Probably the biggest reason for President Trump losing support? Iran.

A big part of Trump’s coalition were people who didn’t want any prolonged wars, wars which served the interests of the “military industrial establishment” (politicians and their cronies), but not the cause of American liberty and sovereignty.

They equated Trump with, “No war.” But clearly that’s not what Trump was about. Trump was about pro-America. True: It didn’t serve America’s interests, back in 2003, to invade Iraq and then deal with the years long mess created by that war.

But Iran is different. Iran is openly and proudly the # 1 sponsor of world terrorism. Thanks in large measure to the money and moral support afforded by the Obama and Biden regimes, Iran has moved closer and closer to having nuclear weapons capability. In fact, based on information now released by Trump’s administration, Iran may have already been to that point.

You can’t say “no war” as an out-of-context absolute. When someone is already at war with you, literally coming to kill you (or, perhaps just as bad, engage in nuclear blackmail with you), then you have to strike them before it gets to the fatal point. It’s not about Israel. It’s about American safety. America benefits from Israeli sovereignty because, compared to the alternatives, Israel is a bastion of freedom and individual rights in that part of the world. And we need that part of the world for oil, which keeps the lights on in Western civilization. If we didn’t have a Communist-inspired environmentalist fascist movement impairing oil and energy production in America, it might be a different story; we might be able to ignore the middle East much more. But Iran would still be a threat, because Iran exports terrorism to America.

You can’t assume, “Trump stands against endless wars” and then consider Trump to have betrayed you when he strikes out against Iran. You might debate the timing, strategy and manner of that strike — but you cannot oppose the strike itself, not in principle. If “America First” means anything, it means saving us from nuclear blackmailers and bloodthirsty totalitarians like the Iranian regime. Oil and Israel are important factors; but America First is really what this was all about. It makes me terribly sad to think that radical leftist totalitarians (some of whom call for “capitalist blood” in the streets) will take over Congress because some people don’t believe in war, even when it’s clearly self-defense and survival.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

A reader emails: “Dear Dr. Hurd, my brother is 32. He doesn’t work. He, his wife and daughter live with our mother. They scrape by on disability, food stamps and our Mom’s generosity. I believe that his disrespect and mooching off our mother and late grandmother actually hastened our grandmother’s death.

“About a year ago he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. Since then I wonder if he’s legit or faking to collect disability. My feelings notwithstanding, do you think it’s possible to fake a diagnosis of that kind?”

Dear Reader, you wonder if your brother is mentally ill or just faking it. The answer is that it really doesn’t matter. You can acknowledge his problems if you so desire, but you should still hold him responsible for allowing his life get to this point.

Some health professionals will assert that your brother’s problems are entirely physical – that a “chemical imbalance” impacts his choices and his actions. But if that were true, then pills would easily cure all that ails us emotionally. No such miracle drug exists.

In trying to understand your brother, ask yourself, “What mistakes in his thinking make him act in self-defeating ways?” That’s how we hold people responsible. If his attitude is, “I can’t help it. I’m not responsible and everybody else owes me a living,” then you should indeed take issue with the way he thinks. If he says, “I know I think in irrational ways. I want to change so I can live a better life,” then he deserves credit for at least attempting to take responsibility for himself.

One takes responsibility by taking charge of his or her mind. That’s the goal of cognitive psychotherapy. If someone isn’t willing to take charge, then they have, in effect, given up. Some give up passively (“I’m beyond help”) and others in a more angry way (“I’m helpless and you had better take care of me!”). It sounds like your brother falls into the latter category. Because he’s overly emotional, he believes that there’s something wrong with him that he can’t be expected to fix. No wonder he’s angry and bitter. His erroneous conclusions led to his choice to mooch off your mother and be generally unpleasant.

Your mother and late grandmother helped facilitate the problem by buying into the same line of thinking. They viewed it as a false choice: Either he’s lying, or he’s physically ill. The truth is that we are the product of more than just brain chemistry. We’re the product of the way we view life, people and events. Anyone who’s even minimally intelligent can evaluate his or her own thinking. Sometimes it’s hard to do that alone. The psychiatrist who prescribed the medicine should have told your brother that he needed cognitive psychotherapy to figure out how to improve his thinking.

Going only on what you told me, I doubt that he’s faking. More likely he’s sad, angry and bitter. He has it easy by mooching off family and then attacking them verbally. He likely believes he has no choice but to be that way. Nobody ever challenged him to rise to a higher standard. This is his biggest problem, although he’ll never see it that way.

Of course, not every person labeled with a mental disorder is like your brother. There are as many different types of disorder labels as there are those without them. However, people with emotional issues often suffer from significant self-esteem problems and will tend to underestimate themselves. Health professionals, significant others and family who encourage this helplessness are doing them an injustice.

If he’s a victim of anything, he’s a victim of that insidious social trend. He has the power to liberate himself from that. If you want to help him and hold him responsible, that’s the way to do it. Tell your mother too.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

In what is clearly an existential war, will the French government fight back and, if it doesn’t, will the French people? Or, more importantly, can the French people?

Andrea Widburg | October 3, 2026

France’s urban areas have extremely large Muslim populations. I mean, extremely large. Now, those same populations are rampaging through the streets, attacking people, and setting buildings on fire. This is an existential problem for France, and it’s unclear whether the government will stop it and, if it doesn’t, whether the French people (mostly disarmed, of course) will step up to save themselves.

Let me take this step by step. First, how big is the urban Muslim population across France? Because France is an aggressively secular nation, it does not officially collect religious data, so the numbers are estimates and can be a little confusing, as they encompass both urban centers and the suburbs ringing those centers. Still, the data are useful. I asked ChatGPT to assemble the available data, which I present here. Please follow this link to see the caveats it attached to this data, and this link to see its source material.

Keeping those numbers in your head, especially for Marseille, consider this historically-based analysis that Michael Haltman compiled based on data in Peter Hammond’s Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat:

After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:

Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%

At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:

Bosnia — Muslim 40%

Chad — Muslim 53.1%

Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%

Of course, at 60%, it’s all over for any belief system other than Islam.

Keeping those numbers in your head, especially for Marseille, consider this historically-based analysis that Michael Haltman compiled based on data in Peter Hammond’s Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat:

After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:

Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%

At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:

Bosnia — Muslim 40%

Chad — Muslim 53.1%

Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%

Of course, at 60%, it’s all over for any belief system other than Islam.

Now, combine that data with reports of riots across France. This AP report gives a little background:

Thousands of arrests, hundreds of injuries, schools set on fire in France. When the summer vacation ended and the new term started just a month ago, few could have imagined that the academic year would so quickly descend into nationwide student protests — and turmoil.

In a country beset by crises — both foreign and domestic — the eruption and rapid spread of protests by unhappy teenage high schoolers caught France off guard.

Friday brought more of the scenes that have dominated streets this week: vandalism, garbage fires, teens confronting and taunting police. Officers charging, firing tear gas and making more arrests. By early afternoon, the education ministry reported protests impacting 560 schools.

Lest readers get upset, the AP hastens to assure them that (a) street protests are a common feature in France (that’s true) and (b) that the high school students have a level of professionalism, right down to masks and goggles to protect against tear gas.

Ostensibly, the protests are about bad schools:

High schoolers are expressing broad grievances — mainly, schools are under-resourced, with dilapidated facilities and insufficient staff. Still, spending on education is one of the costliest items in the state budget that Macron’s government proposed this week, with 65.5 billion euros ($74 billion) set aside for schools in the next year. That’s more than the proposed 63.4 billion euros for defense.

Students also complain that school days, which often start at 8 a.m., are too exhausting and the university entrance system too complex. Some university students also joined the protests this week.

Yeah, maybe. But footage on the ground suggests that the protesters aren’t students who want nicer buildings and better teachers. Instead, a lot of the footage suggests that the protesters are Muslim immigrants flexing their muscles:

It’s ironic, really, that the French national anthem is La Marseillaise, named after the city in France with the largest percentage of Muslims and the most aggressive Palestinian…er, Muslim…er, student rioting.

As the AP report quoted above notes, the French police have been busy arresting the rioters. But I doubt the efficacy of that approach. I also doubt many, if any, will have serious jail time or any jail time at all. The left is allied with Islam, and the left fears Islam. That means Islam is in the driver’s seat.

Given an anticipated weak French response, will the French population act? Despite France’s periodically dismal war record since Napoleon’s downfall (despite some victories, it’s failed enough to be a standing joke), the French have been a warlike people, and darn good at it, too. Their generals have been awful, whether at Agincourt in 1415 or during WWI and WWII, but the French citizens used to be brave.

Are they still brave? And does bravery matter when you’ve voluntarily disarmed yourself in an orgy of virtue signaling, as all good citizens across Europe have done?

Currently, France has fewer than 12.7 million civilian-held firearms, compared to the 400 million or so in the U.S. Even adjusting for America’s larger population, that works out to ~120.5 firearms per 100 people in America, and only ~19.6 per hundred in France. Are they going to throw champagne bottles and frogs’ legs at rampaging “second- and third-generation migrants” who have a living culture of violence, rather than just a faded history of warfare?

Unrecognized at the time, Europe basically died in WWII. America kept it on life support for a long time, and it went through the motions of living. But once Europe embraced leftism and, through that, unlimited Islamic immigration, it began dismantling the very values that created it.

What’s happening now is tragic to watch, but it feels terribly inevitable. The European train is already halfway across a collapsing bridge stretched high over a bottomless abyss.

American Thinker

How the British people gave up their own country, their future, and the narrative of their past.

Lars Møller | October 3, 2026

With intellectual clarity and courage, Soviet-born British podcaster Konstantin Kisin has challenged the common claim that Britain has always experienced high-volume immigration and is inherently a “nation of immigrants.” He notes that the post-1066 Norman conquest added only 5,000–10,000 individuals from mainland Europe to the ruling class—a number that pales, both numerically and proportionally, next to modern net migration figures running in the hundreds of thousands annually.

The unprecedented transformation of Britain’s demographic composition has long ceased to be a matter of distant projection or abstract statistical modelling. In fact, it has become the decisive structural fact of contemporary British politics. White British people are forecast to fall below half the population by 2063, according to modelling that incorporates fertility differentials, age structures, and sustained net migration.

In the major cities and among the younger cohorts, the transition is already far advanced; primary-school classrooms are expected to register a White British minority between 2030 and 2035. These numbers are not neutral background. On the contrary, they determine the composition of the electorate, the selection of candidates, and, ultimately, the character of the House of Commons itself.

After the July 2024 general election, the Commons reached its highest recorded level of ethnic diversity. Approximately ninety members—14% of the House—came from minority ethnic backgrounds, a 24% increase on the previous parliament. Of those ninety, sixty-six sat on the Labour benches, constituting 16% of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Representation of this kind has risen steadily since the first modern Black and Asian MPs entered the House in 1987, accelerating after 2010 as demographic change and party recruitment strategies reinforced one another. Labour’s dominance among minority MPs is not accidental; it reflects the party’s deeper organizational penetration of the communities that have grown most rapidly through postwar and recent immigration.

Immigrant and minority Labour members do not speak with a single voice. Some align with the pragmatic strand of party policy that emphasizes controlled, contribution-based migration and the need to retain public confidence in the system. Others draw explicitly on personal or familial migration histories to defend expansive family-reunion rights, refugee pathways, and the claim that continued inflows enrich public services and the economy.

When leadership figures have floated tighter rules—such as lengthening the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain—resistance has surfaced from left-wing and minority-background MPs who warn that such measures damage community cohesion or punish legal migrants. The practical consequence is institutional friction. Any bill designed to achieve a decisive and sustained reduction in net migration, or to reverse the cultural consequences of earlier settlement patterns, must navigate a parliamentary party whose demographic profile and experiential commitments make robust restriction politically costly.

Muslim representation follows a parallel trajectory. Twenty-five Muslim MPs now sit in the Commons, the large majority within Labour, others among Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and independents. None belong to an explicitly Islamist party; the formal structures of British parliamentary politics remain mainstream. Yet the presence of this bloc, based in constituencies with high concentrations of Muslim voters, introduces further constraints. Independent Muslim candidates in 2024 campaigned heavily on local community concerns and on foreign-policy questions, notably Gaza. The electoral incentives are clear: positions that appear to privilege national cultural continuity over transnational religious solidarity risk alienating decisive shares of the electorate in key seats.

Violence has already entered the calculus. Sir David Amess was murdered in October 2021 by a British national inspired by Islamic State propaganda while conducting a constituency surgery. An earlier attempt on the life of Stephen Timms in 2010 was likewise motivated by Islamist ideology. These episodes do not establish a general rule of parliamentary behavior, yet they illustrate the asymmetric costs that attach to open advocacy of cultural preservation or immigration restriction. Self-censorship and risk-aversion become rational responses long before formal majorities shift.

The cumulative effect is a progressive foreclosure of legislative possibility. Effective curbs on further immigration—measures capable of altering the long-term trajectory rather than merely managing its symptoms—require majorities willing to prioritize the historic nation’s demographic and cultural integrity over competing claims of diversity, anti-racism, and global equity. As the share of MPs whose personal or constituency interests lie elsewhere expands, that willingness contracts. The House of Commons is no longer a body that can be assumed to treat the preservation of British cultural continuity as a primary, non-negotiable good. It has become a body in which such preservation must compete, often unsuccessfully, with the distributive and symbolic demands of newer population groups.

Philosophically, the process reveals the vulnerability of liberal democratic institutions to demographic transformation. Classical liberalism presupposed a relatively homogeneous demos capable of sustaining the mutual recognition and shared historical memory that make majority rule legitimate. Once the demos itself is reconstituted by continuous large-scale settlement from culturally distant regions, the presupposition dissolves. Sovereignty remains formally intact; the capacity to exercise it in defense of the historic people evaporates. Edmund Burke’s insistence on society as a partnership across generations is inverted: the living generation, by acquiescing in policies that dilute its own continuity, extinguishes the inheritance it was obliged to transmit.

The narrative of the past is rewritten in parallel. School curricula, public commemorations, and institutional memory increasingly frame British history through the lens of empire, slavery, and racial hierarchy, while the achievements of industrial civilization, parliamentary government, and individual liberty are relativized or pathologized. This is not an organic evolution of historical understanding; it is the ideological counterpart of demographic change. A population that no longer constitutes a secure majority loses the cultural authority to insist upon its own story as the central thread of national identity. The past becomes contested territory rather than common inheritance.

The destructive mechanisms are self-reinforcing. Higher fertility among certain immigrant groups, continued net migration, and the electoral weight of already-settled communities lock in further diversification. Political parties respond by adjusting candidate selection and policy platforms to the new electorate. The resulting parliament then finds restriction both electorally unattractive and ideologically suspect. Attempts to reverse course invariably confront accusations of “racism” that carry genuine professional and social penalties. The Overton window shifts; what was once mainstream defense of national continuity is reclassified as “extremism.” 

Britain’s experience is not unique, yet it is particularly advanced among Western European nations. The combination of postwar imperial legacies, successive waves of unskilled labor migration from Africa and Asia, family-reunion policies, and asylum commitments has produced a denser and more rapid transformation than occurred in countries that maintained stricter controls. The result is a polity in which the historic people have, through a series of incremental decisions and failures of political will, surrendered the demographic foundations of their own continuity. The country remains geographically the same; its people and the narrative that once defined them do not.

The matter is settled not by formal declaration but by the arithmetic of births, deaths, and arrivals, and by the parliamentary majorities those numbers generate. Legislation capable of restoring the demographic and cultural conditions of earlier Britain is no longer a realistic prospect within the existing constitutional order. 

The British people have not been conquered by external force. Instead, they have consented, through successive governments and electoral choices, to the progressive displacement of their own majority status and the attenuation of the cultural confidence that once accompanied it. The future belongs to the numbers. The past is already being rewritten to accommodate them.

American Thinker

The right has its own unwritten rules of political correctness. There are forbidden words, and while they might not be met with censorship, they do elicit eye rolls. One proscribed term is “misogyny.” It also happens to be the most accurate description of the right’s mood and trajectory these days.

The right’s response to this trend has been to downplay it, or even deny that it is happening at all. But ignoring it will not make it go away. Political discourse often operates like a ratchet: the intensity around a given topic is constantly turned up, but the mechanism is not designed to dial back.

It might have been easier to wave away accusations of misogyny a few years ago. Now, I can just point to a viral post on X by Christian Heiens, who worked for former Republican Virginia delegate Nick Freitas, declaring that the time has come to end women’s suffrage. “The experiment has been run, and the results have been a catastrophe,” Heiens said.

“The sensible and prudent thing is to admit that our 20th century ancestors were wrong, and our ancestors over the preceding 5,000 years were right all along.”

The backdrop for that call to give women the Bronze Age treatment is the Lindsay Clancy case, which has become the latest fodder for a movement looking to break the clock of sexual equality.

In 2023, Clancy killed her three young children and then attempted suicide by slashing her neck and wrists before jumping from a second-story window. She survived, paralyzed from the waist down. That she killed her children is undisputed. Clancy’s defense is that her actions were the result of a lost battle with mental health issues, including bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis. Unlike postpartum depression, which is different and more common, postpartum psychosis is considered a psychiatric emergency. It can involve hallucinations, mood swings, and delusions. All things Clancy reported experiencing before tragedy struck.

A judge declared a mistrial on September 4 following seven days of deadlocked jury deliberations. By then, though, it had already become a magnet for what Rolling Stone described as the “true-crime-obsessed network of internet commentary.” Some of Clancy’s female supporters went so far as to claim that her then husband was the real culprit – a conspiracy theory vigorously rejected by Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s own defense attorney. “My response to those people is, at some point, maybe you get a chance to listen to that 911 tape, and then you look me in the eye and tell me that you think Patrick Clancy did this,” Reddington told Fox News. “What this guy has been through is horrific.”

The right went even further than true-crime-obsessed misandrists and used the case to paint a picture of women as a whole in the most sordid colors conceivable. Clancy became “proof” that all women everywhere are evil, simply looking for any excuse to destroy their families, then lie about it to evade accountability.

Over at the Daily Wire, Matt Walsh used the case to claim that postpartum depression is mostly fake. Women are just being “selfish,” he said. The stuff about hormones causing havoc after birth? Overblown. The real problem is the rotten core of modern women.

Walsh’s wife, Alissa Walsh, seems to disagree. In a 2024 post, she comforted a struggling friend: “Postpartum is not easy at all.” “We blame hormones but… should we?” Joshua Lisec, an author who frequently collaborates with high-profile MAGA celebrities, wrote on X. In another post, he claimed that “upwards of 70-80% of marriages are one-sided abuse and violence of every kind, women against their husbands,” and that this is a conservative estimate.

Others used the Clancy case to make even more shocking assertions. “If women can be excused for killing their kids due to Postpartum depression then men should be excused from raping women if they have High Testosterone,” wrote self-described “paleocon” and “Christian” Andrew Wilson. “Modern women have become incompetent, immoral, and driven heavily by hatred of accountability,” he added in another post, citing the Clancy as evidence.

You might be wondering if people like Wilson and Walsh understand the difference between postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter to them. They don’t care that men account for 91 percent of all perpetrators of familicide for the same reason that they didn’t care about another recent tragedy involving a father who strangled his five-year-old son and was found not guilty by reason of insanity – the same defense Clancy is making. The reasoning seems to be that if it does not contribute to the cause of vilifying women, then it may as well not be real.

Some conservative women have begun to take note of where this is all going. Kimberly Begg is a lawyer and the president of the Clare Booth Luce Center for Conservative Women. She’s also the mother of five children and a devout Catholic. Speaking to the New York Times, Begg expressed concerns over “conservatives pushing for a return to rigid gender norms, with women firmly planted at home.” Begg rejects that framework. She believes women can have both a family and a career, which is pretty typical anyway.

What Begg is saying is not controversial, or at least it shouldn’t be. Working moms had a labor force participation rate of 71.7 percent in 2021, according to USAFacts. Indeed, women accounted for virtually all US job growth in August. That’s not surprising, given that they tend to gravitate more than men toward some of the only reliably growing sectors, such as public education and healthcare.

On the same day the story about her ran, Brian Sauvé, a pastor and founder of a Christian publishing house, encouraged his flock on X to put women like Beggs in her place. “Laugh at the girl boss,” he wrote. “Make her feel low-status. Call her cringe.”

Sauvé is part of a constellation of right-wing religious figures who want women taken down a peg in society. Among the most notable of these figures is Doug Wilson, a pastor who believes women should not be able to vote. Wilson has powerful allies, like Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who belongs to a congregation in the evangelical fundamentalist network of churches co-founded by Wilson.

One of Begg’s sons told her that his male high school classmates have “openly questioned whether women should be able to vote.” Several of her young female interns shared similar stories. One recalled hearing a classmate quote webcam pimp-turned-MAGA celebrity Andrew Tate saying, “So I guess women just want to be raped.” Another shared that, upon expressing interest in law school, a male colleague told her, “I don’t know if women should be lawyers.”

Though Begg is aware of the problem on the right, she seems to view it as a nascent thing that hasn’t quite arrived in full. But it is already here. In August, a reader of my Substack told me about how the misogynistic views absorbed by her husband, through his contact with online spaces, contributed to the collapse of their marriage. This woman, I’ll call her Jane, described herself as a lifelong conservative, raised in a religious household by two smart, caring parents. Her husband was initially a fairly conventional, fiscally-minded, and business-oriented conservative. Gradually, then suddenly, that changed as he immersed himself in right-wing spaces online. Eventually, he began to challenge and provoke Jane, spurred on by whatever he had been consuming.

“He would pick a fight with me, say something that was so clearly not his independent idea,” she said. “Sure enough, I would find out later that he had read ‘red pill’ right-wing rage-bait that stated husband versus wife was necessarily a zero-sum game.

“He said I had tricked him into marrying me for children,” Jane said. “I did marry him for children – isn’t that the whole point?” Jane noted that he had been struggling with himself as an individual, and that it seemed to make him vulnerable to pernicious ideas.

Their marriage crumbled. She emerged late in the Trump era, divorced, without children, and starting over. To make things worse, she said her parents fell under the same influence as her husband after stewing in the same psychic milieu for too long.

“From their interactions with me lately, and what they share with me on Twitter, it’s clear that some part of their brains have steeped in the general anti-woman discourse in right-wing online spaces,” she said. It’s unclear how or even if this genie goes back in the bottle. Ideologically, much of the movement has been infected by concepts from “incel” subculture.

Now, even married men on the right talk about women in a way that had once only been associated with the terminally online and involuntarily celibate. Part of the reason for this pervasiveness is that the rationale behind misogyny can be used to bolster some of the right’s political interests that have, on the face of it, nothing to do with gender.

Women are cast as the carriers of empathy, which is pathologized by the right and presented as a kind of social contagion. There is some evidence that women indeed register more emotional responsivity than men, meaning that they’re better able to recognize the thoughts and feelings of others and take perspectives outside their own.

Women have also historically played key roles in a range of social justice efforts, from suffrage to the civil rights movement – all things a not-insignificant part of the right wants to roll back. This bears out even across the daily news cycle.

A Gallup survey in June on approval for the US strikes in Iran found that women were far less supportive than men. Just 28 percent of women said they approved. They are also less likely to support the war than men in general. Similarly, polling from YouGov and the Economist earlier this year found that more Americans support than oppose abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with more women overall than men being in favor. Even on AI safety, women are more likely to express skepticism about the benefits and concern about the risks. From the perspective of the hard right, it makes sense to try to diminish the influence of women in the movement.

Even if someone wanted to halt this trend, it’s hard to imagine how it could happen. The right-wing attention economy places a premium on outrage. There’s just no reason for it to dial any of this down. You might be wondering whether that is wise from an electoral standpoint. Politics, after all, is about adding, not subtracting supporters – though, not according to Matt Walsh.

When warned by conservative women that the rhetoric he was mainstreaming would alienate members of the Republican coalition, Walsh simply balked in a three-post thread. “Tired of this nonsense. Don’t care. Go cry somewhere,” he said, adding that anyone who would walk away from the movement due to the misogyny of its leading voices would be a “a retarded, morally debased egomaniac.”

His responses swiftly garnered tens of thousands of likes and half a million impressions. The ratchet turns again. That’s what it’s designed to do.

Pedro Gonzalez, The Spectator

Vice President JD Vance says it’s apparent that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a fellow Republican, is preparing to run for president in 2028.

Polls show Vance is among the top choices among likely GOP voters to become the next GOP presidential nominee. However, he’s remained noncommittal, telling NBC News recently that he’s focused, at least for now, on electing Republicans in the midterms.

“It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” Vance said. “At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.”

Cruz is a solid supporter of Israel and the Iran war. And in recent months, he has challenged a number of influential conservative podcasters, including Tucker Carlson, on those issues. He sought the 2016 GOP presidential nomination but lost to Trump.

RealClearPolitics polling average shows Cruz has 3% support for the nomination, compared to 39.7% for Vance.

Ben Whedon, Just the News

I will throw you in prison. I want Chinese style communism to happen inside of the democratic party right now. I want to do cultural revolution shit.” —Hasan Piker, DSA Spox

Translation: Chuck Schumer knows that the Democrats have already been thwarted from rigging the election, from flooding the polls with illegal immigrant voters, with dead voters, with voters who moved out of state but still got mail-in ballots sent to their old addresses, with voters registered as living in Walmart parking lots, and so on. Chuck Schumer knows that the Civil Rights Division of DOJ is sending hundreds of lawyers to observe the action in swing state polling places. ICE might even be on hand to see who turns up.

So, Chuck Schumer is pretending that the Republicans will try to do what the Democrats actually did in several previous elections (including the last midterm, 2022, viz., AZ, GA, NV), and would have liked to do in this midterm, but can’t. The Democrats will holler like crazy about it before the election to plant this idea in credulous minds. They will jump up and down going woo-woo-woo on Election Day itself to water the idea. And after the election they will blitz every critical precinct with lawsuits to prevent the vote from being certified, using select “activist” judges to issue TROs and writs to delay election results and de-legitimize the vote.

And if none of that avails — which it won’t — they’ll call out their ground troops, Antifa, BLM, Free Palestine, LGBTQ2S+, the furious transsexuals, the hysterical cat ladies, and suchlike to make a giant ruckus so as to provoke the president to invoke emergency powers to quell the mayhem. And then they’ll point at Mr. Trump shrieking, “See! Tyrant!”

Chuck Schumer is such a shithead. Everybody knows that he intends for the Democratic Party to inflict lawfare and commit warfare on the midterm election (in that order), and hence on the American people, behind an Alinsky-grade cloud of gaslight claiming the other side is doing it.

Of course, it’s the president’s constitutional duty (Article II, Section 3) to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. You have seen that Mr. Trump is taking a good deal of care vis-à-vis this midterm election to avoid any hint of interference. You can infer that’s at least one reason we have seen no indictments of the Deep State sedition artists operating so brazenly since 2016.

By the way, doing what’s possible to make sure that only citizens can vote is taking care to faithfully execute the law, in case there’s any question about that. A September 25 SCOTUS decision in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters (No. 26A308), a 6-3 majority (usual suspects dissenting) paused by lower-court judge Sparkle Sooknanan that had blocked the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system — further proof that the Lefty-left won’t abide any restrictions on who can vote.

The SCOTUS stay allows state and local officials to match their voter rolls against federal Social Security records, to sort out who can legally vote. AI could do this with novel efficiency. The catch is, states’ participation is voluntary. Only twenty-seven states have moved to participate in this record-sharing. Another catch is that SCOTUS waited, for unknown reasons, before issuing their ruling until well into the “90-day rule window” (in the National Voter Registration Act) that doesn’t allow actual changes in the voter rolls during this period, only identification of problems. We’ll see if any of that dissuades non-citizens from attempting to cast a vote.

You have to wonder why the Democratic Party is acting like they’ve already won the midterms. After ten years of narrative control through their allies in the network media and what’s left of the major newspapers, the Democrats apparently believe that if you assert an outcome often enough, Oprah Winfrey style, it will come true.

It’s just another gaslighting op. Look at the Democratic Party’s marquee candidates, a ragtag and bobtail of avowed jihadis, communists, neo-Jacobins, and plain old creeps such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York, Angie Nixon in Florida, James Talarico in Texas, and Troy Jackson up in Maine. The old Chuck Schumer / Hakeem Jeffries wing of the party pretends to support this rabble, who have declared they are merely running under the party’s banner for convenience and aim to deep-six the likes of Schumer and Jeffries at the first opportunity.

Will the Democrats still try to cheat their way through the midterms despite the obstacles and disincentives piling up around them? Probably, yes, because that will trigger conflict between the states and the Feds, and post-election chaos is what the party needs to keep hope alive, as they like to say. They want the results to remain in limbo as long as possible, with maximum lawfare around it to further confuse and confound the outcome. It’s in their nature. They are the scorpion riding the frog across the river in the ancient parable.

James Howard Kunstler

About one-third of working-age Americans who have health insurance also have outstanding medical bills or debt, according to a Sept. 17 survey conducted by Commonwealth Fund, a private healthcare foundation.

That includes people with an employer-sponsored health plan, an individual health plan, or Obamacare, according to the report.

Hospitals are the main creditors, the survey found. Sixty-four percent of insured people with medical debt said it was from hospital services such as inpatient care, outpatient care, and emergency department care.

Routine care added to the debt for many of the 4,000 survey respondents. That included doctor visits (43 percent), treatment for chronic conditions (39 percent), lab work or diagnostic tests (38 percent), and dental care (25 percent).

Nearly half reported having $2,000 or more in unpaid medical bills.

Most of those having medical debt laid the blame on insurance companies (64 percent) or the broader healthcare system (57 percent), according to the survey.

“When insured people are left owing thousands of dollars for their care, coverage is falling short of its most basic purpose: protecting people financially when they get sick,” wrote Sara Collins, coauthor of the report.

Here’s why having health insurance often fails to protect Americans from debt.

Coverage Denials

At least one in five adults or their family members experienced coverage denials, either before or after they were provided care from July 22 to Oct. 27, 2025, according to a June study from Commonwealth Fund.

A similar March study from KFF, a healthcare policy research center, found that 33 percent of insured adults had coverage denied between 2022 and 2024.

Common denial reasons include noncovered services, out-of-network providers, failure to seek prior approval, or a determination by the insurer that the treatment is not medically necessary, according to KFF.

Physician billing or administrative errors can also lead to claim denials.

“Minor data errors are the most common culprit for claim denials,” said Blue Cross Blue Shield in Texas in a report. That happens when a provider submits the wrong code, leaves information out, or has a patient’s name or birthdate wrong.

Among those who reported billing errors or coverage denials, fewer than half challenged them, mostly because they weren’t aware they had the right to do so, according to a 2024 Commonwealth Fund survey.

While about one-third of prior authorization denials in the Obamacare system were overturned after appeal, fewer than 1 percent of denied claims are appealed in 2024, according to KFF.

“Not everyone has the time, knowledge, or resources to challenge their insurer’s decision,” stated Alex Hoagland, assistant professor of health economics at the University of Toronto, in a 2025 Commonwealth Fund study.

Benefit Cuts

About 60 percent of working-age Americans got health coverage through an employer in 2025, according to KFF. That’s more than 165 million people.

But the cost to employers has been rising.

For 2027, employers are expected to pay more than $19,000 in healthcare premiums per employee, a nearly double-digit increase for the fourth straight year.

Employers have been scaling back the benefit as a result.

Nearly three-quarters of small employers (73 percent) are considering dropping group coverage benefits in 2027, according to a September survey from eHealth, an insurance agency.

More resilient larger employers may respond by “shifting costs to employees through higher deductibles, coinsurance, or restricted networks,” said Dr. Paul Fronstin, director of Health Benefits Research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, in a January report.

Fewer employers are covering GLP-1s to treat obesity due to high costs, according to an August employer report from Business Group on Health, with coverage dropping from 72 percent in 2025 to 60 percent in 2026.

“That could preserve offer rates but reduce the value of coverage, potentially lowering take-up,” Fronstin stated.

“For workers, the impact could be significant, meaning higher out-of-pocket costs, greater reliance on public programs and increased financial insecurity tied to healthcare expenses.”

Higher Premiums, Cost Sharing

While employers pay the primary portion of premiums, employees cover about 20 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Over the past decade, the contribution has increased more than 30 percent for single coverage (31 percent) and the family coverage average (37 percent). In 2025, workers’ annual contribution amounted to $1,440 for single coverage and $6,850 for family coverage, according to KFF.

Beyond premium payments, Americans are responsible for out-of-pocket costs including deductibles, copays, and coinsurance.

More than three-quarters (78 percent) of working-age adults are responsible for at least $1,000 in deductibles for most covered services before the insurer pays anything. Ten years ago, only 62 percent of insured adults had a deductible of $1,000 or more, according to KFF.

Coinsurance kicks in after employees meet deductible limits. Coinsurance payments average 20 percent of the charge for covered services. For hospital admission, that amounts to an average of more than $300 per day.

In addition, most of the working population must pay at least $20 in copays every time they visit a doctor for primary care, according to KFF. Average copays exceeded $300 for hospital admission and $180 for outpatient surgery in 2025.

Most plans have an annual out-of-pocket limit, beyond which the insurance company pays 100 percent of covered charges. The average out-of-pocket limit is $3,000 for 72 percent of workers and $6,000 for 21 percent in 2025, according to KFF.

At least half of adults with employer-sponsored insurance or marketplace coverage said their insurance was fair or poor when it comes to monthly premiums and out-of-pocket costs, according to an April report from KFF.

In 2024, nearly 23 percent of insured Americans reported that their insurers did not protect them from high out-of-pocket or unaffordable healthcare costs, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

The breaking point, beyond which an average American cannot pay their medical bills, is around $4,354, according to JG Wentworth, a financial service company.

Unexpected Medical Expenses

Patients can get a surprising bill when they receive care through out-of-network providers, when hospitals charge facility fees, or due to miscalculated prices.

About one in five adults had major, unexpected medical expenses in 2025, with most of the amount over $1,000, according to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Forty-five percent of insured, working-age adults received an unexpected medical bill in 2024 that they thought should have been free or covered by their insurance, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

“Unexpected medical expenses can push households into medical debt, particularly those with limited savings or unstable income,” stated the Commonwealth Fund in the September report.

More than a third of insured non-elderly would be unable to pay a $1,000 bill within a month for an unexpected medical expense, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

An unexpected expense of $500 represented a hardship for nearly half of adults in 2025, according to the Federal Reserve, potentially forcing them to borrow money or sell an asset in order to cover the expense.

“As a primary care physician, one of the most difficult things is seeing a patient who can’t afford something they truly need, whether it’s important testing, a critical follow-up visit, or necessary treatment. This can have real clinical consequences and be incredibly demoralizing for caregivers,” said Commonwealth Fund President Joseph R. Betancourt, M.D., in a statement.

“No patient should have to avoid or delay care or experience anxiety about medical bills and debt. We can and should do better. There are clear steps policymakers, insurers, and hospitals can take to ensure people can get and afford the care they need, when they need it most.”

Sylvia Xu, Epoch Times

Thousands of noncitizens are losing eligibility Thursday for federally funded Medicaid thanks to President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.

It’s difficult to understand why the federal government admitted so many people who needed American taxpayers to support them in the first place. But what’s not difficult is understanding why Democrats unanimously opposed this legislation — and why it matters for the midterms.

The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act tightened eligibility requirements for Medicaid coverage. Medicaid is a taxpayer-funded health care program that should be for helping poor and disabled Americans. Instead, the policy has been used to pay for health care for hundreds of thousands of foreigners (yes, noncitizens).

Under the new eligibility requirements, refugees and asylees who do not have green cards will no longer be eligible for Medicaid covered by federal tax dollars, though states can individually choose to provide the coverage themselves. (Lawful permanent residents, minors, Cuban and Haitian migrants, and those covered by the Compacts of Free Association are eligible should they meet the other requirements).

According to KFF Health News, Florida “identified nearly 177,000 immigrants who would no longer qualify for the state’s Medicaid program starting in October,” Arizona “predicts nearly 28,000 could lose eligibility,” New Jersey “expects 15,000 to 25,000 of its noncitizen residents to lose their Medicaid coverage,” while North Carolina and Washington estimate the ineligibility of 29,000 and 11,000, respectively. (Notably, these noncitizens can still qualify for medical care under Emergency Medicaid, which is an entirely separate issue.)

The program has allowed foreigners to come here and force taxpayers to pay for their health issues while many Americans themselves struggle with rising health care costs. Take for example one refugee identified by KFF Health News as Ahin, who came to the U.S. in 2024.

“I came here to live a better life,” Ahin said. But “soon after arriving in the U.S., she developed severe abdominal pain that required intestinal surgery. Those costs, along with ongoing visits to specialists, were covered by Medicaid.”

The costs, however, were actually “covered” by Americans. Medicaid “has also been vital to her mother, who has asthma,” KFF Health News reported.

In other words, two foreigners came to this country and began milking a system that should be solely for the benefit of citizens. Also of note is that neither one of these women seemingly broke the law in order to get American-funded healthcare. They were ostensibly here “legally,” which only exposes yet another problem with immigration — getting into our country suddenly entitles you to a host of benefits.

Republicans used their congressional majority to fix eligibility requirements so that Americans wouldn’t be expected to bear the burden of taking care of every Third World foreigner who lands on our soil. Democrats opposed the legislation that included these eligibility fixes. And what’s clear is that these much needed restrictions only became law because Republicans had the votes to pass them. Had Democrats controlled Congress, Americans would still be expected to foot these bills, which is why this policy change matters far beyond Medicaid.

Voters heading into the midterm elections should be asking themselves who Democrats will put first if given power again because right now, it seems Democrats’ first priority is foreigners.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal promised in January that “As soon as we get the gavels back, we have to dismantle DHS, ICE and CBP.”

Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said just last month that admitting “a thoughtful number of refugees” is our “international obligation” and that we, as a nation, “must restart refugee resettlement to a respectable and honorable level.” Their statement came in response to the Trump administration saying it would limit the refugee cap to roughly 17,500 refugees from South Africa in the next fiscal year.

While the trio didn’t explicitly state what a “respectable and honorable level” constitutes, perhaps the Biden administration’s policy of welcoming more than 100,000 refugees for fiscal year 2024 is the new Democrat standard.

In other words, Democrats are foreigner first, Americans last. They care little about the effects of mass legal and illegal migration and have gone so far as to suggest that upon taking power, they will do what they can to prioritize foreigners — even though Americans voted for Trump, who ran overwhelmingly on mass deportations and cracking down on all immigration. This is why the midterms matter so much.

Gas prices are insanely high. They suck. There’s no sugarcoating that the Iran War has strained Americans financially at the pump. But gas prices can — and do — change. Not to mention that Democrats, for all their talk about caring about lowering them, have a poor track record of success in doing so. Just look at California, a Democrat-run state with the highest gas prices in the country thanks to Democrat policies. Democrats may run on affordability and lowering gas prices, but that doesn’t mean they will actually do it.

What they will do, what they’ve guaranteed, is open the border. Flooding the country with Third World foreigners and forcing Americans to foot the bill for all of it. Democrats’ opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill — which will help save Americans from footing the bill for foreigners — proves that they are not going to be putting America first if they win this November.

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Brianna Lyman, The Federalist

Democrats are obsessing over high fuel costs, but the historical record and their policy platform strongly suggests that things would be even worse if they were in charge.

As November’s midterm elections approach, Democrat candidates have obsessed over rising fuel costs, making the price at the pump the central issue in their closing message to voters as they lambast the so-called “war of choice” in Iran.

With the national average approaching $4.50 per gallon, the cost of gas is indeed a real problem for American families – and the war with Iran is indeed the primary reason for it. The Trump administration has made the case that the war and its costs are necessary to prevent the terrorist Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Republican candidates have sought to largely avoid the issue entirely, instead focusing on Democrats’ radical policies and the socialist surge within the party.

But there is another, more compelling argument Republicans have in their favor on this front: voting Democrat won’t lower the price of gas – or anything else, for that matter.

Americans have every right to be upset about the cost of living and the fact that the American Dream seems to be slipping further out of reach. But they should actually look at Democrats’ record on energy policy rather than just blindly assuming that voting for the out-of-power party will lead to a reversal of what they’re frustrated about.

Sometimes, as is the case here, the alternative is worse than the current situation, as undesirable as it may be. Republicans who feel discouraged or unmotivated to turn out in November should remember how bad things were just a few years ago and have the same sense of urgency that they had in 2024 to prevent a return to Democrat rule this year.

But more importantly, it wasn’t too long ago when gas was even more expensive than it is now – above $5 per gallon in 2022, when Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. Biden blamed much of the increase on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war certainly aggravated an already tight global oil market, but the price increases began well before Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border.

According to the Energy Information Administration, regular gasoline averaged approximately $2.38 per gallon immediately before Biden took office in January 2021. By February 21, 2022, three days before the invasion, it had climbed to $3.53.

In inflation-adjusted dollars, gas averaged $4.69 per gallon in 2022 and $4.02 per gallon in 2023, compared to $3.95 per gallon so far this year. That’s cold comfort for families shelling out more than they feel they should be at the pump, but it does provide some context for the current crisis – and a reminder that Democrats’ record was even worse.

Biden entered office determined to transform American energy policy, and congressional Democrats were all too eager to assist.

On his first day as president, Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, effectively terminating a project designed to transport approximately 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil daily. That would’ve reduced prices at the pump dramatically.

A week later, he ordered a pause on new federal oil and gas leasing. A federal judge blocked that decision in June 2021, but the message had been sent that his administration would be no friend to oil and gas producers. Biden also pursued additional restrictions on fossil-fuel development and regulations intended to gut the industry.

Contrast that approach with a milestone achieved during Trump’s first administration when, in 2019, the United States became a net energy exporter for the first time in 67 years.

Americans should also look to current liberal strongholds to see what a vote for Democrats actually looks like in practice. Perhaps the clearest example is California.

On September 25, motorists in the Democrat-governed state were paying an average of $6.24 per gallon, compared with $4.49 nationally. California’s higher fuel taxes, environmental programs, and specialized gasoline requirements have all contributed to its unusually expensive fuel market.

Compounding those costs is the complete collapse of the state’s refining facilities as a result of Governor Gavin Newsom’s regulatory assault on the industry. Phillips 66 began shutting down its Los Angeles-area refinery in 2025. Valero subsequently idled its Benicia refinery, completing the process in April 2026. Together, the facilities had accounted for approximately 20 percent of California’s refining capacity.

These developments are especially significant given California Democrats’ longstanding ambition to phase out gasoline-powered automobiles. That ambition that has now become popular at the federal level as well, with Biden signing an order that would have required half of all new vehicles to be electric by 2030. (Trump quickly reversed that order after taking office.)

Democrats’ EV mandates have not only made fuel more expensive, but cars as well. Everywhere Democrats are in charge, taxes and regulations are hammering working families.

The broader affordability debate should raise similar red flags for voters about Democrats’ economic record.

Inflation reached 9.1 percent in June 2022, its highest annual rate in more than four decades. Americans experienced substantial increases in prices for gasoline, groceries, housing, and other household necessities.

Republicans subsequently passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, making major provisions of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent and introducing additional tax deductions. Passage of the bill prevented what would have been the largest tax hike in American history. Yet every congressional Democrat opposed the legislation. When Democrats had the chance to actually put more money back in the pockets of working Americans, they voted “no.”

Moreover, the data isn’t all bad now, despite some persistent pain points in the economy. Inflation-adjusted household income hit a record high in 2025. Stock indexes have touched multiple record highs in recent weeks. The most recent jobs report was exceptionally strong, well above expectations. Unemployment remains low.

The central question voters should ask candidates campaigning on affordability is straightforward: Beyond criticizing today’s prices, what specific policies would you implement to bring down the cost of gas or anything else? And, just as importantly, what have you actually done to implement those policies?

Democrat candidates have now conveniently decided that affordability is worth talking about after ignoring it for four years when the cost-of-living crisis was even worse under their watch. Voters should view their newfound concern with skepticism.

Shane Harris, AMAC News