America’s housing affordability crisis isn’t a result of too little government intervention or socialism, but a tragic consequence of massive federal intervention gone awry, a new Heritage Foundation report argues.
“When it comes to housing, our problem isn’t a lack of socialism but too much socialism,” John Gibbs, Heritage’s economics director, told the Daily Signal. “Heavy government involvement in mortgages promised to make homes more accessible but instead made them more expensive.”
Gibbs released a report Wednesday noting that despite heavy federal intervention aimed at increasing homeownership, rates have remained essentially stable since the 1960s. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the homeownership rate in the U.S. stood at approximately 62%-63% in the early 1960s and remains at approximately 65%.
“We do not make homes affordable by making debt affordable,” Gibbs explained. “We make homes affordable by reducing the policies that inflate home prices in the first place.”
“Federal mortgage policy has become a $10 trillion experiment in boosting housing demand,” he added. “The evidence suggests much of the result has been higher prices rather than higher ownership.”
Many housing economists attribute the housing affordability crisis to local zoning restrictions, environmental reviews, permitting delays, and other barriers to construction. Gibbs argued that federal mortgage subsidies deserve greater scrutiny because they increase demand for housing and therefore push prices higher when supply cannot expand quickly enough.
As the report explains, the federal government aims to boost homeownership in two ways: by directly providing insurance for home loans, and by purchasing mortgages from lenders, pooling them into mortgage-backed securities, and guaranteeing those securities.
The Federal Housing Administration insures certain mortgages, while government-managed enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages from lenders and package them into mortgage-backed securities.
Taxpayers ultimately stand behind many of these guarantees, making the loans less risky for lenders. Gibbs argues that this encourages more lending and allows buyers to borrow more money, putting upward pressure on housing prices.
When the government takes some of the burden, it frees lenders to offer more loans. That’s one of the major reasons why the federal government now provides some security to between 70% and 80% of new mortgages and outstanding mortgage credit, according to the Heritage report.
Most European countries do not subsidize home loans to nearly this degree. Even Canada only secures the debt of between 30% and 40% of housing, Gibbs told the Daily Signal—about half the rate the U.S. does.
The federal government backs about $11.7 trillion in home loans, but this massive intervention hasn’t meaningfully increased homeownership, the report notes. Instead, it has driven up prices.
“The federal government has spent decades making mortgages easier to get,” Gibbs told the Daily Signal. “The result has been higher home prices, while homeownership remains roughly where it was a generation ago.”
Why does this drive up prices? Just as government-backed student loans have increased the cost of college, government-backed home loans increase the cost of homes, he argued.
“When the government intervenes to expand access to credit or subsidize loans, it artificially raises borrowers’ willingness to pay, increasing demand faster than supply can respond,” the report explains.
This government intervention makes housing less affordable and transfers wealth to those who already own homes, the report states.
“Rising prices reward existing owners on paper, but rapid appreciation reduces affordability for prospective buyers by raising the cost of entering the market—especially when wages fail to keep pace,” the report warns.
If Americans truly want housing to be cheaper, they should urge the government to stop buying so many mortgages, Gibbs argued.
His report recommends reducing the government footprint by setting a maximum value for loans the government will purchase, aiming to stop the government’s purchase of loans for expensive homes. It also recommends the government offer shorter-term mortgages that help homeowners accumulate wealth more quickly.
While the report acknowledges some progress in the 21st Century Road to Housing Act—a bill Congress passed this summer that streamlines the process of housing construction by waiving certain environmental regulations—it warns against too much federal intervention to expand housing supply.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Housing-Affordability-Crisis.jpg360640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2026-08-28 07:03:102026-08-28 13:50:47Housing Affordability Crisis Results From ‘Too Much Socialism,’ Not Too Little: Report
Vice President JD Vance spoke at a factory in Middletown, Ohio, on Friday, his first appearance in his hometown since being elected to the nation’s second-highest office. In addition to sharing sentiments about his papaw working at that same factory, the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works steel plant, Vance spoke on what the Trump administration is doing for manufacturing.
The Cost of Not Investing
The announcement of a $1 billion investment in Middletown Works from Cleveland-Cliffs, thanks to a $500 million grant from the Trump administration, centered the day’s remarks. “Now, this is only possible because of my friend Chris Wright and the president’s energy dominance agenda,” Vance said about the secretary of energy.
Vance described factory workers being able to provide for their families as “the American dream” when speaking of his papaw.
“My papaw hated the politicians who ignored this place. He hated the people who saw this as the place of the past,” Vance said. “He hated the people who forgot about this town when they should have been fighting for this town.”
Those at Fault
Vance recalled how, when he was growing up, people shared that their fathers had lost their factory jobs because those factories were going overseas.
“Now, economists have measured the ways in which the opioid crisis exploded in the very locations where jobs were shipped overseas,” Vance shared, as he brought up open borders, which “brought the fentanyl trade,” and how “it left us with millions of orphan children being raised by grieved grandparents,” including his own.
Signs of Hope
“In November of 2024, you made a choice to reverse 40 years of American decline and make Donald Trump the president of the United States. And I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or it’s all going to happen overnight, but in just 18 months, we have seen an explosion of rebuilding in the American heartland,” Vance continued.
He went on to tout the successes of the Trump administration on manufacturing. “We’ve created more than 29,000 new jobs in the sector in 2026 so far, reversing years of decline in manufacturing employment. And year-over-year, manufacturing workers’ wages actually went up 4.2% where they went down under the Biden administration,” Vance explained.
Vance also insisted that companies hire American workers or otherwise face tariffs.
“For the first time in my life, America saw net migration out of the country as we sent millions of illegal immigrants back home.” Describing it as “maybe the thing I’m the most proud of in the last 18 months,” Vance brought up how the net job growth over that period “went to native-born Americans,” reversing a trend.
A Special Investment
The announcement of the $1 billion investment came from Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves, as he reminded attendees that it was made possible thanks to the Department of Energy.
That $500 million grant was later addressed by Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson, as “one of the largest investments out of [her] office,” and “a vote of confidence in the American worker in the state of Ohio and in President Trump and Vice President Vance’s staunch belief that the future of heavy industry belongs right here on American soil.”
As he introduced the vice president, Wright referred to Vance as “the leader of the reindustrializing the United States of America.”
The Need to Do More
Ohio’s Republican senators shared how their families were both affected by the decline in manufacturing.
Sen. Bernie Moreno spoke of how his father-in-law was impacted, as he had lamented that it “totally screwed up the company” to ship jobs overseas.
He went on to call on Cleveland-Cliffs to strive to become the No. 1 steel for auto production in the world.
Sen. Jon Husted‘s father lost his job at the factory, the senator revealed, lashing out against people who “thought it was OK to send our jobs to China, get back cheap products in return, and weaken basically export American manufacturing.”
Husted pivoted to a more hopeful message about “America First,” and the kind of place that Ohio has since become, which would be a theme of his remarks.
“We’ve added in this state 3,000 manufacturing jobs,” he said, as he recalled candidates claiming manufacturing was dead and jobs were gone, and the industry was not coming back. “They were wrong. We can bring back manufacturing to this great country in places like Middletown and across places across our great state,” Husted insisted.
Good News for Ohio
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, had a heavy focus on Ohio as he celebrated the “good news” of the investment. He thanked Goncalves “for believing in Ohio” and “these great workers that you see here today.”
“We are red hot,” DeWine said about Ohio, speaking of improvements in doing business, lower unemployment, and filling jobs. The governor also spoke about how companies are leaving other states for Ohio, which involves recognizing “a long history of leading in manufacturing.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee who may replace the term-limited DeWine, also spoke. He addressed the need to “successfully fix what needs to be fixed,” which involves being “first grateful for what we’re actually getting right,” as he also touted the United States and Ohio, and the humble beginnings of many speakers.
Ramaswamy concluded by making a promise about “ensur[ing] that Middletown’s best days, that Ohio’s best days, and honest to God, through Ohio, America’s best days are actually still ahead of us.”
President Donald Trump’s proposed reform to give senior political appointees the authority to block or terminate woke federal grants that undermine policies a majority of Americans endorsed in the 2024 presidential election is driving congressional Democrats up the wall.
“As proposed, this regulation would result in a seismic and ill-informed change to an enormous portion of the United States economy and would upend the established understanding of how federal appropriations are carried out, undermining the integrity of government programs,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and 11 Democratic colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee told Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought in a July 13 letter.
DeLauro is the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee and its Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. What she means by “the established understanding” of how federal grants are reviewed and approved is the present system in which unelected bureaucrats — who, on average, are paid considerably more and enjoy better benefits than most taxpaying Americans — are insulated from public accountability and transparency in deciding who gets trillions of tax dollars in the form of grants for research, analyses, services, and advice.
Because the vast majority of career civil servants in the federal government are Democrats, that system is infamous for handing out trillions of dollars to advocacy groups, education institutes, law firms, universities, and corporate organizations that push for woke policies and programs favored by far-left Democratic Socialist-type public officials like the Connecticut Democrat. The Federal Register announcement of the Trump proposal documented literally thousands of examples of such grants totaling hundreds of billions of dollars going to “questionable projects that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.”
And in an August 7, 2025 White House Fact Sheet, the need for the Trump proposal’s implementation was illustrated by the fact that “federal grants have funded, for example, Drag shows in Ecuador, training doctoral candidates in Critical Race Theory (CRT), and developing transgender-sexual-education programs.” The same document also cited “an unsafe lab in Wuhan, China — the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic — engaged in gain-of-function research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)” and “in a direct assault on free speech, the National Science Foundation (NSF) allocated millions to develop AI-powered social media censorship tools.”
Interestingly, DeLauro and her 11 Democratic colleagues claimed in their July 13 letter to OMB’s Vought that “the proposed regulation would affect tens of thousands of research grants awarded annually by the [NIH], the [NSF], the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and many other federal scientific agencies, which support groundbreaking research that underpins breakthroughs in medicine and technology that can save and sustain lives and improve the standard of living across the country and the globe.”
DeLauro and company also worry about the impact of the proposal’s inclusion of measures designed to result in greater transparency of the whole grant-awarding and management processes, noting that “more reporting responsibilities and financial auditing requirements are demanded, new employment reporting mandates are imposed, and burdensome reimbursement mechanisms are promulgated.”
Such illustrations are why the Trump proposal presented earlier this year are necessary. As explained, “the federal government must provide more oversight and transparency regarding how federal funds are used in grantmaking to avoid the recurrence of similar issues in the future. Under the proposal described in this document, federal agencies must return to designing assistance programs and award activities to align with essential public purposes authorized by law.”
“Effective oversight also includes following executive branch policies that eliminate various kinds of wasteful spending that occurred in previous years, such as unlawful DEI mandates and other unnecessary add-on activities that increase project costs and complexity without serving the underlying public purpose of the award,” the administration stated. “The proposed reforms are necessary to ensure greater accountability for use of public funds, and that every taxpayer dollar the Federal Government spends either improves American lives or advances American interests.”
Democrats like DeLauro also argue that the proposal “would inject politicized unpredictability into the funding of awards,” because proposed and ongoing grants could be rejected or terminated by presidential political appointees who do so with the belief that federal funds should be used to implement presidential policies that were approved in an election.
But that consideration points to the fundamental issue underlying the debate about this proposed rule, which faces an uncertain future thanks to Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. As The Washington Stand’s Suzanne Bowdey reported Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) caved on the Trump proposal in an effort to induce Senate Democrats to vote for a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government through the end of the year. The House version of the interim funding CR does include support for the Trump proposal, so a showdown on the issue seems all but assured when both chambers of Congress are back in session after the Labor Day holiday.
Though it will likely be framed by the mainstream media as a venal power grab by Trump, the actual issue that will be on the table when that Senate/House showdown occurs is this: Does the president, who is granted by the Constitution the exclusive authority to manage the executive branch of the federal government in carrying out laws approved by Congress, have the authority to appoint subordinate officers specifically tasked to implement policies the chief executive presented to voters in the previous election? If the answer is, as DeLauro and her Democratic colleagues clearly believe it to be, no, then the president’s ability to manage the executive branch to bring about policies approved by voters is sharply limited.
The Supreme Court has in recent decisions, however, gone a long way toward approving a broad understanding of presidential prerogatives in managing the executive branch. In Trump v. United States, for example, the high court held that “Article II of the Constitution vests ‘executive Power’ in ‘a President of the United States of America.’ The President has duties of ‘unrivaled gravity and breadth,’” as well as “the President’s power to remove — and thus supervise — those who wield executive power on his behalf follows from the text of Article II.” Such power is required if the president is to perform his fundamental constitutional duty to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
Speaking as a former Reagan political appointee and an investigative reporter and editor covering the federal government for nearly four decades, I’ve seen up close how unelected and effectively insulated bureaucrats routinely frustrate policies favored by chief executives. So, my view is that it is better to have a president able to carry out his or her mandate from the voters, who in a republic should have the final say. That also means career bureaucrats who are supposed to do their jobs in non-partisan obscurity will no longer be able to dole out federal tax dollars to advance left-wing causes they back without having to worry about being held accountable.
The problem for some is that the president you like today may be succeeded by a new chief executive whose policies and programs run directly counter to everything your guy backed. Is that a realistic worry? Quena González, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council, responds to the apparent dilemma this way:
“Liberals are complaining that the proposed rule is a power grab by the Trump administration, but the actual proposal would reduce the ability of unelected bureaucrats to obstruct the administration’s stated policies and priorities. I suppose conservatives might fret that future liberal administrations will turn this authority around to target federal funding of conservative causes, but that assumes two things: that conservative causes are likely to be favored by the unelected apparatus, and that conservative projects will thrive long-term under the nurture of taxpayer subsidies. Neither history nor biblical governing philosophy bears out either assumption.”
Dr. Robert Moffit, a former senior political appointee at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and nationally recognized expert on Medicare/public health issues, has no doubt that the Trump proposal should be adopted.
“The democratically-elected president is directly responsible for executive branch policy, including the programs that his agencies decide to fund with taxpayers’ dollars. He cannot shirk that responsibility by delegating it to career officers. In the teeth of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, no president can pretend that the career bureaucracy is somehow above partisan politics or ideological bias in the administration of grant programs. No president should be that naïve. So, of course, his appointees should shoulder the responsibility, and assume the praise or blame, good or bad press, that comes with the territory.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Presidential-Political-Appointees-Should-Be-Able-to-Cancel-Woke-Federal-Grants.jpg336640Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2026-08-21 06:05:402026-08-21 06:08:00Yes, Presidential Political Appointees Should Be Able to Cancel Woke Federal Grants
More than five million jobs will be lost if the federal minimum wage is raised to $25 per hour as proposed by multiple candidates linked to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Democrats in Congress, according to a deep-dive economic data analysis by the Employment Policies Institute (EmPI).
“The majority of research over three decades finds minimum wage increases reduce employment. A new model developed by [EmPI] — based on methods developed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other American labor economists — compiles the latest economic data to estimate what this means for workers under the latest proposed minimum wage hike. Using these established methods and the latest Census Bureau data on workers across the country, EmPI estimates the federal $25 proposal will cost 5.01 million jobs nationally, significantly impacting the hospitality sector, tipped restaurant workers, and teens,” the study reported.
The EmPI is an Arlington, Virginia.-based nonprofit research group that “in particular focuses on issues that affect entry-level employment” from the perspective of classical capitalistic economic theory. The Arlington-based EmPI should not be confused with the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, (EPI), a nonprofit advocacy group that views economic issues from a leftist or progressive perspective.
The EmPI analysis broke out the projected lost jobs on a state-by-state basis and found that Texas would be the biggest loser, with nearly 832,000 positions disappearing. Pennsylvania would be the second biggest loser at more than 295,000, followed by Georgia (253,708), North Carolina (250,000) and Florida (234,730). The next five biggest losers include Ohio (213,802), Indiana (182,152), Tennessee (159,873). California (142,582) and South Carolina (135,739). Collectively, 12 Southern states would lose more than 2.5 million jobs, compared to the other 38 states.
By far, the industry taking the biggest hit under a $25 per hour minimum wage would be the restaurant/bar business with more than 1.7 million jobs going away. By comparison, the grocery industry, which would have the second biggest negative impact, is projected in the EmPI analysis to lose 205,000 positions.
By age groups, teenagers and young adults, 16-24 years of age, would suffer the loss of 2.65 million, while women would suffer three million losses, compared to two million for men. By far the biggest loser, however, would be the nearly 3.8 million men and women working in positions that do not include income from tips.
The major legislative proposals currently in Congress seeking what would be the largest single increase in minimum wage include the House’s Living Wage for All (LWFA) Act sponsored by Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). Each of the 31 House co-sponsors of the proposal are Democrats. Notably absent from the co-sponsors is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
On the Senate side, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is the prime mover behind the upper chamber’s companion bill to the House proposal, which is titled the Skilled Workforce for America Act. It is co-sponsored by Murphy’s Connecticut Senate colleague, Richard Blumenthal, as well as Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Andy Kim of New Jersey.
Under the House and Senate versions of the bill, businesses with 500 or more employees would be required to pay the $25 minimum wage by January 1, 2031, while smaller firms would have until 2038 to reach the required hourly amount.
The DSA has pushed for the $25 minimum wage since adopting the proposal among resolutions agreed to by delegates to the organization’s 2021 national convention, declaring,“Democratic Socialists of America support an increase of the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour with future increases tied to worker productivity.” Unlike the current congressional proposals, the DSA approach does not distinguish between employer size in scheduling the hike to $25 per hour.
Three of the 32 House members co-sponsoring the hike proposal have extensive DSA links. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), for example, is an active DSA member, while Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) joined the organization prior to being elected to Congress while serving on the Austin City Council. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) has run for public office with DSA endorsement since 2018.
Proposals to increase the minimum wage have often prompted heated debate in Congress, in corporate and labor union boardrooms, and among academic economists. The EmPI cited a May 2026 study by CORCOM, Inc. that observed:
“Twenty-six percent of economists support raising the minimum federal wage up to $15/hour (strongly, 12%; somewhat, 14%), and 74% oppose it (somewhat, 14%; strongly, 59%). Overall, there is less support for raising the minimum wage up to $20/hour, with 10% supporting it (3% strongly; somewhat, 7%), but 90% opposing it (somewhat, 13%; strongly, 77%). There is virtually no support for raising the rate to more than $20/hour, with 5% supporting it (strongly, 0%; somewhat, 5%) and 96% opposing it (somewhat, 7%; strongly, 89%).”
There have been a limited number of studies that reached dramatically different conclusions about the impact of increasing the minimum wage. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), for example, a 1994 study of the impact on the restaurant industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania found a 13% employment increase following the former state’s boosting the minimum wage, while employment in the latter state remained steady.
The authors of the 1994 study issued a revised version a year later that reached the opposite conclusion — that jobs were lost, not gained, in New Jersey. The first analysis was based on surveys of 410 restaurants in the two states, while the second looked at actual payroll records from 230 establishments. Yet a third edition of the study appeared in 1998, and it reaffirmed the original findings using enhanced data analytics.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/New-Data-Analysis-Shows-5-Million-Jobs-Will-Be-Lost.jpg336640Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2026-08-21 05:36:562026-08-21 16:17:53New Data Analysis Shows 5 Million Jobs Will Be Lost with DSA’s Hike of Minimum Wage to $25
A database of Green Climate Fund (GCF) “projects” reveals that almost none are actual projects. Most are just specialized junior funds. Each has a supposed emission reduction number, but these numbers are just fantasy guesses since no actual projects are involved. Thus, the GCF emission reduction claims are fraudulent.
(I might never have found it since it is in the voluminous UNFCCC site not the GCF site, but AI found it immediately when I simply asked for “GCF projects.” This is a good example of how AI can improve research.)
Let’s look at three big ticket items that appear early in the list. Smaller items are not likely to be more truthful.
First is just under $1.5 billion for Project GAIA (“GAIA”).
Here is a key part of the project description: “Project GAIA will establish a blended finance platform that offers long-term loans for climate adaptation and mitigation investments in 19 of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world – making funding accessible through sources previously unattainable to participating countries. To answer to the immediate needs of developing countries, the platform allocates 70 per cent of its portfolio investments towards adaptation projects; with a further allocation of 25 per cent for Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States, ensuring that funding reaches the most climate vulnerable communities. The project targets countries facing similar challenges in accessing climate finance for their pipeline of high-impact adaptation projects.”
This is a financial project not a physical one, and the primary target is adaptation. Nevertheless, it boasts a “CO2 equivalent” reduction amount of 30 million tons. (CO2 equivalent includes reduction in methane and other GHGs.)
There is of course no physical basis for this reduction claim since no actual projects are involved. Even worse, the GCF share of this $1.5 billion is a mere 10.3%. They should only be claiming this small fraction of the fantasy reduction amount, but I can see no indication that they are doing that. If not, then their CO2 reduction claim is doubly fraudulent.
The second example is the Programme for Energy Efficiency in Buildings (PEEB) Cool, another $1.5 billion financial project.
Here is the project description: “The Programme for Energy Efficiency in Buildings (PEEB) Cool includes 11 countries across four continents spanning seven different climates: the Mediterranean, humid subtropical, tropical, equatorial, arid, mountain, and continental. These countries suffer from climate change with temperatures reaching levels that increase heat-related health risks. Climate change will lead to an increase in these risks including more regular and extreme heatwaves, and an increase in mean temperatures.
The PEEB Cool project will transform the construction sector by advancing more energy-efficient building design, construction, and operation. It will prioritize sub-sectors with significant potential for climate change adaptation and greenhouse gas reduction such as large-scale new housing schemes and commercial buildings involving both the public and private sectors. Moreover, it will generate strong economic and social benefits such as the creation of green jobs. Throughout its activities, PEEB Cool will include efficient cooling solutions, sustainable construction materials, and the involvement of construction ecosystem stakeholders.”
Note that this program runs through 2033 with no actual projects identified, but it comes with a CO2 equivalent reduction amount of 1.6 million tons. The GCF funding share is just 16.5%, but they seem to be claiming this entire fictitious reduction amount.
A third example is the Global Subnational Climate Fund (SnCF Global) – Equity which runs through 2040. This is a $750 million fund targeting administrative units within countries such as counties, provinces, regions, and municipalities.
Here is a key part of the description: “The goal of the Sub-national Climate Fund Global (SnCF Global or the “Fund”) is to catalyze long-term climate investment at the sub-national level for mitigation and adaptation solutions through a transformative financing model.”
There are no actual projects, but the CO2 equivalent reduction is pegged at a precise 77.6 million tons. This is less than $10 a ton which is completely unrealistic. The GCF financial share is just 20%.
A look through the first 40 or so projects in the database listing shows that all are financial, not physical. The Green Climate Fund claims to be delivering billions of tons of CO2 equivalent emission reductions over its project life cycles. The project numbers are completely fictitious and hence fraudulent.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/UN-Green-Climate-Fund-emission-reduction-claims-are-fraudulent.jpg365640Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2026-08-19 14:26:172026-08-20 12:52:19UN Green Climate Fund Emission Reduction Claims are Fraudulent
As the U.S. national debt approaches $40 trillion. Dividing this gross federal obligation by the estimated number of active federal income tax filers results in a theoretical burden of approximately $359,252 per taxpayer!! The U.S. federal government is several weeks away from reaching a disturbing milestone, surpassing $40 trillion in debt.
The U.S. Senate just left for recess after passing another stopgap spending bill with no offsetting cuts. This avoids a government shutdown before the midterm elections but does not slow gargantuan increases in the federal debt. In the last 18 years, the federal debt has quadrupled. In that time, has the standard of living of most Americans improved dramatically? While some Americans are doing well, there are 35.9 million individuals in poverty, with 12.3% on food stamps. At the end of 2024, there were 770,000 homeless Americans, the highest total ever recorded.
This huge increase in debt certainly did not benefit the American people. The average American faces $63,340 in personal debt, a figure that has remained steady in recent years. If the benefits were not shared with the American people, why did our government accumulate such a debt? For much of the past 18 years, America has been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars cost $8 trillion and the lives of 7,073 military personnel. In the last 18 years, the federal government bailed out banks, created the Obamacare monstrosity, and dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic by shutting down the economy and spending $4.65 trillion in “relief funds for response and recovery efforts.”
As Americans have learned from recent disclosures, the quarterback of our pandemic response, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was a liar who misrepresented the impact of COVID-19 and caused additional financial damage and unnecessary loss of life. Growing government is never the answer, whether the problem is poverty or a pandemic. Unfortunately, politicians of both parties love to throw money at whatever crisis develops and hope for the best. Usually, it is the worst possible outcome: as more debt is created and the problem remains.
Currently, our national debt per taxpayer is a breathtaking $359,252. This continues to increase as leaders of both political parties share responsibility. Under Democratic administrations, domestic spending skyrockets, while military spending balloons in Republican administrations. Our federal government spends $7.25 trillion annually, while revenues total only $5.57 trillion. Efforts to address this massive gap, such as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have been short-lived. While fraud investigations are admirable and will save some taxpayer money, the results will only amount to a fraction of overall spending.
One answer is the passage of a balanced budget amendment, which would require approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures. According to House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX), this amendment is necessary because Congress has “failed.”
In a recent address to Congress, Arrington noted that “Both parties have failed. This institution has failed…We have jeopardized our economy, our security, our leadership in the world, and worst of all, we have compromised on our children’s future and the blessing of their inheritance of freedom and opportunity.”
Arrington supports a balanced budget amendment because it would “impose fiscal responsibility on a body politic that has not done that, that has not mustered the political will to do that. We have a national debt per GDP that exceeds World War II levels of debt. We have an annual deficit that is larger than both the defense and non-defense discretionary budget. Fifty cents or greater on every dollar that we borrow of the $2 trillion going to service our interest payment(s). Half of what we borrow, a trillion dollars, is more than what we spend on defense.” Arrington is right; a balanced budget amendment is needed and should become a major issue in our country again. Republicans should embrace this challenge and make it a significant talking point in the midterm elections.
Unfortunately, politicians are hesitant because, for every government program, there is a constituency that does not favor cuts. The major social insurance programs of Medicare and Social Security have tens of millions of Americans who depend on those services. There are 75 million Americans receiving Social Security benefits, while 70.3 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare.
These programs have enormous constituencies, who do not want any of their services to be cut. However, action must be taken. On June 9, 2026, the Social Security Board of Trustees reported that the program will become insolvent in 2032. Unless corrective measures are taken, benefits will have to be cut 25% in that year.
Another area that must be addressed is the Department of War. Several weeks ago, the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorized $1.15 trillion in spending in the next fiscal year. This does not include the Trump administration’s request for an additional $350 billion in defense spending through budget reconciliation. House Republicans trimmed this amount to $60 billion and are awaiting Senate approval when they return from recess.
The defense budget, as well as spending in every government department, needs to be examined for waste, fraud, and abuse. To address this debt crisis, there needs to be structural changes in our spending across the entirety of the federal government.
The answer to the debt problem is not additional taxes. Every major tax cut given to the American people has led to additional revenue flowing into the federal government. As Americans are incentivized, they become even more productive, creating economic growth and enhanced tax revenue at every level of government.
American families, cities, and states must balance their budgets. It is time that the federal government follows suit. It can be done and was accomplished between 1998 and 2001. In those four years, the budget surpluses totaled $559 billion.
Everything changed after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and government spending increased, both domestically and internationally. Nevertheless, Americans should question whether the extra spending eradicated the threat of Islamic terror or made Americans any safer.
The spending increases did lay the groundwork for the fiscal nightmare our country faces today, which threatens the financial well-being of every American and future generations.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/podcast-2659476_640.jpg360640Conservative Commandos Radio Show and AUN-TVhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngConservative Commandos Radio Show and AUN-TV2026-08-11 05:27:562026-08-11 05:29:42You owe the U.S. Government $359,252! This is not a joke!
A Muslim illegal alien ripped off Americans and sent the money home including to pro-Hamas groups.
In 1992, Khaled Ahmed Satary arrived in the United States on a student visa. Even though student visas are only supposed to be temporary, the Gaza ‘Palestinian’ Muslim would not leave the country, not even when the government began trying to deport him in 2008 after he spent 3 years in federal prison for running a $50 million counterfeiting ring, not as he amassed another $547 million in health care fraud over the next decade by targeting the elderly and not until he finally went on the run in 2022 and became an international fugitive.
Along the way, Satary donated to Islamic groups and remained “committed to helping the people of his native Palestine” and helped “raise more than $1 million to (sic) charities and organizations that support Palestinians” including a ‘charity’ accused of having links to Hamas.
The incredible story of how one ‘Palestinian’ from Gaza who received a student visa to study at the University of New Mexico inflicted at least $600 million worth of costs on the United States across three decades offers a snapshot of the punishing costs of Muslim mass migration.
Student visas, often fraudulent, have been used by millions of foreigners, including from the Muslim world, to come to the United States and remain here even after they have expired.
Seven years after Satary entered the country, he began manufacturing fake CDs in Atlanta as part of what authorities would describe as the largest music piracy operation in history with an estimated $50 million in losses and 127,000 fake CDs seized. The operation was sophisticated enough that, according to an FBI affidavit, Satary “hired bodyguards and used shell corporations”. CNN reported” that he was wiring the “profits to countries in the Middle East.”
At least some of the money was sent to ‘Palestinian’ enclaves in Jordan, the UAE and Israel.
Satary was busted in 2000. The DOJ accused him and two other fellow Muslim defendants, Abedullah F. Al-Qudah and Akram Abdelraham Yaqoub, of manufacturing the CDs. Satary was operating out of Lawrenceville, considered one of the fastest growing Muslim areas in Atlanta, that would serve as a hub of his crime empire and where his son still maintains a business.
Satary was sentenced to 3 years in prison and after he was released in 2008, ICE began trying to deport him. By then however, Hamas was in control of Gaza and since we had no diplomatic relations with the Muslim Brotherhood terror group, no one was available to take Satary.
A few years later, Satary had begun creating an empire of medical testing firms.
Unable to deport Satary back to Gaza, ICE had released him under an “order of supervision” that allowed him to live and work in the United States. By 2013, Satary was in the news again for donations to the senate campaign of a Republican congressman who would later support arming and training Syrian Jihadis and then go to work as a lobbyist for the Syrian ‘opposition’.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the senate campaign took in over $80,000 from employees of two Satary companies: Confirmatrix Laboratories and Nue Medical Consulting. The paper noted that “some of the contributors have strong feelings about Palestinian independence” and “most do not appear to be registered voters in Georgia.”
The money did not officially come from Satary, who in over 20 years had not achieved legal status and was under an order of deportation, but from employees who were allegedly given large bonuses by Satary’s son, told to keep a few hundred dollars and donate the rest. His son Jordan had donated thousands of dollars. Despite his criminal and illegal status, Khaled Ahmed Satary also appeared to have donated previously to the Republican Party’s NRSC.
Satary boasted of raising money for the ILM Academy: an Islamic school aimed at producing “Muslims whose thoughts and actions are devoted to Islam & Allah”, and the Alif Institute which puts on the Atlanta Arab Festival. His own site described him as a “philanthropist” who “helped build several successful healthcare businesses”, believed that “Arabs and Arab Americans have been unfairly portrayed in the mainstream media” and was “active in the Palestinian Medical Relief Society and the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.”
An unofficial Hamas site had directed donations to PCRF: the group had been accused of funding an organization with Hamas links and ran a hospital pediatric unit that was used to conceal “explosives, suicide vests and even a motorcycle used in the 7 October attacks.”
The President of PMRS is Mustafa Barghouti, a former official of the PLO on whose watch the infamous ‘Hamas Mickey Mouse’ had aired, teaching children that “Islam will spread to all parts of the earth” and conquer Spain. Barghouti had appeared at Hamas events and with Hamas leaders, and had declared that Oct 7 was “a glorious day for the Palestinian resistance.”
A PMRS member was caught trying to plant a bomb on a bus in Israel.
Still, few questions were being asked about Satary’s health care businesses, which his site had claimed “ grow at a rate of 23 percent each month” and 6 months after six months had grown from 4 employees and $1 million to “70 employees and revenues of $12 million”.
According to his site, this was all “due to Satary’s efforts and determination.”
In reality, something else was going on. In 2013, Confirmatrix was ranked as the most expensive lab in the country, “collecting an average of $2,406 from Medicare for each patient tested, compared to the national average of $751.” The trick was running “an average of nearly 120 different drug screens on each patient, far more than any other drug lab.”
Confirmatrix profited from the opioid epidemic by allegedly paying kickbacks to ‘pill mills’ across the country to run drug screenings of patients on pain medication. The patients ended up not only heavily addicted, but stuck with massive bills for unnecessary drug screening tests once Medicare caught on to the scheme, lowered its reimbursement rates and the FBI came knocking in 2016, at which point the ‘Palestinian’ company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
And the patients, already suffering, were hounded by bill collectors for thousands of dollars.
Khaled Ahmed Satary had reportedly put the labs and his home in the name of his then-teenage son Jordan Satary. New labs with new names like ‘Elite’ and ‘Clio’ then popped up with some of the same employees including one that billed Medicare for $8.6 million in genetic tests.
In 2019, Clio and Elite were also raided as part of a crackdown on over $2 billion in fraudulent genetic cancer tests in which a telemarketing network was allegedly used to prey on “hundreds of thousands of elderly and/or disabled patients” by promising to test them for cancer.
When the indictment came down, it accused “Satary, the owner of several labs in Georgia, Oklahoma and Louisiana, and his co-conspirators, through companies they controlled” of having “paid the telemarketers illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for the doctor’s orders and medically unnecessary tests.” The labs “collectively billed Medicare for more than $547 million.”
This would have been on top of the previous millions from Confirmatrix.
A convicted felon and illegal alien under order of deportation had been able to donate to politicians and bill the government for over half a billion dollars across six years.
And incredibly, it still wasn’t over.
Sizable amounts of money had reportedly been transferred to the Middle East. $30 million was allegedly sent to Jordan, the ‘Palestinian’ enclave that some have described as a second ‘Palestinian State’, some of which was reportedly sent to key figures in the government.
Before the raids, Satary was alleged to have paid millions for a fake passport to move to Qatar.
With all that money, foreign ties and history of fraud, federal authorities wanted to keep Satary locked up. “It’s not that difficult, when you have $20 million at your disposal, to get out of this country when you’re looking at decades in prison,” the federal prosecutor had warned.
Instead, he was allowed to travel anywhere he wanted, and when he failed to appear for his 2022 court date, Satary was listed as one of the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters and a global manhunt was launched suggesting that he might be hiding out in some of the Muslim settler communities in the United States in Houston and Atlanta as well as Dubai, where he had lived before coming to America, and “Jordan and the Israel/Palestine areas.”
Khaled Ahmed Satary was recently arrested with the help of unnamed “regional partners” and returned to the United States to face criminal charges a quarter century after his first arrest.
The Gaza ‘Palestinian’ has reportedly inflicted over $600 million in damages during that time.
Even if Satary is finally convicted, sizable portions of his assets were transferred to the Muslim world, including prominent figures in Jordan, or to his wife and his son, also named Jordan, who regularly brags about his wealth on social media. According to Jordan Satary, who is now operating as a “real estate investor” in Texas, he’s busy “blending Palestinian-American heritage with my entrepreneurial journey.”
When real-world problems arise, you can always count on socialists to fall back on blaming their old ideological bugaboos rather than addressing them head on.
That appears to be the case in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been forced to deal with an escalating problem of e-bike fatalities.
You can guess who he blamed for the problem.
“The City has issued cease-and-desist orders to 42 online retailers demanding they immediately stop selling these illegal devices to customers in New York City’s 175 ZIP codes,” the mayor’s office announced. “The products being marketed and shipped into the city exceed legal limits for speed, weight or other safety requirements and cannot lawfully be sold or operated on City streets.”
The retailers have until Aug. 18 to comply with the cease-and-desist order.
Of course, many of the e-bikes sold by these retailers are simply modified to go beyond the original safety limits.
This measure couldn’t be more predictable and likely fruitless. On the surface, Mamdani’s policy seems somewhat reasonable.
The city government should be looking to address this.
But like every good leftist, Mamdani finds it far more convenient to blame objects and the supposedly greedy corporations rather than the real culprits.
Previous Mayor Eric Adams at some point realized the e-bike problem was something he couldn’t ignore and at least targeted the source. Under his administration, the city lowered the speed limit for bikes and added criminal penalties for those who were driving recklessly.
Maybe that’s harsh, but it at least placed the burden of compliance on individual users who choose to break the law—and there are many who do.
If you spend any time walking in the city, you will encounter e-bikers, often food app delivery people, driving unbelievably recklessly.
I’ve had so many near misses with New York City e-bikers driving way too fast and breaking the law. They blow through red lights, go far above the speed limit, and frequently nail pedestrians. I often worry about myself and especially my wife when we take our daughter and stroller to the city.
Some of them make the crazy taxi and ride-share drivers seem downright tame in comparison. So, it makes sense to up enforcement and penalties on this kind of behavior.
Reporter Jesse Singal said it perfectly on X.
“I’ve said this before but basically every day I witness driver behavior that could kill someone,” he wrote. “It’s insane. Even just basic stuff like not blocking crosswalks, forcing moms w/strollers to cut into a traffic lane. Just *enforce the s—- out of potentially fatal behavior!”
Yeah, you tell ‘em.
Of course, Mamdani, like any good socialist, doesn’t believe in individual consequences, personal responsibility, or any of that business.
He immediately removed the criminal penalties for reckless e-bikers when he took office and made it seem like traffic enforcement was some kind of cruel burden.
“Every New Yorker on our roads, whether driving or biking, deserves to be treated fairly,” he said in a statement in March. “By ending criminal summonses for low-level traffic offenses, we’re ensuring cyclists and e-bike riders — including those who deliver our food and groceries — are treated like others on the road.”
Since the problem hasn’t stopped, Mamdani was pushed to take further action. And hitting the capitalists was the best he could come up with. It very much reminds me of when Chicago sued automobile makers for not putting better safety measures on their vehicles when the city got hit with a spike in auto thefts.
There’s a problem with Mamdani’s plan though, even if he doesn’t think punishing individual lawbreakers is a good idea.
The city is currently awash in modified e-bikes. Mamdani was asked at the press conference announcing the crackdown if he would do something about the countless ones currently in use and said “for now, this is our focus.”
A spokesperson for the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance said in an interview with the New York Post that Mamdani’s law is effectively worthless.
“He would not commit to enforcement or e-vehicle registration,” the spokesperson said. “We are left with the same failed policies that created this deadly public health crisis, which has plagued the city for five years. Look at ER stats — it is crystal clear that e-vehicle trauma admissions are only increasing, all while the mayor does absolutely nothing.”
So, Mamdani has merely created the mirage of doing something. He’s good at that. But unless New York aggressively addresses the problem of reckless driving, nothing will change.
With the Communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani implementing his anti-business agenda, many financial firms will rightfully downsize their operations in New York City. Over time, several will just leave all together. No rational CEO would want to invest or maintain operations in a city that is governed by lunatics like Zohran Mamdani.
There was a time when New York City’s Leftist politicians could penalize successful corporations with impunity. However, with the emergence of Dallas as a major financial center those days are long gone. We can expect Y’all Street to take a big bite out of Wall Street’s financial sector in the years ahead. And we can also expect Miami to do the same.
Dallas debuts new ‘Tex-ee’ stock exchange, plans to rival Wall Street
A new rival to Wall Street officially debuted on Friday as the Texas Stock Exchange went fully live for the first time with trading available for all of its listed tickers.
The Texas Stock Exchange, which is based in Dallas, is the first new major stock exchange to launch in the US in decades. The TXSE, called the “Tex-ee,” is looking to compete with the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Composite for listings.
The exchange boasts several prominent financial backers, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Charles Schwab, among others.
Despite the relentless attacks, slanders, and calls to boycott by the Islamic/Commie Left and Woke Right, the Jewish state of Israel continues to flourish. Israel’s economy is going to Pluto.
Israel reports all-time high of $169 billion in 2025 exports
The Foreign Ministry said that the record figures reflect “the strength, resilience and global competitiveness” of the country’s economy.
Israel’s exports reached a record $169 billion in 2025, the country’s Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday.
The official Israeli government X account highlighted the all-time high as a reflection of the economy’s “strength, resilience and global competitiveness.”
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Israel-Reports-All-Time-High.jpg356640The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2026-08-05 04:23:122026-08-05 04:23:44Israel Reports All-Time High of $169 billion in 2025 Exports Despite Nazi-Inspired BDS (Boycott the Jews) Movement
REUTERS—The United States on Friday banned imports from 43 more companies over alleged human rights abuses of Uyghur and other minority groups, including Hunan Aihua Group, one of China’s largest capacitor manufacturers, according to a government posting.
The companies were added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, which restricts the import of goods tied to what the U.S. has determined are China’s human rights abuses and ongoing genocide in the Xinjiang region.
The latest additions also include companies in the pharmaceutical, metals, cotton, food and lithium production sectors.
The posting marks the first time companies have been added to the list under the Trump administration, and brings the number of entities on the list from 144 to 187. It is also the largest number of entities added in one action since the Act was signed into law in December 2021. Companies on the list are believed to mine, produce or manufacture their goods with forced labor.
Companies on the List
“Today’s action by the Trump administration strengthens America’s economy against products made with slave labor and sends a message to the Chinese Communist Party that we will not look the other way on its genocide and human rights abuses,” Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on China, said in a statement.
The U.S. has said Chinese authorities have established internment camps for Uyghurs and other religious and ethnic minority groups in China’s western Xinjiang region. Beijing has denied any abuses.
Hunan Aihua Group was added to the list because the U.S. believes the company sources chemical foil and other materials from Xinjiang, the Department of Homeland Security said in the posting in the U.S. Federal Register.
The company, which supplies consumer electronics, industrial, automotive and renewable energy markets, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chacha Food Co., whose products are exported to nearly 50 countries and regions, was also added to the list, according to the posting. Others on the list included Xinjiang Tianhongji Technology Co., Tefeng Pharmaceutical Co., Tianshan Aluminum Group, and Henan Guorong Electronic Technology Co.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The companies could not immediately be reached.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Holmes)
Sami Winc: Let’s turn to California, and California seems to be a petri dish of all those ideas that the Democrats have going. I’ll read a few of the things that are happening this week in California, and you can provide us with commentary.
The first thing that I think is very interesting is that the federal Congress, the House, has passed a bill for the defense budget of $1.15 trillion. In it, Donald Trump has the ability to seize property in California for an oil pipeline. The property they’re looking at is down near Santa Barbara.
Victor Davis Hanson: I think it’s on federal land.
Sami Winc: Yeah. And if it’s not, they have the right to buy it up, is what the bill says.
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, basically, he’s saying to Californians, and I think I’m correct, that we have the fourth or fifth largest oil and gas reserves of any state: Monterey Shale offshore, the Elk Reserve, Naval Reserve near Bakersfield.
So he said, “You people have the highest gas prices in the nation, and it’s kind of a drag on the rest of the nation because you have the tech sector, and you’re driving everybody out, and you’re losing your competitiveness. Part of the reason is your fuel is so expensive, your gasoline and diesel fuel, and your electricity.
“You’re trying to get rid of nuclear. Your wind and solar don’t work much, and you’re importing a lot of energy from the Middle East that we don’t like. So we would like to go in and take our federal leases and put them up. There’s a lot of oil out there. Get Chevron and Exxon to pump.
“And there are other areas that have rare earth minerals in the desert you’re not fully utilizing.”
That’s what he’s trying to do.
Sami Winc: All right, let’s look at another story.
There’s a homeless group that works at 17 different homeless facilities in San Francisco, and they just recently lost their funding.
They were being funded at about $26,000 per inhabitant they were taking care of, and their facilities were rife with understaffing, sexual abuse, a dead and decaying body in one case, vermin infestation, broken elevators—the perfect example of how the government is not taking good care.
Victor Davis Hanson: So what happens is the government doesn’t want to deal with it, so it just takes these block grants. Then somebody says, “You know what? They’re paying $26,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 per person. So I’ll just create a little nonprofit, and I’ll say that I’m taking care of people on the street. For maybe six weeks I’ll do a good job.
“But then I don’t want to get around those people. They don’t bathe. They defecate on the street. They’re violent. They’re mentally ill. I’m just gonna pay me and my family and my staff a lot of money and rip off the government.”
That’s what they’re doing.
And they’re not…
Gavin said if they gave him $10 billion, I think, he could solve the homeless problem.
And they did, and it’s worse than ever.
Sami Winc: It’s worse than ever.
Victor Davis Hanson: We know what the only answer for it is to do one of two things, or both: Have everybody come in for a diagnostic test and cut off the drugs so they can’t get fentanyl, and then either do one of two things. If they are mentally unsound, open up state hospitals where they can get care.
And if they’re not, have some kind of little village on the outskirts of town where they have, you know, 200- or 300-square-foot little rooms with a bed and a dresser, and then they have a big group facility with showers and toilets, and make it humane.
And they won’t do that.
Mamdani said, “We’re not gonna take people off the street.”
So he’s got a huge homeless problem in New York.
And Los Angeles—I never believed two things about L.A. I grew up in California, and from when I was a little boy, there was no such thing, really, as downtown L.A. It had the police station and a couple of government buildings, but it wasn’t like San Francisco with high-rises.
Then in the ’90s, as we came on the eve of globalization, it was a window onto China and Japan. You wouldn’t believe it. You’d go down to L.A. in ’93, ’95, ’98, 2002, 2003, and there were like 20 cranes in the sky at any one time. The city was really clean, you know what I mean? It was immaculate. And they had a downtown.
So you couldn’t believe that.
And now you can’t believe it.
When you go down there, the cantinas have taken over everything, and the street merchants, and these beautiful buildings that were just built 30 years ago have graffiti on them. There’s plywood on a lot of the windows where nobody wants to go.
You have to step over people, and it’s deserted. It’s kind of like Santa Monica.
Anything that leftism touches has the anti-Midas touch. It destroys.
And it’s costing a fortune to destroy L.A.
Sami Winc: Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson: I mean, it’s very expensive to pay homeless people to destroy things.
Sami Winc: Yeah, it is.
It took me a second there, Victor. I’m like, “What?”
Victor Davis Hanson: It is. It was very expensive to tell BLM and Antifa, “Do you want to destroy the country for four months? Well, we won’t arrest you, and we’ll give you a grant. Go ahead and do it.”
Sami Winc: All right.
So California voters have put Proposition 39 on the upcoming ballot, and the state is doing everything to subvert that.
There’s a new story on how they’ve written into the voter ballots a negative summary of it, and then the informational part of it is also negative.
Victor Davis Hanson: Which proposition are you talking about?
Sami Winc: It’s called Proposition 39. It’s a voter ID proposition. So the state’s trying to undermine it, in other words, by subtle means.
Victor Davis Hanson: What usually happens in California is, whether it was Three Strikes, ending affirmative action, or gay marriage—even in its demented state now, after we’ve lost 12 million conservatives to out-of-state immigration—the people still poll that they want it.
But by the time the SEIU and the California Teachers Association get done funding against it, and then all of these Bay Area and L.A. wealthy donors, they’ll probably defeat it.
And if they don’t defeat it, some Ninth District left-wing judge who hasn’t been in the news for two months and thinks he’s Socrates wants to be considered cutting-edge and controversial, so he’ll probably throw it out if it were to pass, like they did with gay marriage.
We passed a proposition that said marriage was only between a man and a woman, and you could have a legal relationship, but it wouldn’t be called marriage.
And it passed overwhelmingly.
Then they libeled it and said it was because of the Mormons and Christians.
But actually, the post-election data showed it was mostly Black and Hispanic people, and then they shut up.
The moment that passed, they sent it to a U.S. federal judge, and he threw it out.
At the time, he was living with another man, so you’d think he would have…
And when people said he had a conflict of interest, they said, “That is the worst thing you could say. That is so homophobic.”
So he threw it out, and the people’s will went up in smoke.
That’ll happen with the voter ID initiative unless it gets to the Supreme Court, if it should pass.
Sami Winc: Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson: I don’t like to be cynical about California, but I’m 72, and I’ve lived here, and I’ve watched it deteriorate. You want to cry when you see what’s happened to it.
Sami Winc: Well, I’m not gonna cheer you up anymore with these last two stories.
One is that California Pizza Kitchen—for anybody who does not live in California, it’s pretty much an institution here. There are 185 stores. The owners have left California, and they also said it’s almost an impossible business environment to operate in. That’s a big business.
The second story is that in the small seaside town of Capitola, a deranged man—I don’t know if he was homeless, actually—Tyler Liljedahl…
Victor Davis Hanson: He was up on felony charges. He’d been let out.
Sami Winc: Yes, he had been let out of jail.
The state also knew that he talked about hearing voices and having homicidal fantasies, and he stabbed to death a woman in a small seaside village that has about 1% of the population in it.
Victor Davis Hanson: If you were to describe the case in Californese, their language, it would be something like this:
“Well, a poor African American young man was only 19, and he made a few errors. He had some violent periods in his life, 19, and we decided not to incarcerate him. We convicted him of a felony, and he’s out now, and for all practical purposes he’s making something of himself.”
But, Mr. Parole Officer, he went to the Capitola Mall to kill somebody, and he saw an elderly Asian male, whom he wanted to kill.
I think he was also a racist, by the way. He didn’t go after other Black people.
But he was afraid the elderly Asian man might put up a fight. So then he found a woman crossing the street, and he thought, ‘Ah, she’s looking at cars, and I’ll just follow her.’”
She was 73.
It was just the classic California dichotomy.
Here was a woman living by herself with a cat. Everybody believed she was beloved. She devoted all of her time to the arts, was an artist, just a wonderful person minding her own business.
Before he followed her, he went to a sporting goods store and bought two—not one, two—knives, because he said he liked to stab with both hands at the same time.
Sami Winc: Yeah, so he bought two knives.
Victor Davis Hanson: Two knives. He goes out, and he stabs her 11 times in the back and chest, through the heart, and he kills her.
And then what will happen?
He’ll be out in three or four years.
This is just…
There are so many things about California.
If I can tell you that if he was a young white guy whose parents came out from Oklahoma, and there was a wonderful, beloved Black artist, and he went out there and stabbed him twice, the whole state right now would be in an uproar about its racist policies.
But they don’t really are.
There’s been no big outrage. It’s just collateral damage.
It’s like the Sikh truck drivers who ran over three people—or whatever they did in California. They rear-ended them.
Oh, they paralyzed that one girl, and he only got five years.
California is really, I think people should understand, a very sick society.
It’s the sickest society of all the states that we have.
And Gavin Newsom has been an accelerant of that sickness.
And it’s a racist state. Twenty-seven percent of the population was foreign-born, and it does not want to acculturate, assimilate, or integrate them.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/California-Is-Becoming-a-Warning-for-America.jpg360640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2026-07-29 12:45:032026-07-29 13:20:13Victor Davis Hanson: California Is Becoming a Warning for America
Senator Mike Lee formally stated on X that he will object to any unanimous consent request or effort by Majority Leader John Thune to put the Senate into an August recess until the SAVE America Act is passed, requesting a recorded roll-call vote.
Background and Conflict:
The Demand: Lee and Senator Rick Scott are pushing to cancel or delay the August break, arguing that the Senate should stay in continuous session to pass the election security legislation.
The Leadership Stance: Leader Thune has maintained that the chamber lacks the 60 votes required to overcome a Democratic filibuster and does not have the numbers to change Senate rules, creating friction with conservative members and the White House.
The Legislation: The SAVE America Act proposes mandatory photo ID at polls and direct proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections.
Trump Shares Warren Clip to Push SAVE America Act on Voter Verification
The post on Truth Social urges passage of the SAVE America Act, which requires proof of citizenship like a passport or birth certificate for federal voter registration and photo ID at polls. It follows New Jersey data showing 75,000 noncitizens summoned for jury duty each year from state databases, though courts confirm safeguards keep them from serving, and a recent glitch added 6,600 to voter rolls with few voting. Similar concerns arose in Pennsylvania, with conservatives like Sen. Mike Lee demanding action amid House passage and Senate pushes, while critics argue it burdens citizens without easy access to documents.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Senator-Mike-Lee.jpg359640The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2026-07-27 05:24:252026-07-28 04:26:39Senator Mike Lee Blocks Senate Recess: No Vacation Until SAVE America Act Gets a Vote
This was quite a strange weather week which we are getting used to up here in the Panhandle. In addition we had no internet for 2 days. Aside from putting me behind in my work it was actually nice some quiet time.
Monday was the first budget meeting in Jackson County. It was quite interesting. Debbie and I went. It seems as though because we have a balanced budget for the years of 26-27 there will be no more budget meetings until the end of July. I would send you a copy of the agenda but it is not on the website yet.
From my recollection the Commissioners are looking to keep the millage rate of 7.945 the same They expect the new property tax to pass and if it does pass that is when tightening the belt for the Jackson county will be in order. There were several ideas for saving money thrown around. Hopefully you will come up with ideas as well. According to Florida CFO Blaze Ingigola, the counties have plenty of money. They just don’t spend it properly. It will be up to us to help the commissioners live within our means.
When grant and matching grant money comes into a County as revenue we have to read the grants to see what is expected of us. We have to make sure that we are taking advantage of the grants that the state is offering. But if we don’t monitor them we could end up spend more for thing we don’t need paying for things that we can’t afford.
We made the right decision regarding AI Data centers in Florida. Every day more states and counties are saying no. Last week one of the AI platforms went rogue during a security test and triggered a hack that compromised the infrastructure of AI startup Hugging Face. Remember AI is only as good as its programmer. AI can be biased and give you the wrong information.
Budgets are extensive but you can help reading the budget and finding places that you can make reductions specially for next year. Example what is the actual cost of the Flock cameras? Lease? Maintenance? How does the ticket money get split? What about tolls from toll roads? What NGO’s get tax money?
Jackson County: We will have a budget Zoom meeting on Monday July 27th at 8:00 p.m. the zoom link for that budget meeting is below. Please be prompt.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/money-5.jpg366640Karen Schoenhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKaren Schoen2026-07-26 12:58:082026-07-26 13:00:22Money: Either you control it or it controls you
It wasn’t easy, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) managed to go three-for-three on some of the heaviest lifts the House GOP has faced this year: the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the framework for reconciliation 3.0, and a short-term government funding bill. In just 48 hours, the Louisianan ran the table on bills that the media had written off as impossible. But, as Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) pointed out, “House Republicans, we almost always get our work done,” even, he added, if it isn’t always a “pretty journey.”
The trio of proposals adds to the mountain of business piling up in Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) Senate, where he’s trying to game out which pieces of the House’s legislation he’ll actually pursue and which he’ll either punt or switch out for his own chamber’s version. All the while, the president sits impatiently, wondering whether his agenda items will actually make it out of Congress alive. “It’s like the Senate is a place that you send things when you want them to die,” Donald Trump told reporters.
While the House and Senate leaders seem to have a good working relationship, there’s no mistaking the tension over the two chambers’ gameplans. Right now, most observers point out, “Johnson and Thune seem to be on completely different planets.” And while the Senate is in session a week longer than the House, it still might not be enough to tie up what are turning out to be very critical loose ends.
Stopping a Government Shutdown
To foil the Democrats’ plans to shut down the government before the elections, Johnson managed to muscle through a continuing resolution that would keep the agencies funded through December 4 — well after the midterms. Six Democrats and Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Calif.) joined the GOP in pushing the bill across the finish line (220-205). “This clean, short-term [CR] simply keeps the government open, protects the progress we’ve made, and preserves the path to full-year appropriations,” Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) explained on the floor.
His budget counterpart in the Senate, Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — the successor to the late Lindsey Graham — has no illusions about the lengths the Democrats will go to score political points. “They’ve completely blown up the appropriations process,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” this week. “I think by and large, most of them are spoiling for a shutdown, thinking that would give them an advantage in the election.” But he’s also heard that there might be enough support from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) caucus to pass a relatively clean CR in the hopes that Democrats take over the House and can press for big spending.
Regardless, he shook his head, “I definitely question their motives. It’s certainly not to be helpful, certainly not to be for the benefit of the American public. It’s for their own personal political power and for growing government. But it’s just possible we might get a CR because of those motivations.”
Whose CR is the better question. On Tuesday, Thune seemed to ignore the House version, opting instead to try to strike his own deal with Democrats, since he’ll need at least seven to reach the 60-vote threshold. “That is something I intend to bring to the floor for a vote before the August break,” he vowed.
The speaker seemed to give his partner latitude, telling reporters Wednesday, “I think Leader Thune believes he’ll have some reasonable Democrats in the Senate that will assist. I certainly hope that’s true and hopefully that’ll spark some in the House as well. So I think we’ll get it done.” If not, Thune has threatened to use budget reconciliation to force the government’s funding extension through on a simple majority vote.
At the end of the day, Senator Johnson wanted people to know, “Democrats are all about power. And to the extent that they can create chaos, [they will].”
Moving on Reconciliation 3.0
Speaking of reconciliation, despite a lot of hemming and hawing, House Republicans ultimately bowed to Trump’s wishes and agreed to unlock the process to a third reconciliation bill Wednesday — overcoming a lot of conservatives’ objections in the process. The budget resolution, which was an iffy prospect at best last week, squeaked through with two votes to spare after a group of hardline GOPers flipped to “yes” at the last minute.
The House’s latest gambit partially fulfills Trump’s wishes for more defense funding to fight Iran, agreeing to another $73 billion for the Pentagon, $12 billion in farm aid, and $10 billion to implement parts of the SAVE America Act. To help secure elections, Johnson’s plan would create a pot of money for states that agree to mandate voter ID and proof of citizenship at the polls.
Reflecting on the dim prospects for reconciliation earlier in the week, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) admitted that “part of what happens with these legislative journeys is at the beginning, everybody is comparing the proposal to perfect, what they want. As the week moves on, people generally understand that they need to be comparing the proposal with some other realistic option, and that perfect is never going to happen around here,” he said. “As that happens, people across the spectrum in the House understand that what’s been proposed isn’t that bad. That’s why we’ve generally won votes Wednesday, Thursday, Friday that looked pretty bleak on a Monday or a Tuesday.”
But the journey is far from over. The Senate GOP isn’t exactly chomping at the bit to launch the fraught process. Thune has already managed expectations, insisting that he won’t move the House’s blueprint until the government funding problem is solved. “That means reconciliation won’t move in the Senate anytime soon — and passing a bipartisan stopgap spending bill could still take weeks or months of additional work,” Punchbowl News cautioned.
“I think [Thune’s] looking at all contingencies,” the speaker agreed. “…[W]e’ll coordinate on strategy, but I think there’s a lot of game to be played between now and then, so we’ll see what happens.”
Part of the hesitation on the Senate’s part has to be the terrifying prospect of a vote-a-rama right before the midterm elections. As part of reconciliation, Democrats can force an unlimited number of amendment votes on any issue they want — forcing vulnerable Republicans to take positions on a number of politically dicey issues like the Iran war, for example. And, Punchbowl adds, with the narrow margins, “it’s naïve to believe that Senate GOP leaders would be able to defeat all of them.”
Look, Ron Johnson acknowledged to Perkins, “It’s never an easy task, reconciliation. I think this one will be made easier because President Trump and the White House are really taking a leading role here. It’s a more modest; it’s a skinnier version of what a lot of people want. … Everybody’s got their own ideas in terms of what they want to do in a third reconciliation package. So this one’s going to be focused on military spending. What can we do to help farmers? And what can we do to restore integrity to our elections? Those are things that most Republicans agree on,” he noted.
Yet, they’re also, Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) observed, not exactly Schumer’s priorities. “Money for the military, and money for the farmers, and a fair chance of passing the SAVE Act — you’re not going to get it in regular order,” he argued. “And if you think otherwise, you’re entitled to your opinion, but I’ve got rocks in my driveway that are smarter.”
Another reason why Thune might hold his fire on reconciliation is that he could very well end up needing that tool to keep the government’s lights on. “I hope that’s not necessary,” he said. “We’ve had conversations, productive conversations, on both sides of the aisle on a funding resolution that would carry us past the November election.” But if not, having another reconciliation bill in his back pocket may be the only way to get the agencies the dollars they need.
Defunding Planned Parenthood
One of the major grudges pro-lifers continue to hold against Congress is its refusal to carry over the defunding of America’s biggest abortion business into a second year. After Republicans accomplished that long-awaited dream in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, stripping more than $800 million from Planned Parenthood in 2024, some corners of the party have abruptly walked away from that fight in the second and third reconciliation bills — to the dismay of grassroots conservatives. Making that sting even more, the floodgates reopened July 4, the same day America celebrated its 250th birthday.
The speaker hasn’t abandoned the idea, though, telling pro-life groups that a fourth reconciliation bill might be in play to rectify this wrong. Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) echoed that thought, insisting that reconciliation 4.0 can “do the things that are left out of this one.” Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) agreed.
The fact that it’s not a part of the current budget framework is “concerning,” Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) told Perkins earlier this week. “And we’re certainly continuing to add our voice to the fact that we’ve got to do something here. I was in a meeting with the speaker just yesterday, and I do believe that he is working with a number of pro-life groups [on] that and really moving strategically as we get into the fall,” he noted. There are also things on the table “that we possibly can do that would almost change the landscape of the way Planned Parenthood is viewed,” the former pastor said without revealing details.
In the meantime, Harris stressed, “This has got to happen. The fact that we passed out of the House a one-year ban in the One Big Beautiful Bill, it got to the Senate, they cut it back to one year, and that just expired on July 4th” should mean Congress can do it again, he said. “It is at the top of our list. We’re continuing to push toward that.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/House-Racks-Up-Dramatic-Wins.jpg336640Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2026-07-25 08:05:302026-07-25 08:07:23House Racks Up Dramatic Wins before Recess while Senate Works to Catch Up
