How to end California’s worsening cost-of-living crisis — politicians must stop lying

By Carl DeMaio, New York Post

California has by far the highest cost of living of any state in the nation — and it’s getting worse every year.

But instead of fixing the problem, state and local politicians are dodging responsibility and spiking costs even higher with insane tax hikes and costly new regulations. 

The Transparency Foundation recently released a study showing the cost of living in California for a typical middle-class family of three is a shocking $29,753.16 higher than the national average.

The study compared every line item in a household budget to determine how much more expensive that item is in California versus the average cost nationally.

Color Revolution Tactics: Why The Left Must Break The Men Who Enforce The Law

Alexander Muse • amuse on 𝕏 January 27, 2026

A republic cannot survive if it teaches its citizens to hate the people charged with enforcing its laws. That is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a plain institutional truth. Law is not self-executing. It lives in ordinary human beings who wear uniforms, sign paperwork, make arrests, and carry out removals. If you can be made to see those people not as fellow citizens performing a difficult public function, but as monsters, then the law begins to look optional, and violence begins to look like virtue.

That is the point of the current campaign to demonize federal immigration officials. For simplicity, I will refer to all immigration officials as ICE, even though the work is carried out across ICE, CBP, and DHS. The campaign is not merely a set of criticisms of policy. It is a moral downgrade, a relentless effort to push a class of public servants outside the circle of normal human sympathy. It is also part of a broader color revolution attempt to remove President Trump and Republicans from power by delegitimizing the state’s basic functions, provoking disorder, and then blaming the resulting disorder on the administration tasked with restoring order.

Oil Matters In Venezuela, But Not For The Reason Democrats Think

Oil isn’t just a commodity anymore. It’s a strategic weapon.

by Larry Behrens, The Federalist

From the moment the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro hit the headlines, out came the recycled slogans that have been gathering dust for more than 20 years: “No Blood for Oil.” Right on cue, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez predictably declared that U.S. policy toward Venezuela was “about oil and regime change.”

It’s a tired worldview recycled by eco-leftists — one where the United States is forever cast as a cartoon villain scheming to seize foreign oil fields. Yes, oil is part of the Venezuela story, but not in the simplistic bumper-sticker way the left keeps chanting.

Today, the United States is the world’s largest energy producer. American oil and gas don’t just power our economy — they stabilize global markets. Meanwhile, China is the world’s largest oil importer. Beijing’s economy survives only because tankers sail halfway around the world to feed its refineries. And one of the places China leans on most heavily is Venezuela. In 2025 alone, Beijing took in 470,000 barrels of oil per day from Maduro; that’s about 4.5 percent of China’s sea imported oil.

That’s the part the protest signs conveniently overlook.

And, Overnight, Trump Goes From ‘Dangerous Isolationalist’ To ‘Dangerous Imperialist’

“Every single American president from FDR on has believed that America has to exercise global leadership. The only exception is Donald Trump.” – Max Boot, PBS, Jan. 1, 2024.

 “Trump is squandering America’s moral capital — and inviting a global backlash against his avaricious overreach,” Max Boot, Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2026

BY: Issues and Insights Editorial Board

Sometimes, we wish the never-Trumpers of the world could settle on the reason they think Donald Trump is an existential threat to the nation. Up until a few weeks ago, the threat he posed, we were told, was that he was an isolationist. As pathological Trump-hater Max Boot repeatedly said, the world needs U.S. leadership, and Trump’s isolationalism was threatening peace and stability around the globe.

Boot was hardly the only one.

Leftists Misunderstand MAGA Vision for America

By Ben Shaprio

This week, Axios ran a fascinating piece about the supposed “redefinition” of Americanism under President Donald Trump. Titled “Inside Trump’s American identity project,” Axios posited that “President Trump is wielding government power to enforce a more rigid, exclusionary definition of what it means to be American.”

What would this new definition entail? “In MAGA’s telling, America is the heir to ancient European civilizations, built on a Judeo-Christian foundation of white identity, meritocracy, traditional gender roles and the nuclear family,” says Axios. “These tenets are cast as universal truths—and mantras such as ‘America is an idea’ or ‘diversity is our strength’ are dismissed as liberal fictions.”

AI and Privacy: A Guide to California's Recently Passed Legislation

By: Afshan Bhatia, Anokhy Desai, Kewa Jiang, and Hina Moheyuddin

In the corridors of the California legislature, legislators are reshaping the boundaries of privacy and artificial intelligence. This article reviews 11 key bills that confront a wide spectrum of contemporary challenges from workplace surveillance to automated decision systems that arbitrate human opportunity. It is critical for businesses, developers, consumers, and privacy professionals alike to understand these bills because they signal how California is setting nationwide standards for transparency, accountability, and ethical technology use.

The California legislative session concluded on September 12, 2025, the first year of a two-year legislative process. The bills that passed both the Senate and the Assembly will now be considered by Governor Gavin Newsom, who has until October 12, 2025 to either sign, veto, or take no action on the bills. The legislature will reconvene on January 5, 2026.