May 10, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Signs of Conservative Resurgence

Featured image It is no secret that red states are trouncing blue states by every metric, including the most important one: where people want to live. Everyone knows about Florida and Texas, but other red states are thriving, too, and they are doing it by applying conservative principles. Mississippi is a good example. Long downtrodden and the poorest state in the U.S. since the Civil War, Mississippi is coming back strong. It »
May 10, 2026 — Bill Glahn

The “moderate” con

Featured imageCall it the Mod Con. And rhe song remains the same: from the Minneapolis Star Tribune . Klobuchar pitches moderation in governor’s race, rebuffs redistricting push for Minnesota. The Star Tribune reports, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar declined Friday to embrace Gov. Tim Walz’s suggestion that Minnesota could try to redraw its congressional districts to create an advantage for Democrats if their party wins full control of state government in November. »
May 10, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Whereabouts

Featured imageI haven’t written anything for a couple of days, which as regular readers know is highly unusual. My wife and I have been in New York for a few days, mostly offline. The occasion was a symposium on antisemitism on the right, which I participated in yesterday. The event was off the record, but I can say that one of the speakers (along with me and two others) was Princeton’s »
May 10, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Optimism and Pessimism on Iran

Featured imageLike Scott, I confess to puzzlement over what the administration is up to in Iran, and concern that President Trump may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Roger Kimball, ever the optimist, notes good news on a number of fronts. He is clearly right about the U.K. (question: why is politics so much more volatile in the U.K. than in the United States?) and trends as we approach »
May 10, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Paul Robeson: Tribute to a…?

Featured imageI love the TCM cable channel, but it has a glaring blind spot for Communism. Last week it put that glaring blind spot on display in its broadcast of Saul Turrell’s Oscar-winning 1979 documentary Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist. Introducing the film, host Dave Karger referred to difficulties in Robeson’s career as a result of his devotion to “civil rights.” The documentary is posted here. I haven’t double checked »
May 10, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Sunday morning coming down

Featured imageBack when I was working as an attorney at Faegre & Benson, I went to see Martin Zellar perform Neil Diamond’s songs on a Sunday night at the old O’Gara’s Bar and Grill at Snelling and Selby in Saint Paul. The show was advertised to begin at 8:00 p.m. I arrived a little early and made my way into the bar’s attached performance space. When the show had yet to »
May 9, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Adam Hamawy then & now

Featured imageHaving been appointed a federal district judge by President Reagan, Michael Mukasey stepped down from the bench to serve as President George W. Bush’s last and best Attorney General. He is of counsel to Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. Judge Mukasey presided over the trial of the Blind Sheikh in 1995. Then-Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy prosecuted the case and wrote the memoir Willful Blindness to recount what »
May 9, 2026 — Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures: More Illegal Aliens—From Outer Space

Featured imagePeople ridiculed President Trump in his first term when he founded the Space Force as a new branch of the military. Well who’s laughing now? True, it might seem that building a wall against alien incursions is impossible, but didn’t Star Trek solve this decades ago with modulated shields? And we’re already long past making analogies between the Administrative State and The Borg. And this, you see, is why I »
May 8, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Big win for UK Reform

Featured imageMost of the votes still remain to be counted in yesterday’s local and regional elections in the United Kingdom. But the upstart, right-leaning U.K. Reform party is already the clear winner. In city council elections across England, Reform has won more seats than any other party. At times during the count, the ruling Labour party (in red) has fallen to fourth place, behind Reform, Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The »
May 8, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Federal government employment down again

Featured imageThe April jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Payroll employment edges up by 115,000 in April; unemployment rate unchanged at 4.3% My favorite paragraph, Federal government employment continued to decline in April (-9,000). Since reaching a peak in October 2024, federal government employment is down by 348,000, or 11.5 percent. The BLS makes clear that this decline is not the artifact of any government shutdown. As »
May 8, 2026 — Scott Johnson

The gore of Alghorra

Featured imageWe took a look at the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photojournalist Saher Alghorra in “The Pulitzers strike again.” The Washington Free Beacon now follows up with a review of Alghorra’s social media posts to establish that, if not a formal member of Hamas, he supports the lying party line in every jot and tittle: “New York Times Pulitzer-Winning Photographer Calls Hamas and Jihadist Militants ‘Martyrs’ and ‘Resistance,’ »
May 9, 2026 — Bill Glahn

U.K. Reform earthquake

Featured imageThis has to rank as the biggest upheaval in British politics in more than a century, since 1924, when Ramsay MacDonald led the first-ever Labour government in the United Kingdom. Fast forward to 2026 and the off-year municipal and regional elections held on Thursday. Left-wing Labour was obviously the biggest loser. In city council elections held across England, the current majority party in the national Parliament finished a distant second »
May 9, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Our progress in degeneracy

Featured imageIn his famous 1855 letter to his old friend Joshua Speed, Abraham Lincoln explained (emphases in original): I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are »
May 8, 2026 — Bill Glahn

S&P 7,400

Featured imageMoments ago, I was able to capture this screenshot of the S&P 500 stock market index sitting above 7,400 points, a record intra-day high, We still have a couple of hours left in the trading day, so who knows where we’ll end up. From CNBC, S&P 500 rises to fresh record on strong jobs report and Iran deal hopes, heads for 6th winning week in a row. [Update: the S&P »
May 8, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Virginia surprise: Spanberger, Obama hardest hit

Featured imageThe Viringia Supreme Court has rendered the surprise of the day with a decision invalidating the redistricting plan promulgated by means of a deceitful legislatively referred constitutional amendment that was narrowly adopted by state voters in a referendum last month. Today it went down in flames. Virginia Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, writing for the majority, held that Democrats “submitted a proposed constitutional amendment to Virginia voters in an unprecedented manner” »
May 8, 2026 — Scott Johnson

The filth this time

Featured imageLast year I attended the Manhattan Institute’s annual Alexander Hamilton Award dinner in New York City with my oldest daughter and reported on the experience “Of being called ‘Nazi filth.'” That was a new one on me. It was an early warning of the gathering Mamdani stormn. This year’s MI Alexander Hamilton Award dinner honored former Senator Ben Sasse, now suffering with Stage Four pancreatic cancer, and Jeff Yass, the »
May 8, 2026 — Scott Johnson

The case for Spencer Pratt

Featured imagePirate Wires editor in chief Mike Solana brings us up to date on the Los Angeles mayor’s race this morning: Former charming reality television villain and present day LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt surged above 20% in the prediction markets following his tremendous debate against incumbent Clown World Karen Bass, who presided over the city’s disastrous response to the LA Palisades fires, and Nithya Raman, a sociopathic Marxist city councilmember. »