'Mass firings of federal employees'

'The Trump administration remains laser focused'

'The U.S.-Japanese alliance is still strong'

'Deeply wedded to the avoidance of confrontation'

slide fast toward ruin

Let’s say you paid top dollar to go to a fancy, five-star restaurant, and the waiter served you warmed-over McDonald’s. Would you ever go back? Maybe, if you didn’t know any better. I started thinking about that after I recently changed my residency from Virginia to California (for reasons I won’t go into) and noticed that my state income taxes had gone up by more than 33%. Over the course of the year, I will pay California $2,115 more than I’d been paying in Virginia, which is hardly a low-tax state (Virginia has the 14th highest income tax burden in the country). Not only are income taxes higher, California’s sales tax is 66% higher, and the gasoline tax is almost double Virginia’s. Those are just the ones I know about. So, I decided to look into what exactly I’m getting for the five-star cost of California’s government for basic services governments are expected to provide. It’s infuriating. California is ripping off its taxpayers big time. Consider: Crime: Despite having roughly the same number of police officers per capita, California has a “crime index” that is 47% higher than Virginia’s, and California has the sixth-highest rate of violent crime of all 50 states. Virginia has the 14th lowest. Education: If you’re a teacher, California is a great place to live. They are the highest paid in the nation and have the fourth-lowest student-to-teacher ratio. But if you’re a parent? Your children are getting screwed. Eighth-grade reading, math, science, and writing scores are significantly below the national average, while Virginia’s are significantly higher. Virginia ranks 7 in average SAT scores, and California comes in 23rd. Infrastructure: Despite having the nation’s highest gasoline taxes, California ranks in the bottom three when it comes to road conditions, with more than 25% of its roads in serious need of repair. In Virginia, just 9% of its roads are in poor shape. Opportunity: How much economic opportunity are California’s sky-high taxes buying? None. The state ranks dead last in U.S. News and World Report’s “opportunity” ranking. And it ranks 47th in the Rich States, Poor States ranking of economic outlook. It has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.5%, the most people on welfare, and the most homeless people. It has the most progressive income tax yet is the fifth-worst state when it comes to income inequality. (Virginia comes in 29th on tax progressivity and 22nd on income inequality.) It is the least affordable state for housing. Virginia is 35th. Fiscal responsibility. Incredibly, despite the fact that California is one of the highest-tax states in the nation, it ranks No. 42 in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking for fiscal stability. And it’s getting worse as out-of-control costs and the flight of hundreds of thousands out of the state have left yawning budget gaps. A new Reason Foundation study finds that California is almost half a trillion dollars in debt, which is more than twice New York’s. (Virginia is $35 billion in debt.) And then there is the criminal amount of waste and fraud. Gov. Gavin Newsom spent $37 billion to fight homelessness only to see the number of homeless climb from 151,000 in 2019 to about 187,000 today—prompting a federal criminal investigation. The state’s Medicaid spending nearly doubled in six years, and almost one-half of that was due to free health care given to illegal immigrants. The state lost $20 billion in COVID-19-related federal unemployment money—the most of any state. In 2014, California voters overwhelmingly approved a $7.5 billion water bond proposal, nearly $3 billion of which was set aside to build new reservoirs. More than a decade later, not a single new reservoir has been built. In 2018, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a $1 billion bill that was supposed to improve land management to “prevent catastrophic wildfires and protect Californians.” In 2019, Newsom’s wildfire “strike force” said, “Over the next five years, the state will commit over $1 billion for critical fuel-reduction projects to support prescribed fire crews, forest thinning, and other forest health projects.” Apparently, that money was completely wasted, as anyone looking at the burned-out Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods can attest. And just this year, the state decided to dump $282 million it doesn’t have for a special election to gerrymander its congressional districts—a completely pointless exercise that will disenfranchise California voters and have no impact on the control of Congress. And then it spent another $2 million to correct a typo in its original voter guide. So, the question I have for every Californian is: “What is wrong with you? Why do you put up with this? Why are you content to let California be a one-party state?” Most of your leaders should be in jail, not winning reelection. It’s true that over the past four years, more than a million more people moved out of the state than moved in. But what about those who can’t or don’t want to leave? Why do you keep electing the same class of criminals to steal your money? I think part of the problem is that Californians don’t know how badly they’re getting screwed, because, while everyone knows which restaurants are worth the price, it’s not easy for average citizens to make direct comparisons between life in one state and another. I can leave the state just as easily as I came. But most can’t pick up and move. Nor should they have to. California is a beautiful state with enormous potential. Its citizens just need to refuse to pay Wolfgang Puck prices for Hamburglar-quality service. The post Do Californians Realize How Badly They’re Getting Ripped Off? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Supporting struggling cattle ranchers was the “single most discussed topic” in Senate Republicans’ lunch with Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal. Vance joined the Senate Republicans’ lunch Tuesday to discuss upcoming votes against President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but according to Cruz, the primary topic of discussion was Trump’s plan to increase importation of Argentine beef in order to lower prices for consumers. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association opposes Trump’s plan, saying it “undercuts the future of family farmers and ranchers by importing Argentine beef.” “It was a vigorous discussion, and JD was listening and hearing the strenuous views from multiple senators,” Cruz said. There was “unanimity in the room that we should be standing strongly with our cattle ranchers,” according to the Texas Republican. “Obviously, in Texas, cattle ranching is a huge business and provides for a lot of livelihoods,” Cruz said, “and I think Texas beef is the best in the world.” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told reporters senators gave Vance an “earful” about the plan. But Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told reporters he thinks Vance said that the Trump administration hasn’t “firmly determined to purchase beef from Argentina.” “They want to bring down the price for consumers,” he said. Hawley told The Daily Signal that no specific action points for supporting ranchers were discussed, but he proposed a solution of his own. “I would start with taking some of that tremendous tariff revenue and redirecting that to farmers, including ranchers,” he said. “It’s going to be like $300 billion this calendar year. It’s a gob of revenue. So why not spend $20 billion of that on farmers?” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that Trump hears the concerns of cattle ranchers who say his decision to buy more beef from Argentina is bad for business. “The president loves our ranchers,” she said in response to a question from The Daily Signal, “and he also loves American consumers, and he wants to do right by both.” What will President Trump do to help struggling cattle ranchers? @PressSec tells me: "The president hears them. He has to address these problems for the ranchers, but also for the American consumer. He promised to lower costs, and that's what he's committed to doing."… pic.twitter.com/wYCms2whRa— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) October 23, 2025 Trump’s short-term solution is to import more Argentine beef to increase our supply and lower costs, Leavitt said. “The immediate solution to the problem of the rising cost of beef—the president wants to bring that down—is we have to increase our supply,” she said. “So, that’s what he’s doing with respect to these imports. The president also is looking out for our ranchers with a long-term plan that was released by the secretary of agriculture yesterday.” The post GOP Senators Hone in On Politically Dicey Topic in Meeting with Vance appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin says he fully backs the military’s crackdown on Caribbean drug smuggling and that it’s the only way to deal a blow to the overseas drug trade. Since early September, the administration has been carrying out deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea they say are smuggling drugs into the United States. Johnson told The Daily Signal’s Tony Kinnett that any drug smuggling crackdown has to hurt those involved in order to make a difference. “One thing I learned when I was chairman of [the Homeland Security Committee], I went down to Southern Command, and you saw our interdiction efforts. At most, we interdict about 10% of the drugs coming into this country from places like Venezuela,” Johnson told The Daily Signal. “I come from manufacturing, and in manufacturing, 10% would be considered a scrap rate. It’s a cost of doing business.” Some in the Senate, such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have raised concerns over the intelligence behind the devastating attacks on the vessels, saying that there is a risk that innocents could be killed. Johnson, however, said that a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reassured him that all of the attacks have been against verified drug smugglers. “We had Secretary of State Marco Rubio come into the Senate luncheon. He told us we have exquisite intelligence on these things,” Johnson said. “We know exactly these are drug boats.” He added, “One of the reasons you know that [is], if we were knocking out some luxury liners or something or innocent people being killed, you’d have that plastered all over the news. Nobody’s coming forward and being outraged by these people are being blown out of the water. By the way, boat smuggling has dramatically decreased.” Johnson additionally sees the Caribbean campaign as a blow to the regime of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, whom he would like to see removed from power. “This is by and large an act of war against the United States by a narco-terrorist state. You can’t deal with, you know, an illegitimate regime,” Johnson told The Daily Signal. “Hopefully, you can put pressure on them and have the Venezuelan people topple it.” Tony Kinnett contributed to this report. The post Wisconsin Senator Backs Trump Admin’s Drug Boat Offensive appeared first on The Daily Signal.

CNN Data Guru: Schumer Shutdown May Be Making Republicans More Popular

TikTok Filled With Videos of People Threatening to Loot Grocery Stores