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.
“Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says he’s ready to meet with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to discuss the city’s future as competing states try to court concerned business owners away from the Big Apple.”
How do you sit down and talk reasonably with someone who says you have no right to exist, that all the money and profits do not belong to you or your customers–that everything belongs to HIM?
Communists believe that all private property is theft. Any business person in New York City is in a position of begging Mamdani to “please, sir, allow me to keep some of my property.” There’s no negotiation with someone who says that he rules you 100 percent morally–and that the legality is only a matter of time.
Mamdani is a literal terrorist and an economic terrorist. He should be treated accordingly. He has no rights, because he is a dictator and a common thug. All who voted for him are accessories to the crimes he’s preparing to commit.
The whole thing is a travesty.
*******
From Fox News: “BADGE OF HONOR? Zohran Mamdani taps his longtime advisor, Elle Bisgaard-Church, as his incoming chief of staff. Bisgaard-Church was dubbed the “chief architect” of Mamdani’s campaign proposal to have social workers respond to certain non-violent 911 calls in New York City.”
I sincerely hope that any resident of NYC who voted for this savage experiences a home invasion or other violent crime, and has the pleasure of an unarmed social worker showing up to save them. Not a tear will be shed by me. You freaks who voted for this insanity while posing as morally virtuous richly deserve what you will get. Rest assured: Your beloved mayor and his henchpersons will be well-protected.
NYC mayor-elect Mamdani promised to replace police with unarmed social workers for many violent situations in New York City.
Richard Ruggiero asks on Facebook:
“Will the mayor be protected by social workers?
This can be mistaken as misguided compassion but that would be a mistake. This is intentional malice. The whites will get the social workers when they call the
police while the supporters of Islam will be armed. Count on it!”
Absolutely.
*******
“Charlie Kirk gets shot and people are celebrating like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You want people to die that you disagree with?’ Like, where are we right now on the scale of one-to-civil war? Where are we? Are we at seven? Because I thought we were at a five. I thought we were like four. Four or five,” he said on the Tuesday’s episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “But after the Charlie Kirk thing, I’m like, ‘Oh, we might be like seven.’ This might be like step seven on the way to a bonafide civil war.”
Joe Rogan cautioned that when people start rejoicing over someone’s death—especially a public killing witnessed by the world and their family—it reflects a disturbing moral decline. He emphasized that if the person’s biggest offense was merely saying things others disagreed with, then celebrating their violent death is deeply troubling.
It’s time to consider the possibility that millions of our fellow Americans are truly bad people.
“When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State, I perceived that this was the essential issue, that this principle was evil, and that it could lead to nothing but evil, regardless of any methods, details, decrees, policies, promises and pious platitudes. This was the reason for my opposition to Communism then—and it is my reason now. I am still a little astonished, at times, that too many adult Americans do not understand the nature of the fight against Communism as clearly as I understood it at the age of twelve: they continue to believe that only Communist methods are evil, while Communist ideals are noble. All the victories of Communism since the year 1917 are due to that particular belief among the men who are still free.”
After New York City voters chose the terrorist-sympathizing communist Zohran Mamdani to lead them toward a future of more crime, higher taxes, and worse public service, post-election autopsies (or perhaps pre-autopsies of New York’s inevitable suicide) noted how overwhelmingly young women went for Zohran the Barbarian. According to exit polling, 84% of women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine voted for the magical Marxist Muslim.
Only white men voted against the guy who cracks jokes with Islamic fundamentalists who celebrated the 9/11 terror attacks. Democrat pundits point to this statistic as evidence that “white supremacy” and the anti-immigrant “patriarchy” are alive and well. I would say that white men are a little less likely to vote for more taxes and more crime just to appease the bloviators who call them “racists” regardless of what they do. An awful lot of white men in and around New York City either fought the jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan or have a family member who did. No matter how much blue-collar workers might still identify as Democrats, voting for a guy who smiles with people who wish you dead is a bridge too far.
As for the glut of women who chose a foreigner to protect their interests, well, talk about cognitive dissonance.
For several decades now, too many young women have voted for the Democrat party because they see it as the staunch protector of abortion on demand. They are right about that. When Bill Clinton was president, Democrats at least tacitly recognized that killing a baby is a serious moral issue by claiming that abortion procedures should be “safe, legal, and rare.” However, when Democrats installed Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee last August, Planned Parenthood parked an “abortion van” next to a food truck outside the Democrats’ national convention and killed at least twenty-five babies for free. Speakers on the first night of the convention spoke about the importance of abortion 119 times, and the Democrat party’s 2024 platform included thirteen references to abortion as a kind of “virtue” and “reproductive freedom.” Disregarding violence against unborn children and the long-term harms to mothers, the Democrat party has embraced its status as the “Shout Your Abortion” party.
If being able to kill your child without legal consequence or societal revulsion is your most important political issue, it seems strange to vote for a Muslim man whose friends insist on controlling how women dress, think, and behave. On the other hand, perhaps pro-abortion voters see Mamdani as just the kind of jihadi-sympathizer who will have no trouble slaughtering Western innocents.
After so many women helped to elect a Ugandan the next mayor of New York City, non-leftists flooded social media platforms with somewhat sarcastic calls to “Repeal the 19th” — the constitutional amendment that recognizes the right of women to vote.
It is certainly true that women’s direct participation in the electoral process has dramatically shifted American politics over the last century. The Democrat party would not exist today without the consistent support of female voters. American men would not be so cowed into silence if the steady feminization of American culture had not cut off their testicles and beat them into submission with their own amputated family jewels. We certainly would not be having pronoun debates or national conversations about why men should stay away from little girls in women’s restrooms. Female athletes wouldn’t have lost championship games to delusional men wearing thong underwear. The secretary of War wouldn’t have been required to explain to military personnel that superior lethal force — not “diversity” or men in skirts — is their paramount mission. There would be no “safe spaces” or “hate speech” or social media platforms such as BlueSky that protect Democrats’ feelings from reality.
Feminine forms of unchecked empathy — when not balanced with noble forms of masculinity that protect families and preserve social order — sometimes invite trouble and endanger the larger group. Without women pushing them to do so, most men would never slap a “coexist” bumper sticker on their cars. Men are hardwired to view outsiders with suspicion and to see unfortified perimeters as dangerous. Men are not naturally inclined to embrace open-borders immigration policies that encourage foreigners to shelter near their families. Men build walls and then stand on those walls to fight anyone brazen enough to approach.
A male-dominated society would not have created a “trans” movement that emboldens pedophiles to prey on children. Not so long ago, boys sneaking into girls’ locker rooms under the pretense that they are girls trapped in boys’ bodies would have ended with other boys giving the trespassers a swift beating. Aberrant and potentially dangerous behaviors would not have been tolerated or encouraged. By today’s standards, that might sound cruel and abhorrent, but yesterday’s lack of deserved beatings created the conditions that have allowed men to invade women’s private spaces today.
That being said, I want to push back on this “Repeal the 19th” business. In my experience, there is nothing more formidable than a conservative woman. When headlines began pointing out that 84% of young women in New York City voted for the terrorist-sympathizing communist, my first thought was, “It’s the other 16% who are going to give us a fighting chance.”
You might have noticed that in America and across the West, we have an epidemic of debilitating groupthink. There is a reason why Democrat politicians sound like deranged parrots, all repeating the exact same slogans word for word. Humans repeat what they hear, and Democrats use this trait to broadcast their message across the country. It is both analytically intriguing and terrifying to see how a Democrat party slogan ripples across social media platforms on any given day. These instruments for mass communication have put traditional forms of peer pressure on steroids and increased exponentially the psychological demands for an individual to conform to perceived social norms. Of course 84% of young women in NYC voted for Zohran the Barbarian! Absolutely every information input in their lives encouraged them to do so.
But then there are the freethinking 16% who resist. No matter how coercive a society becomes, there always seem to be a stubborn 20% who refuse to submit. Communists know this; it’s why Stalin and Mao murdered millions. Time and again, roughly 20% of any society would rather fight and die than give in. Those women in New York who insisted on thinking for themselves — even though every newspaper, television show, and social media buddy told them to vote for the commie — are worth a hat tip.
They will be instrumental in the battles to come. Leftist culture has dominated women’s issues for the last century. It will not always be so. We conservatives often point out that “hard times create strong men” without paying enough attention to its attendant truth: Hard times create strong women, too. Frontier women did not survive because their husbands were always around to protect them. Our American ancestors survived because husbands and wives worked together to overcome all threats. A firearm in the hands of a woman gives her the means to take down any man — which is why Democrat schemes for “gun control” are inherently anti-women. When an armed woman stands between a hostile stranger and her children, she spares no thought to Democrat slogans urging her to “coexist.” Maybe that’s why leftist governments encourage women not to have children.
The funny thing about society’s stubborn 20% is that it often proves to be the vanguard of a much larger movement. Today’s threats are driving women to reconsider what they once believed. Strong conservative women are not so easily mocked when young girls see them as heroes. They are desperately needed for the tough times ahead.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. – George Orwell
George Orwell’s telescreen is no longer “suspend your disbelief”-level fiction. And the foot meting out the punishment may soon be the state’s, delivering your Universal Basic Income in UBI Dollars (UBIDs).
I have recently written about AI and UBI, positing that AI will lead to sufficient disruption to make UBI a near-certainty. In this essay, I combine these threads in relation to a current political stance.
Utopian visions—from Thomas More’s Utopia to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward—imagined harmonious, egalitarian societies where technology and policy eradicated want and conflict. These works inspired reforms, but their blueprints for perfectibility ignored the complexity of human behavior and power. Even Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, a rare example of an anarchist utopia, ultimately reveals idealism crumbling under the weight of institutional inertia and cultural drift.
By contrast, dystopian literature has proven uncannily prescient.
George Orwell’s 1984 anticipated mass surveillance and digital censorship. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World foresaw a society numbed by engineered distractions—a forebear to today’s attention-addiction economy. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 each predicted elements of behavioral control and technological regression that now feel/are eerily present.
Why have dystopias proven more accurate? Because utopian visions reflect a winsome but naïve faith in rational design and reasonableness. Dystopias, however, extrapolate from fears—surveillance, stratification, dehumanization—into plausible futures that transition seamlessly into extant presents. Fear is a real motivator.
At the individual and small group levels, reason may prevail. Politics is not in such realms. It is a team sport, organized as “parties,” large enough to be mobs. And mobs are neither rational nor reasonable in their actions. They are fear-propelled.
The AI revolution is upending work, wealth, and politics. As automation, mechanical and digital, displaces millions of jobs, UBI emerges as a proposed solution: an unconditional monthly payment to all, assuring baseline security. Early proponents framed it as freedom, dignity, and autonomy.
But as AI advances, UBI’s implementation grows less like Bellamy’s benevolent organizing and more like Orwell’s technocratic management.
Why? Because funding and delivering UBI at scale requires digital infrastructure encompassing technologies such as app-based disbursement, biometric identity, fraud detection, and linked spending. The very nature of UBI in an AI age means states can track, analyze, and, increasingly, control how recipients use their income. Conditionality “to ensure necessities” or mitigate “antisocial behavior” becomes a slippery slope toward digital paternalism, where every transaction is scrutinized.
In effect, UBI morphs from liberation into surveillance—and surveillance into social engineering.
UBI’s technological backdoor to surveillance is most powerfully realized through Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). These promise secure, programmable money distributed directly by the state. On the surface, they offer efficiency, fraud resistance, and easier benefit allocation.
UBI is CBDC-lite. It delivers nearly every erosion of cherished freedom, liberty, and privacy—but with the blows softened – like a well-placed pillow over the face of a beating victim. With a nod to Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, “You will be bruised, and you will be happy.”
The privacy dangers are acute. UBIDs (UBI Dollars), similar to CBDCs, would record every transaction in real time, enabling governments to analyze, restrict, or reverse payments at will.
CBDC could be designed to potentially include a wealth of personal data, encapsulating transaction histories, user demographics, and behavioral patterns. Data leakage and abuse, even by issuing authorities, are deeply concerning in countries both with weak and strong rule of law.
Given the complexity and performance limitations of current privacy-enhancing technologies, it seems likely that a true retail CBDC will expose new forms of sensitive information to its operators.
Such tools, paired with AI, make total economic surveillance and behavioral control not only possible, but likely. Dystopian warnings appear not as exaggerations, but as blueprints.
Recognizing these dangers, President Donald J. Trump took decisive action. On January 23, 2025, he signed an executive order stating:
It is the policy of my Administration…to prohibit the establishment, issuance, and use of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) by any Federal agency or instrumentality… Measures will be taken to protect Americans from the risks of CBDCs, which threaten financial system stability, individual privacy, and U.S. sovereignty.
The order immediately terminated all government CBDC initiatives and rolled back prior executive actions promoting their exploration.
A CBDC would give the federal government absolute control over your money… They could take your money and you wouldn’t even know it was gone.
It is no leap to see that, similarly, UBI has no future while Trump is in office.
President Trump has repeatedly asserted—often at pivotal moments—that attacks against him are proxies for attacks on Americans’ freedom:
In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you—and I’m just standing in the way.
This refrain underscores his role as a bulwark against elite overreach, including encroaching technocracy. Whether responding to politically motivated indictments or encroachments on economic liberty, Trump frames himself as a “true protector” absorbing—and preventing—the blows intended for ordinary Americans.
History and literature agree: dystopian predictions, far more than utopian dreams, have captured the real risks of technological and bureaucratic excess. Dystopian literature validates fears as prophetic.
As AI and digital currency threaten to merge UBI with ubiquitous economic surveillance, America stands at a crossroads. Donald J. Trump’s executive action against CBDCs, coupled with his unwavering public stance, represents more than policy—it is an affirmation of the right to privacy, freedom, and independence.
In a world where the “soma“ of UBI and the “telescreen” of CBDCs seem imminent, one leader’s willingness to stand in the way may be the bulwark that preserves liberty for generations to come.
DJT’s vision is one of freedom and liberty for all. Support it, him, and these policies.
Oppose him if slavery to the state is your utopia.
For the first time in decades, the Democrats have lost their bid to engineer a federal government shutdown, blame the Republicans for it, and win political concessions for doing so. Now that they’ve lost, they’re blaming moderates in their own party for the miscalculation. Let the blaming begin.
As is often the case, CNN’s unflappable, lonely conservative, Scott Jennings, predicted the outcome of the shutdown last week after Democrats posted big wins in blue states in the off-year elections. “I’m sure the Democrats will be happy to open the government now, the election is over,” he said, even as the Dems insisted that they wouldn’t.
But mere days after Jennings’ words, Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Maggie Kassan, Jacky Rosen, and Jeanne Shaheen, who had all voted 15 times against ending the shutdown, suddenly relented and crossed the aisle to vote to end the closure, joining original Democrat rebel Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman, and Angus King.
And even the Dems’ media supporters admit the shutdown was entirely a Democrat political ploy, having little to do with sympathy for Obamacare recipients: “Democrats said the shutdown was about the subsidies, but for most of them, it wasn’t,” wrote Ezra Klein in The New York Times. “It was about Trump’s authoritarianism. It was about showing their base — and themselves — that they could fight back. It was about treating an abnormal political moment abnormally.”
He’s right, in a sense. It was cynical manipulation of the public for political gain — a perfect description of today’s far-left Democratic Party, in which moderation, common sense, and decency are treated not as virtues but as political treason. This is now the party of self-avowed socialist and Islamist Zohan Mamdani, new mayor of New York City. It is also the party of soon-to-be retired former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose main legacy, as one recent headline put it, “is the socialist takeover of her party.”
The loss isn’t sitting well with the Dems’ extreme-left wing, which did its level best to blame others in the party for what conservatives quickly dubbed “Schumer’s shutdown.”
“Pathetic. This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!” whined California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a press release.
“Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution. And to my mind, this was a very, very bad vote,” added “independent” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Dozens of other progressive Dems added their vitriol, throwing a collective fit on BlueSky.
The rage was palpable. Why? One big reason was that President Donald Trump promised to do what the Democrats had threatened to do in years past to end a shutdown: Kill the filibuster. (Not all Republicans agree with Trump, by the way.)
Democrats in recent decades have won shutdown fights by using their friends in the mainstream media to portray Republicans as evil, stingy villains who care not a whit about working people. They did it this time, too.
And this time it’s clear: Democrats were 100% at fault for this shutdown, and all its inconveniences.
Moderate Democrats such as the eight who broke ranks to end the shutdown and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer will now find themselves pretty lonely amid the 37 other Democrats in the Senate. Some might be challenged from the left in their next primary. And all will also certainly find themselves short of friends and, in some cases, political funds. As a headline on Raw Story put it, “Angry Democrats brew ‘furious civil war’ after ‘lousy’ shutdown deal.”
As a party, the Democrats are in no mood to compromise or tolerate those who will. They believe once Trump is gone, they’ll again win elections that count, and GOP squishes in Congress will do their bidding.
In the meantime, their rage will turn on the small remnants of moderation and reason within their own party, leaving a giant hole for the socialists, antisemites, and wannabe revolutionaries who now run the Democrats to fill. Politics abhor a vacuum. The Democratic Party’s civil war will likely be the final triumph of its now-dominant socialist wing.
Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.
— Deuteronomy 11:17
Mother Nature may accomplish something that neither the U.S. nor Israel could ever have contemplated: the evacuation of Tehran’s 9.7 million inhabitants. Iran is currently experiencing its fifth consecutive year of drought, and the autumnal rainfall is about a quarter of that in 2024, that would be two millimeters. In short, Tehran is facing a “Day Zero” catastrophe. “Zero day” is probably shortly after January 1.
Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, warned on Thursday that if the drought persisted more than a month longer, “we’ll have to evacuate Tehran.” Mr. Pezeshkian has not explained how such an evacuation would be managed.
Mr. Pezeshkian has warned about Tehran’s water crisis for months, and has even promoted moving the capital south, closer to the Persian Gulf, where there is “access to open waters.”
The Amir Kabir Dam, once a vital lifeline holding over 160,000 acre-feet, now languishes at a mere 8 percent capacity, or about a two-week supply for Tehran. In terms of reservoir capacity, isn’t huge. It is about the size of the Canyon Dam on Texas’s Guadalupe River or the Smith Mountain Dam on Virginia’s Roanoke River. But when you plop it down in the middle of the desert and make your nation’s capital and a lot of your agriculture dependent on it for water, it takes on a significance all its own. The other reservoirs in the five-dam system that supplies Tehran with water — Latyan, Lar, Mamloo, and Taleqan — are in equally poor condition. At Latyan, only half of the current 10 percent fill can be used. Lar is at one percent, Mamloo at seven percent, and Taleqan, which is about twice the size of Amir Kabir, is at 30 percent capacity.
The water crisis in Iran: An Iranian swimmer filmed a video in which he showed how it is possible to walk across the water reservoir of the Karaj Dam (Amir Kabir Dam), which serves as the main water source for Tehran – something that indicates the low water level in the… pic.twitter.com/St8Ycnagko— Dr. Fundji Benedict (@Fundji3) November 7, 2025
Iran is drought-prone; indeed, it is the middle of the most severe drought in 57 years, but that isn’t what is causing the current crisis. It is the logical and foreseeable outcome of decades of environmental neglect and Soviet-style mismanagement that has turned a naturally arid climate into a national emergency.
Iran’s groundwater has been depleted, primarily in an effort to surge agriculture to deal with a booming population. Tehran is sinking at a rate of 25 cm per year as the aquifers collapse. This poses a threat to utilities, subways, and the structural integrity of buildings. It is hard to imagine that the settling hasn’t caused leaks in water mains.
To be clear, this is not a Tehran problem; this is an Iran problem. The drought affects the whole country, and 30 of Iran’s 31 provinces are experiencing land subsidence due to unchecked groundwater extraction.
Iran is also heavily reliant on hydroelectric power. As you can imagine, that isn’t going all that well.
The hydropower sector is reeling, with over 12,500 megawatts of capacity affected. “As temperatures rise, electricity production becomes increasingly unstable due to the country’s energy imbalance and lack of investment in renewable infrastructure,” she said. “There is no solution right now except widespread compliance with consumption guidelines.”
[Somayeh Rafiei, a member of the environmental faction in Iran’s parliament], said the situation requires the Ministry of Energy and provincial governors to immediately implement real-time monitoring across all public institutions and government-affiliated companies, including mandatory installation of smart meters and online tracking systems.
“We cannot demand conservation from ordinary citizens while leaving high-consumption government bodies unchecked,” she said.
The capital began scheduled power outages again this week, according to a notice issued by the Tehran Electricity Distribution Company, following unannounced outages in neighboring towns.
The return of outages coincides with a heatwave that has sharply driven up water usage.
It is statistically unlikely that Tehran will get enough rain to provide potable water to nearly 10 million people, not to mention water for other purposes. The evacuation of Tehran will not be the end of it. We’re looking at the physical collapse of a country on a scale not witnessed in modern history. With this collapse will come the Mother of all Refugee Crises and the probable fall of the current government and perhaps a splintering of Iran into smaller states. Interesting times.
Democrats are seething after news emerged on Sunday that eight members of their Senate caucus had collaborated with Republicans on crafting a compromise to end the longest government shutdown in US history, without winning any healthcare concessions that they had sought.
But one name is coming in for more opprobrium than any other: Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who had led the Democrats’ weeks-long stand against reopening the government without an extension of tax credits that lower premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans.
If the results of the crucial Sunday vote are any indication, the outcome Democrats fought so hard against is now set to happen, potentially in the next few days. And though Schumer does not publicly support the compromise, lawmakers and Democrat-affiliated groups have turned on him, criticizing his leadership and calling for his ouster.
“Last night, eight ‘moderate’ Democrats got played. Conned. Rooked. Pantsed. Pumped and dumped. Rode hard and put away wet,” Rick Wilson, the ex-Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, wrote in a piece titled “Schumer and the Hateful Eight Betray America”.
“It was a colossal leadership failure, and Chuck Schumer should resign as minority leader immediately if he had a shred of honor or shame.”
The sentiment is rife in progressive groups such as Our Revolution, whose executive director Joseph Geevarghese said: “Chuck Schumer should step down as Senate minority leader immediately. If he secretly backed this surrender and voted no to save face, he’s a liar. If he couldn’t keep his caucus in line, he’s inept. Either way, he’s proven incapable of leading the fight to prevent healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for millions of Americans.”
In the House, three Democrats have so far called on Schumer to step aside, among them Mike Levin, who represents a swingy district on the southern California coast. “Chuck Schumer has not met this moment and Senate Democrats would be wise to move on from his leadership,” he wrote on X Monday.
Fellow Californian Ro Khanna said, “Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” while Michigan representative and Squad member Rashida Tlaib said the minority leader “has failed to meet this moment and is out of touch with the American people. The Democratic party needs leaders who fight and deliver for working people. Schumer should step down.”
But none of the voices calling for a change in leadership belong to the Democratic senators who could force the issue. Nor did Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the party in the House of Representatives, join in. “Yes and yes,” he said at a Monday press conference, when a reporter asked if he believed Schumer was effective, and whether he should keep the leadership post he has held for eight years.
A spokesman for Schumer did not respond to a request for comment.
The squabble is in many ways a rehash of one that took place earlier this year, when the 74-year-old briefly found himself manning the barricades in a funding battle the ended up turning into a Democratic rout.
The moment came three months into Donald Trump’s presidency and days before government funding was set to expire. House Republicans had sent the Senate a short-term funding measure that almost all Democrats in the lower chamber opposed.
Faced with the prospect of swallowing the bill as is, or demanding changes and likely causing a shutdown, Schumer initially went with the latter, before changing his mind and voting for the measure along with his caucus’s centrists. The decision brought a backlash from the party’s base, with liberal groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn calling for new leadership.
Schumer survived, and when the latest funding battle began 41 days ago, his office collaborated with those same groups on their shutdown strategy. The Democrats held firm for weeks, even as an increasingly frustrated John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, held 14 fruitless votes on GOP-authored legislation to reopen the government, without addressing the ACA subsidies.
Over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson put representatives on a lengthy recess to make clear to Senate Democrats that his party was not interested in negotiating over their demands.
At the press conferences he convened regularly after funding lapsed, Johnson repeatedly alleged that the “Schumer shutdown” was driven by the minority leader’s desire not to face a primary challenge in 2028 from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York congresswoman who Republicans allege is shaping the party’s agenda.
“He thinks AOC is going to challenge him or some other Marxist,” Johnson said in early October.
The compromise to reopen the government authorizes funding through January, and promises Democrats a vote on extending the ACA tax credits, though there is no guarantee their bill would pass the Senate, or, if it does, come up for a vote in the House. Schumer’s fingerprints are not publicly on the deal, which was worked out by a group of moderate senators who have either recently won re-election or are in their final terms in office.
The moment came three months into Donald Trump’s presidency and days before government funding was set to expire. House Republicans had sent the Senate a short-term funding measure that almost all Democrats in the lower chamber opposed.
Faced with the prospect of swallowing the bill as is, or demanding changes and likely causing a shutdown, Schumer initially went with the latter, before changing his mind and voting for the measure along with his caucus’s centrists. The decision brought a backlash from the party’s base, with liberal groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn calling for new leadership.
Schumer survived, and when the latest funding battle began 41 days ago, his office collaborated with those same groups on their shutdown strategy. The Democrats held firm for weeks, even as an increasingly frustrated John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, held 14 fruitless votes on GOP-authored legislation to reopen the government, without addressing the ACA subsidies.
Over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson put representatives on a lengthy recess to make clear to Senate Democrats that his party was not interested in negotiating over their demands.
At the press conferences he convened regularly after funding lapsed, Johnson repeatedly alleged that the “Schumer shutdown” was driven by the minority leader’s desire not to face a primary challenge in 2028 from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York congresswoman who Republicans allege is shaping the party’s agenda.
“He thinks AOC is going to challenge him or some other Marxist,” Johnson said in early October.
The moment came three months into Donald Trump’s presidency and days before government funding was set to expire. House Republicans had sent the Senate a short-term funding measure that almost all Democrats in the lower chamber opposed.
Faced with the prospect of swallowing the bill as is, or demanding changes and likely causing a shutdown, Schumer initially went with the latter, before changing his mind and voting for the measure along with his caucus’s centrists. The decision brought a backlash from the party’s base, with liberal groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn calling for new leadership.
Schumer survived, and when the latest funding battle began 41 days ago, his office collaborated with those same groups on their shutdown strategy. The Democrats held firm for weeks, even as an increasingly frustrated John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, held 14 fruitless votes on GOP-authored legislation to reopen the government, without addressing the ACA subsidies.
Over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson put representatives on a lengthy recess to make clear to Senate Democrats that his party was not interested in negotiating over their demands.
At the press conferences he convened regularly after funding lapsed, Johnson repeatedly alleged that the “Schumer shutdown” was driven by the minority leader’s desire not to face a primary challenge in 2028 from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York congresswoman who Republicans allege is shaping the party’s agenda.
“He thinks AOC is going to challenge him or some other Marxist,” Johnson said in early October.
The compromise to reopen the government authorizes funding through January, and promises Democrats a vote on extending the ACA tax credits, though there is no guarantee their bill would pass the Senate, or, if it does, come up for a vote in the House. Schumer’s fingerprints are not publicly on the deal, which was worked out by a group of moderate senators who have either recently won re-election or are in their final terms in office.
The Senate passed a bill to reopen the federal government Monday evening, taking the next step toward ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The chamber agreed to speed up the process to pass a bipartisan agreement struck over the weekend. The measure will now head to the House, which is expected to take it up later this week after staying away from Washington for more than 50 days.
“I could spend an hour talking about all the problems we’ve seen, which have snowballed the longer this shutdown has gone on,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said in a floor speech Monday. “But all of us, Democrat and Republican, who voted for last night’s bill are well aware of the facts, and I am grateful that the end is in sight.”
The bill passed 60-40, with seven Democrats and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) joining Republicans to pass it. One Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (Kentucky) voted no.
The bill now passes to the House, where the narrow majority might present some issues for passage. As I wrote earlier, Donald Trump has gotten ahead of that by endorsing the package:
It will still take days to reopen the government. Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday urged House members — who have not held a vote in nearly two months as they took an extended recess during the shutdown — to begin the process of returning to Washington “right now.”
At the White House, Mr. Trump said that he approved of the plan.
“We’ll be opening up our country very quickly,” he said, calling the package “very good.”
Right now, the shortest estimate for getting the House into full session is 36 hours or so. That puts the end of the shutdown sometime on Wednesday.
Johnson sounded confident that he has the votes among the House GOP to pass this bill. Rep. Ralph Norman reversed his earlier objection today, which signals that Johnson has a good chance of muscling it through. However, the support for the bill itself from so-called ‘moderates’ among Senate Democrats might portend votes from Hakeem Jeffries’ own caucus too.
Stay tuned. We’ll have more tomorrow as developments emerge.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP, unexpectedly took center stage in debates over the federal government shutdown.
As funding for the program, formerly known as Food Stamps, ran out in October, Congress, President Donald Trump, and the federal courts have wrestled with what to do about feeding millions of Americans who depend on this benefit each month.
SNAP has grown in size and cost since its inception in 1964, as have many other social welfare programs.
Here’s a closer look at the program, what it costs, the participation rates in different states, and how it has come to top $100 billion per year.
Participation
Participation in SNAP has grown dramatically over the last 50 years.
About 2 percent of Americans received SNAP benefits in 1970, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Today, about 13 percent of Americans receive SNAP benefits—some 42 million people.
That’s a 650 percent increase in the number of Americans who are unable to provide adequate food for themselves.
Participation spiked by 69 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching a high of more than 45 million monthly recipients, largely due to the nationwide recession, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Between 2007 and 2009, national unemployment averaged 9.3 percent, and nearly 15 percent of Americans lived in poverty.
Participation rates vary between New Mexico, the highest at 21.2 percent of the population, and Utah, the lowest at 4.8 percent.
The participation rate for many states mirrors their poverty rate. Some states have exceptionally high or low rates of SNAP participation compared to the rate of poverty.
Outliers on the high side are: Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Wyoming.
On the low side, Georgia’s SNAP participation rate is 12.5 percent, while its poverty rate is 12.6 percent.
Spending
SNAP spending has undergone two surges, reaching annual costs of more than $100 billion in 2024.
Spending shot up 112 percent between 2008 and 2013, coinciding with the surge in enrollment. SNAP costs went up another 98 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic era, when personal benefit amounts increased by 77 percent, according to The Epoch Times’ analysis of Agriculture Department data.
That’s a 300 percent increase in 20 years compared to an overall 50 percent increase in enrollment.
States with higher populations generally receive a larger share of SNAP benefits. California tops the list, receiving more than $1 billion per month, followed by New York at $647 million, Texas at $614 million, and Florida at $535 million.
Alaska and Hawaii both receive nearly double the average SNAP benefit per person, at $364 and $361 per month, respectively. Beneficiaries in New York ($218), Massachusetts ($216), and Tennessee ($203) receive the highest monthly average among the contiguous states.
Incorrect Payments
As benefits have grown more generous, the error rate for payments increased, according to an October report from Alliance for Opportunity, a conservative public policy organisation.
The error rate—which measures how often states make mistakes in determining who gets SNAP benefits and how much they receive—hit 11 percent in 2022 and remained close to that level through 2024. That’s three times higher than the rate in 2013.
That spike in payment errors reversed 15 years of continuous improvement, according to Alliance for Opportunity.
SNAP incorrectly disbursed nearly $11 billion in 2024. This figure breaks down into $9 billion in overpayments and $2 billion in underpayments for a net overpayment of $7 billion.
Before the pandemic, annual SNAP erroneous payments never exceeded $4.2 billion.
The increase was due to increased flexibility granted to states in administering the program, according to Alliance for Opportunity. As states were allowed to let individuals self-attest income, simplify reporting, and take longer certification periods.
California led in the total amount of improper payments, with an estimated $1.4 billion–approximately one in every nine dollars was sent out incorrectly.
New York followed closely, tallying $1 billion in improper disbursements, with roughly one in every seven dollars being sent wrong.
Florida reported improper payments totaling $990.8 million, with an error rate of 15 percent.
Only payment errors greater than $56 per household were included in the error rate. However, all errors will be tallied in 2026 thanks to a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Since the program’s establishment in 1964, the federal government has fully funded SNAP benefits. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with payment error rates above 6 percent will pay a cost share that covers 5 percent to 15 percent of benefits.
Most states will begin paying a state match if their error rates remain the same.
Fraud
SNAP has a significant amount of fraud, according to Robert Rector, senior researcher at The Heritage Foundation. “The [reported] error rates are false and ridiculously low,” he said.
In some cases, recipients don’t accurately report their income. There is an incentive to do so because the benefit is keyed to income level. Those who earn less receive higher amounts of aid.
Inaccurate counting of household members also contributes to fraudulent payments, according to Rector, who notes that the number of single mothers receiving SNAP benefits is about 35 percent higher than the number of single mothers in the country, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau
The federal poverty level fell by about 50 percent between 1962 and 2000, but remains about 11 percent today.
Only payment errors greater than $56 per household were included in the error rate. However, all errors will be tallied in 2026 thanks to a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Since the program’s establishment in 1964, the federal government has fully funded SNAP benefits. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with payment error rates above 6 percent will pay a cost share that covers 5 percent to 15 percent of benefits.
Most states will begin paying a state match if their error rates remain the same.
Fraud
SNAP has a significant amount of fraud, according to Robert Rector, senior researcher at The Heritage Foundation. “The [reported] error rates are false and ridiculously low,” he said.
In some cases, recipients don’t accurately report their income. There is an incentive to do so because the benefit is keyed to income level. Those who earn less receive higher amounts of aid.
Inaccurate counting of household members also contributes to fraudulent payments, according to Rector, who notes that the number of single mothers receiving SNAP benefits is about 35 percent higher than the number of single mothers in the country, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Work Requirements
“There are about 4 million people on food stamps that are called able-bodied adults without dependents,” Rector told The Epoch Times.
Congress changed the program’s work requirement rule in July. States are now implementing new guidelines to comply with the changes.
Able-bodied adults without dependents are required to work, volunteer, or take part in training at least 20 hours a week, or 80 hours per month, to maintain their SNAP benefits.
Older people are granted an exemption from this requirement, but the age limit for the exemption is increasing from 54 to 64.
Generally, people ages 18 through 64 must meet this requirement to receive SNAP benefits for more than three months in any 36-month period.
Work can be something done in exchange for money, goods, or services.
Growth of Social Programs
President Lyndon Johnson introduced his vision to build a Great Society for the American people in 1963.
Over the next several years, Congress passed landmark legislation to social welfare programs that are still in place, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps.
Those programs have been expanded over the years, and others have been added, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Low Income Energy Assistance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, federal housing assistance, student loans and grants, and many others.
Federal spending on all social welfare programs, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, rose from 0.27 percent in 1962 to 3.8 percent in 2024. That’s an increase of more than 1,250 percent.
The federal poverty level fell by about 50 percent between 1962 and 2000, but remains about 11 percent today.
Capitalism is not working for a lot of people in New York City. It’s not working for young people.
Dear me. Here we have the whole world fainting because Tucker Carlson dared — dared — to interview Nick Fuentes, and Peter Thiel says something completely off-the-charts wacko. Capitalism not working? Capitalism works every minute, every hour, every day, for everyone, whether you like it or not.
Surely Peter Thiel knows this.
What is not working right now is the mountain of government programs and regulations and left-wing conceits that are piled high on capitalism like spices from India on an overloaded camel. As with most animals, when you cruelly overload them, they start to groan with pain.
Another thing that is not working is the famous liberation of women that began a couple hundred years ago with the world’s First Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Only last week I wrote a deeply philosophical Substack post “Our Woman Problem,” on the subject. I say that “women’s liberation” has not liberated women, but rather enslaved them. Women don’t like it, and they are complaining about it. But they have no idea that they are enslaved. They complain, I imagine, because like George Eliot’s Lisbeth Bede, they complain in order to be soothed.
So maybe that’s why the most enthusiastic Mamdani voters in New York City seem to be young women college graduates with woke studies degrees. Maybe they are just complaining in order to be soothed.
Now I wrote a couple of weeks ago at AT that the tech lords, with Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel in the vanguard, are presently engaged upon a Tech March Through the Institutions with consequences that nobody can yet foresee. Let’s just say that the tech lords were present in battalion strength at Trump’s inauguration for a reason. And let us suppose it is connected to Peter Thiel’s patronage of JD Vance.
So I speculate that Peter Thiel talking about capitalism not working is a strategic misdirection play directed at the real culprits that are failing to make America work for ordinary people: the politicians and their aides and staffers, the NGOs and the billionaires behind them, the administrators, the regulators and our beloved mainstream media. But don’t tell our dear liberal and DSA friends; there is no need for them to bother their sweet little heads about that.
Still: what is Peter Thiel’s game here? Is he quietly working behind the scenes with JD Vance waiting for the right moment to nuke our liberal friends into orbit with the help of Elon Musk and SpaceX? We shall see.
Meanwhile, let’s get back to reality. It is ridiculous to speak of “capitalism” working or not working. Capitalism is just humans doing what they do to the extent it is not prevented by politicians and administrators and regulators.
I’ll tell you what’s not working: it’s the liberal dream. Or should we say: their fantasy. They knew better than feudal lords. They knew better than absolute monarchs. They knew better than the crude businessmen that invented machine textiles. It was nothing to them that businessmen and inventors revolutionized world transportation — particularly for the ordinary person — with steamships and railways. Actually, when you think of the five technological revolutions analyzed by Carlota Perez in Technological Revolutions there’s been nothing like it, ever. Certainly, all the liberal politics of the last two hundred years would have gone nowhere without the rocket ship we call capitalism. Where would the politicians have found the taxes to fund their heavenly visions without the money from capitalist growth and prosperity.
No. Let us be clear. What isn’t working today are big-government liberal programs.
Item: liberals dreamed of the wonderful world they would create for the workers. Pity the unions and benefits priced workers out of their jobs.
Item: liberals dreamed of the liberation of women from the oppression of patriarchy. Today women are miserable, especially childless educated women.
Item: liberals dreamed of civil rights for blacks. Then they ruined it with racial quotas for blacks,
Item: liberals dreamed of human rights for gays. Then they ruined it with men in the women’s bathroom.
Item: liberals dreamed of saving the climate from the nightmare of rapidly increasing plant food. But now capitalist Bill Gates says maybe CO2 concentration isn’t a problem.
Oh, now I get it. When we say capitalism isn’t working, we really mean that capitalism isn’t fixing the endless mistakes and injustices of liberalism.
And really, they have a point. What’s the point of capitalism if it isn’t a couple of standard deviations smarter than your average liberal bear?
And if capitalism can’t overcome all the stupidities and injustices of liberalism and make young people feel that, despite all the liberal propaganda they have ingested in 20 years of government schooling, capitalism works for them, then what’s the point?
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