Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a euphemism for a rigid racialist theology. It deductively postulates that a large percentage of the population is oppressed by racism and sexism, mostly by white males. DEI makes no allowance for the class or wealth of the alleged victims or their supposed victimizers. So once that rigid party line is set, it cannot account for tens of millions of affluent and privileged non-white Americans or like numbers of poor and non-privileged whites. Absurdities and ridicule must then follow. One example is the spectacle of former First Lady Michelle Obama on her current book tour. Mrs. Obama cannot finish an interview without whining about the racism she allegedly encountered as the once most influential and powerful woman in the United States. According to Michelle, she was not given the exemptions that other white first ladies received. She did not get enough free stuff for the First Family. She had to hire three stylists daily to straighten her hair to meet “white” expectations—as if also Asians and Hispanics do not have straight hair, or many whites do not have hard-to-comb curly hair. Indeed, she now claims blacks cannot even swim because of white-induced pressures to maintain dry and straight hair. Because her DEI creed ignores class and wealth, Michelle has no idea how absurd she sounds. She and husband, former President Barack Obama, own three estates in addition to their former Chicago home, together valued somewhere around $40 million. Their net worth is estimated at between $70 million and $100 million. They fly private, surrounded by a throng of Secret Service guardians. The more Michelle clings to the fossilized dogma of unchanging racial victimization, the more she becomes ridiculous or offensive. Trump Derangement Syndrome is another rigid ideology that deductively mandates that Donald Trump is evil and thus must be exposed as such by any means necessary. Sometimes, such Pavlovian hatred so blinds the Left to evidence that it becomes oblivious to its own suicidal choices. Take the “Epstein files.” For four years, the Joe Biden administration had no desire to release any names that appeared in the thousands of the infamous Jeffrey Epstein’s emails and text messages under its control. To the extent that Trump’s name leaked out of the files, most had agreed on the mostly innocuous circumstances of the references. There was not just a lack of evidence that Trump was ever entrapped by the spider-like Epstein’s blackmail webs. In fact, eventually, Trump ostracized Epstein well before he was convicted and jailed. Had he been compromised, the Democrats—who raided the Trump home, tried to de-ballot him, and used lawfare to drag him into five different local, state, and federal courtrooms—would have released the files in a nanosecond. So when Trump continued the prior Biden policy of keeping the files private, the Left mindlessly shouted that the hated Trump must be hiding his own culpability. They shrilly demanded that he release all the files—without a second thought about the reasons why their fellow Democrats had previously kept them private. So a compliant but cagey Trump has begun releasing the trove of documents. The evidence does not reveal any new Trump bombshells. Instead, there are lots of new references to the Democrats, like the former Harvard President Larry Summers. A Democrat member of Congress, Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands, is exposed in the files as a partisan, compliant tool of the predator Epstein. In her hatred of Trump, the files show Plaskett texting for live prompts from the odious Epstein as he tutors her on how best to coax a congressional witness to demonize none other than Trump. Was there not a single cool Democrat head who could have seen where the party’s obsessions with Trump were headed? Similarly, Democrats embrace climate-change orthodoxy—regardless of the obvious contradictions and paradoxes that follow. Climate change religion exposes Democrat grandees like the shore-residing Obamas, the jet-setting Al Gore and John Kerry, and the multi-estate-owning Nancy Pelosi. All fly on private jets. They heat and cool with fossil fuels their various energy-guzzling huge homes—while demanding hoi polloi turn down their air conditioners or give up their diesel pickups. But even green guru billionaire Bill Gates has become conflicted and a climate apostate. Why? Wind and solar “renewables” will never supply left-wing techies like Gates the additional 100 gigawatts of electrical generation per year that they need to fulfill their lucrative artificial intelligence dreams. Nor does climate orthodoxy make allowances for vastly more U.S. oil and gas production to supply a left-wing, but energy-short Europe, or to flood the world with cheap energy to bankrupt Vladimir Putin’s oil and gas exporting Russia. The problem with a party line is that it is deductive, not inductive. Ideology makes facts fit dogmas, rather than evidence leading empirically to conclusions. So inflexible cults like climate-change orthodoxy, DEI, and Trump Derangement Syndrome make their adherents look utterly ridiculous. (C)2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. This article was first published on The Daily Signal Nov. 22. The post Victor Davis Hanson: The Embarrassments of Ideology appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE CENTER SQUARE—Less than 24 hours after the surprise resignation of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican received thanks from the state Republican Party and criticism from President Donald Trump. Greene said in a Friday night social media post that she had received personal attacks and death threats for her recent stances criticizing her own party and that Trump “hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and then tried to destroy me.”   Greene, who said she is resigning on Jan. 5, had publicly called for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files before the House and Senate voted last week to approve the release.  “Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States of America, whom I fought for,” Greene said. Trump said in a Saturday social media post that he appreciated Greene but criticized her relationship with U.S. Rep. Tom Massie, R-Kentucky. Greene, Massie and a few other Republicans had sided with Democrats in urging the release of the files as Trump initially tried to head off the House vote.  “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown, because of PLUMMETING Poll Numbers, and not wanting to face a Primary Challenger with a strong Trump Endorsement (where she would have no chance of winning!), has decided to call it ‘quits,'” Trump said in his Truth Social post. “Her relationship with the WORST Republican Congressman in decades, Tom Massie of Kentucky, also known as Rand Paul Jr. because he votes against the Republican Party (and really good legislation!), did not help her. For some reason, primarily that I refused to return her never ending barrage of phone calls, Marjorie went BAD.” Massie posted that Greene’s resignation was not “great news for the country” as Trump was quoted as saying.  “I’m very sad for our country but so happy for my friend Marjorie. I’ll miss her tremendously. She embodies what a true Representative should be,” Massie said. I’m very sad for our country but so happy for my friend Marjorie. I’ll miss her tremendously. She embodies what a true Representative should be. Everyone should read her statement; there’s more honesty expressed in these four pages than most politicians will speak in a lifetime. https://t.co/nVFGTT4OEH— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) November 22, 2025 In a statement on social media, Georgia Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon thanked Greene her for her “fierce and unwavering service.” He did not mention her feud with Trump.  “While her decision to step down from Congress effective January 5 comes as a surprise amid recent challenges, her legacy as a bold voice for the grassroots will endure,” McKoon said. “She entered Congress as a political outsider and never backed down from defending the forgotten men and women of our state.” Republican Gov. Brian Kemp must call a special election to fill Greene’s position until the end of its term, according to the U.S. Constitution. The 14th district covers Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade, Floyd, Murray, Paulding, Polk, Walker and Whitfield counties and portions of northern Cobb County.  State Sen. Colton Moore, R-Trenton, said he is exploring a possible run for Greene’s seat. “I’m seriously considering stepping up to fight alongside President Donald J. Trump to advance the America first agenda that’s turning our country around,” Moore said. “I am weighing how to be his partner in the House, draining the swamp and making sure Georgia’s voice roars in Washington.” Greene was first elected to Congress in 2020 and was reelected in 2022 and 2024. She did not indicate what her future plans were in her four-page resignation statement. “When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington’s machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead, the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington, then I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it,” Greene said. Originally published by The Center Square. The post Georgia GOP Thanks Greene, as Trump Says She ‘Went Bad’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Arabella Advisors, a for-profit company that managed services for many influential dark money nonprofits on the Left, is no more—or so it seems. Sunflower Services, a new public benefit corporation, announced on Monday that it would be acquiring “Arabella Advisors’ fiscal sponsorship servicing business.” Meanwhile, Arabella’s former CEO, Himesh Bhise, announced that he would lead a supposedly new company, Vital Impact. A Nov. 19 email to Arabella Advisors received an automated response stating, “As of November 17, 2025 Arabella Advisors has ceased operations.” What, exactly, is Sunflower Services? Well, it’s a completely new company financed by… lead investor New Venture Fund, with financial support from the Windward and Hopewell Funds. These names should be familiar to longtime observers of Arabella Advisors. New Venture Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund are three of the “seven sisters” dark money nonprofits that received services from Arabella. These are the nonprofits organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. These groups acted as “fiscal sponsors,” housing various quasi-independent projects that did not register as separate entities. Critics say this system allows donors to fund activist projects through the nonprofits—cloaking what their dollars are actually paying for. These groups funded many of the left-wing activist groups that fed staff and ideas into the Biden administration, particularly pushing climate alarmism. The Open Society Foundations, founded by Hungarian American billionaire George Soros and now run by his son, Alex, has contributed millions to the nonprofits who were Arabella’s clients. The other nonprofits—Sixteen Thirty Fund, North Fund, and Impetus Fund—more politically active groups organized under Section 501(c)(4), were notably absent from the Sunflower Services press release. Vital Impact told The Daily Signal that “none” of these nonprofits “will be clients of Vital Impact.” “Arabella Advisors’ fiscal sponsorship business, including its existing infrastructure and operations team, was acquired by Sunflower Services, which is unrelated to Vital Impact,” Vital Impact said in a statement Tuesday. “Vital Impact is a new, nonpartisan professional services firm focused on strategy, operations, and technology support for the social sector.” According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Sunflower Services will absorb roughly 243 staff from Arabella Advisors, which had 425 employees in 2023. It remains unclear how many staff will move to Vital Impact. The Gates Foundation dealt a major blow to Arabella Advisors earlier this year, ending its longstanding partnership with the for-profit company. Elias Law Group, which previously represented Arabella Advisors, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment as to whether it still represents the nonprofits, or Sunflower Services or Vital Impact. What Is Vital Impact? Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, directed The Daily Signal to a document that might shed light on the relationship between Arabella Advisors and Vital Impact. On Monday, Arabella Advisors filed “Articles of Amendment” with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, seeking a “Name Change” to “Vital Impact.” In the Virginia system, the same entity (Number S1572793) merely altered the name from Arabella Advisors to Vital Impact. “What will Vital Impact be doing and how is it different from what Arabella Advisors was doing?” Sutherland asked. When asked about this document, Vital Impact repeated the claim that it is a new firm. “This is a straightforward administrative point,” the company told The Daily Signal. “The legal entity formerly known as Arabella Advisors, LLC filed a name change following the sale of its fiscal sponsorship services business — long associated with Arabella Advisors — to Sunflower Services.” “Vital Impact is a new, nonpartisan firm built from the business assets acquired over the past several years — including Redstone Strategy Group, Kiwi Partners, and Ribbon Technology,” the company added. “These teams now operate together as Vital Impact, completely separate from the fiscal sponsorship services business purchased by Sunflower Services.” The Funds Respond The 501(c)(3) nonprofits that previously worked with Arabella each praised Sunflower Services. “New Venture Fund is proud to serve as lead investor in Sunflower Services because we see it as a strategic opportunity to strengthen the entire social impact ecosystem,” the fund told The Daily Signal Wednesday. “The Public Benefit Corporation structure ensures that Sunflower’s success is directly tied to the success of the organizations it supports. Because Sunflower is owned by nonprofits, the work remains deeply mission-aligned, ensuring that every resource is directed toward meaningful impact.” “Hopewell is investing in Sunflower because we believe that when social justice organizations have world-class infrastructure, they can focus their energy where it belongs – on building power and creating change,” Hopewell Fund told The Daily Signal. “Sunflower’s commitment to directness, accountability, and responsible business practices is exactly what organizations—especially those working on climate and environmental solutions—need from a true values-aligned partner,” Windward Fund told The Daily Signal. Why the Change? Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center and author of the book “Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America,” characterized the transition as a “rebrand” and took credit for making the Arabella Advisors brand “toxic.” “We’re proud of ourselves for what we’ve been able to do,” Walter told The Daily Signal in a phone call Tuesday. “Why do you rebrand? To make yourself less toxic.” Walter dismissed the idea that Arabella Advisors might have been going out of business. He noted that the 2024 IRS records for the Arabella-connected nonprofits recently became public, and “total nonprofit revenues were up a bit in 2024.” “It is just a rebranding and a complexifying and maybe it’s also a c3-c4 splitting,” he theorized. Walter has repeatedly testified before Congress, sometimes alongside me, on how Americans’ tax dollars supported left-leaning groups such as the nonprofits linked to Arabella. His work on Arabella, along with my research, highlighted the structure and political influence of the Left’s dark money network. Walter suggested Sunflower Services acquired Arabella Advisors in part to make the dark money funding trail more complex. “The more complex this story is, the harder it is for you or me to explain it anywhere,” he said. A Threat from the Trump Administration? The Arabella move comes two months after President Donald Trump issued a memorandum on “countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence” that highlights domestic threats allegedly motivated by “anti-fascist” forces and targets “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations,” and funding sources allegedly behind the violence. The Free Press reported that Trump’s memo had a “chilling effect” on major liberal foundations. Lawson Bader, president and CEO of Donors Trust, told The Daily Signal that he did not think Arabella had anything to do with violence, but suggested that Arabella’s dissolution is “in part” a “response to the White House directive.” “No question, ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ organizations are feeling the pressure of the public statements from the White House,” Bader said. He suggested some of them regret not being “as aggressively critical of Barack Obama and Joe Biden when conservative nonprofits were getting harassed.” Bader expressed hope that nonprofits on the Right and the Left can form “multi-ideological alliances to keep the IRS away from everybody (except those obviously doing actual illegal things).” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson emphasized the focus on illegality in her statement to The Daily Signal on the issue. “The president’s executive actions to address left-wing violence will employ a whole-of-government approach to end to any illegal activities,” she told The Daily Signal. Sunflower Services, Sixteen Thirty Fund, North Fund, and Impetus Fund did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. The post What, Exactly, Just Happened to the Left’s Dark Money Behemoth Arabella Advisors? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, recently floated the idea of offering people a 50-year mortgage instead of the more conventional 30-year financing option. It sounds attractive at first because stretching out repaying of a mortgage would lower the borrower’s monthly payment, but this wouldn’t fix the homeownership affordability crisis. It’s no exaggeration to name the current situation as a crisis. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the percentage of a household’s income needed to afford just a median price home is near a record high today, and affordability is near a record low. An entire generation of young Americans has largely given up on the dream of homeownership. The profligate spending of the Joe Biden administration and the monetary mismanagement of the Federal Reserve caused both home prices and interest rates to skyrocket, a deadly one-two punch that knocked out the housing market. Because home prices and interest rates are the primary factors in determining a potential buyer’s monthly mortgage payment, when those two inputs quickly rose, Americans saw the monthly mortgage payment on a median price home more than double in less than four years. If that’s not an affordability crisis, nothing is. Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that millions of Americans bought a home or refinanced in 2020 and 2021 at abnormally low interest rates and effectively cannot sell their homes in today’s market of relatively high interest rates. The reason for this phenomenon is that the seller almost always must pay off the existing mortgage on a home at the time of sale, ending that mortgage. The remaining proceeds are then used for a down payment on another home, but the new mortgage won’t be another loan at 3 percent or less, but typically 6% or more. The seller must be content with moving into a much less expensive home, otherwise the monthly mortgage payment will explode. Consequently, homeowners today are listing their houses for exorbitant prices just to try and manage the financing costs on their next home. The market for new homes is no better, where homebuilders face record costs which they have been forced to pass on to consumers to prevent losses. Even still, starter homes and more economical options aren’t profitable at all in certain markets, so homebuilders increasingly are building just luxury homes instead. In response to America’s frozen housing market, many commentators have been clamoring for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, thereby reducing financing costs for potential homebuyers to theoretically increase affordability. Unfortunately, interest rates and home prices have largely recoupled today, meaning they’ve returned to their traditional inverse relationship. When interest rates fall, people can borrow more money and maintain the same monthly mortgage payment. That means borrowers can take larger mortgages and bid up the price of homes, leaving affordability unchanged. That’s a fatal flaw with the 50-year mortgage as well. It will incentivize would-be homeowners to borrow more than they should while putting upward pressure on home prices. Meanwhile, the borrower is effectively a renter, at least for the first decade or so of the mortgage because almost none of the monthly mortgage payment will go to principal, reducing the amount owed to the bank. The homeowner will be building virtually no equity at all during that time, much like a renter. Worse, the median age of a first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Even in the unlikely scenario where the introduction of 50-year mortgages reduces that age, perhaps to 35, homeowners still wouldn’t truly own their homes even well into retirement, so they may never be able to retire to continue making mortgage payments. While the proposed 50-year mortgage may come from a sincere desire to help Americans struggle to find affordable housing, it wouldn’t solve the problem. Indeed, housing isn’t unaffordable because of a dearth of long-term financing options but because of a fundamental mismatch between supply and demand. When the Biden administration flooded the country with over 10 million illegal aliens, that significantly increased the demand for housing. Simultaneously, failed fiscal and monetary policy directed capital away from private industries, like housing, which reduced output. Years of overregulation, from the local to the federal level, further reduced the supply of homes. This is Econ 101: Increasing demand while decreasing supply is a textbook way to drive up prices. If we truly want to solve the homeownership affordability crisis, then we must address the root causes of the supply and demand mismatch that exists today—not introduce novel financing mechanisms that are ancillary to the real problem. ©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. The post 50-Year Mortgages Won’t Fix the Affordability Crisis appeared first on The Daily Signal.

We media types obsess about America’s problems. But we should acknowledge that today, life in America is better than life has been anywhere, ever. For most of history, the norm was hunger, disease, illiteracy, slavery and war. There were a few exceptions (from some of those problems)—so-called golden ages, Ancient Athens, Rome, the Renaissance, etc. In our new video, historian Johan Norberg, author of the new book “Peak Human,” looks at the miracle of the Roman Empire, which at one point extended throughout most of Europe, and parts of Africa and Asia. Ancient Rome inspired our form of government, a republic with a system of checks and balances. “There is a reason why we have a senate and they meet in the capitol,” explains Norberg. “We borrow these ideas from the Romans.” The Romans were ferocious warriors, but so were many at the time. The Romans were able to create an empire because they tried new things: “They gave people among the subjected the ability to have a second career in Rome,” says Norberg. “They made them citizens and allowed them to do business, to have a career in the military. Some of the subjected people could even end up being emperors!” “The conquered—some became emperors?” I ask. “The son of a freed slave eventually ended up on the throne of Rome. That tells you something about the power of meritocracy and of openness. You’ll get the best brains if you’re open to more people.” Rome thrived because the Romans took ideas and talent from all over the world. They didn’t do it to be kind. “Tolerance was a weapon, often literally a weapon,” Norberg explains. “They got their swords from the Spaniards, ships from Carthage, new business models from other groups. Because Rome was such a huge integrated free trade area, you could source the best material, the best technology from any part of the empire. Therefore, they could become the masters of the world.” Of course, eventually, Rome fell. There were many reasons. Disease, barbarian invaders, and one reason that modern societies should fear: entitlement spending. Norberg says Rome collapsed because of: “Bread and circuses. The emperors wanted to become popular by handing out free stuff to people. Originally, this started small. You just handed the very poor means of subsistence. But it was popular, so the group that lived on the public’s expense grew larger all the time. Emperors complained about this. Everyone from Caesar and onwards said, ‘We’ve got to reform this system because it means that we have fewer people working and more people consuming.’ But no one succeeded.” It reminds me of the unsustainable promises we see today: Social Security and Medicare in the U.S., absurd retirement promises in other countries—welfare plans going broke. “Once you have an ever-expanding system of entitlements that you can’t afford,” says Norberg, “that’s often the beginning of the decline and fall … Romans could conquer the world, but they couldn’t do entitlement reform.” Instead, Roman emperors did what modern governments do: printed more money. Actually, since they used coins, not paper money, they devalued their currency by putting less gold and silver in each coin. “Inflation was much worse than barbarian invaders,” says Norberg. “The emperor blamed greedy businessmen—something that we hear today. He imposed price controls on 1,000 goods. But obviously, it all failed. Prices kept rising and undermined the Roman Empire completely.” Today, America is one of the richest and most inventive countries in the world. Will our “golden age” continue? “One of the most worrying signs in history is you begin to take wealth and comfort for granted,” says Norberg. “You forget what made it possible to begin with. I see a lot of worrying signs right now. We have a backlash against things that keep our society innovative, like trade, migration, unsustainable debts … But that doesn’t mean that we’re doomed … It’s not automatic, this decline and fall phase. You can unleash new waves of innovation and progress. There is still time. We can still save this golden age.” 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 Our Golden Age appeared first on The Daily Signal.