Why are DSA members allowed to run as Democrats?

“A Republic If You Can Keep It!” These words of Benjamin Franklin, in response to the question, “what kind of government was the United States to have, a republic or a democracy?” are exceedingly prescient today, for we are surrounded, infected, and infested by enemies within and without.

The four enemies I will focus on today (there are many more than four) are progressivism, the democratic socialists of America, radical Islam, and America’s four horsemen of the apocalypse (hedonism, nihilism, materialism, and narcissism).

First, progressivism. Just in time for our 250th birthday party, progressives in California are blowing up the basic premise of our constitution by fomenting class warfare. This rotten political ideology posits that virtually everything about America is either a lie or its wrong. That is, the Constitution was a racist construct aimed at preserving white, male power. Progressives also believe it is wrong for people to become successful, but it is right to redistribute their wealth to people who did nothing to earn it or deserve it.

California, like other blue states, is an epicenter of progressivism. On the ballot this November is the so-called billionaire’s wealth tax which is not to be confused with an income tax. This class of earners are already paying more than their “fair share” of taxes. Together, the top 1% of earners (which includes multi-millionaires) in our state pay upwards of 45% of all income tax collected, some $122 billion annually. SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, is behind the initiative, not because they are concerned about state and federal benefit cuts to the poor, but because their members stand to lose their jobs as a result of the cuts.

This tax taxes wealth, including the unrealized value of businesses, stocks, bonds, art, collectibles, and intellectual property. Of course, the problem here is that the billionaires are leaving and taking their companies, tax revenues, and jobs with them. It is estimated that $1 trillion in assets have left the state, which means the state’s income tax revenue will crater unless the middle class makes up the difference via future tax hikes. In other words, our state economy is set to implode because of the unmitigated greed of public employee unions in this state who have additionally burdened us with upwards of $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are progressives on crack! Take for an example, Avila Chevalier who just won the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th District, with the support and endorsement of the current leader of the pack, New York Mayor Mamdani. Avila Chevalier has been described by some as “like AOC, but to the left”. According to CNN, “Darializa Avila Chevalier, deleted a previous Twitter account that included thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist”.

That begs the question, that people like James Carville are asking, why are DSA members allowed to run as democrats?

Of course, the progressives are responsible for creating the circumstances that have led to the election of radicals like Mamdani and “the squad” (Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, and the like who are considered DSA “affiliates”), namely by flooding our country with poor immigrants from third world countries who constitute their main constituent voting bloc. That is, these immigrants are voting for fellow immigrants like Chevalier, Mamdani and Omar. For example, according to censusreporter.com, Chevalier won her party’s nomination by winning a district where 33% of the population is foreign-born, 55% of households speak a language other than English at home, and most of the people are poor earning a paltry median income of $37,754. In other words, a constituency that would love to be the beneficiaries of the redistribution of wealth via a distortion of the American dream that can only survive by destroying the American dream.

It is not an accident that many of the leaders of the DSA and their affiliates are Muslim radicals that did not come here to assimilate but to conquer. I do believe there are many Muslims in America that wish our country no harm. They are not proponents of Sharia law, or jihad. They don’t support the genocide of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel. But, the fact remains, America, just like Europe, is being colonized by radical Islam. One illustration I can give you about this is a statement made by the UAE, a solid Muslim country. The UAE provides scholarships to its own citizens (UAE nationals) to study at foreign universities, in addition to supporting them at local institutions. However, the United Arab Emirates is restricting students from enrolling at UK universities amid fears campuses are being radicalized by Islamist groups, namely, the Muslim Brotherhood. Well, this radical movement is not restricted to our cousins across the pond!

Last year, “The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released its landmark report, The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Entryism into Western Society: A Systematic Analysis, at a high-level policy event in Washington, D.C., featuring members of Congress, senior diplomats, policy experts, and leading researchers. The report represents the first-of-its-kind comprehensive strategic assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan at its halfway point, mapping its ideological, institutional, and financial penetration into North America.”

“The 200-page analysis provides a detailed account of how the Brotherhood has spent five decades embedding itself within Western institutions while maintaining ideological opposition to democracy and pluralism. Drawing on authenticated internal documents, verified network mapping, and extensive case studies, the research reveals a coordinated, multi-generational project designed to influence policy, education, and civil society from within.”

As stated, “the Muslim brotherhood is not simply a political movement but a transnational ideological project that adapts itself to Western systems while working to undermine them. The Brotherhood has learned to use the very freedoms of democracy as tools to erode it from within, exploiting the tolerance and openness of liberal societies as strategic vulnerabilities”.

Of course, none of these things would be a problem for America and in America, were it not for the four horsemen of our apocalypse. As Robert George outlined in his report, “Solzhenitsyn’s Prophecy”, on the occasion of the 1978 commencement speech to Harvard graduates, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offered a severe critique of American society. It was a time, as George noted, that anti-Americanism was flourishing both abroad and at home. Many Americans—particularly young Americans—had lost faith in their country, its institutions, its principles, its culture, its traditions, and its way of life. He viewed the West’s weakness, including its weakness in truly standing up to Soviet aggression, as the fruit of the materialism, consumerism, self-indulgent individualism, emotivism, and narcissism—in a word, the immorality—into which we had allowed ourselves to sink. What is behind all this? According to Solzhenitsyn, the moral decline of the West has behind it the same factor that produced the horrors of communism, namely this: “Men have forgotten God.”

People worship themselves, deify their own desires, fall into an idolatry of the self, because they have forgotten that there is something—indeed someone—higher. They have forgotten God.

And, I might add, they have forgotten the warning of Benjamin Franklin as they can’t define what constitutes a constitutional republic even though their life and their freedom depend on it!

Andy Caldwell, California Globe

“A Republic If You Can Keep It!” These words of Benjamin Franklin, in response to the question, “what kind of government was the United States to have, a republic or a democracy?” are exceedingly prescient today, for we are surrounded, infected, and infested by enemies within and without.

The four enemies I will focus on today (there are many more than four) are progressivism, the democratic socialists of America, radical Islam, and America’s four horsemen of the apocalypse (hedonism, nihilism, materialism, and narcissism).

First, progressivism. Just in time for our 250th birthday party, progressives in California are blowing up the basic premise of our constitution by fomenting class warfare. This rotten political ideology posits that virtually everything about America is either a lie or its wrong. That is, the Constitution was a racist construct aimed at preserving white, male power. Progressives also believe it is wrong for people to become successful, but it is right to redistribute their wealth to people who did nothing to earn it or deserve it.

California, like other blue states, is an epicenter of progressivism. On the ballot this November is the so-called billionaire’s wealth tax which is not to be confused with an income tax. This class of earners are already paying more than their “fair share” of taxes. Together, the top 1% of earners (which includes multi-millionaires) in our state pay upwards of 45% of all income tax collected, some $122 billion annually. SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, is behind the initiative, not because they are concerned about state and federal benefit cuts to the poor, but because their members stand to lose their jobs as a result of the cuts.

This tax taxes wealth, including the unrealized value of businesses, stocks, bonds, art, collectibles, and intellectual property. Of course, the problem here is that the billionaires are leaving and taking their companies, tax revenues, and jobs with them. It is estimated that $1 trillion in assets have left the state, which means the state’s income tax revenue will crater unless the middle class makes up the difference via future tax hikes. In other words, our state economy is set to implode because of the unmitigated greed of public employee unions in this state who have additionally burdened us with upwards of $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are progressives on crack! Take for an example, Avila Chevalier who just won the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th District, with the support and endorsement of the current leader of the pack, New York Mayor Mamdani. Avila Chevalier has been described by some as “like AOC, but to the left”. According to CNN, “Darializa Avila Chevalier, deleted a previous Twitter account that included thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist”.

That begs the question, that people like James Carville are asking, why are DSA members allowed to run as democrats?

Of course, the progressives are responsible for creating the circumstances that have led to the election of radicals like Mamdani and “the squad” (Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, and the like who are considered DSA “affiliates”), namely by flooding our country with poor immigrants from third world countries who constitute their main constituent voting bloc. That is, these immigrants are voting for fellow immigrants like Chevalier, Mamdani and Omar. For example, according to censusreporter.com, Chevalier won her party’s nomination by winning a district where 33% of the population is foreign-born, 55% of households speak a language other than English at home, and most of the people are poor earning a paltry median income of $37,754. In other words, a constituency that would love to be the beneficiaries of the redistribution of wealth via a distortion of the American dream that can only survive by destroying the American dream.

It is not an accident that many of the leaders of the DSA and their affiliates are Muslim radicals that did not come here to assimilate but to conquer. I do believe there are many Muslims in America that wish our country no harm. They are not proponents of Sharia law, or jihad. They don’t support the genocide of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel. But, the fact remains, America, just like Europe, is being colonized by radical Islam. One illustration I can give you about this is a statement made by the UAE, a solid Muslim country. The UAE provides scholarships to its own citizens (UAE nationals) to study at foreign universities, in addition to supporting them at local institutions. However, the United Arab Emirates is restricting students from enrolling at UK universities amid fears campuses are being radicalized by Islamist groups, namely, the Muslim Brotherhood. Well, this radical movement is not restricted to our cousins across the pond!

Last year, “The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released its landmark report, The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Entryism into Western Society: A Systematic Analysis, at a high-level policy event in Washington, D.C., featuring members of Congress, senior diplomats, policy experts, and leading researchers. The report represents the first-of-its-kind comprehensive strategic assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan at its halfway point, mapping its ideological, institutional, and financial penetration into North America.”

“The 200-page analysis provides a detailed account of how the Brotherhood has spent five decades embedding itself within Western institutions while maintaining ideological opposition to democracy and pluralism. Drawing on authenticated internal documents, verified network mapping, and extensive case studies, the research reveals a coordinated, multi-generational project designed to influence policy, education, and civil society from within.”

As stated, “the Muslim brotherhood is not simply a political movement but a transnational ideological project that adapts itself to Western systems while working to undermine them. The Brotherhood has learned to use the very freedoms of democracy as tools to erode it from within, exploiting the tolerance and openness of liberal societies as strategic vulnerabilities”.

Of course, none of these things would be a problem for America and in America, were it not for the four horsemen of our apocalypse. As Robert George outlined in his report, “Solzhenitsyn’s Prophecy”, on the occasion of the 1978 commencement speech to Harvard graduates, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offered a severe critique of American society. It was a time, as George noted, that anti-Americanism was flourishing both abroad and at home. Many Americans—particularly young Americans—had lost faith in their country, its institutions, its principles, its culture, its traditions, and its way of life. He viewed the West’s weakness, including its weakness in truly standing up to Soviet aggression, as the fruit of the materialism, consumerism, self-indulgent individualism, emotivism, and narcissism—in a word, the immorality—into which we had allowed ourselves to sink. What is behind all this? According to Solzhenitsyn, the moral decline of the West has behind it the same factor that produced the horrors of communism, namely this: “Men have forgotten God.”

People worship themselves, deify their own desires, fall into an idolatry of the self, because they have forgotten that there is something—indeed someone—higher. They have forgotten God.

And, I might add, they have forgotten the warning of Benjamin Franklin as they can’t define what constitutes a constitutional republic even though their life and their freedom depend on it!

Why are DSA members allowed to run as Democrats?

“A Republic If You Can Keep It!” These words of Benjamin Franklin, in response to the question, “what kind of government was the United States to have, a republic or a democracy?” are exceedingly prescient today, for we are surrounded, infected, and infested by enemies within and without.

The four enemies I will focus on today (there are many more than four) are progressivism, the democratic socialists of America, radical Islam, and America’s four horsemen of the apocalypse (hedonism, nihilism, materialism, and narcissism).

First, progressivism. Just in time for our 250th birthday party, progressives in California are blowing up the basic premise of our constitution by fomenting class warfare. This rotten political ideology posits that virtually everything about America is either a lie or its wrong. That is, the Constitution was a racist construct aimed at preserving white, male power. Progressives also believe it is wrong for people to become successful, but it is right to redistribute their wealth to people who did nothing to earn it or deserve it.

California, like other blue states, is an epicenter of progressivism. On the ballot this November is the so-called billionaire’s wealth tax which is not to be confused with an income tax. This class of earners are already paying more than their “fair share” of taxes. Together, the top 1% of earners (which includes multi-millionaires) in our state pay upwards of 45% of all income tax collected, some $122 billion annually. SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, is behind the initiative, not because they are concerned about state and federal benefit cuts to the poor, but because their members stand to lose their jobs as a result of the cuts.

This tax taxes wealth, including the unrealized value of businesses, stocks, bonds, art, collectibles, and intellectual property. Of course, the problem here is that the billionaires are leaving and taking their companies, tax revenues, and jobs with them. It is estimated that $1 trillion in assets have left the state, which means the state’s income tax revenue will crater unless the middle class makes up the difference via future tax hikes. In other words, our state economy is set to implode because of the unmitigated greed of public employee unions in this state who have additionally burdened us with upwards of $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are progressives on crack! Take for an example, Avila Chevalier who just won the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th District, with the support and endorsement of the current leader of the pack, New York Mayor Mamdani. Avila Chevalier has been described by some as “like AOC, but to the left”. According to CNN, “Darializa Avila Chevalier, deleted a previous Twitter account that included thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist”.

That begs the question, that people like James Carville are asking, why are DSA members allowed to run as democrats?

Of course, the progressives are responsible for creating the circumstances that have led to the election of radicals like Mamdani and “the squad” (Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, and the like who are considered DSA “affiliates”), namely by flooding our country with poor immigrants from third world countries who constitute their main constituent voting bloc. That is, these immigrants are voting for fellow immigrants like Chevalier, Mamdani and Omar. For example, according to censusreporter.com, Chevalier won her party’s nomination by winning a district where 33% of the population is foreign-born, 55% of households speak a language other than English at home, and most of the people are poor earning a paltry median income of $37,754. In other words, a constituency that would love to be the beneficiaries of the redistribution of wealth via a distortion of the American dream that can only survive by destroying the American dream.

It is not an accident that many of the leaders of the DSA and their affiliates are Muslim radicals that did not come here to assimilate but to conquer. I do believe there are many Muslims in America that wish our country no harm. They are not proponents of Sharia law, or jihad. They don’t support the genocide of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel. But, the fact remains, America, just like Europe, is being colonized by radical Islam. One illustration I can give you about this is a statement made by the UAE, a solid Muslim country. The UAE provides scholarships to its own citizens (UAE nationals) to study at foreign universities, in addition to supporting them at local institutions. However, the United Arab Emirates is restricting students from enrolling at UK universities amid fears campuses are being radicalized by Islamist groups, namely, the Muslim Brotherhood. Well, this radical movement is not restricted to our cousins across the pond!

Last year, “The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released its landmark report, The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Entryism into Western Society: A Systematic Analysis, at a high-level policy event in Washington, D.C., featuring members of Congress, senior diplomats, policy experts, and leading researchers. The report represents the first-of-its-kind comprehensive strategic assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan at its halfway point, mapping its ideological, institutional, and financial penetration into North America.”

“The 200-page analysis provides a detailed account of how the Brotherhood has spent five decades embedding itself within Western institutions while maintaining ideological opposition to democracy and pluralism. Drawing on authenticated internal documents, verified network mapping, and extensive case studies, the research reveals a coordinated, multi-generational project designed to influence policy, education, and civil society from within.”

As stated, “the Muslim brotherhood is not simply a political movement but a transnational ideological project that adapts itself to Western systems while working to undermine them. The Brotherhood has learned to use the very freedoms of democracy as tools to erode it from within, exploiting the tolerance and openness of liberal societies as strategic vulnerabilities”.

Of course, none of these things would be a problem for America and in America, were it not for the four horsemen of our apocalypse. As Robert George outlined in his report, “Solzhenitsyn’s Prophecy”, on the occasion of the 1978 commencement speech to Harvard graduates, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offered a severe critique of American society. It was a time, as George noted, that anti-Americanism was flourishing both abroad and at home. Many Americans—particularly young Americans—had lost faith in their country, its institutions, its principles, its culture, its traditions, and its way of life. He viewed the West’s weakness, including its weakness in truly standing up to Soviet aggression, as the fruit of the materialism, consumerism, self-indulgent individualism, emotivism, and narcissism—in a word, the immorality—into which we had allowed ourselves to sink. What is behind all this? According to Solzhenitsyn, the moral decline of the West has behind it the same factor that produced the horrors of communism, namely this: “Men have forgotten God.”

People worship themselves, deify their own desires, fall into an idolatry of the self, because they have forgotten that there is something—indeed someone—higher. They have forgotten God.

And, I might add, they have forgotten the warning of Benjamin Franklin as they can’t define what constitutes a constitutional republic even though their life and their freedom depend on it!

12:50:09 AM by SeekAndFind

Yesterday, Graham Platner denied allegations made by Jenny Racicot of rape, but then announced that he would take some time to mull over his options. At the time, Platner had already cancelled his upcoming events before the July 13 deadline to withdraw his nomination as the Democrat candidate for US Senate from Maine. His withdrawal from the race appeared imminent, so much so that Polymarket actually shut down the betting pool on it.

Well, it has been 24 hours since then, and … all is quiet on the Totenkopf Front. Platner has lost almost every endorser in the race, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced it would not spend money in Maine if Platner remained on the ballot. Even Bernie Sanders threw in the towel this afternoon:

Influential progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders urged Graham Platner to exit the race for Senate in Maine, a day after a woman he was romantically involved with publicly alleged that he sexually assaulted her.

Sanders said Tuesday that he had spoken with Platner and “in light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside.”

The allegation, which Platner denied, prompted top Senate Democrats and close allies to rescind their endorsements, cut off funding and call for him to drop out. Sanders’s statement came after most of Platner’s other allies had pulled their support.

Color me entirely unimpressed with Bernie’s sudden concern about “very serious allegations.” Lyndsey Fifield made very serious allegations of domestic violence and abuse six weeks ago, and Bernie didn’t budge an inch. By that time, Platner’s extramarital sexting and his lies about his Nazi tattoo had already been established. So too had Platner’s s***posting on Reddit about women needing Kevlar underwear and becoming a communist. And let’s not forget about Platner’s activities on Kik with his half-naked profile pic that was up until five weeks ago.

In other words …

Now ask Bernie why he promoted a Nazi-tatted Kik creeper in the first place.

We will never get a straight answer to that question. That’s why Sanders wants Platner to withdraw as soon as possible, so that attention will shift from Sanders’ own responsibility for a disgraceful disaster in a party with which he only barely affiliates. The same is true for all of the other endorsers who suddenly want to turn the page:

“A small caucus of party insiders cannot be trusted to nominate the shake-up-the-system outsider this moment calls for,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand called for Platner’s immediate withdrawal, saying the DSCC “will not invest in the Maine Senate race” if he remains on the ballot. Schumer had previously backed Mills.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Martin Heinrich, previously two of Platner’s biggest supporters, also joined in calling for him to step down, while Sen. Ruben Gallego, another former Platner fan, rescinded his endorsement.

The despicable Ro Khanna has already endorsed state senator Troy Jackson, who – surprise! – allegedly assaulted a staffer in a meeting. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former public health official Nirav Shah are reportedly taking calls about running for the nomination at the state convention. Gov. Janet Mills will likely bid for it as well, although apparently the Platner catastrophe hasn’t done much to boost her chances. 

All of this is premature, though, because it is all predicated on one thing: Platner’s voluntary withdrawal from the nomination by end of business Monday. What if Platner doesn’t withdraw at all? Well, Democrats can’t do anything about it, as Philip Klein points out:

All that being said, it’s quite possible that he will decide to stick it out. In reality, he holds all the cards. He won the Democratic primary, and there is no mechanism for replacing him unless he decides to give up. The guy wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did were he not a narcissist who ignored the advice of the party’s power brokers. The very reason he is in this position in the first place is that he has a history of making reckless, rash decisions that are selfish and that defy rational thinking. 

He knows that if he steps aside, he will be remembered forever as the guy who had to drop out after being credibly accused of rape, which will convince everybody that the accusations about him are true.

What happens then? The endorsers will come crawling back, Klein predicts:

If he holds on, however, Democrats will be stuck with him after next week. Given how negative partisanship works, the left-wing tilt of the state, and the control of the Senate at stake, it’s easy to see Democratic voters talking themselves into the idea that they have to suck it up and support Platner. If Republicans control the Senate, Trump could still confirm Supreme Court justices, lower court judges, and any other nominees. So it’s plausible that Maine remains a competitive race even with Platner. If it comes to October and the seat remains crucial to Democrats retaking the Senate, let’s see if the national committees stick to their pledges not to support him.

This is almost too easy to predict. Of course Sanders, Warren, and Khanna will come back to Platner. What choice would they have? To avoid that, Democrats will have to woo Platner into a withdrawal, and he knows it. The New York Post reported today that Platner wants to set the terms of his withdrawal, and expects Democrats to make him a kingmaker:

Maine Democratic candidate Graham Platner appears to be holding the Democratic Party hostage — refusing to drop out after he was accused of rape unless he gets to approve his successor to run for the Senate, The Post has learned.

A source familiar with the campaign discussions said Platner, his campaign and political strategist Morris Katz are deliberating about the Maine Democrat dropping out but only if his replacement has the same anti-Israel, left-wing values that he does. …

The source quipped that Platner “assumes whoever might replace [him] would want a rapist’s endorsement.”

“His team is delusional,” this person said, noting that Katz, a former campaign adviser to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is still recommending Platner remain in the race.

His team isn’t delusional at all. They realize that they have only one card left to play, and in Rod Blagojevich’s immortal words, it’s “a f*****g valuable thing.” If Platner withdraws, he has to go back to mooching off his parents, with the reputational damage from this campaign hanging over his head that will sour any commercial opportunities that might otherwise have emerged. Platner will demand a golden parachute from Democrats to allow the party to pick another nominee.

And if he doesn’t get it? Platner will keep the nomination and force Democrats to support him in their Orange Man Bad psychosis. Republicans will have a field day in the midterms if Platner stays in the race, making their endorsement of a rapist an issue in every House and Senate election this cycle. And I doubt that Platner will lose a single night’s sleep over the damage he’ll do to Democrats. 

Ed Morrissey, Hotair

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2. Coffee House

Henry Donovan

Germany is quietly falling apart

• 6 July 2026, 5:36am

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In Germany, the trains have stopped running on time, bridges have been shut over safety fears, and the country’s largest carmaker, Volkswagen, is cutting a sixth of its workforce. The government’s response amounts to a shrug, dressed up as reform. It seems like Germany is on a bad streak – and the AfD looks set to reap the rewards.

Why does a country that still thinks of itself as Europe’s engine room seem to have lost the ability to fix its own bridges?

Take the railways, the infamous Deutsche Bahn. A few weeks ago, they ground to a total halt. Every train in the country stood still, because the radio system that lets drivers talk to signal boxes – a system that appears to date, in spirit if not in silicon, from the Kaiserreich – simply stopped working. For several hours, nothing moved on the tracks of Europe’s largest economy.

Stranded passengers shrugged at reporters when asked how they felt about it. This is just what Deutsche Bahn does, several said, with the weary resignation of people describing the weather rather than a national infrastructure failure. That reaction tells you more about the current German mood than the failure itself does. It is not anger. It is fatalism.

Transport minister, Patrick Schnieder, responded with the platitude every politician reaches for in a crisis: he demanded “comprehensive clarification”. It is a mark of quite how unglamorous his brief has become that Schnieder – a man nominally responsible for one of the most consequential portfolios in government – remains almost entirely unknown to the German public. Nobody expects him to fix anything. Nobody, really, expects anyone to.

Consider the rest of the news from the past month. The new Stuttgart railway station, a project that has been under construction for more than two decades, will now open in 2031 – a decade later than originally planned, and that is the optimistic scenario. This barely made headlines, because nobody in Germany still believes Stuttgart 21 will ever actually finish on schedule; they have simply stopped counting.

Then the Rhine bridge carrying the Autobahn A565 near Bonn – a critical east-west artery through one of the country’s busiest regions – was shut without warning because it was structurally unsound. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the industrial heartland of the Bundesrepublik, one in three motorway bridges is now judged to need repair. True to form, the work is delayed until the danger becomes so acute that bridges are occasionally closed on the very day the inspectors find the fault. The public receives this news with a shrug too.

Meanwhile, Volkswagen, the company whose name is practically synonymous with German industrial identity, is reportedly preparing to cut 100,000 of its 600,000 jobs worldwide, with four domestic factories on the chopping block. The unions and the SPD blame management. They might more usefully blame a decarbonisation timetable so aggressive, and a combustion-engine ban so rigid, that it left German carmakers with nowhere to hide when cheaper Chinese electric alternatives arrived. Naturally, nobody in government will admit as much. The correction, when it comes, is grudging and half-hearted.

It is worth dwelling on what all this represents, because it is not merely a bad month. “Vorsprung durch Technik” was not just an Audi slogan; it was the self-image of an entire nation – a country that ran on the twin pillars of relentlessly capable infrastructure and an industrial base that fused engineering excellence with genuine innovation. The Institute for German Economic Research has tracked, for over a decade, how many companies feel held back by crumbling roads and rail. In 2013, 59 per cent said yes. Today it is 84 per cent, with the share reporting severe disruption rising sharply since 2018. Every delayed train and closed bridge is, in the driest possible sense, a tax on German growth.

Berlin’s answer to all this, delivered with much self-congratulation, was a package of pension and tax reforms that the governing parties have spent the past fortnight applauding themselves for, with the press obligingly joining the chorus. The reforms are overdue; they modernise a welfare system that, like the rail network’s signalling, has rather too much Kaiserreich still baked into it. But updating the redistribution of German prosperity is not the same thing as generating any. And generating it is precisely the problem nobody in Berlin wants to confront.

Look closer at the package and the ambition thins out fast. The centrepiece tax relief amounts to barely more than the inflation adjustment the constitutional court had already ordered. A promised cut to red tape is genuinely welcome – fewer reporting obligations, faster permitting – but it sits alongside a new state-owned housebuilding company and an expanding subsidy regime, which rather undercuts the idea that Berlin is serious about shrinking its own footprint in the economy. On energy prices, the single biggest drag on German industrial competitiveness, the package says almost nothing.

Take Lower Saxony’s minister-president Olaf Lies, whose state owns a stake in Volkswagen. As Chinese manufacturers take a huge chunk of market share from VW, his solution is protectionism: keeping Chinese carmakers out of Europe rather than asking why German ones can no longer compete on their own merits. It is the same reflex every time: more regulation, more state, less market, less competition. It is an approach that has served Germany rather well for explaining decline, and rather poorly for reversing it.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz came to office promising, in his own words, a “great leap forward” for German competitiveness – a phrase whose previous owner, Mao, drove his country into famine, though one assumes Merz meant it more kindly. What he has delivered so far is a reform package built on the smallest common denominator between two reluctant coalition partners: welcome, as far as it goes, but nowhere near the scale of the structural crisis Germany is in – arguably its deepest since the Republic’s founding.

None of this is without political consequence. The AfD, which held its party conference this weekend, looks, by common consent, unstoppable. It is not hard to see why: a country that watches its trains stop, its bridges close and its flagship manufacturer shed a sixth of its workforce, while its government congratulates itself on a tax tweak barely larger than inflation would have delivered anyway, is primed to reward whoever promises to notice the rot.

Yet the more pressing question is simpler and more damning: why does a country that still thinks of itself as Europe’s engine room seem to have lost the ability to fix its own bridges? It seems to be symptomatic for Germany’s current state.

The country that once exported “Vorsprung durch Technik” to the world is now struggling to keep its own trains and bridges functioning – and its government is coming up with a reform package that doesn’t deserve to be called as such.

Until Berlin’s political class stops treating that as an inconvenient footnote and starts treating it as the central story, the shrugging fatalism on Germany’s platforms and building sites will keep finding somewhere to go. And Germany will continue to fall apart quietly.

Written by

Henry Donovan

Henry Donovan is an Anglo-German journalist and communications adviser based in Berlin

Republicans should not grin with smug self-satisfaction. This is dangerous for them, even though blue moderates and establishment figures feel the heat right now.

Joseph Ford Cotto | July 7, 2026

The Democratic Socialists of America, as an institution, has been hijacked by young revolutionaries.

They have turned it into a communist outfit, devouring the Democratic Party from within.

Republicans should not grin with smug self-satisfaction. This is dangerous for them, even though blue moderates and establishment figures feel the heat right now.

Once a marginal group committed to social democracy, DSA has become a major vehicle for third-worldist communism. It rejects everything that made America a first-world superpower. Its activists push open borders, the abolition of police and prisons, the dismantling of constitutional checks, and solidarity with America’s enemies abroad.

This is not harmless liberal arts undergrad talk. It is a direct assault on the institutions and initiative that built American strength. It threatens to lock the country into unfathomable decline if left unchecked. Republicans who dismiss DSA as a cringeworthy fad will regret it for the rest of their lives.

Michael Harrington, a secular humanist who came out of the Roman Catholic social justice traditions, founded DSA in 1982 to create a pressure group that would push the Democrats leftward. He wrote rules to rigorously block communists and their influence. Harrington knew from bitter history how such groups destroyed earlier socialist efforts. Nowadays, much like the man himself, his vision of anticommunist socialism is dead.

During and after the Bernie Sanders Democratic presidential campaign in 2016, waves of young, college-educated activists flooded the DSA ranks. They were radicalized by post-Great Recession economic frustration and the conviction that wokeness, despite its rapid ascendance, never went far enough. They were also infuriated with blue gatekeepers who effectively denied Sanders a fair chance at the nomination. With them came Marxist-Leninist organizers who saw opportunity in the chaos.

By the 2025 DSA convention, delegates scrapped the anti-communist clause and elevated the “right to resistance” for Palestinians as a central principle. Nearly half the national leadership now openly calls itself communist. Harrington’s DSA is a reviled memory. In its place stands an organization that treats liberal democracy as the enemy

Look at who fills DSA’s ranks.

As of 2021, more than 80 percent of adult members held college degrees, double the national average, with 35 percent possessing advanced degrees. Only four percent worked blue-collar jobs. Nearly 60 percent sat in professional roles, often in academia, nonprofits, or government. The group was overwhelmingly white. Far more so than the country it claims to liberate.

All indications are that, even in 2026, these are not the factory workers or truck drivers which comprise the actual working class. They are downwardly mobile, self-absorbed yuppies steeped in communist theory, postmodernism, and cultural Marxism. They resent a system that did not deliver an idealized upper-middle class lifestyle, and their pity for themselves knows no bounds.

This sociological distance explains why DSA obsesses over issues like open borders and transgender rights while ignoring the everyday concerns of working families. The organization speaks for a narrow, highly educated, yet underemployed class that has turned personal frustration into a revolutionary program.

That program could hardly be clearer.

DSA’s “Workers Deserve More!” platform demands the abolition of the U.S. Senate and Electoral College. It calls for subordinating the presidency and Supreme Court to a vastly expanded Congress stripped of checks and balances. It is demanded that police and prisons be defunded, all jailbirds turned loose, and criminal penalties for “working-class survival” ended.

DSA calls for borders to be demilitarized, ICE’s abolition, and immediate amnesty granted with full access to welfare for any alien who arrives. Foreign policy centers on ending American “imperialism,” cutting all military aid, especially to Israel, and supporting global resistance against the United States.

The document frames America itself as a settler-colonial, white-supremacist country rigged against workers. The remedy is revolutionary transformation into a “democratic socialist republic.”

This is not reform. It is the blueprint for ending the constitutional republic.

Foreign policy reveals the rot most starkly.

On Oct. 7, 2023, as Hamas terrorists gruesomely murdered more than a thousand civilians in Israel, DSA’s International Committee tweeted support for “the people of Palestine.” It declared “Long live the resistance!” Chapters across the country held rallies and issued statements that treated the massacre as legitimate blowback against “oppression.” Some glorified the terrorist carnage outright.

DSA endorses the anti-Israeli boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, labels Zionism racist settler-colonialism, and makes Jewish State opposition a de facto loyalty test. It aligns with the communist-led São Paulo Forum, expresses solidarity with leftist authoritarian governments, and cheers proxies of Iran’s Islamist dictatorship. This is not workers-of-the-world-unite. It is naked preference for America’s adversaries and terrorists over civilized allies.

The organization has become fundamentally anti-Western, viewing first world achievements as crimes to be dismantled.

DSA’s relationship with the blue party exposes its cynicism. Leaders despise Democrats as corporate sellouts and view figures like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as obstacles. Yet they run candidates in Democratic primaries, exploiting the party’s ballot line, infrastructure, and voters. The dominant strategy is called the “dirty break,” which uses the Democrats to build power, cadre, and organization. Then, once strong enough, there is a permanent fracture, leaving a hollowed-out blue shell.

DSA scored stunning congressional primary victories across state lines during this year alone. It has the mayoralty of New York City, with likely pickups in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. This barely scratches the surface of its local, state, and federal wins over the last decade. DSA elected officials answer first to the organization, not party loyalty.

Meanwhile, the broader Democrat party has shifted dramatically left on immigration, crime, identity politics, and Israel, among numerous other items. That leftward drift created the opening which leftist agitators needed. Moderates and lefty establishment figures who once dominated now find themselves cornered. They either face a DSA-backed primary challenge or the threat of one.

The Democrats are being eaten alive in real time.

DSA recruits, overwhelmingly between their teens and 40s, are hungry for change at any cost. Many are digitally native, often burdened by student debt and precarious jobs. They find in DSA a ready-made structure not only for political activism, but socializing and, so the hope goes, self-actualization. Their adopted intellectual framework arrives from outlets like Jacobin, and they are provided with convenient scapegoats in capitalism and the West.

DSA is extreme, but it regrettably is no longer fringe. The group wields profound influence in major cities, and increasingly their suburbs. It shapes Democratic primaries, commanding loyalty from Millennial and Generation Z malcontents. Its provably bad ideas are now mainstream on the left.

A Democrat party captured by this anti-American, antisemitic, anti-Western, and pro-third world cohort cannot govern a first-world superpower. It can, at best, manage decline and, infinitely more likely, accelerate it.

Republicans should treat DSA as the serious, long-term opponent it has become. This is not merely about the midterms. It is about confronting a disciplined movement that intends to dominate blue politics for generations on end. The stakes are the survival of America as we know her.

Ignoring the Democratic Socialists of America’s threat or hoping it implodes would be absurd.

America’s future demands rejection of this cancerous collective with clarity and resolve. Republicans must rise to the occasion. It is a tall order, but someone must fill it. Immediately.

Dr. Joseph Ford Cotto is the creator, host, and producer of News Sight, delivering sharp insights on the key events that shape our lives. He publishes Dr. Cotto’s Digest, sharing how business and the economy really impact us all. During the 2024 presidential race, he developed the Five-Point Forecast, which accurately predicted Donald Trump’s national victory and correctly called every swing state. Cotto holds a doctorate in business administration and is a Lean Six Sigma Certified Black Belt.

The Federal Budget Deficits are large by historical standards. The deficit totals $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2026 and grows to $3.1 trillion in 2036. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit is 5.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2026 and increases to 6.7 percent in 2036. Deficits averaged 3.8 percent of GDP over the last 50 years (see Chapter 1).

Debt held by the public rises from 101 percent of GDP in 2026 to 120 percent in 2036, well above the previous record of 106 percent just after World War II.

Outlays are large by historical standards—and growing. They total 23.3 percent of GDP in 2026, exceeding their 50-year average of 21.2 percent. After being adjusted for shifts in the timing of certain payments, outlays remain at about that level through 2028 but then grow steadily, boosted by rising spending on mandatory programs and increasing net interest costs. Outlays in 2036 are 24.4 percent of GDP (see Chapter 3).

Revenues in 2026 total 17.5 percent of GDP, surpassing their 50-year average of 17.3 percent. Revenues stay at or slightly above that 2026 level through 2036, when they total 17.8 percent of GDP. Over the 2026–2036 period, individual income tax receipts and remittances from the Federal Reserve rise as a percentage of GDP; those increases are offset by declining customs duties receipts as imports, as a percentage of GDP, fall in response to tariffs (see Chapter 4).

Looks like another “conspiracy theory” just came true again!

To quote Yogi Berra it’s like “deja vu all over again” these days with conspiracy after conspiracy being proven 100% true.

The latest is the Myth of Recycling, or as John Stossel put it: “the Green Religion” otherwise known as Gaia Worship.

I’ve been telling people for years that Recycling is a scam.

Recycling is “garbage”, no pun intended….

I have no doubt some people mean well by it, but it simply doesn’t work!

Most of it does not end up actually getting recycled and the time, energy and “carbon dioxide” that we put into Recycling is far greater and does far more harm than if we’d simply throw the stuff in the garbage.

People have laughed at me when I’ve told them that, but now it’s proven 100% accurate.

A big thanks to John Stossel for his excellent video and for Elon Musk who amplified the message on X this morning:

And in case you need a backup, here is the same video on YouTube.

I will also post the full transcript of the video below in case that’s easier for you.

Please enjoy — and then share this to wake some more people up to the scam of the Green Religion:

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Do you recycle? For sure, absolutely. Absolutely everything I possibly can. For decades we’ve been told Recycle America. Don’t just throw it all away. Because recycling will save the planet. You’re saving the Earth!

And that’s what people believe. We have to do it for the kids, for the next generation. This will all be back on the shelf as a cracker or cereal box in about 4-5 weeks. This recycling company is run by Lynn Hoffman. If we’re not using recycled paper and cardboard we’re cutting down more trees.

Recycling paper and cardboard does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But most of the other stuff is impractical to recycle. That’s right.

This is material that came into the recycling facility from people’s recycling carts, but is going to leave as trash. Huge amounts of what people send to her recycling plant will never be recycled. The worst is plastic which for years has been marked with a recycling symbol. We see stuff like this all the time, recycling arrows on it, “please recycle.” It’s not recyclable. Even worse, plastic bags clog the recycling machines.

We have to climb in for a couple hours every day and cut them out with the box cutter. But people think most of our plastic is recycled. Yeah, I do think so.

Is it not, you gonna tell me it’s not? That’s the trick? The reality is that The amount of plastic actually recycled is around 5%.

Wow. I figured there was something coming, but I’m, I’m, I’m shocked right now. I didn’t know. It’s sad.

[Cans tossed] All my life, I’ve heard about how important it is to recycle. It’s not. Science writer John Tierney debunked recycling claims years ago. His New York Times Magazine story “Recycling is Garbage” set a record for Times hate mail.

And yet What you said is still true? It’s even more true today. In fact, the economics have just gotten worse.

Now my city would save more than $300 million a year if it just stopped recycling. Recycling is an industry that is using increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less. Because it’s not worth recycling here, much is shipped overseas to countries like Malaysia where it’s just piled up.

A vast field of plastic. Two stories high. Some of it from America. See if we can look on the back here. Marysville, Ohio.

Look! Walmart bag. That pollutes even more and what they don’t burn, they sometimes dump in the ocean.

One garbage truck of plastic is dumped in the sea every minute. Barely any of that plastic comes from American shores so [Dolphin noise]

If you care about saving Flipper, you should put your plastic bottle in the garbage. [Truck running over garbage] The garbage? But then it would go to a landfill. And aren’t we running out of space for landfills? I’m sure we are. People believe that because for years the media said We’ve about run out of places to throwaway our throwaways. They think that because years ago there was so much publicity about this barge. A symbol of this country’s growing problems with trash. The barge travelled thousands of miles looking for a place to dump its load.

But it wasn’t because there wasn’t room. States turned this barge away because alarmist media scared people about what it contained. There could be infection waste. Dripping brown ooze of possibly infectious material. We don’t know what kind of tropical vermin is in that garbage. But the EPA later found it was normal garbage. And landfills had plenty of room for that. Today they have more space than we’ll ever need. If you think of the United States as a football field, all the garbage that we will generate in the next 1000 years would fit inside a tiny fraction of the one inch line. Really!? Oh, that’s surprising.

On top of that, today’s landfills are not the polluters they once were. Some sensible regulations make sure they don’t pollute. Eventually landfills are turned into ski hills, parks and golf courses. [Clink] Putting garbage here is much cheaper than recycling, so why do towns keep pushing recycling?

They do it because people demand it. It’s a sacrament of the green religion. I rinse my cans, I take my labels off if there’s plastic on, that’s something that’s paper. I take the plastic piece off of it. That’s fine if they wanna do it voluntarily, but we shouldn’t mandate that.

It’s not my religion. I don’t wanna perform that sacrament. I don’t want to either. It’s time consuming and complicated.

My city orders us, follow all these rules. And that’s one of the reasons recycling fails is because it’s so complicated people never learn the rules and why should they be spending their free time learning these rules? Worse, lots of what we do is pointless.

If you rinse a plastic bottle in hot water, the net result is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than if you threw it in the garbage. Even Greenpeace said, most plastic simply cannot be recycled. So what’s Greenpeace’s solution? Let’s stop producing it. You’re saying, don’t use plastic at all.

Ban plastic. I think that’s where we’re headed. No more plastic? But plastic often creates less emissions than alternatives. Environmental groups rarely mention that, or how they misled us about recycling for years. It’s appalling that after telling people for three decades to recycle, they don’t even apologize for all the time and money that they wasted, instead they have an even worse proposal that will make life even worse and even more expensive.

One time-consuming dream of theirs is a “circular economy” where everything is reused. If you’re running out a laundry detergent, you could take your jug back to the store and fill it up instead of buying another one. That’s really the goal. But people don’t want to, you’re, you’re, you’re asking them to do things

100% Fed Up, Staff

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner has postponed a string of events Sunday and Monday as rumors circulate among Maine Democrats and over social media about another potentially damaging story to come about the oyster farmer’s past.

Platner postponed a planned town hall in Augusta on Sunday after reportedly missing a Fourth of July parade in Machias. The Gorham Democrats on Monday morning said a town hall set for Monday was postponed because Platner was “not feeling well.” And a Sanford town hall previously listed on Mobilize was later taken down.

The Platner campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the events. The postponements came as multiple Democrats told the Bangor Daily News they expected a national outlet to drop a story about Platner Monday or Tuesday. Rumors about potentially damaging stories on the progressive candidate increasingly swirled online Sunday night and Monday, just as they did before the New York Times published a story last month featuring a few ex-girlfriends of Platner’s alleging toxic behavior. He denied ever being physically violent in a relationship.

The prediction market Kalshi showed the odds of Platner dropping out rising to more than 9% from 2% Monday morning.

Platner weathered a series of controversies in the fall and effectively booted primary opponent Gov. Janet Mills from the race in late April. He won more than 70% of the vote on June 9, including a record vote total in a Democratic primary, to become the nominee to face Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Democrats’ strong primary turnout in what’s expected to be a tough year for President Donald Trump’s Republican Party has helped rally both progressives and an increasing number of mainstream Democrats around his push to oust the five-term Collins.

Still, Republicans and some concerned Maine Democrats have said Platner’s past controversies, including explicit messages sent to multiple women early in his marriage, a Nazi-linked tattoo he’s since covered and offensive remarks made on social media, could hurt him with voters he needs to beat Collins. He told Democratic senators earlier this year, including several who’ve backed him such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, that no credible allegations of sexual assault loomed over his campaign.

His supporters have shrugged off concerns and media attention, saying they care more about Platner’s message on affordability and targeting corporate power in politics than his personal life. And he has aggressively targeted Collins, highlighting links with Trump’s agenda and alleging she is part of a corrupt system in Washington that benefits billionaires, not working families.

Platner in June said that “not once” has he considered dropping out of the race, despite knowing he and his wife, Amy Gertner, “were going to take lumps.”

“We’re dedicated to this, and it has never crossed our mind to drop out of this thing,” he told MS NOW.

Benjamin Kail, Bangor Daily News

Over the course of the past week, the Supreme Court has released a group of the most important decisions of this year’s term. Most of those decisions involved the federal government/Trump Administration as a party. As you probably have seen, the government won the majority of those decisions (ability of President to fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, ability of President to end “Temporary Protected Status” for certain migrants, ability of government to refuse to consider asylum applications from those who have not entered the U.S.), but also lost a few (birthright citizenship, ability of President to fire Federal Reserve Board Member Lisa Cook).

Many things about these cases are interesting and worth commenting on, but to me one thing is particularly fascinating: the three “liberal” justices (Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson) voted as a unified bloc in every case. This is in contrast to the six “conservative” justices (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett). Those six may vote together most of the time (on politically significant cases), but they also sometimes break apart, as they did in some of these cases. They vote differently when they have principled disagreements as to the interpretation of a constitutional or statutory provision.

But somehow, the liberals never have any such principled disagreements. Instead, when a particular position in a case is important to the ability of the Democratic Party and its operatives to control government policy, the liberal justices can always find a way to support that position. When a Democrat holds the presidency (recently, Biden), the liberal justices can always find a way to uphold his actions. Here in President Trump’s second term, when a case challenging a presidential action comes before the Court, the liberals can always find a reason to strike that action down.

I’ll consider a couple of the recent decisions:

Trump v. Slaughter.

At the beginning of his second term, President Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Trump did not give any cause for the firing, and claimed a Constitutional right to fire Slaughter without cause. Slaughter brought suit challenging her firing, and the case quickly got to the Supreme Court.

Trump asserted the right to fire Slaughter under the combination of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution (“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”), plus Article II, Section 3 (“[the President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”). The claim was that the power to fire subordinates at will is inherent in those two provisions because the President cannot effectively hold and carry out the full executive power, and assure faithful execution of the laws, without the power to discharge subordinates.

Nevertheless, Trump’s action firing Slaughter was in open conflict with the FTC’s statute. The FTC was created in 1914, during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. It was the embodiment of a progressive-era fantasy of an apolitical bureaucracy, staffed by so-called experts, who could run and regulate the economy based on their supposedly superior intelligence and knowledge. In furtherance of the idea of independence from crass political influence, the FTC’s statue provided that Commissioners could only be removed for “inefficiency, neglect off duty, or malfeasance in office.”

The FTC’s statutory restriction on removal of Commissioners had been tested in a 1935 Supreme Court case called Humphrey’s Executor. In that case, President Franklin Roosevelt had purported to fire one of the FTC Commissioners, Humphrey, without cause, just as Trump had now fired Slaughter. The Supreme Court held the firing invalid, in one of the most bizarre and incoherent decisions in its 200 plus year history.

Trump’s position in firing Slaughter appeared to me to be completely right. The Supreme Court’s Humphrey’s Executor decision had given rise to a proliferation of an alphabet soup of these so-called “independent” agencies, outside the President’s control and outside the carefully constructed three-branch constitutional structure. The Constitution created three branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — but these new “independent” agencies were often referred to as a fourth branch, unaccountable to anyone, who could not be controlled or reined in by the voters in any way. In 1935, at the time of the decision in Humphrey’s Executor, it was perhaps not obvious that agencies outside of the control of the President and of all democratic accountability could quickly become a metastasizing cancer in the government. But by 2026 the problem could not be denied.

I had a post in January 2025 (“Next Up: Humphrey’s Executor”) where I criticized the Court’s decision in Humphrey’s Executor, and predicted that it would shortly be overturned. Excerpt:

The Supreme Court held, in one of its most bizarre opinions ever, that Humphrey was improperly fired . . . . The Court’s logic turns on the idea that the power of an FTC Commissioner is not “executive” in nature, even though the Commissioners have the authority to execute and enforce the laws. The opinion makes no sense whatsoever. However, it has never been overruled, and stands today as Supreme Court precedent.

In that post, I went as far as to predict that Humphrey’s Executor was so obviously absurd that even the liberal justices would go along with overruling it:

I’ll even go out on a limb and say that I expect the decision to be unanimous — I can’t even think of how the liberals might try to support its ridiculous logic.

Well, how wrong I was. Of course the liberal justices voted to continue the rule of Humphrey’s Executor in force, because that rule limits the ability of a Republican President, elected democratically, to change the course of the policies of huge swaths of the government away from the priorities of the Democrats. (In the case of a Democratic President, the policy goals of the “independent” agencies, who are staffed by certified members of the D.C. swamp, almost always align with the President’s priorities. So the liberal justices can perceive no problem there.)

In this instance, the dissent of the three liberals was written by Justice Sotomayor. Basically, the dissent emphasizes the “wisdom” of the long history of these “independent” agencies, and of the Supreme Court precedent (i.e., Humphrey’s Executor) upholding their existence. Excerpt:

[F]ealty to the Constitution means respecting not just what it says, but what it does not say and by its silence leaves to others to decide. It also means respecting precedent—not as a wooden exercise, but out of a recognition that, whatever our confidence in the theories of the present moment, the wisdom of our founding document does not belong to today’s Justices alone.

I guess it’s the best argument they could think of to try to tie the hands of a Republican who got elected President. In this case, it did not work.

Mullin v. Doe

In this case, litigants from Haiti and Syria challenged the Trump administration’s termination of what is called “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) for migrants from those countries. TPS had been granted to migrants from Haiti in 2010 in the wake of a major earthquake in that country, and in 2012 to migrants from Syria, during a civil war there. As stated in the opening lines of Justice Alito’s majority opinion, “Congress created TPS in 1990 to provide short-term humanitarian relief for aliens who cannot safely return to their home countries due to events such as armed conflict or natural disaster.” And yet here in 2026 — sixteen years after “temporary” protected status was granted to Haitian migrants, and fourteen after it was granted to Syrians, those designations remained in effect. In a Democratic presidency, or series of them, those designations would have remained in effect essentially forever. But Trump withdrew them, on the ground that the crises that led to the temporary designations had long passed.

You might think that a case challenging termination of TPS would be about the easiest case ever to come before the Supreme Court. That’s because the statute creating the TPS program precludes judicial review of an executive decision to terminate a designation. From Justice Alito’s majority opinion:

The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims. It allows “no judicial review of any determination . . . with respect to the . . . termination” of a TPS designation. 8 U. S. C. §1254a(b)(5)(A).

So if you are a liberal justice, how are you going to get around that one? Justice Kagan’s dissent for the three liberals comes up with a gaggle of objections, all of which add up to the idea that if the Republican President tries to implement policies we don’t like, we can always find ways to tie him up in knots. Most of the objections are procedural (e.g., the Secretary of Homeland did not consult with all of the other agencies that she should appropriately have consulted with in rescinding the TPS designations). But my favorite objection is that Trump is barred from terminating TPS as to Haitians because he made some allegedly racially charged statements about people from that country. From Kagan’s dissent:

The Haiti plaintiffs have yet another claim that is likely to succeed: that race entered into the decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS designation, in violation of equal protection. . . . [This claim] is more than plausible: Even putting the clear-error standard aside, the Haiti plaintiffs have carried their burden. The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President [that are] repellent and racially inflected. . . .

The evidence in question consists of the well-publicized statements by President Trump in 2025 that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs and cats that were pets of people in the town. Whatever you might think about Trump’s statements on this subject, note the consequences that the liberal justices think follow: once a President has uttered any statement we deem racist against any group subject to a TPS designation, then he can no longer rescind that designation. It must remain in place forever (or at least until this President is replaced by a President more to our liking). Meanwhile, we and not the President get to run the immigration policy of the U.S. as to this country. And so, I guess, every single Haitian can come here and stay indefinitely without any ability of the President to do anything about it.

This is the quality of the judging that we can expect when the Democrats achieve their dream of packing the Supreme Court.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

I wish I had discovered this a few days ago to post this past July 4 but I only found out about it this morning and it is amazing.

Many/Most of us are already familiar with the miraculous coincidence of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents, one of whom (Adams) was most instrumental in pushing for the Declaration of Independence and the other one (Jefferson) who wrote it both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. This was taken by many/most Americans as a positive sign for America by Divine Providence. Also it should be remembered that though Adams and Jefferson were bitter political enemies, they ended up regularly sending each other friendly letters for many years in an act of apparent reconciliation.

Okay, so many of us know about this but this morning I discovered another AMAZING fact. Exactly five years after the second and third presidents died on the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of America, the fourth president, James Monroe, also died on the July 4, 1831. Wow! Was this all just mere “coincidence?” Perhaps some mathematician can figure out the statistical odds of this happening.

PJ Comix