Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Americans are running out of money. According to the Federal Reserve, America’s savings rate just hit a fresh low while credit card balances hit a record high—with 25% interest. In short, the median American is currently scrounging for coins in the couch and putting the Hamburger Helper on the visa. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the nation’s personal savings rate just hit 2.9%. That’s 2.9 cents on the dollar. That’s the second worst rate in 75 years. What’s driving it is that, according to a new analysis, inflation-adjusted real median household income—how much the 50th percentile of households make—actually dropped since 2019. In other words, in terms of how it feels to American households, we’ve been in recession for five years. Hence the savings, and hence the debt. Note, that’s even taking government inflation numbers at face value. If, as many suspect, the official numbers are lying, it means we’re a lot poorer than five years ago. The last time that happened was the 2008 financial crisis. Of course, we’re allegedly not in the middle of a once-in-a-century financial crisis—this is the Biden-Harris miracle, if you watch TV. So, if things cost more and you’re not making more, the last man standing is dumping the piggy bank, one last quick check of the couch cushions, and it’s credit cards as far as the eye can see. What’s driving the weak incomes? Three things: slow job growth, meaning wages aren’t keeping up; the inflation itself; and the Fed’s rate hikes that have given us those 25% credit cards and 7.5% mortgages on half-million-dollar starter homes. In raw numbers, according to the Fed, consumer debt is up an annualized $300 billion, hitting a record $5.1 trillion in just consumer debt—and there’s another $12 trillion in mortgage and other debt. A big chunk of that is credit cards, which just hit a record $1.14 trillion dollars while the average annual percentage rate on credit cards—according to Lending Tree—just hit 24.92%. Even cheaper than the mafia. Keep in mind if credit cards charge 25% interest, that $1.14 trillion means close to a quarter trillion in annual credit card interest alone. A recent ABC News story walked through how you get to $1.14 trillion—how people fall into the credit card hole—profiling an Indianapolis father who was managing to cover rent and food, but when he needed to replace the washer and dryer, he fell behind, soon ballooning to $12,000 in credit card debt. At 25% interest. The fun keeps going. I’ve mentioned recently how car repossessions are rising because millions of Americans were forced to buy expensive cars during the pandemic since supply chain shortages meant they were only making the expensive trims. Now, repossessions are up 23% year on year. Yes, it’s a good time to be a repo man—and we haven’t even hit the meat of the recession yet. So what’s next? The American consumer is floating on drained savings, credit card debt, and government money. And even with all that, incomes are still falling. None of it’s sustainable—we learned that in 2008—but it’s a lot easier for Washington to kick the can—to let the American people mortgage their future—than it is to take the federal boot off the neck of job creators, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and manufacturers. Economist Herb Stein famously said, “Whatever can’t go on forever will stop.” The music’s running out. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Savings Plunge as Americans Tap Out appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich now makes videos, like I do. In fact, his channel, Inequality Media, is very much like Stossel TV. He also reaches people via social media platforms, gets millions of views and covers economic topics. Reich, who served in President Bill Clinton’s administration, does almost exactly what I do, except … Reich is repeatedly wrong. It’s understandable. Despite being frequently introduced as “economist Robert Reich,” Reich has no economics degree. He’s another liberal lawyer. His videos reflect that. “Inequality Media” is a catchy name. Americans dislike inequality. But my new video points out that inequality isn’t a conspiracy. It’s simply what happens when people are free. Taylor Swift’s a billionaire. Should government force you to listen to me sing to make life more fair? Reich wants to “ban billionaires” such as Jeff Bezos. I don’t much like Bezos, but his creation, Amazon, is wonderful. It’s lowered prices so much that it cut America’s core inflation. Reich claims Amazon is a monopoly. But Amazon is far from a monopoly. It has to compete with Walmart, Target, eBay, Alibaba, etc. Where there are free markets, we have choices. If we buy from Amazon, it’s only because we think it’s cheaper or better. Reich says it is bad that billionaires “get money from rich relatives.” But the biggest study of millionaires found few do. Bezos got some money from his parents, but most of what he needed to grow Amazon he got from investors. Media “experts” sneered at them for years, because at first, Amazon lost so much money. Capitalism rewards such risk-taking. Progressives and liberal lawyers like Reich believe rich people take most of America’s wealth and leave little for the poor. Like the Hollywood writers for the movie “Wall Street,” they call our economy “a zero-sum game—somebody wins, somebody loses.” But that’s just dumb. Capitalists create new wealth. They don’t take a big slice of the pie and leave us a sliver. If they get rich, it’s because they find ways to bake lots of new pies. That’s what’s happened in America. It’s why today, even poor Americans have access to things European kings only dreamed about. Capitalists can get rich only by making all of us better off. Actual economist Dan Mitchell explains, “Billionaires only kept 2.2% of the additional wealth they generated … the rest of us captured almost 98% of the benefits.” Reich also mocks trade. In one video, he sneers, “Global trade is good for everyone. That’s bunk!” Of course it’s bunk. Few things are good for everyone. But trade makes almost everyone richer by allowing us to specialize in what we do best. It’s called comparative advantage. Reich complains, “What if a country’s comparative advantage comes from people working under … exploitative conditions?” “Exploitation” would be bad, but people in poor countries aren’t forced to work in factories. They took those jobs because their alternatives were worse. Trade allowed a billion people to lift themselves out of poverty. Still, trade does take away some Americans’ jobs. Donald Trump complains about other countries “ripping us off and taking our jobs.” He and Reich don’t understand that trade creates more jobs. It’s why unemployment is low. Companies engaged in global trade created 60% of America’s new jobs. Finally, Reich says it’s “rubbish” that President Joe Biden’s huge spending increases caused Inflation. He claims it’s “corporate greed … Mega corporations raise prices to increase their profits.” That’s just silly. When prices fall, did companies suddenly get less greedy? My video cites actual economists like Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman, who explains, “Inflation is made in Washington because only Washington can create money. Any other attribution of other groups to inflation is wrong.” Reich’s videos are wrong about almost everything. It’s sad that colleges pay this fake economist to deliver foolish propaganda to students. His “progressive” ideas would leave all of us poorer. And less free. COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Economic Bunk From a Former Cabinet Secretary appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Justice Department’s top watchdog and a successful FBI whistleblower took questions Wednesday from a House panel investigating the weaponization of government.  Key witnesses testified before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government,  noting how such weaponization applies to larger problems within the FBI.  The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a May memo that the FBI failed to comply with whistleblower protections in suspending the security clearance of a bureau employee, Marcus Allen.  Allen, a former FBI staff operations specialist, raised questions about the official narrative regarding whether the bureau had confidential informants on the scene of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Allen also testified before the House’s government weaponization subcommittee in May 2023.  Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the House panel that his office is investigating the role of FBI informants at the Capital riot, but may not issue a report until after the next president is sworn in Jan. 20 The FBI suspended Allen’s security clearance in early 2022 and restored it this past June. At that point, he dropped his complaint to Horowitz’s Office of Inspector General.  Here are four takeaways from the hearing Wednesday.  1. ‘Battle for Truth and Justice Will Cost You’ Allen testified that he wasn’t able to work during his unpaid leave and had to dig into retirement savings.  “The battle for truth and justice will cost you, but the arduous good is worth it,” Allen said. “No [previous] FBI whistleblower has ever had his clearance restored as I did.” He said he has never regretted his decision to be a whistleblower and is “grateful for the experience.”  “My family and I persevered due to our strengthened faith, God’s grace, and the sacraments,” Allen said.  Allen said he learned that Jeffrey Veltri, now the FBI’s special agent in charge in Miami, ridiculed Allen’s Christian faith as one of his supervisors.  Veltri recently made news for leading the FBI’s investigation in Florida into the second assassination attempt on Trump.  As Allen spoke, his voice cracked and he became visibly emotional.  “If you do not worship God, then you will worship something else. You can serve God or you can serve mammon, but you can’t serve both,” the former FBI employee testified, paraphrasing Scripture. “This has been a purification. When we lost material items, we gained important things. We have stored up for ourselves treasures in heaven. What we have gained spiritually far outweighs what we have lost materially.”  Allen cited two early presidents, John Adams and James Madison, during his testimony. “This isn’t about me. It’s bigger,” he said. “I am hopeful that the truth of what happened will be fully revealed and deter the FBI from doing the same injustice to others.” Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt, who heads the whistleblower advocacy group that represented Allen, called for legislative reforms to protect whistleblowers.  “The FBI smeared him with the lie that he was a threat to our national security,” Leavitt said of Allen. “That lie was repeated here in this hearing room. One year later, the FBI reinstated his security clearance and agreed to restore 27 months of back pay. This amounts to an official admission by the FBI that claims about his disloyalty to the U.S. were false.” Leavitt said what happened to Allen is not an isolated case.  “This summer, we disclosed that the security division forced FBI employees to rat out their coworkers if they had ever heard them ‘vocalize support for President Trump’ or ‘vocalize opposition to the COVID-19 vaccination,’” Leavitt testified. “We now understand that was just one manifestation of the FBI’s politicized climate.”   Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, testified that the FBI’s conduct “creates a risk that the security process can be misused as part of an inappropriate effort to encourage an employee to resign.” But, Horowitz said, the FBI’s problems don’t seem to affect only one side.  “These allegations raise serious issues and, I would note, do not apply to only a subset of employees with certain political views or ideologies,” Horowitz testified.  2. Review of FBI Sources on Jan. 6 Will Wait Until After Election A forthcoming report from his Office of Inspector General will include how many confidential informants for the FBI were involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, Horowitz said.  However, the report is in draft form and will not be released before the election, he said.  It “is certainly my hope,” Horowitz testified, that the report will be ready before the inauguration of the next president on Jan. 20, 2025.  Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., asked: “So, three and a half years ago, you announced you would be doing this review, and we still don’t have the review, do we?”  The Inspector General’s Office announced it would start the investigation in 2021, but Horowitz said his office “paused” the probe pending the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigations. He said his office reinitiated its probe last year.  “Now that you’ve restarted the review, do you have evidence of the number of confidential human sources that were operating on the [Capitol] grounds on Jan. 6?” Massie asked.  Horowitz replied:  “Our report will include the information in that regard.” Massie asked: “Can you tell us today how many [FBI informants] there were? Were there more than 100?” “I’m not in a position to say that, both because [the report] is in draft form and because we have not gone through the classification review. So, I need to be careful,” Horowitz replied.  Massie appeared puzzled, noting that the fourth anniversary of the Capitol riot is approaching. “We are just weeks away from an inauguration and we are almost four years into this report,” the Kentucky Republican said. “When is it going to be released?” “Certainly in the next couple of months is my hope,” Horowitz said.  Massie later asked: “You’re saying it’s not going to be done in time for the election?”  “I doubt it would be done in time for the election,” Horowitz said.  “Is it going to be done in time for the inauguration?” Massie asked.  “That is certainly my hope,” DOJ’s inspector general replied.  “We are four years into it. What we do know is that you are going to expose there were confidential human sources at the Capitol,” Massie pressed. “Can you tell us today how many went into the Capitol?” “I don’t know yet what’s classified and what’s not classified,” Horowitz replied. 3. Top Democrat Declares Trump a ‘Would-Be Führer’ Democrats on the subcommittee avoided talking about problems at the FBI or whistleblower retaliation, instead focusing on former President Donald Trump while frequently talking about Project 2025.  Project 2025 is a policy and personnel plan for the next presidential administration that has the backing of more than 100 conservative-leaning organizations and is led by The Heritage Foundation. The proposals in Project 2025 are based on traditional conservative principles and haven’t been embraced by Trump, but Democrats continue to misrepresent the plan and call it his. Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-Virgin Islands, the nonvoting delegate who is the ranking member of the subcommittee, said concerns about weaponization are “projection.”  Plaskett said House Republicans are doing the bidding of their “would-be führer,” Trump.  “We are having this hearing so that you become immune to the notion of the removal of the FBI and DOJ so that those agencies are no longer there to serve as a check against white nationalism, great replacement theorists, Christian nationalists, white-fragility fascists, and the twice-impeached convicted felon, former president, and would-be dictator Donald Trump,” Plaskett said.  (So-called great replacement theory refers to the idea that some conservatives argue that the Left and allied politicians are allowing a surge of illegal immigration that will “replace”  America’s white majority of European descent.) The only witness called by Democrats was Glenn Kirschner, an MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, who warned that if Trump wins the Nov. 5 election it would be the end of the rule of law.  “I fear the horrific conduct of former President Trump and his corrupt DOJ officials in his first term will look like a government official fixing a parking ticket for a friend compared to what Project 2025 holds in store,” Kirschner said.  After every Democrat on the subcommittee talked about Trump and Project 2025, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, joked: “Pretty soon, they’re going to accuse Mr. Allen of writing Project 2025.” Jordan, chairman of both the Judiciary Committee and its select subcommittee, then jokingly asked each of the other witnesses if he wrote Project 2025.  4. ‘We Just Sign the Check’ Horowitz also testified that the Inspector General’s Office is reviewing allegations of “inappropriate questions being asked during security clearance investigations, inconsistent outcomes on security clearance determinations, the suspension and revocation of the eligibility to hold a clearance based on race, and retaliation against employees for raising concerns to management about security clearance investigations and adjudications.” Such problems should have consequences, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said, arguing that Congress should use the appropriations process to force reforms in the FBI and Justice Department, its parent agency, including whistleblower protections. “The process was the punishment and it was the point,” Gaetz said to Allen, the former FBI whistleblower. Allen responded: “Correct, the process in this instance felt like the punishment.”  Gaetz then asked: “Do you think Congress has appropriately protected whistleblowers?” Allen answered: “I do not, Congressman.” “I think the policy recommendations can be put forward so that there can be bipartisan support to protect whistleblowers going forward,” he added.  Gaetz said he wasn’t making a partisan critique.  “It’s a bipartisan critique that we all own,” Gaetz said. “We see the evidence that you get mistreated. We hear from experts like Mr. Horowitz that this is totally off-book. It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that they are doing this to hurt you and make an example out of you. What do we do? We just sign the check.” The Florida Republican added, referring to a stopgap spending bill: “We should put in any continuing resolution that until you get paid, and until the rest of the whistleblowers get their back pay, maybe the FBI director doesn’t get his paycheck. Maybe the attorney general shouldn’t get his paycheck.” The post Weaponization Probes Vindicated FBI Whistleblower, Stalled Jan. 6 Report appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The illegal immigration crisis at the southern border has not only created a culture of lawlessness at the southern border, it has also adversely affected the labor and housing markets. That’s according to the testimony of Center for Immigration Studies director of research Steven Camarota at a hearing of the House Oversight subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, “The Border Crisis: The Cost of Chaos.” Camarota said at the hearing that the amount of illegal immigration in recent years has been “unprecedented” in scale. He said that a recent report by the House Judiciary Committee found that at least “5.6 million illegal immigrants have been released into the country since January of 2021.” That was when President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office. In addition, he said, there were an estimated 1.7 million “got-aways,” who were never apprehended from fiscal years 2021 to 2023. Camarota said that the enormous amount of illegal immigration has consequences for housing and labor markets. For one thing, the increased demand for housing drives up prices. “My own analysis suggests that a 5-percentage-point increase in the share of a community [comprising] recent immigrants will cause a 12% increase in what the average U.S.-born household pays for rent,” he said. In addition to the increased housing cost for American families, Camarota said that there’s a significant fiscal and societal cost to bringing in illegal immigrants on such a large scale. “Using estimates by the National Academy of Sciences, we calculate that the lifetime fiscal drain, considering all the taxes an illegal immigrant may pay, and all the services and costs they would create, is about $68,000 per illegal immigrant, or if you like, $68 billion for each 1 million illegal immigrants,” Camarota said. This net drain is due to the “modest education levels” of most illegal immigrants. He said that nearly 80% of them have no education beyond high school, double the share of U.S.-born citizens. The result is generally low incomes, low tax payments, and high use of public services, Camarota said, qualifying that statement by saying that most illegal immigrants aren’t lazy and aren’t coming for welfare. Instead, this “simply reflects what happens when you add large numbers of less-educated people who have modest incomes to a modern economy that spends a lot on social services,” he explained to the House panel. Camarota disputed the oft-stated claim that illegal immigrants will do jobs that native-born Americans won’t do. “Of the 474 occupations as defined by the Department of Commerce, only six are majority immigrant, and practically none that are a majority illegal immigrant,” he said. “There’s good evidence that immigration, by increasing the supply of workers, reduces wages and unemployment for some American workers.” The most important takeaway from these numbers, Camarota stressed, is how it has coincided with the “long-term increase in the share of working-class men not in the labor force.” They are not showing up as unemployed because they aren’t seeking work at all, he said. He said that 1 out of every 9 men without a high school education is not in the labor force. The Center for Immigration Studies expert laid out the depth of the growing crisis for male unemployment in his written testimony to the committee: For example, 4% of “prime-age” (25 to 54) U.S.-born men with only a high school education or less were not in the labor force in 1960—neither working, nor looking for work. By 2000, it was 13%, and in 2024, it is 18 percent. Competition for jobs with illegal immigrants is only part of the reason for this change, Camarota said, but tolerating illegal immigration “has allowed employers and, frankly, policymakers to ignore this huge social problem.” But having huge numbers of unemployed men is linked to social maladies, he said, including “drug-overdose deaths, crime, suicide, and alcoholism.” Camarota concluded that reducing illegal immigration would force the country to finally deal with that crisis. The post Here’s How Much Your Rent Has Gone Up Due to Illegal Immigration, Expert Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Word Salad Wednesday: Let the Spirit Spirit Us to Greater Good Spirits

To mark this week’s United Nations General Assembly, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared Wednesday morning on ABC, CBS, and NBC to discuss the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East with Israel facing attacks from nearly every direction from Hamas in the south to Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the north. Of course, the liberal media — specifically NBC’s Today and some on CBS Mornings — chose to frame their questions as a problem created by Israel. NBC co-host Savannah Guthrie has had a welcome streak of sorts of holding the feet of Biden administration officials to the fire with challenging questions from the right, but this case was from the left.     After a lead-off question about the ongoing threats from Iran to assassinate former President Trump and ending with Joe Biden being a lame duck President, everything in between was brutally adversarial toward Israel. On Israel’s fight against Lebanon, she first wondered whether the U.S. “support[s] this escalation strategy by Israel” on Hezbollah. Blinken gave a sensible answer about Israel wanting to eliminate the threat the Islamist group has posed to roughly 70,000 Israelis being forced from their homes since October 8, but that wasn’t enough for her. “Israel is not listening to [calls for diplomacy]...[O]n Monday, this Israeli bombardment was the most serious — deadliest day in Lebanon since 2006. So Israel is not listening to the U.S. Why not,” she huffed. A few minutes later, Guthrie pushed harder: “Why does the U.S. not have or use more leverage over Israel, its ally. We are the supplier of the bulk of its weapons of war, and yet, there are countless examples and you probably know them better than I that Israel seems to flout what the U.S. is asking or suggesting. Why is that?” The two then went around and around on this crazy notion that the exploding pager operation last week was terrorism (click “expand”): GUTHRIE: Shouldn’t the U.S. have been given a heads up, for example, that Israel was going to assassinate a political leader in Iran, in Tehran or this pagers attack of last week? Shouldn’t the U.S., the Israeli ally, have gotten a heads up at that at minimum? BLINKEN: Look, it’s always nice not to be surprised by the action someone takes. Certainly that’s better, but since October 7, besides trying to make sure that October 7 never happens again, besides trying to make sure that civilians in Gaza, men, women, and children who are caught in this horrific crossfire of Hamas’s making are better protected and get the assistance they need, we’ve also been working to prevent this war from spreading, from escalating, from going to other places. That’s what we’re focused on now, making sure what you’re seeing in northern Israel, southern Lebanon now doesn’t become a full-scale war, and on the contrary that we resolve the problem Israel has. GUTHRIE: Can I ask you about that pager attack where Hezbollah members were the targets and they’re — literally in their hands. their pagers exploded. Some see this as a technological coup and a genius move by Israel. Others, including John Brennan, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who you know well saying it’s a form of terrorism and it went too far. Where do you come down on it? BLINKEN: Look, you’ve got to start with the proposition that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization — GUTHRIE: No question. BLINKEN: — so designated by the United States. And the reality is Israel left southern Lebanon. It had been occupying southern Lebanon for 15 years. It left in 2000, and all these militia that existed there were supposed to put down their weapons. Hezbollah didn’t do it and then repeatedly in the time after that, it attacked and posed a threat to people living in Israel, so it’s very legitimate Israel do something about Hezbollah. GUTHRIE: No question about it. I mean — yeah. BLINKEN: The only question is what’s the best way to do? GUTHRIE: And the tactic. BLINKEN: And — and what are the best tactics? And those are things we’re always discussing with them, but right now our main challenge is preventing a broader war, one that actually won’t solve the challenge that Israel has and, by the way, the Lebanese have because they want to get their people back to their homes in southern Lebanon, too. We want that, too. GUTHRIE: In fairness, you didn’t answer whether or not you approve this particular tactic. BLINKEN: Look, you’re always looking what someone is doing, trying to figure out what the second or third consequences might be? Does it open up a whole new Pandora’s box. It is something we’re looking at. Guthrie began winding down with two question on ceasefire talks. While she conceded “it is Hamas that broke the cease-fire that existed” with the events of October 7, Hamas and Israel equally “do not seem very interested in a deal.”     Unlike Guthrie (and, as well see, on ABC), the CBS Mornings interview with Dokoupil involved each of the day’s co-hosts. Tony Dokoupil had most of the questions, which were actually productive and showed he’s personally familiar with the region. This allowed Blinken room to explain why Israel has taken such strong actions against Hezbollah and the reality often ignored in the liberal media that Hamas is the major impediment to a ceasefire (click “expand”): DOKOUPIL: Boy, there’s only so many times you can mention escalating tensions and risks of an all-out war before it becomes cliche but things are definitely not going in the right direction, and I think there’s a philosophy question here for the US to answer. Do you end all of this violence in the Middle East by putting pressure on Israel to stop on both fronts? Or do you empower Israel to finish the job? BLINKEN: Look, what we’ve seen since the horrific attacks on October 7 are periods wherein we’ve had a real risk of escalation, a real risk of something turning into a full-blown war, including in Lebanon, between Israel and Hezbollah and through diplomacy, through deterrence, we’ve managed to avert that in the days immediately following October 7, more recently in April. We’re focused right now on making sure that we can deescalate, avoid a full scale war. But Tony, Israel has got a legitimate problem here. Starting on October 8, Hezbollah in the north, from Southern Lebanon, started lobbing rockets and missiles into Israel. People living in Northern Israel had to flee their homes, about 70,000, and Israel understandably, legitimately wants a secure environment so people can return home. The best way to get that is through diplomacy, an agreement to pull back forces, allow people to return home in Northern Israel; also many Lebanese in Southern Lebanon forced from their homes. We want to get people back home. The best way to do that is not war, it’s diplomacy. DOKOUPIL: So Hezbollah went to their weapons systems. Hezbollah began firing into Israel after October 7. BLINKEN: That’s right. DOKOUPIL: In allyship with Hamas and the people in Gaza. BLINKEN: Exactly. DOKOUPIL: Where does ceasefire talks stand, because that — if that is their motivation there on the Hezbollah side, that’s the key to making them pull back and stop. BLINKEN: That would certainly be one of the keys. It would be an ideal key, because it would end the horrific situation in Gaza — horrific for the hostages, horrific for so many men, women and children who have been caught in this crossfire that Hamas is making. We’ve been working on this ceasefire deal for a while. We have an agreement, a piece of paper that’s got 18 paragraphs, 15 of them are agreed. The last three continue to need some work. The problem we have right now is that Hamas hasn’t been engaging on it for the last couple of weeks, and Sinwar, its leader, has been talking about an endless war of attrition. Now, if he really cares about the Palestinian people, he’d bring this agreement over the finish line. Co-host and former NFL player Nate Burleson took this detailed discussion and tried to seem in tune by blaming....Benjamin Netanyahu. “Mr. Secretary, do you believe that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu truly wants a ceasefire,” he wondered before asking again moments later (and after Blinken explained Hamas’s rigidity): “So, on that part, do you put blame on the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?” Fill-in co-host Adriana Diaz had the last question and cited the fear-left, dark money-funded site ProPublica, which presumably found time to do something other than falsely claiming Georgia Republicans are killing pregnant women: ProPublica has determined that two agencies found that Israel is deliberately stopping humanitarian aid from getting to civilians, and as you well know, the U.S. government says that it has to restrict supplying weapons to a country that does this type of thing.Why have we not done so? ABC’s Good Morning America was the newscast that was able to have Blinken’s interview conducted live and co-host/former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos used more than half the time to talk about Russia’s war on Ukraine. Stephanopoulos still led off with the Middle East, but only two measly questions: Do you think this can be contained?  (....) Do you have objections to the way Israel is prosecuting the war right now? To see the relevant transcripts from September 25, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

America is in a spiritual crisis. A nation that was founded on Christian principles, a nation that invoked God in its origins, a nation that has turned to the same God for nearly a quarter-millennium has nearly overnight rebuked Him and has largely abandoned His truth. Case in point, the newest polling from renowned pollster George Barna finds that only 59% of practicing Christians say they will vote in the November 5 election. If churchgoing Christians make up 80 million of America’s 333 million people, that means only 48 million practicing Christians are headed to the polls. It’s not surprising that America’s moral decline barely registers as an issue this election, as only 23% of churched Christians consider moral decline a 'defining issue.' This number is concerning. Voting is our civic duty, a practice that America’s founders enshrined in the Constitution to ensure that all Americans can share in the process of creating a more perfect union. How often are we at a church service or backyard barbecue when we hear Christians of good faith lament on the state of our union? Yet as Barna’s polling shows, only about six in 10 of these people will make the effort to facilitate change. Even worse, one out of every 10 of these Christians refuse to vote at all. As discouraging as these numbers are, they get worse the more one digs into Barna’s polling. Take, for instance, the startingly high number (42%) of Christians who support abortion on demand — that is the right to an “abortion under any circumstance.” That's an alarmingly high number of proclaimed Christians willing to accept the killing of an innocent baby, no matter the reason. If Christian-backed abortion isn’t disturbing enough, nearly one-third (29%) of American Christians say they prefer socialism to capitalism. Yes, they accept the secular ideology responsible for tens, if not hundreds, of millions of deaths over the past century, rather than a system that incentivizes accountability. It is also alarming that more than half (56%) of Christians reject absolute moral truth despite it being conveyed through scripture — claiming that “identifying moral truth is up to each individual; there are no moral absolutes that apply to everyone, all the time.” Although these numbers are shocking, it’s not surprising that America’s moral decline barely registers as an issue this election, as only 23% of churched Christians consider moral decline a “defining issue.” Where is church leadership? Where are the shepherds who were called by Christ to lead His flock? Are they informing their congregations of God’s truth as it relates to our nation’s sad current state of affairs? Is weak church leadership to blame for the 40% of Christians who are at this point likely sitting out the election? No. But we shouldn’t be surprised, either, that the number of Christians who claim to have heard sermons or teachings about the Bible’s stand on specific issues (61%) or who were encouraged to vote by their churches (56%) is nearly identical to the number of Christians planning to vote. Church leaders have a duty to guide their congregations into a closer relationship with Christ. Part of that relationship includes participating in voting efforts and encouraging civic action. In fact, another Barna poll found that 17% of Christians who don’t plan to vote would participate on Election Day if they were told that voting is a “biblical responsibility of every Christian.” Another 10% say they could justify voting if a religious person they highly respected endorsed a candidate. This doesn’t mean pastors need to endorse candidates during sermons, nor should they guilt their congregations into voting. However, since there seems to be a correlation between voting Christians and those who have heard sermons about the importance of voting, church leaders must do more. As Americans, we have a duty not only to leave future generations better off but also to honor our founders and ultimately God by preserving the republic and upholding the unalienable rights He has granted us. Casting your ballot is the perfect start.

The Democratic governor of Washington state says he is so afraid that former President Donald Trump might win the election that he is stockpiling tens of thousands of abortion pills. Gov. Jay Inslee said in an interview with Reuters that the state would go to extraordinary lengths to make sure women could obtain abortion pills if Trump wins in November. Washington will order 30,000 doses of the mifepristone pill, enough to last about three years for Washington state residents. 'Chemical abortions should have more medical oversight not less.' “This is a long-term threat. Those who want to take away reproductive health for women, they’re not going to stop last week, this week or next week. It is a multi-decade effort," said Inslee. He was referring to a Supreme Court decision in June that rejected a lawsuit seeking to ban mifepristone based on the argument that the Federal Drug Administration had improperly relaxed regulations to allow the pill to be mailed across the country. The court did not rule on the merit of a ban on mifepristone but rather that the plaintiffs did not have the proper standing to sue in court. "A plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue," the ruling read. Inslee said the state needed to take action in case the court decided against the drug later. “The supreme court decision was not definitive in protecting mifepristone,” he explained. Trump said previously that he would be open to asking the FDA to shut down approval of the pill, but his campaign later walked back the comments. He has proudly touted his role in assigning judges to the Supreme Court that led to the revocation of national abortion rights in the Roe v. Wade decision but does not support a national ban on abortion. “You just can’t trust him when it comes to women’s reproductive health,” Inslee said of Trump. Critics of the expanded availability of the pill say it is a threat to women's health without the supervision of medical professionals. "Allowing unsupervised chemical abortions via telemedicine, without requiring timely access to medical care, will put women in grave danger," read a 2021 statement from March for Life, a pro-life group. "Data released in 2018 by the FDA shows thousands of adverse events caused by abortion pills, including 768 hospitalizations and 24 deaths since 2000. Chemical abortions should have more medical oversight not less."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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