California’s budget trick is leaving poor patients to die



California politicians love to brag. GDP near $4 trillion. “Fourth-largest economy in the world.” Progressive pundits cite those numbers as proof that big government works.

But behind the glossy stats sits a system bloated with grift, distortion, and federal abuse. Nowhere does that dysfunction show more clearly than in California’s shell game with Medicaid reimbursements — a sleight of hand known as intergovernmental transfers, or IGTs.

Any private-sector CEO who ran a company like this would face prosecution. In Sacramento, these people get re-elected.

At first glance, IGTs look benign. Counties, fire districts, and public ambulance providers send money to California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal. The state then uses those funds to draw matching federal dollars.

In theory, it’s a cost-sharing mechanism to support care for low-income patients.

In practice, California weaponizes IGTs as a legalized money-laundering scheme. The state punishes private providers, guts rural health care, props up political patrons, and hides it all behind the banner of equity.

Here’s how the racket works: Private ambulance companies get stuck with the standard Medicaid reimbursement rate — $118 per ground transport. Public agencies, including fire departments and county EMS units, receive up to $1,400 per run. Same patient. Same service. Ten times the payout.

This isn’t health care policy. It’s a rigged system.

Private ambulance companies can’t compete. Most operate at a loss in low-income and rural regions. Once they go under, they don’t get replaced. The 911 calls still come — but the ambulances come slower. Or not at all.

And in emergencies, minutes cost lives.

California’s IGT scheme isn’t just a technical policy failure. It’s a public safety crisis disguised as social justice.

The people paying the highest price are the working poor — the same communities Sacramento claims to champion. These residents live in neighborhoods left uncovered. They suffer delayed response times. They watch public-sector unions cash in while their own emergency care collapses.

Meanwhile, the state expands Medicaid to undocumented immigrants — ignoring federal guidelines — while using IGTs to balance the budget. These patients can’t legally receive full Medicaid benefits, but California finds the loopholes. State officials cook the books to collect federal money anyway.

It’s a violation of the law. No one stops it.

Sacramento calls this fiscal ingenuity. Washington looks the other way. In truth, it’s federal fraud.

The cash goes to public agencies, which funnel it into inflated salaries, no-show contracts, and political favors. Rural ambulance crews shut down. Small hospitals cut staff. And working-class Californians wait longer to get help they used to take for granted.

RELATED: Every taxpayer ‘should be raising holy hell’

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Any private-sector CEO who ran a company like this would face prosecution. In Sacramento, these people get re-elected.

This isn’t bureaucratic inertia. It’s engineered corruption. California’s 2024 and 2025 State Plan Amendments codify this scheme in black and white. They grant preferential reimbursement to government providers while sidelining the private sector completely.

That’s not policy. It’s pay-to-play.

And it’s working exactly as intended: Drive out private actors, centralize control, and soak the federal treasury while calling it compassion.

The fix is simple. Enforce federal Medicaid law. End special treatment for public agencies. Level the field so private ambulance companies — especially in rural areas — can survive.

Without reform, the collapse continues. The IGT scam rewards states for padding GDP with fake Medicaid spending. It rewards failure. It punishes success. And it leaves real people — sick people, poor people — waiting for ambulances that never come.

California can keep calling itself the world’s fourth-largest economy. But those numbers mean nothing when the foundation is rotten.

The ambulance isn’t coming. The budget is built on lies. And Gavin Newsom is on television doing Baghdad Bob impressions while the system falls apart.

Progressive castoffs don’t get to define the right



When woke mobs began chasing off guest speakers from college campuses and elite institutions started investigating scientists over minor infractions against gender orthodoxy, a certain class of moderate progressives realized its reign was ending. Figures like Sam Harris, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shermer weren’t conservatives by any stretch. In the George W. Bush or Barack Obama years, they would have qualified as mainstream progressives. But they couldn’t keep pace with the radical left.

These disaffected progressives needed a new label. But they couldn’t bring themselves to align with the “backward” conservatives they’d spent careers ridiculing. Venture capitalist Eric Weinstein coined the term “Intellectual Dark Web,” which Weiss attempted to popularize in the New York Times. But most settled on “classical liberal” to describe their stance. The problem? They had spent years rejecting classical liberalism.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right.

“Classical liberal” serves as the ideal label for repackaging Obama-era liberalism in a way that reassures Republicans while keeping a safe distance from the woke left. It sounds moderate compared to identity politics. It evokes America’s founders — Washington, Jefferson, Adams. If you want to appear reasonable to conservatives while shielding yourself from attacks on your right flank, aligning with the founders is a smart move.

Whether the branding strategy was intentional remains debatable. What’s not in question is how badly this self-description distorted classical liberalism.

Some members of the Intellectual Dark Web drifted right. Most did not. They held tightly to progressive instincts. Many were atheists. Some had built careers in the New Atheist movement, penning books mocking Christianity and debating apologists for sport. Several were openly gay, and most championed same-sex marriage. These were not defenders of tradition — they spent decades undermining it.

They didn’t oppose the revolution. They led it — until the mob turned on the parts they still cherished, like feminism or science.

Toleration of all ... except atheists

When the Intellectual Dark Web embraced the “classical liberal” label, it did so to defend free speech. Most of these disillusioned progressives had been canceled — for “misgendering” someone, for not parroting the latest racial orthodoxies, or for refusing to bow to ideological litmus tests. They longed for an earlier version of progressivism, one where they still held the reins, and radical activists didn’t dictate the terms of debate.

This shared frustration became the rallying point between conservatives and anti-woke liberals. Free speech offered common ground, so both sides leaned into it. But classical liberalism involves far more than vague nods to open dialogue.

Some trace liberalism’s roots to Machiavelli or Hobbes. But in the American tradition, it begins with John Locke. Much of the Declaration of Independence reads like Thomas Jefferson channeling Locke — right down to the line about “life, liberty, and property,” slightly rewritten as “the pursuit of happiness.”

In “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” Locke argued for religious toleration among Christian sects. He even entertained the idea of tolerating Catholics — if they renounced allegiance to the pope. But Locke drew a hard line at one group: atheists.

“Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God,” Locke wrote. “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist ... [they] undermine and destroy all religion can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.”

For Locke, atheism was social acid. It dissolved the moral glue holding a nation together. A silent unbeliever who kept to himself might avoid trouble — but even then, Locke saw no reason to trust such a man with power. Atheism, in Locke’s view, posed a civilizational threat.

Indispensable religion

Now, consider the irony. Many of today’s self-declared “classical liberals” rose to prominence attacking religion. They led the New Atheist crusade. They mocked believers, ridiculed Christianity, and wrote bestsellers deriding faith as delusion. These weren’t defenders of liberal order. They launched a secular jihad against the very moral foundation that made liberalism possible.

Their adoption of the “classical liberal” label isn’t just unserious. It’s either historically illiterate or deliberately deceptive.

It’s a mistake to treat America’s founders as a monolith. They disagreed — often sharply — and those disagreements animate much of the "Federalist Papers." But one point remains clear: Their understanding of free speech and religious liberty diverged sharply from modern secular assumptions.

RELATED: Labeling you ‘phobic’ is how the left dodges real arguments

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Even after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified, several states retained official churches. Courts regularly upheld blasphemy laws well into the 20th century. Some state supreme courts continued defending them into the 1970s. Blue laws, which restrict commerce on Sundays to preserve the Sabbath, remain on the books in several states.

John Adams put it plainly: The Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The founders, and the citizens they represented, expected America to function as an explicitly Christian nation. Free speech and religious liberty existed within that framework — not apart from it.

Skin suit liberalism

So when non-woke liberals claim that “classical liberalism” demands a secular or religiously neutral government, they misrepresent history. That idea would have struck the founders as absurd. The Constitution was not written for New Atheists. Adams said so himself.

Faced with these historical facts, critics usually pivot. They argue that America has morally advanced beyond its founding values. Today, we tolerate non-Christian religions, recognize women’s rights, and legalize same-sex marriage. These changes, they claim, bring us closer to “true” American principles like freedom and equality.

Classical liberalism was a real political tradition — one that helped shape the American founding. It deserves serious treatment. Watching it get paraded around by people who reject its core values is exhausting. If Locke or Adams saw progressive atheists wearing classical liberalism like a skin suit, they’d spin in their graves.

The secular liberalism of the 1990s and early 2000s is not classical liberalism. It isn’t even an ally of conservatism. The non-woke left served as useful co-belligerents against the radical fringe, but they were never true allies — and they should never be allowed to lead the conservative movement.

Some have earned respect. Carl Benjamin, Jordan Peterson, and others have taken real steps to the right, even toward Christianity. That deserves credit. But let’s not kid ourselves. Many who still fly the “classical liberal” banner don’t believe in the values it represents. They reject its religious foundation. They rewrite its history. They co-opt its label while advancing a worldview its founders would have rejected outright.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right. And they certainly don’t get to lead it.

The left’s war on the family is real — and Hillary Clinton proved it yet again



In a recent video clip, former first lady Hillary Clinton said the quiet part out loud — confirming what conservatives have long believed: Those on the left see the family as a right-wing institution, and they want to replace it.

Speaking at the 92nd Street YMCA in New York City, Clinton mocked efforts by Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance to encourage Americans to have children, sneering that this role should be left to illegal immigrants. This isn’t just a policy spat; it’s a glimpse into the left’s deeply held religious belief that the family is the problem. And if we let it, that agenda will destroy us.

The left’s war on life and family is not metaphorical. It is real, and it is violent.

The left hates the family because it despises everything God stands for. Leftists' agenda is destruction — not creation — and the family is ground zero.

The bombing of a fertility clinic on Saturday in Palm Springs, California, is a violent testament to this hatred. The attacker’s alleged manifesto openly declared a “war on the pro-lifers” Why such hostility toward those who protect life? Because the left is anti-life. Leftists oppose the unborn, the elderly, and the nuclear family. They target anything and anyone who dares to affirm that life is a sacred gift from God.

One chilling line from the manifesto reads, “We must finally begin the process of sterilizing this planet of the disease of life.” It could not be clearer what the agenda is.

The left’s secular cult

This only makes sense if we understand that the left’s secular humanist and Marxist worldview is demonic in nature. Secular means leftists reject God and divine law entirely, so they must hate everything that God values. In the absence of God, their humanism leads them to establish themselves as rulers, taking God’s place and seeking every hedonistic impulse.

Marxism, finally, is the ideological engine behind their destruction — it cannot build, only tear down.

This worldview is evident in their push to indoctrinate children into radical gender ideology and the LGBTQ sex cult. By promoting gender confusion and sexual immorality, the left seeks to prevent children from becoming healthy adults capable of forming families. The family is, after all, the bedrock of any nation. It is the place where values are transmitted and where identities are formed. That’s precisely why the left must destroy it. Leftists want to erase that identity and replace it with a sterile, fragmented one — incapable of bearing children, incapable of passing on faith, culture, or tradition.

So when Hillary Clinton says they want to replace the traditional family with other models foreign to our values, believe her.

A call to action

But we are not without hope. It is our sacred duty to worship God faithfully in our churches, homes, and daily lives. We must marry, have children, and raise them to do the same. This is not just a personal decision; it's a stand against the forces of darkness. In Genesis 1:28, God commands: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." We must obey this divine mandate.

We must also remember the greatness of our ancestors and the works God has done. Just as the Israelites raised stones of remembrance, we must look back and not forget what God has done for us.

RELATED: Crushed faces, broken legs, knockout punches just tip of the iceberg in savage attacks on pro-lifers

Photo by BRYAN DOZIER/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

We read in Joshua 4:6-7: "We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.”

God has already performed great works in establishing our nation. Many battles have been won. But the work is not finished.

The bombing of the fertility clinic is a grim reminder of the stakes. The left's war on life and family is not metaphorical. It is real, and it is violent. Leftists seek to eliminate any opposition to their anti-life, anti-family agenda.

But we shouldn’t be intimidated. We must continue to build strong families, pass on our values, and defend the sanctity of life. Only then can we hope to preserve the nation that our forefathers fought so hard to establish. The family is not just a social unit; it is a divine institution, and its preservation is our highest calling.

Truth bomb: How Pope Leo XIV is exposing the left's greatest fear



Sorry (not sorry), progressives and liberal media: Pope Leo XIV isn't here to rewrite the gospel and edit the Bible to fit your agenda.

When Cardinal Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV, progressives exhaled in cautious hope. Maybe — just maybe — Leo would accelerate the Catholic Church's liberal evolution as the heir to Pope Francis' attitude of inclusion.

They want Christians who are obedient to the progressive, globalist overlords — not Christ.

But that hope is quickly turning to frustration as reality sets in: Pope Leo XIV isn't going to oblige liberals.

Take, for example, Pope Leo XIV's views on the LGBTQ agenda. Just hours after Leo became pope, the Guardian raised alarm (i.e., clutched pearls) after finding video of Leo standing against the progressive spirit of the age while endorsing biblical ethics on sexuality and life.

In that video, Pope Leo XIV condemned abortion, euthanasia, and LGBTQ ideology while observing how the mass media push an anti-Christian agenda.

"Western mass media is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel – for example abortion, homosexual lifestyle, euthanasia," Leo said, before blasting the media for creating "sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyles choices" in such a way that "when people hear the Christian message, it often inevitably seems ideological and emotionally cruel."

But this is how the Guardian reported it: "Unearthed comments from new pope alarm LGBTQ+ Catholics."

In other words: A Catholic priest saying Christian things is problematic.

To be fair to progressives and the legacy media, I don't think they're personally upset at Pope Leo XIV (yet). After all, no one yet knows how he will lead the Catholic Church.

Instead, they're upset that Christianity still means something and that faithful Christians refuse to capitulate to their agenda.

They want a church that shifts with the spirit of the age. Christians who bow to cultural pressure. A religion that nods along with whatever the editors at the New York Times or MSNBC decide is morally right in 2025. They want the church to extract itself from its ancient roots. They want Christians who are obedient to the progressive, globalist overlords — not Christ.

Unfortunately for progressives, the Church does not exist to be a mirror of the age. It is a countersign pointing all to King Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the Father. It does not exist to affirm but to transform.

Not only are progressives upset because faithful Christians refuse to conform, but they're upset because the truth is a light that illuminates their lies.

Pope Leo XIV, then, is exposing the left's true enemy — God's truth — and their greatest fear: the disinfectant that wipes away their lies.

Take, for example, Pope Leo XIV's comments about gender ideology.

"It seeks to create genders that don’t exist, since God created men and women, and trying to confuse the ideas of nature will only harm families and individuals," he said in 2016. "This campaign, apparently, is going to create a lot of confusion and do a lot of harm. We mustn’t confuse the importance of family and marriage with what others want to create, as if it were a right to do something that isn’t."

In the era of cancel culture and progressive-enforced speech codes, these comments are not just controversial — they amount to dangerous "hate speech."

While Pope Leo XIV has not yet faced the full wrath of the progressive mob, his fidelity to traditional Christian ethics is a clear and present threat to the new religion of woke "inclusivity" in which dissension is branded as bigotry and hate.

The great irony, of course, is that as a faithful Christian leader, Pope Leo XIV is neither a bigot nor hate-filled. He preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is rooted in biblical love — the only love that brings peace to our chaotic world.

But to a world that demands affirmation and acceptance of radically anti-Christian ideals, the love of Jesus Christ — which requires obedience and allegiance to his teachings — looks like hate. In this culture, truth sounds like violence and, as Pope Leo XIV himself said, conviction is rebranded as cruelty.

Perhaps, then, this will be Pope Leo XIV's greatest cultural transgression: He refuses to lie.

He doesn't pretend that men can become women. He doesn't endorse the idea that marriage can be anything but a faithful union between one man and one woman. He rejects abortion and the progressive erosion of the family unit. Under Pope Leo XIV's leadership, the cross will not be replaced with a rainbow flag.

Pope Leo XIV is a shepherd of God's truth, like it or not.

All Christians should be thankful. Because in an age when so many leaders bend to the whims of the culture wars or equivocate truth, Pope Leo XIV will do something truly countercultural: He'll stand on God's word.

Progressives wanted a puppet. Instead, they got a pope.

‘Tolerant’ Leftists Shout Down Gen Z Lawmaker For Saying Boys And Girls Are Different

The time to listen to black men is apparently over if they have the temerity to stray from gender orthodoxy.

‘Nakedly racist’ new film: Ryan Coogler's ‘Sinners’ inspires Karmelo Anthony defenders



The debate surrounding Karmelo Anthony has predictably erupted into one of race, with Anthony’s supporters painting the victim, Austin Metcalf, as the perpetrator because of the color of his skin.

“We don’t actually know what Karmelo Anthony was thinking, but the narrative that they’re presenting is that, ‘Well, Austin Metcalf is a representative of whiteness, and if he’s a representative of whiteness, then all of the sins of whiteness, all of this slavery, systemic oppression, cultural hegemony, and all of these things are a part of Austin Metcalf’s fault,’” Jack Posobiec tells Jason Whitlock on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

“This is, as you always say, this is the idea of collective justice and collective guilt, which is not biblical. It is not Christian. This is a very primitive version of thinking. This is the way the world was — it was tribal — right before Christ came along,” he continues.

And that’s exactly what a new film by Ryan Coogler called ‘Sinners’ does — sends us back to a tribal world where black people and white people only saw each other for the color of their skin.


“What does that do? That divides people,” Posobiec tells Whitlock. “I guess that’s good for donations, right, in the same way that in ‘Sinners,’ it’s good for the box office.”

“But you know what? It’s bad for the country, and unfortunately it’s going to create more Austin Metcalfs,” he warns.

“I’m interested in what Hollywood is targeting at young black people,” Whitlock chimes in, adding, “I found this movie ‘Sinners’ to be the most nakedly racist movie that I’ve ever seen. That’s my takeaway, and it’s akin to ‘Birth of a Nation.’”

“We’ve listened to black people and black historians talk about the evilness of ‘Birth of a Nation’ and what it did,” he continues. “And I don’t disagree with them. It was programming and propaganda.”

“But this is the most nakedly racist. This movie ‘Sinners’ says white people are the devils. It’s as if Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam wrote this movie in 1930,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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The abortion pill’s body count — and the progressive cover-up behind it



Progressives routinely advance their agenda by obscuring the suffering of women and children. Every cultural revolution they champion, from redefining marriage to dismantling biological sex to flooding the country with abortion pills, demands one thing: suppression of consequences.

During the gay marriage debate, we were told it was all about adult love and equality. In reality, children paid the price.

This is the progressive playbook: Minimize harm, deny casualties, and move the Overton window.

With the transgender surge, Americans were assured it was just about “letting people pee in peace.” In reality, it meant lost female swim and track records, male rapists in women’s prisons, and irreversible surgeries on minors.

And now it's the abortion pill. Sold as “a safe, effective, FDA-approved method for people to end a pregnancy in the comfort of their own homes,” it has quietly become one of the most dangerous medical products routinely given to American women — no doctor visit required.

A groundbreaking new study by the Ethics and Public Policy Center shatters the illusion of safety around mifepristone, the abortion drug created by Danco Laboratories and greenlighted by the FDA. Based on real-world insurance claims (versus the previous shallow clinical trials) the data shows that one in 10women who take the abortion pill suffer a serious or life-threatening complication: sepsis, hemorrhaging, emergency surgery, hospitalization — even death.

“Simply stated,” the report says, “mifepristone, as used in real-world conditions, is not ‘safe and effective.’”

Naming the victims

The study analyzed a staggering 865,727 chemical abortions between 2017 and 2023, drawn from an all-payer insurance claims database covering private insurers, Medicaid, Medicare, Tricare, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Unlike the cherry-picked participants in controlled trials, these women represent the actual population using mifepristone today.

The EPPC found that 10.93% of women experienced serious adverse events within 45 days of their abortions — a rate 22 times higher than what the FDA reports on its drug label, which still cites outdated trials from as far back as 1983. As the authors note, those clinical trials enrolled just 30,966 people and were conducted under tightly controlled conditions. The real world doesn’t work that way.

And the real world has already buried the dead.

Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old medical assistant and mother from Georgia, died on August 19, 2022, from septic shock after experiencing complications from a medication abortion. After taking abortion pills, she developed a severe infection due to retained fetal tissue.

In 2017, 23-year-old Keisha Atkins underwent a late-term abortion in New Mexico, using mifepristone and misoprostol. She developed sepsis and required transfer to the University of New Mexico Hospital. Her condition rapidly worsened, and she died during emergency surgery.

Atkins and Thurman are not rare exceptions. Candi Miller, a 41-year-old mother, and Porsha Ngumezi, 35, also suffered fatal complications. Other unnamed victims fill the record. These women represent just a fraction of the tens of thousands who faced serious complications after taking mifepristone.

The EPPC report confirms what these stories reveal: The FDA has abandoned its responsibility to women in pursuit of politically pressured expediency.

In the name of “access,” the FDA has dismantled the original safeguards it once demanded when approving mifepristone in 2000.

Back then, patients were required to make three in-person visits. Only physicians could prescribe the drug. Pills had to be administered in a clinic or hospital setting. Providers had to be able to diagnose ectopic pregnancies and provide emergency surgical care if needed. Adverse events had to be reported.

Now? One telehealth call. Pills mailed to your house. And no obligation to report complications — unless the woman dies.

Returning to reality

In light of such overwhelming evidence of harm, the EPPC report recommends that “the FDA immediately reinstate its earlier, stronger patient safety protocols to ensure physician responsibility for women who take mifepristone under their care, as well as mandate full reporting of its side effects.”

The EPPC is right. Because the data is damning.

The study used the FDA’s own criteria to identify serious adverse events: infections, transfusions, ER visits, repeat surgeries, and psychiatric emergencies, all coded through ICD-10 and CPT medical billing systems. And while the report was cautious — tracking events within 45 days instead of the 72-day window used by FDA trial data — the outcome was still catastrophic.

“We included CTCAE Grade 3 (severe) and Grade 4 (life-threatening),” the report notes. “We did not include Grade 1 (mild) or Grade 2 (moderate).”

In other words, these weren’t headaches or stomach cramps. These were emergencies. And the women were often alone.

Chemical abortions now account for roughly two-thirds of all abortions in America. That means mifepristone is not a niche product — it’s mainstream. And yet the public has been systematically lied to about the risks, even as the federal government continues to loosen restrictions.

This is the progressive playbook: Minimize harm, deny casualties, and move the Overton window. It worked with marriage. It worked with gender. It’s working with abortion pills — unless we stop pretending.

Justice requires living in reality. And the reality is that women and children are the consistent casualties of the progressive utopia.

We owe women more than euphemisms about “empowerment.” We owe them truth, compassion, accountability — and, in this case, stricter regulations that once existed for their protection.

The EPPC’s report is only the beginning. As more real-world data emerges, the FDA and drug manufacturers will be forced to answer the one question they’ve dodged for decades: How many women must suffer and die before “safe and effective” actually means something again?

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.

Austin Metcalf’s death sparks outrage — and opportunism



The death of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a track meet in Frisco, Texas, is every parent’s nightmare. The circumstances make the loss even more devastating. Metcalf, a student at Memorial High School, was stabbed in the chest by another teen, Karmelo Anthony, after a brief argument.

Anthony, a student at Centennial High School, was reportedly sitting under the tent reserved for Memorial High. A witness told police that Metcalf asked Anthony to move. When Anthony refused, Metcalf reportedly grabbed him. At that point, according to the witness, Anthony pulled out a knife, stabbed Metcalf once in the chest, and fled the scene.

The people pushing identity politics are long on hubris and short on wisdom.

Police later arrested Anthony and charged him with first-degree murder. His bail was set at $1 million.

Austin’s twin brother, Hunter Metcalf, held him during his final moments, making the situation even more tragic.

As often happens — especially online — the story of Austin Metcalf’s death quickly shifted from a tragedy about a young life lost and a grieving family to a debate about race.

Metcalf was white. The accused, Karmelo Anthony, is black. Social media users, particularly on X, widely claimed that the case would have drawn national headlines and sparked protests if their races were reversed.

But the facts don’t support claims of media silence. NBC News, ABC News, and Fox News all covered the incident.

Still, accusations of selective coverage illustrate a broader frustration with “outrage inequity” — the notion that moral outrage and condemnation often hinge on the racial identities of both the victim and the accused. The primary indication of this phenomenon is the uneven application of moral indignation and condemnation based on particular victim-perpetrator color combinations.

Critics argue that progressives frequently engage in this pattern, particularly when racially motivated hate crimes make headlines.

In 2022, for example, Payton Gendron drove three hours to a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where he fatally shot 10 black people. That attack allowed liberal commentators to reinforce a familiar narrative: White violence against black Americans stems from “whiteness” and “white supremacy.”

Progressives often cite slavery, Jim Crow-era lynchings, and even verbal altercations between people of different races as proof of a persistent hatred embedded in white identity.

Rise of the ‘woke right’

A growing number of conservatives use incidents like Austin Metcalf’s killing to support their preferred narratives. They see Karmelo Anthony’s actions as a reflection of a much broader pathology among blacks and cite violent crime statistics to prove their point.

Some attribute these outcomes to culture, specifically the breakdown of the nuclear family and fatherlessness. Others believe the dysfunction is a matter of blood and bone, citing lower IQ scores and genetics as the main culprit.

The increasing prevalence of this rhetoric among conservatives is a microcosm of a much bigger phenomenon: the rise of the race-conscious right. Some people use “woke right” to describe this ascendant ideology, but the specific terminology is less important than the reality it describes.

The political left is notorious for making everything about race. Any incident that involves a white person doing something negative to a black person is strained through a racial prism. Police shootings and incarceration statistics are the clearest examples. Disparities in education outcomes and household income are another.

The left’s overarching narrative is that black people in America face unique obstacles because our institutions are infected with anti-black racism. No amount of evidence to the contrary moves them from that position.

Conservatives historically responded to this narrative by promoting “colorblindness,” treating people as individuals, cautioning blacks to resist self-pity, and encouraging them to embrace personal responsibility. In fact, the right regularly chastises liberals for painting police with a broad brush based on the actions of a few “bad apples.” Their message was always clear and consistent: Don’t engage in hasty judgments or sweeping generalizations that tempt you into seeing entire groups as villains or yourself as a victim.

Animus without evidence

That is no longer the case, and the parallels between the race-obsessed left and right are becoming increasingly clear.

One is assuming racial animus is at play — often without sufficient evidence — when you feel attacked by public institutions. For instance, activists on the left saw George Floyd as the living embodiment of the historical oppression black men have faced in America at the hands of racist police. That idea persists to this day, even though prosecutors stated there was no evidence Derek Chauvin’s actions were racially motivated.

The right’s rhetoric during much of Daniel Penny’s criminal trial made it clear that for some, he was the embodiment of the current persecution of white males in American society. It wasn’t just that Penny was being punished for standing up to a mentally ill homeless man. They believed that Penny was being prosecuted because the black District Attorney Alvin Bragg was bent on weaponizing the justice system against a straight white male in New York City.

Another example of conservative race-consciousness is the tendency to individualize in-group misdeeds while collectivizing the sins of out-groups. This explains why conservative commentators would never think to insert a racial descriptor when discussing teachers who have sex with students, even though it feels like every week brings another incident involving white women engaging in inappropriate conduct with teens.

Likewise, for all their time spent fighting against trans ideology, influencers on the right don’t make a habit of describing its most vocal proponents in racial terms. White abusers and perverts only have to answer for their own behavior, while black people who misbehave in public are seen as representatives of a larger group.

Both sides also make a habit of turning isolated tragedies into existential crises. Progressive pundits stoking the flames of race explain why a black man living in Brooklyn comes to feel “white supremacists” are the real threat to his life even though every shooter in his neighborhood shares his complexion. Likewise, conservatives who live in all-white neighborhoods repost old videos of black criminals halfway across the country with captions claiming their children are under attack.

From Robin DiAngelo to David Duke

Even the quick expressions of forgiveness from Austin Metcalf’s father were ridiculed by some conservatives online. This mirrors the frustration black commentators expressed after family members of Dylann Roof’s victims forgave him two days after he shot nine black churchgoers at a church in South Carolina.

One of the worst parts about the rise in right-wing race consciousness is that it was completely predictable. Progressives spent years arguing that white people are the cause of all the country’s problems. Pundits who love to lecture conservatives about embracing Ibram X. Kendi-style “antiracism” regularly said the vilest things on TV about white people. Over the past few decades, the left went from fighting against racism to publicly waging war against “whiteness.”

The fact that most of the people running the institutions — from universities to Fortune 500 companies — are white doesn’t lessen the damage. Only a complete fool would think you can demonize the largest ethnic group in your country without some type of blowback.

Unfortunately, the people pushing identity politics are long on hubris and short on wisdom. Not only do they reduce Americans down to their immutable traits, but they also create the perfect breeding ground for extremist views. Simply put, when you “sow” Robin DiAngelo, you will “reap” David Duke. This is not unique to white people. Rejection of moderation almost always leads to radicalism.

It’s not entirely clear where we go from here as a nation, but I wish both liberals and conservatives alike would turn down the racial rhetoric. This is one reason Austin Metcalf’s father pleaded with people not to make his son’s death about race or politics. Through his grief, he intuitively understands that seeing victims of crime as pieces to be moved around a cultural chessboard is a sign of a sick society that places a higher value on political narratives than on preserving life. This applies equally to the left and right.

Murder is wrong because every person is made in the image of God. It shouldn’t be hard for pundits on either side of the aisle to say.

Red state, blue ballot: Dems use direct democracy to flip states



With 64-6 and 32-3 majorities in the South Dakota House and Senate, Republicans alone have the power to advance or block their agenda. Yet, Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden’s veto of a key initiative petition reform bill hands Democrats an opening to continue pushing their agenda through the state’s highly manipulated ballot initiative process.

In the Mount Rushmore State, the Democratic Party is slightly less popular than herpes, which forces progressives to rely on massive outside funding to place their proposals directly on the ballot. Although the electorate leans conservative, ballot measures are often complex and confusing — one reason the nation’s founders rejected direct democracy in favor of a representative system.

It’s astonishing how, across red states, only the Freedom Caucus seems willing to stop the left from using ballot initiatives to shift policy in purple and blue directions.

This is especially true when it comes to constitutional amendments. At the federal level, amending the Constitution requires approval from two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Yet at the state level, well-funded left-wing groups are trying to change constitutions with a simple 51% majority and carefully crafted ballot language — turning red states blue, one vote at a time.

A commonsense safeguard

Last year, liberal groups gathered enough signatures to place several controversial proposals on the South Dakota ballot: codifying abortion as a right, legalizing marijuana, and eliminating partisan primaries. Voters rejected all three, but these efforts reflect a growing trend. In other red states, similar campaigns have succeeded, using direct democracy to bypass conservative legislatures. Why continue to leave this pathway open — allowing progressives to rewrite the state’s constitution through tactics they could never achieve in the Capitol?

House Bill 1169 offered a commonsense safeguard. The bill would have required petition circulators to gather signatures from all 35 state Senate districts, totaling at least 5% of the votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election. This district-level requirement would have supplemented the existing statewide threshold of 10%, already mandated by the state constitution.

Across the country, progressive groups are steering major policy questions directly to the ballot, often collecting most of their signatures from the most liberal population centers. In South Dakota, that means relying on Sioux Falls and Rapid City, rather than seeking broad statewide support.

“This bill would have finally given people in small towns and rural counties a voice in the petition process to amend our constitution,” House Speaker Jon Hansen (R) lamented after the governor’s veto. “If you live in a small, rural community, chances are you’ve never been approached by a petition circulator. That’s because most proposed constitutional amendments are placed on the ballot by paid circulators in Sioux Falls and Rapid City — without input from smaller communities. If you live in a small town, you rarely get a say in what amendments reach the ballot.”

The measure passed the House by a wide margin along party lines and cleared the Senate by a narrower 19-15 vote. Rhoden vetoed the bill earlier this week.

Absurd excuses

In his veto message, the governor hid behind concerns that the bill would not survive legal challenges. He suggested he supported the idea in principle but believed the measure would ultimately backfire — arguing it could empower, rather than restrain, well-funded special interests.

“The additional burden of collecting signatures from each of the 35 senatorial districts, each on a separate petition sheet, risks creating a system where only those with substantial financial resources can effectively undertake a statewide petition drive,” Rhoden wrote. “This undermines the bill's intent by putting South Dakotans at a disadvantage to dark money out-of-state groups.”

The argument is absurd. In a hypothetical scenario where rural districts lean as liberal as urban areas, Rhoden’s claim — that a uniform signature threshold across all districts would burden grassroots groups more than big-money interests — might hold water. In reality, South Dakota’s rural districts remain largely immune to left-wing campaigns. Passing HB 1169 would likely halt nearly all liberal petition efforts in the state.

That’s precisely why former state Sen. Reynold Nesiba, a Democrat from Sioux Falls, said he planned to launch a referendum to repeal the bill. “It will effectively end the constitutional amendment process initiated by citizens in South Dakota,” he warned.

That’s the point. Why would a Republican governor want to give the left a back door to influence state policy?

The idea that the bill would hinder conservative petitions doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, either. If a proposal has genuine conservative support, it should have no trouble passing through the Republican-controlled legislature. Conservatives only turn to the initiative process when liberal Republicans like Rhoden turn a supermajority trifecta into a uniparty circus.

Letting the left win

It’s astonishing how, across red states, only the Freedom Caucus seems willing to stop the left from using ballot initiatives to shift policy in purple and blue directions — just as it did in Alaska. In Missouri, GOP leadership has repeatedly dismissed Freedom Caucus efforts to rein in initiative petitions, even after the left used that very process to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called a special session earlier this year to address widespread petition fraud. But legislative leaders ignored his request and have been slow-walking reform legislation during the regular session.

This reluctance among Republican leaders to limit ballot initiatives reveals a troubling truth: Many of them quietly support certain left-wing goals but don’t want their fingerprints on the results. They’re fine with legalizing recreational marijuana, weary of the abortion fight, and unwilling to oppose Medicaid expansion.

By allowing Democrats to exploit the initiative process, these Republicans effectively outsource controversial policy changes to the ballot box — letting the left win while they avoid tough votes.