The troubles Trump’s Republicans face are not a mystery. It was always unlikely that Republicans would maintain their hair’s-breadth House majority.

But the 2026 lineup of Senate seats looked favorable, with only one Republican defending a seat in a state Kamala Harris carried and all but one defending seats in states Trump carried by double digits in 2024. At least two Democrats were defending seats in states Trump carried in 2024, and retirements opened up two other seats in marginal states.

That picture has now changed. Persistent inflation, some of it plausibly triggered by Trump’s tariffs, has hurt Republicans. Democrats have sprinted to big polling leads in Georgia and North Carolina, and various combinations of weak Republicans and strong Democrats have left Republicans trailing in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas — states Trump carried by double digits two years ago.

Democrats are already planning investigations of Trump’s financial shenanigans and drafting articles of impeachment. They have high hopes of a 2028 trifecta: the House, Senate and presidency. Republicans’ trifecta hopes are clouded by the prospect of primaries pitting Trump supporters against his opponents.

What a different picture in the rest of the world. Populist veteran Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner for president of France next year, while next month’s snap election in Spain is likely to put the populist Vox party into a governing coalition.

Germany’s populist AfD just won the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, and it’s getting hard to imagine how the traditional parties can keep excluding it from federal coalitions. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, with roots in a populist party that had been excluded from power for years, heads the longest-serving government in post-World War II Italy.

Britain’s populist Reform UK party has lost its lead in public polls after the Labour government ditched Keir Starmer and installed Andy Burnham as prime minister. But it’s interesting that Labour, founded in 1900, felt obliged to reach beyond the usual parliamentary leadership ranks to select first a professional barrister and then a regional mayor. Reform UK, founded in 2018, is still polling ahead of the Conservatives, whose roots go back to 1846.

The picture is even starker in the Western Hemisphere. In November 2023, free-market booster Javier Milei defeated the Peronist candidate in Argentina after attacking high inflation and bloated bureaucracy. In the 15 months beginning in April 2025, conservative populists defeated leftist candidates in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Peru and Colombia.

In the first round of elections this past Sunday in Brazil, Flavio Bolsonaro led incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva 47% to 45%. Bolsonaro’s father, Jair, now confined to house arrest, was elected in 2018 and lost in 2022 to Lula, as he is usually called, 51% to 49%. Lula was previously elected in 2002 and 2006, and his Workers’ Party has won five of the last six presidential elections. He was leading in preelection polls, but Flavio Bolsonaro is considered likely, though not certain, to win the Oct. 25 runoff.

What accounts for the populist wave? In Europe, many voters have recoiled against high levels of immigration, especially of young Muslim men, amid worries that they are not assimilating economically or culturally. Bloated government payrolls and high rates of violent crime are populist complaints in both Europe and South America.

The populist complaint, voiced in loud and raucous terms, is that established parties in government have not just failed to solve these problems but have refused to do so. They have cordoned off populist parties and candidates, as if opposing open borders for immigrants who are difficult to assimilate or supporting tough sentences for violent criminals were morally equivalent to Nazi or communist mass murder.

So how do we explain why populism is on the rise beyond the U.S., even as it seems mired in failure here?

One explanation is that Trumpism is not really mired in failure. Trump has been president of the U.S. for almost six of the last 10 years and has had substantial policy successes. They range from economic growth exceeding that of other major countries to the recent treaty promising American control of Greenland.

That success is part of his problem. After three and a half years of the Biden administration arguing that the law left it no alternative to an open-door immigration policy, the second Trump administration has proved that the border can be controlled.

This success signals to a future administration that it will pay a steep price if it returns to open borders. But for the moment, voters no longer need a Trumpist to close the border. It’s been done.

And, given the messiness of everyday life, it’s been done with some collateral damage to the populist cause. Consider the heavy-handed Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Minneapolis choreographed by the oddball Homeland Security appointee Kristi Noem and her consigliere, Corey Lewandowski.

There is something in the nature of populist politics — the willingness to take on and persevere against established media, corporate, academic and party elites — that produces a peculiarly personal kind of leadership. Success in ignoring hoary shibboleths only encourages such leaders to defy warnings they would be better off heeding.

Populist politics has given us the family dramas of the Trumps in America, the Le Pens in France, and the Bolsonaros in Brazil. It has given America a president who threatens the sovereignty of friendly or largely unoffending allies such as Canada and Denmark.

It has saddled the Republican Party with inflation imposed by tariffs for which there is no perceptible demand from even the smallest subgroup of the electorate. Yet Trump supplies them in abundance, driven by idiosyncratic theories he concocted in the 1980s.

The president’s party has suffered as well from his choice of suboptimal Republican nominees, which has already cost Republicans several Senate seats and seems on the verge of, amazingly, costing them a Senate seat in Texas as well. A leader who has gotten where he is by defying conventional wisdom that proves wrong gets into the habit of defying it even when, as on many occasions, it is absolutely right.

From time to time, we hear predictions from politicians, both populist and conventional, that their side will govern for the next generation. That seldom happens. The Democratic Party won House majorities in every election from 1954 through 1992. But Republicans held the presidency for 26 of those 40 years, and Democrats were usually split between Southern conservatives and Northern liberals.

In the 32 years since 1994, presidential elections have produced party trifectas — majorities in both houses of Congress and control of the presidency — in six of eight election years. But only once did a trifecta last as long as four years, and in one case, it ended after five months. Populist movements can achieve worthy goals spurned by more conventional forces. But they are subject to the rules that every person’s strength is also his weakness and that, in human affairs, success tends to breed failure.

Written by Michael Barone

Official website; https://x.com/MichaelBarone

Local and state governments are tasked with providing basic services to their citizens, and those services should never be made partisan or racial. Sometimes state and local officials need to work together to provide the basic necessities of life to their citizens. Jackson, Mississippi, is the perfect example of the challenges faced by a blue city trying to function in a red state.

Jackson is not just any city in Mississippi; it is the largest city in the state and the seat of state government. Despite these distinctions, Jackson finds itself in a political trap by being a blue city in a red state. In many ways, Jackson is no different from other Southern cities faced with court-ordered integration of the public schools along with subsequent white flight. The population, which soared to over 200,000, has since dropped to about 150,000 after more than 40 years of decline. When white residents fled the city for neighboring suburbs, they left their love for Jackson behind. Today, Jackson is not only a blue city, but it is also an 82% Black city with 25% of its residents living in poverty. The goal of racial separation was achieved, and along with the white flight, there was lasting damage to the city’s tax base. As residents continued to leave, home values plummeted, driving down tax revenues and requiring tax rate increases.

Businesses that could provide the city with a stable tax base also followed residents, relocating to areas with lower tax rates, newer infrastructure, and whiter populations. Those who chose to neglect and ignore Jackson because of the red/blue, White/Black, or the urban/rural divide may never realize that holding back and disinvesting in Jackson will also hold back the state. Mississippi’s rural lawmakers in the Republican-dominated state legislature are following the long tradition of “separate and unequal” by intentionally failing to provide the majority-Democrat city with the adequate funding and resources needed to address its aging infrastructure. The practice of “separate and unequal” will cause one to watch the suffering and misery of people of color without being moved by it.

Before Jackson faced its 2021 water crisis, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and Republican lawmakers repeatedly killed the city’s efforts to adequately fund essential water treatment upgrades. State lawmakers previously denied allowing the city to raise infrastructure funds through a sales tax increase. A bill that would have authorized a bond issuance to help Jackson repair and improve its water and sewer systems died in the Republican-controlled state House Ways and Means committee. In 2021, when approximately 40,000 Jackson residents went weeks without running water, Reeves told city leaders that they needed to do a better job “collecting their water bill payments before they start going and asking everyone else to pony up more money.”

While water is a basic necessity of life, denying it by allowing critical systems to deteriorate is cruel and inhumane. Due in part to severe flooding, Jackson’s treatment plant ultimately failed, leaving thousands of city residents without water to drink, bathe, or even flush toilets. “Ideally, infrastructure serves as a shared foundation for economic, environmental, and public health between different neighborhoods and municipalities,” scholars at the Brookings Institute wrote in March 2021, after Jackson faced another severe water shortage. “However, infrastructure is often poorly maintained or intentionally overlooked in particular places, leading to a lack of access, affordability, and safety for many communities of color.”

Understanding this single Jackson, Mississippi, example means understanding the governing pattern when blue cities are acted upon by red state governments everywhere.

As a result, a group of 15 Democratic mayors governing in Republican-dominated states is building a new Blue Cities/ Red States Coalition that aims to influence national politics as a center-left alternative to both the MAGA movement and what they describe as “far-left dysfunction” from groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. The founding mayors govern cities including Cleveland; Montgomery, AL; Little Rock, AR; Tucson, AZ; Jacksonville, FL; Miami;  Atlanta; Boise, ID; Kansas City, MO; Lincoln, NE; Columbus, OH; Tulsa, OK; and Memphis. According to its website, the coalition is needed to address state legislatures’ infringements on blue city governments. In an era of political polarization, the coalition seeks to bring together mayors working to address some of the nation’s most pressing challenges in complex “red state” environments. It shows that these local leaders understand what happens in Jackson can happen to them as well.

Written by David W. Marshall

Official website; https://davidwmarshallauthor.com/

One may purchase his book, which is titled; God Bless Our Divided America: Unity, Politics and History from a Biblical Perspective.

That bizarre episode illustrates the perverse consequences of trying to disguise the brutal reality of capital punishment by dressing it in medical garb. Although most Americans say murderers like Pike should be executed, the method they prefer suggests they are squeamish about admitting what that entails.

Last year, Gallup put support for the death penalty at 52%, 28 points lower than the peak recorded in 1994. According to several surveys, Americans overwhelmingly view lethal injection, first adopted by Oklahoma in 1977, as “the most humane” method of execution, preferring it to firing squads, hanging, the electric chair and the gas chamber.

The Supreme Court embraced that view in 2008, when it upheld Kentucky’s three-drug execution method, which critics portrayed as iffy and needlessly complicated. At that point, three dozen states had adopted lethal injection, which Chief Justice John Roberts portrayed as the result of “an earnest desire to provide for a progressively more humane manner of death.”

As Roberts saw it, lethal injection was “more humane” than “the firing squad, hanging, the electric chair, and the gas chamber.” But while lethal injection might look less ugly than those older methods, appearances can be deceptive.

As Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno noted a few months before that decision, execution methods that are less painful to watch may not be less painful to experience. “To me,” she told The New York Times, “the firing squad is the most humane,” although it is “perceived to be the most brutal.”

Since then, most death-penalty states have shifted to a single-drug protocol, typically involving a lethal dose of pentobarbital. But as the attempted execution of Pike shows, that change has not eliminated the challenge of finding a usable vein and making sure the drug enters the bloodstream rather than surrounding tissue — a task that can be complicated by preexisting medical conditions.

Pike’s aborted lethal injection was the second such failure in Tennessee this year, and it prompted Gov. Bill Lee to suspend executions until he can clarify exactly what went wrong. But last week’s “tragedy” (as Lee described it) was just the latest example of a problem that goes back more than 40 years: prolonged lethal injections featuring disturbing signs of the needless suffering that the method is supposed to avoid.

Lethal injection drugs, which are difficult to source because pharmaceutical companies are loath to supply them, also have proven to be exorbitantly expensive, costing as much as $300,000 for each dose of pentobarbital. And since the drug degrades relatively quickly, much of that money may be wasted when pentobarbital goes unused for longer than its 90-day shelf life.

Largely for those reasons, legislators are reconsidering the virtues of firing squads, which five states currently allow in at least some circumstances. Condemned killers also see an advantage: Last year in South Carolina, three prisoners chose the firing squad over lethal injection.

It is not hard to see why. Reviewing cases from 1890 through 2010, the Death Penalty Information Center found that lethal injection had the highest rate of botched executions: about 7%, compared to 5% for lethal gas, 3% for hanging and 2% for electrocution. The rate for firing squads was 0%.

Such evidence underlines a point that states overlooked in their rush to embrace lethal injection: Prettifying executions does not necessarily make them quicker or more reliable. The quest for “more humane” execution methods, ostensibly an effort to minimize the discomfort of condemned criminals, actually aims to relieve the public’s discomfort with killing people in cold blood.

Written by Jacob Sullum

Official website; https://x.com/jacobsullum

A new Wall Street Journal poll finds remarkable bipartisan support for government limits on prices, with 93% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans supporting capping prescription drug prices. Nearly four in five voters support capping credit card interest rates at 10%. And large majorities favor capping child care charges for working families.

The Journal describes these policies as “populist.” That’s fair, although populism means something more specific than just being supported by the people (or the consumer). Political scientists generally define populism as a political approach that pits ordinary people against an elite group that’s seen as serving its own interests. Populism can therefore come from the left or the right, which helps explain today’s strange alliances.

Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley agree on a 10% credit card interest rate cap. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren can champion limits on child care costs while President Donald Trump creates a government website directing consumers toward discounted prescription drugs. Different political tribes are embracing the idea that if something costs more than most people think it should cost, the government should make it less expensive.

But if the idea is to advocate for ordinary people against powerful interests, an irony lurks.

First, few people are as powerful or more self-interested than those in government. As Ronald Reagan famously observed, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” It’s not just because the government has the power to coerce — to take resources as glibly as it hands them out. It’s that government officials have an incentive to promise voters things for free, and those promises are impossible to fulfill. Reagan knew how easily government intervention and bureaucracy can complicate economic issues and hurt those it set out to help.

The price controls that so many Americans now clamor for are perhaps the best example. Behind their support is an assumption that prices are just the product of the desires of powerful and heartless sellers. The reality is quite different.

Prices are the manifestations of countless decisions by buyers and sellers, each acting on individual knowledge no one else has. No buyer’s budget and needs, and no seller’s costs and offerings, are identical. Only a free market can account for this and decide whether a price sticks. Creating laws to cap prices doesn’t make scarcity go away. It just shows up as empty shelves instead of a market-determined price.

Consider credit cards. A 10% interest rate cap sounds lovely. Many Americans pay twice that. Why not simply tell banks that’s the limit? Because an interest rate isn’t an arbitrary number. It is the price of credit that reflects funding costs, administrative expenses and, not least, expected default risks.

Congress can cap the rate, but it can’t cap the risk. When the price a lender can charge falls below what the risk costs, lending stops. Lenders turn down applicants, cut credit limits and close accounts. The borrowers the cap was supposed to protect still need the money. They end up at the payday lender or the pawn shop instead. In other words, interest rate caps hurt the economically vulnerable people they are supposed to help.

The same problem is even more stark with child care. The service is expensive because caring for small children requires a lot of labor and demand is high, especially when governments subsidize it through vouchers and tax credits. Meanwhile, state and local authorities restrict child care supply through staff-to-child ratios, credential mandates, zoning bans on home-based providers, costly building codes and more. No wonder prices are so high.

Capping those prices won’t help. If providers cannot cover their expenses at the mandated price, some will reduce capacity. Others will close. The parents lucky enough to secure a remaining slot might pay less. Others will find no available care. The government cannot decree the additional workers and facilities necessary to fill the gap it created.

Prescription drugs are more complicated, but the basic trade-off remains. Reducing drug prices can benefit patients today, at least on the surface. However, developing new drugs is extraordinarily expensive and risky. Expected future revenues help determine how much companies invest in research. Thus, capping prices eventually reduces the number of new drugs that reach the market. Over time, fewer lives are saved.

That example also illustrates why price controls are such seductive politics. Their benefits are highly and immediately visible, while their costs are often harder to spot.

Politicians can legislate lower prices; they cannot legislate away scarcity, other costs or risks. If populism really means standing up for ordinary people, then its policies should be judged not by popularity but by how they affect ordinary people. And for the average American, price controls hurt.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

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

Space doesn’t permit a complete description of all the alleged conduct (you can easily find great detail online should you choose to), but suffice it to say that it involved a great deal of alcohol, people snorting ketamine off each other’s bodies, agreeing to a threesome (and perhaps — but not definitely — more), and men who were with “Jane Doe” sending vulgar texts to fraternity brothers inviting them into the room for “free (sex).”

Just for starters.

“Jane Doe” eventually went to campus authorities, and disciplinary actions were taken against the young men after a lengthy set of hearings. She also reported the events of the evening to the police, but in her statement, she said that she engaged in the conduct willingly. That statement convinced the district attorney not to prosecute. Doe has since reconsidered the events that transpired that night — and provided more detail to law enforcement. She now claims that she was too intoxicated to have consented, and she is suing Cornell University, two bars where she was served alcohol the night of the Chi Phi party, the fraternity and the seven men she accuses of sexually assaulting her, under theories of negligence, breach of contract, sexual assault and battery and violations of New York’s Human Rights Law. No criminal charges have yet been filed against any of the men she accuses of sexual assault, but New York governor has appointed the state’s Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor to investigate.

And so, the legal machinations begin.

One of the Chi Phi men she has accused claims that he was unconscious and that Jane Doe took advantage of him, so he’s also a victim of sexual assault. The fraternity is defending itself by characterizing the evening as a “consensual orgy.” Cornell’s students are holding sit-ins to protest “rape culture” on campus and calling for the resignation of the university’s president.

In the absence of all the evidence, I’m going to refrain from offering an opinion as to the legal liability of the parties. But I am wondering: While everyone is now scrambling to establish (or escape) legal liability, where is the much overdue national discussion about moral accountability?

How are we instructing young people to form their personal behavior?

We could start with binge drinking. Why do both young men and young women at colleges and universities think that entertainment at college means getting blotto, regardless of the risks it poses?

It’s not just sexual assault. According to statistics kept by the U.S. government, more than 1,500 college students are killed annually by alcohol-related accidents. In fact, accidental injuries are the leading cause of death for 18- to 24-year-olds, and many of these deaths involve drunk driving, but other causes are alcohol poisoning (the leading cause of death in fraternity and sorority hazing cases), drowning and fatal falls. The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Disease further reports that 95% of violent crime on campuses involves alcohol use by the perpetrator, the victim or both.

Why does a young woman on a college campus think it’s the right thing to go to a fraternity and have a threesome? To let strangers snort drugs off her body? To snort drugs off someone else’s body? Why do these young men think that inviting a girl you barely know — or don’t know at all — to have an orgy is a perfectly fine thing to do? Why do they think it’s suitable behavior to send out an email or text to their fraternity brothers, encouraging them to join in? Why doesn’t anyone step in to stop this?

We should be asking important questions like these. But we aren’t. Because unlike questions about legal liability, we won’t get to point the finger at someone else, and we won’t like the answer.

The answer is that young Americans indulge in behaviors like these that damage themselves and others because that’s what’s been promoted to them since they were old enough to look at a screen. Hollywood, the music industry, the media — even some academic theorists — routinely promote promiscuous, experimental and irresponsible sexuality as the pinnacle of freedom. Some popular musicians are notorious sex offenders (though few are prosecuted for it). The hottest shows feature episode after episode of indiscriminate hookups — often fueled by alcohol and drugs. The writers and actors win awards. They appear on magazine covers. They grow incredibly wealthy.

Don’t tell me we’re not glamorizing this behavior; we are.

We can’t allow the culture to promote sex as nothing more than drunken recreation, a source of personal gratification or a spectator sport, and then pretend to be shocked when the young audience gets the message.

Nor can we pretend that situations like the Cornell case are purely matters of law and legal issues. That rationalization lets us continue our comfortable hypocrisy and ignore the roles we have played in letting things get as bad as they are.

The good news is that things could change quickly if students simply decided that they wanted more. As I wrote in a column 11 years ago:

“Men: What if you saw yourselves as gentlemen — men of honor, whose social responsibility it was to protect the women you are with (for an evening or longer)? What if you saw your genetic material as something to be preserved for the creation of the children you deliberately decide to bring into the world with a woman of your choice, instead of accidents to be aborted out of inconvenience?

“Women: What if you refused to settle for a drunken hookup in a dorm room with an equally inebriated stranger? What if you decided that your sexual activities would be more rewarding if your inhibitions were removed not by alcohol or drugs, but by the security of a stable relationship?

“This wouldn’t require new laws, more regulations, heightened social stigma or ‘shaming.’ This is about the possibilities of radically altering the cultural landscape through the power of personal choice. In a culture like ours that worships ‘choice,’ why shouldn’t we acknowledge that there are better choices?”

True then, true now. Students have far more control over the culture of college campuses than they realize. They just need to exercise it. That said, the older generations could make their lives much easier if we had the courage to admit that yes, sexual behavior has moral — not just legal — implications.

Written by Laura Hollis

Official website; http://law.nd.edu/directory/laura-hollis/

Consider the September employment report, released October 2. The economy added just 29,000 jobs. Earlier estimates for July and August were revised downward by a combined 60,000. July, initially reported as a month of job growth, now shows a loss of 10,000 jobs. These numbers hardly support the president’s extravagant celebration.

The overall unemployment rate was 4.2 percent, a relatively low figure. But whose unemployment are we discussing? Black unemployment rose from 6 percent in August to 7 percent in September. White unemployment was 3.6 percent. Black workers were unemployed at nearly twice the rate of white workers.

Monthly figures fluctuate, particularly for smaller demographic groups. One month should not carry an entire argument. Yet the familiar racial disparity deserves scrutiny every month. When politicians celebrate the national unemployment rate while overlooking Black unemployment, they erase people whose economic circumstances complicate their preferred story.

A presidential declaration does not pay the grocery bill. It does not fill a gas tank, cover the rent, or produce a job for someone who has been looking for months. And a national economic average tells us precious little about the distance between those enjoying prosperity and those struggling to survive.

A presidential declaration does not pay the grocery bill. It does not fill a gas tank, cover the rent, or produce a job for someone who has been looking for months. And a national economic average tells us precious little about the distance between those enjoying prosperity and those struggling to survive.

What does a “strong economy” mean to the worker whose application goes unanswered? What does it mean to the family drawing down savings while waiting for a paycheck? Losing employment can mean losing health coverage, falling behind on housing payments, and postponing an education. For households with little accumulated wealth, unemployment can turn a manageable budget into an emergency.

On October 5, the national average price of regular gasoline was approximately $4.37 a gallon. In Washington, DC, it was about $4.45. Nationally, filling a 15-gallon tank cost roughly $65. Retail diesel averaged $6.32 a gallon, adding pressure to businesses that move food, equipment, and other necessities. Prices had eased over the preceding week, but a modest decline does not make an expensive tank affordable, nor is it acceptable when precipitously higher year-over-year from 2025.

Ask a farmer about this supposedly magnificent economy. John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association, told NPR in September that filling his tractor cost roughly $1,000. He was paying about $7 a gallon for diesel, nearly twice what he paid a year earlier. “This is a national farm crisis for farmers,” he said.

USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will rise nearly 29 percent this year. For Black farmers, whose operations are generally smaller and whose access to credit is more limited, another surge in operating costs can threaten both a livelihood and the land that sustains it. You cannot harvest a crop with a presidential boast.

Trump’s October 5 diesel order offers an election-season promise of relief, with crucial details left to Treasury. It directs officials to pursue tax deferrals for highway use of off-road diesel, not guaranteed tax forgiveness. Tractor fuel already receives tax-exempt treatment. Farmers hauling crops may benefit, but postponing taxes does not solve high fuel prices.

The latest inflation report, for August, tells a story families know from their ballooning bills. Overall prices were up 3.4 percent from a year earlier, but energy prices jumped 16.3 percent. Gasoline surged 27.4 percent, and home heating oil soared 52 percent—a punishing increase as winter approaches. Groceries, electricity, and shelter also cost more. This is the president’s “greatest economy”? families paying more for the necessities they cannot do without.

These increases arrive on top of prices families already found difficult to manage. Slower inflation does not restore yesterday’s purchasing power. It means prices are rising more slowly. People waiting for their old grocery budget to buy their old grocery basket understand the distinction.

An economy can expand while leaving millions financially insecure. Investors may celebrate rising asset values while renters wonder how to renew a lease. A household with substantial savings can absorb higher fuel costs. A household counting dollars until payday has fewer choices. Economic growth matters, but so does its distribution.

The president wants credit for prosperity. Then he should answer questions about who receives it. Where are the opportunities for workers excluded from the celebration? What is being done to close the racial employment gap? How are families supposed to manage the cumulative increases in their basic expenses?

Voters should ask these questions of every candidate seeking their support. They should demand specifics about employment, wages, housing, transportation, and the ability to build savings. Campaign enthusiasm is no substitute for economic security.

Calling this the greatest economy in our history is an invitation to examine the evidence. That evidence includes weak hiring, persistent racial disparities, and household expenses that continue to climb.

The president can keep repeating his false superlatives, while families still have figure out how to pay their rising bills. The question persists: A strong economy for whom?

Written by Julianne Malveaux

Official website; https://www.juliannemalveaux.com

Due to the reach of his story, Bogie was able to surpass his $66,000 fundraising goal on GoFundMe. But for millions of others, the decision is more dire.

On July 1st, just over a year after the Big Ugly Bill gutted key government programs to fund tax cuts for the richest among us, the Department of Education issued its new student loan guidance. Under them, the Graduate PLUS, financial aid with higher loan limits to help students pursuing graduate and professional degrees, were eliminated. And new student loan caps took effect that in many cases do not cover the cost of attendance for millions of students. The result is more students either dropping out of college or unable to attend at all.

It’s no secret that Black students leverage student loans more than their peers from White families. It’s also no secret that the largest growing population of young people attending college are Black. And make no mistake, it is no coincidence that under this administration, this year, education is becoming further out of reach.

For many, critics of higher education have blamed universities for raising their tuition and fees to figures that have ballooned the federal deficit and left millions burdened with debt that they will never be able to repay.

But the solution to skyrocketing student debt shouldn’t be to punish students pursuing a better life. And neither is threatening to strip schools of much needed federal dollars for having diversity pipeline initiatives like this administration is actively trying to do. A discriminatory action that already follows illegal cuts to NIH research funding that that universities, from Harvard to Stanford, have sued to stop.

No student should have their dreams deferred because the government would rather finance the dreams of the rich than support them on their education journey.

And the federal government should not be allowed to tell someone the value of their dream by denying access to loans because of their major. In the latest slap in the face to America, the Department of Education released a list of college majors that it proposes cutting student loans that it deems “don’t pay off.”

One of which is social work; a growing field that addresses the fallout of growing wealth inequality in our country and the spiking mental health crisis.

In short, the Department of Education not only believes solving our greatest social and societal issues doesn’t pay off, by cutting access to jobs that pay a living wage it’s also creating an enviroment that contributes to them.

If education is our tool to change the world, then we need it more than ever in this rapidly changing economy, ecosystem, and geopolitical climate. And it is clear that the Department of Education in this current administration is either blithly unaware of that fact, or intentionally a role in limiting the earning potential and economic freedom of millions of Americans.

The National Urban League make a commitment through our programs, like Project Ready, to ensure that all students have an education the prepares them for college, work, and life. Now we’re pushing for the Department of Education to do the same by removing these discriminatory caps on student loans, restoring funding to institutions of higher learning, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and letting students decide what field of study is “worth it.”

Written by Marc Morial

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

In what was considered no surprise, media reports circulated that Russian, Iranian, Chinese and other foreign actors were actively attempting to interfere and influence the November mid-term elections. Although the reports suggested that foreign governments are involved, the Chinese government makes no comment, completely ignoring the allegations.

As for the Russian and Iranian governments, irrespective of each other, denied the allegations and countered that American politicians, podcasters and influencers had done an outstanding job of undermining confidence in the US electoral system without any outside help. Those governments mockingly pointed out the last several years certain sectors of the US political establishment had in an unending crescendo alleged vote fraud and tainted elections.

Was it any wonder, the Russians, Iranians and others asked, that American voters had lost confidence in its government’s ability to hold open and fair elections. They pointed to prominent  US leaders who continually undermined their own electoral process. Before one vote was cast some US politicians proclaimed the election would be stolen.

As election day neared reports started circulating that various voter suppression tactics were occurring. That insidious attempts to confound and confuse voters had been hatched. Fake ballots were mailed to voters with misleading and false information. Fake candidates, false polling places and polling times appeared on the ballots.

After mail in voting started there were reports of a significant amount of returned mail in ballots being destroyed in areas where Democrats usually did well. Democratic leaders appealed to the FBI to investigate. Their requests fell on deaf ears. The incidents only served to raise more voter concern about election fraud and insecurity.

AI generated fake campaign ads flooded internet websites with misleading and misinformation as well as outright election lies. Appeals to the White House, Congressional leaders and FBI went unanswered. Voters’ mistrust and anger reached an all-time high.

Individuals and vigilante groups decided to take matters into their own hands. Without any legal authority such individuals and groups started to actively and aggressively patrol polling places.

They demanded individuals preparing to vote to provide documents that indicated their identity and their citizenship. Their actions intimated voting officials who were supposed to know better but remained silent in fear of confrontation.

Some voting officials and voters challenged the individuals and vigilantes. Verbal and physical altercations took place. The pushback became widespread and at times violent.

After procrastinating, the White House finally intervened and ordered Homeland Security personnel to take complete control of all polling places. To enforce its decree the number of polling places were substantially reduced.  It significantly reduced the confusion and violence at polling areas.

Voting also became even less convenient after the White House issued an executive order  prohibiting all mail in voting. The White House insisted that the move was made necessary for national security.

Protests directed at the White House’s moves spread throughout the US. Initially, the protest and then the counter protests were peaceful, but later turned violent. Each side blamed the other for the violence. The violence had moved from polling areas to the streets of America. It was widespread and intensified.

If that was not enough, reports spread throughout the media that some divergent groups anonymously injected AI programs into mainframe electronic state, county and local voting machine systems. The AI programs over rode valid election ballots replacing them with fake ones and in other cases erased ballots altogether.

A question which no one asked was if it really was some divergent groups that used AI? Or did AI go rogue? No one asks because everyone was too busy pointing fingers.

The various state, county and local election officials did not discover the hacking until they began counting early ballots and realized the vast discrepancy in ballots cast and ballots counted. The election was now in complete chaos and confusion.

Both major parties accused the other of the chaos and confusion. A grotesque attempt to rig and steal the elections was alleged and each party blamed the other.

Polls prior to the election showed Democrats winning the House and possibly the Senate. Democrats were alarmed and outraged. Republicans countered that the polls were not accurate but were fabricated by the left leading media.

The nation was in uncharted territory. Republicans called for the current makeup of the House and Senate to remain as it was prior to the election. Democrats vehemently rejected the notion.

Democrats turned to the Supreme Court to decide what should happen. The Supreme Court by a 5-4 decision ruled that the issue was a partisan political issue that should be decided by the House and Senate. Dissenting judges lambasted the decision as a gross malfeasance of judicial duty.

Republican leaders of the House and Senate announced that both houses would meet on Tuesday January 2, 2027, to negotiate a plan forward. Democrats balked at the idea.

Democrats argued that it would be illegal for the current members of the House and Senate to be involved since many of them would have lost if the elections had actually been fair. Republicans countered that since the states were unable to certify new House and Senate members things had to remain as they were.

The issue however became mute.  On the morning of December 31, 2026, the nation woke to the news that overnight the Capitol Building had been completely destroyed. Preliminary indications were that a fire must have broken out in the building and ignited gas lines near and under the building causing massive explosions that completely demolished the building. The nation was in shock.

Although initially there were no indications that foul play was involved, Republican leaders and right-wing talking heads pointed fingers at Antifa, leftist organizations and Democrats.

The current occupant of the White House directed his Justice Department to be relentless in finding the culprits reasonable for destroying the Capitol Building. The Justice Department immediately raided the offices of various progressive and leftist organizations as well as the offices and homes of Democratic leaders, activists and anyone who had raised issues with the current regime. It was an unprecedented action.

What was surprising to some was that scores of leaders, podcasters and influencers associated with the movement that brought the regime into power were also grabbed up in the Justice Department’s sweep. It was an epitome of  a revolution eating its children.

On the evening of  December 31, 2026, the current occupant of the White House in a prime-time television address spoke at length to the American public.

He started with a long recount of attempts by Democrats, other critics and their flunkeys  in the media to go after him. He mentioned how they had stolen the 2020 election and the failure of his then vice president to do the right thing. He mentioned how certain news outlets daily promulgated fake news and were responsible for the current poisoned political climate.

He then announced with the destruction of the Capitol Building and the chaos of the mid-term elections, he was calling for new Congressional elections. The Congressional election as well as the next presidential election would be pushed back to November 2032. It would allow states to create new Congressional maps based on the 2030 census.

It would also give enough time for a new Capitol Building to be built.  The new Capitol Building he pointed out would be the largest, most elegant legislative building ever. It would feature a golden dome and gold-plated fixtures throughout the building. It would be the envy of nations around the world. No one would have ever seen anything like it in the history of the world.

To reimage the nation’s capital to be the most prestigious in the world and history, the Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson monuments would be demolished and replaced with new magnificent monuments reflecting America’s greatness.

To prevent more violence and insurrection he ordered US troops to protect all federal property as well as public areas. Since a viable Congress was unable to exist at the current time, the Executive Branch transferred all Congressional powers to the Executive Branch. It was done by the issuance of Enabling Laws.

The current occupant of the White House ended his address indicating the actions that he was taking would ensure that the US would remain the greatest nation in the history of mankind. He ended his remarks by wishing everyone a Happy New Year and encouraged the nation to bring in the new morning for America by celebrating and partying like it was 1999.

Staff Writer; Al Alatunji

Question or comment regarding this article? Feel free to send a message to: Alatunji@ThyBlackMan.com.

While Confederate troops never captured or entered the U.S. Capitol during the Civil War, the first time the Confederate battle flag entered the halls of the U.S. Capitol was during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The image of the battle flag inside the Capitol building was an insult. Its presence during the Jan. 6 attack highlights the attack’s connection to the larger issue of America’s history of white supremacist violence, anti-democratic rebellion, and efforts to deny equal political power.

It didn’t end with the battle flag. Crosses, Christian flags, prayers, Bibles, religious slogans, and Christian-themed clothing were seen and heard throughout the Jan. 6 gathering and attack. The presence of a cross and makeshift gallows bearing a noose while the crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence” was significant because together they merged religious symbolism, political violence, and a threat of execution.

The noose illustrates the ugly side of U.S. history. It evokes dark memories of lynching—the racial terror used for generations to intimidate, torture, and murder Black Americans, especially during and after the Jim Crow era. During that time, the noose functioned both as an immediate threat toward politicians branded as “traitors” and as a symbol with a long association with white-supremacist violence.

The Christian cross, as the primary symbol of Christianity, did not represent divine love and Christian discipleship in this hostile environment. Rather, the cross was used for political purposes. Scholars and religious-liberty advocates describe this as Christian nationalism: the belief that the United States is specially ordained as a Christian nation and that political power should preserve a preferred religious and cultural identity.

What exactly is a “Christian nation,” and how can people who chant, “USA,” turn around and target hatred toward their nation’s government? Distrust and hatred toward the federal government are not new.

Those who subscribe to the latest MAGA movement are the same group who previously supported the Tea Party, states’ rights, segregationists, the Dixiecrats, and Jim Crow. They are also the same group who support the idea of a Christian nationalist movement. When it relates to the term “Christian nation,” the nation they love is not a physical nation. In the Bible, “nations” generally refers to distinct ethnic groups, foreign peoples, or non-Jewish (Gentile) populations rather than modern political countries with fixed borders.

The confusion comes when people often interchange words such as nation, state, and country. A nation is a collective sociocultural group of people who share a common lineage, culture, or language and are united by a common identity. A state is a political and legal entity with a permanent population, defined borders, and an independent government. Everything about Christian nationalism, from its symbols, cultural identity, and violence, points back to its Confederacy roots.

There is a reason why the MAGA movement feels like a cult. Confederate Christianity fused Protestant faith with Confederate nationalism. Confederate Christianity is a term for the religious ideology that portrayed the Confederate States and its defense of racial slavery as compatible with—and even mandated by—Christian faith. It was a political theology promoted by many Southern clergy, politicians, and laypeople before and during the Civil War. Its central claim was that slavery was divinely sanctioned, biblically supported, and entrusted to white Southerners as a social order they were morally bound to preserve.

From this perspective, abolitionists were viewed not only as political opponents, but enemies of God’s intended order. Advocates commonly cited biblical passages that describe slavery or urge enslaved people to obey masters. They did this while minimizing or rejecting biblical themes of human equality, liberation, justice, and the moral authority of the Golden Rule, which the Black church has promoted throughout history.

Confederate Christianity is what we refer to today as Christian nationalism. Today’s Christian nationalists continue to carry the tradition of being hypocritical in their support of the Bible and the U.S. Constitution in its entirety. This is especially true when both documents speak up for justice and freedom for the marginalized. But in Texas, Christian nationalists are experiencing an identity crisis.

Texas Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate, James Talarico is showing white evangelical voters that Christians can be liberal. White evangelicals have been a solid voting bloc for Republicans because they have repeatedly been told that there is no such thing as a liberal Christian. Most white evangelicals believe you cannot ever vote for a Democrat because they hate you,” explained April Ajoy, a former Christian nationalist turned liberal Christian, on her YouTube channel.

The Republicans have a lot to be concerned about politically if Talarico can expose the myths and untruths behind white evangelicals putting away their Confederate flags in addition to voting for a Democrat. Will they see that before there was James Talarico, there was Raphael Warnock as a Black U.S. senator and pastor with the same Christian message and example?

Written by David W. Marshall

Official website; https://davidwmarshallauthor.com/

One may purchase his book, which is titled; God Bless Our Divided America: Unity, Politics and History from a Biblical Perspective.

It’s not the economy, stupid, that’s souring Americans on the GOP. It’s energy prices, which are causing pain at the pump and making voters, even Republicans, bristle under GOP leadership. To turn the midterm races around, the Republican Party has to make the strong case that pain at the pump is worth it to subdue a nuclear-ambitious Iran, whose leaders have chanted “Death to America” for 47 years.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) claims people are “drowning in Donald Trump’s failed economy,” adding that “they can’t thrive and can barely survive.”

Let’s roll out the data from the impartial U.S. Census Bureau that prove these are lies. Median income rose to a new high in 2025, $87,138. The biggest beneficiaries of the 2025 surge were minorities, women and workers at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Hispanic, Black and child poverty rates hit all-time lows, while earnings for those in the bottom 25% of the economy rose. Adding a dose of hyperbole, Trump presidential adviser Steve Moore calls 2025 “a miracle year.”

In 2025, GOP policies also narrowed the pay gap between women and men to the smallest yet, and women captured virtually all the year’s employment gains. (Try telling this to women voters, who overwhelmingly favor Democrats.)

Despite these undeniable gains, voters are rapidly shifting trust to Democrats to handle the economy. In the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, voters trusted Democrats over Republicans 42% to 34%. It’s the major reason Democrats are predicted to take the House and possibly the Senate.

What explains this disconnect between impressive economic gains and plummeting poll numbers on Trump’s handling of the economy? First, a drumbeat of Democratic statements parroting the same message: Americans are “drowning.”

Polls reveal that voters say their own economic situation is good, but they are being convinced by this rhetoric that other people are not doing well. A Navigator Research poll in August of voters in the Midwest swing states, who are being pummeled with TV and social media ads against the GOP economy, found that 63% rated their own financial situation good or excellent, but 65% rated the national economy negatively. Voters’ shifting attitudes about the economy are the result of deceptive political ads, not reality.

Second, the lasting and painful impact of Bidenflation. Inflation for the 12 months ending August 2026 was miniscule, averaging 3% for all goods and services except energy. But in the first two years of the Biden administration, inflation had soared to 9%, and the Biden-era prices are still up there. Curbing inflation doesn’t lower prices, it just halts the increase. It will take time for wages to catch up, even in a dynamic economy. Until then, shopping for groceries will still be painful.

Third, gas prices are soaring. Iran’s effective shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil is exported, pushed gas to $4.48 on average at the pump as of Monday. Ouch.

Even some Republican candidates are losing fortitude. Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers posted on X, “The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly. When it does, energy costs will plummet.” The Iranian mullahs are loving it.

The administration needs to make the case to these weak-kneed candidates and to the nation that defeating Iran’s nuclear ambitions is essential for the safety of the world and the security of the U.S.

Gas supplies were also interrupted during World War II. But the public didn’t beg Franklin Roosevelt to stop fighting. The real burden on the public then was not high prices but extreme rationing. Civilians were given stickers for their vehicles, allotting them a small amount of fuel, strictly for essential errands or to drive to work at a war plant. Almost no one complained. Austerity was a patriotic duty to defeat the enemy. Carpooling was encouraged, and posters announced that “When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler.”

That was the greatest generation. But there’s greatness in America even today.

If Republicans lose control of Congress, it will not be because of a bad economy. Blame inept, soulless messaging. Republican candidates and the president need to present the facts and ask voters to rise to the occasion.

The Trump administration needs to sell the public on why the price of gas is high and start talking about the price of freedom. Urge the public to sacrifice for victory against a nation determined to destroy us.

Written by Betsy McCaughey

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