The American Spectator

In the last few days, we’ve watched a major dustup take hold over a proposed policy change in the Trump administration championed by Vice President JD Vance; namely, a rule change within the Department of Health and Human Services’ $12 billion Child Care and Development Fund which would make two-parent, one-income families eligible for some $9,000 per year in subsidies, which are currently restricted to two-income families below a certain income level.

Vice President JD Vance wants to pay married parents to stay home with their children, and he wants to do it with money Congress appropriated to help low-income families afford day care. Whatever one thinks of the goal, which may prove popular, the proposal fails every test we should apply to government subsidies. That’s because the proposal corrects no market failure. It pays people for choices they’re already making.

SACRAMENTO — California’s government obviously is notorious for its slow-moving and bureaucratic permitting processes — and its frequent hostility to private enterprise. Despite the state budget’s reliance on capital-gains revenue from the tech industry, officials here also can be quite meddlesome when it comes to AI and social media. But recent news from the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates autonomous passenger-service vehicles, offers some encouraging news.

It was a man with a pen who noticed that the cross stood atop a ball at the apex of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Most of England, going about its business on and around Ludgate Hill, hadn’t thought much about it. But an author’s job is to notice. And then to write.

The Last Stand: Christ or Chaos: The War for the West is an uncompromising book and film documentary written and narrated by Seth Gruber that is less entertainment and more wake-up call. It challenges one to confront the difficult questions about culture, morality, and the value of human life grounded in reality rather than some abstract philosophy. The Last Stand is undeniably bold, a masterpiece that refuses to whisper when shouting is essential.

Just when you thought the Left’s victimhood fetish couldn’t go further, it has. Welcome to the Lindsay Clancy trial, where a mother who clearly killed her three children avoided conviction on a hung jury. The Left cheered on Clancy and the wheels of justice stalled. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Is the Lindsay Clancy Case a Windfall for the GOP?) Clancy is hardly alone on the Left’s victimization of criminals. There is Luigi Mangione, who stalked and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

One wife posted her husband’s private notes to their child on TikTok, and instead of praising the gesture, she criticized him for not meeting her expectations. This is one piece of a bigger phenomenon of spouses going on social media to demean and complain about their significant other, making the internet involved in an otherwise private marital conflict.

Welcome back to the world of Mike Holman. If this is your first stop, here’s what you need to know: Mike Holman is the independent journalist, podcaster, and inveterate maker-of-enemies at the center of Scott McKay’s bitingly satirical thriller series — four novels (so far) chronicling one man’s habit of ending up in the middle of the very stories the rest of the media is too scared, too compromised, or too incurious to tell.

In 2023, I warned in The American Spectator that a new far-left dictatorship was closing in on Europe, referring to the extremist drift of Pedro Sánchez’s government in Spain.

On Sep. 11, 2001, al Qaeda terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people from many nations, including 24 Canadians. On the 25th anniversary, the people might recall the U.S. agency that failed to stop the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor in 1941. “At the CIA, our mission is to preempt threats and further U.S. national security objectives,” claims the secretive agency, whose budget is classified.