ReportWire

Tag: Opinion

  • DEI is the real cause of America’s housing crisis

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    Why doesn’t Hermes just produce more bags and then everyone can have a Birkin? That’s basically the argument of people pressing President Donald Trump to declare a housing emergency. 

    The fact is there’s plenty of housing, just not in the most desirable neighborhoods. Population growth is slowing, deportations are increasing and new home construction already outpaces family creation. The shortage is a myth created by activists so they can force residential living patterns to conform to DEI dogma.

    A simple calculation proves it. The Census Bureau collects annual data on both the number of households and the available housing stock. The latest data shows 131.3 million households and 146.5 million housing units, an excess supply of over 15 million units.

    The housing shortage is a myth created by activists so they can force residential living patterns to conform to DEI dogma. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    Activists cannot deny the excess so instead, they argue that it is not enough.

    BLAME DRUGS AND MENTAL ILLNESS, NOT PRESIDENT TRUMP, FOR THE CHAOS GRIPPING OUR STREETS

    A well-functioning housing market has a natural vacancy rate. Just as labor markets need unemployment for efficient job matching, housing markets need vacancies for buyer-seller alignment, renovations and seasonal use. 

    Activists say that rate should be 12% instead of the current 10%, and to hit that target an additional 1 million units are needed. But they are cherry-picking the baseline rate. Census data tracked since 1965 shows vacancy rates have fluctuated wildly, ranging from 8.3% to 14.5%. There is no stable “natural rate.” Today’s 10% rate falls well within this historical range. When you stop using artificially high assumptions, the shortage disappears entirely.

    Perhaps anticipating this, activists also argue that demand is higher than census data shows. First, they claim construction has fallen behind historical trends, from 1.5 million units annually in 1968-2000 to 1.23 million since 2001, creating a cumulative deficit. Second, they argue for massive pent-up demand, claiming millions of people would form separate households if housing were cheaper, using statistical models to estimate 3-5 million “missing” households.

    HERE’S WHY HELPING THE HOMELESS REBUILD THEIR LIVES IS KEY TO AMERICA’S FUTURE SUCCESS

    Both arguments assume demographic conditions that no longer exist. America has transitioned from rapid population growth of over 1% annually before 2000 to a more stable 0.5% today, projected to reach 0.1% by 2055. The next 30 years will add 23 million people versus 70 million in the prior 30 years, reflecting lower birth rates and longer lifespans. Deaths will exceed births by 2038 as the population matures. Meanwhile, the current administration targets deporting one million people annually, a figure not included in Census projections that assume stable immigration.

    Like Birkin bags, the real problem isn’t supply, it’s that people want exclusive neighborhoods, and no amount of construction changes that reality. What’s really going on here is that activists are manufacturing a housing crisis in order to impose a DEI regime on where people choose to live.

    This is a corruption of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), which was focused on equality of opportunity not results. The bill did aim to disrupt segregated living patterns but only through the narrow mechanism of eliminating overt housing discrimination. In particular, restrictive covenants, redlining and explicit racial barriers.

    TRUMP IS TRYING TO SAVE 100,000 AMERICAN LIVES WHILE DEMOCRATS LET CITIES SPIRAL OUT OF CONTROL

    As the legislative history records, the goal was to ensure families could live “where they wish and where they can afford,” acknowledging that financial capacity remained a valid constraint on housing choice.

    Today’s activists have abandoned that sensible framework. Instead, they want to eliminate disparities in living patterns by lowering community standards through government coercion. Their chief target is local zoning laws, which serve the important function of maintaining community character. It’s why Washington, D.C., which bans skyscrapers, doesn’t look like Manhattan.

    New York City’s Economic Development Corporation exemplifies this approach, scolding neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, SoHo and the West Village for “restrictive land use regulations” that limit density. They explicitly note that “Community Districts producing the least affordable housing are disproportionately white.” Their demographic focus reveals the true agenda.

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    The Obama administration weaponized this logic through HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, forcing towns that accepted federal funding to eliminate zoning laws and to provide detailed reports on racial demographics. The effort had an important political dimension. By forcing high-density, low-income housing into suburban communities, activists aimed to flip red areas blue.

    President Trump recognized the stakes in his first term, and tasked a White House team led by John McEntee to eliminate the rule, which they did in 14 days. Biden reinstated it, but HUD Secretary Scott Turner wisely eliminated it again soon after taking office.

    Unfortunately, some Republicans and Libertarians have fallen for the housing shortage hoax and still don’t realize that eliminating sensible neighborhood standards like zoning are a stalking horse for imposing DEI quotas. This is a problem because housing activists continue to push their radical agenda aggressively at the state level.

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    In 2021, Massachusetts passed a controversial law forcing the 177 towns along the commuter rail line to change their suburban zoning laws to permit high-density low-income housing. The bill was drafted to look optional and incentive-based, but officials are enforcing it as mandatory. Similar efforts are afoot nationwide, amplified by liberal columnists like Paul Krugman calling for “increasing population density,” meaning eliminating suburban single-family zoning.

    Democrats have brought DEI quotas to every institution in America. Your neighborhood is next. That’s the real housing crisis.

    CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM DANIEL HUFF

    Paige Bronitsky is a property attorney who served as a deputy assistant secretary at HUD and as a White House senior advisor in the first Trump administration. Follow @PaigeBronitsky.

    Daniel Huff served as a deputy assistant secretary at HUD and White House lawyer in the first Trump administration. Follow @RealDanHuff.

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  • Bonta ‘disappointed’ by Supreme Court ruling on L.A. immigration raids

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    California’s top law enforcement official has weighed in on Monday‘s controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling on immigration enforcement.

    Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta condemned the decision, which clears the way for immigration agents to stop and question people they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally based solely on information such as their perceived race or place of employment.

    Speaking at a news conference Monday in downtown L.A., Bonta said he agreed with claims the ACLU made in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. He called indiscriminate tactics used to make immigration arrests a violation of the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

    Bonta said he thinks it is unconstitutional “for ICE agents, federal immigration officers, to use race, the inability to speak English, location or perceived occupation to … stop and detain, search, seize Californians.”

    He also decried what he described as the Supreme Court’s increasing reliance on its emergency docket, which he said often obscures the justices’ decision-making.

    “It’s disappointing,” he said. “And the emergency docket has been used more and more. You often don’t know who has voted and how. There’s no argument. There’s no written opinion.”

    Bonta called Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s opinion “very disturbing.”

    The Trump-appointed justice argued that because many people who do day labor in fields such as construction or farming, engagement in such work could be useful in helping immigrant agents determine which people to stop.

    Bonta said the practice enables “the use of race to potentially discriminate,” saying “it is disturbing and it is troubling.”

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  • DAVID MARCUS: The Department of War marks the end of America as the world’s policeman

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    In 1947, the United States War Department became the Department of Defense, as our nation was entering what would be four decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union, and taking its place as a global superpower.

    On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order bringing the original name back to the department created by George Washington in 1789. It brings with it a change that would have earned the hearty approval of our first president.

    TRUMP SIGNS ORDER RENAMING PENTAGON BACK TO ‘DEPARTMENT OF WAR’

    In the 78 years in which the United States has had a “Department of Defense,” we never declared war a single time, but that didn’t stop thousands upon thousands of American soldiers from sacrificing their lives in Korea, Vietnam, and later, the Middle East.

    During this time, the United States widely became known as the world’s policeman. Without actually declaring wars, we played a violent game of Twister across the globe, our Defense Department dipping its toes into conflicts across continents.

    President Donald Trump and Pentagon boss Pete Hegseth. (Getty Images)

    Too often, the role of our soldiers was not to kill the enemy, but to maintain order, and just as a police force is restrained from using total force against criminals, our military was too often simply not allowed to bring its full force to bear.

    There is a fundamental and important difference between war and policing. Wars can be won, policing cannot. Policing is a never-ending struggle, and that is exactly what America’s military interventions felt like under the reign of the Department of Defense.

    “I want offense too,” Trump has quipped about the name change. But what he really means is that he wants wars we can win, not endless nation-building boondoggles meant to maintain balance in a world full of conflagrations from Ukraine to Gaza.

    Secretary of War, as he is now known, Pete Hegseth has made clear his priority is lethality, not just being a stick for diplomats to use. He wants an army, not a police force.

    It was Carl von Clausewitz, the early 19th Century father of modern war, who defined military victory as compelling the enemy to do your will by destroying their desire and means to resist. That is something our military has not done in some time.

    But that may be changing.

    It was no accident that this cabinet-level name change occurred in the wake of the Trump administration blowing an alleged speedboat full of drugs and drug smugglers from Venezuela to smithereens.

    Under the old rubric, that boat might have been stopped, its crew given Miranda rights. In other words, it would have been policed.

    Image shows Tren de Aragua cartel

    Video footage showed the vessel shortly before it was destroyed off of Venezuela on Sept. 2, 2025. (@realDonaldTrump via Truth Social)

    But does this mere police work actually work, per Clausewitz, to destroy the Venezuelan gangs’ and government’s will and means to flood our country with deadly drugs? It does not, it just maintains the status quo from the border to the graveyard.

    But now, the next guys in line to jump aboard a drug-laden boat headed for Florida aren’t looking at possible jail time, in facilities all but run by their gangs. No, they are looking at a quick exit to eternity under the sea.

    Likewise, Trump’s direct attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities sent a new message to the Ayatollah that if he goes too far, we will destroy him and his nation.

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    The Department of Defense, may it rest in peace, was a noble idea. It was launched in the spirit of ending war, not winning wars. It was meant to prop up democracies around the planet until all nations found the right and just path of freedom and capitalism.

    It may have been worth a shot, but it just didn’t work, and that is why the Trump administration is returning to the original premise, that armies don’t exist to protect and serve the world, they exist to kill our enemies.

    Not long after President Washington established the War Department, he would give a farewell address in which warned against engaging in foreign entanglements, and yet under the name Department of Defense, our military seemed to do little else.

    President Trump is sending the message that the United States will no longer be defending itself through proportional half measures and never-ending peace missions. No, from here on out, the Department of War does not exist to contain or constrain our enemies, it exists, as it should, to destroy them.

    CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM DAVID MARCUS

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  • Kate Middleton, wigs, and why it’s no one’s place to ask

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    It’s never surprising when a famous person’s new look sparks online conversation. So, when Catherine, Princess of Wales (Kate Middleton to most of us) stepped out with a new head of blonde hair on Thursday, it quickly became a matter of breaking news for several publications.

    The Princess of Wales has been a brunette for as long as we’ve known her, so the debut of an image revamp outside the Natural History Museum had people talking.

    However, social media comment sections also found that the colour of Kate’s hair was not the only noticeable change – many have claimed that her new look comes courtesy of a wig.

    ‘LOL, that’s a wig,’ reads one of many comments, with countless others mocking the shape and styling of her hair in the various pieces of footage released from the paparazzi moment.

    Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

    As someone who’s been on the internet since childhood, I’m not surprised – I know that nothing’s off-limits when it comes to sharing unsolicited opinions on the web.

    However, I do wish we’d exercise a little more restraint with vocalising these assumptions in such public forums – especially when we have context for why Kate is possibly using hair enhancements.

    Kate announced last year that she’d been diagnosed with cancer after it was discovered by doctors during abdominal surgery. After that, she underwent a course of preventative chemotherapy and has made infrequent public appearances since.

    One of the most common side effects of chemotherapy is hair loss, so it’s not impossible that Kate would use enhancements in the months and years afterwards. But either way, the onslaught of comments and critiques of this possibility is evidence of a lack of empathy in internet culture.

    There are plenty of things to criticise the royals for, and I’m definitely no fan of the British monarchy – but thousands of people making the same public remark in a sort of ‘gotcha’ moment feels unnecessary, and implies that there is something wrong if Kate is wearing a wig.

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    Nicole Vassell

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  • Op-ed: Support the Location Shield Act to keep cell companies from exploiting our data

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    The Massachusetts Location Shield Act (H. 86, S.197) under consideration by the Massachusetts legislature would prevent cell phone companies from exploiting information about users’ locations. The issue is about much more than an overload of annoying advertisements. It is about whether we the users decide who gets data about our private lives, or whether that decision lies with someone else.

    The Act aims to prevent companies from exploiting location data for marketing while preserving legitimate uses like emergency services and navigation. This is critically important legislation, and should be passed immediately.

    The Act is designed to prevent individuals and organizations that collect and buy location information from using it for any purposes not approved by users. There is also a carve-out for law enforcement which provides an additional tool to police to help keep us safe.

    Companies are already using the internet to bombard us with endless ads whenever we stumble onto a website, glance at an article or buy something on Amazon. Access to user location data allows commercial enterprises to track where we shop (they would know when we are in the Market Basket or Stop & Shop parking lots), which doctors we consult, and what our daily schedules are. Without the Act they would be free to market to us through an endless barrage of texts, and could link the data to other outlets, such as the internet. While targeted ads already affect us, location data has the potential to reach the next level of intrusion.

    But the potential uses are even more sinister than that. Because location information tracks our every movement, it has the potential to disclose when we are away from home, who we are meeting with, when we are most vulnerable. In its most nightmarish form, this data could be used by thieves, stalkers or other bad actors for criminal purposes. This is not just theoretical. Research by the American Civil Liberties Union shows this is already happening.

    This Act would prevent bad actors from getting the information in the first place by prohibiting the companies that collect it from selling to anyone that we the users have not approved.

    At the same time, the Act would not affect the use of cell data for legitimate purposes. First, users can provide permission to cell carriers to collect and sell their data. Second, there is a specific exemption for data collection in a law enforcement context. This exemption is narrowly drawn so that police cannot profile certain neighborhoods or populations. Instead, they must use the data only as part of complying with state or federal law, or as part of responding to an active emergency.

    A violation of this rule could result in a fine of three times the actual damages. While it would not impose any criminal penalties, the fines would be enough to deter companies from selling information. A complaint can be filed either by individuals harmed by a violation of the Act, or by the attorney general’s office. As a result, law enforcement can pursue not only criminal charges against stalkers or thieves, but also civil penalties against defendants who used cell data to commit their crimes. This has the potential to become a valuable tool for law enforcement to protect the public.

    The Act has bi-partisan support. It originally passed the House in 2024 unanimously. Four Republicans and one Independent have signed on to the Act, along with 33 Democrats, 38 of the 40 Mass. senators and 106 of the 160 state representatives have signed on as supporters.

    The Act is supported by the ACLU, a liberal organization. However, this is not a partisan issue. It is an issue of control. The question is whether we the people want control to rest with ourselves and the law enforcement organizations that protect us, or with commercial enterprises that have no concern for the motivations of anyone who might buy our location information.

    These provisions are not yet law in Massachusetts. If passed, Massachusetts would be the first state in the nation to have such a law. That said, Pennsylvania is considering similar legislation, following the Bay State’s lead.

    As laudable as the Act is, there is still work to be done to make it law. The legislature still needs to pass it, and the governor needs to sign it.

    I therefore urge readers to contact the governor, and their Massachusetts representatives and senators to show their support for this legislation and demand immediate passage of the Location Shield Act.

    Dave Flanagan is a resident of Westford. He is an in-house attorney for a medical device company and an adjunct lecturer at the Boston University School of Law.

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  • Letters: Battle over Prop. 50 is a fight that’s worth having

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    Prop. 50 is a fight
    that’s worth having

    Re: “Passing redistricting plan will be uphill battle for governor” (Page A16, Aug. 31).

    This opinion piece lists the difficulty of getting voters to the polls for an off-year election, but this is one very special election. For one thing, voting for redistricting is almost as critical as voting for a president. It impacts the entire nation, not just Californians.

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  • Brands have fallen out of love with queer content creators like me, so what’s next for us?

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    I always knew that corporate allyship and the “pink pound” wouldn’t be a magic solution to changing attitudes. While beneficial for increasing visibility, they were never going to change the world on their own. Yet, even this small piece of the puzzle seems to have fallen away. The shift is palpable. Talking about being queer or trans outside of Pride Month seems discouraged. The executive order by President Trump to end “wasteful Government DEI programs” in the United States sent a ripple effect across the globe, validating organisations to roll back their inclusive efforts. Brands that once championed LGBTQIA+ causes are now ghosting collaborators, with some even stating that diversity and inclusion are not a priority. This isn’t just about my personal career; it’s a systemic problem that affects the entire community.

    This year has been a stark reality check. For freelancers like me, it’s become a weekly occurrence to have promising opportunities vanish without a trace. Brands would reach out, eager to show their support, only to ghost us after multiple meetings and creative sessions. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it’s now more widespread and brazen. The irony is not lost on me: often, these opportunities started with a desire to “do the right thing,” only for the brands to become the very problem they were trying to solve.

    This isn’t just a personal grievance; it’s a movement to eliminate LGBTQIA+ inclusion. It affects everyone, regardless of their online visibility. My work as a writer and content creator is built on the premise that organisations want to openly discuss the experiences of queer people. When that support disappears, I’m left questioning my path. As trans people’s existence is being challenged globally, our allies have gone silent, creating a void where transphobic narratives can flourish louder than ever before. This silence forces queer and trans people to pivot in their careers and, more importantly, leaves our community more vulnerable than ever.

    I know I’ve been fortunate to have worked in this space for so long. It’s a job rooted in fun and frivolity, and creativity – but it’s one that ultimately feels too ‘political’ to be seen as creative anymore. My existence, our existence, is no longer neutral, and my desire to tell stories and provide a fun, light-hearted resource for other people to find comfort or joy in is depleted. The time has come for me to shift my focus. I am ready for a new challenge. I could bend to the current climate and become a more “palatable queer” to secure more work, but that’s not who I am.

    Instead of feeling like my online presence needs to tick boxes, each post orchestrated to achieve career progression, or even risk enmeshing my digital success and view of my professional self with my personal desirability, maybe (just maybe) I will be able to be in a place again where I can just fall in love with myself and my community online, rather than seeing it as a role I must filfill 24/7.

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  • Occupational licensing is a costly burden

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    One in five American workers need a government license in order to work. While some licensing schemes might be better justified than others on plausible health and safety grounds, occupational licensing requirements often amount to nothing more than rent-seeking. That is, an effort by existing workers in a particular field seeking to limit competition by throwing up additional barriers to entry.

    Government intervention should always be a matter of last resort for this reason. When the government meddles in the market, it risks all manner of deleterious consequences. From unjustly preventing people from working to driving up the cost of services to distorting the labor market, poorly justified and onerous licensing schemes  can do far more harm than good.

    A new report from the Archbridge Institute shows that this is no partisan matter. States under Democratic and Republican rule can and do impose harmful occupational licensing schemes. Indeed, according to the institute, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas have the highest occupational licensing burdens in the nation.  California is ranked by the institute as having the 21st highest licensing burden.

    A decade ago, California’s Little Hoover Commission reported on the problems of licensing. “The burden to Californians is significant: Applicants to lower-income licensed occupations — those who earn less than the national average income — on average pay $300 in fees, spend 549 days in education or training and take an exam in order to work. Consumers also bear a burden when the government limits who can practice a profession. Nationally, consumers pay an estimated $200 billion more annually for services due to licensing restrictions,” they reported.

    Yet California has made no real movement toward liberalizing its labor market.

    Indeed, while most states in the country have implemented some form of universal licensing recognition — that is, allowing workers licensed for occupations in one state to be allowed to work in their state without too many hurdles — California, Oregon, Texas and Tennessee are among those that have not.

    As a concrete example, while most states have joined the Nurse Licensure Compact to allow nurses to freely work across the country, the California Legislature has consistently rejected the idea.

    Universal licensing recognition would be a good first step for California, but so too would a robust review of which occupations it licenses and whether they ought to be subject to state licensure at all.

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  • Readers Respond: Cheers for Volunteers Keeping an Eye on ICE

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    Many major cities across the United States have been rocked in 2025 by the extreme immigration policies of President Donald Trump, including Dallas. ICE raids, raucous but peaceful protests and questions of how local police forces will cooperate (or not) with ICE have become common headlines that will mark this year in news for years to come…

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  • Celebrate American workers — not union bosses — on Labor Day

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    As we say goodbye to the summer season by celebrating Labor Day, most Americans are eager to recognize the ingenuity and determination of rank-and-file workers.

    But not union bosses, who hijack the holiday every year to argue for more government-granted coercive powers. Instead of focusing on the workers they claim to represent, union officials wield political clout to protect and expand their privileged positions.

    This is because today’s unions are built on the government-authorized ability to compel workers into their ranks. In the 24 states without right-to-work laws, union chiefs can legally extort private sector workers to “pay up or be fired.” Even when union membership is voluntary, workers must accept the union bargaining collectively for their wages and working conditions.

    NATION’S 2 LARGEST TEACHERS UNIONS FUNNELED NEARLY $50M TO LEFT-WING GROUPS, WATCHDOG REPORT SAYS

    It doesn’t matter that you, as an individual employee, may not want the union’s so-called representation or a one-size-fits-all contract; union bureaucrats can forcibly take your dues money, then use it to buy political influence or advocate causes you oppose.

    Workers do still have some limited rights guaranteed under federal law, such as the right to have union dues not pay for political activities (CWA v. Beck, 1988) or the right of public employees not to be forced to pay any money to a government union (Janus v. AFSCME, 2018). But, union political operatives are using their influence — bought with workers’ dues money collected under duress — to try to push through a legislative agenda that upends these rights.

    For example, the Protecting the Right to Work Act (PRO Act), Big Labor’s top legislative priority in Congress, would repeal all current 26 state Right to Work laws by federal fiat. Even though Right to Work laws don’t stop a single worker from joining a union or paying dues voluntarily, they’ve made it their signature move to end this protection for good.

    Why? Because union bosses want to strip rank-and-file workers of their choice. This becomes all the more obvious as you examine the PRO Act’s other provisions, which codify several suspect or downright illegal tactics union enforcers already use to get around workers’ rights.

    One such tactic is the controversial “card check” method of organizing a union, which avoids the traditional secret ballot that lets workers have the final say. Instead, this process lets organizers submit union cards collected in person from workers, often using pressure or intimidation tactics. The AFL-CIO even admitted in its own organizing handbook that such cards don’t reflect workers’ actual wishes.

    To protect existing unions from decertification (secret-ballot votes to remove an incumbent union), the PRO Act codifies another common Big Labor tactic. Through union-filed blocking charges — unproven allegations against the company of unfair practices — union officials can unilaterally block decertification votes for months or more.

    In multiple cases, such tactics were used to block decertification votes from occurring even though 100% of workers signed the decertification petition. Workers can literally be unanimously opposed to the union, yet union officials can manipulate their special legal powers to trap workers against their will.

    It’s the latest sign that today’s union officials have fully rejected the warnings of some early union officials who wanted to build their organizations without coercing workers into their ranks. 

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    Take Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor (now the AFL-CIO). In a 1924 speech to union delegates he forcefully rejected the coercion today’s union bosses rely on: “I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty — the principles of voluntarism. No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.” 

    Gompers understood, as do the 8 in 10 Americans who oppose forced union dues and affiliation, that when union affiliation and financial support are voluntary, union officials must prove their worth to individual workers. But today, union bosses increasingly reject this ideal, and undermine the liberty of those they claim to “represent.”

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    So this Labor Day, remember that truly being “pro-worker” means rejecting the propaganda from union bosses and respecting a worker’s right to choose whether they want to join a union.

    After all, it’s Labor Day, not Union Day.

    Mark Mix is the president of the National Right to Work Committee and National Right to Work Foundation.

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  • Unlikely allies: Trump, Pelosi and the push to ban congressional stock trading

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    It’s rare to find areas of agreement between President Donald Trump and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But they’re both supporting a congressional bill that will ban members of Congress and their households from trading stocks. 

    The legislation, which cleared its committee of jurisdiction in late July, has broad bipartisan support and will help root out public corruption while restoring Americans’ confidence in Congress.

    Common sense would suggest that Congress shouldn’t be actively trading stocks and bonds while they’re holding office. And 86% of those surveyed in 2023 as part of a University of Maryland study favored a ban on congressional stock trading, with Republicans and Democrats showing nearly identical levels of support.

    President Donald Trump and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

    As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent emphasized in an Aug. 14 interview, the credibility of the House and Senate is at stake when members trade individual stocks. He highlighted the “eye-popping returns” some members have earned, noting that “every hedge fund would be jealous of them.”

    WHAT FED MUST DO NOW AFTER JEROME POWELL’S JACKSON HOLE EPIPHANY

    From the perspective of a Treasury official, this issue goes beyond ethics. It touches the integrity of our financial system. 

    Markets rely on trust, transparency and a level playing field. When members of Congress trade stocks with access to information or influence that ordinary investors don’t have, it undermines public confidence in both government and the economy. 

    Treasury leadership has a vested interest in ensuring that policy is made to serve the public good, not to generate personal profit, because the credibility of the United States as a financial steward depends on it.

    In addition to President Trump and Pelosi, there are several other unlikely bedfellows in Congress supporting the ban. They include liberals like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and conservatives like Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. Notably, both Mike Johnson, R-La., the House speaker, and Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the minority leader, support the ban.  

    ARE PRESIDENT TRUMP’S TARIFFS ACTUALLY WORKING?

    Pelosi’s support for the legislation is noteworthy given her families’ well-documented history with stock trading. Last year, her husband, Paul, made headlines by selling between $500,000 and $1 million worth of Visa shares just a few weeks before the Justice Department brought a civil antitrust suit against the company. The transaction led to speculation that Paul Pelosi may have been tipped off by his wife, or contacts in the Biden administration, about the likelihood of a filing against Visa. 

    Filed just six weeks before the presidential election, the Visa suit’s monopoly claim was undermined by a simple fact: the network faces robust competition from other debit card companies, as well as newer payment networks such as Zelle and Venmo. But as the legal process unfolds, the issue of congressional stock trading remains. And the volume of activity is breathtaking. 

    Last year, 120 members of Congress made more than 9,400 trades, according to Capitol Trades, a platform that tracks market trading by U.S. elected officials. The performance by some of the members suggests they should move to Wall Street. The top 10 – six Republicans and four Democrats – all had returns exceeding 70%, according to another platform, Unusual Whales. And this was in a year when the S&P 500 only returned 25%. 

    There is destined to be even more trading this year. Through Aug. 19, there had already been nearly 9,200 trades, involving more than $395 million.   

    I HAD TO LEAVE CALIFORNIA TO SAVE MY BUSINESS. NOW THERE’S HOPE

    Is this trading influencing public policy? It’s hard to know, definitively. But a few years ago, the New York Times examined trades made by members of Congress from 2019 through 2021. The paper reported that there were 97 senators or representatives “who reported trades by themselves or immediate family members in stocks or other financial assets that intersected with the work of committees on which they serve.”

    In one instance, a California congressman disclosed that his wife sold Boeing shares on March 5, 2020. That was just one day before a committee he was a member of issued a report criticizing the company in connection with two fatal crashes of its 737 Max jet.  

    It’s rare for members of Congress to be prosecuted for market trading, but not unheard of. In 2019, a congressman from New York, Chris Collins, resigned after pleading guilty to having shared confidential company information with his son and lying about it to federal agents. He was sentenced to 26 months in prison (and later pardoned by President Trump).

    CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

    Stock trading by members of Congress, and the suspicion that activity engenders, contributes to distrust in government. Last year, a Pew survey found that just 2% of Americans believed the federal government would do what is right “just about always” and just 21% said, “most of the time.” That distrust is unhealthy for the country’s democracy, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, and makes it more difficult for either party to move its agenda forward. 

    Banning members of Congress from trading stocks would help restore trust in the federal government. A ban would also be an opportunity for members of both parties to come together in support of a measure that will benefit the entire country. That can’t happen soon enough. 

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    Bay Buchanan served as Treasurer of the United States under President Ronald Reagan.

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  • Cracker Barrel’s logo mea culpa is a start but it shouldn’t be the end

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    Welcome home, Uncle Herschel.

    Responding to a weeklong barrage of complaints from its loyal customers, Cracker Barrel announced late Tuesday it was scrapping the restaurant’s rebranding campaign and returning to its classic logo.

    “We thank our guests for sharing their voices and love for Cracker Barrel,” the company posted on X. “We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain.”

    Critics immediately pounced on social media, suggesting the company was caving to right-wing pressure, including a call earlier in the day from former President Donald Trump, who encouraged the company to reverse course before it was too late.

    CRACKER BARREL SCRAPS NEW LOGO DESIGN, KEEPS ‘OLD TIMER’ AFTER LISTENING TO CUSTOMERS

    “Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate poll), and manage the company better than ever before,” Trump urged early Tuesday. They got a billion dollars’ worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity. Have a major news conference today. Make Cracker Barrel a WINNER again.”

    General view of a Cracker Barrel Country Store in Fishkill, NY, Monday, August 25, 2025. (Richard Beetham for Fox News Digital)

    Trump then acknowledged the company’s mea culpa Tuesday night.

    “Congratulations Cracker Barrel on changing your logo back to what it was. All of your fans very much appreciate it,” Trump wrote. “Good luck in the future. Make lots of money and, most importantly, make your customers happy again!”

    Company executives need to go beyond restoring the logo and acknowledge that Cracker Barrel was built on moral, commonsense values. 

    Attributing the company’s decision to Trump’s remarks about the logo misses the larger concern. Returning Uncle Herschel to his chair beside the barrel is a start, but if that’s where the company retreat ends, Cracker Barrel will continue to sell fewer biscuits, fried chicken and Mama’s pancakes in the years to come.

    The new Cracker Barrel logo is seen on a menu inside the restaurant on August 21, 2025, in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The restaurant chain unveiled a new logo last week as part of a larger brand refresh. The company announced on Tuesday night that it will stick with the original logo. The new logo removed the image of a man sitting next to a barrel and the phrase "old country store." The new logo featured the words "Cracker Barrel" against a yellow background. 

    The new Cracker Barrel logo is seen on a menu inside the restaurant on August 21, 2025, in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The restaurant chain unveiled a new logo last week as part of a larger brand refresh. The company announced on Tuesday night that it will stick with the original logo. The new logo removed the image of a man sitting next to a barrel and the phrase “old country store.” The new logo featured the words “Cracker Barrel” against a yellow background.  (Getty Images)

    Sadly, today’s Cracker Barrel isn’t your aunt or uncle’s wholesome highway pit stop it once was.

    In recent years, Cracker Barrel has sponsored Pride events, partnered with the Human Rights Campaign to fan and normalize pronoun nonsense and sexual confusion and warmly embraced corporate DEI efforts. In the process, its stock price has dropped from a high of $147.91 in 2021 to the mid-$50s today.

    Corporate rebranding and cultural firestorms often flow from internal ideological ignorance and progressive arrogance to outside firms obsessed with forcing their distorted and often woke worldview on everyone else.

    Cracker Barrel Old Country Store sign

    The Cracker Barrel Old Country Store logo is displayed on a large rooftop sign in Mount Arlington, New Jersey, on August 22, 2025.  (GREGORY WALTON/AFP via Getty Images)

    Reports now suggest Cracker Barrel dismissed or ignored earlier warnings from investors. Sardar Biglari, one such entrepreneur, called the entire rebranding exercise “obvious folly.”

    How did Cracker Barrel manage to go off its rocker?

    If this story sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it before. From Coca-Cola’s “New Coke” fiasco in the 1980s to Bud Light’s tone-deaf campaign celebrating Dylan Mulvaney, there’s precedent for corporations committing unforced errors. It took decades for Bud Light to cultivate its brand and just 32 hours to destroy it.

    Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light

    A photo of the commemorative Bud Light beer can featuring TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney.  (Dylan Mulvaney/Instagram)

    While the company says the man in the logo is a composite, “Uncle Herschel” was a real man and a real uncle of Danny Evins, the company’s founder. Cracker Barrel even calls him the “soul of Cracker Barrel.” He was a salesman who frequented general stores all over the South and was known to “sit a spell” and visit with customers. At company headquarters in Lebanon, Tenn., there’s even a statue of him standing beside an empty bench as if to invite you to sit and converse.

    CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

    I think Herschel, who died in 1998, would have some thoughts about what’s been going on.

    When Coca-Cola was fielding complaints after rolling out its new formula in 1985, company president Don Keough decided to take some of the protest calls himself. One was from an elderly woman. She was crying.

    “I said, ‘Honey, what’s the matter?’” he recalled. “She said, ‘You’re taking away Coca-Cola … You’re playing around with my youth.’”

    Coca Cola billboard

    An aerial drone view of a Coca-Cola billboard in the South Market area on October 26, 2020, in San Francisco, California. 

    The late David Ogilvy, nicknamed the “Father of Advertising,” knew well the lure and idiocy of trying to fix something that isn’t broken. “It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to come up with something new every six months,” he warned. “It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change.”

    Cracker Barrel underestimated the emotional tug and power of its familiar logo. In a world of constant change, Herschel remained a constant. In an economy that seems to celebrate the hard-charging, the old man represents those who are comfortable and content — a reprieve from the chaos and noisy churn everywhere else.

    Company executives need to go beyond restoring the logo and acknowledge that Cracker Barrel was built on moral, commonsense values. They should politely pivot from politically correct corporate silliness and simply embrace the wholesome, sensible and timeless standards that have driven the company’s success: truth, fairness, kindness, respect and good old-fashioned hospitality.

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    The lesson here is simple: If you don’t want your company to go broke, resist the urge to go woke.

    Cracker Barrel says it’s listening — but time will tell who the company is listening to in the days to come.

    CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM PAUL BATURA

    Paul J. Batura is a writer, vice president of communications at Focus on the Family, and founder of the 4:8 Media Network. He can be reached via email Paul@PaulBatura.com or on X @PaulBatura.

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  • President Trump embraces socialism as Republicans shrug

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    President Trump is a capitalist billionaire who campaigned on freeing American markets to compete globally. But last Friday he pushed Intel Corp. of Santa Clara into selling the U.S. government a 10% ownership in the company. The Wall Street Journal reported, “The U.S. government will become Intel’s largest shareholder as nearly $9 billion in grants awarded to the company by the 2022 Chips Act are converted to equity.” 

    Even if that turns out to be profitable, owning 10% of Intel will give the government an interest in the company succeeding. If it fails, taxpayers lose $8.9 billion. If it succeeds and makes a profit, that’s worse, because it will encourage more interference in this and other markets.

    Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, blasted the move, saying, “Socialism is literally government control of the means of production.” But self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., praised Trump’s action as similar to an amendment he proposed to the CHIPS Act, which was signed by Democratic President Joe Biden. 

    Once again, President Trump has aligned himself with the socialists. 

    Intel has had problems. Its stock dropped from $68.21 a share on April 5, 2021, to $23.43 on the morning of Trump’s announcement. It closed Tuesday at 24.36 Yet Intel’s current market capitalization of $107 billion is plenty to get back in the game – if it does the right thing. But the government is the last place to go to for investment advice. Just look at its ownership of Amtrak or the U.S. Postal Service. 

    Meanwhile, other companies have filled Intel’s void. The world’s most valuable company is chipmaker NVIDIA in Santa Clara, with a $4.4 trillion market cap – 41 times Intel’s. American firms continue to lead the world and don’t need government “help.” 

    Intel has had problems before. But what a difference from the 1980s, when it almost went broke. In his 1989 book, “Microcosm,” George Gilder described how Intel soared in that decade to become the world’s greatest maker of microprocessors, a computer’s “brains.” Japanese electronics giants NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu and Toshiba were taking over the memory-chip part of an industry long led by Intel and other American companies. 

    Then, Gilder wrote, under visionary CEO Andy Grove, “Intel bet the company on the microprocessor. Memory was the past; logic was the future.” The key: Silicon Valley’s unrestricted capitalist competition, which beat Japan’s government-directed industrial policy. “In the Valley, crisis is opportunity.” Since then that spirit has led the Valley, and California and America, to dominate the world technology market, including against the rise of an even more formidable competitor than Japan: China. It would do President Donald Trump well to read “Microcosm.” 

    This mistake could hurt California the most, hampering our companies’ competitive edge just when they need it for the battle over artificial intelligence with China. If Silicon Valley is hobbled, the massive revenues it pours into state and local coffers will tank. 

    California’s U.S. senators and representatives should lead the way in unplugging Trump’s chip socialism.

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  • Written in Granite: Fate of Keefe Auditorium unknown

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    Can we save Nashua’s Keefe Auditorium?

    Sometimes, nostalgia may not be enough.

    Mayor Jim Donchess recently appointed another well-qualified individual to the Keefe Auditorium Commission. Joe Olefirowicz joins members Alicia Gregg, Carl Dubois, Dan O’Donnell, Dennis Schneider and Julia Oliver-Barb. The commission will develop a plan “to upkeep and renovate the auditorium such that it could stand alone.” This shall include “the development of a design, capital campaign, and funding recommendations.”

    The Keefe Auditorium may be antiquated, but it has “great bones” and an orchestra pit, is ideally located downtown and happens to be the largest auditorium in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, the iconic performance venue is physically attached to the now-closed Elm Street Middle School building.

    The mayor and Board of Aldermen will let voters make their voices heard on the auditorium’s possible fate in a nonbinding ballot question during the municipal election on Nov. 4:

    “Elm Street Middle School is being redeveloped for new affordable and market-rate housing. The Keefe Auditorium is part of the Elm Street Middle School. To enable the Keefe Auditorium to continue to be used for performances, the City must spend approximately $25 million for a code-required heating system, bathrooms and fire protection with no new additional enhancements. Alternatively, the City could allow the Keefe Auditorium to be replaced by more housing and/or by green space.

    “Should the City spend approximately $25 million to meet code requirements and keep the Keefe Auditorium open?”

    That’s the multimillion-dollar question.

    Olefirowicz has an impressive background. He’s the music director at The First Church here and has also been a freelance conductor and concert artist locally and abroad in all genres of music. Olefirowicz is also a trained theatrical lighting designer and has done orchestra pit design.

    It won’t be easy to preserve the auditorium, he says. “It’s an uphill battle because the public’s perception of putting more money into the arts is a strong, opinionated subject.”

    Olefirowicz has good advice in that citizens should be thinking how we’d “use the auditorium for the next 40 to 50 years… The building alone, just its footprint, can’t be the only thing that happens to the space to make it viable for the city.”

    “I was the former acting principal keyboard of Symphony New Hampshire,” Olefirowicz says. “I played in the Keefe quite often and am very fond of the space.”

    Many Nashuans are sentimental about Elm Street school (1937) and its auditorium. Thousands of students and many teachers walked through those hallowed halls; one of them was Ronald N. Dube. “I graduated from Nashua High on Elm St. in 1960. I taught biology there from 1970 to 1976 on double sessions, then at the new Nashua High, before it became NHS South, until 1979. Then I went to North Middlesex Regional High School until they transferred me to the middle school in Pepperell in the same district. ”

    These days, Ron has written two more books, now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. His autobiography is titled “Ramblings of a Dexter Street Doodler.” The book features “a long history of the French immigration to Canada and then to cities like Nashua and Lowell. My family history is part of this. I remember stories from my grandmothers and did my own research.”

    “Ammonite Ridge” is Ron’s sci-fi novel. “The book is about a paleontologist on a quest to explore and collect from a site in a faraway place. There are lots of adventures, troubles, etc., along the way.”

    Double congratulations, Ron!

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    Joan T. Stylianos

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  • Hypocrite Obama scorns gerrymandering — unless it benefits HIM

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    Former President Barack Obama this week inserted himself into the national debate over partisan gerrymandering with his proprietary blend of self-righteousness, self-interest and duplicity.

    With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushing through a new congressional map to benefit Republicans and California Gov. Gavin Newsom seeking to do the same for Democrats, Obama lent a weary world his wisdom.

    “Over the long term, we shouldn’t have political gerrymandering in America, just a fair fight between Republicans and Democrats based on who’s got better ideas,” he began in a Wednesday post on X.

    “But,” he stipulated.

    But of course.

    “Since Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House and gerrymandering in the middle of a decade to try and maintain the House despite their unpopular policies, I have tremendous respect for how Gov. [Gavin] Newsom has approached this,” insisted Obama.

    “He’s put forward a smart, measured approach in California, designed to address a very particular problem at a very particular moment in time.”

    Who didn’t see that one coming?

    Obama’s high opinion of himself has only ever been matched by his scorn for the masses.

    He hopes no one will notice his blatant projection: Obama himself personally participated, to put it lightly, in a highly beneficial gerrymander over 20 years ago.

    Without a doubt, the former president’s initial suggestion has merit. 

    It would be wonderful if House districts were drawn so as to be maximally representative of discrete communities, and to keep representatives maximally attuned to their constituents’ interests.

    Perhaps one day the two parties will come together to ensure as much.

    Alas, that’s not the world we live in today.

    As it stands, both sides are locked in an unforgiving battle to enshrine the most structurally advantageous maps into law in as many states as possible.

    In Illinois, where Texas Democrats initially fled to deny Abbott the quorum needed to pass his new map, Democrats represent 14 of 17 districts, or more than 82% of the state.

    Yet Kamala Harris won Illinois last year by fewer than 11 percentage points, 54.4% to 43.5%.

    Democrats achieved this feat by creating a map so preposterous that even Stephen Colbert felt compelled to ask Prairie State Gov. JB Pritzker about it during an otherwise softball interview.

    In New Jersey, where President Donald Trump won 46% of the vote in 2024, the GOP holds just 25% of the congressional seats.

    In Massachusetts, Trump won 36%, but Republicans hold none of the state’s nine seats.

    Trump actually won Nevada, yet Democrats occupy three of its four spots in the House.

    And in California, where Newsom is supposedly championing a “smart, measured approach” — and where a supposedly independent commission is responsible for redistricting — the GOP is already at a massive disadvantage.

    Trump won over 38% of the vote in the country’s largest state, and Republicans represent only about 17% of its districts.

    “We’re responding to what occurred in Texas. We’re neutralizing what occurred, and we’re giving the American people a fair chance,” Newsom declared before signing his plan into law on Thursday.

    Just how much more lopsided must it be for elections to be “fair” to “the American people,” by which Newsom means “the Democratic Party”?

    Now, it’s undeniable that Republicans have also drawn unrepresentative maps in states they control.

    Wisconsin, Texas and the Carolinas are particularly damning examples.

    But with both Team Red and Team Blue adopting no-holds-barred approaches to redistricting, honest observers must admit that gerrymandering is a bipartisan pastime in which all’s fair — even if it shouldn’t be.

    And that’s precisely what makes Obama’s claim to the moral high ground so galling.

    Newsom has every right to advance his undemocratic map; Obama has every right to support it.

    They ought not insult our intelligence by flattering themselves, though.

    They’re motivated by the same political objectives that Republicans are, not some nobler commitment to principle that excuses their actions — much less makes them deserving of praise.

    Obama is the same ambitious, self-serving partisan he was back in 2001, when he personally helped draw an Illinois state Senate district to boost his political prospects after falling short in a House campaign the year prior.

    The lines he created gave him new constituents in some of Chicago’s wealthiest neighborhoods — donors he tapped to fuel his ascent to the US Senate and, not long after, the White House.  

    So much for only reluctantly endorsing Newsom’s proposal to retaliate against Texas: Obama himself embraced the power of the gerrymander in a smoke-filled room decades ago.

    His haughty tone now is perfectly representative of the Democrats’ collective hero complex.

    Not to mention their palpable disdain for the public, whom they believe can be duped into believing in it.

    It adds insult to injury — and sanctimony to sin.

    Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.

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  • Editorial: New Rourke Bridge links family legacy with Lowell’s future

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    Four decades after a temporary solution was built to bridge sections of Lowell and provide access to Route 3 and I-495 for motorists in surrounding communities, a groundbreaking on Aug. 13 signified the dawn of a new transportation era — the construction of a modern, permanent replacement.

    The Rourke Bridge honors the legacies of Raymond Rourke, a former Lowell mayor, state representative and deputy state Department of Transportation secretary, and his son, state Rep. Timothy Rourke, whose life was tragically cut short in 1982 at age 29 by a fatal car accident.

    The bridge opened in 1985, two years after construction began.

    The two-lane Bailey pony truss bridge spanned the Merrimack River, connecting the Highlands and Pawtucketville sections of Lowell.

    Thought to be just a temporary solution for accommodating the growing number of vehicles from Lowell and surrounding communities, over time, it became overwhelmed by the volume of traffic, which routinely caused significant congestion throughout the surrounding area and delayed emergency vehicle response times, given its proximity to Lowell General Hospital on Varnum Avenue.

    Not only was the bridge’s vehicle capacity inadequate, but the 40-year-old structure does not comply with current multimodal Americans with Disabilities Act standards for bicycle and pedestrian use.

    The 1,250-foot span carries approximately 27,000 vehicles back and forth each day, including buses and other heavier vehicles. There are no shoulders or bike lanes, and pedestrians navigate the crossing in a steel cage that vibrates with passing traffic.

    At the groundbreaking, U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, a Lowell native, summed up the feelings of countless motorists over the decades by recalling her Rourke Bridge experiences.

    “When I got my driver’s license I crossed the bridge, white-knuckled in my dad’s old pickup truck. If you’ve ever felt that bridge sway under your tires, or braced yourself as cars squeezed past in the opposite direction, you know exactly what I mean,” said Trahan.

    Even the walking path, which sits on the west side of the bridge under a chain-link arch, is nerve-racking to walk across, the 3rd District U.S. rep said.

    “That experience is not unique to me … Every person in Lowell, Dracut, Chelmsford, Tyngsboro and beyond has a story about the Rourke Bridge, the bottlenecks, the anxiety and the frustration.”

    Those unpleasant memories should, like the existing temporary structure, fade into history once the new Rourke Bridge opens for business.

    The new iteration will be built at more of an angle across the Merrimack River, with the southern end being in roughly the same spot as it is today — near Wood Street past the Collegiate Charter School’s athletic fields — while the northern end will connect farther to the west along Pawtucket Boulevard, across from Old Ferry Road.

    It will include four total passenger vehicle lanes, two going in each direction, with a bicycle path and walking path.

    By design, the new Rourke Bridge will arc over the Merrimack River on its six concrete piers.

    The new span will improve passage, sightlines and safety for all users. The placement of the six piers maximize the width of usable riverway for recreational use such as rowing and boating.

    The new bridge, which has a 75-year service life, will be three times as wide as the existing two-lane bridge, a welcome relief for motorists used to the claustrophobic feel of the current one.

    While preliminary sight work, including soil boring samples, utility work and tree clearing at the north and south approaches, has already begun, construction, which is expected to take up to four years, is scheduled to start in earnest this fall.

    The temporary bridge will remain in use during that time; it won’t be demolished until the new one opens for traffic in 2029 or 2030.

    The design-build project, which keeps costs down by combining final design and construction into a single phase, will be built by construction firm Skanska USA and Jacobs Solutions Inc.

    In April, MassDOT announced that Skanska was awarded the $274 million contract.

    In June, Skanska announced that it had been awarded a $303 million contract.

    That sum includes a fund for unexpected expenses.

    Hopefully, unlike Skanska’s experience with the Lowell High construction/rehab project, those funds will cover any contingencies.

    The majority of the construction capital will come from the federal government, with the remaining portion from state and local sources.

    The city of Lowell will allocate $10 million to support the construction of water main connection work by the Lowell Regional Water Utility adjacent to the new bridge.

    The project will increase the city’s ability to provide potable water backup when needed for the Highlands.

    State and federal money funds the bridge design and construction costs, but incidental costs such as cross connections and utilities fall on the municipalities.

    Aside from harrowing stories of traversing a span that has lasted far beyond its intended purpose, that bridge kept the memory of two honored sons of Lowell alive.

    And now, this new motorist, pedestrian and bicyclist friendly bridge will carry the Rourke name well into the next century.

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  • Reader: ‘Now We Know Why He Became a Republican’

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    Let’s be honest: Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson’s recent trip to Tanzania seems to be on the up-and-up. As far as we can tell, the steps needed to make a lavish getaway into an official work trip were apparently taken…

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  • Letters: Let’s invest in the Bay Area’s greatest asset: nature

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    Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.

    Invest in Bay Area’s
    greatest asset: Nature

    Re: “Bay Area needs unity to solve its problems” (Page A9, Aug. 17).

    I second Russell Hancock’s recent call for bold regional leadership in this period of “federal ruckus.” As climate impacts intensify, California must act now to build climate resilience for tomorrow — and for future generations.

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  • Federal law enforcement risk their lives daily — now some Democrats want to make it worse

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    Across the country, liberal open-border politicians are trying to put ICE officers in danger. In addition to the wave of slanderous and demonizing rhetoric against those who enforce our immigration laws, they also want to ensure that these heroic men and women are under constant threat from radical retaliation in the privacy of their own homes.

    How? They want to ban federal law enforcement from wearing masks. Proponents of these bans claim that the masks cause chaos and undermine transparency. The common cry from politicians like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California Governor Gavin Newsom, failed vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz, and others is that federal law enforcement officers are refusing to identify themselves before making arrests of illegal aliens.

    That could not be further from the truth. I’ve been on the ground during an operation, DHS law enforcement clearly identify themselves during arrests, stating their name, showing their badges, and wear identifiers on their gear like badges and patches.

    HOUSE REPUBLICANS WARN ANTI-ICE RHETORIC FROM DEMOCRATS IS DRIVING VIOLENT ATTACKS ON AGENTS

    So why are authorities wearing masks during deportation operations? Because, if they do not, leftist rioters will dox, harass, and assault themselves and their family.

    That is not speculation, it is a fact. The politicians behind this push to expose ICE officers conveniently ignore the fact that they themselves – with their sanctuary policies, extreme rhetoric, and reckless actions – are endangering both the American public and law enforcement to begin with and creating the need to protect officers’ identities.

    Right now, ICE agents are facing a 1000% increase in assaults. Federal immigration officials have been shot, assaulted, ambushed, and targeted on a near-weekly basis. Over Independence Day weekend, nearly a dozen violent assailants equipped with tactical gear and weapons attacked an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas and shot a local law enforcement officer. A month later in August, an ICE facility was set on fire.

    Meanwhile, left-wing politicians have compared ICE and other law enforcement to Nazi Germany’s Gestapo, the KKK, Neo-Nazis, and terrorists.

    That language only encourages more and more violence.

    It’s not just mere rhetoric from these leftist officials either. From coast to coast, they are physically assaulting and obstructing our brave law enforcement officials to defend violent criminals. For example, in California, Congressman Salud Carbajal (D-CA) doxxed an ICE employee to a mob of rioters who attacked federal immigration authorities as they executed a criminal search warrant at a marijuana facility. In Los Angeles, Mayor Bass has repeatedly attempted to shut down ICE operations, even showing up on scene to do so. In New Jersey, several representatives stormed the Delaney Detention facility, placing ICE officials in harm’s way, leading to charges against New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver.

    These politicians claim to care about safety and the rule of law, yet they only want to interact with federal law enforcement officials if it’s a chance to vilify, get a photo op, or thwart removal operations.

    Which brings us to the real kicker here: The same left-wing politicians lying about so-called chaos are the very same ones who are causing the chaos.

    Under the Biden administration, tens of millions of illegal aliens from all over the world poured into the country. Many of them flocked to blue cities and states because they understood they could get freebies, welfare, and a promise to be shielded from federal law enforcement. As a result, crime skyrocketed. U.S. citizens were victimized and killed because of their policies.

    The American people rejected that insanity. They voted for President Donald Trump to make America safe again. Now, rapists, murders, wife-beaters, child predators, and other monsters are being arrested and removed from the country. The border is the most secure in history. In the months of May, June, and July, U.S. Border Patrol released zero illegal aliens into the interior.

    CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

    Who could oppose that? Only politicians who would rather place their own political ambitions ahead of the safety of U.S. citizens.

    It’s evident that rather than admit their failure, they’re choosing to double down by demonizing brave patriots serving their country. It is utterly disgusting and a slap in the face to all who wear the badge.

    If the opioid epidemic, sex trafficking, mugshots of murderers, and the pain and anguish of American citizens hasn’t compelled these open-border leftists to change their policies, it’s unclear what would.

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    In the meantime, the Trump administration will not wait around for sanctuary politicians to have a change of heart. We will take whatever action necessary to keep America safe from illegal aliens.

    We will not apologize for protecting the country, nor will we yield to those who seek to politicize the appearance of our agents rather than address the real threats they and the American people face.

    Troy Edgar is the Trump administration deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

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  • Douglas Schoen: Redistricting raises Newsom’s profile, but risks remain

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    When former Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she would not enter California’s gubernatorial race, the assumption was that she did so in order to take another shot at the White House in 2028.

    However, it increasingly appears that Democrats – at least those in California – have begun passing on the former VP in favor of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    Moreover, as Newsom continues leading the fight against Trump and GOP-led redistricting, there are signs that Democrats across the country may soon rally around the California Governor.

    According to a new Politico-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab survey, which sampled California Democrats, Newsom leads Harris by 6-points (25% to 19%) in preferences for Democrats’ 2028 presidential nominee.

    In that same vein, Emerson polling from early August found very similar results. In that poll – also conducted among California voters – Newsom (23%) led the Democratic field, with Buttigieg (17%) and Harris (11%) behind him.

    Further, political betting site Polymarket shows Newsom (28%) with the best odds to be Democrats’ 2028 nominee, 14-points ahead of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 23-points ahead of Harris.

    To be sure, while 2028 is a considerable time away, these polls are not outliers.

    Rather, they reinforce a point I made in these pages nearly two months ago: the political prospects for Newsom and Harris are sharply diverging.

    Indeed, immediately after the 2024 election, Harris dominated 2028 polling.

    At the time, polls, including this one from Puck News/Echelon Insights in November 2024 showed Harris holding a 33-point lead over the 2nd place Newsom (41% to 8%).

    Similarly, an Emerson survey – also taken last November – reported that Harris led Newsom by a virtually identical 30-points (37% to 7%).

    Behind Newsom’s improving political fortunes appears to be the increasingly front and center role he’s taken in fighting back against Trump and Republicans.

    Nowhere is this more evident than in the ongoing saga over redistricting, an issue Newsom is using to raise his profile among Democratic voters, and which he is increasingly staking his 2028 hopes on.

    To that end, as the redistricting issue garners more attention and with California lawmakers set to pass the measure to put it on the ballot, the risks for Newsom raise in tandem.

    Should California voters pass the ballot referendum this fall, polls suggest that it will be a boom for Newsom’s chances in the Democratic primary.

    One recent survey from UC Berkeley-Citrin Center shows that nearly two-thirds (63%) of national Democrats support California redistricting as a response to Texas’ efforts.

    Further, former President Barack Obama has joined Newsom’s supporters, saying that California’s response to Texas is a “reasonable approach.”

    Interestingly – and likely why Newsom is pushing so hard for redistricting – national Democrats are considerably more supportive of drawing new districts than those in California.

    As I cited last week, more than 6-in-10 (61%) of California Democrats prefer the current system of an independent redistricting commission, versus just 39% who want politicians to redraw the maps.

    In other words, with national Democrats overwhelmingly supportive of partisan redistricting, Newsom is hoping that he will garner their support if he successfully pushes the ballot measure through – and he very well may.

    With all of this being said, there is a significant downside should California voters reject the Governor’s push, a very real possibility.

    The aforementioned California poll revealed that 64% of all California voters opposed partisan redistricting, while 36% supported giving lawmakers the power to redraw maps.

    Joining the nearly two-thirds of Californians in opposition to Newsom’s efforts is former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. And while Schwarzenegger’s campaign is non-partisan – he even endorsed Harris in 2024 – California Republicans have joined in.

    According to Politico reporting, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he’s planning to raise more than $100 million to fund an opposition campaign, along with $30 million already promised by Charles Munger Jr. – the son of Warren Buffett’s late partner.

    Whether or not the opposition is enough to overcome many Californian’s desire to push back against Trump and the GOP remains to be seen.

    But it is clear that Newsom’s success is not a foregone conclusion.

    With that in mind, should California voters reject the ballot measure, the defeat would be a tremendous blow for Newsom’s 2028 hopes.

    Not only would the governor have failed to land an actual hit on Trump – something no Democrats or Republicans have truly been able to do thus far – but national Democrats may feel Newsom is ineffective.

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    Douglas Schoen

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