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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.

Do Liberal Women View Lindsay Clancy Murders Akin to Late Term Abortions?

August 29, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

As the Lindsay Clancy jury deliberates, hundreds of supporters dressed in pink have turned a horrific triple killing into a national debate over motherhood, mental illness—and criminal responsibility

Three children are dead. Their mother killed them. Those two facts are not disputed by either side in a Massachusetts courtroom.

Cora Clancy was five years old. Her brother Dawson was three. Their baby brother, Callan, was eight months old. On January 24, 2023, their mother, Lindsay Clancy, strangled all three children with exercise bands in the basement of the family’s Duxbury home after she sent her husband to pick up medication and takeout food. After murdering her three children, Clancy then attempted to kill herself, ultimately leaving herself paralyzed.

What the jury must decide is something considerably more complicated: Was Lindsay Clancy legally responsible for what she did?

After five weeks of testimony, the case went to a Plymouth Superior Court jury Thursday. The panel deliberated for several hours Thursday and approximately seven more Friday without reaching a verdict. Jurors requested to examine prescription medications and the knife involved in Clancy’s suicide attempt before being dismissed for the weekend. Deliberations resume Monday morning.

The jury has five potential outcomes before it: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, outright acquittal, or a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible because of mental illness. A first-degree murder conviction could result in life imprisonment without parole; a finding of no criminal responsibility could result in confinement in a psychiatric institution rather than prison.

The defense: This was psychosis, not murder in the legal sense

Nobody seriously disputes that Clancy was suffering psychologically before the killings.

She had sought psychiatric treatment, experienced suicidal thoughts, contacted crisis resources and underwent hospitalization. Her defense maintains that she developed postpartum psychosis following the birth of Callan and was subjected to an ineffective and excessive succession of psychiatric medications. Defense experts testified that she was psychotic when she killed her children and therefore incapable of appreciating the wrongfulness of what she was doing.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington consequently isn’t asking the jury to believe someone else killed Cora, Dawson and Callan. He acknowledges that Clancy did it. His contention is that mental disease had so profoundly destroyed her rational capacity that Massachusetts law cannot hold her criminally responsible.

That could be a legitimate legal defense, and it deserves to be considered on the evidence rather than dismissed because the crime is horrifying.

But prosecutors have presented a profoundly different interpretation.

Prosecutors say there was planning

The prosecution contends Clancy was depressed and psychologically troubled but not psychotic to the degree required to eliminate criminal responsibility.

Prosecutors emphasize the sequence preceding the killings. Clancy sent her husband Patrick awayt from the house to obtain medication for one of the children and collect dinner. While he was away, she had the opportunity she needed to kill the children. She strangled them individually with exercise bands before attempting suicide.

Prosecution experts also challenged Clancy’s subsequent account that she heard a voice directing her to kill the children. Forensic psychologist Kirk Heilbrun testified that he doubted she was suffering an acute psychotic episode and concluded that she understood the wrongfulness of her conduct. Other prosecution experts pointed to inconsistencies in her descriptions of what happened.

That conflict—not whether Clancy killed her children—is the case the jury is deciding.

Then came the women in pink

Outside the courthouse, however, something unusual happened.

Hundreds of Clancy supporters assembled wearing bright pink. Associated Press reporters estimated approximately 300 women and a few men participated in one demonstration. Shirts carried messages including “Believe,” “She Needed Help” and “Peace For Lindsay.” Some supporters traveled considerable distances to attend.

These supporters have said nothing about Cora, Dawson and Callan in this extraordinary public spectacle.

Whatever ultimately happened inside Lindsay Clancy’s mind, three human beings incapable of defending themselves were brutally murdered. The oldest had barely begun school. The youngest had lived only eight months.

A society can demand better psychiatric treatment for mothers while remembering their murdered children. Those propositions do not conflict.

When the accused becomes the symbol

The unsettling feature of the demonstrations is not concern about postpartum psychosis. That concern is legitimate and potentially lifesaving. The uncomfortable question is why the person who killed three children became the visual centerpiece of the movement.

There are countless women who have suffered postpartum depression and psychosis without killing anyone. Their experiences deserve attention. So do women who recognized frightening symptoms and sought emergency intervention, families who protected mothers and babies during psychiatric crises, and physicians attempting to recognize an uncommon but extremely dangerous condition.

Making Clancy herself the symbol creates an unavoidable moral ambiguity.

One recent commentary from the political left demonstrates how far that reframing can go. Left Voice, a self-described revolutionary socialist publication, published an essay with the remarkable headline “In the Trial of Lindsay Clancy, Capitalism Is the Guilty Party.” Its authors argued that the capitalist healthcare system—not Clancy—was the true guilty party.

That is no longer simply an argument that mental illness can eliminate legal responsibility. It relocates moral responsibility from the individual who performed a murderous act onto “the system.” It echoes Luigi Mangione shooting United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in the back, and the large cast of young liberal supporters of that “heroic” act of murder.

And that deserves examination.

Compassion cannot require forgetting the victims

Mental illness is real. Postpartum psychosis is real. A human being suffering a genuine psychotic break may be incapable of understanding reality in a way that fundamentally changes criminal responsibility. American law has recognized versions of that principle for generations.

The jury, not demonstrators, commentators or politicians, must determine whether the evidence proves that happened here. But compassion for a mentally ill defendant need not require the moral displacement of her victims.

There is something deeply uncomfortable about seeing hundreds of people assembling around the person who admittedly murdered three defenseless children while the children’s names risk becoming secondary characters in their own deaths.

Cora. Dawson. Callan. They were not abstractions in a debate about America’s healthcare system. They were children. Beloved by their decimated father and extended family members.

Is there a broader cultural question?

The spectacle also raises a difficult cultural question that extends beyond this particular defendant.

Modern political debate increasingly frames traditional obligations through the vocabulary of autonomy. Marriage can be discussed primarily in terms of personal fulfillment. Pregnancy becomes a question of bodily autonomy. Parenthood is frequently discussed in terms of its economic and psychological burdens. Abortion politics, particularly regarding later stages of pregnancy, places the competing moral claims of mother and unborn child at the center of an intense national disagreement.

The Clancy case is legally and morally different from abortion, and it would be inaccurate to claim that the women outside the courthouse necessarily connect the two.

Nevertheless, a conservative cultural critique can legitimately ask whether something happens to a society when the language of adult autonomy consistently becomes louder than the language of obligation toward dependent children.

That is a philosophical question, not evidence concerning Clancy’s guilt.

But this case makes the question difficult to avoid.

Now twelve jurors must decide

The jury of nine women and three men has already spent more than ten hours examining an enormous record developed during five weeks of testimony. Their early requests for prescription medications suggest, although we should not speculate too far, that they are carefully considering the medical evidence central to Clancy’s defense.

They return Monday. Their responsibility is narrower than America’s. They must determine Lindsay Clancy’s criminal responsibility under Massachusetts law.

The rest of us confront a different question. Can we acknowledge severe mental illness without romanticizing the person who commits an atrocity? Can we identify failures in psychiatric medicine without automatically transferring responsibility from individuals to institutions? Can we have compassion for a desperately ill mother while reserving our deepest compassion for three children whose lives were taken from them?

We should be capable of all three. Whatever verdict eventually comes from Plymouth Superior Court, one fact should never become obscured by pink shirts, political ideology, psychiatric terminology or television cameras.

Cora Clancy was five. Dawson was three. Callan was eight months old. They deserve to remain at the center of this story.

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.

Supreme Court Hands Trump Major Victory on Mail-Ballot Safeguards Ahead of Midterms

August 24, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

High Court removes key legal obstacle to administration’s election-integrity order as battle over mail voting enters critical final weeks

The Trump administration scored a significant victory at the U.S. Supreme Court Monday as the justices cleared away a major legal obstacle that had prevented the administration from implementing new safeguards governing mail-in ballots ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The Court lifted an injunction affecting 23 states that had challenged President Donald Trump’s March executive order. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. The Justice Department and U.S. Postal Service indicated that they would move toward implementing the revised requirements.

The administration has made election integrity a major priority, Monday’s ruling removes an important roadblock at a critical moment.

What Trump actually ordered

Much of the political argument surrounding the order has been reduced to the phrase “restricting mail-in voting.” The actual provisions are more specific.

Trump’s March 31 executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Social Security Administration, to compile state-by-state lists of confirmed U.S. citizens of voting age. It also directed the Postal Service to develop standards for handling federal-election mail ballots.

Those postal safeguards include unique Intelligent Mail barcodes on ballot envelopes, standardized Official Election Mail markings and USPS-compatible envelope designs. The administration also called for state-specific lists identifying people participating in mail or absentee voting.

The Postal Service subsequently produced a 95-page final rule. Under the rule, states participating in the system would provide USPS with information concerning voters receiving mailed ballots and use unique barcodes on outbound and return ballot envelopes. USPS says the system is intended to provide an auditable trail and assist enforcement of federal election laws.

Those details matter.

Whatever one’s opinion of Trump, barcoding an election envelope so that it can be tracked is fundamentally different from examining the voter’s choices. USPS says postal employees would not inspect ballot contents, and the system would not collect party affiliation. The information maintained would concern the exterior of the envelope, including addresses and tracking information.

The argument for the safeguards

Supporters see a straightforward principle at work: voting should be easy for eligible citizens, but the mechanisms used to distribute and return ballots should also be auditable.

Mail voting introduces a logistical chain that does not exist when a voter personally appears at a polling place. A ballot can travel from an election office through the postal system to a residence and back again.

The administration argues that unique identifiers and voter-list verification create a stronger chain of accountability without examining how anyone voted.

Postmaster General David Steiner described the objective in practical terms: USPS wants to ensure that ballots states believe they sent correspond with what actually entered the postal system.

The administration also emphasizes something on which there is little legal controversy: noncitizens are prohibited by federal law from voting in federal elections. Trump’s order cites existing federal statutes imposing criminal penalties for unlawful registration and voting and directs federal agencies to improve citizenship-verification capabilities.

The political dispute is therefore not principally about whether noncitizens should vote in federal elections. They cannot legally do so. The argument concerns what verification measures government may employ, which level of government possesses the authority to impose them, and whether the federal executive branch has exceeded that authority.

The constitutional objection

Opponents have a substantial constitutional argument of their own.

The Constitution gives states primary responsibility for determining the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections, while granting Congress authority to alter those regulations. Democratic-led states and voting-rights organizations contend that this structure does not give a president independent power to redesign state election administration through executive action.

They also warn that introducing substantial procedural changes only weeks before voting begins could create confusion or prevent otherwise eligible voters from receiving ballots. Some states are preparing to distribute ballots very soon, making the timing particularly consequential.

Those arguments have not disappeared because of Monday’s decision. They may ultimately determine the fate of portions of Trump’s program.

An important distinction from another recent Supreme Court ruling

There is another reason for precision.

This case should not be confused with the Supreme Court’s June ruling involving Mississippi’s deadline for receiving mailed ballots.

In Watson v. Republican National Committee, the Court rejected a challenge to Mississippi’s law allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive and still be counted during a subsequent grace period. That decision therefore went against the Republican challengers seeking an Election Day receipt deadline.

Monday’s case concerns a different set of federal mail-ballot procedures stemming from Trump’s executive order.

The distinction is worth emphasizing because headlines describing the Court as simply “limiting mail-in voting” can blur two quite different legal controversies.

The larger question: confidence in elections

Beyond the lawsuits lies a problem neither political party can afford to dismiss: Americans need confidence that elections are both accessible and secure.

Critics of Trump’s approach point to studies finding documented mail-ballot fraud to be rare and argue that sweeping new restrictions address a problem that has not been shown to alter modern national election outcomes. Supporters respond that election safeguards should be preventative rather than imposed only after substantial fraud has occurred. The Supreme Court has sided with President Trump.

A system can have historically low documented fraud while still benefiting from technologies that make ballot movement more transparent and auditable—provided those safeguards do not improperly prevent qualified citizens from voting.

That is ultimately the standard against which the new rules should be judged.

A consequential victory—but not the last word

For President Trump, Monday’s Supreme Court action is unquestionably a significant legal victory. A lower-court barrier to one of his administration’s most ambitious election-integrity initiatives has been removed at precisely the moment preparations for the 2026 midterms are accelerating.

But it is not necessarily the final word from the judiciary. The unresolved question is whether the administration’s proposed safeguards survive the remaining constitutional challenges—and whether they can be implemented effectively in the short period remaining before Americans vote in November.

What Monday’s ruling guarantees is that the administration will have an opportunity to press forward with its case: that modern mail voting can remain available while becoming more verifiable, trackable and auditable.

For a country in which confidence in elections has itself become a deeply contested political issue, the American people are one significant step closer to regaining their confidence in a system that has been hijacked by widespread fraud.

The Growing Cloud Over Sen Ruben Gallego: Money, Staffers, Swalwell and Questions Arizona Deserves Answered

August 21, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

A federal investigation into campaign spending, newly revealed family travel, reported relationships with congressional aides and Gallego’s extraordinary closeness to Eric Swalwell are creating a very different picture of Arizona’s junior senator than the carefully managed public image.

Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego increasingly has a Washington problem that cannot simply be dismissed as partisan gossip.

The latest disclosure came this week, when campaign records reviewed by the New York Post showed that Gallego’s political operation spent more than $2,000 flying his sister-in-law and the family’s Brazilian au pair to Washington ahead of his January 2025 Senate swearing-in. The campaign reportedly spent approximately $1,227 on airfare for his sister-in-law and another $777.91 flying the au pair from Mexico City. Campaign funds were also reportedly used to purchase roughly $661 worth of customized stationery announcing the birth of Gallego’s daughter to political donors.

These revelations arrive while the Department of Justice is already investigating whether Gallego improperly used political money for family travel and personal expenses dating back years. CBS News, Axios and ABC News have independently confirmed the existence of that federal investigation.

Disney, Miami Beach, St. Barts and the Super Bowl

The spending now under scrutiny is extensive.

Reports based on Federal Election Commission records show Gallego-associated political committees paying for travel involving Disneyland, Disney World, Miami, Chicago, Puerto Rico, Nantucket and the Caribbean. His JUNTOS PAC reportedly spent approximately $1,500 on meals and lodging connected to a Disneyland trip and about $2,900 at Disney World. Gallego’s family accompanied him on some of these trips.

Then there was Miami Beach.

Gallego and his wife stayed at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel during a trip coinciding with her birthday, with political funds reportedly covering more than $9,000 in hotel expenses.

There was also a trip to St. Barts associated with the birthday of Gallego’s wife’s employer. Again, Gallego’s representatives have described the travel as part of a broader political and fundraising itinerary.

And then there is the Super Bowl.

Gallego and former Rep. Eric Swalwell created a joint fundraising vehicle known as the Swallego Victory Fund. FEC records reportedly show that committee spending more than $37,000 on Super Bowl tickets and meals surrounding the 2023 game in Arizona. Gallego says the Super Bowl event was a fundraiser.

Federal campaign records also raised questions about a 2021 Puerto Rico trip surrounding Gallego’s wedding. Swalwell’s campaign reported approximately $1,522 in expenditures at the Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve, the resort where Gallego was married, while Gallego’s campaign separately reported a $2,000 payment to another Puerto Rico resort.

Federal Election Commission rules are fairly straightforward in principle: campaign funds cannot be converted to personal use. The FEC applies what it calls the “irrespective test.” If an expense would have existed regardless of the person’s candidacy or duties as an officeholder, campaign funds generally cannot pay it.

More Than $18,000 in Childcare

Gallego’s committees have reportedly paid or reimbursed more than $18,000 in childcare expenses since 2019. Among those payments was approximately $400 paid to his mother-in-law for babysitting during a fundraiser.

The Department of Justice Is Investigating

The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Ruben Gallego for suspected campaign-finance violations.

CBS News reported that the investigation was triggered by a whistleblower complaint originating in Southern California and is examining Gallego’s use of campaign money since approximately 2019 for family travel and related expenses. Axios and ABC News separately confirmed the federal investigation.

Gallego denies wrongdoing and says the Trump administration is politically targeting him because he has criticized the president.

Federal investigators now have an obligation to follow the money wherever it leads and explain publicly, when legally possible, what they found.

The Congressional Staffer Relationships

Then there is Gallego’s personal conduct on Capitol Hill.

Multiple sources told the New York Post that Gallego had sexual relationships with at least two female congressional aides while serving in the House. Other outlets, including ABC News reporting on subsequent congressional reform discussions and The Independent, reported the allegations.

The ethical concern being debated in Washington is instead the enormous power disparity between an elected member of Congress and junior congressional employees.

When reporters asked Gallego about the reports concerning the two staffers, he did not issue a detailed denial. He said: “I’m not going to engage in gossip.”

Arizona voters can decide whether it is an adequate answer from a senator whose political future increasingly attracts scandalous national attention.

The Divorce That Was Kept Sealed

Gallego’s personal history became an issue years earlier because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the end of his first marriage.

In December 2016, while his then-wife Kate Gallego was pregnant and nearing the birth of their son, Ruben Gallego filed for divorce. Contemporary reporting described the couple as expecting their first child, and later-unsealed records confirmed that the petition was filed shortly before the birth.

Gallego also sought to have the divorce record sealed.Years later, after litigation by the Washington Free Beacon, Arizona courts ordered most of those records released.

Critics have understandably focused on the human element: a husband initiating divorce proceedings while his pregnant wife was approaching childbirth.

And Then There Is Eric Swalwell

Perhaps no relationship has produced more uncomfortable questions for Gallego than his close friendship with former California congressman Eric Swalwell.

These were not two Democrats who occasionally sat together in committee hearings.

Gallego described Swalwell as one of his closest friends in Congress. They were roommates on Capitol Hill. Gallego chaired Swalwell’s short-lived presidential campaign. The two created the Swallego Victory Fund. They traveled together. Their families socialized together. Gallego subsequently supported Swalwell’s political ambitions.

When serious sexual misconduct allegations against Swalwell emerged this spring, Gallego said he was shocked and quickly distanced himself, claiming that despite their extremely close relationship and many travels together, he had no idea about Swalwell’s constant womanizing.

Swalwell denied the allegations, but eventually withdrew from California’s gubernatorial race and resigned from Congress. Federal agents have since seized electronic devices and searched his Washington residence as part of an investigation into multiple sexual-misconduct allegations. Swalwell continues to deny wrongdoing.

How could someone so extraordinarily close to Swalwell have known nothing?

Skepticism is reasonable when two politicians were roommates, campaign partners, travel companions, joint fundraisers and publicly described close friends for years.

Gallego was sufficiently concerned about the political fallout that he hired former Biden deputy press secretary Andrew Bates for crisis communications, including specifically to deal with matters involving Swalwell and Gallego’s own ethics problems.

The “Cool Kids” Culture on Capitol Hill

Recent reporting has also linked Gallego, Swalwell and Rep. Jimmy Gomez socially as members of what has been described as a Capitol Hill “Cool Kids Clique.” Gomez is now himself facing an Ethics Committee investigation after acknowledging an extramarital relationship with a younger congressional staffer; his accuser disputes Gomez’s characterization that the relationship was consensual. Gomez has denied assault.

This accumulation of misconduct allegations involving interconnected lawmakers has generated a broader institutional question that Congress can no longer avoid: whether an entrenched culture allowed powerful elected officials to treat junior staffers as part of their social and dating pool.

The Money Questions Are the Most Concrete

Sexual gossip attracts headlines. The campaign-finance records may ultimately matter more.

Federal filings do not depend upon anonymous rumors. They document money leaving political committees.

The Justice Department now has the authority to determine whether Gallego’s travel, childcare, family airfare, political events and other spending complied with federal law.

The FEC’s governing principle is remarkably simple: Would the expense have existed irrespective of the campaign or the officeholder’s official duties?

If yes, campaign money generally cannot pay it. If no—if the expense genuinely resulted from campaign or official activity—it may be lawful.

That means investigators can examine each trip individually. Why was Gallego in Miami? What political events occurred? Who attended? How much money was raised? How much of the hotel expense was political and how much personal? Why was the family traveling? Why did the campaign pay airfare for relatives or childcare providers? Were reimbursements made for personal portions? Were contemporaneous records kept?

Arizona Deserves Answers

Arizona sent Ruben Gallego to Washington to represent its citizens—not to create a political financial ecosystem so complicated that voters need federal investigators to determine where political expenses end and personal life begins.

The Justice Department should finish its investigation. The Federal Election Commission should examine any expenditures requiring review. Congress should close the loopholes that permit lawmakers to engage sexually with junior employees outside their own offices.

And Ruben Gallego should answer the questions directly rather than dismissing them as gossip, smears or partisan persecution.

Because eventually every politician facing a growing stack of receipts reaches the same point: The explanations have to be better than the questions.

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.

Trump UAP Disclosure: Five Tranches Later, UFO Disclosure Is No Longer Fringe

August 17, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

The most important revelation may not be a single photograph or video. It is that the United States government has finally acknowledged, in public and at scale, that it has spent decades collecting and studying phenomena it often could not explain.

UAP seen and photographed by civilians on ground, and chased by RAF jet over Scottish Highlands in August 1990.

Something extraordinary has happened in Washington over the past several months, and it risks being missed because Americans have been conditioned to expect “disclosure” to arrive as a single spectacular photograph of an alien spacecraft or a president standing behind a podium announcing that mankind is not alone.

That is not what has happened. In fact, from what President Trump has said in the past, it appears that he and his tops officials have not been read officially into the government’s legacy UAP programs yet, but are exerting force within the government to obtain all of the records.

Instead, President Donald Trump directed the federal government to begin identifying, reviewing, declassifying, and releasing records involving UFOs and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Five separate tranches have now been published through the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters—PURSUE—beginning May 8 and continuing through the fifth release on August 7. The Department says the effort involves dozens of agencies, tens of millions of records, material extending across many decades, and additional releases expected on a rolling basis. See documents>

That statement alone represents remarkable progress.

LARGE “DISC” UAP / ACTIVITY : UAP NAVIGATES THROUGH CLOUDS / DETECTION : AIR FORCE / 23 NOV 2020

For generations, Americans who suspected that the government had taken UFO reports seriously were routinely portrayed as conspiracy theorists. Yet the government’s own disclosure portal now openly acknowledges that agencies throughout the national-security establishment possess decades of UAP-related records, that many remain unresolved, and that officials are conducting a government-wide effort to locate and release them. The Department explicitly states that the cases published through PURSUE remain unresolved because officials cannot make definitive determinations about what was observed.

That does not mean the Pentagon has announced that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth.

Incident: “Cold Orbs” UAP in Gulf of Oman Date: 8 September 2021 Platform: U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider Evidence: EO/IR sensor imagery and multiple released video sequences Public Release: 7 August 2026 Status: Unresolved / no definitive public identification On 8 September 2021, the crew of a U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider operating over the Gulf of Oman recorded a series of unusual objects using the aircraft’s electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor systems. The incident has become known as the “Cold Orbs” UAP encounter because the objects appeared as small spherical targets with unusual infrared characteristics.

It means something more modest, but historically important: the phenomenon was real enough to investigate, important enough to classify, persistent enough to generate records across generations, and unresolved enough that the government is now asking outside scientists and researchers to help evaluate the evidence.

That is a very different world from the one Americans inhabited only a decade ago.

The Fifth Tranche May Be the Most Interesting Yet

Veteran UFO historian Richard Dolan, who has studied the government’s handling of this subject for more than three decades, spent hours reviewing all 41 files in the fifth release. His assessment was unusually positive. Dolan called Tranche Five the most interesting of the releases so far, while simultaneously criticizing the government for continuing to withhold important dates, locations, telemetry, and identifying details necessary for rigorous independent analysis.

That balance is important.

The fifth tranche is not the smoking gun many disclosure advocates have spent years anticipating. It contains incomplete records, artist reconstructions, ambiguous imagery, and cases lacking enough data to reach definitive conclusions.

But it also contains material that deserves serious attention.

Perhaps the most striking involves a September 2021 encounter over the Gulf of Oman involving a U.S. Special Operations Forces AC-130J gunship. Newly released infrared footage and an accompanying intelligence report describe approximately 25 UAP observations during a live-fire exercise. The report characterized some of the objects as “cold orbs,” estimated their speeds at approximately 250 to 1,300 miles per hour, and reported aggressive maneuvering and apparent reactions to the aircraft’s cannon fire.

Scientific American—hardly a publication known for sensational UFO reporting—highlighted the Gulf of Oman material because it originated from a sophisticated U.S. military platform operating infrared sensors during an actual military exercise.

Dolan also drew attention to expanded footage associated with the USS Omaha encounter, an incident already familiar to serious UAP researchers. Earlier leaked material showed an oval or spherical object apparently descending toward the Pacific Ocean. Tranche Five provides additional video surrounding that event, giving analysts more context than the brief clips previously available.

Declassified Pentagon UAP files, Gulf of Oman 2021: an AC-130 gunship crew reports ~25 “cold orbs” at 250–1300 mph — on six phone videos. DEEP FILE 001.

The release also contains CENTCOM footage, FBI witness interviews describing large triangular objects, and historical military documents dating back to the early years of the modern UFO era. Dolan’s conclusion was not that Tranche Five proves extraterrestrial visitation, but that anyone dismissing the release as containing “nothing” has failed to examine what is actually there.

That seems about right.

The Historical Documents May Ultimately Matter More Than the Videos

Modern audiences naturally gravitate toward photographs and video. Yet some of the most important evidence in the five tranches may be the paper trail.

The releases include military memoranda, intelligence reports, astronaut material, FBI records, pilot accounts, investigative files, and photographs extending back into the 1940s. Taken together, they establish beyond serious dispute that elements of the U.S. government have been collecting and evaluating UFO reports for roughly eighty years.

That history matters because the official public posture toward UFOs was often far more dismissive than the private bureaucratic record now being exposed.

Director Dan Farah, whose documentary The Age of Disclosure featured dozens of former and current senior government, military, and intelligence officials, argues that the historical files demonstrate just how seriously the government treated the problem internally. Farah singled out an Apollo 17 photograph in the first tranche showing a triangular arrangement of unidentified objects above the lunar horizon as particularly intriguing, though the image itself remains open to competing interpretations.

More important than any single photograph is the cumulative pattern.

Military organizations were writing memoranda about unusual aerial objects in the 1940s.

Pilots were reporting extraordinary encounters.

Intelligence agencies were collecting witness accounts.

Nuclear and military installations repeatedly appeared in UAP files.

Modern warships and aircraft continued recording unexplained objects decades later.

And today, rather than dismissing these records as meaningless, the government is publicly cataloging and releasing them.

That is progress.

What Has Changed Most Is Washington

The transformation of the political environment may ultimately be more significant than any individual release.

UAP disclosure has become genuinely bipartisan.

On the Republican side, Representatives Anna Paulina Luna, Eric Burlison, and Tim Burchett have been among the most visible advocates for transparency. Democratic Representatives Jared Moskowitz and André Carson have also pushed disclosure efforts. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer, Mike Rounds, and Kirsten Gillibrand have backed legislation and oversight intended to force additional government records into the open.

Years before Trump’s PURSUE initiative, Schumer and Rounds introduced legislation modeled partly on the JFK Records Act that sought a formal government collection of UAP records and contemplated government control over recovered technology of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence if such materials existed in private hands.

That is not the language of a government that considers the entire subject frivolous.

Congressional interest has only intensified.

A major Disclosure Forum held on Capitol Hill this summer brought lawmakers together with former intelligence officials, scientists, military personnel, whistleblowers, and researchers. Participants discussed not merely sightings but whistleblower protections, classification, alleged crash-retrieval programs, national security, and how government should respond if more consequential information eventually becomes public.

Congresswoman Luna made one particularly revealing comment about the degree of White House engagement, praising senior presidential adviser Stephen Miller as “absolutely incredible on this topic” and saying disclosure advocates were providing the administration with names of individuals who might receive immunity in order to come forward.

Whether those witnesses ultimately substantiate extraordinary claims remains to be seen.

But it is increasingly difficult to argue that the disclosure effort consists only of UFO enthusiasts shouting from the political sidelines.

It now reaches deeply into Congress and the executive branch.

Trump Appears Serious About the Process

President Trump’s February directive instructed the Secretary of War and other departments and agencies to identify and release government material involving UFOs, UAP, extraterrestrial life, and related subjects. The Department of War subsequently stated that it is coordinating with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on an unprecedented government-wide review of tens of millions of records. Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly described the effort as part of an administration commitment to unprecedented transparency.

That does not tell us what Trump personally believes UFOs are.

It tells us something arguably more important: he has ordered the government to look.

Farah says senior cabinet officials have been pressing agencies and military branches for evidence and records, while encountering resistance from portions of the national-security bureaucracy. Those assertions come from Farah and his sources rather than from independently released government documentation, but they are consistent with the administration’s acknowledgement that the review involves a massive, decentralized archive spread across many agencies.

Ross Coulthart has similarly argued that Trump appears serious about exposing secrets held within the national-security establishment, while continuing to press officials and whistleblowers for greater disclosure.

The significance is difficult to overstate.

For decades, disclosure advocates complained that presidents expressed curiosity about UFOs but eventually surrendered to the bureaucracy.

This administration has created an actual public release mechanism.

Five tranches later, it is still operating.

There Is Still Plenty to Criticize

Disclosure advocates should resist the temptation to treat every government release as proof of their preferred theory.

Many files remain incomplete.

Some photographs are ambiguous.

Some objects will almost certainly prove to be balloons, drones, sensor artifacts, satellites, aircraft, or natural phenomena.

The government itself emphasizes that “unresolved” means precisely that—unresolved—not extraterrestrial.

Dolan’s criticism is especially important: independent analysts often cannot properly evaluate cases because crucial metadata remains redacted or absent.

If the government truly wants private-sector scientists to analyze the evidence, it must eventually provide better-quality original sensor data, telemetry, complete incident timelines, radar records, chain-of-custody information, and sufficient contextual material to permit real scientific evaluation.

A fuzzy video without metadata may generate curiosity.

It does not settle anything.

Yet Look How Far We Have Come

That criticism should not obscure what has changed.

Within a remarkably short period of time, the United States has moved from institutional ridicule of the UFO subject to:

a presidential directive ordering disclosure;

a permanent government website releasing UAP records;

five successive public tranches;

Cabinet-level involvement;

cooperation from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence;

bipartisan congressional pressure;

formal legislation concerning UAP records;

government acknowledgement of decades of investigations;

and military videos and reports being openly released for public examination.

The stigma is collapsing.

Whatever the final explanation for UAP turns out to be, the question itself is no longer politically unserious.

Scientists are examining the material.

Members of Congress are demanding records.

Military personnel are speaking publicly.

Government agencies are publishing evidence.

And the President of the United States has explicitly told his administration to pursue the truth.

That may ultimately be the most important disclosure of all.

We still do not know what some of these objects are.

We do know, finally and officially, that the government has been asking the same question for a very long time.

And for perhaps the first time in modern history, it is beginning to let the American people look over its shoulder while it searches for the answer.

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.

The Politics of Envy: Why “Tax the Rich” Is an Economic Dead End

August 12, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” — Winston Churchill

One of the most popular slogans on today’s political left is also one of its least examined: “Tax the rich.”

The slogan gives the false impression that “the rich” are not taxed, or not sufficiently taxed.

It is a rallying cry heard at political rallies, on college campuses, and increasingly from elected officials who openly identify as democratic socialists. “Eat the rich.” “Make billionaires pay.” “No one should have that much money.”

These slogans promote class warfare, but they fail to answer a far more important question: How much should the rich pay?

Ask advocates whether millionaires should pay 50 percent, 70 percent, or 90 percent of their income. Ask whether billionaires should surrender half their wealth. Ask what percentage would finally satisfy the demand for “fairness.” There is rarely a clear answer. The line simply moves whenever the previous one is crossed.

The goal appears less about reaching a tax rate than sustaining a political grievance.

The Wealthy Already Pay Most Federal Income Taxes

One fact often missing from the debate is that America’s federal income tax system is already among the most progressive (stair-stepped) in the developed world.

According to IRS data, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay roughly 38 to 40 percent of all federal individual income taxes, despite earning about one-fifth of all reported income. The top half of all taxpayers pay well over 95 percent of federal individual income taxes, while the bottom half pays only a small fraction.

That does not mean lower-income Americans contribute nothing. They pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes through rent, and countless other taxes embedded throughout the economy. But when politicians speak of “the rich paying their fair share,” they are almost always referring to federal income taxes, and on that measure the burden is already concentrated heavily on upper-income earners.

Billionaires Are Not Vaults of Cash

Another common misconception is that billionaires possess enormous piles of cash sitting idle in bank vaults.

They do not.

Most billionaire wealth consists of ownership in companies, factories, warehouses, office buildings, patents, farmland, and investments. Those assets finance businesses that employ millions of Americans.

When someone says, “Take half of every billionaire’s wealth,” they are usually talking about forcing the liquidation or transfer of ownership in productive businesses—not seizing stacks of currency.

The practical effect would almost certainly include reduced investment, declining stock values, lower business expansion, and diminished job creation. Economists argue that confiscating large portions of productive capital would come with significant economic consequences.

Even Massive Wealth Taxes Have Limits

Suppose, for the sake of argument, Congress confiscated half the wealth of every billionaire in America.

The number sounds enormous because billionaire wealth is measured in trillions of dollars.

Yet federal spending is also measured in trillions.

Even several trillion dollars would finance only a relatively limited period of current federal spending before being exhausted. It would not permanently fund Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, national defense, interest on the debt, veterans’ benefits, and every other federal program. It would be a one-time transfer against recurring annual obligations measured in the trillions. After the money was spent, the government would still face the same structural deficits unless spending itself changed.

History shows that governments never solve chronic spending problems with one-time revenue windfalls.

Wealth Is Created Before It Is Taxed

The discussion often overlooks an even more fundamental point.

Before someone can pay millions—or billions—in taxes, that wealth first has to be created.

Successful entrepreneurs build companies that manufacture products, develop software, transport freight, discover medicines, finance new ventures, construct buildings, or provide services that millions of people voluntarily purchase.

Those businesses generate payrolls for employees, contracts for suppliers, retirement savings for investors, charitable donations, and tax revenue at nearly every level of government.

The overwhelming majority of American workers are employed not by government agencies but by private businesses Without profitable enterprises, there are no payroll taxes because there are no payrolls.

Without successful businesses, there are no corporate taxes because there are no profits Without investment, there is less innovation, slower productivity growth, and fewer opportunities for upward mobility.

Taxing Success Does Not Eliminate Poverty

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the “tax the rich” philosophy is its assumption that reducing wealth at the top automatically improves conditions at the bottom. History offers no support for that proposition.

Societies become prosperous not because everyone is equally poor, but because people are free to innovate, invest, compete, and create new wealth. The greatest advances in living standards have generally occurred where economic freedom allowed businesses to expand and productivity to increase.

That does not mean every wealthy individual acquired his fortune virtuously, nor does it mean every tax policy is perfect. Tax reform is a legitimate subject of debate. Closing loopholes, simplifying the tax code, and eliminating favoritism deserve bipartisan support But those discussions are very different from the politics of envy.

Punishing Success Is Not an Economic Strategy

The language surrounding taxation has increasingly shifted from financing government to punishing success.

When politicians promise to “make the rich pay,” the applause often comes not because voters have calculated the expected revenue, but because they enjoy seeing someone else penalized. That is not tax policy. It is emotional politics.

A nation cannot tax itself into prosperity. Government does not create wealth; it redistributes wealth that has first been created by someone else. The more successful that creation becomes, the larger the tax base available to fund legitimate public functions.

The challenge is to encourage more wealth creation—not less.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher understood this problem 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 redistributive political movements spend all their time discussing how wealth should be divided, and none on how wealth is actually created.

Whether every word commonly attributed to Churchill originated with him is debated by historians. The principle, however, remains worthy of serious consideration.

A prosperous society should seek to expand opportunity, reward innovation, and encourage productive investment—not elevate resentment into an economic philosophy that destroys the wellbeing of everyone.

Trump Administration Releases Fifth Tranche of UFO Files as Transparency Initiative Continues

August 7, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Newly declassified records focus on mysterious triangular craft, eyewitness testimony, and additional FBI investigative files as public scrutiny intensifies.

Artistic interpretation of a reported incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in June or July of 2011.

The Trump administration has released the fifth tranche of declassified UFO and UAP records through the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), continuing what has become one of the most ambitious government transparency efforts ever undertaken on the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena. link>

Although previous releases included military videos, NASA imagery, historical intelligence files, and incidents involving nuclear facilities, the newest release appears to concentrate on one of the most persistent mysteries in UFO research: large triangular craft.

For decades, reports of massive silent triangles have occupied a unique place in UFO literature. Whether they represent advanced military technology, misidentified conventional aircraft, atmospheric phenomena, or something more exotic remains unknown.

The newest release is likely to ensure that debate continues.

The “Triangle Edition”

Early reviewers have already begun referring to the latest collection as the “Triangle Edition.” Community discussions note that multiple newly released FBI interview summaries describe witnesses reporting nearly identical triangular objects observed years apart in different locations.

Among the newly released accounts:

A witness described a large triangular craft with bright white lights positioned at each corner.
Another reported a triangle displaying red corner lights while moving silently across the sky.
One observer stated the object appeared capable of accelerating almost instantaneously while surrounded by what appeared to be waves or distortions in the surrounding air.

None of these reports establishes what the witnesses actually observed. They do, however, reveal remarkable similarities between reports collected independently over many years.

Artistic interpretation of a reported incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) near Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2023.

Former Pentagon Employee Describes Extraordinary Sighting

Perhaps the most widely discussed document released today is an FBI interview with a former Pentagon employee who described witnessing an unusual object over Colorado in 2023.

According to the interview summary, the witness and his wife observed what he described as a translucent triangular craft flying silently only a few hundred feet overhead.

The witness reportedly stated the object lacked conventional aircraft features such as wings, engine nacelles, or visible propulsion. It appeared surrounded by a faint haze and emitted a silver-blue glow before rapidly changing orientation and disappearing within seconds.

Because the witness lived near an airport and was familiar with conventional aircraft, investigators noted that he believed the object behaved unlike any airplane or drone he had previously observed.

Continuing a Historic Release Program

Today’s publication follows four earlier releases that collectively opened thousands of pages of government material to public examination.

Those previous tranches included:

historical FBI memoranda,
military cockpit videos,
NASA photographs,
astronaut observations,
Department of Energy reports,
audio recordings,
intelligence summaries,
Project Sign documents,
and investigations involving unidentified objects observed near sensitive military and nuclear installations.

One of the most discussed cases from the fourth tranche involved an unidentified object reported near the Pantex Plant in Texas, America’s principal nuclear-weapons assembly facility. Another included a 1949 conference examining the mysterious “green fireballs” reported over Los Alamos.

What People Are Saying

Reaction to the fifth release has been mixed.

Many UFO researchers have welcomed the continued flow of primary-source documents, arguing that allowing independent researchers to review original government files represents a significant improvement over decades of official secrecy. Others remain cautious.

Artistic interpretation of a reported incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in the western United States in 2026.

Some observers have expressed disappointment that several releases continue to include digital reconstructions or artist’s renderings alongside authentic documents, arguing that recreated imagery should be clearly distinguished from original evidence to avoid confusion.

Many commentators also note that while the collection contains intriguing witness testimony, it still falls short of providing definitive proof regarding the origin of the reported objects.

Transparency Remains the Biggest Story

Perhaps the most significant development is not any individual sighting. It is the release process itself.

For decades, Americans were told that UFO files either did not exist, contained nothing of interest, or could not be made public.

Under PURSUE, the federal government has now released hundreds of documents, photographs, videos, and investigative records for anyone to examine. That does not mean every mystery points to extraterrestrial intelligence.

An artistic interpretation of a reported incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in the western United States in 2026.

Many cases may eventually prove to involve drones, classified aircraft, atmospheric phenomena, sensor artifacts, or simple misidentification. Others remain unresolved.

The Department of War has repeatedly emphasized that these records are being released to encourage public review and independent analysis—not to endorse any particular explanation.

What Readers Should Examine First

For readers visiting the PURSUE archive, several items from the fifth tranche appear especially noteworthy:

The FBI interview describing the 2023 translucent triangular object witnessed by a former Pentagon employee.
The multiple reports describing large triangular craft with illuminated corners and silent flight characteristics.
The accompanying FBI interview summaries documenting how investigators recorded and evaluated witness testimony.

Whether these reports ultimately point to advanced human technology, natural phenomena, or something not yet understood, one conclusion continues to grow stronger with each release: The American public now has access to a body of official records that, only months ago, remained locked behind classification barriers. The debate over what they mean is only beginning.

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.

Flashback: When Chuck Schumer Insisted Voter ID Was Common Sense

August 5, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Senate Minority Leader Once Argued It Was “Easy” to Obtain Identification, and important to election security. What Changed?

For years, Democrats have argued that requiring voters to present identification at the polls amounts to “voter suppression.” It amounts to “Jim Crow 2.0,” to quote Chuck Schumer. They contend that voter ID laws disproportionately burden minorities, women, the elderly, and low-income Americans, making it more difficult for eligible citizens to cast a ballot.

Yet there is one prominent Democrat whose own words tell a remarkably different story.

A recently resurfaced video shows Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer standing on the floor of the United States Senate making the very arguments Republicans have repeated for years. “This is an anti-fraud amendment,” he asserts. Watch the 31 second video.

A resurfaced clip from 1996 shows Chuck Schumer strongly supporting voter ID requirements to protect election integrity. “This is an anti-fraud amendment.”

Schumer argued that obtaining identification is not difficult. Americans need identification to cash checks, board airplanes, drive automobiles, receive government services, open bank accounts, and perform countless everyday tasks. Requiring identification to participate in the most important civic act in our constitutional republic, he argued, was simply common sense.

Schumer said, “Everywhere people go, they’re asked for a social security card. In fact, one way to prove you’re a bonafide person who can have a job is to ask for a driver’s license and a social security card. This is an anti-fraud amendment. All the over, where we go, people say, ‘Well, why can’t you stop illegal immigrants or others from coming here?’ And the number one answer we give our constituents is when they come here they can get jobs, get benefits against the law, because of fraud.” Chuck Schumer, 1996.

Today, however, the Democratic Party and Chick Schumer specifically have abandoned that position. Why?

A Dramatic Reversal

The contrast is impossible to ignore. Modern Democratic leadership has opposed many Republican-backed election integrity measures, including legislation requiring documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration and stricter voter identification requirements.

Republicans argue these proposals protect the integrity of elections, in nearly the exact terms as Chuck Schumer, by ensuring that only eligible citizens vote, and that every lawful vote carries equal weight.

Democrats respond that ID laws prevent eligible citizens from voting because of documentation requirements or administrative burdens.

The contrast between Senator Schumer’s earlier remarks and his current position raises an obvious question: If voter identification was once considered simple and common sense, why is it now portrayed by Democrats as an attack on democracy?

Confidence Matters

Every election produces winners and losers. What should never be a casualty is public confidence in the process itself.

Poll after poll has shown that large majorities of Americans—including many independents and substantial numbers of Democrats—support requiring voters to present valid identification before casting a ballot.

Supporters argue that the requirement is modest, widely accepted throughout daily life, and helps reassure the public that elections are conducted fairly. Recent revelations reflect that millions of illegal aliens have been registered to vote in many states.

Confidence in elections depends not only on preventing fraud, but on convincing the public that the rules are fair, transparent, and consistently applied. They are not.

Immigration and Election Integrity

Immigration has become deeply intertwined with the election debate. The Biden administration’s border policies produced record levels of illegal immigration, estimated at nearly 30 million illegals in the country, prompting Republicans to argue that restoring border security is inseparable from protecting election integrity. Democrats, on the other hand, have gone to extraordinary lengths to guarantee that the borders are wide open, and that any attempts by the current administration to remove illegal aliens musst face the highest level of resistance.

Of course, federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections. Nevertheless, Republicans have argued that maintaining accurate voter rolls, verifying citizenship during registration, and requiring voter identification at the polls are prudent safeguards in light of the nation’s immigration challenges.

Democrats respond that existing laws already prohibit non-citizen voting and that there is insufficient evidence of widespread non-citizen voting affecting federal election outcomes. They argue the greater danger is disenfranchising eligible voters through overly burdensome registration requirements–a nonexistent problem.

Consistency Builds Trust

One lesson emerges from Chuck Schumer’s earlier speech.

At one time, prominent Democrats openly acknowledged that proving one’s identity before voting was neither extraordinary nor oppressive. It was simply one of many routine responsibilities of citizenship.

Today, many of those same Democrats oppose all of the same measures they once defended. What is the difference? They now consider those illegal aliens that they invited into the country, their voters.

But consistency matters. When political leaders reverse longstanding positions on fundamental issues such as election integrity, they should be prepared to explain why.

The American people deserve elections that are both secure and accessible. Those objectives need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, maintaining confidence in democratic institutions requires both. Republican policies provide both. Democrat policies rob the nation of election integrity.

As the video of Senator Schumer demonstrates, there was once broad agreement that verifying a voter’s identity was a reasonable safeguard rather than a partisan controversy. He was right. Now, he is just lying.

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.

Stop Financing Degrees That Cannot Repay Their Loans

August 3, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Federal student lending should help Americans build productive careers—not guarantee universities unlimited customers while leaving graduates buried beneath debts their earnings cannot support.

Why does the federal government continue lending tens of thousands of dollars to students for degree programs whose graduates routinely earn too little to repay what they borrowed?

No private lender would knowingly finance a $100,000 investment without examining whether the investment had a reasonable prospect of producing enough income to service the debt. Yet Washington has spent decades making enormous education loans with remarkably little regard for the price of the program, its completion rate, the employment prospects of its graduates, or the relationship between their expected earnings and monthly payments.

The result is a system that protects universities from ordinary market discipline while transferring nearly all the risk to students and taxpayers. By the first quarter of 2026, the federal student-loan portfolio had reached approximately $1.7 trillion across 43 million borrowers. Meanwhile, the average student at a public university who borrows to obtain a bachelor’s degree leaves with roughly $31,960 in debt.

That enormous flow of federally guaranteed money has not merely helped students pay rising tuition. It has also enabled institutions to raise prices, expand administrative bureaucracies, construct lavish facilities, and create programs whose economic value is often disconnected from their cost. Tuition and fees nearly doubled in nominal terms between the 2005–06 and 2025–26 academic years, rising 93.2 percent; even after adjusting for inflation, the increase was 17.4 percent. Public universities now charge an average of about $10,340 annually in resident tuition, while private colleges average approximately $39,307 before housing, meals, books, and other expenses are added.

The central failure is simple: Washington has treated nearly every accredited college program as though it represents an equally prudent public investment. It does not.

Federal Loans Should Be Investments, Not Blank Checks

A student loan is not a prize for admission to college. It is a financial investment in a course of study that is expected to increase a student’s knowledge, employability, and future earnings enough to justify the expense.

That does not mean education has no value beyond income. Literature, music, history, philosophy, languages, and the arts contribute enormously to civilization. A free society should permit universities to offer them and students to study them. The issue is not whether such subjects may be taught. The issue is whether taxpayers should guarantee virtually unlimited borrowing for any program, at any price, regardless of whether its graduates can reasonably repay the debt.

People remain free to purchase countless things that the federal government does not subsidize. Freedom to pursue a degree does not create an entitlement to have taxpayers assume its financial risk.

Federal loans should therefore be conditioned upon measurable economic outcomes. Before guaranteeing tens of thousands of dollars for a particular degree at a particular institution, the government should ask the questions any responsible lender would ask: What percentage of students complete the program? What do graduates earn? How many find work related to their education? How much do they borrow? What percentage can repay without requiring decades of subsidies, deferments, forgiveness, or default?

The answers vary enormously by field. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce reports that median earnings among prime-age bachelor’s-degree holders range from about $58,000 in education and public-service fields to $98,000 in STEM fields. A bachelor’s degree still produces a substantial average advantage over a high-school diploma, but the return is far from uniform across majors and institutions.

That distinction matters. “College pays” is an average, not a guarantee. It tells a prospective student little about whether borrowing $80,000 for one particular program at one particular university is sensible.

Universities Receive the Money; Students Carry the Risk

The present system creates a dangerous imbalance. Universities receive tuition immediately. They are paid whether the student graduates or drops out, whether the degree leads to a career or unemployment, and whether the borrower repays the loan or spends decades trapped in delinquency.

The school has already been paid. The graduate and the taxpayer remain responsible for everything that follows.

This is a textbook example of moral hazard. When institutions receive the reward while someone else bears the risk, prices rise and accountability collapses. Universities have little financial incentive to close weak programs, reduce tuition, limit enrollment in oversupplied fields, or tell applicants that their chosen degree may never justify its cost.

The federal government should end that arrangement. Institutions should be required to share the losses when their programs repeatedly leave students unable to repay. A university that collects federal loan dollars should have financial skin in the game.

If graduates consistently default, the institution should reimburse part of the federal loss. If a program repeatedly fails objective earnings and repayment standards, its access to new federally guaranteed loans should be reduced and ultimately suspended. Schools would remain free to offer the program, but they would have to persuade students to pay for it voluntarily, lower its price, finance it themselves, or demonstrate improved outcomes.

The market discipline would be immediate. Programs with genuine value would survive. Programs maintained primarily because federal money makes them profitable would face pressure to improve, shrink, or disappear.

Debt Is Not Merely a Number on a Statement

Bad education debt does more than reduce a borrower’s disposable income. It can delay marriage, homeownership, family formation, retirement saving, entrepreneurship, and other milestones through which people enter stable middle-class life.

Research has also identified an association between student debt and psychological distress. One study found a significant relationship between student-loan debt and distress among graduates, while broader reviews have linked educational debt with anxiety, depression, and diminished well-being. Association does not prove that debt alone causes every mental-health problem, but it confirms what common sense already suggests: beginning adult life with a large obligation and weak earnings can impose profound emotional as well as financial strain.

The current labor market has made the problem harder to ignore. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates reached 5.8 percent in 2025, its highest level since 2013 outside the pandemic disruption.

Many graduates eventually succeed, and some low-paying fields provide immense public value. Teachers, social workers, public defenders, artists, and researchers should not be casually dismissed because their salaries are modest. But acknowledging the social value of a profession does not justify allowing institutions to charge any amount they choose. A necessary but modestly compensated career requires lower-cost training, targeted scholarships, employer support, service-based grants, or explicit public appropriations—not a disguised system that saddles the worker with debt and hopes repayment somehow works itself out.

A Better Student-Loan System

Congress should replace the current blank-check model with an outcomes-based system built around several straightforward principles.

First, federal borrowing limits should be established program by program, rather than merely by degree level. The permissible loan should bear a reasonable relationship to the historical earnings of graduates from that specific program and institution. A degree whose graduates typically earn $45,000 should not carry the same federally backed borrowing capacity as one whose graduates routinely earn $100,000.

Second, every applicant should receive a plain-language financial disclosure before borrowing. It should show tuition, total expected debt, completion rates, median graduate earnings, monthly payments under a standard repayment plan, employment rates, and the percentage of former students who are delinquent or require income-based subsidies. Students should have to acknowledge those figures before taxpayers guarantee the loan.

Third, universities should share repayment risk. When a program repeatedly produces poor outcomes, the institution—not merely the borrower and Treasury—should absorb part of the loss.

Fourth, programs that fail minimum standards for several consecutive years should lose access to federal student loans. The Department of Education has already developed transparency and accountability mechanisms using earnings and debt measures, and a 2026 accountability framework moves toward denying federal loans to persistently failing programs. The sound principle should be applied consistently across public, private nonprofit, and proprietary institutions rather than selectively according to institutional type.

Fifth, federal policy should give much greater support to lower-cost pathways connected to demonstrable workforce demand: community colleges, apprenticeships, skilled trades, technical certifications, nursing, medicine, engineering, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, accounting, and other fields in which training leads to identifiable employment opportunities.

This does not require Washington to dictate everyone’s career. It requires Washington to stop pretending that every educational purchase is equally safe for federal financing.

Stop Confusing Access With Value

Defenders of the existing system will argue that restricting federal loans could reduce access to higher education, particularly for students from lower-income families. That concern deserves serious consideration, but “access” to an unaffordable program with poor completion and employment outcomes may be access to financial harm.

A young person is not helped by being admitted, praised, indebted, and abandoned.

Real access means access to education worth its cost. It means an honest chance of graduation, employment, repayment, independence, and advancement. A federal program that helps someone borrow $70,000 for a credential that adds little to his earning capacity has not expanded opportunity. It has financed a trap.

Low-income students should receive grants and scholarships where there is a compelling public purpose. They should also have access to affordable community colleges, apprenticeships, occupational programs, and properly priced universities. But institutions should not be permitted to invoke disadvantaged students as moral cover for charging prices their graduates cannot sustain.

Universities Must Once Again Serve Students

The federal student-loan system was created to expand opportunity. Too often, it now functions as a revenue pipeline for higher education.

Universities have learned that they can increase tuition because students do not pay the full cost at the moment of purchase. The government advances the money, the institution receives it immediately, and the painful consequences arrive years later—after the graduation ceremony, after the brochure promises have faded, and after the borrower discovers what the degree is actually worth in the labor market.

The market cannot correct prices when government continually supplies more borrowed money to meet them. As long as Washington guarantees the financing, universities remain insulated from the most basic signal in economics: customers refusing to buy something that costs more than it is worth.

That insulation must end.

Students should remain free to study whatever they choose. Universities should remain free to teach any lawful subject. But taxpayers should not be compelled to guarantee any debt an institution wishes to generate.

Federal lending should support opportunity, not institutional excess. It should finance education that gives borrowers a reasonable path toward repayment and productive independence. It should inform applicants rather than seduce them with borrowed money. It should reward schools that deliver value and impose consequences on those that do not.

The guiding rule should be neither complicated nor ideological:

No university is entitled to federally guaranteed customers, and no student should be encouraged to borrow more for an education than that education can reasonably help repay.

That reform would not destroy higher education. It might finally force higher education to remember whom it is supposed to serve.

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 Left’s Favorite Question Is “Who Benefits?” Their Forgotten Question Is “At Whose Expense?”

July 24, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Every law creates winners and losers. Good government begins by honestly acknowledging both.

One of the great weaknesses of modern American politics is that too many public debates begin with compassion, but end without arithmetic. Every election cycle, Americans hear a familiar list of promises: free college, free childcare, free healthcare, student loan forgiveness, rent control, expanded housing subsidies, guaranteed income, climate subsidies, new entitlement programs, higher minimum wages, new regulations, and expanded workplace mandates. The list changes, but the sales pitch remains remarkably consistent.

Supporters almost always ask the same question: “Who will benefit?” It is an important question, but it is only half of the equation. The question too often left unanswered is far more important: At whose expense?

Every law has a cost. Every regulation shifts burdens. Every subsidy comes from someone else’s earnings. Every new government program consumes resources that would otherwise remain in private hands. Economics does not permit free lunches simply because politicians promise them.

Government possesses no independent wealth. It produces no goods. It manufactures no products. Every dollar Washington spends first belongs to someone. It comes from taxpayers, borrowing, inflation, or future generations. Politicians often describe spending as though government itself is writing the check. It isn’t. Your neighbors are—or your children eventually will be. That reality rarely appears in campaign speeches.

Consider healthcare. Supporters of expanded federal healthcare argue that medical care should be available to everyone regardless of income. That is a legitimate moral aspiration. But every proposal must still answer practical questions. Who pays physicians? Who finances hospitals? What taxes increase? What services become rationed? How long do patients wait? How much innovation declines when government sets prices? These are not arguments against helping the sick. They are questions every responsible legislature must answer before expanding government obligations.

The same is true of student loan forgiveness. Canceling student debt sounds compassionate until someone asks, at whose expense? The debt does not disappear. It transfers. Construction workers who never attended college, electricians, truck drivers, retirees, and taxpayers who already repaid their own loans ultimately absorb the obligation. Debt forgiven by government is simply debt shifted to others.

Rent control provides another example. Few ideas sound kinder than making housing more affordable. Yet economists across the political spectrum have long observed that strict rent controls often discourage new housing construction, reduce maintenance, and ultimately shrink housing supply. The intended beneficiaries may receive lower rents, but future renters frequently encounter fewer apartments and higher long-term costs. Once again, the obvious question remains: At whose expense?

Minimum wage increases illustrate the same principle. Everyone wants workers to earn higher wages, and better pay is a worthy objective. But labor markets also operate according to economic reality. If government requires wages substantially above what many small businesses can sustain, employers reduce hiring, automate jobs, cut employee hours, or raise prices. Some workers benefit, consumers pay more, and others never receive the job in the first place. Good intentions cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand.

Environmental regulation presents similar trade-offs. Most Americans support clean air, clean water, and responsible stewardship of natural resources. Yet every major regulation carries economic costs. Electricity becomes more expensive. Fuel prices increase. Manufacturing costs rise. Housing becomes more costly to build. Consumers ultimately bear much of the financial burden. That does not mean environmental protections are unwise. It simply means honest policymaking requires acknowledging both the benefits and the costs.

Perhaps the most overlooked trade-offs involve expanding legal rights. Whenever government creates a new legal entitlement, someone else frequently acquires a new legal obligation. Employers, schools, businesses, religious organizations, parents, and taxpayers all may assume new responsibilities. One person’s newly created legal right often becomes another person’s legal duty. Responsible lawmakers should examine both sides of that equation before legislating.

America’s Founders understood these realities well. They rarely spoke of unlimited government. Quite the opposite. James Madison warned repeatedly that factions would seek political power to advance their own interests at the expense of others. The Constitution therefore limits what government may do—not because compassion is undesirable, but because concentrated political power can become dangerous. Every expansion of governmental authority should be viewed with caution, not because government never helps, but because government almost never relinquishes power once it acquires it.

The genius of free markets is not that they produce perfect outcomes. They do not. Rather, they allow millions of individuals to make voluntary decisions based upon prices, risks, incentives, and personal responsibility, instead of centralized political commands. Markets force difficult choices. Politics often conceals them. Politicians can promise benefits today while postponing the costs until tomorrow. Economics, however, eventually demands payment.

America desperately needs compassion. It also desperately needs honesty. Every proposed law should face one unavoidable question before becoming law: Who pays? Whose freedom is reduced? Whose taxes increase? Whose opportunities disappear? Whose business becomes harder to operate? Whose children inherit the debt?

These questions are not obstacles to good government. They are the beginning of good government. Every benefit has a cost. Every promise has a price. Before Congress passes another trillion-dollar program or another sweeping regulatory scheme, Americans deserve one simple answer that too few politicians are willing to provide: At whose expense?

Trump Sounds the Alarm on Election Security—America Cannot Survive Elections That Half the Country Can’t Trust

July 17, 2026 By Editor Leave a Comment

Every proven case of voter fraud, ballot abuse, and election corruption erodes public confidence. Instead of dismissing those concerns, Congress should finally fix them.

Ballot stuffing concerns force Connecticut judge to overturn Democratic mayoral election results

One of the greatest strengths of the American constitutional republic has always been the peaceful transfer of power. Americans have accepted election results, even painful ones, because they believed the process itself was fundamentally honest.

That trust is quickly evaporating.

President Donald Trump’s release yesterday of declassified intelligence concerning election security, foreign cyber activity, and America’s voting infrastructure has reignited a debate that never should have become partisan in the first place.

Whether one supported Donald Trump, Joe Biden, or someone else entirely, every American should want exactly the same thing: Every legal vote counted once. Every illegal vote rejected. Every election conducted transparently enough that the public has confidence in the result.

Instead, Americans have spent years watching politicians, bureaucrats, activist judges, and much of the national media insist that even asking questions about election integrity is somehow dangerous. It isn’t. It is necessary.

Confidence Is Earned

The Left often responds that there is “no widespread voter fraud.” That phrase misses the point. The question isn’t whether prosecutors have already proven enough fraud to overturn a presidential election. The question is whether our election system contains vulnerabilities large enough to undermine public confidence.

The answer is obviously yes. No serious observer denies that voter rolls contain errors. No serious observer denies that ballot harvesting has been abused. No serious observer denies that absentee ballots are more vulnerable to fraud than in-person voting. No serious observer denies that election laws vary wildly from one state to another.

No serious observer denies that foreign adversaries, including Communist China, Russia and Iran, have devoted enormous intelligence resources toward understanding and exploiting America’s political system. Those facts alone should concern every American.

The Cases Keep Coming

For years Americans have been told (by Democrats) election fraud is virtually nonexistent. Yet every year prosecutors continue announcing new indictments, and that is only a small fraction of cases of actual fraud.

Bridgeport, Connecticut became perhaps the most famous recent example. Security video appeared to show individuals depositing large numbers of absentee ballots into drop boxes, leading the Connecticut Supreme Court to order a new Democratic mayoral primary election.

That wasn’t internet rumor. That happened.

Special Prosecutor charges two Hamtramck councilmembers with election fraud

Texas has prosecuted multiple ballot-harvesting operations over the past decade. Philadelphia has seen election judges convicted of accepting bribes.

Local officials around the country have faced charges involving absentee ballots, fraudulent registrations, vote buying, and election misconduct.

Together, they prove something important: Election fraud really occurs. And every successful scheme that escapes detection encourages the next one.

Foreign Adversaries Are Watching

President Trump’s declassified documents also reveal another uncomfortable reality. America’s enemies are not merely watching our elections. They are studying them.

According to information released by the administration, Chinese intelligence collected enormous quantities of American voter information while examining weaknesses within our election infrastructure.

Communist China clearly believes American elections are valuable intelligence targets. Would anyone seriously argue otherwise? China has stolen military technology. China has stolen corporate secrets. China has stolen intellectual property. China conducts cyber operations against American government agencies every day.

Why would anyone believe America’s elections are somehow off limits? No one. In fact, there are recent reports that China has provided Democratic operatives with the equipment and materials to produce millions of forged ballots, with explicit understanding that all efforts to sway elections must go against President Trump and Republicans.

Voter ID Is Not Suppression

Opponents continue insisting that requiring proof of citizenship or photo identification somehow suppresses legitimate voters. That argument has become increasingly difficult to defend.

Americans show identification to board airplanes. To purchase firearms. To open bank accounts. To obtain employment. To purchase alcohol. To receive countless government services. To enter the Obama presidential library.

Yet somehow proving citizenship and identity before helping choose the President of the United States is portrayed as unreasonable. Racist.

It is exactly backwards. Citizenship is the minimum qualification for federal voting. Government should verify that qualification before anyone casts a ballot, not years later during litigation.

The Public Doesn’t Trust the Process

Perhaps the most troubling reality is not the overwhelming number of proven fraud cases. It is the collapse in public confidence. Millions of Americans watched elections take days or weeks to finish counting. California just took five weeks to count their votes.

They watched ballot totals change dramatically overnight. They watched election procedures altered shortly before voting began. They watched lawsuits dismissed on procedural grounds rather than factual findings. They watched social media companies suppress discussion. They watched former Democrat intelligence officials publicly dismiss concerns that later proved worthy of investigation.

Whether every suspicion proved justified is almost beside the point. Government exists to inspire confidence. Instead, it often appeared determined to silence questions.

That was a catastrophic mistake.

Congress Should Act

Election reform should no longer be viewed as a Republican issue. Sure, Democrats almost uniquely defraud the system to garner more votes than exist lawfully, but in fact, it should be viewed as an American issue.

Congress should require proof of citizenship for federal registration. States should maintain accurate voter rolls. Mail voting should return primarily to only those who genuinely need it, like infirm voters, or those who are abroad, or military personnel.

Ballot harvesting should be severely restricted or eliminated. Every vote should generate a voter-verifiable paper record. Mandatory post-election audits should become standard practice. Election Day should once again mean Election Day, not election months..

None of these proposals suppress legal votes. They protect them. The only votes that are suppressed with these measures are, in fact, illegal votes. That’s an inescapable fact. Anyone who stands against these protective measures is a purveyor of voter fraud.

The Republic Depends Upon Trust

America cannot survive if nearly half the country enters every presidential election convinced the system cannot be trusted. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the past decade is that restoring confidence should have united Republicans and Democrats.

Instead, it became another partisan battlefield. Democrats resist election integrity like they resist immigration integrity, and for the very same reason: because they can’t win elections legitimately.

President Trump’s declassification of election intelligence should mark the beginning, not the end, of this conversation. Americans deserve complete transparency. They deserve vigorous investigations. They deserve secure elections.

Most of all, they deserve government that welcomes scrutiny rather than fears it.

Because in a constitutional republic, confidence in elections is not a luxury. It is the foundation upon which every other liberty depends.