MAGA + Seniors = GOP Midterm Victory

American Thinker 

The clock is running. The political landscape heading into the midterms is tightening. It demands clarity, discipline, and focus.

Early polling does not show a runaway advantage for either party. It shows a contest that remains within reach. That reality carries a blunt implication for Republicans. Victory will not come from diffuse messaging or broad, unfocused outreach.

It will come from consolidating and mobilizing the voters most likely to show up, as well as those most likely to support the party. That means building a precise, unapologetic coalition of MAGA voters and senior citizens.

The data leaves little room for interpretation.

A March Economist/YouGov survey found Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot by just three points, 45 percent to 42 percent. Another poll conducted around the same time showed an even tighter race, with Democrats ahead by only two points, 40 percent to 38 percent. Even Rasmussen Reports, which once showed a serious Democratic advantage, came to reflect a reduced gap of three points. That is down from six earlier in the year.

These are far from insurmountable deficits. They are signals of a competitive environment where turnout will determine victory.

Contrast this with the political climate of March 2018, when a Harvard CAPS/Harris survey showed Democrats with an eleven-point lead on the generic ballot. That was a wave building in plain sight. Today is different. The margins are narrow. The electorate is fluid. The side that turns out its voters with precision will win.

That is the entire game.

Midterm elections are not presidential elections. They do not reward broad, aspirational coalitions built on hope and novelty. They reward reliability. They reward consistency. Above all, they reward turnout among voters who never miss an election. That reality elevates one group above all others. Seniors are the backbone of midterm turnout.

The numbers are decisive.

Voter participation increases steadily with age, reaching 74.7 percent among those 65 and older, the highest of any demographic group. Younger voters lag far behind, with turnout at just 47.7 percent among those aged 18 to 24. This is not a marginal difference. It is a structural reality that shapes every election season.

Yet the pattern becomes even more pronounced in midterm races.

Voters over 50 accounted for 64 percent of the electorate in the 2022 midterms, compared to 56 percent in the 2024 presidential election. That shift alone explains why campaigns that chase younger voters often fall short in midterms. The electorate simply skews older.

Beyond turnout, seniors are also increasingly aligned with Republicans.

A national survey found voters aged 50 and older favoring Republican candidates by eight points, 46 percent to 38 percent. That margin represents a meaningful advantage within the most reliable voting bloc in the country. Ignoring or diluting that advantage would be political malpractice.

At the same time, the MAGA base represents the most cohesive and loyal faction within the Republican coalition. Its strength is not theoretical. It is measurable.

A March poll found that 90 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans supported recent U.S. military action against Iran, with only 5 percent opposed. That level of unity is rare in modern politics. It reflects a base that is not only engaged, but firmly aligned with President Donald J. Trump, who characterizes the GOP on the whole.

That loyalty extends beyond any single issue.

Identification with the MAGA movement has reached 27 percent of U.S. adults, with 65 percent of Republicans now identifying as MAGA supporters, a record high. Among this group, approval of Donald Trump stands at 91 percent. These are not soft supporters. They are committed voters who will turn out when mobilized effectively.

The strategic opportunity becomes obvious when these two groups are considered together.

Seniors vote at the highest rates. MAGA voters, some of whom are seniors themselves, constitute the most energized and loyal segment of the Republican base. There is significant overlap between them in both values and priorities, regardless of age. That overlap is where elections are won.

Issue alignment reinforces this conclusion. Among MAGA Republicans, the top concerns are clear. Inflation and the cost of living rank at the summit, alongside border security. These are not abstract policy debates. They are immediate, tangible concerns that affect daily life.

The same priorities dominate among older voters.

Cost of living is the leading issue for Americans aged 50 and older, with 38 percent identifying it as their primary concern. Immigration ranks as a top-tier issue as well, cited by 19 percent of this group. An AARP survey confirms that cost of living is the single biggest issue for voters over 50, cutting across gender and income lines.

This alignment is not coincidental.

Seniors living on fixed incomes feel the impact of inflation more acutely than any other group. Rising prices erode purchasing power and threaten financial stability. MAGA voters, many of whom are working-class or retired Americans, experience the same pressures. Both groups view border security through a similar lens as well. It is tied to economic stability, public safety, and national sovereignty.

This convergence creates a natural coalition. It does not require reinvention. It requires focus.

The mistake Republicans cannot afford to make is chasing voters who are unlikely to participate. Younger voters, while often politically vocal, simply do not turn out at comparable rates. Especially in midterms. Designing a campaign around low-propensity voters is a losing strategy when the electorate is dominated by high-propensity groups.

Equally problematic is the temptation to dilute messaging in an effort to appeal broadly. Vague appeals to unity or moderation do not energize the base. They do not speak to the urgency voters feel about rising costs or immigration crackdowns. They do not create the kind of motivation that drives turnout.

Clarity wins elections. Specificity wins elections. Discipline wins elections.

A successful Republican strategy must therefore center on a few core commitments, communicated with precision and consistency.

First, address the cost of living directly and aggressively. Inflation is not an abstract economic metric. It is the difference between stability and anxiety for millions of Americans. Policies that lower costs, stabilize prices, and protect purchasing power must be front and center.

Second, prioritize immigration control without hesitation. For both MAGA voters and seniors, this issue is tied to a broader sense of personal security and societal cohesion. It cannot be treated as trivial.

Third, protect earned benefits. Seniors need to know that Social Security and Medicare will be preserved and strengthened. Any ambiguity on this front creates unnecessary risk.

Fourth, maintain alignment with the MAGA base. Their loyalty is an asset that must be respected, not taken for granted. Messaging should reflect their priorities and reinforce their engagement.

The path to victory is not complicated. It is narrow, but it is clear. The data points in one direction. Seniors provide the most reliable turnout. MAGA voters provide the grassroots enthusiasm and cohesion. Together, they form a coalition capable of overcoming narrow polling deficits and reshaping the electoral map.

Time is running out. The window to define the midterms is closing. Every day spent on unfocused outreach is a day lost. Every diluted message is an opportunity missed.

Reality always wins out over fantasy.

Podcast thread for April 1st

 

how do people not get nervous about the littliest things?

A Republic, If Our Media Let Us Keep It

Townhall 

During a break in the Constitutional Convention,  prominent Philadelphian Elizabeth Powell asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy.?” Franklin famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” 

Many had feared that America would return to a monarchial form of government, much like that only recently overthrown. But few today understand  the mechanism  which the Founding Fathers feared might eventually turn America into a monarchy.  This dreaded form would most certainly not come from a strong-willed President like Donald Trump, as suggested by the insipid “No Kings” rallies of recent days.  

Rather, the wise Founders, understanding the difficulties of any populist system of government, were most worried about  “mob rule”  and its irrational “mischief of factions.”  They were presciently alluding to such emotionalism and ignorance as displayed in these jejune demonstrations.

The founding Fathers feared that “mobs” would lead to corrupt government, so much out of control that tyranny and despotism would inevitably overtake sober republican virtue.  Students of Montesquieu and Locke, they were most concerned that citizens might not remain  civically educated and virtuous.  Democracy, they understood, might devolve into tyranny, as a mob  is formed of citizens who become focused on petty pleasures, rather than disciplined rule-following conducive to order, safety and security.

Our present society is lurching dangerously close to this state, as best emblemized by the reaction of our major media to the present hostilities in Iran, in turn fueling the irrationality of the “No Kings” rallies, where blame is cast on existential necessity.  No one likes war, since citizens are thereby deprived of the comforts of peaceful existence. Witness the deprivations in Europe during World War II, or in America during its Revolution. 

But the media has lost all sense of the teachings of recent history, likening Trump to Hitler, while, ironically, validating the true Hitler of modern times, Iran.  Giving vent to group derangement, the mob validates Iranian suppression of women, the murder of gays and, most ominously, likely nuclear war. In Iran, the “No Kings” group would, it is safe to say, be massacred.

In contrast to most wars, America’s deprivations today are indeed petty.  We are paying a bit more for gas.  Inflation has strained citizens’ pocketbooks, but recently only marginally as a result of the Iran hostilities, far less so than from Biden-era inflation.  But clearly, because of our actions in Iran, the price of gas is rising, and our stock markets are jittery, inducing slight declines.

If, as the present portends, America brokers an extended Abraham Accords and bring lasting peace to the Middle East, all our grandchildren will gain increased assurance of a thriving future. The relative costs will have been insignificant.

How do our vaunted media portray this realistically optimistic view of the future world? With constant, handwringing negativity.  A moment does not go by without a negative slant on the promising Iran hostilities.  The Straight of Hormuz is closed! Iran has launched missiles! The price of gas is up! Airline fares are increasing! The public is upset! 

At the same time as these petty costs are decried, we search in vain for a legacy media discussion of the Iranian threat from a broader world-historical perspective.  The present costs are emotionally assailed, but there is little talk of resulting broader, long-lasting societal benefits.  

From Benjamin Franklin's perspective, today’s vaunted media constitute a force destructive of our democratic republic.  Do we see any reporting or analysis by major outlets assessing present costs against future benefits?  Of course not. 

In this vein, the New York Times’ reporting is a defining measure in assessing the media’s civic education of society.  Its Sunday Edition is carefully prepared and has access to extensive journalistic resources.  So, its reporting is emblematic of our broader established media.

The Times’  lengthy March 22, 2026,  editorial on Iran is viciously critical of the bombing, but on what basis? After  the initial three paragraphs – screamingly negative – the fourth paragraph begins, “There is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war.  Iran’s murderous government does indeed present a threat – to its own people, to its region, and to global stability.”  

So, the paper admits that Iran’s murderous government does indeed present a threat, but where does the paper go from there to have that “reasonable debate”, balancing the costs against the benefits of ridding the world of this regime?  

Between the three earlier paragraphs and the thirteen following, this lengthy editorial refrains from doing its job of framing the actual debate.  Rather, it spends this wordy diatribe, read by millions, criticizing Trump's language and rhetoric, rather than discussing the substance of his actions.  Of course, the above quoted paragraph serves as a hedge against future criticism that the paper was against the war, which language it can cite if it leads to peace in our time.  No, the Times can argue in the future, we weren’t against the war, just against Trump’s articulation of it.  But in fact, the true criticism of the paper is precisely that, to wit, rhetoric, not reality.

What of the other articles in this prestigious Opinion section of the Sunday Edition?  Nicholas Kristof talks of how the war’s funding should be alternatively spent in his piece, “Better Ways to Spend the War’s Billions”. This money, he argues, could go to pre-screening for cervical cancer; pre-K education for three- and four-year-olds; glasses for schoolchildren; and so on.  Butter, not guns: how novel and enlightening! Of course, the war’s expenditures will soon cease. Entitlements, in contrast, are forever, a small factoid the professedly brilliant Kristof overlooked.

Someone named Phil Klay, whose credentials are mainly that he fought in Iraq, gives a full-page screed against the war, and almost every other previous war. But Phil does not tell us why avoiding a nuclear holocaust is not a valid justification.

There is a feature on Joe Kent, the Tulsi Gabbert counterintelligence aide who recently resigned over the war.  Before he resigned the Times would have criticized Kent as an isolationist MAGA kook, but here it portrays Kent as a modern-day Demosthenes. 

In the past, the Times was distinctly pro-war against the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as aggressive regarding the Iraq War in 2003, and was strongly  invested in prosecuting and sanctioning undemocratic Arab  governments.  But now, with the Iran war, the Times is distraught that Dubai is not safe.  

But not to be outdone, the Times Business Section also jumps into the anti-war act. The headline of an article of March 22, 2026, says it all: “Strait of Hormuz Bottleneck Exposes Strategic Crack.”  What is not discussed is the permanent wall, not a temporary crack, that would be maintained, complete with an extortionate tollbooth, should Iran get a nuke.  Did the Times’ Business folks think of that material business consideration?  There is no evidence of it.  

Oddly and unfortunately for the Times, the putatively isolationist MAGA wing of the Republican party, with only some contrary solitary Joe Kent voices, actively supports this war. Why? Because it makes common sense.  And as kooky as the Times would depict MAGA folk, they are, in this moment of truth, shown to be wise and prudent citizens, seeking to preserve our liberal republic, with 90% approval.  Ben Franklin would applaud this civic virtue of at least a portion of our republic.

In the future, if our democratic republic ultimately shatters from the surfeit of petty passion and impulse, there is no better historical marker than the partisan mob journalism of our legacy media, which will have helped to encourage such a failure.

Passion, prejudice, petty impulse, lack of educated discussion?  Yes, Dr. Franklin, it is all here in our legacy media.  So, we ask, despite our media, can we keep our republic?

A new revelation about our climate

A new revelation about our climate

New data from drilling in the ice cores proves the exact opposite of what climate alarmists have been saying.

Bill Ponton for American Thinker

There are many historical examples of scientific evidence being uncovered, but not fully recognized for its significance. Gregor Mendel published his work on inheritance in 1866, showing clear numerical patterns in how traits passed from one generation to the next. The paper largely sat unnoticed for decades before being rediscovered around 1900, when it became foundational to genetics.

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected persistent microwave noise in 1964, and initially treated it as an annoying background signal. It turned out to be relic radiation from the early universe, one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the Big Bang.

In paleontology and biology, specimens are often collected and stored for decades before a new technique or new theory reveals their importance. A fossil may sit in a drawer until someone realizes it belongs to a new species, or fills a major evolutionary gap.

Now we have another example. The EPICA and Vostok Antarctic ice cores were drilled over twenty years ago, and analysis of the temperature and CO2 datasets derived from them has provided fodder for numerous papers. Climate change advocates had hoped that it would provide the proof they needed that rising CO2 level caused rising temperature, but instead it showed rising CO2 level lagging rising temperature with cause and effect the reverse of what they wanted.

However, that disappointment did not stop Michael Mann, the hockey stick creator, or Bill Nye the Science Guy, from continuing to assert that the recent rise in global temperature is unprecedented. Now, that too turns out to be untrue. Like an old fossil that sat unexamined for years, the ice core data had more to teach us.

Recently, Professor Les Hatt of Kingston University took a fresh look at it and uncovered a pattern within that no one else had noticed. He discovered that a rise of 1.1°C in a century is “not unusual in the current interglacial.” In fact, 16% of the centuries since the end of the last ice age show a rise at least as big as the current century and none of these could have been affected by anthropogenic action. (Here is a link to his paper.)

Will the climate catastrophists now hide in shame? Never. Climate catastrophism will keep staggering along like a zombie. Maybe, we can just herd it into a remote reserve where it can’t do any further damage to the economy or culture—a place where tired and spent ideas from an earlier era retreat. A place called academia. 

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Eric Trump Shares Remarkable Preview for Trump Presidential Library, Located in Miami

Trump Organization CEO, Eric Trump, has shared a preview of the Donald J Trump Presidential Library building and complex that is in the final planning stages for construction in Miami, Florida, on the waterfront.

First impressions of the library are quite remarkable.  Eric Trump shares, “The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library is officially here. Over the past six months, I have poured my heart and soul into this project with my incredible team at [Trump Organization].  This landmark on the water in Miami, Florida will stand as a lasting testament to an amazing man, an amazing developer, and the greatest President our Nation has ever known.”  VIDEO

[Trump Presidential Library Here]

It’s worth remembering, in an ironic twist several multi-million-dollar lawsuits against media outlets for their false reporting of President Trump are structured by previous settlement as part of the funding mechanism for the library itself.

In the past year or so reporting identifies multiple corporate settlements with Trump: Meta agreed to pay $25 million to resolve a suit about post‑Jan. 6 account suspensions, Paramount/ CBS parent paid about $16 million to settle a dispute over a 60 Minutes edit, Disney/ABC agreed to pay about $15–16 million in a defamation claim over comments by George Stephanopoulos, and Google Alphabet/YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle his 2021 YouTube suspension suit.

I find it rather humorous that Big Tech and corporate media who will likely find themselves criticizing the construction, are the same corporate media paying (in part) for its creation.  A very Trumpian outcome.

Dems Hope To Hide Anti-American Policies Behind ‘Straight, White, Christian Man’ 2028 Nominee

The Federalist 

A hilarious article in Axios over the weekend re-upped one of my favorite self-perpetuating problems in the Democrat Party — the party’s refusal to do anything but change its destructive, unpopular policy positions.

“Some top Democrats,” read the piece by Holly Otterbein and Alex Thompson, “are quietly debating a fraught question: whether the party’s best bet for winning back the presidency in 2028 is to nominate a man — perhaps a straight, white, Christian man.”

Democrats had their rears smacked and handed to them red hot in 2024, in large part because they wouldn’t accept that voters aren’t as preoccupied with race and sex as they are. It’s how they permanently screwed themselves with Kamala Harris, first as vice president and then inevitably as the party’s replacement nominee.

To her credit, at least Kamala, with a herculean assist from the dying news media, pretended not to support all the things she and the rest of the party in fact did support up until the last second. Namely, importing every destitute foreigner who made it to the southern border, allowing crime to run rampant (so long as the perpetrators were of a particular demographic), and crushing the middle class by hooking as many people as possible on welfare.

If Kamala hadn’t had a record as, you know, vice president for the previous three-plus years, she might have had a shot. But a policy reversal isn’t the lesson Democrats appear to have taken from that loss. Instead, they have settled on a new strategy that involves going on podcasts, publicly cursing a lot, and — wait for it — hunting down a nominee who might fit the profile of the very type of person the party has tried to destroy. The white, straight, Christian male.

They’re no longer considering a policy shift, it seems.

“[F]alling short twice to President Trump — both times with women on the ticket — has left some Democratic leaders, donors and strategists deeply pessimistic about what voters will accept now,” the Axios story said. It quoted one unnamed Democrat “strategist” who said, “There is a fear — and I actually don’t think this is just a grass-tops fear, I think you’d hear it from voters, too — that a woman has now lost twice.”

True, a woman has now lost twice. But to the extent that polls can be trusted (they usually can’t), it’s not that Democrats were running women. It’s that they were running women with abhorrent policy preferences, which, it turns out, are the same policy preferences that the party’s men have too. Even the allegedly straight, white, Christian ones!

Their policies don’t work. Americans don’t want them. Dressing them up under a ‘straight, white, Christian man’ skin suit isn’t going to change anything.

Declawing Feminism

Declawing Feminism 

From politics to pop culture, progressive dogma is transforming the nation’s institutions.

Lou Aguilar for The American Spectator

From politics to pop culture, progressive dogma is transforming the nation’s institutions.

Here’s a simple truth. The modern Left hates America and loves the Third World. So much so, they want America to be the Third World. And judging by the blue state of Democrat-run cities, they’ve mostly succeeded.

Twenty years ago, the thought of children walking past filthy drug-ridden homeless encampments to get to school would have disgusted members of both major parties. Today, it’s a daily routine in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and other once great burgs. Likewise, the idea of people voting without showing IDs — after a Democrat Administration basically invited 21 million illegal aliens into the country — is opposed by 83 percent of Americans, including the majority of minorities. But Dem politicians are ready to die on that hill, to the point of infantilizing blacks and women as too stupid to attain proper identification.

“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” drones soulless Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, contradicting his own position in the saner 1990s: “Everywhere people go, they’re asked for a Social Security card. In fact, one way to prove you’re a bona fide person who can have a job is to ask for a driver’s license and a Social Security card.”

Yet blacks and women will overwhelmingly vote for that party, and not the one that treats them as competent adults. Because both groups have succumbed to 65 years of relentless, divisive Marxist propaganda — that whites have it in for blacks and men for women — initially fed by academia and media, then cemented by the government in the service of feminism.

In the case of black people, LBJ’s Great Society devastated their once strong nuclear family by displacing fatherhood — a feminist dream. But as destructive as this was, it paled before the abomination that was Roe v. Wade, which sanctioned the slaughter of 65 million unborn babies. In fact, of the Left’s three-legged stool — racism, homophobia, feminism — only feminism remains standing, firmly enough to dominate American society in the 21st Century.

Racism never took permanent hold for the simple reason it’s a total fabrication. White people don’t hate blacks (there are exceptions for everything). They don’t even think about race. Unlike Democrat leaders riding the chimera of white supremacy. With their zenith being the canonization of degenerate criminal George Floyd, the political imprisonment of policeman Derek Chauvin, and the grift of Black Lives Matter. As for homophobia, liberal gays beclowned themselves by pretending they could just switch sexes, to the point of male pregnancy.

But feminism survived, and thrived. It made women crazy — enough to replace maternal fulfillment with ideological fanaticism, like harassing ICE agents in the middle of a dangerous operation to capture criminal illegal aliens, AKA Democratic voters. Their own voting has damaged this country, by electing incompetent losers of both sexes who have made their lives less safe.

Just ask Sheridan Gorman. Wait, you can’t. She was murdered earlier this month by an illegal alien scumbag the Biden people caught at the border and released into the country. Chicago Democratic Alderwoman Maria Hadden had a simpler explanation for the horror. “They might have unintentionally startled this person at the end of the pier, unintentionally.” Put aside any doubt you may have about Hadden’s qualification for high government office. She earned the position, according to the feminist rulebook. She’s the first openly queer Black woman elected to the Chicago City Council.

Politically, I can do very little about feminism damaging the country, other than vote for sane, intelligent conservative candidates. But culturally, I might make a difference. My field — arts and entertainment — is controlled by hack agenda-driven women, and their beta male sycophants. Together, they have ruined the screen industry and diminished literature. Because their goal in both areas is not storytelling, which they lack the talent for, but brainwashing, for which they also lack the talent.

Case in point: two commercials running on Fox News, that I couldn’t pin down for this article. The first one is a laxative ad featuring a nervous man in the bathroom cowering about the solution he must take — until his serene Asian wife explains to him the safety of the product. The other is a wife asking her husband what international cuisine he prefers for dinner, and he shoots down each of her suggestions.

I mostly ignore commercials — other than note the steep drop in quality from the Mad Men era — but subconsciously it hit me. Highly paid advertising executives greenlit the same attitudinal commercials putting men in traditional female roles. No real man in the universe would simper to his wife about taking his toilet medicine. And the cliché, “It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind,” no longer applies to women but to indecisive little men.

Switch the genders to reflect truth, and you’d have women with sad lives, AKA feminists, wasting theirs on protesting the ads. While normal men and women will do what they always do — not buy the product. They won’t even muster the interest to boycott it as they did Bud Lite. It’s too insignificant, though the feminists who made the commercials were probably proud of themselves for their jabs at manhood.

Two bits of science-fiction news back me up. Project Hail Mary, a non-woke sci-fi film featuring a competent straight white male (Ryan Gosling), has made $300 million in two weeks — at the theaters — from a predominantly male audience plus large female audience. While Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, offering nothing but girlbosses and weenie males, got canceled last week. Guess which model Hollywood will follow. We good writers will go the opposite way.

Ridiculous: Judge Orders Construction Trump's White House Ballroom to Be Halted

Townhall 

It’s been a wild day on the courts. A judge ruled that President Trump’s order to defund PBS and NPR was unconstitutional, even though it’s already been established through the Big Beautiful Bill. Now, the president has been instructed to stop all work on the grand ballroom addition to the White House. The reason: Trump likely lacked the authority to do this without consulting Congress (via NYT): 

JUST IN: A federal judge has blocked construciton of the president's ballroom without congressional approval.

"He is not the owner," Judge Leon says of Trump. He has delayed his order for 14 days, however, giving Trump a chance to appeal.https://t.co/mvKQso8i49 pic.twitter.com/d8Y5kIuYTq

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 31, 2026

A federal judge ordered on Tuesday that construction be halted on President Trump’s proposed White House ballroom, to be built in place of the demolished East Wing, saying work must come to a stop until the project receives a go-ahead from Congress.

The decision delivered the first meaningful setback to the president’s increasingly audacious efforts to redesign the White House and Washington, D.C. It came after months of litigation in front of Judge Richard J. Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, who had previously declined to step in. 

In a 35-page opinion, Judge Leon wrote that Mr. Trump likely did not have the authority to act on his own, without consulting Congress, to replace entire sections of the White House — changes that could endure for generations. 

He also reiterated concerns he had raised for months in court: that from the start, the administration has provided shifting and questionable accounts of who was in charge of the project and under what authority private donations could be accepted to fund it. 

“Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” he wrote. “But here is the good news. It is not too late for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the ballroom project.” 

Judge Leon wrote that if the White House sought congressional approval, the legislature would “retain its authority over the nation’s property and its oversight over the government’s spending.” 

The ballroom is just one item on a long list of complaints liberals have against the president, a hyperbolic tantrum that most people ignore except for the supporters and groups that benefit from the political class. Sorry, having dignitaries and VIPs use port-a-johns for state dinners is unacceptable. A new room was necessary, and Trump was trying to make it happen. 

Shutdown Showdown: GOP Plans Big New Beautiful Bill

RedState 

With another Schumer Shutdown causing headaches across the fruited plain, a midterm election fast approaching, and hyper-partisan Democrats seemingly determined to block any Republican effort at any cost, the Republican members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are now planning "One Big Beautiful Bill 2 - This Time, it's Personal."

 In a hyper-partisan Congress that’s facing midterm elections, Republicans in both chambers have united on a plan to pass a second budget reconciliation bill before the balance of power potentially changes.

Their previous reconciliation bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” focused primarily on President Donald Trump’s tax policies, including permanently extending the increased standard deductions from 2017. It also restrained the growth of Medicaid spending over the next ten years and tightened work requirements for both Medicaid and SNAP.

Now, after two Democrat-instigated government shutdowns – the second of which is ongoing – Republicans are considering including a massive funding boost to immigration enforcement agencies, money for the U.S.-Israeli conflict against Iran and possibly some election changes.

Republicans will likely have to at least partially offset any new spending, however, to appease fiscal hawks, many of whom are still bitter over the $3.3 trillion price tag of the OBBB.

Cutting spending is always good, and to the GOP in Washington, I would only say this: This time, use a chainsaw or an axe, not a scalpel. 

There's a catch (there's always a catch): This won't heave the SAVE America Act or its provisions across the finish line.

Additionally, incorporating policies from the SAVE America Act – a voter-ID bill stuck in the Senate – into a reconciliation bill would be difficult, if not impossible. 

The Senate’s Byrd Rule prohibits reconciliation bills from including non-budgetary matters, or “extraneous” policies that would not meaningfully add to or reduce the deficit. Otherwise, the privilege of passing the bill in the Senate with only a majority vote would no longer apply.

Pushing the funding issues out of the way may serve to clear the decks, as it were, to allow the House and Senate to work on the SAVE America Act.

There's some serious strategery, as it were, to be considered here. The Democrats aren't going to agree to anything. If we've learned nothing from two record-setting shutdowns, it's that. So, fine; play their game. Ram the spending bills down their throats - metaphorically speaking, of course - with another One Big Beautiful Bill, passed through the reconciliation process. Then put the SAVE America Act, front and center, focus on that, and that alone, until it passes, by hook or by crook. Use a talking filibuster, or get rid of the filibuster altogether; the Democrats are sure to do so the moment they have a Senate majority. They have said as much, and we should believe them.

It's time to start playing hardball. The Democrats already are. The midterms are fast approaching, and we need the SAVE America Act in place to make sure the elections are honest.

And no breaks or recesses until it's all done. Do your jobs, Congress. Otherwise, it's just another case of "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

Trump’s Iran Deal Must Be Nothing Like Obama’s

Trump’s Iran Deal Must Be Nothing Like Obama’s

The U.S. and the Iranian regime aren't negotiating on equal footing.

David Harsanyi for Frontpage Magazine

President Donald Trump recently announced that he’s postponing strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days to negotiate a ceasefire. “I think it could very well end up being a very good deal for everybody,” he told journalists.

It’s unclear who exactly the White House is bargaining with or whether those officials will have the power to implement an agreement. We do, however, know what a “good deal” looks like, which is, more or less, everything former President Barack Obama’s Iran deal wasn’t.

A popular talking point among left-wing punditry maintains that Trump is seeking an off-ramp for his allegedly unpopular and failed war that looks exactly like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal Obama struck with the mullahs years ago, which the president ripped up in 2018.

That’s clearly untrue.

The Obama deal’s restrictions, as feeble as they were, would already have sunset. Under the JCPOA, Iran was not only allowed to continue uranium enrichment, but it wasn’t compelled to decommission any of its reactors.

Nor did the Obama deal put any limits on the Iranian ballistic missile program, not even on intercontinental ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.

And, incidentally, though the regime has claimed it had no plans to develop such weaponry, the other day, it fired a missile at the joint U.K.-U.S. Diego Garcia military base 2,500 miles away in the Indian Ocean.

Of course, there was no genuine way to verify that any of the JCPOA’s stipulations were being met by the clerics since the agreement didn’t contain anytime-anywhere inspections.

The Obama deal was worse than nothing, however, because it gave the regime protection from Israeli strikes.

The clerics could act with impunity, benefitting from sanctions relief — not to mention, more ransom payments from Democratic presidents — all the while funding their destabilizing proxy armies, building a ballistic shield and shrinking the breakout time for large-scale enrichment and nuke weaponization to months or weeks.

A decade ago, Trump called the JCPOA the “worst deal ever negotiated.” But I suppose it all depends on how you view the Middle East. If the goal of the JCPOA was to stop the clerics from nuclearizing and emerging as an even bigger threat to regional and world peace, then, indeed, the deal was disastrous.

Then again, if the deal was, as many rightly suspect, the Obama administration’s way of lifting the mullahs as a counterforce to Israel and Saudi Arabia, then it made complete sense.

Democrats and the isolationist Right naysayers have been wrong about everything having to do with Iran thus far. So, they’ve moved on from predicting World War III and endless quagmires to lamenting the lack of a clear-cut “strategy” to ending the conflict. But Trump’s reported prewar demands of Iran remain the right ones. And they are nothing like Obama’s Iran deal.

The president should insist that the regime once and for all dismantle its nuclear facilities in Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow and hand over its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, which the Iranians reportedly admitted to Trump envoy Steve Witkoff could make 11 bombs.

Iran is already a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, pledging never to acquire nuclear weapons. So, there’s no need for any sunsetting of the agreement.

Trump should also insist the clerics suspend their ballistic program and cease funding and assisting terrorist organizations.

Since the mullahs have used negotiations to string along past administrations and extract concessions, sanctions relief should be contingent on Iran upholding its end of the agreement.

Despite the demoralizing efforts of the media, the U.S. and the Iranian regime aren’t negotiating on equal footing.

It bears repeating that, thus far, the Iran war is perhaps the most devastating and effective military campaign in modern history.

At worst, the U.S. and Israel have decapitated decades of institutional knowledge and experience of the Islamic regime.

The Iranian ballistic program has been vastly degraded, as has Iran’s ability to wage effective conventional war or to prop up its proxy militias.

Iran’s only real leverage right now is to undermine the world’s economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz, which only reinforces the argument that it should not be in possession of ballistic missile programs, Chinese supersonic weapons and nuclear weapons.

If the remaining regime officials don’t agree to stop, Trump can keep pounding their military and government infrastructure until it reaches a tier of leadership that will talk.

Or better yet, collapse.

With a high-impact, low-casualty war, Trump has devastated our enemy’s military and brought back credible deterrence.

War is no panacea, of course. Unlike anything in the JCPOA, however, those would be big, tangible wins.

Trump Signals When 'Operation Epic Fury' May End, Owns Journalist Fearmongering About Iran Threats

RedState 

My colleague Ward Clark overviewed President Donald Trump's Tuesday EO signing to mitigate mail-in voting fraud. According to a fact sheet, the Secretary of Homeland Security, with the Social Security Administration's help, will create a list of verified U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state. The executive order will create enhanced control and tracking for mail-in ballots by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Ballots will now have specific secure envelopes, with unique barcodes for tracking.

As the president took questions, much of this EO was glossed over. After this morning's Pentagon briefing by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, most of the questions from journalists surrounded Operation Epic Fury and the state of Iran's ability to retaliate. When asked whether an end was in sight, President Trump responded:

I would say, within two weeks... maybe. Two weeks, maybe three. We're hitting them very hard. Last time we wiped out a tremendous amounts of missile-making facilties as you probably read, or wrote. We knocked out...

The reporter interrupted him in mid-speech and asked for confirmation on that timeline. Trump affirmed, "I think within two or three weeks."

Another journalist asked what America will do after that.

Trump said simply: 

We'll leave. Because there's no reason to do this. Look, a guy can take a mine, drop it in the water, and say, "Oh, it's unsafe." It's not like you're taking out an army, or you're taking out a country. Or you can take a machine gun from the shore and shoot a few bullets at a ship. Or maybe, an over-the-shoulder missile, small missiles. 

That's not for us. That'll be for France. That'll be for whoever is using the Strait. But I think when we leave, probably that's all cleared up. Today, I heard tremendous numbers of ships were sailing through. We're negotiating with them right now. They've been.. again, we have had regime change. 

Now regime change was not one of the things I had as a goal. I had one goal: they will have no nuclear weapons. And that goal has been attained, they will not have nuclear weapons.

But, we're finishing the job, and I think within, maybe two weeks, maybe a couple of days longer to do the job. But we want to knock out every, single thing that they have. Now it's possible we'll make a deal before that, 'cause we'll hit bridges, and we've hit some, but and we'll hit some bridges, we have a couple of nice bridges in mind. But if they come to the table, that'll be good. But, it doesn't matter whether they'll come or not, we've set them back.... it'll take 15-20 years to rebuild what we've done to them. They have no Navy. They have no military. They have no Air Force. They have no telecommunications, they have no anti-aircraft systems. They have no leaders, their leaders are all gone. That's why you have regime change.

WATCH:  

Despite the definitive reports of the damage done to Iran's infrastructure and defense on Tuesday morning from SecWar Pete Hegseth, and from the president at this EO signing, Reuters journalist Jeff Mason needed to massage the legacy media narrative that Iran was still dangerous and could mount an aggressive counterattack any time they felt like it.

Mason asked, "The Iranian government threatened a bunch of U.S. companies today in the region, including Google, Apple..."

Trump didn't even let him finish his question, but pushed back.

TRUMP: With what? What did they threaten them with? BB Guns? Or...

MASON: Well... that's ...

TRUMP: They don't have much left to threaten.

And had Mason been listening, he would have phrased his question differently. Instead, he had driven into a ditch, but insisted on pumping the gas and spinning his wheels.

MASON: My question for you is how are you helping...

TRUMP: I don't know. You made a statement. What did they threaten them with, I don't know? Clearly, tell me, how did they threaten them?

MASON: All I know is that they threatened them, sir.

TRUMP: What does that mean? Did they say something nasty?

MASON: Has the government talked to these companies are you helping to backstop them...

TRUMP: You don't even know what the threat was. What was the threat? I haven't heard it. What was the threat?

The exchange was the equivalent of Mason bringing a water gun to a Super Soaker fight. Mason tried to back off, saying, "I'll get back to you," but Trump was now like a dog with a juicy bone.

TRUMP: Did they say they're going to blow them up, they're gonna hit 'em — you know what they're not going to do? They're not going to hit 'em with a nuclear weapon.

Boom. Mason then tried to frame it as though Trump did not care that American companies were being threatened. Mason asked, "Is this something you're concerned about, sir?" 

Trump calmly responded, "No."

A female reporter who had actually done her homework read what the specific threat made by the IRCG was about. 

She said, "The IRCG threatened 18 U.S. technology companies if the U.S. continues targeted assassinations of Iranian leaders beginning on April 1. The companies listed are NVIDIA..."

Trump's comeback was comedy gold: "Most of those people are dead already."

After that exchange, we're Dead. 

Next time third-rate loser @jeffmason1 comes into the Oval Office to ask the President of the United States a question, he should come prepared.

Humiliating. pic.twitter.com/ntzofjIJ6R

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 31, 2026