Category: Opinion & analysis
A payout scheme for senators deepens the gap between DC and the rest of us
During the final hours of the shutdown fight earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) slipped a toxic provision into the continuing resolution that reopened the government. The clause created a special pathway for select senators to sue the federal government, bypass its usual legal defenses, and claim large payouts if their records were subpoenaed during the Arctic Frost investigation.
The result? About eight senators could demand $500,000 for every “instance” of seized data. Those instances could stack, pushing potential payouts into the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. That is not an exaggeration. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has all but celebrated the prospect.
Graham said he wanted ‘tens of millions of dollars’ for seized records while victims of weaponization still face shattered lives.
No one else would qualify for compensation. Only senators. Anyone who spent years helping victims of political weaponization — often pro bono, while prestige law firms chased billable hours — can see the corruption in plain view. The message this provision sends on the central Trump-era promise of accountability could not be weaker: screw the people, pay the pols.
The surveillance of senators was wrong. It should never have happened. But senators did not face what ordinary Americans endured. Senators maintain large campaign accounts to hire top lawyers. They operate out of official offices, armed with constitutional protections such as the Speech and Debate Clause. They do not lose their homes, jobs, savings, or businesses. Thousands of Americans did. Many still face legal bills, ruined livelihoods, and ongoing cases. They deserve restitution — not the politicians who failed them.
Graham helped push this provision forward. As public criticism grew, he defended it. On Sean Hannity’s show the other day, he said: “My phone records were seized. I’m not going to put up with this crap. I’m going to sue.” Hannity asked how much. Graham replied: “Tens of millions of dollars.”
Democrats will replay that clip across every battleground in the country going into an uphill midterm battle in 2026.
Graham embodies the worst messenger for this fight. He helped fuel weaponization long before he claimed victimhood. He urged the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to pass the Steele dossier to the FBI. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he did nothing to slow the Justice Department and FBI as they pursued political targets. He even supported many of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees who later embraced aggressive lawfare tactics. If anyone owed restitution to victims, Graham sits high on the list.
RELATED: Trump’s pardons expose the left’s vast lawfare machine
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Fortunately, enough Republicans recognize the political and moral disaster of funneling taxpayer funds to senators while real victims remain abandoned. The House advanced a measure today to repeal the provision. Led by Reps. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas), the House forced the Senate to address in public what it attempted to smuggle through in private.
Thune defended the measure in comments to Axios. He argued that only senators suffered statutory violations and said the provision was crafted to avoid covering House members. He did not explain why any House member who was illegally surveilled should receive no remedy.
The Senate leader also claimed the financial penalty would deter a future Justice Department from targeting lawmakers, citing the actions of special counsel Jack Smith. His emphasis on “future” misconduct glossed over a critical fact: The provision is retroactive and would cover past abuses.
That defense cannot survive daylight. Repeal requires 60 Senate votes, and not a single Democrat will fight to preserve a payout for Graham. Republicans should not try either. Efforts to strike the measure need to begin immediately. Senators — especially Thune — should commit to an up-or-down vote. If they want to send tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to Graham, they should do it in public, with the country watching.
Washington already reeks of grift and self-dealing this year. If senators protect this provision, that smell will spread nationwide.
When a ‘too big to fail’ America meets a government too broke to bail it out
I’ve been titanically bearish on America for years. Sorry. I can do math.
The United States owes more than $38 trillion. That alone makes the balance sheet hopeless. The debt is insurmountable.
America’s GDP in 2024 was $29.2 trillion, meaning the debt exceeds 130% of what we produce in a year. If this were a business, every financial adviser would tell you to file Chapter 11 and salvage what you can.
Washington keeps adding another trillion to the tab roughly every 100 days. As the debt climbs, interest payments climb faster. The country now spins in a debt spiral that ends only one way. Game over.
The more the world moves away from the dollar, the more tens of trillions of unwanted dollars come flooding home. You haven’t seen anything like real devaluation yet.
Then comes the $210 trillion in future unfunded liabilities — mostly Social Security and Medicare. Those numbers don’t pencil out in any universe.
Underneath all of it sits a sinking currency. The dollar lost 87% of its value since we abandoned the gold standard in 1971. For decades, the petrodollar arrangement held the world in our system by forcing oil purchases through the U.S. currency. Saudi Arabia let that mandate expire last year. Global energy deals immediately began shifting to other currencies.
The more the world moves away from the dollar, the more tens of trillions of unwanted dollars come flooding home. You haven’t seen anything like real devaluation yet.
To fund our binge, Washington must keep selling treasuries. But foreign buyers are losing interest. Rates rise. The government buys its own debt just to keep markets from buckling. The Cayman Islands now holds $1.85 trillion — the largest single foreign share and rising fast. Treasury officials tried to obscure the numbers. None of it signals stability.
Meanwhile, our economy rests on an absurdly fragile foundation: 70% consumption. Seven out of 10 dollars depend on Americans buying things they can no longer afford. Household debt hit a record $18.6 trillion — nearly two-thirds of GDP. Families now pay down debt instead of fueling growth.
Shrinking consumption means a shrinking economy. Shrinking economy means shrinking tax revenue. Combine that with a weakening dollar and the picture becomes darker still.
Enter artificial intelligence, the accelerant. AI threatens tens of millions of jobs within years, wiping out income and collapsing the consumption model even faster. A government facing falling revenue and exploding obligations cannot pretend to stay solvent.
Some cling to fantasies like universal basic income. With what money? The same government already $210 trillion short on existing promises? Please.
This all points toward an economic crash far larger than 2008. Washington froze that crisis with $29 trillion in bailouts — money it didn’t have then either. We conjured it and shoved it onto the national debt.
That option is gone.
Today the government sits too deep in debt, with a weaker dollar and fewer global buyers. And the next crisis won’t hit one sector. It hits everything:
• Record mortgage debt: $13.1 trillion
• Record credit-card debt: $1.2 trillion
• Collapsing commercial real estate: $4.9 trillion
• Big Tech borrowing hundreds of billions to inflate an AI bubble
OpenAI’s Sam Altman already expects an eventual government bailout for AI’s collapse.
RELATED: When the AI bubble bursts, guess who pays
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Total U.S. debt — public and private — hit $102.2 trillion in 2024. Washington cannot rescue a single major sector, let alone all of them. The national debt was $10 trillion during bailout 2008. It’s four times that now. The dollar buys less. Foreign creditors show less patience.
So who steps in next time? Who buys the treasuries? Who absorbs the losses?
No one. Not abroad. Not at home. Nowhere on this planet.
That leaves Washington with only one move: Print tens of trillions in new dollars and hand them to itself — more IOIs (as opposed to IOUs) stacked on a pile already ready to topple.
And that printing wave will obliterate whatever value the dollar still holds.
Think the dollar’s fallen far? You haven’t seen anything yet.
The 2026 map tilts left if Republicans ignore what voters just told them
The Associated Press told us a partial truth after the November 4 elections: Republicans delude themselves when they brush off their losses. AP then added its usual spin, claiming GOP leaders deny that “affordability” drove their defeat. According to AP, soaring costs and economic uncertainty explain why Republican candidates collapsed across several high-profile races.
Republicans did not simply underperform. They were routed. GOP candidates lost in the marquee races in New Jersey and Virginia, and Democrats came within striking distance of a supermajority in the Virginia legislature. Democrats even clawed back ground in places like Luzerne County, Pennsylvania — a longtime working-class stronghold that had tilted red for decades.
The left treats politics as a total struggle. Republicans cannot keep treating it as a polite debate.
The GOP took a real shellacking.
AP captured only part of the story. Republican leaders keep denying the obvious, insisting the mid-cycle results followed the usual pattern for a party out of power. That excuse collapses when measured against the magnitude of the losses.
In New Jersey, a scandal-scarred, aggressively pro-LGBTQ Democrat crushed a strong Republican challenger by more than 14 points — in a state battered by high taxes, rising crime, and deep voter frustration. Jack Ciattarelli was supposedly running neck-and-neck with Mikie Sherrill. The final tally proved otherwise.
Virginia delivered an even starker picture. A hyper-progressive Democrat won the governor’s race against a conservative black Republican woman. The new attorney general prevailed despite revelations that he sent violent, disturbing text messages expressing rage toward a Democratic opponent and his children. Voters shrugged and voted for him anyway.
This election was not routine. It was a decisive, unmistakable rejection of the party in power. The results cannot be explained away by economic anxiety. Voters responded to ideology and identity — not affordability indexes.
Democratic voters turned out as a unified bloc against what they have been conditioned to believe is a dangerous, authoritarian movement. Media outlets, universities, Hollywood, and most major cultural institutions spent years drilling that narrative into the public. The left absorbed it fully and voted accordingly.
It’s hard to square AP’s affordability argument with the fact that voters rewarded Biden’s economically disastrous administration in the 2022 midterms — and continued to do so in these off-year races. By every major metric, economic conditions have improved dramatically since Trump returned to the White House. Inflation fell. Energy prices dropped. Markets hit record highs. Food and housing costs remain problems, but they remain high largely because the Federal Reserve refuses to cut rates — something Trump intends to fix when he replaces the current chair.
Meanwhile, Biden’s border catastrophe flooded the country with roughly 10 million illegal migrants, burdened taxpayers, and fueled a surge of crime. Yet he paid little political price. Voters did not punish him or his party.
To understand why, look at a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll. Georgia Republicans list inflation and the economy as their top concerns. Georgia Democrats list something else entirely: a “tougher response” to Trump and MAGA Republicans. They rank economic issues and even abortion behind their desire to defeat an ideological enemy. For them, politics is a moral crusade.
RELATED: Mamdani sells socialism — and Republicans peddle the Temu version
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
This reveals the central mismatch. Republicans speak the language of policy: inflation, taxes, energy, spending. Democrats speak the language of existential struggle. They believe they are at war with a malevolent force, and that belief animates them far more than grocery bills or mortgage rates. Trump derangement syndrome is very much alive and well with these voters.
Republicans just want to return to normal politics — debates over issues, clean contests, and sportsmanlike disagreements. Their media allies keep telling them nothing has changed since Trump beat a ditzy, verbally inept opponent in 2024.
Wrong. Everything has changed.
Republicans face a massive, highly motivated voting bloc determined to strip them of power. Democrats aim to defeat and humiliate their opposition, not negotiate with it. Their rhetoric against ICE, their nonstop attacks on Trump, and their saturation campaigns across media and education paid off. They fought harder. They fought longer. And they won nearly everywhere that mattered.
The GOP cannot afford to treat this moment as another cyclical setback. The left treats politics as a total struggle. Republicans cannot keep treating it as a polite debate. Until the GOP grasps the scale of the conflict, election nights will keep looking like this one.
Amazon wants Warner Bros. so it can rule your screen
Last month, Warner Brothers Discovery put itself up for sale, triggering what could become a bidding war for one of America’s most iconic studios. Days later, reports emerged that Amazon plans to make a run at the company, immediately raising the stakes.
Consumers and regulators should treat every Big Tech bidder with skepticism, but Amazon’s interest demands special scrutiny. The world’s largest online retailer has a long record of distorting markets, crushing rivals, and cozying up to foreign adversaries — most notably China. Letting Amazon absorb yet another major media asset would tighten its grip on an entertainment industry already buckling under corporate consolidation.
Why would antitrust officials hand Amazon even more power in a sector already suffocating under concentration?
Amazon may be a household name, but it is not an America-first company. It bullies smaller retailers, copies their ideas, and funnels profits and supply-chain leverage through China. That behavior undermines the ingenuity and fair competition that built the U.S. economy.
Amazon already wields enormous influence over media. Last year, Prime Video topped U.S. streaming charts for the third straight year. Amazon controls a sprawling production studio, reinforced by its 2022 purchase of MGM. It holds high-dollar sports rights, including “Thursday Night Football” and an 11-year deal with the NBA.
Amazon doesn’t need Warner Brothers Discovery to survive. It wants the company to force more Americans into its digital universe, dominate an even larger share of the market, and use that dominance to trap users and raise prices. Buying competitors beats out-competing them — a classic monopolist playbook that burdens consumers and smothers innovation.
A Warner Brothers takeover would give Amazon exactly what it wants: a massive content library, the third-largest streaming platform, and a lineup of lucrative cable properties. With the deal sealed, Amazon would control more than a third of the streaming video on demand market — roughly 50% more than its nearest rival.
Why would antitrust officials hand Amazon even more power in a sector already suffocating under concentration? They likely won’t.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Gail Slater, have made clear that they intend to protect small businesses and consumers from predatory corporate behavior.
The Trump administration has backed those promises with action. Within nine months of taking office, the FTC forced Amazon to pay $2.5 million for trapping customers in Prime subscriptions. Ferguson’s vow to ensure that “Amazon never does this again” shows that this White House will not give repeat offenders a free pass.
RELATED: Stop feeding Big Tech and start feeding Americans again
Lexi Critchett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The regulatory terrain also looks dramatically different from 2022, when Amazon bought MGM — an acquisition the Biden administration should have challenged and likely would challenge today. After that merger, the FTC rewrote its merger and acquisition guidelines to strengthen oversight. President Trump kept those rules and appears ready to use them.
Some critics claim Amazon earned goodwill with the administration by contributing to White House renovation projects. That accusation doesn’t survive contact with the facts. Candidate Trump warned about Amazon’s “huge antitrust problem” as early as 2016. The company has grown eightfold since then. Trump hasn’t softened.
And Amazon hardly functioned as a friend of the right. The company backed Joe Biden heavily in 2020, donating nearly $2.3 million to his campaign. Biden’s FTC did not treat Amazon kindly either, suing the company for “anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power.” That case remains unresolved.
The sale of Warner Brothers Discovery will shape the future of American media — either by giving the company a fighting chance to innovate and compete, or by cementing Big Tech control over what Americans watch, read, and hear. If Amazon tries to tighten that grip, I expect the Trump administration to step in.
Let’s hope the sale doesn’t force the administration’s hand.
Mamdani sells socialism — and Republicans peddle the Temu version
New York City has elected a self-professed socialist as mayor. Critics worry about Zohran Mamdani’s inexperience, his approach to law and order, and his views on Israel and Islamic radicalism. But the most urgent issue inside the walls of City Hall is his economic agenda.
Mamdani promises “free” bus transit, a freeze on rent increases, a $30 minimum wage, government-run grocery stores, free child care, and higher taxes in a city already crushed by some of the nation’s highest tax burdens. His brand of socialism isn’t subtle. It’s explicit — and guaranteed to fail.
A movement confident in free enterprise can beat socialism — first in the arena of ideas, then at the ballot box. But only if we choose clarity over imitation.
Many on the right treat Mamdani’s victory as cosmic justice for a deep-blue city that keeps moving left. Others welcome his rise, convinced that showcasing a hard-left mayor will repel voters nationwide. That might be true. It might also be fantasy.
New Yorkers didn’t elect Mamdani so conservatives could score a talking point. His win advances ideas — and conservatives must decide whether they still believe ours are better.
When the right copies the left
Mocking government-run grocery stores is easy. Yet national Republicans just embraced government ownership in Intel — a massive corporation that dwarfs any Manhattan supermarket. Some even support a federal sovereign wealth fund to buy equity across private industry, handing Washington the power to pick winners.
Mamdani demonizes Wall Street and high earners who keep the city solvent. Republicans respond by demonizing “big pharma” and pushing policies that treat major U.S. innovators as villains.
Mamdani wants to redistribute income with New York’s already-extreme tax code. Some on the right now call for $2,000 government checks to lower-income households — financed with borrowed money and paid back by business owners already hit with $350 billion in new tariff taxes this year.
Mamdani would freeze rents because, in his telling, landlords “make a killing.” His economics ignore taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance costs that devour margins across New York’s rental market. Yet GOP proposals on health care routinely blame insurers for “making a killing while the little guy suffers.” The overlap with left-wing rhetoric isn’t coincidence. It’s drift.
High grocery prices fuel Mamdani’s push for government-run grocery stores. He blames “capitalistic greed.” Republicans answered high beef prices by accusing meat companies of “price fixing.” Again, the same logic — just delivered with a different logo.
Resurrecting failed policies
Mamdani’s worldview mirrors the same interventionist thinking that powered the Affordable Care Act. Subsidies, mandates, and price controls promised relief. They delivered higher premiums, higher costs, and lower-quality care.
Conservatives should highlight that failure. Instead, too many mimic the left’s solutions — regulation dressed up as populism, government expansion sold as “tough on corporations,” and class warfare renamed as “standing up for workers.”
If Mamdani’s win teaches anything, it’s that conservatives must draw a bright line: free enterprise or the road to socialism. Blurring that line weakens the argument and cedes the moral ground socialism feeds on.
RELATED: Mao tried this first — New Yorkers will not like the ending
Bettmann/Getty Images
The real fight
The conservative movement faces serious internal debates — debates worth having. But Mamdani’s election exposes one fight we cannot dodge: the fight for limited government and competitive markets.
We cannot counter socialism with lighter versions of the same policies. We cannot attack Mamdani’s economic program while pushing our own price controls, government takeovers, and redistribution schemes. A movement that refuses to defend free enterprise won’t defeat socialism. It won’t even understand the threat.
Mamdani comes into office with plenty of flaws. New Yorkers will feel the consequences soon enough. But conservatives face a choice: defend our own principles or mimic the left and call it “the new right.”
A movement confident in free enterprise can beat socialism — first in the arena of ideas, then at the ballot box. But only if we choose clarity over imitation.
Democrats reject ‘current policy’ — unless it pays their base
Washington’s latest fights make one thing unmistakable: Democrats shift their arguments as needed, but always in service of higher taxes, higher spending, and a bigger federal footprint. When the question earlier this year was whether to keep current tax policy and avoid a massive tax hike, Democrats fought against keeping current policy.
Now, after forcing a government shutdown, they claim they must preserve current — but temporary — Obamacare subsidies. Two opposite stances, one consistent goal: bigger government.
On taxes, ‘current policy’ doesn’t count. On spending, ‘current policy’ functions like holy writ.
Earlier this year, Congress faced a hard deadline. Lawmakers had to choose between extending the 2017 American Job Creation Act tax rates or letting them snap back to pre-2017 levels — a $4 trillion tax increase across income brackets. Republicans pushed to retain the lower rates. Democrats pushed for the tax hike.
Democrats insisted the looming deadline was Republicans’ fault and said the surge in revenue would help slow growth in deficits and debt. Republicans ultimately prevailed and passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Democrats erupted.
We all know what happened next. Less than three months later, Congress approached the September 30 deadline for annual appropriations. With negotiations still incomplete, Republicans advanced a clean, short-term extension to keep the government open. The House passed it. President Trump signaled he would sign it. Senate Democrats filibustered it.
Republicans tried over a dozen times to reopen the government. Senate Democrats blocked them every time — until this week. Their central demand: extend the temporary “emergency” premium subsidies that Democrats expanded during the pandemic. Those subsidies, scheduled to expire, broadened eligibility beyond 400% of the federal poverty line and boosted benefits for those below it. Democrats already extended them once through 2025.
Now, with the pandemic long over — President Biden signed the resolution ending it on April 10, 2023 — Senate Democrats want the emergency expansions made permanent.
The inconsistency could not be clearer.
When expiring tax law meant taxes would rise, Democrats described preventing that increase as a tax cut — even though extending the law simply kept existing policy in place. The fact that the policy had been the law for eight years meant nothing.
But when expiring pandemic-era subsidies would return Obamacare to its original structure, Democrats suddenly insist that current policy must prevail. They now treat temporary emergency expansions — linked explicitly to COVID, extended once already, disproportionately benefiting upper-income households — as untouchable programs that must become permanent.
On taxes, “current policy” doesn’t count. On spending, “current policy” functions like holy writ.
RELATED: Trump officially ends ‘pathetic’ Democrats’ record-breaking shutdown
Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The reasoning shifts, but the outcome never does: Democrats always land on whatever argument leads to more government. Their broader shutdown demands confirm it — ending Medicaid reforms and restoring spending levels President Trump and Republicans reduced. Every item points in the same direction: more federal dollars out the door.
Democrats note that Republicans, too, support keeping some expiring policies. True. Which makes the underlying purpose even more important to identify.
Republicans fought to maintain 2017 tax levels so Americans could keep more of what they earn — and keep that income out of Washington’s hands. Democrats want permanent expansion of Obamacare subsidies to preserve and grow benefits for people who were never intended to receive them, locking in a larger federal role.
Future fights will come; today’s climate guarantees them. One more thing is just as guaranteed: Democrats’ arguments will continue to change as needed, and their demands for higher taxes, higher spending, and a larger federal government will not.
The one virtue America lost — and desperately needs back
Faith is everything to me. I believe in Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, and I’m not shy about saying so. Many Americans feel uncomfortable talking about faith, and many others insist religion should stay out of the public square. I disagree. As a Christian, I want more people to know Jesus, who loves them more than they can imagine.
But I also know that people walk different spiritual paths. Some pray differently. Some worship a different god. Others reject religion altogether. America now holds more faith traditions — and more people with no faith — than at any point in our history. That diversity can spark friction, and as politics fills the void left by declining religious belief, many have turned ideological loyalties into a kind of substitute religion.
America’s diversity guarantees disagreement. It always has. But even in conflict, we can find places to unite.
The risk is obvious: These differences can push us toward a breaking point. The warning signs already surround us. In a moment like this, we need grace.
What grace demands
In Christianity, grace is God’s love poured out freely. Eternal life is His gift — not because we earn it or because we are good, but because God is good.
On Earth, grace takes a more practical form. It means giving each other the benefit of the doubt. It means forgiving mistakes. It means choosing generosity instead of suspicion. And it means approaching someone else’s beliefs with curiosity rather than contempt.
For reasons I still struggle to understand, Americans have stopped trying to understand one another.
Last year, I hosted a meeting of community, business, and faith leaders in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The agenda was full of topics that normally light a fuse: poverty, economic exclusion, racial tensions. Before we began, I admitted that some of the terms we would use carried heavy baggage and that I might say something imperfectly myself. I asked only one thing: a little grace.
That simple request set the tone for the whole day. People pushed through the hard conversations and started looking for solutions. We found common ground in places no one expected. The debate stayed calm because everyone extended grace before they demanded it.
I wish that spirit were more common today.
Why grace is hard — and necessary
Too many people explode at the first sign of disagreement. They judge others more harshly than they judge themselves. They dismiss someone with a different view as beyond redemption. The unspoken thought is always the same: Why bother? They won’t listen to me, so why should I listen to them?
RELATED: Dear Christian: God didn’t call you to be a ‘beautiful loser’
Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images
It’s a natural impulse, but grace calls us to something higher. It reminds us that the person across from us carries the same human frailties we do.
Grace does not mean surrendering your convictions. It does not ask you to dilute what you believe or pretend serious disagreements don’t matter. It simply asks you to respect the strength of someone else’s convictions, even when you oppose them. It asks you to accept that everyone is imperfect — including you. And because each of us hopes for forgiveness when we stumble, grace asks that we extend that same forgiveness to others.
America’s diversity guarantees disagreement. It always has. But even in conflict, we can find places to unite. Recovering that unity starts with a simple choice: showing each other a little grace.
America didn’t lose its tech edge — globalist CEOs gave it away
Everything you interact with is now built by people who don’t understand you, and your kids are pushed out of the job market.
From the front lines of corporate tech, I can confirm what many Americans already suspect: The H-1B program has produced a workplace disaster. It has compromised security. It has degraded the quality of everyday software. Worst of all, it has crushed the job prospects of American workers.
We don’t need to accept a corporate-designed future in which our industries no longer employ us and the products no longer serve us.
I’ve spent more than a decade inside corporate tech. In that time — especially after COVID — the number of Americans on my left and right has steadily dropped. Meanwhile, offshore offices multiply and more foreign workers arrive under visas. And they’re not doing low-stakes tasks. They’re building internal portals for insurance companies, managing databases that store your medical records, and writing the code behind your bank and utility apps.
Look at the results. Your bank’s mobile app crawls. Basic online bill-pay feels like an endurance test. Everyday American services — airlines, grocery chains, utilities — deploy software that barely works. The root cause sits in boardrooms across the Fortune 500: fire Americans, import cheaper labor, and call it efficiency. Why pay an American engineer $150,000 when an H-1B worker costs $100,000 and can be deported for missing an unrealistic goal?
Here’s the pattern I’ve watched repeat across company after company.
An H-1B hire climbs the ladder to director or vice president. He earns that rise largely by finding “inefficiencies,” which usually means firing Americans. He then pushes leadership to open more H-1B slots or to contract with a “consulting firm” staffed almost entirely from abroad.
Executives applaud because the invoices are low and the offshore teams rarely say no to any request, no matter how impossible. And when the savings look good enough, leadership shutters the American division altogether and replaces it with an “innovation center” in Bangalore. Look at the savings!
The American worker who survives this gets a grim reward: meetings at 6 a.m. to accommodate India Standard Time, an office filled with co-workers who share neither language nor culture, an org chart dominated by unfamiliar and unpronounceable names, and a career path with no upward mobility. And that’s if the worker is fortunate enough to have a job at all. Bleak.
The numbers paint an even darker picture. According to the Cengage Group’s 2025 Employability Report, only 41% of 2024 college graduates found full-time work related to their fields. In 2025, that number fell to 30%. Some analysts blame AI, but the claim doesn’t survive contact with reality. A recent MIT report found that despite $30-$40 billion in corporate spending on AI tools, 95% of organizations show no return on that investment — even though nearly half of office workers already use AI in some form.
RELATED: The H-1B system is broken. Here’s how to fix it.
Photo by DANIEL SLIM/AFP via Getty Images
If AI were truly replacing white-collar workers at scale, why did these same corporations ask the federal government to approve 141,207 H-1B visas in 2024?
The truth is simpler: Importing cheaper, compliant labor remains the easiest way for corporate leadership to cut costs, pad bonuses, and build bigger homes in Southlake — while American workers pay the price.
America is not obligated to subsidize its own replacement. We don’t need to accept a corporate-designed future in which our industries no longer employ us and the products no longer serve us. The American middle class built the modern technology economy. It should not be pushed aside so that executives can chase savings that hollow out the country one layoff at a time.
Enough.
Young, broke, and voting blue: 2025’s harsh lesson for the right
In 1992, a young Democratic strategist on the Clinton campaign named James Carville coined the now-famous phrase “it’s the economy, stupid.” He directed it to the campaign workers to ensure that they remained laser-focused on kitchen-table issues. In November’s elections, voters delivered that same message, loud and clear, in New York City, Virginia, and New Jersey. The results were not surprising — even the margins were roughly in line with 2017, the last off-year elections in those localities when Trump was president.
The message was clear: Many young voters are hurting economically. Of course, the Trump administration is well aware of this. The government has been digging out of the economic disaster Joe Biden left behind. Compared to Europe and much of Asia, the U.S. is doing better, but the global macro environment is still challenging — especially for young people.
Once again and as ever: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’
This is why almost immediately after the election, the administration focused on ramping up its communication efforts on the economy. President Trump indicated an urgent need to blow up the filibuster and enact a legislative agenda commensurate with the issues young voters are facing. Trump’s approach was echoed by Vice President JD Vance, who noted, “We’re going to keep working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”
It is useful to do a deep dive into the 2025 election data so that we can learn what happened and how we can be ready with the right political and policy prescriptions to win the much more important midterm elections in 2026.
A coalition of the ‘falling behind’
Contrary to the thinking of most political commentators, Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race wasn’t about racial identity politics. I’m not saying he doesn’t believe in racial identity politics. It’s quite central to his worldview. After all, this is the guy who tweeted in 2020 that “Black + brown solidarity will overcome white supremacy.” Mamdani’s anti-Israel activities have also been well known and much remarked upon. But that’s not what led his coalition to victory on Nov. 4.
First, Mamdani’s campaign was fundamentally a youth movement. Young women ages 18-29, while a relatively small part of the electorate, gave him 81% of their support. These are staggering numbers. Overall, Mamdani won younger voters under 45 by an incredible 69%-25%, while former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) won voters over 45 by 51%-39%. Just as importantly, Mamdani actually won white voters by one point. He certainly did well with Muslims and in the South Asian community.
It’s possible that Mamdani may in fact be a Third-Worldist or Muslim supremacist, as some have alleged — but these were peripheral issues in electing him, and a look at his coalition suggests that focusing on them would fracture it.
Likewise, feelings about Israel were overblown. While it was a “major factor” in 38% of voters’ minds, it was essentially a political wash, with Mamdani losing 47%-46% among those who felt passionately about the issue. While Israel may be personally important for him, it was not a driving issue for most of his voters.
Mamdani’s coalition is spiritually and geographically rootless. While he did strongly among Muslims (presumably a significant chunk of the 14% of voters of “other religions” that he took 70% of), far more powerful was the 75% he took among the 24% of voters who claimed no religion. For those who have made politics their god, Mamdani is a comforting idol and socialism a powerful liturgy.
RELATED: Mao tried this first — New Yorkers will not like the ending
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
His is also a coalition of the mobile, anchored by those with shallow roots in New York — and, one might suspect, America. Mamdani dominated among newer arrivals, winning a staggering 82% among those who have lived in New York City for less than 10 years. Cuomo, meanwhile, carried the NYC-born 50%-38%, but that group comprised just 45% of the electorate. Likewise, Mamdani racked up a 59%-34% margin among renters.
The fundamental point that anchored Mamdani’s coalition was the economy: 25% of voters described themselves as democratic socialists, and he won 86% of them. And many appear to have been motivated by jealousy or frustration. He actually won 59% among those who thought the NYC economy was good, but also 59%-34% among those who felt they were personally falling behind. If you were among the one-third of voters who looked around and saw everyone else getting ahead but you, Mamdani was your candidate.
Fifty-six percent of voters said the cost of living was the most critical issue, and Mamdani won 66% of them. If he had only won these voters, Mamdani still would have come within a few percentage points of beating Cuomo (41%-37%). This is an essential message for the GOP to internalize if it wants to win back these voters at the 2026 midterms.
Of the 34% of voters who supported raising taxes, an incredible 86% were for Mamdani. But his coalition is not a working-class coalition. White voters with a degree supported Mamdani 57%-40%, while he took just 26% of white voters without a degree — a group that would have comprised eight out of ten voters in 1950 but just 14% today. Nor was it truly a coalition of the financial elite: Cuomo won 62%-33% among families earning over $300,000 per year.
Kitchen-table issues, again
While the circumstances in New York City were somewhat unique, the story in Virginia was more typical. There was a huge gender gap — which is really a marriage gap — though unfortunately, we have only the gender breakdown since pollsters, for whatever reason, didn’t ask about marital status, despite its enormous effect on women’s votes in particular. Republican Winsome Earle-Sears actually won men 51%-38%, but Abigail Spanberger crushed her among women, 65%-35%. If gender gap patterns here are similar to 2024, Spanberger took approximately 72% of single women’s votes.
Also notable is the incredible failure of tokenistic identity politics to appeal to left-wing identity groups. Earle-Sears, a black woman, took just 7% of the black vote — and, incredibly, just 3% of black women’s votes. Meanwhile, she took 61% of white men’s votes, even while losing by 14.5 points overall.
The lesson for the GOP is simple: Voters want tangible results on immigration, jobs, and affordability.
Spanberger was similarly dominant among youth, winning the under-45 vote 65%-34%, as opposed to a much narrower 53%-47% margin among the 45-and-over crowd. Similarly, we see how much the Democrats have become the party of the elite, with Spanberger winning 68%-32% among those with advanced degrees. Earle-Sears, meanwhile, won 2-1 among the one-third of Virginia voters who are white and do not have college degrees and 80% of white born-again Christians, who made up 28% of the voters.
Earle-Sears won 61%-37% among the 37% who are not affected financially by the shutdowns, while the 20% who are affected went for Spanberger 82%-18%. If you look at those Virginia voters who are only a little or not at all financially affected by federal cuts, Spanberger eked out only the narrowest victory over Earle-Sears. Almost her entire positive margin came from those 20% of voters who are substantially financially affected by federal job cuts. This illustrates in dramatic fashion how much Virginia has become a company town for the federal government, with politics that reflect that fact.
By a 58%-40% margin, Virginians said that the economy was good, but Spanberger won among the 23% who felt they were falling behind, by a 76%-24% margin. Again, we see that those who are unhappy with their place in the current economy went overwhelmingly for the Democrats.
Spanberger also won on kitchen-table issues. Among the 48% who felt the economy was the most important issue, she won 63% to 36%. And among the 21% who said health care was the most important issue, she won an incredible 81% to 18%.
By contrast, Earle-Sears had only a narrow advantage (50%-47%) on the transgender issue despite having made men in women’s or girls’ bathrooms and similar matters a centerpiece of her campaign. While it’s very likely that particular issue had a larger gap when related to men in women’s locker rooms than transgenderism as a whole, as insane as transgenderism is to most Republicans, it does not trump the economy for most swing voters.
RELATED: Accountability or bust: Trump’s second term test
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Carville’s maxim
In New Jersey, once again, we saw economic anxieties come to the fore. Like New York, most people in the Garden State said the economy was not good. But they did not blame the extended period of Democrat governance, including a two-term Democrat governor. Instead, they blamed the Republicans who have been in power for less than a year. Indeed, among the 24% of voters who felt they were economically falling behind, they went 69%-31% for Democrat Mikie Sherrill.
GOP candidate Jack Ciattarelli barely won white voters, 52%-47%, while 68% of Latinos and 82% of Asian Americans voted for Sherrill. For both Spanberger and Sherrill, the Democrats were gifted with almost ideal candidates — experienced, elected congresswomen — given their potential coalition: relatively moderate, affluent white women who could deliver enough red meat to their minority base to turn out most of them while feeling very safe for moderate white suburbanites. Notably, both Sherrill, a Naval Academy graduate and veteran, and Spanberger, a former CIA officer, are married suburban moms, which makes it hard for your average independent voter to portray them as unpatriotic.
One encouraging point was that these results may say less about Republicans and Democrats than one might think. Among a much more Democrat-skewed electorate than in 2024, party favorability for the GOP in New Jersey was only five points under water (46%-51%), while the Democrats (49%-48%) were barely viewed favorably. But a staggering 23% of those with a somewhat favorable view of the Republican Party voted for Sherrill, speaking to her ability to win independent voters.
The GOP retained some gains it made among Hispanic voters in 2024, but overall, 18% of Hispanic voters who voted GOP in 2024 switched to the Democrats in this election. This still represented a significant gain in Hispanic votes for the GOP compared to the last governor’s race in 2021, but it was not enough to keep the race close.
A silver lining
One bright spot from the exit polls after a tough evening for the GOP is that immigration remains a solid issue for Republicans, even with Democrat intransigence. The Trump administration’s aggressive actions haven’t soured voters. Winsome Earle-Sears won 88% among those who considered immigration the most critical issue in Virginia (unfortunately, only 11% of the electorate). Jack Ciattarelli won 72% among voters who cared most about immigration (but again, just 7%).
The economy is the dominant issue, which is why it’s essential to spend more time talking about deporting illegal aliens as a kitchen-table issue that frees up jobs and housing for citizens, while reducing the tax burden on social services.
In each of these constituencies — New York City, Virginia, and New Jersey — Trump’s immigration policies were more opposed than supported. But these are all liberal constituencies in a Democrat wave election. If Trump’s policies polled this well among these constituencies during this election, they still retain solid popular support nationwide.
In New Jersey, 47% said the next governor should cooperate with the president on immigration, versus 49% who said she should not, a virtual tie in a state where the GOP gubernatorial candidate lost by 13 points. By a 15-point margin, Virginians opposed Trump’s immigration policies, identical to the gap in the governor’s race. Even in NYC, 34% of voters wanted the city to cooperate with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement, versus 61% opposed. That 34% number is several points higher than the 30% Trump won in the city in 2024, which represented the highest vote total for a GOP candidate in NYC since 1988.
The lesson for the GOP is simple: Voters want tangible results on immigration, jobs, and affordability. Recent polling suggests that these are the top three issues for 60% of low-propensity voters. If the GOP delivers on these points, it can have a great 2026 midterm election. If not, 2026 will look a lot like 2025.
Once again and as ever: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.
Watergate was amateur hour compared to Arctic Frost
The FBI’s Arctic Frost investigation is confirmation that the left sees conservatives as enemies of the state and is fully intent on treating them as such.
Arctic Frost began in April 2022, with the approval of Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, along with Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray. In November 2022, newly appointed special counsel Jack Smith took over the probe. Smith declared he was focused on the allegations of mishandling classified documents, but Arctic Frost shows he was much more ambitious. He helped turn the investigation into an effort to convict Donald Trump and cripple the Republican Party.
The report indicts Smith for failing at lawfare, not for the lawfare itself.
It was revealed last month that by mid-2023, the FBI had tracked the phone calls of at least a dozen Republican senators. Worse still, with the imprimatur of Justices Beryl Howell and James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Smith issued 197 subpoenas targeting the communications and financial records of nine members of Congress and at least 430 Republican entities and individuals.
The organizations targeted were a “Who’s Who” of the American right, including Turning Point USA, the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Conservative Partnership Institute, and the Center for Renewing America.
Not content with active politicians, these subpoenas also went after advisers, consulting firms, and nonprofits. One subpoena targeted communications with media companies, including CBS, Fox News, and Newsmax. Normally, a telecommunications company should inform its clients and customers about subpoenas. But Howell and Boasberg also ordered nondisclosure orders on the dubious grounds that standard transparency might result in “the destruction of or tampering of evidence” — as if a U.S. senator could wipe his phone records or a 501(c)(3) could erase evidence of its bank accounts.
The scale and secrecy of Arctic Frost are staggering. It was a massive fishing expedition, hunting for any evidence of impropriety from surveilled conservatives that might be grounds for criminal charges. One can see the strategy, typical among zealous prosecutors: the threat of criminal charges might compel a lower- or mid-level figure to turn government witness rather than resist.
But Smith had an even grander plan. By collecting financial records, he was trying to establish financial ties between those subpoenaed and Trump. Had Smith secured a conviction against Trump, he could then have pivoted to prosecuting hundreds of individuals and entities under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. This would have led to asset freezes, seizures, and further investigations.
Smith laid out a road map for crushing conservative organizations that was supposed to be implemented throughout a prospective Biden second term or a Harris presidency.
Fortunately, voters foiled Smith’s efforts.
A false equivalence
The meager coverage of Arctic Frost thus far has compared the scandal to the revelations of Watergate. But the comparison doesn’t hold. Arctic Frost involved significantly more surveillance and more direct targeting of political enemies than the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973 and 1974 managed to expose.
Setting aside campaign finance matters and political pranks, the most serious crimes the hearings exposed pertained to the Nixon administration’s involvement with break-ins and domestic wiretapping.
In the summer of 1971, the White House formed a unit to investigate leaks. Called the “Plumbers,” this unit broke into the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, who was the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Transferred over to the Committee to Re-elect the President at the end of the year, the unit then broke into the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate complex. The hearings exposed the burglars’ connection to CRP — and to the White House.
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The administration also authorized warrantless wiretaps. From May 1969 until February 1971, in response to the disclosures of the secret bombing of Cambodia, the FBI ran a 21-month wiretap program to catch the leakers. This investigation eventually covered 13 government officials and four journalists. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover submitted the wiretapping authorizations, and Attorney General John Mitchell signed them.
As a matter of optics, it was the surveillance of the members of the media that provoked the scandal. Since they were critical of the Nixon administration, it looked like the administration was targeting its political enemies. As a criminal matter, the issues were less about the actions themselves, as it was at least arguable that they were legal on national security grounds. Instead, it was more about the cover-up. When these wiretaps came up in the hearings, Mitchell and others deceived investigators, opening themselves up to charges of obstruction of justice.
A troubling parallel
One aspect revealed during the Watergate hearings could be compared to Arctic Frost. The hearings exposed extensive domestic spying that preceded the Nixon administration. The tip of the iceberg was the proposed Huston Plan of June 1970, which became one of the most sensational pieces of evidence against the Nixon administration. Named for the White House assistant who drafted it, the Huston Plan proposed formalizing intelligence coordination and authorizing warrantless surveillance and break-ins.
Nixon implemented the plan but rescinded it only five days later on the advice of Hoover and Mitchell.
Who were those Americans who might have had their civil liberties affected? It was the radical left, then in the process of stoking urban riots, inciting violence, and blowing up government buildings. The plan was an attempt to formalize ongoing practices; it was not a novel proposal. After Nixon resigned, the Senate concluded in 1976 that “the Huston plan, as we now know, must be viewed as but one episode in a continuous effort by the intelligence agencies to secure the sanction of higher authority for expanded surveillance at home and abroad.”
For years, ignoring the statutes that prohibited domestic spying, the CIA surveilled over three dozen radicals. The military and the Secret Service kept dossiers on many more. The FBI operated COINTELPRO, its surveillance of and plan to infiltrate the radical left, without Mitchell’s knowledge. And as the Senate discovered, “even though the President revoked his approval of the Huston plan, the intelligence agencies paid no heed to the revocation.” This was all excessive, to say the least.
RELATED: Damning new docs reveal who’s on Biden admin’s ‘enemies list,’ expose extent of FBI’s Arctic Frost
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Watergate helped expose a far larger and longer surveillance operation against left-wing domestic terrorists. Comparing this to Arctic Frost suggests that the shoe is now on the other foot: the state regards right-wing groups as equivalent to domestic terrorists. Once, the national security state was abused to attack the left. Now, it’s abused to attack the right. This is hardly an encouraging comparison.
Lawfare for thee, not for me
There’s a third reason that the comparison to Watergate doesn’t hold. In the 1970s, abuses generated a reaction. The Huston Plan, for instance, was squashed by the head of the Department of Justice. Controversial surveillance plans wound down eventually. Wrongdoing was exposed, and the public was horrified, worsening the people’s growing mistrust of government. Lawmakers passed serious reforms to rein in intelligence agencies and defend Americans’ civil liberties.
Survey today’s landscape, and it doesn’t look like there will be any similar reaction. If you’re a conservative staffer, activist, contract worker, affiliate, donor, politician, or lawmaker, you’ve learned about the unabashed weaponization of the federal justice system against you without the presence of any crime. What’s even more disturbing is that this investigation went on for 32 months, longer than Mitchell’s wiretaps.
During that time, no senior official squashed the investigation, and no whistleblowers leapt to defend conservatives. There wasn’t a “Deep Throat” leaking wrongdoing, as there once was in Deputy Director of the FBI Mark Felt. There weren’t any scrupulous career bureaucrats or political appointees in the Justice Department or elsewhere ready to threaten mass resignations over a legally spurious program, as happened to George W. Bush in the spring of 2004.
No telecommunication company contested the subpoenas, as happened in early 2016 when Apple disputed that it had to help the government unlock the iPhone of one of the terrorists involved in the December 2015 San Bernardino shootings. Neither bureaucrats nor corporations are coming to the rescue of the civil liberties of conservatives.
Public opinion won’t help, either. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) has called for “Watergate-style hearings.” But they wouldn’t work. Watergate was a public-relations disaster for the presidency because it spoke to an American public that held its government to a moral standard of impartial activity. Television unified this audience while also stoking righteous fury over the government’s failure to meet that standard.
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The hearings were effective only because they reached a public sensitive to infringements of civil liberties and hostile to the weaponization of the state against domestic targets. But 2025 is not 1975. Even if one could unite the American public to watch the same media event, televised hearings on Arctic Frost wouldn’t bring about a major shift in public opinion. In fact, many voters would likely approve of Arctic Frost’s operations.
For one part of the country, lawfare happens and it’s a good thing. Jack Smith’s lawfare does not embarrass or shame the left. If anything, he is criticized for insufficiently weaponizing the law.
To date, the largest exposé of his methods to reach the legacy media, published in the Washington Post, criticizes Smith for prosecuting Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents in Florida (where the alleged crime occurred) rather than in the District of Columbia. It’s an impressive investigative report, assembling aides and experts to showcase Smith’s mistake. Left unstated is the answer to the naïve question: If the offense was committed in Florida, why was it a mistake not to pursue the case in D.C.? Because that was the only district where Smith could guarantee a favorable judge and jury.
To the conservative mind, most Americans still believe that protecting civil liberties matters more than attacking one’s enemies.
The report indicts Smith for failing at lawfare, not for the lawfare itself. In this environment, where lawfare is already taken for granted as the optimal strategy to defeat the enemy, exposing the details of Arctic Frost is like publicizing the Schlieffen Plan’s failure in 1915 and expecting the Germans to be ashamed enough to withdraw. They already know it didn’t work.
Exposing the plan won’t change anything. The election of Jay “Two Bullets” Jones as Virginia’s attorney general is an indication not only of the presence of a fanatic at the head of Virginia’s law enforcement but also of what a good proportion of the Democratic electorate expects from the state’s most vital prosecutor. His task is to bring pain to his enemies.
The 1970s saw the abuses of the national security state generate a forceful public reaction. That turned out to be a rare moment. Instead of a pendulum swing, we have seen a ratchet effect. The national security state has acquired more weapons over the intervening decades, and the resistance to it has grown weaker. This has hit conservatives hardest, because many still imagine that our constitutional culture remains largely intact.
To the conservative mind, most Americans still believe that protecting civil liberties matters more than attacking one’s enemies. From that point of view, American politicians operate under electoral and self-imposed restraints that will impel them to take their opponents’ due process rights seriously or risk being shamed and losing elections. But these restraints are now ineffectual and hardly worth mentioning.
Unlike in the 1970s, there will be no cultural resolution to the problem of lawfare. The problem will only be solved by political means: using power to punish wrongdoers, deter future abuses, and deconstruct the weaponized national security state.
When you’re presumed to be an enemy of the state, the only important question is who will fight back on your behalf.
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at The American Mind.
