Along with Tulsi Gabbard, who now serves as Director of National Intelligence, three Republican members of Congress were surveilled by the now-defunct TSA “Quiet Skies” program, independent journalist Matt Taibbi <a href="https://www.racket.news/p/not-only-tulsi-three-members-of-congress">reported</a> on Tuesday.
According to documents handed over to the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, two of the three Republican representatives were placed on a surveillance list before they were elected, but remained there after joining Congress. According to the Senate committee’s notes, “a cursory review would have revealed them to be a member of Congress, or a decorated U.S. veteran or service member,” Taibbi reported.
The names of the members of Congress and the states they represent were redacted in the government documents.
The TSA’s “Quiet Skies” program, which began in 2010, came under intense scrutiny last year after whistleblowers revealed that Gabbard — then a former Democratic congresswoman who was highly critical of the Democratic Party — was followed by Air Marshals and bomb-sniffing dogs under the TSA program. “Quiet Skies” was ended by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in June. Noem <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/06/05/secretary-noem-ends-politicized-tsa-watchlist-program-has-failed-prevent-single">said</a>, “It is clear that the Quiet Skies program was used as a political rolodex of the Biden Administration — weaponized against its political foes and exploited to benefit their well-heeled friends.”
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The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee also revealed that TSA approved a watchlist, or “enhanced screening,” for people “suspected of traveling to the National Capital Region” in connection with the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The watchlist was deemed appropriate for people “believed to pose an elevated risk” but for whom “there is a current lack of specific information relating to unlawful entry into the U.S. Capitol.”
Gabbard was surveilled on at least eight flights during the summer of 2024, according to documents handed over to the committee. The former Democratic lawmaker was listed as a “possible affiliate” of a member of the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). According to The New York Times, Gabbard landed on the list after she attended an event “at the Vatican that was organized by a European businessman who appeared on an F.B.I. watch list.”
A text exchange between Marshals assigned to follow Gabbard from July 22, 2024, also pointed to the TSDB as the reason that Gabbard was placed on the list.
“So Gabbard is an affiliate with a TSDB, and since she’s no longer in Congress that’s probably why she hit for the rule,” one Marshal wrote.
“Yeah I talked with [redacted] about it and that’s the conclusion we came to as well,” a second Marshal replied.
“Cool cool.”
One former Marshal, however, told Taibbi that the decision to place Gabbard on the list wasn’t necessarily made by an automated database.
“Obviously, there is a way for human beings to influence the decision tree above our level,” the former Marshal said.
Taibbi testified before the Senate committee on Tuesday and ripped the federal government’s “Quiet Skies” surveillance program.
“Before Quiet Skies was discontinued by this administration, it was a symbol of the steep decline of federal enforcement since 9/11. The government spent $200 million a year following up to 50 people a day for a program that in its history never once led to an arrest, or thwarted a single criminal act,” Taibbi told the committee. “Despite its demonstrated inutility and grave civil liberties concerns it was re-funded year after year because this is what our government does now: it gathers information on its own citizens as an end in itself.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
The full opening statement of <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mtaibbi</a> <a href="https://t.co/NJ2fRqNeWX">https://t.co/NJ2fRqNeWX</a> <a href="https://t.co/TaGBhBfYY1">pic.twitter.com/TaGBhBfYY1</a>
— Emily Chapple (@blonde4thewin) <a href="https://twitter.com/blonde4thewin/status/1973065367527260667?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

TSA, Tulsi Gabbard

Three GOP Congress Members Were Placed Under TSA Surveillance Program That Targeted Tulsi Gabbard

Congress

Federal Government

Politics

Republicans

Surveillance

Tulsi Gabbard

As conditions in northern Nigeria continue to deteriorate, the U.S. State Department inexplicably approved a potential sale of <a href="https://www.dsca.mil/Press-Media/Major-Arms-Sales/Article-Display/Article/4273754/nigeria-munitions-precision-bombs-and-precision-rockets">$346 million</a> in arms to the Nigerian military. The multimillion-dollar deal comes as northern Nigeria further descends into violent turmoil as killings, kidnappings, and raids continue to destabilize communities throughout the region.
After years of <a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/">working in the region</a>, I&#8217;ve seen arms deals like this before. They rarely, if ever, work. In fact, they often make things worse. The U.S. has a terrible habit of assuming money or weapons can resolve every conflict, while ignoring the unique cultural and historical factors that created the problem in the first place.
The Nigerian government indeed needs assistance in providing and maintaining security. Terrorist groups like Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), Boko Haram, and a host of factional bandit groups have successfully destabilized nearly the entire northern territory of the country. The Nigerian military is ill-equipped to deal with these challenges.
The International Society for Civil Liberties has calculated that more than <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/christians-killed-nigeria-religion-2116416">7,000 Christians were killed</a> during the first 220 days of 2025. Although the violence is predominantly focused on the Christian community, Muslims are suffering at the hands of these extremist groups, too. Just this month, armed extremists entered a mosque in northern Nigeria and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/bandits-kill-least-27-northern-nigeria-mosque-attack-officials-say-2025-08-19/">killed 27 worshippers</a>. This year is already the deadliest in recent memory, and by year&#8217;s end, it will very likely be the deadliest ever in Nigeria’s history.
In the face of rising violence and extremism, from 2000 to 2021, the U.S. State Department dumped $232 million in “<a href="https://watson.brown.edu/chrhs/files/chrhs/imce/partnerships/Civ-Mil/Nigeria-May-2022-Factsheet.pdf">security sector assistance</a>,” $593 million in foreign military sales, and $305 million in “direct commercial sales” from private companies into Nigeria. All in an effort to stop the rise of terrorism and suppress newly formed terrorist groups, including Boko Haram.
Did it work? Absolutely not.
Since Boko Haram’s formation in 2002, they have only grown in strength and numbers. What started as a handful of extremists with Jihadi ideals to rid northern Nigeria of anything western has grown into an army of thousands. And while the U.S. was still throwing money and weapons at the problem, another, more menacing group was forming. In 2015, ISWAP was born when a group within Boko Haram defected and pledged its allegiance to ISIS. This group has grown into an army of 20,000.
While both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses tried to solve the problem with money and arms, the problem only grew. 
By the end of 2020, an estimated <a href="https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/nigeria-s-silent-slaughter-62-000-christians-murdered-since-2000">60,000 people were directly killed</a> by the violence of these two groups alone. And according to a 2021 report by the United Nations Development Programme, the insurgency had <a href="https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/migration/ng/Assessing-the-Impact-of-Conflict-on-Development-in-NE-Nigeria---The-Report.pdf">caused the death of 350,000 people</a> from the conflict’s indirect consequences (like lack of food, healthcare, etc).
Anyone looking at the policy of selling arms to Nigeria would be hard pressed to say, “Job well done.”
Arms sales to Nigeria are a debacle for two reasons. First, Nigeria is notorious for its corruption. Corruption is woven into the very fabric of Nigeria’s culture. As quickly as the U.S. sends money and arms, the resources are often diverted from their intended destination.
In 2016, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/nigerian-military-some-officers-selling-arms-to-boko-haram/3493038.html">Nigeria’s military was forced to admit</a> that many of its officers were selling arms and ammunition to Boko Haram and fraudulently diverting hundreds of millions of dollars budgeted to help suppress the insurgency. One four-star general was even accused of <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/nigerian-military-some-officers-selling-arms-to-boko-haram/3493038.html">skimming $24 million</a> to build a shopping center in Abuja. He was relieved of his command but never convicted.
For a State Department that seems set on getting rid of fraud, waste, and abuse, I don’t think sending unsupervised money and weapons to Nigeria is a wise step in the right direction.
Secondly, the Nigerian military has been known to make serious mistakes that cost innocent lives. The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0y30766kjo">latest example</a> happened in May, when the Nigerian Air Force bombed a local self-defense group, mistaking them for insurgents. Ironically, the <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/nigeria/">State Department&#8217;s Annual Human Rights Report</a> warning that Nigerian air strikes kill civilians was released the same week the department approved the latest weapons sale.
The reality is this: Nigeria needs help to suppress the growth of terrorist groups in the north and they cannot fight stone-cold killers with peace signs and flowers.
However, this is an extremely complex problem, and the solution is not unilateral. It will take a multi-layered approach to see any degree of success. Any funding and weapons should never be approved without a plan for oversight and strict accountability – something that has never been part of our weapons aid in the past.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I know <a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/">northern Nigeria</a>. I know the language, the culture, and the people. And one thing I am sure of is that if all the U.S. is prepared to do is throw guns, ammunition, and money at the problem, we will only get more of the same.
* * *
<a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/ourfounder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brad Brandon</a> is the founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Across Nigeria</a>. Since 2018, he has been actively serving in predominantly high-risk, highly persecuted areas like Northern Nigeria and other parts of West Africa.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

military equipment ammunition and camouflage uniform

Why The Latest U.S. Arms Deal With Nigeria Will Only Fuel More Violence

Africa

Military Weapons

Nigeria

Opinion

State Department

A week ago, President Donald Trump <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/dariosabaghi/2025/08/11/trump-says-marijuana-rescheduling-will-be-decided-within-weeks/">said</a> that he would soon decide whether to move cannabis from Schedule I to III for purposes of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA), which would take marijuana out of the category of drugs that cannot be used for any purpose. Doing so would be a huge mistake. Huge.
Congress placed cannabis in Schedule I — the category for drugs that have no legitimate medical use, that are potentially addictive, and have no safe use even under a physician’s supervision — when it passed the CSA 55 years ago. While Congress empowered the U.S. Attorney General, after consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to reschedule cannabis, in the ensuing half-century, no Republican or Democratic attorney general has done so, and no court has ruled that they must do so.
In 2023, however, cannabis advocates finally found a friend. Admiral Rachel L. Levine, HHS Assistant Secretary for Health under President Biden, <a href="http://www.jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2834954">recommended</a> that Attorney General Merrick Garland transfer cannabis into Schedule III. To justify that conclusion, Levine invented a newfangled test that relied heavily on the fact that multiple states have adopted medical cannabis programs. As a matter of law, that rationale is wrong for multiple reasons.
First, Congress could not have been clearer that it is the exclusive responsibility of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not the states, to decide whether a drug is safe, effective, and uniform. Levine’s rationale effectively and unlawfully transfers decision-making authority from the FDA to the states.
Second, the FDA has never approved the botanical form of cannabis as a safe, effective, and uniformly made drug. The FDA has approved the synthesis of compounds found in the plant by legitimate pharmaceutical companies, but has not approved the interstate distribution of the cannabis plant enjoyed by Cheech and Chong and Harold and Kumar fans.
Third, the FDA could not find that the cannabis plant is safe, effective, and uniformly made.
Start with its safety. The cannabis sold today is <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110381/witnesses/HHRG-116-IF14-Wstate-VolkowN-20200115.pdf">far more powerful</a> than the version smoked at Woodstock. At that time, the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content — the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis — was 3-6%. Now, some concentrated cannabis products can have a 90% THC content. That difference is like comparing near beer to grain alcohol.
Growing evidence also links cannabis use to a host of <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110381/witnesses/HHRG-116-IF14-Wstate-VolkowN-20200115.pdf">adverse physical outcomes</a>, such as oral, head, and neck cancers; cardiovascular disorders; pulmonary disease; and numerous adverse psychological effects, such earlier onset of psychosis; reduced IQ; childhood poisonings; amotivational syndrome; increased school absenteeism; and a reduced likelihood of graduating high school, enrolling in a university, or completing higher degree requirements. Heavy cannabis users and people who begin its use as minors and continue into adulthood are particularly <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110381/witnesses/HHRG-116-IF14-Wstate-VolkowN-20200115.pdf">susceptible</a> to these harms.
Plus, botanical cannabis can be adulterated with a host of dangerous, unhealthy, or downright disgusting contaminants. Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told Congress in 2020 that “individuals across the country are using cannabis strains and extracts that have not undergone the rigorous clinical trials required to show that they are safe and effective for medical use, and are not regulated for consistency or quality.”
As I explained in an <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">earlier article</a>, among the “hodgepodge” of dangerous contaminants found in the cannabis sold today are E. coli, fungi, mold, toxins, hazardous chemical solvents such as butane and propane, pesticides, heavy metals (such as arsenic, lead, and mercury), and other harmful and disgusting substances such as formaldehyde and insects. The FDA would never allow such contaminants to be present in any drug sold to the public.
Cannabis can also lead to physical dependence in users. Heavy or long-term use can lead a person to develop a tolerance to THC, requiring ever greater quantities of the chemical to experience the same euphoria. As drug policy experts Wayne Hall and Rosalie Pacula have explained, there is a 10% risk of addiction for people who have ever used cannabis, a 20-33% for people who use it more frequently, and a 50% risk — &#8220;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">a coin flip</a>” — for people who use it daily. Driving while stoned can, of course, lead to motor vehicle accidents that maim or kill pedestrians or other drivers and their passengers.
Keep in mind that the FDA has <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">never</a> given approval for a drug to be smoked. Why? There is no uniform depth or length of any one inhalation, and no uniform number of inhalations that users follow. Moreover, the nation concluded over 60 years ago that smoking burnt carbon products damages a smoker’s health, which explains why major medical institutions such as the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the Royal College of Physicians have <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">not</a> recommended smoking as a legitimate drug delivery system.
The raw cannabis plant also is not “effective” for purposes of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Only a handful of controlled studies have examined whether pot can be used as a legitimate treatment for disease or injury; the results are <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/public-policy-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2019/09/17-2-Larkin-Madras.pdf">inadequate</a> to draw any scientific conclusion.
The most common justification offered is that its psychoactive calming effect makes it a legitimate analgesic alternative for pain. But that argument is medically <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/public-policy-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2019/09/17-2-Larkin-Madras.pdf">unsound</a>. Cannabis is too weak to substitute for opioids as a treatment for severe pain — indeed, it hinders cessation of opioid use by anyone trying to kick an opioid <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4127123/pdf/nihms609765.pdf">dependency</a> — and scientific proof that THC is a valid treatment for lower levels of pain is also lacking.
To be sure, smoking a joint can get you “high,” but that is not the test for a medicine’s effectiveness. As Dr. Peter Bach, Director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-weed-is-medicine-so-is-budweiser-11547770981?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAh7LaDEYv_vcqs-izvRtTLHvE4_TMMU_qu3NyDxy9OXughPlX3zaBL-&amp;gaa_ts=689c8e99&amp;gaa_sig=tzI2Ti78lH5zRhqIjd3w0ZVcT308pAa8r1GA3Re1URauoN8dYXnoBs5EqZYAmoitDwKaFsuYPpeZooGzKZ9AwA%3D%3D">explained</a>, “[E]very intoxicant would pass that sort of test because you don’t experience pain as acutely when you are high. If weed is a pain reliever, so is Budweiser.”
Finally, the cannabis plant is not a <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">uniformly made product</a>. As Brian Thomas and Mahmoud ElSohly <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">explained</a> in their book The Analytical Chemistry of Cannabis, “The number of parameters on which cannabis can vary is enormous,” and differs according to “strain, growing conditions, harvesting methods and handling,” to “storage and processing of the raw material to combining them with a wide variety of foods and other excipients in manufacturing, and to “methods of administration (eating, smoking, ‘vaping,’ applying to mucous membranes)” and so forth.
Botanical cannabis also varies according to potency and the presence of cannabinoids (i.e., biochemically active compounds), which tends to <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">offset or moderate</a> the potential adverse effects of high THC consumption, such as anxiety, cognitive impairment, amotivational syndrome, dependence or addiction, and psychosis.
In sum, the Levine recommendation from 2023 is wrong as a matter of law and medically unsound, indeed dangerous. If the President truly wants to Make America Healthy Again, he should reject that recommendation.
* * *
Paul J. Larkin is the John, Barbara &amp; Victoria Rumpel Senior Legal Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Trump Administration Considers Reclassifying Marijuana As A Less Dangerous Drug

Dude, Rescheduling Cannabis Downwards Would Be A Huge Mistake. Huge.

addiction

Drugs

Marijuana

This week, President Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115092130707196133">sent a letter</a> to Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022, informing her of her immediate removal from her position of service, citing allegations of mortgage fraud.
In a time when buying a home is out of reach for millions of Americans, in part due to the high interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, it is obvious that someone who allegedly committed mortgage fraud by claiming two different homes as their main residence to get better loan terms would be unfit to serve. While the President provided documentation alleging fraud, time will tell whether Ms. Cook indeed committed fraud. Innocent until proven guilty.
Aside from this point, however, there is a much larger problem at play.
The Constitution is clear: All members of the Executive Branch report to the President of the United States. This is a basic chain-of-command that is not difficult to understand.
Yet time and time again, we see political appointees cling for dear life to their appointed, and temporary, positions of service, exhibiting unmatched levels of arrogance and entitlement.
Take Lisa Cook, for example.
A decorated former professor of economics who has conducted plenty of research and advised the Obama administration, her resume passes muster. Still, are there not thousands of other economic experts who might serve the American people in this position?
Not according to Ms. Cook, who remains defiant.
“I will not resign,” she <a href="https://x.com/bencasselman/status/1960175891658498543">pouted</a> through her attorney like a petulant child, adding that the President of the United States has no authority to fire her.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Just received this statement from Lisa Cook, via her attorney: 
&#8220;President Trump purported to fire me &#8216;for cause&#8217; when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have… <a href="https://t.co/57C6p0cwMI">https://t.co/57C6p0cwMI</a>
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) <a href="https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1960175891658498543?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @bencasselman/X
Of course, that is not true.
As every middle school civics student knows, and as President Trump spelled out quite clearly in his letter, his authority comes from Article II of the Constitution of the United States: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
Lawyers are scrambling in Washington and across the nation to come up with legal arguments for both sides. But it doesn’t take a Juris Doctorate, just a basic reading comprehension level, to understand that the President oversees the Executive Branch. Ultimately, all members of the Executive Branch report to him.
If that were not the case, then who is in charge? 
Who has the authority to appoint and fire within the Executive? Lisa Cook?
Let’s take it a step further to examine the practicality of the matter: Why on earth would Ms. Cook wish to continue her service when her boss, the President, has fired her? She is no longer wanted in the Trump administration. This was not a lifetime appointment. She was always going to have to return back to the real world and her real job.
Cue the arrogance to center stage.
Ms. Cook apparently believes she alone is capable of serving as on the Board of Governors at the Fed, and that her politically-appointed position holds more power in it than the President of the United States holds via Article II of the Constitution.
She will use the mainstream media and the fury of liberal Democrats who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome (looking at you, Gavin Newsom) for as many news cycles as she can to stir up trouble and get her 15 minutes of fame.
Meantime, those Americans trying to afford a home will just have to wait.
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Lisa Cook is not the first, nor will she be the last, to throw a temper tantrum when asked to leave. She is just one of thousands of bureaucrats in Washington who mistakenly believe they are independent from and just as important as the sitting President of the United States.
Woe to anyone, including the president, who challenges that notion!
But perhaps the American people can use this moment to see just how difficult it is for the president to exert his authority over the very government he has been elected to lead. Millions of Americans voted for President Donald Trump. Nobody voted for Lisa Cook.
They voted for his vision, his leadership, and his discretion. They voted for his judgment. Politically-appointed bureaucrats may not like it, but that is how democracy works.
Time to pack your things, Ms. Cook.
* * *
Carly Bird is a Republican strategist and founder and president of Bird’s Eye Consulting. She previously served as the national spokeswoman for Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

President Trump Meets With His Cabinet At The White House

Yes, The President Can Fire Politically-Appointed Bureaucrats

Federal Reserve

President Trump

The following is a portion of an edited transcript from a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mrn-250824-member-exclusive?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel">Weekend Edition of Morning Wire</a> where Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley sat down with Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us now is Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget. Maya, thanks so much for coming on. First, tell us, what exactly is the <a href="https://www.crfb.org/">Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget</a>?
MAYA: Thanks for having me. Other than a mouthful of a name, it&#8217;s a bipartisan nonprofit watchdog group. Basically, we&#8217;re very concerned about fiscal policy, meaning how big our debt and deficits are and we don&#8217;t have a political agenda at all. I&#8217;m a political independent. Our board and our staff are from across the political spectrum. But we are deeply concerned that our political environment now focuses on borrowing when we shouldn&#8217;t be because of the political benefits of not actually dealing with trade-offs. And that concern has been growing over time.
JOHN: I wanted to ask you exactly about that. You&#8217;ve been warning about borrowing. Why is the growing debt so dangerous for the U.S. economy? What specific ways will it actually impact Americans?
MAYA: I think that&#8217;s one of the biggest challenges about this whole issue. It&#8217;s really not something that feels directly related to us as individuals, but it&#8217;s directly related to everything we care about. The fiscal health of the country is really the underpinning of both our economic and our national security strength. So, if your debt is too high — and ours without question is — every warning sign that there is is blinking bright, bright red right now. But if your debt is too high, it actually means that the government borrows so much money, it squeezes out the investment possibility and the private sector. It slows growth and slows productivity, it pushes up inflation, pushes up interest rates, all sorts of things that slow economic growth, which translates into lower wages, lower standard of living, and less job security. Nothing good on the economic front. That&#8217;s one. 
Two, it means that our budget has huge pressure because interest payments start to absorb more and more of our resources. Whether you want huge tax cuts or huge growth in spending, we can fight about those things, but interest payments get the first claim on the dollar in the budget. Right now it&#8217;s our second largest item in the budget and the single fastest growing item. It also means that when we have national emergencies where you should be borrowing, it&#8217;s more difficult to do so. And it means that, if you&#8217;re trying to fight a recession or a pandemic or a national emergency, you may have high pressure on upward interest rates when you&#8217;re trying to borrow. Whereas, if your debt&#8217;s lower, that doesn&#8217;t happen. 
But it&#8217;s also expanded now where it&#8217;s not just an economic issue, it is a national security issue. We are borrowing from countries with whom we are not aligned. We are not able to make our own national security decisions just from a strategic and security perspective, we have to think about budget resources and you don&#8217;t want to be in that position. So it weakens our ability to respond to emergencies, take advantage of opportunities. But bottom line, we can do fewer things and we become poor as a nation.
And finally, for those people who worry about the next generation, it&#8217;s really, really [hosing] a generation that&#8217;s already facing so many challenges. They are facing a much more difficult, fast-paced, changing world and we have tied up their budget with interest payments and promises to seniors. They don&#8217;t have the fiscal flexibility to respond and they owe a whole lot of debt because of the borrowing we took on.
&nbsp;
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/debt-deficits-disaster-can-washington-change-course/id1576594336?i=1000723297012" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
JOHN: Like you said, it&#8217;s insidious because you don&#8217;t feel a lot of the effects. There are a lot of things that we can&#8217;t do now, things that we could have done if we had more money available. And then, kicking the can down the road. We&#8217;re not feeling it now – but our kids will feel it, and their kids will feel it. Is there any progress on this in Washington? Anyone paying attention to this?
MAYA: Yes, it&#8217;s so discouraging, honestly, because the situation is getting worse. Our debt to GDP is getting worse. Our annual deficits are getting worse, and this is outside of emergencies. And, frankly, our political environment and willingness to talk about this is much, much worse. We&#8217;re so polarized. You have both parties basically fighting with each other by giving away more things. &#8220;I&#8217;ll give you tax cuts, no taxes on this.&#8221; &#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll give you bigger tax cuts, and I&#8217;ll increase the spending.&#8221; &#8220;I&#8217;ll also increase the spending.&#8221; It used to be that you thought of Republicans as wanting tax cuts and Democrats as wanting spending increases. It&#8217;s literally both now. So, they fight for these huge giveaways. 
So, no, the situation is frankly very troubling both from an economic, national security, but also a political perspective. And internally, because it&#8217;s frustrating to work on an issue where you know we&#8217;re not going to have the big debt deal that we really need to have this year, for instance, a lot of times the best we can do and sort of why we&#8217;re able to pat ourselves on the back for some work is when things would have been worse without the kind of fiscal pressure we put on. But it&#8217;s really frustrating to say, &#8220;Well, we borrowed a trillion dollars, but we might have borrowed a trillion and a half if it weren&#8217;t for our pushing against this issue.&#8221; We&#8217;ve got to do better than that. We&#8217;ve got to start actually turning the ship around and bringing the debt as a share of GDP trajectory down instead of continuing to grow it&#8230;
* * *
<h3><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/debt-deficits-disaster-can-washington-change-course/id1576594336?i=1000723297012">Catch the full interview with Maya MacGuineas on Morning Wire.</a></h3>

National Debt

‘Blinking Bright, Bright Red’: Maya MacGuineas On America’s Debt, Deficits, And Disaster

'Blinking Bright, Bright Red': Maya MacGuineas On America’s Debt, Deficits, And Disaster

Budget

finance

Morning Wire

Spending Bill

U.S. House of Representatives

According to polls, the increased amount of support for New York Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is coming from people under the age of 35. 
Mamdani has never held a real job in his entire life. If you were looking for the definition of a career useless person, this would be the guy. 
You might say to yourself: How does a person with effectively no résumé, who worked for his mommy and was a rapper, wind up as the Democratic nominee in New York City?
But to misunderstand that is to misunderstand everything about Gen Z.
I&#8217;m not a politician, so I don&#8217;t have to pretend that the concerns of Gen Z are legitimate. I understand that if you&#8217;re a politician, then you have to placate people when they emotionally explain to you why their life is so difficult. Sometimes people do have difficult lives with real challenges in the world.
But when I hear from Gen Z that the American dream is dead to them, all I can think of is this: You have got to be kidding me.
I&#8217;ve read many pieces over the last couple of years now that Gen Z has it tougher than any generation in modern history. I thought to myself, “I&#8217;m going to vomit.”
How many serious wars have they had to live through? Zero. Zero serious terrorist attacks. They have lived in the most prosperous time in human history and the healthiest time in human history.
But because their rent is too high in New York City, while they concomitantly hold some sort of nonprofit jobs, they whine.
I don&#8217;t mean everyone in Gen Z complains without reason — there are many people who are suffering, who have a disease, who have health problems, who have been dealt a rough hand by life.
Those are not the people I&#8217;m talking about.
The generational complaint that somehow Gen Z has it worse than the millennials or Gen X or the boomers, or the Greatest Generation, ignores literally all of American history, all of it.
But if you&#8217;re a politician, you can make bank by pretending that these people have legitimate concerns and they&#8217;re not just being ungrateful and bratty. For these folks, Mamdani is an avatar.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2259-nyc-s-whiny-brats-pick-a-mayor?elementPosition=5&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
He has no resume. He grew up absolutely loaded with wealth, and currently is taking advantage of a rent-controlled apartment in New York City. He is currently living in a rent-stabilized apartment where the rent is $2,500 a month. The market rate would be $8,000 per month. He earns $147,000 a year and is campaigning on housing affordability in New York City.
You might think to yourself, “That&#8217;s crazy. How are all of these socialists in New York City supporting somebody who&#8217;s so clearly a hypocrite?”
But that misses the point: So many folks in America look to their politicians as aspirational figures. I think a lot of people who love President Trump view him as an aspirational figure, somebody who&#8217;s very wealthy and very powerful, somebody who&#8217;s made more of himself than otherwise he might have had at the beginning. Yes, he grew up rich, but he made himself into a brand name available all across the world for literally decades, and then became President of the United States twice.
It&#8217;s an aspirational thing.
But what if the Gen Z aspiration is to be a career loser who lives off of their parents’ income until they get some sort of cush government job living in a rent-stabilized apartment? What if that is the actual aspiration? What if people look up to Zohran Mamdani not in spite of the fact that he is a loser, but because he is a loser?
A lot of New Yorkers now have jobs and backgrounds very similar to Mamdani’s.
And this is the central point. 
Armin Rosen noted in <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/zohran-mamdanis-fantasy-island">Tablet Magazine</a>:
<blockquote>New York is thought of as the sink-or-swim epicenter of American capitalism, but that’s not true anymore. The city is home to more than 600,000 jobs in <a href="https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/critical-role-of-nonprofits-in-new-york.pdf">the nonprofit sector </a>and a roughly equal number of <a href="https://dol.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2025/08/new-york-city.pdf">jobs in government</a>. Nonprofits now employ nearly 17 percent of the city’s total private-sector workforce, compared to 10 percent nationally. Wage growth in the nonprofit sector healthily outpaced the rest of the private sector statewide in New York between 2017 and 2022, 29.3 to 25.3 percent.</blockquote>
Wage growth in New York City is healthy because it&#8217;s all done off of government grants.
All of those nonprofits are not independently raising their money. They&#8217;re getting money from the government. Thus, they&#8217;re effectively second-order government employees.
When you look at the stats in New York, you understand just why Mamdani is so successful. You have well over 50% of the population that is working for some sort of government-orchestrated, government-organized, or government-funded segment of the economy.
In other words, the people who are getting money from the government are not the people who are paying for the government. They&#8217;re all Zohran Mamdani types. They&#8217;re living off the largesse of government.
Meanwhile, all of the rent across New York City has been rent-stabilized. 50% of all of the units across New York City have been rent-stabilized. One million units have been rent-stabilized, which means that there&#8217;s an artificially low supply of new construction in New York City. That means the prices go up. 
Mamdani is complaining about “affordability.” It should be pointed out that it&#8217;s all left-wing policies that made things unaffordable. Additionally, of the people who are in New York City trying to afford those rent-controlled, rent-stabilized apartments, a huge number of them are on the government dole, so they are earning from both ends. The government is stabilizing their rent, and at the same time, the government is likely subsidizing their salary.
This is why I&#8217;m irritated when I hear from Gen Z about how tough things are in places like New York.
We should point out that there has been this mindset that has settled in among the American population that you are supposed to die where you were born. 
This is not a typically American idea. There are people on the Right who believe this. There are people on the Left who believe this. But it is not a traditional American idea. The traditional American idea, if you go back to the very beginning, was to cross an ocean with nothing to guarantee what was going to happen. People went into the wilderness, built a crappy house, and tried to start a business. And if that didn&#8217;t work, they would abandon that place and move further to the west, across mountain ranges, across rivers.
That was the original American idea.
Traditionally, when it was too expensive to live in a place, Americans went somewhere else.
But Americans are not doing that anymore. Instead, the reason so many New Yorkers seem warm on socialism is that many New Yorkers are already living a form of socialism. They are living the Zohran Mamdani lifestyle, where they are being supported by the government in a wide variety of ways, ranging from the regulatory to the actual subsidy.
So when they say things are so hard in New York City, and the answer is more redistribution from the people who are earning all of the income and paying all the taxes, the answer should be NO.
At some point, there&#8217;s going to have to be a call for some level of responsibility on the part of young people.
I grew up in a 1,100 square-foot house with one bathroom and shared a bedroom with my three sisters until I was eleven. I did have the ultimate privilege: a solid two-parent household.
And you know what? It was a fine life. I&#8217;m grateful for that life.
I&#8217;m telling this story because there is this dumb assumption that if you talk about mobility in America and the capacity of people to make smart decisions and to make the kinds of moves that will be necessary to achieve success, the immediate accusation is that it was only true for you, it&#8217;s not true for anybody else.
But it&#8217;s not only true for me. It is true for a huge majority of Americans. If you make smart decisions in America, and if you stop whining for five seconds, and if you go out and make better decisions for yourself, you can make a better life for yourself.
So many politicians make bank off this idea that America is dying, that the American dream is dying. Who does better because of that?
Politicians.
This is how they gain power, because every time they fail, they turn around and they say, “The system has failed. Give me more power.”
This is how you end up with Zohran Mamdani or Bernie Sanders.
It&#8217;s not going to work out for anyone who believes this garbage. It&#8217;s not going to work out for the city of New York. It&#8217;s not going to work out for the country.
The only person who can make your life better in the end is you. You are the person who makes your life better, not Mamdani, not Bernie Sanders.
Most Americans are not dreaming of a government job, making a decent salary, and living in a rent-stabilized apartment.
That is not the American dream.
It never was.

NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Holds Press Conf. On Political Opponents

NYC’s Whiny Brats Pick A Mayor

Ben Shapiro

Democratic Socialism

Democrats

Gen Z

Leftists

New York City

Renters

Zohran Mamdani

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt provided an update on Thursday morning regarding President Donald Trump&#8217;s federal operation to combat violent crime in Washington, D.C., saying that 45 more people were arrested on Wednesday night.
In addition to the 45 arrests made by federal authorities in collaboration with D.C. police, federal agents also detained 29 suspected illegal immigrants, Leavitt said. The charges against those arrested overnight on Wednesday included second- and first-degree assault and distribution of illegal drugs and narcotics. Authorities also seized three illegal firearms while making some of those arrests.
&#8220;In addition to that, there were 29 illegal aliens who were removed off of Washington, D.C., streets last night, many of whom had final orders of removal,&#8221; the White House press secretary told &#8220;Fox &amp; Friends.&#8221; &#8220;So these results are happening night after night because of the efforts of this federal task force that [is] working alongside the Metropolitan Police Department, who agree with this effort.&#8221;
&#8220;While Democrats want to rant and rave and coddle criminals, President Trump wants to put them behind bars, and that&#8217;s what this task force is focused on doing for the next 28 days,&#8221; Leavitt added.
Leavitt also argued that the &#8220;huge law enforcement presence&#8221; in the streets of the nation&#8217;s capital is deterring more violent crime.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/PressSec?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PressSec</a> on Making D.C. Safe Again: &#8220;Overnight, there were 45 criminal arrests made&#8230; In addition to that, there were 29 illegal aliens who were removed&#8230; If the Democrats had their way, there would be hundreds more criminals roaming free.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/rT8FREVSdg">pic.twitter.com/rT8FREVSdg</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1955977575651492304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 14, 2025</a></blockquote>
&nbsp;
Leavitt&#8217;s latest update adds to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/d-c-will-be-safe-again-feds-kick-off-trumps-violent-crime-crackdown-with-over-100-arrests?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=D.C.+%E2%80%98WILL+Be+Safe+Again%E2%80%99%3A%C2%A0Feds+Kick+Off+Trump%E2%80%99s+Violent+Crime+Crackdown+With+Over+100+Arrests">total arrest</a> number revealed on Wednesday, when Fox News reported that federal authorities made over 100 arrests between August 7-12. Following Trump&#8217;s order to federalize D.C. police, agents with the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Capitol Police, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives descended upon the nation’s capital. Trump also deployed around 800 National Guard troops to assist with federal efforts to crack down on crime in D.C.
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FBI Director Kash Patel said on Tuesday that his agents assisted in the arrest of at least 10 people, including one arrest &#8220;on a search warrant for a prior murder charge.&#8221; Democratic Congressional and city leaders continue to push back on Trump&#8217;s plan to address D.C.&#8217;s violent crime. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser argues that crime in the capital &#8220;is at its lowest level in 30 years.&#8221;
&#8220;We had an unacceptable spike in 2023, so we changed our laws and strategies. Now, crime levels are not only down from 2023, but from before the pandemic,&#8221; Bowser <a href="https://x.com/MayorBowser/status/1955408828964671749">said</a> earlier this week. &#8220;Our tactics are working, and we aren’t taking our foot off the gas.&#8221;
The president disagreed, and he took to Truth Social on Wednesday evening to cast doubt on the city&#8217;s official crime data.
&#8220;The Violent Crime Rate in D.C. has worsened, and the Murder Rate has essentially DOUBLED in just over a decade — But these are only the &#8216;official&#8217; statistics released by corrupt City Officials. The REAL numbers are many times worse,&#8221; Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115024069066734919">wrote</a>. &#8220;In fact, a Precinct Commander was just suspended for allegedly manipulating the Violent Crime Statistics, and the D.C. Police Union, likewise, says the real numbers are much higher.&#8221;
The president notched another major victory on Thursday when Washington, D.C., Police Chief Pamela A. Smith announced that the city would break from its &#8220;sanctuary city&#8221; policies, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-effect-d-c-police-break-from-sanctuary-city-policies-will-cooperate-with-ice?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Trump+Effect%3A+D.C.+Police+Break+From+Sanctuary+City+Policies%2C+Will+Cooperate+With+ICE">reported</a>.
“Effective immediately, members may assist federal immigration enforcement agencies with the following: Sharing information about persons not in MPD custody (e.g., during traffic stops). Providing transportation for federal immigration agency employees and detained subjects,” a press release signed by Chief Smith stated.

Federal agents in Washington, D.C.

D.C. Crime Crackdown Update: Authorities Arrest Dozens More, Including Suspected Illegal Immigrants

Donald Trump

Karoline Leavitt

Police

Trump Administration

Violent Crime

Washington D.C.

Trump Announces Deployment Of National Guard In Washington D.C.

Trump Moves To End D.C.’s Third-World Lawlessness. Democrats Lose It.

Crime

Matt Walsh

National Guard

President Donald Trump said on Thursday morning that illegal immigrants will not be included in the next census, adding that he has ordered the Commerce Department to begin working on a &#8220;new and highly accurate census that is based on results from the 2024 presidential election.&#8221;
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which falls under the Commerce Department, the first major <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2024/2030-census-planning-what-2024-brings.html">field test</a> for the 2030 census is set to take place in 2026, with another coming in 2028.
&#8220;I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,&#8221; Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114987220997209419">wrote</a> on Truth Social. &#8220;People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.&#8221;
The Census Bureau also <a href="https://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born/about/faq.html">says</a> that illegal immigrants, whom it refers to as &#8220;unauthorized migrants,&#8221; are included in censuses and surveys and added into &#8220;the total foreign-born population.&#8221;
&#8220;The U.S. Census Bureau uses the term foreign born to refer to anyone who is not a U.S. citizen at birth. This includes naturalized U.S. citizens, non-citizen U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents (immigrants), temporary migrants (such as foreign students), humanitarian migrants (such as refugees and asylees), and unauthorized migrants,&#8221; the bureau says.
Trump&#8217;s directive to remove illegal immigrants from the census could run into legal challenges. Section 2 of the 14th Amendment <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14-S2-1-1/ALDE_00000847/">states</a>, &#8220;Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.&#8221;
Trump is placing his focus on the census as Republicans and Democrats fight over redistricting in Texas ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans are also seeking to prevent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/blue-states-benefited-from-2020-census-mistakes-as-red-states-suffered-losses">census errors</a> from benefiting Democrat-led states in future elections, an issue from the 2020 census that the Census Bureau acknowledged in 2022.
Following the 2020 census, the government said that multiple red states, including Florida and Texas, were incorrectly undercounted, which led to them not receiving as many seats in Congress — which also determines electoral college votes — as they should have. Most of the overcounted states in the census were Democrat-led, including New York, Massachusetts, and Minnesota.
If the federal government follows through on Trump&#8217;s pledge to stop counting illegal immigrants in the census, a handful of states — both red and blue — could see their population numbers fall in 2030. According to a Pew Research <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/">survey</a> from last year, three states have illegal immigrant populations of more than one million: California (1.8 million), Texas (1.6 million), and Florida (1.2 million). As of 2024, New York had an illegal immigrant population of 650,000, New Jersey had 475,000, and Illinois had 400,000.

Trump Says Illegal Immigrants ‘Will Not Be Counted’ In The Next Census

2026 Midterms

Census Bureau

Election

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he is considering taking complete control of Washington, D.C., to fight the violent crime that &#8220;is totally out of control&#8221; and often committed by teenagers.
Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114977985620971126">wrote</a> on Truth Social that violent crime in the city is being committed by teenagers who are then getting &#8220;immediately released&#8221; if arrested. In his post, Trump shared a photo of a bloodied young man whom he said was &#8220;beaten mercilessly by local thugs.&#8221;
&#8220;They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it’s going to happen now!&#8221; the president said of the teenage criminals. &#8220;The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these &#8216;minors&#8217; as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14.&#8221;
&#8220;Washington, D.C., must be safe, clean, and beautiful for all Americans and, importantly, for the World to see. If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore,&#8221; Trump added.
The president also threatened to take control of the nation&#8217;s capital in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/law-and-order-trump-says-feds-should-take-over-washington-d-c">February</a>, blasting D.C. Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser&#8217;s leadership.
&#8220;I think that we should govern the District of Columbia. It&#8217;s so important,&#8221; Trump <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1892419597141262429">said</a> aboard Air Force One on February 19. &#8220;I think that we should run it strong, run it with law and order, make it absolutely flawlessly beautiful.&#8221;
D.C. leaders recently created a new police unit to focus on juvenile crime as the city faces an increase in teenagers fighting at school and breaking the law outside of school, NBC 4 Washington <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/dc-police-unit-to-focus-on-stopping-juvenile-crimes-before-they-happen/3883054/">reported</a>. Each year since 2020, the number of juveniles arrested in the nation&#8217;s capital has increased. In 2024, the majority of all robbery arrests involved juveniles, and around 60% of carjacking arrests through the first three months of 2025 involved minors.
Republicans in Congress <a href="https://statehood.dc.gov/page/why-statehood-dc">introduced</a> legislation earlier this year to end &#8220;home rule&#8221; in D.C., which allows residents to control their local affairs, and give Congress more control over the city. Under &#8220;home rule,&#8221; D.C. residents can elect their mayor and city council while Congress maintains some oversight. The city council is made up of 11 Democrats and two independents.
The bill, spearheaded by Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) and Mike Lee (R-UT), specifically called out &#8220;the mayor and city council’s failure to prevent violent crime, corruption, and voting by non-citizens.&#8221;

President Trump Returns To The White House From Scotland

Trump Threatens To Take Federal Control Of D.C. To Fight Violent Crime Committed By ‘Youths’

A decades-old court order that blocked the federal government from using tests to measure job applicants&#8217; skills was terminated by a D.C. judge on Friday, setting the stage for an overhaul of the federal workforce that could be one of President Donald Trump&#8217;s most lasting achievements.
In 1981, Angel Luevano sued the federal government over the Professional and Administrative Career Examination, a test that helped identify the best and brightest out of the tens of thousands who apply for government jobs each year. Luevano argued that the test kept too many blacks and Hispanics out of government, and, in the waning days of President Jimmy Carter&#8217;s administration, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) agreed to pause the test for five years.
Forty-four years later, the &#8220;Luevano Consent Decree&#8221; was somehow still intact. In January, the Trump administration filed a brief <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-cant-hire-for-competence-because-jimmy-carter-said-it-was-racist-trump-wants-to-fix-that">challenging the agreement</a> — a feat which required reopening a decades-closed court case in which the original judge had died. The administration argued that it was doubtful the decree was ever appropriate, and that, with Supreme Court case law outlawing affirmative action, it was certainly not now.
Angel Luevano is still alive, and agreed to terminate the consent decree, <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69731384/luevano-v-director-office-of-personnel-management/">court papers</a> show. Luevano was represented by lawyers from Hispanic and black civil rights groups, two of whom did not return a request for comment.
For almost half a century, the federal government has operated like a college that didn&#8217;t look at SAT scores when admitting students. Rescinding the Luevano Consent Decree could take the government from safety-school status to Ivy League.
&#8220;We&#8217;re making civil service great again,&#8221; OPM Director Scott Kupor told The Daily Wire Friday.
The move opens the door to technocratic hiring assessments that allow the government to hire applicants who objectively demonstrate the most aptitude. Kupor told The Daily Wire in an interview that the move means Americans may start getting better service at government agencies, with government being more helpful and responsive.
&#8220;The lasting opportunity here is: can we change the culture of the workforce in the federal government? Can we make it a high-performance culture? That will definitely be the president&#8217;s legacy, if we can make that successful,&#8221; he said.
After the demise of the Professional and Administrative Career Examination and similar tests, the government began relying on &#8220;self-assessments&#8221; to sift through job applicants, as it was the only measure that saw a sufficient number of minorities enter government. Applicants simply declared how good they were at a task, with no attempt to verify it or compare them to other applicants. That led to a hiring process that rewarded boasting and fabrications as much as merit.
Kupor said the de facto prohibition on government checking people&#8217;s competency before hiring them had become crippling in the modern age, with people using artificial intelligence or simply copy-and-paste to take a job advertisement&#8217;s requirements and send an application asserting that they had all those skills.
The inability to use objective measures to sort the most qualified applicants from a large pool — as virtually all other large employers do — has profoundly impacted the caliber of government employees. The Luevano Consent Decree was perhaps one of the largest applications ever of the philosophy known as &#8220;disparate impact,&#8221; which holds that anything that produces racially unbalanced outcomes must inherently be racist. But the fallout went beyond just minorities, leaving little way to differentiate a brilliant white job applicant from an incompetent white applicant.
The government was represented by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Department of Justice&#8217;s Civil Rights Division.
OPM General Counsel Andrew Kloster told The Daily Wire in an interview that the government did not make any concessions to reach the agreement. &#8220;They just flat out agreed,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It would not have happened without the original named plaintiff agreeing to it and the judge agreeing to accept it.&#8221;
&#8220;This is really kind of an understanding that disparate impact as a way to measure things is not the law of the land anymore. You have to actually show real discrimination. The explicit argument was that the objective tests themselves were racially biased, and obviously that&#8217;s bogus.&#8221;
It is yet to be decided whether OPM will institute a general aptitude test across agencies. But many specific job categories are likely to have their own tests. If the government is hiring, say, computer programmers, it won&#8217;t simply ask them how good they are at a programming language. Instead, it will administer a coding test to rank applicants on a uniform scale.
The hiring process used by government agencies for decades resulted in hiring that was, at best, random, and at worst, allowed the sort of cronyism and favoritism that the consent decree was supposed to avoid, Kupor said.
&#8220;We&#8217;re going to be able to attract really, really good people, because they&#8217;re going to be fairly tested for their merit,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It also really does eliminate a lot of potential for a bias in the hiring process if you actually use objective standards.&#8221;
&#8220;This is a win for fairness, as well as a win for getting American people the ability to get people with the appropriate skills into the right jobs.&#8221;

Scott Kupor And Eric Matthew Ueland Testify In Their Senate Nomination Hearing

For The First Time In 40 Years, The Federal Government Can Judge Applicants By Merit

federal workforce

Jimmy Carter

Office of Personnel Management

Racial Bias

Racism

After decades of investing in life science breakthroughs, from biotech platforms to diagnostic innovations, I’ve seen what’s possible when bold ideas meet real backing. I’ve also seen what happens when bureaucracy gets in the way. Nearly $52 billion flows through the National Institutes of Health each year — taxpayer money entrusted to one of the world’s most important engines of biomedical progress. It begs a tough question: Is the NIH delivering what it promises? In my opinion, not yet.
Discovery today moves faster than ever, but the NIH struggles to keep pace — not from lack of talent or mission, but because of outdated systems, fragmented structure, and a risk-averse culture. This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s not about dismantling anything. It’s about upgrading an essential institution to work the way science works: fast, open, collaborative, and accountable. Under Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s leadership, with his courage and clear-eyed vision, we’re closer than ever to meaningful reform.
The NIH’s 27 institutes and centers often function in isolation, duplicating work and missing chances to collaborate. In 2024, $9 billion went to indirect costs like admin overhead — paperwork, not pipettes or Petri dishes. Rep. Cathy McMorris proposed streamlining to 15 centers, a plan that ought to be seriously considered. Merging overlapping fields, say, translational medicine and biomedical imaging, would sharpen focus and accelerate progress. It would help the NIH act like a modern, integrated organization, not a loose confederation of silos. Let scientists spend their time in the lab, not in grant-cycle purgatory.
<div id="attachment_946227" style="width: 879px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-946227" class="size-large wp-image-946227" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2214721636-869x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 12: National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya speaks alongside President Donald Trump during a press conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 12, 2025, in Washington, DC. During the event, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at reducing the cost of prescription drugs and pharmaceuticals by 30% to 80%. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)" width="869" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2214721636-869x576.jpg 869w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2214721636-300x199.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2214721636-768x509.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2214721636.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 869px) 100vw, 869px" />Andrew Harnik/Getty Images</div>
Public funding comes with public accountability, and the NIH has work to do. Concerns over inadequate responses to research misconduct, opaque grant reviews, and questionable international ties — like those linked to risky pathogen studies — damage credibility and slow progress. What’s needed isn’t punishment but clarity. Reforms to tighten oversight, simplify peer review, and flag repeat issues will protect the science and the people behind it. The American public is generous in funding medical research. It’s time to be just as generous with the truth.
In my years as a venture capitalist, I’ve learned that real innovation comes from unexpected places — outsiders, first-time founders, scientists chasing questions no one else asks. But the NIH’s grant system favors the safe route, funding incremental research while visionary proposals, like a novel approach to Alzheimer’s, get passed over. Put more generalists and cross-disciplinary thinkers on peer review panels. Train reviewers to recognize high-risk/high-reward ideas. Carve out funding for newcomers applying for the first time. We can’t solve 21st-century problems if we’re afraid to back 21st-century thinkers.
The scientific landscape has changed — AI decodes protein structures, organ-on-chip tech replaces animal testing, wearables guide patient care. Yet the NIH uses tools and timelines built for another era. The new public access policy, requiring funded studies to be shared freely, is a good start. But modernizing how we evaluate, fund, and share research is overdue. AI-driven grant reviews and real-time data platforms could match the global pace of discovery. If we want to compete with China and Europe, we need to move faster.
Despite its massive budget, the NIH sends disproportionate funding to elite institutions. In 2023, half of all grants went to just 10 states. Great science can come from a fresh PhD in Idaho or a tenured lab in Iowa, but without grant caps, geographic diversity, and fair review standards, those ideas never get a shot. America doesn’t have a monopoly on good ideas. Let’s stop acting like it does.
Are all reform proposals perfect? No. They’ll need input from scientists, policymakers, and patients who count on the results. Ignoring the problem, though, is reckless. This isn’t about tearing down the NIH; it’s about retooling it for today’s challenges. I came to this country believing in what it stood for. I’ve backed companies that pushed the limits of healthcare. I believe American science is the best in the world, but it needs a system that doesn’t hold it back. Let’s build an NIH that earns trust, funds bold ideas, and turns the best thinking into real-world cures. It’s time we let science lead. 
* * *
Guy Paul Nohra is co-founder of Alta Partners, a leading Venture Capital firm in life sciences, funding over 150 companies in the healthcare/life sciences sector since 1996 through eight Venture Capital funds.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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