The Jay Weber Podcast #0011 5-12-26

normal this fall. But first, I see that our governor in the great state of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, has come to a deal with Republican leaders to finally, finally give taxpayers some of their money back. Governor Evers, Robin Voss, Devin Lemiheue. They're the Republicans in charge of the Assembly and the Senate there. They're all retiring at the end of the year, and so they obviously decided that they have a rare window here to resolve a long time fight. What to do with all of the money that the

state government has taken out of our paychecks unnecessarily. Wisconsin, thanks to Republican budgets for over a decade, has run two to three million dollars or billion dollar surplus every year. And this is money that they haven't needed to run state government over the last decade. They've given it back to us in different ways over the years, but there's about a three billion or so dollar surplus, and I think the level and they've decided now that they're going

to give us some of that money back. I think the level of refund is pathetic given the size of the surplus. It would be three hundred dollars back for individuals and six hundred dollars for married couples. But they're also agreeing to dump even more money into Wisconsin public schools and special ad while ending state income taxes and

taxes over time. So overall, both sides get something. I understand Producer Gregory John that Congressman Tom Tiffany was on Benjamin the Ount Show on WISN this morning, and you have a bit of an exclusive here. Tiffany was saying that he would not sign this agreement if he was governor. He doesn't like the agreement because he thinks we could do better. Is that right?

unrivaled authority amongst governors across the country. And he could have put in here the repeal of the four hundred year property tax increase, and he did not. All he wanted in there for the relief was a sugar high for a year. Now. I understand why Republicans may support this because they're at least getting something and being in a tough position with an executive that has so much power, some of it given to them by to the governor by the state Supreme Court. I get it why they

would want to take a victory here. But we need long term systemic tax relief here in Wisconsin, and it starts by repealing the four hundred year property tax increase.

up two billion dollars under Governor Evers. I think about the livestock citing our livestock inspection fee where Governor Evers proposed raising it from four hundred and fifty dollars to seven thousand dollars. Now they settled for a little bit less, but it was a huge increase. So they're nickel and diming the taxpayers at the State of Wisconsin. And then they want to give them a little bit of money back.

And this is ultimately where I have the objection. To give people a little bit of money back temporarily, but it is not long term. And the taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin should expect to have tax relief, including property tax relief, that continues not just this year, but for the foreseeable future, so life can be affordable in our state.

a lot better. But on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats that are running to oppose him are shooting this down because they don't want to give up the money. You'd think it's smart to stand in the way of voters and taxpayers getting some of their money back in an election year. So far, it's nearly all the Democrat candidates for governor Kelda roy Is, Francesco Hong, David Crowley, etc. Who have come out against this. Tom Tiffany isn't necessarily

against the tax return. He's just saying I could do a better bill. I wouldn't sign this bill because we could do better. I don't know, Greg. It's only six hundred bucks for you and Dorothy, but do you want some of your money back?

I think is interesting. It's a great example of how today's Democrats really are big government socialists. Past Dems would have at least realized that this is the taxpayer's money taken from them out of their paychecks. Unnecessarily, we took too much. But today's Democrat leaders really do think that all of your money is really their money, and people

like Hong and Calderoy's can't even pretend otherwise. If you're a socialist like Hong or Roy's, why would the dumb donkeys who send you a chunk of their paycheck every week deserve any relief or consideration. This really is how today's Democrat thinks. Since your money is really their money, they talk openly about heaping higher and higher taxes on you, and hell no, you don't deserve anything back. They get

to decide how your money is spent. It's infuriating, and it's why it's harder and harder to save for your own retirement nest egg and plan for your own retirement. So this is where I say, have you heard about Creative Planning? They're one of the nation's largest independent wealth management firms, offering fully integrated financial and retirement planning, investment management, estate planning, tax strategies, business services, and international wealth management,

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of the firm. We are moving into the summer of twenty twenty six and moving closer and closer to the official two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of this nation. President Trump and Congress are promising all sorts

of special and wonderful celebrations related to it. And I love, I really love and appreciate the fact that Donald Trump happens to be our president right now because he's put an importance on cleaning up, renovating, and doing long term deferred maintenance on our new national monuments and institutions and

Washington d C in general. Sincerely, if Kamala Harris or any other Democrat or Republican leader was sitting in the White House right now, do you think we'd have seen an effort to get Washington d C all spruced up for the two hundred and fiftieth underway. I convertually guarantee you we wouldn't, and we wouldn't because sadly, no one else would have thought of it. I don't think anyone else alive or in politics today really thinks this way.

It had to be Trump. Only Trump would drive through DC and say, my god, we need to fix these fountains. It's an embarrassment that they sit in decay. My god. How can this be the road leading to the White House. It's all rutted and crumbling. We must replace this, my god. How can the reflecting pool in the National Mall not be holding water some days and covered over with LGA other days. We thank god President Trump is restoring some

pride and dignity to our important public spaces. I can guarantee you Kamala wouldn't be doing it, neither Barack nor old Dementia Joe drove around in the decay and decided we should really do something about this. We are president, after all. It had to be Trump. But at a deeper level, having at last four or five administrations simply allow our national monuments to decay along with our national pride,

it should be disturbing to all of us. The physical decay seems to mirror a general decay when it comes to American pride and greatness. It just disturbs me. We're such a divided and very different country now than we were back in nineteen seventy six when the country celebrated its bi centennial. A lot of us were around to see that and the display of greatness and independence that

was celebrated back then too. Yeah, I was a kid, but I can firmly say, based on both personal experiences at the time and the history I've read about it since, the bi centennial celebration in nineteen seventy six was genuinely a moment of great national pride and a coming together of both parties as everyone, regardless of political affiliation, race, ethnicity, everyone celebrated the greatness of this country, celebrated the promises

of the constitution, proudly waived the American flag, not because we were a perfect country, but because we had gotten closer to achieving that than any other country or society and human history. That is the promise of the nation

after all. Right. In the most important founding document, the founders make it clear this is an effort to form a more perfect union, a more fair and perfect society, etc. And right through the nineteen seventies, I'd say, actually, right up until about nineteen ninety, we had people on both sides of the isle, both leaders and voters on both the Democrat and Republican side of the isle, who really loved and appreciated the greatness of this country and the

promises of this country, and they only really argued over the best ways in which to achieve that more fair or perfect union. Then came the modern left, and now we find ourselves a country battling over a national identity. And trust me, if Donald Trump wouldn't have won in twenty twenty four, we'd be seeing a very different version

of America two hundred and fifty years later. If Kamala Harris would have won, many of us would have marked America's two hundred and fiftieth year and been wondering, is this as long as America lasted? Because we'd have a nitwit in the White House who liked Abigail Spanberger or Kathy Hokl or Chuck Schumer wouldn't have been strong enough to push back on the socialism. Kamala would have been giving into every last one of their radical activist ideas.

And there'd be no doubt that this country was on a path to socialism as it marked two hundred and fifty years of existence. There is no doubt in my mind that had Kamala won, we in the pundit class would have spent the entire summer and fall this year mulling over those questions. The Roman Empire lasted nearly fifteen hundred years, the Egyptian Empire lasted nearly three thousand. The

American Republic only lasted about two hundred and fifty years. Really, we started down the clear path towards socialism in twenty twenty four, and so market the most important promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were taken away from us in less than two hundred and fifty years. That's all the longer we would sustain it.

And I'm simplifying and amplifying to some extent here. A Kamala Harris regime wouldn't have meant instant socialism, but the destruction of another four years of having the bullying America haters of the Obama and Biden eras in charge would have very likely meant this a significant amount of destruction that the public couldn't have bounced back from as it is.

The socialist made gains. You've got Zorn Mamdani, an open socialist in charge of New York City and all sorts of council seats and mayorships at the local level in the Blue States, turning socialist. Back in nineteen seventy six, when we were all wearing our red, white and blue and celebrating this wonderful thing we were gifted from our founders, no one would have imagined the sort of divided and angry and disparate country that we've become in the decades.

Since this really is a nation battling over a national identity right now. And what's making everything more difficult is that nearly half of the people in this country no longer seem to believe in God, family, and education, or that they make for a stronger society. I found this blurb not long ago and set it aside. I'd credit the author if I still had his or her name, but I couldn't agree with it more. The most grievous cultural wound has been the loss of a shared moral order.

We told multiple generations to come up with their own individual values. It has left us morally inarticulate and uninformed. It created a naked public square where there was no broad agreement about what was true, beautiful, and good. Without shared standards of right and wrong, it's impossible to settle disputes, it's impossible to maintain social cohesion and trust. Every healthy society rests on some shared conception of the sacred, sacred heroes,

sacred text, sacred ideals. And when that goes away, anxiety, atomization, and a slow descent toward barbarism are the natural results. And if that doesn't describe America and the Western world today, I don't know what does. Where a nation founded on individual freedom, equality and self determination, specific principles and moral values, and now only half of the country seems to believe in those things. The very lessons of the founding documents

have been lost on today's younger generations and leaders. It's clear that Alexandria Ocassio Cortez has no idea zero, how or why our nation was founded. You've probably heard the clip in which she claims America's founders were trying to get away from the controlling billionaires of their day.

modern standards, was laughably meek. If you want to compare King George and his reign to Marxism and the socialist and communist desires to control absolutely every aspect of our lives, there's no comparison. Give me England in the seventeen seventies over modern socialism or communism any day. And if AOC repris sence a young, spoiled, arrogant, ignorant class of Americans, and she does, then yeah, this country is battling over

its national identity. IPSOS just conducted a poll and found only thirty nine percent of millennials and gen zers agree that being an American is an important part of how I think about myself, compared to sixty five percent of baby boomers. In a twenty twenty three Gallop pole, only eighteen percent of Americans aged eighteen to thirty four said they were extremely proud to be an American. That compared

to fifty percent of adults over fifty five. Asked by Democracy Fund if the Founders would be better described as villains or heroes, forty percent of gen Zers picked villains. Only ten percent of boomers did I guess those are the old crackpot hippies. But in a Ugov pole, nearly one third of young voters agreed that quote democracy is no longer a viable system and Americans should explore alternative

forms of government. Only five percent of those over the age of sixty five did you can say these are just misguided youth? But who misguided them? This is reflective of a country whose educational system was taken over by left wing America haters decades ago and is now indoctrinated at least two generations of young people into hating or at least putting no value on the founding ideals of

this country or anything that is seen as American. And they do this even though the country has never been greater, or more prosperous, or more fair. This is a nation of grievance mongers and complainers, even though the country has by and large greatly lived up to the promises the founders made sure. There are social inequities, and there always

have been. But trust me, despite what the leftists and America haters tell you, the social inequities here in America aren't even close to those that you'd find virtually anywhere else on the globe. There are one hundred and ninety countries on this planet, and in the vast majority of them you'll find a rich dictating class, a poor underclass, and very little in between. Even better, you'll also find that the promises of this nation are as possible and

there as happening as regularly as ever. Two hundred and fifty years later. The left and their accomplished media members don't want you to know this or hear this, but the vast majority of Americans are still moving up and through the social classes, and just a generation or two in this country every day, every year every decade. We still see people moving from poverty into the lower middle

class or firm middle class. We still see people moving from the lower middle class to the upper middle class, people moving from middle class to rich, etc. It is still the untold greatness of America occurring every day, and it drives the America haters so crazy they need to lie about it and try to indoctrinate our children into

a different, false reality. Bernie and AOC and virtually all of today's Democrat officeholders and pundits genuinely believe that America has a shrinking middle class because the so called super rich have sucked up all of the money in the resources from the middle class, and so we have more Americans in poverty than ever. Everything about that is false everything. First of all, we simply don't have true poverty in America anymore. And if you doubt that, just do some

traveling and look around. We don't have acres and acres of wooden shacks built on muddy hillsides with starving children hanging around every door. We don't have one room cabins in the woods with no running water and six dirty children, barefoot and nearly naked, hanging out on the porch looking at the world through dead eyes. America's so called poor have on average twelve hundred square feet of living space, food, clothing, heat, and power. Some of that they paid for themselves, a

lot of it's been provided by us, the taxpayers. But no one is poor or starving in America anymore. We're the only country that has a terrible obesity problem among our poor. Sincerely, in America, the larger obesity problem is among those on the lowest rungs, not the highest. In short, it isn't our so called rich who are fat, it's our poor people. Only in America would leaders say our

fattest class of people are starving or food insecure. Earlier this year, a study at the American Enterprise Institute got some attention, and it did because it showed that, yes, America's middle class has been shrinking, but only because more so called middle class Americans are moving up into the higher classes, not because we have more poor people or because we have a hollowed out middle class. And this is the truth, not the crappier average lefty teacher or

morons like AOC are telling you. These researchers divided households into five categories poor or near poor, lower middle class, core middle class, upper middle class, and rich. Technically, the middle class has been getting smaller, they say, but that's only because more families have ascended the income ladder.

middle class. That's impressive, they say. Over the same period, between nineteen seventy nine and twenty twenty four, quote, family incomes rose significantly across the entire income distribution, pushing more families into higher income categories. Other studies show similar patterns. Quote. Yes, the rich have gotten richer over the decades, but so

have the non rich. Everybody is doing better, and yet the relentless lying by Democrats like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have most Americans convinced that we have a hollowed out middle class. And it's a terrible thing. It means more people in poverty, etc. It doesn't and that isn't what has happened. The Democrats have been lying to you for decades, and now that flat out socialists are leading their party, the perpetual misinformation machine is only going to

get worse. Is it any wonder that more and more Americans are leaving the negativity and dysfunction of the Blue states and moving into the Red states. We've been talking about this on the podcast, and Kim Strassel of The Wall Street Journal has a good blurb on it this week, saying the contrast between New York living and Florida living

has never been greater, and she's correct. She says in Florida, Miami Dade County has experienced booming growth, with working people flocking to chase an explosion of business, jobs and better lives. Its schools are better than New York's, Its housing and rent half as expense of its utilities, more affordable, it's cleaner, it isn't teeming with vagrants, and you can even visit

a Walmart. Miami residents get all this because of not in spite of zero state income taxes, zero with state taxes and manageable seven percent sales tax, reasonable property taxes,

and corporate taxes. Those policies drive growth and revenue. Strassel says, New Yorker's, by contrast, stagger under tax and cost burdens a combined state and local income tax of as much as fifteen percent, a state and city sales tax of nearly nine percent, property taxes, a heaving corporate income tax, all for the joy of crummy schools, insane rent, costly utilities, and a collapsing transit infrastructure. More than one hundred thousand

people fled the Big Apple last year. Strassel correctly says, this is the divide and at accelerating. It's accelerating across the country. Red states are racing each other to compete for growth, cutting taxes, slashing regulations, and acting government union reforms. South Carolina is the latest to join the flat or zero tax movement, the ninth state to do so since twenty twenty one. Those cities are vying to become finance and tech hubs, she says. By contrast, progressives are doubling

down on taxes and redistribution. At least eight states now have a millionaire's tax, while at least a dozen more sprint to adopt one Blue states are promising even bigger handouts, more crackdowns on business, greater union power, fewer cops, even as crime rages, schools fail, and the cost of living keeps increasing. She concludes, the chasm between these two approaches is now too wide for businesses or average Americans to ignore.

She's right, and she says, is what's providing those fascinating real time results. Whereas working folks in the past mainly relocated for weather or the occasional job switch, Americans are moving aggressively on the basis of economic policy. Now they're flocking to Florida, Texas, Utah, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. They're draining out of New York, Illinois, New Mexico, Massachusetts,

New Jersey, California, and Hawaii. The obvious success of one model and the obvious failure of the other is documented with every one way you hold rental. Kim Strassel could not be more right about that, and some of us have been pointing this out for decades now. There is no contest between these two models of government control and taxation. Then consider what we covered last week that with proud socialists like Zoororn Mamdani winning elections and taking over America's

biggest cities. The speed of decay and social rot is only going to accelerate and push even more people to the Red States. I'll end here with about two minutes of Stuart Varney on Fox. Remember, over the last three years alone, nearly a million people have fled Florida, Illinois, and New York, the Democrats' three most populous blue states. That's just over the last three years. Varney is talking about an estimate that says nearly that number, about eight

hundred thousand people are going to leave every year. Now, eight hundred thousand people are expected to flee from the Blue States to the Red States over the next three or four years alone.

to cut taxes. Imagine that. But for the high tax states it is a disaster. Would you move to say, New York to take a new job if you'll get hit with a tax fike, you will think twice. For years we've been seeing migration. Now get ready for mass migration. I'll conclude the way Laugher and more end their article quote delusional liberal interest groups want blue states to respond by soaking their rich residents even more.

with Russia. This is the sort of conflict that's easy to lose sight of or lose interest in, since it's half a world away and it really doesn't affect America much directly. But it's the sort of thing that's really easy for the news media to start ignoring as sexier and more interesting news events push it further and further out of the back page. It's pretty safe to say that nearly all Americans have lost sight of what's going

on over there. Well, it sounds like Ukraine has gotten the upper hand since its leaders finally started to engage

in missile strikes into Russia. For the bulk of this war, Ukraine's western allies, the countries providing nearly other weapons and war supplies, insisted that as one condition Ukraine basically only played defense, don't take the war into Russia, and that at some point that changed and Ukraine was allowed to start sending drones and missiles into Russia in certain instances, etc. Long story short, it turns out that at this point of the war, Ukraine has started to do better again,

win territory back rattle Putin. In March and April, the Ukrainian army actually took more ground and had more battlefield success than the Russians did, which hasn't happened since the war started. In April, Russian forces recorded their first territorial losses in years, apparently. Quote The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Moscow seated control of about forty five square miles across the front in April. In the first four months of twenty twenty five, Russian forces seized

an average of about four square miles per day. In twenty six, that figure fell to about one square mile per day. Now Ukraine is taking more land back than it's giving up. Moreover, they say, Ukraine's drone campaign has expanded into a sustained strategic instrument, reaching deep inside Russian territory. Strikes on drilling platforms and pumping stations, oil depots, and repeated hits on the Black Sea export terminal have allowed

Ukraine to bring the war to Russia territory. Reuters says these cumulative strikes have cost Russia access to roughly forty percent of its possible oil export revenues, with Ukraine degrading the capacity to move at least two million barrels per day. That is a significant blow to Putin and the Russian economy.

And as for the human toll, estimates are that Putin was handed more than thirty five thousand Russian casualties in April alone, and the Ukrainians claim more than sixty percent of that number represents deaths, as in, they're killing sixty percent of the fighters Russia is marking as casualties in war. Obviously, dead means taken off the battlefield permanently. There's no chance that those soldiers are going to be sent back to Moscow for rehab and then sent back to Ukraine to

rejoin the fight. That is a high death rate, and it's significantly higher than most war analysts expected to see. This recent Ukrainian success has Putin in an increased panic, if you believe various news reports. Not only is he fearing more and more for his own safety and now sheltering himself behind more, behind more and more walls for safety, but he's downplaying Russia's Victory Day celebrations this year. This yearly display of Russian military might normally plays a huge

part of his political propping and the machine. Apparently not this year. This year, they saw generic threats and saber rattling from the Ukrainian side, suggesting there might be a military strike on Putin's big parade. Ukrainian leaders went so far as to warn political leaders and dignitaries in other countries you might want to decline Putin's invitation this year, and at the very least, now they're in Vlad's head. There's no doubt that Ukraine's reach in. Ukraine's recent successes

have Putin rattled. And here's an interesting bit of trivia. This war for Russia has now lasted longer than their military campaign did in World War II, and we're entering here four of this quagmire that Putin's generals insisted would only take a matter of days, maybe a week. Remember, Russia's war planners were certain they'd invade Ukraine and they'd be rolling into Kiev just a few days later, having

taken control of the country. It was an easy the first step in Putin's grand plan to reconstitute Mother Russia before he dies. What was supposed to take three or four days is now entering year four. Meanwhile, back at home, President Trump's war with Iran is only in its third month, but everyone's freaking out over how long it's taking. Why

isn't this wrapped up yet? Really? Trump and Netanya, who have already raised a forty five year old global terror threat in about three months, and that's not fast enough for people? Good grief. It's worth noting that even as better than expected jobs numbers were released last week, the lefty media was insisting more doom and gloom is coming for the US economy because of this war, especially if

Trump doesn't wrap up his war soon. His war, let's emphasize the numbers first, because yet again they were surprising to the so called experts who are supposed to be the great predictors of our economy. One hundred and fifteen thousand jobs were added in April, which isn't a huge number, but it's more than double what the so called experts

were expecting to see. The prognosticators, who are heavily left in if they're associated with the media outlet, they were predicting only fifty five thousand jobs would be created in Trump's horrible economy in April. Instead, one hundred and fifteen thousand jobs were and not in government. Let's stress this too.

Not only were the Obama and Biden eras significant for creating mostly low paying and part time jobs, but it was government hiring that seemed to be the biggest chunk of the full time jobs that were being created in those presidencies. Well, government work isn't work that's productive to

an economy. Now under Trump, he's already fired three hundred thousand federal workers and isn't hiring new and so it's worth noting that these one hundred and fifteen thousand jobs that were added in April were mostly full time and in good private sector parts of the economy. And they come on top of one hundred and eighty five thousand such jobs added in March, and it means something that their jobs that are being created in nearly all sectors

of the economy. April and March saw tens of thousands of jobs added in healthcare and manufacturing and transportation and warehousing and retail across the board. Tech continues to be slow due to the transition to AI. Also, the percentage of people who are working part time but want to be working full time is also up, which the Left is going to spin as well, there aren't enough full

time jobs. What it really means is we have increasing numbers of Americans wanting to work full time Again, We've got fewer Americans lazing around on food stamps and or wanting to only do the minimum post COVID. But this is positive stuff. And still these experts can only see the doom and gloom ahead. And yes, we're still in an era of unsettled employment as we transition from the

fraudulent Biden economy to a more honest and stable Trump economy. Yeah, we're still in a period in which many employers are still reluctant to hire more full timers.

experts more worried about inflation than jobs losses. It brings us back to the political reality that even with the bold tariff gambit and the hard decision to finally deal with Iran, Trump's team has been improving the economy. It also brings us to the harsh reality that we've been talking about over the last few weeks, that the American voters need to see and feel their personal financial situations improving or they're going to vote Republicans out of office

and fall. And so far, the early going in Trump's second term here has been so unsettled that the vast majority of Americans aren't seeing it. Most Americans don't perceive their economic situation is getting better because we still have high gas and grocery prices. And hey, given all of the economic promises that Donald Trump and the Republicans gave to the American people when they were running for office in twenty twenty four, wrong for voters to want to

see and feel progress. It's one reason I said it was stupid to promise lower grocery prices in twenty twenty four, because inflation doesn't work that way. The high prices tend to stick and they don't go back down quickly. As for gas, Trump's moves did have gas prices dropping rapidly. The three p fifty or four dollars per gallon gasoline that was the hallmark of the Biden presidency was suddenly backed down under three dollars and hanging around more like

two point fifty. Fantastic. Trump had won some goodwill from the voters with that move. Then came the Iran War and now gases around four to fifty a gallon, and most Americans are viewing this as worse than Biden. It's not, by the way, It's temporary, but it's hard to rationalize with the American people because most of them don't really follow along or pay attention. It's why I've been saying Trump needs to explain this directly to the American people.

I've suggested he make a prime time address to be followed up by his team of cabinet members and other Republicans doing several rounds of interviews, explain the high gas prices to the U American people, reassure them it's temporary, ask for their help because, frankly, in the absence of anything else for Democrats to moan and whine about, over the next few months, gas prices are going to become amplified as important to voters. And I know it's unfair.

The double standard here is infuriating and it's glaring. When a Democrat is in office, we're told to ignore gas prices or just deal with it. But when a Republican is in office, gas prices are suddenly the big issue. But in Fall, a couple of things are working to make this the case. A couple of things are working to amplify this issue and elevate it as a key consideration for voters. The first is Trump promised lower gas prices. He even gave them to us temporarily. He and the

gup ran on them and promised relief. Voter perception will be we aren't getting it, promise not kept. The second is, honestly, everything else in the second Trump era is going so well. There's nothing else for the Democrats to moan and whine about that might actually move voters that I know. Any liberal listening now has their hair on fire curious about this. Democrats are always going to whine and moan, and their media accomplices are always going to make a huge deal

about something to bash Trump. But Trump has lowered crime, defund the police's idiotic Trump has ended DEI and trans bullying. The people are with him on that. The economy hasn't crumbled. The stock market is bouncing around fifty thousand. My god, what is there to complain about? Really? Again, they'll complain and moan and spin and trash and bash, But what is there to complain about? What can the Democrats possibly find to rally around as an issue that the American

people might really care about? What promise hasn't Donald Trump kept?

make this simple sacrifice. And I really do believe this is a messaging win. This is messaging that could bring the country's voters together because a sense of collective sacrifice can do that. And it starts with Trump acknowledging this isn't much of a sacrifice. We're not putting troops on the ground in Iran. We're not putting your sons or daughters in harm's way. We aren't asking that of you,

Thank Heaven. In World War Two, Americans back home, we're asked to cut back, collect metal and rubber, put up with blackouts at night to help the war effort, etc. All we're asking this time is please put up with the temporarily high gas prices. Trump could easily say prices will be back down by Thanksgiving or Christmas, maybe even Halloween. But please make this little sacrifice as we deal with a nearly fifty year global terror and national security threat.

I strongly believe the American people would embrace that and screw the Democrats and their lefty media members and how they'd spin it. Let them spin that whichever way they're going to it. Who cares. There is still power in having a president speak directly to the American people and ask for their help. Trump should do it, and then have his cabinet members and other Republicans carry the message out all summer. I've been suggesting this for a while.

Now I see that the Great Molly Hemingway from the Federalist is now suggesting it on Fox. But it also occurs to me that this is another good example of how living within our system of government makes it often harder to deal with the problems that we face and the crises that pop up. It's far easier for dictators to get things done than it is for democracies to get things done. And it isn't only because well, presidents can't just order it be done like dictators can. Presidents

can't just ignore the will of the people. It's far more complicated than that. It's mostly because in democracies, elected leaders are now constantly worried about the next election. History is replete with instances of US and European lawmakers not going bold, not doing the right thing because they were worried about upsetting voters and losing the next election. And I don't think Donald Trump is overly worried about it

or obsessed over those calculations. But he needs to be at least somewhat cognizant of it as someone who wants to keep Congressional control in his final two years in office, and as someone who is trying to build a political legacy for the party beyond him. And so of course this is a consideration. And so far Trump's kurt and somewhat grumpy explanations on high gas prices are falling flat.

He clearly believes an end to this Iran stand office close, but he can buy himself some time by giving the speech and making it clear I am not going to half ask the end of this war because gas prices will stay higher until it's over. That's what the Democrats and their media accomplices, as well as a growing number of squishy Republicans want him to do. They're pressuring him to accept any resolution to this war just to get gas prices back under four dollars a gallon again before

the election. That's silly. President Trump appears to understand that, So give the speech boy another week. Another series of twists in the redistricting saka over the last few days. The Virginia Supreme Court shot down the democrats bullying move there, obviously as I suggested they would. Meanwhile, the Trump administrations expanded its notion of which red states should redraw their maps.

Following the Supreme Court's decision that ends racial jerrymandering, Trump's team is now pushing South Carolina and Indiana to maybe redo their maps for twenty twenty eight at least. And we've reached a point at which even left wing Politico is admitting the Democrats have lost the twenty twenty six redistricting wars. We'll get to that, but I want to start with the Virginia Supreme Court decision only to clarify something. Clarify what it is they decided and why the Virginia

Supreme Court shot down that map. I'm doing so because, based on what I've seen in the way of news media coverage and social media posts, the average American isn't clear on what those court justices did and didn't do. Apparently, it's just an article of faith on the left that the members of the Virginia Supreme Court have ignored the

will of Virginians and taken away rights. Boloney a single Virginia voter who doesn't still have every one of the voting rights that they had before this Supreme Court decision. The Court also didn't ignore the will of the people, and very importantly, this court also didn't specifically reject that ten to one heavily jerrymandered map. What the Virginia Supreme Court did, on a four to three decision was reject the process by which Virginia's unhinged, bullying democrats rammed that

map into place. The justices ruled that Virginia's democrats ignored the state's constitutional process, ignored a map's commission that the people of the Commonwealth said should be used to draw these maps, ignored various legislative procedural hurdles to get a rigged quickie map. The Virginia Supreme Court justice is ruled basically,

you can't cheat on process. They did not reject either the extreme gerrymander or that specific ten to one map, which means by the way that if the Democrats controlling Virginia really wanted to double down and by God force that map into place, all they need to do is gee, take a step back and actually follow the slower and more careful procedure in order to make their actions more

legal and defensible. Folks, something not being emphasized is that the Democrats in Virginia could do a reset here and still try to force this map onto the people of Virginia. And I'm assuming that at some point they will. But for now their scummy attempt to ram a new map into place has failed. And yes, that State Supreme Court ruling is going to stand. I know Hakim Jeffreys wants

to insist it won't. I know volumes of angry lefties on Blue Sky and x and other social media are insisting Virginia's lawmakers simply ignore the ruling, which is, genuinely, by the way, a republic killing move. I'll say something I've said for years, America won't fall to the Chinese

or some sort of outside invading force. America falls when one side of the aisle or the other decides that they on their side just aren't going to follow the rules of the Republic that our founders and our generations of forefathers have laid out for us. This country crumbles if the Democrats decide they simply don't like the rules and the laws that we're all being asked to live

by and go rogue. And so to have even a small legion of people on Blue Sky saying just ignore the ruling should be shocking and unacceptable to all of us. There's also an effort underway by the Democrats to move this all into the federal court system and or get the U. S. Supreme Court to block or strike down

the Virginia Supreme Court's decision. That's not going to happen either, and not because it's a conservative federal Supreme Court, but because our US Supreme Court, since its founding, has always made it clear the states have their own constitutions and Supreme Courts, and they govern themselves, and they govern their

own elections. The U. S. Supreme Court is not going to step in and decide that the Democrats in Virginia don't need to follow their own procedures or state constitution, and that a group of state judges got it all wrong when they said follow the procedure. Come on so that's also not going to happen. As one column put it, the Democrats in Virginia blew by any number of legal obstacles to draw the most absurdly lopsided map in the

country and then congratulated themselves on their audacity. That's a pretty good summary. These Democrats were so smug in their self satisfaction after ramming that map into place a few weeks ago that it makes their defeat all the more delicious. Now. They took a map that was actually quite fair and representational for the voting patterns of that state. There was a six or five Democrat advantage, and they tried to force total Democrat dominance and a ten to one map.

And I'll emphasize again that they actually could have gotten away with it if they'd followed procedures. Look around. There are nine blue states, nine that don't have a single Republican congressional district, even though their voters vote at about a forty to forty five percent Republican level. There are several more Blue states and at least a few red

states that only have one or two Democrat districts. So we already have extremely gerrymandered statewide maps but we do because the lawmakers who drew them in those states followed the laws and the constitutions when they drew them and put them into place. That is not what Virginia did.

And now that the map has been shot down, now we learn that Virginia's new horrid socialistic governor, Abigail Spanberger and her new team knew they were ignoring all procedures and the Virginia Constitution, and they even argued about it behind the scenes. But the Trump derangement bullies won out, and they rammed ahead, and they spent tens of millions of dollars and exhausted all sorts of credibility and political capital,

only to be slapped back and embarrassed. Fantastic, and they blew through so many barriers that it's why I said the day after the map was put into place, the members of the State Supreme Court are out of their mind if they ignore all the procedural cheating and allow this to stand. My contention was, no one can call themselves a fair minded judge and allow this map to be put into place. And it turned out to be right.

Looking past all the cheating was something that at least four of the seven Virginia Supreme Court justices simply couldn't bring themselves to do. And by the way, the justice who wrote the opinion was appointed by a Democrat governor and is a fellow lefty, a lefty with some personal integrity, as it turns out. But that leaves us with Republicans in the Red States and the Trump political team angling to create somewhere between five and fourteen new Republican seats

before twenty twenty eight. And since we know the Democrats are going to triple and quadruple down on their efforts to engage in even more extreme gerrymanders in their states, we may as well talk about the projections on their side as well. How many of these new seats are actually in place by fall is a big question mark, given that every attempt to redraw a map is going to lead to litigation and court delays and legal jockeying.

So the level of Republican advantage by fall is still in question, but I can't imagine that it's going to be more than four or five seats. If we look at twenty twenty eight, well we could see as many as fourteen new Republican congressional districts and as many as six or seven Democrat districts, if you believe the experts.

We've talked about, how most Democrat run states are all ready so extremely gerrymandered that there aren't as many options for them, in contrast to the southern red states, whose leaders have literally been forced for decades by federal law to make sure there are at least a few deep blue districts that minority candidates could win. And this is the most basic difference here when you start to look

at it. The Voter Rights Act worked to guarantee that Democrats had a certain number of freebe districts handed to them by the courts in the Red States, even as those same Democrats had free reign to draw Republicans completely out of the picture any way they wanted to in other states. And so, of course a releveling of this playing field is going to mean a Republican advantage. But by twenty twenty eight we could have as many as

twelve or fourteen new Republican congressmen. And then comes the twenty thirty census, which is going to more formally count the number of citizens who have migrated out of the Blue states and into the red states. The twenty thirty census is terrifying the Democrats right now. The twenty thirty census is expected to cause several Blue star states to lose at least one or two congressional seats and hand

even more seats to Republicans. So I think you can see why the Democrats and their strategists are having absolute meltdowns over this map war and the fact that they're losing it. It's also why I assume Virginia's Democrats are going to be under heavy pressure to put aside their SmackDown regroup and try to actually follow procedure to get that different map into place by twenty twenty eight. We'll

see how it plays out. The only other solid blue state that seems to have any real room for adjustment is New York, and this is fun. The California and Illinois maps are already extreme gerrymanders. Obviously, nine of the other blue states are completely blue, as in, they couldn't find a Republican congressman to steal a seat from if they'd tried. All of New England. All those states are

already shockingly unfair. Their state constituents vote around forty to forty five percent Republican, but not a single Republican is sent to Washington to represent them. New England's already a sea of blue cheating, as is Hawaii. And so it turns out that the state of New York is really the only other state that could be used to create several new Democrat districts as in three four five. Right now, the New York state map includes nineteen Democrats and seven Republicans.

And so, as a lefty you look at that and you say, oh, you know, we could erase virtually every Republican seat and pick up five or six more. The problem is, and again this is just delicious. The problem with that notion is several of the current Democrat districts only exist because of the race based jerrymandering that the Supreme Court just shot down. Fantastic, folks, It turns out

that the district of Haakim Jeffreys is a racially jerrymandered district. Well, he's the clown who's the Democrat leader in the House. His district is a racial cheat. So what are Kathy Holkal and New York Democrats going to do? Take away the black guys district and he isn't the only one in jeopardy. If these New York Democrats decide to start really drawing their map for political advantage instead of racial advantage.

It's a wonderful iron a twist that over the years New York Democrats have based their map so heavily on racial cheating that if they actually try to do it now in favor of a map that is nakedly political instead of nakedly racial, they're going to be erasing all sorts of racially protected Democrats. Tell me, this isn't fun.

This has political reporting that Kathy Holkl and other Democrats who run the state of New York are not inclined to step into this racial minefield, and if they don't, it's going to limit how much they can really further cheat that map. Could Hokal and New York Democrats come up with a map that gives them three or four more seats? Yeah, but six or seven?

at least two or three protecting Hispanics congressmen, including AOC's district. Now, come on, do you think that New York State Democrats are going to draw one of their parties so called superstars out of her district? Are Kathy Hochl and state Dems in New York going to put AOC out of a job and force her back into bartending?

are mortified. It is increasingly likely that the twenty thirties are an era of conservative control in DC, or at least shared control in DC, where the Liberals can't move their radical left agenda, and it's because the Democrats of the early two thousands have increasingly been pushing working class and productive voters out of their states and into the Republican led states. That's fantastic. The coming maps crisis of the twenty thirties is all the Democrats fault, and most of them know it.