There’s a reason Democrats are focused on affordability: It is a daily reality, and many Democratic policies make it worse.
Democrats have been running on “affordability” since Joe Biden left office and broke the party’s direct political connection to the inflation surge of his presidency.
Yes, affordability is a problem. But you do not solve a problem by putting the people who helped cause it in charge of fixing it.
When Biden took office in January 2021, inflation was 1.4%. By March, it was 2.6%, and by December, it hit 7%. It reached 7.5% in January 2022, topped 8% in March, and hit 9.1% in June — a 40-year high. By December 2022, it was still 6.5%.
Inflation did not fall below 3% until the latter half of 2024, and it never returned to within one percentage point of the rate Biden inherited.
Democrats spent much of the Biden years defending the administration’s economic record. Now they talk constantly about affordability, even though today’s price level still reflects the inflation Americans absorbed during those years.
That distinction is vital. Slower inflation means prices are rising more slowly; it does not reverse increases already built into the economy. Those higher prices remain unless incomes eventually catch up or prices actually fall.
Politically, that creates an opening. Democrats can campaign against high prices after presiding over the period when those prices rose fastest, while hoping voters forget how they got there. Much of the coverage treats affordability as a fresh problem rather than the cumulative result of years of price increases.
Affordability is national, but it is not uniform. Some states are much more expensive than others, and the partisan pattern is difficult to ignore.
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According to World Population Review’s 2026 Cost of Living Index by State, blue states dominate the least-affordable end of the rankings.
Hawaii ranks as the nation’s most expensive state. It voted for Kamala Harris 60.6% to 37.5% in 2024 and has had Democratic trifectas in state government for 27 straight years.
The pattern extends beyond Hawaii. Of the 10 least-affordable states, only Alaska voted Republican in the 2024 presidential election. The next Republican-voting state is Arizona at No. 15. Thirteen of the 15 least-affordable states, and 15 of the top 17, voted Democratic in 2024.
At the other end, Oklahoma is the nation’s most affordable state. It voted for Trump 66.2% to 31.9% in 2024 and has had 16 straight years of Republican trifectas in state government. All 10 of the most affordable states voted Republican in 2024.
Partisanship is not the only thing that determines a state’s cost of living. Geography, housing supply, energy, taxes, regulation, and labor costs all play roles. But policy affects several of those variables directly.
Democratic policies often push costs upward through heavier regulation, higher minimum wages, greater public spending, and higher taxes. Businesses pass many of those costs along. Residents pay the rest directly. Either way, affordability suffers.
That is the bind for Democrats. They see a powerful political issue in affordability, but many of their preferred remedies would add costs rather than reduce them. Fixing the problem would require reconsidering policies they have spent years defending.
Worse, they increasingly want to impose those policies nationally, exporting mistakes made in high-cost blue states to places that have so far avoided them.
Yes, affordability is a problem. But you do not solve a problem by putting the people who helped cause it in charge of fixing it.
Are young Americans expecting too much, or has homeownership genuinely become out of reach? According to BlazeTV host Nick Freitas, the answer is obvious.
While older generations often point to bigger homes and modern amenities to explain rising housing costs, Freitas says the data tells a different story. Even after accounting for those differences, the cost of buying a home has skyrocketed relative to income, leaving many young people feeling frustrated and demoralized.
“When younger people are saying that they have a real problem here, that they’re frustrated, that they’re demoralized, you can’t just dismiss that as, 'Well, they’re being demoralized by TikTok or online or whatnot,'” Freitas says.
“One of the things in this is every time this gets brought up, people will say, ‘Well, yeah, you can't compare a home in 2026 that is 2,500 square feet and four bedrooms and has all these amenities and central heating and air with what your grandpa bought on a single income that was an 800-square-foot, two-bedroom house with no AC,’” he explains.
“That’s all fair, but when you account for all of that, when you account ... for all of these other factors, what you end up finding out is that the median house price is still significantly higher. Not like a little bit. It’s not like it’s gone up 20%. No, it’s significantly higher,” he continues.
“Now all of a sudden, it’s far more difficult to buy that first house, and what everybody is telling you is, ‘Well, you just need to work harder’ or ‘you expect too much,’” he adds.
But, Freitas says, they’re not expecting too much, pointing out that if you want to buy a home close to where you work, depending on where that is, an 800-square-foot home could run you close to a million dollars.
“You’ve got building codes, and you’ve got taxes. You’ve got multiple factors impacting that price,” he says.
“Your income is never catching up with what you actually need to live. And that is a very real and a very genuine concern,” he continues. “And again, if we have people just easily dismissing this, they are missing the point.”
“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.
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The war on data centers has intensified to the point that localities across the country are banning them outright or stopping them through targeted zoning and regulation. The concerns are understandable. The political response is not.
Public opposition has jumped 12 percentage points in four months, with 61% now saying they oppose building new data centers, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Opponents held 142 protests in 42 states on July 18, citing water use, noise, electricity demand, outages, pollution, and property values.
There is an obvious alternative for people who do not want a data center built on a particular parcel: Buy the land.
Predictably, politicians are turning against the industry.
On August 18, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) signed an executive order restricting data center construction and boasted that he was imposing “the strictest guardrails in the nation.” He denounced a history of industry “running roughshod over our communities to make a buck” and vowed that Pennsylvania would not be “bullied” or “bulldozed” by developers and their lawyers.
Critics noted that Shapiro, who faces re-election this year, had strongly supported data center construction and even placed projects in a fast-track approval program before the recent grassroots backlash.
The turn is broader than Pennsylvania. Some 210 counties and local governments now have active moratoriums on data center construction. More than 3,000 centers are operating in the United States, with another 1,500 under construction, Pew Research reports. Two-thirds of planned facilities are headed to rural areas, while 87% of existing data centers are urban.
It is reasonable to worry about harm from any large enterprise. Citizens have every right to warn property owners and neighbors about potential costs. They often have a moral responsibility to do so.
But concern does not create a general right to control someone else’s property.
No one can foresee all the consequences, positive or negative, of a novel enterprise. That is one reason we have courts: to hear claims of actual harm, determine responsibility, and order compensation or punishment where warranted. A functioning civil justice system reduces the need for sprawling systems of preemptive command and control.
Governments should not single out data centers with punitive taxes or regulations, nor should they subsidize them. Let them pay for the energy they use, comply with laws that apply generally, receive no privileged access to water or other resources, and answer in court if they injure others.
RELATED: The data center backlash is getting spiritual
That is a better rule than trying to calculate every hypothetical “social cost” in advance and empowering regulators to decide which enterprises may proceed. Markets reveal costs and benefits imperfectly, but government regulation does too — usually with fewer incentives to admit mistakes.
In a free society, you do not get to decide what other people do with their property merely because you dislike the proposed use. That remains true when “you” becomes “we.” A majority does not acquire a moral right to coerce simply by counting heads.
There is an obvious alternative for people who do not want a data center built on a particular parcel: Buy the land.
If you cannot afford it alone, put together a consortium. If you can afford it but would rather force the owner to accept your preferred use without paying him, then the problem is no longer the data center. It is your claim to control property you do not own.
Buy it, and you may use it as you wish — subject, of course, to the same rule protecting your neighbors from actual harm. Mission accomplished.
The developer will go somewhere else, taking the jobs, local tax revenue, and other economic benefits to a community that wants them more.
That process is not perfect. Nothing involving human beings is. But voluntary exchange does a better job of matching scarce resources with people willing to bear their costs than political systems in which the loudest coalition simply vetoes uses it dislikes.
Unfortunately, that is no longer good enough for a growing number of Americans. The backlash against data centers parallels the rise of democratic socialism in one important respect: Both elevate collective control over individual property rights.
People who want to build data centers should listen seriously to objections. They should pay their own way and answer for the harm they cause. But the reflexive demand to control other people’s property because a project is unpopular reflects a much older political decay.
Restoring property rights is essential to renewing American prosperity and human flourishing. Data centers would be a good place to start.
The mayor of New York City faced two major roadblocks for his far-left plan to hit certain rentals in the city with a pied-à-terre tax.
The tax scheme from Mayor Zohran Mamdani was temporarily blocked by a Staten Island judge on Monday who sided with a group of homeowners suing against the tax.
'It is pure Amateur Hour, and it’s hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved.'
Then President Donald Trump piled on and said he would seek to use the powers of the federal government to oppose the "dangerous" policy in his hometown.
"This dangerous political 'experiment' in New York will destroy what was once a great City and State," the president wrote on Truth Social. "It is pure Amateur Hour, and it’s hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved. Financial, and then Social, RUIN, is a 100% certainty."
The tax would impose a penalty for non-primary residences rented out in the city and worth more than $5 million. Mamdani said it would hit larger landlords and help pay for his socialist schemes in the city.
The president went on to say he would seek to oppose the tax himself in order to save the city from certain ruin.
"I am looking to see if the Federal Government has any legal right to avert this disaster, before it is too late," he added, "for the millions of people who cherish New York and want to see it thrive, as opposed to becoming a filthy, crime ridden, decrepit place of mockery and scorn."
The Mamdani administration said i would file an appeal in order to allow the tax to continue.
"The City will continue with the pied-à-terre’s implementation," said Matt Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for Mamdani.
"We disagree with today’s ruling, but we are confident in both the pied-à-terre surcharge and the City’s ability to implement it fairly and effectively," he added.
RELATED: Prominent professor supported Mamdani's socialist scheme — until he became a target
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit said he supported the tax but was shocked when he got a notice in the mail demanding he pay it. He says it was a mistake.
"Hopefully they can take a bit of time, take a step back, and say, well, let’s approach this in a more thoughtful way, do a little bit more diligence before we start sending out letters," said Simon Hedley.
The tax would also apply to non-primary co-ops or condominiums worth over $1 million.
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Why should America’s most successful suburbs take their cues from cities struggling to preserve the very qualities suburban families value?
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