GOP’s Sigh of Relief. Why Trump Accounts Are Better Than Guaranteed Income. Somalis. Sabrina Carpenter’s Anger. TFP Adds Advice Column! More
The AOC of Tennessee—as Nashville-hating candidate Aftyn Behn is known—failed to paint the Volunteer state’s 7th congressional district blue in yesterday’s closely watched special election. Republicans breathed a sigh of relief. Fox Digital reports:
Republicans will hold onto a GOP-controlled vacant congressional seat in ruby-red Tennessee after winning a hotly contested special election that grabbed plenty of national attention.
Republican nominee Matt Van Epps on Tuesday defeated Democratic rival Aftyn Behn, according to The Associated Press, in the high-stakes race to succeed former GOP Rep. Mark Green, who resigned from office in June to take a private sector job.
The Democrats, however, “have reasons for optimism,” according to The Hill, because this is a heavily red district and Behn overperformed by 13 points compared to 2024. Behn was vocal about her disdain for Nashville, country music, and law enforcement. The GOP should realize that God will not always send them candidates like Kamala Harris and Aftyn Behn.
Children of affluent parents begin life with financial advantages and likely more financial literacy. The Associated Press poses an intriguing question:
[W]hat if all children, regardless of their family’s circumstances, could get a financial boost when they turn 18?
Well, that question might be answered by President Trump’s innovative “Trump Accounts.” The AP continues:
That’s the idea behind “Trump Accounts,” a lesser-known provision of President Donald Trump’s tax legislation. The bill, signed into law earlier this year, gives $1,000 to every newborn, so long as their parents open an account. That money is invested in the stock market by private firms, and the child can access the funds when they turn 18. The parents of older children can also open accounts, but they won’t get the $1,000 bonus.
Billionaire couple Michael and Susan Dell plan to donate $6.25 billion to fund Trump Accounts for 25 million children. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal is headlined “Billionaire Cash for Kids and Capitalism.” “The Dell donations beat a guaranteed annual government income,” the editors contend. They write:
The Trump accounts aren’t without political risk since Democrats will try to expand the government donations to make the accounts another engine of income redistribution. Don’t be surprised if the political left also tries to steer the assets into investments they favor, rather than the larger stock market. It’s crucial that the accounts remain an individual property right.
But at least the money will at first be invested in the private economy, and young people will get from an early age a lesson in capitalism and watching their assets grow. Over time the accounts might become large enough to use for tuition, a home down payment, or a head start on retirement.
As for billionaires, the idea of donating money to give young people a stake in the American economy beats a guilt-ridden political panic to endorse higher taxes—which would hit the middle class in any case.
America is gearing up for a long-overdue debate about immigration. The wily Left clamors for “comprehensive immigration reform.” Better have the debate first. The massive welfare fraud centered on Minnesota’s politically relevant Somali community highlights concerns. President Trump didn’t hold back at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting:
President Trump lashed out against immigrants from Somalia, saying he didn’t want them in the U.S. and describing them in disparaging terms ahead of an expected federal operation against Somalis in Minneapolis.
“I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you…their country is no good for a reason,” Trump said Tuesday, speaking at a cabinet meeting at the White House. “We’re at a tipping point,” he said, adding that the country would “go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
Ms. Must admits she cringed at the g-word. But the sober and measured Rich Lowry today pens a highly recommended column headlined “Ungrateful Ilhan Omar and the Somali Scammers Are the Immigrants We DON’T Want.”
Is it too much to ask for immigrants who love America and its system of government?
That’s a question that President Trump has been asking, with an especially high level of vitriol, in the wake of the horrific shooting of members of the National Guard in Washington, DC, the day before Thanksgiving.
In a corker of a Truth Social post announcing “a permanent pause” in immigration from Third World countries, Trump went after Minneapolis-area Rep. Ilhan Omar, and for good reason.
Omar stands for everything we shouldn’t want an immigrant to be — ungrateful, hostile to the American system as such, and perhaps not above perpetrating immigration fraud.
With all respect to the Wall Street Journal’s great Jason Riley, whom I admire inordinately, the premise of this morning’s column (“Can Minnesota’s Somalis Rise Above the Fraud Scandal?“)—that other immigrants were problematic in their early days on these shores—rings false. Unassimilating immigrants are a recent phenomenon.
Respected former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy’s take on whether embattled War Secretary Pete Hegseth committed a war crime carries weight. A Washington Post story indicated guilt, but a subsequent New York Times report has more facts and nuance. “The administration’s defense against the allegations in the Post story has come into sharper focus during the past 24 hours,” McCarthy notes. McCarthy does not definitively answer the question of culpability, but the piece is illuminating.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma: “ ‘Welcome to America!’ Captured Drug Lords Choose: Snitch or Suffer” is a Wall Street Journal report on the choice facing 55 cartel leaders Mexico turned over to the U.S. It’s quite a story. Germane is RCP’s Philip Wegmann’s piece on “the new Trump Doctrine,” which stipulates that nations harboring drug cartels are subject to attack. Somewhere, James Monroe is smiling.
Healthcare expert Betsy McCaughty is urging the GOP to “unwind” the financially unsustainable ObamaCare:
Democrats cynically insist on continuing to spend huge sums of taxpayers’ money — $450 billion over the next 10 years — to prop up lousy insurance, defending the indefensible because of its Obamacare label….
Republicans who want to stop the skyrocketing subsidies must show their concern about the quality of care for patients — and start to fix what’s broken.
Armageddon is just weeks away. The enhanced subsidies will expire Jan. 1, immediately hiking costs for every Obamacare enrollee.
Make Washington Scandals Great Again: A good way to do that is to read Kristen Fleming’s piece on Olivia Nuzzi’s much-hyped new book, “American Canto,” apparently about the Great American Triangle (Nuzzi, fiancée Ray Lizza, and future HHS Secretary RFK Jr.). “As far as memoir rollouts go, it’s been bizarre. Or to be more accurate, a tabloid feeding frenzy,” writes Flemming.
Nuzzi has been adamant that she never had a physical affair with Kennedy. But Kennedy wasn’t even Ms. Must’s favorite romantic figure in Ms. Nuzzi’s life —that’s got to be pompous pontificator Keith Olbermann.
Sabrina Carpenter is furious that the Trump administration has used her hit song “Juno” for the soundtrack of a video depicting the arrest of an illegal alien. Ms Must somehow missed the video (it’s a vicious canard that I watch Fox News 24-7) and can’t quite figure it out. Carpenter called it “evil and disgusting.” The White House refused to apologize, and PJ Media’s Michael Cantrell isn’t sympathetic either:
[The White House’s] response landed hard. And Carpenter earned every bit of it. It blows the mind how radical leftists bend over backward to defend violent criminals who enter our country illegally and victimize fellow Americans. We’re not talking about people desperately fleeing oppression. The vast majority or people ICE deports belong to sick and twisted gangs or cartels — people who bring deadly poison like fentanyl into the nation and cause countless deaths from coast to coast.
Genius: The Free Press is launching an advice column. And the choice of advice columnist is equally brilliant: Abigail Shrier, who’s written on bad therapy, persuading vulnerable young girls to “transition,” and a host of other issues. We get a preview: “No coddling, no dawdling. Just tough love.”
