• Immigration

The latest data from the American Community Survey (ACS), reflecting the US population in mid-2025, shows a total foreign-born (also called immigrant) population of 50.4 million—up slightly from 50.2 million in the 2024 ACS, but growing much more slowly than in prior years. The survey shows a big slowdown in foreign-born population growth through mid-2025, with an increase of just 174,000 from mid-2024 to mid-2025, compared with growth of 2.4 million from 2023 to 2024. (Center for Immigration Studies)

Parth Nayi organized hundreds of fake robberies to help immigrants fraudulently obtain immigrant visas, making millions of dollars. It was all going well until one of the fake robberies went wrong and a man was shot in the stomach. (CWB Chicago)

More than 150 Afghan immigrants are expected to be deported to Pakistan; most have broken some laws, including a gay man who committed two felonies and said his life will be at risk back in Afghanistan. (The New York Times)

34 Senators from both parties are asking DHS to double the number of H-2B visas for low-skilled, non-agricultural labor. Last December, the Trump Administration caved to Congressional demands and increased the number of low-skilled workers up to 64,716. The list includes Republicans like Senator Rounds, Cramer, Daines, Husted, Lummis, Tillis, and majority leader Thune. (Senator King)

• Economy

Microsoft is offering buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees, or about 27 percent of its workforce, as the software giant continues to spend heavily on artificial intelligence. Microsoft employed about 223,000 people at the end of June, down 5,000 workers from the same period in 2025. (Fortune)

The average price of health insurance in the Obamacare marketplaces will rise by 13 percent next year, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (The New York Times)

Wall Street profits and the AI boom have given New York State a big financial bump. The state Division of the Budget increased its projected tax revenue by $8.1 billion for the current fiscal year and reduced its projected deficit from $6.1 billion to $2.9 billion. (Times Union)

US Real GDP came in at a 3.4% annualized growth rate in Q3 2026 data released this morning. Consumption, investment, & government output increased, while the trade deficit widened. Nominal GDP growth (unadjusted for inflation) came in at 5.6% annualized.

• Elections

Texas completed its early vote, and voters who’d previously cast a ballot in a past Republican primary outvoted those who’d previously cast a ballot in a Democratic primary. Democrats benefited immensely from a surge of first-time voters, especially young Latinos. Most voters, however, have no history of voting in either party’s primary. More first-time Democrats voted in the primary in this midterm than in the 2024 presidential election. (Theo Elections)

• Other Topics

Jonathan D. Miller, the Libertarian Party nominee for a state Senate seat in North Carolina, live-tweeted a high-speed chase with the police. The Wake County District Attorney later dropped his felony gun charges. (WRAL News)

In 2020, the University of California San Diego had 32 freshmen placed in the remedial "middle school math" section. By 2025, it was 665 students. (USCD)

Declining birthrates are becoming increasingly problematic for public school enrollment. A majority of states are seeing public school enrollement decline, with West Virginia (-11%), Oregon (-10%), Mississippi (-10%), New Hampshire (-9%), Illinois (-8%), and New Mexico (-8%) seeing the steepest decline. (The Wall Street Journal)

The CDC updated its preliminary monthly birth data, with non-Hispanic white mothers having more than 50 percent of all children in the United States for the seventh consecutive month - a sharp reversal from trends over recent years. Overall raw births are down about 42,000 from last year, but most of that decline is due to falling birthrates among immigrants.

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• Immigration

Legal immigration has fallen sharply under Trump’s executive orders, visa bans, and suspension of the diversity visa. Only Mexico, Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom, Chile, Indonesia, Spain, Portugal, the Philippines, Turkey, and Kenya saw higher levels of immigration to the US. Most countries saw an 80 percent or greater reduction. (The New York Times)

Gurinder Gill, an immigrant from India, claimed that ICE abducted his wife while she was collecting their mail. Jasmine Gill was later found burned and buried in a remote part of California. It turned out that ICE was not even in the area at the time, and Gurinder has been charged with murder. (India Today)

• Economy

Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents in customer accounts, including some that appear to act independently of user instructions. Several banks are now preparing for worst-case and even “day after” scenarios, including how to secure or restore customer accounts if things go wrong rapidly, the people said. (Axios)

The war in Iran has exacted a big toll on the average American pocketbook, costing "the average American household more than $2,000." (The Wall Street Journal)

• Elections

Democrat nominee Abdul El-Sayed is facing resistance from black voters in Michigan due to growing tensions between Muslim immigrants and black natives. El-Sayed has blamed racism on the part of Muslims for not having as much collective racial guilt as white liberals. Immigration is also playing a big part in the conflict, and Muslim immigrants have increasingly moved into historic black neighborhoods, forcing racial tensions. (The New York Times)

President Trump has dropped several tariffs on Canada to boost Sen. Susan Collins’ re-election chances. The narrative going into this election is that Collins is at her political apex in terms of influence and the money she can bring back to Maine; delivering this win only reinforces that message. (The Guardian)

Republicans are seeing massive declines in youth turnout across the country; for example, in North Carolina, Democrats under the age of 30 are turning out at 62 percent of their 2024 numbers, while young Republicans are only at 14 percent. This trend is consistent across most of the country. (Zachary Donnini)

Latino turnout in Texas, especially among young people, is exceeding 2024 levels. Turnout among Latinos under 30 is nearly double what it was at this point in 2024. This is very good news for Democrats in the state, especially since turnout in precincts Harris won by more than 30 points is over 100 percent compared to 2024, versus just 79 percent in precincts Trump won by more than 30 points. Virginia saw very high early Latino turnout, followed by a significant drop-off. We could see a similar phenomenon in Texas over the next week.

• Other Topics

Democrats have unveiled their legislative agenda if they take back the House. Within the first 100 hours, they plan to pass bills to reinstate expired Affordable Care Act health care premium subsidies, reverse nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, end Trump’s tariffs, and direct Trump to end the War in Iran. Almost all of this will be blocked in the Senate, but it’s more a messaging bill than anything else, meant to tell voters where their priorities are. They also plan to investigate the Trump administration for corruption around pardons, public contracting, and cryptocurrency, but the Trump administration is unlikely to comply with any of it. There will be growing tensions, however, as DSA-backed candidates are hoping to pass bills to abolish ICE and introduce Medicare for All, both of which are dead in the water. (The New York Times)

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• Immigration

A September survey from the National Association of Home Builders found labor costs had increased by a median of 4.2 percent from the previous year. This comes after a national crackdown on illegal immigration and a tightening of legal immigration laws. The loss of migrant labor in American national labor is forcing CEOs to hire more Americans. (Breitbart News)

• Economy

The war in Iran has exacted a big toll on the average American pocketbook, costing the average American household more than $2,000. (The Wall Street Journal)

A study of 3,000 participants in a basic universal income program found that most participants used the funds to support family and friends, then childcare, then food. (The New York Times)

• Elections

This election season included $170 million in AI-generated ads, half featuring politicians, and 70 percent lacking disclaimers that the images were AI-generated. (The New York Times)

Elon Musk made the largest single donation in midterm election history, giving the Senate Leadership Fund $158 million of the $273 million it raised in the third quarter. (Axios)

More money was spent on ads during the 2025-2026 political cycle than any previous election cycle. It's astonishing that midterm spending exceeds that of a presidential election. (The New York Times)

Democrats are increasingly running on political corruption and tying it to affordability. Basically saying that while you’re struggling to pay for healthcare, food, and gas, President Trump and his allies are making billions of dollars. According to Blue Rose Research, it has moved the needle three points toward Democrats. (Politico)

• Other Topics

Voter registration in Texas is up 2 percent since the primary election, and 7.7 percent since the midterm election. Fast-growing suburban counties saw some of the biggest growth since the last midterms, including Kaufman (27% more registered voters), Waller (23%), Ellis (21%) and Hays (21%). Notably, Tarrant, which political watchers consider a swing county, lost the most registered voters. The county had 32,503 fewer voters compared to four years ago, a 2.6% drop. Tarrant grew 4.1% between 2022 and 2025, according to Vintage Population Estimates. (Texas Tribune)

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• Immigration

The State Department, led by Secretary Marco Rubio, has revoked more than 250,000 visas from foreign nationals since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025. (Breitbart News)

• Big Tech

Microsoft has been suspended from applying for green cards for H-1B workers. Vice President Vance said the suspension applied to Microsoft. The program requires companies to advertise jobs in America before applying to the Department of Labor, showing they need to give a foreign worker a green card because they lack American workers. (Associated Press)

• Economy

A new survey of Federal Reserve Consumer Finances data is out. The report finds that Gen Z’s wealth, on average, is outpacing previous generations, controlling for age.

The study also finds that, adjusted for inflation, the overall median net worth for Americans over 75 rose sharply from 2022 to 2025, while it fell for people under 35. (The Wall Street Journal)

What does this mean? Gen Z is doing better than previous generations, which is why older Americans feel it’s okay to lecture them, but they’re experiencing the economy and inflation firsthand and are struggling.

• Elections

Latino turnout in early voting is outpacing even the 2024 presidential election so far, likely driven by highly engaged Democrats. As of October 8th, Latino voters accounted for nearly 8 percent of all early votes, compared with 4 percent in 2024. (New Republic)

Chaz Nuttycomb, who follows state legislative elections, predicts Democrats will win 409 seats nationwide, their first national gain in state legislative elections since 2018, aside from the 2025 elections in just Virginia and New Jersey. (State Navigate)

Democrats are shifting resources from double-digit Trump districts that could be vulnerable this cycle to more swing districts, hoping to hold them for more than one election cycle. (The New York Times)

The Human Rights Campaign is declining to back Amy Acton for Ohio Governor and Rep. Marcy Kaptur for Ohio’s 9th congressional district after they opposed trans athletes in women’s sports. They’re looking to punish anyone who moves away from their ideologically poisonous positions, even if it means they become politically viable. (The Washington Sun)

• Other Topics

Gov. Josh Shapiro announced he’s changing the state’s primary process to let people not registered with either major party vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a very liberal Republican from the first district who took over the seat after his very popular brother was diagnosed with cancer, announced he plans to leave the GOP to become an independent. (Mediate)

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Democrats have a lot going for them in the upcoming midterm election: Trump’s unpopularity, inflation outpacing wage growth, an energized base, and a war that most Americans think is a mistake. The New York Times/Siena poll shows Democrats leading by double digits in multiple states that voted for Trump in 2024: 7 points in Alaska, 6 points in Texas, and within the margin of error in Iowa, Ohio, and Kansas.

Aside from a victory against the still-unsinkable Susan Collins in Maine, Democrats have an almost sure pickup in North Carolina and very likely holds in Michigan, Minnesota, Georgia, and New Hampshire. Democrats’ path to the Senate majority runs through double-digit Trump states.

So far, generic and statewide polling and primary vote tallies suggest that’s a real possibility, but living in a country where partisanship has become increasingly cemented as part of our understanding of modern politics means Democrats have decades of trends running against them. Is 2026 the year that blind partisanship dies in red-state America?

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Since 2002, only 24 elections have seen a candidate from one party win a Senate seat in a state the presidential candidate from the other party carried by double digits. Only 8 of those elections were flips, where a senator of one party replaced a member of a different party in a state where the opposition party's presidential nominee won by 10 points or more.

Of those eight, more than half would flip back within one election. Only Senators elected in Montana, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin survived more than one election, and only Ron Johnson still serves today.

Essentially, this election would need to be the Democrats Tea Party wave. This is a requirement for Susan Collins to win re-election, a race where she’s led or tied in six of the last nine polls. Most political analysts say she has about a one-in-three chance of beating the odds, but Collins typically outperforms polls by 6-8 points.

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A Collins victory means that they’d have to win in their next most likely states, Ohio and Alaska, plus either Iowa or Texas, states they haven’t won in quite some time.

VoteHub predicts Maine, Texas, Ohio, and Alaska will flip toward Democrats by a two- to three-point margin in each race.

Democrats have a lot going for them in this election, but they will have to defy recent gravity that is political partisanship. Perhaps Ken Paxton is just flawed enough, or the oil and food prices have worked to deflate interest in voting, or Trump’s base is just too low-propensity to save these candidates. Maybe Americans are just finally done with Donald Trump. While polls and election prediction markets say one thing, it is actually much harder than it sounds.

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• Immigration

Since the beginning of the summer, ICE has quietly and quickly picked up steam in its efforts to carry out President Trump’s promise of mass deportations. Unlike previous attempts that drew massive backlash in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, this has flown under the radar in both blue and red states, and more than 140,000 illegal aliens were arrested from June to August. (The New York Times)

More than 440,000 people have been denied asylum during the first 19 months of President Trump’s term. (The Washington Post)

• Big Tech

Major tech titans including Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, and Eric Yuan attended President Trump’s official state dinner with Chinese Dictator Xi. The list of tech leaders invited to the dinner is similar to the list that would attend a Biden state dinner. (The New York Times)

• Economy

In August 2026, the cost of transporting goods across the country rose to their highest level since August 2022, an estimated $3.11 per mile. While fuel is a big part of that, it’s not the only factor. “The cost of recruiting, advertising, onboarding, training, sign-on bonuses—help me if I’m missing one of them, we’re going to see about $25 million more in Q3 versus Q2,” said Delco at a Morgan Stanley investor conference. J.B. Hunt also faces at least a $10 million headwind sequentially from the rapid rise in fuel prices. (The Wall Street Journal)

• Elections

Since Rep. Maria Salazar broke with Trump on immigration, he has reposted multiple accounts on Truth Social demanding a 2028 primary challenge. (Politico)

Texas Republicans are already beginning the blame game as many expect James Talarico to win the upcoming Senate race despite the GOP spending north of $300 million to support Ken Paxton. More establishment Republicans are blaming Trump for his endorsement, while supporters of Paxton are blaming Sen. John Cornyn for spending $100 million in the primary against the Attorney General. (Politico)

Early turnout is already four times higher than it was during the 2022 midterm elections (John Couvillon)

Republicans are struggling with the “Doubly Disenchanted” voters who are typically younger, working-class, and more likely to vote Republican. (Cook Political Report)

Progressive Democrats are already looking past the midterms into the 2028 Congressional election and are planting their flag in New York State. Anti-AIPAC groups are planning on targeting Democrats sympathetic to Israel. They include Reps. Ritchie Torres, George Latimer, Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi. (Axios)

• Other Topics

In 10 of the most-watched races in the country, the candidates running for governor and Senate are not debating each other, nearing a recent high. The media landscape is changing to the point that candidates no longer feel it's necessary. (Axios)

Latinos in Maria Salazar’s South Florida congressional district are angry with her for her anti-Trump message on border enforcement, saying they have misread their disappointment with the Trump Administration. (The Washington Post)

A small group of White House officials is exploring whether to cut back Trump’s decision to increase foreign beef imports, as GOP panic rises ahead of the midterms. (Politico)

Central America:

Mexico:

Mexico released its official fertility rate data, and it’s far lower than many people expected. Mexico’s fertility rate stands at 1.2 children per woman, down from 1.9 in 2019. Mexico’s fertility rate looks more like an Eastern or Southern European nation than it does the United States. At the current rate of decline, Mexico will see its population shrink far sooner than experts anticipated. (INEGI)

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Trump’s approval ratings have never been lower, not ahead of the 2018 midterm and not even after January 6th.

This is why Republicans, even in safe districts and states, are scrubbing his name from their website and distancing themselves from tariffs and demanding an end to the war in Iran.

In less than two years since forming a majority coalition, Trump blew it up while fixating on ballrooms, arches, and renaming bodies of water.

Going into the midterm elections, things are bad for Republicans, some of the worst historically, based on some polling and lack of enthusiasm. That said, the commentary class and election Twitter need to get a grip. The laws of political polarization and electoral gravity are still in effect.

Pollsters and election analysts are getting high on a lot of nonsense, pushing narratives that Republicans are in so much trouble that Florida and Idaho could be in play or that R+15 seats could fall to Democrats. If dreams were horses, everyone would ride, and a lot of people are riding to fairy land.

All the signs point to a blue wave; that much is true, but the idea that the wave is so large it’s going to wash away nearly every Republican running for a seat to the left of West Texas is just not true.

We don’t have to look far in history to see evidence of this.

There was a wave election just last year in Virginia and New Jersey.

Both states experienced big left-wing shifts from 2024’s presidential election, with Virginia swinging from a Harris +5.8 state to a Democrat victory of 15.36. Likewise, New Jersey moved from a state Harris won by 5.9 percent to a state Democrat Mikie Sherrill won by 14.4 percent. That's a 9.6 percent and 8.5 percent shift left in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.

That’s not far from where polls estimate the midterm shift to be, especially given that most midterm polls underestimate Republican performance.

According to VoteHub, Democrats have a generic ballot lead of 8.1 points, which would be about a 10.5 percent swing to the left from the 2024 House election.

So does that mean Republicans lost every seat under the sun in New Jersey and Virginia in their wave elections? No.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones is having a moment every parent dreads: questioning whether her parenting decisions have harmed her child. In her case, the evidence seems clear… it did.

In The New York Times Magazine, Jones, who makes a healthy six-figure salary, including receiving tens of thousands of dollars for paid speeches, decided to send her daughter to an economically deprived public school out of an obligation to the greater good instead of giving her daughter more advantages that could help her get into a better college and perhaps a high-paying career.

Jones first wrote about choosing her daughter’s school in 2016, when she described her desire to send her child to public school but the difficulty of selecting a school in a “segregated city.”

“In a city where white children are only 15 percent of the more than one million public-school students, half of them are clustered in just 11 percent of the schools, which not coincidentally include many of the city’s top performers.”

This is one of the first fallacies of Jones’ logic on segregation to begin with: more than two-thirds of the city’s public school population at the time was Latino or black (the black student enrollment has since plummeted along with the overall student population); the city is not segregating the 15 percent as if they are a protected class. Jones is under the impression that there’s a constitutional right for every child to be in proximity to a white student. Perhaps it’s because they believe they can enshrine the child with the wisdom that comes from interacting with Black girl magic; perhaps it’s because she believes the city will invest more equitably if it knew white students were more fairly spread around, as if Caucasian students were a commodity.

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“In 2014, the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, released a report showing that New York City public schools are among the most segregated in the country. Black and Latino children here have become increasingly isolated, with 85 percent of black students and 75 percent of Latino students attending “intensely” segregated schools — schools that are less than 10 percent white,” she writes.

Jones needs to believe that she is a victim, that systems are permanently in place to deprive black Americans like her, the millionaire New York Times writer who’s authored a bestselling book based on historical inaccuracies and has been rewarded for a decade of writing basically the same thing over and over again. If she stopped for a moment and thought about it, a school that is less than 10 percent white is slightly below the city's overall average of 15 percent of the public school population.

And the lack of white children didn’t translate into a lack of funds for other schools. The highest-need schools in the city receive more funding from the local government on top of state aid and Title I spending from the federal government. The problem with these schools isn’t their lack of funds or white bodies.

Jones wrote in her 2016 article that she wanted to enroll her daughter in a segregated, low-income school because she didn’t want her daughter to be liberated from the experience that most black and Latino children faced.

“I understood that so much of school segregation is structural — a result of decades of housing discrimination, of political calculations and the machinations of policy makers, of simple inertia. But I also believed that it is the choices of individual parents that uphold the system, and I was determined not to do what I’d seen so many others do when their values about integration collided with the reality of where to send their own children to school.”

While there is a long history of systemic discrimination against blacks in the United States, it was not the country her daughter was born in. Imagining that the United States of 2016, when her daughter was entering the New York City public school system, was comparable to the same world as Selma, Alabama in the 1950s is a fable that liberals tell themselves to excuse poor behavior by parents, teachers, and children that has not resulted in failing test scores, chronic absenteeism, or disciplinary issues. Jones’ own blindness is that public schools in New York City and many other regions of our country are built not for children but for adults, whether it be various unions, the whims of activist superintendents, or dozens of contractors who tether well-meaning teachers to various technological platforms and professional development workshops that bury them in bureaucratic nonsense.

For her decade of bemoaning the fact that her daughter’s school wasn’t properly integrated with flocks of white children from the nearby wealthy neighborhoods, she fails to mention that many schools, including her daughter’s, openly opposed integration because it jeopardized their Title I funding for low-income schools, something her own paper chronicled in the year before she enrolled her child in school.

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It was not proximity to white bodies or systemic changes in race that elevated recent Asian immigrants to be the highest scholastic achievers in New York City, nor was it what helped millions of black students in Mississippi achieve some of the highest reading scores in the country as most other public schools saw their test results plunge in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was New York City’s poor education system built for the powerful teachers’ union. Children are allowed to fall through the cracks if their parents let them.

Her now-teenage daughter asked her a very simple question: what has she accomplished by using her as a tool for political progress? A question that Jones couldn’t answer.

Jones says she saw problems in the school as early as first grade, when children were hitting, chasing, and pushing each other while adults stood by. New York City’s unions have extremely restrictive rules on the ability to discipline a student; basically, they cannot touch a child even if another child is being attacked, unless they risk their jobs and benefits.

The writer chalked it up to the idea that all children were like this and that the institution had failed. But not all children are like this; her own daughter wasn’t. And rather than expecting more from other parents, Jones kept expecting the school to discipline the children. When other middle-class, mostly white families left the school, Jones became more determined to make sure her daughter stayed; there was an ideological war to be won, after all.

Year after year, Jones witnessed failures in the school, and with each passing year she kept her child in a failing school.

It was so bad that in the fourth grade, she opened her daughter’s schoolbag and found that none of her work was graded. Her daughter believed she excelled at math because the teacher never corrected her, and the same was true for her writing assignments. She earned As and Bs because,e had she failed, or a majority of the black children failed and been left behind, it would have been an example of the systemic racism Jones is always looking for. So, instead, everyone passed, regardless of what they wrote.

She says the school was underfunded and understaffed, while the teacher-to-student ratio was less than 10 children per teacher and taxpayers spent more than $50,000 per child. None of the standard liberal excuses hold any merit, but they are much more comfortable lies than examining truths that fly in the face of your ideology.

Still, Jones chided specialized schools that test children and only allow the best and brightest, alluding to the idea that it’s a system of white supremacy that magically also benefits Asian families, most of whom earn far less than Jones and her husband.

“This systemic sorting of worthy and unworthy children is justified by saying that our “brightest” students deserve and demand more rigor,” Jones writes. “While many of the city’s Asian students have benefited from these screens, in reality the screens are part of a tawdry bargain to keep a dwindling number of white and wealthier parents from exiting the public school system.”

Once again, if Jones took a moment to look at the math, she’d realize it doesn’t make any sense. Whites are a minority of the voting population; most upper-class whites send their children to private schools that have similar expenses to a college education. Yet many Asian students, many of whom come from homes with little affluence and where English is a second language, thrive. It’s not for a voting bloc or to appease a white demographic, but the system of white supremacy is more concrete in Jones’ head than the outside world, so it’s what she always must fall back on.

Jones’ daughter tried to take a specialized test to get into one of those high-performing schools, but couldn’t compete with a substandard education. In the ninth grade, she didn’t even have a full-time math teacher.

After detailing years of watching disciplinary issues in these failing schools, Jones never asks herself why teacher retention is so difficult. Could it be that teachers who get into education to make a difference feel like they can’t in such an environment?

Jones’ mission to promote failing schools at her child's expense never stopped. She boasted that her daughter graduated on the honor roll, even though she knew her teachers had never graded her work and that she couldn’t do basic math.

The decision to send her child to a failing elementary school haunted her in high school; up to that point, she had experienced no academic rigor, including homework. The culture shock meant she struggled in most classes, and Jones found out that her daughter couldn’t do algebra because her grade school never taught long division or fractions.

If a decade of this shared experience was supposed to make Jones or her teenage daughter realize anything beyond lessons about race or class, it didn’t.

“She then said she was glad she had not spent her early years in a white environment as many of the Black students at her high school had, because she’d developed a strong sense of her identity and had the confidence to speak up against the casual racism they sometimes experienced. Najya said that spending the last two years in classrooms full of privileged kids had taught her that these students weren’t smarter or even necessarily better behaved than the kids she had gone to school with before; they just had more.”

This is just a refusal to acknowledge disparities not only in race and income, but in parental expectations, discipline, and an education system meant to fail children forward. It’s not segregation, money, teachers, or all the other people Jones has decided to blame that are holding black children in New York City back. It is the failure of parents to demand more from their children, and the failure of the teachers’ union and government to fail children forward. Black children in Mississippi don’t have universal school choice, a voucher program, or anywhere near the kind of money spent on black students in New York City, $52,349 in the case of Jones’s daughter’s school vs. $12,324 for the average school in Mississippi. Yet, the latter outperforms New York City students in testing.

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Neither Jones nor her daughter can admit the hard truth that these black students didn’t have less when it came to school spending. In fact, because of New York City’s Fair Student Funding rule, she and her classmates actually had more.

In the comment section of the article, Jones said her daughter doesn’t believe she’s being hard enough on herself, and there’s a lot of truth to that. How did she knowingly put her child in an unsafe, failing school without supplemental tutoring? Why did she wait till the fourth grade to realize that none of her work was being graded? For someone who claims to be an education expert, Jones was constantly surprised. Still, aside from running to the principal or emailing the teacher, she didn’t do personalized follow-up to make sure her daughter met her standards. It’s question after question on a slow-moving train wreck that’s supposed to conclude with the thought that at least she was honest. But is that enough? Because if she had her way, her daughter would still be on track for a much harder life, where she failed to meet the basic needs of a college freshman. So she would have been left behind, and it would have been nearly impossible ever to catch up.

Jones worries that in fighting for all children and standing true to her values, she let her child down, but she’s asking the wrong question entirely. It’s not that raising your children with values rooted in your ideological framework is a bad decision; it’s the choice most parents make, whether that be based on religion, culture, or politics. The problem is that Jones’ ideology is inherently poisonous.

All of her answers to the problems were because of whiteness, structural racism, funding, poor teachers, or understaffing; on deeper examination, all of those explanations fall apart. Jones is so profoundly inept at analyzing cause and effect that at this point it’s a moral failing.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a single Asian or white parent who makes decisions for their children because they’re fighting for every child of that race. They understand their child will compete with every other member of their race for the rest of their life. They are not separating themselves from failing schools because they hold an animosity against black students the way she holds a venom against whites. She assumes the worst of other people because they are mirror images of herself, and her answer to this was to disenfranchise her own child instead of making her compete in their schools and prove she was as gifted, talented, and intelligent as them.

Instead, Jones’ daughter is a victim of her mother’s virtue signaling, her lack of attention to her daughter’s education, and her refusal to ever believe that her own worldview not only imprisoned her in an endless cycle of the identitarian victimhood mind virus, but also hurt her child.

Her arguments are all about a thematic struggle when she lost sight of what was right in front of her eyes. Even when she talks about disparities in funding for black-majority schools, she’s not talking about New York City schools receiving as much, if not more, than white- and Asian majority schools. And in the need to address the greater “struggle” at large, she failed to see that the racially-lensed progressivism that she bathed in did not prioritize her daughter.

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• Immigration

Democratic states and cities are lining up to sue President Trump’s administration for shutting down access to Green Cards for immigrant families who are public charges and use welfare. In addition to 22 states, cities like Chicago and New York City are also suing the administration over the rule change because they believe it will hurt their cities economically. (Breitbart News)

• Big Tech

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to speed up two AI laws he recently signed and to explore proposals like requiring AI companies to develop a “kill switch” for their most advanced models. (Politico)

Sen. Rand Paul blocked an attempt by Sen. John Kennedy to quickly pass legislation requiring companies to build a “kill switch” into their artificial intelligence models. Paul said he wanted the bill to go through committee and produce studies, which Kennedy said would cause it to die a slow death in committee. (Politico)

OpenAI disclosed six new instances in which artificial intelligence systems hid mistakes, made up data, and moved files onto the open internet without permission. (The New York Times)

A vote on catastrophic AI regulation could come as early as this month, according to Sens. Cantwell and Klobuchar, working with majority leader John Thune. (Semafor)

Since the Hugging Face hack, AI regulation has become much more important to voters. According to new data from Democratic pollster David Shor, AI will be the most important issue for voters within the next five years. More than 60 percent of voters believe that AI is likely to pose a risk to humanity, versus 26 percent who believe it is not.

• Education

The collapse in fertility and failing schools have finally hit New York City. Mayor Mamdani has been urged to merge more than 200 schools with alarmingly low student populations. Most of the consolidation is in Black neighborhoods and the Commie Corridor, which has very few children. (New York Post)

Teachers unions are pressuring New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to reverse course on a decision to join President Trump’s school choice program. Hochul became the largest blue-state governor to join a program that allows taxpayers to claim up to $1,700 in credits on their federal taxes for donations to scholarship-granting nonprofit organizations. Trump administration officials have said those nonprofits can include private schools, after-school programs, and organizations that support public schools. Under the federal legislation, families who earn up to 300 percent of the local area median income are eligible. In New York City, that works out to a cap of around $500,000. This is a battle over who needs more: Orthodox Jews, with strong support of the program, are an increasingly large voting bloc in New York State, or the teachers’ union, which could sit out the election in November in protest. (Gothamist)

• Elections

Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott is once again campaigning for Republicans in down-ballot races. This is not typical for blue-state Republican governors, including Chris Christie and Charlie Baker. During the 2024 election, Vermont Republicans won the Lt. Governor seat, six state senate seats, and 19 state house seats because of Phil Scott’s coattails. (Andrew Solender)

President Trump has become increasingly aware of the dynamics playing out against Republicans in the midterms, wavering between the fact that he’s not on the ballot and the Iran War creating a backlash from voters as the reason. (The Washington Post)

Democrats’ internal polling shows none of their incumbents willing to lose re-election. For that to be true, Democrats are going to have to win Trump +14 seats, something I kind of doubt. (Puck News)

• Other Topics

Seven House Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to end the war in Iran, the largest number ever to break with the President, as poll numbers show the war is endangering a number of their re-election prospects. Nancy Mace, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Zach Nunn joined Tom Barrett, Brian Fitzpatrick, Warren Davidson, and Thomas Massie, who voted for the previous resolutions opposing the war. If a resolution is brought again during the lame duck, I expect many more Republicans who worry about Trump’s ire will be joining the seven. (The New Republic)

John Dougherty, the former longtime head of Pennsylvania’s IBEW Local 98 and major powerbroker, has switched party registration from Democrat to Republican. He was convicted of two federal crimes, including bribery and embezzlement, but President Trump commuted his sentence. (Claudia Vargas)

New data from Smirkley measured the national fertility rate by race and ethnicity, finding that whites have returned to 2022 levels while blacks and Hispanics are still far below levels seen five years ago.

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A poll by Navigator in December 2025 found that a large share of voters were ambivalent about building data centers, with a third of Democrats and 40 percent of Independents unsure how they felt. Republicans, while being more supportive, also had large populations with no strong feelings either way.

A Politico poll from January found similar numbers, with a third of Harris voters and nearly as many Trump voters unsure how they felt.

Seeing traction against data centers starting to grow, President Trump both demanded data centers start paying for their own electricity and making agreement with major tech companies to a broad set of energy, water and community principles. It was more PR of Trump and the tech community walking hand-and-hand together.

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• Immigration

The Trump Administration has proposed a new Census regulation that would add a citizenship question to the 2030 questionnaire. The proposal argues that the census count should exclude any undocumented immigrants and noncitizens without permanent residency because they are “not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a ‘usual residence’ in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States.” Under the newly proposed rules, refugees and asylum seekers would be excluded from the population count. Democrats are already planning to challenge the proposal. (The Washington Post)

• Big Tech

The flurry of stories over the last week about concerns that AI development could become a danger to humanity has stalled. Americans already didn’t like AI and data centers, but now there is confirmation that they could pose a risk to people’s lives, which has drawn a line in the sand I don’t believe we’ll ever cross back from, even with positive PR spin from tech firms. Reed Albergotti writes in Semafor that tech CEO’s proposed fixes are not going to be enough to relax Americans’ anxiety. The conversation over AI guardrails has escaped Silicon Valley and is increasingly becoming one of the most important issues Americans care about.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for AI companies to slow the pace of development as concerns mount over the technology's risks, and said swarms of rogue AI agents could take over the internet in as little as six months. Amodei has released a lot of doomsday scenarios that haven’t been true, and he’s probably one of the least trusting individuals in tech right now because he’s so media-hungry. I can’t stress this enough: these people are going to get themselves attacked as people are increasingly worried that these men are creating Skynet from The Terminator movies. (The Washington Post)

AI agents being tested by OpenAI launched a cyberattack against a popular software service two months before they hacked the AI software company Hugging Face, a new signal of the potential for advanced AI tools to slip out of human control. (The Wall Street Journal)

Congress is set to vote this week on the bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act. The proposal aims to compel tech companies to pay for the infrastructure associated with data center development. Dozens of vulnerable Republicans and at least half a dozen Democrats support it. This bill requires two-thirds support from the House under the expedited procedure requirement. (Politico)

Sens. Thune, Klobuchar, and Cruz are working on an AI regulation framework focused on catastrophic risk that’s expected to gain steam over the next few weeks. (Semafor)

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills regulating how outside groups evaluate AI programs for safety. The bills create a registry and ethical rules for outside auditors — third-party groups that AI developers could hire to ensure their models comply with state AI laws, as well as task the state with establishing criteria for and checking the credentials of so-called “Independent Verification Organizations” and their expertise in assessing the risks posed by AI systems. (Politico)

President Trump has dismissed all worries that AI poses a fundamental threat to humanity, but that’s not calming Americans' concerns, and Republicans are increasingly finding themselves in a predicament where Democrats look like they’re taking on the fears presented by AI. At the same time, Republicans have their head in the sand.

• Education

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) released its international test results, finding that 15-year-old American students' reading scores have fallen sharply since 2022 and are near their lowest point in 25 years. U.S. math scores are also among the lowest since the test began in 2000, even as students have held their ground in science. Global scores declined, but America’s fell faster. The highest-scoring countries were Singapore, Japan, Estonia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The United States ranked 11th. Education reform remains a salient issue that many politicians haven’t learned to address since COVID. (The New York Times)

New York City’s Department of Education released new data on the 2025-2026 school year, finding that enrollment fell by 22,000 from the previous year to 884,644 students. Other interesting findings include:

• The number of English as a new language learners fell by 11 percent from the year prior, likely due to self-deportations, fear of the Trump Administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, or people leaving the city. English learners still make up 15.4 percent of total enrollment, or close to 136,560 students, according to the data. That’s around the same level as the 2022-23 school year.

  • The sharpest decrease was in kindergarten through fifth grade. Enrollment in the lower grades fell from 420,412 to 335,285 students, a 20.2% decrease. In future years, those shrinking elementary schools may become under-enrolled middle and high schools.”

  • The student population is much less black than it was a decade ago as the black fertility rate nosedives and black families increasingly leave the city. In 2016, the demographics of the NYC public school system fell from 27 percent black to 19 percent black, while all other groups increased their representation in the school system. Whites grew from 15 to 16.5 percent, Latinos from 40.5 to 41.5 percent, and Asians from 15.5 to 19 percent. (New York Daily News)

• Elections

Republicans have officially turned on the financial spickets in the upcoming election, especially focusing on the must-win race for Senator of Texas. Last week, James Talarico had a 7-to-1 spending advantage over Ken Paxton; at the start of this week, Paxton had a 5-to-1 advantage over Talarico. (The New York Times)

Outside spending from the Trump-aligned No Going Back Super PAC unleashed $80 million in spending in key Senate and House races.

• Other Topics

On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the C.I.A. released dozens of intelligence documents showing that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were well aware of the threat posed by bin Laden. Clinton was explicitly told that they needed to take him out, and Bush was told they were trying to hijack airlines, making his policy to end profiling of Muslims in airports even more reckless and a stain on their legacies. (The New York Times)

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• Immigration

Immigration attorneys stated to The Los Angeles Times that the U.S. system has become “deportation mills” where illegal immigrants stand little chance of winning a case in court.

• Big Tech

OpenAI on Thursday released GPT-6 Astra, which president Greg Brockman said could eventually be seen as the start of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. It performs better than previous models, but it's also better at avoiding monitoring, meaning it could be harder to know what it's thinking or doing. OpenAI, Anthropic, and more than 100 other companies warned that time is running out to prepare for AI-enabled attacks on critical infrastructure. (Axios)

The backlash against data centers has resulted in a spike in new legislation restricting their construction across the country. Since 2023, the number of bills introduced in state legislatures to restrict data center construction has increased from 16 in 2023 to 277 in 2026, while the number of bills to facilitate their construction has gone from 31 to 67. (The Washington Post)

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is investigating OpenAI over a recent hack in which its programs carried out actions on their own against another artificial intelligence company, Hugging Face. The hack of startup Hugging Face, which OpenAI disclosed in July, was an unprecedented breach in which AI agents created by OpenAI effectively went rogue during internal testing and accessed the open internet. A further investigation conducted with OpenAI’s cooperation indicated that the extent of the Hugging Face intrusion was wider than first thought. At the same time,e other AI companies like Meta and Anthropic have revealed incidents of programs going rogue. California is the latest state to probe the ChatGPT maker over the incident, after more than a dozen states joined Alabama in its investigation. (Politico)

• Economy

The economy added an impressive 162,000 jobs in August, far beyond expectations. Even better news is that June and July’s totals were readjusted upwards by a total of 52,000. The biggest sectors hiring new jobs outside of healthcare were hospitality (59,000), education (42,000), construction (22,000), and manufacturing (16,000).

Here’s a graph from The New York Times showing growth in different sectors since 2022.

Wage growth remained steady at 3 percent, but that did not offset the 3.5 percent spike in inflation. Wages were outpacing inflation until the start of the Iran War, which has caused inflation to eat away at Americans’ economic gains every month.

97.5 percent of all jobs created went to women. Since January 2025, women have gained more than 765,000 jobs, while men have lost around 6,000. (CNBC)

The tech sector continues to bleed jobs,s with 7,000 more losses last month and 48,000 over the last year. Not as bad as the 2024 tech recession, but a far cry from the 2022 boom or norms over the last decade.

• Elections

With Trump’s poll numbers struggling, more congressional Republicans have distanced themselves from Trump on their websites and in public speeches. (The Washington Post)

Republicans flipped their seat in the 2026 elections after the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled Democrats missed the deadline to replace candidates who withdrew from the races. Republicans will flip the 4th state house district, which voted for Kamala Harris by four points, and hold the 23rd state house district, which voted for Trump by three points. (Vote Hub)

• Other Topics

The decline in American fertility is entirely driven by the fall in the black birthrate. While births to American-born women in 2026 are down only 0.1 percent, births to foreign-born women are down 6.4 percent. Every racial group except black Americans is seeing births increase.

Democrat Reps. Josh Gottheimer, Hillary Scholten, Tom Suozzi, and Jared Moskowitz introduced a House resolution condemning socialism and the DSA, a more aggressive resolution than even Republicans proposed. This is mostly window dressing, as many of these members vote with DSA-backed Congressmen most of the time. (Axios)

The Trump Administration will begin allowing families with a stay-at-home parent to collect child care subsidies previously designated for working parents, a policy championed by Vice President JD Vance. The change would create the only federal subsidy to pay parents to stay home and raise their children. (The New York Times)

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• Immigration

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 49,571 people in July, a 15% increase from June and the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration. Since Trump took office, more than half a million people have been arrested by ICE, a majority of whom had a criminal record. (Associated Press)

The Trump administration has paused all immigrant visa applications as the State Department moves to tighten restrictions and limit access to applicants it deems could end up relying on welfare. The agency launched the initiative at all embassies and consulates in early August, and visa appointments had to be adjusted to accommodate “in-depth training,” according to the official. The State Department has been working on updated guidance and training since early this year, “to ensure all consular officers are fully equipped to evaluate every visa applicant comprehensively and consistently.” (The Guardian)

At the same time, Secretary Rubio announced that the State Department plans “to identify and revoke the non-immigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay permanently.” (The Guardian)

The Trump administration has proposed a rule imposing a fee on new H-1B visas, charging companies $103,265 per applicant. (Breitbart News)

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is looking to spend up to $2 million on robot dogs to help secure the border and infrastructure. (ABC News)

• Education

Syracuse University is one of the many large and mid-size schools being engulfed by the student crisis. After spending $500 million building new dorms, student enrollment plunged 1.5 percent. With depressed birthrates and the number of international students falling, more schools will likely see an enrollment shortfall. (The Wall Street Journal)

• Economy

Corporate profits hit an all-time high, with pre-tax earnings at an annualized $4.8tn in the second quarter, or 18 percent of national income, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. Meanwhile, Employees’ share from wages and benefits fell to 60 percent, the lowest level since the 1950s. (The Financial Times)

• Elections

West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice is floating a run for governor after only one year on the job. (Metro News)

The campaign to win over social media influencers is becoming big business in both the Republican and Democrat primaries. This is also true in several countries, where companies pay influencers to advocate on their behalf. (The New York Times)

Famed conservative pollster Tony Fabrizio said that narratives showing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed with a commanding lead in Michigan are incorrect and that the race is essentially tied. Knowing Fabrizio, I can say that he’s not one to oversell anything. If he says it, I generally believe it. (Politico)

Data centers found their first major political ally outside of billionaire donors, with trade union bosses saying they withhold support for any candidate campaigning on data center moratoriums. (The Wall Street Journal)

President Trump has indicated that he’s supportive of Republicans who are increasingly breaking with him on data center construction since it’s become a 70/30 issue opposing their construction. (Politico)

• Other Topics

Meta agreed to a $17 billion lawsuit and vowed to change its policies on how minors can access its platforms. Among the changes promised include a default time limit of two hours for users under 18 and a nighttime block between midnight and 6 a.m., both of which can be lifted only by a parent; default night and schooltime notification blocks; a ban on displaying the number of "likes" or reactions to posts made by minors; a ban on cosmetic surgery image filters for minors; and an option for young users to have a "non-personalized feed" that is not run by an algorithm targeting them with content. Activists supporting greater social media regulation say this victory is more than they originally hoped to achieve and believe it will reform the industry. (NPR)

California's ten largest public-sector unions are harvesting a record-breaking $1 billion in membership dues per year. (City Journal)

Australia

Australia:

The national populist One Nation Party scored its first election victory in Western Australia, a stronghold for the center-left. The by-election was triggered after senior Labor minister Paul Papalia retired mid-term and was considered an easy victory for Labor in most polls. (The Guardian)

The rise of One Nation is pressuring Labor to change its immigration policy. Australia’s annual refugee intake will fall by a third next financial year, as Labor works to drive down migration levels. Currently set at 20,000 arrivals per year, the annual refugee quota will drop back to 13,750 in 2027-28. (The Guardian)

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• Immigration

The Trump Administration revoked more than 175,000 visas from foreign nationals, claiming violations of the terms of the documents related to criminal activity and calls for violence against U.S. citizens, among other allegations. The announcement marked an increase in visa revocations compared with the previous year, representing more than 10,000 visa cancellations per month in 2026, compared with more than 8,000 visa cancellations over the course of 2025. (The Hill)

A Financial Trend Analysis report from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network found that United States banks flagged nearly $5 billion linked to potential human smuggling from 2023 to 2025. In particular, the report states that human smuggling-related transactions fell 62 percent in 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term, compared to 2024 when former President Joe Biden was in office. That dramatic drop is tied to the massive decrease in illegal immigration since the start of 2025. (Breitbart News)

• Economy

Through FY2026 Q3, employers received certification for 830,710 foreign-worker positions under the H-1B/H-1B1/E-3 LCA program. The top employers were Cogniant, Qualcomm, and Amazon. (Hany Girgis)

• Elections

Trump finally agreed to unleash millions of dollars from his MAGA INC Super PAC, which has hundreds of millions of dollars in their bank. Republicans feel optimistic that they can hold the House and Senate if they can stimulate Trump’s base of lower-propensity voters to show up. Internal Republican polls show that voters have soured on the president more than the GOP. (CNN)

Private equity has flipped from supporting Democrats to Republicans during this election year as the Trump Administration has embraced deregulatory efforts, while Democrats are moving close to the DSA. Private equity has donated more than $60 million this election cycle, preferring Republicans by a 65-to-35 percent margin. (The Wall Street Journal)

Outside Republican groups are also ramping up ads to defend 41 Republican districts by emphasizing “no tax on tips” and Democrats’ extremism on transgender sex surgeries on minors. (Axios)

Jewish Democrat bundlers based in Michigan are planning to hold fundraisers for Republican Mike Rogers after El-Sayed won the primary. (Jewish Insiders)

New analysis from Voter Hub found that downwardly mobile educated voters powered Abdul Ed-Sayed’s victory in Michigan more than any other group. Basically, people with advanced degrees who earn less than $75,000 per year.

• Other Topics

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a directive halting approvals for new data center connections to the state's power grid pending a statewide audit. This move temporarily pauses up to 300 projects to protect grid reliability. He has also directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to require data centers to pay for their own electric infrastructure costs, stopping at least one project planned for East Texas. Many tech companies have applauded the Governor’s decision. This is one of the biggest about-faces Abbott has taken recently, with pressure on data centers growing even in Texas. (The Texan)

Interest on the national debt will surpass $1.3 trillion this fiscal year. (E.J. Antoni)

A group of eight moderate Senators, four Republicans and four Democrats, are aiming to reform Social Security during November’s Lame Duck session when it’s easier to pass bills, and many Congressmen and Senators no longer have to fear the wrath of voters. The Senate Finance Committee held its first hearing about the PROMISE Act, the first step toward a vote. This will be the closest Congress has come to reforming Social Security since Simpson-Bowles during the Obama era. (NOTUS)

New Census data reveals that the states that voted for Donald Trump in all three elections gained 3.15 million new people, while those who never voted for Trump lost 3.79 million from 2020 to 2025.

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Wisconsin was supposed to be a cakewalk for the DSA. The establishment Democratic Party had a miserable election cycle where their leading candidate had to drop out, their backup candidate had to drop out and then jump back in, and the former Lt. Governor dropped out just weeks before the election, all but conceding to the DSA-backed candidate.

Polls going into the election had Hong with a commanding double-digit lead, and many progressive activists were already thinking about November.

Then the unthinkable happened: Hong lost.

This comes just a week after polls massively overestimated the support for another DSA candidate, Abdul El-Sayed. He won his primary by a single point after polls said he would bury Rep. Haley Stevens.

So what happened? Well, there’s good news for Democrats and good news for Republicans.

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• Immigration

ICE made around 51,000 immigration arrests in July, marking the highest month on record. (Daily Wire)

The number of illegal aliens being tracked by ICE with ankle monitors has increased from 17,000 last year to 54,000 this year. (The Guardian)

President Donald Trump signed two executive actions: one limiting the number of people born in the country who are eligible for U.S. citizenship, and another tightening restrictions on those seeking visas to give birth in the country. These will definitely be challenged in court; I guess that the White House wants another hearing in the Supreme Court on birthright citizenship, but with a narrower review of who can be denied citizenship. (Associated Press)

The Trump administration is considering adding a $100,000 fee to optional practical training, the program that allows international students to work on their student visas for a time after graduation. (The Wall Street Journal)

• Economy

Part of the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia Act includes new sanctions powers for President Trump that give him legal authority to increase tariffs on any country to 100 percent. The bill passed the Senate 86-11 and is expected to pass the House. (The Bulwark)

US manufacturing activity expanded in July at the fastest pace in more than four years as demand remained strong. The manufacturing sector has gained momentum this year, with factories benefiting from resilient consumer demand, solid business investment and government outlays on defense.

The new jobs report shows America lost 23,000 jobs in July, with most losses coming from local and state governments (-50k) and hospitality (-40k) after the World Cup ended. The good news is that healthcare (+23k), construction (+22k), transportation & warehousing (+10k), and manufacturing (+5k) showed strong growth. So, there is some stability in the private sector.

The real problem the President has is that inflation, spurred by the Iran War, is eating away at any wage growth. Wages outpaced inflation from summer 2023 until the beginning of the war. The President has a decent economy attached to a very bad foreign policy.

• Elections

Ohio Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton continues to buck national Democrats. A few weeks after announcing her support for banning trans athletes in school sports, Acton voiced that she will back a Voter ID amendment. (Signal)

Polls are showing that Republican nominee Ken Paxton isn’t just struggling with Latino voters who are moving back to their pre-2024 numbers but also with working-class whites who are frustrated with the economy. If there’s any area of error in the polling, it’s here. If working-class whites aren’t moving to the left and it’s just that progressive whites are answering polls more frequently than non-progressives, it will be what saves Paxton. (Axios)

Andy Ogles became the sixth Trump-backed candidate to lose his re-election this year, the most since 2022.

United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain is eyeing a 2028 presidential bid as a Democrat. (Politico)

• Foreign Policy

Trump’s top general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine, has made it clear to other Trump advisors that the U.S. needs to find an off-ramp from the war with Iran because the military options on the table to escalate the conflict could backfire, and airpower alone is unlikely to achieve the nation’s objectives. (CNN)

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• Immigration

The Trump administration has begun arresting foreign citizens with expired U.S. visas as they travel through airports, including spouses of Americans. While The New York Times was lighting their hair on fire over the story, it should not be forgotten that more than one of the hijackers on 9/11 was using an expired visa. (The New York Times)

• Economy

The Commerce Department quietly announced that the U.S. has taken seven new equity stakes in semiconductor firms. President Trump is setting a precedent that future Democratic Administrations are going to run rampant on. (NIST)

US government borrowing costs have hit their highest level since 2007 after the Federal Reserve voted to hold its key interest rate steady. The decision to leave rates on hold has spooked investors who are worried about the US economy’s ability to absorb a rise in inflation triggered by the war in Iran. (The Guardian)

U.S. economic growth slowed to 1.5 percent in the second quarter, with many economists citing an energy price shock as the main risk to the economy heading into the second half of the year. Half of the real GDP growth in Q2 came from data center investments. Consumer spending also remained strong despite increasing gas prices, rising from 0.5 percent to 3.2 percent. Job gains were steady in the second quarter, and the unemployment rate remained low. Beyond the impact of gas prices, Americans got a break on inflation in June: the personal consumption expenditures price index declined by 0.1% due to lower energy prices. (The Wall Street Journal)

The Trump administration plans to end a subsidy program that helped hold down premiums for Medicare drug plans. This move could leave many seniors facing higher rates for their prescription coverage next year. This could increase premiums on drug-only plans by over 10 times the cost. (The Wall Street Journal)

• Elections

Trump’s Super PAC, MAGA Inc., is investing some of its $400 million war chest in the Texas Senate race, where the embattled GOP nominee is struggling with fundraising and polling. Allegedly, someone from the NRSC told Team Trump that Paxton was their problem after the President endorsed him over Sen. Cornyn in the primary. (Puck News)

• Foreign Policy

Four House Republicans joined every Democrat in passing the War Powers Act to curb the President’s ability to continue the war in Iran. Reps. Massie, Barrett, Davidson, and Fitzpatrick joined the Democratic caucus to stop the war. The bill failed in the Senate, where Sens. Collins, Paul, and Murkowski joined the Democrats, but Fetterman sided with the Republicans. Mitch McConnell did not vote. (Time Magazine)

• Other Topics

New fertility data from the CDC revealed that births are down 1.86 percent in the first six months of 2026 compared to the prior year. Interestingly enough, among American-born women, births are only down by 0.25 percent due entirely to the collapse of the black birthrate. Among immigrants, the birthrate is down more than 6 percent because of Trump’s crackdown on immigration. Interesting point: every American racial and ethnic group, aside from Black Americans, saw an increase in births in 2026 compared with the prior year. (Smirkley)

Syracuse University is suspending 20 percent of its academic programs, including classics, classical civilization, German, Italian, Middle Eastern studies, and Modern Jewish studies, due to a lack of students majoring in these fields. These are the ramifications of the baby bust: fewer students to enroll in different college programs and colleges offering fewer options. (The New York Times)

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• Immigration

ICE released new data revealing the agency carried out 356,389 deportations so far in Fiscal Year 2026, which began October 1st. That averages out to roughly 1,260 per day. ICE currently has 65,765 people in ICE detention. The number of deportations has picked up over time with June being the largest month for deporation, averaging 1,474 per day and July looks like it might exceed that number. (Austin Kocher)

The U.S. government is reviving a rule that could deny permanent residency to immigrants who are dependent on public benefits such as food stamps ‌and Medicaid, as the intent is "that aliens in ​the ⁠United States be self-reliant" (Reuters)

Indiana Sen. Jim Banks and Texas Rep. Brandon Gill have introduced legislation in the House and Senate to classify foreigners who come into the country for the purpose of giving birth to obtain US citizenship for their children as invaders, which would exclude them from receiving birthright citizenship.

Sen. Eric Schmitt fillibustered Democrats attempt to extend Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 Haitians living in the United States. (Miami Herlad)

Dozens of House Republicans have signed on to a new agriculture bill granting amnesty to illegal aliens present in the United States as of May 31, 2026, who meet minimal agricultural work history requirements.

A former Army solider named Andrew Arrabaca has been taken into custody for attempting to start a fire at an immigration court in New York City. (PBS)

• Economy

A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that only 59 percent of the working-age population is currently in the labor force. A shockingly high number comes after 832,000 Americans left the labor force in June, bringing the total to 105.8 million working-age adults aren’t looking for a job. (The New York Post)

• Elections

Democrats announced the list of primary dates and states for the 2028 presidential election, with South Carolina going first on January 22nd, Nevada next on February 1st, New Hampshire on February 8th, New Mexico on February 15th, Virginia on February 29th, and Super Tuesday on March 7th.

The lead-up to the announcement was marked with lots of tensions between black and Latino Democrats, with race hustlers like Al Sharpton jumping into the fray. Ultimately, Democrats set up the system where the first primary state and last before Super Tuesday are majority black, to take the wind out of the sails of any potential progressive or DSA-aligned candidate. Both South Carolina and Virginia are states that picked the establishment-backed candidate in overwhelming numbers in both 2016 and 2020.

Maine Democrats picked Troy Jackson as their nominee to replace Graham Platner as their nominee for the Senate race. Republicans are going to throw up legal challenges against his nomination because of the state’s sore loser rule that forbids a candidate who loses a race from seeking another office during the same cycle. (The Maine Wire)

President Trump, in a state of grief over the death of Lindsey Graham, announced his support for the late-Senator’s sister Darlene to replace him for a full six years. The 62-year old advocate for disability rights and former housewife is largely unknown to South Carolina voters and is polling in the mid-teens. (The New York Times)

Republican nominee for Minnesota Governor and Trump-backed candidate Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame has endorsed amnesty for illegal aliens. (Minnesota Reformer)

• Foreign Policy

Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Thomas Massie, Warren Davidson, and Tom Barrett joined every Democrat to pass a resolution to halt U.S. military activity in Iran. The bill passed 214-208. (Associated Press)

Two more American servicemen were killed in the Iran war, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, and First Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii. That brings the total number of Americans killed in this war up to 17. (The New York Times)

• Other Topics

New York City spent a staggering $9 billion on migrants from July 2022 to February 2026, when 250,000 migrants moved to the city. Almost half of those funds went to building shelters. (The Manhattan Institute)

Hawaii Lt. Governor Sylvia Luke was indicted yesterday on bribery charges. (Civil Beat)

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Race has both scientific (just look a…

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• Immigration

Federal judges have ruled against President Trump’s mass detention more than 15,000 times from July 2025 to July 2026 and against the President about 2,200 times. While Democrat appointed judges overwhelmingly ruled against Trump nearly every time, even Trump-appointed judges ruled against the President by a two-to-one margin. (Politico)

The Trump Administration extended work permits for immigrants in the U.S. on Temporary Protective Status for two additional weeks for migrants from Haiti, Myanmar, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. The work permits for Haitians are set to expire on July 24th and for all other countries on July 17th. (The Washington Post)

President Trump is asking Congress to rehear the case on birthright citizenship, in which the court ruled 5-4 that anyone born on American soil had a right to citizenship, citing 11th-century British feudal law. Supreme Court rules technically allow parties to file for a rehearing within 25 days of a decision. But in practice, the court usually grants such requests only when a significant development comes to light after a ruling, not because the losing party simply disagrees with the outcome. The last time the court re-litigated a decision immediately after the hearing was in 1965. (CNN)

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a 25-year-old Texas law allowing these discounts directly conflicts with federal law. The court pointed to a federal statute that says states can’t give higher education benefits to undocumented immigrants based on where they live unless they offer those same perks to all U.S. citizens, regardless of what state they’re from. If the Supreme Court takes the case on appeal, it could end up reaching all states with in-state tuition for illegal aliens. (Breitbart News)

• Economy

The bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law after President Trump refused to either sign or veto the bill. The bill includes 45 provisions to develop affordable housing by removing regulatory barriers and streamlining environmental reviews. It also launches a pilot program to help local governments convert vacant commercial buildings into affordable housing and limits institutional investors' purchases of single-family homes. The most controversial policy that conservatives should have mobilized against is that it doesn’t touch the highly abused Section 8 housing provision. If anything, it streamlines the process by reducing inspections of Section 8 housing. There are more than 4 million Section 8 homes in the U.S., and it’s one of the most abused welfare programs in the U.S. The bill also incentivizes local communities to change zoning laws, ending the historic preservation of some communities; those who comply receive additional federal funds for schools and infrastructure programs; those who don’t flood their communities with more housing are denied those funds. The fundamental problem that most legislators don’t understand is that housing is more of a demand issue because of high legal immigration than a supply issue. (CBS News)

A new report from the Federal Reserve on Economic Well-Being found that 49 percent of adults between 18-29 are living at home with their parents, up 12 points since 2019. Additionally, 47 percent of young adults rely on their parents to pay their bills; that number remains high among adults ages 30-44, 26 percent of whom rely on their parents to pay theirs. (Fortune)

• Elections

The Ohio Progressive Caucus wrote a letter condemning Democratic nominee Amy Acton for stating she does not support "boys playing in girls' sports," and calling the issue settled law in Ohio. They’re threatening to withhold support from her in the upcoming governor’s election. (Andrew Tobias)

Senate Democrats’ super PAC posted its second-best quarter, raising $147 million from April to June. Even with the massive haul in Q2, Democrats face a large deficit compared to Republicans, who outraised them by a jaw-dropping $600 million. (The New York Times)

• Big Tech

Rhode Island became the first state in the union to mandate that every grocery store in the state have at least one staffed checkout for every three self-checkouts operating. The law takes effect on January 1, 2027, and failure to comply can result in fines of up to $500 per day. (Reason)

A jury awarded 20-year-old Kaley Glenn-Mills a $6 million payout against Google and Meta for getting her addicted to social media when she was a teenager. She said in the interview that her biggest fear was they would permanently ban her from their platforms if she sued. (Bloomberg News)

• Other Topics

Black Californians United for Early Care and Education, an organization dedicated to challenging harmful language hierarchies and affirming “black English” as a legitimate, rule-governed language rooted in black history, culture, and community, is demanding “black English” be legitimized in preschool as a way to build children’s literacy skills in California. (The New York Post)

New data on outflow migration from New York State found that the people most likely to leave the state were upper-middle-class married couples making between $100,000 and $500,000 a year. Overall, .7 percent of upper-middle-class New Yorkers left the state, while one percent of people making $500,000 or more also left. In 2024, 121,251 moved into New York, while 134,913 left the state, resulting in a net out-migration of 13,662 taxpayers—approximately 1 in 1,000 resident taxpayers. (New York State Comptroller)

A new study from Pew Research found that 44 percent of American Muslims have a favorable opinion of the terrorist organization Hamas. (Pew Research)

The CDC released preliminary birth data for May, finding that births were down 3.41 percent from May 2025. Births by white mothers remain a majority of all births with one of the smallest declines among any racial group. Non-Hispanic black birthrate continues to nosedive as the overall birth rate is on the verge of making up less than 12 percent of the overall birth rate for the first time in at least a century.

Examining the overall numbers for the year, births from foreign-born mothers are down 9 percent, while those from American-born mothers are down just 3 percent.

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