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Why Trump must block Netflix’s Warner Bros. takeover
If Netflix absorbs Warner Bros., the far left will secure a cultural monopoly unmatched in American history. This would place iconic franchises, mass distribution platforms, and elite political influence under a single ideological command structure.
Most coverage treats Netflix as a hybrid of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. That framing misses the decisive fact: The company already operates well inside the Democrat political ecosystem. Susan Rice’s role on Netflix’s board makes that unmistakable.
Susan Rice, Reed Hastings, Barack Obama, and their allies stand within reach of the most powerful political messaging system in American history.
Rice joined Netflix’s board in 2018 after serving in senior positions in the Obama administration. She returned in 2023 after leading Biden’s Domestic Policy Council. Her career spans national security, intelligence, and domestic governance, placing her at the intersection of political power and narrative control.
Rice represents a specific governing class. She served as Obama’s national security adviser and later ran domestic policy for Biden, exercising authority over both foreign and internal priorities. She has shown a willingness to use state power for partisan ends, including her role in the unmasking of Trump transition officials. She has also promoted the most aggressive progressive social policies, including medical interventions for minors under gender ideology.
Rice understands that political power does not rest solely on legislation or elections. It rests on shaping public perception. Institutions that control culture define what ideas appear reasonable, what questions seem illegitimate, and which outcomes feel inevitable.
That instinct was clear in her 2019 New York Times op-ed, “When the President is a Bigot, the Poison Spreads,” in which she accused President Trump of “overt racism” and “almost daily attacks on black and brown people.” The piece functioned less as analysis and more as moral instruction issued from elite authority.
Since returning to Netflix’s board, Rice has intensified her attacks on the Trump administration. She accused Vice President JD Vance of showing “fealty to Vladimir Putin” and derided Trump as a “surrender monkey” for resisting constant military escalation. These are not isolated remarks. They reflect an entrenched worldview that treats deviation from the foreign policy consensus as disqualifying.
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Rice’s presence alone should concern anyone who values media pluralism. A Netflix acquisition of Warner Bros. would raise the stakes dramatically. Such a merger would consolidate production, distribution, and political alignment inside a single corporate structure.
Warner Bros. controls some of the most influential properties in American entertainment, including DC Comics, "The Lord of the Rings," Harry Potter, and a deep film and television catalog. These assets shape cultural imagination at scale. No serious observer believes they would remain politically neutral under unified ideological control.
Netflix’s existing output already shows how entertainment becomes a delivery system for political messaging. Iconic characters are refashioned to signal progressive virtue. Narratives favor mass migration, abortion, and sexual politics without engaging dissent. Ideology enters through repetition rather than argument.
The most consequential impact would involve foreign policy and the national security state. Entertainment does not debate policy; it conditions instinct. Audiences absorb stories that normalize permanent crisis, global intervention, and moralized obedience to authority long before they encounter those ideas in political form.
Rice is not operating alone, obviously. Netflix founder and chairman Reed Hastings is a major Democrat donor who tried to blacklist Peter Thiel in 2016 for supporting Trump. That same year, Netflix signed Michelle and Barack Obama to a reported $50 million production deal, renewed in 2024 for an undisclosed amount.
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These relationships form a coherent network. Political power feeds cultural production. Cultural production shapes public opinion. Distribution ensures saturation. The loop closes without voters ever being asked.
My organization, the Oversight Project, will soon release an interim report examining Netflix’s role in social engineering under the guise of entertainment. The report documents how elite political priorities migrate into mass culture through corporate platforms that present ideology as entertainment.
A constitutional republic depends on a citizenry capable of self-government. America’s founders emphasized this repeatedly, and the First Amendment reflects their concern. Self-rule requires access to information and culture that are not filtered through ideological monopolies.
When dominant media platforms operate as unified political actors, that condition erodes. Citizens no longer encounter competing interpretations of reality. They receive moral direction from institutions that treat politics as settled doctrine.
A Netflix-Warner Bros. merger would accelerate this consolidation. It would fuse cultural memory, creative output, and political alignment into a single apparatus. The result would not be persuasion but control through saturation.
Susan Rice, Reed Hastings, Barack Obama, and their allies understand what is at stake. They stand within reach of the most powerful political messaging system in American history. President Trump must not allow it.
The Obamacare subsidy fight exposes who Washington really serves
The failure of both Democrat and Republican plans to extend or partially replace enhanced Obamacare subsidies offers a clear lesson: Escaping an entitlement trap almost never happens.
Yes, the House of Representatives on Thursday voted to extend the COVID-era Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the end of 2025. Seventeen Republicans even joined a unanimous Democratic Caucus in voting for the extension. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Republicans have “no appetite” for an extension — at least not without reforms.
Republicans remain an impediment to the necessary reforms and are working hand in hand with Democrats to bring on economic collapse. Time is not on our side.
The reality is, once government creates a welfare entitlement, logic and sustainability exit the conversation. Politicians do not debate whether to grow the program. They argue only over how much to increase spending and how to disguise the costs. That pattern now governs the fight over enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
Why the premise never gets challenged
When the Senate rejected a nearly identical bill in December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Congress faces “no clear path for aiding millions of Americans facing soaring Affordable Care Act insurance costs next year.”
The Journal’s framing accepts the entitlement premise without question. It treats “aiding millions” as morally self-evident while ignoring the coercion necessary to fund that aid. Government assistance does not materialize from thin air. It transfers responsibility, money, and risk from one group of Americans to another.
Once imposed, that transfer only grows.
Both rejected plans would have sent more taxpayer money to insurers than the ACA already guarantees. With no deal in sight, the Journal observed last month that hope for extending the subsidies is fading. That assessment may be accurate politically, but an extension does not deserve hope. It deserves scrutiny.
How entitlement politics works
Democrats want Republicans to extend an expansion they never voted for of a program they never supported. Republicans respond by proposing modest adjustments to reduce political damage without challenging the underlying structure.
Rep. Max L. Miller (R-Ohio), who voted for the bill, summarized the dilemma perfectly. “I just want to make this abundantly clear: This is a Democratic piece of legislation. It is absolutely horrific. Now, it is the best alternative to what we have at the moment.”
That is how entitlement traps operate.
For decades, big-government advocates have followed a reliable strategy. They create a benefit for a defined group, allow costs to spiral, then dare the opposition to take something away from a newly entrenched constituency. When the moment arrives, those who claim to favor limited government retreat or propose cosmetic reforms that leave the core system untouched.
That dynamic explains why the country remains locked into the socialist ratchet, the uniparty routine, and a political class that acts as tax collector for an ever-expanding welfare state.
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Trapped voters, trapped taxpayers
Entitlements squeeze the nation from both sides. They trap recipients by discouraging work and mobility, and they trap taxpayers by locking future governments into permanent obligations.
The Affordable Care Act stands as one of the most powerful modern examples of this system. The law forced millions into government-regulated insurance markets while guaranteeing insurers a growing pool of subsidized customers. The result was predictable: higher costs, deeper dependency, and a massive political constituency invested in permanent expansion.
Not a single Republican voted for the ACA. They understood what the law would do. Democrats passed it anyway, and it worked exactly as designed.
Who Obamacare was really built to serve
As Connor O’Keeffe has argued at Mises Wire, federal health care policy has long served industry interests. Government interventions channel money toward providers, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers under the guise of helping patients.
Obamacare accelerated that process by mandating coverage and expanding what insurers must provide, driving demand and cost growth in tandem. Once people rely on government assistance to afford insurance, any reduction becomes politically unthinkable.
Republicans now scramble to avoid electoral consequences. House Speaker Mike Johnson says the GOP will advance health care proposals without extending subsidies, yet many lawmakers privately admit that only an extension prevents immediate pain ahead of the 2026 midterms.
That admission exposes the trap. Spending limits become cruel. Taxpayer costs disappear from the conversation. Only the next premium increase matters.
Why conservatives keep losing
History explains where this leads. Entitlement debates almost always end with higher spending. Political power depends on payments to voters. Reducing benefits means losing elections.
Progressives act decisively when in power. Conservatives obsess over procedure and restraint, even as the administrative state grows unchecked.
Last week alone offered two examples. The House overturned President Trump’s March 2025 executive order blocking collective bargaining for over a million federal employees, with 20 Republicans joining Democrats. Even Franklin Roosevelt opposed public-sector unions. Modern conservatives could not summon the resolve to block them.
On the same day, Indiana Republicans declined to redraw their congressional map despite the risk of losing the House and triggering impeachment proceedings against Trump. They clung to unwritten norms while their opponents prepared to exploit the outcome.
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This pattern defines conservative failure. Republicans manage decline. They preserve a decaying system rather than reverse it.
Donald Trump broke from that habit. A former Democrat, he understands power. Win elections, then act. Trump restored a political energy absent on the right for decades.
His approach to entitlements focuses on restraining growth outside Social Security while expanding private-sector freedom to increase economic output. The goal is not austerity. It is to shrink government’s share of the economy by growing everything else faster.
Reform or collapse
That strategy may succeed or fail. It remains the only alternative to collapse. Without reform, federal spending and debt will overwhelm the system within a decade, possibly sooner. Borrowing costs will explode. Inflation will surge. Control will vanish.
The United States approached that danger under unified Democrat control and Joe Biden’s autopen in 2021 and 2022. Voters halted the slide by electing Republican majorities and returning Trump to the White House.
Trump failed to drain the swamp in his first term, largely because congressional Republicans refused to legislate when they had the chance. In his second term, he has advanced reforms through executive action. Congress has responded with delay and timidity.
The country will escape the entitlement trap one way or another. Reform can arrive through disciplined growth and economic expansion, or through collapse driven by massive overspending.
With their conservative approach to governance, Republicans remain an impediment to the necessary reforms and are working hand in hand with Democrats to bring on that collapse. Time is not on our side.
How do you solve a problem like Wikipedia?
Wikipedia has recently come under the microscope. I take some credit for this, as a co-founder of Wikipedia and a longtime vocal critic of the knowledge platform.
In September, I nailed (virtually) “Nine Theses About Wikipedia” to the digital door of Wikipedia and started a round of interviews about it, beginning with Tucker Carlson. This prompted Elon Musk to announce Grokipedia’s impending launch the very next day. And a national conversation evolved from there, with left- and right-leaning voices complaining about the platform’s direction or my critique of it.
As long as Wikipedia remains open, it is entirely possible for those who think differently to get involved.
As its 25th anniversary approaches, Wikipedia clearly needs reform. Not only does the platform have a long history of left-wing bias, but the purveyors of that bias — administrators, everyday editors, and others — stubbornly cling to their warped worldview and vilify those who dare to contest it.
The “Nine Theses” are the project’s first-ever thoroughgoing reform proposal. Among the ideas:
- Allow multiple, competing articles per topic.
- Stop ideological blacklisting of sources.
- Restore the original neutrality policy.
- Reveal the identities of the most powerful managers.
- End unfair, indefinite blocking.
- Adopt a formal legislative process.
Such ideas were bound to be a hard sell on Wikipedia. It has become institutionally ossified.
Nevertheless, I was delighted that the discussion of the theses has been robust, without much further prodding from me. Following the launch, Jimmy Wales actually stepped into the fray on the so-called talk page of an article called “Gaza genocide,” chiding the participants for violating Wikipedia’s neutrality policy. I chimed in as well. But the criticism was thrown back in our faces.
This brings me to the deeper problem: Wikipedia is stuck in its ways. How can it possibly be reformed when so many of its contributors like the bias, the anonymous leadership, the ease of blocking ideological foes, and other aspects of dysfunction? Reform seems impossible.
Yet there is one realistic way that we can make progress toward reform.
Above all else, those who care should get involved in Wikipedia. The total number of people who are really active on Wikipedia is surprisingly small. The number editing 100 times in any given month is in the low thousands, and this does not amount to that much time — perhaps one or two hours per week. Those who treat it as a part-time or full-time job — and so have real day-to-day influence — number in the hundreds.
In interviews, I have been urging the outcasts to converge on Wikipedia. You might think this is code for saying that conservatives and libertarians should try to stage a coup, but that is not so. Hindus and Israelis, among others, have also complained of being left out in recent years. The problem is an entrenched ruling class. As long as Wikipedia remains open, it is entirely possible for those who think differently to get involved.
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If you are a conservative or libertarian who is concerned about the slanted framing of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, get involved. If you are a classical liberal who is alarmed by the anti-Semitism within Wikipedia — like Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz — it is time to make your presence felt. Wherever you may fall on the ideological spectrum, I call on good-faith citizens to become engaged editors who take productive discourse seriously, rather than scapegoating “the other side.”
Even a dozen new editors could make a difference, let alone hundreds or thousands who might be reading this column. Given that Wikipedia attracts billions of readers, in addition to featuring prominently in Google Search, Google Gemini, and elsewhere, improving the platform will strengthen our collective access to high-quality information across the board. It will bring us closer to truth.
So how do we solve the Wikipedia problem? With you, me, and all of us — individual action at scale.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
Caregiving decisions begin in the bathroom
The holidays have a way of forcing conversations many families would rather postpone.
Every year, as adult children come home and aging parents gather around the table, familiar signs emerge. Someone struggles with stairs. Someone tires more easily. Someone forgets what was once routine. And with those observations come discussions caregivers know well.
The promise.
“I’ll never put Mom or Dad in a nursing home.”
It is often spoken years earlier, in healthier days, and always with sincerity. At the time, it feels like a declaration of love and loyalty. Assisted living seems distant, unnecessary, and meant for other families, not ours.
The problem is not the promise. The problem is that life keeps changing.
Circumstances change. Strength ebbs. What once worked may no longer work safely or wisely.
Over time, what began as devotion can quietly become more than one person can manage alone. Needs grow. Safety becomes a concern. Medical issues multiply. Caregivers often find themselves trying to do, by themselves, what normally requires trained professionals, proper equipment, and constant oversight.
At that point, the issue is no longer love or loyalty. It’s capacity.
That reality came into focus during a recent conversation with a friend. He had offered a small cottage on his property to help a friend relocate aging parents closer to family. The mother now uses a walker. The father has been her caregiver for years, but serious heart problems have begun to limit what he can safely do.
Still the conversation kept circling back to the same refrain: Neither would ever go into assisted living or a nursing home.
Their adult son is caught in the middle, trying desperately to make everyone happy. That is a fool’s task. In my work with fellow caregivers, I call this the caregiver FOG — fear, obligation, and guilt — because it blurs perspective, narrows options, and makes even familiar paths hard to see. No one wins.
It is like driving into actual fog. Visibility drops. Muscles tense. Judgment narrows. We try to peer miles ahead when we can barely see the hood of the car.
Every highway safety officer gives the same advice: Slow down, turn on the low beams, and stop trying to see five miles down the road.
Caregiving requires the same discipline.
My friend asked what I thought.
I suggested we lower the emotional temperature and start with one concrete issue.
Not the promise. Not the arguments. Not the guilt.
Start with the toilet.
Laugh if you like. It sounds abrupt. But it has a way of clarifying reality quickly.
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The bathroom is often ground zero for caregiving challenges. If the toilet is not safe and accessible, the demands on the caregiver escalate immediately. Transfers become harder. Fatigue compounds. Falls become more likely.
Once the toilet is addressed, you move outward.
The shower. The bedroom. Doorways, lighting, entrances.
Sometimes modest changes are enough — grab bars, a raised toilet seat, a walk-in shower. None of these are exotic ideas. But determining needs honestly requires facing the limits of strength, balance, and endurance as they exist today, not as we wish they were.
While politicians and toilets often deal with similar subject matter, toilets remain refreshingly honest. They simply reveal what actually works.
When families do this, reality follows. Cost. Time. Budgets weighed against needs. Timelines measured against declining strength. What once felt like a moral standoff becomes a practical evaluation.
Fear, obligation, and guilt begin to loosen their grip. In their place come planning, stewardship, and direction.
This matters because emotional decisions often rush families into choices that create larger — and sometimes far more expensive — problems later. We see this dynamic everywhere, including politics. While politicians and toilets often deal with similar subject matter, toilets remain refreshingly honest. They do not respond to intentions, promises, or speeches. They simply reveal what actually works.
Families do not choose assisted living or nursing homes in the abstract. Toilets always have a seat at the decision table.
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Surveys consistently show that most older Americans want to remain in their own homes as they age. That desire is sincere and understandable. But staying home without meaningful accommodations transfers an enormous burden onto the caregiver. The home may remain familiar, but the cost — physical, emotional, and relational — often rises exponentially.
Most promises are made sincerely. They are also made without a full understanding of how disease progresses, how bodies change, or how deeply caregiving reshapes everyone involved. Honoring a promise does not mean freezing it in time. It means continually asking how we can care well, given today’s realities.
Assisted living is not a surrender of care. In many cases, it is an extension of it. It allows families to return to being sons, daughters, and spouses, rather than exhausted amateur medical staff running on guilt and fumes.
We are not obligated to preserve every arrangement exactly as it once was. We are called to steward what has been entrusted to us — finances, time, energy, relationships, and the caregiver as well.
Circumstances change. Strength ebbs. What once worked may no longer work safely or wisely.
Important decisions are best made with clear heads, honest assessments, and wise counsel — not under the duress and resentment that so often accompany them. The days after the holidays are not a verdict. They are an invitation to slow down, think clearly, seek experienced guidance, and choose what is best not just for one individual but for the whole family.
The path forward is rarely determined by emotion, decades-old promises, or guilt.
More often, it is clarified by something far more unassuming — and far more truthful.
The appliance in the nearest bathroom.
How a pro-life law in Kentucky lets mothers get away with murder
Melinda Spencer allegedly took abortion pills, ended the life of her unborn son, and buried his remains in a shallow grave in her backyard.
Yet a law in Kentucky exempting women from prosecution after obtaining an abortion — a law supported by the most influential pro-life organization in the state — appears to have prevented prosecutors from holding Spencer accountable for murder.
If a state refuses to make murder illegal for everyone, then some human beings will remain unprotected by design.
According to court documents cited by local media, Spencer, 35, told Kentucky State Police that the child “was not her boyfriend’s, and she did not want him to find out she was pregnant with another man’s baby.”
To conceal the pregnancy, Spencer allegedly ordered abortion pills online, intending to end the life of her unborn child without medical supervision.
Police say Spencer took the pills the day after Christmas, placed her deceased son in a light bulb box, and buried him in a shallow grave in her backyard. An autopsy determined the child was around 20 weeks’ gestation at the time of his death.
Initially Spencer was charged with first-degree fetal homicide, abuse of a corpse, concealing the birth of an infant, and tampering with physical evidence.
This week, however, Kentucky prosecutors dropped the homicide charge — not because they doubt that Spencer intentionally caused the death of her unborn child but because Kentucky law explicitly prohibits prosecuting a pregnant woman who murders her own unborn child.
— (@)
Miranda King, the prosecutor overseeing the case, acknowledged this limitation directly. In a public statement, she explained that the relevant statute “prohibits the prosecution of a pregnant woman who caused the death of her unborn child.” Spencer still faces the remaining, lesser charges.
King made clear that this frustrating outcome was not her preference.
“I sought this job with the intention of being a pro-life prosecutor but must do so within the boundaries allowed by the Kentucky state law I’m sworn to defend,” she said. “I will prosecute the remaining lawful charges fully and fairly.”
Kentucky is widely regarded as a conservative state with strong pro-life laws. Many Americans assume abortion was effectively banned there after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. This case exposes how incomplete that assumption is.
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Kentucky’s leading pro-life advocacy organization, Kentucky Right to Life, has long supported laws that shield women from criminal liability for abortion. In practice, this ensures that abortion remains legal for women, even if clinics are closed.
In 2021, Kentucky Right to Life joined more than 70 other pro-life organizations in signing a national letter declaring opposition to “any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women” who obtain abortions.
Since then, the organization has opposed multiple abolition bills that would have established equal protection under the law for unborn children — specifically because such legislation would allow for the prosecution of mothers who willfully procure abortions.
Addia Wuchner, Kentucky Right to Life’s executive director, opposed an abolition bill in 2023 on the grounds that it might expose mothers to criminal charges. She took the same position last year, arguing that women are victims of coercion by the abortion industry.
That framing has deadly consequences.
Following Spencer’s arrest, Wuchner publicly expressed sympathy for the accused, describing Spencer as likely being “on her own” and calling that “probably the greatest tragedy,” before adding that “of course ... a child’s life was lost.”
The ordering is revealing. The alleged murder of a child was treated as secondary to the emotional state of the alleged murderer. Empathy displaced justice and accountability.
— (@)
There are cases in which women are coerced into abortions under genuine duress. But coercion cannot be presumed as a universal explanation. By all available evidence, Spencer appears to have acted deliberately. Kentucky law nevertheless forecloses full accountability — and ensures that the central act in this case cannot be adjudicated as homicide.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, states like Kentucky have continued to see record abortion levels, largely through self-managed chemical abortions ordered online. Laws that categorically exempt women from prosecution guarantee this outcome.
If a state refuses to make murder illegal for everyone, then some human beings will remain unprotected by design. And when that exemption applies even in cases involving concealment, burial, and admitted intent, justice becomes impossible by statute.
So long as that remains the case, women who willfully kill their unborn children in Kentucky will continue to get away with murder.
America tried to save the planet and forgot to save itself
Let’s face it: $20 trillion is a lot of money.
One would expect a big bang to follow the spending of 20,000 billion dollars. It’s a lot of money! In fact, it’s pretty much the total present value of America’s GDP.
The American economy sent trillions to our south and east — putting America second, hollowing out the American middle class, and neutralizing the American dream.
This is the total amount spent globally — largely by Europe and the United States — in a coordinated effort by the developed world to decarbonize the global economy. China, in contrast, sold windmills and solar panels worldwide while opening a new coal-fired power plant every month.
What was the net effect of this “Green" Marshall Plan? Hydrocarbon consumption continued to increase anyway. All that was achieved was a tiny reduction, just 2%, in the share of overall energy supplied by hydrocarbons. Put simply, as the energy pie got bigger and all forms of energy supply increased, hydrocarbons ended up with a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.
We also saw the deindustrialization of the European and American economies — not just with higher prices at the gas pump and on electric bills, but a stealth green tax that was passed on to consumers on everything. This is the culprit of our American and global affordability crisis. So much treasure and pain for a 2% reduction in the share of hydrocarbons.
Ironically, a byproduct of this Green Hunger Games was political populism.
What a waste. The worst bang for the public and private buck ever. Yet the Chicken Little believers of the Church of Settled Science and the grifters who profited from it will still sing in unison that it failed because they did not go far enough. If only the global community spent and regulated more!
In contrast, the Marshall Plan (1948-1951) rebuilt a decimated Europe into an industrial, interconnected, and peaceful powerhouse. It was a great success by any measure. At the time, its price tag was huge: $13.3 billion in nominal 1948-1951 dollars, equivalent to approximately $150 billion in today’s dollars.
Since a trillion is such a large number, let’s divide $20 trillion by an inflation-adjusted Marshall Plan of $150 billion, and we have 133 Marshall opportunities. Money was not the problem. To give a sense of the comparative bang for buck, by the Marshall program’s end, the aggregated gross national product of the participating nations rose by more than 32% and industrial output increased by a remarkable 40%.
President Trump has been on the global funding rounds and has secured more than $18 trillion in foreign investment. That’s roughly the equivalent of 120 Marshall Plans — just 13 shy of $20 trillion — to be invested here and nowhere else.
Unlike NAFTA, through which the rich got richer under the banner of free markets in exchange for cheaper consumer goods, Trump’s policy is a recipe for prosperity for all Americans.
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Making these investments a reality in America will require a growing army of blue- and white-collar workers. With the wealth that it creates, our debt could be paid down and, finally, retired. Social Security and Medicare would be placed on a solid footing for time immemorial. All our public obligations to one another would be met by ever-growing prosperity, not by borrowed money and suffocating debt service.
Nothing approaching this level of intentional investment in a single country has ever been done. Yes, a similar tranche of greenbacks was burned with no discernible environmental benefit and great economic hardship for all. And yes, the American economy, under the guise of comparative advantage, sent trillions to our south and east — putting America second, hollowing out the American middle class, and neutralizing the American dream.
Trump’s plan is the opposite of both failed experiments. Like the original Marshall Plan, Trump’s is a recipe for the reindustrialization of the American economy and military, and it is not going to be fueled by windmills and solar farms but with hydrocarbons and uranium. That’s the Trump plan. It has merit.
Yet if we look at the polls, Trump is under water, and his base is showing signs of stress fractures. You bring peace to the Middle East, stop six other wars, and bring in some $20 trillion in America First investments within your first year, and you come home to find yourself under water and called a “lame duck.” Democracies are known to be fickle and hard to please, but this is still rich — and it will result in poverty if it continues.
Without the use of Trump’s tariffs and dealmaking, there would not be $20 trillion looking to onshore in the United States. You can blame Trump for higher costs on bananas and coffee, but it is the cost of electricity and health care — not the cost of coffee and bananas — that is roiling kitchen-table economics.
Vice President JD Vance recently made the right call for popular and populist patience. Those who are impatient should look at the offsets already passed, such as no taxes on Social Security, tips, and overtime. That helps pay for bananas and coffee and then some.
The sovereign wealth funds that are presently lining up on our shores are coming here based on promises made by a can-do president speaking for a can-do nation. While Trump is a can-do guy, are “We the People” still a can-do people? Or do we at least want to return to becoming a can-do people again?
The “can’t-do” forces are legion, and they are the ones now championing the affordability crisis they caused. When America was a can-do nation, we built the Empire State Building in a year. Today, it would take years to get a permit.
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Those willing to invest such money will require some certitude that the power they will need will be there to “build, baby, build.” If not, the money and the opportunity will pass before they have the possibility to take needed root.
And what about us, the American family, worker, and business continuing to struggle under the legacy of throttling energy privation? In short, we all have a common good — a shared interest — in righting the wrongs that control our grid and our nation’s future.
The good news is that a bill was introduced in the House during the government shutdown. It’s called the “Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act.” Unlike Obamacare, which clocked in at 903 pages, this bill is a lean 763 words. If it becomes law — and it should — it would change everything for the better, unlike Obamacare, which is a recipe for unaffordability.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was missing this one thing. His short- and long-term America First ambitions would be significantly strengthened by making this energy bill law before the midterms. Executive orders don’t provide the energy security these investors require or the American people deserve.
$20 trillion is a lot of money. Coming to our shores is a new lease on the American experiment as we enter our 250th birthday, hopelessly divided and broke. Let us come together to solve not just the affordability crisis but also set the conditions for greatness for the next 250 years.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
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