The unfinished work of ensuring there will never be another Donald Trump will be a total effort.

In a previous piece for American Greatness, I said accountability would be the dividing issue in the fast-approaching midterm elections. On the one hand are Democrats, seeking to hold Trump himself and those around him—cabinet members, prominent supporters like Elon Musk, and even corporations that have done deals with the administration—responsible for their role in the “high crimes and misdemeanors” of Trump’s second term in office. On the other are Republicans, wanting to take the Democrats to task for failing to stop the party’s slide into demented gay race communism, as exemplified by its ever-more-radical roster of new stars such as Zohran Mamdani, James Talarico, Melat Kiros, Claire Valdez, and Vanessa Hong.

Over the last week, we got a better idea of exactly what accountability is going to look like in practice for the Democrats. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) appeared on a podcast and said she wanted to use the threat of prosecution to scare young people away from working for the Trump administration.

“I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.”

Slotkin responded to the inevitable backlash by doubling down on X and making clear exactly what she has in mind.

“America must be a place where the rule of law still matters,” she wrote.

“Those laws should apply to everyone equally. If you have aided in the corrupt use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit the President or his family, or you have violated the law in order to carry out guidance from the President, you should be held accountable. And given how rampant that corruption appears to the average American, people looking to work for his Administration should realize that while the Supreme Court has granted the President immunity, it has not done the same for those who do illegal things at his behest.”

You don’t have to twist Slotkin’s words. Taken at face value, her proposal would give carte blanche to investigate and prosecute pretty much anybody who has done pretty much anything for the Trump administration since January 20, 2025, so long as it’s deemed to be “corrupt”—and corruption, like beauty, is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Slotkin has good reason to hate Trump. Last year, she was investigated by the DOJ for sedition. She appeared in a video with five other Democrat lawmakers with military or intelligence experience—Slotkin worked for the CIA—and advised soldiers, sailors, and airmen that they “must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.” Trump had deployed the National Guard to cities including Washington, D.C., and U.S. Southern Command was blowing narco-boats to kingdom come in the Caribbean and posting highlight reels on X.

The video was interpreted, quite rightly, as a call for military personnel to disobey orders, but for whatever reason the charges didn’t stick. Too bad.

In her clapback, Slotkin said it was rich for Trump supporters to cry about “weaponization” of justice for political goals, when that’s exactly what had been done to her. “Spare me the pearl-clutching,” she seethed.

It’s hard not to notice Slotkin’s CIA past and everything that suggests—hint: it rhymes with “creep state”—but don’t forget that she’s widely considered to be a moderate within the Democrat Party. This proposal to go after ordinary rank-and-file members of the current administration just for doing their jobs is not coming from the mouth of a James Talarico, fresh from a nine-day sojourn in an Ohio looney bin, or a Zohran Mamdani and his polyamorous friends in the DSA. This is the dead center of the Democrats in mid-October 2026.

There’s been plenty of pie-in-the-sky talk about the punishment that awaits Donald Trump and his allies, like Matt Ford’s call in The New Republic, for the President to be black-bagged by the International Criminal Court while he’s playing golf in Scotland. The real Democrat plan for retribution, beginning with the midterms, is taking shape under the very knowing rubric of “Project 2029,” which appears to have been coined by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Although the main focus is on regaining the White House in 2029, as the name suggests, detailed preparations are already underway to make life much harder for President Trump and his allies after the midterms.

Impeachment may be off the table, at least for President Trump himself, given how well he has turned proceedings against his enemies. “No one wants a failed vote on day one,” a senior Democrat told Reuters. Instead, the Democrats want to investigate and intimidate a wide range of commercial entities that have done business with the Trump administration. Among those companies are Apple, Alphabet, Blackstone, BlackRock, and Palantir. Companies owned by Elon Musk are also being targeted.

Reuters says, “Democrats are expected to examine Department of Homeland Security contracts, financing for Trump’s planned White House ballroom, corporate donors, and alleged pay-to-play arrangements… They also plan a probe of Trump-linked financial vehicles, including 1789 Capital—a venture capital firm where his son Donald Trump Jr. is a partner—and foreign sovereign wealth funds whose investments in Trump family-linked entities could raise questions about administration influence.”

Party leaders have already sent out letters as a prelude to future subpoenas. Paramount Skydance, Alphabet, and two security contractors that work with the Department of Homeland Security have all received requests for information from the Democrats.

The threat of investigations after the midterms may indeed be enough for Slotkin to get what we might call her “minimalist wish”: promising young men and women fresh out of college may very well decide against a career in the Trump administration in 2026, 2027, and 2028.

But a broader and deeper persecution—Slotkin’s “maximalist wish”—is entirely possible if Gavin Newsom or, heaven forbid, Kamala Harris becomes president in 2029. In fact, it’s almost inevitable. Just a few days before Slotkin made her remarks, we got a reminder of just how broad and deep such persecution has already been. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published its new Debanking Review on October 14, after investigating 100,000 complaints and 50,000 internal bank records covering the years of the Biden presidency. The Review found that JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank, and BMO Bank all debanked customers on the basis of their political, social, and religious beliefs, using the opaque category of “reputation risk” to justify their behavior. “Negative press, protests, criticism from advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, and reprisals from regulators or politicians were cited as the reputation risks most feared by the banks,” the New York Post reports. Individuals and organizations were targeted. Organizations were flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and screening lists were created to identify customers that were deemed to pose a “reputation risk.” After the events of January 6, 2021, various MAGA-related terms were added to internal screening lists that were used to subject customers to enhanced scrutiny.

All nine of the banks under review told the OCC they had changed their practices, but the regulator expressed skepticism, noting that not a single bank has “fully and publicly acknowledged” its “weaponization of finance against hardworking Americans.”

With the support of a very different administration, with very different priorities, it will be the easiest thing in the world for those policies to be reversed.

And maybe too we should remind ourselves of what was done to Douglass Mackey, the man behind the popular “Ricky Vaughn” Twitter account that posted memes during the 2016 election. Mackey was prosecuted under a Reconstruction-era anti-Klan statute for voter suppression for posting a meme he didn’t even make. For the crime of mocking Hillary Clinton and helping Trump to win, Mackey’s enemies in the Democrat Party waited five years, and then within days of Biden’s inauguration, federal agents were kicking down the door.

Retribution was a long time coming, but come it did. That’s exactly what Elissa Slotkin is promising again. The unfinished work of ensuring there will never be another Donald Trump will be a total effort, touching every level of American society, from government to corporations, from MAGA-hat vendors to dudes who post memes on X. Bank on that.

Raw Egg Nationalist, American Greatness

Does anyone in the Democrat Party own a mirror?

Because Bill Clinton lecturing Americans about civility in this country is absolutely hilarious, given that he might want to spread the word to his fellow party members.

Starting with his wife. Hillary Clinton. She who dubbed anyone who would dare to vote for Donald Trump “a basket of deplorables.”

Former President Bill Clinton was campaigning for Democrats in Florida on Tuesday night when he issued a warning against politicians who try to win elections by demonizing their opponents.

Clinton criticized what he characterized as negative campaign tactics by Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds.

“If you think you can get elected on the cheap, you do it by demonizing whoever you’re running against — putting a label on them and trying to make them unacceptable,” Clinton told the audience.

A clip of Clinton’s remarks circulated Wednesday on X, where conservative commentator Western Lensman pointed out the irony of a member of the Clinton political dynasty warning against labeling political opponents.

“This is hilarious. Has Bill met his wife?” the account remarked.

Let’s take a brief walk through the grooveyard of forgotten favorites when it comes to the incivility of his wife Hillary Clinton.

At an LGBT fundraiser in New York, Clinton said:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. … Now, some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”

In the final 2016 presidential debate, after Trump said Putin had no respect for her or Obama, Clinton replied: “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president.”

In a 2019 CBS interview, she called Trump an “illegitimate president” and said he knew it because of “voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories.” She added that she knew “he knows that this wasn’t on the level.”

In a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour during the Kavanaugh confirmation fight, she said:

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.”

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.”

This is at the heart of our political disputes. If conservatives, by nature, want to preserve America as a freedom-loving, God-fearing, and Constitution-respecting nation, then what, pray tell, are they trying to “destroy”?

Round and round we go, and Bill Clinton’s remarks are neither intellectually honest, nor helpful. They are merely political cover for leftists like Democrat gubernatorial nominee David Jolly and his running mate, Gwen Graham, who are running for office in the State of Florida.

Meanwhile, we have former Democrat presidents stumping for partisan leftists, and former Republican presidents’ families cutting checks for left-wing Democrats. Maybe our political terrain is slightly rigged?

At the end of the day, I am going to have to agree with RedState colleague Ward Clark: Will Bill and Hillary Clinton please just go away?

What does it say about the Democrats’ perception of their own prospects, by the way, if they are dragging out these fossils? Oh, Bill may bring in a few middle-of-the-road types who remember his moderate (by today’s standards) presidency. Just to give the devil his due, Bill was, back in the day, a serious campaigner. He was glib, could speak contemporaneously at length on a variety of topics, he was charismatic and could be charming if he put his mind to it. He was also sleazy and corrupt, but those are things Democrats tend to overlook as long as one is ideologically pure.

Hillary, though, is everything Bill doesn’t appear to be. She is strident, shrill, nasty, abrasive, and she has a sense of entitlement that is so huge that one has to measure it in parsecs.

Thus, getting a lecture about political civility from a Clinton is kind of like getting a culinary lesson from Jeffrey Dahmer. Or flight instructions from Osama bin Laden. Or hair styling tips from Gavin Newsom.

The message may be good. But the messenger? Not so much.

Kyle Becker, Red State

Even before Trump entered office, although well after the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton and the FBI had already begun working on destroying Trump. Chuck Schumer gleefully told Rachel Maddow that the intelligence community was going to go after Trump and that they knew how to do it.

A few weeks after the election, both Maddow and Schumer were discussing the fact that Trump had angered the IC, and Schumer dropped his bombshell: [“Six Ways from Sunday” video at article source]

Well, those folks have spent a decade trying to take Trump down, concocting hoaxes (Steele Dossier and countless other bulls**t charges), pushing phony investigations, and turning a huge fraction of the FBI field agents into a cadre of Inspector Javerts digging into everything from Trump’s finances, his sex life, and his wife’s literal underwear drawer.

DataRepublican has been doing a very deep dive into the current Deep State project to take Donald Trump out after the Midterm elections, dropping chunks of her investigation, including receipts from an insider who leaked video, audio, and documents from a wide-ranging, shall we call it a “plot,” to amp up resistance to Trump and to create a Constitutional crisis that would, they hope, reshape the entire political landscape.

Including the Constitution.

The core groups involved are military alumni, various intelligence agencies, and, of course, the USAID folks. You may recall that as Trump closed down USAID, a bureaucrat walking out the door darkly insinuated that it was the biggest mistake Trump ever made.

“Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We’ve become one… They were so quick to disband AID, the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions. But they’ve done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime.

Basically: “We know how to take regimes down, and Trump is next.”

All these alums from the IC and related agencies are now part of a massive NGO complex designing plans and wargaming ways to take Trump down, not in any namby-pamby way like using the courts or prosecutions, though they are intended to be part of the plan.

They want a full-blown confrontation between Blue States and the Trump administration, up to and including what could be low-level armed conflicts, more along the lines of an escalation from what we saw in Minnesota last winter.

You may recall Governor Walz’s language kept returning to the word “war.” “War with the federal government.” The references to the Minnesotans at Gettysburg during the Civil War. The fact that Democrats from the governor’s office on down to city and county officials helped coordinate the physical resistance to ICE officers, leading to two deaths and the injury of multiple federal officers.

Think along those lines, but amped up to 11, with all the troops mobilized on the left, and all the Democrats in governors’ offices and in Congress making a full-court press to take Trump out using any means necessary.

As many of you know, in recent days Data Republican has been releasing transcripts, videos and audio recordings of a group of groups plotting to use violence to force President Trump to take protective actions (i.e., the Insurrection Act) that will result in the overthrow of our Constitution in favor of the will of Democrat governors.

These groups include former USAID employees and other ex-national security officials, and the plans they discuss are straight out of the color revolution tactics, techniques and procedures those same people have been using for decades to overthrow foreign governments unfriendly to the USA.

This is the biggest news story in decades, right?

Yet no one in the mainstream media will touch it.

Except to defend it.

See the below headline from today’s Washington Post (I’ll link to the full article below).

The plotters behind this effort are obviously alarmed by the recent public uncovering of their conspiracy, so they have done what any reputable Democrat determined to overthrow the electoral choices of the American people would do: run to a friendly press outlet to drop a soft-pedaled puff piece to run top cover for their efforts, and blame Trump.

If you read this article, it does not talk about a coup conspiracy. Instead it talks about a bunch of well-meaning, patriotic, anonymous ex-national security officials simply trying to protect America from the evil dictator Trump destroying “our democracy.”

This article itself is straight out of the color revolution tactics—it’s propaganda designed to condition a populace to accept illegitimate actions.

DataRepublican has thousands of pages of documents, audio, and video, and started dropping the information yesterday.

So today, The Washington Post is already doing the counter-narrative, portraying what is happening as a bunch of happy-go-lucky folks who only want to save Democracy from the fascists.

Horizons Project is Erica Chenoweth’s brainchild, and brings foreign regime change techniques into the United States umbrella. Its goal is to “reimagine” the United States system of governance. Rear Admiral Mike Smith (RET), shown here, in addition to being NSL4A founder and leading the United Democracy Alliance under the Horizons Project “Big Tent” initiative… also leads Horizons Project’s Insurrection Act Working Group.

I can’t go through all the data in one post, and DataRepublican is still putting what she has out in digestible chunks, but the bottom line is very clear: those USAID folks, along with the IC officials who have “six ways from Sunday” to get you are now organized, plotting, working with politicians and even the Democratic Socialists of America to create a crisis and the next best thing to a coup.

It’s not idle. This is what they do. And this is exactly what that USAID official said on his way out the door: we do color revolutions, and you just kicked us out the door. You will pay.

Yes, I know it sounds conspiratorial, and indeed it is a conspiracy, but like so many conspiracies it is not particularly hidden. The “eat the bugs” and “you will own nothing and be happy” were proudly displayed on the WEF website and had NPR stories all about it, and now, in their own defense, these plotters are explaining themselves to a very sympathetic Washington Post in order to get their side of the story out.

It’s all real. The only question left is, “Is a color revolution in America justified?” They say “yes.” That’s it. There’s really little dispute about WHAT they want to do, just whose side you are on.

Cynical Publius, a former full Colonel in the Army himself, made the case yesterday for why skeptics should take this all very seriously: [X post at source atricle]

Being Blinded by Loyalty to an Institution One of the hardest things for a human to do is to recognize that an institution they have devoted their life to is corrupt.

Loyalty to an institution often blinds us to the defects of that same institution. Because we define ourselves as being well-intentioned, moral and enthusiastic members of an institution, we have a hard time seeing defects in that same institution because to do so is to acknowledge that we are in some way personally enabling those defects.

This is human nature.

I am commenting on this because I have been troubled by some reactions to @DataRepublican’s recent and ongoing revelations regarding plans by ex-USAID employees to overthrow the Constitution. Many establishment types—people who have invested their lives in the U.S. military or other parts of our federal government—are mocking her findings as the insane ramblings of a conspiracy theorist, and they are similarly mocking those of us who are trying to make sure her findings reach a larger audience.

I kind of get that too—in my time in government there were, in fact, numerous outlandish conspiracy theories widely circulated in the civilian populace that I knew based on personal, insider knowledge were wildly baseless claims. One example was Hurricane Katrina. I was in the National Military Command Center coordinating support for that disaster, and the conspiracies about the CIA blowing up the levees or George Bush withholding support because he “doesn’t care about black people” were wildly inaccurate and wholly contrived. If you are an insider and you hear enough genuinely whacko conspiracy theories, you tend to start dismissing EVERYTHING you hear that smears your institution as being false.

“The institution I have devoted my life to would NEVER do that.”

That’s the thought process.

The fix is to be able to compartmentalize your personal contributions away from the defects of the institution that you had no part in. For example, I am proud of my service in Afghanistan and Iraq, without reservation, because I know the good things my service accomplished. At the same time, I acknowledge that the Department of Defense made many incredible, amoral mistakes in those wars. I am able to acknowledge those mistakes without condemning myself. It is a skill one must develop.

Which brings me back to @DataRepublican’s findings. If you are one of those institution defenders dismissing what she is showing, you need to look again at the evidence she is presenting. She is backing up everything she reports with video and written evidence—it’s all there. Don’t dismiss her out of hand. Listen to and read the unfiltered evidence she presents from primary sources. Let go of your allegiance to the institutions of our federal government long enough to realize that for decades USAID has been a rogue agency inside our government, and now that President Trump and Secretary Rubio have pushed them out the door, they are conspiring to overthrow our system of government using the very tools they developed during their time with USAID.

It’s all there. Go look for yourself. And realize you can safely condemn the institution without condemning yourself.

Just because many conspiracy theories are wrong does not mean that there are no conspiracies at all, and this one requires no secrecy. The NGOs are out there. The people have meetings, communicate with government officials, have tremendous funding from radical leftists, and have made dark threats for years.

Sure, they say they are plotting to do good. But they are most certainly plotting. And DataRepublican has many of their internal documents.

I suggest you follow CynicalPublius’ advice and go check the evidence yourself. There are multiple threads at DataRepublican.

David Strom, Hotair

Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is doubling down on a controversial ad featuring his Democratic opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother, but it seems to be catastrophically backfiring on him as his odds of winning the election have cratered.

In the ad, Donna Arthur, the candidate’s estranged mother who lost custody of her and her younger brother when Acton was 12, lambasts her daughter as a “liar” and urges viewers not to vote for her. Acton has publicly spoken about her troubled childhood for years, well before she ran for office, including the reason her mother lost custody: documented neglect and abuse, including Acton’s stepfather sexually abusing her from the ages of 9 to 12. Arthur sided with her husband against her daughter and the two have not spoken since she lost custody.

The ad drew swift and vociferous condemnation from a chorus of bipartisan voices, with many prominent conservatives declaring the ad made them more sympathetic towards Acton. Her campaign shared a statement and then a video message from her brother denouncing Ramaswamy for “platforming their estranged and abusive mother,” and National Review and other media outlets dug up the legal documents confirming Acton’s story, all of which increased the criticism of Ramaswamy.

It was not initially clear who paid for the ad, as it was circulating online without a disclaimer (apparently provided directly to conservative influencers, many of whom declared it a “bombshell” and devastating “October surprise”). The Ramaswamy campaign issued a statement that neither denied nor condemned the ad, instead attacking Acton as a “serial fabulist,” but the campaign and even the candidate himself did admit it was their ad a few hours later.

Ramaswamy campaign manager Jonathan Ewing told Axios the campaign was dropping $4 million to televise the ad across Ohio and declared “this is a campaign-ending moment for Amy Acton.”

Ewing may be right about it being a “campaign-ending moment,” but for his own candidate, not Acton.

Ramaswamy was already slipping behind Acton in the polling, with CNN data guru Harry Enten marveling at Ramaswamy’s “worst this century” polling among Ohio independents the day before the ad was shared.

The latest numbers from prediction market Polymarket show Ramaswamy got a minor, one-point bump on Tuesday morning, around the time the ad first started spreading online, but then his numbers cratered amid the bipartisan backlash as the day went on and reporting confirmed Acton’s story.

Polymarket’s political gamblers currently give Ramaswamy only a 22% chance of winning, nudging up from his low of 21% on Wednesday afternoon. The graph shows Ramaswamy was already on a downward trajectory and then his numbers plummeted as outrage about the ad grew throughout the day. Acton currently has a 79% chance of winning, according to Polymarket.

Mediaite

“An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection—to the conceptual identification of your inner states—you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception. The men who scorn or dread introspection take their inner states for granted, as an irreducible and irresistible primary, and let their emotions determine their actions. This means that they choose to act without knowing the context (reality), the causes (motives), and the consequences (goals) of their actions.”

— Ayn Rand

American liberals have long fantasized about how different life would be in ‘enlightened and tolerant’ Europe instead of having to deal with people they regard as knuckle draggers here at home. Well, a few got their chance and what they say should serve as a dire warning.

Wired magazine spoke to several Americans who fled Trump’s America for the European continent about their experiences.

Let’s just say the fantasy they were sold turned out to be a lie.

A progressive woman going by “Annie” had noticed Americans on TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit bragging about how exciting life was in the United Kingdom’s suburbs. “Annie” was particularly enchanted by the promise of ‘free’ healthcare, ‘excellent’ transportation, and the country’s ‘rich’ culture.

But “Annie” soon received a rude awakening about the liberal ‘paradise’ she thought she was entering.

She was taken aback by Britain’s garbage NHS, lower salaries, and basic items that the country lacks, such as dryers and dishwashers.

Now, she and her husband want to run back home.

From Wired:

But the reality of life in the UK was dramatically different to what she’d imagined. “There are huge misconceptions about access to quality health care, standard of living … the quality of life is significantly lower than in the US,” she says, citing the challenges she experienced with the National Health Service’s maternity care—having moved while pregnant with her first child—as well as the lack of disposable income in Britain, thanks to lower salaries.

“Things in the UK that are considered luxury items are very common” in America, like a dishwasher and dryer, she adds.

Annie says she experienced a high amount of anti-American sentiment straight away. “I found it particularly surprising how people feel so comfortable mocking my accent and culture, even in a workplace environment,” she says. “The UK is very much a place of ‘it is what it is,’ but as Americans we are taught to always improve and strive for better things.”

Annie and her husband now have an exit plan for summer next year, the earliest their employers would allow them to relocate back home.

Kate Glavan, a leftist influencer from New York, had her own unpleasant experience with the U.K.

She fled to London in late 2024 after Trump’s election and quickly found out how difficult it was to perform her job.

Brands were more reluctant to work with her because she was mostly speaking to a much smaller British audience. In the end, she ended up returning to New York earlier this year.

An American named “Josh” who fled to Germany in 2023 fearing that Trump would win the following year also had a less-than-pleasant experience.

Despite speaking German, he had trouble finding work and struggled navigating the bureaucracy.

Moreover, he found the people in Germany far less friendly than those in America and never felt accepted.

Trending: “I Don’t Give a F*ck Who You Are!” El-Sayed Staffer Tries to Assault James O’Keefe and Has to be Restrained in Wild Confrontation (VIDEO)

This was a similar reality for Josh, another American immigrant who asked to remain completely anonymous, citing concerns about backlash. He moved to Berlin in 2023, in part anticipating what might happen at the 2024 election, and also because he felt his life had hit standstill post-Covid. He had even lived in Germany before, spoke German, and had friends in Berlin.

But his expectations, particularly when it came to his career, didn’t align with reality.

“Finding work was so hard, and the endless bureaucracy had grown worse since I’d left,” he tells WIRED. “I missed the friendlier people, freedom of speech, and ease of daily life” in the US. He adds, “If you aren’t born and raised there, and don’t look German, you’ll never be fully accepted.

Then there’s “Nick,” an art director from New York who relocated with his wife to her home country of Poland in part because of his disgust with “right-wing populism” in America. Upon arriving, he immediately experienced culture shock as well.

What is happening in the US is also happening everywhere now, to the point I’m even a little hesitant in what I say to you, or anywhere online,” says Nick, an art director from New York who relocated to Poland in part because of right-wing populism in the US. He moved with his Polish wife to Krakow, where they have a young child, but despite these personal ties has found it difficult to adjust to the culture and bureaucracy.

Now Nick feels trapped in Europe where he says the politics aren’t much better—conceding that Poland both politically and culturally has strong right-wing popularity.

These liberals may have learned the hard way that the grass is not always greener on the other side, but still do not appear to have changed their political views.

Sometimes, there is no fixing stupid.

Cullen Linebarger, Gateway Pundit

The Republican-backed Ratepayer Protection Act, legislation aimed at constraining the higher electric bills that hit some consumers after data centers arrive, passed the House but failed in the Senate before that chamber recessed.

Democrats have touted a different data center bill, the GRID Savings Act, that would make the companies building out data centers pay for grid and transmission upgrades associated with the boom. GRID stands for Guarding Ratepayers from Increased Demand-costs.

Adam Swart of Crowds on Demand, a paid protester firm, weighed in on grassroots opposition to the buildout to data centers, describing it as “one of the strangest emerging bipartisan issues.”

“Tucker Carlson-style Republicans and progressive Democrats increasingly oppose them, while the establishments of both parties largely support them. I suspect Congress eventually passes ‘reform’ that sounds restrictive but actually makes it easier for the industry to build,” he told The Epoch Times.

AI could also spur action.

Amid the tech competition with China and AI-driven economic growth, Trump has cautioned against excessive regulation of the technology, which he has dubbed “super intelligence.” Yet some lawmakers, including many Democrats, want more guardrails on those systems as some industry leaders publicly worry about AI safety.

Cunningham said that while he is not in line with the leftmost wing of the Democrats, AI regulation would be “more populist than socialist,” and important for his party to address to win back support for 2028.

On Oct. 7, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), who has worked with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) on legislation to regulate AI, published a draft version of a bill that would impose a stricter liability standard on AI developers.

Other Priorities Carmack, the political scientist at the Stevens Institute of Technology, told The Epoch Times she expects Democrats to apply pressure on AI and another contentious matter—immigration—through both legislation and spending negotiations.

Spencer too expects immigration to fuel spending battles between Republicans and Democrats.

Reconciliation bills passed by the GOP-controlled Congress have locked in years of funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

If Democrats perform well enough in the midterms, they could also step up their challenges to tariffs, food stamp cuts, the scope of military spending, and the Iran War, among other Trump policies.

The expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, premium subsidies, which triggered the longest government shutdown in history in late 2025, may come back into focus too.

Jeffries and Schumer have both vowed to tackle ACA restrictions championed by Republicans.

Legislation unveiled on Oct. 1 by the New York Democratic delegation, which includes both legislators, would roll back limits to the scope of those who can use ACA premium tax credits, a result of last year’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.

“The ACA subsidies are a hugely popular issue, and Democrats would almost certainly make restoring them a priority,” said Spencer.

Limits and Division

Insiders and experts see a narrow and highly political path to some action as the threat of a Trump veto looms over possible Democratic attempts to legislate on their affordability promises.

Spencer said Democrats could “advance popular legislation that would require Trump to either sign it or veto it.”

Cunningham said Democrats could force hard choices through bills targeting the costs of everyday goods. He hopes the party will pursue legislation on prescription drug prices and anti-competitive practices by large corporations.

If Democrats rule Capitol Hill, they will still have to manage conflicts in their own camp.

At the Democratic National Committee’s August meeting, dueling resolutions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement—one calling for reform, the other for abolition—underscored ideological divides within the party.

Republican control of Congress during the first half of Trump’s second term was marked by conflict, both between different wings of the party and between the House and Senate.

Whether Democrats curb their infighting or not, the future looks explosive.

“This will be an adversarial two years in the run-up to the 2028 presidential elections,” Cormack predicted.

Democratic dominance on Capitol Hill—and just how adroitly they tangle with Trump—would also give voters a yardstick ahead of 2028.

“If Democrats want to build a lasting majority—if they want to build some momentum going into 2028—they’ve got to start making deliveries for people, for Americans who are getting crushed under this economy,” said Cunningham.

The Epoch Times

Trick-or-treating might cater to the gatherers of the world, but the full moon that falls just before Halloween is for the hunters. The Hunter’s Moon will join millions of jack-o’-lanterns across America to light up the night sky on October 26, 2026, peaking just after midnight.

The moniker “Hunter’s Moon” refers to the full moon that follows the Harvest Moon, which is the one that falls closest to the fall equinox. This mid-autumn moon goes by many names in different cultures, but its symbolic associations with introspection, preparation, completion, and clarity are universal.

How the Hunter’s Moon Got Its Name

The Hunter’s Moon is to the Harvest Moon as meat is to potatoes. Equally important for seasonal nourishment, the Harvest Moon represents the traditional time for farmers’ final crops, while the following full moon centers on acquiring meat ahead of the winter months.

Moonlit fields that are cleared of crops and filled with plumped-up, pre-hibernation animals make for favorable hunting conditions. They were in fact so ideal that hunters regularly turned to the light of October’s full moon to help them stock up on a whole winter’s worth of meat for the family. While we can now turn to Costco for our seasonal hoarding needs, the deeply-rooted survival practice linked to the Hunter’s Moon has made the name stick.

Like most other full moons, the Hunter’s Moon goes by different monikers depending on who you talk to. In various Native American cultures, names for this moon reflect everything from harvest traditions to changing weather. The Dakota dub it the Drying Rice Moon in honor of rice preparations that take place prior to winter, while the Anishinaabe call it the Falling Leaves Moon for the crunchy, windswept leaves that color the air in autumn. The Ojibwe and Haida, meanwhile, know this full moon as the Freezing Moon or Ice Moon, and the Cree call it the Migrating Moon, a reference to southward-bound migratory birds. Other names for this moon are the Travel Moon, Dying Grass Moon, Blood Moon, and Sanguine Moon.

The Spiritual Symbolism Behind the Hunter’s Moon

While the history of the Hunter’s Moon is all about stocking the pantry, the symbolic side is more about taking stock of your mindset. The month of October spans a full lunar cycle that marks the transition from harvest to preservation, culminating in the Hunter’s Moon.

Across different traditions, this time of year has long been marked by a shift in the air: in Celtic culture, this window brushes right up against Samhain, a time when the veil to the spiritual world is lowered, and communication with ancestors and spirits is enhanced. Similarly, across parts of India, this same lunar phase coincides with Sharad Purnima, a moonlit celebration of the closing of the monsoon season. A common ritual is to soak kheer, a type of rice pudding, under the light of the full moon and then eat it at dawn. It’s the first full month of fall after the autumn equinox, providing a prime opportunity for internal reflection on the connections and feelings accumulated throughout the year.

With winter comes a focus on preparing for the season ahead—not just in terms of getting and storing what we need, but also protecting the parts of your life that serve you and pruning those that don’t.

Think of it as a last sliver of light leading you to an entrance you can slip through before the door closes. In other words, it’s a nudge to stop putting things off. Whether that means finally having that tough conversation, walking away from a situation that has run its course, or simply dealing with the emotions you’ve been avoiding, it’s a true act of self-preservation—a chance to clear the air now instead of letting those unresolved things weigh you down all winter.

How to Celebrate the Hunter’s Moon

The moon has many different faces, and with that, many ways to honor them. Because this phase is all about balancing decisiveness with deliberation, you can lean into whatever feels most grounding for you right now.

Like a hunter, it’s important to observe your surroundings before deciding where to aim your energy. In a day-to-day sense, that can mean writing down your abundances—and what might be dragging you down—to narrow in on what deserves your focus ahead of a lower-energy season. Full moons are naturally tied to release, making this an ideal time to drop what no longer serves you. Whether that means letting go of bad habits built up throughout the year or intense emotions that will only weigh you down in the season ahead, this is your chance to clear the slate.

And amidst all that release and restock, like with any full moon, the Hunter’s Moon is also a chance to practice gratitude. Under the bright light of the full moon, thank the universe for the abundance of the past harvest and anything that’s serving you, and simply enjoy the beauty of the moon framed by the fall foliage.

Nitya Rao, Mental Floss

Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering a bill called the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. That isn’t a very descriptive name, but the author of a fine Substack called Energy Talking Points has a better one — he calls it “Freedom-to-Build legislation,” and says that it’s the biggest attempt at permitting reform that the United States has made in 46 years.

One weird thing about this law is that it’s supported by pro-business and libertarian think tanks, like the Cato Institute, and also by a lot of left-wing NGOs like the Citizens’ Climate Lobby. How could such an odd alliance come together? Well, the short answer is that it involved some hardball politicking by an administration that takes its job a lot more seriously than any previous Republican administration of my lifetime.

But first, an explanation is in order of why permitting reform is so necessary, and why overhauling the system could reduce the cost of living and create hundreds of thousands of new American jobs.

At present, if you want to build a large infrastructure project in the U.S., such as a railway, power line, pipeline, wind farm, road, mine, or refinery, then you have to get a lot of permits, from federal agencies like the EPA, as well as from the state and the city that you’re in. But that on its own isn’t newsworthy — every country has building codes, pollution limits, and some form of environmental protection law.

But America is different from countries like Japan, Canada, and Australia (which have been outcompeting us in physical industry for a long time) because, in the United States (due to laws like NEPA that were signed by the traitorous Nixon Administration in the 1970s):

The environmental laws are vague. If you’re a builder, you must produce “environmental impact statements” (EISs) that spend hundreds or thousands of pages listing ways that your project might affect the environment, without any clear guidance on what impacts are and aren’t acceptable.

Building permits are easy to revoke if there’s a change in the administration. And it’s hard to persuade people to spend money on things like the Keystone XL Pipeline if you might have to stop work the moment that a different party is in the White House.

Some of these laws are enforced by private activists, not the government. Once you file your EIS, anyone can sue you on the grounds that it isn’t thorough enough… and the window to file a lawsuit stays open for six years.

There is no presumption of innocence. If the court sides with the activists, then you have to stop work on the project until you can write a newer, longer EIS, which (due to the vagueness of the laws, and the burden of proof being on the accused) usually takes years and years of litigation before it’s finished.

For an example of how long these EISs can be, just consider that, back in 2008, San Francisco spent two-and-a-half years writing a 1,353 page report to try to convince a judge to let it add new bike lanes to the city streets. Bike lanes! A project that liberals, in theory, are supposed to like! (Now imagine how much worse the problem is if you’re trying to build an oil pipeline or a uranium mine.)

These are the problems that the BAAJA is trying to mitigate. If passed, it would shorten the lawsuit window from six years to 150 days, restore the presumption of innocence so that work can continue while the suit is being decided, and allow developers to sue government agencies for damages when they revoke existing permits without an urgent reason. There are a lot of other details, too — I can’t summarize everything in the 417-page bill, but suffice it to say that it does a lot of things that are necessary and long overdue.

But with the permitting process that we have right now, it’s no wonder that American industry is a risky, low-yield investment. And it’s no wonder that more and more of our energy and tangible goods have to be imported from abroad each year. As a reminder of how bad things are, just look at this S&P500 survey of development time on mines in different countries. The United States came in second-to-last, ahead of only Zambia.

One major takeaway from the permitting situation is that most leftists love big government way more than they love the environment. Just think about how California approved its high-speed rail system in a 2008 ballot measure, has spent about $14 billion on it over the next 18 years, and still has no operational track. This is because California state permitting laws are even worse than federal laws. (It’s worth remembering that, back in the 1930s, before any of these laws were enacted, Americans were able to build the Empire State Building in barely a year, with much more primitive technology.)

So how did Donald Trump’s Republicans manage to get a bunch of green energy activists to see the light and support permitting reform? It was simple, really — the GOP just had to apply the law impartially.

When Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, he froze development on a lot of wind and solar farms.

There wasn’t any good free-market reason for him to do that. These projects were not boondoggles like Solyndra, the solar firm that the Obama Administration scandalously subsidized back in 2009. It turns out that, over the last decade or so, a lot of gradual technological improvements have made wind and solar the cheapest way to generate power on windy and/or sunny days, especially in places like Texas, which is now producing more solar energy than California.

Yes, you read that right. The moment that technological progress made solar panels profitable, the pro-business state that doesn’t care about climate change started installing way more of them than the state that yelps loudly about the environment… but that really just loves big government for its own sake.

What was the effect of Donald Trump’s decision to pull all of these wind and solar permits? It forced the Democrats to the negotiating table. Suddenly, a lot of left-wing engineers realized that the only way they would actually be able to install more green energy is if they lobbied for a permitting reform bill that would make all construction easier.

To be fair, there were a minority of Democrats who were agitating for permitting reform during the Biden years. These were people like Noah Smith, the centrist economics blogger who spends half his time accusing Donald Trump and his allies of being corrupt and bigoted, and the other half trying (and usually failing) to get his fellow Democrats to admit to obvious but inconvenient truths: like that being soft on crime mainly harms poor people, or that refusing to teach algebra in public schools doesn’t fight racism.

As long as Joe Biden was in the White House, the Noah Smith wing of the party could be ignored by the other Democrats, who were usually content to spend lots and lots of money on infrastructure subsidies, and not pay much attention to whether any infrastructure was actually built with that money. (Remember that whether or not anything gets built, a lot of money still moves into the pockets of activists and consulting firms, which is kind of the point).

But once the Republicans were in the driver’s seat, they could put hard pressure on the Democrats, by holding solar and wind projects to the same standards as any other infrastructure. That made it possible to hammer out a deal with just enough support from green energy activists that it might get passed. And if the Cato Institute and Vox both agree that the new legislation will bring down Americans’ electricity prices… well, they’re probably right.

And if this bill makes it all the way through Congress and to the president’s desk, then there’s a good chance that it will be remembered as the greatest accomplishment of Donald Trump’s second term.

After all, without reforms like this one, trying to bring back American jobs via tariffs and tougher immigration laws is a sorry half-measure. (It doesn’t really matter if you exclude foreign competition when Americans themselves have little or no economic freedom.) But if the new bill gets signed into law, then it will remain in place, and keep making American industry more competitive, even if most of Trump’s other policies are reversed by future executive orders.

That is why I’m calling my senators and representative and telling them that I support the BAAJA. And that’s why you should, too. After all, Donald Trump ran on a promise to end job-killing regulation, and now is the moment when we’re within sight of the fulfilment of that promise.

Twilight Patriot is the pen name of a young American who lives in South Carolina, where he is currently working on a graduate degree. You can read more of his writings at his substack.

American Thinker

Halloween is more than just a great opportunity to score Snickers bars from your kids’ baskets. It’s also the chance to deck out your lawn in a way that strikes terror into the hearts of any liberal who walks by!

Here are 10 decorations you can put up to scare the living daylights out of your liberal neighbors:

1. Clarence Thomas inflatable: Simply plug him in and enjoy the shrieks of horror.

2. Biology textbook: Opened to the chapter that covers human genders… terrifying.

3. Graph showing minimal impact of climate change: Noooo!

4. Giant U.S. Constitution: With a spotlight on the Bill of Rights.

5. An in-person voting booth: Run for your lives, liberals!

6. Crazed serial killer with a chainsaw: Not because they’re liberal, he’s just really scary.

7. A Don-0′-lantern: Nobody thought he could look even more orange.

8. A skeleton wearing a Sophie Cunningham jersey: Is it pointing straight at you?

9. The Ten Commandments: The terror of liberal terrors.

10. A Bible: No… no… ANYTHING BUT THAT.

Babylon Bee