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

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

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

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

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

Ben Whedon, Just the News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Howard Kunstler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coverage Denials

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benefit Cuts

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

But the cost to employers has been rising.

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

Employers have been scaling back the benefit as a result.

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

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

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

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

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

Higher Premiums, Cost Sharing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unexpected Medical Expenses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sylvia Xu, Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Brianna Lyman, The Federalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shane Harris, AMAC News

Too many students are graduating with a college degree ignorant of this country and how it works. 

Rhys Read | October 2, 2026

Too many students are graduating with a college degree ignorant of this country and how it works. To remedy this, I would add three courses that should be required for graduation. These courses would go a long way toward curing the misinformation now being presented to many modern college graduates. We can add these requirements to the Illinois state schools as a minimum and as an example to the rest of the education establishment.

First, require microeconomics. No student should receive a college degree without at least a basic understanding of both the laws of supply and demand and the utility theory of value. Many students graduate believing Marx’s labor theory of value, which was debunked going back to the 19th century.

Second, students should know the basis of our country’s founding. This should include readings of John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and The Federalist Papers, as well as study of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Adding Polybius’s chapter on the structure of the Roman Republic in the 2nd Century B.C. might provide additional insights into how the country’s government was originally structured. The University of Chicago used to require students to read Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which would be another alternative.

Third, a class reviewing 20th-century socialism and the human tragedy it caused worldwide. The class would cover the USSR, where 20-40 million people died in the labor camps and famines, National Socialist Germany, which murdered 12 million people in Europe as well as starting a war which led to 50 million deaths, Mao’s Chinese Communist Party which killed 40-80 million people, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia which killed a quarter of the population of the country in just a four-year period, North Korea, where an estimated 10% of the population starved to death in the early 1990s when the rest of the world was experiencing food surpluses, as well as discussing Cuba, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and other modern tragedies. Discussion should include three comparative examples of East vs. West Germany, North vs. South Korea, and Taiwan vs. Maoist China. Students should be able to explain why every socialist country resorts or resorted to the use of slave labor. The class should conclude with the fall of the Berlin Wall and how this symbolized the lifting of millions of people from the tragedy of socialism.

American Thinker

So, you’re thinking about sitting out the midterms. Or you might just vote Democrat to protest. The Iran war has dragged on too long, you say. Months rather than weeks hardly make it Vietnam, though. Casualties are minor. Consider: Iran with nuclear weapons would be an uber-terror state. It would pose a 24/7 threat to U.S. security. Victor Davis Hanson is right: Breaking Iran is a gift, yet hard to appreciate now. Higher gas, diesel, and grocery prices are chewing up your budget. No argument. But relief is coming.

The midterms are playing out in a broader context. They’re threshold elections for Democrats. They’re crossing over into socialism. When you appreciate how extreme their agenda is about to become, maybe it would be wise to temper your disgust with Trump and Republicans? For Democrats, there’s no turning back.

Democrats aren’t merely jumping the shark. They’ve been moving left since Woodrow Wilson. Once venerated, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson are thoroughly reviled by the rank and file. JFK was an outlier.

Full-throttle socialism is Democrats’ logical destination. And not years from now. With socialism comes rigid top-down governance. “Collective” rights over individual rights. Less is more mantras. A potential climate “holocaust” — unending kudos to grifter Al Gore — makes draconian economic policies mandatory. Do you appreciate how “greens” have hobbled Germany’s economy?

The vanguard, for the benefit of us witless masses, must impose everything from values to personal conduct. China’s ever-evolving surveillance state is a model for American leftists. Flock cameras are a beachhead. Big Brother must watch. Social deviants are to be punished.

Democrats are experiencing generational change, which means sharper conflicts lie ahead. Not within the party, however. Craven, power-hungry establishment Democrats will bend. The ongoing cold war between the left and traditional America is bound to intensify. When it reaches a climax and what that looks like is anyone’s guess. It likely doesn’t end with smiles and handshakes over coffee and poundcake.

The rising generation of Democrats is embracing the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which wants a government-run economy. The DSA has declared for gutting the Constitution.

What does working-class rule translate to? Key DSA aims: A new constitution to create a “democratic socialist republic.” Abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College and replacing the president and Supreme Court with an executive committee and high court selected by a unicameral legislature. Extending the franchise to permanent alien residents (noncitizens). Oh, and a goody bag full of other anti-liberty and anti-American propositions.

Progressive Democrats are toxic enough. You know, Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, Chris Murphy, Hakeem Jeffries — the usual suspects. We need only cast our minds back to Biden’s White House sojourn. It was a mishmash of bad economics, wide open borders, degenerate woke social policies, a thoroughly corrupt FBI, therapeutic policing (meaning, soft on crime), disaster in Afghanistan, and kowtowing to China and, yep, Iran.

When Nancy Pelosi assumed the U.S. House speakership in 2019, what was the first measure out of the chute? Legislation to gut fair elections. Pelosi wanted to enact federally many “temporary” state-level 2020 election measures that caused half the country to doubt the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election.

If Democrats capture Congress, what happens?

Resurrected, the old, familiar bevy of investigations and impeachment to hamstring Trump. They’ll resurface the worst of Biden’s policies. But, of necessity, they’ll introduce some hard left legislation to pacify the growing cohort of socialists among them.

Democrat-Socialists won’t be satisfied doubling, tripling, or quadrupling down on Biden’s follies. They mean to go full Karl. Consider pro-abortion advocates. Many have dispensed with the pretense of being pro-choice. Marx idolaters are brazenly promoting all the hokum that socialists and communists have peddled for nearly two centuries. Many imbibed this poison at universities. That’s why university administrations and faculties need to be confronted and cleaned out, but that’s a subject for another day.

Suffice it to say, across the globe, when socialism rears its ugly head, peoples have witnessed societal catastrophe after catastrophe, and body counts in the tens of millions. Full Karl — from Russia to China to Vietnam to North Korea to Cambodia to Cuba — are bleak testaments. But it can’t happen here, huh?

According to Gallup (September 23), socialism is regarded as positive by 40% of Americans. The skew? Among the 18-34 crowd. 57% think going hard left is swell. You don’t trust polls, then go visit a college campus or hang out at a Starbucks. Your eyes and ears won’t betray.

But socialism isn’t today’s problem, right? You’re sick and tired of stretching your paycheck. It’s time to send Trump a message.

If Democrats take the House and/or Senate, the final two years of Trump’s presidency will be scuttled. All the chaff surrounding the war has obscured Trump’s remarkable accomplishments — accomplishments made in just 20 months.

Here goes: Border and immigration victories, which are ongoing. Plummeting murder rates. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” is huge, ongoing tax relief. No tax on tips and Social Security. Trillions of dollars in new foreign investments are or will be pouring into the country. Tariffs are revitalizing the domestic steel industry. Yes, energy production is up here. Venezuelan oil production facilities are being modernized, and oil will arrive more sooner than later. Federal DEI programs are being eliminated. Female athletes are being shielded from Democrat-supported trans infiltration.

Imagine how much more Trump can achieve in his final two years without Democrat obstruction?

Finally, Iran is reaching a breaking point. Trump’s warning to Iran during his speech at the United Nations couldn’t have been starker: Quit or face annihilation. Operation Economic Outcast is biting hard. Ther Iranian economy is faltering.

Per Al Jazeera, September 21:

Tehran, Iran – Amid dire fuel shortages and mounting economic challenges, the Iranian government is seeking cost-saving measures for government workers and other citizens to deal with the crisis.

And the New York Post reported Secretary Scott Bessent saying (September 27):

“Probably within the next two weeks, they are going to make their final deliveries of oil to China, and then they will have nothing,” Bessent added. “It is an empty set. And I believe that they are feeling the pressure here, and that’s why they want a deal.”

Lower gas and energy prices are in the offing. The Strait of Hormuz is opened. WTI crude has plummeted to $91 a barrel (as of this writing) from a high of $105 on September 14.

Yeah, you’ve heard it before. Trump miscalculated the war’s duration, no doubt. But what remains of the Iranian regime gets that when food becomes scarer and nights grow cold, their citizens will grow bolder. Their rule hangs in the balance.

With Trump’s leadership, the next couple of years promise to be brighter and better. Backing the president and keeping a GOP Congress is vital. It’s critical in stopping socialists from gaining footholds. Vote Republican because the alternative is full of regrets.

J. Robert Smith can be found at X. His handle is @JRobertSmith1. At Gab, @JRobertSmith. Also at Truth Social, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover.

American Thinker

At eighteen, my worldview was shattered

David Jäkle

The pandemic is finally over, and we can all go back to normal.”

Well, that was naïve of me. That is what I genuinely thought.

It was late summer 2020; I was newly of legal age and starting to take on the role of a responsible adult with real conviction. Closely following the news? A civic duty!

I tracked the numbers, absorbed the briefings, and trusted the framework. The German government had serious people running its institutions. They would read the data, adjust, and steer us back toward something resembling ordinary life.

Sure, people make mistakes, but my elected representatives and their trusted experts were working hard, day and night, to make my life better. Right?

After months, it was clear that heavy restrictions on normal life had been ineffective at best and actively harmful at worst. But back then, we didn’t know better. Or so I told myself.

And then the restrictions came back. Harder.

For the most part, I stayed analytical. I was watching the numbers. I still hoped we would recognize the overreaction and return to normal. Soon. Politicians would look at the evidence without the narrative scaffolding, shrug, and admit they had overreacted.

Instead, we got escalation. The narrative shifted twice a week. “We are all going to die!” “The hospitals are overrun!” “You are going to kill grandma!” The metrics shifted too: cases, incidence, hospitalizations, deaths, excess deaths—whatever best served the goal of frightening people.

That gap between the rational governance I expected and what actually happened was small at first. Barely worth naming. But gaps like that have a way of widening.

The Power of Reading

Bitcoin entered my life around the same time. Saifedean Ammous’s The Bitcoin Standard raised questions and shattered illusions. It was the kind of book that doesn’t just introduce a new idea but makes the old ones look structurally unsound.

The book made me question the state’s supposed neutrality as an economic steward. Over time, I learned that politicians use money, like anything else within their reach, to steer the population as they see fit.

The alternative was extreme: hard money, fiscal discipline, and the radical notion that citizens could manage their own economic lives without a central authority inflating away the value of their labor.

Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action deepened that skepticism. It didn’t just argue against interventionism but showed in detail why intervention tends to generate the very catastrophes it claims to prevent.

I hadn’t known much about economics before. Human Action is a nine-hundred-page treatise that takes the time to explain sound economics to newcomers. Understanding its arguments doesn’t require a degree. If you can reason like a human, you can follow the argument.

Price controls produce shortages. Subsidies distort the incentives they were meant to correct. Regulations entrench the large players they were supposedly restraining.

Mises did not work like modern economists. He didn’t build a model of how human beings should behave and then scold reality for non-compliance. He started with how people actually behave and built outward from there. That methodological honesty was, to me, more radical than any of the conclusions.

Orwell’s 1984 reinforced the trajectory. Alongside this reading, I followed accounts on Twitter: individuals questioning the official covid narrative, the coziness between regulators and pharmaceutical companies, and the gap between what was reported and what the data actually showed.

The combination of rigorous economic theory and well-reasoned suspicion of institutions made me a huge skeptic of any government policy.

When Reality Confirmed the Theory

Small doubts had appeared in the early summer of 2020 and hardened over the following months. By late summer, I was genuinely shocked.

We had the data. We had months of evidence about what worked and what didn’t. And the response was to run the same play again, with the same confidence, expecting different results.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
—often attributed to Albert Einstein

What made it worse was the silence. No one pushed back. Nearly everyone simply absorbed the new rules. Some people around me did hold an opposing view, but few would declare it publicly.

Others repeated the “expert consensus” back at you the moment you asked a question. Some were true believers—devotees of the state and its priests in lab coats. Some spoke from habit—the habit of outsourcing judgment to credentialed authority and calling it informed opinion.

After half a year of covid tyranny, the Querdenker protests gained traction in Germany. I disagreed with some of the wilder theories. I do not, for instance, subscribe to antisemitic conspiracy claims. Still, the central point they were fighting for was freedom.

They fought for the freedom to move, to associate, to disagree. Yet many people who privately opposed the lockdowns still parroted the media line: all Querdenker protesters are unhinged cranks who want to kill your grandmother.

Shadows of the Past

In the following year, the Overton window shrank visibly. The range of acceptable opinions narrowed. People who had never engaged seriously with epidemiology, virology, or public policy were citing “the experts” with the certainty of converts.

Ask a clarifying question and you were endangering lives. Rigorous questioning, the core of the scientific method, was out the window, even as “the science” was invoked at every turn.

The policies were bad enough. The thinking—or rather, the replacement of thinking with recitation—was alarming.

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By international standards, Germany has done an admirable job, perhaps the best, of confronting the horrors its ancestors committed. Unfortunately, the emphasis is misplaced: instead of teaching how tens of millions of ordinary people were drawn into and sustained Nazi ideology, the lesson has been reduced to “the Right is bad.” (And then they define “the Right” broadly and tendentiously as “anything we don’t like.”)

When it comes to spotting warning signs and preventing such a tragedy from recurring, the operative goal seems to be suppressing votes for right-wing parties. The fact that tyranny can emerge from any point on the political spectrum is a lesson mostly ignored.

It may sound hyperbolic today, but footage from the covid years shows the unvaccinated being treated with a social hostility that echoed how Jews were treated in mid-1930s Germany. They weren’t sent to camps (yet), but every social ill was blamed on them.

A Good Crisis

By 2021, the landscape looked bleak. Vaccine passports, to use the preferred euphemism, looked permanent. The noose around dissenters was tightening.

I felt we were beginning to relive the trajectory of 1930s Germany. Again, this might sound exaggerated to many, but take a look at the news in 2022. The people in 1930s Germany did not anticipate what was about to happen either.

Whether you agreed that vaccination was a good idea, were pressured into it, or managed to resist entirely, the coercion being applied to ordinary people should have alarmed you.

Considering how normalized tyranny had become, I was amazed that the covid measures ended at all. But the end of emergency measures did not mean that things returned to the way they had been before. The state grew during those years, and it did not shrink back.

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

—often attributed to Winston Churchill

The Land of the Free

A question took shape: “Is this where I want to build a life?” Some Germans complain that they aren’t allowed to express patriotism. And I always think: Patriotism about what, exactly? About politicians and neighbors who treat your freedoms as an obstacle to be managed rather than a birthright?

I was done. I knew I had to leave. But where?

I was searching for a land of the free. The answer was clear: The Land of the Free. I had concerns about some of what was happening in the United States, but I could always move to Texas instead of California.

In my mind was the America the Founders envisioned, one where I could be left alone to live my life as I saw fit.

At the time, I was completing a duales studium—alternating between hands-on work at my employer and university coursework—the kind of arrangement German institutions do well and that companies value because it produces capable workers quickly.

My plan was simple: finish my studies in 2023 and find a position—with my current employer or, if necessary, another—in the United States.

How this plan played out will be the subject of our next installment.

React19 reviewed free-text entries submitted to the CDC’s V-safe vaccine safety monitoring program to document reports in which participants asked for help, described suicidal thoughts, reported that they were dying or nearly died, or reported a death, and to document what participants said about the response they received.

CDC V-safe free-text survey responses were produced under FOIA request 24-01322 and published by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) at icandecide.org/v-safe-data. The CDC released the data in twelve interim and final tranches. This audit uses ICAN’s updated files, which add the survey type, response ID, and response date to each entry. All twelve tranches: the 1st through 12th, were released from December 14, 2020 to December 31, 2022. These contain 7,554,929 responses from 3,489,888 unique participants.

Each entry was searched for words and phrases indicating a plea for help or contact, suicidal thoughts, dying, or death. Death, suicidal, and dying entries were reviewed individually; cries for help were filtered by rule. Because V-safe check-ins are tied to vaccine doses, entries were treated as post-vaccination reports unless the writer named another cause. Entries attributing illness to Covid-19 infection were excluded. All entries from each identified participant are grouped under their V-safe user ID, in date order, across tranches.

Conclusion: 3,329 participants met the criteria and submitted 14,430 related entries. About 1 in every 1,048 participants in the tranches wrote a plea for help, or reported a death. Many wrote in repeatedly. Several reported that promised callbacks never came, and some asked directly whether anyone was reading their reports.

V-safe was built to hear from people after vaccination, and these participants used it for that purpose. In their own words, 3,329 people reported serious harm, suicidal thoughts, near-death events, or the death of someone they loved. Many kept writing for weeks or months. Their entries describe promised callbacks that never came, pleas for help with no reply, and repeated questions about whether anyone was reading at all. This audit cannot determine what the CDC did with these reports. It can document what participants experienced: a system that asked them to report and, as they describe it, did not respond. 

There are limitations. Entries are self-reported; this audit does not assess whether the vaccine caused any reported event. Counts are a floor: participants who described serious events without using the search terms are not included. The CDC’s redactions appear as (b)(6). Names, phone numbers, and email addresses the CDC left unredacted have been replaced with [name], [phone], and [email].

How to read this report. Each block is one participant: the header shows the V-safe user ID and number of entries. Entries in bold with a red date matched the search; the rest are the same participant’s other entries. The companion spreadsheet lists the CDC response ID and tranche for every entry. The Top Cries for Help list follows on the next page, then the 30 notable cases and the full audit entries.

React19 exists so that people injured after vaccination are heard, believed, and cared for. These entries show why that work matters. They also show where the public health system’s own tools fell short of it.

Brownstone Institute

Each year the federal government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion to fraud. There is no single or simple solution to combat fraud in federal programs, including those administered by states. But, over the years, GAO has identified hundreds of actions federal agencies and Congress can take to better protect taxpayer money from fraudsters and increase public trust in government.

Today’s WatchBlog post looks at nine key actions Congress can take. These actions include passing new legislation, as well as increasing oversight of agency counter fraud efforts.

Millions of Americans receive payments from the federal government—including through Social Security and Medicare, as well as social safety net and disaster assistance programs.

But these payments and programs are susceptible to fraud from people or businesses either pretending to be someone they are not or applying for benefits they don’t qualify for. How can we stop them? We think there are four actions that Congress should take to help prevent fraudulent and erroneous payments.

Eliminate use of self-attestation to determine identity and eligibility for federal programs. Some federal programs allow applicants to self-attest or self-certify their identity and eligibility for benefits. This has helped agencies get money to those who need it as quickly as possible, because they aren’t spending time verifying information.

Self-attestation was used often during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the result was hundreds of billions of dollars lost to fraud. Much of this fraud could have been prevented or more quickly detected if Congress had required agencies to verify identities and information before making payments.

Expand use of Treasury’s “Do Not Pay” program. The Department of the Treasury manages the “Do Not Pay” program. This is a key resource for checking eligibility. It allows agencies to verify recipients against a variety of databases before making payments. But we recently found that only 4% of all federal programs fully use it. Others cite resource constraints and concerns about privacy and data protections as reasons why they don’t.

Additionally, state-administered programs that use federal funding (such as SNAP or TANF) also would benefit from using Do Not Pay. They can access it for free—but aren’t required to do so.

Congressional action could help agencies and states overcome the barriers to using this valuable data source for fraud prevention, while also protecting privacy. Congressional action could also grant the Do Not Pay program access to more data sources, making it an even more powerful resource to combat fraud.

Authorize greater access to the National Directory of New Hires to verify eligibility for federal programs. The National Directory of New Hires contains employment and wage data on nearly every working American, as well as people who receive unemployment benefits. This is an important resource for verifying program eligibility and determining benefit amounts. But very few programs and agencies are legally allowed to access it.

Increasing access to this database, with the appropriate privacy and data protections, wouldn’t only help fight fraud. It would also improve government-wide efforts to identify, prevent, and recover payments made in error (also known as improper payments).

Provide the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with authority to obtain information from states to estimate and report improper payments in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). So far, we’ve discussed government-wide actions to combat fraud. But our work has also looked closely at specific programs. Among them is TANF, a $17 billion program annually. This program is an important resource for families that need help. But more should be done to protect funding from fraud and errors.

HHS oversees this program, which is administered by states. HHS says it lacks legal authority to require states to give it the information needed to estimate how much is loses to improper payments each year. Providing HHS with that authority would increase accountability over TANF payments and allow HHS to collect the information it needs to implement corrective actions and assess their effectiveness in reducing fraudulent and other improper payments.

Earlier this year, GAO experts testified before Congress about the importance of improving TANF oversight. Hear from them in the video below.