Songs for the testosterone side.

A potent combination.

It’s fun for the columnist when the columns prove prescient. Not that my column last week encouraging conservatives to take the win on the House passage of the Big Beautiful Bill was particularly earthshattering in its reference to a coming package of rescissions. It didn’t take a genius to notice that was coming. (RELATED: Take the Win on the Big Beautiful Bill) But I did find it peculiar how few of the critics of that bill bothered to note the likelihood, or at least possibility, that a rescission was to follow the Big Beautiful Bill. In fact, following the bill’s passage, I don’t know that I saw anybody else even mentioning it. Which is a bit of a headscratcher. I don’t know. Stick around and maybe you’ll learn something? We do pretty good work here at The American Spectator. 1. And So, a Rescission President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who this column noted last week is (1) possibly America’s most vigorous budget hawk and (2) a very vocal supporter of the Big Beautiful Bill, went on Larry Kudlow’s Fox Business show Wednesday and laid out the administration’s thinking… I suggest watching the whole thing, but Breitbart had a transcript of some of the most important parts… Larry Kudlow asked, “So, rumor has it that we’ve got a big rescission package, an Elon Musk DOGE rescission package coming up, can you confirm it?” Vought answered, “I can. We’ll be sending that up on Monday or Tuesday, whenever the House is back in session, they will get our first rescissions bill. And, again, this has been proposed and we’ve talked about it, we want to make sure that Congress passes its first rescissions bill, including the DOGE, and we will send more if they pass it. And so, this is the first one, it’s foreign aid, USAID cuts, many of the waste and garbage that was funding, not only wasteful, but hurting our foreign policy, but also the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR.” Vought added that the bill won’t be subject to the filibuster. That last part is possibly the most important. Rescission bills can’t be filibustered. House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed Vought on the rescission… When the White House sends its rescissions package to the House, we will act quickly by passing legislation to codify the cuts. The House will use the appropriations process to swiftly implement President Trump’s 2026 budget. DOGE found savings in discretionary spending (such as funding agencies), while our One Big Beautiful Bill secured over $1.6 trillion in savings in mandatory spending (such as Medicaid). Both are HISTORIC and take HUGE steps toward addressing our debt and deficit. The House is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand. So when this bill comes next week and knocks out a good $160 billion, or maybe more, from the federal budget baseline, what will come next is an interesting national discussion. You can’t be a Republican member of the House or Senate and vote to keep the idiotic USAID spending, or the funding for the sue-happy communists at NPR. Those items are mandatory yes votes for everyone in the party. (RELATED: Uncle Sam Just Conducted Its Final April 15th Pledge Drive for PBS and NPR) Which is not to say that a rescission bill will get unanimous Republican support in both houses. But it ought to be pretty close, and one would think there are 215 votes in the House and 51 in the Senate for passage. And any NPR Republicans (that’s my term for somebody who would vote against the rescission; I’m going to guess it won’t catch on for pleasant reasons) who do exist are going to find themselves beset with very well-supported primary challengers. There won’t be hardly any Democrats crossing the aisle to vote for the rescission. From a branding standpoint, that’s a big problem for their party. They’ll become what they are, which is the party of profligate waste and corruption, in the minds even of people who aren’t very political. (RELATED: Entitlement Fraud Is Now a Stated Aim of the Democrat Party) And as Vought noted, if the first rescission bill passes, the administration can keep sending tranches of rescissions to Capitol Hill one after another as they find the cuts. Last week’s column noted the administration can also impound funds that are either counterproductive as appropriated or simply unneeded, given better management of the public fisc. The point being that these are the tools which can be used to bend the budget baseline downward, so when the administration and Congress begin work on the 2027 federal budget later this year, they’ll be operating from the standpoint of a substantially smaller spending total. Create some real economic growth, which making the Trump tax cuts permanent and a few of the administration’s other policies will do, and it will become possible to actually bring the budget to balance for the first time in a generation. Of course, the rescission is yet to come. The Big Beautiful Bill still has to get out of the Senate. 2. Stephen Miller Lets the ‘Libertarians’ Have It Miller, the White House policy director and pit bull spokesman, said something yesterday on X which was so incandescently true as to shock the senses. He was talking about the opposition to the Big Beautiful Bill and just how silly some of the arguments are, and he ate alive those libertarians who are making the perfect the enemy of the good… I see some self-described libertarians siding with lefty bureaucrats at CBO who claim the Big Beautiful Bill will “explode the debt.” This is based entirely on CBO claiming that extending the current tax rates (not raising them) will “cost” the government $4 trillion in revenue.… — Stephen Miller (@StephenM) May 28, 2025 In case the X post doesn’t embed, here’s the whole thing… I see some self-described libertarians siding with lefty bureaucrats at CBO who claim the Big Beautiful Bill will “explode the debt.” This is based entirely on CBO claiming that extending the current tax rates (not raising them) will “cost” the government $4 trillion in revenue. Since when have libertarians argued that NOT raising taxes “costs” the government money? Private money yet to be earned does not “belong” to the government. This is a Democrat-collectivist argument and I’m shocked to see libertarians deploying it. Under this ludicrous theory, one could raise taxes to 90 percent on everyone and declare the deficit solved. BBB cuts taxes, cuts spending, reforms welfare and *ends mass migration*. On the last point, anyone serious about limited government and improving America’s financial health would understand that ending mass migration is the prerequisite for every other problem we wish to solve. Of course, true libertarians don’t believe in borders at all… He’s right, of course, and in particular, Miller has the Congressional Budget Office’s number. CBO’s scoring is an absolute joke and has been again and again throughout history. They always fail to recognize the positive revenue effects of a tax cut, particularly two and three years out or more. And the fact that supposedly small-government types, including the libertarians, use CBO’s scoring (modeled on socialist/Democrat principles, I might note) to evaluate bills like this one is irritating beyond measure. Here’s something else Miller noted… I’ve seen a few claims making the rounds on the Big Beautiful Bill that require correction. The first is that it doesn’t “codify the DOGE cuts.” A reconciliation bill, which is a budget bill that passes with 50 votes, is limited by senate rules to “mandatory” spending only — eg… — Stephen Miller (@StephenM) May 25, 2025 OK, that’s enough budget and rescission talk. We’re too close to the weekend to stay in these weeds. 3. Charlie Kirk, Back From the U.K., Says… …that essentially it’s a country in paralysis. Here’s the entire video of Kirk’s segment evaluating what he saw on a trip to Britain, with a little commentary to follow… The fact that he opens by noting that he managed not to get arrested by the tyrannical British government while there made me chuckle — as it’s the very subject of my last book, From Hellmarsh With Love. I’ll have to send him a copy. (RELATED: The Death Throes of Free Speech in the United Kingdom) But the most interesting thing Kirk says, and I haven’t seen this said elsewhere, though it’s unquestionably true, is that the U.K. right now is where the U.S. was before Donald Trump came down that escalator and gave American politics and culture a massive, and very necessary, enema. The Brits have allowed their idiot elites to limit what they can say and even think, and everyone in that country knows the direction this has led them is a bad one. But nobody has the guts or the stroke to call out the idiocy of their status quo. Take Trump out of the equation, and assume the GOP nomination had fallen to someone who couldn’t beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and where do you think we would be right now? Kirk is saying that’s where the Brits are. I’d say he’s correct. And I’m very happy to be on this side of the pond. 4. That $20 Million the Democrats Want to Spend Recapturing the Young Male Vote? Might as Well Set It on Fire. You’ve heard about this plan that the DNC is trying to put in place whereby they want to figure out why men under 45 hate them so much and fix that, right? (RELATED: ‘Get Laid’ and ‘Have Fun’: The Democrats (Still) Don’t Get It) It’s a little like the “abundance agenda” they’re now touting as a fix for their policy woes. I could pick any number of cliches to describe this, but I’m not sure the ones that come to mind really serve. (RELATED: There Is No Abundance in the Wilderness I could say these are band-aids on a gunshot wound, but that isn’t really right. Maybe you guys in the comments can come up with a better descriptor for the fact that these people have made it very manifest that they despise the very people they’re trying to court with that $20 million. Just like the “abundance agenda” crowd is talking about deregulation and unburdening the productive class so it can build things and deliver social goods, when the entire Democrat Party is built around protesting every possible manifestation of progress that doesn’t spring from its corrupt elite. None of this will work, because none of it CAN work. The Democrats are built on dysfunction because their core base of support is dysfunctional people. And this is as pristine an example as there could ever be to illustrate it… This is why the Democrats are doomed. They’re turning to an overweight 22 year old feminist woman as their masculinity expert. I can’t think of anyone on Earth less equipped or qualified to speak for men. It’s like consulting me as an anime expert. https://t.co/9e8PjzRbap — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 29, 2025 Hat tip: Ace of Spades, who had this to say about the dumb discussion this Olivia Julianna woman engaged in… In fairness, I would say that the people she’s talking about are college-attending “conservatives,” who skew more liberal than non-college-attending conservatives. I’ve observed this ten thousand times myself, including the example of myself. I would also note that one of the most important drives of any young straight man is to find and court a mate, and with college-attending women being absolutely batshit leftwing lunatics right now, young men will tend to claim “I’m not like the other conservatives” and offer their half-hearted endorsements of the issues that college-age women think are the most important. But that doesn’t really mean they believe it or, even if they do believe it, that it’s something they’d actually vote on. Everyone is very aware of the very real phenomenon of trolling pro-abortion rallies to get laid. Countfeiting your beliefs to please stupid 20-year-old liberal chicks just a scootch is a very common courting deception. I’ve mentioned before that Jordan Peterson now thinks that this habit of adjusting beliefs to attract mates may now be working in the opposite direction: Younger Gen Z girls are dating somewhat older guys who have turned against the left, and are now expressing more conservative beliefs. Some beliefs become socially accepted as “status-conferring” and some beliefs as “status-reducing.” We are seeing a broad repudiation of leftwing bullshit and grievances, and they are losing their former status-conferring appeal. Because they’re dogshit and only marginal, useless, mentally-ill dogshit people believe in them. Yup. The great P.J. O’Rourke used to say that you could evaluate a political movement based on how many hot chicks were involved in it. I don’t know that either side has the hot chick vote locked down, but what I can say is that the Democrats don’t currently seem to understand how to make themselves desirable to desirable people — and this comes after a good 50 years of controlling the culture. That’s a bad sign for them. It’s a sign that maybe none of their stuff works, and eventually, a price has to be paid for that. 5. If This Doesn’t Tug at Your Heartstrings, You Don’t Have Any I could be wrong in saying that the American character in 2025 is more and more accurately expressed in country music, but it’s just what I see. Friends who were formerly into hip-hop or classic rock or even electronica are talking about Chris Stapleton and Eric Church and Lainey Wilson lately, and it seems like the songs that capture the imagination of large numbers of people now are increasingly country songs. I could cite a bunch of statistics to back up that impression, but you either agree or disagree, and your opinion isn’t likely to change based on something I could pass along from Grok. In any event, if you agree with me that we’re becoming a country-music culture little by little, I would explain that by saying the reason is not just that country artists seem to be more talented than what else is out there in the record business right now, but also that what country speaks to is a set of human sentiments Americans are becoming more and more in tune with. Those sentiments are universal and timeless, but the pop culture has generally conspired to make them uncool. Except the pop culture has itself become uncool, and what is flooding the resulting vacuum is a return to the things we’ve always known. That’s just a bit of social commentary around a new video by HARDY, who’s one of the newer country artists generating buzz (he and Wilson were the duet that produced that amazing song “Wait In The Truck” three years ago). This is only 10 days old, and I had a friend send it to me telling me she couldn’t keep a dry eye watching the video… Music is most powerful when it tells the truth. So much of recent pop music is just manifestly based on lies, and that’s one reason it doesn’t — can’t — resonate. This song does. Country music, well executed, does. I think that’s why it’s having its moment in America. READ MORE from Scott McKay: The Agony Of 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley There Is No Abundance in the Wilderness Take the Win on the Big Beautiful Bill The post Five Quick Things: The Rescission Cometh appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Being a professor at an elite university can make a person believe that he or she has a special status over regular people. For Francesca Gino, formerly a professor at Harvard Business School, her status as a professor gave her the impression that she could scientifically calibrate a system that would inculcate regular people toward morality. Gino claimed that putting a signature line testifying to truth-telling at the top of a form, rather than at the bottom, would invite greater honesty. She said that giving a person ownership over an object would activate “prosocial behavior” and “self-esteem.” And she asserted that having a person count to 10 before eating would cause that person to choose healthier foods. All of these conclusions, Gino claimed, were reached through robust scientific research — a research that was ever-so special because it was done by her. She was the all-star professor who could draw speaking and consulting gigs from Fortune 500 companies seemingly at will, thus giving her “scientific” conclusions an imprimatur of authority. This week, the Harvard Crimson reported that Gino’s tenure has been revoked and she has been fired. This all follows years of repeated discoveries that Gino’s claimed technocratic tricks for getting people to act morally and honestly could be better described as made-up hunches that were propped up by (manipulated) research papers. The irony, for many, is too much. The woman who came up with a bunch of “scientifically backed” schemes to get people to act honestly was lying about (at least some of) those very schemes. Examining Gino’s past research through the lens of knowing she is a liar puts an entirely different spin on her findings. For instance, what exactly was Gino thinking when she concluded in one study that just “one bad apple” who cheats and lies can induce others to do the same? Regardless of whether Gino lied to herself as well as the world, this professor of “honesty” and “authenticity” reveals much about the rottenness of academia today. First, Gino shows how elite academia has coalesced around the goal of enforcing a leftist worldview. To cite one case, Gino used her research on how “one bad apple” can induce others to act immorally to claim that the death of George Floyd showed that a “toxic culture” had infiltrated the Minneapolis police department. In another case, Gino called on people to foster a more inclusive work environment for racial minorities by acting “authentically,” such as not toning down one’s preferred style of dress. Gino did not stop with framing this as advice for how to help racial minorities. No, Gino claimed that acting “authentically” was scientifically proven to also benefit white people. In a study, Gino purportedly showed that people who are more “authentic” in a job interview are more likely to get hired. Thus, Gino tried to induce white people to create her envisioned racially just world by claiming that doing what she believed would help racial minorities would also help white people. We are in a time when, according to Claremont McKenna College professor Jon A. Shields, the percentage of professors in the humanities fields who are conservative has dropped into the single digits (apart from economics). When this is combined with liberal professors who use their position not to advance truth and knowledge but to further liberal ideology — even if, as in the case of Gino, this means inventing things out of whole cloth — we arrive at a situation where the university is a propaganda machine for liberal ideology. Second, Gino shows how scientific, psychological, and sociological research is created to be marketable and to further a professor’s career, rather than to advance human knowledge. The replication crisis has demonstrated the enormous extent to which this is the case across numerous fields: In 2015, for instance, psychologists repeated 97 studies and found that just 36 percent of them replicated, and in 2018, 62 percent of 21 social and behavioral science papers were replicated. Gino was first caught when a graduate student named Zoé Ziani attempted to reproduce one of Gino’s studies and found that it did not replicate. Showing just how much shoddy research is protected by academia, two members of Ziani’s dissertation committee refused to approve her thesis until she deleted criticism of Gino’s research from it. It’s especially unbelievable that these professors silenced Ziani’s critiques given how Gino’s research conclusions read as though they were spun up for newspaper headlines. Gino’s story also demonstrates how institutions of higher education give very low priority to the education of the next generation. According to a 2025 report from the Manhattan Institute, full-time college students spend an average of just 20 to 25 hours per week in class and doing schoolwork. Indeed, universities, particularly elite ones, are not in the business of actually teaching students anything but rather exist to bestow their paying customers with an (often false) reputation for intelligence and education. Gino was part of this whole scheme. She taught a course titled “Anatomy of a Badass,” which was “about learning to be unapologetically bold and authentic at work.” This is Harvard’s idea of a serious education. To make matters worse, Gino’s course was geared around celebrity and elitism, as it “featured” Bozoma Saint John, Netflix’s chief marketing officer. Yet somehow, Gino was one of Harvard’s most well-compensated professors and was held up as one of its best teachers. Elite academia is built upon ideology and status rather than truth and education. Francesca Gino’s firing, which coincides with the Trump administration’s defunding of Harvard University, marks a turning point in the call for accountability. READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: The Bizarre Phenomenon of Celebrity Transgender Children Confronts Changing Attitudes The Messed-Up World of People Who Believe Abortion Is Love Newsom Can’t Memory-Hole What He Did to California The post Francesca Gino and the Rot at the Heart of Elite Academia appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

After 130 days, Elon Musk’s tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ended yesterday as scheduled. What remains are key revelations of systemic corruption — and the sobering realization that modern government is a reform-proof, power-entrenched apparatus. “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized. I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least,” according to Musk. On his final day in public service — an intense 130-day interlude — Tesla CEO Elon Musk could barely hide his frustration. The serial entrepreneur who pushed Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink to industry dominance ran aground in Washington’s bureaucratic quagmire. From a business perspective, his mission had been straightforward and rational: to rein in federal overreach and slash runaway government spending. Musk had aimed to cut $2 trillion annually from the ballooning federal debt, which now sits around $36 trillion. In the end, only $175 billion in potential savings were identified — some still under audit, some mired in legal challenges. Musk offered a sober but hopeful farewell: As my planned time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I want to thank President Trump for the opportunity to help reduce wasteful spending. The DOGE mission will grow stronger over time. Musk’s exit is a tacit admission that even the most successful business minds can be defeated by the inertia of the federal machine. Still, the final word on the DOGE initiative has not yet been written. Pressure on fiscal policy is mounting in the bond markets. Interest rates are rising, and the cost of financing the federal debt will eventually force Washington to make deep spending cuts — whether it wants to or not. But for now, the Musk era of cost-cutting in D.C. is over. The Inevitable Ridicule Musk is already facing ridicule from the political left. That the world’s richest man couldn’t enact meaningful spending cuts — even in freedom-minded America — is a deeply unsettling signal. It reveals a fundamental truth: those who confront the bureaucratic wall of the postmodern hyperstate encounter a fortress, not a dialogue. This edifice defends itself in myriad ways — from the media’s selective blindness to government corruption (as the USAID scandal laid bare) to the entrenched “deep state” architecture: a network of military-industrial power centers largely immune to democratic oversight. It is increasingly clear that the postwar democracies of the West, flush with decades of prosperity, have fallen into a coma of complacency. Bereft of the will to reform and incapable of diagnosing their own malaise, they rely on debt to preserve the illusion of a welfare state that serves a swelling army of transfer recipients. A glance at U.S. and European public budgets reveals two dominant costs: the oversized welfare state and — especially in America — the military. And even that defense budget is slated to grow by another $113 billion. A Grim Fiscal Reality The U.S. is once again hurtling toward a massive federal deficit. This fiscal year’s projected shortfall is $1.9 trillion — nearly matching last year’s $2 trillion under President Biden. Total national debt has now surpassed $36.2 trillion, an all-time high. What’s particularly alarming is the explosive growth in interest payments, which now consume over 20 percent of the federal budget — more than is allocated for defense or education. Debt service is fast becoming Washington’s top expenditure. It is crowding out nearly all other priorities and shrinking what little fiscal room remains. America is living on borrowed money — and the bill keeps growing. This diagnosis doesn’t stop at America’s borders. In Europe, particularly across the southern states, debt-to-GDP ratios also range from 120 to 140 percent. Even Germany, once a paragon of fiscal restraint, is preparing to take a perilous leap: the federal government’s proposed €1 trillion stimulus would send its debt ratio soaring from 63 to around 95 percent — a historic jump to the edge of the fiscal abyss. And that assumes the German economy doesn’t deteriorate further — which, right now, looks increasingly optimistic. Inflation or Debt Collapse? So what are the options? Historically, outright debt cancellations or sovereign defaults have been avoided, as they would trigger catastrophic fallout across the banking sector, insurance systems, and pension funds. Instead, governments may repeat the playbook of the 1940s and 1970s: gradual budget tweaks paired with aggressive monetary expansion. Rather than defaulting, the state inflates its way out of its obligations. In such a scenario, the biggest debtor — the government — gets off easy. The ones left holding the bag? Savers, taxpayers, and those who trusted the state’s promises of financial stability. It’s too simple, and frankly misleading, to mock the DOGE experiment as a failed curiosity. One way or another, we will all be made to pay for the wreckage wrought by a political class addicted to limitless spending. READ MORE from Thomas Kolbe: Tariff Shock in Brussels America Loses Top Credit Rating German Chancellor Calls for ‘War Readiness’ The post Bureaucracy Beats Entrepreneurship — Musk Leaves Washington appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Culture is more than galleries and symphonies. It’s not just what hangs on a wall or flickers on a stage — it’s what pulses through the streets. How people live. How they treat each other. What they tolerate, and what they won’t. Culture is everything from high art to street-level ethics. From cathedrals to crime scenes. That’s why the word itself is so slippery. You can interpret it a hundred ways. A canvas. A riot. A prayer. A protest. Paris is a masterclass in that ambiguity. Time Out just crowned it the “world’s best city for culture.” They polled 18,500 residents, tallied votes from experts, name-dropped the Louvre, and threw around phrases like “euphoric energy” and “weightless performances.” It’s all very poetic. Very curated. Very Paris. But it’s also deeply incomplete — sanitized, even — a glossy brochure version of a city many Parisians no longer recognize. Because culture may start in museum corridors, but it spills into the streets. And in Paris, those streets are cracked open by riots, littered with broken glass, and haunted by the hum of sirens after dark. Try wandering to your next exhibition while dodging a knife attack on the Métro. Try sipping an espresso while youths set cars ablaze three blocks over. Or watching on as police officers are gunned down in broad daylight. Paris is a melting pot. But what it’s melting into isn’t all wine and ballet. It’s Molotov cocktails and stolen scooters. It’s pickpocket rings and police in body armor. It’s a metropolis where tourists photograph gothic cathedrals while someone gets sexually assaulted in a public park down the road. The old and the sacred collide daily with the new and the lawless. Cathedrals next to crack dens. Luxury fashion boutiques adjacent to makeshift migrant camps. It’s not just contrast — it’s collapse dressed in Dior. Yes, Paris has always had an unmistakable edge. But there’s a clear difference between bohemian messiness and existential breakdown. What we’re seeing now is something else, something more volatile. Go ahead — visit the Louvre. Take in the Musée d’Orsay. Wander the galleries. But just know: if you walk a few blocks too far in the wrong direction, you’ll hit a very different kind of exhibit. Open-air drug markets. Groups of men harassing women in broad daylight. And it’s not just the outer suburbs anymore. It’s central. It’s creeping inward. I say this as someone who has visited the city many times and was just there a few months ago. Sure, the Eiffel Tower still sparkles. Paris can still be beautiful. No one’s denying that the Louvre is still packed. But so are the courtrooms. So are the ERs. We talk about culture like it’s fragile. A thing to be protected. But what if it’s already broken? What if the museums and monuments are now just decorative masks for something much darker underneath? Ask the locals — not the ones working PR. Ask the café owner who’s been robbed three times this year. Ask the elderly woman who won’t ride the subway anymore. Ask the mother who sends her daughter to school with a pepper spray canister clipped to her backpack. This isn’t a hit piece. It’s a reality check. The truth is, Paris is now two cities: one for the travel writers and Instagram influencers and one for everyone else — the under-policed, the under-protected, and the quietly terrified. We are told to celebrate diversity, romanticize chaos, and call everything “vibrant.” However, what’s happening in Paris isn’t vibrancy. It’s violence. It’s not multiculturalism. Not the good kind, anyway. It’s unmanaged collapse. And yes, culture can be interpreted differently. But if your cultural capital looks more like a war zone than a wonderland, maybe it’s time to stop handing out awards and ask some harder questions. This isn’t just Paris. The same symptoms are showing up across Europe. London, once the pride of the Commonwealth, now wrestles with gang stabbings, acid attacks, and cultural fragmentation. Dublin staggers under housing shortages, rising street crime, and an uneasy tension in its once-cozy neighborhoods. Berlin, Stockholm, Brussels — name a capital, and you’ll find the same patterns: assimilation abandoned, identity diluted, disorder tolerated in the name of virtue. And still, the ruling class offers hashtags and silly slogans. “Unity in diversity” sounds lovely until you’re told to ignore the sirens, the riots, the no-go zones, the communities being ripped apart. At some point, a nation must ask: how much reality are we willing to sacrifice to protect a narrative? Because if the cost of progress is pretending not to see decay, then maybe we’ve already failed. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: The Band That Hates America Would Be Nothing Without America Never Forget What Jon Stewart Did To America The New York Times Goes After the Police — Again The post Paris Is Still Beautiful — From Behind Bulletproof Glass appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On Wednesday evening, the world’s wealthiest man announced that his sojourn in the nation’s capital is almost over. “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President (Donald Trump) for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Elon Musk posted to X, the social media platform he owns. While Musk was quick to add that “the (Department of Government Efficiency) mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” Musk’s departure will represent the effective end of DOGE as we know it. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “much of DOGE’s work will shift to the White House Office of Management and Budget,” which is headed by Russell Vought. The DOGE team claims it identified about $175 billion in total savings. Given the federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal 2024 alone, that may seem like a mere drop in the bucket. And given that Musk himself once vowed to identify taxpayer savings in the trillions of dollars — albeit without much of a timeline attached to that pronouncement — it certainly is a bit disappointing. But consider some of the specific outrageous spending outlays identified by Musk’s team as ripe for the cutting board: eye-opening domestic savings such as $382 million from alleged fraudulent unemployment benefits at the Department of Labor and astonishing extravagance on the foreign stage — for instance, $2 million for sex-change operations in Guatemala and $20 million for a Sesame Street-inspired early childhood initiative in Iraq. (RELATED: Grappling With DOGE: Why Cutting Waste and Fixing Entitlements Are Both Essential) Such ideologically driven spending is emblematic of what Vought, in a Newsweek op-ed written two years ago during the Biden-era presidential interregnum, described as “the scourge of a woke and weaponized bureaucracy.” The brief DOGE experiment, which uncovered tens of thousands of combined government contract and grant terminations that would shock the conscience of most Americans with any inclination toward sound fiscal stewardship, is proof that such a “woke and weaponized bureaucracy” isn’t merely speculative — it really exists. (RELATED: USAID v. Trump) There is probably a lot more, furthermore, where that $175 billion in flagged waste came from. And Vought, who has worked with Musk since last year, is the right man to continue the mission once Musk fully returns to the private sector. There are now at least two additional steps that must be taken — one pressing short-term item and one more difficult, longer-term item. The so-called big, beautiful bill that passed the House of Representatives last week, and which is now pending before the Senate, did not incorporate the DOGE cuts. It seems there is a procedural reason for this: The DOGE cuts are technically post hoc rescissions of presently appropriated money, and rescissions of current outlays are typically subject to their own process. An obscure figure known as the Senate parliamentarian controls the process by which the annual reconciliation budget bill — a favored tool because it permits a Senate majority to bypass the chamber’s legislative filibuster — can pass muster. And Capitol Hill Republicans apparently fear that including the DOGE rescissions would endanger Trump’s desired bill. But without Congress actually enacting the DOGE cuts into law, history will show this entire exercise to have been largely futile. Accordingly, Vought and the White House’s OMB must, following the reconciliation bill’s passage and enactment into law, transmit a fresh rescission package to Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) desk. That should happen quickly after the reconciliation bill becomes the law of the land. It is extraordinarily important that the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress demonstrate not merely that they can identify excessive spending but also that they are willing and able to cut it. The longer-term problem is thornier. While DOGE has served as a useful function, and while Vought’s OMB can probably identify a good amount more in the way of “woke and weaponized bureaucracy” cost-cutting measures, it is a matter of basic mathematics that something more will be needed to begin to rein in America’s soaring annual deficits and our shocking national debt. The Republican Party of Donald Trump has moved in a strongly populist direction on issues of political economy. On many fronts, such as antitrust and industrial policy efforts to reshore vital supply chains, such a shift is very much welcome. But at some point, both Republicans and Democrats alike are going to have to find some way to come together and put our 1960s-era entitlement programs — above all, Medicare and Social Security — on a long-term path to sustainability. The political optics of being perceived as “cutting” either of these programs are simply horrible, so any attempt at reform will not be easy. But it must be done anyway, as the recent Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating makes starkly clear. The longer we wait, the more credit downgrades and interest payment spikes we risk. (RELATED: DOGE Confirms That Social Security Is a Fine Mess.) Basic game theory suggests that neither party will want to blink first. Recall the 2012-era political ads accusing then-GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan of throwing grandmothers off cliffs. The politics are nasty, divisive, and radioactive. But this must get done. So we’ll have to find some way to force everyone to do it together. And in the meantime, as a down payment, let’s just make sure DOGE’s crucial work was not done in vain. READ MORE from Josh Hammer: ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and the Evils of Left-Wing Political Violence End the ‘Nationwide’ Injunction Racket Once and for All Mutually Assured Law Enforcement Destruction To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM. The post Musk’s Worthy DOGE Spotlight and the Fiscal Path Forward appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

What many Americans may not know is that this very past week — May 29th to be specific — was President John F. Kennedy’s birthday. To be specific, his 108th. For those old enough (ahem!) to recall, November 22, 1963, has never and will never lose the sharp pain of the memory. As a young student finishing up just another day in school, something was suddenly amiss. As kids filled the hallways and playground to head home — in my hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, it was the usual 2:30 “school’s out” time — there was something going on with all of us. Kids were suddenly whispering among themselves, a decidedly unlikely characteristic for a normally laughing, chatting, and more than occasionally loud crowd who would normally be looking forward to the weekend on a Friday. What was this? The whisper finally reached me. There was a story out there — and recall, this was long before cell phones and televisions in classrooms — that something had happened to President Kennedy. In fact, it was being whispered in observably horrified voices that the President had been shot. There was even a tale that he had been killed. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 223: Uncovering the Truth Of JFK’s Assassination) By the time I had climbed on my bike and peddled the short distance to my mother’s office, where she worked as the executive assistant to the Smith College English and History Department, it was abundantly clear there was something up. There was Mom, uncharacteristically not in her office but standing outside it, as she and a collection of Smith College professors and others in jobs similar to hers stood speaking quietly. The whispers on the school playground were true. President John F. Kennedy, a former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts whom, in fact, my own politically involved father knew, had been shot and killed in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. I raced home and into the house, quickly turning on the family television, which was, as it happened, tuned to CBS. And there on the black and white screen was America’s news icon of the day — anchor Walter Cronkite. Uncharacteristically, “Uncle Walter” (as he had long since come to be dubbed by media types awed by his fatherly appearance and authoritative tone) was sitting on camera dressed not in his usual suit but simply in his shirt and tie. And as he discussed the fact that JFK had been shot, he then announced that “it was apparently official” that the President had indeed died of his wounds. He removes his glasses to announce that he didn’t know where Vice President Lyndon John had “proceeded.” Clearly, Uncle Walter was stunned and upset. From that moment proceeded what was seen at the time as four of the longest and darkest days in American history. While, in fact, there had been three previous presidents who had been assassinated — Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, and McKinley in 1901 — this was the first time such a horrendous event had taken place in the day and age of television. Every minute of the next four days after those shots were fired was devoted to live television covering every aspect of the events that followed. The return of the president’s casket to the White House, the stream of VIP visitors over the next day, the casket lying in state in the East Room of the White House, the funeral service, the slow march to Arlington Cemetery for the final service and burial. On Sunday morning, with the nation watching, stunningly, the cameras were rolling live when alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was transferred out of the local jail to a different facility. Out of the watching crowd in the police basement suddenly emerged a dark-suited figure who lunged in Oswald’s direction, pistol in hand. In a blink, police insider Jack Ruby had shot Oswald in the stomach, wounds from which Oswald quickly died. What was also happening during those four days was something no one saw coming. It was the birth of JFK as an American martyr, a legend in American history. The legend: The young war hero PT-Boat commander from World War II, the handsome young senator with the beautiful wife and two young children, the young president who had enchanted both America and the world. The hero who had faced down the Russians in the Cuban Missile Crisis and stood up for black Americans in the civil rights movement. And it was also soon obvious that JFK had been transformed into an inspiration for a whole generation of young Americans. Young Americans who would go on to devote their lives to politics and government, running for office, serving in office, fanning out across the country in every office there was to be had. All done in the service of JFK’s call to “get America moving again.” To look around the America of 2025, the JFK influence is everywhere. In Washington, there sits the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In Arlington Cemetery, generations of visitors have visited his grave site with the “Eternal Flame” at his grave, lit by his wife at his burial. From one end of the country to the other, there are schools, office buildings, and more bearing his name. In the current Republican Trump administration, a JFK nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sits as the decidedly influential secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The point? No one could have predicted when I was a kid that the young president then in the White House would assume such a major role in 20th-century American history. Much less would it have been seen that as the decades stretched out from his passing and into the 21st century, his impact would be seen on one generation after another. Whether it was a Democrat named Bill Clinton or a Republican named Ronald Reagan, the JFK influence on future presidents would have a genuine hold on American history. Back there in the Reagan presidency — in 1985, to be specific — President Reagan himself happily agreed to raise money for the John F. Kennedy Library. JFK, of course, had been unable to perform that routine task of presidents, and when asked by Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr., Reagan happily agreed to do so. On the 108th birthday of JFK, it is for sure a moment to reflect a moment on what President Reagan had to say about his predecessor. In brief, Reagan said this: I was very pleased a few months ago when Caroline and John came to see me and to ask for our support in helping the library. I thought afterwards what fine young people they are and what a fine testament they are to their mother and father. …But I must confess that ever since Caroline and John came by, I’ve found myself thinking not so much about the John F. Kennedy Library as about the man himself and what his life meant to our country and our times, particularly to the history of this century. …Many men are great, but few capture the imagination and the spirit of the times. The ones who do are unforgettable. Four administrations have passed since John Kennedy’s death; five Presidents have occupied the Oval Office, and I feel sure that each of them thought of John Kennedy now and then and his thousand days in the White House. And sometimes I want to say to those who are still in school and who sometimes think that history is a dry thing that lives in a book: Nothing is ever lost in that great house; some music plays on. History is not only made by people; it is people. And so, history is, as young John Kennedy demonstrated, as heroic as you want it to be, as heroic as you are. Reagan’s wisdom is itself now history, as he has himself long since joined the iconic hall of presidents who not only lived history but also teach it by example. Without question, every president has to face their own time dealing with history’s challenges. As this is written, it is President Donald Trump’s moment to deal with the challenges of today’s world. And clearly, most Americans think Trump is meeting those challenges in Kennedy/Reagan fashion. The world — and history — keeps moving. But on this particular occasion of the young president’s 108th birthday, it is more than appropriate to take a moment and look back at John F. Kennedy’s contributions to America and the world. There were many. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: James Comey Warns GOP — For Something Dems Did? The Washington Shooting Hillary: Handmaiden to the Patriarchs of the Left The post JFK at 108 appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Demi Lovato, a Goo Goo Dolls fan, enlisted the band to play the first dance at her wedding this past weekend (5/25).  Written for the 1998 film “City Of Angels” soundtrack, it was included on the Goo Goo Dolls’ sixth album, “DizzyUp The Girl.” The ’98 single peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. Iris Demi Lovato marries Jordan “Jutes” Lutes Lovato married Jordan “Jutes” Lutes in a California ceremony, wearing a custom Vivienne Westwood gown. Goo Goo Dolls revealed their wedding gig on Instagram — “an absolute pleasure,” they wrote. “It was surreal,” Lovato later told Vogue of the “Iris” performance. “This was a pinch-us moment. It’s our favorite song and has so much meaning to both of us.” ### The post Goo Goo Dolls Are A Wedding Band appeared first on RockinTown.

Suspect Rodney Charles Hill, 17, reportedly penned rap lyrics that mentioned gunning down White.