Two foreign nationals have been detained for the burning of Star Link antennas at a secret facility near Sofia, Bulgaria in what authorities are investigating as a terrorist attack, Faktor.bg reported, citing Prosecutor’s Office sources.

The two men were arrested on Monday on suspicion of intentionally setting fire to antennas supporting Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications system. They hold German passports but are not ethnic Germans, and entered Bulgaria legally through the Kulata border checkpoint.Find Embassies

The incident occurred overnight between October 9 and 10, when masked individuals set fire to 11 antennas, destroying them completely. Security cameras recorded the suspects. Only seven of the facility’s 18 high-frequency antennas remained intact after the blaze.

The site is located near the village of Plana, outside Sofia, and supports the SpaceX communications system. The Interior Ministry and security services initially did not disclose the incident. The attack was made public by Ivaylo Mirchev, leader of the “Yes, Bulgaria” party.

The arrests in Bulgaria come as Germany detained two Turkish citizens suspected of setting fire to a Starlink ground station in Poland. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the arrests, saying the suspects would be brought before Polish justice

Novanite

Is the backlash growing teeth?

J.R. Dunn | October 24, 2026

We got a perfect example of the biter-gets-bit scenario late this week featuring the larger-than-life crusader against fascism Elissa Slotkin. We’re told that Slotkin served as an analyst for the CIA, which means that this case is a twofer, informing us what’s wrong with the Senate today and what’s been wrong with the CIA for the past twenty years.

Slotkin, as readers will know, made the news earlier this week with the release of a clip showing her at some sort of University of Chicago conclave threatening legal persecution for young people who took jobs in the Trump administration: “I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity… I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want.’ I want that deterrence message sent.”

A few days later, in the face of a massive backlash, she doubled down on the threat and attempted to flip it into an accusation of Trump. “Fear is the point. Intimidation is the point. And if the president can do this to me, he can do it to anyone.”

It happens that U of Chicago undergrad Michael Bicksel was present for Slotkin’s remarks. He took them as a personal threat. “I don’t think there’s any other way to take it.” In response, he filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics.

“Senator Slotkin proposed a course of legislative action to weaponize the legal system in order to terrorize college students into forgoing public service,” Bicksel told the committee.

He noted that the discussion went on to suggestions that “Young people who want to serve the Trump administration be made pariahs, socially, politically, and even legally.”

Bicksel stated that he wanted a full ethics investigation into Slotkin, the kind that would certainly follow any such remarks by a GOP politician. “I could see Chuck Schumer racing down to the Senate floor to demand a censure, expulsion, or at the very least an ethics investigation. That’s what I’m asking for right now.”

Michael Bicksel is associated with the nobly named Chicago Thinker, a U of Chicago conservative student paper founded to hold campus leftists to their own standards. He is extremely personable and well-spoken, and should do well in politics if that’s the route he chooses.

While little may come of his complaint, it should serve as a warning to Slotkin – among many others – that, senator or no, she can’t simply mouth off and walk. Not in the political environment of 2026. When you kick open a door, you have to accept whatever comes through. The next door she kicks may not have an ethics panel behind it, but something more like the DoJ or Homeland Security.

J. R. Dunn, American Thinker

Strikes and blockades by truckers in Southern Italy this week have left many supermarket shelves bare. Those strikes and blockades in the south were matched by protests, which turned to riots in the north. Both movements were protesting the same issue: affordability. In the north, students marched against low wages, high taxes, and quickly rising grocery and fuel costs. In the south, farmers and truckers have blockaded ports and highways in protest of those same high fuel costs.

The high costs are associated with fuel shortages stemming from the war in Iran, and, on Thursday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government announced the equivalent of $200 million to cover gas prices. Meloni’s government has already spent the equivalent of $3 billion to lower or offset gas prices this year.

But Italy’s protest movement is only part of the global story. Protests in France have resulted in major government intervention. Albanian students are protesting governmental corruption and the high cost of living. Bolivia has seen longstanding protests against rising fuel costs as well. Around the world, protest movements are heating up largely due to governmental corruption in conjunction to rising fuel and food costs associated with the war in Iran.

Sam Stone, Bon Appitit

US President Donald Trump renewed calls for a change in Ukraine’s leadership on Monday as his war of words with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued to intensify. “I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,” Trump stated in Washington DC following criticism from Zelenskyy over the US leader’s decision to ease sanctions pressure on Russia.

These latest comments followed on from Trump’s recent accusation that Zelenskyy “doesn’t want to end this war,” and his suggestion that Ukraine should get a new president “who can make a deal.” Many of Trump’s most prominent supporters have backed his hardening stance toward the Ukrainian leader. “And so the slaughter continues. Time for Zelenskyy to go,” Elon Musk wrote on October 15.

The US President’s attacks on Zelenskyy closely mirror Russia’s own position. Speaking last week in Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia was “in complete agreement” with Trump regarding the Ukrainian head of state. Days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that Zelenskyy “obviously has no desire even to move towards reaching an agreement.”

This is nothing new. Since the early stages of the invasion, Moscow has consistently sought to position Zelenskyy as an obstacle to peace, with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin repeatedly questioning the legitimacy of the Ukrainian president and pointing to the absence of democratic elections in wartime Ukraine. “You can negotiate with anyone, but because of his illegitimacy, Zelenskyy has no right to sign anything,” Putin stated last year. Stay updated As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

It is not difficult to debunk portrayals of Zelenskyy as the main obstacle to peace. In reality, the Ukrainian leader has agreed to every single ceasefire proposal put forward by the American side, while Moscow has rejected them all. Crucially, he has offered major territorial concessions that would allow Russia to retain control over almost a quarter of Ukraine. Zelenskyy has also repeatedly declared his readiness to meet face-to-face with Putin anywhere in the world to negotiate an end to the war, only for the Russian ruler to firmly decline. It should be clear to any objective observer that Ukraine’s wartime leader is actively seeking pathways to peace.

Trump and Putin’s over-emphasis on Zelenskyy’s personal role in the Ukrainian war effort reveals a fundamental failure to grasp what Ukrainians are actually fighting for. Many in the White House and the Kremlin appear to believe that the removal of Zelenskyy would somehow pave the way for a Russia-friendly peace. This is delusional. Ukrainians are not fighting for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They are fighting for national survival.

Recent polling indicates strong Ukrainian public support for Zelenskyy, suggesting that he would be very likely to win a wartime election. But even if Zelenskyy was ousted, it is virtually impossible to imagine any replacement emerging with a mandate to make peace on Russian terms. While most Ukrainians favor a negotiated settlement of some kind, surveys indicate strong opposition to any peace deal that fails to provide Ukraine with long-term security or potentially sets the stage for further Russian aggression.

This uncompromising stance reflects widespread Ukrainian perceptions of the current war as an existential struggle that will determine whether Ukraine continues to exist as a state and as a nation. Most Ukrainians are in no doubt that Putin ultimately intends to destroy their country, and regard Western talk of limited Russian territorial ambitions as hopelessly naive. They have grown accustomed to the genocidal anti-Ukrainian messaging that dominates wartime Russia’s public discourse, and take it for granted that the Kremlin’s end goal is a Ukraine without Ukrainians. Eurasia Center events

Online Event Wed, October 21, 2026 • 9:00 am ET How is Europe responding to hybrid warfare? Europe Europe & Eurasia Politics & Diplomacy Security & Defense

Ukrainians have reached this chilling conclusion based on years of bitter experience. Long before Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine with the 2014 seizure of Crimea, he was already notorious for insisting that Ukrainians were in fact Russians (“one people”). Since the outbreak of hostilities, Putin’s rhetoric has grown ever more extreme. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, he published a 5,000 word history essay that read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood. He routinely describes the occupied regions of Ukraine as “historically Russian lands,” and boasted last year that “all of Ukraine is ours.”

Putin’s obsession with the destruction of Ukraine has set the tone for the entire invasion. Wherever Russian troops have established control, the occupation authorities have sought to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, history, culture, and identity. For the past two years, international human rights watchdog Freedom House has ranked Russian-occupied Ukraine as “the least free place on earth.”

Throughout the occupied regions, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been detained and imprisoned in a campaign of mass arrests that UN officials have classified as a crime against humanity. Those who remain face ruthless russification in every sphere of daily life and are forced to accept Russian citizenship. Meanwhile, a whole generation of Ukrainian schoolchildren living under occupation are being stripped of their nationality and indoctrinated to celebrate the invasion of their own country.

Ukrainians know what is happening in the occupied territories and are under no illusions about the fate that awaits them if Russia is not stopped. Twenty percent of Ukraine is already being subjected to a form of brutal national identity erasure that may qualify as genocide. If Putin is able to extinguish Ukrainian independence and install a puppet regime in Kyiv, there is every reason to assume that the Kremlin’s actions in the remaining 80 percent of the country will be just as severe.

This understanding of Russia’s genocidal intentions is one of the key factors driving Ukraine’s much-hyped resilience. Ukrainians are not superheroes with special powers of endurance. They are ordinary people who recognize that they are facing an extraordinary threat.

After almost five years of staggering sacrifice and unimaginable trauma, most Ukrainians are utterly exhausted. And yet somehow they fight on. Putin’s well-documented determination to wipe Ukraine off the map leaves them with no real choice but to keep resisting until the Russian dictator is finally forced to acknowledge the impossibility of conquering their country.

Trump and Putin are deeply mistaken if they think replacing Zelenskyy would change anything. Ukraine’s struggle for national survival reflects the will of millions and does not depend on any one man. This struggle will continue, regardless of who holds the office of the presidency.

Peter Dickinson, Atlantic Council

The number of Americans dining out just hit a new low.

In the early days of the pandemic, restaurants went into survival mode to stay afloat. It may be safe to grab a bite to eat out of the house these days, but with fewer Americans able to afford the luxury of eating out, business is drying up again.

The percentage of Americans who say they dine out at least once a week slid almost 10% between 2022 and 2026, according to a new Gallup poll. In 2019, just prior to the pandemic, more than half of people surveyed reported eating out at a restaurant at least one time per week. By 2021, that percentage dipped 10%, to 43%, before perking up to 47% in 2022. In the 2026 version of the same poll, Gallup found that only 39% of people dine out weekly—fewer than in the first year following the COVID outbreak.

“Weekly dining out fell during the pandemic, partly recovered by 2022, and has since dropped to a new low, with the latest decline concentrated among middle- and upper-income Americans,” Gallup wrote in its new report. The analytics company cited the “cumulative effect of price increases over the past four years” as the main driver that’s keeping people at home.

They aren’t just staying in and ordering takeout, either. The number of Americans who say they get takeout weekly slipped to 31% in 2026, down from 26% in 2022 and 39% in 2021—a strong sign that the affordability crisis is behind the shifting trends. That percentage of Americans ordering takeout in 2026 is now even with what it was pre-pandemic in 2018.

Dining out across income levels

Unsurprisingly, people in different income brackets have different habits when it comes to eating out. Americans in upper-income households dine out much more often than those making less money, an intuitive finding given that higher costs don’t sting nearly as much when you’ve got more financial padding.

Just prior to the pandemic, Gallup found that 40% of people in a lower-income group dined out on a weekly basis, compared with 54% in a middle-income group and 65% in an upper-income group. By 2021, weekly dining rates had dropped across the board, but they began to rise again in 2022—but only for higher-income Americans. Now, weekly dining is sliding again, this time falling for middle- and upper-income adults, with 38% and 48% of people in those categories eating out at least once a week, respectively. For lower-income Americans, the percentage stayed stable at 32%.

“For restaurants, the challenge is less that Americans have stopped eating out than that they are doing so less often,” Gallup wrote in the report. “And with restaurant takeout falling from its pandemic-era high, weekly takeout or delivery does not appear to be making up the difference.”

Food safety worries

The current Gallup survey was conducted in July of this year, drawing on data from a random sample of 1,200 adults across all 50 states. The company does note that its polling coincided with the cyclosporiasis outbreak that had Americans skittish about lettuce this summer, as the food safety scare may have impacted eating habits, too.

The outbreak—traced to iceberg lettuce recalled by food supplier Taylor Farms—officially ended in September, but not before it sickened almost 13,000 people and sent 579 to the hospital. In a separate survey, Gallup found that Americans distrust the federal government on food more than ever, with only 47% feeling confident about food safety protocols.

With more people holed up at home with their groceries, restaurants have been forced to improvise. Some, like fast-casual pillars Noodles & Company and Chipotle, are getting creative with innovative menu items to bring diners back into the fold. Others, like McDonald’s, opted to make fast food feel cheap again with a $5 meal deal. But local restaurants and fine dining options don’t have as much breathing room as their corporate peers, with many folding to a lethal combination of higher ingredient prices and shrinking customer budgets—and little relief in sight.

Fast Company Magazine Staff

The Vatican Secretariat of State told the Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage’s chief organizer that their procession is banned from St. Peter’s this year, according to a new report.

The faithful attending this weekend’s Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage will no longer be permitted to enter St. Peter’s Basilica, per a Friday report.

Vatican journalist Diane Montagna, citing Christian Marquant, the pilgrimage’s chief organizer, reported Friday that the Vatican will bar priests, religious, and lay faithful participating in the 15th annual Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage from entering St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, Oct. 24, as originally scheduled.

This notably expands restrictions on the traditionalist pilgrimage, as Bishop Athanasius Schneider had already been denied permission to celebrate the October 24 Mass at St. Peter’s, but pilgrims were still scheduled to process into and pray at the ancient basilica on Saturday afternoon.

“Your procession is not allowed to enter into St. Peter’s Basilica,” a letter from the Vatican Secretariat of State said per Marquant.

“We will not enter into St. Peter’s tomorrow,” Marquant read to pilgrims Friday per Montagna, adding that accusations had been made that the 2025 Mass at St. Peter’s  was “instrumentalized.”

This story is developing…

Antonio Cambria, Lifesite News

A 17-year-old McKinney resident has been arrested and charged by the FBI for planning to assassinate U.S. Rep. Keith Self and carry out an allegedly ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in North Texas.

According to reports, the bureau arrested the would-be assassin on October 5 after the individual obtained a firearm. Investigators said they believed the suspect planned the assassination for October 17. The suspect had been monitored by federal agents for some time at that point, and was believed to have been radicalized by online ISIS material.

In a post to X on Wednesday, Self (R–McKinney) expressed his gratitude to the FBI and law enforcement for their role in preventing the threat.

“My family and I are safe,” Self wrote. “And I remain focused on serving the people of Texas’ 3rd District. Preserving our constitutional republic from radical Islam means accepting the costs that come with it—name-calling, threats, and worse.”

“This only strengthens my resolve. I will not back down,” Self added.

Self has been an outspoken opponent of a controversial Islamic Association of McKinney mosque project. At the city council meeting that approved the site plan for the new mosque, Self warned of radical Islam, stating, “Child marriage, honor killings, don’t tell me it can’t happen here.” The comments garnered Self a standing ovation at the meeting.

Additionally, Self, along with U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R–Austin), launched the Sharia-Free America Caucus in late 2025. The caucus has “sparked conversations throughout Congress and across the country, drawing attention to concerns surrounding Sharia and its incompatibility with the principles enshrined in the United States Constitution.”

Politicians, some from across the aisle, have come forward publicly to express their solidarity with Self in light of the thwarted assassination.

“The FBI stopped this radical Islamic terrorist before he could strike,” said Gov. Greg Abbott, praising the agency. “Radical Islamic terrorism has no place in Texas. We will combat radical Islam in all forms and eliminate every threat it poses.”

Roy posted to X Wednesday in response to news of the suspect’s arrest, saying, “I stand proudly with [Self]. ‘His Truth is Marching On.’”

Democrat nominee Evan Hunt, Self’s midterm opponent in the race for Texas’ 3rd Congressional District, stated in response to the news that “there is no place for violence in our politics. No political disagreement ever justifies threatening someone’s life. Every elected official, their family and their staff deserve to be safe, regardless of party.”

Self and Roy, along with two other Texas congressmen, recently asked U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to investigate several Islamic groups for potential abuse of taxpayer-funded grants and ties to terrorism.

Radical Islam is drawing increasing scrutiny in Texas, with Republican primary voters overwhelmingly voting in favor of a non-binding ballot proposition calling for an end to Sharia law.

Recently, businessman Elon Musk warned of “jihadis” after claiming he had fired Ndiaga Diagne from Tesla for assaulting a woman for stepping on his prayer rug. Diagne was later charged for a mass shooting in Austin. He wore a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt while carrying out the shooting that claimed the lives of three victims.

A representative of the FBI’s Dallas office gave no further comment when asked by Texas Scorecard.

Hunter Burney, Texas Scorecard

Hillsdale College shows how teacher education can thrive without the mandates of state certification and national accreditation.

In 2012, Dr. Daniel Coupland, professor of Education at Hillsdale College, published a Martin Center (then the Pope Center) article entitled “A College Reinvents Teacher Education.” That piece described how Hillsdale’s Education Department resisted the state of Michigan’s mandate that all teacher certification programs in the state be nationally accredited. 

Coupland wrote that following the decision to move away from state certification, Hillsdale’s faculty “began to think about what teacher education could be without the ideological straitjacket (i.e., ‘standards’) from the state.”

A glance at the standards listed on the website of CAEP (the largest national accreditation agency for education programs) shows why that was a sound move. Of its seven standards required for “initial” accreditation, only one is devoted to “content and pedagogical knowledge.” And rather than focusing on actual topics teachers need to know, it involves “facilitat[ing] candidates’ reflection of their personal biases to increase their understanding and practice of equity, diversity, and inclusion.” 

In sum, adherence to the “diversity” agenda is all that matters.

CAEP’s other standards require programs to overcome elaborate bureaucratic obstacles that do little to help teachers to become stewards of knowledge and effective leaders of the young. 

Hillsdale faculty and administration quickly recognized that this push for national teacher education accreditation represented not only a significant added financial strain for smaller institutions such as Hillsdale, but also a threat to teacher preparation programs that want to follow their institution’s mission and the principles of the liberal arts tradition.

Dr. David Whalen, a professor of English at the college and provost during the period described above, observes that Hillsdale’s transition away from state certification was “like a caterpillar to a butterfly—the elements for the change were there all along. But we decided that we needed to change the way we did things so that it truly comported with our principles.” 

Indeed, Hillsdale College resists (what Whalen terms) “the bureaucracy of experts” that dominates mainstream teacher preparation. Rather, it required future teachers to complete a rich and rigorous core curriculum and to major in an academic subject just like any other student at the college.

Even before leaving state certification behind, Hillsdale did not offer a major in education. Rather, it required future teachers to complete a rich and rigorous core curriculum and to major in an academic subject just like any other student at the college. This broad and deep formation provided by the core was not to be sidelined by an over-emphasis on education courses based on whatever fads were favored by the education establishment.

Free from the education establishment, Hillsdale’s Education Department was able to draw from the college’s mission to develop a deeper and more robust teacher education experience that was grounded in time-tested, historical principles of education. 

The department created a 19-credit-hour minor in Classical Education, which includes a core of four courses plus two electives. 

One required course is English Grammar, which prepares teachers to understand and communicate the structure of language at a deep level, enabling their students to develop clear and polished communication. A common complaint among college professors these days is that their students can scarcely write, but that won’t be a problem with Hillsdale-trained teachers. 

Another core course is Philosophy of Education, which uses classic texts to delve into perennial questions about the nature and purpose of the educational task. 

Examples of electives include Explicit Phonics Reading Instruction, which tackles the nation’s literacy crisis head-on through learning the traditional method of sounding out phonemes; and Classical Pedagogy, in which future teachers learn techniques of classroom leadership rooted in attention to the cultivation of character, respect, and thoughtfulness in students. 

Students who complete the Classical Education minor have contemplated broad, serious, and humane ideas rather than whatever is in vogue according to the education establishment. They are infused with a passion for cultivating the hearts and minds of the next generation instead of preparing young people for social activism. 

It is no wonder that schools that recognize the need for educational reform are so interested in hiring Hillsdale graduates rather than the products of accredited schools of education.

Building on the success of its undergraduate program, Hillsdale College launched the Diana Davis Spencer Graduate School of Classical Education in 2022 and welcomed its first cohort of students in the Master of Arts in Classical Education (MACE) program, a two-year, full-time, residential graduate program. In the summer of 2025, Hillsdale added a second graduate program in classical education specifically designed for practicing educators who want to serve as leaders in the growing classical education movement (Master of Classical Education Leadership, or MCEL). 

Graduates of these programs are equipped not only to teach but also to serve as school leaders, policy advisors, curriculum developers, and other important roles in the renewal of classical K-12 education.Hillsdale has shown that institutions of higher education can meet the needs of those who will do the noble work of educating the next generation of Americans.

What does this mean more generally for teacher preparation in America? Unburdened by the onerous and often unnecessary mandates of the education establishment, Hillsdale has shown that institutions of higher education can meet the needs of those who will do the noble work of educating the next generation of Americans.

Davis C. Smith is a classical Humanities teacher and a 2026 MA graduate of Hillsdale College’s Graduate School of Classical Education.

Here’s one war that should’ve started years ago: Team Trump’s drive to stamp out fraud is still ramping up, but is already saving the public billions.

This week alone, federal, state and local authorities conducted a string of fresh raids and made arrests, including in New York and California, as part of a nationwide crackdown on Medicaid fraud.

Homeland Security also launched a massive operation to snare illegal immigrants who fraudulently stole $40 million in food stamps, bringing the total in food-stamp fraud ID’d so far to $641 million.

The feds have also destroyed more than 2,200 illegal merchant SNAP devices and disabled more than 2,000 retailer authorization numbers, heading off an estimated $5 billion in potential fraudulent transactions, Fox New reported.

Meanwhile, Tuesday’s sweep in Gotham alone saw more than 80 adult-day-care centers hit in Brooklyn and Queens.

And in Staten Island, prosecutors arrested two operators for $530,000 in billings for hundreds of phantom seniors.

All this follows the epic fraud scheme uncovered last year in Minnesota, where billions are said to have vanished.

One day-care center there alone, made famous by its misspelled name, the “Quality Learing Center,” was caught collecting millions for nonexistent kids.

Last month, a LexisNexis Risk Solutions study put the true cost of food-stamp fraud — including the costs of uncovering it — at more than four times the amount of the theft itself.

The company’s Haywood Talcove says such fraud is now running at “a trillion dollars a year.” Ouch.

The people stealing the funds, he warns, are “real criminal groups doing real damage to our democracy.”

One key problem: While Washington picks up much of the tab for welfare programs, states administer them — so don’t much care about waste or theft.

That’s especially true in blue states, where pols view the growing ranks on the dole as a plus.

In Minnesota, a report found Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison not only turned a blind eye to the thefts, they actually “retaliated against employees who tried to raise concerns.”

In New York, which spends more on Medicaid than any other state, Attorney General Letitia James’ Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has the worst prosecution record in the country.

Fortunately, President Donald Trump’s crackdown, under the leadership of Vice President JD Vance, will send an unmistakable message to the scammers: The jig’s up.

Trump is even offering $30,000 bounties (plus 1% of funds recovered) for tips leading to fraud indictments.

By nabbing current fraudsters and frustrating future ones, this war on fraud should keep paying off for generations — as long as Democrats don’t quietly undo the good work.

For now, it’s hats off to Trump, Vance and the rest: At last, someone is fighting for taxpayers.

New York Post

France’s collapse will create a red, Republican wave? I doubt it will help. The ignorance and cognitive chaos in average Americans when it comes to politics, ethics and economics are worse than anyone realizes. The people voting Democrat are thinking (if you can call it thinking): “Affordability good. Cannot afford anything, even though I continue to buy everything. Trump’s fault. Trump must go. Democrats not Trump. Therefore, Democrats make things affordable.” And then there are the marginal issues like transgender children and the like, but mainly this is how you get Independents who voted Trump in 2024 swinging to openly socialist, even Communist Democrats just two years later. They don’t focus on Democrats having gone Communist and probably don’t care. They just want affordability. “Affordability good.”

It’s a contradiction, by the way, to say you cannot afford things which you continue to buy in the same or even greater quantity than before (evidenced by the fact we are not in a depression or recession). Prices only go up when supply (despite the incentive of profit) cannot keep up with demand. The best and ONLY way to more affordability is get government out of the way. Reduce or eliminate taxes — especially for the wealthiest because they invest and spend the most, and are paying most of the taxes already. And massively cut or eliminate regulations, way beyond anything DOGE started. Government agencies have become politicized and weaponized against American citizens. The federal government should focus on defense, border control and assisting Medicare and Social Security (both going bankrupt within a decade) on the road to gradual privatization. To be fair, Republicans have focused on defense and borders, but nothing else. Trump can only do so much.

Democrats propose the polar, 180 degree opposite of everything I just wrote. Everything they want is wrong; absolutely everything. They mean it. They will torch America if they get away with it, and IF they win in both 2026 and 2028 they will torch America. For good, this time. Neither election has yet occurred, and we will soon know where we’re headed.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason