Prices rise. People blame capitalism. Politicians promise “solutions.” President Donald Trump wants to cap credit card interest rates. My socialist mayor wants to freeze rents. Elizabeth Warren wants politicians to decide what prices are “excessive.”    So I was surprised to see economist Donald J. Boudreaux’s new book titled “The Triumph of Economic Freedom.” “Economic freedom is losing!” I shout at him in my new video. “Republicans and Democrats vote against it.” “Free markets are on the ropes,” he replies. “But when you look at history, you see that when economic freedom is allowed to flourish, it does triumph. … It’s really important that people step back and look at economic history … [to see that] the more we move away from free markets, the worse things become.” We should have learned that from the Great Depression. Schools now teach children that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal “brought the U.S. out of the Great Depression.” Not true, says Boudreaux. “He created government programs all right, but they did not pull us out of the Depression. Unemployment in the 1930s was never below 10%.” When farmers complained about low prices, FDR blamed an oversupply of food. So the government paid farmers to destroy crops. “People were hungry and they were destroying food!” complains Boudreaux. “How was that good?” “It raised prices,” I say. “Farmers wouldn’t go bankrupt.” “People can’t eat prices! They have to eat food.” FDR’s other “solutions” included higher taxes on the rich and more regulation of businesses—proposals we hear today. “By introducing these new unprecedented programs,” says Boudreaux, “the New Deal made investment in America a risky project. That kept private investors on the sidelines.” Why wouldn’t they invest? “FDR is criticizing businesspeople and blaming [them] for all that ails America,” replies Boudreaux. “Those businesspeople were saying, ‘I’m not going to trust my property to you.'”         The Depression continued for more than a decade, until, according to the Library of Congress, “Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression.” That’s a myth, too, says Boudreaux. “Unemployment fell. That’s not hard to do when you conscript 2.5 million men into the military. But If you look at the actual performance of the economy, that didn’t recover until the late 1940s.” It recovered, says Boudreaux, because “Republicans won the 1946 election, and they were more pro-investor, pro-business than the Democrats.” And FDR died. “Harry Truman was less vigorously opposed to capitalists … So investors were finally confident to come back into the playing field.” Seventy years later, politicians from both parties created the “Great Recession” by having government subsidize mortgages. When the mortgage bubble burst, home prices collapsed, banks lost big, and millions lost jobs. “What the government did was impose policies that made homeownership seem affordable to people who couldn’t afford it and compel banks to back those mortgages,” explains Boudreaux. “When things went down … you had this calamity.” Politicians blamed that recession on “an unregulated free market.” It’s a fallacy, says Boudreaux, “that deregulation led to the Great Recession. There was very little deregulation.” He says the “reason the Great Recession lasted as long as it did is because [President] Barack Obama kept saying hostile things about markets and businesspeople.” Obama did shout things like, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that!” “Negative words from the White House kept investors on the sidelines, kept unemployment higher than it would otherwise have been,” says Boudreaux. Obama’s policies didn’t help either. He expanded unemployment benefits, boasting it “made a difference in the lives of 12 million Americans!” “Yeah, it did,” says Boudreaux. “It kept them unemployed a lot longer … because people were being paid not to work.” Today, politicians and pundits continue to claim capitalism is a problem and government must step in to make it more fair. “They don’t know what they’re talking about!” says Boudreaux. “Government’s ‘solutions’ actually made things worse.” Free markets do work. If politicians just let them. COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who has served as the Senate’s Democrat whip for more than 20 years, went down to the Senate floor on Jan. 21, 2025, to speak about a bill aimed at protecting the lives of certain newborn babies. He was against it. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, as described in its official summary, would have established “requirements for the degree of care a health care practitioner must provide in the case of a child born alive following an abortion or attempted abortion.” What exactly would this proposed law have required a health care practitioner to do when dealing with a born baby who survived an attempted abortion? “Specifically,” said the bill’s summary, “a health care practitioner who is present must (1) exercise the same degree of care as would reasonably be provided to any other child born alive at the same gestational age, and (2) ensure the child is immediately admitted to a hospital.” “An individual who intentionally kills or attempts to kill a child born alive is subject to prosecution for murder,” it said. But the mother would not be prosecuted. “The bill,” said the summary, “bars the criminal prosecution of a mother of a child born alive under this bill and allows her to bring a civil action against a health care practitioner or other employee for violations.” Durbin considered this bill an outrage. “Tomorrow marks the 52nd year since our Nation’s highest Court issued a rule recognizing a woman’s constitutionally protected right to choose,” he said on the Senate floor on Jan. 21, 2025, according to the Congressional Record. “Roe v. Wade enshrined into law something that should have been a given in America: In America, women have the right to make decisions about their own bodies. And, as a result of Roe, America’s women took a giant leap forward in gender equity. The decision in Roe afforded women the right to choose whether, when, and how to start a family. “But,” Durbin said, “after nearly 50 years of progress, in June 2022, the Supreme Court overruled Roe with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, dragging women’s rights half a century backward.” “Instead of addressing the health care crisis that Dobbs unleashed, Republicans are now instead looking to make it even harder for women to access comprehensive and compassionate health care,” he said. “Tomorrow, they will attempt to bring to the floor the so-called Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” said Durbin. “The goal of the bill that we will consider, introduced by the Republicans, is to target and intimidate reproductive health care providers and make it harder for women to access comprehensive and compassionate health care.” Is it “compassionate” to deny health care to a newborn baby? The day after Durbin gave this speech, his Senate office put out a press release. It was headlined: “Ahead of the Roe v. Wade Anniversary, Durbin Condemns Republicans’ Sham ‘Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.’” That day the Senate held a cloture vote to end debate on the bill and bring it up for a final substantive vote. The cloture measure required 60 votes to succeed. It only got 52. Every Democrat in the Senate voted against it. The Dick Durbin who has now served in Congress for more than four decades has championed a dramatically different position on abortion than the Dick Durbin who first ran for the House of Representatives in 1982. That year, as this column has noted before, Durbin ran as a pro-life Democrat. In January 1982, he served as master of ceremonies at the Springfield Right to Life Committee’s annual “Respect for Life Observance.” This event, as explained by the committee, was designed “to speak for the unborn and bear witness to the right to life of all human beings.” On March 14, 1982, Durbin wrote a campaign letter emphasizing his pro-life position. “My record of opposition to abortion on demand has been public record for eight years,” he wrote. “As recently as January I was honored to serve again as Master of Ceremonies at the Annual Observance in the State Capitol for the fifth time.” “I oppose abortion on demand,” he wrote. “I support the Hatch Federalism Amendment which has been endorsed by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.” The Washington Post explained in a March 11, 1982, article what this amendment would do: “The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved something called the ‘human life federalism amendment.’ This newest vehicle of abortion foes, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and also known as the Hatch amendment, would amend the Constitution in order to erase the constitutional right to have an abortion established by the Supreme Court nine years ago. The amendment would return the abortion question to the states and Congress. But it is not a states’ rights or ‘new federalism’ initiative, for it stipulates that whichever law— state or federal—were ‘more restrictive’ would prevail.” On July 12, 2022, when Durbin was chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee, he presided over a hearing on “A Post-Roe America: The Legal Consequences of the Dobbs Decision.” At that hearing Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas quoted from a letter Durbin had written about abortion in 1989. Lee requested that this letter be included in the committee’s record, and it was. “I believe we should end abortion on demand and at every opportunity I have translated this belief into votes in the House of Representatives,” then-Rep. Durbin wrote in that 1989 letter. “I continue to believe the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade should be overturned.” Durbin announced last year that he will not seek reelection in 2026. History will remember him as someone who abandoned the right position and adopted the wrong position on the most profound issue of our time.COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The suspect arrested in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting on Saturday was identified by a law enforcement official as Cole Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area man who appears from social media sites to be a Caltech graduate working as a part-time teacher and game developer. The official said Allen, approximately 31 years of age, is a resident of Torrance, California, a coastal town that is part of the South Bay area adjacent to Los Angeles abutting Santa Monica Bay. The chief of the District of Columbia police department said investigators believe the suspect was a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the annual dinner was taking place, but that no motive had been determined. Facebook postings appearing to relate to Cole show that he was named “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024 by the Torrance office of C2 Education, a nationwide private test-preparation and tutoring service for college-bound students. A LinkedIn profile in the suspect’s name describes him as a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth.” He obtained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2017, and a master’s degree in computer science from California State University at Dominguez Hills in 2025, according to the profile. Caltech said in a statement that a person of that name graduated in 2017. Under job experience, the post shows he has worked for the past several years as a part-time teacher for C2 Education and as a self-employed game developer. He previously worked as a mechanical engineer for a company called IJK Controls in South Pasadena for a year before that as a Caltech teaching assistant. The profile also includes a local newspaper article “on a robotics competition my team won” at Caltech in 2016. The Secret Service said the suspect was armed with a shotgun and was taken into custody after opening fire at a Secret Service agent in the Washington Hilton Hotel, outside the ballroom. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and key Cabinet officials were evacuated from the White House Correspondents Dinner after shots had been fired outside the ballroom where the event was being held Saturday night. Journalists were told to get on the ground, get under the tables, and hide for approximately five minutes at the Washington Hilton. Many of the 2,600 attendees took cover under their tables amid confusion as Secret Service agents in combat gear entered the dining room and scoped the perimeter. The Secret Service released a statement on the incident. “The U.S. Secret Service, in coordination with the Metropolitan Police Department, is investigating a shooting incident near the main magnetometer screening area at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Anthony Guglielmi, Secret Service communications chief, wrote. “The president and the first lady are safe along [with] all protectees. One individual is in custody.” Trump called on Americans to “recommit” to resolve their differences peacefully. “As you know, this is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin who sought to kill,” the president said in a press conference after announcing that law enforcement had apprehended the shooter. “In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago—you all know that story—and in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that,” he faced assassination attempts, Trump noted. “In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts and resolving our differences peacefully.” The Daily Signal’s Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell and Tyler O’Neil contributed to this reporting, along with Reuters’ Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.

President Donald Trump called on Americans to “recommit” to resolve their differences peacefully after a shooter disrupted the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday evening. The Secret Service took a gunman into custody after he ran past a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton. The gunman shot a Secret Service agent, but did not wound him, before law enforcement subdued him and took him into custody. “As you know, this is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin who sought to kill,” the president said in a press conference after announcing that law enforcement had apprehended the shooter. “In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago—you all know that story—and in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that,” he faced assassination attempts, Trump noted. “In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts and resolving our differences peacefully.” RECOMMIT OURSELVES TO PEACEPresident Trump calls for all Americans to "recommit" themselves to resolving differences peacefully after the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting. He mentioned the assassination attempts in Butler and West Palm Beach. pic.twitter.com/dsaopzA6MZ— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) April 26, 2026 Trump said “the most impactful people” face assassination threats. He cited President Abraham Lincoln. “Nobody told me this was such a dangerous profession,” he said, joking that if Marco Rubio “would have told me, maybe I wouldn’t have run.” Yet Trump insisted that the work is worth the danger. “I’m here to do a job. It’s part of the job, it is a dangerous—I can’t imagine that there’s any profession that’s more dangerous,” he said. “We’ve got, I think, the most successful, the hottest country anywhere in the world.” “We’re going to do great things. With that comes risk,” he noted. “No question about it.” A reporter asked him if facing political violence is “the cost of doing business,” and Trump said, “Yeah, it is.” A DANGEROUS PROFESSIONPresident Trump speaks about the inherent danger of leading a great country like the US, and about why he thinks he faces threats to his life: because he's effective. pic.twitter.com/WXjRApP8R3— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) April 26, 2026 Trump explained the confusion at the White House Correspondents Dinner. “A man charged a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons, and he was taken down by some very brave members of Secret Service,” the president explained. He later noted that the assailant “charged from 50 yards away.” WHAT HAPPENED?!President Trump explains what happened outside the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight. A man charged a security checkpoint with multiple weapons, and opened fire. pic.twitter.com/fOJZcyAy4e— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) April 26, 2026 Trump also released footage of the incident. The shooter hit one officer, whose bulletproof vest saved his life. “The vest did the job,” Trump said. “We told him we love him and respect him.” The president mentioned that the ballroom he intends to build at the White House would be more secure. “We need the ballroom, that’s why Secret Service, the military, are demanding it,” he said. The assailant has been captured, and Trump described him as a “lone wolf wack-job.” The president promised that they would reschedule the White House Correspondents Dinner “within the next 30 days, and we’ll make it bigger and better and even nicer.” He said he “fought like hell to stay,” but law enforcement recommended against it. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche predicted that the Justice Department would bring many criminal charges against the attacker. FBI Director Kash Patel praised law enforcement, saying, “You saw the very best of America tonight.” The first few weeks of 2026 saw at least 10 incidents involving serious threats against Trump or members of his administration.

President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and key cabinet officials were evacuated from the White House Correspondents Dinner after shots had been fired Saturday night. Journalists were told to get on the ground, get under the tables and hide, for approximately five minutes, at the Washington Hilton. Cabinet officials began to return after journalists were notified it was safe to get up again. Staff announced the dinner would resume and Trump would return. Reporter Elizabeth Mitchell reported this from inside the Washington Hilton. This is a breaking news story and may be updated.