Conservatives are blowing the easiest political win in America



After Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2024 election, Democrats had to stop and ask what went wrong. One conclusion from the commentary class was that progressives had a serious man problem, and for once they were right.

Democrats had made contempt for men, especially young white men, central to their message, and that came with a cost. Any white man who remained on the left had to accept that he was either uniquely guilty or expected to participate in his own dispossession. The party even launched a $20 million effort to discover why men were abandoning it, only to arrive at the familiar conclusion that men were simply bad and deserved what they got.

Young men who believe the system is organized against them — and who have substantial evidence for that belief — will organize to defend their interests.

This should have created a golden opportunity for the GOP to secure the loyalty of young men for a generation.

Instead, conservatives are setting that opportunity on fire.

Men’s natural role in society is to protect, provide, and lead. Even when women earn good incomes, the data consistently shows that they still prefer men who are at least as successful as they are. Women generally do not form families with men who cannot find stable work, buy homes, or attain the status markers that signal competence and security.

A society that blocks young men from those roles is choosing dysfunction and decay.

In a recent Fox News interview, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the rise of democratic socialism on Gen Z. She said young people were “raised with silver spoons in their mouths,” called them lazy, and suggested sending them to Cuba or Iran.

Calling those remarks callous and tone-deaf would be generous.

Leavitt married a millionaire real estate developer more than 30 years her senior. It is unlikely that her “silver spoon” would be adjusted by deployment to a foreign combat zone. The entitlement only became more obvious when she defended the comments after deserved criticism.

The message to young people was unmistakable: Your concerns are not legitimate, and we despise you for expecting us to fix anything.

Of course, some young people are lazy and entitled. Every generation has its share. That does not mean most young men are or that the obstacles they face are imaginary.

Young men, especially young white men, have been systematically excluded from educational institutions, corporate hiring, and promotion. This is not mere resentment or speculation. It is the predictable result of decades of cultural indoctrination and civil-rights enforcement that trained institutions to prefer women, immigrants, and minorities whenever possible.

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That has real consequences. Men who cannot secure education, employment, and status are less likely to marry or form families, no matter how often our culture repeats slogans about equality.

Housing has become another barrier. The average first-time home buyer is now approaching middle age. Young men cannot build wealth as their parents did or provide the stability women often want before marriage.

There are many reasons for this, including mass immigration and corporate speculation in residential real estate. But one factor is simply welfare for seniors. Many older Americans failed to save adequately for retirement and now depend on the inflated value of homes they bought decades ago.

President Trump has said explicitly that he does not want housing prices to fall for this reason. That is a deliberate choice to sacrifice young men’s development and family formation to protect older asset holders.

Young men have also watched their country import foreigners, legally and illegally, to replace them. Immigrants receive special access to education loans, business programs, and hiring preferences unavailable to natives. Mass immigration drives up housing, insurance, medical, and education costs while transforming neighborhoods beyond recognition.

In Minneapolis, the mayor now manages Somali clan politics like a colonial regent simply to maintain control.

The question is not why young white men are radicalized. The question is why it took so long.

On July 4, during America’s 250th anniversary celebration, Patriot Front marched in Washington, D.C. The group consists largely of young white men in quasi-military uniforms carrying American flags.

A comical number of conservatives rushed online to call them federal agents after Reuters published a photo of one black woman sitting in a subway car full of Patriot Front members. It later appeared that the supposed new Rosa Parks was a homeless drug user with a record of indecent exposure.

She was certainly safer than Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed in the neck by a mentally ill black man while riding public transportation alone. The Patriot Front members may even have prevented another indecent-exposure incident simply by being present.

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Young white men remain the easiest group in America to attack publicly. The left has demonized them for existing, which should give the GOP an obvious opening.

Instead, conservatives once again take their social cues from progressives. Many still crave left-wing approval and believe belittling young white men proves they are neither sexist nor racist.

I do not think Patriot Front’s tactics are wise, and I have said so repeatedly. Nor is skepticism about the group irrational, given the relationship between the Southern Poverty Law Center, federal law enforcement, and manufactured panic over “white supremacy.”

But dismissing everything as a federal operation is easier than offering serious solutions. Telling ourselves that no legitimate grievances exist and that all unrest is manufactured is foolish and weak. If Patriot Front scares you, good. It should.

Young men who believe the system is organized against them — and who have substantial evidence for that belief — will organize to defend their interests. The answer is not to insult them, mock them, or pretend they are imagining their dispossession.

The answer is to address the problems driving them toward radical groups.

Young men are not asking conservatives to excuse every bad decision or endorse every organization that claims to speak for them. They are asking for a political movement that recognizes their interests, defends their future, and gives them a reason to build.

Conservatives should stop hating the young men they need to inherit the country.

Glenn Beck’s pencil test: The simple object that exposes why socialism always fails



If you’re not familiar with the power of a simple yellow pencil and what it can teach about economics, freedom, and the limit of government power — then Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is here to help.

“I’m holding a pencil. Yellow, six sides, little pink eraser at the top. And we’ve used these our whole life,” Glenn begins.

“The cedar comes off a mountain in the Pacific Northwest. It’s cut by a steel saw. That steel came from an iron ore in Minnesota, smelted with coal hauled by the rails by people who are long dead,” he says.

“The graphite comes out of the ground in Sri Lanka, and it’s mixed with clay from Mississippi. The little band up at the top, that used to be copper from Chile, zinc from Canada. The yellow paint, the rubber that never once met a rubber tree in its life,” he continues.


“All of these things, thousands of people on five continents that don’t speak the same language, who never met, who’d probably cross the street to avoid each other ... these people couldn’t agree on lunch, and they built the pencil,” he adds.

The point, Glenn says, is that “no one was in charge.”

“There’s no department of pencils in a marble building deciding how much graphite Sri Lanka needs to mine this year. Nobody on the planet wakes up at 3:00 in the morning in a cold sweat thinking, ‘Dear God, does Ohio have enough erasers?' Nobody does,” he says.

“So here’s how you explain capitalism and socialism. If no one is smart enough to plan a pencil, nobody ... it just happens. Who exactly do we figure is smart enough to plan an entire economy?” he asks, before citing the economist Friedrich Hayek.

Glenn notes that Hayek “spent his life on this one idea,” which was that “the knowledge that it takes to run an economy doesn’t live in any one place.”

“It’s scattered across millions and billions of heads. It’s the welder who can feel a batch of steel running brittle. It’s the grocer who notices that young families are starting to move in, and they got all these kids, so I better stock up on more diapers. It’s the farmer that can read the sky,” he says.

“None of them could write down what they know. They couldn’t fill it out in a form. They’d lose the form. But they act on it every single day,” he adds.

However, when you introduce a central planner, Glenn explains, even the ones with the most sincere hearts will fail.

“And that’s when the bread line happens. Bread lines are real, and it happens the same way every single time,” he says.

“It’s like a band that only knows one song. That’s what socialism is,” he adds.

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Most new jobs are going to women — and 1 in 3 men have given up



President Donald Trump celebrated the jobs report published on Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows that American employers added jobs for the third consecutive month.

The report, which Trump called "great," says the U.S. economy added 172,000 jobs last month; the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.3%; the number of unemployed people, 7.3 million, "changed little over the month"; and the labor force participation rate held at 61.8%.

'Bodes ill for the country.'

Total employment growth for the months of March and April were revised up by 29,000 and 64,000, respectively.

"This is a labor market that is stronger than it was last year and is looking pretty darn solid, despite high energy prices and higher inflation generally," Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC, told CNBC. "There's no indication that the labor market needs support."

While the labor market is purportedly healthy, there are a pair of potentially destabilizing trends under way behind the scenes: the overwhelming majority of new payroll jobs are going to women, and a staggering number of men have given up on finding a job.

Jason Riley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, recently highlighted that "the share of American men in the labor force has dipped to record lows." Labor Department data revealed last month that one in three men were neither working nor looking for a job.

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The male labor-force participation rate has declined significantly in recent years, to say nothing of the precipitous decline that has taken place over the past century. The male LFP rate was 87% in 1948, 75% in 2000, and — according to the latest jobs report — 67.2% in May.

"The premature absence of millions of able-bodied men from our workforce, combined with the continuing retirement of the Baby Boomers and significant reductions in immigration, bodes ill for the country," wrote Riley.

While there are multiple factors at play — Baby Boomers are, for instance, retiring en masse; young men are dropping off to study; there is diminished demand for non-college male labor; and prime-age men are falling to the wayside because of illness and disabilities — the Washington Post recently pointed out that:

the labor market has weakened since early 2025, with most job opportunities concentrated in areas typically dominated by women, including health care and private education. At the same time, several male-dominated industries, including manufacturing, transportation, and mining have shed jobs, leaving a mismatch between typical skill sets and job opportunities for men.

It's evidently a new day for female labor.

Whereas in the mid-1970s, women held roughly 40% of jobs in the U.S. — not including agricultural work or self-employment — they now hold the majority of jobs in the country.

NPR's "Morning Edition" reported that of the roughly 369,000 jobs created between the beginning of Trump's second term and April, 348,000 jobs went to women and 21,000 jobs went to men. In other words, 94% of the jobs went to women and only 6% to men.

Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman for the Labor Department, stressed to "Morning Edition" that raw job counts provided a "misleading snapshot" of the labor market, adding that "both men and women are benefiting from a strong economy."

Women have picked up the supermajority of net new payroll jobs in part because of the growth in female-dominated sectors, namely health care — where women hold roughly 80% of the jobs — and social assistance.

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Steelworkers need a future, not another merger war



Roxanne Brown, the head of the United Steelworkers, must recognize the reality of her members and consider the recent history of the steel industry. If she remembers what happened when steel mills closed and factory towns devolved into ghost towns, she must distinguish herself from her predecessor, David McCall, whose intransigence during his tenure was neither shrewd nor productive. To set her union on a renewed path forward, Brown must distance herself from McCall’s troubling legacy and avoid jeopardizing the very workers she claims to represent.

Brown has reportedly rejected U.S. Steel’s initial contract offer, setting the stage for the next round of negotiations beginning July. If talks go south again this summer, workers could face lost wages, disrupted health benefits, and uncertainty over retirement security. Their families would feel the pressure through tighter household budgets, delayed bills, strained child care and health care decisions, and the emotional toll that comes with prolonged economic uncertainty.

Steelworkers deserve leadership focused on jobs, wages, benefits, and retirement security — not reputation management or corporate alliances.

In steel towns and surrounding communities, the impact would ripple through local businesses, schools, churches, charities, and public services that depend on steady paychecks and a stable industrial base. A lockout would not just pause production; it would threaten livelihoods, family stability, and the economic backbone of communities built around American steel.

McCall's reckless efforts to tank the Nippon-U.S. Steel merger led to a revolt among steelworkers, and his alliance with competitor Cleveland-Cliffs’ CEO Lourenco Goncalves showed he prioritizes his own reputation and corporate alliances over his members. In the next round of contract talks, McCall should not be allowed anywhere near the negotiating table from the union side.

For decades, steelworkers have been heavily affected by market swings and fluctuating steel production demands. 2026 has been a welcome relief of slow but steady growth, aided by investments like those from Nippon, shifts toward modernization, and economic tailwinds, but history shows this tide can turn anytime.

When the steel industry turns down, it faces facility idling, facility closures, layoffs, and industry upheaval. Despite recent upturn, this volatility has contributed to a public perception that blue-collar jobs like those of steelworkers are unstable, making the upcoming contract negotiations in July that much more significant.

The past tells us quite a bit about what could be ahead for steelworkers. Last year’s high-profile Nippon-U.S. Steel merger carried major consequences for American steel production and steelworkers’ jobs. Yet as the deal progressed through the approval process, McCall chose to advance his own interests rather than champion union members’ security and prosperity, revealing deeply troubling behavior.

In 2023, when the merger was proposed, U.S. mills produced about 89.7 million net tons of raw steel, supporting 70,000 workers in iron and steel manufacturing. The deal promised substantial benefits to American steelworkers, including: $2.7 billion in capital investments exclusively dedicated to USW facilities; a 10-year commitment to maintain steel production levels at existing facilities, protecting union jobs; a $5,000 signing bonus for union workers and eligible nonunion employees below the senior-manager level upon deal closure; and written, enforceable commitments to honor existing union contracts and labor agreements.

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Despite clear support among many rank-and-file members for the merger’s approval, McCall staked out firm personal opposition that did not reflect union workers’ input. In a February 2024 phone interview, McCall stated bluntly: “I want to kill this deal.”

McCall also took advantage of the Biden administration’s likely politically partisan, election-driven opposition to the merger. A lawsuit alleged that Biden sought to kill the deal to “curry favor with the USW leadership in [Pennsylvania] in his bid for re-election ... motivated by ‘purely political reasons.’”

Perhaps most damning is that McCall’s opposition clashed with the interests of steelworkers.

This is a pivotal time for the future of the American steel industry. The industry can only thrive if USW and the companies that employ its members can reach a commonsense agreement that both protects workers and allows companies to continue operating.

Brown must capitalize on this unique opportunity to move the union past the destructiveness of McCall’s leadership by participating in good faith in the upcoming negotiations and avoiding prolonging the contract talks at the expense of her members’ well-being. America’s steelworkers deserve better than their fate still being in the shadows of David McCall.

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America’s fiscal fire will not put itself out



There is an old admonition, courtesy of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, that no one has the right to falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theater and cause a panic. The abused part of that line is obvious. The neglected part is just as important: When the danger is real, responsible people do not stay silent. They sound the alarm before the smoke fills the room and the flames become impossible to ignore.

That is where the United States is today.

The fire may not yet be visible to everyone, but it is already burning. Recognizing it is the first step. Acting on it is the next.

Our nation’s fiscal condition poses a real and growing threat, and pretending otherwise will only make the consequences more severe.

And I am shouting fire.

Washington’s overspending has produced a federal debt that is plainly unsustainable. Interest-bearing debt alone now exceeds $39 trillion and climbs higher each year by trillions of dollars. Add unfunded commitments for Social Security and Medicare, and the total burden rises to more than $136 trillion, a number so large that it barely registers. Spread across the population, the liability amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars for every American.

According to projections from the Congressional Budget Office, the debt will exceed $63 trillion within 10 years. In less than a decade, the trust funds supporting major entitlement programs are expected to be depleted, requiring by law major cuts in benefits. The federal government can continue on this path only by borrowing more, which compounds the problem, or by printing money, which courts hyperinflation. That cycle cannot continue indefinitely.

The government itself acknowledges this reality in plain language. Its own financial reports describe the current fiscal path as “unsustainable.” That word means the system, as currently constructed, will not endure. At some point, the burden becomes too great and the consequences grow severe. It will make the Great Depression seem mild. That is the future awaiting a nation that continues to spend far beyond its means.

This situation did not arise overnight, nor can it be blamed on one party or one generation. It is the product of years of decisions in which immediate political gain took precedence over long-term stability.

Voters were promised benefits, often framed as cost-free, while the real price was pushed into the future. Little by little, we have been mortgaging tomorrow until soon there may be nothing left to mortgage.

The good news is that the method of putting out this fire is no mystery. The principles required to restore stability are well understood and have repeatedly proven themselves in practice. Limited government, restrained spending, and less federal intrusion into our lives remain the foundation of long-term prosperity.

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Reform must begin with the biggest drivers of future debt. Entitlement programs must be strengthened for the long term, not ignored for short-term political convenience. That does not require cutting benefits for current recipients, but it does require thoughtful reforms to keep those programs viable for future generations.

At the same time, the scope of the federal government should be reconsidered with renewed respect for constitutional limits.

America’s founders envisioned a system of limited federal powers and reinforced that design in the 10th Amendment, which reserves powers not specifically granted to the national government to the states or the people. A more disciplined understanding of federal responsibility would not only reduce costs, but also strengthen accountability and preserve liberty.

Examples around the world show that nations can confront fiscal crisis and begin to recover through disciplined economic policy. Each country’s circumstances differ, but the lesson is consistent: When governments commit to sound principles and follow through, better outcomes follow.

The United States still possesses enormous strengths, including a dynamic economy, innovative capacity, and a resilient people. Those advantages give us a window to address this problem before it reaches the breaking point. But that window will not remain open forever.

Ultimately, the responsibility does not rest only with elected officials. It rests with the public that sends them to Washington. An informed electorate that understands the stakes and demands accountability can still change the country’s course. The challenge is serious, but it is not beyond our ability to meet.

The fire may not yet be visible to everyone, but it is already burning. Recognizing it is the first step. Acting on it is the next. The future will be shaped by whether we confront this danger now or keep looking away until the consequences can no longer be avoided.

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