Reading & Math Scores all across the Nation are abysmal, and national testing results have documented that Illiteracy Rates are rising: The number of 16 to 24-year-olds reading at the lowest literacy levels increased from 16% in 2017 to 25% in 2023. As an economist, this is our country's greatest crisis - and it puts the future of American prosperity in grave danger.

Time Magazine, which, like so much in print journalism, has suffered from a loss of readers, has published its annual list called the "Most Influential People of 2025." The list includes "Artists, Innovators, Titans, Icons, Leaders, and Pioneers." Time's "Person of the Year" is Artificial Intelligence. That might also apply to Congress. Most of the people Time considers influential, I have never heard of, so they haven't influenced me. Maybe it's a generational thing.

Some Stay True, Some Don’t Justice Gorsuch has been fairly consistent. Justice Kavanaugh has usually held the line, relying upon the U.S. Constitution as his north star. More than occasionally, Amy Coney Barrett has been a liability to conservatives. It is speculated that she fears for members of her family if she does not yield to Leftist causes. She did, however, appropriately chastise the ranting of Ketanji Brown Jackson – a DEI selection who should have never become a Supreme Court Justice.

Nothing bothers the European elite as much as American conservatives praising the European foundations of their shared, but threatened, Western civilization. Europeans especially resent having their social-welfare state system critiqued by upstart, crass Americans. Americans, in turn, are worried that Europe is not just stagnating but is on a trajectory of permanent decline -- with dire consequences for the entire Western world.

There should be no question what the Democrat Party is about. That is -- miss no opportunity to accumulate political power by fostering as widely and as deeply as possible a culture of government dependence in America. And pay for the bill by bankrupting the country.

“Washington, D.C. has become a case study of what happens when crime goes unchecked, and small businesses are left defenseless. Under the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, our nation's capital deteriorated into a place where shop owners are forced to worry more about theft, vandalism, and violent crime than about serving their customers. Recently, I led a U.S. House Committee on Small Business hearing on the impact of crime on Main Street."

The Woke, the Left, a good Socialist Democrat never tires of finding causes to fight for. "Stand with Ukraine! Free Palestine! No One is Illegal!" Did I forget any other empty slogans? Whatever declares war on the West, undermines natural law and basic reality, and places power above principle, the Left lines up for the kill. But there's one slogan that has disappeared, one fight which has fizzled out: The Climate Change Cult.

Is the American Left finally waking up from its decades-long climate catastrophism stupor? For years, climate alarmism has reigned as political catechism: The planet is burning, and only drastic action -- deindustrialization, draconian regulation, even ceasing childbearing -- could forestall a certain apocalypse. Now, at least some signs are emerging that both the broader public and leading liberal voices may be recoiling from the doom and gloom.

There’s this thing in politics where people scramble to find something “good” to talk about for their side – no matter how bad the reality happens to be. It’s a special kind of “missing the forest for the trees” you can only find in politics and dysfunctional relationships. For instance, Newsweek declared that the results of Tuesday's Special Election in Tennessee – in December of an off-year – to be something Republicans should set their hair on fire over.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of freedom. Our Founder Fathers understood this truth as a matter of first principles, and Ronald Reagan applied the same logic to the media marketplace when his administration created limits on how large of a national audience any single broadcaster could reach. Fortunately, President Trump has also shown he understands the stakes. Ronald Reagan was right, and President Trump is right.

Why are they so financially stressed out? One reason things seem so "unaffordable" to young people is that too many aren't working hard – in fact, they're hardly even working. Labor Department data shows that fewer and fewer males between the ages of 16 and 24 are even in the labor force. It used to be that more than 70% had a job; now less than 60% do. Work is a virtue. The earlier in life kids learn that lesson, the better for them and for the rest of us.

We have a lot of problems in this country, as we always have. But just for a minute, imagine if we had a Political Class interested in addressing problems in a way that benefited as many Americans as chose to avail themselves of the opportunity to improve their lot in life? Republicans, at least, do try to get good things done every once in a while. Democrats, on the other hand, would be happy to bring the whole thing crashing down on anyone who refuses to bow to their will. But imagine if Democrats loved the country as much as they love illegal aliens or violent criminals.

With new revelations coming out that the Biden administration coordinated with county and state prosecutors to target President Donald Trump and his associates for questioning the results of the 2020 election, Trump is not taking the news lightly. “Arctic Frost” targeted over 430 Republicans, including Trump campaign committees, the RNC and Turning Point USA, and secretly subpoenaed phone records and metadata from Trump and at least 10 Republican senators.

As I wrote recently, careful projections of the U.S. Illegal Population Estimate went from around 12 million in 2007 to 14.5 million during the Biden Administration. The impetus for Biden's policies came from something other than the usual elite economic argument that U.S. population growth is slowing. That something else can be summarized in the phrase "Orange Man Bad." If Trump wants to stop people at the border, then we shouldn't stop anyone there.

When a movie is hyped beyond belief, I lose interest long before it gets released. Not because the story or the actors are boring to me, but because there is no way it could ever live up to the buzz. Movie studios do this all the time, screwing themselves out of profit they otherwise would have had a pretty good chance of realizing, but politicians do it all the time, too. That’s what is happening with “The Epstein Files!”

Connecticut's Democrat supermajority last week rammed through a bill that's a thinly disguised Socialist Wishlist. Cynically couched as a remedy for the "affordable housing crisis," its real purpose is ideological: forcing Connecticut's 169 towns to achieve "economic diversity." Translation: If you've worked hard to own a home in a leafy suburb with quiet streets, you can't live there unless everybody can – including the homeless and those with low incomes.

President Donald Trump said he would bring prices down, and since he became President in January, the inflation rate has fallen. If we go back to the start of COVID-19, we find that much of the recent rise in prices of things you buy today is because of Biden inflation, not Trump inflation. It's important to remember WHY – and a few examples of how – inflation soared to a high of 9% under Joe Biden.

At long last — we finally have an administration that believes America can do Big Things again. It's one that understands "Energy Independence" isn't a myth, a meme, or a climate-cult hallucination. It's a real National Security Priority and an economic necessity. And unlike the previous crowd running the circus in Washington, this administration isn't trying to replace physics with feelings – or swap reliable power for a windmill and a wish to power the future.

Well, that didn’t take long. Democrats won some liberal state races during the off-year elections one week – BUT, then less than a week later the Congressional Dems in the U.S. Senate completely collapsed on the shutdown under Chuck Schumer's "leadership." And I mean completely collapsed. It was an utter defeat and a huge humiliation – and a Democrat Civil War broke out afterward to boot.

When a School District in Texas begins to decline or fail to maintain a standard of Hope & Inspiration, students from the brightest to its most vulnerable suffer and are impacted. In public education, the measure of success isn’t found in Slogans or Strategic Plans, but in how a district treats its students at the margins – the children who need the most help, and those who need the most challenge. By that standard, Leander ISD is failing both.