My younger brother, Hamraz, was arrested in Iran at 16. Two years later, the Islamic regime executed him. His death filled me with anger and a desire for revenge. But as I studied the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenged me to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me.

God transformed my hatred into love. Rather than seek revenge against Muslims, I devoted my life to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with them.

Love your Muslim neighbors. Befriend them, serve them, pray for them, and share with them the good news of Jesus Christ.

I love Muslims. And I love America. That is precisely why I am sounding the alarm.

I came to this country from Iran and discovered freedoms that religious tyranny denies. I know what it means to lose those freedoms. Americans who have never lived under such a regime should not assume their liberties will always be secure.

My purpose is to warn, not to stir hatred or violence. I want Americans to recognize the danger of political movements that seek to replace constitutional government with religious rule — and to confront that danger with truth, courage, and love.

Many Americans think of Islam exclusively as a religion. Historically, it has also supplied models for political authority and law. Muhammad was a religious prophet, a political leader, and a military commander. His followers in Mecca initially had little political power. In Medina, beginning in the 7th century, he governed a community and led military campaigns. His successors extended Islamic rule across vast territories.

For 1,400 years, movements seeking Islamic government have drawn upon that history: organize believers, build influence, gain power, and govern according to their interpretation of Islamic law.

Not all Muslims take the Quran’s commands and Muhammad’s example equally seriously. Many nominal Muslims love freedom and reject extremism. But I believe those who follow those teachings most closely see the extension of Islamic political rule as a religious duty. That is the ambition I mean when I warn of world domination.

The danger is not confined to terrorism. A movement can pursue religious authoritarianism through political institutions as well as violence. Its leaders may use freedoms of speech, worship, and political participation while seeking power to deny those freedoms to others.

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I watched a version of that tragedy unfold in Iran. Before the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini promised liberty and justice. Many Iranians believed him. After the revolution, his regime imposed religious law, crushed dissent, persecuted minorities, and executed political opponents. My brother was among the dead.

Judge a political movement by more than its promises before it gains power. Examine its history, its stated aims, and what it intends to do after winning.

Europe offers warnings of its own. Across Europe, Islamist movements have sought greater political and cultural influence. In some communities, disputes over religious arbitration, women's rights, freedom of expression, and the application of Islamic law have raised serious concerns.

America must learn from these experiences.

Political influence is not always pursued through violence. It can also develop gradually through organized, long-term efforts to influence schools, local governments, public institutions, and, ultimately, national policy.

Some Islamist movements seek to use the freedoms of democracy — free speech, religious liberty, and political participation — to gain influence while advocating systems that would deny those same freedoms to others.

Participating in civic life is every American's constitutional right, including the right of Muslim Americans. But when any movement seeks political power for the purpose of imposing religious law on others, Americans must recognize the threat.

We must never confuse religious freedom with permission to undermine the freedoms of others.

America’s openness, tolerance, and goodwill are tremendous strengths. But without knowledge and vigilance, these virtues can be exploited by movements that do not share our commitment to liberty.

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I often say that I worry more about America’s future than Iran’s. Millions of Iranians know firsthand what religious authoritarianism can do. Too many Americans know it only as a distant subject in a history book.

That concern led me and other Iranian-Americans to produce "The Great American Conflict," a documentary examining political Islam and what its ambitions could mean for this country.

My appeal is simple: Wake up. Study the history. Look closely at organizations seeking power in your community. Attend meetings, participate in elections, serve on school boards and city councils, and hold elected officials to the Constitution. Defend religious liberty, free speech, and equal rights for everyone.

Above all, act from conviction and love, never hatred or fear.

Love your Muslim neighbors. Befriend them, serve them, pray for them, and share with them the good news of Jesus Christ. I sometimes call myself Islamophilic rather than Islamophobic. I do not embrace Islamic teachings. I love Muslim people.

My brother's execution taught me the terrible cost of religious tyranny. Jesus taught me that hatred cannot answer hatred. We can love Muslims wholeheartedly and defend America's constitutional freedoms courageously.

The time to do both is now, while we still have the freedom to do so.

Trump's FTC gets a big win, but the job is far from over

Hours before trial was set to begin last month, the Federal Trade Commission and five state attorneys general settled their antitrust case against Zillow and Redfin. While this was a major success, and the FTC should be proud, there is still more to be done.

More than 30% of American households rent. For most of them, the search begins and often ends inside one company's ecosystem, which is a major violation of antitrust principles and laws.

The solution does not actually touch the cost of rent for average people.

To be clear, the government was able to achieve much. In a $100 million deal, Zillow had paid Redfin to shut down its multifamily rental-advertising business, transfer its customers and salesforce, and stay out of the market for as long as nine years. That deal is now dead. Instead, Redfin will have to restart its former business within six months and display Zillow's listings under a partnership that will continue through at least 2030.

This remedy is superior to potential alternatives, such as a fine, which often does not actually solve the problem. Gigantic monopolies can usually absorb these fines and continue to violate antitrust law. Requiring actual change goes a long way toward solving the problem.

This was, to be clear, a rather easy antitrust case. The Zillow-Redfin deal was a blatant violation of the core principles of antitrust. The companies literally signed an agreement not to compete, with a nine-figure bribe thrown in.

The FTC was also not alone in its demands against Zillow and Redfin. Virginia, Connecticut, New York, Washington, and Arizona all joined in. After securing the required changes, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson hailed the result as a critical part of the Trump administration's housing agenda.

This last framing, however, is a problematic framing for supporters of antitrust. The issue only dealt with property managers as it concerned postings for renting. The solution does not actually touch the cost of rent for average people. Essentially, a housing-advertising case is being sold as a housing-affordability case.

Consider what the settlement leaves standing.

Zillow still operates Zillow Rentals, Trulia, and HotPads. Restoring Redfin is a major success, but eliminating the deal does not solve the issue because there is so much more to do.

Even worse, Zillow’s dominance extends beyond rental listings into the homebuying transaction itself through alleged "tying" tactics. In ongoing class action antitrust litigation against Zillow, plaintiffs allege that Zillow leverages its monopoly over buyer leads to force real estate agents into steering clients toward Zillow Home Loans. By tying access to critical consumer leads to whether an agent pressures clients to use Zillow’s lending arm, the platform squeezes independent lenders out of the market and deprives buyers of competitive mortgage rates.

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Then there is Redfin itself, which is owned by Rocket Companies. Rocket Companies also owns Mr. Cooper, one of the country's largest mortgage servicers, another potential antitrust violation. This sketchy alliance has already raised the ire of some in Congress.

This is not to say that the FTC was wrong to make this settlement. It’s only to say that the job is not yet finished.

Because yes, renters may eventually pay a little less than they do now, as the trickle-down effect occurs. But that would take a long time and is the most indirect way possible to lower rent or limit increases.

There are three ways the federal government can build on its success.

First, use its 6(b) (of the FTC Act) authority to study the rental listing market as a whole: the pricing, exclusivity arrangements, syndication terms, and leverage, including illegal tying mechanisms between lead generation and home financing.

Second, the agency should make clear that trading preferential access for exclusivity should not be automatically safe simply because no money changed hands. What Zillow and Redfin did would have been illegal even if Zillow had not bribed Redfin.

Finally, Congress and state regulators should pay attention to what unfolds, particularly as 2030 gets closer. Zillow and Redfin are going to use the next four years to figure out how they can legally reconstruct their partnership; it is up to elected officials and regulators to keep them from being successful.

The FTC started off strong, but still has a long way to go. Over the next few years, it is critical that the agency turn its sights toward anti-competitive tying and finish the fight for housing affordability.

Billy Crystal no longer trusts God. Christians should listen.

Billy Crystal recently said he has stopped talking to God. “No, ’cause I don’t trust Him,” he told CBS correspondent Tracy Smith. His home burned in the Pacific Palisades fire, and his longtime friend Rob Reiner and Reiner’s wife, Michele, were murdered.

Suppose you were sitting across the table when he said it. What would you say?

We arrive at someone’s sorrow with conclusions before we’ve heard their story. We deliver our answers and leave. They’re still grieving, and now they may also feel guilty for struggling.

I asked that question on my radio program because someone we know may eventually trust us enough to say the same thing. A neighbor who buried a child. Someone who prayed beside a hospital bed and went home alone. Would we hear their anguish or immediately start preparing our answer?

I’ve spent 40 years caring for my wife, Gracie. Her suffering began before I met her. Over her lifetime, she has endured 98 operations and the loss of both legs. Along the way, people have told us what we should believe, how we should feel, and what God was evidently trying to accomplish. Some never acknowledged the weight of what we carried.

Rush Limbaugh used the phrase “drive-by media” to describe reporters who rushed into a story, stirred things up, and moved along, leaving others to deal with the damage. Are we in danger of engaging in drive-by ministry?

We arrive at someone’s sorrow with conclusions before we’ve heard their story. We deliver our answers and leave. They’re still grieving, and now they may also feel guilty for struggling. It costs considerably more to pull up a chair.

Job’s friends managed that at first. They sat silently beside him for seven days because they saw how greatly he suffered. Most of us struggle to give someone seven uninterrupted minutes.

Scripture makes room for anguish. David asks in Psalm 13, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” Those words are in our Bibles. We ought to be able to hear them from someone sitting in our living rooms. David ultimately recalls God’s steadfast love, but the psalm lets us hear his sorrow along the way.

I learned something about the cost of coming near in a dusty prosthetic clinic in Ghana. Through Standing With Hope, the ministry Gracie envisioned after losing her legs, we’ve provided prosthetic limbs in Ghana for more than 20 years.

Photo by Peter Rosenberger

On an early trip, a young Nigerian man arrived wearing a prosthesis. Our team was occupied, so I sat down with him. We didn’t share a language, and I couldn’t find an interpreter. With gestures, I asked him to remove his prosthesis and the liner covering his residual limb.

The smell hit me like it had reached out and slapped me. My eyes watered, and a friend sitting several feet away backed up. I feared an infection, but I found no visible wound. He hadn’t properly washed his limb and liner, and my attempts to explain what he needed to do weren’t getting us anywhere.

I understood that he was Muslim. This was not terribly long after September 11. For all I knew, he could have been an enemy of my faith or my country. I didn’t know. What I knew was that he was missing a leg, needed help with his prosthesis, and had come to our clinic.

So I found clean water, soap, and a towel and demonstrated how to wash his limb and liner. At first, my eyes watered from the smell. As I washed his limb, I began to weep over what Christ had done for me.

My own stench was far worse. And mine wasn’t coming off with soap and water. It required His blood.

I could barely keep myself together. I had come to help put legs on people, and there I sat, overwhelmed by the mercy Christ had shown me.

Sitting with someone in anguish can leave us feeling helpless. Physical or emotional trauma makes us uncomfortable. We want to explain something, fix something, or give them something to do. Their grief may outlast everything we know to say.

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Jesus stood at Lazarus’ grave and wept. He knew He was about to raise him, yet He wept. That ought to shape how we approach someone whose sorrow has spilled into words that trouble us.

I want grieving people to know Christ. I want them to know the Savior who bore our sin and rose from the dead. And when I speak of Him, I want to remember how patiently He has dealt with me.

I cannot make sense of why Billy Crystal’s home burned or why his friends were killed. But hearing his words makes me want to pull up a chair and ask, “Tell me about your friends.” Then listen long enough to hear the answer.

That takes time. It may cost us more than we expected. Forty years beside Gracie have taught me that some suffering will still be there when the conversation ends. But Christ has given us ample reason to keep showing up.

He didn’t drive by. He entered.

New York City’s Jews need more than Mamdani’s security grants

I'm a Jew who lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and nobody on my block can tell. I don't wear a kippah. I don't keep Shabbat. On a Saturday afternoon, I can walk down Eastern Parkway without standing out.

Many of my neighbors don't have that luxury. Their hats, coats, and tzitzit identify them from a block away. Those visible signs of Jewish life also make them targets in a city long considered one of the best places in the world to be Jewish.

New York already publishes hate-crime figures. It should also examine the rhetoric behind those crimes.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he wants to protect them. On September 29, he released New York City's first Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. Parts of the plan deserve credit. It directs $1 million to security at vulnerable houses of worship, doubles “hate-prevention” grants to $6.4 million, and expands eighth-grade visits to the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Synagogues struggling to pay for guards, cameras, and locks need the help.

But the 33-page strategy has a glaring blind spot: It never confronts the anti-Semitism that increasingly uses the word "Zionist" as a substitute for "Jew."

The report's concrete examples of anti-Semitic violence are Charlottesville in 2017, the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in 2018, and the Poway synagogue shooting in 2019. All were horrific. None happened in New York City. The document acknowledges that anti-Jewish crime increased after October 7, 2023, but does not examine the role of anti-Zionist agitation in that increase.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the share of anti-Semitic incidents in New York City involving Israel or Zionism rose from 5% in 2022 to 37% in 2023 and 58% in 2024. Yet the mayor's plan never addresses the relationship between anti-Zionist rhetoric and attacks on Jewish New Yorkers.

It also declines to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism. The city says it can fight hatred "without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate." The report discusses competing definitions, then leaves the decision unresolved. That is convenient when some of the most poisonous language comes from activists on the mayor's side of the political divide.

In Crown Heights, we have heard that language firsthand. Last year, a group called Crown Heights Bites Back distributed free groceries near Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway. It also distributed flyers warning that "Zionist white supremacists" would "kill us, exploit us, raise our rents and evict us." At a vigil for Gavin Cato, whose 1991 death preceded the Crown Heights riots, masked activists from the group shoved a Jewish man. The group also praised the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers.

The accusation has spread beyond my neighborhood. Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime claimed that “Zionist landlords” exploited black communities to fund settlements in Palestine. Brooklyn Democrat district leader Carmella Charrington compared a family property dispute to Israeli activity in the West Bank, even though the state attorney general’s office had described the underlying matter as an inheritance dispute. In Chelsea, flyers opposing a public-housing redevelopment denounced a “Zionist occupation”; others attacked “Talmudists” and “Rothschilds.” The same reporting documented both sets of accusations.

The housing grievance is especially perverse because Hasidic families struggle with rising costs, too. The borough president’s housing analysis identifies Borough Park and South Williamsburg among Brooklyn’s most rent-burdened neighborhoods. Some young Chabad families have moved to Brownsville because they cannot afford Crown Heights. Some Hasidic developers have grown rich in Brooklyn real estate. So have many others.

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But the anger rarely lands on a developer. It lands on the man in the black hat waiting for the bus.

The ADL found that Orthodox Jews were victims in 36 of the city's 69 anti-Semitic assaults in 2024, though they constitute about one-fifth of New York City’s Jews. Mamdani's own report recognizes that visibly Jewish New Yorkers bear a disproportionate share of attacks. It never grapples with the local rhetoric that can turn a neighborhood housing complaint into an accusation against Jews as a group.

The strategy itself warns that anti-Semitism thrives on conspiracy theories that blame Jews for society's troubles. What, then, should the city call the claim that "Zionists" are responsible for a family's rent?

The political difficulty is plain. City Hall rolled out the plan with support from progressive Jewish organizations, including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Bend the Arc, and J Street's local chapter. The rent-and-Zionism rhetoric comes from parts of the same political world. Naming it would require Mamdani to criticize allies as well as enemies.

He can do so when he chooses. In December, after an incoming staffer’s old posts about “money hungry Jews” surfaced, he accepted her resignation. When offensive Chelsea flyers appeared, City Hall denounced them.

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But when Jewish Insider asked about Charrington, a Democrat district leader elected with progressive backing, the mayor refused to answer three times. His office later condemned her conspiracy rhetoric as anti-Semitic but did not say whether she should remain in party leadership. The condemnation was welcome. The refusal to confront her position was revealing.

City Council Member Eric Dinowitz, an ally who praised the plan’s education and prevention measures, said it missed an opportunity to confront the overlap between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He was right. That omission leaves a serious hole in an otherwise useful effort.

New York already publishes hate-crime figures. It should also examine the rhetoric behind those crimes, including attacks that connect Jewish identity to Israel or blame Jews for housing costs. And the city’s new prevention money should reach Crown Heights, Williamsburg, and Borough Park, where visibly Jewish residents have suffered assaults.

Mamdani should come to Crown Heights and say the words himself: Blaming Hasidic Jews for your rent is anti-Semitism. If he cannot say that much, no 33-page strategy will close the gap between his promises and the lives my neighbors lead.

The GOP can’t blame Biden forever for pain at the pump

A few months in Manhattan have made me part of the city’s bubble. I pay $3 for the subway, worry about rent and groceries, and rarely think about the cost of filling a gas tank. Then I went home to South Jersey and saw the price posted outside a station. I had almost forgotten what the rest of the country pays to get around.

New York City makes that easy. Apartment renters and subway riders experience housing, transportation, and energy policy differently from families who drive to work, take their children to school, and run errands by car. Nine in 10 Americans say they drive at least sometimes. They cannot simply stop paying attention to the price of gasoline.

The election is November 3, and voters won't grade fuel prices on a curve just because the occupant of the White House has changed.

As of October 14, the national average for regular gas stood at $4.33 a gallon. California topped $6, and several other states exceeded $5. New Jersey, where I grew up, averaged about $4.29 a gallon. Even where prices are lower, a family's weekly fill-ups eat into money needed elsewhere.

For years, Republicans hammered President Biden over gas prices. Motorists slapped “I Did That” stickers bearing his face on pumps. Looking at that station in South Jersey, I realized Republicans now face a similar reckoning. The election is November 3, and voters won't grade fuel prices on a curve just because the occupant of the White House has changed.

The administration has moved to ease energy rules. For example, the EPA has repealed vehicle greenhouse gas standards. But regulations alone cannot explain the price at the pump. The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted oil markets, and years of delayed infrastructure projects have constrained domestic capacity. A proposed diesel export ban would create its own problems rather than solve the underlying shortage.

Yet the White House has offered little comfort to motorists. Trump called higher gasoline costs a “very inexpensive price” to pay for what the United States had done in Iran. Energy Secretary Chris Wright pointed to the end of the summer driving season and weaker demand as reasons to expect prices to fall. Seasonal demand may ease, but families still need to drive in October. They need relief, not reassurance that summer is over.

Gas prices cannot be waved away until the next news cycle. They present a real political problem for Republican incumbents in November. Democrats bear responsibility for decades of energy restrictions that have hindered pipelines and domestic production, but Republicans now govern in Washington. Voters have every right to demand results from them.

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Democrats have made public transit, walkable cities, and climate policy central to their energy vision. Republicans have sold a different promise: Families should have the freedom and means to live in safe communities, raise children, and drive the pickup truck or minivan that fits their lives. Expensive gasoline makes that promise harder to keep.

From my Manhattan apartment, gasoline prices can look remote. For parents in Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Michigan, driving is neither a luxury nor a political statement. They cannot skip the trip to work or the school pickup because the pump reads $5. A city dweller may be able to substitute a subway ride. Most suburban families cannot.

The administration can point to two possible long-term gains. Trump has promoted a long-planned Alaska gas pipeline, although financing and other details remain unresolved. And four senators from both parties have introduced permitting reform intended to speed construction of energy infrastructure. Those are potentially useful moves, not substitutes for lower prices today. Nor should a natural gas project be confused with an immediate fix for gasoline.

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The administration has made progress rolling back regulations and encouraging domestic production. Yet Americans still face the costs of delayed projects, inadequate infrastructure, and international instability. The president cannot control every oil shipment or every price sign. He can explain what the government is doing to expand supply, make projects easier to build, and reduce costs over time.

Republicans have spent years arguing against climate mandates and forced dependence on electric vehicles. Opposition alone will not persuade a family paying more to get to work. The affirmative case is straightforward: Americans should decide how to heat their homes, power their businesses, and travel, while government clears obstacles to producing abundant, affordable energy.

I had to leave Manhattan to remember what a gallon of gas costs. Millions of Americans do not have that luxury. They see the cost every time they pull into a station. Republicans who want their votes in November had better see it, too.

Three cops changed DJ Daniel’s life with a slice of pizza

In 2017, as Hurricane Harvey battered Houston, three police officers found DJ Daniel and his brothers wandering through a shelter. The boys had gone looking for snacks. The officers reunited them with their father and took them upstairs for pizza. DJ still remembers that meal — and the officers who helped his family through a frightening time.

That small act of kindness gave DJ a dream. He wanted to become a police officer so he could help others the way those officers helped him.

Three officers had no way of knowing how far their kindness would travel. They simply saw a family who needed help and acted.

Nearly a decade later, DJ has been sworn in by about 4,400 law enforcement agencies across the United States and abroad. In March 2025, President Donald Trump recognized him during an address to Congress, when the Secret Service director made him an honorary agent. A boy inspired by three officers and a slice of pizza had found a professional family numbering in the thousands.

That journey inspired our new children’s book, “Special Agent DJ.” We wanted to tell a story about courage, family, service, and the impression one good deed can leave on a child. We also wanted young readers to understand something practical: When they need help, police officers can be people to turn to.

A child becomes separated from a parent in a crowded store. A youngster gets lost in a park or feels frightened and does not know who to ask for help. Officers help reunite families, respond to emergencies, and protect neighborhoods. Children should learn to recognize when to seek help. DJ learned that lesson firsthand.

His determination has been tested in ways most adults can barely imagine. Diagnosed with brain and spinal cancer as a young child, DJ has undergone 13 brain surgeries. He has lived for years beyond an initial prognosis that gave him only months. Reading has also presented difficulties, yet he helped turn his experience into a book for other children.

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DJ’s father, Theodis, has been by his side throughout the journey. He has driven him across the country, stood with him at ceremonies, and encouraged him through grueling days. During the book’s development, he helped us work through illustrations, story ideas, and revisions by phone. His steady support helped make the project possible.

We brought “Special Agent DJ” together in roughly four months. That schedule was ambitious for a children’s book, but we had a reason to move quickly: We wanted DJ to hold the finished book, see what he had helped create, and enjoy the accomplishment himself.

A badge or a ceremony may seem like a small thing to someone watching from a distance. For DJ, every welcome from a police department has reinforced the kindness he encountered as a child. Each officer who embraced his dream helped him carry it a little farther.

Parents and educators teach children many lessons about safety. Knowing when and how to ask a police officer for help deserves a place among them. A positive encounter can shape a child’s understanding of public service long after the immediate trouble has passed.

DJ’s story began with a slice of pizza in a hurricane shelter. It grew into thousands of honorary swearing-in ceremonies, recognition in Washington, and a book he can share with children he has never met. Three officers had no way of knowing how far their kindness would travel. They simply saw a family who needed help and acted.

That is the lesson we hope readers take from "Special Agent DJ": A small gesture can change the course of a life.

Democrats may ride a blue wave on a red script

Democrats are poised for a good night on November 3. The only question is how far into Republican territory their gains will reach. Yet unlike the Democratic waves of 2006, 2008, and 2018, this election has no unmistakable leftward pull. Watch the ads. Democrats are attacking Republicans on issues that conservatives should own.

Trump won Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, and Texas by double digits in 2024. Now Republicans must defend Senate seats in every one of them, along with North Carolina, which Trump also carried. Georgia, another Trump state, has a Democratic incumbent senator that Republicans appear unlikely to unseat. Some of the fiercest contests are unfolding where the GOP should be cruising.

Trump’s endorsements helped protect milquetoast incumbents from serious primary challenges. Now Republicans must spend millions defending them. It’s political malpractice.

Does this mean voters have embraced the left? The Democratic Party’s commercials suggest the opposite. They seldom lead with abortion, transgender ideology, or illegal immigration, though those issues will surely figure in their governing agenda. Instead, Democrats attack inflation, health care costs, insider trading, data centers, Big Tech surveillance, and the Epstein scandal. Some of these spots would fit comfortably in a conservative primary.

We’re losing an election for things we don’t even believe in. Republicans embraced the cost of living as the “golden economy” while Democrats run on affordability, corruption, and opposition to corporate favors. Voters hear one party attacking powerful interests and another defending them. Guess which one holds the White House?

Take Texas. James Talarico, the radical leftist running against Ken Paxton, recently attacked Paxton for tax breaks and campaign donations tied to data centers that are “selling off Texas — our land, our water, our communities.” Talarico also promoted an ad calling out Biden for “failing us on the border” and promising to put Texas first. I could have written those attacks against a corporatist Republican myself!

In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown (D) casts Republican attacks on transgender issues as distractions from gas prices, groceries, and health care. He goes after Senator Jon Husted (R) for promoting data centers across Ohio. Rather than defending their cultural agenda, Democrats make Republicans look like the ones obsessing over it while families struggle.

Independent Dan Osborn is doing something similar against Sen. Pete Ricketts (R) in Nebraska. His ads tie Ricketts to Epstein, challenge the importation of foreign beef over Nebraska cattle, and promote right-to-repair laws — a cause I have championed while few Republicans joined me. Osborn also condemns Ricketts’ vote to pardon a convicted rapist who had already served his prison sentence. That is a political opening no tough-on-crime conservative should offer.

Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

I have no faith in Osborn to govern as a conservative. But why hand him those openings? He is hammering Ricketts over sprawling data centers and casting himself as the champion of farmers and ranchers. The Senate Leadership Fund is pouring another $8 million into Nebraska, a state Trump won by 20 points.

Trump’s endorsements helped protect milquetoast incumbents from serious primary challenges. Now Republicans must spend millions defending them. It’s political malpractice.

In Kansas, Democrats are running an ad condemning Sen. Roger Marshall (R) for voting against releasing Epstein files and quoting his remark that the matter was “not of much interest to me.” Trump won Kansas by 16 points. The state hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. Yet a toxic mix of corporate baggage, scandal, and a rudderless Republican agenda has put even this seat in play.

Campaigns have aired more than 160 different Epstein-related ads this cycle, backed by more than $35 million in airtime, according to CNN’s analysis of AdImpact data. Democrats have found an issue that lets them sound like the outsiders demanding accountability while Republicans defend the status quo.

The same pattern holds in Georgia. Incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff is attacking Flock cameras and Big Tech surveillance, issues most Blaze readers would recognize as legitimate threats to liberty. I don’t trust Ossoff to get them right. But my kind of Republican would never give him such an easy target. Why did the GOP?

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Michigan offers another example. Abdul El-Sayed, perhaps the Democrats’ most radical Senate nominee, isn’t running ads about making the Muslim Brotherhood great again. He’s attacking Republican Mike Rogers for promoting government surveillance and saying officials would love to get “one-tenth of what Google has on you.” Once again, Democrats have seized ground conservatives should occupy.

Then comes Iran. The war has battered energy prices and supply chains. Trump opened with two weeks of bombing and failed to plan for Iran's predictable disruption of the Strait of Hormuz. Even from a hawkish perspective, what meaningful objectives did he accomplish? That is another glass jaw Republicans did not need to inherit.

After Nov. 3, conservatives will face a long conversation about what went wrong. No single issue explains it. For two years, the movement has been pimping Big Tech, protecting Epstein, defending corporate welfare, and selling an economic message that bears little resemblance to what voters experience. None of that is inherent in conservative principles.

Democrats may be on the cusp of a blue wave, but they’ve written it with a red script. If conservatives refuse to learn, Democrats will repeat the performance in 2028 while Trump remains president. We need to break out of the paralysis of the Trump era and write our own script — so we can finally win or lose on what we believe.

The global meritocracy myth sells Americans’ inheritance cheap

Americans are being told that restricting legal immigration would rig the competition for jobs and college seats. Apparently, allowing citizens to compete with the entire planet is “meritocracy,” while giving them preference in their own country is “discrimination.”

The argument has gained force as scrutiny moves from illegal crossings to work visas and foreign student admissions. Employers use H-1B visas to recruit skilled workers, and public universities often collect higher tuition from students who live outside their states. Critics of tighter visa rules portray any preference for Americans as a kind of affirmative action for the native-born.

A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it.

The claim assumes something remarkable: America exists chiefly to administer a worldwide talent contest. Its citizens have no special claim on the institutions, industries, and opportunities their country built.

Even on its own terms, the global meritocracy argument collapses under scrutiny. It’s a myth.

Merit requires standards, judges, and rules. A perfect score wins in bowling; a low score wins in golf. Hit the pins with a golf ball on a bowling lane and nobody objects. Roll that same ball across a putting green with your hand and you have cheated. What counts as skill depends on the rules of the game. Standards require a recognized authority too.

University admissions present a far harder problem. Americans argue endlessly about standardized tests, grades, extracurricular activities, and what a degree should prove. Colleges that abandoned entrance exams are now restoring them, while others still refuse to consider scores. Even within one country, administrators cannot agree on what qualifies an applicant.

Now expand that disagreement worldwide.

Some countries place extraordinary pressure on students to excel in examinations that determine their educational futures. Others rely more heavily on interviews, recommendations, or years of coursework. Each system rewards different habits. More importantly, credentials are only as reliable as the institutions that issue them and the people who verify their authenticity.

Academic fraud also complicates the picture. Cheating and plagiarism plague American schools, and universities abroad confront their own scandals. Cheating and plagiarism are endemic in China and India. India’s University Grants Commission maintains a public list of institutions that lack authority to award degrees, but diploma mills where credentials are manufactured at scale remain rampant.

An American diploma hardly guarantees competence, either. Universities have diluted requirements, expanded administrative bureaucracies, and sold credentials whose value employers increasingly question. Yet the remedy for weak standards is honest verification, not faith that a global marketplace will somehow discover merit on its own.

Blaze Media Illustration

Culture adds another complication. Americans generally expect a posted store price to apply to every customer. In markets where bargaining is customary, skill can mean negotiating the lowest price through patience, personal relationships, and persistence. The same conduct can be admired in one setting and treated as manipulation in another.

Importing large numbers of people also imports habits, expectations, and assumptions about fairness. A country that refuses to acknowledge this invites conflict over the rules by which everyone is expected to live.

We have our own contradictions. Universities and employers spent years elevating diversity goals alongside measures of achievement. Courts and lawmakers have pushed back against some of those practices. On paper, federal law prohibits hiring discrimination based on race, sex, and national origin. Still, anyone who watched institutions defend racial preferences should be skeptical when those same institutions suddenly invoke neutral merit as an unquestionable principle.

The H-1B debate raises a separate problem. Federal rules require employers to pay visa workers at least the applicable prevailing wage or the wage paid to comparable employees, whichever is higher. The program was not written as permission to hire foreign workers at half price. But wage safeguards are only as good as enforcement, and employers can still gain leverage when a worker’s legal status depends heavily on keeping a particular job.

That dependency can hurt both the foreign employee and the American applicant. An employer may prefer the worker who has fewer options. Calling the resulting arrangement a free and fair contest does not make it one.

Even a perfect ranking of talent would not answer who America's schools and employers ought to serve. An American need not prove superior intelligence or virtue to claim a privileged place in his own country.

Blaze Media Illustration

The case against the feasibility of a global meritocracy is sound, but the most important argument against the practice is one of ownership. A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it.

The opportunities inside a country do not emerge from the ether. Americans inherit institutions built through generations of work, investment, and sacrifice. They finance schools, build infrastructure, defend borders, and bear the cost of political failure. The inheritance carries a moral claim, just as children have a claim to their parents’ estate.

Americans may welcome foreign talent when it serves their interests. They can debate which visas advance national purposes and how many to grant. They are not obligated to treat every qualified applicant on earth as equally entitled to the opportunities their country provides. Citizenship must carry a claim that a temporary visa cannot erase.

Calling visa restrictions “DEI for Americans” turns national obligation into an accusation of unfairness. Advocates of limitless competition insist that any preference for Americans violates meritocracy, even while relying on institutions that cannot agree on merit's meaning or enforce its rules. Their supposedly neutral standard disguises a political demand.

A nation that treats its people as interchangeable bidders in a global labor auction has surrendered its purpose. America was not built to supply corporations with cheap labor or universities with tuition-paying students. Americans have every right to prefer their own people, especially in employment and college admissions. Their future should not be sacrificed on the altar of economic ideology.

Democrats can't erase the price shock of the Biden years

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says Republicans have "done nothing to make life more affordable for the American people" and instead have "made life more expensive." That’s a remarkable accusation from a party that presided over a historic jump in consumer prices and continues to defend policies that add to the bills families pay.

With the November midterms approaching, Democrats want voters to blame Donald Trump for the cost of groceries, rent, power, and gasoline. They should first account for the prices Americans inherited when Trump returned to office — and for the costs imposed by Democrat-led states.

Americans did not forget what groceries and rent cost four years ago. Democrats should not expect them to forget who held power when those prices took off.

Start with inflation. The Federal Reserve aims for 2% annual inflation over time. Even when inflation slows, prices generally keep rising. A smaller annual increase does not reverse the larger increases that came before it.

According to the consumer price index, overall prices climbed about 21% during Joe Biden's presidency. They rose roughly another 5% between January 2025 and August 2026, the latest available monthly data. Inflation has not stopped: The August report put the 12-month rate at 3.4%. But the distinction between the rate of inflation and the price level explains why families still feel the squeeze from the Biden years.

Household essentials tell the story. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded increases of more than 20% in grocery prices and residential rents during Biden's term. Electricity costs rose by roughly 30%. Slower subsequent increases leave those earlier jumps in place.

At the pump, the weekly national average hit $5.01 a gallon in June 2022, during Biden's term. It peaked at $4.50 so far in Trump's second term, amid disruptions to oil supplies due to the Iran war. Nominal term averages have run $3.46 under Biden and $3.43 so far under Trump, according to federal energy data.

Still, the household costs Democrats now denounce were already elevated when Biden left office. The party cannot credibly campaign as though American families began paying those bills in January 2025.

State policy makes the contradiction sharper. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors stricter immigration enforcement, estimated in 2023 that illegal immigration imposed a net fiscal cost of $150.7 billion a year on federal, state and local taxpayers. The report raises a question Democrat officials cannot dismiss: Who pays for education, health care, and other public services as migration increases?

Frederic J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Housing supplies another pressure point. A September 2026 Brookings study estimated that the post-pandemic immigration surge raised rents in receiving metropolitan areas by 1.4% to 1.6%. Policymakers who expand immigration without making room for more housing should expect renters to notice.

Electricity offers an even clearer test of state choices. An analysis publicized by the American Energy Alliance found that rates rose 32.4% from 2014 to 2024 in states that backed the Democrat presidential nominee in 2020 and 2024, compared with 18.5% in Republican-voting states. States with mandatory renewable portfolio standards also saw larger increases than those without them. Voters should ask what those mandates cost.

When House lawmakers passed legislation requiring state utility regulators to consider shielding ratepayers from new data-center infrastructure costs, Senate Democrats blocked its advance. Families watching their power bills climb deserved a better result.

Taxes provide another point of comparison. Visual Capitalist's analysis estimated that a New Jersey resident would pay about $1.36 million in federal, state, and local taxes over a lifetime, equal to 48.2% of estimated earnings. Eight of the 10 highest-tax states in that ranking had Democrat governing trifectas in 2026. The concentration is striking.

Aleksei-veprev/Getty Images

New Jersey, my home state, levies the nation's highest top corporate income tax rate, 11.5%. Burlington has announced plans to shift its headquarters to Philadelphia, and Samsung has announced a headquarters move to Texas. ExxonMobil moved its legal domicile to Texas. Lawmakers should consider what those departures say about the state's tax and regulatory climate.

The state's employment figures offer another warning. New Jersey's initial estimate of 25,600 jobs lost in July was subsequently revised to 21,900. Officials have reason to examine the burdens they put on employers.

Americans have also seen welcome gains. The Census Bureau reported that real median household income reached a record $87,460 in 2025, up 2.6% from 2024, while the official poverty rate fell to 10.2%. Median income for black households rose 4.8%.

Democrats are free to make their case that Republican policies have made life more expensive. Voters should require them to answer for their own record: the price surge under Biden, the tax burdens in Democrat-led states, the cost of energy mandates, and the fiscal consequences of immigration policy.

Americans did not forget what groceries and rent cost four years ago. Democrats should not expect them to forget who held power when those prices took off.

Why organized labor hates innovation

In Onondaga County, New York, a union has gone to court to stop an artificial intelligence tool from answering nonemergency calls at the county’s 911 center. The system handles routine calls, roughly a third of the center’s volume, and transfers suspected emergencies to human operators. The county wants to use the technology. The union wants it stopped.

The union contends that the rollout violates its labor agreement. But its lawsuit puts a familiar priority on display: Protect work covered by the contract, even when new technology might improve a public service.

Americans should not have to sacrifice the benefits of invention to preserve yesterday’s job descriptions.

Labor unions exist to defend their members. They owe no comparable allegiance to consumers, employers, or workers who never join. That last group is enormous. Union members accounted for just 10% of U.S. wage and salary workers in 2025 and only 5.9% in the private sector. Yet a union can use its bargaining power to obstruct changes that would benefit everyone else.

American ports offer a more expensive example. The 2025 Container Port Performance Index, which measures vessel turnaround efficiency, ranked only one U.S. port among the world’s top 50: Philadelphia, at No. 48. Meanwhile, the International Longshoremen’s Association has made opposition to automation a central demand.

The ILA’s 2025 agreement with employers at East and Gulf Coast ports delivered a 62% wage increase over six years. It also restricted automation. As Jordan McGillis reported in City Journal, employers must hire another longshoreman for every new semiautonomous crane they install, while fully autonomous cranes remain prohibited.

Better machines could move goods faster and reduce costs for businesses and consumers. The union secured limits on those machines instead. A Congressional Research Service report has also documented long-standing concerns about payroll fraud and organized crime influence involving the ILA on the New York-New Jersey waterfront.

Jason Henry/Bloomberg/Getty Images

This struggle predates computers, robots, and artificial intelligence. Some medieval craft guilds protected their privileges by limiting competition and resisting techniques that threatened established trades. American unions have repeatedly followed that example.

When diesel locomotives displaced steam engines, railroads no longer needed firemen to tend boilers. Unions nevertheless fought to preserve those jobs. H.E. Gilbert, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, defended that struggle in 1963: “You can always mint more money. But you can’t mint new lives.”

Gilbert cared about the livelihoods of his members. He ignored the workers and families who would gain from cheaper, more efficient rail service. Protecting a job made obsolete by technology does not preserve the wealth that makes employment possible.

In 1971, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union staged a 134-day strike as containerization transformed shipping. The fight centered on jobs, jurisdiction, and work rules as machines replaced much of the labor once required to load cargo. In 1986, Rupert Murdoch moved his British newspapers to computerized printing at Wapping, dismissed 5,500 workers, and faced union picketing for more than a year.

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In each dispute, established workers fought to defend their position against technological change. The gains from new equipment, however, extended well beyond the employers who purchased it. Consumers gained faster service and lower costs; other workers benefited from a more productive economy.

Workers should remain free to join unions and bargain collectively. Voluntary labor organizations belong in a free society. But decades of government intervention have given organized labor legal privileges that can come at the expense of nonunion workers, employers, and customers. Those privileges deserve scrutiny, not automatic deference.

A union has every incentive to protect its members. The public has no obligation to make that protection the governing purpose of an industry or a taxpayer-funded service. The East India Company did not trade in a free market simply because it conducted commerce. Nor does a union bargain in a free labor market when government grants it advantages unavailable to everyone else.

Innovation raises living standards by allowing people to produce more with less. Organized labor can help workers adapt to that progress, or it can try to halt it. Americans should not have to sacrifice the benefits of invention to preserve yesterday’s job descriptions.

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