Middle-class Americans thrived under Trump’s tax cuts. Here’s the proof.



As the 2025 fiscal cliff approaches, key provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire — triggering one of the largest planned tax hikes in U.S. history. If Congress fails to act, the hardest hit won’t be billionaires or Wall Street elites. It will be working- and middle-class Americans who will get hammered.

For years, the left has pushed a false narrative about the TCJA, passed in 2017 under President Donald Trump. They claim it was a “giveaway to the rich.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) even labeled it a “wealth transfer” from working families to millionaires and billionaires. That claim is flatly untrue. The data from the Internal Revenue Service tells a very different story.

Democrats say they care about working families. If that’s true, why are they standing in the way of the very law that lowered the tax burden on millions of middle-income Americans?

A new policy study from the Heartland Institute, which I co-authored, analyzed IRS data from 2017 through 2022 to evaluate the real impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Although the law passed in 2017, it didn’t take effect until 2018. Using the most recent available tax year (2022), we compared data before and after the law took effect to determine how much taxpayers saved across each IRS income bracket.

Since IRS data for 2023 and 2024 isn’t available yet, we used historical averages to project savings for those years.

Big tax cuts for the middle class

The results are clear. The TCJA cut personal income tax rates across the board. But the biggest winners — by percentage saved — were working- and middle-class Americans earning between $30,000 and $200,000 a year. Over the period studied, these families saved thousands.

Here’s the breakdown: From 2018 through 2024, we project that households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 saved around $6,300 in federal income taxes. Those making between $75,000 and $100,000 saved about $8,300. And families earning between $100,000 and $200,000 saved nearly $13,500.

That’s not a giveaway to the rich. That’s real relief for working families.

While high-income earners benefited too, their relief was modest compared to the savings middle-class families received.

In 2022, filers making between $5 million and $10 million saw their federal tax bills fall by just 2.3% compared to 2017. Meanwhile, households earning between $40,000 and $50,000 saved nearly 19%. That’s not trickle-down economics — that’s targeted relief for working Americans.

Overall, the income groups that saw the largest percentage tax cuts were those earning less than $75,000. Within that group, even the lowest-performing bracket — households making between $50,000 and $75,000 — still saved a little over 16% in 2022 compared to pre-TCJA levels. Every other bracket in the under-$75,000 range saved at least 18%.

Perhaps most striking of all, our study shows that the TCJA actually made the federal tax code more progressive. It shifted more of the income tax burden onto high earners while easing it for working families — the very opposite of what critics have claimed.

The IRS data from 2017 to 2022 shows a clear trend. After the TCJA took effect, households earning less than $200,000 paid a smaller share of all personal income taxes, while households earning more than $200,000 picked up a larger portion of the national tab.

Debunking the deficit myth

This contradicts a favorite claim of the left — that the Trump tax cuts would drain federal revenue and explode the deficit. Yes, the deficit has worsened since the TCJA took effect, but not because tax revenues collapsed. The truth is just the opposite.

In 2017, the IRS collected about $3.5 trillion in total taxes. By 2022, that number had jumped to nearly $5 trillion. Personal income tax collections alone reached $2.13 trillion in 2022 — up half a trillion dollars since the TCJA became law.

The TCJA didn’t starve the Treasury. Federal income tax revenues have grown significantly since 2017. What has fueled the national debt and deficit is not a lack of revenue, but out-of-control government spending.

The clock is ticking

Middle-class tax relief is scheduled to expire at the end of the year. If Congress fails to act, the fallout will be severe. Many middle-income families could face tax hikes of 18% or more, costing them thousands of dollars over the next few years. Higher earners would face even steeper increases — an economic drag that would ripple across the entire country.

Democrats say they care about working families. If that’s true, why are they standing in the way of the very law that lowered the tax burden on millions of middle-income Americans? Why are they trying to undo the progress that helped working people climb the economic ladder?

The answer is plain: politics. Democrats have opposed the TCJA from the beginning — not because it failed, but because Donald Trump signed it into law.

But the facts don’t lie. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act worked. It lowered tax rates, fueled economic growth, and helped everyday Americans keep more of what they earned.

If Congress doesn’t step in soon and make the cuts permanent, the middle class will once again be left holding the bill.

Young Men Are Officially Ready To Be ‘Unburdened’ By Kamala Harris

But what's a Dem to do, if not fail upwards?

Democrats’ Latest Cope Is Peak Trump Derangement Syndrome

The only theoretical treatment is turning off the television for an hour or two — something no sufferers have yet proved capable of doing

250 years after the British invaded my hometown



When I was a boy, my father would rouse my brothers and me — plus the dog — just after sunrise on Patriots Day. We’d walk to the bottom of our street to catch a glimpse of the men and boys marching down Strawberry Hill Road, bound for the Old North Bridge in Concord.

There were never more than a few dozen from Acton, but we heard the drums long before they appeared through the tall, thick trees that line the roads of our Massachusetts town. Now and then, a musket shot cracked the morning air. The dog hated it. He couldn’t grasp why we stood there, waiting for what sounded like an advancing army.

You can’t hold on to your inheritance if you don’t know where it came from — or what it cost.

But for us, it was unforgettable. It felt like history marching toward us. The thrill of a lifetime.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this past Saturday, there were no ceremonial shots. No crowd. No celebration. Just a grim and determined militia moving through the cold New England air, summoned by the alarm of church bells echoing across the countryside.

The British were coming. And the men of Acton walked out to meet them.

There were far fewer trees back then. As the sun rose, the men could see across the open farmland for miles.

Today, Concord is downright tony. But in April 1775, it was still rough country — 140 years old and carved from the wilderness by people who lived off the land. The forest wasn’t just scenery. It was essential for survival: fuel for fires, timber for homes, a barrier against the cold and the unknown.

Years later, the most despised man in town wasn’t a redcoat or a Tory — it was a scrawny, self-important poet who managed to burn the woods down trying to make chowder. His name? Henry David Thoreau.

But on that frozen April morning, no one had time for philosophy. As the Minutemen turned onto Barretts Mill Road, then Lowell Road, they may have glimpsed fellow militiamen assembling on the ridge above the bridge spanning the Concord River.

Ahead lay the town. Between them and it: British light infantry, armed and in formation.

In 1775, the British Empire spanned from Bengal to Bermuda. It held all 13 American colonies and, after its victory in the French and Indian War, ruled Eastern Canada as well. The British Army was undefeated, disciplined, and sharply dressed in red coats and white trousers.

But beneath the uniform, most were poor. Soldiering wasn’t seen as honorable. It was a last resort for men with no other prospects — desperate enough to take the king’s shilling.

The night before the battle, those men had been roused from their barracks in Boston, a world away from the places they called home. They boarded small boats and crossed the Charles River in silence. Seven hundred soldiers, soaked to the skin, trudged 10 miles through the dark to Lexington Green.

There, about 80 American militiamen waited. They had mustered in the night, armed but unsure. As the British columns approached, fear rippled through their line. The enemy just kept coming.

Their captain — a veteran of the war in Canada — knew the odds. He arranged his men in parade formation and told them not to fire. He wasn’t there to win. He was trying to avoid a massacre.

British officers on horseback rode past their lines, eyes cold, barking orders at the militiamen to drop their weapons and disperse. The sun was still nearly two hours from rising when a shot rang out.

No one knows who fired first — but the British answered with a volley.

They gunned down their own countrymen — eight killed, 10 wounded — shattering a small town before continuing their march to Concord.

The shock was immediate and profound. Tensions had simmered for months, but no war had been declared. The Declaration of Independence was still more than a year away. British troops had fired on an unruly mob in Boston five years earlier, but this was different. This time they opened fire on a peaceful militia. And this time, they were marching inland to seize arms and cannon — something they had done before without bloodshed.

This time changed everything.

By the time the British reached Concord, seven miles farther west, the town already knew what had happened. Colonial spies had tracked the army’s every move. Paul Revere had watched their boats leave Boston. The militia had scattered much of the weapons and ammunition into nearby fields. The element of surprise was gone.

Unlike Lexington, Concord didn’t meet the troops with defiance — at least not at first. Soldiers paid townspeople for supplies. No shots were fired. But above Barrett’s Hill, the Minutemen were watching.

They were farmers, blacksmiths, merchants, and their sons. Some had fought the French. Others had battled Indians. But most had never faced trained soldiers.

They weren’t an army — until that moment.

Now, they outnumbered the redcoats. Then the smoke rose from the town — cannon carriages, set ablaze by the British.

The sight triggered fury.

“Will you let them burn down the town?” shouted Joseph Hosmer.

The Americans didn’t answer with words. They marched down the hill to cross the bridge — and into history.

When I was a kid, “the shot heard ’round the world” was the defining story of the American Revolution. We took field trips to the battlefield, rode our bikes down to see the re-enactments with Dad, and as teenagers, we snuck beers and cigars along the quiet river after dark.

I imagined the men — some barely more than boys — who stood their ground and faced down a global empire for their rights. I thought of their strength, courage, and resolve. They suffered, bled, and died for our inheritance.

To us, they were heroes.

It wasn’t until I got older and started to travel that I realized how little of the war was actually fought in the towns where I grew up. I knew my ancestors had fought at Monmouth. Others in my family had taken up arms for the crown in the South. But in my imagination, the war was always Lexington, Concord, the Boston Massacre, and Bunker Hill.

Travel shattered that illusion.

I stood on a hill in New Jersey where my family had held the line against charging Hessian mercenaries. A few miles away, I visited a house marked with a plaque: A man had been hanged there by a mob, suspected of loyalty to the king.

The biggest battles were in the South. That’s where the war was won.

One branch of my family knew the cost of neutrality. A former officer from the French and Indian War refused to take sides when the Revolution broke out. The local townspeople tried to lynch him. Driven into exile, he joined the loyalists.

While he was away fighting, his wife fed information to the Americans — protecting the farm and their many children from reprisals. Her actions earned him a pardon. After the war, he returned from exile and served in the North Carolina State Assembly.

The Revolution wasn’t a clean myth. It was a civil war, bitter and personal. And my family, like many, lived both sides of it.

I once had a beer and a lobster roll on a quiet Connecticut beach where Long Island spies came ashore with news of British troop movements. I bent down and touched the cold water of the Delaware, where Washington’s army crossed one bitter Christmas Eve.

No book can teach what you learn by walking where history happened — by breathing the same air, listening to the same wind, standing where great men once stood.

With time, I came to see how much larger the Revolution really was. And uglier. The lines between right and wrong blurred. The deeper you go, the more complexity you uncover. That’s the price of understanding — and of growing up.

Still, Concord will always stay with me.

I know the men in red weren’t monsters. They were cold, far from home, following orders. “They came three thousand miles, and died, to keep the Past upon its throne,” reads the grave marker by the river. “Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, their English mother made her moan.”

But I know the other side, too. The farmers who stood against them weren’t radicals or rebels. They were citizens. They were noble. And when the moment came, they chose to act.

You can’t hold on to your inheritance if you don’t know where it came from — or what it cost.

That’s why I’ll take my son with me the next time I stand on that “rude bridge that arched the flood” and tell him what happened there — where embattled farmers once stood and fired the shot heard ’round the world.

Emerson's poem: Concord Hymn

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Why Easter Monday should be a federal holiday — and I'm fighting to make it happen



Last year, as millions of Americans were preparing to celebrate the Resurrection, President Biden took the opportunity to add a new holy day to the national calendar.

March 31, 2024 — previously known as “Easter” — would now double as the “Transgender Day of Visibility,” Biden’s proclamation declared. (This was a separate event from the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which fell on November 20.) “Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans,” the president wrote. “You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong.”

One year later, as Christians gathered again to celebrate one of Christianity’s most holy holidays, a new president issued a very different proclamation.

“During this sacred week, we acknowledge that the glory of Easter Sunday cannot come without the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross,” President Trump wrote. “In His final hours on Earth, Christ willingly endured excruciating pain, torture, and execution on the cross out of a deep and abiding love for all His creation. Through His suffering, we have redemption. Through His death, we are forgiven of our sins. Through His Resurrection, we have hope of eternal life.”

What a difference one year can make.

The Trump administration’s commemoration of this Holy Week didn’t just strike a contrast with Biden. President Trump has taken Easter more seriously than any other president in modern American history. That’s a good thing. Easter is the holiest day on the Christian calendar, “celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity,” as the president’s proclamation put it.

This is not a radical idea. Nor is it some boutique left-wing micro-holiday, dreamed up five minutes ago in a sociology classroom.

Even more broadly, Easter is deeply rooted in the traditions and folkways of the American nation itself. Some 80% of Americans celebrate this holiday — a larger number than the nearly two-thirds of Americans who identify as Christian.

Last week, I introduced legislation that would establish Easter Monday as a federal holiday. This is long overdue. Easter Monday is already recognized as a public holiday in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Western Europe. The United States is one of the only nations in the West that doesn’t formally recognize it as such.

My bill, which I was proud to introduce with Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.V.), would fix that, giving millions of Americans the chance to more fully celebrate the defining moment of the faith that shaped our nation.

This simple addition to the federal holiday calendar is pro-faith, pro-family, and pro-worker. March and April are the only back-to-back months without an official federal holiday. A federal holiday would add a three-day weekend to the two-month stretch from Presidents' Day to Memorial Day, providing American workers and families a much-needed opportunity to gather and relax.

At the same time, it comes with its own economic benefits. Easter weekend already generates around $15 billion for our economy. A three-day weekend could boost that by an estimated 10% to 15%, adding up to $2 billion in economic activity.

This is not a radical idea. Nor is it some boutique left-wing micro-holiday, dreamed up five minutes ago in a sociology classroom, commemorating “Trans Visibility” or “Indigenous Day of Mourning.” It is a federal recognition of a tradition that is inextricably linked to our way of life itself — a tradition that already unites more than three-quarters of Americans.

For generations, many American school calendars gave students the day off for both Good Friday and Easter Monday. We already have a “National Day of Prayer,” signed into law by Missouri’s own President Harry Truman. A federal Easter Monday holiday would go a step farther, allowing Americans to celebrate one of the most extraordinary days in world history: Easter — the day of Christ’s Resurrection.

Our holidays and traditions are part of the story we tell about ourselves. This is not a partisan idea. Easter is not a “Republican” or “Democrat” holiday. Easter is an American holiday. It’s time our federal calendar recognized it as such.

Catholic students push a top-tier university to draw the line on porn



The University of Notre Dame may finally be on the verge of blocking access to pornography on its Indiana campus — and not a moment too soon.

When I was a student at Notre Dame in 2019, I met with then-President Rev. John Jenkins to urge him to adopt a campus-wide porn filter. Our student-led campaign had gained thousands of signatures and drawn national media attention, including coverage from Newsweek, the Daily Beast, and ABC’s “Nightline.”

With major corporations distancing themselves from the pornography industry, Notre Dame has even more reason to follow its students’ lead.

I explained to Father Jenkins, an affable priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, how pornography fuels the trafficking of women and children. But he seemed more concerned about avoiding any attempt to control the behavior of male students who watch porn. His argument? That blocking pornography would deprive students of the chance to build self-control.

Six years later, that argument feels even more out of touch. A growing consensus now recognizes pornography not as a harmless personal vice but as a driving force behind the sexual exploitation of children and the trafficking of women. It’s also bad for the brain.

That change in understanding comes as a new generation of Notre Dame students has launched another effort to convince the university to act. Last month, students introduced a petition urging the university president “to take immediate action to promote a pornography-free campus.” According to the Irish Rover, a conservative student newspaper, more than 600 students have already signed the petition — an impressive showing at a university with only about 9,000 undergraduates.

‘Infested with rape videos’

Public opinion has shifted in recent years thanks in part to a groundbreaking 2020 New York Times article by columnist Nicholas Kristof titled “The Children of Pornhub.” In it, Kristof documented how Pornhub “monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.”

Kristof’s column shared the stories of young women whose abuse as children had been filmed and profited from by one of the most powerful pornographic websites in the world. Kristof concluded, damningly, that Pornhub “is infested with rape videos.”

The corporate world took notice. In response to Kristof’s exposé, Mastercard, Visa, and Discover all blocked payments to Pornhub to avoid liability for enabling child sexual abuse. Under pressure, Pornhub announced new age-verification policies last year. But the vast majority of pornographic websites still require no such safeguards. Child sexual abuse material remains rampant across “mainstream” platforms.

With major corporations distancing themselves from the pornography industry, Notre Dame has even more reason to follow its students’ lead. Other Catholic institutions already have.

Inspired by our 2019 efforts at Notre Dame, the Catholic University of America passed a student government resolution asking administrators to “prohibit access to the top 200 pornography websites through the campus network.” President John Garvey agreed and honored the request. Franciscan University of Steubenville and Christendom College also maintain similar pornography filters.

Overcoming resistance

Now, with new leadership at Notre Dame, the odds of real action have improved. The Rev. Robert Dowd took office as university president in June.

When I was a student, I had the privilege of learning from Father Dowd. Unlike professors who treat students as interchangeable, Father Dowd made time to meet individually with everyone. His compassion wasn’t confined to the classroom — he also founded the Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity, which supports research aimed at alleviating poverty in the developing world. Standing against child sexual exploitation would be entirely consistent with both his academic and moral commitments.

But Father Dowd will face institutional resistance. Some administrators fear that blocking porn might make Notre Dame look provincial — unfit to compete with elite secular institutions. Others worry a filter might somehow impinge upon academic freedom.

Both fears are unfounded.

First, Notre Dame can lead the nation by taking a principled stand against an industry that fuels exploitation and abuse. Second, academic freedom can be preserved with basic accommodations. If faculty or students require access to pornography for legitimate research, they can ask Notre Dame’s IT department to lift the filter on their account.

And the technical hurdle? It’s minimal. John Gohsman, Notre Dame’s former vice president for information technology, told Students for Child-Oriented Policy that installing a filter “would be neither technologically difficult nor costly.”

I hope — and fully expect — that Father Dowd will heed today’s students and take meaningful action against the evils perpetuated by the pornography industry.

I’ll end where I began. In 2019, when Father Jenkins refused our request, I said this:

Pornography propagates sexual assault, contributes to the objectification of women, and advances the sexual exploitation of children. I call on Notre Dame to instead stand as a champion for women and children by enforcing the university’s official policy against using pornography on the campus Wi-Fi network.

That call is still waiting for a response. Now is the time.

Old boxes, open hearts, and a little divine timing



My suburban town has a waste drop-off center where residents can take items that don’t belong in the regular trash — things like chemicals, corrugated cardboard, and certain recyclables. I gladly hand over my aluminum and metal cans, which actually have some raw material value, in exchange for unloading the mountain of cardboard boxes I seem to collect.

The center also runs a moving-box exchange: new arrivals can drop off their flattened boxes, and anyone is free to take what they need. It’s one of those small civic gestures that, in theory at least, make a town feel like a community.

‘I think you might be an angel,’ she said. ‘Ma’am,’ I laughed, ‘I can assure you I’m not. You can call my wife and confirm.’

It’s also where I witnessed two moments I’ll never forget.

The first came just after my wife and I had moved from another state. We’d been through an ugly incident — one that left her physically hurt, shaken, and furious. I tried to console her, though I was rattled myself. More than anything, she felt afraid. She didn’t know a soul in our new town. She felt alone.

Still, life had to go on. We were setting up our new home, and on that Saturday afternoon we loaded the car with flattened moving boxes and headed to the drop-off center. After unloading the last one, I placed my hand gently on her back as we turned toward the car. Her face was heavy with sorrow, her body slack with grief.

As we neared our vehicle, a man and woman — both around 60 by my guess — walked toward us. The woman gently placed her hand on my wife’s arm and asked, “May we pray for you?”

The man explained that they had noticed her pain and wanted to offer her comfort through prayer. My wife, still shaken but open, nodded yes.

They each rested a hand on her shoulders. Without knowing a single detail of what had happened, they prayed. They asked God to bring her peace. They prayed for strength to carry the weight she was bearing. They asked that she feel God’s presence — that she know she wasn’t alone.

And then my wife began to cry.

These two complete strangers embraced her while she wept. In that moment, something shifted. Her healing had begun.

Afterward, my wife and I reflected on that moment. If angels walk among us, we agreed, they must look something like that couple.

About a year later, we had new neighbors whose garage was overflowing with empty boxes. As they unpacked, I offered to take the pile to the waste station while running errands. They accepted, and we broke the boxes down and loaded them into my SUV.

At the drop-off station, I noticed an elderly woman struggling with a single flattened moving box, trying unsuccessfully to wedge it into the back seat of her small Nissan. I approached and joked that she either needed a smaller box or a bigger car.

I offered to fold the flaps or crease the cardboard to help it fit, but she waved me off — it wasn’t worth the trouble, she said.

She explained that she’d heard about the moving box exchange and came to see what she could find. But she didn’t need just one box — she needed dozens. She was moving out of the home she’d lived in for decades, the house where she and her late husband had raised their children. They were all grown now and had moved out of state. It was time, she said, to downsize and move closer to one of them.

“It’s all so overwhelming,” she said. “I don’t even know where to begin. But I know I’ll need a lot of boxes — so much is being given away or won’t be packed by the movers.”

I nodded toward my vehicle, packed with dozens of flattened moving boxes, and said, “Let’s skip the middleman. I’ll bring these straight to your house.”

She hesitated with the usual “I hate to impose,” but eventually accepted. I followed her a couple of miles to her home.

As I carried the boxes inside and stacked them in a corner, her tone turned serious.

“Why were you at the waste station?” she asked.

“To drop off these boxes,” I replied.

“No, I mean why were you there at that exact moment? And why did you approach me?”

“Just timing,” I said.

“I think you might be an angel,” she said.

“Ma’am,” I laughed, “I can assure you I’m not. You can call my wife and confirm.”

She handed me some strapping tape, and I assembled a dozen boxes, showing her how to do it easily.

Before leaving, I scribbled my name and number on a slip of paper.

“Call if you need more boxes,” I said, “or help with anything else.”

As I walked out, she asked again, “Are you sure you’re not an angel?”

“I promise you I’m not,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure they hang out at the waste drop-off center. That’s where my wife and I met a couple of angels once.”

Consumer prices are down — why can’t Democrats admit it?



The latest inflation report is in — and for the first time in nearly five years, the Consumer Price Index has dropped.

According to data released April 10, gas prices led the decline, falling 6.3% from February to March and nearly 10% year over year. That’s real relief for working families.

It’s easy to claim every success as earned and every failure as someone else’s fault. But that’s not leadership — it’s childishness.

But don’t expect Joe Biden to credit Donald Trump. That would mean acknowledging the obvious: These results aren’t from Biden’s policies — they’re from Trump’s.

Psychologists call it the “locus of control.” People with an internal locus believe they shape their own destiny. People with an external one think they’re at the mercy of circumstance.

Most people pick one or the other. But Democrats? They flip depending on who happens to sit in the Oval Office.

When inflation stayed low under Trump, they called it luck. When inflation hit a 40-year high under Biden, they blamed Vladimir Putin. And landlords. And grocery stores. And payment processors. Anyone but Biden.

That spin didn’t pay the bills — especially in minority communities hit hardest by inflation.

Federal Reserve data shows that black and Hispanic households spend a higher share of income on gas, groceries, and rent than white households. In cities like Atlanta, Detroit, and Charlotte, black renters saw double-digit rent hikes between 2021 and 2023.

What did we hear from the White House? Excuses. Deflection. “We’re building back better” — but for whom?

Trump gave us the answer. On day one, he signed executive orders to fast-track energy permits, cut red tape, reopen federal lands for drilling, and establish a new National Energy Council.

The results are clear. Energy prices are dropping. Inflation is cooling. And Americans — at long last — are catching a break.

Biden took the opposite approach. He vowed to “end fossil fuel,” killed the Keystone XL Pipeline, blocked offshore drilling, and even sold oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — to China.

When energy prices surged, he pointed fingers. Biden blamed the war in Ukraine. But by January 2022 — before the invasion — gas prices were already up 40% year over year, and inflation had hit 7.5%.

The “Putin price hike” was a convenient distraction from Biden’s failed energy agenda.

And the scapegoating didn’t stop there.

When inflation hit every corner of the economy, Attorney General Merrick Garland pointed at Visa, accusing debit card fees of fueling the crisis. The fees in question? Fourteen cents on a $60 purchase.

Never mind that businesses willingly pay those standard fees. If they had a real problem with them, they could easily switch to any number of alternative companies or payment methods.

If Garland wanted real answers, he should have looked at Biden’s regulatory agenda. One study estimates those rules will cost the average family $47,000 over a lifetime.

When rents spiked, Biden and the Justice Department pointed fingers at landlords and pricing algorithms. They ignored the real drivers: millions of illegal immigrants increasing demand and federal mandates that jacked up compliance costs for builders. And the algorithms they blame? Those same tools recommend lower prices when inflation and demand cool down.

As grocery bills climbed, Biden blamed “shrinkflation” and greedy grocers and meatpackers. He ignored the real culprits: trillions in wasteful spending from the American Rescue Plan and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

This is the pattern: Jack up costs, then blame someone else. Spin doesn’t fill a gas tank in Jackson or put groceries on the table in Memphis. A press release won’t pay the electric bill in Columbia.

It’s easy to claim every success as earned and every failure as someone else’s fault. But that’s not leadership — it’s childishness. No kindergarten teacher would tolerate it. Voters shouldn’t either.

And they aren’t. Democrats are polling at 29% for a reason.

While the media tracks the stock market, Main Street is what matters. When gas prices jump 60%, hedge fund managers don’t suffer. It’s the single mom in Detroit, the delivery driver in Atlanta, and the grandmother in Baltimore stretching her Social Security check.

This isn’t academic. It’s survival.

Americans are done with excuses. They want results — and President Trump is delivering.

He didn’t just talk tough. He cut gas prices, cooled inflation, and restored energy independence. For communities crushed by elite policy failures, those results aren’t just political. They’re life-changing.

Telling America’s story is too important to leave to radicals



Every nation has a story. Recently, the Washington Post described the Smithsonian Institution, with its 21 museums and 14 educational and research centers, as “the official keeper of the American Story.” What kind of story have the Smithsonian museums been telling about our country?

On March 27, President Trump issued an executive order arguing that there has been a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” and promote a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” This “revisionist movement” casts American “founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” A White House fact sheet calls for “revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology.” Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, will lead the administration’s efforts.

The debate over the Smithsonian is only one front in a wide-ranging, ongoing conflict over first principles and concepts of justice (equality versus equity).

Critics of the executive order responded quickly. They maintain that the Trump administration wants to “whitewash the past and suppress discussion of systemic racism.” The Smithsonian, the critics contend, is led by nonpartisan professionals whose aim is to be truthful and inclusive and tell the whole story of America, including groups that have been neglected in the past. Professor David W. Blight of Yale, president of the Organization of American Historians, complained that the executive order is a “laughable thing until you realize what their intent actually is and what they’re doing is trying to erode and then obliterate what we have been writing for a century.”

Is there a divisive ideology being taught, as the Trump administration maintains, and if so, what is it? What have university professors been writing about America, if not “for a century,” for at least the past decade? Professor Blight’s OAH revealed its ideology by embracing the New York Times’ 1619 Project, declaring:

The 1619 Project’s approach to understanding the American past and connecting it to newly urgent movements for racial justice and systemic reform point to … the ways in which slavery and racial injustice have and continue to profoundly shape our nation. Critical race theory provides a lens through which we can examine and understand systemic racism and its many consequences.

What do we call the ideology that, as the OAH explains, “acknowledges and interrogates systems of oppression — racial, ethnic, gender, class — and openly addresses the myriad injustices that these systems have perpetuated through the past and into the present”?

As most are aware, the ideology expressed by the OAH is dominant in universities today. It views American history negatively through the lens of “oppressors” (white males) versus “oppressed” and “marginalized groups.” This ideology has been variously called political correctness, identity politics, social justice, and wokeness. We could use Wesley Yang’s term “successor ideology,” meaning it is the new, radical, left-wing ideological successor to the old patriotic liberalism of politicians like Walter Mondale and historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Not surprisingly, given its pre-eminence in America’s universities, this divisive “successor ideology” is at the heart of the worldview propounded by the leaders of the Smithsonian.

Something rotten in the Smithsonian

The current secretary of the Smithsonian is Lonnie G. Bunch III, who is adept at dealing with donors, stakeholders, and Republican congressional appropriators. His language is mostly measured and reasonable. He talks in terms of truth, nuance, complexity, and nonpartisanship. But in reality, Bunch is a partisan progressive, a skilled cultural warrior, and a promoter of the leftist “successor ideology.”

Bunch partnered with and promoted the biased 1619 Project, which asserts that slavery is the alpha and omega of the American story and that maintaining slavery was a primary motivation for some American colonists who joined the revolutionary cause. The architect of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, bragged that it “decenters whiteness,” and she denounced her liberal academic critics as “old white male historians.”

Nevertheless, Bunch proclaimed, “I want the Smithsonian to legitimize important issues, whether it's 1619 or climate change.” Of the Smithsonian’s participation in the 1619 Project, he declared, “I was very pleased with it.” Bunch proudly noted that people “saw that the Smithsonian had fingerprints on [the 1619 Project]. And that to me was a great victory.”

Bunch pictures America as a nation in which systemic racism is pervasive. During the George Floyd riots, Bunch told the Atlantic, "It is really about systemic racism throughout, not just the police department, but many parts of the American system.”

Further, he made excuses for the violence in the summer of 2020, which resulted in more than a dozen Americans killed and between $1 and $2 billion worth of property damage:

How dare they loot. Well, that kind of protest is really one of the few ways the voiceless feel they have power. And while I am opposed to violent protests personally, I understand that frustration sometimes pushes you over the edge. I think what’s important for us to recognize is, let us not turn attention towards looting in a way that takes away what is the power of these protests.

Three years ago, the Smithsonian assisted in the creation of a new College Board AP course on African American Studies. Ethics and Public Policy Center scholar Stanley Kurtz has revealed how APAAS is a radical neo-Marxist, anti-American project that calls for the socialist transformation of the United States. APAAS is soaked in the tenets of critical race theory, flirts with supporting violence, and implicitly advocates dismantling the American way of life, including free-market capitalism. It is a curriculum where students learn from Frantz Fanon that America is a “monster” and from Aimé Césaire that Stalin’s Soviet Union was a model society. Nevertheless, the APAAS curriculum is promoted on the Smithsonian’s Learning Lab.

Under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida legislature passed the Stop Woke Act that bars APAAS from the state’s K-12 schools because it promotes the divisive concepts manifest in CRT. Lonnie Bunch and his close ideological ally Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, falsely accused DeSantis of ignoring African-American history. On the contrary, DeSantis created a new black history curriculum based on serious and accurate scholarship. In response to DeSantis’ opposition to APAAS, Bunch complained to Alexander:

I am upset because you know we were involved in helping [APAAS] and the notion that somehow simply having a course that forces us to understand complexity, nuance, and ambiguity is a problem, that’s a problem for all of America.

In truth, there is very little “complexity” and “nuance” in the Smithsonian-promoted APAAS. It is one-sided, partisan propaganda. Kurtz notes that APAAS is not in fact inclusive, ignoring the work of black conservatives “like Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, or Robert Woodson” or even “liberal black intellectuals, like Randall Kennedy or John McWhorter.”

Bunch often talks in terms of “nonpartisanship” and promoting the best of historical and cultural scholarship. But at the same time, he promotes the progressive left agenda, stating that the “job” of the National Museum of African American History and Culture is “really to create new generations of activists,” and “for me it really is about how … museums play a social justice role.”

Our story

To use one of Lonnie Bunch’s favorite terms, what is the “context” in which President Trump issued his executive order? It recognizes that a left-progressive cultural revolution (the “successor ideology”) has marched through our universities, schools, foundations, and museums, transforming the story of America into a tale of oppression and exploitation. The woke revolutionaries aim to “fundamentally transform the United States” from a nation based on a natural rights concept of the equality of citizenship to “equity,” a system of racial-ethnic-gender group quotas and group consciousness.

The debate over the Smithsonian is only one front in a wide-ranging, ongoing conflict over first principles and concepts of justice (equality versus equity). If the cultural revolutionaries are “transformationist,” in the sense that they aim to deconstruct the American way of life, the position articulated by Trump’s executive order is “Americanist,” in the sense that it represents a cultural counterrevolution that affirms America’s past and principles.

Are the Organization of American Historians and the current leadership of the Smithsonian right that America is a nation built on “slavery, exploitation, and exclusion”? Or is the American story what British writer Paul Johnson described as one of “human achievement without parallel,” the story “of difficulties overcome by skill, faith, and strength of purpose, and courage and persistence”? Was Johnson right when he wrote, “The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures” and that Americans “thrown together by fate in that swirling maelstrom of history” are “the most remarkable people the world has ever seen”?

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

Meet the Millennial influencer running to be Michigan’s next US senator



The 2026 U.S. Senate race in Michigan now has its first official candidate: State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a Millennial Democrat from Oakland County who shot to national attention with a viral floor speech. She’s betting that moment can carry her all the way to the world’s greatest deliberative body.

Before Democrats and their media lapdogs start drafting puff pieces and polishing the pedestal, they should ask a harder question: Who is Mallory McMorrow — and more importantly, who is she not?

This isn’t just political positioning. It’s a fundamental disconnect. McMorrow’s politics are tailored for retweets, not results.

McMorrow isn’t a product of Michigan grit. She’s a coastal transplant from suburban New Jersey with a degree from Notre Dame and a résumé that reads like a LinkedIn influencer’s dream. She landed in Michigan less than a decade ago and began branding herself as the conscience of the Midwest. But Michiganders know the difference between authenticity and ambition.

McMorrow presents herself as a pragmatic progressive. In reality, she mimics the Instagram-ready style of coastal elites and peddles the kind of policies that might play in Brooklyn or Silver Lake, but not in Battle Creek or Midland.

Take her recent appearance on “Off the Record” with Tim Skubick, a Michigan political staple. Asked about boys competing in girls’ sports, McMorrow didn’t just sidestep the issue — she leaned into it, defending the far-left line with social media polish and no concern for the working-class parents listening at home.

This isn’t just political positioning. It’s a fundamental disconnect. McMorrow talks unity and moderation while aligning herself with activists who push fringe agendas. She sells herself as a consensus-builder while alienating the very voters she claims to represent. Her politics are tailored for retweets, not results.

If Attorney General Dana Nessel jumps into the primary, that contrast will become impossible to ignore. Say what you will about Nessel — she’s blunt, combative, and never confused for anything but herself. She doesn’t hide her ideology or try to sugarcoat her record for the national press. In a matchup, McMorrow won’t just have to explain her platform — she’ll have to explain her reinvention.

A real race demands contrast and courage. Michigan voters don’t need more social media senators. They need leaders who know the price of gas, not just the latest polling memo. They need fighters who understand what Michigan families face every day — not what’s trending in a D.C. group chat.

To her credit, McMorrow is young, articulate, and eager to chart a new course. That’s not nothing. But the path forward for Michigan isn’t progressive posturing. It’s common-sense governance rooted in the lives of working families — not curated identities shaped by PR consultants and filtered through national donor networks.

Republicans need to seize this opportunity. Michigan requires a new generation of GOP leadership — grounded, principled, and ready to fight. I know that generation exists. I see it in the state legislature. I see it in young constitutional conservatives who understand the dignity of work, the sanctity of family, and the value of a dollar.

As a Millennial myself, I know we don’t need more viral fame. We need values. We don’t need slogans. We need substance.

In the coming months, you’ll hear a lot about Mallory McMorrow — there will be glossy profiles, glowing press, and lots of digital fanfare. But underneath the branding is a clear ambition: to take Michigan’s Senate seat and turn it into a springboard for the next liberal celebrity.

We’ve seen that movie before. We know how it ends.

The real question is whether Michigan voters will choose performance or principle.

I believe they’ll choose principle. Because in Michigan, authenticity still matters. Common sense still counts. And we still believe a senator should represent everyday citizens worried about the price of a gallon of milk — not the Met Gala elite sipping champagne just across the Hudson from McMorrow’s home state.