Following defeat in the presidential election, Democratic Party leadership is doing much-needed soul-searching. Those not in denial know there is something wrong. Per Gallup, in the 10 months in 2024 prior to the election, January to October, the Democrat partisan advantage—the percentage identifying as Democrat or lean Democrat minus the percentage identifying as Republican or lean Republican—was in negative territory five of the 10 months. This is more Democrat negatives than in any presidential election year since Gallup started reporting this in 1992. The percentage of the electorate not happy with either party is growing. In 2004, per Gallup, 31% identified as independent. Twenty years later, in 2024, this was up to 43%. More general measures show a displeased American public. In December, Gallup shows just 19% were satisfied with the direction of the country. Gallup has been polling annually since 2001 asking, “How proud are you to be an American?” In 2001, 55% said they are “extremely proud.” In 2023, this was down to 39%. To summarize, the 2024 presidential election plus polling data tells us that Americans are not happy with the status quo, almost half of Americans are not happy with either party, but between the two major parties, they are less happy with Democrats. The late Peter Drucker, who pioneered the field of management consulting, wrote that when a firm hired him for advice, the first question he would ask management was to define the business they are in. Drucker observed that a common characteristic of companies that are in trouble is that management cannot clearly define their business. We can apply Drucker’s rule to our country. What business is the United States of America in? Although there were many debates in the founding of the country, the principles that define it, which show up in our founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution—are very clear. It is a country about individual freedom, with a limited federal government, whose responsibilities are enumerated in the Constitution, but all with the objective of protecting the individual freedom of our citizens. Democratic Party leaders can focus here to understand what the problem is with their party. Democrats fail the Drucker rule. They have completely detached from what our country is about. We are completing four years of a Biden administration that paid zero attention to anything but spending money, expanding an already bloated government, and financing it all with mindboggling new debt and deficits. The principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility, as a national ideal, is and has been totally lost to the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign promised only a new chapter of the same. She had not one idea or proposal that did not involve more government. With individual freedom comes personal responsibility. This implies standards of right and wrong. In our nation, the Bible has always been the source for these standards. George Washington said it in his farewell address. Abraham Lincoln said it in his second inaugural speech. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it in his “I Have a Dream” speech. Anyone that viewed President Joe Biden’s Christmas video message from the White House heard him say, “Too often we see each other as enemies, not as neighbors, not as fellow Americans.” It is, sadly, true. But responsibility for this destructive mindset lies at the doorstep of Biden and his party. It is the Democratic Party that has fostered a culture, the antithesis of what America is about, that says that some do not have enough because others have too much. And that government should decide who has what and should use its political power to redistribute wealth. The eternal truths that define our nation are the rules of the game that give all better lives. Everyone seems to grasp this these days, except those leading the Democratic Party. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post What’s Wrong With Democrats? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Romans set January as the first month of the year. Originally, March had been the start of the new year. But the early Roman kings, before the republic, moved it to coincide with Janus, a two-faced god who looked backward with an old face and forward with a young face. Julius Caesar realigned Roman governance around January being the start of a new year of governance. The reality, however, is it is arbitrary, and we have all given great psychological importance to it. The pagans of Rome engaged in debauchery and resolutions for the new year—something modernity has embraced. The early Christians turned the first day of the year into a holy day to curb people’s pagan behaviors. Most of Western society has returned to revelry and resolutions instead of quiet reflection and worship on what is the eighth day of Christmas. The prior year’s anxieties have not gone away. Early on New Year’s Day, a terrorist in New Orleans unleashed carnage. A few hours later, another in Las Vegas blew up a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel. The former was a veteran and the latter was an active-duty soldier. The former, as of this writing, seems to have crumbled under the weight of his life, converted to Islam, and became radicalized. There is still much to be determined about the latter. Given his act, my guess is he was steeped in progressivism and broken by the 2024 election. For the past four years, the Biden administration has insisted that conservative white Christians in America are the biggest domestic terrorist threat, but we keep seeing left-wingers and Islamic radicals engaging in terrorism. From repeated attempts on Donald Trump’s life to the carnage in New Orleans, the only violence right-wing Christians have committed is at the ballot box against the Left. But that is enough to certify them as dangerous to much of the press and Democratic Party. On the Right, online, people continue to lose their minds just as badly as the Left. In the final days of December, fog set in around the country as it often does in the winter. Right-wing sleuths online began trading conspiracy theories that it might be something sinister. Elon Musk monetizing X (formerly Twitter) incentivized clickbait and sensationalism. The more someone gets circulated, the more money that person makes. So fog becomes sinister mind-control particles because that gets clicks. Fog does not. Likewise, people have insisted on connecting the two terrorists on New Year’s Day. We have been warned since the days of George W. Bush that “lone wolves” would be the biggest terrorist threat, white Christians notwithstanding that. Two seemed to operate on the same day, and many people, steeped now too deeply in online paranoia, have insisted lines must be connected and conclusions must be drawn. The media and government have not helped matters. The distrust in government and the press continues to contribute to our nation’s unraveling. The arrogance of the American media, inhibiting its ability to self-correct, is only dragging its reputation further down. On New Year’s Day, the rush of reports about the New Orleans attack caused conflicting information. The FBI made matters worse by first stating it was looking for others, then that the attacker was acting with others, then that there was no one else, and lastly that the attacker was a lone wolf. The rush to explain to an interested nation conflicted with the need to get it right. All the while, the conspiracists trotted out their own theories. We may be in a new year, but we have the same problems, and many of them continue to fester. The more online people are, particularly on BlueSky and X, the worse these issues will fester as people abuse trust and seed lies, all for revenue and clout. We could use an honest media, but the media are too broken. We could use a competent government, but that may be asking for too much. Instead, perhaps, we should all go touch some grass and reconnect with the world and people who are actually around us. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post New Year, Same as the Old Year appeared first on The Daily Signal.

China’s communist secretary-general, Xi Jinping, turned down an invitation to attend the U.S. inauguration offered by President-elect Donald Trump. Meanwhile, between Dec. 9 and 11, the Chinese Communist Party sent the People’s Liberation Army in large numbers around Taiwan and into the Philippine Sea. As the Jan. 20 inauguration approaches, recent trends in military operations make clear Xi has no interest in lowering tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Since 2022, China has steadily increased its military incursions around Taiwan—the most provocative when PLA warplanes cross the median line in the Taiwan Strait. In just the past nine months, there have been various waves of PLA activity near Taiwan. Usually, these demonstrations of military might around Taiwan are publicly announced as a response to some specific action irking Beijing, but the December event was unusual, not only for its massive scale, but also that it was not publicly announced by Beijing. This wasn’t the only remarkable PLA activity in 2024. In early April, there was a one-day surge of PLA activity around Taiwan involving 30 warplanes and nine warships. Twenty of those aircraft provocatively crossed the median line. What was the trigger for that? Typically, weather is ideal for cross-strait military operations in mid-April, and it’s also the time when the PLA begins its annual training cycle. But this time, there was added context: The April 3 spike in activity followed a 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan that killed 18 and injured 1,100. While the island was recovering, Beijing may have wanted to test Taiwan’s military resiliency during a natural disaster; this would provide insights into how the island would fare in a war. After that one-day surge, a familiar pattern repeated, with PLA incursions tapering off returning to average seasonal levels six days later. The month of May, however, was full of political triggers for Beijing. The PLA’s biggest military demonstration followed the inauguration of Taiwan’s new president Lai Ching-te. Apparently, Lai’s inaugural speech infuriated Beijing, as it was construed as “splittist”—meaning, promoting independence for the island. While many China watchers noted nothing new in the speech, it did diverge from past inaugural precedent in structure and mentioning that Taiwan was “not subordinate” to China. The PLA’s response was Joint Sword 2024A, a two-day military operation that occurred three days after Lai’s speech, involving at its height 19 warships, 16 coast guard vessels, and 62 warplanes that executed 82 median-line crossings.   In the summer months, Chinese military activity increased steadily, with the 30-day rolling average of air activity reaching a two-year high in early August. That upward trajectory began to occur after China’s hosting of the 16th Straits Forum, which aims to improve bilateral relations in the Taiwan Strait. The upward trend persisted through July, with a spike in early July following a NATO statement describing China as a decisive enabler of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Toward the end of July, PLA activity around Taiwan tapered off to zero ahead of a meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The PLA’s good behavior didn’t last long. As Blinken was on his way home, PLA activity levels returned to historic highs. An Aug. 23 speech by Lai, in which he rejected Beijing’s communist rule of Taiwan, drew a prompt response from the PLA even larger than the historically high levels of activity seen during the Aug. 1 anniversary of the PLA’s founding. September saw sporadic PLA activity with a surprisingly high three-day period of activity after another Blinken-Yi meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. For several days ahead of that meeting, as was the case in July, PLA activity was at zero. After that meeting, however, according to the Institute for the Study of War, China chose to retaliate against the U.S. arms sale to Taiwan by conducting its first intercontinental ballistic missile test launch since 1980. While 2024 had, up that point, seen sustained high levels of provocative PLA activity, it was October that would see the largest-ever single-day military demonstration. A “10-10” speech by Lai on the day marking the 1911 founding of the Republic of China drew a swift rebuke from Beijing. Five days later, Beijing sent a record-breaking number of warplanes (153) and 14 naval vessels near Taiwan. Of those, 111 aircraft crossed the median line, activity that Beijing called Joint Sword 2024B. That was followed the next week by live-fire drills. (Muhammed Ali Yigit/Anadolu via Getty Images) With the U.S. presidential election as the backdrop, PLA activity in November returned to more “normal” levels with an interesting peak as votes were being cast. When Lai visited Hawaii and Guam, returning to Taipei on Dec. 6, things got very interesting. In a break with precedent, no announcement was made, nor rationale given, for a massive PLA response that included more than 90 warships. At a time of year when the PLA is usually less active and the weather is problematic, that December surprise was remarkable. On the first day alone, Dec. 11, there were 53 warplanes and 19 naval vessels detected by Taiwan. With warships from all of China’s three fleets, it was the largest military drills in decades. The last time the PLA sortied so many naval forces occurred during the third Taiwan crisis from 1995 to 1996. Moreover, the warships appear to have taken up station to the east of Taiwan in two columns, apparently to drill interdicting shipping headed to Taiwan and practice a mock blockade. As those events transpired, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was visiting Japan, and when asked about it, said the Pentagon would “keep a close eye” on developments. So, what does 2025 hold for a new administration intent on strengthening its deterrence of future PLA provocations? For one thing, China has not been deterred for some time, as the events of the past year indicate. Returning to a safe status quo will require changing the military balance in Asia. In the absence of that, there is every reason to expect future provocations from Beijing in response to tariffs promised, as well as expectations that the new administration will work to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses. The bottom line is that provocations will continue and likely escalate until America regains deterrence of China. One indicator of success would be reduced levels of provocative PLA activity around Taiwan, as well in the South China and East China seas against our allies Japan and the Philippines.   Unfortunately, the U.S. has, for the past decade, neither recognized the comprehensive threat China poses, nor taken judicious countermeasures. The next administration seems intent on restoring peace through strength, but against a ready China, that will require a forceful rejuvenation of American economic and military power that has been elusive. The post What’s in Store in 2025 for US From China’s Military? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Joe Biden rewarded one of the Left’s most influential and notorious donors Saturday, giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros. The White House announced the honor in a list of 19 recipients, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and LGBTQ megadonor Tim Gill. Biden framed Soros’ funding as philanthropy in service of “democracy” and “social justice.” “George Soros is an investor, philanthropist, and founder of the Open Society Foundations,” the White House explained. “Through his network of foundations, partners and projects in more than 120 countries, Soros has focused on global initiatives that strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice.” Soros, a Hungarian-American billionaire investor, has funneled more than $15.2 billion through his Open Society Foundations (now run by his son Alex), which has awarded more than 50,000 grants worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum. Soros bankrolled the “rogue prosecutor” soft-on-crime movement by funding the campaigns of local prosecutors who oppose the death penalty and use prosecutorial discretion to avoid charging crimes they consider minor. Cully Stimson, deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, and Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at Heritage, have extensively exposed this movement and how it has emboldened criminals by enabling them to avoid prosecution. Their book, “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities,” was released in 2023. Crime rates have spiked across the country, particularly in Democrat-led cities, where murder rates have increased. Yet it makes a perverse amount of sense that Biden would grant Soros the highest civilian honor—not because the billionaire has funded a movement that puts Americans in danger but because his massive funding network enabled Biden’s allies to implement their radical agenda through the administrative state. My forthcoming book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” reveals how Soros, his son, and other major left-wing donors prop up a vast network of woke activist groups that staff and advise the federal government. Why does this matter? As the Competitive Enterprise Institute pointed out, during calendar year 2023, agencies in the federal government issued 3,018 rules, while Congress only enacted 68 laws, many of them ceremonial. In other words, agencies issued 44 rules for every law enacted by Congress. While the Constitution gives the people’s elected representatives in Congress the ability to make law, the administrative state issues far more rules that impact Americans’ daily lives. Activist groups bankrolled through Soros’ Open Society Foundations have worked to remake the federal government in the image of pink-haired college students steeped in gender studies and protesting Israel on campus. The Biden administration has kowtowed to gender ideology, rewriting federal education law to force schools to allow boys in girls’ restrooms and even directing federal law enforcement to refer to illegal aliens by their preferred pronouns. The administration opened the border after groups like the Center for American Progress urged bureaucrats to transform the Department of Homeland Security into a welcome mat for illegals. Biden signed an election executive order that had effectively been written by the activist group Demos, and then the administration brought in Demos to help implement it! Soros’ fingerprints—along with those of his son—are all over these and other efforts to push woke ideology in the federal government. The Open Society Foundations had funneled millions to the Center for American Progress, a hub of left-wing advocacy and woke influence in the federal government. Different arms of the Open Society Foundations have funded Demos, the LGBTQ activist group the Human Rights Campaign, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, among many others. Biden’s decision to honor Tim Gill also echoes this woke funding. Gill has poured millions into the LGBTQ activist movement, including in an effort to prevent social conservatives from opting out of celebrating same-sex weddings. “We’re going to punish the wicked,” Gill told Rolling Stone in 2017. After the 2015 Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage across the country, Gill turned his activism apparatus against religious freedom restoration acts and toward a legal mentality that would penalize Christians, and anyone else in business, who refuse to participate in a same-sex wedding. Gill’s mentality echoes the Human Rights Campaign, which uses a Corporate Equality Index to shame companies into taking extreme LGBTQ stances that alienate customers (see Target and Bud Light in 2023). When HRC asked the Biden administration to jump via a set of policy recommendations in 2021, the bureaucrats effectively responded by asking, “How high?” It also echoes the Southern Poverty Law Center, which suggests mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits are similarly hateful to the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC has put religious freedom groups like Alliance Defending Freedom on a “hate map” alongside KKK chapters, and SPLC leaders have advised the Biden administration in combatting “domestic terrorism.” The vast network of woke NGOs Soros props up have enabled Biden to seed his far-left ideology throughout the federal government, and President-elect Donald Trump has his work cut out for him if he wants to root this out. By awarding Soros this honor, Biden is rewarding one of his most influential ideological allies—a fitting if disgusting final chapter for this far-left administration. The post Biden Gives Highest Civilian Honor to Notorious Left-Wing Donor Behind ‘Rogue Prosecutor’ Movement appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In the dreamlike days between Christmas and the regular work week’s return in the new year, it’s easy to believe all things are possible. Indulge in as much pie as you like—a resolution to eat healthier in 2025 will balance the scales. For most of us, this is harmless self-deception. Unfortunately, Congress has the same mentality, and it’s produced a bloated government that soon won’t be able to afford what’s been promised to taxpayers. Social Security and Medicare have some 10 years left before their trust funds are exhausted and they’ll no longer provide full benefits. Congress knows the deadline. Every year, a report from the programs’ trustees spells it out. The latest figures say Social Security will run dry beginning in 2035, with Medicare following suit the next year. Yet those estimates, from May, are already out of date because the Senate decided to ring out 2024 by passing a proposal that actually makes Social Security less solvent and brings the breakdown a full year closer. A bipartisan bill taken up in December makes people who already have state, local, or federal government pensions eligible for more Social Security benefits than before. What the program actually needs, if it’s going to survive another generation, is the opposite approach: means testing to match limited resources with the people who need them most, rather than expanding payouts to people with other retirement resources. While his colleagues played Santa Claus, Sen. Rand Paul risked being branded a Grinch, proposing an amendment to prolong Social Security’s life by gradually raising the retirement age to 70. Only two fellow Republicans—Utah’s Mike Lee and Wyoming’s Cynthia Lummis—backed his effort. The rest of the Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike, seems to view shoring up Social Security (and Medicare) as a resolution for some future new year. Donald Trump has said many times he won’t allow cuts to Social Security. But by doing nothing—or worse, adding to the program’s burdens—Congress is, in fact, acquiescing to cuts, and drastic ones. Before the December expansion proposal, Social Security was already set to meet only 83% of its obligations after 2035: in effect, an across-the-board cut of 17% from then on. The scenario is similar for Medicare, which will only be able to pay about 89% of its Hospital Insurance obligations after 2036. What would seniors say if a candidate explicitly proposed slashing Medicare by 11%? If Congress can’t get serious about entitlement reform, elections at the start of the next decade will be overwhelmed by the crisis, which will confront candidates with a choice of big cuts, higher taxes, or quickly—not gradually—raising the eligibility age or implementing means testing. The longer Congress postpones the reckoning, the more painful it will be, and the greater the threat some next-generation Bernie Sanders turns the emergency into a class war. Progressives fear means testing because it puts the lie to the idea Social Security and Medicare are purely savings or insurance programs, rather than wealth transfers. It makes no sense to send millionaires or billionaires Social Security checks, but a need-based entitlement wouldn’t have as wide a base of recipients and so not as much political support. As the Kamala Harris campaign demonstrated, Democrats understand that openly campaigning on higher taxes on everyone is a losing strategy. But raising taxes on some people—namely, the wealthy—to pay for more benefits for everyone is the kind of thing that might well command a majority in an emergency. The possibilities grow more extreme as the road gets shorter. The time to take a detour is now, but with the new House of Representatives so closely divided, passing major reform is almost unimaginable. This is where Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy come in. Their Department of Government Efficiency is tasked with curbing wasteful discretionary spending, not with entitlement reform. But the power of DOGE is greater than its formal responsibilities suggest. Musk, after all, owns one of the nation’s most important news and opinion platforms: X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. DOGE can be an educator as well as an auditor. Simply by calling attention to the fiscal realities that apply throughout the federal government, to entitlements as well as discretionary spending, Musk and Ramaswamy can accelerate Congress’ timetable for action. Left to their own devices, lawmakers would put off the hard work until the last minute, making reform a New Year’s resolution for five years from now, or later. Musk, Ramaswamy, and their allies can reshape public opinion on Social Security and Medicare solvency right now. If they do, Washington might still take years to catch up, but elected officials will be moving faster than they would of their own accord—and maybe fast enough to avert disaster. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Make a Resolution to Fix Social Security appeared first on The Daily Signal.