Democrat Party.

For years, conservatives warning that America’s progressive movement was marching steadily leftward were routinely accused of exaggeration. Democrats were not becoming socialists, Americans were told. Bernie Sanders was an eccentric outlier. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represented an unusually liberal congressional district. The Democratic Socialists of America were activists operating at the edges of a much larger and fundamentally conventional political party.

That explanation has become increasingly difficult to sustain.

The story unfolding in 2026 is not that every Democrat has suddenly become a socialist. Not completely–not yet. Is democratic socialism synonymous with Soviet-style communism? Again, not yet. The more consequential development is that candidates openly identifying as democratic socialists, and candidates closely allied with that movement, are demonstrating that they can defeat traditional Democrats, capture Democratic nominations and build a political infrastructure capable of reproducing those victories.

And Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed may be the most revealing example precisely because he publicly rejects the socialist label.

The Candidate Who Says He Isn’t a Socialist

El-Sayed is now the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in one of America’s most important battleground states. He defeated the more centrist Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic primary and will face Republican Mike Rogers in November. His victory followed endorsements from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and every current member of the congressional “Squad.”

El-Sayed nevertheless insists that descriptions of him as a socialist are wrong. “I’m not somebody who is a socialist,” he told CNN during the campaign, adding that he believes in capitalism but believes it must be regulated. In another interview he described himself as “a capitalist who’s actually read about capitalism.” A wholistic survey of his totalitarian-leaning statements provide a textbook definition of Mussolini-styled fascism.

Fox News reported that El-Sayed appeared at six DSA events between 2017 and 2020. He headlined a 2019 fundraiser that raised approximately $10,000 for Detroit DSA, whose organizers reportedly described him as a “longtime friend.” At one event, El-Sayed and Rep. Rashida Tlaib were photographed behind imagery depicting a hand labeled “DSA” choking a snake labeled “capitalism.”

Streamer Hasan Piker, left, and Abdul El-Sayed take a selfie with young fans following a campaign event at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, on April 7. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)

Then there is the coalition behind him. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez campaigned with El-Sayed. The entire Squad endorsed him. DSA members have gravitated toward his campaign even without a formal organizational endorsement. His agenda includes Medicare for All and an aggressive attack on corporate concentration and money in politics.

Whether El-Sayed personally checks the “socialist” box is therefore almost beside the point. He has become a vehicle through which America’s socialist left can exercise power in a state that Donald Trump carried twice. That is much more significant than a label.

The Deleted Posts

El-Sayed’s past rhetoric has received renewed attention as he attempts to broaden his appeal for the general election.

CBS News reported this week that it verified two deleted El-Sayed posts comparing America’s COVID death toll with the nearly 3,000 people murdered on September 11. He is for it. Another deleted post from the 20th anniversary of 9/11 compared the victims with deaths resulting from subsequent American military interventions.

Then there is is close relationship with Hasan Piker. Piker, the enormously popular left-wing streamer who infamously said that “America deserved 9/11” appeared at El-Sayed campaign events. Their association has become sufficiently controversial that fellow Democrats have demanded a repudiation.

This is no longer simply Republican opposition research. It has become an argument inside the Democratic Party about how far its insurgent wing has traveled and which associations should remain beyond the pale.

The same problem surfaced after an attack on a Michigan synagogue. El-Sayed initially discussed the attack partly through the assailant’s personal loss in the Middle East and said that “hurt people hurt people.” He subsequently apologized to Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus, saying he had not intended to excuse violence and regretted the pain his words caused.

Taken together, the statements illustrate that a candidate who developed his political identity within America’s activist left is now attempting to translate that identity into statewide political power. And he is hardly alone.

Zohran Mamdani Proved the Model Could Work

The political earthquake really began with Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani doesn’t run away from the terminology. He is a democratic socialist and was sworn in as mayor of America’s largest city in January after campaigning on universal childcare, free bus service, rent freezes and higher taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

More importantly, Mamdani isn’t treating his victory as a one-off New York phenomenon. He told CBS that democratic socialism “can flourish anywhere.” The movement is now testing that proposition.

In June, all three congressional candidates endorsed by Mamdani won their New York Democratic primaries. Brad Lander defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman. Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated Rep. Adriano Espaillat. Claire Valdez captured the nomination for an open congressional seat. At least a dozen NYC-DSA-backed candidates won races that night.

That is not an activist club issuing manifestos. That is an electoral machine. And because these are overwhelmingly Democratic districts, primary victories can be tantamount to election.

The Insurgency Spreads to Michigan

Then came Michigan. State Rep. Donavan McKinney, a DSA member, defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. McKinney ran on Medicare for All, ending military aid to Israel and rejecting corporate PAC money. He was backed by DSA and other progressive organizations and is heavily favored in his Democratic district.

On the same primary night, El-Sayed defeated the more establishment-oriented Stevens for the Senate nomination. Consider what that means.

A democratic socialist knocked a sitting Democratic congressman out of office. A Sanders- and AOC-backed progressive with longstanding DSA relationships captured the party’s Senate nomination. And the results occurred not in Brooklyn or San Francisco, but in Michigan, one of the states that determines who governs America.

Reuters now describes El-Sayed and McKinney as part of a broader test for the democratic socialist movement as it attempts to expand its coalition beyond younger progressives and into constituencies, including older Black Democrats, that have traditionally been more skeptical of the socialist left.

Florida Just Delivered Another Warning

Florida provided yet another data point. State Rep. Angie Nixon stunned the Democratic establishment by defeating Alex Vindman for the party’s U.S. Senate nomination. Nixon joined the Democratic Socialists of America in June, although she has emphasized that she doesn’t endorse every position taken by the organization.

After winning, Nixon told CBS that voters weren’t interested in ideological terminology. “It’s not about labels,” she argued.

That phrase is becoming remarkably common. El-Sayed says he isn’t a socialist. Nixon says labels aren’t important. Mamdani says democratic socialism can flourish everywhere.

Conservatives would be foolish to become obsessed with terminology while ignoring the underlying transformation. Look at the policies. Look at the alliances. Look at who is winning.

A Democratic Leadership Vacuum

Former Democratic fundraiser Lindy Li offers one explanation for why this is happening.

Li, who raised money for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris before breaking with the party and now identifies as conservative, told Fox News that the Democratic Party’s post-Biden leadership vacuum has created an opening for DSA.

“Power abhors a vacuum,” she said. “They’re simply filling a vacuum. There’s no one there.” Li’s political conversion obviously gives her a point of view, and her characterization of DSA should be understood in that context. But the underlying observation is difficult to dismiss.

Who currently defines the Democratic Party? The Biden generation is gone. The old Clinton-era centrism has little emotional hold on younger Democratic voters. The party establishment remains institutionally powerful, but establishment-backed incumbents have repeatedly discovered that institutional power doesn’t guarantee victory in a Democratic primary.

The socialist left, meanwhile, has something establishment Democrats increasingly lack: an ideology, an activist base, recognizable national personalities, an economic narrative and an organized mechanism for identifying and electing candidates. It knows what it wants.

Socialism With Better Marketing

There is also a reason the movement is succeeding that conservatives should understand rather than caricature. Its candidates rarely campaign by giving voters lectures on Marx.

They campaign on rent. Groceries. Health insurance. Childcare. Corporate power. Housing.

Young Americans facing enormous housing costs, student debt and health-care expenses (all created by Democratic policies) are told that their economic insecurity is not primarily the result of scarcity, regulation, monetary policy, taxation or failed government programs. They are told instead that the system has been captured by billionaires and corporations, and that government can make life affordable by transferring more economic power to the public sector.

That message has political potency.

Mamdani’s campaign was built around affordability. Nixon stresses everyday costs. El-Sayed continually redirects interviews toward housing, health care and the price of living. Even Reuters’ examination of the socialist movement today notes that its candidates are concentrating on affordability as they try to broaden their electoral appeal.

Supporters see these policies as democratic government correcting market failures, restraining monopolies and providing necessities that private markets have failed to make affordable. They reject comparisons with authoritarian communism and point to social-democratic programs throughout Europe and elsewhere. That is the strongest argument for their side.

But conservatives should recognize what is occurring beneath the friendlier vocabulary: the acceptable boundary of government intervention in American economic life is moving dramatically.

Policies that would have been considered outside mainstream Democratic politics a generation ago are increasingly presented not as radical experiments but as obvious moral necessities.

Yesterday’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Establishment

That is the real lesson of Abdul El-Sayed. It isn’t necessary to prove that he secretly keeps a copy of The Communist Manifesto under his pillow. It isn’t even necessary to win an argument over whether “socialist” “communist” or even “caliphate” is the technically correct description of his political philosophy.

Watch the movement instead. Bernie Sanders spent decades as an eccentric independent socialist from Vermont. Then came AOC and the Squad. Then came Mamdani.

Now Mamdani has become mayor of New York City and helped knock incumbent Democrats out of Congress. DSA-backed candidates are winning nominations in Michigan. A DSA member has captured Florida’s Democratic Senate nomination. And a politician who spent years appearing at DSA events, enjoys the backing of virtually every major figure in the congressional socialist left and advocates some of its signature economic policies is now the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Michigan.

The socialist movement has not quite captured the entire Democratic Party. A few moderate Democrats may still exist, often resist it somewhat, and in many parts of the country remain more electorally successful. But that is no longer the relevant threshold.

The question is whether socialism has moved from the Democratic Party’s fringe into a position from which it can plausibly compete for the party’s future.

The 2026 election cycle is supplying an increasingly uncomfortable answer: It has.

And Americans who were once told that warnings about the Democratic Party’s leftward march were merely conservative hysteria no longer have to speculate about where the movement wants to go.

Its candidates are telling us. Its organizations are mobilizing. And increasingly, Democratic primary voters are putting them in office.

For What Possible Reason? The Political Movement That Opposes the People

August 24, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

There is a question Americans ought to ask whenever they encounter a political position that seems, at first glance, difficult to understand: What principle connects it to the other positions being advanced at the same time? Taken separately, arguments over illegal immigration, voter identification, gun ownership, government fraud, taxation, regulation and the growth of the federal bureaucracy can appear to be unrelated disputes.

Taken together, however, they illuminate one of the oldest disagreements in American political life: whether government exists primarily to protect the liberty and sovereignty of the individual citizen, or whether increasingly consequential decisions should be entrusted to an expanding administrative state.

What Possible Reason for an Open Border?

Consider the border. A sovereign country has both the authority and responsibility to decide who may enter, who may remain, and who may become a citizen. What obligation does the federal government have to the existing citizenry when immigration occurs illegally or at a scale that strains housing, schools, hospitals, public assistance and law enforcement? Immigration policy is not merely a discussion about the people seeking admission. It is mainly a question about the government’s responsibilities to the people who already constitute the nation. Those people ARE the government.

The Democrats oppose controlling our borders. For what possible reason? They oppose removing illegal aliens. For what possible reason?

What Possible Reason to Oppose Election Integrity?

The same fundamental question arises in election administration. Americans can reasonably disagree about precisely which safeguards provide the best combination of ballot access and election security. But the objective itself should be overwhelmingly shared: every eligible citizen should be able to vote, every lawful vote should be counted, and unlawful votes should not be counted. Requirements such as voter identification, accurate voter rolls, auditable election procedures and effective citizenship verification should therefore be evaluated according to whether they accomplish those objectives without improperly disenfranchising qualified voters. Election integrity should not belong to Republicans or Democrats. Confidence in legitimate elections is infrastructure for the republic itself. Yet, Democrats oppose election integrity at every step. For what possible reason?

What Possible Reason to Oppose Gun Ownership?

Then there is the Second Amendment. The Constitution does not merely mention firearms as an incidental matter of public policy; it expressly protects a right of the people to keep and bear arms. Americans should recognize the deeper philosophical question underlying the debate. A society in which peaceful citizens possess enforceable rights independent of government is fundamentally different from one in which government decides which privileges citizens may exercise. The distinction between a right and government-granted permission is central to the American constitutional experiment. The right to keep and bear arms exists before, during and after the existence of the federal government, and the government has no ability to “infringe” that right. For what possible reason would Democrats seek to restrict or eliminate that right?

What Possible Reason to Oppose Ending Government Fraud?

Perhaps nowhere should political agreement be easier to achieve than in the effort to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from government.

Whether the amount ultimately uncovered is billions or hundreds of billions of dollars, every dollar fraudulently obtained from government originated with taxpayers or public borrowing. A fraudulent Medicaid payment, fictitious government contractor, nonexistent beneficiary, corrupt grant recipient or improperly obtained federal benefit is not free money. Someone earned the money that government collected, and future taxpayers must ultimately service the debt incurred when government spends money it does not have.

That should make aggressive auditing one of the least partisan propositions imaginable. It is not. Democrats oppose ending government fraud at every step, and their abhorrent treatment of DOGE and Elon Musk are clear evidence of their disdain.

If investigators identify apparent fraud, investigate it. If an audit discovers payments going to ineligible recipients, stop them. If government databases contain glaring inconsistencies, reconcile them. If contractors are billing taxpayers for services never performed, prosecute the responsible parties where the evidence warrants it. If an agency cannot satisfactorily account for enormous amounts of public money, require it to do so.

After all, a government confident in its integrity should welcome serious auditing because an audit that disproves an allegation is valuable too.

The Answer

There is one common answer to each of these simple questions. Who could possibly oppose doing what is best for the American people, rather than what is best for unvetted foreigners, election fraudsters, Leftist politicians with totalitarian desires, and financial fraudsters?

Those who benefit, is the common answer.

Democrats benefit from a permanent underclass, who will vote against America’s interest to elect politicians who promise massive benefits and cash for little effort.

Democrats benefit from promoting and defending those involved in election fraud, because those illegal votes are nearly 100% cast for Democrats.

Democrats are always engaged in anti-Second Amendment activities, because they, like every wanna-be totalitarian government that preceded them have trouble taking away American rights if American’s are armed.

Democrats oppose investigating and prosecuting fraud because it is their operatives who engage in it, funneling billions to friendly recipients, and many millions of those ill-gotten dollars end up in Democrat campaigns coffers.

I challenge anyone to offer sound reasons why these conclusions are not true. There is no other possible reason for Democrats to take these harmful and foolish positions.

No Debate, No AG Interview: What Is AZ Gov Katie Hobbs Hiding?

August 20, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Arizona’s governor won’t debate Rep. Andy Biggs. She won’t sit for interviews requested by investigators examining pay-to-play schemes. Meanwhile, her campaign is spending heavily to falsely define her opponent without facing him.

Arizona voters are being asked to give Katie Hobbs another four years as governor. Why would they do such a foolish thing?

It is remarkable how many questions the governor appears unwilling to answer, even in the traditional forums where politicians are expected to answer them.

Hobbs has announced that she will not debate Republican gubernatorial nominee Andy Biggs before November’s election. She similarly refused to debate Republican Kari Lake during her successful 2022 campaign and has not participated in a televised political debate since 2018.

Hobbs is no stranger to controversy over institutional conflicts. During the 2022 gubernatorial election against Kari Lake, Hobbs simultaneously served as Arizona’s Secretary of State—the state’s chief elections officer—and Democratic nominee for governor. Hobbs rejected calls to recuse herself from election duties, and ultimately certified the very questionable election declaring herself the winner.

Hobbs refuses to submit submitted to a formal interview requested months ago by investigators working for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes—a fellow Democrat and close friend of Hobbs—who is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of a pay-to-play scheme involving one of Hobbs’ major political benefactors.

Rep. Andy Biggs will attend debate vs. sitting Arizona governor Katie Hobbs whether she shows up or not.

Hobbs says she is cooperating with the Attorney General’s Office, but Mayes reports that Hobbs is refusing to sit with criminal investigators for an interview.

After two years for stonewalling investigators, Arizona voters are entitled to wonder why obtaining straightforward answers has proved so difficult.

The $400,000 Question

At the center of the controversy is Sunshine Residential Homes, a company providing group-home services for children in Arizona’s foster-care system.

The basic chronology is not a partisan invention. Sunshine and its leadership made more than $400,000 in political contributions benefiting Hobbs, her inaugural operation and the Arizona Democratic Party during 2022 and 2023. Sunshine previously had little history of political giving.

Then came the state money. After Hobbs became governor, her Department of Child Safety approved a substantial special increase in the rate paid to Sunshine for caring for foster children, worth millions of dollars.

Other providers seeking increases had been turned down. And yes, Sunshine got one.

The resulting increase ultimately took its rate from approximately $140 to $234 per bed, according to Capitol Media Services—a rise of more than 60 percent.

That combination—large political contributions followed by favorable specific government treatment worth many millions of dollars—was sufficiently troubling that it eventually triggered multiple investigations.

It presents exactly the kind of circumstances that investigators exist to examine.

Three Investigations—and Two Years Later, Still No Answer

Attorney General Mayes opened her investigation in June 2024. That means Arizona has now entered the third year of an investigation involving its sitting governor.

And Mayes isn’t the only prosecutor looking at the matter. Republican Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has conducted a separate investigation, and the Arizona House retained outside attorney Justin Smith to conduct an independent inquiry for lawmakers. That is important because criticism of Mayes’ handling of the investigation has inevitably been complicated by politics. Mayes and Hobbs are both Democrats, and are closely aligned.

The extraordinary duration of the investigation, and Mayes’ inability or unwillingness to say whether investigators will actually get the governor into an interview room, naturally invites scrutiny.

In April, Mayes publicly confirmed that investigators are seeking to interview Hobbs. “Our investigators are prepared to do that interview,” Mayes said at the time, calling it appropriate to ensure that the investigation was thorough.

Months passed. No interview.

Although earlier this month, Mayes insisted that “no one can blow off the Attorney General’s office,” Hobbs has done exactly that. Despite numerous invitations and demands by prosecutors for interviews, Hobbs has refused each and every opportunity to tell her side of the public corruption story.

Last week, Hobbs told KTAR that her office remains in discussions with Mayes’ office about the request but offered no explanation for why she has not simply sat down and answered investigators’ questions. That is difficult, if not impossible, to understand.

If the governor had nothing to do with Sunshine’s favorable treatment, as she maintains, why has arranging an interview with investigators required months of “negotiation”? The answer becomes more obvious with each passing week.

In reality, a criminal investigation involving a sitting governor cannot simply drift through an election indefinitely. Either the evidence supports her story in the criminal investigation, or it doesn’t. And after more than two years, Arizona deserves answers.

Even worse, Hobbs Vetoed a Contract-Transparency Bill

There is another awkward chapter in the Gov Hobbs criminal investigation saga.

Republican state Sen. T.J. Shope proposed legislation requiring companies seeking state contracts and grants to disclose certain political donations, gifts and financial connections involving the governor and her political network.

Hobbs vetoed that legislation in June.

Politically, the optics are extraordinary. A governor under criminal investigation over allegations involving political contributions and a lucrative state arrangement vetoes legislation specifically designed to expose relationships between political contributions and state contracts.

Arizona taxpayers should not have to work this hard to discover who is giving politicians money while simultaneously seeking taxpayer-funded business.

Hobbs Won’t Debate Biggs Either

Against that backdrop comes Hobbs’ other refusal. She won’t debate her opponent, Rep. Andy Biggs.

Hobs likewise refused to debate Kari Lake in 2022. She also refused to debate her Democratic primary opponent that year. Her last televised political debate was reportedly in October 2018.

Biggs, meanwhile, has committed to appearing at the October Clean Elections debate whether Hobbs shows up or not.

Arizona voters deserve better than dueling television commercials.

Hobbs’ “23 Percent Tax” Attack Is a Lie

Hobbs has instead gone aggressively negative against Biggs, particularly with advertisements claiming he wants to impose a 23 percent sales tax that would make groceries, gasoline, rent and other necessities 23 percent “more expensive.”

The truth is that Biggs has discussed replacing federal income and payroll taxes with a national consumption tax.

Its central premise is to abolish federal individual income taxes, payroll taxes and several other federal taxes and replace that revenue with a simple, across the board consumption tax.

Of course, that is merely restructuring the manner in which federal taxes are levied and collected. It does not add any tax.

A gubernatorial debate would be an excellent place for Hobbs to challenge Biggs on that, and for Biggs to react to a few of the allegations against Hobbs. She has chosen not to debate him—likely, for that very reason.

Arizona Really Does Have an Affordability Problem

There is one criticism of Hobbs that doesn’t require exaggeration. Arizona has become painfully expensive.

A 2026 Common Sense Institute analysis ranked Arizona 45th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., for affordability, down sharply from 2019. Arizona PBS reported the study as placing the state seventh-least-affordable nationally. Housing is the largest problem: CSI estimates that only about 42 percent of Arizona households could afford the monthly mortgage on an average-priced home under conventional affordability standards, compared with 66 percent in 2019.

Much of Arizona’s housing-price explosion began during the pandemic and the Biden inflation mistakes. Hobbs touted and even embraced those democratic party policies, and now seeks to escape her responsibility for the affordability crisis in Arizona.

Again, that sounds like an excellent debate question.

Arizona Deserves Answers Before November

Arizona voters shouldn’t have to choose their governor first, and receive answers about the governor’s criminal investigations afterward.

They deserve to know why a company and its principals suddenly became major political benefactors and subsequently received unusually favorable state treatment, resulting in millions of dollars in benefits.

They deserve to know whether anyone in the Governor’s Office influenced that decision They deserve to know what Mayes’ investigators found after spending more than two years examining it They deserve to know why Hobbs still has not sat for the interview investigators requested months ago.

And they deserve to see their governor stand across from the man seeking her job and answer questions without handlers, campaign advertisements, or carefully controlled events separating the candidates.

Hobbs says she has nothing to hide. Andy Biggs says he is prepared to debate. Kris Mayes says nobody can blow off the Attorney General.

Excellent.

Then there should be a remarkably simple solution to all three controversies: Answer the investigators. Debate the opponent. And let Arizona voters hear the answers before they cast their ballots.

The Fang Fang Files: Democrats Covered Up Eric Swalwell Affair with Chinese Communist Intelligence Officer

August 18, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Newly declassified FBI records reveal an intimate relationship, a years-long counterintelligence investigation, suspected foreign campaign contributions, and disturbing questions about Chinese efforts to cultivate rising American politicians.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D) and “Best Friend” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D) in the hot seat after traveling to Doha on several Qatar-sponsored trips, and being caught in extramarital affairs.

For nearly six years, Americans have heard two dramatically different versions of the Eric Swalwell–Christine Fang story.

One version portrayed it largely as partisan gossip: a rising California Democrat encountered a Chinese woman active in Bay Area politics.

Newly declassified FBI records reveal that abbreviated version as a lie.

According to records released yesterday, Swalwell acknowledged to FBI investigators that he had engaged in what he described as “physical relations” with Christine Fang—better known as Fang Fang—on a “handful of occasions.” The disclosure provides an important fact that was absent from the original public reporting when the controversy erupted in 2020. Fang Fang would show up at Swalwell’s rooms “wearing no panties,” and the security team was under instruction to allow her in.

Chinese honeypot Fang Fang solicited illegal campaign donations for Eric Swalwell and placed Chinese spies in his office, FBI found

More importantly, the documents illuminate the concerning breadth of the FBI’s concerns about Fang herself and about Chinese Intelligence efforts to cultivate relationships with American politicians.

The FBI investigation ran from 2014 through 2017 under the code name “Freshman Fifteen.” Investigators examined suspected foreign-source campaign contributions, congressional internships and Fang’s relationships with American political figures.

Swalwell was never criminally charged by Biden’s DOJ and a House Ethics Committee investigation ended without disciplinary action against him.

This Was About Much More Than Sex

Federal investigators believed Fang was associated with China’s intelligence apparatus and were sufficiently interested in her activities that the FBI at one point attempted to develop her as an intelligence source.

The FBI discovered the Swalwell relationship during that effort. Investigators eventually concluded that Fang could not be trusted as a source.

The documents also provide additional information concerning Fang’s political activities. Investigators examined campaign contributions and internships in Swalwell’s congressional office, finding that she was planting female Chinese Intelligence operatives on Swalwell’s staff in exchange for political contributions.

Of course, foreign nationals are prohibited from contributing to American federal campaigns for an obvious reason: Americans, not foreign governments or foreign nationals, are supposed to choose and influence America’s political leadership.

And the broader question remains unavoidable:

How did a woman under FBI counterintelligence scrutiny for suspected connections to America’s principal geopolitical adversary obtain such extraordinary access to a rising member of Congress?

China’s Influence Operations Are Not Hypothetical

The larger story is Communist China’s patient approach to cultivating political influence inside the United States. Intelligence operations rarely begin with a stranger walking into a congressman’s office and requesting classified documents.

They begin with relationships. Access. Introductions. Fundraisers. Friendships. Political assistance. Personal vulnerabilities.

And sometimes, sex.

An intelligence service does not necessarily need its target to become a conscious spy. Simply establishing access to an ambitious politician can produce information about personalities, relationships, political networks, schedules, vulnerabilities and future opportunities.

That is why the original Fang story was significant even before these new documents appeared.

The original 2020 Axios investigation reported that U.S. intelligence officials believed Fang participated in a Chinese political-influence operation targeting promising American politicians. She assisted Swalwell’s fundraising efforts and helped place interns in his congressional office.

Today’s declassified records provide considerably more context about just how close the relationship became.

Then Swalwell Joined the Intelligence Committee

The chronology makes the episode especially uncomfortable. Swalwell entered Congress in 2013 and subsequently served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence beginning in 2015.

Members of that committee oversee extraordinarily sensitive national-security matters involving the CIA, NSA, covert activities, foreign intelligence operations and threats posed by adversarial governments—including China.

Counterintelligence is supposed to identify vulnerabilities before classified information is compromised.

Imagine reversing the political parties and changing only one country.

Suppose a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee admitted having repeated sexual encounters with a woman whom the FBI suspected of connections to Russian intelligence. Would Washington dismiss questions about that relationship as partisan politics?

Would journalists consider the matter unworthy of aggressive investigation? Would congressional leaders insist there was nothing interesting to see because GOP prosecutors ultimately filed no espionage charges?

Americans can answer those questions for themselves.

The “Freshman Fifteen” Investigation

The newly disclosed existence and scope of the FBI investigation deserve particular attention.

According to the newly reported documents, “Freshman Fifteen” operated from approximately 2014 through 2017 and examined Fang’s activities surrounding American politicians, including suspected campaign-finance activity.

Investigators reportedly believed Fang herself may have violated federal laws governing foreign political contributions. Reporting on the records says investigators believed she understood the prohibition against foreign nationals contributing to American campaigns and examined whether American intermediaries had been used instead.

Fang departed the United States in 2015. The FBI dropped its investigation. But Americans should understand that “not charged” is not synonymous with “nothing happened.”

The newly released records demonstrate that the FBI considered the situation sufficiently serious to conduct a multiyear counterintelligence investigation.

Why Didn’t Americans Know?

That brings us to perhaps the most important question raised by the entire release. Why did Americans have to wait until 2026 to learn so much of this?

When the Fang controversy became public in 2020, Americans did not have the investigative record now available. It was essentially covered up by the Deep State FBI. They received fragments of the story through anonymous intelligence sources, partisan arguments, and carefully worded political responses.

The FBI knew substantially more. Investigators had interviewed Swalwell. They knew the nature of his personal relationship with Fang. They had investigated Fang’s political activities. They had examined suspected campaign-finance issues. They had attempted to assess her intelligence connections.

Yet the public remained largely in the dark about the underlying investigative material. Only conservative news outlets like Fox News provided the public coverage of the outrageous behavior of Rep. Swalwell, and later, his “Best Friend,” Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona.

National-security investigations legitimately require secrecy while they are underway. Sources and methods must be protected. Active counterintelligence operations cannot simply be published on the Internet. But an investigation that concluded years ago raises a different question.

At what point does protecting legitimate national-security information become protecting Washington from embarrassment? That question deserves an answer.

What About Ruben Gallego?

The release has also renewed attention on Sen. Ruben Gallego (D) because of his extraordinarily close political and personal relationship with Swalwell. Gallego and Swalwell were exceptionally close, by their own admission.

Gallego served as national chairman of Swalwell’s short-lived 2020 presidential campaign. The two traveled together often, on foreign junkets paid for by foreign countries. They were congressional roommates, and maintained a close friendship. Swalwell has reportedly described Gallego as his “best friend in the world.”

That makes questions about what Gallego knew politically interesting. Recent revelations about Galleo’s extra-marital affairs are likewise deeply disturbing, particularly when discussing allegations involving national security.

When prominent politicians campaign together, travel together, live together, have affairs at the same time, and publicly defend one another, reporters are perfectly entitled to ask what each knew about controversies surrounding the other.

Patriotism Should Not Be Partisan

There is a principle here that should transcend political affiliation. China conducts sophisticated intelligence, cyber, economic and political-influence operations against the United States. American intelligence officials under Republican and Democratic administrations alike have repeatedly warned about their scale.

Protecting America from foreign influence therefore cannot depend upon which letter follows a politician’s name.

If a Republican develops an intimate relationship with someone suspected of connections to Russian intelligence, investigate it. If a Democrat develops an intimate relationship with someone suspected of connections to Chinese intelligence, investigate it.

If foreign campaign contributions appear to be entering American elections through intermediaries, investigate them.

If foreign operatives are cultivating young American politicians whom they believe may someday become governors, senators, presidential candidates or members of sensitive congressional committees, expose those operations.

National loyalty should come before party loyalty.

The Fang Fang Story Is No Longer a Punchline

For years, “Fang Fang” became a punchline in partisan political arguments.

The newly released records demonstrate why it never should have been. Foreign intelligence services cultivating American politicians is serious business.

Sexual relationships can create counterintelligence vulnerabilities. Foreign campaign money is prohibited for a reason. Access to congressional offices matters. Access to congressional personnel matters. And access to politicians who later oversee America’s intelligence agencies matters enormously.

The FBI investigated Christine Fang for suspected connections to Chinese intelligence personnel and political-influence activities. Investigators examined suspected foreign-source campaign contributions and congressional internships. And Swalwell acknowledged an intimate relationship with Fang on a “handful of occasions” during the period when his political career was rapidly ascending toward one of the most sensitive committees in Congress.

Americans deserved to know those facts. They deserved to know them years ago. And that leaves Washington with questions that cannot be dismissed simply by pointing out that no prosecution resulted:

What exactly happened? Who knew about it? What did the FBI conclude about China’s operation? And why did the American people have to wait more than a decade to see so much of the underlying record?

The American press and Democratic leadership did everything they could to hide the story, and lied about the facts for over 10 years while they boosted Swalwell’s political career. That is why the American people are only learning about it today.

If Packing the Supreme Court Is a Good Idea, Why Shouldn’t President Trump Do It?

August 14, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

For years, many progressive Democrats have argued that the Supreme Court should be expanded by four seats. They call it “court reform.” Others call it “court balancing.” Critics have called it by a more accurate name: court packing.

The argument is simple. Democrats dislike the current ideological makeup of the Court, so they propose changing the rules until they achieve a different outcome. It is a remarkable admission that the problem is not with the Constitution, nor even with the qualifications of the justices. The problem, they argue, is simply that too many justices disagree with them.

But there is a simple thought experiment that exposes the weakness of the entire proposal.

If expanding the Supreme Court by four justices is fair when Democrats control Washington, why wouldn’t it be equally fair for President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress to do exactly the same thing? Now!

Imagine President Trump announcing tomorrow that he intends to appoint four additional constitutional originalists to the Supreme Court. Would the same politicians who have spent years demanding court expansion applaud his commitment to institutional reform?

Of course not.

They would denounce it as authoritarian. They would call it an assault on democracy. Editorial boards would declare the judiciary under attack. Cable news networks would run wall-to-wall coverage warning of constitutional crisis.

The very people who have insisted that adding four seats is perfectly legitimate would suddenly discover that it is dangerous, reckless, and fundamentally unfair.

That reaction reveals the truth.

The debate has never really been about the number of justices.

It has always been about who gets to appoint them.

The Supreme Court has consisted of nine justices since 1869. That number is not fixed by the Constitution, but it has endured through Republican and Democratic administrations alike because both parties gradually recognized that constantly changing the size of the Court would destroy public confidence in its independence.

Once one party expands the Court for political advantage, the other party has every incentive to respond in kind.

Nine becomes thirteen.

Thirteen becomes seventeen.

Seventeen becomes twenty-one.

Eventually the Supreme Court ceases to function as an independent judicial branch and instead becomes another political battlefield whose membership changes whenever power changes hands. Supreme Court Justices become political activists, appointed by the party what holds the White House.

The institution itself becomes the casualty.

Even President Franklin Roosevelt—perhaps the most powerful Democratic president of the twentieth century—failed in his attempt to enlarge the Supreme Court after the justices struck down portions of the New Deal. Roosevelt argued that additional justices were necessary for efficiency. Few believed him. Americans understood that the proposal was fundamentally about changing judicial outcomes rather than improving judicial administration.

Congress rejected the idea, including many members of Roosevelt’s own party.

History has generally vindicated that decision.

The genius of the American constitutional system lies in its separation of powers. The judiciary was intentionally insulated from day-to-day politics precisely so that constitutional rights would not depend upon whichever party happened to win the most recent election.

Court packing undermines that safeguard.

Ironically, many of the same politicians advocating Supreme Court expansion have spent years warning that American institutions must be protected from political interference. Yet they propose changing one of the nation’s oldest institutions because they dislike its current decisions.

That is not judicial reform.

It is political retaliation.

There is another question that proponents rarely answer. If four additional justices are appropriate today, why stop there?

Why not six? Why not ten?

What constitutional principle determines the “correct” number of justices?

There is none.

The only apparent principle is obtaining enough votes to guarantee preferred outcomes.

That is a dangerous precedent regardless of which party holds power.

Those who support court packing today should remember that political fortunes change. Every tool one administration creates eventually becomes available to its successor. That is exactly why the GOP refuses to do away with the filibuster; a tool that works against them currently.

If expanding the Court is acceptable when progressives hold the White House, it must also be acceptable when conservatives do.

If President Trump were to announce tomorrow that he intended to appoint four new constitutional originalists to a newly expanded Supreme Court, would today’s advocates of court packing cheer the decision?

Their answer would almost certainly be no. And that answer tells us everything we need to know.

The issue has never been the number nine. The issue has always been power.

The American people should be wary of any proposal that changes the rules of our constitutional system simply because one political faction dislikes the current outcome. The Constitution was designed to restrain temporary political passions, not surrender to them. Preserving the independence and legitimacy of the Supreme Court ultimately requires something increasingly rare in modern politics: the willingness to respect institutions even when they do not always produce the decisions we prefer.

When Bill Maher Starts Worrying About Socialism, Democrats Should Pay Attention

August 6, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

A lifelong liberal says his party is being “colonized” by democratic socialists. The question is no longer whether the Democratic Party has changed—but how much, and how far will it go.

For years, Republicans have warned that the Democratic Party has steadily moved left, far left, embracing policies that greatly expand government, increase redistribution, and elevate the role of the state in every aspect of American life. Despite overwhelming evidence, Democrats have generally dismissed those criticisms as partisan rhetoric.

Now, however, one of the country’s best-known liberal commentators is raising many of the same concerns.

Bill Maher is hardly a conservative. Not even a moderate Democrat. He is firmly rooted in the far left. For decades, he has identified with liberal causes, criticized Republican presidents, and supported Democratic candidates. Yet in recent interviews and on his HBO program, Maher has expressed growing concern that the Democratic Party is being, in his words, “colonized” by democratic socialists and increasingly radical activists. He has even remarked that his vote is now “in play” because of the party’s direction.

That observation is significant precisely because it comes from someone who has long been a thought leader of the American left.

Two Parties—or One Coalition?

The Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America remain separate organizations, technically.

The Democratic Party is a broad coalition ranging from moderates to progressives. The DSA is an independent organization that advocates substantially expanding the role of government in healthcare, housing, education, labor policy, and parts of the economy, while also supporting greater worker ownership and cooperative enterprises. In other words, it advocates for state ownership of the means of production and distribution, the touchstone of Marxist and Leninist communism.

Yet in recent years, the distinction between Democrats and Democratic Socialists has become less clear in the public mind.

Several elected officials identify as democratic socialists, or have received DSA support. Policy proposals once associated primarily with the party’s progressive wing—such as Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, wealth taxes, and broad student-debt forgiveness—have increasingly become part of mainstream Democratic debate.

Maher’s concern is not that every Democrat has become a democratic socialist. It is that ideas once considered outside the party’s mainstream are exerting greater influence over its direction.

The Shift in Priorities

Many mainstream Democrats continue to support a regulated market economy, private enterprise, and incremental reform. Democratic socialists generally advocate more sweeping structural changes to the economy, including expanded public ownership or worker control in most sectors.

There is nevertheless meaningful overlap on several policy questions. Both generally support broader access to healthcare, although they differ on how far government should go. Both support stronger labor protections, though democratic socialists typically seek more extensive workplace restructuring. Both support addressing climate change, though they often differ over the balance between government planning and market incentives. Both favor making higher education more affordable, though the DSA generally advocates tuition-free public higher education as a permanent policy.

The debate is therefore less about whether there is any overlap and more about how far the Democratic Party should move toward the DSA’s vision.

Maher’s Warning

Maher has argued that many Democratic politicians are not themselves radicals, but that they have become reluctant to challenge the party’s most ideological activists. He has criticized slogans and positions such as calls to abolish police, prisons, or borders, and he has warned that embracing such ideas risks alienating many Americans.

His criticism is noteworthy because it comes from someone who still describes himself as a liberal.

Bill Maher says, “I’m not voting for anyone who thinks the wrong side won the Cold War or cheers for the Intifada like it’s the World Cup.”

Rather than urging the party to move right, Maher argues that it has drifted away from the pragmatic liberalism associated with previous Democratic leaders and toward a more ideological politics.

Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, it reflects an active debate within the Democratic coalition itself.

The Larger Question

Every major political party evolves. The Republican Party today differs in important respects from the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.

Likewise, the Democratic Party has changed significantly over the past several decades. The question confronting voters is not simply whether the party has moved left. It is how they view that evolution.

Supporters argue that expanded government programs, stronger regulation, and greater redistribution are necessary responses to modern economic challenges. Critics contend that those policies increase government dependence, reduce economic flexibility, and gradually shift decision-making from individuals and markets to political institutions.

That debate is likely to define American politics for years to come, unless action is taken immediately to eradicate this leftward march toward communism from our nation.

Why Maher’s Voice Matters

Political labels are often dismissed when they come from ideological opponents. They are harder to ignore when they come from longtime allies.

Bill Maher’s recent comments do not settle the debate over the Democratic Party’s future. They do, however, demonstrate that concerns about the party’s ideological direction are no longer coming only from conservatives.

When one of America’s most recognizable liberal voices publicly warns that his own party is being “influenced”colonized” by democratic socialists and says his vote is “in play,” it suggests that the conversation has moved well beyond partisan talking points.

Whether Democrats view that as a warning or an opportunity will shape not only their party’s future—but perhaps the nation’s as well.

Democratic Socialists and Democrats: Is there any Difference?

August 5, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Although the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic Party remain separate organizations, many of their policy priorities increasingly intersect.

The rise of openly self-described democratic socialists and even communists within American Democratic Party politics has revived a question that would have seemed unlikely a generation ago: How different is the Democratic Party from the Democratic Socialists of America?

For decades, American politics treated socialism as a fringe ideology. Both Republicans and Democrats generally embraced a market-based economy, private property, and entrepreneurial capitalism, while debating how extensively government should regulate markets and provide social programs.

Today, however, the political landscape has changed. The Democratic Party has moved steadily left, to the point that they have now intersected with the Democratic Socialist Party, due to their common views and goals of transferring wealth and power to just one party, and doing away with Constitutional safeguards.

Bill Maher expresses growing concern that the Democratic Party is being, in his words, “colonized” by democratic socialists and increasingly radical activists. He has even remarked that his vote is now “in play” because of the party’s direction.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has grown substantially since the mid-2010s, and several prominent elected officials identify as democratic socialists or have received support from the organization. At the same time, many policy ideas once associated primarily with socialism have become part of mainstream debate within the Democratic Party.

Different Organizations, Similar Philosophies

The Democratic Party is one of America’s two major political parties and includes a broad coalition of moderates, liberals, progressives, and some elected officials who identify as democratic socialists. Its platform lightly supports a mixed-market economy, private enterprise, while emphasizing its extreme brand of civil rights protections for non-citizens, environmental regulation, and a social safety net that includes Medicare for all.

The Democratic Socialists of America is a separate political organization that advocates for a swifter transformation of the economy. It supports expanding worker ownership and cooperative enterprises, increasing public ownership in most sectors, strengthening labor unions, and significantly expanding the role of government in healthcare, housing, education, and other public services, and most areas of American life.

Healthcare

One area of significant overlap is healthcare. Many Democrats support strengthening and expanding the Affordable Care Act, while others within the party advocate Medicare for All. The DSA explicitly endorses a universal single-payer healthcare system.

Although Democrats disagree internally about the best approach, both organizations generally support broader access to healthcare than currently exists. The difference often lies only in the degree of government involvement rather than the objective of expanding coverage to complete government domination.

Higher Education

Education provides another example. Many Democrats support reducing college costs, expanding Pell Grants, and forgiving most student debt. The DSA generally advocates tuition-free public colleges and universities as a permanent policy.

Labor and the Economy

Both organizations strongly support labor unions. The Democratic Party generally advocates strengthening collective bargaining rights and improving workplace protections.

The DSA goes further by promoting worker cooperatives, greater employee ownership, and broader democratization of economic decision-making, and the seizure of the means of production and distribution; essentially, pure communism.

Climate Policy

Climate policy has also become an area of considerable overlap. Both organizations support substantial government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage clean-energy investment.

The DSA generally favors larger public investment, expanded government planning, and more extensive public ownership in portions of the energy sector. Many Democrats support aggressive environmental regulation while continuing to rely primarily on heavily regulating private markets and private investment.

Of course, none of these proposed policies is designed to actually affect the climate. They merely use climate philosophy to facilitate the transfer of high levels of wealth and power to the Left.

Taxation

Both organizations generally support higher taxes on many high-income households than current law provides. The DSA advocates broader wealth taxes and more extensive redistribution through public spending.

Many Democrats also support increasing taxes on higher-income Americans, though the party encompasses a wider range of views regarding how far redistribution should extend. Of course, as in all examples of socialism and communism in the past, “the rich” turn out to be nearly everyone, and eventually, all citizens become impoverished through socialistic policies, except for the elite leaders.

Public Ownership

Perhaps the clearest distinction involves ownership itself.

The Democratic Party still accepts the concept ofprivate ownership of businesses operating within a highly regulated market economy.

The DSA argues that more sectors of the economy must be seized by government, and be publicly owned, cooperatively owned, or democratically controlled by “workers” meaning them.

The Broader Question

The broader debate extends beyond labels. It concerns the proper relationship between government, markets, and individual liberty. Democrats earn a D minus in these areas, where the DSA earns a prison sentence.

Supporters of expanded government programs argue they reduce inequality, improve economic security, and provide opportunities that markets alone may not deliver. Critics argue that larger government increases public debt, reduces economic flexibility, discourages investment, and places more decisions under political rather than market control, and will inevitably reduce America to Venezuela or Cuba status.

These competing visions have shaped American politics for generations and continue to influence debates over healthcare, education, taxation, housing, labor policy, and environmental regulation.

Looking Ahead

The conversation about democratic socialism and the Democratic Party is unlikely to end soon. As younger progressive leaders gain prominence and the Democratic Party continues to devolve, voters will continue to evaluate where the party sits along the spectrum between market-oriented liberalism and democratic socialism.

Vaccines Save Lives. They Also Injure Some Children. Both Facts Can Be True.

August 4, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

There is something of a pro-vax / anti-vax vibe in the air in America. There shouldn’t be. But Americans need to know that there is a real risk for many children receiving vaccines.

HHS Secretary RFK, Jr. tells Dana Bash ‘Parents should get their children vaccinated for measles’

For years, Americans have been told that vaccines are “safe and effective.” In the broad sense, that statement is true. Vaccines have dramatically reduced or eliminated diseases that once killed or permanently disabled hundreds of thousands of children.

But another statement is also true. Some children are seriously injured by vaccines.

That fact is neither new nor controversial within the medical community. It is the reason Congress established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986. Lawmakers recognized that while vaccines benefit society as a whole, a small number of individuals would inevitably suffer severe adverse reactions through no fault of their own.

The question is not whether vaccine injuries exist. The question is how honestly we discuss them.

A Rare Event Is Still a Tragedy

Parents naturally think in terms of percentages. If a serious adverse reaction occurs once in every million doses, statisticians describe that as “extremely rare.”

The family whose child suffers that reaction describes it differently. To them, the risk is 100 percent.

Modern medicine recognizes several vaccine-related adverse events as genuine complications. These include severe allergic reactions, certain seizure disorders associated with fever, immune-mediated blood disorders, and rare bowel complications following rotavirus vaccination. In uncommon circumstances, these reactions can result in permanent disability or death.

These are not conspiracy theories. They are recognized medical conditions documented by federal health agencies, peer-reviewed research, and the federal vaccine compensation program itself.

Congress Created the Compensation Program for a Reason

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has compensated thousands of claims over the past several decades.

Importantly, not every compensated case represents a definitive scientific finding that a vaccine caused an injury. Many claims are resolved through settlement, and some are compensated because the legal standard differs from the scientific standard.

Nevertheless, the existence of the program acknowledges an important reality: vaccines are not completely risk-free.

No responsible physician claims they are. The proper question is whether the benefits outweigh those risks—not whether the risks exist.

Why the Numbers Are Difficult to Measure

One of the greatest frustrations for both parents and researchers is determining how often serious vaccine injuries actually occur. The United States relies on several surveillance systems, each with strengths and limitations.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) accepts reports from anyone, making it valuable for identifying potential safety signals. At the same time, reports alone do not establish that a vaccine caused an injury, and many reported events ultimately prove unrelated . . . perhaps. Of course, most reporting and determining functions lean heavily pro-vax, so the numbers are considered unreliable by many.

Other surveillance systems actively study medical records and provide stronger evidence regarding causation, but they examine narrower populations. As a result, there is no perfect accounting system.

Some critics argue that passive reporting inevitably misses many cases because not every adverse event is recognized or reported. Public health officials, meanwhile, caution that raw reports cannot be interpreted as confirmed vaccine injuries because illnesses naturally occur in the same age groups receiving routine immunizations.

Both observations can be true.

Understanding the actual incidence of vaccine injury is therefore more complicated than either side of the debate often acknowledges.

Honest Medicine Requires Honest Conversation

Unfortunately, public discussion has become polarized. Some activists portray every childhood illness following vaccination as proof that vaccines are dangerous. Others behave as though questioning vaccine safety is itself irresponsible.

Neither position serves parents well. Medicine advances by openly examining evidence—not by dismissing uncomfortable questions.

Parents deserve to know that every medical intervention carries some degree of risk, whether it is surgery, anesthesia, prescription medication, or vaccination. Vaccines should not be exempt from that principle. Nor should they be uniquely condemned.

Trust Requires Transparency

Public confidence is not strengthened by pretending that vaccine injuries never occur. It is strengthened by acknowledging them honestly, caring for the families affected, continually improving vaccine safety, and conducting rigorous independent research whenever legitimate questions arise.

The overwhelming majority of children experience nothing more than temporary soreness or fever after vaccination. A very small number experience something far more serious. Those families should never be treated as collateral damage in a political argument. They deserve compassion. They deserve answers.

And they deserve a medical system willing to investigate every credible safety concern with the same determination it brings to preventing infectious disease. Public health does not require blind faith. It requires transparency, accountability, and the willingness to follow evidence wherever it leads—even when that evidence is inconvenient.

Only then can Americans have the confidence that both the benefits and the risks of vaccination are being reported honestly.

Envy Is the Fuel of Socialism

July 28, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Social media has created a generation taught to compare, covet, and consume. Socialism arrives promising to satisfy desires that only hard work and free enterprise can sustainably provide.

One of the most destructive cultural developments of the past twenty years has received remarkably little attention. It is not merely the rise of social media, but the rise of manufactured envy. Platforms that began as a way for families and friends to stay connected have evolved into global competitions where millions of people display carefully edited versions of their lives.

Filters erase imperfections. Luxury vacations become routine. Exotic automobiles, designer clothing, expensive homes, private jets, and seemingly effortless wealth fill endless scrolling feeds.

For many users, especially young people, the result is not inspiration—it is comparison. And comparison, left unchecked, often becomes envy.

Researchers have found that social media encourages upward social comparison, particularly among younger users, increasing dissatisfaction with their own circumstances and amplifying the “fear of missing out.” Social media companies profit from that emotion. Influencers profit from it. Advertisers profit from it. Increasingly, politicians do as well.

Every successful political movement appeals to deeply rooted human emotions. Some appeal to hope. Others appeal to patriotism or fear. Socialism has historically found its greatest appeal in resentment and envy. Its message is deceptively simple: someone else has more than you. Someone else lives in the house you wish you owned, drives the car you wish you could afford, and enjoys a lifestyle you have been taught to believe you deserve.

Rather than asking how successful people created their prosperity, socialism asks a different question: Why should they have it at all?

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher understood this tendency better than most. She famously observed, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” She also noted that socialism often appears less interested in making the poor wealthier than in making the wealthy poorer. In fact, history repeatedly demonstrates that many redistributive political movements spend far more time discussing how wealth should be divided than how wealth is actually created.

Social media has fundamentally altered the psychology of younger generations. Previous generations compared themselves primarily to neighbors, classmates, or coworkers. Today’s young adults compare themselves every waking hour to celebrities, entrepreneurs, professional athletes, entertainers, and social media influencers whose carefully curated lives bear little resemblance to reality. Algorithms continuously feed users images of people who appear richer, happier, more attractive, and more successful than themselves. It should surprise no one that many young Americans conclude they are somehow falling behind.

What rarely appears on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube are the years of sacrifice that almost always precede genuine success. Viewers seldom see the entrepreneur who mortgaged his home three times before building a successful business, the contractor who worked nights and weekends for twenty years, the physician who endured a decade of education and residency, or the investor who quietly accumulated wealth through disciplined saving and decades of compound growth.

Social media compresses decades of effort into a thirty-second highlight reel. Success appears effortless. Wealth appears instantaneous. Luxury appears normal rather than exceptional. When the hard work disappears from the story, redistributing someone else’s success begins to seem perfectly reasonable.

It is therefore not surprising that socialism has gained renewed popularity among many younger Americans. Surveys have shown that younger generations express more favorable attitudes toward socialism than their parents and grandparents. There are many reasons for this. Housing prices have risen dramatically. College tuition has exploded. Student debt burdens millions of graduates. Economic mobility often feels more difficult than it did for previous generations. These concerns are genuine and deserve serious attention. Yet social media magnifies those frustrations by presenting extraordinary lifestyles as though they are ordinary expectations. The emotional response creates fertile ground for politicians promising to solve inequality by expanding government and redistributing wealth.

Within today’s Democratic Party, that message has become increasingly prominent. Self-described democratic socialists now occupy influential positions within the party, while others advocate policies that would significantly expand federal control over healthcare, education, housing, energy, taxation, and wealth redistribution. Supporters argue these programs create greater fairness and economic security. Critics respond that every new entitlement, regulation, or subsidy eventually raises the same unavoidable question: At whose expense?

Government creates no wealth of its own. Every benefit it provides must first be financed through taxation, borrowing, inflation, or future generations who will eventually be asked to pay today’s bills.

America has never promised equal outcomes. It has promised equal opportunity under the law. Those are profoundly different ideas. Free societies inevitably produce different results because individuals make different choices, possess different talents, assume different risks, and devote different levels of effort to different pursuits.

Capitalism rewards innovation, investment, entrepreneurship, and productive labor. Socialism increasingly looks to political power to redistribute what others have already created. History offers countless examples of that experiment, and the results have consistently included slower economic growth, diminished innovation, expanding government control, and declining personal freedom.

The proper response to seeing another person’s success has never been resentment. It should be curiosity. How did they build it? What sacrifices did they make? What risks did they assume? What can I learn from their example? Those questions built the American economy. They inspired generations of immigrants, entrepreneurs, inventors, and workers who transformed modest beginnings into remarkable success stories. Envy has never built a civilization. Innovation has. Discipline has. Entrepreneurship has. Personal responsibility has.

Social media will continue rewarding appearances, and politicians will continue rewarding promises. But neither can repeal economic reality. A nation that teaches its young people to covet what others possess rather than encouraging them to build prosperity for themselves risks replacing ambition with resentment. The American Dream was never that government would guarantee every citizen the lifestyle of an internet influencer. It was that every citizen would remain free to pursue success through talent, perseverance, innovation, prudent risk-taking, and hard work.

That dream remains worth defending. Perhaps the first step is teaching the next generation not to ask, “Why do they have more than I do?” but instead, “What can I build?”

The Climate Scare Revisited: What Happened to the Predictions?

June 12, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

For more than half a century, Americans have been told that environmental catastrophe is just around the corner. The names changed. The slogans changed. The predictions changed.

But the underlying message remained remarkably consistent: Trust the experts. Expand government power. Spend vast sums of money. And act immediately before it is too late.

Yet after decades of increasingly dramatic warnings, many Americans are beginning to ask a simple question: How many of those predictions actually came true? The answer is not nearly as clear as the climate establishment would like the public to believe.

Many readers are old enough to remember when the scientific consensus appeared to point in the opposite direction. During the 1970s, major media outlets warned of global cooling and a possible coming ice age. Television specials discussed advancing glaciers and shrinking growing seasons. One famous program hosted by Leonard Nimoy warned viewers that climate change could bring dramatic cooling and widespread disruption.

The science was settled. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA) provided incontrovertible data that we were headed into a mini ice age.

Until it wasn’t. After a few years of study, the data turned out to indicate there was no global cooling problem. In fact, the earth had been on a 400 year natural warming cycle, which predated the industrial age and burning of fossil fuels.

So, then came global warming. Then climate change. Then climate emergency.

The terminology had evolved, and the direction had changed, but the dead certainty remained.

For the next few decades the public heard that the polar bears were disappearing, that Arctic ice would soon vanish entirely, that entire island nations would be underwater, that major coastal cities would be flooded, and that civilization itself faced imminent danger.

Of course, those most dramatic timelines have passed without the predicted outcomes. Not even close.

Miami remains standing. New York remains standing. London remains standing. The Netherlands remains inhabited. The great coastal cities of the world continue to function much as they always have, and no one suffers from wet feet.

Sea levels have risen only slightly, if at all, a couple of inches over decades rather than the catastrophic multi-foot increases frequently promised by climate alarmists and envisioned by the public.

Meanwhile, some of the world’s wealthiest climate advocates continue purchasing beachfront properties while warning others that the coastlines are in imminent danger. That obvious contradiction has not escaped public notice.

The Earth itself tells a more complicated story than political slogans allow. Long before automobiles, coal-fired power plants, or industrial civilization, Earth experienced dramatic warming and cooling periods.

The Medieval Warm Period brought conditions that allowed farming farther north than today in some regions.

The Little Ice Age brought colder temperatures that famously froze over of the Thames River in England and affected weather patterns throughout Europe and North America.

A winter fair used to be held on the frozen Thames River in London every year, and even elephants could walk across the thick ice. These annual affairs came to an end even before the rise of the industrial age due to a natural warming trend of the earth, which could reverse in the near future, depending on solar activity.

Climate has always changed. It always will.

Many researchers have argued that solar activity, ocean cycles, volcanic activity, atmospheric oscillations, and other natural factors play larger roles than the public is often led to believe. Various long-term climate-cycle theories have been proposed, some extending over centuries. Scientists continue to debate the precise causes and magnitude of these influences, but few dispute that natural variability plays a significant role in Earth’s climate system.

That reality raises an important question: How much of modern warming is natural? Is any of it man made?

The honest answer is that nobody can isolate every contributing factor with absolute certainty. What is certain is that climate is an extraordinarily complex system influenced by countless interacting variables.

What have we learned about climate alarmists in these years? Think Climategate.

In 2009, leaked emails from prominent climate researchers shocked many Americans. The public saw something deeply troubling: discussions about controlling narratives, influencing publication decisions, and managing how data would be presented. In other words — lying about the amount of global warming was have experienced.

The famous phrase “hide the decline” became a symbol of a deeper problem. Trust.

Whether or not the researchers believed they were acting appropriately, many citizens concluded that some climate scientists had become advocates first, and scientists second. That damage to public confidence has never healed.

The controversy also exposed another reality that was rarely discussed publicly at the time. Climate datasets are routinely adjusted. Historical temperature records are revised. Measurement stations are corrected. Observations are recalibrated.

At the same time the Thames River would freeze in London, the Delaware was likewise known to freeze and be choked with ice during the American Revolution. These annual deep freezes ceased before the rise of the industrial age.

Scientists argue these adjustments improve accuracy. Critics note that many adjustments appear to amplify modern warming trends relative to earlier records, without the predicted results materializing.

Regardless of one’s position, the public learned that the data were not as simple or straightforward as they had been led to believe. There was no ‘settled science.’

Perhaps the most important lesson of the past twenty years, however, is not scientific. It is economic.

Climate policy has become one of the largest transfers of wealth and authority in modern history. Trillions of dollars now flow through climate initiatives, green-energy subsidies, carbon-credit markets, government grants, international agreements, research institutions, universities, nonprofit organizations, consulting firms, and advocacy groups.

Entire bureaucracies depend upon climate funding. Entire industries depend upon climate regulations. Entire political movements depend upon climate urgency.

These gigantic transfers of power and wealth to Leftist advocacy groups deserve scrutiny, seeing that they produce no improvements in global climate.

Whenever enormous amounts of money and political power become attached to a particular conclusion, skepticism becomes a civic responsibility.

The fishing industry provides one example. For years, American fishermen complained that vast regulatory systems increasingly restricted their access to waters that had sustained coastal communities for generations. Meanwhile, America became heavily dependent on imported seafood despite possessing some of the richest fishing grounds on Earth. In fact, the “imported” fish were actually being harvested from the same waters that had been restricted by Obama and Biden executive orders, but not by American fishermen. See our article of June 11, 2026, Trump Throws a Lifeline to America’s Fishermen.

Whether one agrees with every policy decision, the broader pattern is difficult to ignore: climate and environmental concerns have repeatedly been used to justify expanding regulatory authority over land, energy production, transportation, agriculture, and natural resources.

The result has been a steady transfer of decision-making power away from local communities and toward distant bureaucracies.

Even some former climate alarmists have begun moderating their views. Prominent voices who once predicted near-term catastrophe increasingly acknowledge humanity’s remarkable ability to adapt, innovate, and solve problems. Several, like climate activist billionaire Bill Gates, have warned that exaggerated claims may ultimately undermine public trust by creating expectations that reality does not support.

That may be the greatest danger facing the climate movement today. Not skepticism. Not debate. Not criticism. But credibility.

Science advances through questioning assumptions, challenging theories, testing evidence, and revising conclusions when new information emerges. Politics often works differently. Politics rewards certainty. Politics rewards fear. Politics rewards urgency. Politics rewards crisis. And for decades, climate politics has frequently operated as though uncertainty itself were forbidden.

Americans deserve better. They deserve honest data. They deserve transparent methods. They deserve open scientific debate. They deserve acknowledgment of natural climate variability.

And they deserve the freedom to question institutions that have repeatedly demanded trust while accumulating extraordinary wealth, power and influence.

The Earth will continue warming and cooling as it always has, in natural cycles, dictated by the sun and other natural influences.

The real question is whether those claiming to ‘save the planet’ are willing to submit their own assumptions, incentives, and predictions to the same scrutiny they demand from everyone else.

The SPLC and the Profits of Division

June 10, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Bryan Fair, interim president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, testifies before House Judiciary Committee hearing on June 9.

The Southern Poverty Law Center built its brand by claiming to fight hate. But this week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing raised a darker question: What happens when an organization becomes more powerful by finding, labeling, amplifying, and monetizing hate than by healing the divisions it claims to oppose?

The hearing, titled The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate, Part II, placed the SPLC under congressional scrutiny over its role in modern civil-rights politics, its influence over public policy, its ideological labeling machine, and disturbing allegations regarding the use of donor funds. Republicans pressed SPLC leadership over whether the organization has become less a neutral civil-rights watchdog and more a partisan political weapon. Democrats largely defended the organization as a necessary opponent of extremism.

That divide tells the story. For decades, the SPLC has used its “hate” and “extremist” labels to shape media narratives, influence corporate behavior, pressure technology platforms, and stigmatize conservative organizations. In theory, tracking genuine violent extremism is a public service. In practice, the SPLC increasingly blurred the line between actual hate groups and mainstream traditional conservatives, Christians, pro-life advocates, parental-rights activists, and constitutional traditionalists.

That is not civil rights. That is Marxist ideological enforcement.

Dr. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr., delivered one of the hearing’s most powerful rebukes. King accused the SPLC of “profiteering from division” and warned that organizations claiming to fight hatred can themselves become agents of distrust when they weaponize accusations for political or financial gain. Indeed, the SPLC has profited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars as a purveyor of hate.

Dr. King’s testimony cut to the moral heart of the matter. The civil-rights movement led by her uncle appealed to America’s founding promises. It asked the nation to live up to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It appealed to conscience, equal dignity, Christian moral language, and the principle that all men are created equal.

Much of the modern left has taken a very different road. Rather than binding Americans together around shared citizenship, activist institutions divide the country into permanent categories of oppressor and oppressed. They do not heal wounds. They reopen them. They re-injure them, and often. They do not encourage gratitude for constitutional liberty and economic opportunity. They teach suspicion toward the very system that has allowed Americans of every background to rise farther and faster than any people in history.

The SPLC’s critics argue that this is the real business model: find division, intensify division, fundraise from division, then claim moral authority over the chaos.

The abortion issue reveals the contradiction especially clearly.

The SPLC and other left-wing organizations often portray pro-life Americans as extremists, even though the pro-life movement is the traditional centrist view, and includes millions of Christians, conservatives, Catholics, evangelicals, Black pastors, Hispanic families, mothers, fathers, and ordinary citizens who believe unborn children possess human life and dignity.

Dr. King has long argued that abortion has disproportionately harmed Black Americans. Federal data has consistently shown that Black and Brown women account for a disproportionately high share of abortions compared with their share of the population. Pro-life advocates therefore ask a question the modern Left rarely wants to confront: how can a movement claim to defend Black lives while defending an abortion regime that has ended tens of millions of Black lives before birth?

The history of the abortion and birth-control movements makes that question even more uncomfortable. Margaret Sanger and other early population-control advocates operated in an intellectual world deeply influenced by eugenics. Sanger is famously tied to the belief that Black and Brown people are nothing more than “human weeds,” and should be controlled in like manner, giving birth to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers — always located in the center of minority neighborhoods.

This is why many pro-life Americans view the SPLC’s labeling apparatus as morally inverted. Orwellian doublespeak, Leftist propaganda and lies. It condemns those who defend unborn life while aligning culturally with movements that have treated abortion as liberation, even when the heaviest consequences fall on minority communities.

That is not justice. It is exploitation dressed in Orwellian moral language.

The deeper problem is that far-left organizations have failed to do anything to improve the daily lives of the people they claim to champion. They do not rebuild families. They do not restore safe neighborhoods. They do not improve failing schools. They do not reduce dependency. They do not strengthen churches. They do not create businesses. They do not teach young people discipline, marriage, thrift, faith, responsibility, and hope.

Instead, they often offer resentment. They offer grievance. They offer ideological identity. They offer gender and social confusion. And then they ask for money.

The constitutional vision is better. America’s founding principles offer every citizen — Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, immigrant, native-born, believer, skeptic — the same basic promise: equal protection under law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, property rights, due process, local self-government, and the opportunity to build a life through work, family, faith, and enterprise.

Those principles do not guarantee equal outcomes. Nothing can. But they create the conditions in which human beings can flourish. They provide opportunities.

That is what the old civil-rights movement understood. It did not ask America to abandon its founding. It asked America to honor it.

The modern activist Left increasingly asks the opposite. It treats the Constitution as an obstacle, traditional religion as a threat, the nuclear family as a problem, free speech as dangerous, and political disagreement as hate.

That worldview does not liberate anyone. It traps Americans in permanent conflict. It permanently traps minorities in a Leftist ghetto.

The SPLC hearing exposed more than one organization’s criminal problems. It exposed a broader industry of division that profits from convincing Americans they are enemies.

The country does not need more hate maps. It needs moral clarity.

It needs constitutional confidence. It needs leaders who believe that Americans of every background can rise together, not activists who grow rich by keeping them divided.

Europe Is Finally Learning the Lesson Trump Tried to Teach

June 8, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

For years, political leaders across Europe dismissed concerns about mass migration as fearmongering. They called opponents of mass migration xenophobic, racist, and worse. Citizens who questioned the pace of immigration were labeled reactionaries.

Border enforcement was portrayed as intolerance. Calls for assimilation were dismissed as outdated nationalism.

Now, reality is forcing a reassessment.

Across Europe, governments that once embraced large-scale migration are tightening border controls, increasing deportations, restricting asylum policies, and openly acknowledging social tensions that many citizens have been discussing for years.

The shift is remarkable because it echoes a warning Donald Trump delivered long before it became politically fashionable: A nation without borders eventually struggles to remain a nation.

The issue is not whether immigration can benefit a country. Throughout history, immigration has helped fuel economic growth, innovation, and cultural vitality. The issue is scale. The issue is speed. The issue is whether newcomers can be successfully integrated into the civic, legal, and cultural framework of the receiving nation.

When migration occurs faster than assimilation, problems emerge. Housing shortages intensify. Schools become strained. Healthcare systems face insurmountable new pressure. Infrastructure falls behind population growth. Wages for some lower-skilled workers come under pressure. Social trust declines. And political polarization accelerates.

Many European leaders now find themselves confronting realities that voters noticed years ago. The debate is increasingly less about race or ethnicity and more about governance.

Can a nation absorb large numbers of newcomers while maintaining social cohesion? Can welfare systems remain sustainable when populations grow rapidly and high numbers of newcomers are injected as recipients of public benefits? Can democratic institutions function effectively when citizens lose confidence that their governments control their own borders?

These questions are no longer confined to conservative circles. They are becoming mainstream concerns.

Another concern increasingly raised by European citizens involves public safety and the failure of some governments to confront uncomfortable realities surrounding certain migrant crime patterns. Over the past decade, several European countries have been rocked by highly publicized grooming-gang and sexual-exploitation scandals, particularly in the United Kingdom, where authorities were widely criticized for failing to act aggressively enough against organized abuse networks.

Similar debates have emerged in Germany, Sweden, France, and other nations following incidents of sexual violence involving recent migrants or asylum seekers. Most immigrants are law-abiding people seeking better lives, but critics argue that political leaders too often suppressed discussion of these crimes out of fear of appearing intolerant. The result, they contend, has been a breakdown of public trust and a growing demand that governments place the safety of their own citizens above political sensitivities.

Many Middle-Eastern groups of immigrants have continued their native practices of abusing and raping women in their new host nations, grooming impressionable young European women for lives of abuse and prostitution.

There is another aspect of mass migration that receives far less attention. The people who leave developing nations are often among the most ambitious, capable, entrepreneurial, educated, and determined members of their societies. Economists have long referred to this phenomenon as “brain drain.” While wealthy nations may gain workers, professionals, and future taxpayers, poorer nations often lose many of the very people most capable of building businesses, creating jobs, strengthening institutions, and improving living conditions for those left behind. If the goal is truly to help struggling nations prosper, one must at least ask whether encouraging the permanent departure of their most productive citizens is always the best solution.

In many cases, the long-term answer to poverty may not be moving millions of people from poor countries to wealthy countries. It may be helping nations develop the conditions necessary for prosperity where people already live—stable governments, secure property rights, functioning legal systems, economic freedom, educational opportunity, and public safety. The countries that lose their most capable citizens often need them the most.

The United States faces many of the same challenges. The southern border experienced historically high levels of illegal immigration during the Biden administration. Local governments across the country have struggled with housing shortages, school enrollment pressures, public-assistance costs, and the practical challenges of accommodating large numbers of new arrivals.

Reasonable people can debate the exact scale of these effects. What is becoming harder to debate is whether unlimited migration is a workable long-term policy.

Every nation has a right to determine who enters, under what conditions, and in what numbers. That principle is not extremism. It is sovereignty.

Critics often portray border enforcement as hostility toward immigrants. But nations can be both welcoming and selective. They can support legal immigration while opposing illegal immigration. They can show compassion while insisting on order. They can remain open to newcomers while preserving the institutions, values, and social trust that made them attractive destinations in the first place.

Perhaps the most important lesson emerging from Europe is that citizens eventually demand reality. Political slogans can delay that reckoning. Media narratives can obscure it. Government programs can temporarily mask it.

But reality always arrives.

The debate over immigration is not fundamentally about compassion versus cruelty. It is about whether leaders are willing to balance compassion with responsibility. A country that cannot control its borders eventually discovers that it cannot effectively control many other things either.

Europe appears to be learning that lesson. The question now is whether America will learn it as well.

Trump Was Right To Ask — Georgia’s Election Questions Didn’t Disappear, They Got Louder

June 2, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

For years, Americans were told that questioning Georgia’s 2020 election was itself a threat to democracy. But history has a way of complicating simple narratives.

The official result remains unchanged — thus far. Joe Biden carried Georgia by the slimmest margin; 11,779 votes. Yet, the story does not end there.

In the years since the election, investigators, auditors, journalists, courts, and election officials have continued uncovering procedural failures, recordkeeping problems, audit discrepancies, misplaced documentation, and other irregularities that raise a legitimate question: Was Donald Trump wrong to demand a closer look?

That question matters because one of the most famous moments of the post-election controversy became the basis for enormous legal and political attacks against Trump. During his January 2021 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump asked officials to “find” 11,780 votes. Critics portrayed the statement as an attempt to manufacture votes. Find and manufacture are very different things.

Trump and his supporters argued that they believed legitimate votes had been overlooked, miscounted, or improperly handled, and that a thorough review would reveal enough errors to change the outcome.

Subsequent events make that argument harder to dismiss than many in the media originally suggested. During Georgia’s recount process, officials discovered nearly 6,000 ballots that had not been included in the original count because of reporting and scanning failures. Thousands of those votes favored Trump.

The discovery demonstrated something important: Missing votes were not a conspiracy theory. They existed.

Additional reviews later identified audit mistakes and tabulation discrepancies in Fulton County. State investigators found thousands of audit-related errors that should never have occurred in an election decided by fewer than 12,000 votes.

Again, officials maintained the mistakes were not large enough to alter the certified outcome. But they were mistakes nonetheless. Significant mistakes.

Then came further revelations. Fulton County officials acknowledged problems involving unsigned tabulator tapes and election documentation that should have been properly preserved and verified.

Questions surrounding election records continued years after the race had supposedly been settled. The credibility of the Georgia prosecution itself has suffered significant damage. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis became the subject of intense scrutiny after it was revealed that she had a romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to help lead the case against Trump. Courts ultimately disqualified Willis from continuing to prosecute the case unless Wade resigned, and subsequent legal battles, appeals, and ethics investigations have further delayed proceedings. What was once portrayed as one of the strongest cases against Trump has become mired in questions about prosecutorial misconduct, conflicts of interest, and whether political considerations played too large a role in one of the most consequential prosecutions in modern American history.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (center) confers with prosecutors, Donald Wakeford (left) and Nathan Wade, (right) during a hearing on July 1, 2022.

Most recently, federal investigators obtained election-related records and materials from Fulton County as part of an ongoing investigation. Fulton County Democrats fought the feds in court, and the court found in the fed’s favor. The legal battles surrounding those records continue.

Perhaps those investigations will ultimately reveal nothing significant. Perhaps they will reveal serious misconduct. There are indications of elections fraud. However, at this point, nobody knows the ultimate outcome of the federal investigation.

What Americans do know is that confidence in elections depends on transparency. Georgia has not been tranparent.

When elections are extraordinarily close, scrutiny should not be feared. It should be welcomed.

That is why many Americans view the legal campaign against President Trump in Georgia with increasing skepticism. The central question is not whether every claim made after the election turned out to be correct. The question is whether asking for a full accounting of ballots, records, audits, and procedures in a race decided by 11,779 votes should be treated as criminal conduct.

Reasonable people can disagree about Trump’s conclusions. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that there were no legitimate issues worthy of investigation.

The more that election officials acknowledge missing ballots, flawed audits, misplaced records, and procedural failures, the more many Americans wonder whether the response should have been greater transparency rather than criminal prosecution.

A healthy republic does not fear questions. It answers them. And four years later, Georgia still has questions that many citizens believe deserve answers.

How Many More Victims of Lethal Compassion?

May 29, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Cristobal Vasquez Sanchez, 25, is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in the stairwell of a residential parking garage on May 22, 2026, and police are looking for more potential victims. (Arlington County Sheriff’s Office)

For years, supporters of sanctuary policies insisted the debate was about compassion. Critics warned it was about public safety.

Today, the evidence is increasingly difficult to ignore. Many Americans are beginning to question what some commentators have called “deadly compassion” — the tendency of political leaders to elevate compassion above every other civic duty, including public safety. In this worldview, nearly every enforcement action is viewed as cruelty, every detention as oppression, and every deportation as injustice. Yet when dangerous individuals are repeatedly released back into communities despite extensive criminal histories, the burden of that misplaced compassion is borne not by politicians, but by innocent victims. A government’s first responsibility is not to make criminals feel welcome; it is to keep law-abiding citizens safe.

The question is not whether America should be compassionate. The question is whether compassion without accountability eventually stops being compassionate at all.

Across the country, state and local officials have adopted policies restricting cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, refusing detainer requests, limiting information sharing, or requiring additional legal hurdles before federal authorities can take custody of illegal immigrants already sitting in local jails for crimes they have committed against Americans.

Supporters argue these policies build trust with immigrant communities. Critics ask a simpler question: How many dangerous offenders could have been removed from American communities before they allegedly committed additional crimes?

Virginia has recently become one of the most visible battlegrounds in that debate. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have repeatedly urged Virginia officials to honor immigration detainers involving illegal immigrants accused of serious crimes, including rape, murder, child molestation and pornography offenses, and sexual assaults. In several cases, federal officials publicly warned that sanctuary-style policies were increasing risks to local communities.

One recent case involved Luzvin Orvando Garcia Moran, a Guatemalan national charged with attempted rape in Arlington. DHS stated that he had accumulated at least 25 prior charges before the latest allegations and urged local authorities to cooperate with ICE.

Another involved Abdul Jalloh, a Sierra Leone national accused of murdering Virginia resident Stephanie Minter. DHS and ICE publicly criticized policies that complicated federal efforts to take custody of him. Officials stated that Jalloh had been arrested dozens of times before the fatal attack.

Other recent Virginia cases have involved suspects accused of murder, child pornography offenses, sexual assaults, and crimes against minors, with ICE repeatedly asserting that local jurisdictions failed to cooperate fully with federal immigration enforcement.

At some point, Americans are entitled to ask whether the purpose of government is to protect ideological commitments—or to protect citizens. Democrats have answered that question by turning hundreds of dangerous criminals loose on their own citizens.

‘Rules for Radicals’ and the Socialist March Through America’s Institutions

May 27, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

In 1971, radical left activist Saul Alinsky published a book that would become one of the most influential political manuals of the modern American left: Rules for Radicals.

At the time, many Americans dismissed it as fringe political theory, a handbook for campus agitators, community organizers, and anti-establishment activists. Few understood how deeply its tactics would eventually penetrate American culture, education, media, bureaucracy, and politics.

Today, more than half a century later, Alinsky’s fingerprints appear almost everywhere.

The strategy was never primarily about persuading Americans through reasoned debate. It was about power — how to seize it, wield it, and use institutions and the Democratic Party themselves to reshape society from within.

Alinsky openly taught confrontation, polarization, ridicule, and pressure politics. Sound familiar? One of his most famous rules was simple: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Modern Americans now see that tactic daily. Political opponents are no longer merely people with traditional ideas. They are increasingly portrayed as existential threats, fascists, racists, extremists, traitors, or enemies of democracy itself. Public discourse has become less about persuasion and more about destruction.

That did not happen accidentally. The radical movements of the 1960s gradually evolved into institutional power centers. Activists moved from protest movements into universities, media organizations, foundations, education, nonprofits, unions, government agencies, entertainment, corporate HR departments, and eventually the permanent bureaucracy itself.

The old revolutionaries grew up, and then took over the institutions.

Hillary Clinton herself famously studied Alinsky while at Wellesley College and wrote her senior thesis on his organizing philosophy. Barack Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago in an environment heavily influenced by Alinsky-style political activism. Countless progressive organizations have openly adopted variations of his methods for decades.

The point was never simply to win elections. The point was to reshape the culture. And in many ways, it worked.

The American middle ground steadily eroded. Patriotism became suspect in elite circles. Traditional religion was increasingly marginalized, and now vilified. National identity fragmented into grievance politics and competing victim categories. Meritocracy gave way to ideological litmus tests. Bureaucracies expanded while accountability weakened. Public debt exploded. Government dependency grew. Universities became ideological sorting centers. Corporate America increasingly fused itself with activist politics.

Our Constitutional Republic form of government provided balance between the inherent power of the people and their individual states vs. the power of the federal government to provide specifically enumerated services

Meanwhile, ordinary working Americans often felt as though the country they grew up in was disappearing beneath them.

The left insists these changes represent progress. In fact, they represent decay.

The Left has institutionally projected the false illusion that the fulcrum in the balance of power and rights has moved increasingly left

What cannot seriously be denied is that America has become dramatically more polarized, more distrustful, more bureaucratic, and more culturally fragmented over the past several decades.

Alinsky understood something important about political psychology: people can often be manipulated more effectively through emotion than reason. Anger mobilizes. Fear mobilizes. Division mobilizes. Envy mobilizes. Constant outrage keeps political movements alive.

That is why modern politics increasingly feels like permanent warfare. Every issue becomes apocalyptic. Every election becomes “the most important in history.” Every disagreement becomes a moral emergency. And compromise becomes betrayal.

This atmosphere benefits institutional power brokers. A frightened, confused and divided public becomes easier to control, easier to manipulate, and easier to direct toward ever-expanding government authority.

Ironically, many Americans who consider themselves moderates now find themselves pushed toward populism or conservatism not because they became more radical, but because the cultural center itself moved sharply leftward.

Policies once considered extreme gradually became mainstream inside elite institutions and the Democratic Party:

open-border advocacy,
aggressive identity politics,
speech policing,
gender ideology mandates,
sprawling administrative regulation,
massive federal spending,
and the increasing use of government power to pressure dissenting viewpoints.

The constitutional republic envisioned by the Founders is slowly being replaced by a managerial state governed less by elected representatives and more by entrenched bureaucratic, corporate, legal, academic, and media networks.

That concern is no longer limited to conservatives.

Even many independents and classical liberals, like Jonathan Turley, now express alarm at censorship pressures, politicized institutions, ideological conformity, and the disappearance of basic civic trust.

America’s Founders understood something modern activists often forget: republics survive only when citizens share enough common identity, moral restraint, and mutual legitimacy to govern themselves peacefully.

A politics built entirely around division eventually consumes itself.

Saul Alinsky did not create America’s polarization alone. But his methods helped normalize a style of political warfare that increasingly dominates modern public life.

The tragedy is that many ordinary Americans — left, right, and center — no longer feel they inhabit the same country psychologically, culturally, or morally. And that may be the most dangerous legacy of all.

The American Dream was built by a nation confident enough to believe in shared opportunity, shared sacrifice, and shared citizenship. If America is to recover that spirit, it will require rejecting the permanent politics of rage and rediscovering something larger than factional victory. Because once every institution becomes a battlefield, eventually the nation itself becomes the casualty.

Stephen Colbert’s Final Curtain: When Late Night Became Political Therapy Instead of Comedy

May 21, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Tonight marks the end of an era.

After years behind CBS’s iconic desk, Stephen Colbert’s final televised broadcast closes a chapter not merely for one host, but for an entire late-night television model that increasingly drifted from broad comedy into ideological performance.

CBS’s decision was widely reported as financial, not merely political. Industry estimates have placed The Late Show with Stephen Colbert at roughly $100 million per year to produce, with a massive staff reportedly numbering well over 150 and, by some estimates, closer to 200, when writers, producers, technical crews, stage teams, support staff, and network overhead are included. As traditional late-night advertising revenue (a fraction of production costs) and linear-TV audiences have steadily declined, critics argue the economics of maintaining such a sprawling legacy production became increasingly difficult to justify, especially when the broader late-night model no longer commands the captive audience it once did. People have switched it off.

But economics is only part of the story. The deeper issue may be cultural narrowing.

There was a time when late-night television belonged to almost everyone. Johnny Carson could be watched by Republicans, Democrats, blue-collar workers, professors, churchgoers, business owners, and people who simply wanted to laugh before bed. David Letterman, Jay Leno, and others built audiences by mocking absurdity, not relentlessly sorting the country into political tribes.

That changed.

Under Stephen Colbert, The Late Show increasingly evolved into something closer to partisan satire and ideological affirmation. To supporters, however small that audience became, it was sharp political comedy. To critics, it became repetitive anti-Trump monologues, applause-line activism, and a show that often seemed more interested in validating a Leftist political worldview than entertaining a broad national audience.

That distinction matters. Comedy survives on surprise. It weakens when it becomes predictably tribal.

Many Americans who once watched late-night comedy simply stopped seeing themselves in it. Not because they rejected humor, but because they increasingly felt they were being lectured rather than entertained. Lectured by a moron.

And Colbert was not alone. Across much of modern late night, the genre became increasingly political, often aligned culturally and rhetorically with Marxist progressive media and urban-left sensibilities. That may energize loyal viewers. But it also shrinks the tent.

Meanwhile, another model emerged.

Fox News’ Gutfeld!, while airing on cable and not directly identical to network late night, built a large audience by mixing satire, irreverence, cultural commentary, and anti-establishment humor. It has frequently outperformed traditional late-night competitors in total viewers and became one of the clearest signs that audiences still want comedy—just not necessarily ideological conformity dressed up as comedy.

May 21 is Stephen Colbert’s night, and his fellow late-night hosts are ceding the stage to him. Per Variety, Jimmy Fallon is joining Jimmy Kimmel in taking the night of May 21 off in honor of Colbert’s final Late Show, upholding the Strike Force Five solidarity between both hosts, along with Seth Meyers and John Oliver, whose time slots don’t compete with Colbert.

Now, as Colbert exits, the late-night fraternity has rallied around him, with some arguing politics or pressure played a role in his cancellation.

Perhaps. Probably not.

But what cannot be ignored is that legacy late-night television has been under economic and cultural strain for years. Streaming, podcasts, YouTube, short-form media, Gutfeld, and changing entertainment habits have shattered the monopoly these hosts once held.

The bigger question is whether late night lost its audience not because Americans stopped laughing— but because too many hosts stopped trying to make all Americans laugh.

Stephen Colbert is leaving the desk. But the real story may be larger: Late night did not merely lose relevance. It forgot who it was supposed to serve.

The Gerrymandering Map Neither Party Wants You to See

May 16, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

For years, Americans have been told that gerrymandering is one of the greatest threats to democracy.

But after examining congressional representation state by state against actual presidential voting patterns in the 2024 Trump–Harris election, one uncomfortable reality becomes impossible to ignore:

Both parties benefit from distorted representation.

That may sound obvious. But the modern political narrative rarely admits it. Instead, Americans are usually presented with a cartoonishly simplified version of the issue in which one party is uniquely evil while the other merely seeks “fair maps.”

Reality is more complicated.

Federalist Pres recently compared each state’s congressional delegation against its presidential vote. The logic was intentionally simple and intuitive:

If Donald Trump won roughly 60% of a state’s vote, Republicans would be expected to hold roughly 60% of that state’s House seats.
If Kamala Harris won roughly 60%, Democrats would be expected to hold roughly 60%.

The interactive map below compares each state’s 2024 Trump–Harris presidential vote share with its current U.S. House delegation. Hover over each state to see whether Republicans or Democrats are overrepresented compared to the statewide vote.

Perfect proportionality is impossible, of course. Geography matters. Urban concentration matters. Small states with one or two House seats naturally produce exaggerated outcomes. But over time, and especially in larger states, representation should at least loosely approximate the electorate.

In many states, it does not. The resulting map was fascinating. And, we note that the most fairly apportioned state is Virginia, which just attempted to make all but one district democrat, blowing through all of the constitutional safeguards to accomplish the task.

As we see, some states strongly overrepresent Republicans compared to statewide voting patterns. Others strongly overrepresent Democrats. And several supposedly “competitive” states are far less balanced than Americans might assume.

The strongest Republican-leaning representation gaps appeared in sparsely populated states like Iowa, Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Montana, where Republicans hold substantially more congressional power than Trump’s statewide vote percentage alone would predict.

Meanwhile, Democrats enjoy enormous representation advantages in states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Illinois. This is especially true in states with massive populations, like California and New York, where Republican share is merely half of what the presidential outcome would demand. This is an excellent example of why the GOP has recently begun trying to re-balance where it can.

As the map indicates, gerrymandering and structural advantage are not uniquely Republican inventions. They are political tools. Both parties use them whenever possible.

That does not mean the distortions are morally identical or arise from identical causes. In some Democratic states, heavily concentrated urban voting naturally produces overwhelming Democratic delegations. In some Republican states, map drawing and district engineering clearly amplify Republican power. The causes vary.

But the public conversation almost never acknowledges the full picture. Instead, Americans are fed a simplistic morality play by the media in which every Republican district map is sinister “democracy suppression,” while Democratic structural advantages are treated as either accidental or virtuous.

Even more revealing is the selective outrage. When Republican legislatures redraw maps aggressively, national media organizations erupt in fury. When Democratic states produce congressional delegations wildly disconnected from statewide voting balance, the issue often disappears from public conversation entirely.

That inconsistency is precisely why public trust continues collapsing. In the left-leaning media, and in politicians generally.

Most Americans do not expect politics to be perfectly fair. But they do expect honesty, and transparency. And increasingly, they are noticing that the rules seem to change depending on which party benefits, and the angle pitched hardest, or buried entirely, by the media.

The Supreme Court’s recent reluctance to aggressively intervene in partisan gerrymandering cases has only intensified the debate. Critics argue the Court is enabling Republican-controlled legislatures. Supporters counter that courts cannot realistically become permanent national referees for every politically disputed district boundary.

Both arguments contain some truth. However, in recent cases the high courts have ruled consistently against democrat attempts to gerrymander due to their failures to follow the rules. Apportionment is based on federal and state constitutions, and democrats have rushed so quickly to push out republican representation, that they have ignored those laws, resulting in rulings of invalidation.

But perhaps the deeper problem is this: modern Americans increasingly expect election systems to produce outcomes they personally prefer. When they do not, many immediately conclude the system itself is illegitimate. That instinct is dangerous.

The Constitution was never designed to produce mathematically perfect proportional representation. It was designed to balance competing interests, competing regions, competing populations, and competing political factions inside a stable republic. It was created to protect the rights of the minority, as the majority seeks to overwhelm the system with its constant transfer of power and wealth from one group to another. Every time we hear that we should eliminate the electoral college so that the population centered majority may have its way over the minority spread out throughout the nation, for instance, that is exactly what the Constitution was created to prevent. Congressional representation, and its mirrored electoral college, were created to protect those minority rights — to prevent the bare majority (concentrated in urban centers) from pillaging the suburban and rural citizens.

Still, there is a legitimate question lurking underneath the outrage: At what point does aggressive map engineering become so disconnected from voter behavior that representation itself begins losing credibility?

That question should concern everyone — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike.

Because once large portions of the public conclude elections are structurally rigged, faith in institutions deteriorates rapidly. And once institutional trust collapses, republics become very difficult to hold together. That is exactly why those who demand a stacking of the Supreme Court should be relegated to the scrapheap of history. They want to transform our representative constitutional republic to a bare-fisted democracy, where the mob rules, and takes what it wants at the expense of the minority.

Ironically, the map we created may accomplish something useful precisely because it does not flatter either side. Republicans can look at it and see states where Democratic power is clearly amplified. Democrats can look at it and see states where Republican power is clearly amplified.

And honest observers can look at it and realize something even more important: The real problem may not simply be gerrymandering itself.

The real problem may be a political culture in which politicians increasingly pursue every possible structural advantage while simultaneously pretending only the other side is doing it.

Kamala Harris Wants to “Save Democracy” by Rewriting It

May 16, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Vice President Kamala Harris and the modern Democratic Party have finally stopped pretending. They have no fealty to the Constitution. It is fine when it serves their purposes. It is an obstacle to be surmounted when it doesn’t. Period.

For years, Americans were told that concerns about court-packing, eliminating the Electoral College, weakening the Senate filibuster, federalizing elections, and restructuring the constitutional system were merely paranoid conservative fantasies. Now, leading Democrats openly discuss them as if they are moral necessities.

Harris is again signaling support for “fundamentally transforming” the Supreme Court and other core American institutions in ways critics say would permanently tilt the balance of power toward Democrats. Among the proposals being discussed by the Left are expanding the Supreme Court, diminishing the Electoral College, and altering the constitutional structure that has restrained pure majoritarian rule since the founding of the Republic.

This is a fair example of what we can expect if democrats make good on their threats.

Naturally, all of this is being done in the name of “protecting democracy.” That phrase should now trigger immediate skepticism in every American mind. Because when modern progressives say “democracy,” they increasingly mean a system in which their side permanently governs and constitutional barriers preventing that outcome are dismantled one by one.

The Supreme Court is not malfunctioning because Democrats suddenly discovered constitutional principle. It is malfunctioning, in their view, because they do not currently control it.

The Electoral College is not suddenly illegitimate because it violates the Constitution. It is illegitimate, they argue, because it prevents California and New York from effectively choosing every president forever.

The Senate filibuster was not an assault on democracy when Democrats used it repeatedly. It became an assault on democracy the moment Republicans started winning elections and confirming judges.

This is not reform. It is escalation.

And if the Left truly believes court-packing is such a wonderful idea, perhaps Republicans should grant their wish immediately. Seriously.

Let Republicans expand the Court by four seats tomorrow morning. Let a Republican president fill every one of them with originalist constitutional scholars under the exact same “democracy-saving” logic Democrats have been promoting for years.

Something remarkable would happen almost instantly: Democrats would suddenly rediscover the sacred importance of constitutional norms, institutional stability, judicial independence, and the dangers of authoritarian overreach.

Funny how that works.

The truth is that most Americans instinctively understand why court-packing is dangerous. Once one side expands the Court for political advantage, the other side retaliates. Then the next administration expands it again. Eventually the Supreme Court becomes little more than a fluctuating super-legislature whose size changes every election cycle.

At that point, the Constitution no longer restrains power. Power simply rewrites the rules whenever it can.

The Founders designed the American system specifically to prevent this kind of raw factional domination. The Electoral College, equal Senate representation, judicial independence, and separated powers were not historical accidents. They were deliberate safeguards against exactly the kind of centralized political monopoly many modern activists now openly desire.

Alexander Hamilton warned about it. James Madison warned about it. And history repeatedly confirms it.

Nations rarely lose their republics in one dramatic moment. More often, political factions slowly convince the public that long-standing constitutional restraints are “outdated,” “undemocratic,” or obstacles to “progress.” Once those restraints are weakened, power consolidates quickly.

That is why critics are calling Harris’s proposals “institutional arson.”

Because the issue is not whether Republicans or Democrats temporarily benefit. The issue is whether America remains a constitutional republic governed by durable rules that apply to everyone equally, or whether it becomes a system where whichever party gains temporary power simply restructures institutions until opposition becomes nearly impossible.

Ironically, many of the same people warning that Donald Trump represents a “threat to democracy” are simultaneously advocating structural changes that would permanently weaken political opposition and centralize ideological control.

Americans should notice the contradiction.

If Democrats truly believe court-packing, Electoral College abolition, and institutional restructuring are legitimate tools of governance, they should have no objection whatsoever if Republicans use those same tools first.

But somehow, everyone already knows how that conversation would go. And that tells you everything you need to know.

The “Authoritarian” Narrative vs. Reality: Why Trump’s Positions Are Historically Mainstream

May 7, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

For nearly a decade, Americans have been told that Donald Trump represents an unprecedented authoritarian threat to the republic.

The language has been relentless:

Fascist
Dictator
Nazi
Extremist
Threat to democracy

The accusations are repeated so often in media and political circles that many Americans have stopped questioning them. But when one steps away from the rhetoric and examines the actual policy positions involved, a different picture emerges.

On issue after issue, many of Donald Trump’s core stances are not historically radical at all. In fact, they are remarkably moderate and traditional.

1. Border Enforcement

For decades, both parties supported strong border enforcement.

Presidents from Eisenhower to Obama:

expanded border security,
increased deportations,
and emphasized national sovereignty.

Even prominent Democrats once argued that uncontrolled borders undermine wages, strain public systems, and weaken national cohesion. President Obama was dubbed the “deporter and chief” because he deported millions of illegal aliens during his tenure. Speeches by all democratic leaders going back 40 years stress the importance of closed national borders.

Trump’s position, that a nation has the right and duty to control its borders, is not historically extreme. It is historically normal.

2. Merit-Based Immigration

Trump has repeatedly argued for immigration systems that prioritize:

skills,
economic contribution,
and national interest.

That model is used by numerous, if not all countries around the world, including Canada and Australia.

Supporting legal immigration while demanding enforcement and structure is not authoritarian. It is standard statecraft.

3. Opposition to Endless Wars

One of Trump’s defining positions has been skepticism toward prolonged foreign military interventions.

He criticized:

nation-building,
open-ended wars,
and interventionist policies embraced by both parties for decades.

Whether one agrees or not, anti-interventionism is not fascism. In many ways, it reflects older American traditions of restraint and strategic realism.

The three-week attack on Iran to prevent its development of nuclear weapons is a master class in how to conduct a pinpoint military action without getting bogged down in a foreign quagmire.

4. Energy Independence

Trump’s support for domestic oil production, pipeline infrastructure, and energy self-sufficiency was framed by critics as reckless nationalism. But energy independence has long been viewed by policymakers as a matter of:

economic stability,
lower consumer costs,
and national security.

Again, this is not a radical historical position.

5. Opposition to Crime and Disorder

As open borders and degradation of blue cities has led to steep increases in crime, Trump’s calls for:

stronger policing,
tougher prosecution of violent crime,
and safer cities

These were always bipartisan political staples. Today, such positions are increasingly framed as authoritarian by democrat leaders, liberal media, and commentators. But historically, public order has been considered one of the most basic responsibilities of government. President Trump offered to restore peace and civility in these cities by employing the National Guard. We watched as democrats resisted his efforts, but reaped the rewards, as in the case of Washington C.C., where crime fell remarkably.

President Trump invites Communist Mayor of New York Mamdani to Oval Office to discuss methods of improving the lives of citizens.

6. Protection of Free Speech

Ironically, one of Trump’s strongest themes has been opposition to:

censorship,
deplatforming,
and institutional suppression of dissenting views.

His supporters argue that major institutions increasingly attempt to narrow acceptable public discourse. Defending broader speech protections, even offensive or controversial speech, is rooted deeply in American constitutional tradition, and was the darling of the Left until conservatives began voicing the virtues of traditional values.

7. Opposition to Bureaucratic Expansion

Trump’s repeated criticism of unelected bureaucrats, entrenched bureaucracies, and administrative overreach is often portrayed as an attack on institutions themselves.

But skepticism toward concentrated federal power has long existed across the political spectrum—for hundreds of years. Most Americans historically viewed excessive bureaucracy as a threat to democratic accountability.

8. America-First Economic Policy

Tariffs, industrial protection, and economic nationalism are frequently portrayed as extremist ideas today. Yet throughout American history, leaders from both parties used tariffs and industrial policy to protect domestic production and strategic industries.

Trump’s economic nationalism may be somewhat controversial, mainly because it has been ignored for many decades, but it is not historically unprecedented.

9. Judicial Originalism

Trump’s judicial appointments emphasize:

textualism,
constitutional originalism,
and limits on judicial activism.

Critics strongly oppose many resulting rulings, but interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning is not authoritarianism. It is a longstanding legal philosophy embraced by most constitutional scholars and jurists. Only Leftists claim the Constitution to be a “living” document, meaning malleable to the desired results of the Left.

10. Religious Liberty

Trump has consistently aligned himself with:

religious liberty protections,
conscience rights,
and public accommodation of faith traditions.

These positions reflect traditional American debates about:

free exercise,
pluralism,
and the role of religion in public life.

Again, these are not fringe ideas in American history.

11. Parental Rights in Generally, and in Education

Support for parental rights over their children vs. the state’s right to supervise and indoctrinate them has only recently arisen as an issue. Traditionally, parents had all the rights, as long as they were not placeing their children in unreasonable danger.

Educational oversight, curriculum transparency, and local control in education has become one of the defining cultural issues of the past several years as the Left has pushed to overtake parental rights.

Yet historically, American education was deeply local and parent-driven. Opposition to centralized educational authority is hardly a novel or authoritarian impulse.

12. Election Integrity

Trump’s rhetoric around elections has been among the most controversial aspects of his political career.

But concerns over election security itself are not new. For years, politicians from both parties supported:

voter ID laws,
ballot safeguards,
and anti-fraud measures.

The debate is not whether elections should be secure. It is how best to secure them while maintaining broad access. The requirement of a voter I.D. is nothing new, and democratic harping that such a requirement will disenfranchise “many” liberal voters who lack the capacity to obtain an I.D. are nonsense.

13. Opposition to Ideological Enforcement

Many Americans increasingly feel pressured by:

corporate ideological mandates,
speech codes,
social media conformity,
and institutional activism.

Trump’s political appeal often stems less from ideology itself than from opposition to perceived coercion.

His supporters view him not as an authoritarian figure, but as a disruptive reaction against institutional pressure and cultural rigidity.

14. Skepticism Toward Globalization

Trump’s criticism of global trade structures, outsourcing, and transnational institutions is frequently mocked as backward nationalism.

But skepticism toward globalization emerged across the political spectrum long before Trump entered politics. As a result of globalism, many millions of Americans experienced:

industrial decline,
wage stagnation,
and economic displacement

Trump’s desire to re-establish an industrial base in the U.S. reflects his understanding that outsourcing the production of key products puts America at the mercy of foreign interests, and in many cases, America’s competitors, or even its enemies.

15. National Sovereignty

At the core of Trump’s worldview is a simple principle: The United States should prioritize its own national interests.

Critics often frame this as dangerous nationalism. Supporters view it as the basic responsibility of any elected government.

Historically speaking, nation-states asserting sovereignty is not unusual. It is the global norm.

The Power of Political Labeling

None of this means Trump is beyond criticism. He is polarizing, confrontational, and frequently inflammatory in tone.

Reasonable people can strongly disagree with:

his rhetoric,
his conduct,
or many of his policies.

But there is an important distinction between opposing a politician, and redefining traditional political positions as extremist simply because they are politically inconvenient.

That distinction matters. Because once ordinary disagreement is routinely described as fascism or authoritarianism, language itself loses meaning.

The Bigger Picture

Much of the modern political conflict in America is not simply about Trump himself. It is about two competing visions of the country:

one favoring stronger national identity, local control, borders, tradition, and constitutional restraint;
the other emphasizing Leftist technocratic governance, global integration, institutional management, and unhealthy cultural change.

Those are substantial political disagreements. But they are not evidence that President Trump and political conservatives have abandoned democracy. In fact, it IS democracy, as its been understood and practiced for 250 years in America.

The repeated portrayal of Donald Trump as uniquely authoritarian relies less on historical comparison than on extreme political rhetoric.

When many of his actual positions are examined individually, they are not revolutionary departures from American tradition. In most cases, they are positions that large numbers of Americans, including Democrats in recent eras, once openly supported themselves.

That does not make Trump perfect necessarily, but it does make the constant attempt to frame ordinary political disagreement as extremism increasingly difficult to take seriously.