The vote late Wednesday evening finalized a tactical win for Kevin McCarthy and Republicans on spending – and a humiliating retreat by Joe Biden. The president spent 97 days refusing to negotiate any deal to raise the debt ceiling and tried to bluff McCarthy with a game of chicken over a technical default. McCarthy's success in passing a debt-ceiling increase with substantial cuts—and no tax increases—forced Democrats to negotiate on McCarthy's terms and agree to cut hundreds of billions from planned spending.

Are there reasons to criticize this debt-ceiling deal? Yes, but this a debt-ceiling negotiation on budget items already passed by Congress. It was not a budget negotiation; but it does set the stage for that next budget negotiation—and on terms more friendly to conservatives. McCarthy's ability to pass the first bill demonstrates that the Speaker and the House majority are forces to be reckoned with.

Clearly, more is needed. But in order to achieve that, Republicans have to win more elections.

It was a tactical win.

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Lately, we’re hearing a lot about the dangers of TikTok. 

A piece by Julie Jargon at The Wall Street Journal caught my attention. The title: “TikTok Feeds Teens a Diet of Darkness.”

Jargon writes of recent research, where they put together hundreds of fictitious teenage accounts, set up as if they were indeed teenagers. The material directed to the teenagers was incredibly, frighteningly, dark: Self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, depression. 

Are you depressed yet?

She writes about this kind of feed and then says, “I had to stop. If the rapid string of sad videos made me feel bad, how would a 14-year-old feel after watching this kind of content day after day?"

The point is simple: As human beings, we are not made to be bombarded with all of this darkness—and that’s true whatever our age. It is warping to the personality. It’s corrosive to the soul. We are not made to marinate ourselves in this kind of darkness.

We were made for something more. Indeed, the Scripture tells us—much more.

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With angry members from the progressive caucus in Congress announcing their vast disappointment with the Debt Limit compromise, we can quickly surmise who got the better of whom in the long negotiation just concluded. 
 
Conservatives who are realists are cheering the breaking of the Democratic stranglehold that until this deal obliged Congress to spend an additional dollar on boondoggles for every new dollar spent on defense. Breaking this approach for good is the best part of the new deal. 
 
The next best thing is that there is not one line of tax hikes or “revenue enhancements” in the whole thing. Congrats to Speaker McCarthy for this critical win for spending discipline.
 
Some conservatives are angry that the GOP did not get everything that all of the 222 members of the caucus wanted. Realists know that was never going to happen, not with only one-half of the Congress under very narrow Republican control. 
 
But to make progress means winning in November of 2024, and this deal puts the GOP on the road to that crucial next step. 

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It looks like the days of wine and roses—and impunity—for the EPA are over. For the second time in as many years, the Supreme Court has rebuked the agency for expanding its jurisdiction without congressional authorization. 

Last year, the court ended the EPA’s attempts to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant.” Now they’ve unanimously rebuked the agency from attempting to regulate all  land with water on or even near it as part of the Clean Water Act. Justice Alito ended five decades of capricious regulatory actions by seriously limiting the “Waters of the U.S.” rule to a common-sense definition. 

After 19 years, the Sackett family prevailed—delivering a blow for liberty and the rule of law over the administrative state.

The court will have another opportunity to strike a much bigger blow against the entire bureaucratic state in the Loper Bright case. 

Let’s hope they choose to act for the rule of law over the administrative state then as well.

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Each year at this time, we are granted a three-day weekend and what amounts to a kick-off to the summer months ahead.

This year, Memorial Day comes amidst tense and dynamic times for the nation. 

And yet, on the world stage, our nation is facing challenges unlike anything we’ve seen since the end of the Cold War.

General Secretary Xi and the Chinese Communist Party sense weakness in this administration and are more aggressive and assertive than ever. When you consider Iran, Russia, North Korea, other rogue institutions and states and the still-present threat of radical Islam across the globe, we live in a very dangerous world.

I’m hopeful our nation will rise to the challenge yet again.

I know this: We are debtors to all those who have defended us for nearly 250 years now.

For all who bear the scars of service, for all who paid the ultimate price, for the families with an empty seat at the table…

We are in your debt.

Hundreds of millions of Americans salute you today.

A grateful nation says, “Thank you.”

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It came and went without much notice, but last week a new report showed drug deaths increased last year to nearly 110,000 Americans—an increase from the previous year’s nearly 107,000 deaths.  And these are undercounts, just drug poisonings—they don’t include drug involved suicides or fatal car crashes.  Consider: With drug deaths, we are now losing the equivalent of two major commercial airline crashes per day in America. This isn’t carnage—it’s slaughter.  

As for children, for Covid we closed schools, shut down athletic and other programs, vaxxed and masked our kids and scared the heck out of them.  Yet, in 2021, alone, we lost 154 percent more children from drug poisonings than Covid. And it’s getting worse.

We are actually witnessing a decrease in life expectancy. That’s unheard of in a society as wealthy, educated and developed as ours.   

We can ignore this problem, we can appease it, or we can roll up our sleeves and actually do something to stop the slaughter.

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A recent survey of Americans’ views of the news media by Gallup and the Knight Foundation “goes beyond others that have shown a low level of trust in the media,” according to an Associated Press report of the findings, “to the startling point where many believe there is an intent to deceive.”
 
That’s right. We think the media is lying.  This skepticism might be growing. 
 
Consider recent revelations by Republican-led House investigations about the 2020 letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials strongly suggesting that the discovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian disinformation operation. Right on cue, the letter released before the 2020 election, impacting it with a massive media publicity boost.
 
Now we’re on to the 2024 campaign, and the legacy media’s contempt for Donald Trump and the tens of millions of Americans who support him still burns with the heat of a thousand suns, and it certainly distorts media coverage. 
 
Journalists shouldn’t be surprised when they discover that feeling is mutual.

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Last week, the Supreme Court rejected last-ditch efforts to restrain illegal immigration by retaining Title 42. That’s the covid-era public health policy that let the government quickly expel certain asylum seekers.

Justice Neil Gorsuch penned a wise accompanying statement. He denounced all the emergency decrees — from lockdown orders to vaccine mandates — enforced during the pandemic. 

Calling them, rightly, “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country,” Justice Gorsuch was only getting started. He pointed out how executives closed churches but allowed casinos and other favored businesses to stay open. And he noted that abuses from the executive branch had occurred at every level of government.

The Justice concluded with a warning all of us must take to heart: “Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.” 

Let’s hope more of the nation starts listening.

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Regulations—imposed by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats—already impose $2 trillion dollars in compliance costs on Americans. That sum is roughly equal to the entire Canadian GDP.

The Biden administration’s already proposed rules to effectively outlaw gas stoves. Now they’re coming for other appliances.

One proposed rule mandates new dishwashers use 34 percent less water and 27 percent less power. Another would get rid of top-loading washing machines. The administration is eyeing microwaves and toothbrush chargers, too.

All this is being done in the name of “environmental justice.” But even as these rules erode our standard of living and make everything more expensive, can anyone quantify their benefits? Why are Americans sacrificing when China’s carbon emissions are nearly double ours and Europe’s combined—and they’re still building the equivalent of two coal plants per week?  

It’s time for the Biden administration to answer these pressing questions—and press “pause” on this regulatory state.

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You may have seen recent news reports where the new Ford Mustang is not going to have an AM Radio on the dashboard. We’ve heard similar reports about plans for radio in some of the EVs coming from automakers like Tesla, Audi, Porsche and more.
 
The car companies should not be moving this fast.
 
We all know the media’s landscape is changing quickly—but AM radio still has upwards of 45 million listeners every month. AM radio is the core of the Emergency Alert System for the nation.
 
When cell phones are dead … when mobile coverage is just not there, AM radio provides reliable, real-time help to Americans facing weather emergencies, traffic safety issues or other crises.
 
When other mediums fail, AM radio is a reliable source for help— always.
 
AM radio ought to remain on the dashboard of today’s cars.
 
In a rare, bipartisan move, Republicans and Democrats have introduced the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” in Congress.
 
It ought to move quickly through both houses of Congress.
 
Keep a wonderful system in the car and available.

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