The president intends to maintain political power and control by circumventing the will of voters by eliminating fair congressional districting through partisan and racial gerrymandering. To have this type of president make this type of order and then have a state governor carry it out is disturbing. As a result, we have a “redistricting arms race.” This is what happens when America elects a robber baron as president. A robber baron is a term used to describe powerful 19th-century American industrialists and financiers who amassed enormous wealth through unethical and controlling practices. Their key tactics included (exploiting workers), maintaining wealth by paying extremely low wages and providing poor working conditions, (monopolies) formed “trusts” to control entire industries, allowing illegal or aggressive means to dictate prices and eliminate competitors, (political corruption) influencing government officials through lobbying or outright bribery to secure favorable land grants and subsidies. Critics often focused on their greed and the unethical methods by which they created human suffering and extreme economic disparity between the very wealthy and the poor. In the late 19th century, the top 1% owned roughly 51% of property while the bottom 44% owned only 1.1%.

These robber barons included John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil), Andrew Carnegie (Carnegie Steel), Cornelius Vanderbilt (Railroads and shipping), and J.P. Morgan (finance & banking). Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, when asked by a reporter how much money he needed to finally have enough, said, “Just a bit more.” Rockefeller was America’s first billionaire and was forced by the government to dissolve his monopoly. Cornelius Vanderbilt was known for ruthlessly eliminating competition in transportation. Jay Gould was one of the worst robber barons. He was an American railroad magnate who founded the Gould business dynasty. Historians single out Jay Gould not because of his wealth, but because he repeatedly used deception, manipulation, and political corruption to extract wealth from others rather than create it through integrity.

Gould’s pattern was to rig markets, water stock, bribe officials, and crush labor, leaving investors and workers ruined while he walked away richer. Many Gilded Age tycoons were ruthless, but also associated themselves with major productive achievements or philanthropy. Gould, on the other hand, was notorious for enriching himself through schemes that even contemporaries called socially destructive. He was infamous for how he treated workers, reinforcing his image as morally callous. During labor conflicts in the 1880s, Gould was quoted as saying he could “hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” a line that captured how many Americans saw his willingness to set groups of workers against each other. In the Gilded Age, many industrialists were harsh employers, but Gould’s open contempt for labor and use of violence and division made him stand out. Even during his life, Gould “considered himself to be the most hated man in late-19th-century America,” and contemporary press, clergy, and politicians depicted him as the very embodiment of greed. In short, Gould is cited as one of the most unscrupulous and worst robber barons because of his large-scale and corrupt political influence, his willingness to destabilize the national economy for profit, and his aggressive, often brutal opposition to labor.

What we have today in the White House is a modern-day Jay Gould in President Donald Trump, who entered his second term in office using robber baron tactics to govern. The way observers saw Jay Gould deliberately run companies into the ground and then rebuild them in ways that benefited him is the same tactic Trump is doing with the federal government. The unfair advantage of congressional representation gained through unethical racial and political gerrymandering parallels the monopoly tactics of the 19th-century robber barons.

Robber barons never totally went away. We have them in modern tech moguls such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. We simply never had one as president. Even King Charles III has noticed a different and alarming America under the current administration. Speaking before a rare joint meeting of Congress, he gave a subtle warning regarding the need to uphold democratic traditions, specifically highlighting the importance of checks and balances on executive power. It has been a while since Black America has experienced a Jay Gould-type robber baron as president, particularly one whose goal is to ruthlessly destroy Black political power and prosperity.

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.

But beneath the gleaming architecture and diplomatic theater lies a far darker reality that the world continues to confront only selectively and often cowardly.

This is not merely a strategic rivalry between two superpowers over tariffs, trade imbalances, semiconductors, artificial intelligence or rare earth minerals. It is also a deeper conflict over the meaning of freedom, human dignity, sovereignty and truth itself.

The CCP wants the world to see China as modern, disciplined and indispensable to the global economy. Yet behind that carefully managed image exists one of the most sophisticated authoritarian systems on earth. Political dissidents vanish. Religious believers are monitored. Journalists are silenced. Lawyers disappear. Uyghur Muslims have faced mass detention and surveillance campaigns. Christians worship under constant scrutiny. Falun Gong practitioners have long alleged torture, imprisonment and persecution. Even ordinary citizens who criticize local officials online can suddenly find themselves erased from public life.

China represents what communism can become when fused with advanced technology, centralized state power, economic leverage and absolute intolerance for dissent.

The regime does not merely punish opposition; it seeks to eliminate independent thought itself.

Former prisoners and human rights investigators have described detention systems marked by psychological abuse, coerced confessions, forced indoctrination, isolation, relentless monitoring, beatings and, in some cases, death. Families are separated. Faith is criminalized when it competes with loyalty to the party. Surveillance is not a tool of security alone; it is a mechanism of obedience.

Yet despite these realities, much of the Western world continues to treat the CCP as simply another difficult trading partner rather than an authoritarian power with expanding global ambitions.

Why?

Because money clouds moral clarity.

Corporate America depends heavily on Chinese manufacturing and markets. Universities accept Chinese funding while often remaining silent about repression. Tech companies seek access to Chinese consumers while overlooking censorship demands. Media institutions frequently soften criticism to preserve business relationships or market access. Politicians in both parties speak aggressively about China during campaigns, yet many remain economically intertwined with the very system they condemn.

The result is a dangerous form of selective outrage: loud rhetoric paired with strategic dependency.

That contradiction becomes even more alarming when viewed through the lens of the Middle East and the growing military relationships reshaping the region.

As Trump prepares for high-level meetings in Beijing, reports and intelligence assessments continue to raise concerns about China’s indirect support for Iran’s military infrastructure through its deepening relationship with Pakistan. Trucks, components, dual-use technologies, drone systems, missile enhancement capabilities and logistical cooperation flowing across the region are no longer viewed as isolated developments. They are part of a larger strategic alignment among powers seeking to weaken American influence in critical global corridors.

Iran’s expanding drone and missile capabilities did not emerge in a vacuum.

The Gulf region remains one of the most strategically sensitive areas in the world. American military personnel, naval assets, energy infrastructure, shipping lanes and allied nations remain vulnerable to asymmetric warfare. Drones, missile technology, cyber capabilities and proxy militias now define modern conflict as much as conventional armies do.

If Chinese-backed systems or technologies ultimately strengthen Iranian military capabilities that threaten or kill Americans in the Gulf region, then the stakes of this week’s diplomatic engagement become infinitely more complex than trade negotiations or photo-ops.

This is the uncomfortable reality confronting Washington: America is economically intertwined with a nation that increasingly supports or enables forces working against American strategic interests abroad.

That does not mean diplomacy should end. Serious nations engage adversaries and competitors alike. Dialogue between nuclear powers remains essential. Economic decoupling at the scale some advocate could destabilize the global economy overnight. Trump’s visit may very well reduce tensions in certain areas while opening channels for negotiation that prevent larger conflicts later.

But the anxiety many are carrying is not simply economic. It is emotional, psychological, and profoundly political. Conversations with activists, clergy, teachers, nonprofit workers, caregivers, journalists, and parents often arrive at the same conclusion. People are tired — not merely physically tired, but weary in a deeper sense, exhausted by years of instability, outrage, uncertainty, and struggle without resolution. Americans have lived through a pandemic, political upheaval, racial backlash, economic volatility, social isolation, and a digital culture that demands constant vigilance and immediate reaction. Before one crisis is fully processed, another arrives demanding attention.

The human spirit was never designed for perpetual emergency.

At the same time, exhaustion is not the only emotional current shaping American life. Many people are energized, alarmed, and newly engaged precisely because they believe democratic norms themselves are under threat. Across the country, people are organizing, protesting, voting, fundraising, and showing up at demonstrations proclaiming “No Kings.” Millions are turning out in protest. Yet even this activism often carries an undertone of strain, because much of today’s civic engagement is fueled less by optimism than by fear of what may happen if people disengage entirely.

Polls showing widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country reflect more than partisan division. Many Americans feel they are working harder, worrying more, and falling further behind, even as they are repeatedly told the economy is fundamentally sound, even as rising prices continue to outpace wages for many workers.

Reading The Fire Next Time today, one is struck not only by James Baldwin’s prophetic brilliance, but also by the exhaustion beneath his prose. Baldwin wrote as a man who deeply loved his country while watching it revisit the same moral failures over and over again. More than sixty years later, many Americans are asking some version of the same question: how many times must we fight the same battles?

That exhaustion is especially familiar within Black political life. More than 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress between the late nineteenth century and the early twenty-first century. Again and again, activists marched, testified, fundraised, wrote editorials, gathered petitions, and demanded federal protection, only to watch legislation delayed or blocked. Federal anti-lynching legislation did not finally become law until 2022.

The NAACP once hung a banner outside its headquarters reading, “A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY.” The repetition itself became part of the tragedy, as generation after generation was forced to sound the same alarm while institutions moved slowly, if at all, to respond.

It took more than a century for anti-lynching legislation to become federal law. How long will Americans wait for meaningful affordability relief? The struggles are obviously not the same, but they are connected by a familiar frustration: ordinary people sound the alarm while institutions remain paralyzed, indifferent, or consumed by political calculation.

Exhaustion is not new in American life, but today it threatens to erode civic participation itself. People are withdrawing from public engagement not necessarily because they do not care, but because they are depleted. Democracy requires participation, but participation requires emotional, physical, and economic reserves that many Americans no longer possess.

An exhausted public becomes vulnerable to cynicism, resentment, manipulation, and authoritarian appeals that promise easy answers to complex problems. Exhausted people stop imagining alternatives and retreat into survival mode.

America is running on empty. The danger is not simply economic instability, but civic depletion — a public so exhausted that it loses the capacity to imagine, organize, or resist. Exhaustion may explain the national mood, but it cannot be allowed to become the nation’s destiny.

Written by Julianne Malveaux

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

unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

— Voltaire (1694-1778)

Last week, when the Pentagon resumed its attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, the media barely noticed. The U.S. military has now destroyed 56 vessels and killed 190 persons. The killings began in September 2025 and have continued to this month.

The attacks caused a stir a few months ago when one of the strikes disabled the boat at which the attack was aimed but failed to kill all the passengers. When a follow-up strike was ordered, it succeeded where the initial strike had failed. The admiral who ordered the murder of the survivors told members of Congress in secret that he believed he was following orders. The secretary of defense denied that he ordered the survivors to be killed.

Killing survivors is expressly prohibited by federal law as well as by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And, of course, ordering the killing of innocents is always unlawful.

So, the Pentagon made two changes. It produced more lethal strikes so as not to be burdened with the problem of survivors, and it either stopped killing survivors or stopped revealing that it killed them.

Everyone who professionally monitors the government expects that it will not be truthful when the truth is unpleasant or reveals criminal behavior. This expectation is realistic, considering history and Supreme Court rulings that permit the government to lie.

The Navy rescued two survivors whom it failed to kill. Under the law, rescuing is to be done by the Coast Guard. But that law was written when the Coast Guard was in the Department of Defense. Today, it is in the Department of Homeland Security, which is largely mistrusted by the DoD.

So, rather than share information about its attempted murders with a department of the government over which it has no control, rather than having a team ready and nearby to rescue survivors, the Pentagon assigned the Navy to arrive long afterward and rescue two fishermen.

But the Navy didn’t know what to do with them, so its legal team asked Department of Justice lawyers for guidance. They asked the DoD what evidence of crimes it had on these fishermen, whereupon the DoD was unable to provide an answer that would rise to the level of probable cause — the legal standard for charging and detaining anyone.

Probable cause is a level of evidence such that a neutral person would conclude that it is more likely than not that the detained persons committed a stated crime. At that point, the DoJ told the DoD to return these would-be victims to their home countries.

In 56 attacks, and one follow-up attack, only three persons survived. Two of them have hired American lawyers and have served notice of their intention to sue the federal government for its attempted murder of them.

The government initially claimed that these killings were of known drug dealers and this was part of a law enforcement operation. Yet, under federal law, the military is prohibited from engaging in law enforcement.

When confronted with that, the White House claimed that the folks in the boats were enemy combatants, and thus susceptible to targeting by the military. But that would require some empirical evidence of their use of force or violence against U.S. personnel, of which the government revealed none.

Then, the White House likened the effect of the sale of drugs as a war on the American people and offered that the job of the military is to defend the country in wartime from what it called narco-terrorists. Yet, controlled dangerous substances are initially ingested voluntarily either by those looking to become addicted and separated from reality, or by those who believe that they — not the government — own their own bodies.

It is clear that none of the government’s changing justifications for these killings amounts to a legally cogent argument. The Constitution requires due process — notice, fair trial, right to appeal — and it permits only judges to impose sentences; and it requires judges to impose only sentences that have been prescribed by law.

Stated differently, the president cannot order the killing of a person because he thinks or fears — or even knows — of their criminal behavior. It is apparently of no moment to him that drug dealing is not a capital offence.

The Voltaire quotation at the top of this piece about murders and trumpets has haunted me since I first read it as a college student. The reference to the trumpets was Voltaire’s way of calling attention to government wars and executions, many of which in his day were often accompanied by trumpets.

But trumpets or not, all this raises the question: How can an act that is intrinsically evil — the intentional killing of the legally innocent — become moral or lawful just because it is committed by government officials? The short answer is: IT CANNOT. Moreover, intrinsically evil acts can never produce moral outcomes, because the toleration of pure evil will propagate it.

In America, all persons are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. This principle has been a bedrock of Anglo-American jurisprudence for 600-plus years. The president and all in government take an oath of fidelity to the Constitution, whose values embody this principle.

A government is illicit when it violates the very laws it enforces. When the government breaks its own laws, it invites others to do so. When it kills innocents, it invites others to do so. It is always immoral and criminal for anyone intentionally to extinguish innocent human life.

And now, Trump’s ordered killings are so commonplace, there is little coverage and less outrage. But we will see both when the killings come home.

Written by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

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

For most of American history, that color has been Black.

No ad has taught that lesson more brutally than the Willie Horton ad of 1988. It showed the face of a Black man convicted of murder. It blamed Michael Dukakis for a furlough program. It told voters mercy was dangerous.

After that, clemency withered. Democrats especially learned to treat grace as a trap. To this day, too many Democratic politicians fear using their clemency powers. Even when their cowardice means people receive punishment they do not deserve.

Republican governors and presidents have often been more sweeping. Our nation’s current president has used the pardon power boldly and repeatedly. He has never seemed afraid of the power itself. Too many Democrats still are.

This spring marks 10 years since the Bernie Sanders campaign made a very different kind of ad. Nearly three decades after Willie Horton, I asked the campaign to do the opposite. Put a Black man convicted of murder in a presidential ad. Not to destroy the campaign. To strengthen it.

His name was Chris Wilson.

Chris grew up in Baltimore. He saw violence young. At 17, he took a man’s life. He went to prison.

There is no hiding from that truth. There should not be.

But Chris did what we say we want people to do. He took responsibility. He educated himself. He built a master plan for his life. He came home determined to work, mentor, and help others escape the traps that nearly swallowed him.

At the time, Chris was painting my house. When the campaign came to film the ad, Chris helped find the location.

To me, his story was not a liability. It was the point. Real public safety requires redemption. Prevention. Education. Jobs. Second chances.

The idea carried risk. Given the legacy of Willie Horton, some had concerns. That was understandable. This was not a safe testimonial. It was a direct challenge to a powerful racial taboo.

But in a nation with the highest incarceration rate on Earth, Willie Horton politics had trained campaigns to distrust voters. My experience told me voters were better than that.

Years earlier, I had been part of polling for a big-box retailer that wanted to know what would happen if customers learned it provided second-chance employment for formerly incarcerated people. Customers said they would be more likely to shop there. The company stood to gain market share, not lose it.

People were ready to believe in second chances. Politics just had to catch up.

Everyone signed off on taking the risk. The campaign made the ad. The name said it all: “Be Bold, Change the System.”

There was Chris, looking into the camera, telling the truth. No hiding. No sugarcoating. No mug shot. No monster. Just a man. A Black man. A Baltimore man. A man who had caused harm, paid a terrible price, and fought to become a force for good.

It was the anti-Willie Horton ad.

The Willie Horton ad said Black men are the reason to fear mercy. The Chris Wilson ad said Black men are among the reasons to believe in redemption.

And it worked. The ad drew roughly a million clicks in the first 24 hours. It sent Bernie’s support up fast in Illinois. It was used powerfully in Michigan and Missouri. It moved people because it trusted them.

Chris later received a book contract. The Master Plan told how he refused to let prison be the end of his life. That work became the basis for an education program that has trained more than 100,000 incarcerated people.

Today, Chris is a celebrated artist whose paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

That is what Willie Horton politics never wants America to see. It wants to freeze a Black man forever at the worst moment of his life. Chris Wilson proves something else. Redemption does not erase accountability. It fulfills it.

Ten years later, the lesson is urgent. Willie Horton politics is still with us. It has changed targets. Today, the scary Black man in the old ad has too often become the scary brown immigrant in the new one. Campaigns still take one terrible crime, attach it to a whole people, and tell voters mercy, due process, and fairness will get them killed.

The faces change. The formula does not.

The Chris Wilson ad, and the life he has led since, prove the best way to combat racist, authoritarian propaganda is with the bold and transformative truth.

Bold enough to believe accountability and redemption can live in the same sentence. Bold enough to trust voters with the full humanity of a Black man who changed his life. Bold enough to bury the politics Willie Horton made famous — and build a politics worthy of the people of every color we too often leave behind.

In America, the color of trust is the color of the blood in all our hearts — red and blue, flowing together as one.

Written by Ben Jealous

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

That question matters because vague stress can make everything feel worse than it is and, sometimes, easier to avoid than it should be. A practical plan replaces fog with facts. It tells you what comes in, what goes out, what obligations are fixed, and where the pressure points really are. That kind of clarity is valuable whether you are trying to improve daily habits or dealing with larger issues that make people explore options such as debt relief in Arizona. Either way, a real plan is built on what your life costs, not what you wish it cost.

Practical planning is powerful because it works with reality instead of against it.

Start With the Full Picture

The first step is not cutting spending. It is seeing the whole picture. Income, rent or mortgage, utilities, transportation, food, debt payments, insurance, subscriptions, and irregular costs all need to be visible. If something keeps getting paid, it belongs in the plan.

Many people underestimate the value of this stage because it feels basic. But clarity alone can lower stress. Uncertainty tends to make money problems feel shapeless and constant. Once the numbers are visible, your next steps stop being guesses.

The Social Security Administration’s money and retirement planning resources help people think beyond the immediate month, and Benefits.gov can be useful for identifying support options or programs that may reduce financial pressure in specific situations.

A Practical Plan Solves Actual Problems

One reason money plans fail is that they target the wrong issue. Someone may think they have a spending problem when the deeper problem is uneven income. Another person may think the answer is more discipline when fixed debt payments are the real strain. Someone else may blame groceries when convenience spending triggered by exhaustion is what keeps breaking the budget.

A practical plan asks where the real friction is. Are your essentials too high? Is your debt load too heavy? Is your income unstable? Are late fees and timing issues creating unnecessary damage? Is avoidance preventing good decisions? Once you know the real source of strain, your plan can become specific.

Generic advice is rarely enough because people do not all have the same financial bottleneck.

Make the Plan Simple Enough to Follow

Complexity is one of the biggest enemies of consistency. If your plan requires constant calculations, too many categories, or a level of attention you cannot realistically sustain, it probably will not last. A practical plan is simple enough to use on a tired Tuesday.

That may mean broad categories instead of tiny ones. It may mean one weekly review instead of constant tracking. It may mean automatic transfers instead of repeated decisions. The goal is not a perfect system. It is a repeatable one.

Simple systems often look almost too basic, but that is part of their strength. They survive low energy better.

Leave Room for the Irregular and the Human

Another reason rigid plans fall apart is that life is not perfectly monthly. Car repairs, gifts, school costs, medical expenses, and random household needs show up whether you plan for them or not. A practical plan anticipates that irregular costs are normal, not exceptional.

It also makes room for being human. If your plan treats every small pleasure like sabotage, you may rebel against it quickly. Practical planning is not about becoming joyless. It is about making sure comfort and convenience exist in a form your finances can handle.

A useful plan should reduce shame, not increase it.

Action Matters More Than Theory

Once the plan is clear, the next step is not endless analysis. It is choosing a few specific actions that directly improve the situation. Maybe that means canceling unused subscriptions, setting bill reminders, moving due dates, creating a small emergency cushion, cutting one consistently wasteful category, or negotiating a payment arrangement.

These actions do not need to be dramatic to matter. In fact, smaller actions often build better momentum because they are easier to repeat. Progress becomes visible, which makes the plan feel more real.

Review and Adjust, Do Not Abandon

A practical plan should be reviewed regularly, but review is not the same as self attack. The purpose is to notice what is working and what needs adjusting. Maybe a category was unrealistic. Maybe income changed. Maybe a habit improved enough that you can set a new target. Maybe stress made one week harder than expected.

Adjustment is part of practicality. If a plan only works under ideal conditions, it is not very practical at all. Real planning includes revision.

Practical Means Sustainable

The best money plan is not the one that looks the most disciplined on paper. It is the one that creates steadier outcomes over time. Practical plans build stability through visibility, simplicity, and realistic action. They do not rely on fantasy, guilt, or constant intensity.

If your money feels messy right now, that does not mean you need a genius solution. You may need a practical one. See the full picture. Identify the real pressure. Simplify the system. Take a few direct steps. Then keep adjusting as you learn. That is often how money gets calmer, and calm is where better decisions begin.

Staff Writer; Lee Jackson

Both races are crowded with progressive candidates, each trying to one-up the others in a bid to court the radical left. This showcase in socialism salesmanship offers a glimpse into the doctrine Democrats hope to impose on Americans — not only in California but across the country.

In last week’s gubernatorial debate, the candidates espoused visions of more government, more taxes and more spending — from “rehousing” the homeless at taxpayers’ expense to universal health care for illegal immigrants.

Tom Steyer, the billionaire candidate whose opponents have happily pointed out how he amassed his wealth investing in domestic fossil fuels, contorted himself into knots to defend raising taxes — including a proposed “Billionaire Tax.”

For Steyer, it seems the proposed one-time tax on all the assets, not just the income, of high-net-worth individuals is just the price he must pay to appease the eat-the-rich crowd.

Other top earners apparently are not so inclined. They are fleeing the state in droves, taking their resources — and the public revenue they support — with them.

The departures of high-profile figures like Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have drawn headlines, but others are exiting more quietly. A recent Hoover Institute report estimates that nearly a third of the Billionaire Tax’s eligible base has already left the state.

The same study notes that the permanent loss of high-wealth individuals would decrease public revenue long term. Worse still, the amendment to the state’s constitution needed to make the tax legally possible opens the door to unlimited tax hikes, not only on the rich but also on the working class.

Some candidates have the sense to realize that running the wealthy out of town isn’t good for public coffers. But at least for former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, the answer is to simply open our borders to illegal immigrants.

“They are one of the only ways that our state has been growing in recent years,” she stated during a recent interview. The “sanctuary state,” she added, should marshal its resources to obstruct federal immigration authorities.

Some 400,000 illegal immigrants entered California between 2021 and 2023, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The state’s population grew by less than 20,000 during the same period, indicating legal residents are getting out of there nearly as fast as illegals are taking up residence.

In the Los Angeles mayoral race, incumbent Karen Bass — a sympathizer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, or “Comandante en Jefe,” as she called him — faces an even more crowded field. And while it might seem difficult to out-socialize someone with Bass’ record, she is being challenged by opponents from her left.

Not surprisingly, the candidates are running on more of the same — raising taxes so they can pay for more government initiatives they can’t afford. Somehow, Bass’ program that spent $300 million on hotel rooms for the homeless, only to have 40% return to the streets, seems reasonable compared to some of what the candidates have floated.

Noticeably absent in these debates is any mention of California’s $2.9 billion deficit. In the sprint to the left, the default answer is, raise taxes. It’s a cycle that feeds the welfare state. Tax hardworking families and redistribute it to social handout programs. The only problem is, soon there won’t be anyone left to tax. The budget hole is only growing.

It would be easy for conservatives to dismiss these races as another example of the Golden State’s sharp left turn into liberal orthodoxy. But California isn’t a state to mock; it’s one to study.

The left is committed to forcing this same radical agenda on Americans across the nation. California is a testing ground, but middle America is the target.

The question now isn’t whether California will learn from its mistakes and correct course. The question is whether voters will wake up and realize this socialist tax-and-spend agenda is knocking on our door — and whether we will fight to stop it.

Written by Ken Buck

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

Britain’s voters just battered the Labour Party over what many perceived as social disorder amid uncontrolled immigration. Many were incensed by the influx of migrants from Muslim-majority countries, some prone to crime and violence. The obsession by many over Israel and the Gaza War further fueled an outburst in attacks on British Jews.

Britain, it seems, has a silent majority that didn’t want to speak their minds through confrontations with screaming lefties, many recorded for posterity by a wall of cellphones. Reform UK set off the political earthquake by breaking Britain’s old two-party reign. Labour had been the party in power, having replaced the Conservatives in 2024. Many Conservative voters, angered by their party’s failure to defend their border as well as their national identity, deserted the party.

Anger grew that arrivals rushing off rubber rafts onto British soil were immediately offered benefits courtesy of taxpayers. Almost all had requested asylum, and most were granted protection against removal while their cases crawled through the bureaucracy.

That resembled the policy under Joe Biden until the last months of his term. It was a big reason Democrats lost the presidency to Donald Trump for the second time. Border crossers typically claimed asylum and were allowed to remain in the United States until their cases were heard, often years in the future. This was a big reason Democrats lost the presidency to Donald Trump for a second time.

Reform UK is a right-wing populist, anti-immigration party. Its leader, Nigel Farage, had long been dismissed by British elites.

Prominent voices in Labour and the far smaller, more radical Green Party attributed the left’s losses to rampant racism. It appears, however, that a good number of Reform UK voters were immigrants themselves worried about the same matters as the native-born.

What does the vote in Britain have to do with our Democrats? Many on their left flank have made Gaza their all-consuming issue, ignoring far bloodier conflicts elsewhere, not to mention issues germane to their own districts. That group is heavily represented by liberals who are economically comfortable and so don’t worry much about losing their health coverage. For many younger progressives swimming in social media, politics is for performance, not about governance.

Shortly before Britain’s election, Zia Yusuf, a Reform UK spokesman, threatened to place immigrant detention centers in areas that voted for the Greens. These facilities are deemed undesirable to the surrounding community. Yusuf argued that Green supporters should live with what they would push onto others. Green Party leaders framed the warning as “racist” or “cruel.”

It’s interesting, however, that New York City’s new socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has chosen the East Village for a men’s homeless intake center. About 70% of voters in the super lefty neighborhood backed Mamdani for mayor. But residents rose in revolt against placing the center where they live. A judge has issued a temporary restraining order on the project.

It’s lazy to dismiss political movements like Reform UK or MAGA in this country as slop for right-wing populists. On matters like immigration, there is good reason for concern. Sure, racist attitudes can seep into discussions on how many and which immigrants are let into the country. But the issue also touches on such important matters as national security, wages and public spending.

There’s a reason some populist views are popular.

Written by Froma Harrop

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