Democrats Are Walking Into a Minefield

Townhall 

Here’s my minority position – I think Republicans are set to do surprisingly well in the 2026 midterms and very, very well in 2028. Oh, I don’t put it beyond the Republicans to screw up any advantage they’ve been handed. Republicans have the uncanny ability to squander a good thing, but what the Democrats are handing over is pure electoral gold. If you look at the relative positioning of both parties in terms of future electoral success, there is zero question that the Republican Party is much better situated to begin a lengthy sojourn in power. The Democrats have walked themselves into a minefield, and they’ve got no map.

Let’s take a look at a few of these land mines. Some of them are obvious, some a lot less so. Will they all fully manifest by 2028? No, some will arise in later cycles. What’s important to remember is that even if the Democrats were aware of them, there’s not a lot they can do about them. One of the problems with the Democrats is that, ironically, the liberals are absolutely resistant to change; they not only don’t want to do it, but they can’t do it. They’ve confused their ideology with a religion, limiting the ability of Democrat politicians to exercise a key tool in any effective politician's toolbox – the flexibility to do a 180 on their most deeply-held beliefs when it makes sense at election time.

The first land mine is an obvious one, but that’s not going to stop them from stomping on it. The Democrats are going harder and harder left. Right now, the success of the socialist insurgents has been limited to deep blue districts. Where they try to do it in more purple areas, they have more mixed success. In Virginia, they managed to elect a sociopath as AG who wants to kill the kids of Republicans to teach them to be good people. It didn’t work in Maine, though; Herr Platner got punted after he was accused of going a rape too far.

Normal Americans don’t like the weird stuff Democrats are getting into. There’s the transsexual stuff, of course. Normal Americans are getting tired of that freak show, but Democrats are doubling and tripling down on it. It’s become a litmus test for them, depriving them of crucial flexibility. They need to reach out to normal people who don’t think some dude should be sporting his turgid pride as he walks through a girl’s locker room. But also, there’s their whole thing about criminals. Normal people are against being murdered. Democrats are going to get painted as enabling the worst of social pathologies, just like they did in the 70s, which helped Ronald Reagan and the GOP take over until Bill Clinton came along and was able to lead a Democrat Party back to at least a semblance of sanity.

There’s a procedural land mine that President Trump has been talking about for years – election fraud. Fraud is a huge part of how they win. It is not going to go away in one fell swoop – the GOP simps are too weak to pass the SAVE Act – but it’s going to be curbed over time. Take voter ID – it is unsustainable for the Democrats to keep to the 20 side of an 80/20 issue forever. Nor can Democrat judges sitting in the Tatooine Federal District Court protect the fraud forever. Between the reforms Trump can impose (it looks like his mail-in voting postal regulations are going into effect), the revelations from the multiple investigations, and the reputational damage to Democrats defending shady practices (is California still counting from last June?), we’re going to end a lot of the scams and run down their reputations as the die on the hill of protecting the remaining grifts.

Another land mine is the swap out at the top of the Democrats’ racial hierarchy. Democrats have always been about constituencies, knitting them together to form a majority. But it’s always in flux. The white working class used to be a big piece of the puzzle, and the Democrats dumped them. In the last few cycles, Democrats have lost their headlock on Hispanics, who don’t appreciate weirdness, and many of whom have personal experience with communism. There’s a lot of talk about how Dems grabbed the affluent college-educated whites who used to be Republican voters, and that’s true, to an extent. But a lot of these are wine women, particularly single ones and including young ones, and they’re psychotic and will further alienate normal people (married women still prefer Republicans).

But the big problem for Democrats is their biggest and most loyal constituency, blacks. We’re already seeing the fallout in Texas, where the darling of the faculty/Chardonnay set, heretical imp James Talarico, defeated noted particle physicist Jasmine Crockett in the Senate primary. Well, Jazzy C and black Texans aren’t taking that very well. They believe, not without merit, that they have been ripped off. And they have been. Democrats take blacks for granted, which is the fault of blacks because they’ve allowed themselves, until now, to be taken for granted. But a black woman just roasted Talarico at one of his rallies, bringing this to a head. He’s already a problem because, well, blacks tend to be religious, and this guy is a blasphemous demon in human form who spreads satanic lies that will lead the unwary to eternal damnation. Black folk aren’t down with that. And it’s only going to get worse for the Democrats because blacks across the country are going to demand their share of the power, power that the ascendant leftists want for themselves.

There is also the 2030 census, which will likely put the House out of reach of Democrats for a decade. Democrat failure is driving people from blue states to red states. The coming redistricting, along with the intermittent demonstrations of GOP manhood via gerrymandering, are going to crush the Dems. And if we go for the big enchilada, banning the counting of illegal aliens in the census, the Dems are screwed.

There is another land mine, the baby bomb. Democrats aren’t breeding like conservatives. A lot of them are single women who have no intention of settling down and having children; when they do get knocked up, abortion remains readily available in blue states, and they make use of it. This blends with another problem for the Democrats, which is that a lot of their boomer base is aging out. If you recall those rallies for the Nazi tattoo guy, behind him on stage were always a bunch of gray crones who all looked like Billy Jack’s girlfriend. They’re not going to be around that much longer, and they are some of the Dems’ most devoted voters. Gen X is much more conservative; we have the advantage of being around for another couple of decades.

And there are other effects that come from Democrats not reproducing, besides upping the average IQ and attractiveness of Americans. The birth dearth means fewer kids being indoctrinated in grade schools and colleges. Academia is where the Democrats not only found places for their members to get paid but gave them a chance to corrupt our youth. But fewer kids mean fewer unionized teachers paying union dues, while a lot of colleges are going away in the bankruptcy. That's fewer dollars and fewer worker bees making mischief. Combined with new technology that is making old education methods obsolete, as well as cost considerations and conservative attention that is going to work to undermine the leftist hold on these institutions, academia writ large is going to stop being so influential. Democrats have become fatally over-invested in their own version of the buggy whip industry.

Immigration is going to continue to be a huge problem for the Democrats because they’re not going to be able to import a brand-new electorate from the Third World to make into welfare clients and electoral serfs. Deportations are ongoing, but the Republican goal isn’t to drag them all out of the country. It’s to drive them all out of the country. Initiatives like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent leaning on the banks and other industries not to do business with them, as well as other reforms that make it unbearable to live here as an illegal, are going to make them pack up and go home in numbers that dwarf what ICE is doing. With the open door at the border slammed shut, the only way to generate more of these people is through birthright citizenship, and the recent Supreme Court decision, while not overturning it, began a discussion that’s inevitably going to lead to reforms that limit it.

Here are some other things that the Democrats might find blow them up. The mainstream media may dismiss the government handout fraud stuff that we’ve been seeing, but fraud resonates. From California’s high-speed rail that’s cost billions of dollars and built about 15 inches of track, to massive Somali learing center schemes, to corrupt USAID payoffs to leftist NGOs and beyond, the crackdown is both going to starve the Democrats of money looted from the treasury and laundered into the pockets of the left and closely associated Democrats with fraud in the minds of the voters.

Then there’s something they really can blame on the Jews. The Dems will have to deal with Jews’ sense of self-preservation as the Democrats fully embrace their new Hamas constituency and work to ensure Israel and the Israelis are annihilated. That’s not putting it too harshly – if you’re Jewish, you can’t take any threat too seriously, and this is a threat. Jewish Democrats are enormous donors to the Democrat Party, and that flow of dollars is going to shrink to a trickle that’s not going to be made up by a bunch of new Dems just imported from Goatbangistan. The money might not go to Republicans – that’s a bridge too far for a lot of liberal Jews – but it isn’t going to the Palisimpian Democrats. We’ve seen massive shortfalls in Democrat donations this cycle, and that was before half of the House Democrat caucus voted to render Israel defenseless in the face of the psychopaths who committed the October 7th attacks.

Here’s another ka-boom that’s coming that only a few people are talking about right now. Cuba is about to go under. The clock is ticking, and the commie dictatorship has maybe got a year or so left. Here’s the Dems’ problem. The Dirección de Inteligencia (DI) has spent over 60 years infiltrating the left in the United States. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass went to Havana and trained with these communist bastards, but there are a lot more big names on the left of the party who are tied in with Cuban intelligence. Cuba is going to fall; Marco Rubio has that as one of his 87 jobs.

And when that grotesque regime’s collapse accelerates, a lot of DI officials are going to want to ensure that they don’t swing from a lamppost or worse. I married a Cuban–they’re not a forgiving people, and they’re going to make the people who oppressed them pay. So, if you’re a high-ranking DI officer, you’re going to want to make American intelligence an offer it can’t refuse to save your worthless hide, and that means trading stolen records on the DI’s intelligence network in the United States that includes prominent Democrats. That’s going to happen, and it’s going to be earth-shattering. People throw the word “treason” around a lot, but working with the communists to subvert the United States is literally treason, and it’s been happening. Do not expect the Trump administration to forgive and forget, and even the regime media is going to be unable to hide the indictments. The Democrats will, correctly, be painted as the party of traitors.

Let’s also not forget the collapse of captured institutions. We mentioned academia’s decline, but look at the mainstream media and Hollywood. Both are going away. Moreover, the decades of corporate footsie with Democrats will end as the business world realizes that the DSA types can’t be bought off like the old school Pelosi Dems could be. Plus, there is a generalized anti-woke counter-reaction that places PC Democrats with their spouting off on woke nonsense outside of the zeitgeist. Their own base won’t let them moderate; they’ll be telling us dudes can menstruate for another decade even as over-it normals shake their heads in disgust.

So, I like how the Republicans are positioned over the next decade or so. In the short term, the Trump economy is going to take off again. We’re going to clear out the illegals one way or the other, and we’re going to continue to drive crime down. Long-term, we’re having babies, and the future belongs to people who show up. Importantly, we’re not traitors colluding with a foreign government to undermine our country. 

But then again, we are Republicans, and the fact remains that the Republican Party is the only party that can summon up enough dumb to squander these advantages.

Podcast thread for July 23

 

too bored.

Advanced Iran Negotiation Theory

American Thinker 

Welcome to today’s seminar. By the time we’re done, you’ll grasp Iran’s favorite negotiating trick: saying one thing, meaning another, and watching Western diplomats pretend they didn’t notice.

Armed to the teeth but incredibly vulnerable, Iran has played a losing hand with the West like a gambler who has memorized every tell in the room and understands that Western negotiators fold long before the cards hit the table. Here’s the truth: Iran lacks the conventional military and economic strength to project decisive power against major nations.

Iran’s perceived trump card is that it provides about 4% of the world’s oil and even less natural gas. It is also attempting to create leverage the world can never allow it to have by turning an international waterway into a toll booth that controls an even larger share of the energy the West needs, and if successful, would embolden other nations to do the same for their waterways. Most of Iran’s remaining leverage comes from the instability it directs through its proxies and that the West has largely tolerated. That’s effectively it.

One obvious objection to this claim about Iran’s limited strength: What about Iran’s nuclear program? Doesn’t the prospect of nuclear weapons change the entire equation?

It does raise the stakes, but it’s still a negotiating tool rather than an actual force. Even before a weapon exists, the program itself creates leverage. Every additional centrifuge, every increase in uranium enrichment, every underground facility increases diplomatic urgency. Whether the ultimate objective is a bomb or a bargaining chip, the program’s existence influences perceptions long before any weapon could be deployed.

And right now, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons may be yesterday’s news. Why? Because the jig is up, everyone’s wise to Iran’s intentions, and the world, frequently timid, aloof, and rarely in sync, will likely deny Iran’s ascent into the nuclear club.

All the mullahs’ efforts—their spinning centrifuges, enriched uranium, and deep bunkers—will not see them prevail. Iran also knows that at least with this president, nuclear weapons for Iran are his red line. That point of pressure, effectively, no longer exists.

Yes, Iran has ballistic and drone arsenals, engages in hostage diplomacy, conducts cyber-attacks, and maintains an extensive network of regional allies and proxies. None of these capabilities, alone, would allow Iran to defeat or coerce the U.S. Iran believes their significance lies not in their ability to win wars, but to shape negotiations and create pressure points. Collectively, they create enough friction, uncertainty, and disruption to distract Western governments from the larger strategic picture and to generate leverage far greater than their military value alone.

Here’s the paradox: Iran’s leverage is objectively limited. Yet it has projected and repeatedly negotiated as though it were the stronger party. Why? Because military power and economic power are only part of negotiation. Iran’s sociopathic psychology matters more, leading to:

Iran Understands Us Better than We Understand Iran:

Iran’s leaders know Western governments are constrained by:

• election cycles
• media pressure
• aversion to casualties
• economic disruption
• energy prices
• diplomatic infighting
• fear of escalation

Iran’s leaders have spent decades studying us. Iran is negotiating against democracies that must constantly justify every action to a distrusting electorate. Iran doesn’t have those constraints and pushes our hot buttons hard. Why not? We have trained Iran over decades to understand America’s pressure points, leading Iran to become masters of political torture.

Iran’s Four-Hundred Level Negotiation Strategy:

Rule One—Negotiate Over Possibilities:

Negotiate over future possibilities, not what you already have. Leave the other side to ponder what you might do. Threats are more valuable than actual capability.

Examples:

• Nuclear enrichment—scares everyone who projects what Iran would do with one or more nuclear devices.
• Missile development—state that you have no interest in long-range weapons and then demonstrate that you already have that capability.
• Strait of Hormuz—turn an international waterway into a bargaining chip to protect even more important strategic ambitions.
• Proxy escalation—continuously enlarge the other side’s problems and calculus with endless attacks and provocations by “independent“ actors.

A fait accompli no longer has much negotiating value. An emerging capability forces the other side to imagine multiple possibilities; Iran exploits that difference.

Rule Two—Manufacture Dependence:

Create problems only you can solve. Iran repeatedly manufactures crises that only Iran’s cooperation can solve.

Examples:

• Proxy attacks
• Shipping disruptions
• Militia violence
• Hostage diplomacy

Iran has learned that the West rewards restraint quickly, but like gas prices, removes those rewards ever more slowly.

Rule Three—Raise the Price of Resistance:

Raise the cost of saying no. Iran cannot defeat America; it only has to make American policymakers conclude that confrontation is too expensive politically. Deplete America’s very expensive (and slow to replenish) stockpile of advanced weaponry. Tick up oil prices to increase domestic political pressure to end hostilities. Maintain urgency and a popular sense that Iran controls the levers of power, not us.

The objective isn’t military victory for Iran; it’s our exhaustion.

Rule Four—Force the Other Side to Negotiate Against Itself:

Make your opponent negotiate against himself. Western negotiators frequently enter talks seeking tangential ends:

• Stability
• De-escalation
• Diplomatic success
• Avoiding kinetic actions

Iran simply waits while the pressure builds almost entirely on us.

Why This Keeps Working:

Iran is patient. Western governments rotate every few years, while Iran believes in divine providence. Politicians think in terms of election cycles. Iran sees time as its ally; we feel it as a liability.

The Real Commodity Iran Sells

Iran does not primarily sell oil. Iran’s real export is uncertainty. Oil traders, insurance companies, and shipping companies price it in. Governments are reactionary, as are financial markets. Iran, with only a modest share of global economic output, exerts influence far beyond its size because uncertainty itself has become its most valuable commodity.

Why Western Negotiators Keep Misreading the Room

Western diplomats often think this way: “If we reduce Iranian insecurity, Iran will moderate.” They do so even though, for decades, Iran’s actions have not reflected that. Its leadership treats concessions as confirmation that pressure works. Thus, concessions have worked the opposite of what we intended because we don’t share the same rulebook.

Lessons We Should Learn That Extend Beyond Iran

Iran isn’t unique. History shows that weaker actors can succeed against stronger ones by better understanding their negotiating strength. Negotiation is often less about relative strength than understanding what the other side fears losing most. Iran is unusually adept at exploiting that principle.

Iran did not become influential because it possesses overwhelming military or even economic strength. It derives its influence from the lesson it learned that Western governments can’t seem to absorb: negotiations are rarely won by the side with the strongest hand. They are won by the side that best understands what the other player cannot afford to lose.

These lessons extend beyond Iran. Whether we’re discussing geopolitics, immigration, federal spending, or deterring America’s adversaries, the same principle applies. Negotiations are rarely won by the player holding the strongest cards. They are won by the player who recognizes everyone else’s tells—and knows precisely when they’ll fold.

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How Congress Can Fix SCOTUS’s Disastrous Birthplace Citizenship Error

The Federalist 

When the Supreme Court decided Trump v. Barbara on June 30, 2026, opponents of birthplace-citizenship reform declared the fight over. But that disappointing decision was not the end of attempts to reform the system. It was merely the “end of the beginning.” Sen. Jim Banks read Barbara as a legislative map. His new Citizenship Act follows the road Wong Kim Arkcharted.

Barbara held that President Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional by locking in birthplace citizenship’s definition from a much older case. That 1898 case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, laid out three categories of people whose children are not automatically citizens even if born on American soil. Barbara held the executive order was unconstitutional for going outside those three categories. But within those three categories, any needed fix need only be by statute. That means Congress can pass a fix.

Banks could have taken the easy way out, either reading Barbara as a loss or arguing any fix must be constitutional — and thus impossible in today’s polarized age. Instead, he took the harder path: legislating within the four corners of precedent. If the Supreme Court says birthplace citizenship is governed by Wong Kim Ark, then Wong Kim Ark’s own exceptions are fair game.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a separate opinion explaining that while he agreed with the majority’s result, it would not require a constitutional amendment to change the law to deny birthplace citizenship to more people than just the three categories flagged in Wong Kim Ark. This law fits within Kavanaugh’s conception — and may be enough to pull another justice from the majority, too.

Understanding why requires understanding what Wong Kim Ark held. The case is remembered as a basis for today’s broad understanding of birthright citizenship. But the opinion did not extend the 14th Amendment to everyone born on American soil. It outlined at least three widely accepted categories of people born here who are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and thus not birthright citizens. Those three categories are the children of: diplomats, members of Indian tribes, and “children … of enemies within and during a hostile occupation” of American territory.

Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, no ally of the administration, acknowledged in last year’s Trump v. CASA, Inc. win for President Trump, that “children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation” fall outside the guarantee. No serious thinker questions that, even under Wong Kim Ark, children “born of alien enemies” may be excluded from birthplace citizenship.

Of course, critics will say, the question is one of scope. Skeptics insist the invading-army exception reaches only a uniformed force whose occupation has so displaced American authority that the government “cannot exercise its jurisdiction” over the territory. On that view, the exception requires a foreign flag over the courthouse before children become ineligible for foreign citizenship. Where the United States still governs, everyone born here is a citizen. That argument sounds intuitive. But it does not survive contact with the Supreme Court’s own war-powers jurisprudence.

Consider Ex parte Quirin, the 1942 case of eight Nazi saboteurs who came ashore from U-boats in Long Island and Florida carrying explosives to attack American infrastructure. They were not an army, abandoned any uniform, and occupied no territory.

They arrived as individuals, in secret, disguised as civilians — precisely the profile the skeptics say the invasion exception cannot reach. Yet a unanimous Supreme Court had no difficulty classifying them as enemy belligerents subject to the law of war, and it upheld their trial by military commission. One of them even claimed American citizenship. The court held it made no difference: A citizen who joined the enemy’s hostile incursion was an enemy belligerent soldier.

What if one of the Quirin invaders fathered a child during his covert mission on American soil? Would anyone seriously contend that the newborn was a citizen of the United States? The 14th Amendment does not mandate such an absurd result. Such a child falls squarely within Wong Kim Ark’s exception for the children of enemies engaged in hostile incursion.

The United States never lost criminal jurisdiction to prosecute the Nazi infiltrators. We found them, tried them, and executed them. If “subject to the jurisdiction” meant only the physical power to catch and punish, the Nazis and their hypothetical children would have been as “subject” as anyone in the country. But invaders with allegiance to a foreign enemy are not “subject” to American jurisdiction in the 14th Amendment sense. The citizenship test was never solely about territorial control. After all, it required a statute to make American Indians birthright citizens — even though they could be prosecuted if they committed crimes on American soil.

That is the insight animating the Citizenship Act. The line that matters under Wong Kim Ark is a recognition of an invader or invading force. A Nazi spy owes no more obedience to the United States, whose domain he has invaded, than an army division does. Wong Kim Ark fixes the citizenship guarantee’s boundary on the nature of the entrant. So for those categories, Congress holds the authority to define citizenship’s scope.

Sen. Banks’ bill grounds that authority in the Constitution. The Constitution obliges the federal government to protect the states “against Invasion,” and tasks Congress exclusively with the power to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” The Citizenship Act uses that authority, declaring that those who enter unlawfully or for the purpose of birth tourism enter as invaders under the law, and that their children accordingly fall within Wong Kim Ark’s invader exception. It legislates in the open space Trump v. Barbara expressly left open.

Another benefit of the Citizenship Act is that judicial review is constrained in the context of what the Supreme Court has called political questions. And designating an invasion — especially when that designation is made by the political branches in concert, is an apex political question and thus should be unreviewable.

Courts lack the constitutional authority to second-guess that judgment at all. In United States v. Abbott, Judge James Ho explained that whether a surge of illegal entry amounts to an “invasion” is a political question, not a legal one. There are no judicially manageable standards for deciding when an influx of unlawful migrants becomes an invasion; that determination belongs to the political branches, not to judges.

Judge Ho defended a governor’s declaration under Article IV. His point applies with even greater force to Congress, which holds the exclusive naturalization power and shares the duty to repel invasion. If a governor’s invasion finding lies beyond judicial scrutiny, a congressional finding that is reasonable on its face and grounded in the record of mass unlawful entry is stronger. The act is ultimately a judgment the Constitution assigns to Congress.

The alternative view contorts the Constitution to its breaking point. An interpretation that extends citizenship to the child of a Nazi saboteur departs from Wong Kim Ark’s holding. So too with properly designated invaders that come across America’s southern border. 

Sen. Banks has offered a text-and-precedent-bound response to a decision his opponents assumed had ended the debate. The Supreme Court reaffirmed its reading of Wong Kim Ark. Reasonable people can try to reverse that decision — and they should. But until then, Barbara wrote a map, and Sen. Banks is sitting in the driver’s seat ready to hit the road.

Ouch: Democrats Are Nursing a Kamala-Sized Hangover That Could Crush Their Midterm Hopes

RedState 

The Democrat Party would really rather that you not know this, but they are on a collision course with the midterms and they've got the fiscal woes of a college freshman who spent one too many nights out on the town with their first credit card. Things are reportedly so bad that they are taking drastic measures to keep their dismal balance sheet a secret. 

Democrats and their national apparatus, namely the Democratic National Committee (DNC), have been hampered this entire midterm election cycle by a debt incurred during the last election cycle. As RedState has reported on numerous occasions over the past two years, Democrats became severely cash strapped when they elevated Kamala Harris to be their presidential nominee in July of 2024. Her campaign, which famously lasted only 107 days, spent more than $1.5 billion to get an electoral thrashing from Donald Trump.

You could say Democrats were left with a Kamala-sized hangover. 

Last October, the DNC was so dead broke that they had to take out a $20 million loan to cover their bills. DNC Chairman Ken Martin, who has turned out to be an extremely poor fundraiser, blamed Trump: “We can’t win elections or fight back against Trump if the D.N.C. downsizes operations like it often does after a presidential cycle. I made a bet that investing early would build power, rack up wins and rally supporters back to the table. That bet is paying off.”

Sure, Jan.

Things have not improved for Democrats since then, with the most recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings showing Republicans far outpacing Democrats in national fundraising. In other words, President Trump is a fundraising machine who is keeping his party's donors happy.

In terms of cash on hand, Republicans have a 3-to-1 advantage with only 104 days until the November elections. One Democrat operative is deeply concerned about his party's cash woes.

“What is putting the House majority and the Senate majority, nationally, in danger is the Republicans’ massive stockpile of resources that they’re putting together to push back,” said Morgan Jackson, a longtime North Carolina Democratic strategist and an adviser to former Gov. Roy Cooper, who is running for Senate.

“If you get outspent five to six to eight to one, that can alleviate the environmental advantage that Democrats have this cycle of poor leadership from the White House, a dysfunctional Congress, a bad economy that they own,” he added. “There’s a lot of concern to that.”

And it looks like Democrats are embarrassed at how badly they're being lapped by President Trump and his fellow Republicans in the high-stakes fundraising game. It's so bad that they apparently had senior DNC staffers sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) before their most recent finance meeting. 

One senior DNC officer called the NDAs "a non-issue," but you can bet this same official would be shouting from the rooftops if his team was outperforming Donald Trump.

Now, this doesn't mean that Democrats won't fare well in midterm elections; individual candidates, such as James Talarico in Texas, are faring well on their own. Where the crash crunch will really hurt Democrats like Talarico is in those critical weeks before the election when candidates rely on their national partners to open their wallets and hit the airwaves on their behalf.

And that wallet will be awfully empty at the exact moment Democrats will need it most.

Speaker Johnson Had a Legislative Hat Trick Today While Thune Wants to Sell Out to Dems

Townhall 

I’m not sure if Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) wanted the speakership, but he turned out to be the right person for the job. Speaker Johnson continues to impress by passing numerous pieces of legislation with razor-thin majorities. The man gets things done. He’s a closer. We had a defense bill, a spending measure, and legislation to ban congressional stock trading—all of which were passed. Johnson achieved the legislative hat trick after telling the media earlier this week that he had the votes to clear the procedural hurdles.

On the NDAA:

House lawmakers on Wednesday narrowly passed a nearly $1.15 trillion annual defense policy bill, advancing the measure amid increasing tension over military spending and the war in Iran.

The tally was 216-212, with six Democrats voting for the bill and seven Republicans voting against it.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) expands U.S. defense production capacity, raises all service members’ pay by five to seven percent, authorizes $1.8 billion for barracks and family housing, and expands access to education and childcare for military families. The legislation authorizes $56 billion for aircraft development, including for next-generation fighter jets, B-21 Raiders, P-8 maritime patrol planes, F-35s, Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters. 

It greenlights more than $60 billion in funding for construction and support of a fourth Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Virginia-class submarines and two Arleigh-Burke class destroyers. The bill also codifies a number of Trump administration executive orders, including building the Golden Dome, one of President Trump’s top defense priorities. 

After the vote, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lauded the bill as one that would “ensure America maintains the most lethal, most dynamic, most capable fighting force in the world. This year’s NDAA builds on key investments in the Working Families Tax Cuts as Republicans lead the charge to restore America’s military dominance and rebuild the arsenal of freedom.”

The ban on congressional stock trading (via CBS News):

The House on Wednesday passed a bill placing some limits on congressional stock trading, but the lack of tougher restrictions and the inclusion of a voter ID provision complicated its support among Democrats. 

Lawmakers approved the bill in a 232 to 198 vote, with 13 Democrats voting with all Republicans in favor. 

The Stop Insider Trading Act, introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin in January, would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from purchasing publicly traded stocks. It would also require lawmakers to publicly disclose each intended sale of stocks at least seven days in advance to the House clerk or Senate secretary. The penalty for a violation is $2,000 or 10% of the transaction's value, whichever is greater, as well as the forfeiture of any realized gains from the sale.

On the reconciliation 3.0 framework (via Fox News):

Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to bypass Democratic opposition on a key election integrity bill took a major step forward in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

It’s a major victory for Johnson, R-La., who had to overcome a wall of left-wing opposition and threats of a rebellion within his own GOP ranks.

House Republicans are working to move the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act as part of a larger $95 billion budget bill that, if successful, would completely sideline Democrats to implement election reforms sought by President Donald Trump.

And what has the Senate done? Nothing. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) wants to cave to Democrats over a separate bill to keep the government open, and cannot quiet the rabble-rousers in his caucus about the SAVE America Act, which is part of the reconciliation package. Working with Democrats? We’ve seen this before. They will stall the process, forcing a must-pass situation to avoid a shutdown on September 30. Everyone sees the political calamity ahead except John Thune, who isn’t suited for this job. Has Johnson secured Democratic votes for things? Sure, and he also gets things done. Thune doesn’t, so his balance is in the red. 

Before the circus over Department of Homeland Security funding, Johnson passed 12 appropriations bills, one of which funded DHS, increased ICE resources, and gained Democratic support. The Minnesota shootings killed them. The point is that, with such slim majorities, House Republicans managed to ensure the government was funded. Senate Republicans chose to be tepid, weak, and let Democrats walk all over them. 

The DHS funding fight turned into a circus because Thune couldn’t do anything about it. It was a pathetic display of a man who simply couldn’t see the political traps: Thune, Democrats don’t want DHS reopened quickly. Their base demands a shutdown. They have no incentive to negotiate. What the hell are you doing? And when they reneged, no kidding—it only delayed reopening DHS, which was the goal. You got played again. You got owned by Chuck Schumer, and that says a lot because Chuck sucks. 

We’ve seen how Thune handled the DHS fight. It was a trainwreck. So, while one chamber is making progress, the other is slow and dithering, getting exploited and outmaneuvered by Democrats who know that Republicans often settle for moral victories and defer to institutional procedure—things that either don’t matter, don’t earn political points, and only leave the GOP tricked. Being the bigger, more mature person in the room is irrelevant when you lose all the time. And that’s the Senate GOP, specifically Thune; he’s a pure loser. 

Can’t wait to see how he drags this out, gets slapped down by own members, and flanked by Democrats who will be as subtle as a sledgehammer about their intentions, but Thune will be Bird boxing the entire time.