CHAD WOLF: Space isn’t just the final frontier, it’s the ‘ultimate high ground’

The race to the moon is on — again. But the strategic competition playing out today is much bigger than our race with the Soviet Union in 1969. If China reaches the moon ahead of the United States and establishes a permanent, manned presence — it will not treat the lunar surface as a peaceful scientific outpost, but as an extension of its campaign to surpass America, intimidate our allies and compromise our systems that keep the American homeland secure. This is no longer something of science fiction.

President Donald Trump understands this threat, signing the Executive Order on Ensuring American Space Superiority, which made it abundantly clear that he wants the United States to lead this new space race — returning Americans back to the moon by 2028 and building a permanent manned presence on the lunar surface.

Let me be clear, the fear that China could somehow “claim” the moon by arriving first misunderstands both geography and international reality. Two of the main locations for settlement are the Shackleton Crater, which stretches about the distance from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland, and the South Pole–Aitken Basin, which is roughly the distance from Washington, D.C., to Denver, Colo. The moon is vast.

The strategic concern and question for Congress is not who arrives “next,” but who establishes a durable, scalable and defensible presence on the lunar surface. China understands this question and is well on their way to develop a reusable launch system to control this terrain and its abundant critical resources within a decade. The U.S. needs to recognize this threat and address it with the urgency it demands.

TRUMP DIRECTS RELEASE OF GOVERNMENT ALIEN AND UFO FILES TO MULTIPLE FEDERAL AGENCIES NATIONWIDE

The Obama-Biden administration’s Space Launch System (SLS), which is currently being used for the Artemis missions, utilizes 1980s architecture developed from the shuttle missions and has been highly criticized by NASA’s former inspector general during the Biden administration who calculated the cost of a single SLS launch was $4.2 billion, with nearly $64 billion already spent despite only one operational flight since 2022. This is an enormous price tag with limited payload capacity and a launch cadence measured in years rather than months.

Seeing NASA’s struggles with the SLS, Chinese state-backed firms are now mimicking architectures that support fully reusable, self-landing heavy-lift rockets modeled on SpaceX’s Starship. As seen on Feb. 11, China’s Long March 10 booster (developed in just eight years) successfully guided itself to a powered, vertical ocean splashdown. This is an unmistakable signal that China is quickly catching up to us and recognizes that a nation that can launch more often and move more mass will dominate.

The critical national security question is this: What happens if the U.S. does not pivot quickly toward prioritizing cost, capacity and cadence, after Artemis III?

ASTRONAUTS ARRIVE AT ISS FOR 8-MONTH MISSION AFTER MEDICAL EMERGENCY FORCED EARLY EVACUATION

First, we will likely see the formation of a permanent Chinese, manned presence expanding Beijing’s intelligence collection and space awareness across the Earth–moon system helping China monitor U.S. and allied activity. Beijing has invested in capabilities designed to “degrade, damage, or destroy” U.S. satellites — the backbone of American command-and-control and targeting. This has direct homeland security implications.

Trump is right to push a layered, space-enabled missile defense, known as the “Golden Dome,” but if the Chinese control the ultimate high ground, it can build a moon-based counter-command designed to blind, spoof, disrupt or hold at risk the space layer that makes that shield possible. Put simply: you cannot defend the homeland from above if Beijing can contest the space above you. The United States should establish that capability first — call it the “Donald J. Trump Moon Base” and lock in the operational advantage ahead of the Chinese.

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Second, if China is left untouched on the lunar surface, it would surely increase the risk of espionage, sabotage and gray-zone interference against our own forthcoming lunar infrastructure.

Seeing NASA’s struggles with the SLS, Chinese state-backed firms are now mimicking architectures that support fully reusable, self-landing heavy-lift rockets modeled on SpaceX’s Starship.

Finally, Beijing will seek to turn its presence into control over resources on the lunar surface. It is critical for us to get ahead of the Chinese on the extraction of these critical minerals, which China already has a stronghold of on Earth. We need these critical minerals for national defense, economic prosperity, and, frankly, our sovereignty.

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The moon is the ultimate high ground; we cannot afford to be first on Earth but second in space. If China gets to the moon, fine, but if it frequently returns, they will turn their presence into control — over the “Golden Dome,” over our critical infrastructure on Earth and in low Earth orbit, and over the resources the moon provides — America will be permanently exposed to its greatest adversary.

To beat China, Congress should demand accountability for delays and cost overruns, stop blindly giving subsidies to outdated systems, and pivot to reusability. Our continued homeland security depends on it. Let’s put America first and prioritize cost, capacity and cadence.

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SEN ELIZABETH WARREN: President Trump’s broken promise on credit cards

President Donald Trump could save American families hundreds of dollars on credit cards, but so far, he’s been all talk and no action.

At the State of the Union, President Trump will try to spin a happy story about his failed economic agenda. During his campaign, he promised to lower costs “on day one.” He is now more than 400 days into his second term, and his policies are forcing Americans to pay more for everything from groceries to housing and electricity. Last Friday, the Supreme Court rebuked him for illegally taking money from working families. And polls show the American people think the president is not doing enough to lower costs.

One way Trump could lower costs quickly is to follow through on his campaign promise to put a 10% cap on credit card interest rates. This could save the average American with credit card debt about $900 a year. Collectively, families would save roughly $100 billion, giving them some breathing room and strengthening the economy overall.

TRUMP CALLS FOR 1-YEAR 10% CAP ON CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES

On Jan. 9, the president seemed poised to act. He announced that credit card companies will no longer rip off the American people — and then he politely asked the biggest banks to put in place a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates by Jan. 20. At the time, I said that asking credit card companies to play nice is silly, and if the president was serious, he’d work to pass a bill through Congress that would deliver lower rates.

Three days later, President Trump called me himself. I had just given a speech noting that he is driving up costs for families and sowing terror and chaos in our communities. I repeated my push: If the president really wanted to cap credit card interest rates, he would use his leverage and push a bill through Congress. On our phone call, I delivered the same message.

While the president dawdles, the big banks are coming out of the woodwork to warn of an ‘economic disaster’ if we cap credit card interest rates. Give me a break.

That was six weeks ago. President Trump’s Jan. 20 deadline has come and gone, and no one is surprised that the big banks have not voluntarily cut credit card rates to help American families. Instead, Trump and his budget chief, Russ Vought, have moved in the opposite direction, trying to sideline the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which could be used to bring down credit card costs. While Trump claims he wants a credit card interest rate cap, his own regulators are helping out those very same Wall Street banks that are ripping off Americans and blocking states from protecting their citizens from sky-high loans.

SEN BERNIE SANDERS: WE NEED TO CAP CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES AT 10%

While the president dawdles, the big banks are coming out of the woodwork to warn of an “economic disaster” if we cap credit card interest rates. Give me a break. These are the most profitable financial institutions in the history of the world. There is no reason for them to demand 25% or 30% interest rates when smaller banks and credit unions are offering much lower credit card interest rates and are still making solid profits.

The big banks make about a 1.5% return on their lending generally — but for credit cards, they make a whopping 6.8% return. Credit cards also bring in and sustain new customers for other services. These banks could lower credit card rates and still be wildly profitable.

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Credit card CEOs love those high rates because they help finance a big chunk of the salaries and bonuses for those at the top. Compensation for every big bank CEO topped $40 million last year, with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon pocketing a tidy $770 million. Shareholders are happy, too. Big banks paid out a record $140 billion in dividends and share buybacks in 2025. Meanwhile, the American people have been charged more than $150 billion annually in credit card interest.

Americans want relief — and Democrats are ready. After the president called me, I reached out repeatedly to his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to share ideas about how to design an emergency 10% rate cap that prohibits banks from retaliating by shutting down accounts, reducing credit lines or devaluing rewards. I also explained how we could transition to a permanent rate cap, so credit card companies can’t go right back to ripping people off after one year.

But after six weeks, there’s no deal to help the American people. We don’t need more speeches. We need an agreement on legislation and a commitment from the president to actually fight for it.

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Let’s pass a bill to cap credit card interest rates. The Senate Banking Committee could hold hearings in March and get a bill to the president’s desk this spring.

No more delays. It’s time to deliver relief for American families.

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Ayatollah’s arsenal vs. American firepower: Iran’s top 4 threats and how we fight back

Ayatollah Khamenei on X ramped up threats to send U.S. warships to the bottom of the sea. “Americans constantly say that they’ve sent a warship toward Iran. Of course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea,” he (or his minions) tweeted Feb 17.

Admiral Brad Cooper, who’s in charge of United States Central Command, has forces to counter Iran, and to carry out strikes if so ordered. Sadly, Iran has taken American lives over the years, and now the regime is desperate. With the airspace laid bare by attacks on integrated air defenses prior to Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran has little ability to defend against stealth aircraft. 

Count on Iran trying to hit U.S. ships and bases.

Here are the four top tactics in the ayatollah’s arsenal – and how the U.S. will fight back.

US MILITARY WARNS IRAN IT WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY ‘UNSAFE’ ACTIONS AHEAD OF LIVE-FIRE DRILLS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ

Ballistic missiles

Iran launched short- and medium-range ballistic missiles against the U.S. airbase at Al Udeid, in Qatar, on June 23, 2025. A skeleton crew of American soldiers with two Patriot missile batteries intercepted Iran’s missiles. “We believe that this is the largest single Patriot engagement in U.S. military history,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine in a Pentagon briefing the next day.

The U.S. Space Force will once again be on alert to detect the heat of Iranian missile launches and cue the target tracks. Iran’s ballistic missiles can attack multiple targets, but U.S. forces are ready to intercept. In 2024, American Navy destroyers sailing in the eastern Mediterranean nailed Iranian missiles with nose-on shots. They used Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), both the older Block 1 and the wide-coverage Block 2A. SM-3 is a hit-to-kill weapon: it smashed Iran’s missiles at 65,000 feet, in the exo-atmosphere, using just the 600-mph velocity. Bullet hits bullet. That’s why Navy destroyers are fanned out from the Med to the North Arabian Gulf.

IRAN TO HOLD LIVE-FIRE DRILLS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ WITH US ARMADA IN MIDDLE EAST

Drones

Iran manufactures a lot of drones, but they are going to die if they tangle with U.S. forces. A Marine Corps fighter pilot flying an F-35C from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln shot down one of Iran’s Shahed drones on Feb. 3. That was a Shahed-139 surveillance drone, which also carries glide bombs and can loiter for up to 24 hours. It got too close to the aircraft carrier, as Central Command put it.

Victory credit goes to the “Black Knights” of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron VMFA-314, as reported by USNI News. The drone kill was easy work for the F-35C, with its sensitive, long-range radar and vectoring by Navy E-2D radar planes, which fly with a massive dish radar to sort out good guys and bad guys. Forward surveillance by the E-2Ds will be essential if Iran launches waves of drones toward U.S. ships. USS Gerald R. Ford en route could add options for day and night combat air patrols against drones and missiles.

MORNING GLORY: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S MOST IMPORTANT DECISION IS COMING

If the attack is over land, look for the U.S. Air Force to pounce. Over the last two years, American pilots have become masters of anti-drone tactics. It started when U.S. Air Force F-15E “Strike Eagles” from an undisclosed Mideast base shot down waves of Iranian drones in April 2024. At one point, crew chiefs came out of bunkers while the base was under fire to pull the arming pins on weapons before the F-15Es took off. They are ready to do it again.

Swarming boats

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The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps navy has a long history of harassment with small boats, and they like to boast about their exercises with “swarms” of boats. That’s over. Iran thug small boats can’t form up to “swarm” under the constant eye – and guns – of this many U.S. ships and planes. Foolishly, two Iranian small boats and a drone tried to “swarm” a Swedish tanker carrying fuel for U.S. forces. How did that work out? Well, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS McFaul ran them off, as Air Force land-based fighter planes zoomed out to assist.

Cruise missiles

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Iran is stuffed with cruise missiles of various types. Their low, snaking path makes them difficult targets. The good news is the U.S. Navy has done a lot of target practice on Houthi missiles , like when the destroyer USS Gravely deployed its “C-whiz” Phalanx Close-In Weapon System against a sea-skimming Houthi missile one mile from the ship back on Jan. 30, 2024. Typically, Navy missiles like the SM-6 and the Evolved Sea Sparrow can nail the cruise missiles a dozen miles out. F-35 fighters are good at chasing down cruise missiles, too.

U.S. forces have the edge over the ayatollah’s arsenal. But make no mistake. This is a combat zone. Constant vigilance will be key to survival. Navy sailors and the airmen, Marines, soldiers and Space Force Guardians will feel the pressure and intensity of 24/7 operations. Maintainers and ground crews at land bases have jets to fuel, arm and launch, even against incoming drones and missiles. Force protection is top priority and the reason for the sheer number of forces now in U.S. Central Command. You can see why Trump has long sought curbs on Iran’s missile arsenal, and why missile and drone production sites are likely top of the target list for U.S. forces if diplomacy fails.

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China dominates with 5,500 ships while America has under 100 — but Trump’s fighting back

China dominates the world’s sea lanes.

In addition to its powerful navy, China possesses the world’s largest commercial shipping fleet — 5,500 vessels strong, with hundreds more added per year. By contrast, America’s fleet currently numbers under 100 with, at most, five ships added per year.

Today, only a fraction of the tankers and cargo ships carrying goods to and from our country fly the American flag — by some estimates, less than 0.4%.

The diminished state of American commercial shipbuilding is a pending economic and national security disaster.

HELP WANTED: US MUST FILL LOTS OF SHIPS-AND-CHIPS JOBS TO BEAT CHINA

Fortunately, President Donald Trump understands the urgency of this situation and has prioritized an American shipbuilding revival. On Feb. 13, his administration released a comprehensive Maritime Action Plan to help restore America’s maritime dominance.

According to the plan, “Less than one percent of new commercial ships are built in the United States. With only 66 total shipyards … the United States does not have the capacity necessary to scale up the domestic shipbuilding industry to the rate required to meet national priorities…. A self-sustaining domestic shipbuilding sector is critical for national and economic security.”

The plan offers specific recommendations to strengthen America’s maritime capacity, secure our supply chains, and build a resilient maritime workforce. In total, the White House’s Maritime Action plan is a much-needed, holistic approach to restore U.S. commercial shipping, and I commend Trump and his team for issuing it.

US COULD BURN THROUGH KEY MISSILES IN ‘A WEEK’ IF WAR WITH CHINA ERUPTS, TOP SECURITY EXPERT WARNS

As the plan recognizes, however, Congress must be part of the solution. The strategy proposes tax incentives, creative funding mechanisms and new programs that all require congressional authorization and resourcing. That’s why my colleagues and I are working to pass the “SHIPS for America Act.” This bipartisan legislation, which I helped introduce last year, substantially overlaps with the president’s vision and is explicitly called out in the plan. 

The legislation would make U.S.-flagged vessels commercially competitive in international commerce by cutting red tape, rebuilding the shipyard industrial base and expanding and strengthening mariner and shipyard worker recruitment. Our proposal would train a pipeline of new workers, encourage domestic and foreign investment in maritime infrastructure, and provide the permitting reform and deregulation that is essential for timely construction of new shipyards.

Underlying all of the bill’s initiatives is a trust fund to support an expansion of the U.S.-flagged fleet to 250 vessels by 2035. And the SHIPS Act would create multiple investment tax credits to build up the U.S. shipyard industry for both military and commercial oceangoing vessels.

Key to spurring private-sector investment in the industry is the designation of Maritime Prosperity Zones. These areas — modeled off the successful Opportunity Zones contained in President Trump’s 2017 tax cut — would supercharge investment in communities that will be most important to rebuilding our maritime industrial base.

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From the coastlands to the heartland, these places on our oceans, rivers and Great Lakes will be the hubs for building up our production facilities and supply chains that will power America’s maritime dominance over the next several decades.

The diminished state of American commercial shipbuilding is a pending economic and national security disaster.

The SHIPS Act is Congress’s answer to President Trump’s call to restore America’s maritime dominance. It provides the legal authorities and resources necessary to make President Trump’s Maritime Action Plan a reality. It has support from Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate.

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The release of the White House Maritime Action Plan should serve as a wake-up call for Congress to act quickly and pass our bill. Reviving American shipbuilding will take time, but as President Trump recognizes, doing so is critical to our economic and national security.

It’s time to make American ships again.

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Trump has sealed the border. Now, Democrats are hell-bent on ending immigration enforcement

When Pandora, the girl of Greek legend, opened the box, the ills of the world spilled out and could never be put back. The lesson was that some things, once done, cannot be undone. Let’s hope that mass illegal migration isn’t one of them.

Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. border was virtually open. He may best be remembered for writing a massive check on his grandchildren’s account, as the financial and social costs mount from the millions released, paroled or just left alone to live without authorization on his watch.

Under President Donald Trump, this ended. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims “an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations” occurred in Trump’s first year in office. I’m skeptical of round numbers and not sure of their accounting methodology. But if it’s anywhere close, that would be a great start on keeping his promise to remove people here illegally.

Meanwhile, at the border, the picture is clear: the tap has been turned off.

HOW ICE WENT FROM POST-9/11 COUNTERTERROR AGENCY TO CENTER OF THE IMMIGRATION FIGHT

“Encounters” is a term that means any time an alien with no visa or other right to enter the U.S. shows up at the border, airport or between land border ports and tries to get in. Let’s compare some months, using the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Nationwide Encounters page. In December 2023, 249,740 foreigners came illegally over our border between official ports. In December 2025, it was 6,472. That’s not nothing, but it is an acceptable “normal” we can live with.

What is more, January 2026 is the ninth consecutive month since DHS reportedly released zero illegal aliens at the border. Not a one. That’s what the law requires. Aliens caught entering illegally “shall be detained,” says the Immigration and Nationality Act, thanks to a 1996 amending law called the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Guess who signed that? President Bill Clinton.

That law was passed after an exhaustive bipartisan congressional review, known as the Jordan Commission for its Democrat chairwoman, looked at U.S. immigration policy. They determined that we needed to clearly distinguish between legal and illegal immigration and do much more to prevent the latter.

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION VICTORY IN A MINNESOTA COURT IS A WIN FOR ALL LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS

Today, politicians on the left are doing all they can to blur that all-important distinction. They speak of “migrants,” to avoid the issue altogether. Minneapolis Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey uses the word “neighbors” to describe illegal immigrants. He wants to pretend there is no difference between an American citizen and a foreign national living here illegally.

“No human being is illegal” is the favored lawn sign of the left. What does that even mean? Yes, being human is not illegal. But being in someone else’s house without permission is illegal. It’s the act, not the person.

Activists talk about “due process,” but what they really want is new process – endless litigation, even when higher courts have set clear precedent, to buy more time and find more loopholes.

BIDEN SPEAKS OUT AGAINST IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN IN MINNESOTA, SAYS IT GOES AGAINST AMERICAN VALUES

A Fifth Circuit court of Appeals judgment just re-confirmed that aliens in the country illegally can (and should) be detained, even if they have long avoided detection. The court had to re-state clear law and precedent because, fueled by open donations and dark money, groups from the ACLU to Greater Waco Legal Services are suing left and right to prevent all deportations.

Democrats in Washington and in some blue states and cities are hell-bent on ending immigration enforcement altogether. We’ve all seen the organized obstruction by activists in Minneapolis, on the streets, at federal facilities, at hotels and even in a church during services.

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Meanwhile, at the border, the picture is clear: the tap has been turned off.

As well as impeding and harassing officers, activists want to force businesses to agree with them. In February, anti-enforcement group ICE Out Minnesota staged protests at Target stores to pressure the Minnesota-based chain to take a political stand. ICE Out’s demands include shutting down ICE, which means ending enforcement of U.S. immigration law.

Some angry women harassed staff at a Minneapolis Yoga studio for not putting up their anti-ICE sticker. Not coincidentally, the “revolutionary political group” Socialist Alternative took part in protests outside a Minneapolis Target branch. World socialism requires no borders, so the workers of the world can unite.

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For now, open borders advocates are fighting to prevent enforcement in their strongpoints inside the country; mostly large cities from Boston to Los Angeles run by Democrat or Democratic socialist mayors and councils. But despite – or because of – Trump’s proven success in sealing the border, the left is planning and waiting for the chance to reopen all the migrant “pathways” like parole and mass release at the border.

If this country is to hold together, we must never again allow the high-water mark of illegal immigration to reach the level it did under Biden. Further, we cannot allow nullification of our immigration laws by law-breaking activists. Statutes to prevent a return of 2021 need to be passed, and the rule of immigration law locked in beyond legal challenge for the future.

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MARK HALPERIN: Trump strategy super session plots midterm survival as history stalks GOP

Tuesday night at the Capitol Hill Club, just steps from the House office buildings and a world away from cable news hysteria, the senior Trump political command gathered its core team to talk midterms. It was not a rally. It was not a pep talk. It was a working session — about two hours, a chicken-and-steak buffet, roughly 75 to 100 people in the room, many of them Cabinet secretaries and their top aides, almost all political veterans.

The mood, according to one attendee, was not panicked. Not shaken. But not sanguine, either. Just focused. The kind of focus that comes from knowing that, at the moment, the patterns of history are not on your side.

Midterms are almost always brutal for a president’s party. Since World War II, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but a handful of elections. The average loss is measured not in single digits but in dozens. The modern political era is replete with examples: 1994 for Bill Clinton, 2010 for Barack Obama, 2018 for Donald Trump himself. The gravitational pull of backlash is real.

Which is why Tuesday night’s meeting mattered.

MARK HALPERIN: THE REAL REASON TRUMP KEEPS BEATING THE MEDIA AT ITS OWN GAME

Susie Wiles, the president’s chief political architect and one of the most disciplined operators in either party, hosted and spoke briefly. Then pollster and strategist Tony Fabrizio took over, presenting roughly 25 slides of data — demographics, issue salience, message testing and a summary of what breaks through and what falls flat.

The headline: The economy will be THE issue at the polls this November.

Not immigration. Not foreign policy. Not Epstein or the border. Not investigations or indictments or Jan. 6 retrospectives. The economy.

Fabrizio’s data showed that certain messages resonated with key voters: banning stock trading for members of Congress; promoting greater transparency in health insurance pricing and claims reimbursement; lowering prescription drug costs; and protecting the Trump tax cuts. Housing affordability, especially for younger voters, looms large — a kitchen-table issue with generational bite, though one the administration has yet to solve, either politically or through policy.

DEMOCRATS EYE NARROW PATH TO CAPTURE SENATE MAJORITY, BUT ONE WRONG MOVE COULD SINK THEM

Notably, taking credit for closing the border does not resonate nearly as much as Republicans might assume. It’s not that voters oppose border enforcement; many simply see it as baseline governance rather than a life-changing economic intervention.

The persuadable universe is also narrower than partisans often imagine: men, moderates, true independents and Hispanic voters. These are the movable pieces on the board.

The battlefield, at least for now, is defined. There are 36 targeted House races and seven key Senate races that will determine the balance of power.

When addressing the group, Fabrizio was not pessimistic, but nor was he sentimental. He urged the team to prioritize specialized podcasts and social media over national news interviews. Paid media, he argued, should be highly targeted — digital, demographic and data-driven — rather than sweeping broadcast or even cable buys. Facebook remains king for voter reach, followed by Instagram and TikTok. The information ecosystem is fragmented and specific; campaigns that pretend it is still 2004, with its homey, conventional mainstream vibe, are wasting money.

RNC CHAIR BETS ON ‘SECRET WEAPON’ TO DEFY MIDTERM HISTORY, PROTECT GOP MAJORITIES

The battlefield, at least for now, is defined. There are 36 targeted House races and seven key Senate races that will determine the balance of power. The Senate math, as presented, is favorable to Republicans unless something dramatic shifts. One striking assertion: the only way Republicans lose their Senate majority is if Democrats take 50 House seats — a wave scenario of historic proportions, made difficult because redistricting has placed the vast majority of House seats safely in the hands of one party or the other, barring a massive tsunami.

After Fabrizio came James Blair, the White House’s political czar, armed with an ice-cold bucket of galvanizing history. It is rare — exceedingly rare, he told the assembly — for a president’s party not to lose a significant number of seats in a midterm.

GOP WARNS DEMOCRATS USING DHS SHUTDOWN TO STALL SENATE VOTER ID PUSH

Blair pointed to the recent special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District as a tale both cautionary and instructive. The race appeared headed for a loss until a late, aggressive push on messaging and grassroots organizing saved the seat for Republicans and generated lessons about what works — and what does not. 

You cannot argue voters into believing wages are up, he said. They have to feel it. Economic statistics do not automatically translate into economic security, nor do they take precedence over personal bank accounts and family budgets. And some good, old-fashioned opposition research painting Democratic candidates as out of step with the electorate can do wonders.

DNC CHAIR KEN MARTIN BOASTS ‘WIN AFTER WIN,’ SHRUGS OFF MASSIVE TRUMP, REPUBLICAN MONEY LEAD

Perhaps the most candid moment of the evening came when Team Trump acknowledged a central reality of this presidency: Donald Trump will do what he wants to do. He will say what he wants to say. He will not be governed by slide decks, message matrices or pleas from Republican candidates and strategists. The rest of the political apparatus, therefore, must be relentlessly data-driven and on message — two separate but related campaigns running in parallel: one instinctual and improvisational, the other disciplined and empirical.

The Trump high command expects Democrats to run largely on a “Stop Trump” message. History suggests that is not a foolish approach. Opposition parties in midterms often succeed by nationalizing the election as a referendum on the president. But referendums cut both ways. If voters decide the question is not “How do you feel about Donald Trump?” but “How do you feel about your cost of living?” the terrain shifts.

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Ironically, for all the caricatures of chaos, arrogance and impulse that surround Trump world, the Capitol Hill Club meeting was a sober, methodical session. Cabinet secretaries such as Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Sean Duffy attended, along with senior aides — not to posture or network, but to listen.

No one in the room thought the midterms would be easy. No one suggested the president’s party was immune to natural political rhythms and swings. But neither did they prepare for inevitable defeat.

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The White House officials acted as an alert and cohesive team — one that understands the rules of the game and believes it can bend them.

In Washington, that counts as confidence.

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BISHOP BARRON: AOC mocks Western culture — Marx would love that, but I find it chilling

Many have commented favorably on the speech that Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave recently at a security conference in Munich. What they seemed to admire most was his willingness to look beyond some of the particular political and economic matters that preoccupy policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic — the Ukraine War, climate change, immigration, etc. — and to consider the cultural convictions that both Europe and America share. 

Secretary Rubio lyrically invoked Dante, the Cologne Cathedral, Shakespeare, the democratic form of government, the university system — even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — as representations of that common vision. But then he took a further step that especially caught my attention. Very much in the spirit of both Pope Benedict XVI and the church historian Christopher Dawson, he observed that culture is tightly linked to cult, that is to say, to religion. In a word, all the things that we value stand in relation to that which we value most highly. And therefore, Secretary Rubio was not afraid to identify the Judeo-Christian faith as the deepest and most abiding source of what is best in Western culture. Only, he concluded, when both Europe and America re-discover together the wellsprings of their common culture will they find the cohesiveness they both long for. 

It was heartening to me to see that this clarion call was met with a sustained standing ovation. I believe that even that rather jaundiced and secularized audience sensed the real spirituality that lay behind Rubio’s rhetoric. 

AOC MOCKED FOR ‘ABSOLUTE TRAIN WRECK’ WEEKEND ON GLOBAL STAGE: ‘MADE A FOOL OUT OF HERSELF’

But not everyone was happy with his speech. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who happened to be in Europe at the same time as Rubio, mocked the secretary of state for being preoccupied with Western culture, which she characterized as “thin.” All cultures, she averred, are ephemeral, passing, unstable; therefore, social analysts should concentrate not on wispy cultural achievements but on the “material” elements of a society which manifest themselves in the class struggle.

I would first observe that it is simply breathtaking to maintain that the culture that produced the university system, affirmed the rights and prerogatives of the individual, and gave rise to democratic rule of law is “thin.” But secondly, I would draw attention to the unnervingly Marxist quality of AOC’s formulation. All serious students of a political economy, Karl Marx held, ought to focus their attention on the class conflict between those who have power and those who do not. He also held that the various expressions of culture — art, literature, science, entertainment and especially religion — are but epiphenomenal superstructural features, whose entire purpose is to protect the economic substructure. So the responsible intellectual should at best acknowledge the culture but should by no means become preoccupied with it — precisely the recommendation that AOC was making in her airy dismissal of the ideological underpinnings of the West.

Something that is becoming increasingly a concern of mine is the prevalence of explicit Marxism in the rhetoric and practice of certain leaders on the Left in America. Just recently, we heard Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York extolling the “warmth of collectivism” and one of his top aides insisting that the people of our largest city should get accustomed to the idea that government can and should confiscate private property and seize the means of production. 

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Again, the Marxism is not implied or subtle; it is right out in the open, unapologetically on display. And this should alarm every American. I might strongly encourage the followers of Mamdani and AOC to speak to those who fled the Marxist tyrannies of Russia and Eastern Europe or those today who labor under Communist oppression in North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela or China. I sincerely doubt that any of them would gratefully acknowledge the “warmth of collectivism.”

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I speak against this radicalism not simply as a concerned American, but also as a bishop of the Catholic Church. Marx said that the first critique is the critique of religion. He meant that before we even get to an assessment of a capitalist political economy, and certainly before we engage in revolutionary praxis, we must throw off religion, which functions, as he famously put it, as “opium for the masses.” We must shake off our addiction to the drug of supernatural faith, which has dulled our sensitivity to our own suffering and which has provided cover for the oppressive class. It is important to note that the political adepts of Marxism followed their master closely in this regard. Watch the strategies of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Fidel Castro and Pol Pot, just to name some of the most notorious examples. Their opening move was invariably to attack the churches. 

Some might find the Marxism touted by certain radical politicians today trendy and refreshing, something to be bandied about at Upper East Side cocktail parties. Given the historical record, I find it chilling.

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Illinois city’s reparations plan is misguided, divisive and likely unconstitutional

Evanston, Illinois, made history in 2021 by enacting the country’s first race-based reparations plan for past housing discrimination against Black residents. Since the program began, the city has issued about 40 payments each year to qualified residents. Last year, the city issued 45. This time around, the number is 44, for a total of about $4 million. Yet regardless of how many checks Evanston sends out, the effect will be, at best, merely symbolic. At worst, it is muddled, confused and likely illegal.

This year, Evanston will send $25,000 payments to 44 Black residents and descendants of Black residents who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969. The program, funded primarily through a city real estate transfer tax, is intended to address the legacy of housing discrimination in Evanston — a city that, like much of the nation, enforced restrictive covenants and other barriers that prevented Black residents from buying homes. While rooted in a desire to correct past wrongs, the plan raises significant constitutional, practical and moral concerns.

At its core, the Evanston program is race-specific, providing benefits solely to Black residents who meet narrow historical criteria. This raises an obvious legal question: Can the government dole out money based on race? Critics have already flagged the program as constitutionally questionable under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Beyond legality, there is a broader question about fairness. The program compensates some individuals while excluding others who may face equal or even greater financial need. Wealthier Black residents in Evanston receive the same payments as those struggling economically, while low-income residents of other races receive nothing. Isn’t a poor White person more in need of that money?

ILLINOIS CITY HANDS OUT $25K CASH PAYMENTS TO 44 BLACK RESIDENTS THROUGH REPARATIONS PROGRAM

The structure of the program is also confused. While Evanston’s payments are framed around historical housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969, this period does not capture the full scope of systemic racial inequities. Restrictive housing practices existed both before and after that window. Yet the city has drawn an arbitrary line, oversimplifying a complex history into a single snapshot. It may be administratively convenient, but it’s not exactly thoughtful.

A $25,000 payment may provide temporary relief for some recipients, but investments in education, financial literacy and other community-building initiatives could provide more long-term benefits. These types of investments would be better than offering short-term individual relief.

None of this is to say that reparations programs are inherently bad. The government has previously compensated groups who suffered identifiable, direct injustices — Japanese Americans interned during World War II, for example. 

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By contrast, the Evanston payouts go to those who were merely living in the city during the time discrimination took place, without regard to whether they personally suffered from it. And while past discrimination may have created obstacles to wealth accumulation, evidence also shows that many Black Americans have achieved upward mobility through their own efforts. The fact that 80% of Black Americans are middle class or higher weakens that point substantially. And what does it mean that Black Americans like my parents accomplished upward mobility without such help?

What about the fact that being given equal opportunity — not simply a cash handout — was all they needed to give themselves and their children a better life?

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A $25,000 payment may provide temporary relief for some recipients, but investments in education, financial literacy and other community-building initiatives could provide more long-term benefits. These types of investments would be better than offering short-term individual relief.

From a moral standpoint, too, the idea of placing a monetary value on past suffering is inherently insulting. No sum of money can undo decades of harm caused by segregation. Reparations, when narrowly tailored as cash payments, appear performative. This reparations program, and the idea of reparations in general, ignores the realities of contemporary America, where socioeconomic status — regardless of race — is the more salient issue.

Ultimately, the Evanston reparations program highlights a tension between historical justice and practical policy. On one hand, it is an earnest attempt to confront the city’s past. 

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On the other hand, its design — race-specific, administratively narrow and cash-focused — raises legal, moral and strategic concerns. A more comprehensive approach might focus on opportunity rather than compensation, addressing systemic inequities with policies that expand access to quality education, affordable housing and economic development. By investing in structures that empower communities over the long term, cities can confront historical injustices in ways that are more equitable, sustainable and legally defensible.

Evanston’s reparations program may be a heartfelt gesture, but it is a misguided idea built on racial essentialism — the idea that all Black people are the same — a waste of resources because the money could be put to better use, and certainly morally questionable. The individual payees may be happier, but the long-term effects of this program may do more harm than good.

DAVID MARCUS: Mamdani’s Jim Crow 2.0 snow removal operation requires ID

With a blizzard bearing down on New York City, socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has offered citizens a chance to make a few extra bucks removing snow, but there is a catch, and it’s a doozy: As racist as the Left tells us this is, workers must bring valid ID.

Say it ain’t so, Zo. We know from the voter ID debate that marginalized Brown and Black people just can’t figure out how to get driver’s licenses. According to Kamala Harris, it has something to do with not having a Kinkos. So why is Hizzoner pushing Jim Crow 2.0 here?

Oh, and, the ID required includes a Social Security card, so in addition to excluding minorities, Mamdani is barring illegal immigrants.

Is the mayor worried that people may not be honest about who they actually are? That seems like a strange thing to worry about in hiring someone for day work when it’s no issue at all in voting for our political leaders. And why won’t the miserly Mamdani allow the “undocumented” to work? These are people who have to feed their families, and Zany Zohran insists they shouldn’t be deported, so what are they supposed to do?

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I thought this was the kind of administration that would send the Department of Sanitation down to the U-Haul lot at 4th Avenue and 6th in Brooklyn and just scoop up some eager employees. You know, the way contractors do every day.

Sure, Mamdani claims that nobody is illegal on stolen land, but when push comes to shovel, he’s just another racist xenophobe demanding people of color show their papers.

I can hear the defenders of Zohran saying, “It’s the law,” which is absolutely amazing given that Mamdani has never seen a federal immigration law he found worth enforcing.

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Where is his socialist spirit of civil disobedience? Zohran supposedly celebrates when our undocumented brothers and sisters are hired illegally. He says it’s the lifeblood of the city, and hey, it’s a boon for those employers who don’t have to worry about paying workers compensation insurance.

A win-win.

Surely, Mamdani can and must defy this racist relic of past administrations and instruct the Department of Sanitation to stop this fascist insistence that workers be citizens.

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What is the worst that could happen? Is Mamdani actually worried that without ID there could be fraud? That money could go to made-up people who don’t do any snow removal? If that’s not a valid concern in voting, then why is it for salting sidewalks?

The level of hypocrisy on display here is stunning, Mamdani’s insistence that illegal aliens have a right to live in Gotham regardless of federal law absolutely implies that he believes these people can and should be able to be employed. But not for the city?

Zany Zohran would happily encourage you or I to hire an illegal worker and face the potential federal penalties for doing so. He would celebrate it, in fact. So why can’t he buck the very system he now controls to give them a shot at snow removal gigs?

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The difference, of course, is that if the mayor or his administration breaks the law, they would be the ones facing criminal penalties, and obviously we can’t have that.

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The reason that somewhere around 85% of Americans support voter ID is that it’s just a no-brainer. Showing ID is a basic part of our everyday lives, even if Democrats condescendingly suggest that people with certain skin tones struggle with it.

The ludicrous nature of this argument is completely exposed when Zohran gets up at a podium and tells people not to forget their ID if they want to shovel snow, without batting an eye, as if he was eating rice with his hands, or calling someone racist.

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But today, the racist shoe is on the other foot and Mamdani should be ashamed of himself. How many families of the undocumented, or the Americans who somehow can’t get ID, will go hungry because of this monster?

Grow a spine, Zohran. You talk the talk on illegal immigrants working in New York, it’s about time you walked the walk.

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Jimmy Lai is risking everything for democracy. We can’t ignore what China is doing

For those who speak of the global perils to democracy, a grim milestone deserves their rapt attention and full-throated condemnation: The Feb. 9 sentencing in a Chinese court of Hong Kong dissident Jimmy Lai.

In the imagination of the Chinese Communist Party, Lai’s sentencing closes the book on a troublesome man: a Catholic, a publisher, a democrat. Lai, 78 and in failing health, was condemned under the elastic logic of the Beijing-imposed National Security Law, and is meant to disappear quietly into history.

We must hope that Lai’s story instead endures as an indictment of China’s regime.

Not for violence, espionage or corruption. Lai’s crime was to have run a newspaper, Apple Daily, that gave coverage to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and reported critically on the city’s Beijing-appointed overseers.

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Lai’s severe 20-year sentence is designed to teach a lesson: that in today’s Hong Kong, conscience is subversion; that loyalty to truth is treason; that even peaceful dissent will be crushed without apology.

Lai came to Hong Kong as a penniless refugee. He began life as a child laborer before eventually becoming a garment tycoon. He gave away his successful business, the popular Giordano retail brand, to build a newspaper to defend the liberties that made his life possible. Lai could have fled China’s takeover of Hong Kong, but chose to stay, reasoning: “If I don’t stand up, who will?”

The manner in which Lai’s case has been conducted is morally obscene. He has been denied the right to choose his own legal counsel. His lawyers have been harassed. His newspaper was shuttered by force. His staff were arrested, his assets frozen. The sentencing merely formalizes a persecution that has been ongoing for some time.

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Jimmy’s daughter, Claire, shared with me a list of the books Jimmy has been reading in custody. They are not light diversions. They are dense, demanding theological works—Augustine, Aquinas, Guardini, Ratzinger, Francis, Van Thuan (himself a prisoner of communist Vietnam). These are the companions of a man seeking not comfort, but endurance.

Jimmy’s relationship with Claire reminds me of another imprisoned conscience: St. Thomas More, locked in the Tower of London for refusing to betray his faith and flatter an autocrat. More’s letters to his daughter Meg are among the most luminous prison writings in Western tradition — tender, playful, disciplined and utterly free.

More, of course, became one of history’s most enduring symbols of resistance to despotic repression. We must hope the same becomes true of Jimmy Lai.

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The Chinese Communist Party insists that Lai’s case is an internal matter, beyond the concern of the international community. But Hong Kong’s autonomy was guaranteed by treaty. Its freedoms were promised to the world. The destruction of its rule of law is not domestic housekeeping; it is a breach of trust with global consequences.

And its chilling effect will extend far beyond Lai’s prison cell. Journalists and teachers will self-censor. Priests will wonder which homily might cross an invisible line. Students will learn not how to argue, but how to survive.

The manner in which Lai’s case has been conducted is morally obscene. He has been denied the right to choose his own legal counsel. His lawyers have been harassed. His newspaper was shuttered by force.

This is the logic of totalitarianism: it does not need to imprison everyone. It only needs to imprison the right people — publicly, brutally and decisively, so the rest internalize the lesson.

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That is why protest against Lai’s sentence cannot be ritualistic or half-hearted. It must be sustained and morally vigorous. Western governments cannot content themselves with statements of “concern.” They must treat this as a defining test and respond accordingly: public, high-level advocacy. Real diplomatic pressure. Support for Hong Kong’s exiled journalists and institutions.

There is reason — however fragile — for hope. President Donald Trump has taken a vocal interest in Lai’s case and is expected to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping in April. Place not one’s trust in princes, the Psalms tell us, but history often unexpectedly turns on such moments.

In my conversations with Jimmy over the years, what always struck me was not anger, but joy. Not bitterness, but gratitude. He spoke about freedom as a gift. He spoke about faith as a relationship. He never imagined himself a hero. He simply refused to betray what he had seen.

History is full of such figures: men and women whom regimes tried to bury, only to discover they had planted seeds.

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The sentence imposed on him should not be remembered as an act of strength, but as a confession of weakness.

Because if Jimmy Lai is remembered — if his name is spoken, his case defended, his courage honored — then a prison cell cannot contain his legacy.

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But if Jimmy Lai is forgotten, Hong Kong could be finished as a symbol of hope for future democracy in China.

The regime will write its sentence. History will write the verdict.

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DAVID MARCUS: Memo to Bono: Please shut up and go away

I regret to inform you that Bono, the aging Irish pop star and front man for the band U2, is at it again, lecturing us poors as he always does. This time, it’s about supposedly fascist efforts by the Trump administration to arrest and deport illegal immigrant criminals.

This week, the band, which hasn’t produced a relevant song since the invention of the iPod, released the single “American Obituary,” meant to be a searing protest anthem against President Donald Trump, but actually a ditty just as flaccid as all of Bono’s mailed-in outrage-of-the-day efforts.

Take this profound line:

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Did it happen near a tree? Did she know how to ski? And does Dr. Seuss know that Bono is raiding his notebooks?

This prancing clown has taken an incredibly fraught and complicated situation in Minneapolis, where a federal agent shot and killed Good, and made it seem like murder. However, Bono doesn’t bother to mention that Good was hitting the officer with her car when she was shot.

Not exactly a minor detail.

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No, instead of anything remotely resembling the truth, Bono is stoking anger in America at the behest of the billionaires who sign his checks, produce his Muzak, and hate Trump with the power of a thousand SpaceX launches.

Honestly, it has been enough. For 40 years Bono has parroted every lefty billionaire’s cause, been wrong about most of them, flown around on private jets while complaining about carbon emissions and just generally been annoying.

At every Clinton Global Initiative Gala, there’s Bono. Every conference on global warming, every scam “feed the children” campaign run by the U.N. that mostly enriches African warlords, yep, there’s Bono.

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It is not a stretch to say that Bono’s primary job and role in the universe for decades now has been to be the poster child of global liberalism, with all the smarmy smugness that comes with it.

He’s sure as hell not a contemporary musical artist in any meaningful sense of the word. People attend his shows to hear songs from the 1980s, not new releases.

Remember when Apple forced everyone to own the latest U2 album by having it automatically download on devices?

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That happened because nobody actually wanted the latest U2 album. If people wanted it, they would not have given it to us, they’d have made us buy it.

This tells us something very important about the incentive structures that exist for our celebrities, and perhaps, why so many of them, the vast majority, in fact, regularly spout off lefty talking points.

Compare the treatment of Bono to his Brit pop star contemporary Morrissey, whose upcoming album “Make-up Is A Lie”  took years for any record label to release, even with extremely high demand, because it confronts Islamic terrorism and defends Western values.

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Morrissey has famously never bent the knee to the record industry when told what to say or when to shut up. Bono lives on that knee, lives off of that knee, and is likely too set in his ways to ever stand up again.

What message does this send to every musical performer, actor or filmmaker in the world? It says, “Push the progressive Soros agenda or else.” You can be rich and famous or you can challenge the left’s holy truths, not both.

Bono is now trying to airlift in as Gen Z’s Bob Dylan, to be the toast of the campus protests and an important and significant musical artist again. But it’s just so obvious that he is going through the motions with fake moral outrage and a new cheesy ballad.

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In the name of love, I am imploring Bono to just finally shut the hell up. We can all make our political judgments with or without you, and honestly, after decades of your puerile pontifications, the latter would be preferable.

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The protest music of the 1960s was important because it was organic. It was of a piece with the sounds of that culture itself. Bono’s neoliberal rehashing bears no resemblance to the fiery anger, the Palestinian flags, and the Black Bloc Antifa crews of 2026 anti-government agitation.

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His song is nothing but a puff piece.

For whatever reason, for 40 years, Bono has been made the pope of pop culture, its moral arbiter and yardstick. He has always been terrible at it, and it is time for his tepid rule to end.

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DR MARC SIEGEL: RFK Jr and David Kessler are right to take on Big Food

Former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may seem like unlikely bedfellows, but not when you consider that they share a common enemy: ultra-processed foods. 

Both have openly declared war on these highly addictive, unhealthy products, which range from 4,000 to 10,000 ingredients, making them difficult to regulate.

Both believe that at the heart of the enormous health crisis (people in the U.S. get half of their calories from ultra-processed foods) is the 1958 law that allows food manufacturers to decide what’s safe for people to eat — the “Generally Recognized as Safe,” or GRAS, designation — a self-fulfilling prophecy that allows food makers to “innovate to meet consumer demand.” 

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It’s seen by critics as a surefire recipe for addiction, backed by the Consumer Brands Association.

RFK Jr. says ultra-processed food manufacturers have hijacked the GRAS “loophole” to use questionable ingredients. This so-called self-regulation is the equivalent of a race car company deciding the proper speed limit for a public highway.

There is increasing evidence that ultra-processed foods are linked to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, dementia, heart disease and precancerous colon polyps. Kessler told me this past week he would like to see these products studied further to better define their downstream “metabolic effects” on major organs. The results of these studies would provide further ammunition to fight these unhealthy products.

What do I mean by ultra-processed foods? These include cereals, snacks, sweetened beverages, cookies, frozen foods, sauces and hot dogs and also food products made with artificial flavors, colors, preservatives and chemicals designed to improve texture and shelf life. They are often high in added salt and hyper-concentrated sugars, including high-fructose corn syrup.

Artificial colors and exotically engineered flavors draw you in, and sugar addiction keeps you there. As Kessler outlined in his book, “Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine,” and as Secretary Kennedy knows well as a former opioid addict, ultra-processed foods can act on the brain in ways similar to certain drugs. A dependency can form because of the dopamine response triggered by these high-calorie foods and their interaction with opioid receptors.

 According to the World Health Organization, nearly 1 billion people worldwide are obese, and ultra-processed foods are a big part of the problem.

This problem isn’t confined to the United States. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 1 billion people worldwide are obese, and ultra-processed foods are a big part of the problem.

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What is the answer? The first step is Kessler’s petition to the FDA to reconsider the health risks of “refined processed carbohydrates” and revoke their GRAS status. The effort is gaining traction as Kennedy considers taking action to close the GRAS loophole.

Kessler told me that if the petition gains traction, he will next ask for bipartisan hearings before Congress, where food manufacturers can attend and testify about their products under a legislative spotlight.

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But what may help most of all is the spotlight Kennedy and the MAHA movement are placing on whole food alternatives, foods that look, smell and taste like food and food that comes from the ground and is grown, fished or hunted, not products engineered in a lab as part of a profit-driven manufacturing process.

Since food can be medicine, imagine how many billions of dollars could be saved in healthcare costs with a slimmer, more vital population that is less reliant on chemically engineered foods and on a sick-care system to keep it alive.

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Five important reasons why the Trump economy is about to really blast off

If you’re struggling to make sense of the economy today, you’re not alone. Many so-called experts completely whiffed their forecasts, while positive economic data — the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 50,000 points — seemingly contradicts negative survey responses. But understanding five key elements reveals we’re about to be off to the races.

First, 2025 was a year of transition for the economy. Under Democrat President Joe Biden, particularly his last two years in office, job growth was disproportionately due to government hiring. Similarly, government purchases played an outsized role in growing overall economic activity, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).

President Donald Trump turned off those spigots, slamming the brakes on government spending growth and firing a record number of bureaucrats at the federal level. Shrinking the unproductive public sector while growing the private sector is a welcomed change, but it initially shows us as a negative in many economic metrics.

Shrinking the federal workforce and cutting wasteful government spending subtracts from the overall job numbers and GDP, respectively. Just as Biden was able to boost these figures with government largesse at taxpayer expense, now cutting the bloat drags down the headline numbers. Nevertheless, it’s a positive change.

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The second element is the distinction between inflation and prices. You can think of inflation as how fast you’re driving down the highway, and prices as the mile markers on the side of the road. Your speed (the inflation rate) can stay constant at 60 miles per hour, and the mile markers (prices) will keep going up, at a rate of one per minute.

But now let’s say your speed drops by half, to 30 miles per hour. The mile markers keep going up, but now it’s only once every two minutes. This is like prices going up more slowly when the inflation rate drops. If you come to a complete stop, your speedometer hits zero, and the mile markers don’t go up at all. That’s zero inflation.

But notice that the mile markers aren’t going down even when there’s no inflation. That’s nearly where we’re at today, with real-time inflation metrics like Truflation showing an inflation rate well below 1%, about as good as it gets outside of a recession.

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The problem today is not the rate of inflation but how bad inflation was for the four years under Biden, which caused prices to skyrocket. People are not mad about inflation right now, but that prices aren’t coming back down. To make that happen, we need Congress to make serious cuts in both spending and to bureaucratic red tape.

Even if Congress doesn’t act, the good news is that income growth is helping solve the problem, albeit more slowly, and that’s the third element which has changed significantly in the economy.

Under Biden, wages grew substantially, but prices rose much more rapidly. The average American’s weekly paycheck, adjusted for inflation, shrank 4% during those four years. But with inflation so much lower now during the Trump administration, the average American’s weekly paycheck buys about 2% more than when he was inaugurated.

That tells us two very important facts: things are getting better, but we also haven’t regained all the lost ground from the Biden years.

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Emblematic of these two facts is the fourth element to understand, which is federal finance. Because the economy is growing faster, tax receipts to the Treasury are up 11.8% this fiscal year, compared to the same months in the prior fiscal year — which were the last four months of the Biden administration.

Shrinking the unproductive public sector while growing the private sector is a welcomed change, but it initially shows us as a negative in many economic metrics.

On the spending side of the ledger, outlays rose just 1.9%, causing the federal deficit to fall 17.0% — tremendous progress in just a year! Again, this doesn’t mean the government’s finances are sunshine and rainbows, but they’re not doom and gloom either. We’re not where we want to be yet, but we are absolutely improving.

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That brings us to the final element: investment. Between tax and regulatory cuts along with Trump’s trade negotiations, trillions of dollars in investment are pouring into the country. That will mean more factories, higher productivity and wages, more products and services, higher tax receipts to the Treasury and even lower inflation, if not lower prices.

That’s all incredibly bullish and paints a picture of an economy that has just rounded the turn and will soon blast down the straight. After years in the doldrums, the finish line of prosperity is fully in sight.

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I was a child and believed gender transition would heal my pain; it became a new trauma

In medicine, there are moments when speed is not only appropriate but lifesaving. A patient in cardiac arrest cannot wait for medical attention. A child victim of a car wreck cannot afford debate around pulling her from the car. Doctors are trained to move quickly in true emergencies, where delay costs blood and oxygen. Speed in those moments is a true expression of care. 

What I’ve had to wrestle with in detransition is how my gender dysphoria was treated with such unrelenting urgency that it became a manufactured emergency.

At age 11, I discovered the darkest corners of the internet. In these chatrooms, I was sexually groomed by adult strangers who used my love for art against me. I made friends with other little girls on art forums around the same time, many of whom had similar experiences. One such girl began identifying as transgender. She told me she felt like “a boy trapped in a girl’s body.”

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We both liked to cosplay, wearing costumes and makeup to help us look like our favorite characters. Sometimes, we brainstormed characters of our own, coming up with all sorts of names and faces. Trans identity was very similar to this ritual, except the characters were ourselves. It let us take our hard experiences —i n my case, loss of innocence — and turn them into something neat. 

When medical professionals got involved and affirmed our pretend with medicine, “neat” became “streamlined.” The culture began to shift dramatically, and everywhere I turned, I was told that the discomfort I felt in my own skin was not the product of instability at home or adolescence or even trauma. It was proof I was transgender, and I needed to convince everyone around me, lest I die.

I was a child. I didn’t have the tools nor the mental capacity to interrogate these claims. What unsettles me now, at age 23, isn’t how I “bent gender” through costume like the rock star Prince. It’s how quickly adults with credentials validated bunk narratives and led me to medicalize my biological sex as a teen.

I was convinced the hormones and surgeries doctors gave me were carefully considered, evidence-based and even lifesaving. Yet, anyone who has followed the stories of detransitioners knows that the risks are substantial: internal bleeding, chronic pain, tissue death, infertility, loss of sexual function, challenging pregnancy. These are not rare events, either. Most people who traverse this path experience myriad side effects, unsurprising, given we’re amputating healthy body parts and shocking our endocrine systems with hormone surgery.

On February 11, the Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in part of my case against the providers who facilitated my medical transition. One of my attorneys articulated what has felt obvious to me for years: Accountability for doctors does not vanish because a patient “wanted it.”

My experience was no exception. My drain-free “top surgery” resulted in massive complications, forcing me to seek help in the emergency room while my original surgeons completely dismissed me. It was there, lying under the fluorescent lights, that clarity began to break through the fog. The surgery that had been presented as the solution to my distress had become its own trauma.

The emergency I had been warned about was never my original body. The emergency was what had been done to it. 

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For years, aesthetic alterations in the name of “gender-affirming care” were seen as therapeutic treatments. Surgeons began removing body parts and “creating” new ones without sustained, if any, exploration of underlying causes. What was this child’s home life like? Are they on too many medications? What could we do to treat their depression that isn’t as drastic as surgery? These questions were too often bypassed in favor of easier affirmation. 

We know the tides are turning for the general public. Still, many activists struggle to admit they’re losing grip. Media coverage often includes a familiar refrain that major medical institutions still recommend “gender-affirming care.” The implication is that dissent must therefore be fringe. But that consensus is fracturing. International reviews, evolving guidelines and legal scrutiny tell a more complicated story than headlines suggest.

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Both the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association have issued statements signaling concern about gender surgeries on minors, an acknowledgment that should have come long before irreversible practice became normalized. 

While mainstream medical institutions seem to be reconsidering their stances, top Democrat officials have reintroduced the so-called Transgender Bill of Rights. The timing is striking. We already have civil rights protections in this country, protections based on sex, race, color and creed. 

Equal protection under the law does not require redefining medicine or compelling doctors to ignore blatant risk. When sweeping new federal guarantees are proposed in the middle of mounting medical malpractice cases, it begins to look less like necessity and more like virtue signaling.

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On Feb. 11, the Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in part of my case against the providers who facilitated my medical transition. One of my attorneys, John Ramer, articulated what has felt obvious to me for years: Accountability for doctors does not vanish because a patient “wanted it.” During arguments, it was difficult to miss that even the defense doesn’t believe its own words.

Like most people, I don’t take joy in the process of litigation. I didn’t set out to become a plaintiff or to get rich quick. But when an industry moves at emergency speed absent an emergency and irreversible interventions are offered to adolescents facing temporary pain, someone has to make the call to let time run its course. 

True emergency medicine saves lives because it responds to objective danger. The physicians who treated my mastectomy complications in the emergency room were swift and conscientious. What’s happened in pediatric gender “care” is different. A generation of young people was told that discomfort requires surgical intervention; and their parents, teachers, and medical professionals were told that any form of hesitation would be lethal.

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I was taught that compassion meant affirming every belief I held about my body. What I’ve learned now is that compassion sometimes means restraint. It means asking hard questions. It means protecting children from decisions they cannot yet comprehend. 

The law now has an opportunity to examine what medicine rushed past. Speed can be merciful. But when speed overrides caution, reflection and evidence, it is no longer care. 

DAVID MARCUS: To burnish Trump’s legacy, we need to stop naming things after him

In 1839, not long before President Donald Trump’s favorite president, Andrew Jackson, died, an admirer offered him an ancient Roman sarcophagus, thought to have once held the remains of an emperor. 

Jackson declined the offer, saying, “My republican feelings and principles forbid it.” There may be a lesson here.

Since Trump returned to the White House just over a year ago, it seems like every single day something new is being named after him. The Kennedy Center, the Institute of Peace building, a new class of battleship, the Palm Beach airport and, who are we kidding, eventually the White House ballroom.

Meanwhile, a giant banner featuring Trump’s stern features was placed on the Department of Justice this week, not the first public building to be adorned with the visage of the president glaring down at us.

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It all seems to have gone a bit too far, but not for the reasons generally cited. Instead, the pure quantity of Trump-branded government buildings is starting to diminish the meaning and impact of all of them.

To be clear, there is no risk of a major political backlash from voters as Trump’s name and image get plastered around Washington like posters for a Dave Matthews Band concert. People who hate him call it “Dear Leader” fascism, and people who love him take selfies. Everyone else just shrugs and says, “Well, that’s Trump.”

Culturally, the question of whether naming everything after yourself is crass or unseemly is subjective and a matter of personal taste. As a priority to voters, it falls somewhere below good taste in music.

And, after all, every city has its John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. boulevards, though, in fairness, they were killed, which is a major advantage if your goal is getting stuff named after you.

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No, the real question is whether this avalanche of eponymous enterprises are burnishing, or diminishing, the president’s legacy, and in the far-seeing eyes of history, very often, less is more.

I get it. Trump spent his whole life making buildings grow out of the ground so he could slap his name on them, big as life and usually in gold. It is an admirable and very human impulse to leave something lasting.

The president was very good at leaving his mark. Trust me, I lived in New York City for 20 years, and you really can’t miss it. But now it turns out that all of that glass and steel is flimsy and impermanent compared to Trump the man, who, say what you will, will be spoken of and debated for centuries.

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It is not in flinty metal or in the cold plastic of physical reality where Trump’s true legacy must now be forged. Rather, it is in the invisible fire of the future, where the man, not the buildings, will be judged.

Trump has the immortality shot with his bold vision not just in America but around the globe. He stands to be the most consequential figure of the early 21st century. We don’t need to name every county courthouse and 1-95 rest stop after him.

Throwing your name up everywhere in giant fonts is actually exactly the kind of eccentric behavior that gets mocked for thousands of years. Like Caligula threatening to make his horse a consul of Rome, it will be used by many to suggest narcissistic mania in Trump, because it already is used that way.

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Trump is never going to be the modest Abe Lincoln type with the shawl and aw shucks, “Nobody will remember my speech,” attitude. That’s cool, his braggadocio is fun. But I don’t want to live in a world where I check my Trump watch to see if it’s time for a Trump burger on my way to Trump airport.

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As it turned out, “Old Hickory” Andrew Jackson would be buried in a plain pine box, though the ancient treasure he declined is still housed by the Smithsonian. And instead of paying homage to him through a marble masterpiece, we keep little pictures of him in our pockets.

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More importantly, our current commander in chief still draws on Jackson’s strength and values to this very day, fancy Roman sarcophagus or not.

The more things we name after Trump, the less it means, and the more it feels forced, when it needn’t be. Nobody, including Trump, has to convince us that he is a figure of historical magnitude. Seeing that advertised again and again starts to make it all seem a little bit cheapened.

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BROADCAST BIAS: Idea of giving politicians equal time sends Colbert into a fury

Is the concept of “equal time” outdated on today’s broadcast networks? The Federal Communications Commission put regulations on the books in 1934 requiring equal air time for political candidates during an election season. But that doesn’t extend to cable, or to streaming, or to the booming podcast world. You could get technical and claim the broadcast networks often come to people today via cable or satellite connections, not an antenna.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently suggested late-night comedy shows and daytime talk shows like ABC’s “The View” could be evaluated for potential violations of the old equal-time rules. On Monday, Feb. 16, “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert gaudily announced that he invited Texas state Democrat Rep. James Talarico for an interview, but lawyers told him “in no uncertain terms” that he couldn’t do this, so he posted a Talarico interview on YouTube instead. When that YouTube video drew over 8 million views, it was painted by liberal journalists as a great victory over President Donald Trump. But Trump never objected to this interview.

Colbert had to unfurl the nightly rant about being a courageous dissident and all that rot: “Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV, OK? He’s like a toddler with too much screen time. He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diaper.”

Then, surprisingly, CBS put out a statement that suggested Colbert was a liar, that the interview was not banned: “The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett.” On Tuesday, Colbert sputtered. “They know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS’s lawyers.”

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Colbert wasn’t in danger of having to invite Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn. He might have to interview Crockett – who appeared on the show last year, before she was a candidate. This whole stunt could be painted as a campaign booster for Talarico, who raised millions of dollars off the appearance. 

Then came the weirdness of CBS News covering this spat, giving both sides equal time and weight. On Wednesday’s “CBS Mornings,” reporter Elaine Quijano ran the opposing views, and then added another liberal view: “Monday was the first known time a late night talk show changed its programming since the FCC issued its new guidance. Anna Gomez, the only Democratic-appointed FCC commissioner, worries that decision could enable censorship.”

The “PBS News Hour” also turned to Gomez for an attack on Trump and Carr: “Anything they don’t like, they want to control and they want to censor.” Defunded PBS still sounds bitter.

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The supreme irony in this entire kerfuffle is that Colbert represents the exact opposite of equal time. Overall, Alex Christy of NewsBusters reported that from September 2022 through Thursday, Colbert has brought on 230 liberal or Democrat guests, to only one Republican – and that Republican was former Rep. Liz Cheney after she was drummed out of office in a primary. So, let’s wink and say 231 to zero.

CBS could easily change the name of its late-night comedy show to “The People’s Republic of Colbert.” Anyone who wants to end their day by listening to a long interview with Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders is not looking for giggles. But that’s what viewers found on January 20. Colbert announced with fanfare that this was the 19th time he’d platformed Sanders.

This is not a “bona fide news interview,” if we’re going to use FCC lingo. It’s the lamest kind of “Sunset Semester” socialism session. “Define oligarchy for us” isn’t even a question. It’s a prompt.

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But Colbert also put this ball on the tee for Bernie:  “This is a red-letter day for you. Here you are administering the oath of office to Mayor Mamdani and I just—you’ve been fighting, you’ve been carrying the banner of democratic socialists for a long time. What was that like to swear in the first Democratic Socialist mayor of a major city?” He found it “extremely gratifying.”

When that YouTube video drew over 8 million views, it was painted by liberal journalists as a great victory over President Donald Trump. But Trump never objected to this interview.

It was the same situation with Talarico – two Democrats talking like Democrats. Colbert nudged: “It’s not the first time you’ve caused some drama. ‘FCC opening probe into “The View” after appearance by Talarico.’ Do you mean to cause trouble?”

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Overall, the late-night “comedy” show guest count in 2025 was overwhelmingly stacked: 99% of the political guests are liberals or Democrats. It’s the same on “The View.” In 2025, Whoopi & Co. interviewed 128 liberals or Democrats to two Republicans or sort of conservatives. Again, that’s being generous. The two are now former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was fulminating against Trump, and Cheryl Hines, who was forced into defending her husband, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

These are the shows that are the most passionately painting themselves as brave upholders of Democracy when they practice nothing of the sort. Only one side is worth hearing, and the other side is only worth smearing. 

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Mayors pushing for guaranteed income decry the dismantling of federal aid programs

The Mayors for a Guaranteed Income coalition decried the dismantling of federal aid programs in a news release published on Tuesday.

“At a time when key federal aid programs are being dismantled, state leaders are picking up the slack and bolstering economic stability for residents,” founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income Michael D. Tubbs said.

President Donald Trump has cut federal programs and seeks to dismantle the Department of Education. The Trump administration froze more than $10 billion in federal childcare and social services funding to five Democratic-led states amid concerns taxpayer dollars were improperly diverted to noncitizens, according to a report released in January.

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The organization said that state leaders are helping Americans struggling to “make ends meet” as the “affordability crisis” continues. The mayors claimed that state leaders are “bolstering economic stability for residents” through guaranteed income programs. 

“With data from nearly 30 city-led and county-led pilots, we have proof that guaranteed income policies help struggling families meet their basic needs, build savings for emergencies, seek better employment, and experience reduced stress,” Tubbs said in the statement. He went on to say, “As the affordability crisis continues to put pressure on household finances, this is a solution that lifts families up.” 

Guaranteed basic income programs have become a trend across the U.S. in recent years, with more than 100 pilots launched since 2018. Mayors for Guaranteed Income grew into a coalition of 150 mayors pushing pilot programs, offering low-income participants up to $1,000 a month with no strings attached. The group has pushed pilot programs that have been adopted by municipalities across the country. 

Most notably, Cook County, Illinois, the second-largest county in the U.S., established a permanent guaranteed basic income program after the success of a previous pilot version. The program launched in 2022 with the aid of federal COVID-19 relief funds.

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“Guaranteed income policies, which provide recurring, unconditional cash payments to people in need, have been tested at the local level in hundreds of cities and counties across the nation,” Mayors for Guaranteed Income stated in the new release.

The group explained further that based on the evidence, its counterpart organization Legislators for a Guaranteed Income reported more than 20 bills in 11 states being proposed to establish some form of statewide guaranteed income program.

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More than 60 bills that would implement cash-based policies similar to guaranteed income have been floated in another 15 states.

Tubbs also founded the Counties for a Guaranteed Income and Legislators for a Guaranteed Income. He was the mayor of Stockton, California, from 2017 to 2021. 

“With data from nearly 30 city-led and county-led pilots, we have proof that guaranteed income policies help struggling families meet their basic needs, build savings for emergencies, seek better employment, and experience reduced stress,” Tubbs said in the statement. He went on to say, “As the affordability crisis continues to put pressure on household finances, this is a solution that lifts families up.” 

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JOHN YOO: Supreme Court tariff ruling should end complaints that justices favor Trump

The Supreme Court just struck down President Donald Trump’s worldwide tariffs. Contrary to immediate takes on the opinion, Learning Resources v. Trump does not mark a permanent reduction in presidential power. If he chooses, Trump could restore many of his tariffs over the next year under different laws. But Learning Resources should put to bed the left’s attacks on the court and the Constitution, while also highlighting the need for cooperation between the president and Congress in managing foreign affairs.

Writing for a 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts reaffirmed two basic constitutional principles. First, he wrote that the Constitution vests the power to impose tariffs and taxes in Congress alone. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that “Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposes and Excises,” and “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” Second, Congress can delegate that power to the president. Congress has enacted a series of trade laws that have. There was no real disagreement among any of the justices on these two fundamental points.

Where the justices divided is whether Congress had given the president the power to impose the unique, worldwide, immediate tariffs that he imposed last year. On Liberation Day, April 2025, Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to set targeted tariffs not only on Canada, Mexico and China, but also a universal tariff of at least 10% on all imports. Roberts, joined by a rare coalition of three conservative justices (himself, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett) and three liberal justices (Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson), held that IEEPA did not grant the executive the power to impose tariffs.

The majority unduly narrowed the reach of IEEPA. IEEPA grants the power to the president, in the event of an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to American national security, foreign policy or the economy from abroad, to investigate, block, “regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit” economic transactions with another country.

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Trump declared that the large trade deficit created a national emergency; the court did not touch this aspect of the president’s tariff orders. Instead, the court held that because Congress did not include the specific word “tariff” in IEEPA’s list of powers, it had not granted this power to the executive.

“The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” Roberts writes. “IEEPA’s grant of authority to ‘regulate … importation’ falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties.”

This reading pays no attention to the way that the United States has used IEEPA and its predecessor statute, the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. The government, and the lower courts, have long understood the power to “regulate” trade to include the power to impose a complete embargo on hostile nations, such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea.

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IEEPA’s reference to the powers to “regulate” and “prevent” “importation” of foreign goods is quite sufficient to justify the president in imposing tariffs. Indeed, if sufficiently high, tariffs are simply a tool to “prevent or prohibit” such “importation.”

Nevertheless, Learning Resources will not prevent Trump from succeeding in the end. The decision only says that the administration cannot impose tariffs under the IEEPA statute. But Congress has enacted several trade laws that clearly grant the president the power to impose tariffs.

Going by the nicknames of Section 232, Section 301, and Super 301, among others, these laws allow the executive to impose reciprocal tariffs in response to high tariffs on American goods, to sanction unfair trade practice by other countries, or to address a surge of imports in a specific product. And trade law still allows tariffs on specific countries that pose a national security threat to the United States. The Supreme Court did not touch those powers, and, as Trump made clear in his press conference, he intends to re-enact as many of his tariffs as possible under these other laws.

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Beyond the technical reading of trade statutes, and its impact on Trump’s economic policies, Learning Resources bears deeper lessons on our constitutional order.

First, the decision belies the attacks from the left that the Supreme Court – particularly its conservative majority – simply rubber stamps the Trump administration’s policies. Here, two of Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch and Barrett, joined Chief Justice Roberts, himself appointed by President George W. Bush, in striking down the Trump tariffs.

The government, and the lower courts, have long understood the power to “regulate” trade to include the power to impose a complete embargo on hostile nations, such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea.

They were joined by the three justices appointed during the Obama and Biden administrations. These justices did not decide the case because they agree or disagree with tariffs or like or dislike Trump. They simply voted because of the way that they read the IEEPA statute’s lack of the word “tariff.”

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Second, Learning Resources denies the left’s cries of wolf that the United States is falling under an authoritarian regime. Learning Resources demonstrates, again, that the separation of powers continues to work.

Congress alone has the power to impose tariffs and taxes as part of its overall power of the purse. It can delegate that power to the president; and it has. But when existing statutes are silent, Congress retains the constitutional power to set tariff rates. Trump did not claim a right to impose tariffs unilaterally under his executive power; he continuously argued that Congress simply had given him that power in IEEPA. Even if he reimposes tariffs, he will have to use other trade laws enacted by Congress. Using delegated powers according to the terms set out by Congress does not amount to authoritarianism.

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Lastly, Learning Resources points the way for future cooperation between the president and Congress. The dissenters –Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh – argued that the court should have read IEEPA broadly in order to allow the president to conduct foreign policy and protect the national security. While the president bears the constitutional responsibility to address foreign threats and advance the nation’s interests abroad, the Constitution vests in Congress the means of international economics.

In order to achieve the nation’s interests in restoring dominance in the Western Hemisphere or fending over the rising threat of China, the president and Congress will have to cooperate to ensure that economic policy plays a harmonious role in a full-spectrum American approach to the world.

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DAVID MARCUS: Hospitals stop transing kids now that the myth has fallen apart

In what would have been a stunning announcement just a few years ago, Langone Medical Center, a New York City giant in the healthcare industry, has announced it will stop providing surgery and hormone treatments for children confused about their gender.

This comes after years of the medical establishment insisting that surgery on minors is very rare and “needed” only in extreme cases.

Last year, Harvard School of Public Health published an article titled “Gender-affirming Surgeries Rarely Used on Transgdender Youth,” which conveniently did not include the actual number of children who have had such procedures.

This was in the article written by the co-author of the cited study: “Our findings suggest that legislation blocking gender-affirming care among TGD youth is not about protecting children, but is rooted in bias and stigma against TGD identities and seeks to address a perceived problem that does not actually exist.”

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Follow that? The people who don’t want to chop up kids based on their gender delusions don’t actually care about kids, the people who really care about kids are the ones wielding the scalpels, even while claiming the procedures are rare.

It’s the old, “It’s not happening, you’re crazy. Okay, it happens, but very rarely. Okay, it happens a lot, but it’s a good thing.”

Far less rare, though, are hormone therapies for children, such as puberty blockers, which Langone will also cease to provide. Importantly, they will continue to provide mental health services for gender dysphoria, which is, of course, the proper way to treat someone who thinks they are trapped in the wrong body.

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The catalyst here, for Langone and other major medical centers nationwide, is not just the threat of legislation and regulation, which most have cited. It is also a recent court decision in New York in which a detransitioner won a $2 million lawsuit against the doctors who removed her breasts as a child.

The verdict was a shot across the bow of every clinic in the country that uses surgeries, or potentially even hormones in transgender treatment for kids. They could be sued into total oblivion.

But honestly, it’s a fair test. A doctor performing unalterable surgery on a child because they are as confused as the kid about how gender works should pay a price.

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The mere fact that people do come to regret trans surgery is itself proof that it should not be within a mile of children.

Even the old hostage-taking argument that if we don’t medically alter trans kids they will commit suicide, with activists and doctors asking frightened parents if they want a trans kid or a dead kid, turned out to be a lie.

In fact, last year, at a Supreme Court hearing on banning trans treatments for kids, activist and attorney Chase Strangio made just that damning admission when Justice Samuel Alito asked him if the literature clearly shows greater suicide in trans kids.

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Strangio flat out admitted it did not, saying, “There is no evidence in some – in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide.”

As our society emerges from this bizarre trans fever dream, and returns to the ancient and clear fact that men are men and women are women, it is becoming clear just how flimsy every aspect of it has been.

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The American people were never given a rational explanation for how suddenly men could become women, because there isn’t one. Credentialed experts just declared it and to question it made one a bigot.

MAJOR MEDICAL ORGANIZATION URGES DELAYING YOUTH GENDER SURGERIES

If, as the medical establishment insists, transgender medical treatment of kids is so rare as to not be an issue, then there should be no problem in ending the programs and finding better treatment options until a child reaches maturity.

The left’s argument isn’t about what makes sense, or even what is best for the children. This is really about affirming the delusions of adults who want the whole world to play pretend with them.

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Some positive news here is that the backlash to Langone’s sensible decision has thus far been fairly muted. At least for now, the proponents of transgender for everyone, as President Donald Trump puts it, are decidedly on the back heel.

But this is no time to give up. Saving kids from medical procedures based on delusions is a great first step, but what we really have to do is ensure the delusions are not encouraged in the first place.

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Trump’s economic wins cancel out Biden’s losses in latest jobs report

The “experts” were wrong yet again as the January jobs report smashed expectations with every metric beating forecasts. 

Payrolls were up a whopping 130,000, almost twice what the economy needs to cover population growth. Even better, the labor force grew by almost 400,000 as more people decided to look for work and the number of people saying they were employed jumped by more than half a million. That was enough to force the unemployment rate back down to 4.3%.

There was more good news on the workweek. Hours worked rose, which predicts future hiring. It’s also a result of people exchanging multiple part-time jobs for better-paying full-time work. Sure enough, we saw a 450,000 drop in part-timers who couldn’t find full-time work, while the dreaded U-6 underemployment (which even includes people who’ve given up on finding a job altogether) crashed by 600,000 people.

Even manufacturing rose, hopefully breaking a trend that started three years ago in the middle of the Biden administration. Construction jumped by 33,000 last month, driven by factory development. This trend could continue as factory building surges under President Donald Trump.

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One of the biggest gains was average hourly earnings, which grew 5% annualized. That’s close to twice official inflation — it’s actually six times inflation according to Truflation’s current numbers. 

That’s a stark contrast to the Biden years when prices outpaced wage growth. Under President Joe Biden, the average American’s weekly paycheck, adjusted for inflation, actually shrunk 4%. Trump’s made half of that back in his first year alone.

Previous economic data pointed to a lot of labor market weakness, at least on paper, because of factors like deportations and federal government layoffs — which are counted as jobs. There’s also Biden’s zombie cronies — private businesses that got government-backed loans for projects that were never going to be economically viable or profitable — going bust, and slower federal spending compared to the Biden spending orgy. Meanwhile, the factors that boost jobs, like Federal Reserve rate cuts and trillions of dollars in new factories, all take time.

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Well, this job report says we’re going from the pain to the gain. The private sector added a whopping 172,000 jobs while government shrunk by 42,000. You have to go all the way back to 1966 — an incredible six decades ago — to find a time when the federal bureaucracy was smaller than it is today.

That’s not to say it’s all rosy. There was a much-anticipated massive downward revision of almost 900,000 jobs from the notorious Bureau of Labor Statistics, covering the 12-month period ending with March 2025, so that’s the last 10 months of Biden and the first two months of Trump. It turns out that during Biden’s last year, job growth was overestimated by more than a million fake jobs.

The culprit is the BLS’s so-called birth-death models of company formation that use data from the COVID-19-era explosion of millions of fake businesses set up to steal federal money they were handing out like candy, from the Somali-run “Quality Learing Center” on down.

The other concern is AI. For a year we’ve been warning about a two-speed job market where blue-collar jobs grow from deportations and investments in new factories but white-collar work, especially at the entry level, gets slammed as AI draws closer to replacing cubicle jobs in finance, consulting, IT, journalism and more.

In fact, January finance lost 22,000 jobs — down almost 50,000 since last May. IT was roughly flat this month, but down 90,000 since its post-COVID peak. Journalists lost 12,000 last month — down 300,000 since the post-COVID peak.

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There was more good news on the workweek. Hours worked rose, which predicts future hiring. It’s also a result of people exchanging multiple part-time jobs for better paying full-time work. 

Meanwhile, construction was up 33,000 last month — driven by factory construction. Manufacturing added 5,000 and will hopefully gain steam in the months and years ahead as those factories are completed and hire workers to make products.

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This kind of Robin Hood job market is a welcome change from 40 years of blue-collar slaughter where bad trade deals and automation fired workers in manufacturing.

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Still, considering most American jobs are white collar, there’s millions at risk, if only in the short run. Technological improvement always ends up creating more jobs in new industries than it eliminates, but the losses show up first, and AI-induced layoffs should start to become apparent later this year.

Overall, the job market is picking up, and it should accelerate with onshoring factories, investment, and Fed rate cuts. The question becomes: can the onshoring and rate cuts soak up AI displaced workers? If not, then we need more from Congress — specifically, cutting tax burdens and regulatory red tape for small business that employs 62 million Americans — half the population — and could employ tens of millions more if bureaucrats get off their backs.

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When an ‘A’ means average, even Harvard has a problem — and they know it

Last year, the average GPA for Harvard University’s Class of 2025 was 3.83. That’s not a typo.

At Harvard, one of the world’s most selective colleges, the average student graduating in 2025 had a 3.83 GPA on a 4.0 scale. That meant that the typical student received an A or A-minus in nearly every class they took.

Harvard has plenty of company. Yale’s average GPA was a similarly laughable 3.7 in 2023, with nearly 80 percent of grades in the A to A-minus range. Public universities boosted grades by 17 percent between 1990 and 2020. And, in K-12 schooling, grades keep going up even though test scores haven’t.

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This phenomenon is known as grade inflation, and it’s a big problem. Colleges claim that they’re teaching students critical, essential skills. That’s how they justify those pricey tuition bills and hefty taxpayer subsidies. But how seriously can we take such claims when they’ve ceased setting a consequential bar for student work?

A meaningful education rests on high expectations and a sense of shared purpose. When students receive A’s for mediocre work, hard work starts to seem like a sucker’s bet. The result is that students and teachers drift into convenient cosplay, with professors pretending to teach and students pretending to learn. That’s how you wind up with students reporting that they haven’t been tasked with writing anything more than five pages. With students increasingly delegating their essays to AI and grumbling if they’re asked to read more than 10 pages a week for a class. With Harvard students breaking down in tears when told they may have to start attending class. Professors at elite colleges have grown reluctant to ask students to read whole books. Even film professors have largely given up on assigning complex films because they don’t think students will bother to sit through them. The number of students who qualify for disability accommodations, such as extra time on tests, has risen exponentially at elite schools.

This is what happens when standards and expectations collapse. Tougher grading isn’t a one-off fix to this problem, but it’s a healthy start.

That’s why it’s promising to finally see Harvard take grade inflation seriously. Last week, a faculty committee proposed capping A’s at 20 percent of grades per class. Since A’s constitute the lion’s share of grades issued at Harvard, such a cap would be a stark corrective. The university’s faculty appear to be tentatively supportive of the recommendations, which they’ll vote on later this spring.

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Faculty support may surprise some readers. After all, aren’t professors the ones inflating the grades? Yep, they sure are. But what outsiders may not appreciate is that these same faculty frequently say they feel like they have no alternative.

The same professors who give students A’s that they don’t deserve will quietly lament that they feel powerless to do anything else. It’s a collective action problem: There’s no incentive for an individual faculty member to try to hold the line. To do so is to invite tearful pleading from students, accusations of bias, and even angry texts from tuition-paying parents. Easy grades make students happy and a professor’s life easier.

Tough grading is also a recipe for lousy ratings on student course evaluations, which can come back to haunt faculty when it comes to tenure and promotion. That’s why so many professors would breathe a sigh of relief if Harvard “forced” them to grade more rigorously.

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There’s reason to question how successful Harvard is going to be. Two decades ago, Princeton University tried something similar, only to eventually give up due to student complaints that they were handicapped when competing against peers from rival colleges for jobs and graduate school admission. Indeed, Harvard students are already kvetching: Eighty-five percent oppose the proposal, with one student explaining, “It would create so much pressure where life wouldn’t be worth that much to live.” It may only be feasible for colleges to tackle grade inflation if they operate in concert.

Still, it’s heartening to see Harvard finally taking the issue seriously.

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It’s no coincidence that, after decades of studiously ignoring the problem, Harvard is finally taking action. While there’s plenty to second-guess about how the Trump administration has gone after Harvard and its peers, the pressure has sparked a new urgency about long-ignored problems. The administration’s proposed higher ed “compact,” issued last October, had its problems but also did much to elevate issues like grade inflation.

A quarter-century ago, Harvey “C-Minus” Mansfield, the iconic Harvard political theorist, started giving students two grades — one he thought they deserved and another “based on Harvard’s system of inflated grades.” It’d be a terrific turn if Harvard recommitted to rigor, if only so that professors who want to provide honest feedback no longer feel obliged to operate in the shadows.

I left California and I’m never going back — here’s why no parent should raise kids there

Last year, I left California to start my first full-time job elsewhere. At the time, I thought my move was temporary. Now, though, I’m sure: aside from a miraculous piece of divine intervention, I’m not moving back.

Of course, I’m not the only one. Young professionals like me are fleeing the state in droves, driven by the hope of better jobs, more affordable housing and better family environments elsewhere. 

For some reason, the prospect of paying over $2,000 each month to live in a 500-square-foot studio apartment for the rest of one’s life isn’t alluring to many. That’s especially true for a state like California, where it has become increasingly hard to find a job, any job, even as a college grad. California now suffers the nation’s highest unemployment rate — meaning it has the highest percentage of people who are looking for work but can’t find it.

As someone California-born and raised, those facts alone didn’t drive me to leave. I’m confident I could have found an in-state job and, as sad as it is to say, resigned myself to a lifetime of apartment living.

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So, if not the economy, what drove me to make my “temporary” move permanent? In part, the state’s absurd move under Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom to brand itself as Woke Central — but, more importantly, the horrific message it sends to kids. 

As someone who wants a family one day, I can’t imagine raising kids in Newsom’s California. 

At age 5, my child could begin receiving sex-ed instruction from her public school teacher.

In middle school, she would be required by law to take a pro-LGBTQ sex-ed class covering contraception, abortion, gender identity and other issues absent any religious discussion whatsoever. As a resource, she’d be encouraged to read “S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties,” a book including graphic descriptions of anal sex and bondage. 

At just 11 years old (or even younger), she could be secretly “gender transitioned” by her teachers without my knowledge (thanks to a 2024 law signed by Newsom). 

In high school, she would be forced to take yet another sex-ed class that, depending on her school, could be taught by Planned Parenthood itself.

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Of course, some of that could be avoided by either opting out or homeschooling (though each year, the state seems to make it even harder to do either). 

What’s more problematic is what you can’t opt out of: the state-sponsored culture of death that pervades the atmosphere.

As someone who wants a family one day, I can’t imagine raising kids in Newsom’s California. 

Newsom, like former Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris before him, seems to be crafting a presidential campaign centered on so-called “reproductive rights” — and he’s using California as his testing ground.

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Described by Planned Parenthood affiliates as a “champion” for their cause, Newsom has dedicated himself to making California a sanctuary state not just for illegal aliens, but for child murder. 

Newsom recently told Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill to “go f— yourself” when she attempted to extradite a California “doctor” who faces criminal charges for shipping deadly chemical abortion pills into Louisiana.

Last fall, Newsom announced $140 million in emergency funds for abortion facilities across the state to help keep them open following their loss of federal funding.

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And in January, state legislators announced they’d be handing abortion vendors another $90 million.

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While California does not require abortion reporting, estimates suggest that the state saw roughly 183,240 abortions in 2024 alone, with a full 31% of pregnancies — almost one in three — ending in abortion. That’s drastically higher than the nationwide abortion rate, which different sources place at between 17 and 25%.

A number that high, in which the lives of nearly one in three babies are intentionally ended by abortion, reflects a culture that devalues life and considers it disposable.

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At just 11 years old (or even younger), she could be secretly “gender transitioned” by her teachers without my knowledge (thanks to a 2024 law signed by Newsom). 

That same culture shows itself in California’s “assisted suicide” program. The state reports that 1,281 individuals received prescriptions for assisted suicide drugs in 2023, up from 293 in 2016, the first year of the program. The rate of other suicide is also up (though that’s true throughout the U.S.). Meanwhile, embryos — preborn children — created via IVF are being lost or destroyed all over the state even as Newsom allows an explosion of IVF tourism, buying babies and a U.S. footprint.

California’s woke agenda is bad, but in most cases, it can be avoided. What can’t be avoided is the state’s promotion of a culture that treats life as negotiable and disposable. That kind of environment is no place to raise a kid.

FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL: We have made America safer in just one year

On February 20, 2025, I had the honor of being confirmed as the ninth director of the FBI.

In that time, much has happened. Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the FBI and our partners at the state, local and federal level have helped deliver one of the safest periods America has seen in decades.

When I sat before the Senate for my confirmation, I promised to refocus the FBI on its core mission: crush violent crime and defend the homeland, strengthen transparency and rebuild public trust. One year in, my team and I have worked every day to turn those words into action. We delivered historic results.

From 2024 to 2025, the FBI saw a 197% increase in arrests, from 34,000 to 67,000. We disrupted 1,800 gangs and criminal enterprises, a 210% increase. Agents seized more than 2,100 kilos of deadly fentanyl — enough to kill 150 million Americans — up 31%. That mission also extended overseas, where my trip to Beijing resulted in a historic agreement to shut off the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals at the source, directly targeting the supply chains poisoning American communities. Arrests tied to Nihilistic Violent Extremism, including offenders who prey on children, rose 490%. More than 6,200 child victims were located, up 22%. Espionage arrests increased 35%. We captured six of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives in one year — two more than the entirety of the prior administration — a group collectively on the run for more than 50 years, including Ryan Wedding. Nationwide, the murder rate fell by a record 20%, a level not seen in a century.

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President Trump let good cops be cops while giving us the resources needed to execute the mission. The results speak for themselves.

But the success of this administration and this FBI goes well beyond the numbers. Over the last year, quiet but consequential transformations have taken place inside the Bureau — changes many Americans may never see on cable news or social media, but which have paid significant dividends.

From day one, we reoriented the FBI to meet modern threats with four clear priorities: Crush Violent Crime, Defend the Homeland, Restore Public Trust and enforce fierce organizational accountability. Under the prior administration, violent crime barely cracked the top 10 FBI priorities. Today, it is a central focus, which is why violent crime arrests doubled to more than 30,000 in 2025.

Shifting resources to defending the homeland helped us capture some of the most wanted criminals in the world: Nicholas Maduro, wanted by the Department of Justice for narco-terrorism; Mohammad Sharifullah, an alleged key ISIS operative in the Abbey Gate suicide bombing in Kabul; and Zubayr Al-Bakoush, a key coconspirator in the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans: Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. We also disrupted and stopped three separate terror plots during the holiday season, preventing potential mass-casualty attacks and ensuring Americans could celebrate safely.

To restore transparency and oversight, we produced more than 40,000 pages of documents to Congress in our first year alone, a level of disclosure that represents more than double the combined document production of my predecessors.

We reduced the Bureau’s dependence on bloated Washington, D.C., bureaucracy and put safety and security resources back into Main Street America. We moved 1,000 agents out of the National Capital Region into field offices across the country, with 1,000 more intelligence and support personnel to follow this year. We also ignited the advanced training facility at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, including the first-ever law enforcement counter-UAS training program.

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We restructured operations so that field offices no longer report through a single bottleneck at headquarters. Dividing offices into regional structures increased accountability and responsiveness to the public. We eliminated units that failed the mission, including the politicized CR-15 squad, removed personnel who acted unethically, and rebuilt leadership around results.

The FBI is now faster and more responsive, with a heavier focus on technology. We established the Director’s Strategic Information Center (DSIC), a fully overhauled information hub focused on proactive threat identification and 24/7 monitoring of critical incidents to dramatically improve response times. We also launched a Technology Working Group, led by Dan Bongino, to help strengthen national security infrastructure through artificial intelligence and enhanced biometric coordination with interagency partners. Rather than continuing a patchwork approach, we engaged private-sector partners to rebuild core systems and expanded the FBI’s leadership role in the National Counterintelligence Task Force to better coordinate efforts against hostile intelligence actors targeting the United States.

After decades of delay and excess, President Trump facilitated the deal to shut down the Hoover Building project. We canceled a minimum $5 billion taxpayer-funded plan that would not have opened for at least a decade and instead moved toward utilizing the existing Ronald Reagan Building, providing a safe and modern headquarters at a fraction of the cost to the American people.

Perhaps most importantly, we made it a top priority for field leaders to work hand in hand with state and local law enforcement. Last year, we created a series of Homeland Security Task Forces — historic partnerships with state officials focused on removing violent criminals from American streets. In Virginia, that effort resulted in nearly 600 arrests in just one month. We replicated this model in Memphis and Washington, D.C., under the President’s Task Force. In those two cities alone, violent crime is down 30%, while homicides are down nearly 70% in D.C. and 50% in Memphis. We also established the first-ever Law Enforcement Partner Engagement Council (LEPEC), giving local law enforcement a permanent seat at the table inside the FBI.

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By the numbers, President Trump’s FBI delivered a record year. But the institutional changes implemented over the last year go far beyond statistics, arrests, or headlines. We have rebuilt and remade the FBI into an organization designed to better serve the American people and keep the country safer for decades to come, alongside our partners at the Department of Justice who continue to prosecute bad actors and hold them accountable.

As for us, we will continue to put the Mission First.

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I need an expensive asthma drug to live. Trump’s RX plan helped me and many others

When President Donald Trump announced “TrumpRx” in early February, a weight I’ve carried my entire adult life suddenly lifted from my shoulders. The website offers life-saving medications at much lower prices than normal, based on the president’s promise to give Americans the same prescription drug costs as patients in other developed countries. I can personally attest that such equal treatment — a policy known as “most favored nation” pricing — is urgently needed for people who struggle with chronic disease.

I’ve had debilitating asthma since I was a child. I’ve been able to manage it thanks to a prescription drug which blocks lung inflammation and keeps my airways open. The few times I’ve gone off the medication, I’ve ended up in the emergency room, unable to breathe. That nearly happened four years ago in what I thought was the worst possible place — on the other side of the world, unable to contact my doctors or go to my pharmacy.

My family and I were in Italy, on a trip to honor my mother. She had recently been diagnosed with cancer and my brother and I scheduled the trip in between her chemo treatments, when she would be well enough to travel. She had always wanted to go there with us. But in our rush to get two families and three little kids packed, I accidentally grabbed a nearly empty inhaler.

I realized my mistake a few days into the trip, when I looked at the inhaler and saw that I only had two doses left. I wasn’t just worried about my health, though, of course, that was paramount. I worried how I’d afford the drug if I even found it in Italy.

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I’ve organized my professional life around access to insurance that covers my medication, given its longstanding retail price of $600 for a month’s supply. For 25 years, I’ve grappled with denied coverage letters, premium tier prescription charts and the constant worry that we would have to cut back on necessities to get my medication. At the time, in Italy, I was already paying a few hundred dollars a month for the drug — a lot, but a bargain compared to its normal price.

But I had no choice. I had to get my medication. After a few minutes of searching, I found an Italian pharmacy across town. I walked there immediately, trying to control my racing thoughts of what might happen. I knew that if I couldn’t get the drug, I couldn’t get safely back to the U.S.

Fifteen minutes later, in tears, I walked out, drug in hand. It cost me only 30 euros or about $35.

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At first, I was both relieved and grateful. But by the end of the day, I was scratching my head. Why was it $600 in the U.S. while Italians could get it for next to nothing? In the days that followed, I discovered that the answer is beyond complicated.

It’s affected by everything from a lack of price transparency to the meddling of middlemen who jack up costs. It’s also true that foreign countries have been negotiating the prices of prescription drugs for decades, forcing Americans to cover the enormous cost of pharmaceutical development while they pay far below market prices.

Whatever the reason, the system doesn’t work for Americans. Brand name prescription prices in the U.S. are more than four times higher than prices in other wealthy countries. As many as 18 million Americans have struggled to buy the prescriptions they need in recent years.

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I’m now using a generic version of the drug that costs significantly less. But that doesn’t change the fact that I, like many other Americans with chronic disease, have paid through the nose for decades on end, only to find the medication I needed in Italy for what seemed like pennies.

I wasn’t just worried about my health, though, of course, that was paramount. I worried how I’d afford the drug if I even found it in Italy.

Trump is fighting to fix this broken system. Before launching TrumpRx, he reached 16 deals with pharmaceutical companies to charge most-favored-nation prices. As a lifelong conservative, I’m typically uncomfortable with this kind of government intervention in the market. But other countries have already intervened and people like me have paid the price.

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If pharmaceutical companies need the extra money, they should take it up with other countries that negotiated them down first. Then they could recoup their costs on the backs of others, not simply by charging more in the U.S. Bottom line, there’s no good reason why 340 million Americans should pay so much more than hundreds of millions of people who live in Europe and Asia.

I will always be grateful that my medication was so affordable in Italy back in 2022. It may very well have saved my life. But I’m even more grateful that President Trump is finally lowering prices for every American here at home.

Under oath, Meta’s Zuckerberg showed why Big Tech can’t police itself

Wednesday was a historic day as Mark Zuckerberg took the stand and faced a jury under oath to answer allegations that Meta knowingly designed and promoted products that hooked young users — including children — despite internal warnings about the risks, marking the first time he has testified before a jury in such a case.

While Zuckerberg’s testimony was often characterized by sidestepping and dodging questions — to the point that the judge instructed him to answer directly — he can’t deflect his way out of this one. The evidence in this social media trial speaks for itself.

The plaintiff’s attorney, Mark Lanier, focused on three central themes in his questioning: 1) addicting users; 2) allowing underage users access to the platform; and 3) making business decisions that put profits over safety.

Zuckerberg was presented with a 2015 email in which the CEO stated his goal for 2016 was to increase users’ time spent on the platform by 12%. Zuckerberg argued that Meta’s growth targets reflect an aim to give users something useful, not to addict them, and stated that the company does not seek to attract children as users.

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When asked whether he believes people tend to use something more if it’s addictive, he dismissed the premise. “I don’t think that applies here,” he said.

But it absolutely does apply. Meta’s entire business model is built on user engagement. Social media appears “free,” but a child’s time, attention and data are the product being sold. More hours with eyes glued to the screen mean more advertisements to sell. The user is the product. The incentive is to keep users engaged as much as possible.

As confirmed earlier in the trial by addiction expert Dr. Anna Lembke of Stanford University, social media meets the clinical criteria for addiction, according to her expert testimony.

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Lanier also questioned Zuckerberg extensively on Meta’s age-verification policies. He showed an internal Meta email from 2015 estimating that 4 million children under 13 were using Instagram — approximately 30% of U.S. children ages 10 to 12. One in three preteens.

Zuckerberg said the company removes identified underage users and includes terms about age requirements during the sign-up process. Lanier responded, “You expect a 9-year-old to read all of the fine print? That’s your basis for swearing under oath that children under 13 are not allowed?”

Zuckerberg added that some children “lie about their age in order to use the services.” During this exchange, he also said, “I don’t see why this is so complicated … we have rules, and people broadly understand that.”

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Waving his hand and saying “we have rules” is not an adequate defense. These are minors. It is the company’s responsibility to ensure the platform is effectively age-gated; otherwise, its stated age policy is meaningless.

In practice, age verification on most social media platforms relies largely on self-reported birthdates. A child can enter a false age, click to accept the terms and conditions and gain access within minutes. Critics argue that without meaningful safeguards, age restrictions amount to little more than an honor system.

Age of access is a key issue in this trial. The plaintiff, K.G.M., who got on Instagram at age 9, alleges that her social media use as a child and teenager led to body dysmorphia, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, addiction and depression. Her age when she began using the app — during a period of significant brain development between ages 10 and 12 — is central to the harms she alleges.

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Instagram should never have allowed her on the platform at age 9, the plaintiff argues. Whether the jury ultimately agrees remains to be seen, but the case places responsibility for those decisions squarely on Meta’s leadership.

Lanier ended his questioning by unrolling — with the help of six others — a 50-foot collage of every selfie K.G.M. had posted on Instagram, many with beauty filters. He asked Zuckerberg whether Meta ever investigated her account for unhealthy behavior. Zuckerberg did not answer.

Earlier, Lanier pressed Zuckerberg about his decision to allow beauty filters that mimicked plastic surgery after 18 internal experts warned they were harmful to teenage girls and could contribute to body dysmorphia, according to internal documents. Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, ultimately reversed a temporary ban and allowed the filters on the platform. Plaintiffs contend that decision exposed vulnerable young users to tools linked to body dysmorphia and other mental health struggles.

Zuckerberg defended the decision by saying that after lifting the ban, Instagram did not create its own filters or recommend them to users. He added, “I think oftentimes telling people that they can’t express themselves like that is overbearing.”

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What a spin. Removing plastic surgery filters that harm young girls is, in his words, “overbearing.” Many parents would call it putting reasonable safeguards in place.

While Zuckerberg has publicly said Meta cares about children’s safety — telling Congress in 2024 that “Our job is to make sure that we build tools to help keep people safe” and that “We are on the side of parents everywhere working hard to raise their kids” — the internal evidence presented at trial suggests otherwise.

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Though he would not admit in court that he knew his products were addictive or targeted teens, he didn’t need to. The jury — and the public — can weigh his answers against the internal documents and decide for themselves. 

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