Politics

Thune’s Midnight Folly

How Senate Leadership Played the House and the Base for Suckers, and Why the Speaker's Backbone Points the Way Forward In the wee hours of March 27, 2026, around 2:30 to 3 a.m., the U.S. Senate passed a unanimous consent request to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security. Only about five senators were physically present on the floor: Republicans John Thune, Eric Schmitt, and Bernie Moreno (presiding), plus Democrats Brian Schatz and Andy Kim. The deal cleared funding for TSA, the Coast Guard, FEMA, CISA, and other non-enforcement functions while explicitly carving out full funding for Immigration and Customs…

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The Johns

The Base Revolts Against the Johns Roughly 60% of Republican primary voters in Texas just told Sen. John Cornyn exactly what they think of him: NOT CORNYN. On March 3, with over 2.16 million GOP ballots cast—a record turnout that crushed historical averages—Cornyn scraped together 41.9% (907,325 votes). Ken Paxton pulled 40.7% (881,192 votes), and Rep. Wesley Hunt took 13.5% (292,682 votes). No one hit 50%, so we're headed to a May 26 runoff, the day after Memorial Day. But make no mistake: that near-tie wasn't a fluke. It was a warning shot heard far beyond Texas borders. The base isn't…

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Brute Force Smashmouth Politics

Make Their Shame Visible “I myself will lift up your skirts over your face, and your shame will be seen.” (Jeremiah 13:26 ESV) Read that again. God isn’t asking politely. He isn’t negotiating. He is declaring judgment on a people who forgot Him, chased after idols, trusted in lies, and lived in spiritual adultery. The image is brutal on purpose: skirts lifted over the face, naked shame exposed for all to see. No covering. No excuses. No quiet retreat into the shadows. That is exactly where we are with Senate Democrats right now. We are in the largest U.S. military engagement…

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Fisking French

David French’s “MAGA” Smear Proves He Doesn’t Know Texas A 25-year Texas politico reads the latest New York Times lecture on Christian character, and finds the same old outsider blind spot. I’ve been active in Texas politics for more than a quarter century: knocking on doors, phone banking, running precincts, serving as a Presiding Election Judge, and watching this state transform from a purple battleground into the solid red powerhouse that keeps delivering Republican supermajorities. So when David French, the Connecticut-based New York Times columnist, parachutes in with his Sunday piece “James Talarico Is a Christian X-Ray,” I recognize the familiar…

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The Finest Use of the Bully Pulpit

How Trump’s 2026 SOTU Was Stage-Managed to Perfection I. Introduction: Turning a Long Speech into a Command Performance Let’s be honest: when a State of the Union clocks in at nearly 1 hour 48 minutes—the longest on record—you expect viewers to start checking their phones halfway through. Yet President Trump’s 2026 address never felt like a slog. The pacing was crisp, the energy never dipped, and the mix of victory-lap confidence, sharp humor, and genuine showmanship kept the room—and the country—locked in from the opening line to the final word. This wasn’t accidental. Every beat, every pause, every camera angle, every…

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The Economy Has Gone to the Dogs

Why Democrats Are in Trouble Last week, Rep. Ro Khanna stood on the House floor and read the names of four completely innocent New Yorkers into the Congressional Record as part of the Jeffrey Epstein files scandal. It was a self-inflicted wound. Those men had zero connection to Epstein. They were random faces from an old photo lineup. Khanna had to walk it back after the Guardian called him on it. Fast forward one week. A pro-Palestinian activist named Nerdeen Kiswani posts on X: "Finally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor…

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Talking the SAVE America Act Into Law

There's a Way Forward But Does Senate GOP Have the Will? Senate Majority Leader John Thune has a point when he calls floor time the coin of the realm. Every hour spent grinding through quorum calls, dilatory amendments, and endless debate is an hour not spent on confirmations, funding bills, or the next must-pass item on the calendar. It's the same scarcity that once let Al Gore extract promises of a clean vote on the 1991 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq in exchange for his support. Thune's caution is real: reviving a true talking filibuster on the SAVE…

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Egg-Face Economists

Inflation Dips, Private Jobs Surge in Trump's Resilient Economy In my previous column, “The BLS Affordability Boost,” I laid out how the January 2026 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics gave working families a tangible win. Private-sector payrolls jumped 172,000-far exceeding the consensus forecast of 55,000 to 80,000-while unemployment edged down to 4.3% and average hourly earnings rose 3.7% year-over-year. For the first time in a while, wage growth outpaced the prior month's inflation reading, putting real dollars back in pockets here in Plano and across Texas. Barely three days later, the February 13 CPI release for January served…

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The BLS Affordability Boost

Unpacking the "Unexpected" January Jobs Report If you've been following the economic tea leaves like I have for over 30 years in this game, you know the drill: Wall Street "experts" cluster their forecasts like sheep, the media slaps "unexpectedly" on anything that doesn't fit their narrative, and real-world metrics get buried under a pile of revisions and spin. Today's January 2026 BLS jobs report? It's a classic case. Clocking in at +130,000 nonfarm payrolls with unemployment ticking down to 4.3%, this thing smashed the lowball consensus and kicked off the year with a bang for the Trump administration and Republicans.…

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It Was Breyer

The Dobbs Leak: A Preponderance of Evidence Points to Justice Stephen Breyer In the annals of Supreme Court scandals, few events have cast as long a shadow as the unprecedented leak of Justice Samuel Alito's draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. On May 2, 2022, Politico dropped the bombshell, publishing the full text of Alito's February 10 draft that would ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The fallout was immediate and seismic: protests erupted outside justices' homes, an assassination attempt targeted Justice Brett Kavanaugh, vandalism hit crisis pregnancy centers and…

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