A Trump Amnesty Deal Would Betray Not Just His Voters But All Americans
America's immigration laws are not something the Republican Party or Trump should trade away after a bad election.America's immigration laws are not something the Republican Party or Trump should trade away after a bad election.Trump conquered the Republican Party. What a waste of a victory.
In September, Donald Trump asked Republicans gathered in Dallas to pretend he was on the ballot in November. “Because in a way, I am on the ballot,” he told them.
I was at the American Airlines Center for the Republican midterm convention. It was a handsome production. Speaker after speaker praised Trump, invoked “common sense” over “crazy,” and celebrated his conquest of a party whose leaders once regarded him as an intruder. The crowd loved it. The old establishment had learned its lines.
Trump won over Republican voters. He never quite won over the lukewarm Republicans they sent to Washington.
On Tuesday, voters took Trump at his word. Oh, boy, did they ever.
Democrats seized commanding majorities in the House and Senate, winning seats in Republican strongholds including Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina. Trump had promised a political realignment on the scale of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal or Ronald Reagan’s revolution. What he achieved looks increasingly like a temporary rearrangement of loyalties.
It didn’t have to be this way.
In 2016, Trump spoke for Americans tired of a Republican establishment devoted to free trade, foreign adventures, and its donors. In 2024, he promised to protect workers, revive manufacturing, secure the border, and put American interests first. He won the White House twice with an argument that the old GOP had failed to understand — and still does.
He won over Republican voters. He never quite won over the lukewarm Republicans they sent to Washington.
Trump returned to office with majorities in both houses. On paper, he commanded a governing party. In practice, House and Senate leaders accommodated him when his agenda suited theirs and balked when it didn’t. As often as not, they seemed more interested in managing Trump than in carrying out the political transformation their own voters had endorsed.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was a genuine achievement. It extended tax provisions and committed billions to border enforcement and ICE. Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn voted for it. But tax cuts have been Republican doctrine for generations, and border enforcement was hardly alien to the party. Their votes proved a willingness to cooperate, not a conversion to Trump’s governing philosophy.
Trade was the harder test. Trump’s tariffs collided with the party’s old free-trade commitments. McConnell joined Democrats in opposing emergency tariffs on Canada. House Republicans broke ranks, too. Under the red caps, old convictions survived.
The SAVE America Act offered a different kind of failure. The House passed it; the Senate would not muster the 60 votes to advance it. Democrats supplied the decisive opposition, but Republican leaders still could not get a major priority across the finish line. Not that they tried very hard.
A congressional majority is an opportunity, not a magic wand. Turning one into legislation takes more than issuing demands.
The same problem dogged Trump’s reliance on executive orders. A few policies found their way into legislation; others remain vulnerable to the next president’s pen. If the promised transformation could be reversed with a signature, how much had Republicans really built?
RELATED: Republicans need to be honest about why we lost
Congressional leaders failed their own voters. But Trump hardly made their job easier. He could dominate headlines, threaten political careers, and extract declarations of loyalty. He mistook intimidation for leadership and obedience for conviction. He knew how to make Republicans fall in line. Getting them to march toward a common destination was another proposition altogether.
He also squandered political capital on spectacles his allies were left to defend. The Kennedy Center needed repairs; Trump decided it needed his name. Then came the proposed triumphal arch near Arlington. Then Lake America. Republicans defended monuments to presidential vanity while voters worried about groceries and gasoline.
And what about the Iran war?
The case against the Iranian regime is not difficult: its nuclear ambitions, support for international jihad, and more than 40 years’ worth of threats to U.S. forces and allies. Trump had arguments that deserved a serious hearing. If only he had made them. He offered a perfunctory explanation of the campaign’s objectives in April. But announcing a war and celebrating its progress are no substitute for persuading Americans that its costs are necessary and its ends attainable.
The political consequences were plain. An NBC exit poll found that 63% of voters considered military action against Iran the wrong decision, while 74% said the war was a major or crucial factor in their congressional vote. CBS found opposition among about a quarter of Republican voters. Pew Research Center identified rising fuel prices as a leading concern about the conflict. Those figures do not explain every lost seat. They do expose the limits of commanding loyalty without earning consent.
RELATED: Trump’s 2024 coalition was a loan. The bill just came due.
Trump once boasted he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue without losing voters. Perhaps personal devotion could survive that imaginary crime. An expensive war in the Middle East was another test entirely. A president who promised to end futile foreign adventures owed Americans more than bluster and assurances that all was going splendidly.
And the economic promise? Trump said life would get cheaper. Americans went to the polls worried about food, fuel, and the future. Having insisted that he was on the ballot, he cannot credibly disown the result after the election went sideways.
Trump changed the Republican electorate and shook some exhausted orthodoxies. Those changes may endure. But a realignment must also change what politicians do when their leader is absent, or when following him becomes inconvenient. It must be enacted, defended, and handed on.
In Dallas, Republicans knew how to celebrate Trump. Their leaders never demonstrated that they knew how to make his revolution stick. Trump, for his part, never demonstrated that he could lead them there.
He conquered the Republican Party. Neither he nor its leaders quite knew what to do with the conquest. What a waste.
British Columbia just threw out the left. Could California be next?
Some said it couldn't be done.
For much of the past two decades, the political landscape in British Columbia has been dominated by the increasingly woke, leftist New Democratic Party and supposedly moderate Liberal governments without the nerve to reduce the power of the state.
Even the emergence of Jerry Brown, derisively nicknamed 'Governor Moonbeam,' in the swinging '70s did not permanently extinguish Republican political fortunes.
That all changed Saturday night.
The Conservative Party of BC and its leader, Lorne Doerkson, humiliated NDP Premier David Eby. According to preliminary results from Elections BC, the Conservatives are leading in 63 of the 93 seats in the provincial legislature, capturing 48.06% of the popular vote.
The defeat was particularly humiliating for Eby because he had called the snap election himself, two years ahead of schedule. Instead of securing a renewed mandate, he handed the Conservatives a commanding majority and announced his resignation as NDP leader.
British Columbia has long been compared to California, not only because it occupies the West Coast of North America but because it has long been associated with crazy political leaders and even crazier political movements.
Today, British Columbia is defined by massive government spending and debt, along with urban centers struggling with homelessness, public disorder, and the consequences of permissive drug policies.
Sound like San Francisco, anyone?
But British Columbia was not always so left-wing or the very picture of economic mismanagement. And neither was California. Remember Gov. Ronald Reagan?
A Conservative comeback
Doerkson has promised a new direction for the province, emphasizing economic opportunity and a government more responsive to ordinary British Columbians.
One of the most difficult battles awaiting his administration concerns the province's increasingly contentious Indigenous land claims and the legal uncertainty surrounding private property rights.
Doerkson has promised to repeal the province's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. The legislation, adopted in 2019 with all-party support, was intended to bring provincial laws into alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But critics argue that the law has contributed to uncertainty about the province's obligations to Indigenous groups and the rights of other British Columbians.
Doerkson has made his position clear. Speaking after the election, he said DRIPA had failed to resolve disputes involving land and resource development and had instead contributed to continuing litigation.
Those concerns have become especially acute following a landmark ruling involving land in Richmond, a waterfront suburb of Vancouver.
In August 2025, the British Columbia Supreme Court recognized Aboriginal title held by the Cowichan Nation over approximately 732 acres of land in Richmond, including areas containing privately owned property.
The ruling raised serious questions about the relationship between Aboriginal title and conventional property ownership. Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie warned that the decision undermined the reliability of the province's land-title system.
“The Court's untenable decision cannot remain unchallenged,” Brodie said in the city's announcement of its appeal.
The city appealed, as did the provincial and federal governments. The Canadian government has acknowledged that the ruling could have significant implications for private property rights and that greater legal clarity is needed.
The decision did not order homeowners to vacate their properties. Nevertheless, it has alarmed property owners who believed their registered titles provided secure ownership.
For Doerkson, the controversy presents a formidable challenge. Indigenous land rights are constitutionally protected in Canada, and overlapping territorial claims have long complicated questions of ownership, development, and government authority in British Columbia.
His government will have to navigate those obligations while addressing the concerns of property owners who fear that the rules governing their homes and businesses are changing beneath their feet.
BC wasn't always socialist
One mistake commentators make is assuming that British Columbia has somehow been socialist for the past century because the last government elected under the Conservative Party banner dates to 1928.
In fact, much of the province's modern history was dominated by the BC Social Credit Party, which was conservative and populist.
Social Credit governed British Columbia for all but three years between 1952 and 1991.
W.A.C. Bennett was premier from 1952 to 1972. His son, Bill Bennett, became premier in 1975 after three years of NDP government under Dave Barrett. The Socreds remained in power until 1991, when the NDP defeated them.
The BC Liberal Party, which subsequently became the province's de facto center-right party, took power in 2001 and governed until 2017.
So the notion that British Columbia is naturally or permanently left-wing is nonsense. Conservative governments have governed the province for much of its modern history, even when they operated under different party names.
Doerkson's victory is remarkable, but it is hardly without historical precedent.
RELATED: Gavin Newsom makes damning admission about socialist takeover on undercover camera
Could California follow?
So can this kind of political phenomenon happen in woke, leftist California, a state struggling with enormous fiscal pressures and a myriad of destructive progressive social policies?
You can only push people toward the edge of a cliff for so long before they begin to push back.
California was Ronald Reagan country. He governed the state from 1967 to 1975. The Golden State supported Republican presidential candidates in nine of the 10 elections between 1952 and 1988, including Richard Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.
Even the emergence of Jerry Brown, derisively nicknamed "Governor Moonbeam," in the swinging '70s did not permanently extinguish Republican political fortunes.
Republicans George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson subsequently governed California for a combined 16 years. Arnold Schwarzenegger, another Republican, won the governorship in the 2003 recall election and was re-elected in 2006.
California's present Democrat dominance is therefore a relatively recent development in the state's political history.
Of course, British Columbia and California have different political systems. The BC Conservatives benefited from a parliamentary system in which winning a majority of legislative seats delivers control of the government. California Republicans would have to overcome entrenched Democrat advantages in statewide elections.
But British Columbia's election demonstrates that political dominance can evaporate when voters become sufficiently dissatisfied with the people governing them.
Eby thought he could strengthen his position by calling an early election. Instead, voters delivered a Conservative majority and sent him packing. California's Democrats might want to take notice.
If British Columbia can turn its political fortunes around, why not California?
Five Things America Must Do To Rein In Oil Prices
Stop talking the price down, take the windfall profits tax off the table, quit using the reserve as a price tool, and more.Trump picked the wrong way to fight fake news
President Trump announced Friday that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were banned from the White House, effective immediately.
By Saturday morning, the ban was real. Reporters from all three organizations were turned away from the White House grounds. Press passes were disabled or confiscated, Reuters reported. By Monday morning, the media companies were filing lawsuits.
The First Amendment establishes a floor. A president who professes devotion to free speech should aim higher.
The reaction from plenty of people on the right was predictable: Good! About time! A friend of mine reposted Trump’s announcement on Facebook with three words: “Late but welcome.”
I understand the sentiment. I don’t share it.
The institutional press has spent years torching its own credibility. CNN can be grossly unfair. Politico can be tendentious. And MS NOW is simply unwatchable. Reporters make mistakes, protect narratives, follow ideological fashions, and regularly publish garbage. Trump is perfectly entitled to say so.
But none of that answers the question: What should government do about it?
The First Amendment issue here is more complicated than the knee-jerk reactions suggest. Reporters possess no free-floating constitutional right to enter the Oval Office, fly on Air Force One, join the presidential press pool, or demand an interview with the president.
The courts have never said otherwise.
In fact, the White House won an important round last year when the Associated Press sued after being excluded over its refusal to adopt “Gulf of America.” In a June order, two D.C. Circuit judges concluded that restricted presidential spaces such as the Oval Office, Air Force One, and Mar-a-Lago are not First Amendment forums. The White House therefore retains considerable discretion over which journalists get in — even, the judges said, on the basis of viewpoint.
Brian Stelter can hyperventilate all he likes. CNN does not own a chair in the Oval Office.
But the same ruling reaffirmed an older rule.
When the White House opens press facilities generally to “bona fide journalists” — the Brady Briefing Room, for example — access cannot be denied arbitrarily or because officials dislike a journalist’s speech. That principle goes back to the D.C. Circuit’s 1977 decision in Sherrill v. Knight.
Trump has now gone well beyond leaving CNN out of the Oval Office pool.
RELATED: CNN says Trump press ban is illegal — then the Trump team THROWS DOWN fiery response
He has revoked ordinary White House access for entire news organizations because, by his own account, he objects to their journalism. “They purposely write negative news,” he said Friday.
Lawyers can argue about where precisely the First Amendment line falls. Presidents are better off staying well away from it.
Especially presidents who have spent years railing against censorship, government pressure on social media companies, and official efforts to suppress disfavored speech.
Trump began his second term with an executive order declaring government censorship undertaken to advance a “preferred narrative ... intolerable in a free society.” Vice President JD Vance went to Munich weeks later and delivered a speech excoriating European governments for restricting disfavored speech.
Those principles are tested by speech you despise, not speech you welcome.
You cannot hate the media enough? Fine. Hate them.
Read somebody else. Watch somebody else. Mock them. Refute them. Support media companies that don’t hate your guts. Put every mistake the other guy makes on blast. When CNN or MS NOW botches a story, make them eat it for a month.
Bad journalism has a remedy in a free country: more speech.
Once government begins imposing penalties because officials despise the journalism, the question changes. It is no longer whether CNN deserves contempt. It is what power you are willing to give the state. Me? Not very much.
Barack Obama’s White House confronted the same temptation in 2009. Administration officials complained that Fox News operated more like an arm of the Republican Party than a news organization. When the White House tried to exclude Fox from a pool interview with a Treasury official, the other networks objected and threatened to pull out. The administration backed down.
Good.
Fox did not suddenly become acceptable in Obama’s sight. The administration stopped trying to settle an argument with a news organization by manipulating access.
Ronald Reagan had a better formulation. He had plenty of righteous complaints about hostile press coverage, but he called the antagonism between presidents and reporters “the friction of freedom.”
RELATED: So much for ‘Reliable Sources’!
A year later, Reagan acknowledged that presidents naturally try to use the press to their advantage and avoid situations that hurt them. The press could take care of itself, he said, and so could the president.
His preferred epitaph for a president’s relationship with reporters was simple: “He gave as good as he got.”
That’s about right.
Nobody is asking Trump to admire CNN or pretend bad journalism is good journalism simply because reporters invoke the First Amendment.
Fight them. But fight them with words. They call it the bully pulpit for a reason.
And forget CNN for a moment.
Every presidential practice sets a precedent. Anyone cheering presidential punishment of a despised news organization today should decide whether he wants the same rule administered someday by a president who thinks Fox News, Blaze News, or some other right-wing outlet traffics in “negative news.”
That isn’t an argument for CNN. It’s an argument for us.
The safest rules governing government power are the ones you can tolerate when your enemies administer them.
Trump may ultimately prevail on some of the constitutional argument here. The D.C. Circuit has already recognized broad presidential authority over access to restricted spaces. Revoking ordinary White House credentials because of hostile coverage presents a different question.
The First Amendment establishes a floor. A president who professes devotion to free speech should aim higher.
CNN doesn’t need defending. The principle does.
Let them in anyway.
That’s the friction of freedom.
Poll pits Trump against Reagan and Lincoln — and the results are shocking
President Donald Trump is touting a poll showing that he is more admired than other legendary Republican presidents.
The president posted a video of CNN analyst Harry Enten covering the poll that showed 53% of Republican respondents said they admired Trump more than Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln.
'Trump's still the sun around which the GOP revolves.'
Only 18% of Republicans said in the CNN poll they admired Reagan most, while a paltry 8% said they admired Lincoln most.
Trump posted a short video to his Truth Social account from the segment that first aired on CNN on Wednesday.
Enten used the poll to explain why Trump-endorsed Darline Graham Nordone won the Republican primary runoff for one of two South Carolina seats in the U.S. Senate.
"Trump's still the sun around which the GOP revolves," he posted on social media.
"Trump's endorsees for Senate have won 100% of the time in 2026," he added. "He pulled Graham, who had little shot pre-endorsement, over the finish line."
Enten pointed out that a separate Elon University poll found 29% of Republicans said Trump was the best president in history, while only 25% said the same of Lincoln and 14% said the same of George Washington.
RELATED: Democrats face CRUSHING math problem trying to take over the Senate: CNN
He went on to show that New York City Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani had grown his national support and now had the most positive net favorability among Democrats, surpassing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Many polls have reported that the president's favorability has suffered after the prolonged military operation in Iran and some of its economic fallout.
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To err is human. To owe $40 trillion is Washington.
Caregiving has taught me to ask a simple question before making a consequential decision: “Is this healthy?” Will this solve today’s problem by consuming what we may need tomorrow? Does it respect the resources entrusted to me?
After 40 years as a caregiver, I have learned that money, time, strength, and even goodwill are finite. Wanting something does not make it wise, and good intentions do not eliminate consequences. A caregiver who confuses desire with capacity can hurt the very person he is trying to help.
We are financing today’s promises with tomorrow’s labor, then congratulating ourselves for our generosity.
Caring describes an intention. Stewardship requires an accounting. By that standard, Washington has failed spectacularly.
The United States has now crossed $40 trillion in national debt. The figure barely communicates anything. Forty trillion sounds like something a third-grader says when trying to name the biggest number in the world.
The national debt is what Washington has accumulated through borrowing. The annual deficit is how much more it spends than it collects each year. The debt is the hole. The deficit is how much deeper we dig it.
The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2026. Congress has looked into a $40 trillion hole and concluded that what it needs is more digging.
Democrats invoke compassion to justify spending money the government does not have. Republicans campaign on fiscal restraint, win office, and then discover that their preferred spending somehow does not count. One party calls it caring. The other calls it necessary. Both send the bill to our children.
Each party points furiously at the other while passing the national credit card back and forth. Both help start the fire, then pass the collection plate while arguing over who bought the gasoline.
Now we enter election season, when, as Lloyd Christmas might say, the promises flow like the salmon of Capistrano. Candidates will tell us how deeply they care about families, seniors, veterans, national defense, and taxpayers. They will demonstrate their concern for one group by promising it money borrowed from all the others. A politician can always appear compassionate by promising benefits with other people’s money.
RELATED: It took 200 years to reach $1 trillion in national debt. 2026 said, ‘Hold my beer.’
Stewardship asks harder questions: How much will this cost? Who will pay for it? What has the existing program accomplished? What happens if your projections are wrong? If this is worth doing, why must we borrow the money?
Those are not cruel questions. They are the responsible ones.
Government cannot create resources by attaching the word “federal” to them. There is no government money. Government either collects money from today’s citizens or borrows against tomorrow’s taxpayers.
We are financing today’s promises with tomorrow’s labor, then congratulating ourselves for our generosity. There is nothing generous about giving away the money of someone not yet born. That is taxation without representation on a generational scale.
Stewardship does not require government to spend nothing or never incur debt. Families and nations face genuine emergencies. Caregivers understand that. Medical catastrophes rarely consult the household budget before arriving.
But caregivers often do without. Congress seems far more comfortable assigning sacrifice than accepting any. I have also learned that an emergency cannot become a permanent governing philosophy.
At my kitchen table, I cannot promise everything, spend without limit, blame someone else when the bills arrive, and then congratulate myself for caring. Yet Washington does just that.
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Over the next few months, commercials filled with flags, farms, hard hats, classrooms, and concerned expressions will flood the airwaves. Recorded voices will warn that civilization depends upon our response before midnight.
As the onslaught escalates, keep asking one question: Is this candidate a good steward? Not only of public money, but of public trust, constitutional authority, and the extraordinary inheritance of self-government.
To our national shame, we may not be able to answer yes about many of them. That does not excuse us from voting. It makes our responsibility more sobering.
Ronald Reagan popularized “trust, but verify” when dealing with the Soviet Union. Washington has now given us $40 trillion reasons to apply it to our own government. We must choose the better steward and then hold that person accountable.
Campaign season is when politicians sell. Election Day is when we buy. Tax Day reminds us what we paid. Better hang on to the receipt.
After April 15, we begin to learn whether they can manage what they were so eager to sell.
Around my kitchen table, math eventually gets the final vote. At $40 trillion in debt, one wonders whether math even applies in the halls of Congress.
Fake Outrage Over Trump’s Jokes At The Worthless Correspondents’ Dinner Is Pathetic And Meaningless
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We have a republic if we can keep it, and we will not keep it without the SAVE America Act.Today's top stories
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