The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday to share a list of grievances on how Republicans are “f*cking up” their midterm chances. Trump shared a July 14 post from influencer Matt Van Swol, which included a long list of things the president has touted as accomplishments, including “negative net migration” and fentanyl trafficking being down, in his second term and then Swol’s lengthy post.
“I don’t think the GOP fully grasp how badly they are ….. up right now,” Swol wrote in his post about people being “pissed off” at Republicans because they are not seeing major reforms they expected.
His message reads:
They are not seeing the major reform they thought would happen and are REALLY MAD about it.
No true accountability. No true mass deportations. No meaningful decrease in the deficit. Lots of very long vacations and no work. No bills being passed that REDUCE the government involvement in their lives.
I’m very worried the GOP is sleepwalking toward a midterm reckoning they don’t see coming.
People are pissed off that they voted Trump into office and then the GOP continues to slow-walk every reform people want.
Where are all the DOGE cuts that were promised? Where is the SAVE ACT? Why haven’t we defunded the Taliban yet?
Why are bills passing the House and then disappear in the Senate?
Why are the GOP still funding Left-wing NGOs that target and hate MAGA Republicans?
Why are members of the GOP pushing for mass amnesty instead of mass deportations?
People are waking up and they aren’t happy about it.
People believed they were voting for the Trump agenda. and instead, many feel like they’re getting the same old Washington.
If Republicans in Congress don’t start producing tangible results, they’re going to discover that frustration has consequences…
…And by the time they realize how deep-seeded that frustration is, it may already be too late.
Trump also took a dig at Republicans in an interview this month with Punchbowl News. While the president is facing his worst polling ever, he insisted that the public is not “angry” with him, but they are angry with Republicans.
“They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me,” he said.
Trump said he hopes Republicans vote in the midterm elections, but he understands they’re “very angry.”
I don’t think the GOP fully grasp how badly they are fucking up right now.
I’m talking to people who normally have ZERO interest in politics who are legitimately pissed off.
They are not seeing the major reform they thought would happen and are REALLY MAD about it.
No true…
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) July 14, 2026
“The question is will they vote because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans,” he said.
Trump has expressed frustrations with GOP lawmakers on a number of issues.
Most recently, he’s lashed out at Senate Republicans for not passing the SAVE America Act, legislation that would put new restrictions on mail-in voting and require proof of citizenship to vote, something lawmakers have expressed concerns over with the midterms just weeks away.
Obama says there is no “silver bullet” or quick fix solution for bringing down gas prices.
This may be true — but does this mean there’s no solution?
First of all, it isn’t the government’s job to bring down (or drive up) gas prices. The government’s job is to stay out of the market. Right now, the government interferes in the market in numerous ways. The most glaring way is that government stands in the way of oil production in the United States. Obama has refused
to permit additional oil drilling — or really any oil drilling at all — in the United States. As a result, there’s less oil on the market, supply is low relative to demand, and prices are higher than they otherwise would be.
Allowing for drilling is not a quick fix, either. But it’s the only rational step government can take, and it’s an example of why government should stay out of the way. Remember that the most dysfunctional parts of the marketplace are the ones where government interferes the most. Education is a mediocre mess — because government controls and subsidizes most of it. Health care is a growing mess — because government has regulated and subsidized it for decades, and is becoming more involved all the time. On the other hand, technological growth — computers, gadgets, smart phones — and the Internet have been much less regulated than these other sectors of the economy. As a result, customer needs come first and prices have been mostly coming down, not going up.
Obama may be a fool, but he’s not stupid. He knows all of this. He’s obviously not being honest. He says he wants gas prices to come down. If he did, he would immediately get out of the way so that oil producers could do their thing. He hasn’t, and he won’t. This is because he believes Americans should be forced to convert to a different form of energy — energy he considers more pure, and more appropriate. The problem is, there is no such energy that can compete with oil. Obama knows this, too. But all he can say to himself is, “Too bad.” That’s what he’s really saying when he claims, “There’s no silver bullet.” What he means is: “Oil and gas too expensive? Too bad.”
Why “too bad”? Because he wants to force Americans to change. If oil becomes more and more expensive, then Americans (Obama hopes) will be forced to consider alternative fuels. At present, manufacturers cannot sell “green energy” on the market, at least not on any wide scale, because there’s little or no profit to be made from it. But if gas prices go through the roof, that will change. By curbing and (best case, to Obama) destroying the market for gasoline and oil by making it too expensive for most people to afford, Obama thinks he can make people opt for things like wind, solar and other alternative forms of energy.
Imagine if the government had taken this stance back in the 1800s. Imagine if the government had decided that the horse and buggy should be replaced with something better, cleaner and more efficient. Could government have passed laws to make the manufacture and purchase of horses and buggies so expensive that people would gradually stop using them? If government had done this, would the automobile have come about much sooner? If so, then maybe government should restrict everything it doesn’t like. This will make human beings come up with better things. Clearly, this is insanity. But this is the premise implicit in all of Obama’s policies.
Obama’s error is the error of Communism, fascism and every form of force. Obama thinks that force will make people produce. He doesn’t think the profit motive is enough. For example, he doesn’t think that the desire to make a big profit is always a compelling reason to come up with a better, cheaper and cleaner form of energy to ultimately replace oil as the primary one. He thinks people will respond better to force than to profit. He probably thinks that force is more moral than profit. And we all know he certainly does not like profit. He has made that clear whenever he condemns those who make profit, saying they should be taxed at a higher rate, that their wealth should be “spread” around, and that America was made a great place by the poor and the middle class, and least of all by the wealth producers.
A government’s job is not to reinvent the wheel, and a government’s job is not to discover or invent a new fuel source. Governments don’t do this kind of thing, and cannot do this kind of thing. Only minds motivated by financial profit and/or a quest for knowledge ever discover or produce anything. People need to stop looking to government to do this for them, and stop waiting for government. People simply need to demand that government get out of the way and let profit-makers and innovators do the best they possibly can. Leave the best and the brightest unimpeded by self-anointed community organizers who don’t know much of anything.
Obama may think there’s no “magic bullet” for bringing down oil prices, but he surely believes government can come up with a magic bullet for replacing oil with an alternative form of fuel. Yet if such a market existed on any major scale, it would be on the marketplace by now, because there would be profit to be made in it. America elected a man as President who has no remote understanding of how business and markets work, and — more deeply — how the human mind works. Unfortunately, people will pay a higher price for gas and an even higher cost in lost innovation because of their support for this man.
Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman might want to trade in his black hoodie for an elephant badge if he wants to keep his seat in the Senate: New polling suggests that he could find friendlier terrain on the Republican side of the aisle than among the Democrats who elected him.
According to a shocking poll from The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Siena College, Fetterman has become a complete outcast in his own party. The survey reveals Fetterman is underwater at a brutal -41 approval rating with Democrats, while boasting a staggering +52 favorability rating with Republicans.
The jaw-dropping numbers come as Fetterman continues a high-profile, scorched-earth streak against his own party’s hard-Left wing, positioning himself as a moderate willing to lock arms with Republicans on key national security, energy, and foreign policy battles.
Fetterman’s rift with the Left was on full display when he slammed “AI doomsdaying” last week, aligning himself with President Donald Trump’s aggressive stance on artificial intelligence and data centers to counter China. Fetterman publicly rejected “political pandering and hyperbole over data centers,” taking aim at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who wants a stop on AI development, which Fetterman blasted as a “China First” policy.
Fetterman has also ripped into Sanders over his support for controversial figures. In July, he referred to Sanders’ support for former Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, snapping, “I would really call Bernie Sanders to apologize for pushing this kind of predator — more than anyone he helped [to] elect — and now apologize to the victims, especially the woman that she claimed that he raped her, so I don’t know why you want to keep pushing these kinds of people. Maybe he should consider [sitting] a few out and stop pushing these kinds of communists, and now people like P. Hustle. Now he has been credibly accused of rape — and that’s fairly recent, too, that was only less than five years ago.”
Fetterman’s willingness to cross party lines isn’t new. He previously made waves by backing Republicans in carving out the filibuster to end a government shutdown. Fetterman also noted that Left-leaning networks like MS NOW stopped booking him once he began speaking out against his party’s consensus, while conservative outlets welcomed his no-nonsense style.
The biggest breaking point, however, remains foreign policy. Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Fetterman declared there was one thing that could push him straight out of the Democratic Party: if anti-Israel hostility officially becomes part of the party platform. Fetterman warned that “rank antisemitism” is being allowed to flourish on the far-Left and on college campuses. He remains the only Senate Democrat to vote against every Iran war-powers resolution this year.
In July, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) was asked, “Senator Fetterman has indicated that if Democrats officially become anti-Israeli, he would leave the party. Have you had any conversations with him about maybe joining the GOP conference, and would you welcome him if he were to follow that path?”
Thune replied, “Yes, we would welcome him. I haven’t talked to him recently. I have had conversations with him in the past, as have many of my colleagues, about the challenges he faces in his caucus. There are many of us who I think would welcome the opportunity to have him join the Republican conference but you know ultimately that’s a decision that’s left up that’s up to him.”
“I mean, this is a party that’s moving further and further, more radically, and to the more extreme Left on a lot of issues,” Thune added. “And I think people like John Fetterman, who have views that probably reflect a more moderate or at least historically moderate Democrat position, are really kind of people without a home. So if he ever comes to the conclusion that he’s ready to move, we would certainly welcome it.”
The U.S. government is working at full speed to reindustrialize the country. With tax cuts, deregulation, and hard-nosed tariff policy, German companies are also being persuaded to engage in the United States. And when persuasion is not enough, U.S. investors go shopping.
For the left and the German media mainstream, Elon Musk is the proverbial “Lord, help us.” An entrepreneur who takes a political stand. For many Germans, the free world ends right there, especially since the voices of entrepreneurs have largely disappeared from public view as soon as things become politically uncomfortable.
Despite all the disputes, Elon Musk still stands firmly behind U.S. President Donald Trump, another persona non grata in the German public sphere. Trump is pursuing perhaps the most aggressive form of reindustrialization policy we have seen since the German economic miracle after the end of the Second World War. With tariffs, deregulation of energy policy, and tax cuts, Trump is getting to work, and the numbers speak for him: Private-sector investment is rising by between 8 and 10 percent year-on-year. The U.S. economy is growing steadily at an annual real rate of 3.5 percent, roughly in line with the increase in labor productivity.
The situation in Germany is different. Here, private-sector investment, after depreciation, slipped into negative territory around the turn of the year. Labor productivity is stagnating or even eroding slightly. In Germany, the economy is now being held together only precariously by the debt hammer and the construction of a domestic war economy. Nothing economically innovative can emerge in such an environment. The consequence is that next year, once the municipal deficit and the special funds are included, the debt burden will rise by more than 5 percent, measured as a share of GDP.
In the United States, the trend is moving in the opposite direction. Despite being largely ignored by the German press, the Trump administration has at least managed to reduce the budget deficit from 6.9 percent under his predecessor Joe Biden to probably around 4.7 percent in the current year. It would not be surprising if the Americans managed to break the dynamics of debt altogether.
To initiate growth, the Americans are relying above all on massive investment in their energy grids, nuclear power, artificial intelligence, and robotics. But traditional industrial sectors as well — from the automotive industry and aluminum production to the steel sector — are to be dragged back to the United States through the blunt-force argument of high import tariffs.
Elon Musk plays a significant role in this. Alongside numerous major projects such as the space company SpaceX and the automaker Tesla, his latest project, the chipmaker Terafab, could make economic history in the United States.
Terafab was announced in March 2026 and is to be built in Texas as a joint project between Tesla, SpaceX, and chipmaker Intel. The facility is ultimately planned to cover up to 9.3 million square meters and thus become the largest building in the world. Depending on the stage of development, investment is estimated at between $16.8 billion and $119 billion. In the long term, Terafab is intended to provide more than one terawatt of annual AI computing capacity.
The facility is to manufacture customized AI logic chips and memory chips, primarily for Tesla’s Optimus robots, autonomous vehicles, and Cybercabs, as well as SpaceX’s planned space-based data centers. In the long term, production of up to 100 to 200 billion of these AI and memory chips per year is envisioned. Musk is therefore not simply trying to build another chip factory, but to bring the entire value chain — from manufacturing and memory to packaging and testing — under one roof. Step by step, the Americans are making themselves less dependent on chip production by Taiwanese giant TSMC and are slowly but surely pushing themselves back into pole position in the competition with China.
Good economic policy removes infrastructure bottlenecks while otherwise largely staying out of economic affairs. Germany’s energy policy should be proof enough of the damage that ideologically driven delusion and persistent intervention can cause.
German industry is playing an increasingly important role in the reindustrialization of the United States. In 2025 alone, U.S. investors acquired stakes in or control of 76 German industrial and manufacturing companies worth around $29.5 billion — double the figure recorded in 2022. By August 19, 2026, another $23.9 billion had already been added. Prominent cases include Viessmann and a stake in Aixtron, as well as the acquisition of fan manufacturer EBM-Papst by Madison Air for $5.4 billion and further transactions in mechanical engineering, automotive suppliers, energy, and manufacturing.
Across industrial sectors, know-how and technologies protected by German patents are therefore flowing into the United States — strengthening its industrial base and the competitiveness of its economy. German policymakers apparently do not seem concerned. Quite the contrary: The German chancellor once again underlined his priorities at the beginning of the week — the fight against CO2 emissions; energy policy, he said, should not change.
Germany’s deindustrialization therefore appears increasingly unstoppable. It is becoming increasingly irreversible.
Which brings us back to Elon Musk. Good entrepreneurs are what the country needs to turn the ship around. Visionaries who open up markets and thereby create prosperity. True elites are needed. But being part of the elite also means standing by one’s country and by values such as performance, individual and social responsibility, and the fight for civil liberties — values that are considered outdated nonsense and taboo in the political mainstream.
Where are Germany’s Elon Musks hiding? Where have the courageous representatives of the Mittelstand retreated to? Why are so few willing to step into the public arena and criticize the growing state economy, dangerous censorship, and the ideological rampage of the obsessive world-improvers that has paralyzed the country?
In Germany, 188,000 businesses were abandoned last year. Just 24,000 of them disappeared as a result of insolvency.
Many German entrepreneurs are throwing in the towel these days. They sell up and take their profit — whether to Americans, Chinese, or competitors in other successful locations no longer matters. What unites them all, what everyone in the country can feel, is this: Entrepreneurs, young and ambitious academics, independent minds, and friends of freedom are no longer welcome in Germany in 2026.
German mainstream media, the political class, and the left-green establishment that sustains it cultivate an aggressive, one-dimensional socialism that turns against anyone who dares to disturb the subsidized paradise of perpetual recipients with criticism.
A Washington state public school district is facing a federal lawsuit after officials allegedly searched a Christian child’s backpack for religious materials, confiscated her Bible and later told her she had “no choice” but to participate in school programming that violated her family’s faith.
The American Center for Law and Justice says the dispute involving Highline Public Schools began in 2022, when J.H. was a second grader at North Hill Elementary School.
School officials repeatedly searched the girl’s backpack and confiscated her Bible and Gospel tracts because she had been talking about her Christian faith with classmates, according to the ACLJ. The legal organization says the district ultimately acknowledged the conduct was wrong and promised in writing that J.H. would be allowed to exercise her faith.
“It is abundantly clear that school officials must be able to affirmatively establish that they have a substantial reason to interfere with a student’s First Amendment rights, and stating ‘because it is upsetting parents’ as the reason certainly does not meet this constitutional threshold,” ACLJ said in a statement.
But the controversy did not end there.
Now a sixth grader at Sylvester Middle School, J.H. was allegedly pulled from class earlier this year after distributing Gospel tracts during lunch. The lawsuit alleges a vice principal told the child that students could share “opinions” at school, but not religious beliefs.
Then came a mandatory May 29 “Inclusion Assembly.”
The ACLJ says J.H. became visibly upset when the presentation addressed subjects that conflicted with her Christian beliefs. She quietly asked to leave and explained why.
A teacher allegedly responded, “They aren’t forcing their belief on you, but they are informing you about this.”
When the girl again objected, she was allegedly told, “You have no choice,” and sent back into the gym, where the ACLJ says she sat crying.
The ACLJ filed suit July 8 in federal court on behalf of J.H. and her father, Jonathan H. Local news outlet The Highline Journal reported that Highline Chief Communications Officer Tove Tupper initially said the district had not yet received the lawsuit and would review it once served. The allegations have not been proven in court.
The district’s own published student-rights policy states that students “possess the constitutional right to the free exercise of religion” and should not be pressured to choose between participating in school activities and their religious beliefs.
The ACLJ argues the incidents demonstrate a continuing pattern of religious discrimination.
“Three separate incidents. Three separate violations. The same student. The same district,” the organization said.
Back in 2022 a school district spokesperson told CBN News that sometimes the district must restrict student expression.
Highline Public Schools Chief Communications Officer Catherine Carbone Rogers disputes the ACLJ’s account of what happened. She tells CBN News, “The student was not banned from discussing her Christian faith with classmates, she was asked to invite classmates to talk about her faith and honor their wishes if they chose not to. This came after several students reported being scared by her talk of Satan and Hell, and multiple parents complained about their children coming home with religious pamphlets.”
Rogers told CBN News that the school contends the little girl was also standing dangerously on a playground table while sharing her faith and her words reportedly made other children cry. She says school district staff informed her that she can’t tell other children they’re going to hell and that the little girl must stop distributing what the school considers to be unacceptable religious materials.
“As reflected in its policies and procedures, the Highline Public Schools agrees with the core principles raised in the ACLJ letter of governmental neutrality to religion, avoidance of discrimination against religious viewpoints, and allowing students to express themselves at school, including potentially through the distribution of written materials. At the same time, we must sometimes restrict student expression to avoid undue interference or disturbance—especially at the elementary school level,” Rogers stated.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not some distant experiment reserved for Silicon Valley giants. It already reshapes Main Street.
Far from ushering in Armageddon, AI gives small business owners the power to cut costs, serve customers better, and compete against anyone in the world.
Republicans who recoil from this reality are handing the future to Beijing. They also embolden a Democrat party now captured by hard-left forces that despise the very foundations of this country.
Roger Williams, congressional Republican from Texas, is chairman of the House Committee on Small Business. He recently convened a hearing titled “AI on Main Street” that laid out the plain facts.
Nearly three-quarters of small enterprises already use some form of AI. Generative tools help retailers source products more cheaply, restaurants manage inventory, and service businesses handle routine work so owners can focus on growth. A skincare company in California’s Coachella Valley used these tools to find lower-cost suppliers. It avoided passing higher prices to customers.
AI adoption is strong among tech and entertainment companies, yet even half of traditional brick-and-mortar operations have begun to apply the technology. The holdouts are not rejecting the idea out of principle. Many simply lack trained workers, face regulatory confusion, or still do not understand how AI tools fit their daily operations.
Clear national rules on data privacy and targeted training programs, such as those advanced by US House Republicans, are essential. After all, every Main Street proprietorship deserves to move forward with confidence.
President Donald J. Trump understands this. He has directed federal agencies to accelerate approvals for large AI data centers and open suitable federal land. He strips away layers of unnecessary review, while ensuring that ordinary households and small firms do not subsidize the electricity needed for new AI infrastructure.
Large operators must pay the full cost of added power generation. More than 200 utilities, developers, and states have already joined a Ratepayer Protection Pledge. It covers 80 percent of the power delivered to American homes and businesses.
Energy capacity in the United States has barely grown since the 1970s, while China has raced ahead. Only a determined “build” approach closes that gap and keeps the decisive economic and military advantages on this side of the Pacific.
Protests have targeted hundreds of proposed AI data center sites. Local bans and freezes have appeared in dozens of jurisdictions. Polls show majorities in both major parties favor at least a temporary nationwide pause. The stated concerns are water use, noise, traffic, and fear of higher bills. These are real enough for some communities.
Deeper still is anxiety that AI will replace human jobs. Young workers in highly exposed occupations have already seen employment decline. Nearly two-thirds of Americans expect fewer jobs over the next two decades. That fear is understandable. It is also fatal if it becomes national policy.
Global investment in AI more than doubled in a single year. Private capital poured into the sector, with generative tools leading the surge. American private investment dwarfs China’s by a factor of more than 20. The economic value American users already extract from AI has climbed sharply. The technology is not optional. It will expand whether Americans like it or not.
The only question is whether the data centers and the rules that govern them will fly the American flag or the Chinese one.
Some of the most organized opposition carries a darker pedigree. The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a Marxist-Leninist group with documented ties to China. These come through leadership overlap and fiscal networking. The PSL has helped organize campaigns that delayed or blocked more than $20 billion in proposed AI investment across multiple states. Under federal law, the PSL need not disclose its issue-advocacy donors.
While the Chinese communist party (CCP) builds its own AI capacity without hesitation, it benefits when Americans choke off their own. That same party has sunk deep roots into American institutions that shape future leaders.
A joint investigation by House committees revealed that Harvard created a special nonprofit vehicle to accept foreign money when the university itself could not. Its public-health school hosted sessions that appear to have included participants from a Chinese paramilitary force sanctioned for involvement in the genocide of Uyghurs. Harvard officials worried first about damaging relations with Beijing rather than about American law or human rights.
University researchers have co-authored papers with entities tied to China’s defense apparatus on dual-use technologies. One former professor who accepted Chinese talent-recruitment funds later rebuilt his lab in China. He now works on brain-computer interfaces with clear military applications.
The pattern is consistent: Chinese money flows in, standards erode, and sensitive research flows out.
The influence does not stop at Harvard Yard. Community organizations linked to the CCP’s United Front Work Department have directed the overwhelming majority of their political donations to Democrats for decades. In New York alone, the imbalance has been stark. Executives tied to firms under CCP influence have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the blue team in this midterm cycle alone.
In California, individuals and employees of companies flagged for close collaboration with the Chinese military have poured substantial sums into the campaign accounts of leading Democrats. These blue “public servants” hold office at every level of government. Senior staff, at businesses the Pentagon believes are intertwined with China’s military, have directed millions of dollars to blue coffers since 2020.
The Chinese Communist Party cultivates influence where resistance becomes weakest. The Democrat party is today’s marshmallow target.
Hard-left forces trafficking in third-worldism, racial grievance, and open hostility to Western civilization now define the blue team. Anti-Western, anti-white, and antisemitic attitudes, dressed up as “democratic socialism,” surge through its ranks. Avowed communists are no longer obscure. They increasingly set the tone.
Should Democrats capture the House, the Senate, or both this November, they will move aggressively to cripple the Trump administration. Investigations that expose Chinese influence will be shut down. Efforts to restrict Beijing’s reach will be slowed or blocked. Simultaneously, Democrats will create every possible obstacle for Republican presidential contenders as the 2028 cycle starts.
The result will be paralysis where resolve is required and surrender where strength is essential.
Republican voters who stay home this November choose to place America last. The progress already made in exposing Chinese penetration of elite institutions, and in advancing American AI leadership, deserves protection. The country should continue to be led with strength. Not handed over to forces of race-communist, democratic-socialist carnage.
Artificial intelligence is the future for small businesses and for the nation. Data centers are the foundation of that future. President Trump is right to endorse them. Anyone who stands in the way, whether from misplaced fear or deliberate sabotage, serves Beijing’s interest and weakens the United States. The choice in November is unmistakable.
Show up and vote to defend America herself.
Dr. Joseph Ford Cotto is the creator, host, and producer of News Sight, delivering sharp insights on the key events that shape our lives. He publishes Dr. Cotto’s Digest, sharing how business and the economy really impact us all. During the 2024 presidential race, he developed the Five-Point Forecast, which accurately predicted Donald Trump’s national victory and correctly called every swing state. Cotto holds a doctorate in business administration and is a Lean Six Sigma Certified Black Belt.
A prominent election-integrity activist has uncovered bombshell evidence suggesting that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 election victory may not have been legitimate.
Marly Hornik, the founder of RealAmerica.Vote and NY Citizens Audit, has suggested that the 2025 election included large numbers of unqualified or nonexistent voters. But that’s only part of the problem.
“I actually don’t know whether Mamdani won the mayoral race, and I’m not here to say that he didn’t,” Hornik said during a July 22 interview on New York radio station WABC’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning” program
“The problem we uncovered is that the New York City and the New York State Boards of Elections have no idea if Mamdani won the mayoral election either. And that’s where the rubber meets the road here.”
After examining 1 million of the total 2.2 million voters who participated in the election, her organization discovered that 7 percent were nonexistent in records, 6 percent had fake Social Security numbers, and 10 percent didn’t even live in NYC.
In total, they identified 230,000 illegal votes, which exceeded Mamdani’s 207,000 vote margin of victory over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent.
And this was despite Hornik needing to still review the remaining 1.2 million voters.
“So out of 2.2 million voters, we studied about a million of them, and we found more votes that are apparently illegal than his margin of victory,” she told host Sid Rosenberg.
“Again, the issue is not whether or not Mamdani won. The issue is whether or not the boards of elections in New York are actually counting fair elections so that we are properly represented as we are constitutionally granted.”
These statistics that we discovered … they implicate both in New York City and the New York State boards of elections in potential very serious misconduct, because we could not find 7 percent of the voters,” she said. “They don’t exist.”
“We were unable to verify any of their critical information as provided by the, by the boards of elections — their name, their date of birth, their voting address. They don’t exist. They’re fake people,” she added.
Asked what she intends to do with her findings, Hornik said she’s already forwarded them to federal authorities.
“This is in the hands of federal investigators and prosecutors right now, because again, when our right to choose representatives is diluted or harmed, injured in any way, that is a serious crime in America,” she said. “It’s not a minor thing, especially when you’re talking about 7 percent of the vote.”
Her findings have also piqued the attention of best-selling author and journalist Naomi Wolf — who served as political adviser to the campaigns of former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore. Wolfe who used to be a liberal Trump hater until she woke up:
In the post above published to the social media website X, she referred to an earlier allegation from June in which she’d purported to have identified over 100,000 blank ballots on the New York City Board of Elections website that were improperly included/counted.
V. Saxena is a seasoned conservative news writer and commentator with a decade of experience in the industry. When not at work, he can be found working out or tending to his popular bird feeder.
Iran-backed Houthis claim to target crucial Yanbu oil port amid flare-up; Israel, Jordan down drones near Dead Sea as Iraq also reports attacks, officials don’t identify source
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq reported drone attacks in their territory Monday amid a lull in US air strikes against Iran, after nearly two weeks of fighting between both sides.
The Israel Defense Forces said Monday morning that it shot down two drones over the Jordan border, near the Dead Sea, adding that the drones did not cross into Israeli territory. Their origin was under investigation, the army said.
Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry, meanwhile, said it shot down drones aimed at petroleum targets, some in its eastern province and others in the capital Riyadh. It said the drones had been launched from Iraq by Iran-backed militias, and it reserved the right to respond.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq have not claimed any attacks in the region since the resumption of hostilities between the US and Iran this month, after an April ceasefire broke down, but Saudi Arabia was repeatedly targeted by the groups at the height of the war with Iran that erupted in February.
Separately, Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen said they had targeted transit sites carrying oil west to Saudi Arabia’s main Red Sea oil port of Yanbu, in retaliation for what it said were Saudi drone incursions into Yemeni airspace.
Riyadh did not immediately comment on the Houthis’ claims, which came after several days of strikes traded between the two sides. The fighting rekindled when the latter announced a blockade of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in the Red Sea, sending oil prices even higher.
Saudi Arabia responded with airstrikes on what it said were Houthi military facilities in Yemen’s Hodeidah port, saying it would protect shipping.
The latest flare-up between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis marked the first time in years that the two sides have traded blows, threatening a 2022 truce that has held despite expiring.
Jordan also reported that its forces shot down two drones, and Iraqi security sources reported a series of drone attacks on camps housing Iranian opposition Kurdish forces in northern Iraq.
Neither Jordanian nor Iraqi officials identified the sources of those drones.
Jordan and northern Iraq were the locations where four US service members were killed during the two-week air campaign, which US President Donald Trump suspended abruptly over the weekend after his top brass advised him that the strategy had run its course.
Iran has said it will pause its own attacks for as long as Trump’s self-imposed ceasefire continues. But it also said it was still in control of the contested Strait of Hormuz, and was not seeking to resume peace talks with the US.
The US and Israel on February 28 launched a joint bombing campaign on the Islamic Republic in a bid to destabilize the regime and destroy its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.
Messages were still being passed between the sides through mediators and Iran had not forsaken diplomacy, but “reports about Iran requesting negotiations with the US are fabricated,” Baghaei claimed. “This is not in our DNA.”
Tehran also indicated it was still in control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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You Simply Cannot Give Power to Lunatics. From Ceuta to Cuba to Tehran — and increasingly the American left — the same destructive ideas keep proving that reality is no match for ideological zeal.
I’m looking around the world right now, and what I see isn’t all bad. In fact, there are lots of indications of positive things happening or about to happen. What strikes me, though, in seeing the hopeful signs, is the contrast between those and the, er… other things going on in the world.
For example, the Moorish invasion of the Spanish town of Ceuta.
Much of the reporting, particularly on social media, that you’ve seen is overhyped and factually shaky. There was indeed a massive wave of migrants from Morocco into that North African town, which briefly doubled its population of 85,000. The migrants were almost exclusively male; most were Moroccans — unemployment in Morocco is as high as 29 percent in some parts of the country — and the remainder seems to be largely sub-Saharan Africans. That wave generated some utterly appalling video, to be sure, though the accusations made against the Spanish government, namely that it invited the wave and seeks to profit politically by it, appear not to be accurate. (RELATED: I’m a Spanish Taxpayer. This Is Why the West Doesn’t Need to Reward Illegal Immigrants.)
Pedro Sánchez, the socialist president of that country, actually sent in the army to repel that invasion, and as of Monday it seems that all but 3,000-5,000 of the migrants had been returned to Morocco. None have made it across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Iberian mainland.
But it’s fairly obvious that the human-trafficking cartels which control African migration — whether North African or sub-Saharan African — into Europe were simply testing the Spanish government’s resolve and capabilities, and with the better part of 100,000 people conducting a human wave into a small territory on a compressed timeline one can’t help but to see Ceuta as a textbook example of what happens when the bad guys go unchecked.
Sánchez’s government is not in the business of checking bad guys. He’s been Spain’s president since 2018, and he’s all but wrecked the country with terrible economic policies, catastrophic immigration policies and rampant corruption. In truth, those migrants were almost certainly attempting to enter Spain as a way station to someplace better in Europe. (RELATED: What’s Wrong With Spain? It’s Pedro Sánchez.)
Is that the U.K.? Some 2,000 illegal aliens have entered Great Britain through the English Channel since its new prime minister, Andy Burnham, was anointed to replace Keir Starmer as the captain of the sinking ship which is the Labour government, and the citizenry seems to be angrier than ever before. Burnham’s chief political opponent, Nigel Farage of the Reform UK Party, has come out publicly for employing the Royal Navy to blockade the English Channel and prevent crossings by migrants in small boats and rubber rafts, which has generated howls of opposition from the French, who have allowed their country to become the leading repository for African migrants
The current governing class in Western Europe seems to be unanimous in its approach to migration by non-Westerners into their countries — namely, that they want as much of it as they can hide from the public, and any resistance to that wave they’ll put up is mostly performative and never long-lasting.
Nobody really thinks the Moroccans turned back at Ceuta won’t eventually make it into Europe. It’s only a matter of time.
And so the lands of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles Martel, are gradually being gobbled up by the modern-day Moors, with little real prospect of a Reconquista on the horizon.
One may come, but before it does there will need to be a wave of political revolution, and perhaps bloody conflict.
The old line that you can vote yourself into socialism but you’ve got to shoot your way out is very relevant here. Allow these people political power, and they will eat away at your democratic and cultural institutions until there is nothing left but the corruption they’ve installed, and those institutions collapse into themselves. And you’ll have to build new institutions to replace them.
Which is what you get when you allow the lunatics into power.
The serialization of my new novel The Necessary Men will begin here at The American Spectator in just more than a week, as I’ve noted, and in writing it I did more research into Cuba’s maladministration under the communist revolutionary tyranny which controls that country than I would have cared to. The only conclusion anyone can come to in surveying the 67 years since Fidel Castro and his cronies seized power there is that the Cuban revolutionaries are lunatics.
Crafty lunatics, who, as the State Department’s report on Cuban communism made clear, are far more dangerous and have been for a long time. That’s certain. But lunatics all the same. (RELATED: The Castroist Playbook Comes to America)
To get a good glimpse of what they’ve made of that country, I’ll direct you to a YouTuber who goes by Adventure Elliot; he’s from Wisconsin but actually lives in Spain, and earlier this year he traversed Cuba to produce 12 travelog videos exposing what the Castroites have done to the place.
They’ve turned it into a madhouse. Neighbor turns on neighbor. Every foreigner is mobbed and scammed. People live in filth, conditioned to accept what the revolution gives them — which is misery. Initiative is punished, and the supposed classless society now manifests itself in two tiers of people — those with relatives in the United States or elsewhere who remit money to them to pay for basic necessities in what private shops the communists allow, and those without who stand in line at the state stores.
As everyone’s house falls down around them.
Use Google Earth’s satellite view to navigate around Cuba, and you will see things which make no sense — there are literal ruins in every town on the island, buildings which collapsed from years of neglect and have just been left to molder. People raid those sites for bricks or other building materials; in some cases, the inhabitants of those collapsed houses remain in what shelter they can find.
And in less than five years, Cuba’s population has declined from 11 million to less than nine and a half million. Just as Venezuela, Cuba’s protege communist paradise, ran off a quarter of its own population in a decade.
To live like that is lunacy. Cuba won’t for very much longer; it can’t.
And yet the lunatics are somehow not discredited.
We’re watching the Democrat Party come apart at the seams. As David Catron noted on Monday, James Carville says he won’t be in the same party as Hasan Piker, and that’s a noble sentiment, but it’s too late. Polling indicates the Democrats can’t stop Francesca Hong, a committed — well, in one sense; in another she’s uncommitted, and this is a problem — lunatic running for governor of that state whose Twitter/X feed contains some of the most insane, hateful drivel imaginable. Just recently, Hong dropped a post on X which accused the patrons of the Wisconsin staple Culver’s Restaurants of genocidal racism based on her own feelings and perceptions without any concrete substance to them, which generated national buzz, and yet the Democrat voters of that state don’t seem to be coming off her. She’s going to win her primary unless something massive changes. (RELATED: Why Republicans May Defy Midterm History) Politicalparty merchandise
And Piker just descended on Wisconsin to stump for her. Which doesn’t appear to be a scandal among the party’s voters. (RELATED: The New Brownshirts?)
Piker is also stumping for Abdul El-Sayed, who is now as much as a 15-point favorite over the more establishmentarian Heather Stevens in the Michigan Senate race. El-Sayed comes from an accomplished academic background and has apparently made a lot of money based on the properties he and his wife own, but we don’t know how he managed it. He’s an avowed DSA socialist whose speeches and pronouncements contain open rejections of the American founding and way of life, and it doesn’t seem to bother Michigan Democrat voters in the least.
Because Michigan Democrats, like Wisconsin Democrats, are now made up of a majority of lunatics who think that abandoning American culture, economics, and politics and putting people like Francesca Hong and Abdul El-Sayed, not to mention Darieliza Avila Chevalier and Zohran Mamdani, in positions of power will create something better.
And we see something else, which defines it as lunacy — namely, an utter refusal to recognize that these things do not work.
This isn’t stupidity. It’s lunacy. It’s pathological, because we already see, in the decline in Western Europe and the destruction in Cuba, what those belief systems create.
And we see something else, which defines it as lunacy — namely, an utter refusal to recognize that these things do not work.
That’s a problem. Dealing with lunatics whose worldviews are impervious to their own failures leads to intractable dilemmas. A perfect case of this involves the lunatics in charge of Iran. (RELATED: When the Villagers Finally Have Had Enough of the Pillagers)
It’s been five months since the current round of bombing started, and basically all of America is tired of the Iranian conflict, the off-and-on blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, the higher gasoline prices that blockage has fostered, and the intermittent reports of American casualties. President Trump is without a doubt looking for a suitable off-ramp from the conflict for domestic political reasons.
But the truth is that beyond the perception of this five-month staccato of air strikes and negotiations, there is indeed a forever war. It isn’t ours; it’s Iran’s. Since 1979, that regime has done everything it could to plunge itself into open conflict with the world’s largest superpower because the people in charge of Iran since their revolution believe that if they can start enough trouble, a 1,200-year-old man will climb up out of a well and perfect the planet.
That’s lunacy. Those are lunatics. And Trump and his team, who keep going back to the table again and again after beating on the lunatics, destroying their military infrastructure, taking apart their capabilities to make war and affect the geostrategic situation, and yet nonetheless offering them an offramp to their own inevitable demise, are finding that you can’t negotiate with lunatics because their math is not the same as yours.
Iran doesn’t want peace with us. Iran wants to destroy us. If we’re going to have peace with Iran, we’re going to need a different Iran.
Just like we’re going to need a different Cuba.
And just like there will have to be a different Western Europe if the continent is going to save itself from the demographic time bomb ticking ever more loudly as it packs migrant on top of migrant to weigh down an already sclerotic society. (RELATED: Spain’s Demographic Suicide: A Generational Error Europe Will Not Undo)
And just like we will eventually come back to a reality this country once embraced, which is that there can be no bread broken or accord made with the Francesca Hongs and Zohran Mamdanis.
You have to deny power to the lunatics. This is neither negotiable nor avoidable. It’s a lesson we seem doomed to repeat the hard way, and we will invariably learn it again soon.
Lansing—Democratic members of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers voted Monday against certifying the Americans for Citizen Voting initiative, leaving the proposed constitutional amendment to require proof of citizenship off the November ballot after a contentious debate.
The four-member board deadlocked 2-2, with Republican members Chair Richard Houskamp and Paul Cordes voting to certify the petition and Democratic members Vice Chair Mary Ellen Gurewitz and Heather Cummings voting against certification. Since the Board has four members in order to have a petition certified there must be at least three members who vote for it.
The initiative needed 629 valid signatures in the state’s random sample to receive a recommendation for certification. Bureau of Elections staff determined that 626 of the 1,000 signatures reviewed in the sample were valid, putting the petition below the required threshold.
Americans for Citizen Voting challenged the findings and submitted sworn affidavits from petition signers whose signatures had been rejected by election officials. Organizers argued the affidavits demonstrated that several signatures the state had deemed invalid were actually signed by registered voters.
The organization presented testimony from a notary who had notarized affidavits submitted by petition signers. The board reviewed 20 affidavits during the proceedings, with five becoming central to the final decision.
Houskamp argued the affidavits deserved special consideration because they came directly from voters who were willing to appear and attest that they had signed the petition.
“Those affidavits meant more than all the other signatures we were fighting for,” Houskamp told the media following the meeting. “Because those were you people, and you were stepping up to the plate.”
The Board of Canvassers has a rule that new evidence cannot be considered in their decision unless it was submitted 48-hours before the meeting, a rule the Democrat members cited as their reason to vote no.
“This was voters who had signed petitions, who were coming forward and saying, ‘You invalidated my signature. I’m coming forward to tell you that that really was my signature and that really was me on the petition,’” Houskamp said. “And so when it comes to the 48-hour rule, I think that’s different.”
The five disputed affidavits were the critical factor in the meeting. Had the affidavits been accepted, supporters argued the initiative would have reached 631 valid signatures in the sample, two above the 629-signature threshold.
The board ultimately remained deadlocked over the affidavits, with both Democratic members voting against certification.
Americans for Citizen Voting Chairman Paul Jacob sharply criticized the decision following the vote, arguing the board had rejected the testimony of voters who had personally sworn that they signed the petition.
“Even the two Democratic canvassers on the board … admitted that there are five people with sworn affidavits who are registered voters who signed our petition and we’re not getting credit,” Jacob told the media. “And how many are we short? Three. Do the math.”
Americans for Citizen Voting submitted 709,841 signatures in March, more than 260,000 above the statutory requirement of 446,198, according to the Michigan Fair Elections Institute.
The Bureau of Elections initially found 692 valid signatures in its 1,000-signature sample before challenges reduced the count to 612. The campaign subsequently sought to restore 149 challenged signatures, but election officials restored only 14.
The proposed constitutional amendment aims to require proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote, create a statewide citizenship verification system, and require the Michigan Secretary of State to vet voter rolls for noncitizens and report annually about those efforts to state lawmakers.
Jacobs told the media Americans for Citizen Voting will challenge Monday’s decision in court.
“The people of Michigan, 700,000 plus, signed this petition,” Jacob said. “People deserve a vote on this issue, and they’re going to get one,” he continued.
“I am more than frustrated. I am ready to continue to do battle because we’re not giving up,” Jacob said. “You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it.”
“We’re going to be back,” he added. “We’re going to go to every court we have to go to.”
The initiative is supported by Republican gubernatorial candidate John James, who signed the petition supporting the measure.
In a post on X on Monday, James blasted the Secretary of State office for blocking the initiative from the November ballot.
“She is using her office to fight voter ID and suppress the voices of 700,000 Michiganders who signed the petition to put Citizens Only Voting on the ballot this November,” James wrote.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has campaigned against proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote on both the state and federal level, is overseeing her own election for governor as the Democratic nominee.
The Michigan Fair Elections Institute warned before the vote that the initiative was running out of time to qualify for the November ballot. Monday’s Board of State Canvassers meeting was the only scheduled opportunity for certification through the ordinary process, and the proposal faces a Sept. 4 deadline for final ballot-summary certification, according to the institute.
“Look, all we can do is have faith in God and do the right stuff,” Jacob said. “We’re going to go to that court and we’re going to hope that they do the right thing.”
Unless a court overturns the board’s decision, the Americans for Citizen Voting initiative will not appear on the Nov. 3 statewide ballot.
Americans for Citizen Voting Chairman Paul Jacob: ‘You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it’
The proposed constitutional amendment aims to require proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote, create a statewide citizenship verification system, and require the Michigan Secretary of State to vet voter rolls for noncitizens and report annually about those efforts to state lawmakers.
Jacobs told the media Americans for Citizen Voting will challenge Monday’s decision in court.
“The people of Michigan, 700,000 plus, signed this petition,” Jacob said. “People deserve a vote on this issue, and they’re going to get one,” he continued.
“I am more than frustrated. I am ready to continue to do battle because we’re not giving up,” Jacob said. “You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it.”
“We’re going to be back,” he added. “We’re going to go to every court we have to go to.”
The initiative is supported by Republican gubernatorial candidate John James, who signed the petition supporting the measure.
In a post on X on Monday, James blasted the Secretary of State office for blocking the initiative from the November ballot.
“She is using her office to fight voter ID and suppress the voices of 700,000 Michiganders who signed the petition to put Citizens Only Voting on the ballot this November,” James wrote.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has campaigned against proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote on both the state and federal level, is overseeing her own election for governor as the Democratic nominee.
