Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

I’d like to talk very briefly about the current economy. We’re in a very Orwellian situation when everybody’s talking about affordability, and they have legitimate concerns to do so because prices are pretty high, and they’ve risen higher in the last few years than wages.

But here’s my point. If you look at the actual economic data, the economy is on the edge of a boom. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. In 2022, affordability was an issue. Eighty percent had polled that in that midterm year they were upset with Joe Biden, whose positive polls had dropped—likability, performance, etc.—all the way from 52% before the August Kabul skedaddle down to 40% during the 2022 midterms.

But here’s my point. All the economic indicators were much worse in 2022 than they are now, whether you’re talking about inflation three times higher, median income thousands of dollars lower, stock market about 20,000 points lower than it is now. Gas prices roughly the same. They had gotten up to $5 in 2022, except—etc. You can go through every single indicator. The only one, that GDP was lower. Unemployment was a little bit better, but mostly the same.

And yet the red wave didn’t materialize. So, there’s something going on in the way that the blue wave did materialize with a more robust economy.

And what I’m getting at is everybody talks about the tariffs causing inflation. The inflation rate right now is 3.7%. 3.7. It was 2.7 in the first term. That’s still well below the average of the Biden administration, 5.1%, the aggregate 21% inflation, and the record of 9.1% in 2022, which was the midterm year, and it apparently didn’t do Biden very much damage.

But what I’m getting at is the problem with the economy is essentially there was a 21% price hike under Joe Biden that was given to the Trump administration, and they did lower the inflation rate almost by half, from 5.1 to 2.7. This year, because of oil, it’ll be about 3.7, still much lower than 5.1.

But you cannot reduce that rat in the snake, that big hump. We have to work through it by lowering the rate of inflation and increasing living wages.

But look at the other indicators where we are right now, at a period of Donald Trump’s greatest unpopularity and a historic wipeout of the Republicans:

Unemployment: 165 [thousand] new jobs. Of course, we all use the word unexpectedly. Wall Street Journal said that because the doom and gloomers said it would be a dismal 70,000 creation. And remember, these are not government jobs. It’s not Joe Biden padding the workforce at the federal level. We have lost 270,000 federal jobs due to the DOGE cuts, so the unemployment rate should be sky-high, but it fell this October from 4.2; it’s down to 4.1.

GDP, we were told it’s a dismal two point—it’s been revised to 3.4. It may get up to 4.4. So inflation is just a third, a little over a third, that it was under Biden. GDP is strong.

The poverty rate has never been lower. It’s 10.2, a point and a half lower than the Biden administration. The per family median income is $87,000. It’s thousands of dollars higher than it was during the Biden administration.

Until the Democratic takeover of the midterms, their big win, which has now been recorded in a huge stock market loss because investors are worried about some of the things they’re talking about—higher taxes, more regulation, even confiscations, attacks on Elon Musk, etc. Even with that, the stock market is 20,000 points higher than it was under Biden.

If you look at any other indicator, foreign investment, it’s triple what it was during the Biden midterms of 2022, and it’s double what, gone, the highest year that Joe Biden had foreign investment.

If you look at U.S. companies and all of the emerging technology, even with the war on AI centers that we’re seeing here, AI companies worldwide by terms of use of AI or market capitalization, eight out of the 10 are American. Digital media, nine out of the 10 are American. Software, nine out of the 10.

Space launches, almost 9 out of 10 are SpaceX, or Elon Musk, that’s being demonized and attacked. He launched more American satellites this year than the world put together, and now he has launched more American satellites than all the satellites launched in the world.

So, what am I getting at? We’re getting … And if you want to talk about energy, no country in the history of civilization has pumped per year as much gas and oil as the United States will in 2026. Not Russia, not Kuwait, not Iran, not Saudi Arabia, not—none of them, not Venezuela, none.

So, if you look at the building blocks of an economy—unemployment, inflation, GDP, stock market, per family income, poverty rate—everything is going good.

So, why is this important? There were other reasons why the Republicans got wiped out. The price of gas because of the Iran war had spiked, yes, and that’s the first thing everybody feels, and diesel fuel is the blood of the American circulatory system, and that was high.

There was also, and we don’t even talk about it, there was furor over corruption. There was a feeling that there were people that had contacts with the administration that were making money in double-dealing or influence peddling or grifting in the Middle East while people were hurting, and that got people angry.

There was also the idea that some of the candidates on the Republican side were very weak, especially Ken Paxton in Texas. I could go on, but it doesn’t serve any purpose other than just to say they were weak, and I think people agree with them.

There was also anger that the United States—there was anger with the, I don’t know how you call, the Tucker Carlson base that they had defined no optional wars: not as [Qasem] Soleimani, not as taking out [Abu Bakr al] Baghdadi, not in the first term destroying ISIS, not destroying the Wagner Group, not last year’s necessarily bombing for 25 hours and eliminating most of the nuclear capability—not all, but a lot of it—or the Maduro raid, but a 38-day bombing.

And most importantly, the war is gonna be over next week. No, two weeks, three weeks, the stopping and the bombing. They don’t say that, but if you look at the polls, they say people oppose the war from the beginning. No, the Republicans did not. They did not. They did not oppose the Iran war until we got into a talk, talk, talk, talk, talk for six months with people who cannot be trusted.

What am I trying to say? The economy is just about to boom. All of the indicators say that. A Dr. Furman, one of the chief Obama economists, what did he say yesterday? He’s a staunch Democrat, partisan, no fan of market, the free market, libertarian economics. What did he say? He says, “An economy doesn’t get much better than this.” He was amazed at what’s going on.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but one of two things I think could happen. One, as this economy starts to boom, there will be people who will fall in line and say Donald Trump brought amazing prosperity, and the usual time it takes to rectify a huge tsunami, as we saw in the midterms, is usually three election cycles. But it could be reversed as quickly as two years if we go into the 2028 presidential elections with 4.0 GDP and 2% inflation and 2 or 3% unemployment. And so that’s a likelihood.

There’s also a likelihood that there’s going to be people in the Democratic Party that are not completely crazy, and they are going to try to tell the Islamicist, socialist wing, just be quiet and let’s take credit.

Let’s say as we go into 2027, it was all because of us that we got inaugurated on Jan. 3, even though they hadn’t done anything, and they will try to push the Green New Deal, more regulation, more taxes, but they will try to leapfrog and claim as they go into the 2028 that the Congress brought us a reprieve.

That’s not true, and it probably won’t happen, but there are people in the Democratic Party that see that possibility.

Victor Davis Hanson, Daily Signal

When some people hear the Catholic Church teaches “no one can be at the same time be a good Catholic and a true socialist” (Quadragesimo Anno 120), they ask in reply, “But can a good Catholic be a true capitalist?”—as if capitalism were a sin opposite yet equal to socialism. But while the Church teaches that “no Catholic could subscribe even to moderate socialism” (Mater et Magistra 34), it has never said the same thing of capitalism, which it views as something that can be compatible with Catholic moral principles.

We must point out that the debate over capitalism is not about whether we should have laissez-faire capitalism instead of state-regulated capitalism. Since capitalism can exist only when the government enforces private property rights and recognizes contractual agreements, it’s impossible to leave the state out of it entirely. The question is, rather, “How should the state view and intervene in the affairs of free-market economies?” To that question, Pope Pius XI offered two answers.

First, the state should not treat capitalism as something intrinsically evil, since it “is not to be condemned in itself” (Quadragesimo Anno 101). Second, following Leo XIII, the state should make sure free markets adhere to “norms of right order” by correcting violations of these norms. These include conditions that “scorn the human dignity of the workers, the social character of economic activity and social justice itself, and the common good” (101). The state could, for example, require factory owners to implement commonsense safety measures to protect workers from occupational hazards.

But nowhere did Pius XI say that socialism could be acceptable provided it adhered to certain moral norms. He admitted that, “like all errors,” socialism “contains some truth” (120). But the truths of socialism (which are shared by Christianity, thus making them not strictly socialist in nature) are not enough to redeem a system that, he writes, “is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity.”

Magazin

The Church’s condemnation of socialism and qualified criticism of capitalism have been remarkably consistent

Trent Horn • 2/18/2020

Listen to the audio version of this content

So not only are Catholics forbidden to be socialists and free to be capitalists, they are free to criticize capitalism without becoming socialists by default.

Adam Smith, the father of modern economic thought, warned about capitalism’s vices. For example, he noted how the ability to freely set prices can lead businessmen into “a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.” But Smith recognized that capitalism is a worthwhile system because it works despite human imperfections. Socialism, on the other hand, requires everyone always to be perfectly altruistic, and that’s why it always fails.

So when Pope Francis says that under capitalism “people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending” (Laudato Si 203), he’s right. Markets may be able to provide lots of things to buy, but that doesn’t mean we should try to find meaning and happiness in those things. The pope also said that “once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society.” But greed is a property of morally defective capitalists; it is not intrinsic to capitalism in the same way that confiscation and redistribution are intrinsic to socialism.

William F. Buckley put it well: “The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists.”

When Pope Francis visited the United States in 2016, he even gave an address to Congress where he affirmed that capitalism could be a good thing when it is properly ordered toward the good. He commended the U.S.’s efforts to fight poverty and said that “part of this great effort is the creation and distribution of wealth.” He said:

The right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology, and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive, and sustainable. “Business is a noble vocation directed to producing wealth and improving the world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the area in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good” (interior quote from Laudato Si 129).

Pope Francis’s former mentor, Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone, says the pontiff “doesn’t criticize market economics but rather the fetishization of money and the free market.” When critics labeled Francis a Marxist for his criticism of “trickle-down” economics, the pope said in response that “Marxist ideology is wrong.”

In fact, Pope Francis’s dual criticisms of capitalism and socialism echo the writings of John Paul II.

In Centesimus Annus, John Paul II said that profit has a “legitimate role” in the function of a business but that it’s not the only indicator that a business is doing well. The human dignity of workers matters too, and if capitalism is left unchecked, it can become “ruthless” and lead to “inhuman exploitation” (33).

Despite his criticisms, the pope saint never said that this system is intrinsically evil as is socialism nor does he offer an alternative economic system in its place. In fact, John Paul II reaffirms the teaching of previous popes who said that the Church not only does not offer the world a “Catholic” system of economics, it can’t offer such a system.

The Church’s authority relates to teaching about faith and morals; but economics is a science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. As Nobel economist James Buchanan put it, economics studies “the ordinary business of man making his living.” Economics can answer questions such as “What gives rise to the wealth of nations?” but not moral questions such as “How should I make use of my wealth?” The Church can offer moral and theological principles to guide secular disciplines, but it can’t replace those disciplines.

To make an analogy, the Church offers principles to doctors to guide them in practicing medicine morally. Some of these values have their roots in classical wisdom, like the Hippocratic Oath’s condemnation of abortion and assisted suicide, and some in teachings stemming from divine revelation. But the Church doesn’t tell doctors how to restore health in their medical interventions. Only the science of medicine can tell us how to cure a person’s illness.

Likewise, the Church offers principles to economists to guide them in the moral application of economics, but it doesn’t dictate a “Catholic” way to create wealth. That’s the job of those competent in the science of economics. This is why Pope Pius XI taught that “economics and moral science each employs its own principles in its own sphere” (Quadragesimo Anno 42). He said God entrusted the Church with exercising its authority “not of course in matters of technique for which she is neither suitably equipped nor endowed by office but in all things that are connected with the moral law.”

Since economics is not a field related to theology or the moral law, John Paul II made it clear that “the Church has no models to present.” Instead, economic models “that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political, and cultural aspects.” The Church does have, however, a role to play in offering guidance on economic questions that overlap with moral and social doctrine. “For such a task,” he says, “the Church offers her social teaching as an indispensable and ideal orientation” (Centesimus Annus 43).

John Paul also asks if capitalism is the economic model that should be proposed to developing countries. He admits the answer is complex and says it depends on what you mean by “capitalism”:

If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property, and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy,” “market economy,” or simply “free economy” (CA 42).

John Paul did not directly call this system capitalism, but the name is still appropriate. When people are free to sell services and goods in the marketplace and can retain profits for their good and the good of their company, then capital will naturally accumulate. However, the pope goes on to say:

But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative (42).

Although capitalism is subject to abuse when it operates without legal limits, John Paul II stressed that “the Church’s social doctrine is not a ‘third way’ between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 41). Instead, the Church’s moral teachings can be used to order actions that take place in free markets toward promoting the common good of society and protecting society from evils like socialism that would destroy the common good and reap “a harvest of misery” (Graves de Communi Re 21).

Trent Horn, Catholic Answers

President Trump said Thursday that the United States no longer needs a deal with Iran, declaring that “those days have long since passed.”

Instead, he’s directed Vice President JD Vance to train his sights on the ever-growing crime and corruption taking place in Democrat-run cities and states.

Trump singled out Minnesota, California, and Illinois as “poorly run, corrupt disasters” in a Truth Social post earlier this morning, warning that “Billions of Dollars (are) being stolen each and every month.”

He also claimed the federal budget could be balanced by straightening out the massive corruption alone. Then the president turned to Tehran.

“We don’t need a deal with Iran,” he insisted. “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

BREAKING: PRESIDENT TRUMP SAYS UNITED STATES DOESN’T NEED A DEAL WITH IRAN ANYMORE https://t.co/UzRmgu4jHL

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) November 12, 2026 Trump’s comments seem to respond to a Wall Street Journal report that Vance, who has been leading diplomatic outreach to Tehran, was considering face-to-face talks with Mohsen Rezaei. Rezaei is the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

The Journal, citing officials, said Trump had told aides he was open to Vance restarting negotiations. No meeting had been scheduled, and Rezaei has denied that such talks were planned.

Trump’s focus away from Iran, practically dismissing any need for further diplomacy, comes following a midterm election disaster that saw voters urge more of a spotlight on domestic issues.

President Trump said Wednesday the U.S. has already won the war against Iran, but when the conflict will end is a different question. “America did not start a war with Iran,” he said at a Veterans Day event at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. “Iran has been waging war on America since 1979. This should have been taken care of a long time ago.” “Under this administration, and it was about time, somebody fought back,” he continued. “All of us fought back. We fought back. And we seriously fought back. And we won.”

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 11, 2026 Embedded tweet continues:

… America since 1979. This should have been taken care of a long time ago.” “Under this administration, and it was about time, somebody fought back,” he continued. “All of us fought back. We fought back. And we seriously fought back. And we won.”

The White House said it is confident the United States is “in a very strong position with control of the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian economy collapsing,” adding that the naval blockade — Operation Economic Outcast, along with Operation Iron Gate — “will continue with full effect.”

“President Trump holds all the cards and will do whatever is best for the United States,” they told Fox News Digital.

Iran has been demanding that Washington lift that blockade, release frozen assets, and ease oil sanctions as conditions for talks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week called those demands “totally unrealistic,” while saying the United States would be “prepared for diplomacy” if Tehran changed its position.

Trump’s post makes it clear America no longer needs to bargain with the volatile nation.

Oil prices jumped after the post, with markets reading the remarks as a sign that a deal is not immediately in sight.

Rusty Weiss, Red State

The same bill backs equity curricula and removes a deportation ground for noncitizens who vote illegally.

=======================================================================

“Universal mail-in voting”

That is what American taxpayers would help finance under Democrats’ legislation to abolish the Department of Homeland Security.

Rep. Delia Ramirez’s Reimagining Safety Act would dismantle DHS and give its proposed replacement a new assignment: distributing federal grants for mail-in voting, equity-focused civics curricula and community civic-engagement programs.

Twenty pages earlier, the same bill would erase the specific deportation ground for noncitizens who vote unlawfully.

The proposal pairs federal support for universal mail voting with the removal of an immigration consequence for illegal voting. Both are tucked into legislation publicly promoted as a plan to reimagine community safety.

Official bill excerpt: Inclusive Democracy Grant Program, recipients and universal mail-in voting.

H.R. 10803, printed page 67, section 402(d). The proposed grants explicitly cover universal mail-in voting. Cropped from the official Government Publishing Office PDF; wording is unaltered. Read the original page.

==========================================================================

A new bureaucracy to subsidize mail voting

Ramirez introduced H.R. 10803 on October 13 with original Democratic cosponsors Rashida Tlaib, Adelita Grijalva and Jim McGovern.

Their public pitch is to abolish ICE and Customs and Border Protection, dismantle DHS and redirect resources into communities. The proposal would preserve FEMA, CISA, TSA and customs functions under a reorganized federal structure.

But section 402(d) goes beyond immigration policy. It would create an Inclusive Democracy Grant Program inside the new Department of Community Safety.

The secretary would be directed to distribute grants to states, Washington, D.C., territories, tribes and local governments. Eligible activities explicitly include universal mail-in voting, expanded early voting without an excuse requirement, and language-accessible ballot processing.

The provision would also let those governments obtain federal support for K–12 and adult civics curricula covering constitutional rights, systemic equity and participatory democracy. Independent, community-led civic-engagement programs are another eligible use.

Official continuation naming systemic equity, participatory democracy and community-led civic engagement.

H.R. 10803, printed page 68, continuation of section 402(d). The curriculum and civic-engagement provisions complete the grant program’s three eligible purposes. Cropped excerpt; wording is unaltered. Read the original page.

In other words, the Cabinet department replacing DHS would help finance election administration and classroom instruction on equity.

Ramirez’s public summary describes the voting grants in broad terms. It leaves out the bill’s explicit universal-mail-voting example and its systemic-equity language.

Removing a consequence for illegal voting

The election provisions extend beyond spending.

On page 47, section 302(b)(10) would repeal two paragraphs of the Immigration and Nationality Act: the public-charge deportation ground and the separate ground for unlawful voting.

The latter provision currently makes a noncitizen deportable for voting in violation of federal, state or local law, with a specified exception for certain people who reasonably believed they were citizens.

Official bill paragraph repealing INA section 237(a)(5) and (6).

H.R. 10803, printed page 47, section 302(b)(10). The cross-reference repeals the public-charge and unlawful-voter paragraphs of INA section 237(a). Cropped excerpt; wording is unaltered. Read the original page.

===============================================================================================

Ramirez’s proposal would remove that basis for deportation. The separate federal criminal ban on noncitizen voting would remain.

That is a consequential choice about citizenship and enforcement: the bill would eliminate an immigration penalty attached specifically to unlawful participation in American elections.

The priorities are written. The price tag isn’t.

The coalition backing the legislation includes Free Speech For People, Mijente, Indivisible Chicago Alliance, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and CAIR-Chicago.

The bill’s spending priorities reach well beyond mail ballots. Section 402(a)–(b) would cancel DHS’s remaining unobligated immigration-enforcement funding and authorize its reappropriation for eight categories of programs, including universal health care, housing, education and climate initiatives.

Its instruction to provide grants would still need funding through appropriations. The nearby $250 million annual authorization is for a separate violence-prevention program.

As introduced, this is a proposal for spending and legal changes, not money already awarded. Its political priorities are nevertheless clear: dismantle DHS, repeal an unlawful-voting deportation ground and establish federal subsidies for mail voting and equity curricula.

Natalie Winters

Veterans did not die for today’s America. Today’s America is dominated by a population either ignorant of freedom’s value, or openly hostile to it. People who love freedom do not vote for medieval, beheading barbarians or totalitarian, starvation-inducing Marxists. They don’t applaud the deaths of nonviolent people whose ideas they don’t share. Lovers of freedom honor the right to property — their own, or another’s — and do not scream for freebies or “affordability” paid for by others.

Let’s be real, just once … The veterans of yesteryear fought for an ideal no longer embodied in this nation as we know it. Freedom once was, and might be again. But not now. Now is disgusting almost beyond belief — and now is not what they fought and died for.

Don’t trivialize the achievement of veterans by pretending that the America of today is anything like our founders envisioned or our Constitution requires. Freedom only benefits decent, good, self-governing people.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

“Observe how difficult it is to change yourself and you will understand how naive it is to try to change another person.” (Voltaire)

You cannot change another person. You might persuade or inspire another person. But you cannot change another person. EVER.

Most of the world’s evil and dysfunctional insanity rests on this faulty premise. Past and present. In families, marriages, governments, cultures — this is THE problem.

Accept you will never change another person, focus on yourself and set yourself free.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

It has been an “open-ended conflict” for almost 50 years, not by our choice.

By George Rasley

November 9, 2026

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…’”

“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.”

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.

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.

American Greatness

Europe stands on the brink of a structural shift in its energy landscape. In the first nine months of 2026, electric vehicles (EVs) accounted for 24.2% of all new car sales across the continent, marking a 41.9% surge compared to 2025. In September 2026, that market share climbed as high as 30.5%. This momentum is no passing anomaly; it is the direct result of targeted policy interventions, technological advances, and evolving consumer behavior.

Displacing Oil: By the Numbers

The electrification of passenger road transport is striking at the very core of the oil sector. Globally, EVs now displace 1.2 million barrels of oil per day—a fivefold increase compared to 2021. The shift is particularly striking given that while EVs currently represent only 4.2% of the global vehicle fleet, they already command 25% of all new vehicle sales.

In Europe, the impact is even more acute: across the European Union, the market share of pure petrol cars slipped to 21.2%, while diesel plummeted to a historic low of 7.1%. For the oil industry, this translates into a structural decline in demand for transport fuels, a sector that has traditionally been its most dependable revenue driver.

Norway and Denmark Offer a Glimpse of the Future

With a battery-electric vehicle (BEV) market share of 97.9% in 2026, Norway remains the world’s undisputed frontrunner. Denmark follows at 81.7%, while Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands have all broken past the 40% mark.

These markets demonstrate that a rapid transition is fully viable under the right conditions: elevated fossil fuel prices, a dense and reliable charging network, and generous tax incentives. In Norway, long-standing VAT exemptions paved the way for mass adoption, while in Denmark, BEV buyers benefit from a 40% discount on vehicle registration taxes. These policies have catalyzed widespread electrification, driving down demand for road-bound petroleum products at unprecedented speed.

France and Germany Step on the Gas

Europe’s heavyweight automotive markets are picking up speed as well. France recorded a 79.1% jump in EV sales in 2026, pushing its market share to 31.4%. Germany followed with a 58.1% gain, lifting its share to 27.2%.

Both governments have leaned aggressively into targeted subsidy schemes. France introduced a subsidized “social leasing” program, enabling 50,000 lower-income households to lease an EV for €200 per month. Meanwhile, Germany allocated up to €432 million under its BAFA grant scheme to fund 97,790 applications. These measures have compressed adoption timelines and tightened the squeeze on the oil sector. While Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3 continue to dominate sales charts, European automakers such as Renault and Škoda are rapidly clawing back market share.

The transition to electric mobility appears irreversible and is set to accelerate further in the years ahead. In 2026, EVs officially surpassed petrol to become Europe’s best-selling powertrain. Looking further out, BEVs are projected to displace up to 5.8 million barrels of oil per day worldwide by 2034, a seismic shift that could dramatically bolster Europe’s energy independence

Innovation Origins

I have a secret to share.

Academics don’t like Western Culture, and they aren’t afraid to shout that from the rooftops. They are very passionate in their hatred. They announce it every day in the classroom.

Students are genuinely scared to disagree because they are pretty sure the professor will punish them, which reduces the value of the $100,000/year in tuition and fees they pay for the privilege of being harangued.

A new survey of nearly 2,200 students at five Chicago-area universities found 84% felt pressure to criticize Western civilization to succeed academically, while roughly 3 in 4 reported holding back their opinions. …

… Every university any of these students attend was founded to promote Western ideals, and until recently the Western canon formed the backbone of the education they provided.

So I assume it comes as a major surprise to my readers that the core curriculum is now characterized as THE WEST IS BAD!

Just kidding. We all know that, but many Americans still don’t, which is why it remains a $2 trillion industry that gets hundreds of billions poured into it by taxpayers. …

… America faces deep disagreements over its history, institutions, politics, and future. Addressing those problems requires citizens willing to challenge the ideas institutions teach them to accept, test arguments against opposing evidence, and speak openly when doing so carries a social or professional risk. …

… When students were asked whether challenging a professor’s negative view of Western culture could result in a lower grade, 83 percent agreed or strongly agreed. When asked whether challenging a professor’s positive view could hurt their grade, only 14 percent agreed. …

… The institutions have been captured by the radical Left, which aims to use the positions of power (and the money) to destroy the West.

David Strom, Hotair

This is the 2020 election, exactly like it, repeating identical statistical anomalies designed to engineer an artificial realignment.

Amil Imani | November 12, 2026

When an election produces outcomes that run completely counter to historical precedent, polling baselines, and raw mathematical probability, the dispute ceases to be a conventional political debate and transforms into an indictment of the process itself. The case asserting that this midterm was systematically subverted rests upon four primary pillars: statistical impossibility, software and algorithmic manipulation, unauthorized cyber penetration, and administrative chain-of-custody collapse.

The foundational argument against the legitimacy of the results begins with the numbers that show uniform swings across non-contiguous battlegrounds violating basic demographic distribution principles.

The primary anomaly centers on contested battleground outcomes where one party captures 29 out of 30 coin-flip congressional races. In probability theory, independent coin-flip distributions do not resolve with a 96.7% success rate without external bias. When thirty high-friction districts spanning diverse demographic regions — from rural working-class enclaves to high-density suburban corridors — all break in an identical direction by margins often hovering within single fractions of a percentage point, the outcome defies standard standard-deviation boundaries.

The macro-level numbers tell the same story: across the national House popular vote, turnout surged exclusively on one side, with Democrats picking up an estimated 13 to 15 million votes compared to 2022 while Republican totals remained largely static.

Even local races reflected institutional breakdown, such as in Texas House District 93, where an ineligible candidate facing felony questions remained on the ballot and was credited with a narrow victory under contested circumstances.

It is impossible to make Texas blue — just impossible. This is the 2020 election, exactly like it, repeating identical statistical anomalies designed to engineer an artificial realignment.

The technical case targets the digital layer of the voting apparatus: central tabulators, direct-recording electronic units, and optical scanners. The core vector highlighted is algorithmic poisoning — the insertion of modified code designed to alter vote tallies before results are compiled and transmitted.

Unlike crude, visible errors, algorithmic weighting operates beneath standard audit thresholds. The software applies a mathematical multiplier — often referred to as fractional voting — assigning decimal values to individual ballots (e.g., counting a vote as 0.85 for one candidate and 1.15 for the opposing candidate) while displaying whole numbers on public-facing dashboards.

This argument is compounded by software update procedures executed in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Jurisdictions that applied “emergency patches,” logic upgrades, or firmware updates circumvented standard public certification timelines. When hash values of operational software fail to match the pristine binaries certified by accredited testing laboratories, the integrity of the tabulator logic is irrevocably compromised.

Beyond internal algorithmic modification lies the vector of external cyber intrusion. Election networks rely on distributed infrastructure: electronic poll books, county consolidation servers, and third-party election management vendors.

The intrusion argument focuses on middle-tier transmissions — the point where localized precinct vote totals are converted into encrypted transfer files and sent across private modems or public networks to state election databases. Network packet captures and traffic latency spikes reported on election night demonstrate that air-gapped systems were bridged through external telemetry ports and remote access clients.

These telemetry profiles reproduce the distinct ‘drop and roll’ tabulation curves observed previously, where steady, predictable vote-intake lines were suddenly interrupted by asymmetric aggregate spikes that reversed established leads within minutes.

Once external access is achieved, man-in-the-middle attacks can intercept data pipelines to inject synthetic vote batches directly into county-level aggregate databases. These injected totals reflect immaculate digital signatures, making them appear authenticated by the system while bypassing direct paper-ballot verification at the precinct level.

The physical manifestation of the challenge addresses voter roll hygiene and ballot collection protocols. The volume of mail-in and drop-box ballots processed without continuous, unsevered chains of custody constitutes a fatal breach of legal statutory requirements.

The mechanism involves:

• Duplicate Registration Exploitation: State voter registration databases containing hundreds of thousands of unpurged inactive voters, deceased individuals, and change-of-address discrepancies provide the raw inventory for phantom ballots.
• Batch Injection: Unmonitored ballot drop boxes and late-night consolidation deliveries where physical custody logs lack dual-party signoffs, timestamped custody transfers, or secure transport seals.
• Automated Signature Bypass: Optical signature-verification engines set to lowered confidence thresholds, allowing mass acceptance of ballots that would fail standard human forensic comparison.

The steal is designed to make it nearly impossible for the public to access the evidence — a playbook proven in 2020. They have systematically deleted the records, and even when proof surfaces, the courts refuse to hear it. But none of that means conceding defeat.

When combined, these vectors do not describe isolated irregularities; they describe a synchronized architecture designed to bypass constitutional safeguards. By combining manipulated software logic with targeted database inflation and unverified paper intake, an election is steered from a democratic contest into an administrative seizure of power. Underneath the technical operation lies the political objective: Democratic socialists coordinating with Establishment figures to dismantle Trump and eliminate the MAGA movement entirely. The systematic execution across key swing districts forms the complete operational blueprint for what is fundamentally characterized as a bloodless institutional coup.

The demand is straightforward: audit these elections thoroughly, transparently, and immediately. If elections cannot be independently verified and guaranteed as legitimate, this one may well be the last.

American Thinker