A report from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University found that 62 percent of adults aged 18-29 said that the design and structure of our nation’s government needs significant changes, no matter which party is elected.
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Forty percent of Gen Zers said political violence is justified to some degree, compared with 30 percent of millennials and 11 percent of baby boomers.
Mayor Wilson and Chief Barnes repeatedly mentioned efforts to reduce ‘gun violence’. That typically translates to more gun control measures against law-abiding adults including the 112,500 King County residents who have valid concealed pistol licenses. They haven’t hurt anybody. Yet, instead of acknowledging that the problem is with criminals, including juveniles whose parents should be asked why their kid is at the Seattle Center shooting people, we hear about something called ‘gun violence reduction.’ But you’re not going to reduce gun-related violence by penalizing the wrong people, and Seattle’s leaders must keep that in mind.
On July 1, California’s Assembly Appropriations Committee advanced AB 1383, a bill that guts the pension reform Sacramento passed in 2013 to keep its own promises honest. It would drop the public safety retirement age from 57 to 55, invent a new 3%-at-55 benefit formula, and let cities bargain away the cost-sharing rules that reform required. CalPERS already carries more than $179 billion in unfunded liabilities. California’s total state and local pension debt tops $200 billion. Sacramento’s answer, apparently, is to promise more.
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Congress has already written one pension bailout check. In 2021, it authorized $97 billion in Special Financial Assistance to prop up failing multiemployer union pension plans, and even that money did not close the gap. Roughly $745 billion in unfunded multiemployer promises remain today. State and local public pensions carry nearly $1.27 trillion in unfunded liabilities nationwide, according to the Equable Institute’s most recent accounting, more than 15 times the multiemployer shortfall Congress already covered.
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Sacramento just showed Washington what happens without a floor. The next state to test Congress’s resolve will not file a request. It will simply run out of cash and dare anyone in Washington to watch retirees lose their checks on television.
Either these politicians do not understand numbers, and/or they are deliberately trying to destroy the country. It is not difficult to make the case it is deliberate.
Party transformations follow a predictable six-stage evolution — recoil, squint, rationalize, submit, amplify, and purge. Each stage has language you can hear long before you see it in the votes. Republicans just finished the full cycle. Democrats might be starting it.
Watch how the language shifts, stage by stage, for signs of whether recent socialist wins are an anomaly, or the start of something bigger and broader.
Stage 1: Recoil. Denounce, by name. Lindsey Graham called Trump a “kook” who was unfit for office. Ted Cruz called him a “pathological liar.” That was 2016. Both later defended him against the exact words they coined.
Stage 2: Squint. Support without looking. “I haven’t seen the tweet” became the go-to response of House and Senate Republicans in Trump’s first term when they were asked about the latest storm. Some did the binary dodge: “The other side is worse.”
Stage 3: Rationalize. This is the “yes, but” stage: “I don’t love the style, but the judges … the tax cuts … the border … He’s a fighter.” This is where accommodation becomes the norm, and the need to win trumps style or tactics.
Stage 4: Submit. Dissent becomes career-ending. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said on the floor that Trump “bears responsibility” for Jan. 6. Two weeks later, McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to make peace. In less than three years, he’d been ousted as speaker. Silence becomes life-and-death survival.
Stage 5: Amplify. Fully adopt the vocabulary, the style, the maximal claims. Try to out-Trump Trump. After privately calling Trump “America’s Hitler” in 2016, JD Vance is now vice president. And routinely seeks to show his Trumpiness. That’s almost every Republican now.
Stage 6: Purge. Actively work to oust anyone who disagrees. You either fully accept and amplify, or get exiled. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — gone. This year alone, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) was beaten in a Trump-backed primary, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) chose retirement over humiliation, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) drew a primary challenger (and lost to him) after voting with Trump 99% of the time.
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The counterpoint: Socialism is widely seen by most elected Democrats as political poison. So this moment could prove fleeting. Four reasons for this:
Socialism has no enforcer yet. Trump ended careers personally. An idea can’t, unless someone becomes the idea. Mamdani endorsing, campaigning and toppling incumbents is what an enforcer looks like in beta. But it’s hard to see Bernie Sanders or AOC taking this national.
The far left has no Fox News synchronizing base and elites. In fact, it’s safe to assume The New York Times, The Atlantic and MS NOW will resist socialism, at least initially. But watch for the formation of a media ecosystem to counter them. Politics is downstream from information flow and currents.
Transmission is slower. Democratic voters, broadly speaking, are institutionalists. Republican voters wanted demolition. Submission to an insurgency may have a lower ceiling on the left.
Socialists need to clear general-election hurdles, as Trump did. If socialist nominees cost Democrats swing seats in November, expect the Iraq-style reversal and recoil to come roaring back.
Interesting… But as near as I could determine these stages are anything but “predictable”. My research suggests this is the first time such a classification has been proposed. Political “science” (for some definitions of science) does study these sorts of things but this analysis and classification system is new. Via Grok:
Political science does study related phenomena—party realignment, factional capture, elite defection and conformity under primary incentives, populist takeovers, and the dynamics of movement entry into parties—but these are typically analyzed through historical comparison, voting data, network analysis, or game-theoretic incentives rather than a fixed six-stage sequence.
I would love to know the future of socialism in this country. But this analysis methodology has not been proven to be a good predictor.
For the general public, the biggest takeaway is that gun law in America is being rewritten in real time. The center of gravity has shifted from legislatures making policy judgments to courts applying an aggressive historical test that often leaves modern public safety evidence in the background.
That makes outcomes harder to predict for nonlawyers. A law that once seemed settled can suddenly become vulnerable if judges decide there is no close historical analogue from the 18th or 19th century. New Jersey’s loss shows how quickly a state can go from defending a long-standing law to facing a precedent that may weaken similar rules across the country.
It also means the national debate is no longer just about whether gun restrictions are popular or effective. Increasingly, it is about whether they fit a constitutional template shaped by history, common use, and a Supreme Court that has become more protective of gun rights. That is a very different battleground from the one most Americans are used to.
So yes, this New Jersey ruling could reshape gun laws across the U.S. It already has, in one important sense: it changed the terms of the argument. From here on out, every state with an assault weapon ban, every state with a magazine cap, and every judge hearing those challenges will be looking over their shoulder at what happened on July 17, 2026.
The political left is getting a clue. And I think they are going to look for greener pastures than gun control. They have to realize they are on the wrong side of history.
Imagine taking a day off from work in a future without capitalism.
It might not feel as badly needed as it does now. You enjoy your work; it’s interesting to you, and you’re well trained for it. You work as much as you are able and no more than needed, and you would control your own labor and see it going to good use. It’s not just a job to pay the bills.
Speaking of bills: you don’t really have them anymore.
You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.
OK, enough about bills. What do you do on your day off? Maybe in the morning, you walk your kids to school, run errands, or go to a doctor’s appointment. In the afternoon, you might play a sport, practice a new skill, read, plan a trip. In the evening, you could meet up with friends or family and eat together, maybe go to the movies or down to the park.
Among the items on the DSA platform she is happy to defend: “Abolish the Senate,” “Replace the presidency and Supreme Court,” “Abolish ICE,” “Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the U.S. illegally,” “Defund the Pentagon,” “Abolish prisons,” “Government or public ownership of most large corporations.”
Watch this video to hear her say it with enthusiasm:
Fox: "Abolish the Senate?"
DSA Chair: "True"
Fox: "Abolish ICE?"
DSA Chair: "Absolutely"
Fox: "Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone in the US illegally?"
This is mind bogglingly delusional and/or a deliberate set of lies.
While I can see this set of visions could be appealing to some people, I don’t think enough people will believe these same lies that have been told for 100+ years is going to gain traction in the age of the Internet. People know what happened in Venezuela. People know what happened in Cuba and East Europe. Just spend a day in the U.S., Germany, Denmark, Singapore, Hong Kong, or even France or England. Compare that to a day in Vietnam, Poland or Czechia. I have visited all those countries. And even though Poland and Czechia have been released from the bonds of heavy socialism for 30 years, you can easily still see the price they paid before rejecting socialism and accepting something approximating a free market. Vietnam is far worse off than any of those countries. Did they find their workers’ paradise by going full socialist fifty years ago? No. Not even close.
The socialist never stop lying, but maybe this surge in popularity will see their lies rejected before 100s of millions more people have to pay the price.
From the Greg Price thread on X:
THIS SHOULD BE IN AN AD FOR EVERY R running for Congress in Nov.
This is the new Democrat Party platform and Rs need to shout it from the fucking rooftops.
These people are insane. Show the world how insane they really are.
A portion of every NJ-15 supports the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, the lead plaintiff in the recent 3rd Circuit victory, to directly fund the legal battles for their second amendment rights. Help us spread freedom. pic.twitter.com/Cc21zD47tJ
— Palmetto State Armory (@palmettoarmory) July 24, 2026
The gun is a civilizational technology in the deepest sense: it requires responsibility, judgment, and the willingness to accept the consequences of your decisions. You cannot outsource it. You cannot have a committee fire it. It is the most anti-bureaucratic object ever invented – a direct, personal, consequential instrument that puts the full weight of the decision on the individual holding it. Which is precisely why the administrative state finds it intolerable. Not because it is dangerous. Because it is sovereign.
It is my opinion that once people own a gun and go shooting once a month or so it changes them. They become more independent in many other aspects of their life. They see their relationship with the government in a different light.
Take a new shooter to the range. Get them started down a healtiher path.
The reports from Hawaii and New Jersey underscore what could be described as the bitter resentment and resistance from gun control proponents when they lose, which has happened consistently at the Supreme Court since 2008. It signals the battle to fully restore the Second Amendment’s protection of a right that “shall not be infringed” will not end even when the high court hammers down on gun and magazine bans.
There will be other issues to address, including—but not limited to—such impairments as:
Permits to Purchase
Waiting Periods
Training Mandates
Constitutional (Permitless) Carry
National Reciprocity
The legal roller coaster ride is definitely far from over.
Workman has been involved in the gun rights movement since the mid- to late-1970s. That is about 20 years more than me. So, if he thinks we still have a long way to go before declaring victory I have to give his opinion serious consideration.
After thinking about it, assuming he means “far from over” in terms of years of court and political battles, I still think I will be closer to correct than he is. Neither of us have been in this situation before. Until just the past few years we have primarily on the defensive when blocking a law from being enacted could be considered a win. Now we complain that a court victory only applies to members of an easily joined national organization.
There is a comparison to be made with the battles other groups have been through in this country. I’m thinking of the Jim Crow laws (segregated schools and transit, poll taxes, literacy tests, bans on interracial marriage, etc.) and gay marriage. My impression of those situations is that once SCOTUS made their rulings and the executive branch started enforcing the rulings the opposition folded relatively quickly. Am I wrong? If not, then why shouldn’t this take a similar course?
I think that rather than think of this in terms of political and court battles we are entering the domain of psychological and financial battles. We certainly have the psychological edge at this point. In the 1970’s our opponents were plotting the banning of handguns (remember Handgun Control, Inc.?). They saw a national handgun ban only a decade or perhaps two away. The rifle and shotgun bans were to follow. That drive stalled and Josh Sugarmann brilliantly created the deliberate deception of the “assault weapon” to create a new front to attack us.
That attack front has been stopped. Within a year it will have been nearly completely repelled. If they only have the items on Workman’s list, I see psychological and financial collapse. Those items just will not generate the interest and donation dollars that handgun and “assault weapon” bans did. Yes, most of the dollars have been from a few big donors and government grants. But the government grants have been trimmed way back. And are big donor going to be dropping hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on getting permits to purchase, waiting periods, and training requirements in a few more states or even to fight the repeal of those laws? What is the sales pitch to those people? If only the mass shooter of a dozen kids had better training, they would have known better than to do that?
My read between the lines is they know they are losing a key fundraising issue and don’t know where to go next. If the assault weapons and mag issue go, they’re getting into increasingly esoteric fights that don’t propagandize well.
“You see, if a rifle measures 26 inches, it’s good and wholesome. But if it measures 25.9 inches, it’s a killing machine designed for war.” doesn’t hit the same. Neither does “Make Gun Owners Deaf Again”
I’m just not seeing out opposition being able to get the useful idiot enthusiasm ramped up or the people with money virtue signaling on the remaining issues.
We used to believe — still see this in comments — that the left (and their distant patron the USSR) were ultimately good at one thing: propaganda. And for a long time, they seemed to be so. They could convince people of the most ridiculous things and more importantly, they’d made leftism into a positional good. If you wanted to show you were high class you’d be as leftist as possible in public, all the way to communist.
Turns out though that this wasn’t in any way shape or form a natural system, any more than the public schools are. It turns out they could act superior, sell leftism as a positional good, and act like we were the baddies because they controlled critical positions in the information/art/entertainment industrial complex. They could therefore keep out anyone who disagreed with them, and act like all smart people agreed with the most outrageous idiocies of the communist mind.
… but this is not the case anymore. And it’s becoming glaringly obvious it was all fake.
In fact, the more distributed the information system gets the more the left is becoming like the mean girls once they leave high school: bitter, vociferous, and attracting only the mentally ill.
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The reign of the mean girls is coming to an end. First slowly (these last 20 years) then suddenly, you’ll see communists and leftists in general being derided as the sapskulls with nothing but evil and vain gloating on their side.
We are unpersuaded by the State’s argument that LCMs are not “Arms” covered by the Second Amendment because they are not necessary to operate a firearm. The State reasons that firearms can operate with smaller capacity magazines. But the text of the Second Amendment does not limit “Arms” to the minimum equipment necessary to operate a weapon. And nowhere in Heller or Bruen’s textual analyses did the Supreme Court suggest that the availability of alternative equipment changes the definition of an arm under the Second Amendment.
It is important to note that the decision was 10-5 and that Freeman, writing for the majority, is Biden appointee. And for people who care about such things, she is a black woman. The racist who would normally call this decision a right wing, white male, ruling will find themselves a bit tongue tied on this occasion.
Please also note that anti-gun politicians attempting to use such weak arguments is very telling. They are reaching the end of the line. As we move forward their babblings will become less coherent and more easily dismissed. Soon their contribution to society will be considered nothing more than a stain on liberty in our history books.
On July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear challenges to so-called “assault weapon” bans out of Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois. That means the justices will now confront one of the most important Second Amendment questions in the country: whether states and localities may outlaw some of the most popular rifles in America by attaching to them a political label designed to frighten the public. However, the gun-control lobby chooses to market these bans, the underlying reality is simple. The government is attempting to prohibit arms that millions of peaceable Americans own for lawful purposes.
In my mind this should have been resolved within a few years after California passed the Roberti–Roos “Assault Weapons” Control Act in 1989. But the reality is that we didn’t have the SCOTUS votes for a win. There were a lot of people who even doubted we had the votes to agree the 2nd Amendment was an individual right in the 2008 Heller decision. Now, we know we have the votes and the pro-freedom organizations are pushing as many cases as they can through the courts while the chances of a win are good.
This could be dismissed as an incredible fantasy dream that could never true:
“The US Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, has agreed to hear en banc the question of whether Congress has the constitutional authority to enact federal gun control laws.”
The only hook in the enumerated powers granted to the Federal government to regulate guns is the commerce clause. Had you been concerned the feds restricting gun ownership in the early 1800’s you would have thought you were doubly protected by the lack of an enumerated power as well as the 2nd Amendment. As of Wickard v. Filburn (1942) the government bypassed the enumerated powers restriction, and they burst through the loophole like one of the Missoula floods. Now we have an essentially unlimited Federal government.
The case before the Fifth Circuit is a gun case by a convicted felon in possession of a firearm challenging the government’s authority granted in Wickard v. Filburn. If successful at both the appeals court (plausible) it would be immediately appealed to SCOTUS. Justice Thomas has said he thinks this approach to invalidating gun regulation has merit.
If SCOTUS overturns Wickard v. Filburn we would suddenly be living in an unknown universe. Probably 95% (or more) of what the Feds currently do would be beyond their authority.
This would be a way to get out from under the $40 Trillion dollar debt. It would relive all the congress critters from being blamed for the collapse of, well, just about everything the government does.
I would like to believe this has the potential to restore the limited government the founders envisioned. But, to put it mildly, I am skeptical. But it is fun to think about. Imagine the liberal tears, shrieks, and wailing!
But just that this is being considered is incredible. We truly live in interesting times.
“Doubles all around,” said Tradition. “New Jersey is paying.”
A little knowledge of 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 helps with the punchline.
I’ve been putting time and money into this cause for over 30 years now. It is incredibly satisfying to be able to make jokes like this instead of thinking about to make my last stand at my underground bunker in Idaho as costly as possible for the forces of tyranny.
I’ve been quoting Winkler since 2008 (see also here). I would never call him a friend to the gun rights movement. But he is mostly accurate, if you ignore what some people might say are lies by omissions, in his observations.
That he says, “there very few guns laws that are safe”, is an admission from the other side that a structural collapse in our opposition is in sight. This is other evidence of this too:
I think a lot of folks on the left see this like I saw the gay marriage issue: Regardless of how one might feel about it, it was a losing issue for R’s. And it is better that the debate on it just be disposed of for good. Many folks on the left know 2A is a losing issue for them. And the longer they drag it on, the more active we get about it. Being anti-2a is an anchor around their necks.
Of course, that is not the universally accepted take:
Nothing much has changed with the New York Times over the years. In the 1930s, thanks to Walter Duranty, the so-called “newspaper of record” was effectively cheerleading for Joseph Stalin’s communism. Today, in Jia Lynn Yang’s “How American Socialism Changed, and Stormed the Democratic Party,” it displays a similar sympathy for a modernized version of that same evil system, now advanced by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies.
Yang’s article is filled with admiration for socialism’s supposed adaptability and moral force. She notes that Mamdani’s New York protégés “won by harnessing a wide sense of grievance.” In other words, they are skilled politicians, identifying discontent and converting it into electoral success. But Stalin, too, harnessed grievance, appealing to resentment against the czarist regime. That did not make him a champion of liberty.
What do you expect? If they were capable of learning from history and the world around them, they could see the difference between East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Hati and the Dominican Republic (opposite sides of the same island), and Venezuela before and after the socialists took power.
Even when lined up at the edge of the ditch like millions of others before them, they will still insist, “This is a mistake! I’m a good communist! This isn’t real communism!”*
Gun owners in staunchly anti-second amendment states have felt forgotten for too long. SCOTUS has restored our faith in the system that the little guy can still fight back in this great country. This case isn’t just about restoring our rights in Connecticut, it’s about ensuring that no other citizens will face similar infringements regardless of which state they call home.
But the courts, strong action from the executive branch, and determined community action eventually stopped the Democrats from socially acceptable lynching, separate water fountains, only sitting in the back of bus, suppressing voters, illegal mixed-race marriages, and a multitude of other injustices.
A culture shift with support from the courts allowed homosexuals out of the closet and the right to marry.
It is now our turn to change the culture in a dramatic and nearly irreversible way.
With a specific constitutionally protected right enumerated in the Bill of Rights to back us up, why can’t we achieve our goals as well? I think we can and will. I think we are on the edge of a widespread collapse of the resistance to our destiny. I think wins in the “assault weapon” cases will break their will to continue.
The NRA has secured a statewide injunction blocking Abigail Spanberger’s ban on semi-automatic firearms and standard-capacity magazines. The Virginia court has made it unmistakably clear: this blatant violation of constitutional rights cannot be enforced by any law enforcement agency in the Commonwealth. This is a historic victory for gun owners and the rule of law. It ensures that law-abiding Virginians will not have their rights stripped away while our challenge proceeds. The NRA and our world-class legal team will continue fighting in court until this unconstitutional measure is permanently removed from the books.
Let’s be precise about causes. For example, the housing crisis isn’t a progressive policy failure — it’s rooted in decades of restrictive zoning, corporate real estate speculation. Homelessness requires federal funding for mental health services and addiction treatment. Blue cities can’t solve (problems like these) alone.
