We’ve all been there, men. You’re waiting in line outside GameStop, minding your own business, when a gorgeous Chinese woman walks up and asks you to dinner. You start dating, but the question lingers — could she actually be a spy?
Here are a few simple signs that your new girlfriend might actually be a Chinese spy:
She’s a gorgeous Chinese woman who wants to go on a date with you: This is your first clue.
A babe, a smoking hot babe from the Orient, wants to see you romantically: You don’t have that kind of game. Get it through your head.
A woman of Chinese descent, who is conventionally beautiful, is expressing some modicum of interest in you: It’s spy or nothing, bud.
She is female, Chinese, and not ugly, yet wants to go out with a giant dweeb like yourself: Concerning.
A real-life human being of the opposite sex, who hails from the Far East, and is a total smoke show, claims to be physically attracted to you: Be honest with yourself, bro.
She is not blind, has seen you, and looks like a supermodel from the continent of Asia: Bad news on the spy front.
She is a Chinese “10,” and you are whatever number you are: Espionage is literally the only explanation.
If any of these ring true, watch out! The CCP is onto you!
“Driving the kitchen table affordability message and tying that to Democrats on a positive and Republicans on a negative,” he said. “They couldn’t get any traction on these cultural war issues anymore because we figured out how to get around that.”
“They never figured it out, and that network is going to continue to push for kitchen-table issues and hold our Democratic lawmakers accountable.”
VAN JONES: Now it can be told. How did we win the narrative on affordability? Was it just these nice little Democrats out there running for office and going, “No”? The Republicans never figured out what we were doing.
There’s something called the American Accountability Network: tens of thousands of online humans, not bots, coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online.
Thirty-two and a half million people hit on Instagram every day, 88.8 million hits on Twitter every single day, and 185 million Facebook hits every single day—and they never figured it out.
The Republicans could not understand: It wasn’t bots. It was actual human beings. The most effective online organizing campaign, called the American Accountability Network, flew under the radar screen. It had never been told. They were talking about the issue, or they were saying, “You need to elect Democrats to deal with this,” driving the kitchen-table affordability message and tying that to Democrats on a positive and Republicans on a negative.
CNN’s Van Jones says the Democratic Party’s “American Accountability Network” coordinated tens of thousands of people to amplify their message across social media. “The Republicans never figured out what we were doing!” he said. “Don’t get mad at me. I was given permission to reveal this”
“Driving the kitchen table affordability message and tying that to Democrats on a positive and Republicans on a negative,” he said. “They couldn’t get any traction on these cultural war issues anymore because we figured out how to get around that.”
“They never figured it out, and that network is going to continue to push for kitchen-table issues and hold our Democratic lawmakers accountable.”
VAN JONES: Now it can be told. How did we win the narrative on affordability? Was it just these nice little Democrats out there running for office and going, “No”? The Republicans never figured out what we were doing.
There’s something called the American Accountability Network: tens of thousands of online humans, not bots, coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online.
Thirty-two and a half million people hit on Instagram every day, 88.8 million hits on Twitter every single day, and 185 million Facebook hits every single day—and they never figured it out.
The Republicans could not understand: It wasn’t bots. It was actual human beings. The most effective online organizing campaign, called the American Accountability Network, flew under the radar screen. It had never been told. They were talking about the issue, or they were saying, “You need to elect Democrats to deal with this,” driving the kitchen-table affordability message and tying that to Democrats on a positive and Republicans on a negative.
Defense secretary’s group was laughing, chatting after taking photos at memorial
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got a sharp reminder about decorum on Wednesday at one of the nation’s most solemn sites. While at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day for a ceremony where President Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Hegseth, his wife, and senior aides were chatting and laughing after taking photos in front of the tomb, prompting an on-duty sentinel to call out, “All visitors will maintain atmospheric silence and respect at all times,” NBC News reports. Hegseth did not visibly respond and kept walking up nearby steps.
Hegseth was with his wife, Jennifer, chief of staff Ricky Buria, deputy chief of staff Patrick Weaver, and senior adviser and deputy assistant Tami Radabaugh, CNN reports. Asked about the exchange, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Hegseth and the department “have always honored” the military’s sacrifices. “While commemorating this solemn day, a soldier correctly and respectfully reminded everyone to maintain decorum,” Parnell said. The tomb, considered one of the most sacred war memorials in the US, has been guarded around the clock by soldiers from the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment since 1948, reports the AP.
There’s no shortage of takeaways from last Tuesday’s shellacking, but one of the most unfortunate is the door the GOP’s drubbing opened for radical Islam. In Michigan, which is sounding more like an arm of the Tehran propaganda machine every day, two of the most powerful offices are laying an unnerving groundwork for the nation’s next chapter. As Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed openly warned in his victory speech, winning his seat was never the goal. “The goal is to use that seat to transform our politics.” And that’s what every American should be afraid of.
El-Sayed’s success, which seemed impossible in a post-9/11 world, has ushered in an era of proud anti-Semitism and a growing concern that his religion — which is predicated on non-Muslim hatred — is starting to gain an eerie foothold in the halls of American government. “I’m honored to be the next United States senator from the great state of Michigan,” El-Sayed told his new constituents, adding that the state is now “the capital of Arab America.”
Arab America is one thing, experts would note, but when Arab America is just a front for the ultimate goal — Sharia law — the country should be very concerned. That much was clear from the congratulations that came pouring in from extreme Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who called it just one step in ensuring “Muslim political power lasts for the long haul.” Any doubts about El-Sayed’s ties to the terrorist-adjacent Brotherhood should have vanished with the group’s jubilant celebration of the Colombia graduate. Senior officials hailed the win as a model for the religion to work from “within the political system” on behalf of the Islamic world.
The fervor is even affecting Governor-elect Jocelyn Benson, who’s now appointed a Nation of Islam leader to serve on her transition team, “months after an antisemitism coalition removed him from an advisory panel over his controversial affiliations.” Marcus Muhammad will be helping to shape Benson’s policy priorities, despite comparing Jews to “termites” and calling Adolf Hitler “a great man.”
But exactly how worried should Americans be about the rise of Islamic power in the U.S.? The Washington Stand’s Casey Harper sat down with Shahram Hadian, a former Muslim who fled Iran, in his latest “Outstanding” podcast, and he asked that very question: is the paranoia over Sharia law just fear-mongering, or is there more to it?
“Well,” Hadian replied, “do you value your freedoms? Because if you value your freedoms, then it is absolutely a concern. If you don’t value your freedoms, and you’re okay being subjugated, whether you’re subjugated under the push for socialism, Marxism, communism,” then fine. But one thing people need to understand is that “Sharia is Islam. … It encompasses every area of life for a Muslim. So that’s part of the problem we have. … We’re trying to separate the two. And there is no separation.”
Thanks to the media and our leftist education system, young people, especially, have been led to believe that there are two kinds of Muslims — the peaceful followers, which they’ve been taught is the majority, and a tiny fringe of violent jihadists.
Pastor Hadian passionately disagreed. He talked about the success these forces have had in brainwashing our children, pointing to a disturbing new Rasmussen poll that found four out of 10 young people between 18 and 25 (43%) have a highly favorable view of Sharia. “These are not Muslims,” he noted. “These are just young Americans that they surveyed. That should be disturbing, because where are they getting that? They’re getting that as a result of our indoctrination in our high schools, in our universities, in our colleges, by the media,” he explained.
The effect, he warned, is that entire generations “want to prop up anyone they see as marginalized or as discriminated against. So, as you said, they’re going to say we’re being racist” by pointing out the truth about this religion. “They’re going to say we’re being Islamophobic. No, I’m not against any individual people. … It’s the ideology we have a problem with,” the Iranian made clear. “And if Muslims come to this nation, assimilate, follow our laws, fine. You want to privately be a Muslim? I don’t have a problem. The moment you try to ask for public accommodation, public funding, and try to change our system, now we should have a problem.”
Why? Because Islam isn’t simply a religion, Hadian stressed. “It is a political system. It is a governmental system. It is a legal system. It is a military system. It has a religious component, no doubt. But you can’t separate them. And we would do well to stop calling Islam a religion and start calling it a political ideology that is bent on … tearing down any other man-made law — which is what they consider our Constitution — and imposing Sharia.”
In America, our rights come from God. They’re based on natural and common law — all of which is at risk under a Muslim-dominated society. Look at Iran, the pastor urged. “One of the things that they did in Iran when Sharia became governance — within six months of the so-called revolution — was that they mandated that women must once again go back to wearing the hijab, which is the full head covering, and then, in some cases, the full-body covering.
They mandated that the rights of women are now secondary to the rights of man. They mandated blasphemy laws. If you insult Islam, you can be arrested or killed. They mandated apostasy laws, where if you leave Islam, you can be killed. All of that is not a radical interpretation of Islam or Sharia.” Our rights, our republic, and especially the First Amendment, would be on the chopping block.
Harper reframed it this way. “Everything you’re describing is Islamic fascism, essentially. And I think … because we call it ‘Sharia,’ maybe people don’t get it. But if you just call it Islamic fascism, people might understand what we’re talking about. It’s very similar.” He paused to play devil’s advocate. “The skeptic in my mind would say, ‘Well, sure, Iran has Sharia. They’re kind of totalitarian, but this is America. Is this really going to happen here? The Muslims here are westernized.'”
But the reality, he acknowledged, is that we’re already seeing the shift. “If anybody dares travel around this nation, as I have over the last 22, 23 years that I’ve been traveling and carrying this message … they will see it. If you go to Hamtramck now in Michigan, if you go to Minneapolis, if you go to Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Paterson, New Jersey, if you go to Plano, Texas, where I’ve been three times in the last year and driving around and watching about a 30% Muslim population now in those areas. You see the implementation of this ideology.”
The quiet movement in places like Kaufman and Plano, Texas, to develop “Sharia Cities” is real. It’s part of the reason Congress now has a Sharia-Free America Caucus.
They start by telling the non-Muslims, “This is now a Sharia-controlled area, this enclave. And it could be a neighborhood, it could be a city block, it could be a city,” Hadian notes. “They impose it, and then they force people out of those areas. They start taking over population growth, and ultimately, they take over governance. Hamtramck, Michigan,” he emphasized, “has the first Muslim-majority city in America and the first Muslim-majority city council and mayor, police chief, all of it. They are Muslim. So it’s not just a religion. It’s now become political.”
Look, he underscored, “Jihad isn’t blowing yourself up. Jihad is warfare to establish the religion and to establish Islam. So they say, number one: Migrate, go to these other places. Number two: populate. Their birth rate is two to four times our birth rate here in America. They’re double our birth rate. In Europe, they’re four times the birth rate of the Western Europeans. So all they’ve got to do is have more children, and they’re going to take over. And number three, segregate … so there is not assimilation.”
Of course, the other crucial element to this is the alliance we’re starting to see between Muslims and socialists in the Democratic Party. What does this axis of red (socialism/Marxism/communism) and green (Islam/Sharia law) mean?
Hadian wants Americans to understand that this rise of Muslims and socialists in our political system is no accident. “It’s a marriage of convenience for power. It’s a demonic marriage, if I can be that bold to say. And ultimately, it’s a divided house they can’t both sustain. And experience has shown after 4,448 years of Islam that when the green takes over, it will overtake the red. It just uses the red to get to that power.”
Looking at Western Europe, which is farther along in this “transformation” that El-Sayed so proudly represents, “The globalists are the red … and they’re helping the green to take over the world, to be the boots on the ground and the foot soldiers in their migration replacement. They are bringing the Muslims in to replace the low population birth rate of Western nations, which leads to all sorts of horrific problems like the rape culture in Western Europe, all of that concocted by the … red socialist Marxist communists.
They think they can control Islam.” But the Bible’s prophecy of Gog and Magog, he insists, “tells us in the end, it’s going to be that green that I think is going to be the major player persecuting and killing Christians, which is what’s happening right now. The greatest persecution of Christians is coming at the hands of Muslims.”
The picture is grim if America continues on this trajectory, which it will if the church doesn’t intervene. “People need to understand that red and blue, Republican and Democrat, is not the main battle that’s happening for the earth. Even the battle of East and West is not really the main battle that’s happening,” Harper reiterated.
“There are spiritual powers that are working together on light and darkness. … And within the kingdom of darkness, you have the principalities of Islam, the principalities of communism, atheistic communism, and they’re happy to work together — even if one of them loses in the end — because they’re actually on the same side.” He paused before adding, “I’m not sure if Christians have really woken up to that. I think they’re a lot more awake now than they were 50 years ago, but man. We don’t have much time left to wake up.”
Hadian agreed but tried to drive home a key point: “Politics aren’t going to stop this Islamic takeover of America at first. It’s got to be the church. The church has to pray. The church has to stand. The church has to vote. The church has to be educated and equipped. If the believers who are supposed to have the Spirit of God in us don’t do that, how do you expect non-believers to understand that? … They have to know that this isn’t just a surface issue. This is much deeper than just a few radicals or whatever. This is an absolute spiritual battle against ultimate freedom, liberty, Christianity, God-given rights, the God of the Bible.”
This is not something that’s going away, he warned. “It’s just gotten worse.”
When asked why Republicans were soundly defeated in the midterm election, Vice President JD Vance posted on X, “The reason we lost is the war… If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so.”
Florida’s outgoing Governor Ron DeSantis similarly said the Iran war was a “big, big drag” on the Republican Party.
During an appearance on Stephen A. Smith’s show on SiriusXM, Gov. DeSantis told Smith that Trump “…obviously ran saying he wasn’t going to do a Middle East war, where he did. We have some of our voters who’ve checked out because they’re like, ‘I didn’t want any more Middle East wars, and now we’re doing it…’”
Polls tend to back Gov. DeSantis’s analysis. Rasmussen Reports found that earlier in the conflict (March 2026), 61 percent viewed the military operation as successful, though public backing eroded as the war progressed into the summer and autumn.
“Had that been wrapped up in like a week—like Venezuela was very quick—people, it probably wouldn’t have been an issue right now, right? But what’s happened is it’s kind of an open-ended conflict, and it’s having a direct impact on people’s finances because they’re going to the gas pump. They’re seeing energy prices have gone up.”
By July 23–27, 2026, Rasmussen found that 54 percent of likely voters believed going to war in Iran was the wrong decision, while 35 percent thought it was the right decision (11 percent were not sure).
And, despite all of President Trump’s bluster, his claims of victory, and his assertion that “Iran wants a deal,” only 37 percent of likely US voters now believe the United States is winning the war, 33 percent consider the conflict to be a stalemate, and 17 percent actually told Rasmussen that Iran is winning the war.
No one can argue with Gov. DeSantis’s point that the war with Iran remains an open-ended conflict without a decisive outcome, such as the one we achieved against the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela.
But it has been an “open-ended conflict” for almost 50 years, not by our choice, but by the choice of Iran’s leaders, who, starting with the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared war on America and pursued nuclear weapons to win it.
When asked what the lesson of the first Gulf War was, General S.F. Rodrigues, formerly Chief of Staff of the Indian Army, said, “Don’t fight the Americans without nuclear weapons.”
The George Rasley corollary to that observation is “You don’t seek nuclear weapons unless you plan to fight the United States.”
So, to Vice President Vance’s point, what the polls told us going into the election was not that Americans were inalterably opposed to war with Iran; they were opposed to NOT WINNING a war with Iran.
Meaning the gamble on the political outcome of launching the war would have been worth it—and still could be worth it—if we actually achieved a demonstrable victory resulting in the termination of the political will behind Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
As General George S. Patton famously said in a speech to his troops during World War II, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.”
Donald Trump’s entire public persona was built around winning: The Art of the Deal, The Art of the Comeback, and The Apprentice were all about Donald Trump the winner.
And right now, despite all the statistics about targets destroyed, ships sunk, and the wreckage of Iran’s economy, thanks to Iran’s “rope-a-dope” strategy, Donald Trump looks like a loser.
When history looks back on Donald Trump’s second term as president, all of his other accomplishments—rebuilding American manufacturing, ending the open borders policy and the illegal alien invasion that accompanied it, driving the crime rate down to the lowest point in decades, achieving the lowest poverty rate and the highest employment numbers ever (and more)—will all be forgotten in the face of the results—or lack of results—in the war he launched to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
The way to stop having “forever wars” is to win the wars in which we engage. To avoid going down in history as one of the greatest losers ever to occupy the White House, Donald Trump has only one choice—renew offensive operations against Iran until the political ideology that motivates Iran’s nuclear weapons program is destroyed and a real victory is achieved.
In 2024, Kamala Harris won 4,835,250 votes in Texas. In 2026, Gina Hinojosa, the gubernatorial candidate from her party, picked up 5,230,929 votes and James Talarico, the Senate candidate, scored 5,445,156 votes.
Where did Texas Democrats find 395,679 more voters than in a presidential election?
In October, Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden announced the big news. Texas had hit a record 19 million registered voters or specifically, 19,041,684 voters.
Not only was Texas up a whopping 17,119,632, nearly 2 million from its 2022 numbers, but there were now 418,000 more voters than there had been in 2024.
That 418,000 increase was all the more amazing since the population of Texas had only increased by 391,243 people from 2024 to 2025 and by 782,486 over those two years.
There was one new voter for less than two new people.
Where were these new voters coming from? The vast majority had come out of Houston, Dallas and Austin, and the surrounding areas, as well as record growth in some border counties.
Hidalgo County, a mostly Latino border county, gained 32,930 people from 2022, but also gained almost 50,000 new voters. Hinojosa picked up over 70% of the vote there.
Brazoria County in the Houston area, where Trump won by 59% and Cruz won by 55%, gained over 26,000 voters, an 11% increase, and went to Talarico by around 8,000 votes and to Hinojosa by around 2,000 votes.
Houston’s Harris County picked up 177,714 voters and went from a 46% Trump to 51% Kamala result in 2024 to a 65% Talarico and 63% Hinojosa blowout. Talarico blew away Kamala’s 802,370 vote total in Harris County by over 100,000 with 907,617 votes and Hinojosa picked up 879,134 votes. How does a Senate candidate get over 100,000 more votes than his party’s presidential nominee just two years ago? It helps to find and register over 177,000 more voters.
Dallas County gained 73,000 new voters and went from a 59% Kamala to 38% Trump split to 72% Talarico and 69% Hinojosa wins. Kamala had scored 497,992 votes there while Talarico got 563,186 votes for a 65,194 vote improvement. In Hays County, voter registrations shot up 21% and the 2024 46% Trump to 52% Kamala split in 2024 turned into a 65% Talarico win.
The same pattern repeats itself across Texas with a massive gain in voter registration that was well ahead of any kind of natural population growth and mostly fed Democratic Party gains.
The media has been talking up a shift in Latino voters driven by a backlash against ICE, but what happened was not so much a shift among Latino voters as a case of finding more voters.
It’s not just that Latino voters cast their ballots for Democrats in Texas, it’s that their voting behavior changed so that according to Voto Latino, “68.9% of Latino voters” were “casting their ballots during the early voting period” and a massive primary turnout boost so that “460,438 voted in the Democratic primary: a 149% increase from the 2022 primary.”
That 68.9% is vastly ahead of the state average of 40.5%. And raises major red flags.
If there’s any place to spot fraud, that 68.9% will be the motherlode.
Voto Latino is one of many Democrat Latino voter turnout operations, run by Democrat operatives that function as non-profits and focus on Texas. Mi Familia Vota, another paired C3 and C4 non-profit turnout operation, that invested $22 million into the 2026 election, bragged that, “at Mi Familia Vota, we are incredibly proud of the work our organizers, canvassers, volunteers, and community partners accomplished this election cycle” and claimed that, “yesterday’s historic turnout and progressive victories send a clear message: Latino voters delivered a resounding rebuke of the MAGA movement.”
Mi Familia Vota is funded by a complex network of interlinked left-wing foundations and activist groups including familiar names like Tides and Proteus as well as Future Forward: the Democrat Party’s former PAC. Somos Votantes, another PAC, had announced that it was spending $6 million targeting Latino voters in Texas districts where Trump had previously won.
Groups like the Texas Organizing Project do door knocking in Latino areas in Texas. TOP operates as a C4 and C3s, while and also running their own PAC, and getting funding from the Soros network.
The outcome in Texas was the work of a giant political machine in which tax-exempt foundations passed along money to non-profit groups which then funded local non-profit community activist groups: some of which benefit from government funding aimed at helping minorities. Money moved, sometimes illegally, between C3s and C4s and PACs, violating laws against using non-profits for electioneering, while being focused on one thing: registering voters.
How many of those voter registrations were legitimate? How many of those registered were actually citizens? How many local community organizers ensured that they would be getting more grants by finding dead voters or voters who didn’t exist?
Texas has better election security than some states, but over 400,000 new voters being registered is a lot of data and a barrage of early voting may have caught the state unprepared. Many of the new voter registrations came out of urban areas and border counties which were already at a high risk for fraud.
When ‘non-profits’ start throwing around millions of dollars in poor minority areas to find new voters, they will find them one way or another. The underlying problem was allowing non-profits to engage in voter registration so that tax-exempt money was being used to finance a voter turnout machine with the accompanying financial incentives for corruption.
Democrats have always had a straightforward plan to flip Texas, the way that they had flipped California, Minnesota and other states, and that was to import and settle the maximum number of immigrants and minorities, build taxpayer-funded community organizations to serve them, register them to vote and then get their ballots, while removing any kind of election security.
Republicans have been slow to come up with a counter to that. In recent years, they started to fight for voter integrity, but that’s just securing the end of the pipeline while doing nothing about the rest of it. The 2026 elections in Texas showed pretty clearly that wasn’t enough. Elections need ‘end-to-end’ security with clean and verified voting rolls. IDs are a step forward, but the country is also rife with fake IDs and every other illegal alien abuses IDs to be able to work.
And most crucially, voter registration is electioneering and should be treated that way. No non-profits should be allowed to engage in any step in the election process. No one who is not a government employee or government organization should be allowed to take money in exchange for helping to register voters even if they’re just providing ‘information’ about how to register.
Finally, elections aren’t lost at the voting booth, they’re lost at the border. Illegal aliens eventually become legal voters or their kids do. Yesterday’s refugees are tomorrow’s rulers. After seeing what happened in California, many more people in Texas understood the problem.
But not enough. Too many people believed that Texas couldn’t fall the way California did.
2026 should be all the wake-up-call anyone in Texas needs about what to do..
What things can a man say to a woman at a formal ball to observe that she looks good without being offensive?
Let’s look at the background of the question. I just attended a very nice formal ball where the men were in suits, black-tie tuxedos, and white-tie tailcoats. What’s fascinating about the protocols here is that the more men dress up, the less of a spectacle they become.
Their individuality gradually dissipates into a blur of grayscale coloring. Stand them all in a line and they nearly look like they are all in uniforms. All of this is intentional in the sense that it is an evolved tradition. The men try to dress up and work very hard at it but when they succeed, they cannot shake the sense that this causes them to look nearly interchangeable with each other.
It’s a funny reality that takes time for men fully to realize and understand.
What is the purpose here from the perspective of evolved traditions? It should be obvious. The purpose is to permit the women in the room to shine and glow as never before. I can promise you that every man in the room who came with a woman can tell you stories of how his wife or date spent weeks thinking and working for the perfect look, concerned about the dress, the shoes, the hair, the scarf, the gloves, every single bit of the outfit.
I had many people tell me, as the host of the event, that it was so nice to have the chance to dress up for once. The men don’t care that much about it, but the women understand something extremely important. It is their time to shine as never before. They care as much about how other women see them as about how the men do, if not more.
What’s the problem, then? Why can’t men simply compliment the women there on how they look?
It’s not so simple. In polite society in the past, it was easy enough to simply say “You look lovely tonight” or to exclaim “How fabulous you are tonight.”
This has become more difficult in our time. About 30 years ago, the office protocol as enforced by legal interpretation came to be that a man in the office can never say anything to a woman that draws distinctive attention to her gender. That can be interpreted as gender or sex discrimination if not harassment.
I’m not exaggerating at all. Most training manuals pushed out by the HR offices say this. They train everyone not to see, much less comment upon sexual distinctions between men and women. Any slight comment—even something as small as “nice dress”—can trigger an investigation for a lawsuit. Countless men have faced these over the decades.
Nor can men risk treating women in the office as just one of the guys. Here the old rules come into play. A manager who invites a woman employee over to his house even to watch the football game is essentially insane. That is a major lawsuit risk, even if there is no problem in inviting a man over. So one must discriminate in order to avoid the risk of being accused of discrimination.
That sounds crazy and it is but it is the reality. As a result, men in professional life have gradually learned to treat women in the office as statues, sexless beings who are interchangeable with men but also people to slightly fear. In any case, at the very minimum, men have been trained never to say anything that suggests consciousness of gender. That includes and especially pertains to anything that is complimentary.
This ethos has become a life habit at this point. This is why men fear opening doors for women, helping with chairs, standing when they come to the table, tipping hats, or anything else from the old world that was considered mannerly.
Now these same people find themselves at a formal ball. The men look great but interchangeable in some way.
Meanwhile, the women shine as never before with jewels, hats, long dresses of many colors and fabrics, patterns of flowers and stripes, and every conceivable combination of high luxury, along with gold, diamonds, gloves, and clutches of pearls and beads.
It’s an incredible spectacle. The normal reaction should be: wow, these ladies all look amazing. But men have to stop themselves from saying this even if it seems natural and normal. They have been trained out of it.
The additional problem is that this situation rarely presents itself in life. How often does one go to a formal ball? Maybe once a year. More likely, once a decade. Maybe just once. As a result, the men in the room find themselves completely unprepared for what to do.
This is why men on these occasions seem so incredibly uncomfortable and probably why they avoid such situations generally.
I’ve still not answered the question. I will tell you what I came up with on the spot, because the truth is that I had not prepared for this either. My immediate thought was that I want to and need to say something but did not know what. So my personal choice, again on the spot, was to exclaim, “Wow look at you!”
Granted, that is not very elegant at all, whereas a formal ball calls for elegance above all else. It is a natural setting for a polite appearance compliment, precisely because everyone has dressed for the occasion. As I think about it, several possibilities come to mind.
You compliment the ball gown, the hat, the gloves, even the hair, but nothing else. You can say “Your gown is so beautiful,” or even “You look lovely tonight” though that skirts close to the edge. Or perhaps this: “You are so elegant this evening.”
This is not an easy problem to solve but it cries out for an answer.
No woman wants to fuss and dress up for a formal ball and come away without any man acknowledging the fact that she succeeded in achieving elegance.
These are all crazy problems we’ve created for ourselves.
Maybe that’s the real cost of all this. Not the awkwardness of one evening, but what awkwardness does over time: it wears down the occasions that require it. Men avoid the ball because they don’t know the script, and the ball shrinks, and eventually the tailcoats and the long dresses and the gloves and the pearls go into storage for good.
Every man who says “Your gown is beautiful” is voting to keep it. Every man who says nothing, and instead looks down with shuffling feet, is voting, quietly, for the end of the whole thing. That’s a lot of weight to put on four words, but there it is.
Gun rights groups and retailers are projecting a surge in firearm sales after Democrats won control of both chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate in last week’s midterm elections.
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) Chairman Alan Gottlieb is warning that gun control groups are heralding the wins and will be seeking new gun control legislation and restrictions.
Gottlieb said the threat of new gun control legislation isn’t limited to Congress and that Democrats also are set to push restrictions in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona.
In an interview Thursday, Gottlieb told The States:
Arizona’s gone from a you know a great gun right state right now to a very anti-gun state overnight. Pennsylvania, you know, that now the trifecta on the government controlled by the Democrats in Pennsylvania, many of which are anti gun and are gonna push all kinds of gun control measures.
States that previously enjoyed Republican protection of gun rights now may be facing state-level measures such as permit-to-purchase requirements, extended waiting periods, enhanced background checks, and restrictions on concealed carry permits, according to the Center Square.
Gottlieb noted that when there are big swings in politics towards gun control advocates getting in power, there’s also big sales surges of firearms. “In the couple of weeks leading up to the election, people, knowing and thinking that, you know, things were gonna flip, gun sales had a big spike and we’re seeing that continuation spike yesterday, today, and I think we’re gonna see it for months to come now.”
According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, October 2026 saw 1,402,422 adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks, marking a 7.9 percent increase compared to October 2025.
Federal Bureau of Investigations Firearm Background Checks statistics show more than 2.2 million NICS background checks across the country in October.
That’s up from 2 million in September, but the third highest month of 2026.
Gottlieb said one possible threat that gun owners could be facing from the newly-elected legislatures are what he characterized as workarounds:
I think on the anti-gun, the gun prohibition lobbies’ wish list, they start off of course with things like a permit to purchase so that you have to go through an extra hoop to be able to buy a firearm, extended waiting periods, extended background checks, different kinds of measures of where you where you can be able to take your firearm, more restrictions on concealed carry permits, be able to to get a permit to carry to for self-protection. Those are the things that they’re gonna start with pretty quickly, I think.
Long before Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac immortalized the road trip or Americans got their kicks on Route 66, cross-country drivers had to navigate a confusing network of colloquially named thoroughfares to reach their destinations.
Like pioneers of yore, motorists in the early 1910s could follow the National Old Trails Road—a transcontinental route between Baltimore, Maryland, and Los Angeles, California, stitched together from existing roads and historic wagon-train paths such as the Santa Fe Trail—or the Lincoln Highway, which connected New York City and San Francisco. As cars proliferated, so did demand for better roads. Countless automobile clubs, auto trail associations, local civic boosters, and business owners began marking highways, often with signs painted on utility poles, planks, barns, and rocks.
By the mid-1920s, these groups had helped to create, map, and promote hundreds of national auto trails. Some had evocative monikers. Travelers could thread their way from Illinois to Louisiana on the Bee Line Highway or Magnolia Route, for instance, or take the Lone Star Trail from St. Augustine, Florida, through Texas, to Los Angeles.
Names and signage revealed nothing about the quality of the roads, however. Nor did drivers have an easy time negotiating the often overlapping maze of marked highways—a challenge that only grew as cars surged in popularity.
Call for Order
Wisconsin was the first state to address this crisis by numbering its roads in 1917. In 1925, spurred by a recommendation from AASHTO’s predecessor, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), Congress formed a Joint Board on Interstate Highways to hash out a nationwide solution. On November 11 of the following year, AASHO adopted the U.S. Numbered Highway System.
Today, roads bearing the distinctive shield of the U.S. Numbered Highway System—with odd-numbered routes generally running north to south and even-numbered routes stretching east to west—span nearly 180,000 miles. That numbering system is still administered by AASHTO in cooperation with state and local departments of transportation.
Interstates Come of Age
Beyond giving rise to the numbered highway system, historic auto trails also laid the foundation for the Interstate Highway System that launched in June 1956 with passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act. I-90 and I-94, for example, closely parallel the old Yellowstone Trail—the first transcontinental route through the country’s northern tier. The popular motorway stretched from Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to Puget Sound in Washington and contained a dedicated spur to Yellowstone National Park. Parts of I-95 overlap the old Dixie Highway leading into South Florida from Michigan, while I-80 aligns with much of the Lincoln Highway.
Ironically, the inspiration for a federal roadway network—a key economic development initiative of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration—traces in part to the President’s experience with rutted, muddy roads as a young soldier. In 1919, he participated in the U.S. Army’s first transcontinental convoy, an often-grueling, 62-day journey along the Lincoln Highway undertaken to showcase the utility of motor vehicles and build public support for investing in better roads.
Today, the romance of road travel continues to beckon millions of motorists onto the nation’s historic highways each year. Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, their journeys to the Grand Canyon or grandma’s house—summer travelers logged 866 billion miles on U.S. highways in 2024—may be smoother and faster than automobile enthusiasts endured a century ago. But the scenery is no less spectacular. Sweeping vistas, kitschy roadside attractions, and other relics of America’s golden age of road trips still draw millions of travelers—many of them international tourists—to Route 66 each year.
Bypassed by Interstates, the highway that carried Dust Bowl migrants from Midwest farms to California during the Great Depression was decommissioned in 1985. But most of the historic route remains drivable, its retro diners and neon signs offering a nostalgic glimpse of past travel adventures while helping to ensure that the Mother Road, as novelist John Steinbeck dubbed it, will remain among the nation’s most iconic and enduring highways for the next 100 years.
In the 126 years since 1900, nearly 90 percent of the midterm elections have led to the party in the Oval Office losing House seats, and two-thirds of those same elections have led to it losing Senate seats. Given this history, midterm losses of some sort in 2026 were almost a sure bet. But what ensued in November went well beyond all normal expectations. When all the votes are tabulated, the current blue wave may match the massive midterm losses that buried Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010.
First, what does this massive 2026 slapdown now portend?
A second-term president in his final two years, facing a euphoric and frenzied opposition Congress, emboldened by a landslide, will have difficulty confirming federal judges or cabinet members. Most presidents in that dire situation try to rush through confirmations in the brief two remaining months of their lame-duck congressional majorities—not an easy task. Trump is, at this very moment, following in their footsteps.
Come next year, Trump will still not have to face a veto-proof Congress—unless renegade Republican senators and representatives join Democrats on key legislation to provide them with the necessary 67-Senate-vote/290-House-vote override.
It is critical for Trump, then, to shore up potentially apostate congressional Republicans and keep them in line to prevent this. Another problem: waves as huge as the 2026 blue wave can sometimes take two or three election cycles to correct themselves—meaning the 2026 left-wing momentum gives the socialist Democrats advantages in the 2028 presidential elections.
Even though the Democrats cannot hope to override the veto, some, like Elizabeth Warren, have recklessly called for ending the filibuster—a huge mistake when they don’t yet have the White House. (Why end this time-honored institution just to pass legislation that will be vetoed by an opposition president anyway?)
As for Trump’s own legislative initiatives—they are dead. Bipartisan initiatives with the new socialist Democratic Party could be explored, but they would likely be untenable in the eyes of the MAGA base. Otherwise, Democrats will vote against anything and everything Trump proposes—in the fashion of what Harry Truman once called his oppositional Republican legislators: “The Do-Nothing Congress.”
So-Called Lame-Duck Presidents
Nevertheless, sometimes presidents in the wake of bruising congressional losses find ways to stay dynamic and popular. The last two years of the Clinton and Obama administrations were supposed to be inert. They most certainly were not.
Clinton successfully went to war in Serbia against Slobodan Milosevic without congressional authority. He worked domestically with the Republican majority to ensure another two years of balanced budgets.
Obama was more confrontational after he had completely blown his huge congressional majorities. Even before the midterms, he had boasted that he had a pen and a phone and would govern domestically by executive orders and vetoes. And so he did—to an even greater degree after losing Congress.
Abroad, Obama entered the most contentious and radical two years of his administration. He continued his targeted assassination campaign, which would finally total 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Obama restored relations with communist Cuba without congressional assent. And he signed on to the disastrous Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Deal. Despite claiming to be a constitutional-law expert, lame-duck Obama arbitrarily declared both agreements immune from Senate ratification.
At home, Obama, on his way out, nonetheless helped weaponize the FBI, the CIA, and the DNI and ordered them to dig deeper to find (nonexistent) evidence of Trump/Putin “collusion.”
Trump could very well follow some of these lame-duck precedents. Even now, he could stop radical Democratic legislation, quickly finish the Iran war, and continue to reset regions in the manner that he has already remade Latin America, which now bears little resemblance to its anti-American socialist character before 2025.
Twenty-seven months of his remaining tenure is a long time. If there were an end to the Ukraine war; if the Iranian theocracy becomes denuclearized or eventually even implodes; or if the strong economy goes into hyperdrive in 2027 (with 5 percent GDP growth, more good jobs reports, continuing record median household incomes, and continuing record-low poverty rates), then Trump could enjoy popularity on the level achieved by Clinton and Obama as they left office.
Blue Wave Bomb-Throwers
Historically, there is a problem with opposition-party midterm waves. The bomb-throwers, drunk on success, power, and notoriety, go overboard.
In 2010 and 2012, the Tea Party, enthusiastic about their spectacular successes, nominated poor senatorial candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. They, and others like them, had little chance of winning.
The Republicans failed to build upon their control of Congress in the 1998 midterms. Despite widespread public anger at Bill Clinton’s various sexual imbroglios, they went wild, pursued endless cul-de-sac investigations, and foolishly authorized an impeachment inquiry right before the elections—in the midst of a booming economy. That wild goose chase ensured they would lose five House seats in 1998 and win no additional Senate seats, in what should have been a golden opportunity to win large gains.
Will a weak speaker like Hakeem Jeffries and a fossilized Senate majority leader like the rudderless Chuck Schumer be able to rein in some 25 new avowed progressives and six new avowed socialists in Congress?
Probably not.
The hard Left is younger, more energetic, and more charismatic than the ossified Democratic status quo. And yet Democrats learned in 2024 that their agendas—whether on the trans issue, DEI, the border, immigration, energy, or crime—poll at only 30–40 percent favorability. So it is likely that zealots will try once again to ram through stale radical legislation that the public has long been on record opposing.
The Real Cause of the Wave: The War, the Economy, and the Border
The War
The 2026 midterm rout exposed Republican failures on the economy, Iran, and immigration. Trump can still recover, but Democrats risk overplaying their hand with a radical agenda.
In the 126 years since 1900, nearly 90 percent of the midterm elections have led to the party in the Oval Office losing House seats, and two-thirds of those same elections have led to it losing Senate seats. Given this history, midterm losses of some sort in 2026 were almost a sure bet. But what ensued in November went well beyond all normal expectations. When all the votes are tabulated, the current blue wave may match the massive midterm losses that buried Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010.
First, what does this massive 2026 slapdown now portend?
A second-term president in his final two years, facing a euphoric and frenzied opposition Congress, emboldened by a landslide, will have difficulty confirming federal judges or cabinet members. Most presidents in that dire situation try to rush through confirmations in the brief two remaining months of their lame-duck congressional majorities—not an easy task. Trump is, at this very moment, following in their footsteps.
Come next year, Trump will still not have to face a veto-proof Congress—unless renegade Republican senators and representatives join Democrats on key legislation to provide them with the necessary 67-Senate-vote/290-House-vote override.
It is critical for Trump, then, to shore up potentially apostate congressional Republicans and keep them in line to prevent this. Another problem: waves as huge as the 2026 blue wave can sometimes take two or three election cycles to correct themselves—meaning the 2026 left-wing momentum gives the socialist Democrats advantages in the 2028 presidential elections.
Even though the Democrats cannot hope to override the veto, some, like Elizabeth Warren, have recklessly called for ending the filibuster—a huge mistake when they don’t yet have the White House. (Why end this time-honored institution just to pass legislation that will be vetoed by an opposition president anyway?)
As for Trump’s own legislative initiatives—they are dead. Bipartisan initiatives with the new socialist Democratic Party could be explored, but they would likely be untenable in the eyes of the MAGA base. Otherwise, Democrats will vote against anything and everything Trump proposes—in the fashion of what Harry Truman once called his oppositional Republican legislators: “The Do-Nothing Congress.”
So-Called Lame-Duck Presidents
Nevertheless, sometimes presidents in the wake of bruising congressional losses find ways to stay dynamic and popular. The last two years of the Clinton and Obama administrations were supposed to be inert. They most certainly were not.
Clinton successfully went to war in Serbia against Slobodan Milosevic without congressional authority. He worked domestically with the Republican majority to ensure another two years of balanced budgets.
Obama was more confrontational after he had completely blown his huge congressional majorities. Even before the midterms, he had boasted that he had a pen and a phone and would govern domestically by executive orders and vetoes. And so he did—to an even greater degree after losing Congress.
Abroad, Obama entered the most contentious and radical two years of his administration. He continued his targeted assassination campaign, which would finally total 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Obama restored relations with communist Cuba without congressional assent. And he signed on to the disastrous Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Deal. Despite claiming to be a constitutional-law expert, lame-duck Obama arbitrarily declared both agreements immune from Senate ratification.
At home, Obama, on his way out, nonetheless helped weaponize the FBI, the CIA, and the DNI and ordered them to dig deeper to find (nonexistent) evidence of Trump/Putin “collusion.”
Trump could very well follow some of these lame-duck precedents. Even now, he could stop radical Democratic legislation, quickly finish the Iran war, and continue to reset regions in the manner that he has already remade Latin America, which now bears little resemblance to its anti-American socialist character before 2025.
Twenty-seven months of his remaining tenure is a long time. If there were an end to the Ukraine war; if the Iranian theocracy becomes denuclearized or eventually even implodes; or if the strong economy goes into hyperdrive in 2027 (with 5 percent GDP growth, more good jobs reports, continuing record median household incomes, and continuing record-low poverty rates), then Trump could enjoy popularity on the level achieved by Clinton and Obama as they left office.
Blue Wave Bomb-Throwers
Historically, there is a problem with opposition-party midterm waves. The bomb-throwers, drunk on success, power, and notoriety, go overboard.
In 2010 and 2012, the Tea Party, enthusiastic about their spectacular successes, nominated poor senatorial candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. They, and others like them, had little chance of winning.
The Republicans failed to build upon their control of Congress in the 1998 midterms. Despite widespread public anger at Bill Clinton’s various sexual imbroglios, they went wild, pursued endless cul-de-sac investigations, and foolishly authorized an impeachment inquiry right before the elections—in the midst of a booming economy. That wild goose chase ensured they would lose five House seats in 1998 and win no additional Senate seats, in what should have been a golden opportunity to win large gains.
Will a weak speaker like Hakeem Jeffries and a fossilized Senate majority leader like the rudderless Chuck Schumer be able to rein in some 25 new avowed progressives and six new avowed socialists in Congress?
Probably not.
The hard Left is younger, more energetic, and more charismatic than the ossified Democratic status quo. And yet Democrats learned in 2024 that their agendas—whether on the trans issue, DEI, the border, immigration, energy, or crime—poll at only 30–40 percent favorability. So it is likely that zealots will try once again to ram through stale radical legislation that the public has long been on record opposing.
The Real Cause of the Wave: The War, the Economy, and the Border
The War
Many Americans initially were not opposed to the idea of strikes aiming to denuclearize Iran—for example, of the kind launched in June 2025. They grew accustomed to and approved of Trump’s history of brief Jacksonian one-offs abroad: the elimination of Soleimani, al-Baghdadi, and Wagner Group mercenaries in Syria, as well as the later Maduro removal.
All were quick, decisive, and came at little cost.
Perhaps Trump thought Iran would follow the script. And so he did not explain the enormous complexities of neutering the near-half-century-old theocratic disrupter of the Middle East, ever intent on acquiring nuclear bombs.
The initial bombing went well. But the United States talked more of what was destroyed, rather than what still likely remained. And we did not adopt the current crippling sanctions during the first weeks of the war. Nor did we prepare by stockpiling oil or Patriots and Tomahawks. Nor were we at the outset fully prepared to keep the Strait open.
In short, the notion that the war would resemble the other brief encounters may have undermined the necessary material preparations for an Iran war of a totally different magnitude—even beyond the lack of any candid explanation to the American public about the enormity of the challenges Iran presented.
But most importantly, as Iran was reeling, we stopped fighting after 38 days. And then we inexplicably entered endless negotiations with a regime that has been historically incapable of honest dialogue.
Trapped in such a rut, the administration kept thinking that the midterms were still a long way off—even as they insidiously grew ever closer. Seven months, then six, then five, then four, then three, then two—and finally the midterms were upon them, as the promised peaceful deal was always just a proverbial week away.
The public expected a short, decisive war, which would eliminate the Iranian military-nuclear complex, spare the restive Iranian people, and leave the theocrats sanctioned and stewing in their own juices, perhaps even with the specter of a popular revolution on their horizon—and without ground troops or the direful prospect of nation-building.
That might still happen, but not if we reenter another disastrous cycle of talk/bomb/talk/bomb and the mantra that the war will be over in another one, two, or three weeks. We could, on our departure, hit Pickaxe Mountain to guarantee that there is no bomb-ready enriched uranium, then leave with crippling sanctions still in place, ensure that the Strait is kept open by our allies with our help, and allow the Israelis to arm whomever they wish in Iran.
“Affordability”
Remember how, in November 2022, even leftist pundits were fearing a “Red Wave”?
Given the sad state of the economy and Biden’s foreign-policy debacles, there was supposedly no reason why he would escape midterm calamity—of the sort that would, as Bill Clinton said of 1994, “beat the living daylights out of us”; that George W. Bush in 2006 called a “thumping”; and that Barack Obama in 2010 termed a “shellacking.”
But Biden did just that and avoided a wipeout. How and why?
Remember that Biden was polling dismally at 40 percent approval. The economy was in terrible shape. Gas had hit $5 a gallon in June 2022 and was still averaging $3.80 in November. Inflation had soared to 9.1 percent in 2022—entirely due to Biden’s bloated $6.27 trillion budget, with massive social spending timed right when post-COVID consumer demand was surging, and supply chains were still dormant.
Polls in 2022 showed that 80 percent of voters thought the economy was one of the chief issues and gave a resounding 14-point lead to Republicans over Democrats in fixing the mess.
Wartime disasters had also helped to crash Biden’s polls. A year earlier, the United States had fled Kabul, losing 13 service members and abandoning thousands of contractors and loyal Afghans, along with some $50 billion in weapons, equipment, and infrastructure, a new embassy, and a huge newly renovated military base.
Biden’s reaction to an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was unhinged. He scoffed that his response would depend on whether he felt it was a “minor incursion.” Such U.S. indifference and the earlier Afghanistan disaster had convinced Vladimir Putin that America and NATO either would not or could not do much about his aggression. Deterrence was lost, and then Putin attacked.
And yet, in spite of all that terrible news, the red wave of 2022 became a merely tiny ripple. Republicans picked up only nine seats, scarcely reclaiming the House, while Democrats actually picked up a Senate seat.
Fast forward to the present of 2026.
The same historical rules should apply: when a president has poor ratings and the economy is deemed bad, the opposing party should have a massive midterm rebound. And pundits certainly were convinced of an imminent 2026 Blue Wave midterm.
Trump was polling poorly—right about where Biden was in 2022. Democrats were the opposing party. And the economy was again the issue, along with a war in Iran.
But there are major differences between the circumstances that led to the red wave sputter in 2022 and to the blue wave blast in 2026. Ironically, most of them make 2022 look worse.
Inflation is not at 9.1 percent as in 2022, but will likely end this year at around 3.4–3.7 percent—well over five percentage points lower than Biden’s 2022 peak. Gas is still high at $4.17, but not much higher than Biden’s $3.80, and has never, in 2026, reached the Biden 2022 high of $5 a gallon.
Third-quarter GDP growth is higher than it was under Biden in November 2022. Wall Street’s Dow Jones index stood at an almost unbelievable 18,600 points higher in 2026 than it had in November 2022.
Manufacturing activity was soaring by November 2026, while it had grown sluggish by the 2022 midterms. The poverty rate was also higher in 2022. Real median household income soared in 2025 to around $87,000, up an inflation-adjusted $6,000 from the 2022 level. Unemployment is only slightly higher in 2026 (4.1 percent) than in 2022 (3.7 percent).
Tragically, 23 service members have died in the Iran War, more than the 13 who died during the supposedly peaceful withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021. But the $50 billion worth of American weapons and infrastructure abandoned to the Taliban was likely not much more than the cost of the Iran war to date.
So the question arises: why have “affordability,” the economy, and war supposedly doomed the Republicans to a huge blue wave—while these issues did not ensure a red wave in 2022?
After all, to reiterate, annual inflation was nearly three times higher in 2022. Gas prices were high in 2026, but they never reached $5 a gallon as they had in 2022. America’s Biden-era foreign-policy humiliations, from the misadventure in Afghanistan to a theater-wide war in Ukraine, were as controversial as the Iran war.
Yet there are two differences that might explain why “affordability” is an issue now in a way that Biden’s 9.1 percent inflation was not.
One reason the prior red wave was deflated and the current blue wave was inflated was the media reaction to supposedly bad economic news. The media more or less played down the 2022 price hikes, the Afghanistan disaster, the Ukraine war, and the generally bleak economic news, while hyping the bad economic data in 2026, even though the economic picture was, in many respects, far better.
Second, and more importantly, Trump left Biden an economy with an average annual inflation rate of only 1.9 percent and a moderate four-year aggregate 7.6 percent rise in prices. Hence, even though Biden spiked inflation to 9.1 percent in the 2022 midterm year, inflation would average 5.1 percent annually during his presidency—more than 20 percent in his four years—the affordability “crisis” was not as alarming as it might have been.
In dire contrast, Trump inherited an economy where prices were a staggering 21 percent higher than when he had left office four years earlier in January 2021—nearly three times higher than the price rise that Biden had inherited from Trump.
When Trump ran in 2024 on “fixing the economy,” his team assumed that this meant lowering the average yearly inflation rate. And during his first year back in office, Trump in fact cut the Biden-era average yearly inflation nearly in half, to 2.7 percent. Even in 2026, he still kept it lower than the Biden average, at an estimated 3.7 percent.
But Trump’s team did not explain to the voters that he could hardly reverse those huge Biden price rises, although he could certainly lower Biden’s inflation rate.
There is a significant difference between absolute prices and inflation rates that was never made clear to the voters. The fact that only a full-blown recession could have wiped out the price increases of the Biden years was never explained to them.
Nor did Republicans publicize the good news that families could deal more easily with the Biden inflation because Trump had, since the 2024 election, raised median household income by 2.6 percent.
Since it is almost impossible to reduce prices in absolute terms, that huge 21 percent Biden-era inflation surge could only be addressed by raising median income while keeping inflation much lower from that point onward. Trump did both, lowering inflation and raising income—but he did not, and could not, actually lower the prices that had soared under Biden.
The Border
Ironically, the successfully closed border undermined the popular appeal of Trump’s signature issue of illegal immigration. Once it was closed tight, voters breathed a sigh of relief—without considering that, while it is easy to allow 10 million of the world’s needy to storm the border, it is quite another thing to find them, spread out over 50 states and shielded by 600 sanctuary jurisdictions.
The result was that initial ICE apprehensions, sometimes done sloppily, were demonized by the left as “Gestapo tactics.”
Trump’s people forgot where the American people were on the issue. The latter certainly wanted the border closed. And they also wanted the 10 million new illegal aliens deported—but apparently in a fantasy manner of somehow magically being flown home without any unpleasant scenes.
Many also wanted some path to green cards for the pre-Biden population of long-residing illegal immigrants, but only those who (1) had not committed a crime, (2) were gainfully employed rather than on welfare, and (3) were willing to pay fines to obtain a green card. The time-consuming path to citizenship could be left up to the individual green-card holder.
The Democrats knew all that. And so they successfully managed to portray disproportionately Hispanic and other minority ICE officers as Nazis, illegal aliens—among them 660,000 criminals—into saints, and some of the more ostentatious and overreaching Trump cabinet officers into vicious Gauleiters.
The Takeaway
So what should we conclude from this recent midterm upset?
First, not to panic or despair. Trump could still accomplish quite a bit, both domestically and internationally, even without a congressional majority.
Second, to ignore hubristic leftist claims that the election results prove widespread American support for the boutique neo-socialist agenda.
If Democrats fail to learn this lesson, Republican success in 2028 is practically guaranteed.
