The Spring housing boom was a complete bust. Real estate agents expected home sales to surge, but the surge never happened.  It is the worst slump in 16 years. The American Dream is disappearing for young people. According to the National Association of Realtors, transactions of previously owned homes in March decreased by 5.9% compared […] The post Home Sales Hit a 16-Year Low appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Democrats on the California Senate Public Safety Committee shot down a bill on Tuesday that would have kept male sex criminals out of female prisons. The committee, which includes far-Left Senator Scott Wiener, voted down a proposal from Republican Senator Shannon Grove to protect women from males who are registered sex offenders from being able to be housed in women’s prisons. The bill also would have given women privacy in sleeping arrangements and showers, meaning that they would be protected from males who have taken advantage of California’s lax laws that allow men to be placed in women’s prisons. “Today I am here on behalf of incarcerated women in California prisons who are dealing with the unintended consequences of allowing transgender inmates to be housed in women’s correction facilities,” Grove said at the committee hearing. “Everyone agrees that we need to keep inmates safe and provide additional protections.” She noted that she had received a letter from a female inmate discussing how males were being housed in her prison. The letter included a condom that had been distributed by prison staff. “Why is the state of California paying for condoms in women’s prisons?” Grove asked the committee. The only lawmaker to support the bill was Senator Kelly Seyarto, the lone Republican on the committee. Grove’s bill is seeking to address problems created by SB 132, a bill sponsored by Wiener that said that inmates should be housed according to their “gender identity.” Her legislation would “establish a secure facility at each women’s prison to house transgender women, in order to protect the security needs of biological women at birth in sleeping and other intimate areas” and prohibit male sex offenders from being eligible to be assigned to female prisons. “SB 132 created a preference for transgender individuals. If you are a woman serving in the women’s prison and a transgender self-identified check-the-box person comes in and goes, ‘I want to house with you,’ the woman in that cell has no recourse. They can’t say no because that’s considered discriminatory,” Grove told The Daily Wire on Monday. Grove said that she was told before the hearing that the committee planned to kill the bill. She said that the California Democrat supermajority had a “preference for predators versus victims.” The bill would only have prohibited males “convicted of an offense for which they are required to register pursuant to Section 290,” which include crimes like rape, human trafficking for sexual purposes of a minor, sexual battery, child molestation, sexual penetration with a foreign object, and other horrific crimes. During his comments, Wiener said that it was common knowledge among kids that prisons had a rape problem. He claimed that the proposal from Grove was motivated by the “culture war” and trying to target “trans people.” He said people were trying to “turn trans people into terrifying predators” trying to scam their way into women’s prisons. Wiener claimed it would be dehumanizing to not allow men who identify as women into women’s prisons. He also said that the provision about the sex offender registry was “discriminatory” and targeted LGBT people. Grove had a broad coalition of support from advocates concerned about the safety of women and inmates who have experienced the negative impacts of SB 132. In one letter of support shared with The Daily Wire, one inmate said that she was brutally beaten by a male named Tremaine Carroll who caused her to have a “spontaneous abortion.” Carroll, who has since been moved from the women’s prison, is currently facing charges of raping multiple women at the prison. A California judge ruled in December that prosecutors have to use female pronouns for him because of his identity. Letter from inmate in support of Grove’s bill Another letter in support came from an inmate who said that she was forced to house with a 6’2” man who was 200 pounds, describing the environment in prison as the “wild west.” One of those who testified in favor of Grove’s bill was Amie Ichikawa, a woman who spent nearly five years in a California prison and now advocates to keep males out of female prisons. During her testimony, she asked the committee to back the bill to show that “protecting women’s safety is not up for debate” and asked committee members to value “people over politics.” Recent documents from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reveal that at least 45 males who identify as transgender have been transferred into female prisons since implementation of Wiener’s legislation. In total, there have been nearly 900 males who have requested transfer into women’s prisons while only 70 females have requested transfers into male prisons. Many of the requests are still being reviewed. Statistics from 2022 show that 33.8% of the men identifying as women seeking to transfer into women’s prisons were registered sex offenders and another 25.8% were convicted of sex crimes. Grove’s proposal was also supported by Erin Friday, the president of Our Duty, a group that seeks to educate parents about the dangers of transgender medical procedures on kids. Friday, who says she was a longtime Democratic voter before the school system tried to transition her daughter, told The Daily Wire that Grove’s bill was “a first step in where we need to get which is to get all males out of female prisons and jails.” She sad that ultimately, Wiener’s SB 132 needed to repealed, but that there was a lot of work to be done. “The Democrats won’t even get out the known rapists, the known sex offenders out of the women’s prisons. That’s how much they dislike women,” she said. “That’s how much the gender ideologues have to keep their falsehood going. This is so simple. At least get the sex offenders, the known sex offenders out of the women’s prisons.” The Daily Wire reported last week that little scrutinized regulations from the Obama-era prohibit prisons from having policies in place to assign housing by sex, at both adult and juvenile facilities. President Donald Trump has indicated that he is looking to amend this code.

'Doesn't sound very scientific to me'

Senate Republicans are shrugging off polls suggesting voters are souring on President Donald Trump’s second term, arguing that Trump’s vast policy agenda will boost Americans’ satisfaction with his administration in the long run. Trump’s second term capped off its first 100 days Tuesday amid recent polling suggesting that an increased number of Americans are viewing […]

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson. I’d like to talk today, if I could, about the changing of the Democratic guard. There was some news lately that Sen. Dick Durbin from Illinois—he was the author, remember, of the DREAM Act. He was a hardcore liberal. You could even say he was left of center. He’s stepping down. He’s in his 70s. And there’s a changing of the guard. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in some polls, is running—I cannot believe it—behind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for his upcoming senatorial bid by 20 points and more in a primary. And then, as a force multiplier, I just saw Rep. Nancy Pelosi, she was at a public event. I think she’s 85, turning 86. She was as incoherent as former President Joe Biden. So, what’s Victor trying to say? We’re watching a changing of the guard, both due to aging—and we see that with Joe Biden, and the Biden generation is over with, and Nancy Pelosi. And then the next cohort in their 70s, the septuagenarians, they’re terrified. Dick Durbin’s terrified of being in a primary. And so is Chuck Schumer. He took the dignified way out. Chuck Schumer will probably fight to the very end and be humiliated by AOC. Who are these people? Well, “the squad,” remember, traditionally was Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Somalian who allegedly had married her brother to gain citizenship access to the United States. There was Ayanna Pressley. She was the radical African American congresswoman. We had, of course, AOC, who was a prominent member. And we have also, in addition, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, she was a member of the squad, she was the Michigan pro-Hamas congresswoman. Then we had the Democratic National Committee. And we had Ken Martin who won the DNC chairmanship. He’s very much to the left. And really to the left is his subordinate, David Hogg, the vice chairman. He was a survivor of the Parkland shooting, remember, in 2018. And he transmogrified into anti-Second Amendment. But then he got even more and more and more radical. I don’t think he’s ever really done anything except raise money. But here’s my point. We’re watching a metamorphosis of the Democratic Party that is out of power. The old guard: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin—that old guard did not deliver the 2024 election. And they lost the House. They lost the Senate. They don’t have a majority in the Supreme Court. They lost the popular vote. They lost the Electoral College. So, in the eyes of the Democratic youth, they’re discredited. But here’s the key. They didn’t lose the 2024 election because they were too far—they didn’t go far left enough. They lost it because former Vice President Kamala Harris and her supporters tried to move her from her hard left. And can I make a parentheses here? She had the most left-wing voting record in the U.S. Senate—to the left of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And she couldn’t even move a little bit to the center, although she tried. She said, remember that she was for fracking and she wanted the border wall and she was for deportation? That was all untrue. But the point I’m making is, the party tried—in a very anemic fashion—to move to the center, where they knew the votes were. But this new cohort is saying, “You lost the election because you didn’t go far left enough. And maybe we represent 20% of the Democratic registered cohort, but we’re young. And we’re charismatic. And we’re dynamic. And we’re gonna take this party, in the 2026 midterms and the 2028, to victory. And we’re gonna do it by a socialist agenda. And a radical, radical, new, new, new green deal. And an open border. And a trans banner on every campaign event. That’s who we are. And a disarmament. And we’re gonna raise taxes on the billionaires.” And that’s their message. It has no public support. So, even though they think they’re charismatic and they’re youthful, we get back to the old proverb of the 80-20 paradigm. The Republican Party has been on the 70% to 80% of where the people are on the border, on foreign policy, on the economy, on social and cultural issues. These people—these Jacobin French revolutionaries—they’re pulling 20% to 30% on this issue. I’ll leave you with a final thought. The Republicans are not afraid. They’re not afraid of the squad and the Jacobins and this new cohort, the David Hoggs of the world. But you know who’s terrified of them? Dick Durbin, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, because they don’t know how to handle them. They’re part of themselves. It’s an incestuous relationship. And they’re saying to them, “But we’re the old guard.” And they’re saying, “You may be the old guard, but we’re going to guillotine you and get rid of you. And we’re coming in with a revolutionary fervor they’re terrified of.” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Democrats’ Radical Changing of the Guard appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Pierre Poilievre Exits Stage Right