“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”
THE FOUNDATION
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” —James Madison (1792)
IN TODAY’S DIGEST
- Executive News Summary
- Featured Analysis: Affordability Can Change Everything
- More Analysis
- Best of Right Opinion
- Best of Videos
- Short Cuts
- Today’s Meme
EXECUTIVE NEWS SUMMARY
The Editors
- Schumer Shutdown update: For the first time since the Schumer Shutdown began on October 1, the ball is in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s court. The Senate has passed the slightly amended continuing resolution; now, the House will vote on the funding extension. The House Rules Committee worked past midnight to pass the bill to a general rules vote, which will be held today. Democrats attempted and failed to force votes on amendments related to their pet ObamaCare subsidies. Interestingly, while Senate Republicans promised Democrats a vote on those subsidies in early December, House Republicans have made no such promise. If the CR passes the rules vote, as expected, it will then be open to debate before being put to a final vote tonight, advancing the legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk.
- Leftmedia comes clean: With the Senate Democrats finally ending their record-long government shutdown, the Big Three legacy media networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — suddenly changed their tune. Having misinformed the American public by primarily blaming Republicans for the shutdown, the networks finally admitted the shutdown was the Democrats’ doing. A despondent NBC’s “Today” reported that “the reason Democrats had pushed for the shutdown in the first place” failed and that seven Democrat senators “decided it was time to bring the shutdown to an end.” CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil observed that Democrats chose to “drive the country into a shutdown,” and their base is now angry. ABC’s Rachel Scott reported that “it was Senate Democrats who backed away from what they’ve been demanding all along.” Maybe this shutdown would have been much shorter if these networks had accurately reported that Democrats were responsible for it in the first place.
- SNAP fight reaches SCOTUS: Lawsuits attempting to force the Department of Agriculture to find funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments that go out to nearly one in eight Americans were successful last week before the Supreme Court answered an emergency request on Friday to freeze some lower-court orders. The initial freeze offered by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have expired on Tuesday if the Court had not extended it to Thursday at 11:59 p.m., this time against Justice Jackson’s wishes. The Supreme Court did not explain its decision, which is not unusual for emergency requests. However, given the recent movement on the CR to fund the government, it’s likely that the Court hopes Congress will provide funding through ordinary means, thereby rendering the question moot.
- UK sides with narco-terrorists: Apparently, the current leadership of the United Kingdom would rather see illicit drugs flow into the U.S. than see them stopped. That is effectively the message that was sent after the UK said it was suspending the sharing of some intel with the U.S. over the Trump administration’s recent strikes taking out cartel drug boats. Reportedly, the UK prefers not to be complicit in “illegal” U.S. military strikes. So, America’s closest ally doesn’t want to share intel because it thinks attacking drug-smuggling terrorists is illegal. Based upon what? Evidently, past practices, when those criminals ferrying illicit drugs, responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans annually, were simply detained and had their illicit cargo seized. In war, killing the enemy ends the enemy’s war efforts.
- Antifa vs. TPUSA: The Turning Point USA tour that Charlie Kirk began on his last day on earth in Utah ended on Monday at UC Berkeley, where Antifa thugs tried to stop the event. One arrest for battery occurred before the event even started, and one TPUSA supporter was seen on video being assaulted and trying to flee Antifa. Police later detained that man with blood pouring down his face before identifying him as a victim. At one point, a car backfired with a sound like gunshots, and it was greeted with raucous cheers. Andy Ngo reported that the protest was organized by a group called By Any Means Necessary. TPUSA noted that inside the police barricade, the event went off without a hitch. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon suggested that the DOJ will investigate possible First and Fourteenth Amendment violations, and UC Berkeley has promised to cooperate.
- Hochul shuts down Mamdani’s free child care promise: In his successful bid to become New York City’s next mayor, Zohran Mamdani promised a litany of freebies, including free child care. The estimated annual cost of providing “free” child care to NYC residents is roughly $6 billion, equal to the NYPD’s entire budget. Mamdani’s answer to that massive cost is higher taxes, but here’s the catch: taxes fall under the purview of the state government, and Governor Kathy Hochul is in no mood to sign off on such a significant tax increase. Hochul is facing a significant election challenge from popular Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik. The last thing Hochul wants to do is alienate New York voters outside of NYC who are already paying some of the highest taxes in the country.
- CFPB to run out of money as DOJ rules its funding is illegal: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent and arguably unconstitutional executive agency established during the Obama presidency, will run out of money next year. The CFPB, intentionally designed to avoid accountability, draws its funding directly from the Federal Reserve rather than from Congress. However, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has determined that money can flow to the CFPB only when the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet shows a profit, which has not occurred since 2022. Given this reality, the CFPB’s funding will run out in early 2026, effectively shutting down the agency. CFPB could go to Congress with hat in hand and ask for a direct appropriation of cash, but this will likely fall on deaf ears given that Republicans control the legislature.
- The frontrunner for Nancy Pelosi’s seat makes it clear where he stands: California State Senator Scott Wiener had a chance to engage with concerned voters on Monday, during which he made his priorities abundantly clear. The man who is poised to succeed one of the most influential American female politicians of all time was forthright: he stands with men — that is, “trans women” — over women. Tish Hyman, who gained national attention last week for objecting to a man undressing in her locker room at Gold’s Gym, asked Wiener about how he’d ensure women would “be protected from men.” Wiener responded with leftist dogma: “trans women are women.” For those who ply in identity politics, crossdressing men are more important than women.
- DHS says surging number of terror suspects at border is good news: Despite DHS closing out the 2025 fiscal year with the best border numbers in five decades, one category did not show a significant drop — the number of terrorist suspects nabbed crossing the border. The number increased nearly 30-fold — from several dozen a month to more than 950 in September alone. According to the DHS, that’s a good thing. Since the Trump administration has classified certain drug cartels like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as terrorist organizations, the numbers have skyrocketed — not because more of them are crossing into the U.S., but because they are actually being flagged via the terrorism watch list. “The elevated number of TSDS matches is not a surge in new threats,” said U.S. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott. “It’s the result of properly identifying the dangerous actors who were always there.”
Headlines
- Epstein: Trump “asked Ghislaine Maxwell to stop” recruiting girls from Mar-a-Lago spa (NY Post)
- Jeffries, Democrats will offer three-year extension of ObamaCare subsidies (The Hill)
- “Operation Dirtbag” sees over 150 illegal migrant sexual predators nabbed in Florida (NY Post)
- U.S. to mint its last penny as Treasury halts production (Fox Business)
- California illegally issued 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses (Transportation.gov)
- Virginia redistricting push leader used campaign funds on family business, daughter’s campaign, steaks (Washington Examiner)
- Google lawsuit accuses China-based cybercriminals of massive text-message phishing scams (CBS News)
- Humor: Congress prepares to pivot from doing nothing because of the shutdown to doing nothing because they’re Congress (Babylon Bee)
For the Executive Summary archive, click here.
FEATURED ANALYSIS
Affordability Can Change Everything
Nate Jackson
The word of the year might be “affordability.” How the two political parties address that issue will, in large measure, determine who wins the 2026 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump says, “I don’t want to hear about the affordability,” dismissing it as a “dead” issue, which doesn’t seem like a good start. Still, as usual, Trump’s brash New Yorker style can mask the fact that he makes some good points:
“It was a con job, affordability,” he argued recently regarding Democrat wins in the off-year elections. “It was a con job by the Democrats. The Democrats are good at a few things — cheating on elections and conning people with facts that aren’t true. We are much better than [former President Joe] Biden and all of them now, just so you understand. Do you remember that the Biden administration had the highest inflation in 48 years? The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under sleepy Joe Biden.”
First, he’s absolutely correct that inflation is at a far better annual rate now than it was under Biden and the Democrats, whose American Rescue Plan plunged the nation into a battle with inflation that hit generational highs and persists nearly five years later. Trump won in 2024 because voters were fed up with Bidenomics.
Second, he’s wrong to dismiss affordability. Prices are cumulatively almost 25% higher now than when Trump left office in 2021.
I don’t know about you, but every time I buy something, I have at least a momentary flare of aggravation that stuff is so darn expensive now. Just for starters, that fast-food meal you could get for $7 in 2020 is now almost twice that much. That ain’t “3% inflation.” Gas prices may be back down, and a Thanksgiving meal might cost a little less than last year, but the latter is only because beef (up 15% since last year) isn’t usually on the menu.
Want to buy a house? Prices are up 56% since 2020. Over the same stretch, thanks to rising interest rates and other factors like insurance and property taxes, monthly payments are up 80%. The median age of the first-time homebuyer has reached an all-time high of 40 — up from 33 in 2021. Young people no longer feel like owning a home is even remotely within reach.
The bottom line is that Americans simply feel poorer, and telling them they shouldn’t feel that way — as Democrats and the Leftmedia tried in 2024 — is not a recipe for winning.
Trump’s larger point might be that it’s frustrating that this issue hasn’t sunk the Democrat Party. Democrats — with zero Republican votes — “rescued” America by causing rampant inflation. Their Inflation Reduction Act a year later was a scam to pass as much of the Green New Deal as possible. Even Joe Biden later admitted it had nothing to do with reducing inflation. The Schumer Shutdown charade over ObamaCare is another unaffordability crisis entirely of Democrats’ making.
Why is anyone even talking about affordability? Because Democrats make stuff unaffordable!
Unfortunately, Democrats have the Leftmedia at their disposal, so millions of Americans will hear the message that Democrats care more about affordability than Republicans do. Democrats want to “lower the cost” of your health insurance. Democrats want to raise the minimum wage, feed the hungry, pay for child care, and give away tax dollars on any number of other income redistribution schemes aimed at pulling heartstrings and winning votes with “free” stuff.
As for the GOP, National Review’s Mark Antonio Wright issues a warning: “The issue of affordability — high prices, high interest rates, inflation, sluggish wage growth — will be everything next year. If Republicans don’t figure out a way to address that priority, no amount of complaining about Zohran Mamdani and the rise of socialism is going to save them.”
At some level, President Trump understands that his party has to address affordability. The bad news is that he’s doing it by behaving like a Democrat.
Whether he uses the word affordability or not, his two big proposals in recent days are aimed directly at people feeling the pinch of rising expenses. In a tacit admission that tariffs are a tax on American consumers, Trump has been pushing $2,000 rebate checks for every American (“not including high income people!”). He boasts that the U.S. is bringing in so much revenue from tariffs that the American people should reap the benefits. In reality, such rebate checks could end up being inflationary, just like the direct transfer payments made under both his and Biden’s administrations during COVID. It also won’t help pay down the national debt, which he promised to do with that revenue.
The other proposal is a 50-year mortgage option. This idea may be worth its own analysis, but suffice it to say that stretching a mortgage out that long might save a few bucks in monthly payments, but it will rob homeowners of equity and cost them a pretty penny in higher interest rates. You’d be better off renting than “owning” a house by making payments that last a lifetime. It will also cause prices to rise even further.
On a related note, Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates for months. While all of us would love for mortgage rates to drop, reducing rates too soon is not helping tamp down persistent inflation.
The good news is that many of Trump’s other policies are exactly what the economy needs. His focus on energy development, domestic manufacturing, foreign investment, and rare earths will all boost the American economy. Making his 2017 tax cuts permanent has helped Americans at almost every economic level. Those are the things he and every Republican should tout, all while reminding voters just how expensive “free” stuff ends up being.
MORE ANALYSIS
- Emmy Griffin: Pelosi’s Likely Successor Dwarfs Her Radicalism — Scott Wiener, a kink-festival-loving state senator, wants to make a big splash on the national stage by codifying his extremist policies for all of America.
- Sophie Starkova: Sports Integrity at the Olympics — The International Olympic Committee hasn’t banned men pretending to be women yet, but it’s heading in that direction.
- Michael Swartz: The Continuing Decline — and Hypocrisy — of Joe Biden — The former president — Hunter Biden’s “Big Guy” — trotted out recently to give a lecture about how the Trumps are supposedly getting rich off the presidency.
- Thomas Gallatin: Are Offshore Wind Farms a Threat to Human Life? — HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has directed the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to study and report on the impact of offshore wind farms on humans.
- Gary Bauer: The Terror Plot Too Big for Media Attention? — At least six young people have been arrested in multiple states related to a terror plot planned for Hallowe’en.
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
- Byron YorkWhy Did Democrats Fight So Long — Before Caving?
- Star ParkerHow Should Republicans Move Forward?
- Ian HaworthI Hope Trump Destroys the BBC
- Betsy McCaugheyThe Home Affordability Crisis — Not Fake News
- Allen WestYou Reap What You Sow
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.
BEST OF VIDEOS
- Why Won’t Tucker Carlson Push Back Against Certain Guests? — Carlson’s immense popularity among conservatives reveals an alarming truth about our side: we’ve forgotten how to make good arguments that promote our worldview.
- Confronting Conservative Antisemitism — Victor Davis Hanson explains how conservative icons like William F. Buckley once handled extremists, contrasts that with today’s platforms, and explores why some on the Right are now flirting with the same rhetoric on Israel that echoes left-wing sentiments.
- ‘Are You REALLY Spending Money on Christmas?’ — Liberal women are asking questions of those on the political right. Is this a genuine attempt at understanding, or just another tactic to further the divide?
- Jury Nullification a Feature or a Bug? — The DC Sandwich Tosser was acquitted of assault charges against a federal officer.
- ‘This Digital Experiment Is Not Going to End Well’ — Winston Marshall discusses with Sophie Winkleman the dark side of smartphones, social media, and educational technology.
- Humor: Congress Prepares to Continue Doing Nothing After Shutdown Ends — Congress is making preparations to switch over from doing nothing because of the shutdown to their usual job of doing nothing simply because they’re Congress.
SHORT CUTS
The BIG Lies
“The last 41 days have exposed the depths of Trump’s cruelty. He shut the government down longer than any president in American history. He took innocent kids, veterans, and federal workers as political hostages — all because he refuses to fix the healthcare crisis.” —Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
“We have waged a battle on behalf of the American people. First of all, Donald Trump and Republicans are the ones who shut the government down.” —House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
Delusions of Grandeur
“I certainly believe that … the overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, have waged a valiant fight over the last seven weeks.” —Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
Village Idiot
“You cannot put on the American people that Democrats were the one that were hurting people, making this plight.” —actor Dylan Douglas
For the Record
“One thing that came out of this entire fight is that … ObamaCare has been exposed as a complete and utter failure. We all know it now. Everybody admits it. The other thing that came out is that Democrats are willing to make people suffer.” —Scott Jennings
Helpful Hints
“You don’t act as if ending a shutdown is a cave, a defeat, and a disaster if you believed that the shutdown was causing terrible harm and you wanted it to end. It was all a lie.” —Dan McLaughlin
“PRO TIP: if you’re gonna call it ‘the Republican Shutdown’ you’re not supposed to get mad that it’s ending.” —Jimmy Failla
“Hello, Gavin? It’s the High-Speed Rail Calling”
“There’s not one goal the state of California has ever set that we haven’t achieved and did so early.” —California Gov. Gavin Newsom
Theater of the Absurd
“They killed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Incredibly shortsighted. It’ll hurt mostly rural communities. Maybe that’s their intention. There’ll be news deserts.” —documentary filmmaker Ken Burns
Belly Laugh of the Day
“I was aware of [Donald Trump’s] strategy. … I understood the game that was being played. And I made a decision that I wasn’t gonna get played. … Three-dimensional chess!” —Kamala Harris
Observations
“A CNN exit poll found that Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo among those with a bachelor’s degree or higher by nearly 20 percentage points. They voted for Mamdani for mayor, but what they really want is a miracle worker. They’re desperate for someone to wipe away the money and years they’ve wasted. What they miss is how leftism steered them wrong to begin with.” —Victor Joecks
“Trump loves this country and wants to maintain its foundations. He’s a builder, after all. Mamdani, on the other hand, wants to tear it all down, and rebuild a Workers Utopia, where immigrants are not the victims of ICE but are, at the other extreme, the rulers of the Earth.” —Christine Flowers
“A half-century mortgage would turn homebuyers into something closer to renters, with their banks as their landlords — only maintenance and home repairs won’t be the landlord’s responsibility, they’ll be the mortgagor’s. That’s not the American dream. That’s 21st-century serfdom: laboring for a lifetime without owning property of your own free and clear. … Financial finagling, whether in the form of 50-year mortgages or tariff stimulus checks, isn’t the answer — a rebirth of industry, enabled by American energy, is what the nation needs.” —Daniel McCarthy
“In the modern political imagination, the subsidy is the government’s magic wand — a painless way to make life’s necessities affordable. … From Washington’s perspective, affordability is merely a problem of distribution: if prices are too high, just inject more money.” —Michael Smith
Persona Non Grata
“Give Candace Owens this: It takes considerable talent to take an open-and-shut murder case and turn it into a whodunit and you’ve-got-to-listen-to-every-episode true-crime mystery.” —Rich Lowry
Upright
“The most important war-fighting technology is not a new airplane. The most important war-fighting technology is not artificial intelligence or anything on a computer. The most important war-fighting technology is a well-trained and well-armed United States Marine.” —JD Vance
And Last…
“Gavin Newsom is flying 5,372 miles to Brazil for the #COP30UN climate conference. A 5,372 mile round trip flight emits roughly 3.4 tonnes of CO2 per passenger. If the climate crisis was real, Newsom would’ve attended the conference via Zoom.” —Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner
TODAY’S MEME
For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.
| ON THIS DAY in 1954, Ellis Island closed as an immigration processing center. Opened in 1892, the New York Harbor facility welcomed more than 12 million legal immigrants. |
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