There is no doubt that a lot of bad, big-government policies are in store. But if the prospect of Democrats returning to power is so terrifying, why on earth did Republicans elect a president and vice president as controversial as Donald Trump and JD Vance? Why did they support so many policies in clear opposition to the promotion of a free and virtuous society? Did they think a majority of voters would enjoy the result?

You cannot spend years governing this way, adopting tariffs and other policies that raise the cost of living, defying a clear directive to lower prices from voters in the previous election, and then expect the fear of what Democrats might do to spare your party from accountability.

Start with the moment Trump’s 2024 voters began drifting away: April 2, 2025. On “Liberation Day,” the president displayed a chart in the White House Rose Garden featuring tariff rates calculated with laughably incompetent mathematics. He then proceeded to raise taxes on nearly everything we buy from abroad, including from allies and uninhabited islands.

It’s true that voters were told there would be tariffs. In fact, they were sold the theory that tariffs could solve every problem. What they got was a president who taxed importers at his whim based on how he felt on any given day. Americans quickly realized they were the ones footing the bill, not foreigners.

Everything was more expensive, from steel to food to luxury products and basic necessities. When a conservative Supreme Court ruled last February that Trump’s tariffs were not authorized by the statute he relied on, the president quickly doubled down by turning to another faulty statute.

Meanwhile, the failed and chaotic tenure of the Department of Government Efficiency alongside a refusal to reform entitlement spending, additional war spending, damaging tax carveouts for tips and overtime and fresh giveaways to seniors left us with a $2 trillion deficit. It also fed inflation that no amount of blame directed at former Fed Chairman Jerome Powell could hide.

Immigration policy followed the same pattern. The administration did, in some respects, close the border, which many Americans supported. But after that, it decided the job wasn’t complete without raiding farms, meatpacking facilities, building sites and hotels. Beyond the negative effects for workers and employers, shocking images of draconian raids added to the political damage.

Farmers got the worst of it: In 2025, soybean exports to China fell 76%, beef by 69% and cotton by 85%. In December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by “unfair market disruptions.” It was indeed unfair, but that’s because farmers were repeatedly punched in the face by U.S. trade policies that destroyed their export markets. Now the unfairness extends to everyday Americans taxed to compensate the farmers.

Then came the war in Iran. Gasoline went from $2.98 a gallon in February to $4.15 on Election Day. Diesel, which rides along in the price of everything trucks deliver, hit $6.28, 65% above its prewar level. Moody’s puts the Iran bill at roughly $2,000 per household once mortgage rates, airfares and heating oil are counted.

Farmers took a second hit because one-third of the world’s traded urea, a product heavily used in agriculture, moves through the Strait of Hormuz. The price of nitrogen fertilizer roughly doubled in a matter of weeks.

Not everyone suffered, of course. Lobbyists and cronies thrived. When a tax on their inputs can be raised or waived by one erratic man, firms slow hiring and investing and plead for exemptions. In 2025, the number of registered clients lobbying on tariffs rose by 218%. Tech companies that pledged big domestic investments were rewarded with exemptions. Unsurprisingly, the artificial intelligence industry did well. The administration also took an equity stake in 41 companies, many of which have connections to members’ friends and family.

Vance now implies that the electoral drubbing happened only because of the war. That’s convenient. If the war explains everything, nobody has to ask about the failing populist promise that moving away from free-market policies will make America great again, or about how such a top-down system feeds corruption. Both are trademark policies of a MAGA movement that will presumably soon be led by Vance himself.

So yes, fear the Democrats. I certainly do. They’ll keep most of the tariffs, expand industrial policy, cheer the equity stakes and run even bigger budget deficits — or worse. That fear should have mattered before so many Republicans chose to tolerate intolerable MAGA policies and behaviors.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

Once Donald Trump’s skilled personal lawyer, Attorney General Blanche now occupies an office whose responsibilities do not include addressing the personal interests, political grievances and wounded vanity of the man who appointed him. Yet he behaves as though he is still sitting across the table from Trump, preparing another legal defense for his client.

His performance is not merely embarrassing. It is an assault on the constitutional separation of powers, an affront to the First Amendment and a disquieting demonstration that he is wrong for his job.

Last week, Blanche threatened Department of Justice investigations and prosecutions of Democratic members of Congress who have announced their intention to investigate the Trump administration. The president had already demanded that the DoJ investigate these lawmakers, characterizing their announced oversight activities as extortion and suggesting that they deserved imprisonment. Blanche, rather than explaining that Congress has an independent constitutional prerogative to investigate the executive branch, reinforced the president’s threats.

Asked whether lawmakers could be investigated or prosecuted, Blanche suggested that they should be worried and that criminal liability depended on what they say. He even suggested that there might be a criminal offense in threatening administration officials with investigations.

This is an extraordinary proposition coming from the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Since when did offering to investigate government officials become a crime? Since when did announcing an intention to exercise congressional oversight become grounds for a DoJ investigation? And since when does the attorney general get to decide that speech displeasing to the president is potentially criminal?

Congress is a coequal branch of government, with constitutionally assigned powers and responsibilities. Those responsibilities include examining the conduct of the executive branch, checking the expenditure of public money, scrutinizing the administration of federal agencies and determining whether laws have been faithfully executed. Congress cannot intelligently legislate, appropriate funds or exercise its constitutional checks and balances without investigating matters arguably related to those responsibilities.

The DoJ does not get to decide that an investigation is illegitimate simply because Trump dislikes its subject or fears its consequences.

Nor do members of Congress lack First Amendment rights. They retain the right to criticize the president, condemn his policies, accuse his administration of misconduct and publicly announce investigations. They may use harsh language. They may be wrong. They may be politically motivated. They may even be obnoxious. None of those characteristics transforms protected political expression into a federal crime.

There is an important distinction between the DoJ and other executive departments. The Commerce Department, for example, exists to administer almost blindly the policies established by the president and Congress. The attorney general, however, is a lawyer, and the DoJ exercises extraordinary powers over the liberties of every American. He and its prosecutors must obey the Constitution, federal statutes, judicial decisions and the rules of professional responsibility. The president’s political preferences do not override those obligations.

The danger is not theoretical. Earlier this year, the DoJ pursued criminal charges against six Democratic members of Congress, because they appeared in a video reminding members of the military that they must refuse unlawful orders. Trump had ignorantly denounced the lawmakers as traitors and suggested they deserved arrest and even execution.

The DoJ’s efforts to obtain indictments failed when a federal grand jury refused to bring charges. What a disgraceful spectacle: The nation’s chief law enforcement agency attempting to criminalize legislators for expressing an opinion about the constitutional obligation of military personnel stopped midstream by ordinary citizens!

Last month, the DoJ filed suit seeking to prevent Alaska from certifying its Senate election results if the administration’s preferred candidate lost. The court dismissed the case a week later, finding that the government’s requested relief was legally untenable and implicated fundamental voting rights. This was an extraordinary intrusion into state election administration, undertaken on the eve of voting.

These are not isolated examples of aggressive lawyering. They are evidence of a Department of Political Justice increasingly willing to use its enormous institutional power to accommodate presidential grievances. And they make Blanche’s latest threats against congressional Democrats particularly alarming.

The attorney general’s job is not to protect the president from embarrassment. It is to protect the Constitution.

Blanche’s oath was to the Constitution, not to Donald Trump. That oath includes protecting the speech of members of Congress whose words his boss hates and fears. It requires him to defend their right to investigate, criticize, question and hold the executive branch accountable.

A competent attorney general would have told Trump that his demand for investigations of political opponents cannot substitute for evidence of a crime. A fair attorney general would have reminded him that congressional investigation is a constitutional political process, not extortion, and that congressional oversight is not a criminal enterprise. A Constitution-defending attorney general would have underscored the independence of Congress rather than threatening its members.

An intellectually honest attorney general would have resigned rather than violate his oath of office. But Blanche has demonstrated a disturbing willingness to subordinate legal judgment to presidential anger.

The most frightening thing about an attorney general who threatens legislators is not that he might prosecute them. It is that he might succeed in frightening them into silence. That is precisely how constitutional government deteriorates: Not necessarily through the formal abolition of rights, but through the intimidation of those who exercise them.

If Todd Blanche cannot understand that elementary principle, he is not merely the president’s former lawyer. He is an unqualified attorney general, unfit to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Anyone who uses the Department of Justice to assault the constitutional liberties he swore to protect has forfeited the moral and constitutional authority of his office.

Written by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Official website; https://twitter.com/Judgenap

When people hear the words “civil rights museum,” they often think of history.

They think of photographs, artifacts, and stories from another era. They imagine a place where visitors come to remember remarkable people who confronted remarkable injustices.

The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem, opening next weekend, certainly will preserve history. But preserving history is not its primary purpose.

We did not build this museum because the civil rights movement is over. We built it because it is not.

At a time when Americans are more divided from one another, less trusting of institutions, and less engaged in civic life, our nation does not merely need better history lessons. It needs a new generation of citizens prepared to strengthen democracy and advance justice in their own communities.

That is why the Urban Civil Rights Museum is designed not just to be a repository of the past, but also as a bridge between generations.

The men and women whose stories fill its galleries never viewed themselves as historical figures. They were ordinary people confronting extraordinary circumstances. They organized their neighbors. They challenged discriminatory laws. They registered voters. They built businesses. They formed associations, churches, advocacy groups, and community institutions. They understood that progress is not something a nation grants. It is something people demand, defend, and build.

Too often, we talk about the Civil Rights Movement as though it were a completed chapter in American history. But the central questions that defined that movement remain open:

Who has access to economic opportunity?

Who can afford safe and stable housing?

Who has equal access to quality education?

Who participates fully in our democracy?

Who is heard and who is ignored?

The struggles may have evolved, but our responsibility to confront them remains.

That is why we believe a museum in the heart of Harlem can be more than a destination for visitors. It can be a catalyst for civic engagement. Young people who walk through its doors should leave with a deeper understanding of history, but also with a sense of obligation to shape the future.

They should understand that the right to vote survives only when people exercise it. They should see that economic justice requires organization, advocacy, and persistence. They should recognize that every major advance in American democracy began with citizens who refused to accept the status quo.

The museum is part of the Urban League Empowerment Center, a first-of-its-kind development that combines the preservation of history with the pursuit of opportunity. Alongside the museum are affordable housing, community organizations, retail businesses, and the National Urban League’s headquarters.

That is part of our message. Civil rights are not confined to exhibits and archives. They are reflected in whether families can find affordable homes, whether workers can earn living wages, whether entrepreneurs can access capital, and whether communities have the resources they need to thrive.

The Empowerment Center, as a whole, reflects a fundamental lesson of the civil rights movement: that democracy works best when opportunity is broadly shared and communities are equipped to flourish.

For generations, Harlem has been a center of Black political thought, cultural innovation, economic aspiration, and social change. People came here not just to express their dreams, but also to organize around them. Harlem has never been a place simply to remember history. It has been a place to make history.

That tradition continues with the Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem.  Here, we honor those who came before us, and ensure that their courage inspires those who come after us.

A museum cannot register voters. It cannot organize a neighborhood meeting. It cannot mentor a young entrepreneur or advocate for affordable housing. But it can remind us that ordinary people have always been the driving force behind extraordinary change. It can help us see ourselves not as spectators in the American story, but as the creators of it.

Written by Marc Morial

Official website; http://twitter.com/MARCMORIAL

And all over the world in Africa, Asia, Latin America, there was talk and movements informed by the moral and political imperative of the independence of countries, the liberation of nations and revolution for the masses who would imagine and bring into being a new history, promise and prospect for humankind. So it is in this exciting and uplifting context that I called and chaired our founding meeting at my apartment in Los Angeles at the end of the summer of ’65. And we, men and women of varied interests and ideas, sat down in the circle of shared social activist concerns, and diligently searched for ways we could develop and bring a distinct, useful and meaningful message and initiative to the Movement.

To raise up and continue the legacy of Malcolm was a central and priority shared concern. And so we wove within the fabric of Kawaida philosophy itself pivotal concepts in his social and ethical thought. These included his teachings of radical self- and social transformation thru the liberation struggle; the centrality of culture and cultural revolution in the liberational process; the need to return to the source, Africa, culturally, psychologically and spiritually to reaffirm our identity and dignity and extract paradigms of human excellence and possibility; the right and responsibility of resistance to injustice and oppression and of self-defense, armed and otherwise; Black united fronts; a God in our own image and interests and committed to justice and liberation; global pan-Africanism; and Third World solidarity.

Working within our developing philosophy of Kawaida, we also took seriously Sekou Toure’s call for “full reAfricanization”; and his concepts of the indivisibility of African freedom; resistance and liberation as acts of culture; and liberation as freeing of the mind and life, as well as the land. And from Frantz Fanon, we took the challenge to discover our generational mission and fulfill it in the struggle to start a new history of humankind and set afoot a new man and woman in the world. And this too we learned as a vital lesson from Fanon, that we must practice a deep-rooted self-determination, reach inside ourselves, think new thoughts and struggle to produce new ways of understanding and asserting ourselves in the world.

We defined ourselves as revolutionaries, those dedicated to radical, deep-rooted and far-reaching social change, indeed, the end of White supremacy and the creation of free space to imagine and bring into being new ways of being African and human in the world. But we did not seek to import our revolution and the strategies to wage the liberation struggle. On the contrary, we believed, then, as we do now, that we must create out of the rich, resilient and resourceful depths of our own culture ways and means not only to imagine liberation, but also ways to achieve it in sound and sustainable ways.

We also defined ourselves as cultural nationalists without surrendering our identity as revolutionaries. For as I argued in the Quotable Karenga, “culture is the basis of all ideas, images and actions; to move is to move culturally, i.e., by a set of values given to you by your culture”. Thus, as Toure, Fanon and Amilcar Cabral have argued, revolution, liberation and resistance are all acts of culture, conceived, made and carried out by a people whose culture demands it, legitimizes and sustains it. Here culture is conceived in the most expansive sense as the totality of sensibilities, thought and practice by which a people creates itself, celebrates, sustains and develops itself, and introduces itself to history and humanity. And we as a people are a cultural community, a cultural nation striving and struggling to come into being as a self-conscious and capable political power.

Kawaida cultural nationalism in its liberational and revolutionary thrust is based on three interrelated and interlocking propositions. First, the defining feature of a people is its culture. Second, for a people to be itself and free itself, it must be self-conscious, self-determining and rooted in its own culture. And third, the quality of life of a people and the success of its liberation struggle depends upon its waging cultural revolution within, and political revolution without, resulting in the radical transformation of self, society and ultimately the world. Whatever else may be said about cultural nationalism and its revolutionary and liberational character, conduct, history and future, these are its fundamental propositions and those by which we of Us understand and assert ourselves in the pursuit of our lives, work and struggle.

There is to our organization both a core set of values that represent our anchor and the source of our unbudging Blackness. We call these the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles): Umoja (Unity); Kujichagulia (Self-Determination); Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility); Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics); Nia (Purpose); Kuumba (Creativity); and Imani (Faith). We see these as values central to our self-understanding and self-assertion in the world as African people, ways of grounding, orienting and directing our lives, work and struggles.

In our (six decades) of work, struggle, service and institution-building, we have seen organizations come and go; some streaking across the sky like a comet with a great ball of light and then disappearing in the darkness below the horizon. But we are blessed to have been internally strong enough to weather the storms and the artificial hurricanes of history created by our oppressor and to see fundamental aspects of our work flourish in our lifetime. Yet we know the struggle is far from over, and there are so many social-media soldiers waging good-weather war in cyberspace, and too few all-seasons soldiers actually and ultimately engaged on the ground. And so even after (six decades) of struggle, we remind ourselves and urge our people to set aside any and all illusions and to intensify and expand the struggle constantly.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

America loves the strength of Black women. It just hasn’t always loved Black women. For centuries, Black women have been asked to carry more, endure more, sacrifice more, and forgive more, all while being judged more harshly than almost anyone else. From slavery to the present, stereotypes have painted them as less feminine, less deserving of protection, overly aggressive, hypersexual, and somehow built to withstand endless hardship. Those lies had a purpose: to excuse unequal treatment. What is remarkable is not that Black women persisted despite these barriers. What is remarkable is that they succeeded while carrying them. Too often, society has mistaken Black women’s survival skills for personality traits. Determination became aggression. Confidence became arrogance. Leadership became intimidation. Independence became hostility. Speaking the truth became “difficult.” The reality is that many of the qualities criticized in Black women are the very same qualities celebrated in others. For generations, America has depended on Black women to save institutions, communities, families, movements, and even democracy itself. Yet it has often hesitated to trust them with the same power they helped others achieve. Maybe the greatest misunderstanding in American history is this: Black women’s strength was never the problem. America’s discomfort with it was.

Have we finally begun to see Black women? Not just their beauty, but their brilliance. Not just their appearance, but their intellect. Not just their strength, but their humanity. For centuries, Black women have been forced to navigate a society that often denied them the fullness of their beauty because they did not fit Eurocentric definitions of what was considered desirable, feminine, worthy, or valuable. Their features were questioned. Their voices were dismissed. Their contributions were overlooked. Their sacrifices were expected. Yet despite those barriers, Black women continued to build, lead, nurture, innovate, organize, and transform communities, often without the recognition they deserved. Perhaps the greater question is not whether Black women are finally being seen. The question is why it took so long. Throughout this election cycle, Black media played a critical role in portraying Black women in their full humanity: as leaders, thinkers, visionaries, mothers, professionals, advocates, and agents of change. It provided a counter-narrative to stereotypes that have persisted for generations and reminded America of a truth Black communities have always known.

Black women are not one-dimensional. They are beautiful in mind, spirit, soul, and purpose. If we want future generations to inherit a more honest understanding of Black women, our support for positive, authentic Black media cannot be occasional. It must be intentional. Because representation is not just about visibility. It is about who gets to tell the story. And for far too long, Black women have had their stories told by everyone except themselves.

As Black women continue to make history, their success does more than fill offices, boardrooms, and leadership positions. It forces America to confront old assumptions, challenge outdated narratives, and reconsider who it believes is worthy of power, influence, and trust. Every barrier a Black woman breaks creates a wider path for those who follow. Every election won, business launched, hospital led, classroom transformed, and policy shaped chips away at stereotypes built over centuries. Black women are not simply participating in the future. They are helping define it. From business and entrepreneurship to healthcare, education, politics, and public service, Black women continue to demonstrate that excellence is not the exception. It is the expectation.

In a perfect society, achievement would be celebrated without qualification. Leadership would be embraced without suspicion. Success would not be viewed as a threat. But history teaches us that progress often makes those invested in the status quo uncomfortable. When historically excluded people rise, some mistakenly see equality as a loss. When power becomes more inclusive, some perceive it as displacement. Yet Black women have never allowed resistance to define their destiny. They have turned obstacles into opportunities, setbacks into comebacks, and barriers into bridges. And this time, they will not stand alone. Black men must do more than applaud Black women’s success. We must actively protect, support, and nurture it. We must pray for them, advocate for them, encourage them, defend them when they are unfairly attacked, and celebrate them while they are here, not just after history has validated what we should have recognized all along. For too long, Black women have carried the weight of communities, movements, institutions, and families without receiving the same level of support they so freely gave to others. That must change.

The rise of Black women is not a threat to Black men. It is a testament to what is possible when a people rise together. The true measure of progress will not be how many Black women break glass ceilings. It will be how many ceilings disappear because an entire community decided that Black women should never have had to fight through them alone.

The future belongs to those bold enough to imagine it, courageous enough to pursue it, and committed enough to build it. Black women have already proven they are all three. The question now is whether the rest of us will have the wisdom, humility, and courage to stand beside them.

The story of Black women in America has never been one of waiting to be chosen. It has always been a story of rising despite being overlooked, leading despite being doubted, and believing despite being discouraged. Today, we are witnessing more than electoral victories. We are witnessing the unfolding of a promise for which generations fought, prayed, sacrificed, and persevered. The rise of Black women is not a moment. It is a movement. It is a reminder that history bends when courage refuses to break. As Black women continue to ascend, may we not only celebrate their victories but also honor their humanity, protect their peace, amplify their voices, and support their leadership. The bridesmaids have become the brides, but the greater story is that Black women were always worthy of standing at the altar of opportunity, influence, and power. America did not create their greatness. It is finally beginning to recognize it.

The future will remember the elections, the appointments, and the achievements. But history may ultimately conclude that the greatest victory was not that Black women gained power, but that a nation finally began to recognize the power they had all along.

Seven Affirmations for Black Women

1. I am worthy of every room I enter and every opportunity I pursue.

2. My voice has value, my presence has purpose, and my leadership matters.

3. I refuse to shrink so others can feel comfortable with my greatness.

4. I am not defined by stereotypes; I am defined by my character, faith, and purpose.

5. I carry the strength of my ancestors and the promise of future generations.

6. I deserve joy, peace, success, and abundance without apology.

7. I am not merely making history. I am shaping the future.

Seven Quotes to Live By

1. “Never mistake my resilience for the absence of pain; I rose because I had to.”

2. “The world changes when Black women stop asking for permission and start walking in purpose.”

3. “Your power is not found in proving people wrong; it is found in becoming everything God created you to be.”

4. “Every ceiling broken by one Black woman becomes a doorway for another.”

5. “Do not dim your light to fit into spaces that were never designed to contain your brilliance.”

6. “What others call intimidating is often simply confidence wrapped in conviction.”

7. “Black women have never needed validation to be great. They only needed the opportunity to be seen.”

Three Calls to Action

1. Support Black Women’s Leadership

Make a conscious commitment to support, mentor, promote, vote for, and invest in Black women in business, government, education, healthcare, and community leadership. Representation matters, but support sustains it.

2. Control and Invest in the Narrative

Subscribe to Black newspapers, magazines, podcasts, websites, and media platforms. Share stories that accurately reflect the brilliance, diversity, and humanity of Black women. If we do not tell our own stories, others will tell them for us.

3. Turn Celebration into Action

Do not simply applaud Black women when they make history. Stand beside them as they make it. Advocate for equitable opportunities, challenge harmful stereotypes when you hear them, and create environments where Black women can thrive, not merely survive.

Staff Writer; Jamie Seals

May also connect with this brother on Twitter; mychocolatemind.

Also drop an email at; JSeals@ThyBlackMan.com.

But hopefully, not to the exclusion of doing what they were handed the majority to do. They need to make doing the people’s business — affordability, and health care, and the economy, and the war in Iran — even more important than pursuing corruption in the Trump administration.

Impeachment? Why? That was not on the table. It won’t lower gas prices. President Vance? Stop right there. Impeachment is a long, drawn-out process that sucks the oxygen out of the room.

The Democrats have a mandate to take on the affordability agenda. They don’t have a mandate to impeach President Donald Trump.

That leaves almost everything else on the domestic agenda open to a Democratic overhaul.

And Trump?

He thinks his veto is the answer, but that has its limits. A series of vetoes of popular programs only makes the case for a Democratic president in 2028. Let Trump say no to lower premiums and lower prescription drug prices.

Democrats need a domestic agenda that he blocks at his peril. The country needs to see Democrats organizing themselves to achieve that agenda. There are all these amazing new faces to deliver the Democratic message. Give them center stage and a national audience.

The country is very clearly hungry for change. That is what everyone who moved to the Democratic side from somewhere else was voting for. Change is not measured by the number of Beltway scalps you collect but by your impact on the family budget.

Can the Democratic Congress make things better for average Americans? Can they show that they understand the problems people face and actually have solutions to address them? That’s the challenge facing every Democrat in the new Congress.

And the war?

Donald Trump has no choice but to end it, one way or another. There is only so long you can pursue military action without popular support. In Trump’s case, the accusation is even more pointed because he promised no forever wars. And what do you call this? Can he find a face-saving exit strategy that doesn’t lead to more unflattering comparisons with Barack Obama? Not clear. How long can he sustain an endless war with a Democratic Congress? Even less clear. Trump is not going to go gently into the night; he is still trying to win even though his hand has obviously been weakened. Will he blame the Democrats if he has no choice but to beat a hasty retreat to an Obama-like deal, if he can still get that?

On the eve of the elections, Congress was right down there with your local used car salesperson at about an 18% approval rating. Hard to get much lower. Great potential to do better.

If not now, when? The country has put its faith in Congress to save our democracy from a corrupt administration which has neglected the needs of the people. The Democrats need to take on that corruption, which they are clearly gearing up to do, but not at the expense of addressing the affordability agenda. They need to do two things at once, and they have big enough majorities and strong enough leaders to do so.

Written by Susan Estrich

The man did not land like a candidate. He landed like a debt the country was finally getting around to paying. Hope, change, a face studied in living rooms that had long given up on seeing one of their own in that house. For those of us who remember the fights that came before, the election struck a chord that no legislative achievement could have struck on its own. A Black family crossed the threshold of the White House. Grandmothers wept. Congregations organized. The symbolism carried a weight that policy, by itself, was never built to bear.

Now turn and look at Hakeem Jeffries, and you are studying a different animal altogether.

Born in Brooklyn in 1970, the congressman became the first African American to lead a major party in Congress when House Democrats tapped him to take Nancy Pelosi’s place. Sit with that sentence a minute. Before him, the highest a Black lawmaker had ever reached in that chamber’s party ranks was James Clyburn holding the whip. So the milestone is genuine, historic, no asterisk needed. Yet nobody printed Hakeem’s face on a dorm room poster.

Why not? Because his job did not run on feeling. It ran on arithmetic.

Think about what the brother did on a given Tuesday. He counted heads, sat across a table from Speaker Mike Johnson, and traded away pieces of a spending bill to protect the pieces that mattered. During one funding fight he quietly muscled through a bump in earmark money for his side, then declined to brag about it. That right there was the work. Reporters even took to calling him the shadow speaker when Republicans struggled to hold their fractured majority together. Democrats supplied the votes that helped keep the government’s lights on.

None of that fits on a t-shirt. Nobody writes a gospel number about reconciling a continuing resolution.

Here is where I want to be straight with you about the trap we set. With Obama, the burden was to be the dream itself. For this generation it flipped into something that sounds easier and is not, the burden of being good at the job. Both weigh a ton. That first one damn near breaks a person, carrying the hopes of millions while you govern a country that spends half its breath reminding you what you are. The second looks small from the cheap seats. Go try it. Hold progressives and moderates in one room without the roof coming off, then manage to look like a winner when your side does not even run the floor.

Hakeem managed that tent about as well as any human could. His members voted together on the big party-line battles at rates north of 90 percent, the kind of discipline Pelosi herself would tip her hat to. He bridged the wings, bent where bending was required, and swallowed the shots from his left flank. Critics called him cautious, corporate, and too soft-spoken for a moment they believed demanded open fire. A New Yorker profile even questioned whether his careful approach left voters knowing what he really stood for. Fair or not, that critique tells you the size of the expectation gap this man lives inside every single day.

That gap, far as I am concerned, is the entire story.

We demand our Black leaders be two things at once, and those two things almost never fit in one body. Obama was the orator, the symbol, living proof the ceiling could shatter. He opened his mouth and stadiums went silent. The Brooklyn man is the mechanic under the hood, grease to his elbows, no cameras rolling. His job is to make sure the engine turns over when a shutdown comes creeping. One of them sold a vision to a packed arena. What the other does is duller and, some nights, more important, holding the rickety thing upright while the clapping drifts off somewhere else.

Look at the two jobs side by side. A president signs things, vetoes things, sends troops, stands at a podium when the nation is grieving. The other job runs on schedules, vote counts, and backroom horse-trading. The grind can last years, with no promise the voters will ever put a gavel within reach. It takes a different set of muscles. Takes a different kind of nerve too, the kind nobody throws you a parade for.

I came up watching Black men lead in ways the cameras never bothered to find. Deacons. Union stewards. The brother who ran the numbers for the whole block and never raised his voice once. We did not call that leadership back then, and we were wrong not to. It outlasted plenty of the loud men I could name. That is the lane Hakeem works, and you have to know the game to give it its due. Not the figure on the mountaintop. The one keeping the building from falling down.

Something almost cruel lives in how we grade these men. Obama got crowned and then got blamed for not being a messiah the minute governing turned ugly. With Hakeem it runs the other direction, plenty of respect and then a shrug, too dull to love. Same community raising both men, handing each one a scorecard he could never win.

Well, the gavel is closer than ever. When voters handed Democrats the House this month, they opened the door to something no African American has ever held. If elected in January, the Brooklyn man will become the 57th Speaker of the House. He would be the first Black person to grip that gavel, second in line to the presidency, inside a Capitol that enslaved hands helped raise. Let that settle a second. The mechanic is nearly at the mountaintop after all.

Here is the twist that captures the whole moment. Even with history within reach, there is a crowd at his back hollering move over. A petition opposing Hakeem for Speaker has already passed one million signatures, while others are calling on Chuck Schumer to step aside. Fight harder or make room, they say. Too cautious for this fight. Comfortable with the old ways. Yesterday’s news.

Are they wrong to demand change? I will not pretend the answer comes easy. Part of me bristles, because a Black man climbs for twenty years to reach the gavel his elders only dreamed of. Yet the welcome mat reads step aside. Nobody mailed Pelosi a retirement gift the week she made history. Still, the young folks have a real point, and pretending otherwise would be a lie. A party that refuses to let go of anything eventually chokes on it. And a man who cannot stand a few boos from his own bench has no business walking into the fight that is coming.

I do not read those petitions as an insult. The criticism is a tax, the toll the job takes now in a restless hour when patience starts to smell like surrender. Should Hakeem be the man his record suggests, he will carry the crown and the criticism in the same two hands, the way he has carried everything else.

Obama showed us what it looks like to dream out loud. This new leader is about to show us what it looks like to govern once the dreaming is done and the dishes still wait in the sink. Both matter. Either one standing alone leaves the house half finished.

And a people who only toast the dreamers, never the builders, got no business acting surprised when the house they dreamed about never quite gets built.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.

The very institution established to protect our natural rights has become our greatest threat.

The Fourth Amendment protects the right to privacy by prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and requiring judicial warrants supported by probable cause. Yet the National Security Agency has developed a surveillance apparatus capable of intercepting and examining all electronic communications traveling through the fiber-optic cables that carry the world’s internet traffic.

The NSA literally captures every keystroke and telephonic conversation of every person in America. It subjects Americans who are suspected of absolutely nothing to continuous surveillance. The distinction between collecting information first and examining it later offers little comfort to someone whose private life has become government property.

Privacy is not a privilege granted by government. It is a natural right protected by the Constitution. The burden belongs to government to establish probable cause before invading the privacy of an individual, not to its victims to demonstrate afterward why they deserved privacy before the government stole it.

And the loss of privacy produces fear. People who believe their conversations, correspondence, internet searches, medical, legal and banking records, and political associations are being monitored become less willing to be candid. They hesitate before criticizing or challenging government officials, or associating with controversial organizations. They begin self-censorship.

This is how surveillance destroys freedom without ever having to prosecute anyone.

Freedom of speech is the linchpin of all other freedoms. Without it, there can be no meaningful political opposition, no effective accountability, no public exposure of corruption and no peaceful means of challenging government abuses. George Washington warned that if men were prevented from expressing their opinions, reason would become useless and, “dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.” Yet the government deports lawful U.S. residents and threatens American college students because it hates and fears their speech.

Congress has enacted over 5,000 criminal laws and its agencies have produced over 300,000 regulations. No person can reasonably claim to understand all of them. Federal criminal laws are often written so broadly that ordinary Americans can violate provisions without realizing that they have committed a federal crime. Don’t dare write a check for less than a dollar, clean fish in a national park or toss caught fish back into the sea.

The Constitution was never intended to create a federal government with unlimited criminal jurisdiction. It establishes a government of limited and enumerated powers. It authorizes only one federal crime — treason. It does not grant Congress a general police power to criminalize whatever conduct it finds objectionable.

The proliferation of federal crimes is a signpost of government corruption. When almost every aspect of human activity can potentially be brought within some criminal prohibition, selective prosecution becomes an instrument of political power. The old observation attributed to Joseph Stalin captures the danger: “Show me the man and I will find you the crime.” A government with too many criminal laws can find a legal pretext to punish almost anyone it wishes.

Meanwhile, the government has demonstrated criminal irresponsibility with the people’s money. The government’s debt has now surpassed $40 trillion and grows by $2 trillion or more annually.

Perpetual war compounds the damage. For generations, administrations of both political parties have treated military intervention as an ordinary instrument of American foreign policy. Wars are launched, expanded and continued without the serious constitutional deliberation the Founders intended.

Congress has increasingly surrendered its responsibility to declare war, while presidents have claimed authority to commit American lives and resources to conflicts with no clearly defined objectives or endings.

War is the health of the state and the enemy of liberty. It produces death, taxation, borrowing, secrecy, executive power, censorship, surveillance and the diversion of productive resources into destruction. It creates permanent bureaucracies whose institutional survival depends upon permanent threats. The national security state becomes an unaccountable government within the government in the name of emergencies that never seem to end.

What makes this tragedy particularly infuriating is that neither political party can claim innocence. Republicans and Democrats have alternated control of the White House and Congress while expanding surveillance, increasing federal spending, accumulating debt, multiplying criminal statutes and perpetuating foreign military interventions.

The problem is not which politicians are in charge. The problem is the concentration of power itself.

Our elected officials increasingly behave as though the Constitution they have sworn to uphold is an inconvenient and avoidable historical artifact rather than the supreme law of the land. The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” If no law doesn’t really mean no law, what does it mean? It means whatever any five justices of the Supreme Court say it means, and that makes them — not the Constitution — the supreme law of the land.

The Declaration of Independence tells us that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Consent is meaningless if people are afraid to speak, cannot understand the laws governing them, are watched without suspicion and are forced to finance debts and wars they never authorized.

We were not born as subjects of Washington. We were born free, with natural human rights that no legislation or executive command has the moral authority to extinguish.

Today, the government doesn’t work for us. We work for it. We have lost the republic. It has become a fading bankrupt empire. It’s time for massive resistance to reclaim personal freedom — to alter or abolish the government that has failed to preserve our liberties and instead assaults them.

Written by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Official website; https://twitter.com/Judgenap

Each official will choose between letting a 22% automatic cut to benefits go through, finally making the program’s math work by reforming its outdated design, or letting Washington borrow trillions more to prevent any cuts. Few, if any, of the candidates said a substantive word about it while campaigning.

In fact, fiscal sustainability was remarkably absent all election season. During the 2010s, powerful politicians openly championed “austerity.” As late as 2018, according to AdImpact data reported by The Wall Street Journal, 140 political ads mentioned the debt or budget deficit. During this cycle, only 30 did, putting the subject 52nd among campaign topics.

That’s beyond crazy. It has been widely reported that in the fiscal year that just ended, government debt held by the public reached 100% of GDP, a level last seen following World War II. The deficit is nearly $2 trillion, or 6.2% of GDP. Interest payments have more than doubled in only four years, surpassing the United States’ bill for military spending.

And because the Treasury kept the debt’s average maturity short, high interest rates are hitting the budget very quickly. About one-third of the marketable debt — more than $10 trillion — must be refinanced in the next 12 months. This debt must be rolled over at the new rate, so interest payments will continue to explode.

Indeed, some of that debt was initially borrowed at much lower rates. The 30-year Treasury yield is near 5.31%. The Iran war explains part of that, but investors also question a government and Congress with no plan to back the debt with future surpluses. So, they’re charging more while they wait for answers.

This is the situation many of us warned about 15 years ago. At the time, we all got the same pat on the head. Politicians who ran on fiscal issues were mostly pacified. After all, interest rates were historically low, and markets were buying all the debt that Uncle Sam was putting out there.

With some economists, like Olivier Blanchard, Jason Furman and others, making the intellectual case for the debt having no real cost as long as interest rates stayed below growth rates — and with many of the same people believing that this would be the case indefinitely and that inflation had been defeated — politicians were more than happy to spend away and borrow to pay for it.

However, what we fiscal hawks warned about wasn’t the short-term risk of borrowing at such low rates. We warned about what came next. Low rates were never a law of nature. When they drifted back toward normal, the country got higher rates applied to a now much larger debt.

Public debt was roughly $10 trillion in 2011 (65.5% of GDP). It stands now at $32.6 trillion (100% of GDP).

So here we are. In a world where politicians almost always blame the other guy, nobody gets a pass. In the last two years, Republicans have been cutting some spending and then cutting taxes even more. President Donald Trump promised $5,000 checks to every adult, at a cost of $1.2 trillion, if his party kept control of the House and Senate. And the GOP long ago adopted Trump’s rule that the two programs driving the debt — Social Security and Medicare — are off-limits.

For their part, Democrats want to reverse recent Medicaid savings and restore expanded Obamacare subsidies, and they are of course opposed to any structural reforms of Medicare and Social Security. They pledge more taxes on the rich while sheltering everyone else, which amounts to a European-sized welfare state funded by perhaps 2% of taxpayers.

Voters don’t get a pass either. Polls say Americans worry about the debt, yet few accept the necessary spending restraint. Many had other things on their minds this fall, to be sure. But interest costs and trust-fund expirations won’t care who won on Tuesday.

Of course, many of the new legislators will think raising taxes is the way to go. However, it’s really hard to solve this problem on the revenue side. Revenue collection has hovered around 17% of GDP for the last half-century (including when income-tax rates were much higher than today). Meanwhile, spending has climbed from about 18% of GDP in the 1960s to more than 23%, with this growth concentrated in programs for the elderly.

Closing the tax code’s carveouts to special interests would help, but there is no path to sustainability that avoids cutting (or slowing the growth of) benefits, raising eligibility ages to reflect longer lives and putting Medicare on a budget.

The new class of senators must now deal with reality. I wish more voters had asked them how they’ll do it.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

But Wilson had a grander vision of why America should go to war.

The headline in the Washington Herald the next day said: “President Asks for War Declaration.”

“He pointed to the democratization of Russia, and declared the new Russia was a fit partner for a ‘League of Honor,'” said the first sentence in the Herald’s story about Wilson’s speech.

“He declared that the United States proposed to fight for ‘the ultimate peace of the world, and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included,'” reported the Herald. “And he placed the entrance of the United States into the war on the broad humanitarian basis that ‘the world must be made safe for democracy.'”

“I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate,” Wilson said of the German attacks on civilian ships.

“Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be,” he said. “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way.”

Wilson then turned from this realistic explanation of why America needed to defend itself against German aggression to applauding the revolution in Russia that had just overturned that nation’s tsarist government.

“Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future of peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?” said Wilson. “Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life.

“The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace.”

The same month Wilson delivered this speech, Vladimir Lenin arrived back in Russia, according to Britannica. Lenin, who founded the Russian Communist Party, had been living in exile in Switzerland and had returned to Russia through Germany with the aid of the German government, according to History.com.

By that October, Lenin’s Bolsheviks had seized control of the Russian government, and five years later, the Soviet Union was established, according to Britannica. The country that Wilson saw as an emerging democracy became a tyrannical force and enemy of freedom for decades.

It was 88 years after Wilson gave his speech to Congress, in which he described the Russian Revolution as having added the Russian people “to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace,” that President George W. Bush gave his second inaugural address. It was also less than four years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States that were carried out by al-Qaeda, which was then based in Afghanistan.

In his second inaugural address, Bush called for spreading democracy around the world.

“For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny, prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder, violence will gather and multiply in destructive power and cross the most defended borders and raise a mortal threat,” said Bush.

“We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion,” he said. “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

“So, it is the policy of the United States,” Bush said, “to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

After the 9/11 attacks, the United States launched a just and necessary war in Taliban-run Afghanistan, which had provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda.

Almost 10 years after the attacks — in May 2011 — U.S. forces raided a compound in Pakistan where al-Qaeda’s terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was then hiding, as reported on the FBI’s webpage on bin Laden. They killed him.

Ten years later, in August 2021, the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. That same month, under President Joe Biden, U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from that country.

Bush’s vision for “the expansion of freedom in all the world” did not work in Afghanistan.

Going forward, the foreign policy of the United States should not aim to change the nature of other nations. It should aim to preserve the security and freedom of this nation.

Written by Terence P. Jeffrey

Official website; http://twitter.com/terryjeffrey