Trump, Tariffs, and the EU’s Dirty Little Secret

An existential crisis in the making.

By Mark Angelides | May 27, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

On Sunday (May 25), President Donald Trump granted the European Union a brief lifeline in his quest for reciprocity on tariffs, extending the proposed 50% burden imposition to early July. “Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively,” declared EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shortly after the hiatus was announced. However, her situation, and that of the 27 participating member states, is far more precarious than one might initially assume.

Mighty Markets, Many Tariffs

Without doubt, the EU bloc is a big and valuable trading partner to the United States. Indeed, America purchased more than $600 billion worth of goods and services from the Union in 2024, with members, in return, buying around $370 billion. Princely sums, but uneven – especially considering that there are more potential consumers in the EU market than the US one (450 million souls compared with 347 million).

There’s a unique reason for this trade imbalance, however. Consider that the EU is little more than a protectionist market with multiple layers of government attached. It was founded on the idea that nations with close economic ties would not go to war (as they had done in both 1914 and 1939). As trade became more globalized, the project morphed into a series of mechanisms and institutions that could ultimately impose political will on its members.

In fact, currently, the European Union is considering stripping Hungary of its voting rights within the EU parliament for attempting to implement a law on transparency in its own parliament. This supranational behemoth has gone well beyond scripting rules on single-market access. But therein lies the issue with negotiating a tariff deal with the Trump administration: If the EU is not a protectionist market for its members, it serves no real purpose.

Single Market? Time to Update Your Status

The EU describes its “single market” like this:

“The EU aims to enable EU citizens to study, live, shop, work and retire in any EU country and enjoy products from all over Europe. To do this, it ensures free movement of goods, services, capital and persons in a single EU internal market. By removing technical, legal and bureaucratic barriers, the EU also allows citizens to trade and do business freely.”

Sounds fine, but such boilerplate is strictly for the tourists. In reality, the EU commission enacts rules and regulations in a highly partisan manner for each country in order to support and protect certain industries.

Your News – How You Like It!

For example, the champagne industry – comprising some 16,000 producers in the region – gets subsidies from the EU courtesy of taxpayers in all 27 countries in the bloc. Or how about the German car industry? As a special carve-out, manufacturers no longer have to hit their global emissions deadlines by this year and can instead average emissions over a number of years, putting other carmakers at a serious disadvantage. Such climate-forgiving largesse will not be extended to foreign producers, naturally.

But if the European Union wants to avoid the fast-approaching 50% tariffs, it may have to do the unthinkable.

Remember Brexit?

In the run-up to the 2016 Brexit vote that saw Britain leave the EU, doom-mongers predicted economic turmoil for the tiny UK as it would not have specialized access to the single market that comes only with membership in the bloc. Almost a decade later,  Trump is trying to do just that.

If the EU cannot offer intimate protections for specialized markets that tip the scales in favor of bloc members, why should such industries support the Union at all? After all, its sole purpose is trade protectionism within member states to the exclusion (and cost) of those outside its hallowed markets. The days of European Union exclusivity are surely coming to an end and, with it, the false sense of Pax Romana that globalists worldwide have long sought to emulate.

~

Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

 

Read More From Mark Angelides Editor-in-Chief

Should Trump Derangement Syndrome be Considered a Mental Illness?

There are far stranger conditions that are recognized.

By Kelli Ballard | May 28, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

 

Should Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) be classified as a mental illness or psychological disorder? Some lawmakers believe so. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) recently introduced the Trump Derangement Syndrome Research Act of 2025.

“TDS has divided families, the country, and led to nationwide violence – including two assassination attempts on President Trump,” Davidson told the Daily Mail in a statement. “The TDS Research act would require the NIH [National Institute of Health] to study this toxic state of mind, so we can understand the root cause and identify solutions.” He continued:

“Instead of funding ludicrous studies such as giving methamphetamine to cats or teaching monkeys to gamble for their drinking water, the NIH should use that funding to research issues that are relevant to the real world.”

Trump Derangement Syndrome and Political Polarization

The bill defines Trump Derangement Syndrome as “intense, irrational emotional or cognitive reactions to President Donald J. Trump, his actions, or his public presence.” Among other things, the NIH would be tasked with studying this state of mind as well as trying to track down Patient Zero. Any idea who that might be?

Trump isn’t the only president to have “derangement syndrome” attached to his more energetic opposition. In 2003, columnist Charles Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome”; in 2008, conservatives used “Obama Derangement Syndrome”; and in 2016, both parties sometimes used the term “Clinton Derangement Syndrome.”

Unfortunately, political polarization is rather common in America. Therapy Group of DC mentioned similar rhetoric against Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. “In every cycle, a president’s presence sparks vocal expressions—tweets, protest chants, heated dinner-table rants—and sometimes overt acts like unfriending relatives, boycotting businesses, or skipping holiday visits.” However, most might agree that Trump Derangement Syndrome is more prevalent and vicious than in previous presidencies. The chief executive probably had it right when he said that no matter what he did, even if he cured cancer, Democrats still would not support him.

No one knows for certain why people develop such an intense fervor against a commander-in-chief, so much so that they wear blinders and see only the negative in everything. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X in April that “Trump Derangement Syndrome is causing Democrats & the media to oppose President Trump’s commonsense efforts to cut billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse from our federal government.” She added: “They can’t stand that we finally have a President who actually delivers on his promises.”

During an interview on Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) podcast, the senator asked Elon Musk why people hated him and Trump so much, and the billionaire responded: “Well, because we’re clearly over the target. If DOGE was ineffective, if we were not actually getting rid of a bunch of waste and fraud and a bunch of that fraud, I mean, the fraud we’re seeing is overwhelmingly on the left. I mean, it’s not zero on the right, but these NGOs are almost all left-wing NGOs that are being funded.”

But is it all just about being upset with a political party or a particular president? A March 2023 commentary by sociologist Musa al-Gharbi found that conservatives tend to be happier and more well-adjusted than liberals, as Liberty Nation News National Correspondent John Klar wrote in his article, “Political Extremism and the Brain.”

“It’s possible that genetics and biology could explain much of the observed relationship between liberal identification and mental illness,” Klar quoted. He explained further, “Thus, the root causes of TDS might not be political at all, but rather a side effect of the core worldview and mental state that leads to a leftist alignment. A symptom, rather than the underlying illness itself, so to speak.”

The American Psychological Association identifies politics as a major stressor, with one study revealing that as many as 40% of Americans say politics is a major source of stress, and up to 20% admitted they lost sleep over political news.

Kick Back and Ditch the Matrix

We’ve seen the extremes to which those allegedly suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome have gone: screaming at the sky, threatening to move to another country, vandalizing Teslas and threatening the vehicle owners, etc. While some may scoff at the idea of confirming TDS as a mental illness or psychological disorder, they might want to look at some of the other illnesses out there. For example:

• Stendhal Syndrome: When someone panics, dissociates, or hallucinates in the presence of a lot of art in one place, especially art considered emotionally powerful or overwhelmingly beautiful.
• Clinical Lycanthropy: When a person has the delusional belief that they are transforming into, or have already transformed into, an animal, most famously a werewolf.
• Folie a Deux: A psychiatric condition in which two people share the same delusional beliefs, usually because one person with a psychotic disorder “transmits” their delusions to someone close to them, usually between relatives or people closely associated.
• Paris Syndrome: People who suffer extreme disappointment after seeing Paris and it does not live up to their expectations. It’s a rare but real condition, and the afflicted suffer hallucinations, dizziness, anxiety, and more.

After looking at some of these other conditions, maybe Trump Derangement Syndrome doesn’t seem so far-fetched after all.

~

Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

 

Read More From Kelli Ballard National Correspondent

Vaccine Cover-Up: The Greatest Biden Scandal of All

The lives of untold thousands have been lost or permanently diminished.

 

By Tim Donner | May 28, 2025 | Articles, Opinion, Politics

 

It is an undeniable scandal of mammoth proportions, but one that is – surprise, surprise – still being ignored by major media. It all began in February of 2021, shortly after Joe Biden took the oath of office with the pandemic still raging. Health officials in Israel sent a dire warning to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) detailing “large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people” who received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Many doctors and vaccinated individuals witnessed the same phenomenon here in the US. The affliction strikes the heart muscle, and in many recorded instances has caused heart failure and even death. But those raising red flags were discredited, scorned, and silenced.

After years of anecdotal reports about perilous side effects from the vaccine, the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, headed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), finally conducted a hearing on the matter on May 21, 2025, and the revelations should have made headline news.

As you undoubtedly remember, we were repeatedly assured by top officials in the Biden administration that the vaccine, approved for emergency use and released during the waning days of the first Trump administration, was completely safe and effective. Every living former US president and first lady – except Trump and his wife, of course – participated in a public service announcement touting the vaccine in March of 2021 – after the warning from Israel about myocarditis.

What happened thereafter is truly chilling. As revealed in a thorough summary of the three-hour-long hearing by The Vigilant Fox, Sen. Johnson offered up a detailed timeline proving that the Biden administration deliberately withheld information from the public about risks associated with the vaccine, most especially for young people and pregnant women. By September of 2021, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) had received reports of 384,270 “adverse events” following vaccinations and 4,812 deaths, including 1,736 within two days of injection.

When he was questioned about the startling data by Sen. Johnson, then-CDC Director Francis Collins responded by arguing that official government information at the time claimed just six vaccine-related deaths, and then said, “Senator, people die.”

The CDC had claimed that instances of myocarditis were “rare.” But that is patently false, according to Dr. Peter McCullough, a longtime cardiologist whose outlying views on COVID led to the revocation of his medical certifications. When he was called to testify, Dr. McCullough reported that he had seen just two cases of myocarditis in his pre-COVID career but that he has now “examined thousands of patients with the problem,” adding that “there’s 1,065 papers in the peer-reviewed literature on COVID vaccine myocarditis.” He pointed to one particular case from Korea in which a young man died within eight hours of being jabbed, saying his heart was “fried with inflammation.”

Dr. McCullough shot down mainstream claims that the vaccine saved millions of lives, offering three alternative reasons for the ultimate drop in COVID-related deaths: natural immunity, early treatment keeping people out of hospitals, and the virus mutating into a milder form. He also provided irrefutable data proving that COVID-related deaths actually spiked after the vaccines were released, forcing health officials to admit one year later that, unlike what they had told us previously, the vaccine did not prevent transmission of the virus. He referenced three papers by Nathaniel Mead, a former writer for the National Institutes of Health, that contain nearly 1,000 references, all reaching the same conclusion: “The risks of COVID-19 vaccination far outweigh any theoretical benefits.”

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Nationwide Vaccine Fallout

Dr. Jordan Vaughn, head of the Alabama-based Long COVID Clinic, testified that up to 15 million Americans may be suffering from Long COVID (a persistent form of the virus) or COVID vaccine injuries. He warned that the mRNA injections led to uncontrolled production of spike protein, allowing the viruses to penetrate cells and cause infections that spread throughout the body, reaching the heart, brain, ovaries, and testes. A Yale study now shows some people are still producing spike protein more than 700 days after their last injection.

Next came the receipts on the effect of the vaccine on pregnant women. OB-GYN Dr. James Thorp testified that the vaccine “mirrored” the effects of chemical abortion drugs and referred to a study published by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine indicating that almost 13% of expectant mothers who got the jab had miscarriages. He further went on to repeat the heavily debated claim that 82% of those women who got the vaccine in their first trimester miscarried.

 

Attorney Aaron Siri testified about the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA), which immunizes pharmaceutical companies from vaccine-related lawsuits. Following the passage of NCVIA, the schedule of vaccinations for newborns under one year old increased by almost 1,000%, from 3 to 29, a direct result, according to Siri, of the fact that “[pharmaceutical companies] don’t have the financial incentive to make them safer … In fact, they have the disincentive.”

Sen. Johnson went on to summarize data from VAERS reporting 38,607 vaccine-related deaths to date, with 9,228 of them occurring within two days of vaccination. Considering that many such deaths undoubtedly were not reported directly to VAERS, these numbers are thought to be conservative estimates.

The damage from vaccines could be felt far and wide. This author’s son, diagnosed with epilepsy 25 years ago, had controlled the condition with medication and not experienced a seizure for 13 years – until six days after he was given a COVID-19 booster shot. We now live with the anxiety of not knowing whether that shot will cause more seizures or even permanent damage. Our story is far from unique.

President Trump has now replaced health establishment insiders like Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci with a team of what we might call vaccine realists. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, both of whom were demonized for their outlier views on the COVID vaccine, have now forged a new path, as evidenced by the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement. It comes as a welcome relief for millions of vaccine skeptics who were the victims of textbook gaslighting because they dared to speak truth to power.

Crickets From Big Media

One would have thought that responsible media would have reported on this long-awaited hearing, if only in an attempt to refute the testimony and defend their own role in toeing the government line. But there was precious little coverage, in fact almost none, from legacy media unashamedly aligned with the Washington establishment.

Bored? Check This Out!

The New York Times, famously the “newspaper of record,” did not even cover the hearing, limiting its transparently biased coverage to a preemptive strike in an article before the hearing headlined “The FDA May Restrict COVID Vaccines. Who Will Be Able to Get Them?” Washington’s most famous newspaper weighed in with a similar angle: “FDA to limit COVID shot approval to 65+, those with medical conditions,” with one author writing, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has falsely called the mRNA shots against COVID ‘the deadliest vaccine ever made’ … the lingering politicization of COVID is fueling the new attacks on science.” And here was the message in Google AI, which routinely offers responses to queries of all kinds, on the term “Biden vaccine scandal”: “An AI Overview is not available for this search.” In searches with similar descriptions, Google’s AI would not activate.

If it is possible for big government and big media credibility to descend even further into the gutter than it has in recent years, this scandal should do the trick. The government withheld devastating information about COVID vaccines, and the media refused to even report on hearings designed for the purpose of getting to the truth. We might have thought that things would change by at least a slight degree after the 2024 election. No such luck.

~

Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

 

Read More From Tim Donner Senior Political Analyst

How Soros Bought the ‘Voice’ of the Jewish Community

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

After a belated crackdown on campus antisemitism, some were surprised to see the Jewish Council for Public Affairs leading a campaign in support of college Hamas enthusiasts.

Observers of Jewish organizational life remembered the JCPA as a representative of local Jewish ‘federations’, the organization had always been liberal, but it had never taken so blatant a stance in defense of antisemites or so overt a stance.against the American Jewish community.

In reality though the JCPA had not existed since 2022. The organization using the JCPA name is a leftist activist group funded by George Soros and headed by a member of his anti-Israel lobby. The crucial break came when the JCPA endorsed the Black Lives Matter racist hate group whose associated mobs attacked synagogues, assaulted Jews and denounced Israel.

Jewish federations were uncomfortable with the JCPA leadership’s seeming support for antisemitism and racism. JCPA boss David Bernstein initially defended the move along with engagement with far-left antisemitic groups, including the Women’s March, before leaving the organization and founding the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (the group is now known as the North American Values Institute) to fight wokeness and institutional capture of liberal groups.

The JCPA however was ground zero for institutional capture. Instead of the federations taking control of the JCPA which they had funded and lent their name and support to for so long, a plan was developed to make the JCPA independent. The problem was that most people did not realize that an organization that had formerly spoken for sizable portions of the liberal Jewish community was now detached from the community and funded by one of its worst enemies.

In 2023, as the JCPA became “independent”, the group received a $250,000 grant from the Soros Open Society Foundations. While that amount might not have been so impressive for a major organization, the JCPA had lost most of its funding when it left the ‘federations’ and its budget was less than $2 million so that the Soros grant represented a sizable part of its cash.

It also helped pay the salary of its new CEO: Amy Spitalnick. Spitalnick was a veteran of Democratic and leftist organizations, but her only previous role in a Jewish organization had been serving as a spokeswoman for Soros’s anti-Israel lobby: J Street. The JCPA added new board members like Kiyomi Kowalski, the “Afro-Latin queer” founder of ‘Jewbian Princess’ to deliver DEI training to Jewish organizations. Kowalski had come through Soros’s Bend the Arc.

Rori Picker Neiss, the JCPA’s Senior VP for Community Relations, was a leftist activist who had argued that America was systemically racist, claimed to have a transgender 11-year-old girl, was a former board member at HIAS, which specializes in resettling Muslims in America and was the “Rabbi in Residence at the Holy Communion Episcopal Church” in St. Louis.

Other incoming JCPA staffers included Benjamin Suarato, the former spokesman for USAID, and Emily Graham, a Gillibrand staffer.

None of this was normal and the JCPA, which had been a generically liberal group, became a radical leftist one.

The old JCPA had responded to Israel’s elections by describing them as evidence of democracy, the new JCPA however repeatedly attacked Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, declaring a “fight for democracy” in Israel and America.

Days after the Oct 7 attacks, Amy Spitalnick, who had worked with the anti-Israel lobby J Street, organized a statement against ‘Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate’.

“We unequivocally reject those targeting our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian American neighbors with bigotry, threats, and violence,” Spitalnick declared. The signatories included multiple Soros anti-Israel and anti-Jewish groups including J Street, Bend the Arc, T’ruah and the New Israel Fund which subsidizes BDS hate groups.

Spitalnick jumped on the Burlington shooting hoax to issue a press release declaring that “we are praying for a swift and full recovery for Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ahmed.” The shootings had nothing to do with Israel or Islam, but the three Muslim men used their platform to repeatedly denounce Israel with the political aid of the new JCPA.

No one could mistake the new JCPA’s priorities when it issued two statements condemning the Oct 7 attacks, three statements condemning Islamophobia after the attacks and five statements condemning the Trump administration’s crackdowns on campus antisemitism.

While the JCPA assembled a list of signers to its campaign against Islamophobia, it offered no such response to Oct 7. What made the JCPA jump into some kind of action wasn’t the mass murder of Jews, but any report of any violence, no matter how random, as in the case of the Burlington shootings, involving Muslims.

The JCPA claimed that its militant defense of campus antisemitism was motivated by its concern for ‘free speech’ and other democratic values, but the organization had previously demanded the removal of hate speech from Twitter and social media. Its sudden concern for free speech existed only when it came to Hamas supporters targeting Jewish students on college campuses.

The new JCPA defends even the worst campus antisemitism while leveraging a vintage brand of the liberal Jewish establishment. The JCPA had started life as the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council. Many people who encounter its initials still think that it represents some sort of ‘grassroots’ coalition of liberal community groups when all it represents is the Left.

And the Soros political machine.

In announcing its new identity, the JCPA stated that it “traditionally operated on a consensus model among 125 national JCRCs and 16 National Jewish organizations”, but in “today’s political climate, however, consensus is harder to obtain” and so the “JCPA is moving from a consensus and general membership model to the coalition model where policy will be driven and overseen.” The JCPA no longer represents anyone except its bosses and major donors.

That includes at least a quarter-million dollar investment from the billionaire funder of anti-Israel groups who had once urged, “America and Israel must open the door to Hamas.”

And whose former employee runs the JCPA and speaks for it.

The JCPA is certainly not the first liberal Jewish group or personality Soros bought, what is surprising is how cheap the price of one of the crown jewels of the old liberal establishment was.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

The Chickens Coming Home to Roost

Are we going to do something meaningful about this?

John Droz jr. May 28, 2025 @ Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues

I recently read an interesting article in the Carolina Journal: 

“The work habits of Gen Z: A wake-up call for employers and educators.”  

The author, a current college professor, makes some good observations about what he describes as a deplorable situation.

In essence, he has concluded that many Gen Z students/citizens are averse to traditional employment. He goes on to name a few reasons why many of them would rather be self-employed as “influencers” rather than have a 9-5 job producing helpful products, supplying meaningful services, etc.

I’m writing this as I believe that he missed some of the most significant reasons for this far-reaching attitude change. But first, we must understand who benefits from this degradation: the Left. In other words: Anti-Americans.

One of the historical trademarks of Americans has been their strong work ethic. Those whose goal is to bring America down know very well that if they can undermine that work ethic, we will soon descend into third-world status. Great empires in the past have collapsed for lesser reasons!

To bring about this end, the Left has purposefully infiltrated much of our society, but their top priority is our K-12 education system. Their objective was to take control of the curriculum, which they have done. Our current situation is that we are unwittingly (or is it knowingly?) helping them produce graduates who will be the very agents of our undoing! The professor’s article simply points out a few of the expected (and intended) red-flag results.

Some of the Left's Education Strategies - 

Here are some of the tactics (many of them subtle) that the Left has used to undermine the K-12 education of our children…

Grade inflation is rampant: students are awarded for just showing up. (See here and here.) What type of work ethic is that communicating?

Using a calculator: why bother learning (i.e., understanding) any boring math when you can just click some keys and quickly get the answers?

Artificial Intelligence: why sweat over such mundane things as research or laborious thinking, when AI can do it for you in a minute? (See here.)

Social media: why pay attention in class, when a lot more interesting things are going on every day on social media, just a click away?

Woke: The clear message to students is: a minority or “disadvantaged” status takes precedence over merit. Got it. Sign me up as a victim.

Discard traditional Religion, which instills old-fashioned fundamental values. Instead, grab onto the deceptively attractive — and atheistic — SEL.

Age-inappropriate books and videos are spreading like wildfire in K-12. Their purpose is to undermine traditional values, distract students from learning, and encourage them to join a privileged minority.

Cheating is pervasive. If students have few morals, and the objective is to get high grades (not to actually learn), then the end justifies the means.

Worst of all, the opposite of Critical Thinking (conformity) is aggressively being taught, so students have been purposefully prevented from being able to understand the foolishness of their choices.

 Take Away -

I could go on, but you get the points: 

 a) there are several powerful forces undermining the work ethic [and value system] of our children,  

b) the most problematic of these is the corrupt K-12 curriculum,  

c) stunningly, no major conservative organization is doing anything meaningful about this tsunami threat, and  

d) amazingly, this well-intentioned article didn’t mention a single one of these major problems!…

How can we possibly fix what we don’t acknowledge?

I will repeat what I have argued before: 

 1) this issue is not only monumental, but arguably the most significant threat to the American experiment, and 

 2) we currently have the power (and a window of opportunity) to fix MOST of this if we play our cards right with the US Department of Education (see here).

Will we wake up in time, or be enticed by the Pied Piper over the precipice?

---

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The Case for School Choice, Part II

May 27, 2025 by Dan Mitchell@ International Liberty

Yesterday’s column celebrated the amazing expansion of school choice, a trend that seems unstoppable.

 

One reason for my optimism is that government schools have been given buckets of money, but there’s never any improvement.

All the cash winds up leading to more bureaucracy rather than better educational outcomes.

Another reason is that we are accumulating more and more evidence that school choice is the way to help students learn more and perform better (see here, here, here, and here).

Today, let’s look at some new evidence, courtesy of two recent editorials from the Wall Street Journal.

Here are excerpts from the editorial about what has happened in Ohio.

A study released Tuesday by researchers at the Urban Institute found that students who used vouchers to attend private school saw substantially improved long-term academic outcomes. Ohio’s Educational Choice Scholarship Program began in 2005 as a state-funded voucher program for students in lousy public schools. In 2013-14 it began to serve low-income students regardless of school. … 

Researchers Matthew Chingos, David Figlio and Krzysztof Karbownik studied more than 6,000 Ohio students who first used EdChoice scholarships to attend private schools between 2008 and 2014. They compared this group with more than 500,000 students who remained in public schools, selecting for similar demographics and academic characteristics. Scholarship recipients were found to be 15 percentage points more likely to attend college than public school counterparts, and nine points more likely to graduate. 

Students in the program for at least four years—about 60% of participants—had even higher college enrollment and graduation rates. …Groups that benefited the most were blacks, boys, students who experienced long-term childhood poverty, and students with below-median test scores before leaving public school. The rate of college enrollment among black scholarship recipients increased 18 percentage points.

And here are passages from the editorial about Indiana’s program.

Indiana has been a leader in expanding school choice for K-12 students, and better student achievement results have followed. …Gov. Mike Braun last week signed a budget that opens school choice to every Hoosier girl and boy. …Indiana first launched vouchers and expanded charters during a period of enthusiastic reform under former Gov. Mitch Daniels in the 2010s… 

More than 20% of the state’s students attend a school other than the public one for which they’re zoned, and the shift has accelerated since 2020. The difference for students is clear. Indiana eighth-graders ranked sixth in the nation in reading scores in the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, up from 19th in 2022. The state’s fourth-graders jumped 11 spots in the same assessment and now also rank sixth nationwide.

What we are seeing in these two Midwestern states is not a surprise.

Of course the private sector is more efficient than the government. Of course the private sector delivers better results for less money.

I’ll close with the observation that school choice is a litmus test for the left. As far as I’m concerned, they are bad people if they put the self-interest of teacher unions above the needs of students and parents.

P.S. Don’t forget that school choice is delivering strong results overseas. Just look at what’s happened in countries such as Canada, Sweden, Chile, the Netherlands,  and Denmark. No wonder more and more nations are shifting to choice, just like more and more American states are doing the same thing.

The Democratic party is nothing more than a criminal gang

Cui bono?

Michael D. Shaw May 28, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

 

The late Wyoming senator Alan Simpson is credited with labeling the two major American political parties as the Stupid party (Republicans) and the Evil party (Democrats). The early history of our country’s politics was fractious, whereby the Democratic-Republicans broke away from the Federalists, and the Democratic-Republicans themselves separated into factions—one led by John Quincy Adams, and the other by Andrew Jackson.

The Adams faction called themselves the National Republicans, and the Jackson group became the Democratic Republicans—shortened to the Democrats by 1828. Various splinter groups who disliked Jackson (calling him “King Andrew”) joined with former National Republicans to create the Whig party in 1834.

The Republican party as we know it today was formed in the 1850s, when antislavery leaders (including former members of the Democratic, Whig, and Free-Soil parties) joined forces to oppose the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories by the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854). This Act promoted the notion of “popular sovereignty,” allowing the residents of each territory to determine by vote whether they would be slave or free. As such, 1820’s Missouri Compromise was invalidated.

At meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin (May, 1854), and Jackson, Michigan (July, 1854), the idea to establish a new party was conceived, and was formalized at the Jackson convention. Thus, at the very outset of this two-party rivalry, the Democrats were pro-slavery, and the Republicans were anti-slavery.

Slavery was officially abolished, of course, with the 13th amendment (1865). 99 years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would appear, opposed by the southern faction of the Democratic party. It is one of the greatest ironies in American history that the Democrats were able to somehow identify as the party of civil rights, merely because the Act was signed by Democratic president Lyndon Johnson—himself a profoundly cynical and Machiavellian southern Democrat.

Never mind that the Civil Rights Act would never have passed, but for significant Republican support. At any rate, by virtue of their bogus public posture related to this Act, the Democrats portrayed themselves as the party of Social Justice—mostly engineered to benefit NGOs, with little left for the supposed victims. And that has forced them down an absurd rabbit hole of ever more divisive causes, including mindless DEI, and a robotic adherence to the neo-Marxism of seeing the world through the prism of oppressor/victim.

Never mind also that the clients of the Dems (the minorities and working class who slavishly vote for them) have scarcely prospered. Many major cities have been run by Democrats for 80 years or longer, and seem to only be getting worse.

Now, the Dems are proudly supporting men in women’s sports, preferring criminal illegal aliens to their own citizens, and were trying to gaslight the world about the mental state of Joe Biden. The latter energized by their all-consuming irrational hatred of Donald J. Trump.

The collateral damage to our very culture has been far-reaching. On the same day, on the front page of the LA Times, two stories appeared: “Free speech” advocates decried Trump’s lawsuit against CBS for its shameless editing of the “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview, done solely to hide the fact that she can barely construct a meaningful and coherent statement. The other was the case of middle school student Liam Morrison, in which the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that he did not have the right to wear a shirt proclaiming that “There are Only Two Genders.”

So much for free speech. And, while we’re at it, where were all those “due process” advocates (regarding illegal aliens) when thousands of businesses were closed during the COVID plandemic, or when millions were forced to take the “vax”?

We will always have corruption and bad leadership. The real evil of the Dems is societal destruction. A hopeful sign is the public’s rejection of what these degenerates stand for.

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Thought For the Day

 

The Case for School Choice, Part I

May 26, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

It’s been more than 15 years since the Center for Freedom and Prosperity released its video about school choice, so let’s update the argument for educational freedom with this new video from John Stossel.

For most Americans, the biggest argument for school choice is improved educational outcomes (see here, here, here, and here).

 

And that’s the most persuasive argument for me as well. However, since I’m a fiscal policy wonk, I can’t help but also highlight this screen shot from the video.

Simply stated, government schools cost a lot of money and deliver sub-par results.

And we also know that dumping more money into government schools does not make things better (see here, here, here, and here).

Part of the problem, as illustrated by another screen shot from the video, is that more money has translated into a bigger bureaucracy.

This might be good news for teacher unions and the education bureaucracy, but it’s not good news for students, parents, and taxpayers.

The good news is that school choice is spreading. It’s gone from a libertarian fantasy to a political reality (West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas).

The trend is so positive that Robert Pondiscio of the American Enterprise Institute has an article speculating about the end of government schools. Here are some excerpts.

…we’ve hit and passed “peak public school.” A school choice revolution is rapidly reshaping how public education is organized, funded, and delivered in America. …millions of parents have been given the power to pull their children out of district-run public schools—taking with them the lion’s share of the money the state would have otherwise spent… 

Soon, more than half of US families with school-age children will have the option to educate their children privately with public funds. …the reckoning has finally come. Public education is on the verge of an unprecedented crack-up. In fact, it’s already underway. …school choice allows families to select educational approaches that align with their values, aspirations, and children’s interests and needs. School choice needn’t justify itself as merely an improvement over traditional public schools. It is an intrinsic good… 

To be sure, the zip code–driven default mode of educating our children is unlikely to disappear entirely. It will remain a common mode for a significant number of children if only because of habit and inertia. But we have hit and passed peak public education. Its influence and dominance can only wane.

I think this optimism is warranted.

Here’s what I expect will happen. With so many states now adopting choice, we should soon see even more scholarly evidence that this leads to better educational outcomes.

And we’ll also see more evidence that teacher unions are producing dismal outcomes in blue states.

This will create even more pressure for further reform. At some point, the only non-choice states will be ultra-left states such as California, New York, and Illinois.

P.S. If I’m forced to provide a pessimistic scenario, it would probably be significant electoral victories for the left in the midterm elections followed by the election of an AOC-type leftist to the White House in 2028 (Trump’s first term led to total Democrat control of Washington in 2021, so this part of the scenario is realistic).

At that point, the Democratic-controlled Congress uses the power of the purse to threaten states with a loss of funds if they don’t repeal or emasculate school choice.

P.P.S. If you don’t want the left to control Washington after the 2028 elections, you should hope Trump changes his mind about protectionism. Voters are more likely to punish Republicans if the economy is weakened by bad trade policy.

Around the Nation and the World

By Robin Itzler 

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors.  Any cartoons will have been added by me.  If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free.

Events Around the Nation

Tennessee:   In backwards states like California, public school employees and students can be in trouble if they use the wrong pronoun. However, Tennessee just passed legislation signed by Republican Governor Bill Lee protecting them from LGBTQ++++++ insanity. Employees and students will not be “civilly liable” for failing to use the preferred names and pronouns of trans-identified employees or students. Duh! To share your thoughts with Gov. Lee:

Email: tn.fellows@tn.gov,  Phone: 615-741-2001, Write: 1st Floor, State Capitol, Nashville, TN 37243 

In Huntington Beach:  Vote No on A&B:  In Huntington Beach, California, there is a vote on June 10 to keep pornographic material away from children in public libraries. The pornographic material in many of these books would make a stripper blush, so of course the left wants it where the children can easily find it. “A” would do is move these books to age-appropriate sections of the library.

• Vote No on A: Current law lets a community board of parents in addition to librarians review library books to protect children from obscene content. If “A” passes, parents are removed from the process and it’s given to one unelected person.
• Vote No on B: Currently, the city council manages the library budget. If passed, the control would go to special interests.

Below I discuss the targeting of Christians and Jews in Muslim controlled nations, but Christian persecution is now rampant in western civilization, and the violence in Seattle against Christians has triggered an FBI investigation.  The FBI under the Biden administration has been notorious for targeting Christians in the past.  Patel and Bongino have put the FBI back on the right track.  

• When City Hall Chooses the Mob - Bruce Harrell, elected to lead but seemingly content to triangulate, did not respond with praise for law enforcement or a reaffirmation of Seattle’s civic obligations to neutrality and free expression. Instead, he questioned the Christian group’s presence—why they had been issued a permit and why their event had not been relocated to a “less provocative” area. Translated: The fault lies not with the mob—heaven forbid—but those who dared to speak within earshot of it..............
• Does America have a Muslim problem? - Western cultural norms are not global norms. We need policy makers to wake up and recognize this -- and to do so fast.  It is time for a significant shift in U.S. immigration policy, and for the U.S. government to act against anyone promoting murderous leftist ideology on university campuses. .........
• The Wages of Conspicuous Compassion  - ........such displays are morally idiotic camouflage for Europe’s failure of nerve and despicable political hatred of the region’s only free democracy.
• Hamas Warns Gaza Muslims Not to Accept US Food - Gaza is starving...... but social media videos show fully-stocked supermarkets.........Hamas faked a famine to win global sympathy. It’s funding a lot of its operations through stolen and diverted aid. .......

Events Around the World

Ukraine:  Is the US Furthering Persecution of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine?  The US is essentially “facilitating the persecution of Christians in Ukraine by supporting the Kiev government, which has been waging a purge campaign against the nation’s canonical Orthodox church,” American journalist Tucker Carlson has said. Carlson made the statement during an interview with a former Ukrainian MP, Vadim Novinsky, released on Friday............

Trump and the Middle East:  President Donald Trump recently visited four Arab Middle East nations. Saudia Arabia was his first stop and during the visit it was announced that Syria's new interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who is an Al-Queda terrorist but now dons a western appearance, would be visiting with the President. We are very disappointed that Trump met with a terrorist whose government is Killing Christians and other non-Muslim minorities!  And worse yet, as Daniel Greenfield points out, he's cut a deal with them for promises to protect Christians.  A promise that will not be kept.  Trump has made a lot of amazingly good decisions, this isn't one of them!

Even Jefferson understood Muslims will not honor agreements with unbelievers, he read the Koran, which no only excuses such behavior, it encourages it.  And we have over 1400 years of history to prove that's what they practice.   Do western civilization's leaders read history books any longer?

United Arab Emirates:  Amjad Taha is a UAE-based political strategist and analyst and appears to want peace in the region. Following President Trump’s visit to the UAE, Taha posted:

“This is the UAE, where we walk the talk, not just talk it. No one around us dares to do it. We’re different. We lead. President Donald Trump standing in the Synagogue at the Abrahamic Family House marks a historic day for all Abrahamic faiths: Jews, Christians and Muslims. While synagogues face attacks in London and Paris, the Jewish community feels safter here than in the West.”

The Jewish UAE community is very small, but that would make it an easier target. Yet, Taha is right that at the moment Jews are safer in the UAE than in many European, Canadian or Australian cities. 

Canada’s Liberals Want to Ditch Carney? It’s Complicated

The prime minister may want to abandon the Grits. 

By Andrew Moran | May 27, 2025@ Liberty Nation News, Tags:  Articles, Opinion, Politics

King Charles and Queen Camilla arrived in Ottawa, Canada, on May 26 for a two-day visit to the nation’s capital. The king will address Canada’s parliament on May 27, an oration that will likely highlight the sovereign constitutional monarchy that will not transition to America’s 51st state. But while all the focus is on some people who do nothing all day, the public is missing out on some good old-fashioned backroom political shenanigans.

Liberals and the Political Mutiny?

Liberal Members of Parliament are ostensibly united in a common goal: The Great White North cannot have another Justin Trudeau on its hands.

According to Politico, Liberal lawmakers gathered to bolster their power to remove Prime Minister Mark Carney from the party’s leadership throne. While the news outlet offered readers a misleading title, “Canada’s Liberals are already thinking about how to remove Mark Carney. It’s not personal,” MPs are simply adopting measures found inside Canada’s Reform Act, a decade-old piece of legislation introduced by Conservative MP Michael Chong.

The Tories used it to kick out former leader Erin O’Toole. Because the Conservative Party presented this initiative, the Liberals refrained from utilizing it when Trudeaumania ravaged the Canadian economy, decimated household finances, and set the country back ten years. Now that it is out with the old and in with the new, the party might hope Canadians’ collective memory fades to black.

Quebec Liberal MP Sophie Chatel told the news outlet that this is “a powerful symbolic gesture” and “a renewed commitment to strengthening the relationship with caucus.” Carney acknowledged the vote, telling reporters he “observed that this will happen.”

Put simply, the Grits are not actively seeking to oust Carney – for now. Instead, they want to possess the option to remove the prime minister in the future should unfavorable conditions metastasize, and the party’s polling numbers tank again. However, considering what members of Carney’s party have said since the election, he might want to think about distancing himself from the Liberals.

Beginning of the End

Like the Toronto Maple Leafs’ playoff run, it was over before it started.

The prime minister won the 2025 election for two reasons: older voters hate President Donald Trump, and Carney convinced them that he would bring the public the change they needed. However, within days after being sworn in, the Liberals made Carney look terrible.

Give Cable TV the Boot – Check This Out!

First, the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England chief promised to make the country an energy superpower. One strategy is constructing a pipeline that should have been done years ago, essentially caving to Alberta’s demands. Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault appeared to contradict the prime minister.

Speaking to reporters on May 14, the former environment minister seemed to pour cold water on the new pipeline idea, citing the years-long prognostication of peak oil demand. “So I think before we start talking about building an entire new pipeline, maybe we should maximize the use of existing infrastructure,” Guilbeault told the press. “And, the Canadian Energy Regulator, as well as the International Energy Agency, are telling us that probably by 2028-2029, demand for oil will peak globally, and it will also peak in Canada.”

Second, Carney has vowed to make housing affordability one of his top economic priorities. Indeed, the Canadian real estate market is one of the most expensive in the world, with the average price hovering around $700,000, up approximately 40% from before the coronavirus pandemic. Aside from Saskatchewan, every housing market has spiraled out of control, leaving millions of Canadians unable to achieve the dream of homeownership.

Economists and housing advocates generally concur that home prices need to fall to ensure middle-class households and young families can accomplish something Baby Boomers did decades ago. Yet, Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson says he does not think housing prices need to come down to restore housing affordability.

“I think that we need to deliver more supply, make sure the market is stable,” the former Vancouver mayor told the media on May 14. “It’s a huge part of our economy, but we need to be able to deliver more affordable housing.” He later doubled down on social media: “The question I answered was about reducing the price of a family’s current home, which for most Canadians, is their most valuable asset.”

It is true that Canada’s economy largely depends on real estate, accounting for as much as 50% of GDP growth in some quarters. Many senior Canadians are also relying on their home’s ATM to fund their retirement. However, if this were the dim reality, the Grits should have been forthright during the campaign about this plight and informed the next generation that they will never be able to purchase a residential property. This will be the case for years to come, anyway.

When the cats are away, the mice will play. Or, when the captain is gone, his seamen will accidentally commit mutiny. It is safe to say the prime minister was not expecting these remarks while he was in Rome for Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural mass. With allies like these, who needs enemies up north?

~

Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

 

Read More From Andrew Moran Economics Editor