I had little to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago. Like the billions who grew up with the monstrous structure, I thrilled to watch it get torn down by Germans on each side of it. And I celebrated the man responsible for the glorious sight, in journalism and fiction, although he was no longer President. Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union with a singular vision which dispelled a 70-year-old belief — that the Cold War was the permanent status quo. He’d articulated it a decade earlier and shaken the world. “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War,” Reagan said. “We win, they lose.” You can almost feel sorry for the poor, indoctrinated Zegler, discovering the limits of her Hollywoke bubble. I felt the same elation two weeks back on Election Night, but with an added thrill. This time, I’d done my bit to save the West — by covering the Culture War. I chronicled how Donald Trump turned the tide, as Reagan did. And he too was shot and nearly killed in the process. But while both men were attacked by the media and their political opposition, Trump by far got the worst of it. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Trump Victory Is the American Counter-Reformation) Reagan’s inner circle — James Baker, Michael Deaver, Attorney General Ed Meese, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and, yes, Vice-President George H. W. Bush — were mostly loyal to him. Yet many on Trump’s team — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley, National Security Advisor John Bolton, others — kept stabbing him in the back. Worse, though still traditionally rulebound in the Eighties, by Trump’s time, both the media and the Democratic Party had fused into one massive Swamp Dragon that blew fire on him pre, during, and post his presidency. Trump endured hoax after hoax — “White supremacists were fine people”, “Inject bleach”; lie after lie — “Veterans are sucker and losers,” Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation; impeachment after impeachment — abuse of power, incitement of insurrection; indictment after indictment — falsifying business records, mishandling classified documents, trying to overturn the 2020 election, many more; assassination attempt after assassination attempt — July 13, September 15; and finally opposing candidate after opposing candidate — Joe Biden, Kamala Harris. Trump beat back all of them and stood tall. Then, in the biggest Republican electoral landslide since Reagan, also winning the popular vote. But politics, as my late mentor Andrew Breitbart most famously said, is downstream of culture. And the Culture War is my beat, and my literary frontier. Consequently, I knew long before the last election what the enemy forces would be. I’d been exiled from Hollywood after making producers money writing about strong men and beautiful women — by weak men and unattractive women, in other words, feminists. Disdain for Obama and support for Trump sealed my fate. Understanding the Left’s hatred of masculinity and femininity led me back to my first loves — journalism and fiction. My initial article for The American Spectator, an astounding six years ago, posited how Hollywood would never greenlight a sure hit like Taken. Because the concept of a loving macho dad brutally rescuing his nubile teen daughter from minority white slavers is anathema to modern PC producers. Today, they would rather lose money by imposing unwanted fantasy dreck about butt-kicking women (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Marvels), mutating boy-friendly franchises into girl-driven flops (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Mad Max), and defeminizing beloved fairy tales. On that third point, nothing has been more unintentionally entertaining than Snow White starlet Rachel Zegler being a one girl wrecking crew against her movie, once trusted Disney, and the beloved film that built it. As I wrote last summer, Zegler obnoxiously ridiculed the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as “weird, weird” and Prince Charming as “a stalker.” “She’s not going to be saved by the Prince,” Zegler snorted. “And she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.” Scratch every romance-loving girl and mom from the potential audience. A panicked Disney delayed the movie till next year, had Rachel issue a hostage-video apology, then sent her into hiding. All seemed tranquil until the Night that Wrecked Hollywoke — Trump’s blowout of Kamala Harris. It drove Zegler back into the spotlight with a Trump Derangement Instagram screed against his voters, the traditional family base for a Disney film: I find myself speechless in the midst of this. Another four years of hatred, leaning us towards a world I do not want to live in. Leaning us towards a world that will be hard to raise my daughter in. Leaning us towards a world that will force her to have a baby she doesn’t want. Leaning us towards a world that is fearful. I shouldn’t be this shocked. But I am. I am heartbroken for my friends who awoke in fear this morning. And I am here with you. To cry, to yell, to hug. To wax poetic on how the left continues to fail us in forging a new path forward. This loss should not have been. And it certainly should not have been by so many votes. Zegler ends with the coup de grace on Snow White and possibly her career, an actual threat. “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.” Naturally Disney made her walk the plank again with another groveling insincere apology. “I let my emotions get the best of me,” Zegler wrote on Instagram.” Hatred and anger have caused us to move further and further away from peace and understanding, and I am sorry I contributed to the negative discourse.” (READ MORE: We Can Be Heroes for One Day — Election Day) “This week has been emotional for so many of us but I firmly believe that everyone has the right to their opinion, even when it differs from my own,” she continued. You can almost feel sorry for the poor, indoctrinated Zegler, discovering the limits of her Hollywoke bubble. If she thought November 5th, 2024 was a rough night, she should wait till March 21st, 2025, premiere date for Snow White. She’ll be begging Trump voters to fill those empty theater seats. ___________ “You got a problem with women in combat?” Amy asked. “More than the Chinese will when they take us on,” said Slade. If you approve of Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, you’ll like Mark Slade, the ex-Army Ranger turned DC private eye in my shockingly timely new political thriller, The Washington Trail, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever fun mysteries are sold. The post The Night That Wrecked Hollywoke appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

It started last month with the decision of Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times, not to endorse a candidate in the race for U.S. president. This move not only surprised many longtime readers of the reliably far-left daily, but led several Times staffers — who’d expected the paper to support Kamala Harris — to quit in outrage.In recent times, no issue has seemed to animate the Times more than transgenderism. But that was only the beginning. On November 10, three days after the Trump landslide, Soon-Shiong, a South Africa-born businessman and medical researcher who is the richest man in L.A., announced that he was firing his entire editorial board and would be replacing it with one that was more “fair and balanced.” This news was, of course, even more stunning than the paper’s failure to endorse Kamala — because the Los Angeles Times editorial board has, for some time now, been ground zero for wokeness on the West Coast, having devolved, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, into a wellspring of left-wing propaganda. Indeed, at times it can feel as if the Los Angeles Times is even loonier than its East Coast counterparts. For one thing, it’s all in — predictably enough — on climate hysteria. On August 27, it ran a piece by one of its editorial interns who recalled growing up in India, where “it wasn’t uncommon for my friends to faint due to heatstroke in the scorching 110-degree heat.” Moving to northern California, she’d enjoyed the temperate weather, which made going for a run feel like an act of “liberation.” But climate change, she said, threatens to ruin that: “California is barreling toward a future where the outdoors might become inhospitable for children to play because of wildfire smoke, heat waves, storms and flooding.” And don’t forget earthquakes — surely they’re caused by climate change, too? The Times has also celebrated defunding the police and leniency toward felons by Soros-backed prosecutors. A November 12, 2023, article praised Norway’s Halden Prison, where inmates “choose their own clothing,” “buy fresh produce from their well-stocked grocery store,” “play in bands,” and “walk in the woods.” The prison, which also provides a compass that “shows the direction of Mecca,” was being studied by California officials who wanted to copy it. No mention that, as a consequence of this policy, foreign felons in Norway are treated far better than many law-abiding Norwegian natives, including homeless veterans. But then, Gavin Newsom’s policies have already made California more hospitable to criminal illegal aliens than to its own highly taxed citizens. Times writers are also enamored of academic identity studies, which have turned universities into settings for vapid navel-gazing and the transformation of individuals into members of identity groups that are identified as either oppressing or oppressed. On November 27, 2023, the Times ran a piece by Sonja Sharp celebrating UCLA’s “new disability studies major — the first of its kind at any public university in the state.” Disability studies, it should be noted, is a discipline that rejects the so-called “medical model” of disability in favor of the notion of disabled people as one more group of oppressed people; the group-identity mentality is so powerful that diversity-studies “scholars” condemn parents and doctors for making use of wonderful new technologies and surgical procedures that free disabled children from their disabilities. Then there’s the paper’s stubborn enthusiasm — even now — for each and every COVID lockdown measure. A September 1, 2023 article had nothing but criticism for a forthcoming Stanford symposium at which scientists “associated with discredited approaches to the COVID pandemic” — among them the impeccable Jay Bhattacharya — would participate. Even at this late date, the paper treated the lab-leak hypothesis as heresy and the wet-market theory as gospel and approvingly quoted Peter Hotez’s rejection of the Stanford event as “anti-science.” Hotez, of course, is the shamelessly self-promoting virologist who during the pandemic promoted school mask mandates and other excessive measures — and who even called for those who disagreed with him to be silenced and arrested. (READ MORE from Bruce Bawer: Remembering Greer Garson) In the light of day, it’s clear that Hotez is a dangerous fanatic with no respect for Americans’ freedom while Bhattacharya is a pillar of reason and restraint. But for the Times’s reporter Hotez is a “vaccine expert and disinformation debunker” and Bhattacharya a fount of conspiracy theories. On the issue of race, the Times goes exactly where you’d expect. It loves Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project. Last year it posted photos of its 28 summer interns. All but five were girls; all but two or three were non-white. Typical of its approach to race was a purported news story on July 25, 2023, that painted a rosy picture of a black history class at a south L.A. high school. One of the authors on the syllabus was Frantz Fanon, whose work the Times reporter described as exploring “the racism and violence inherent in colonialism.” In fact, Fanon — who saw all whites as colonizers and therefore evil and all non-whites as colonized and therefore virtuous — preached violence, admired Castro, despised capitalism, and called for the crushing of the bourgeoisie. To indoctrinate teenagers into Fanon’s hateful ideology is despicable — and dangerous. An extremely long piece on race ran in the Times on October 23, 2023. It profiled a number of black American expatriates, among them Jameelah Nuriddin, an L.A. filmmaker who, we were told, “always tried to work twice as hard as those around her, thinking: ‘If I’m smart enough, pretty enough, successful enough … then finally people will treat me as a human being.’” During the George Floyd protests, however, Nuriddin “had an epiphany: ‘America does not deserve me.’” So she moved to Puerto Viejo, “an idyllic beach town” in Costa Rica “that has become a hub for hundreds of Black expatriates fed up with life in the United States.” This attitude was treated by the Times as entirely justified, given that “the U.S. is still grappling with racism, with Black people twice as likely as white people to be killed by police and Black workers earning less on the dollar than their white counterparts. In Florida, a new law forces teachers to downplay the impact of slavery, and across the country, far-right activists are seeking bans on books touching on Black history.” All these assertions, of course, range from hysterical exaggeration to outright lies. But forget climate, COVID, and CRT. In recent times, no issue has seemed to animate the Times more than transgenderism. During the last year or so, several alleged news reporters have written about gender ideology as if it were a matter of settled science. On June 11, 2023, for example, a Times story described a bill in the Texas House that would ban transgender girls from girls’ sports as a denial of their “rights” and as a victory for “misinformation about gender identity and healthcare.” And March 10, 2024, brought a story about a new Kansas law declaring that there are only two sexes and thereby ending “legal recognition of transgender identities.” The article cited unnamed “critics” who accused the law of “erasing transgender and nonbinary people’s existences” and unnamed “medical experts” who said that the law is based on “the outdated idea that gender is binary rather than a spectrum.” On October 29, 2023, came a piece by an 18-year-old trans female — that is, a boy who thinks he’s a girl — who complained that state laws restricting “gender-affirming care” and trans participation in women’s sports threaten trans people’s “happiness.” There was, needless to say, no mention of the biological females who are losing scholarships and getting concussions because biological males are joining women’s teams. “I recall the joy I felt as a little kid expressing my femininity,” wrote the author, who claimed that treatment with puberty blockers and estrogen at age 14 replaced his “distress” with “elation.” America, he contended, owes trans people that happiness. In short: shut up about biological facts and parrot trans ideology. Last March, the Times ran a piece by Judith Butler, the feminist professor who helped shape gender ideology. The “anti-gender ideology movement,” charged Butler, is rooted in a “fear of ‘gender’” and desire to restore “a patriarchal dream order” on the part of people who “oppose … thought itself.” And on June 2, a Times editorial cheered the fact that a group called Protect Kids California had failed to collect enough signatures for a ballot proposition that would’ve required teachers to tell parents “about their child’s gender identity at school” and would’ve kept boys out of girls’ spaces and girls’ sports. The measure, stated the Times, “would have restricted medical care for transgender youth.” Translation: surgeons would’ve been prohibited from mutilating minors’ sex organs. (READ MORE: ‘Pogrom’ in Amsterdam) So it’s about time that the owner of the Times gave his editorial board the heave-ho. Like their colleagues at many other big-time legacy media, these weasels have been pushing divisive, America-hating, and reality-defying ideologies on their readers for far too long. Yes, many of their readers (surely people like Cher, Bette Midler, and Rob Reiner must be loyal Times subscribers) have welcomed the paper’s consistent reinforcement of their own insipid views. But if America’s second city is going to have a dead-tree major newspaper, it deserves better than this Pacific coast Pravda. Kudos, then, to Patrick Soon-Shiong. May his effort to drag his paper back to the center prove profitable — and may his counterparts at the failing New York Times and Washington Post take note. The post Revolution at the <i>LA Times</i> appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I didn’t know we had a class system in this country. But according to popular pundit descriptions, it seems we do. If so, I guess you would say that I grew up in the so-called “lower class.” What am I getting at? Well, during the recent political season, I kept hearing much about “the middle class” or “working class.” The Founders’ vision was not a society built on privilege or titles but a self-governing republic … expressed through character, faith, and hard work. “I grew up firmly in the middle class,” or “The middle class came out to vote,” “He won the middle-class vote,” and “You must attract the working class to win.” Pardon my lack of enthusiasm for the phrase, but my response, in a word, is: “Yuk. Just yuk.” I am sick of the phrase. I don’t ascribe malevolent motives to anyone using it — I’m sure I have probably mimicked the voices and used it myself to my shame — but I would like to humbly suggest that the phrase is, well, in a word, anti-American. I don’t mean treasonous or anything like that. I’m just saying that class systems are not the best, authentically American way of identifying groups in our Republic. These terms — “middle class,” “working class” — feel misplaced in the land of the free, where we’re supposed to be united by the shared title of “citizen.” America’s founders envisioned something different from the class systems of Europe. They weren’t aiming to replicate Old World divisions but to create a republic founded on freedom and personal dignity, not social rank. As a boy, an old World War One Veteran from our country church once reminded me as he heard a kid ribbing me about my social status (no parents, no car, no money, living on USDA handouts and what we could raise): “Son, we may be poor. But don’t let anyone say, ‘You ain’t got no class.’” His poor grammar notwithstanding, we could borrow that little phrase and turn it around to describe the social order in the United States of America. “We ain’t got no class” in this country. We are a nation of “second sons,” those who once would have inherited nothing under the laws of primogeniture in England yet came here to forge their destiny. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison each held a firm disdain for the idea of an “upper” or “lower” class — a social structure they rejected in favor of a republic of citizens. What is Class? So, what, then, is “class”? To understand the issue thoroughly, we must trace its origins. Used to describe the social strata of ancient Greece and Rome, “Class,” as people came to use it in the modern world, is a term deeply rooted in the socio-political theories of thinkers like Karl Marx and Max Weber. Marx believed that “class” was the lens through which societies could be understood and transformed. He argued that the very structure of society was determined by a perpetual conflict between classes: the “bourgeoisie,” or capitalist class, and the “proletariat,” or working class. As Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Weber expanded on Marx’s ideas, introducing a model that considered social and political dimensions beyond mere economic standing. He described class according to “life chances” — a grim view of the limitations imposed by birth and inheritance, as starkly visible in the separation of classes on the Titanic. The Irish laborers on the lower deck had fewer “life chances” than the aristocrats on the upper deck. Thus, in Weber’s view, class distinctions meant barriers to one’s path in life. Sociologists like Dennis Gilbert have continued this tradition, describing social stratification as “social ranking based on characteristics such as income, wealth, occupation, or prestige.” In short, class is an old-world concept, and the founders of this nation viewed it as incompatible with the American experiment. They were not trying to engineer social equality but instead offering a blueprint for individual potential. It is a profoundly Christian concept, in fact, one that echoes the words of St. Paul, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free…. for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 ESV). A New Vision of Social Order Christianity’s influence on Western civilization turned the old social order upside down, valuing each individual as an image-bearer of God. Tom Holland, in his bestselling work Dominion, asserted that even bad ideas are just so because whether we believe or not, we evaluate ideas from the still-prevailing worldview of the Bible and Christianity. The Pilgrims and, later, the Founding Fathers built upon these values in America. By the time of the Revolution, America had emerged as a land of opportunity for those willing to work, worship, and govern themselves. Rather than an aristocracy, we became a nation of citizens, free from the constraints of inherited rank. Here, the goal was not to entrench hierarchy but to foster a “commonwealth,” a shared culture of virtue and responsibility. The Founders had a clear and firm philosophy regarding social order. Hereditary aristocracy was a no-go. Yet, both Adams and Jefferson admitted that meritocracy would create a “natural aristocracy.” They disagreed on responding to the “talented tenth,” as W. E. B. DuBois would later call it (1903). Jefferson wanted to cultivate the talented tenth. Adams saw it as “a subtle venom” (from Lester J. Cappon, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2012, 343). Adams wished to check the fallen nature of ambitious men to avoid “political corruption.” In the end, we benefited from their debate. As Philip Costopoulos wrote, “For both Adams and Jefferson, the problem of the natural aristocracy is the human problem in heightened form. The best men share in the ‘moral capability and the moral corruptibility’ of man as man.” The Founders’ solution to this tension was to embrace a vision of virtue as the bedrock of a self-governing society, believing that personal character and responsibility would act as safeguards against the excesses of ambition. Meritocracy, though essential for recognizing and rewarding talent, could only be compatible with the republican ideals they cherished if those rising to influence upheld a commitment to the greater good. This conviction — that natural distinctions in ability need not create social divides — shaped a society where achievement was to be measured by character, faith, and diligence rather than birthright. As George Washington wrote, the security of a free constitution depends upon “teaching the people themselves to know and to value their rights.” The Founders’ vision was not a society built on privilege or titles but a self-governing republic, where one’s worth is not predetermined by birth but expressed through character, faith, and hard work. America’s social order, then, rests on four pillars: Faith in God: This essential value grants each person a purpose beyond material success. The Judeo-Christian theology of God and Man establishes a worldview of purpose and meaning beyond ourselves. John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” is Reagan’s vision. Trump’s recent, inspiring talk of an “American Golden Age” also recognizes the Constitutional covenant and priority of Biblical faith established in Plymouth, Jamestown, and Philadelphia. Personal Virtue: Cultivating virtues like honesty, gratitude, and charity serves the community and reflects our highest calling. The Founders were virtue seekers. They sought to bind all Americans to a concern for cultivating Biblical and natural law virtues that combined glory to God and good to others. Hard Work: We honor ourselves, our families, and our communities when we dedicate ourselves to our work, whatever it may be. In this sense, all Americans are “working class.” Liberty: Our freedoms come from God, not from government. Thus, Americans have historically understood that liberty requires vigilant protection. Where We Stand Today These foundational values must be reconsidered in today’s society. Politicians and media figures frame their appeals to “middle-class voters” or the “working class,” sidelining the more significant identity that binds us all: American citizens. Yes, people vary in income, occupation, and geography, but these distinctions should not resurrect the old ” class divisions.” When I use the term “middle class” solely to mean “middle income,” I unintentionally contribute to a sense of division. I repent of this. If we must discuss America’s “social order,” let us remember that our strength lies in our unity as citizens. We live in a country where, in theory, anyone can change their station in life through self-discipline and hard work: vision, education, determination, and grit. We are blessed with the singular title of American, earned not by aristocracy or economic status but by a shared commitment to the ideals that first called our forebears across the sea. Our Constitution is spotted with the sea spray of Pilgrim forebearers in the North Atlantic, seared by the fires from the defense of liberty and stained to a glorious hue by the blood of patriots who defended its truths. This is a new class of Men. This is the American class. And every founder descendant or legal immigrant family assumes the nobility of that title. So, the next time you hear a pundit pontificate on the “middle class” or a candidate claim to champion the “working class,” remember this: we are Americans, bound by something more profound than income brackets or social standing. As we used to say, we “ain’t got no class” in the traditional sense — but we do have dignity and the solemn title of citizen. In a world obsessed with labels and hierarchies, it’s a privilege and a blessing to be known simply as an American. READ MORE from Michael A. Milton: Being Herd: Understanding How the Left Views Society Biden Makes Inappropriate Comment in D-Day Speech The post America Ain’t Got No Class appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris are surely experiencing disappointment, but one of the Biden-Harris administration’s pillars — “industrial policy” — won big on Tuesday. That’s because it’s already been embraced by both parties. President-elect Donald Trump loves expensive tariffs, and Harris loves big subsidies to big businesses, and to some degree vice versa. Another major problem with industrial policy is that the money goes to companies that do not need it. That, my friends, should disappoint us all. Industrial policy represents one of the most dangerous economic illusions of our time. Industrial Policy Basics Often presented as a populist program, it’s usually implemented in a way that makes it no different than the worst crony programs. According to my friend Sam Gregg — an expert on the issue for the American Institute for Economic Research and author of the excellent book “The Next American Economy” — industrial policy “involves trying to alter the allocation of resources and incentives in particular economic sectors that would otherwise transpire if entrepreneurs and businesses were left to themselves.” (READ MORE from Veronique de Rugy: The GOP’s Gigantic Opportunity) It’s also known by another name: central planning. Industrial policy’s tools include giving out subsidies, tax preferences, trade protection, preferential financing, and regulatory advantages. To be sure, we already have plenty of that, including a tax code littered with exemptions for special interests and a budget full of costly subsidies. What makes industrial policy distinct is that it picks certain economic activities to promote in attempts to reorder our economic landscape — sometimes even for cultural reasons. Democrats use it to force a transition away from energy sources they dislike. They use mandates, subsidies and tax incentives to permanently change the way we consume energy at the national level, whether we want it or not. Meanwhile, lots of Republicans want to impose tariffs that push more people into manufacturing jobs and incentivize women to stay home so that America looks more like it did in the 1950s. Both sides want to coerce some people into activities that are not in their best interests. So, to achieve a national order that intellectuals and politicians prefer over the current one, the economy must suffer. While industrial policy can direct funds toward specific goals or industries, it often fails to deliver on its promises and does not contribute to the genuine improvement of our culture and communities. When governments attempt to steer industrial development through subsidies, targeted tax breaks and preferential treatment, they inevitably distort market signals that efficiently allocate resources. A stark example is Boeing. Decades of subsidies and special treatment have not made the company more innovative or competitive. Instead, they produced a culture of dependency in which political connections trump customer satisfaction. The same pattern repeats across industries from green energy to semiconductors. Government intervention doesn’t create sustainable competitive advantages for America; it creates politically protected incumbents who become experts at lobbying rather than innovating. When the incumbents lose their edge and their projects flounder, they come back for money. Politicians who loathe seeing their “national champions” fail extend more subsidies and tariffs. Some people worry that this is exactly what will happen to Intel. Despite being the biggest recipient of the Biden administration’s semiconductor industrial policy — the federal CHIPS and Science Act — Intel is having money problems, largely due to bad business decisions. As Semafor reports, top Commerce Department officials and members of Congress are considering whether they will need to give more handouts to the company because “Intel is seen as too strategically important to be allowed to fall into serious trouble.” Industrial Policy Doesn’t Work Protecting a company from the discipline of the market all but guarantees that it gets worse rather than better. It doesn’t help that politicians often load the beneficiaries with counterproductive requirements. Take the news that the Environmental Protection Agency handed out $3 billion in Clean Ports Program funds from the Inflation Reduction Act on the strict condition that ports do not use automation. Welcome to the industrial-policy stone age, where “keeping America competitive” doesn’t mean keeping costs low for us consumers through efficiency. Another major problem with industrial policy is that the money goes to companies that do not need it, and to do things that would be done without the subsidies. National Review’s Dominic Pino reminds us that another large beneficiary of the CHIPS Act, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., had “announced its intention to invest $12 billion in constructing (an) Arizona facility in May 2020. That was over a year before the CHIPS Act was introduced, and over two years before it became law.” (READ MORE: Which Nations Are the Freest, and Why Should We Care?) I wish I had better news. If Trump and Congress don’t initiate a move away from central planning, we will pay a heavy price. Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Bipartisan Bummer: ‘Industrial Policy’ appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Donald Trump’s reelection and GOP majorities in both houses of Congress offer a unique opportunity to reform an election system that remains badly broken, and it must be done now. The Democratic Party is controlled by people who, despite their rhetoric, don’t believe in representative democracy. This was clearly demonstrated before the election, when they deposed a presidential nominee chosen by their own voters. Nor was this the first time they have rigged their nomination process — as Sen. Bernie Sanders will attest. If you require more evidence of their disdain for democratic norms, they are at this moment flouting Pennsylvania law to steal a U.S. Senate seat. It is no coincidence that most of the states that Kamala Harris won in 2024 have weak or nonexistent voter ID laws. If you don’t follow Pennsylvania politics, the Senate seat in dispute has been occupied for three terms by Bob Casey Jr., primarily due to good will earned by his father, a former governor of the Keystone State. The younger Casey has been dubbed “America’s Worst Senator” by Paul Kengor, our editor-in-chief here at The American Spectator. This is evidently not a unique perspective among Pennsylvania’s voters. Thus, he narrowly lost to GOP challenger David McCormick for whom AP called the race on November 8. Casey, however, has refused to concede and the small margin of victory (less than 0.5 percent) requires a recount. This is when the skulduggery became so brazen that even the editors of the Washington Post cried foul: Before the Nov. 5 election, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled that provisional ballots must be signed in two required places and that mail-in votes must be dated. Yet elected Democratic officials in Philadelphia and three other counties — Bucks, Centre and Montgomery — voted this week to defy these and other court decisions at the request of lawyers for Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, who trails GOP challenger Dave McCormick by about 24,000 votes … These Democrats’ decisions will almost certainly be overturned on appeal, but the mere attempt to defy judicial rulings is corrosive to democracy and invites similar behavior in future elections. How did these Democrats justify ignoring the law and the courts? Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia delivered this stunning assertion: “I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws anytime they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.” (READ MORE from David Catron: Desperate Democrats Learned Nothing Last Week) A properly structured federal election statute would require this woman to be removed from office, pay a substantial fine, and face potential jail time. Ellis-Marseglia is deliberately allowing illegal votes to be counted. This obviously violates her oath of office and effectively disfranchises thousands of legal voters whose ballots she will have rendered meaningless. Only federal legislation with stiff penalties for noncompliance will stop such people from dismantling democratic norms. Most corrupt officials aren’t as garrulous as Ellis-Marseglia, but they are by no means “rare.” The Heritage Foundation maintains a database listing 1,560 adjudicated cases of election chicanery, more than 1,300 of which produced felony convictions. Many involved election officials engaged in large scale fraud. Thus, Republicans can’t afford to be complacent in the afterglow of 2024. Among the best reform proposals comes from a source that will surprise many conservatives. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has called on Congress to pass legislation as outlined in this statement from his office: Citizenship verification: Georgia has developed a seamless way to verify citizenship by working closely with the Department of Driver Services. Federal legislation should expand the tools available to states to verify U.S. citizenship of all voters and require this to be done for voters in federal elections. Photo ID: Citing Georgia’s success with photo ID requirements for all forms of voting, Raffensperger called for a similar standard in federal elections. He pointed to high voter turnout and widespread public support for such measures as evidence of their effectiveness. Ban Ballot Harvesting Nationwide: To safeguard against vote buying and inducement, Raffensperger proposed a nationwide ban on ballot harvesting, reinforcing the direct relationship between voters and the ballot box. Quick and Accurate Reporting of Results: All ballots should have to arrive by Election Day except for military and overseas voters, and results should be tabulated and reported quickly and accurately. Those results should then be audited to bolster confidence in election outcomes. Clean Voter Lists: Modernize the National Voter Registration Act to allow states to clean lists closer to elections as long as high-quality, accurate data is used. Raffensperger calls this “the Georgia Plan,” and its components are by no means controversial as far as the public is concerned. According to Gallup, for example, 83 percent of Americans believe proof of citizenship should be required from people registering to vote for the first time. Gallup also finds that 84 percent believe everyone should be required to provide photo identification at their polling place in order to vote. Inevitably, the Democrats vehemently oppose the voters on these common sense proposals. It isn’t hard to see why. As Elon Musk recently noted above a long list of nations that require people to provide identification when voting, “Those who oppose voter ID are doing so to commit fraud.” (READ MORE: How Democrat Lawfare Launched Trump’s Comeback) It is no coincidence that most of the states that Kamala Harris won in 2024 have weak or nonexistent voter ID laws. This is why the Republicans must get national election reform passed and signed into law before the end of 2026. Unless 2026 is a very unusual midterm election, the Democrats will flip enough seats to regain a majority in the House where they will extinguish all hope for common sense election reform. They will then exhume the “For the People Act” and try to convert the country into a one-party autocracy like California. This is not your father’s Democratic Party. They don’t believe in the constitutional Republic created by the framers and they will kill it unless the Republicans act now. The post We Need National Election Reform … Now! appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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by Ray McGovern, The Unz Review: President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence (DNI) will cause shockwaves in and among the 18 fiefdoms that now comprise the U.S. intelligence community. Gabbard will be fighting an uphill battle if she tries to herd those 18 cats into a cohesive whole […]

Iraqi Muslim Ihsan Ali and his wife, Zahraa Ali, were charged with attempted murder for the shocking attack outside Timberline High School in Lacey, Washington, in which the dad also allegedly punched their daughter’s boyfriend in the face, police said. NY Post (h/t Liz) Their daughter, who was not identified, said that “her father had […]