We need digital IDs. State governors are pushing it. Gavin Newsom last year allowed drivers licenses onto Apple and Google wallets. This “mobile drivers license,” or mDL, is a digital ID, and one more link in the chain.

And it is Americans, including Bill Gates and the controlling owner of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who are financing the digital ID push. “ The NHS [National Health Service] in the UK has an incredible amount of population data, but it’s fragmented,” he told Blair in February of this year. “It’s not easily accessible by these AI models. We have to take all of this data we have in our country and move it into a single, if you will, unified data platform… The secret is to get all of that data in one place.”

In September, Ellison made clear that he viewed the power of data centralization in behavior change. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly watching and recording everything that’s going on.”

Ellison’s Oracle is an AI database cloud computing company and he is its best salesman. Ellison, the second richest man in the world, and owner of CBS and CNN, has “donated or pledged at least £257m to the Tony Blair Institute,” reportedthe New Statesman last week. “Ellison donations have helped it grow to more than 900 staff, working in at least 45 countries.”

The nightmare scenario for mass, constant spying on citizens is not theoretical. China in 2019 created a social credit system with rewards that include better employment, school admissions, and shorter wait times in hospitals, and punishments including denial of access to public services and social events, denial of train and air tickets, and public shaming.

One study found that at least one-third of total “offenses” were not actually against the law and thus expanded “local government authority into moral and social domains beyond the law,” found researchers.

UK’s Big Brother Watched recently warned that a digital ID system, even if initially limited, could be a gateway to more invasive government surveillance and intrusion.

Why would any liberal and democratic Western government like Britain want such a thing?

Money is no doubt a big part of it. Oracle and other high tech companies stand to make billions taking bits of our money here and there for every transaction. Governments like Keir Starmer’s also seem eager to give them billions in contracts to monitor and analyze the population.

We found no evidence Starmer would personally benefit financially from digital IDs, however, and as a political leader, he must consider whether his actions are popular, and digital IDs are not. A YouGov poll released yesterday found UK opinion toward digital IDs was 42 percent in favor and 45 percent against. And given the negative reaction to them online, popular opposition will likely rise.

Tony Blair Institute’s (TBI) polling may have misled Starmer. TBI’s first question primed people to think about how inconvenienced they’ve felt without a digital ID, a blatantly manipulative form of polling.

No honest pollster seeking to give a client a realistic understanding of how the public thought about digital IDs would have started with that question, because they know the importance of framing.

The second question was equally biased. “Some are suggesting the government should introduce a new app, allowing instant access to a range of public services.” The framing suggests awareness on the part of the pollster that the public had a negative view of “digital ID,” hence the use of the “app” euphemism.

The third question was “Do you think there is digital technology that could help tackle these issues… Processing asylum seekers and managing the UK’s borders.”

One reason to think Starmer relied on the TBI’s biased polling is that Starmer pitched the digital ID as necessary to stop mass migration. “I know working people are worried about the level of illegal migration into this country,” said Starmer. “Digital ID… will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.”

The notion is absurd. Nations have maintained borders for hundreds of years without the need for digital IDs.

Given how badly the Starmer government’s digital ID roll out appears to have backfired, why did Starmer and Blair push it?

One possibility is that they really believe in the mission of improving people’s lives. That is already how they justify it. Said Starmer, “it will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly – rather than hunting around for an old utility bill.”

But it is hard to believe Starmer and Blair really viewed the difficulty of finding where you left your utility bill as a high-priority social problem.

It appears more likely that they are hiding their reasons and that the real motivation is the same as the Chinese government: to control the population.

Gates last year released a Netflix documentary calling for sweeping AI-powered censorship of people he disagrees with on vaccines and other issues.

The Starmer government’s digital IDs should be a wake-up call to all of us. For years, various people have been raising concerns about digital IDs but free speech and privacy advocates have clearly not done enough to stop them. That needs to change.

The good news is that the backlash to the digital IDs appears strong and growing. And anyone can see that, when they spoke, Blair was taking instructions from Ellison.  “You can pipe this data from these three thousand separate data sources into a single unified database,” said Ellison, “and that’s what we need to do.”

The episode should wake us Americans up to the continuing threat of total surveillance and censorship. Powerful American high-tech elites see dollar signs in controlling our data — and our behavior.

Michael Shellenberger, X

Trump fumed, ‘Wasn’t she the one that married her brother in order to gain citizenship?’

In as Trumpian a fashion as it gets, the president has rekindled the years-long debate: Did progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) marry her brother?

Shortly after conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a deranged leftist, Omar reposted a video on X that called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.” Republican lawmakers saw an opportunity to censure the “Squad” member and remove her committee assignments. The motion failed by a 214-213 vote.

Nevertheless, some conservatives are demanding Omar’s denaturalization and deportation to Somalia. Denaturalization is allowed in cases of “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.” To be clear, Omar will not be denaturalized, nor deported.

But amid Omar-gate, President Trump fumed that she was “SCUM,” derided her “Country of Somalia,” and asked, “Wasn’t she the one that married her brother in order to gain citizenship???”

The accusation is nearly a decade old, prompted in part by court filings and a trail of murkier evidence.

Public records show that Omar entered a religious marriage with a man named Ahmed Hirsi in 2002, separated in 2008, and then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009. Elmi, a British citizen who later attended college in the US. It is Elmi who some have suggested may be Omar’s brother, an allegation Omar has consistently denied.

The marriage with Elmi ended in 2011, but they did not obtain a legal divorce until 2017. In that same period, Omar reconciled with Hirsi, had another child with him, and even filed joint tax returns with him in 2014 and 2015, despite still being legally married to her alleged brother.

In 2020, the Daily Mail quoted an old friend of Omar, Abdihakim Osman, who claimed Omar herself had described Elmi as her brother – and admitted she married him to get the papers he needed to study in the US. Osman claimed Elmi was introduced around Minneapolis as family, and that Omar told him explicitly she was helping her brother get student loans. Omar has flatly denied this, dismissing the story as “baseless,” but has refused to provide documentary evidence to settle the matter.

In 2018, one conservative outlet discovered archived Instagram posts from 2012 that appear to show Ahmed Elmi calling Ilhan Omar’s daughter his “niece.” In 2015, photos from a London trip placed Omar alongside Elmi and relatives, all appearing under the shared surname “Elmi.” But these posts are no longer available and cannot be independently verified.

The Star Tribune tried to confirm Elmi’s identity but ran into the same problem: Somali records are difficult to obtain, and Omar herself declined to clarify.

While this scavenger hunt remains incomplete, what is beyond doubt is that Omar’s life today bears little resemblance to the humble origins she once invoked.

Ilhan Omar was born in Mogadishu in 1982, the youngest of seven children. Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was a colonel in the Somali army who brought the family to a Kenyan refugee camp before they eventually resettled in Minneapolis, where Omar grew up in public housing and later entered politics.

She built her brand as the daughter of refugees, a progressive outsider weighed down by student debt – the antithesis of a silver spoon Congressman. But her most recent financial disclosure revealed a net worth as high as $30 million — a staggering increase of 3,500 percent in a single year.

The source of that fortune is her most recent husband, Tim Mynett. His venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, ballooned from under $1,000 in 2023 to as much as $25 million by the end of 2024. The firm’s board is stacked with powerful names, including former senator and ambassador to China Max Baucus.

Rose Lake Capital’s website once bragged about structuring “legislation” before that word was quietly removed. It now claims $60 billion in assets under management. Around the same time Rose Lake took off, Mynett’s California winery, eStCru, jumped from being worth just $50,000 to as much as $5 million. Both companies have faced lawsuits alleging fraud, which have since been settled.

The overlap with Omar’s official role is clear. After the launch of Rose Lake, Omar formed a congressional US-Africa Policy Working Group. She and Mynett have since appeared at events promoting investment in Africa – exactly the kind of opportunity Rose Lake now pursues. At face value the arrangement is indistinguishable from influence-peddling.

The same Omar who has scorned politicians for leveraging their office for gain now appears to be doing it herself, handsomely. In America, the socialists have a funny way of always cashing in.

So, back to Trump’s accusation. Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother? As it stands, it’s impossible to say one way or the other. Omar continues to deny the allegation as baseless.

What is certain is that Omar has prospered enormously in America, moving from refugee housing to the halls of Congress to a personal fortune worth tens of millions.

That story is perhaps the greater indictment. The congresswoman who speaks endlessly of justice and equity appears to have mastered the very Washington tricks she pretends to loathe.

Barack Obama’s long-promised presidential library is shaping up to be just as corrupt as his administration. You probably haven’t heard much about this in the media, but recent tax filings reveal that money donated to the Obama Foundation—supposedly earmarked for his sprawling “presidential center” in Chicago—is quietly being redirected to one of the left’s most notorious dark money groups: the Tides Foundation.

The numbers tell the story. In 2022 and 2023, the Obama Foundation handed over $2 million to Tides, a group best known for serving as a clearinghouse for radical left-wing causes and for shielding donor identities. It should come as no surprise that George Soros heavily backs Tides, and Tides is directly tied to groups organizing anti-Israel protests. That includes demonstrations against the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocities. In other words, donations made in the name of funding a presidential library are now helping bankroll organizations promoting antisemitic activism under the guise of social justice.

That’s pretty on-brand for Barack Obama.

“The Tides Center played an administrative role in the program by processing grants while Cities United [a nonprofit] managed the application process,” the spokeswoman said in an email. Grants ranged from $15,000 to $30,000 each over the two summers.

Tides has also handled donations for Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which sued the group in California Superior Court last year. It alleged “egregious mismanagement” of more than $33 million in its funds, according to court documents. That lawsuit is ongoing.

In addition to sending donations to Tides, the Obama Foundation has sent more than $3 million in 2022 and 2023 in grants to Gofundme.org for undisclosed “grassroots leaders to empower girls through education,” according to the group’s filings.

Meanwhile, the foundation admitted it has so far spent more than $615 million building the Obama Presidential Center, which is scheduled to open in spring 2026, according to its website.

The group, which received just $129,320 in donations in 2022, spent more than $27 million on salaries.

While community members struggle, insiders at the Obama Foundation are doing just fine. The foundation’s CEO, Emeka Jarrett, earned over $750,000 last year. The executive vice president, Rob Cohen, pocketed nearly $650,000, and also maintains ties to the Pritzker Realty Group. His connection to Penny Pritzker—sister to Governor J.B. Pritzker—only highlights the tangled web of Democratic powerbrokers who are thriving while the project supposedly dedicated to “the people” spirals out of control.

ICYMI: A ‘Deranged Leftist’ Assaulted a Trump Admin Official at the United Nations

Meanwhile, the presidential center itself—originally sold to the public as a beacon of civic pride for Chicago’s South Side—has turned into a financial pit. Construction on the 20-acre site in Jackson Park began years ago, with a ballooning price tag that has already exceeded $615 million, far above the initial $500 million projection. The opening date has slipped again, now pushed to spring 2026. Local residents aren’t thrilled either. One lawyer described it bluntly as a “monstrosity,” pointing to rising costs, neighborhood headaches, and little actual benefit to the people forced to live around it.

This entire project reeks of the kind of carefully crafted con job only career political operators could pull off. Sell it as a beacon of unity, then funnel millions to radical, antisemitic causes, all while insiders pocket obscene salaries. It’s a true reflection of the same kind of corruption that plagued Obama’s presidency.

The Obama Presidential Center is a $615 million con, funneling money to radical causes and insider salaries. The mainstream media won’t cover this, but we will. Support our work by joining PJ Media VIP. Use promo code FIGHT for 60% off for ad-free access and sharp reporting. Support America First journalism.

Matt Margolis is a conservative commentator and columnist. His work has been cited on Fox News and national conservative talk radio, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dan Bongino Show. Matt is the author of several books and has appeared on Newsmax, OANN, Real America’s Voice News, Salem News Channel, and even CNN.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that white men of a “certain religion” are responsible for “so much damage” just two weeks after the assassination of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.

Clinton, 77, made the remarks during a segment Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in which the two-time Democratic presidential candidate said America has yet to achieve the “more perfect union” spoken of by former President Abraham Lincoln.

“We haven’t gotten to the more perfect union, and we fought a Civil War over part of it. And people have been protesting for hundreds of years that things were not as they should be, given our ideals and how we should be moving toward them,” said Clinton.

“So, I think that’s what makes us so special as a country, and the idea that you could turn the clock back and try to recreate a world that never was dominated by, you know, let’s say it, white men of a certain persuasion, a certain religion, a certain point of view, a certain ideology, it’s just doing such damage to what we should be aiming for.”

Earlier in the conversation, Clinton, who is promoting the 20th anniversary of the Clinton Global Initiative, warned that equality and progressive ideology were “in the crosshairs of those on the right.”

“The idea of ‘We The People’ that all men and women are created equal, that seems to be in the crosshairs of those on the right who want to turn the clock back on the progress that has been made,” she said.

In an October 2023 interview with CNN, Clinton suggested that supporters of then-presidential candidate Trump — whom she described as “MAGA extremists” — are in a “cult” and should undergo “formal deprogramming.”

“Sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure,” she said. “He’s only in it for himself.”

Ian Giatti, Christian Post

Charlie Kirk is emblematic of one of the things that is great about our country.  Endowed by our Creator, we have freedom of speech.  The First Amendment in our Bill of Rights enshrines this.  Within bounds, we can express our own opinion, argue, and debate.  Most importantly, we are free to say unpopular things so long as there’s no incitement to violence or willful defamation.

Charlie used freedom of speech to enlighten, educate, argue, and persuade.  He chose a debate format, offering people with ideological differences a chance to give their own perspectives.  If you count winning by hearts and minds, there was a clear champion over time of the debates.  And, that champion was gathering strength and gaining ground.  This is what terrified atheists and progressives most.  The latter’s worldview has a stranglehold based on conformity, consensus, and ideological purity couching no challenge or dissent.

Calls have been renewed for progressive fascists to renounce political violence and violent rhetoric.  This would leave progressives embracing just the socialist component of fascism.  Establishing such a limit on themselves, they would have to settle for progressive socialism.  This presents a vulnerability to ever louder calls to debate differences instead of resolving them with coercion, intimidation, and violence.

Why can’t progressive fascists debate?  The answer is that, decades ago, progressives lost all the arguments on their merits.

How can Democrats defend socialism when it has impoverished and tyrannized citizens everywhere and every time it’s been tried?  Won’t capitalism have to be recognized as the only economic system in mankind’s history capable of elevating people out of poverty and increasing liberty?

How will progressives justify regulation of every personal and corporate action?  How will they oppose implementing only necessary, affordable, and beneficial regulations?

When libertarians opine the money you have earned legitimately is yours, what argument will advance the idea that all money belongs to the government from whence it is allocated to the people?  How will leftists advocate for confiscatory taxes instead of low tax rates?

Will advocacy for open borders sound more compelling than having only legal immigration that serves our country’s interests?

Progressive fascists crave social justice even though it brings violence and anarchy.  How will this stack up against citizens’ desire to live in safety in their neighborhoods applying criminal justice?

Will authoritarian arguments for freedom only within narrowly specified bounds sound better than freedom of everything as long as it’s not specifically forbidden?

Will Marxists convince listeners that words are violence, or will freedom of speech be cherished even if the opinions expressed are unpopular or disfavored?

What new arguments will be made that welfare should be open-ended, and there should be no workfare by able-bodied individuals?

How will consumers be convinced that higher cost, unreliable wind and solar energy with blackouts and brownouts is preferable to lower cost, abundant energy?

Is the U.S. an immoral and degenerate country led by, and populated with, irredeemably racist and unremittingly oppressive people?  Or, will more people be persuaded these United States represent the best nation on earth, and things keep getting better over time?

Will Democrats argue Western Civilization is evil in all respects?  What response will be given to evidence presented that Western Civilization is the best that’s ever been?

Apostate Christians and atheists have found their home in the Democrat party.  Will that party now plainly advocate for their worldview, knowing there’s only this life with the highest goals of hedonism or a struggle to build utopia?  What will be the rebuttal to the Christian worldview that best perceives, understands, and explains reality?

When does life begin?  If it’s not a tomato or a squirrel, what is that newly conceived being?  Is it a human being?  When should new individual human life be protected?  Christians and conservatives have ready answers.  What responses can be given by atheists and progressives that won’t evoke horror and revulsion in many?

Over decades, our culture rejected Christian roots and influence.  We progressed to modernism in our post-Christian time.  Progressivism knowing no limits, modernism has been rejected for a post-reality vision.  Nevertheless, science and facts are useful for describing reality. So, what is the compelling argument by progressives for a reality defined only by imagination and unburdened by what is sensed? That reality is just what political elites say it is today?

Is the grooming of children for sterilization and sexual mutilation going to be defended outright by Marxist cultural theorists?  Won’t conservative advocacy maintaining the innocence of children for as long as possible be received more favorably?  How will arguments go for holding accountable enablers and practitioners when inevitable buyer’s remorse of Frankenstein procedures is expressed?

Will enablers of perverts, predators, pedophiles explicitly be lionized by the left?  Or, is there insurmountable empathy for protection of women and girls in spaces and opportunities?

Are progressive arguments better for group identity and enforced level achievement when compared to those for individualism and exceptionalism?

Will leftist arguments for reparations based on ancestral offenses win the day along with the idea of inexorable systemic racism?  Rather, shouldn’t people, all made in the image of God, be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin?

Everyone’s for equality.  But, is this forced equality of outcomes?  Or, will there be recognition that individual differences means there will always be inequalities of outcomes absent coercion. Aren’t arguments more attractive for equality of opportunities?

For decades, progressives in both political parties have put American interests last in economics and foreign affairs.  Is this defensible?  Contemporary arguments advocate for putting American interests first.  We can’t go in both directions.  Which is most appealing?

World government is the gold ring for many progressive fascists.  Incremental progress has been made over time with innumerable multilateral engagements.  Can these be defended against arguments for only bilateral relationships that best serve our country’s interests?

If progressives can’t win any debate on the merits, then they won’t participate.  It suggests speeches, arguments, and debates should still be used by Christians, conservatives, and libertarians for the purpose of awakening some of the woke.  This will work and be effective so long as freedom of speech endures.  But, the primary goal of progressive fascists will be to re-impose censorship and hollow out freedom of speech.  Censorship will be expanded greatly in scope along the lines of what was implemented in the great trial run during the COVID-19 tyranny.  If progressives can’t win a debate, then there should be no debate.  In the immortal words of Anthony Fauci, “Just do as you’re told.”

It doesn’t bode well for our country when one of the two major political parties disdains virtues and eschews traditional and normal values.  With or without any debate, the progressive fascist grip on the Democratic Party means their pernicious ideas are being mainstreamed. In memory of Charlie Kirk, let us resist those ideas and vanquish them, in debate, winning hearts and minds one by one.

Whitson G. Waldo, III is a capitalist, a venture capitalist, and master and skipper of a 43 foot monohull sloop-rigged 

Like the late Soviet Union, it depends on ignorance and wishful thinking.

With the last, desperate attempt to restore the integrity of the system he had given his life to having failed, the only tolerable course of action open to Sergey Akhromeyev was to hang himself. Over the years, many have questioned whether Akhromeyev and his fellow plotter of the August 1991 coup attempt, Boris Pugo, truly died by their own hands. Surely, a soldier like Akhromeyev would have done the job with his service pistol, rather than hang himself with his Party ribbon? Along with a short note giving some account of himself, Akhromeyev left behind a modest but precise amount in cash, to cover his outstanding bill at the Kremlin staff canteen. It seems unlikely that an assassin would have gone to such trouble.

I wrote before about how Britain’s present political settlement carries the same stench of doomed malevolence as the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the years before they collapsed. Yet I will be the first to admit that the analogy only goes so far. One cannot imagine the architects and apparatchiks of the Blairite state doing the decent thing — with the aid of their rainbow lanyards — when the curtain finally falls. And Pret wouldn’t have offered them credit anyway.

Akhromeyev’s last gesture, and the objectives of the coup attempt that sealed him into that path, was an expression of a particular sense of Marxist-Leninist propriety — one that was fundamentally at odds with the reality of the modern world into which Mikhail Gorbachev had been attempting and failing to integrate the USSR. Financial debt had become a defining feature of the Soviet Union in its final years; the socialist superpower’s dependence on the institutions of Western capitalism to keep itself creaking on made a mockery of decades of propaganda. 

Looking back, it’s surprising to remember that up until the mid-1980s, in the world of international high finance, the Soviet Union was considered one of the most well-regarded sovereign borrowers. The Ministry of Trade’s monopoly on international transactions, and the size and solidity of the Soviet state, left creditors reassured that the Union’s institutions would never be allowed to fail in their financial obligations. But with the Gorbachev reforms, all of that changed, as sub-sovereign and state-owned entities were given the authority to negotiate their own financial dealings with foreign entities, and to build up debt on their own books. Suddenly, international markets took an interest in which bits of the Soviet economic system actually sustained themselves, and they did not like what they found. 

For much of its existence, the Soviet economic and trade strategy was simple; to use the export of commodities to finance the development of heavy industry, with domestic consumption deliberately suppressed, even to the point of famine. Initially, the primary export commodity was grain, eventually replaced by oil. The success of this strategy in the 1920s and 30s is often exaggerated, with industrialisation in these years probably proceeding slightly more slowly than it had done in the Russian Empire in the period 1890-1914. It was in post-war reconstruction in the late 1940s and early 1950s (with the assistance of expropriated plants from defeated Germany) that this approach demonstrated the most impressive results. 

However, once the country had rebuilt its basic industries by the early 1960s, the command economy proved far less successful at cultivating innovation and driving productivity than the market economies of the West, and the USSR began its long period of economic stagnation. The necessity of suppressing domestic consumption in order to maintain a sustainable balance of payments created widespread political dissatisfaction. At the same time, the Soviet Union was attempting to maintain military parity with the United States and its allies, as well as equipping and arming its network of client states in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. 

This burden was ultimately unsustainable, but for many years, the Soviet system was able to make a decent fist of hiding it — not only from the outside world and its own citizens, but also from its own leadership. So long as the central government maintained a monopoly on international trade, and the citizenry were unaware how far behind the West their own living standards were falling, then continual trade surpluses could be kept up. Huge swathes of Soviet industry were consuming more resources than their output was worth, but the profitability of key export commodities ensured that the economy overall was just about in surplus, so long as consumption was kept to a bare minimum. This resulted in vast distortions in the allocation of resources, and unmet needs and wants on an immense scale among a population who, up until perestroika, had little choice but to lump it. 

Political choices cause resources to be allocated in very strange ways, and incentivise behaviours among consumers, investors and producers that run contrary to the interests of prosperity

At first glance, this bears little resemblance to the economy of modern Britain, in which basic and heavy industries have atrophied or moved abroad, and in which a free-floating currency means that a large current account deficit and a reliance on imports is regarded essentially as a self-correcting non-problem. Under the surface, though, we can find a system in which political choices cause resources to be allocated in very strange ways, and incentivise behaviours among consumers, investors and producers that run contrary to the interests of prosperity. The ultimate answer of where these resources will come from, and what the corresponding opportunity cost will be — i.e. who pays — is left unaddressed. The wealth is assumed simply to exist because the need exists, and if it doesn’t it will be up to somebody to create it, and hand it over. 

The most obvious area in which this is visible is the parlous financial state of many British local authorities, as a result of the imposition of adult social care costs onto their budgets, with additional pressure created statutory obligations to provide certain services, such as taxis to take children with special needs to school. Some of the figures associated with these expenses are truly astounding. Certainly, these needs could be met in one manner or another far more efficiently, but it is the underlying logic that illustrates the predicament of the system.  

The local authorities know that these costs are ultimately unsustainable. SEND taxis, adult social care, and the various other statutory obligations substantially exceed the taxes they are able to levy. But it is illegal for them not to provide those services, so they go on doing so; borrowing for as long as they are able to, in the knowledge that at some point, they will go bust — as some already have and dozens more are projected to in the coming few years. If a private company were to do this, it would be considered trading while insolvent and it would be illegal — but for the local authority, it would be illegal for them not to. 

What really happens when a local authority goes bust? Technically, they cannot go bankrupt in the way that a business can, but they can issue a Section 114 notice, obliging councillors  to come back with a new budget within three weeks. These usually necessitate substantial cuts to the most basic services the authority provides to rate-payers, such as waste disposal, but the statutory obligations remain. Presumably, what is keeping the whole thing going, and causing suppliers and creditors not to consider the entire realm of local government in Britain as financially delinquent, is the unspoken assumption that ultimately, the national government will be obliged to stand behind local authorities.  But the situation in Birmingham suggests that we will have to wait to see just how much ruin there is in a city before Whitehall steps in. 

Burdensome statutory obligations are not the only way in which the law has intervened ruinously in the finances of local authorities. Birmingham City council was ultimately bankrupted by a tribunal judgement on historic equal pay claims, which saw judges rule on whether or not a range of jobs were “equal” or not, and thus whether a group of predominantly female employees in one set of roles had been discriminated against when compared to another group of predominantly male employees in another set of roles. They did this with seemingly minimal reference to what those people actually did in their jobs, or to the relative aggregate supply and demand for people willing to do that work in the economy as a whole  Instead, justices appeared to be making a subjective judgement on the relative social status of the jobs, which they concluded were equal and thus befitting equal payment.  This followed several similar judgements against private sector employers which collectively, are likely to be transformative in how low- and semi-skilled work is contracted and remunerated across the economy. 

Beyond the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act and the raft of other quasi-constitutional laws that guide the judiciary in their role as the nation’s economic guardians, there is now a bewildering array of entitlements, cross-subsidies, and needs-based pricing which completely distort to whom things are sold, for how much, and where the bill is sent. 

Commentator Max Tempers has documented the astonishing growth of the Motability scheme in the financing of new cars, to the point that it now accounts for at least a fifth of the market. This means that hundreds of thousands of brand new vehicles are paid for out of Personal Independence Payments to individuals for disabilities, the huge growth of which in recent years seemingly being down to mental health complaints, such as anxiety. In an example of knots of legally enforceable entitlements the state has bound itself up in, a council is forbidden from taking into account whether a parent has motability financed car on account of a SEND child, should they also request a council-funded taxi service to school. 

In housing, strict rules ensure that builders must offer a certain percentage of any new development at sub-market “affordable” pricing in return for permission to build anything at all.  In utilities and banking, a baroque structure of cross-subsidy ensures that the costs of serving the bottom quintile are passed on to the slightly better off, at the government’s behest. The exception is retail electricity, where the market has been abolished altogether by the government’s price cap — introduced to shield consumers from the price shock in Autumn 2022, and now effectively politically irremovable.  Although government intervention in energy pricing had distorted anything resembling a free market in electricity, by imposing the costs of subsidising, balancing and backing up intermittent generation, long before that. 

I could go on and on, but the important point is that in many cases prices are ceasing to mean anything — they are simply a division of the cost of supplying something for everyone, divided by the number of people the state deems able to pay. They no longer serve as a signal telling producers where to allocate resources and what to prioritise. Price signals act as the nerve system of a market economy — the alternative ought to be a command economy, but Britain has no mechanism for that either. 

The link between production and consumption has been broken.

Chris Bayliss

Chris Bayliss is an independent consultant whose main interest is the energy sector in Iraq. He tweets at @baylissbaghdad

Democrats are vowing to break up media companies that kowtowed to Trump if they take back power.

Earlier this week, comedian Jimmy Kimmel delivered his monologue, as he does at the beginning of every episode of his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He focused on the reaction to the assassination of conservative media figure Charlie Kirk, and claimed that “the MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”

In addition to not being very funny, the observation rested on a false assumption—that the presumed killer, 22-year-old Utah man Tyler Robinson, is a conservative. Incorrect notions about the suspect’s political tribe have remained enduringly popular in liberal media circles; one of the top mainstream liberal Substack writers, Heather Cox Richardson, wrote earlier this week that the motive of the alleged shooter “remains unclear.” This is simply not true: Interviews with Robinson’s friends and family members, as well as text messages between Robinson and his roommate—his transgender romantic partner—paint a clear portrait of a man who found Kirk’s conservative views “harmful.” It’s fine to leave room for new details that further elucidates or complicates this picture, but for now the totality of the available information suggests an essentially left-wing motivation.

While Kimmel is a comedian rather than a newscaster, given how paranoid the mainstream media is about the spread of so-called misinformation, the criticism of Kimmel on this subject was well-deserved. And I had been planning to criticize him in this newsletter all week.

Unfortunately, the story no longer ends there.

Brendan Carr, chair of Federal Communications Commission (FCC), weighed in on the matter; not only did he criticize what Kimmel had to say, he also implicitly threatened the broadcasters. (Kimmel’s show appears on ABC.)

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said Carr during an appearance on conservative influencer Benny Johnson’s podcast. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC.”

This was not an idle threat. The FCC licenses broadcast channels, and can fine them or even take them off the air. Moreover, the FCC oversees mergers of companies in the communications space. Nexstar Media, which owns many of the ABC local affiliate stations that air Kimmel, is attempting to acquire Tegna Inc., a rival firm; the FCC needs to okay the deal. There’s a lot at stake, and FCC can make life very difficult for companies that defy it.

And so, on Wednesday night, both Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group—another major telecommunications company—informed ABC that they would not air Kimmel on their affiliate stations. ABC then opted to place the show on indefinite hiatus. (Disclaimer: Nexstar owns Rising, the news show I host for The Hill.)

Robby Soave, Reason Magazine

In her 1962 essay “Have Gun, Will Nudge,” Rand explained exactly how the public interest standard would lead to censorship.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr has received much criticism after appearing to pressure broadcast channels to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air following the comedian’s misinformed monologue about the motivations of Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer. Republican Sens. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), Ted Cruz (R–Texas), and Dave McCormick (R–Pa.), all chastised Carr for seemingly using his position to steer the editorial decisions of private companies—a serious breach of free speech principles.

Carr is not without his defenders, however. Nathan Leamer, tech policy expert and advisor to former FCC Chair Ajit Pai, asserts that Carr’s actions fall squarely within his duty to promote the “public interest” on television, as defined by the Communications Act of 1934. He also assails “libertarians” in particular for not caring about how the FCC works (his words), and suggests that such skeptics are incorrectly or selectively railing against the public interest standard in the Kimmel case.

But of course, libertarians have been warning that broad interpretations of the public interest standard will empower the FCC to engage in censorship for decades. Just ask Ayn Rand.

In 1962, Rand penned a prophetic warning about the public interest standard, which then FCC Chair Newton Minow was citing as justification for pressuring television companies to create more educational programming. Minow famously railed against a supposedly “vast wasteland” of shoddy television shows, and claimed that the FCC’s charter empowered him to push for editorial changes to the medium that would align with his view of the public interest.

“You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives,” said Minow in his well-remembered 1961 speech. “It is not enough to cater to the nation’s whims; you must also serve the nation’s needs.”

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Minow repeatedly claimed that he was not in favor of government censorship, and was not trying to tell broadcasters what they could and could not say. Rather, he charged them to make nebulous and ill-defined improvements to the product that he believed would be better appreciated by the American public—i.e., the public interest.

And that’s precisely what Rand disliked about his approach. Her essay, “Have Gun, Will Nudge,” published in The Objectivist Newsletter in March 1962, makes clear her disdain not just for abject censorship, but also for a reality in which the FCC chair makes vague statements regarding the actions that private actors should or should not take.

“It is true, as Mr. Minow assures us, that he does not propose to establish censorship; what he proposes is much worse,” she wrote. She continued:

Censorship, in its old-fashioned meaning, is a government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas—such, for instance, as sex, religion or criticism of government officials—an edict enforced by the government’s scrutiny of all forms of communication prior to their public release. But for stifling the freedom of men’s minds the modern method is much more potent; it rests on the power of non-objective law; it neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men’s lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim. It spares the bureaucrat the troublesome necessity of committing himself to rigid rules—and it places upon the victims the burden of discovering how to please him, with a fluid unknowable as their only guide.

No, a federal commissioner may never utter a single word for or against any program. But what do you suppose will happen if and when, with or without his knowledge, a third-assistant or a second cousin or just a nameless friend from Washington whispers to a television executive that the commissioner does not like producer X or does not approve of writer Y or takes a great interest in the career of starlet Z or is anxious to advance the cause of the United Nations?

What makes it possible to bring a free country down to such a level? If you doubt the connection between altruism and statism, I suggest that you count how many times—in the current articles, speeches, debates and hearings—there appeared the magic formula which makes all such outrages possible: “The Public Interest.”

The title of the essay was inspired by Rand’s contention that a man who holds a gun to your head and demands your wallet is surely deploying impermissible force rather than mere encouragement. When the FCC chair proclaims that a private company can “do this the easy way or the hard way,” he is providing a similar kind of nudge.

Robby Soave, Reason Magazine

At the O2 Arena in London, the president sounded exasperated. His worldview had lost

For people like Fran who wanted answers, Obama gave none. He just seemed depressed. He said that Britain, like America, is at a “fork in the road.” He said that we’re too materialistic, and have lost two historic defenses against consumerism: religion and counterculture. (Hip-hop used to have a purpose, now rappers just talk about money.) He said there was a “significant risk” that AI becomes a tool of oppression and censorship, and said that Donald Trump has committed “violence against the truth.” “Old men hanging on who are afraid of death” cause 80 percent of the world’s problems, he told the audience, with exasperated frankness. His world view had lost.

After an hour-and-a-bit he was done. [British historian David Olusoga] said “Mr President, thank you for your leadership,” and Obama smiled, waved and left. People ran for the doors. To get the train home, to rush to their friends and loved ones, to proclaim that their king was dead.

Max Jeffery, The Spectator

Many Democrats are still mired in a state of low-level depression after Kamala Harris’ devastating defeat in the 2024 election. President Donald Trump has steamrolled Washington, and the party’s favorability has plunged to historic lows, including among Democrats, as the circular firing-squad continues over exactly why the party lost. Harris herself has come in for her share of blame, and in recent weeks, she has tumbled in the 2028 presidential polls; she now stands well behind her longtime frenemy California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

But you wouldn’t know it from the crowd assembled Wednesday at the cavernous Town Hall auditorium in New York City for an 8 p.m. “Conversation with Kamala Harris,” a book talk for the former vice president’s recently-released — and surprisingly sharp-edged — memoir of the campaign trail, 107 Days.

Here, the audience buzzed with excitement at the prospect of seeing Harris up-close, and the mood was festive. The event’s “featured cocktail” was the Madam VP, a tall drink made with gin, cassis, cardamom, honey and lemon. It was priced at $24, a likely reference to the campaign year. The audience members seated around me traded campaign stories, reminiscing. One had spent much of his summer door-knocking; another had been a delegate at the Democratic National Convention. The only indication that all was not well was the intermittent thump of pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ drums just beyond the venue’s doors, which persisted throughout the event. Soon, the mere sight of the failed presidential candidate and her husband, Doug Emhoff, prompted a standing ovation. Beside me, a woman shouted, “That’s my first gentleman!” Another, just behind us, chimed in: “We love you, Dougie!” The pair retreated backstage.

When I first bought my tickets for the event, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would this be a somewhat skeptical audience, loyal to the Democratic Party, but uneasy about Harris’ role in it? Would it be a somber occasion, a chance for reflection about a party or a candidate that failed to reach voters when it mattered most? Not quite. It became clear, instantly, that this wouldn’t be a tough crowd for Harris, nor a place for nagging negativity. This was a KHive reunion, and joy was on the agenda.

Several minutes later, Errin Haines, the event’s moderator and the founder of the nonprofit news outlet The 19th, took the stage and further set the tone. “We know that tonight’s conversation is not just about politics or power,” Haines told the crowd while introducing Harris. “It’s about legacy, it’s about leadership and it’s about the lived experience of breaking barriers in full view of the world. It’s about how history gets written and who gets to write it.” This prompted a wave of mmm-hmms through the thousand-person venue. Harris emerged onstage several minutes later, prompting another standing ovation.

Harris took great pains to emphasize that the final outcome of the titular 107 days — the loss of every swing state and the popular vote — had been the result of her simple lack of time. “It was an unprecedented election,” Harris averred. “Just think about this for a moment. The sitting president of the United States, three and a half months before the election, decides not to run for reelection. This sitting vice president takes up the mantle against the former president of the United States, who had been running for 10 years, with 107 days to go.”

Had she had more time, maybe, she could’ve sealed the deal. It’s true, everyone now agrees, that President Joe Biden should never have run for reelection in the first place. But it’s also true that much of Harris’ best polling was at the campaign’s outset, and arguably began slipping once Americans had gotten to see more of the candidate.

Haines shifted the conversation to the epigraph of 107 Days, a quote from Kendrick Lamar’s track “Loyalty” — “you being a loyal person, being loyal perhaps to a fault to President Biden.” Biden’s name prompted boos from the audience, one of only a few instances of such a reaction — the others occurring during references to Trump and his administration. But if the audience was expecting Harris to denounce her former boss, she gave them no such satisfaction. “This book is not about Joe Biden,” Harris explained. “This book is about those 107 days.”

By and large, this was an audience with little interest in relitigating the failures of the campaign — or, for that matter, Democratic campaigns before it. The very mention of Hillary Clinton’s name, for instance, drew no fewer than two separate rounds of applause. Clinton, Harris noted, had mentored her on the campaign trail. “We all hope to be mentored,” she reflected. “We all hope to have support from those who come before.”

spoke to three audience members after the event, and they all said they wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Harris in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, should she choose to run. Few seemed interested in even acknowledging the campaign’s failures.

“I think this campaign and this book is more of an example of how you can win, or how you can get close to [winning],” Don, a 31-year-old New Yorker, told me. “This was one of the closest elections in this century… so it almost happened.” Others considered it solely a matter of sexism and racism. “I think by that all accounts, we want to keep women down as a society, and unfortunately, she was a consequence of that,” said Stephanie, a 36-year-old New Yorker.

Turning to current events and the Democratic Party’s future, Harris posed more questions than she answered. “I always believed, and perhaps in retrospect naively, that if push came to shove, these titans of industry would somehow be among the guardrails to protect our democracy. But yet they’re kneeling at the altar of the tyrant. …Why?” And, “There’s also work to be done about reconstructing in a way that we ask ourselves, were we being efficient? Were we being effective? Were we delivering for the people?”

You could say Harris’ questions were rhetorical ones, and perhaps important. But they also betrayed what her critics have long argued is a certain hollowness to her political vision — still defined, almost a year later, by little more than her opposition to Trump. “Donald Trump campaigned by promising his supporters on day one, he’d bring down prices,” she explained, turning to the Democratic Party’s perceived weakness on the economy. “Here we are today. Prices are up, inflation is up, unemployment is up. He made those promises, and he broke them.”

Harris’ litany of unanswered questions also seemed to acknowledge, at least implicitly, that she’d mis-stepped in emphasizing the Trumpian threat to democracy as heavily as she had on the campaign trail. These institutions, Harris said, were not functioning as well as the Democrats had believed. “I caution us,” she said, “against having any nostalgia.”

The Democratic Party of 2025 is, in many ways, not the party it was just a year ago. For one, Democratic voters are more willing to radically experiment.

Case in point: The only figure whose name seemed to generate as much excitement than Harris herself was New York’s Democratic nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Two nights earlier on Rachel Maddow, Harris had rather tepidly backed the 33-year-old democratic socialist, who has yet to be endorsed by key members of the party establishment. (“He’s the Democratic nominee, and” — passive voice — “he should be supported.”) But now, Harris appeared more assured. “There’s a mayor’s race coming up in New York,” she said, drawing rapturous cheers from the hometown crowd. “I have endorsed Mamdani.” The applause swelled. “The enthusiasm, right?” she added, smiling. Haines asked whether Harris would return to New York to campaign for Mamdani. “Maybe,” Harris replied.

More than when she spoke about politics, though, Harris appeared most at ease dispensing life advice as the event segued into a Q&A session.

The first audience question, pulled from Haines’s pre-approved stack, came from an audience member named Layla, who asked Harris for career guidance. “As a woman in corporate America who aspires to lead,” she began, “what advice would you give me to … build influence before I have a formal leadership title and … work effectively with people who clearly do not want me to succeed?” Harris encouraged her to “choose your safe circle of people who have a sense of what you’re going through and are going to applaud your ambition.”

Danielle, another audience member, turned to Harris for parenting advice. She was expecting her first child, a boy. “I understand the huge responsibility I’m tasked with in raising this boy to have a good heart and a moral compass, which so many young men lack today,” she said. She wanted to “hear your thoughts and advice on raising him in this world and this current political climate.” Harris responded: “Don’t give up on our young men. They’re our young men, right?” Haines, for her part, sought Harris’ perspective on the nature of married life. “What did you learn about marriage running for president?” she asked. Harris advised: “Communicate, you know, in a way that is hopefully without judgement.”

Harris, to this crowd, was not only a politician but a figure of almost mythic proportions — a paragon of success professionally and personally. And, indeed, the specificity of Harris’ life advice seemed to exceed the precision of her political advice. “You described 107 Days as a political nonfiction thriller,” Haines quipped, “but I think it could also be a self-help for women in the workplace book.”

Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, which the Biden-Harris administration had aided with billions in arms sales and transfers to many Democrats’ dismay, did not receive a mention during the event (protesters interrupted an earlier talk that night). But the party’s deep divisions could no longer be ignored after audience members emerged from the event to a crowd of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. “Harris, Harris, you can’t hide,” chanted the protesters, bearing Palestinian flags and signs noting the quantity of arms sales and transfers Biden had approved. “Your legacy is genocide.”

“She is very much trying to apply this false, revisionist history that, while she was vice president and while she was campaigning for president, she was against the genocide in Gaza,” explained one protester, who identified himself only as R. “We know that this is not true. We do not forget.”

Both groups — Harris’ supporters and pro-Palestinian demonstrators — gathered near the venue’s exit, hoping to catch a glimpse of the former, and potentially future, presidential candidate even as it began to rain. Her security detail cleared a narrow corridor between them. Cheers erupted from one side, chants from the other, as Harris emerged and entered her motorcade. Once the black SUVs disappeared down the street, the two groups turned their attention on each other. First came the shouting, and before long, shoving.

“Joy is a strategy. It is a political strategy,” Haines had told Harris earlier that night. Evidently, the good feelings couldn’t last.

Alex Bronzini-Vender is a writer from New York.