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.

World’s Smallest Political Quiz.Take the Quiz

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.

Green Party members have been told to replace terms such as “mothers and fathers” with gender-neutral terminology under new guidance on inclusive language.

They have been advised to use the terms “parents and carers” when referring to a child’s mother and father and also said people should never be referred to as “elderly”.

The guide also instructs members to use the phrase “black, Asian and minority ethnic” (Bame) with caution because “many people are uncomfortable with grouping diverse experiences under a single label”.

The same applies to “homosexual” and “transsexual” – the latter because it “does not encompass non-binary people”.

“Sexual preference” is also labelled as “unacceptable” because it “implies that attraction is a choice and should be avoided”.

The terms “lunatic” and “nutter” also do not comply with the rules because they “reinforce negative stereotypes and stigma about mental health”. The guidance tells members it “widely reflects common usage in the UK”.

It warns members that using the wrong words, as determined by the Green Party, “can create environments that feel unwelcoming or exclusionary”. This could contribute to bullying and harassment, which would be in violation of the party’s code of conduct.

The guide also instructs members to use the phrase “black, Asian and minority ethnic” (Bame) with caution because “many people are uncomfortable with grouping diverse experiences under a single label”.

The same applies to “homosexual” and “transsexual” – the latter because it “does not encompass non-binary people”.

“Sexual preference” is also labelled as “unacceptable” because it “implies that attraction is a choice and should be avoided”.

The terms “lunatic” and “nutter” also do not comply with the rules because they “reinforce negative stereotypes and stigma about mental health”. The guidance tells members it “widely reflects common usage in the UK”.

It warns members that using the wrong words, as determined by the Green Party, “can create environments that feel unwelcoming or exclusionary”. This could contribute to bullying and harassment, which would be in violation of the party’s code of conduct.

The Greens have also recently launched a “healing toolkit” for its members amid growing tensions under Zack Polanski’s leadership.

A surge in new members after Mr Polanski became leader in September 2025 and the election of 441 new councillors in May has radically altered the political direction of the party.

Disenfranchised Left-wing activists who quit Labour under Sir Keir Starmer joined the Greens after its new leader championed Palestinian and transgender rights rather than focusing on environmental issues.

In September last year membership stood at 68,000 but surged to 200,000 by March 2026.

Under a section titled “What if I get it wrong?”, the guidance reassures members that “it’s OK to make mistakes from time to time” as long as they are trying to be more “inclusive”.

It instructs members to apologise, thank the person who pointed it out and “adjust your language moving forward”.

However, “repeated or deliberate behaviour may be considered harassment, which is unlawful”.

A YouGov poll released on Wednesday revealed Britons tended to see the party as “weak, out of touch, incompetent and serving their own interests”.

The survey found the Greens’ net favourability rating had fallen from five to -19 over the course of Mr Polanski’s leadership.

He is standing in the by-election to replace Sir Keir Starmer in his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras on Oct 8.

The contest is expected to be a two-horse race between the Greens and Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden council and a former Somali child refugee

A Green Party spokesman said: “This is an existing and standard equalities training document, similar to those found in other organisations that also take equalities seriously. It is a guide and nothing else.”

The spokesman did not respond when asked when the guidance was published.

Sapphire Hope, The Telegraph

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate state Rep. James Talarico has launched a $25 million statewide initiative to reach Black voters six weeks before election day.

The initiative is multifaceted and launched as Talarico continues to lead Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the polls. A Real Clear Politics average of multiple recent polls has Talarico beating Paxton by three points. The once strong Republican seat has been labeled toss-up by Real Clear Politics and other organizations.

“There is no way to win Texas without sustained, on-the-ground engagement in Black communities,” Talarico said. His campaign’s plan “further solidifies our commitment to organize and energize Black Texans who have been taken for granted for far too long by both political parties.”

His campaign has launched a “Souls to the Polls” initiative, expanding outreach primarily to Black churches in Texas. It’s similar to a Souls to the Polls initiative launched in Virginia in 2021 by former Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The initiative also primarily targeted Black churches, The Center Square reported. McAuliffe lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin. Critics have argued Souls to the Polls campaigns violate IRS rules governing tax-exempt entities, including churches.

“Black churches have carried Texans to the polls for generations,” said Carl Davis, founder of C.D. Davis and Associates, who is running the Souls to the Polls initiative. “Our job is to make sure every voter who hears the call to vote on Souls to the Polls Sunday has a plan to vote and makes their voice heard. Wherever Black people of faith gather, we’ll be there.”

Talarico’s campaign also launched a door-to-door canvassing operation in partnership with the Texas Together Coordinated Campaign. It’s also invested in BlackTOP, an initiative of the Texas Organizing Project PAC, to turn out Black voters in Harris County.

This week, Talarico for Texas launched a multi-million-dollar digital, radio and print ad buy in Black media statewide. His campaign’s newest radio ad, “Legacy,” is slated to run on gospel, talk, hip-hop, R&B and news stations statewide. His digital ad, “Afford It,” is airing statewide on digital platforms and TV. The campaign is also running ads in historic Black newspapers statewide.

Three Black-owned firms are leading the latest paid communications outreach. They include Bryson Gillette, a strategic communications firm founded by Bill Burton, the former press secretary for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign who also served as deputy press secretary in the Obama White House. They also include Foston International Communications, based in Fort Bend County, which ran ads for former U.S. Rep. Robert (Beto) O’Rourke’s 2018 U.S. Senate campaign and 2020 gubernatorial campaign, and Advantage Communications Group of Houston led by Linda Brown. Brown was the former press secretary for Rev. Jesse Jackson and senior advisor to the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and the late Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner among others.

Talarico is leading Paxton among Hispanic and Black voters by 19 points and 77 points, respectively, according to the most recent polls. Paxton leads Talarico among white voters by 19 points.

Talarico is leading Paxton by more than 30 points among independents, according to the latest Texas Public Opinion Research poll.

Talarico has said throughout the campaign that he recognizes there’s a hesitancy among Black voters but his campaign is committed to reaching them, as well as Republicans and all voters. At a campaign event at a large church in Houston in July, Talarico was confronted by Black voters who said they “didn’t trust him” and that he couldn’t win without their vote. Kandice Webber, an organizer with Houston’s Black Lives Matter, demanded that he answer her questions or “suffer the consequences.” Voters raised questions about reparations for descendants of slaves and police brutality.

Black voters and others have also expressed opposition to Talarico’s pro-transgender policies and comments about multiple sexes and genders and God being “non-binary,” according to multiple polls. In the last several years, Black and Hispanic Democratic politicians left the party over these issues, arguing the party no longer represented them, The Center Square reported. By the 2024 election, Texas Democrats suffered massive losses with politicians and voters leaving the party and largely Hispanic districts at the border overwhelmingly voting Republican.

Two years later, a growing percentage of Texas voters who were polled who previously voted for President Donald Trump now say they are voting for Democrats. The primary reason they give is Trump administration economic policies they say have made life unaffordable, including tariffs and the Iran war, The Center Square reported.

Talarico’s campaign says its Black voter outreach plan “is the largest of its kind in modern Texas history.”

Paxton’s campaign hasn’t launched a comparable initiative. Paxton’s campaign office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bethany Blankley, Center Square

From tariffs and grocery shelves to AI and martial law, election-season fear keeps outrunning the facts.

Jack Hellner | October 1, 2026

From tariffs and grocery shelves to AI and martial law, election-season fear keeps outrunning the facts.

For decades, the media and other Democrats have continually used fear to push leftist policies and defeat Republicans.

In 2025, when Trump imposed tariffs, many predicted the stock market and economy would collapse, store shelves would empty, and inflation would soar. Here’s just one example from thousands: “Retail wipeout: Trump tariffs stoke fears of shortages and price hikes.”

The dire predictions were 100% wrong.

In fact, the stock market has risen rapidly, the economy continues to grow, store shelves are full, and core inflation has continued to decline from the levels seen during Biden’s presidency. Note, too, that the so-called experts never predicted Biden’s disastrous inflation or blamed his policies for it.

Under Trump, core inflation driven by COVID panic and Biden’s policies has declined: 2020, 1.6%; 2021, 5.5%; 2022, 5.7%; 2023, 3.9%; 2024, 3.2%; 2025, 2.6%; August 2025 to August 2026, 2.4%.

World Cup tourists were amazed at how many products Americans have on store shelves.

The experts also predicted widespread food shortages and high food inflation because Trump closed the border and began sending illegal immigrants out of the country. When I asked AI to summarize the predictions, I got this:

Numerous articles, research papers, and government filings detail how closed borders, strict immigration crackdowns, and a resulting decline in foreign workers risk causing supply-shock food shortages and sharp inflation.

From tariffs and grocery shelves to AI and martial law, election-season fear keeps outrunning the facts.

For decades, the media and other Democrats have continually used fear to push leftist policies and defeat Republicans.

In 2025, when Trump imposed tariffs, many predicted the stock market and economy would collapse, store shelves would empty, and inflation would soar. Here’s just one example from thousands: “Retail wipeout: Trump tariffs stoke fears of shortages and price hikes.”

The dire predictions were 100% wrong.

In fact, the stock market has risen rapidly, the economy continues to grow, store shelves are full, and core inflation has continued to decline from the levels seen during Biden’s presidency. Note, too, that the so-called experts never predicted Biden’s disastrous inflation or blamed his policies for it.

Under Trump, core inflation driven by COVID panic and Biden’s policies has declined: 2020, 1.6%; 2021, 5.5%; 2022, 5.7%; 2023, 3.9%; 2024, 3.2%; 2025, 2.6%; August 2025 to August 2026, 2.4%.

World Cup tourists were amazed at how many products Americans have on store shelves.

The experts also predicted widespread food shortages and high food inflation because Trump closed the border and began sending illegal immigrants out of the country. When I asked AI to summarize the predictions, I got this:

Numerous articles, research papers, and government filings detail how closed borders, strict immigration crackdowns, and a resulting decline in foreign workers risk causing supply-shock food shortages and sharp inflation.

American Thinker

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) wrote a 26-page letter to the American people on Tuesday, urging them to vote for Democrats in the midterms.

“Although American politicians often win your votes through deception and false promises, as Trump did, you can change the makeup of the government if you apply the criteria for good leadership in choosing the people you vote into office,” the IRGC said. “Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state.”

The IRGC then asked Americans to “take back control.” The letter referred to Trump as a tyrant and said that Islam “requires believers to stand up to tyrants.” The IRGC offered “help” to the American people to “liberate themselves from the tyranny of oppressive powers.” The letter did not specify how the regime would aid the American people in “liberating” themselves.

“The United States of America is a great nation. To allow vulgar and immoral individuals to continue steering your politics and policies will only further humiliate and undermine the U.S. Any politician who thinks they can buy your vote for 5,000 dollars is unworthy to lead you. Take back control.”

The group argued that Americans bear responsibility for their government’s actions, rejecting the idea that voters who oppose U.S. military operations are powerless to stop them.

“Your response may be that you do not accept these atrocious actions but are powerless to do anything about them. This answer, however, is not acceptable. You are the ones who empower, with your votes, the government and allow it to do what it does.”

The IRGC claimed that American perceptions of Iran are “improving” while hostility toward Israel “is visibly increasing.” That assertion comes after a primary season in which several Democratic candidates with records of anti-Israel activism defeated longtime incumbents.

In New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the primary for the state’s 13th Congressional District. As The Daily Wire previously reported, Chevalier refused to condemn Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terrorist attack, questioned Israel’s legitimacy, and helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University after the massacre.

In Colorado, democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated 15-term Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette. Kiros had described October 7 as “the inevitable consequence of apartheid” and questioned why calls for eliminating the Israeli state were considered antisemitic.

The IRGC’s appeal to American voters, meanwhile, came with a warning: if Washington does not change course, people around the world will rise up and “set fire to all of America’s interests and assets throughout the world.” The letter predicted a “massive economic earthquake that will affect the lives of all Americans.”

“The era when the U.S. could plunder the wealth of nations through military might has come to an end,” it continued. “This century is the century when the will of the people will triumph. If the U.S. chooses to continue on its evil path, a painful fate awaits it.” After urging Americans to oust their leaders, the IRGC sought to explain away the regime’s “Death to America” chant, insisting its hostility is directed at the government rather than the people. “It is, in a word, not an expression of ill will toward the American people.

And we are certain that if the American people truly understood the reality of the evil their leaders commit in their name, they would disavow their leaders — as they gradually are doing — and would stand by the people of Iran in indicting their common oppressor,” it read.

Brecca Stoll, Daily Wire