RNC Election Integrity Machine Revs Up In Virginia And New Jersey
The RNC’s election integrity team, sources on the ground tell The Federalist, continues to build on its 2024 election protection campaign.The RNC’s election integrity team, sources on the ground tell The Federalist, continues to build on its 2024 election protection campaign.California’s superstate creates waste, not solutions
California loves to pretend its problems don’t exist. Power shortages, housing shortages, suffocating regulation, wildfires, polluted waterways, and the nation’s largest homeless population all make the Golden State look less like a paradise and more like a failed state.
Yet, its politicians keep picking fights with Donald Trump while ignoring the rot at home.
Once an issue becomes symbolic in California, solutions no longer matter. Every crisis becomes a stage for politicians to declare themselves protectors of the people.
That’s why Bed Bath & Beyond executive chairman Marcus Lemonis made waves in August. “We will not open retail stores in California,” Lemonis said. “This isn’t about politics — it’s about reality. California’s system makes it nearly impossible for businesses to succeed, and I won’t put our company, our employees, or our customers in that position.”
Unlike the political class, Lemonis acknowledged what business leaders see clearly: The state’s promises don’t match its reality.
California’s theater of waste
Take the Chiquita Canyon Landfill in northwest Los Angeles County. In operation since the early 1970s, it stopped taking trash on Dec. 31, 2024, and formally closed in January. Regulators had blocked expansion a year earlier, citing odor and earthquake risks. Residents and politicians then piled on with lawsuits, claiming health harms and price gouging in new waste contracts.
Now, a federal judge is hinting at a preliminary injunction — against a landfill that’s already closed. The legal circus has little to do with waste management and everything to do with California’s political theater. The real waste that needs to be disposed of is the state’s broken system of governance.
California masks its failures with glossy headlines about “protecting communities” while courts and agencies bankrupt operators with lawsuits. That’s not stewardship. It’s damage control dressed up as virtue.
I’ve worked for decades as an investor with a focus on sustainability. Real stewardship balances safety, markets, and management. When the state cripples businesses caught in its crosshairs, it destroys the very resources needed for remediation. Mining provides a clear example: If regulators bury companies in red tape after they scar mountainsides, no one has the money left to restore the land.
But California prefers to bankrupt operators, create thousands of plaintiffs, and unleash a regulatory swarm. At Chiquita alone, more than 9,000 plaintiffs are attached to multiple lawsuits, and at least 10 agencies — from the EPA to the California Air Resources Board — have swarmed the site. With that many bureaucrats involved, solving problems takes a back seat to turf wars and political maneuvering for credit.
Image over impact
I saw this dynamic firsthand in 2015, when I led takeover attempts of American Apparel, then one of the nation’s largest manufacturers. Regulators in Los Angeles didn’t care about managing waste or energy use. They cared about projecting the right social image. Meanwhile, toxic dyes, chemical runoff, and hazardous waste poured into the basin.
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The pattern repeats. Los Angeles “fixed” diversity in its fire department just before wildfires swept the city. San Francisco “fixed” homelessness just in time for a visit by China’s Xi Jinping. And Gavin Newsom is scrambling to “fix” his reputation by backtracking on Medicaid for illegal immigrants.
Once an issue becomes symbolic in California, solutions no longer matter. Every crisis — from wildfires to homelessness to waste management — becomes a stage for politicians to declare themselves protectors of the people. The real beneficiaries are trial lawyers, regulators, and politicians themselves.
Lemonis is not alone in seeing through the charade. Californians deserve better than endless lawsuits and performative fixes. Until the state values results over theater, it will keep hemorrhaging businesses, people, and trust.
The left closed schools, failed kids — and now sues to block choice
Democrats closed schools unnecessarily during COVID. Five years later, test scores continue to plummet. And now, unions and their allies oppose school choice with even greater intensity than ever.
This hostility toward parental choice has been the Democrat stance for decades, but since 2019 the consequences have become unmistakable. The numbers are in, and they are damning.
Red states emphasized learning; blue states kowtowed to union demands.
The first National Assessment of Educational Progress report since the pandemic shows American high-school seniors graduating in 2024 performed worse than their 2019 peers in both math and reading.
Seniors scoring at or above the “proficient” level dropped from 37% to 35% in reading and from 24% to 22% in math. The number of seniors failing even “basic” math climbed from 40% to 45%, while those below the basic reading level rose from 30% to 32%.
As The 74, an education-focused outlet, reported: COVID “took a bite out of already declining basic skills” and left seniors “reading and doing math worse than any senior class of the past generation.”
The class of 2024 spent nearly four years under lockdowns, masks, remote learning, and chronic absenteeism. By March 25, 2020, every public school in the country was closed, locking out 50.8 million students.
Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, in “In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us,” described these closures as “the most extensive and lengthy disruption to education in history.”
Unions kept classrooms shut
What Macedo and Lee underplay is the role of the American Federation of Teachers and its president, Randi Weingarten.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic concluded in its final report that many schools “remained closed because of AFT and Ms. Weingarten’s political interference” in the Biden administration’s reopening guidance.
That interference persisted despite mounting evidence that children were at low risk for serious illness and transmitted the virus less than adults. Early reports from Iceland and even the World Health Organization’s initial findings from Wuhan confirmed as much.
Instead of leading America’s schools back to normal operations, the AFT insisted that closures remain the default. The result: The U.S. more closely resembled developing nations than its advanced democratic peers.
The establishment’s response
Faced with the lowest test scores in a generation, the education establishment has not offered reform. Instead, it calls for more unions.
The 74 reported earlier this month that school administrator unions have expanded since COVID, with 11 new locals across eight states. It also noted strikes and strike threats in Washington state and Philadelphia, along with lawsuits from teachers’ unions trying to block school voucher programs as unconstitutional.
In short, the very groups that prolonged school closures now demand more money and more power, while students pay the price.
Spending more, learning less
The U.S. spent $15,500 per student in 2019 (adjusted to 2021 dollars), 38% more than the OECD average, while delivering worse outcomes. Yet unions still fight to preserve their monopoly and to block competition from private or charter schools.
But school choice is breaking through. As of May 2025, 35 states offer some form of private school choice program, most with more than one. Of those states, 27 voted for Trump in 2024. Among the 15 states without school choice, 11 voted for Harris.
The pattern is clear: The longest lockdowns happened in blue states, where Democratic leaders sided with unions over students.
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Federalism’s hard lesson
Macedo and Lee note that “lengthier school closures had strong political support in Democratic-leaning jurisdictions.” The Sunlight Policy Center of New Jersey measured the impact:
Red states (that voted for Trump in 2020) provided in-person instruction for 74.5% of the 2020-21 school year, while blue states (that voted for Biden) only provided in-person instruction for 37.6% of the time. Put another way, children in red states got 134 days of in-person instruction versus 68 days for blue state children. The bottom line: Red state kids got almost twice the number of in-person days than blue state kids during the school year. That’s an enormous difference in learning.
The bottom line: Red states emphasized learning; blue states kowtowed to union demands.
The takeaway
American seniors may be falling behind in math and reading, but the country has gained a civics lesson: Federalism matters. Where unions dictate policy, students suffer. Where parents have choices, students have opportunities.
The fight for school choice isn’t only about better scores. It’s about protecting families from the kind of educational malpractice that wrecked a generation of learning.
New FBI Releases From Tennessee Christian School Shooter Call Out And Depict Demons
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The Atlantic reports the avalanche of leftist lawsuits are cut-and-paste operations designed to overturn election results Democrats don't like.Why pro-life Americans can’t trust the courts any more
Americans love to blame politicians — and often with good reason. But the real power in this country doesn’t rest with the people we elect. It rests with the ones we don’t. Unelected judges now govern America. They don’t interpret laws. They rewrite them.
Activist judges have become the unelected elite now running our country, handing down rulings that override the will of voters, defy elected legislatures, and erase laws they don’t like.
One state is trying to protect life; the other is trying to shield those who end it. And a single judge gets to pick which law counts.
They employ manipulative language to justify their overreach. If you don’t comply, blood is on your hands. Whether it’s the environment, vaccine mandates, border control, or abortion access, the refrain is always the same: Submit to the ruling, or people will die.
The irony couldn’t be more blatant.
In many cases involving abortion policy, it is in fact judges’ rulings that cost lives — lives of the unborn babies impacted by their rogue, dangerous decisions.
Take the recent case in Tennessee, where a federal judge blocked a law that protected minors from being trafficked across state lines for secret abortions. The law didn’t punish women. It didn’t outlaw abortion. It simply required parental involvement, something the majority of Americans support. But for activist judges, parental rights are optional if abortion is the end goal.
In New York, another judge defied federal authority and openly refused to cooperate with Texas law enforcement to hold a doctor accountable for illegally prescribing abortion pills. One state is trying to protect life; the other is trying to shield those who end it. And a single judge gets to pick which law counts.
Meanwhile, a federal judge overturned efforts to defund Planned Parenthood nationwide, even after Congress passed clear budget restrictions. The elected branches — chosen by the people — made a decision. But it didn’t matter. The judge didn’t like it, so the ruling class overruled the people and prioritized its holy grail: abortion.
Judicial activism has turned the courts into abortion war rooms. Judges now see themselves not as interpreters of law but as defenders of an ideology that elevates abortion above the democratic process. Their rulings don’t reflect any laws. They reflect a commitment to abortion at any cost.
It’s not just dangerous. It’s undemocratic.
Thankfully, the Supreme Court is beginning to push back. In a recent ruling, the court clarified that district judges cannot issue nationwide injunctions and block federal policies. It’s a necessary and overdue correction. But it’s only the beginning.
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The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and gave power back to the people. In many states across the country, Americans responded by electing leaders and passing laws to protect the unborn. But today, activist judges are overriding those efforts, blocking pro-life laws and shielding abortionists from accountability.
We need judges who apply the law, not rewrite it. Until that happens, every unborn child, every woman in danger of being exploited by the abortion industry, and every citizen fighting for life will remain at the mercy of unelected rulers.
The Dobbs decision was only the beginning. Now we must press forward to ensure that the will of the people is honored and the most vulnerable among us are finally protected.
Prepare For A Wave Of State Court Battles Over Men In Women’s Sports
State and local policies might still force sports organizations to deny the reality of male advantage.Redistribution comes for Harvard — and it’s glorious
If you’ve endured a university humanities class in the past decade, you’ve probably encountered something closer to a revival for secular dogma than a center of learning. The professors preach cultural Marxism in cap and gown. Saints include Che Guevara. Sinners: white, heteronormative males. Sacred rites: pronoun rituals and land acknowledgments.
At the heart of this faith lies one central mantra: “The rich must pay their fair share.” The chant rings through classrooms and protests alike, uttered with all the subtlety of a Gregorian monk — though with far less harmony and far more self-righteousness.
Let the endowment taxes roll. Let the lawsuits fly. And may the gates of our so-called higher learning institutions be broken open to the higher truths they’ve long tried to suppress.
Let’s be fair. If everyone pays the same tax rate, the rich still pay more in absolute dollars. But that kind of equality doesn’t satisfy the high priests of redistribution. They demand “equity,” which in this context means punishing the successful with steeper percentages. Anything less is deemed injustice. Anything less is oppression. Anything less confirms you didn’t graduate with a gender studies degree and an enduring grudge.
I don’t bring this up just to trigger memories of a feminist philosophy professor scolding you for your privilege. I mention it because, at long last, I agree with them. Yes, the rich should pay a higher rate. And I know exactly where to start: with the universities themselves.
Here’s the irony — a brand of justice so rich even a tenured literature professor could see it. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act delivers on the universities’ own demands. The new graduated endowment tax will slap elite schools like Harvard and Yale with a levy of up to 8% on their investment income.
That’s not chump change. That’s enough to make a development officer cry into his ethically sourced, carbon-neutral latte.
These institutions — which idolize Alfred Kinsey, stack 95% of their faculties with leftists, and teach students to hate America — are finally getting a taste of the redistributionist medicine they’ve long prescribed to others. After decades of turning our culture into a grievance-riddled mess, they’re now paying the price. Literally.
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Call it poetic justice. Better yet, call it providential irony. Let these institutions finance the repair of the very foundations they’ve spent years undermining.
But don’t stop there.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon should give students a clear legal path to demand refunds for failed educations. If a business promises a product and fails to deliver, customers deserve their money back. Why not apply the same principle to overpriced degrees in grievance studies?
And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should open the floodgates to lawsuits against professors who, without any medical training, diagnosed gender dysphoria and pushed irreversible surgeries as cures for teenage angst. These people couldn’t diagnose a flat tire, but they felt confident calling your daughter a boy and your son a pansexual moon sprite.
Only when faced with real consequences — financial and legal — might these institutions begin to take their responsibilities seriously again. Only then might they stop operating as what John Calvin once called “idol factories” — churning out false gods and vain imaginations at record speed.
Let the endowment taxes roll. Let the lawsuits fly. And may the gates of our so-called higher learning institutions be broken open to the higher truths they’ve long tried to suppress.
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