MOST HILL AIDES FAVOR FILIBUSTER: In something of a shocker, four-fifths of congressional aides interviewed expressed support for preserving the Senate filibuster. The big majority was evident among aides representing both major political parties, according to HillFaith.

ERNST BILL CLAWS BACK $65 BILLION: It’s quite possible the Covid relief spending was the biggest boondoggle ever, but Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) introduced a bill today requiring the return to the Treasury of $65 billion that remains unspent.

ELON’S GROKOPEDIA TO REPLACE WIKIPEDIA: Science & Culture’s Denyse O’Leary took a close look at the new Grokopedia and came away quite impressed with the new digital clearinghouse of all human knowledge.

DICKENS AND THE 2025 VOTING: Speaking of the outcome of Tuesday’s voting, Family Research Council (FRC) Chairman Tony Perkins recalls Scrooge’s haunted question to the last spirit:

“In ‘A Christmas Carol,’ Ebenezer Scrooge meets the final spirit — the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come — and is terrified by the vision of his own lonely death. Realizing the horror of what he’s seeing, he pleads with the Spirit for hope as he asks the question that pierces through time:

“’Are these the shadows of things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be only?’

“That is one of the most profound moments in Dickens’s story, and it captures the central moral truth — that the future is not fixed. Repentance and moral renewal can alter destiny. Tuesday’s election results may be shadows of things to come, but they don’t have to be.”

Put otherwise, there is nothing inevitable about a Democrat sweep in 2026 unless Americans who know better, allow it to be. Reminds me of Charles Krauthammer’s fine lecture a decade ago entitled “Decline is a Choice.”

WHY BE SURPRISED BY DEMS TDS TANTRUM? The always brutally frank guys at Issues & Insights (I&I) contend nobody should be surprised that blue majorities in NYC, New Jersey and Virginia turned out en masse to protest Trump:

“In New Jersey and Virginia, the Republican candidates did worse than Donald Trump just one year ago. And in Virginia, Democrats picked up at least 10 seats in the state legislature.

“New York elected its most radical mayor in its history. Californians voted by an almost 3-to-1 margin to redraw the state’s districts to squeeze out five more seats for Democrats. All of these elections had one thing in common – they were akin to a primal scream about President Donald Trump.”

That said, what the 2025 election results do make clear, according to I&I, is that Republicans better get their voter turnout act together in time for the 2026 mid-term election because if they don’t, the last two years of Trump’s second term will be an unending parade of investigations, impeachments, trials and repeals.

To which I would add: Repealing the Senate filibuster now in order to re-open the government and complete enactment of the Trump agenda, but then failing to keep Congress in GOP hands will guarantee that agenda’s quick execution by the new Democratic majority in 2027.

EARMARKERS GOTTA EARMARK: They renamed earmarks “Congressionally Directed Funding” (CDFs), but an earmark by any other name is still an earmark. The Washington Stand offers multiple examples from the current Congress.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT SHARE THIS POST WITH LEFTIES: Romina Boccia and Tyler Thurman of the Cato Institute make an excellent point about one of the inherent flaws of a centralized welfare system:

“The fact that a program that provides food assistance to millions of Americans can be brought to the edge of a cliff because of partisan gridlock illustrates the perils of allowing the welfare apparatus to become increasingly centralized in Washington. Devolving welfare programs like SNAP to the states would align spending authority with accountability and insulate food aid from federal dysfunction,” they write.

Read the whole column because that’s just one of multiple interesting observations.

TRUMP’S VENEZUELA STRATEGY EXPLAINED: Rod Martin lays it out in stark detail: America doesn’t send the world’s largest and most lethal aircraft carrier, along with its accompanying destroyers, etc., merely to blow up cartel drug boats. But there’s even more to the military noose Trump is putting on Maduro’s neck (Putin, are you watching?).

SURPRISED? DEMS WON’T SAY IF THEY COORDINATE WITH HEALTHCARE INSURERS: The central demand of Hill Democrats is the government stays shutdown until Republicans and President Donald Trump agree to permanent extension of Joe Bide’s “temporary” Obamacare tax subsidies.

Since healthcare insurers already reap hundreds of billions of tax dollars through those subsidies and will get even more if the subsidies become permanent, it seems imminently logical to ask what is the connection, if any? But as I report this morning for The Washington Stand:

“Spokesmen for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffres (D-N.Y.), House Minority Whip Kathleen Clarke (D-Mass.), and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) were each asked by TWS earlier this week if they or any members of their leadership or personal staffs have “met with executives, registered lobbyists or any other representatives” of the 10 biggest Obamacare healthcare insurers.

Of course they didn’t respond. And if they did say something, you can be certain it would be about “protecting” millions of Americans from higher premium costs that will surely follow termination of the subsidies on 12/31/25 and preserving Obamacare.

But here’s what they won’t/can’t say: The “temporary” subsidies approved in 2021 and then extended to 2025  doubled enrollment, but premiums, fraudulent enrollments, denied claims and the overall costs to taxpayers also increased dramatically. That’s why the abject failure of Obamacare is the odiferous skunk in Democrats’ shutdown strategy, a fact even the Washington Post editorial board has acknowledged.

And here’s the other things they won’t/can’t say: Massive campaign contributions from healthcare insurers going to the very Democrats in Congress now refusing to re-open the government and let members of the U.S. military, air traffic controllers, and hundreds of thousands of other federal workers be paid. And maybe, just maybe, the Democrats shutdown strategy explains why those healthcare insurers have spent record amounts lobbying Congress in the first three quarters of 2025.

And here’s a question for the Trump administration: Why is Dr. Oz the only one talking about his agency’s new investigation that is confirming the hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid benefits going to illegal immigrants, a fact that directly contradicts the claim Democrats have made incessantly since Shutdown Day One?

SUCCINCT CASE FOR NOT MOVING TO CALIFORNIA: Veteran conservative journalist John Merline recently moved from Virginia to the Golden State and, boy, is he paying for it!

THOSE SLEEPER TERRORISTS CELLS ARE STILL HERE: Richard Pollock is warning in his latest Substack column of the continuing and possibly increasing threat of a new wave of terrorist attacks in America and Europe.

Citing the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, Pollock reports that U.S. intelligence agencies have been warning state and local governments “to be vigilant for potential domestic plots in the United States.”

LOBBYIST MILLIONS BEHIND SCHUMER SHUTDOWN: The familiar maxim about following the money to figure out what’s really happening in politics is perfectly illustrated by examining the millions being spent by healthcare insurers to protect those “temporary” Obamacare tax credits that generate billions of tax dollars in income for them.

JUDGES CONFESS AI IN RULINGS: The Washington Stand’s Sarah Holliday advances the recent news about two federal judges admitting an intern and a clerk used AI in researching and drafting two rulings that were subsequently withdrawn due to AI-induced errors. Opinions based on AI are only one aspect of the potential problems stemming from widespread adoption and development of AI technology.

Holliday reports that much AI discussion was raised during the Family Research Council’s recent 2025 Pray-Stand-Vote Summit. Asked by FRC Vice-President Travis Weber if Americans should be worried about AI, the response of a panel of experts was clearly in favor. Holliday quoted Jon Frendl, a tech entrepreneur and founder of the custom app development firm Cappital:

“'[T]he way to really do a lot of work in AI is you build several AIs that help to build even better AIs, and those better AIs help you build even better AIs. So, there’s an exponential nature to that. And when you combine that with the amount of investment across the board internationally, and then really you can look at power companies and chips, which are the fundamental things necessary behind this,’ Fremdl said.

“Understanding all this, he stressed, shows us that it’s only ‘just getting started, and it’s going to radically change things.’ However, as both Frendl and [Brandon Maddick, software engineer and head of product for the Christian AI platform Dominion] Maddick concluded, these advanced and ever-advancing AI developments, especially if left unchecked, could potentially drive people back to a place of desiring true meaning — church, real human connections, and genuine effort,” Holliday said.

HILL AIDES SNAP OUT OF IT? New survey by CNCT Capitol Pulse finds 80 percent of congressional aides responding “No” when asked if Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries should be able to use the benefit to purchase sodas.

FEMINIST REACHES FEMINISM’S DEADEND: Wintery Knight updates on a feminist advocate he first featured more than a decade ago, and who now, at age 63, has realized she ruined her life by living the values of the feminist movement. This is a profoundly sad but instructive portrait of the emptiness that so characterizes post-modern materialism.

IF YOU’VE EVER WONDERED: Speaking of the Issues & Insights (I&I) crew, a critical comment from one of their many readers prompted a lengthy explanation of why they don’t like the Democratic Party. The explanation is full of interesting insights, including these two:

“The Democratic Party’s intersectional politics are why Greta Thunberg can shift from climate warrior to a Hamasnik wearing an Arafat keffiyeh (also known as the ‘hipster swastika’) and no one on the left blinks. They furnished the stage for Barack Obama to promise that if elected, he’d get busy ‘fundamentally transforming the United States of America,’ and be cheered as if he were a deliverer having descended from Olympus.

“The revolution that the Democratic Party has been pressing for at least six decades would abolish capitalism and free markets, seize the means of production, destroy the nuclear family, erase Christianity and Judaism, defund law enforcement, reopen the borders, censor speech, pack the Supreme Court, ration energy and health care, overturn our civil order and uproot Western civilization.”

There’s more, much more, worth your perusal.

YOU THINK ICE IS BAD NOW? The Issues & Insights guys provide a lengthy list of reminders about the conduct of ICE agents when Barack Obama was in the Oval Office.

IS SCHUMER SHUTDOWN PAYBACK TO THE HEALTHCARE INSURERS? Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and legions of Democratic incumbents, challengers and committees get millions of dollars in campaign donations from healthcare insurance firms.

Is it coincidental that those same firms are the main beneficiaries of those “temporary” Covid-related Obamacare tax credits? No, it’s gotta be coincidental no matter what this article in The Washington Stand reports.

DR OZ BLOWS HOLE IN SCHUMER SHUTDOWN NARRATIVE: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) repeats it over and over and over: It’s against the law for illegal immigrants to get federal healthcare and other benefits, so GOP charges that they are getting billions in such aid cannot be true.

Well, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), dispatched investigators to get to the facts on this issue and their earliest results show more than $1 billion in confirmed Medicaid benefits going to illegals.

Neither Schumer nor House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded to my request for comment on the Oz probe to The Washington Stand.

BUREAUCRACY AND REPUBLIC: Rod Martin and Jeffrey Tucker make the most  succinct case I’ve read in eons on why you can have a ruling administrative state or you can have a democratic republic, but the two cannot coincide on an equal basis. And the “No Kings” hypocrisy gets its due, too.

NO MORE CANCEL CULTURE: Pastor Luke Ash was fired earlier this year from his second job at the Baton Rouge Parish Library after he refused to use a transgendered co-worker’s “preferred pronouns.” It wasn’t that long ago that such an incident would be a one-day story and the world would move on, in part due to fear of the consequences of fighting back.

Pastor Ash is fighting back, with help from attorneys at the Florida-based Liberty Counsel civil liberties defense outfit, according to the Washington Stand’s S.A. McCarthy.

“Liberty Counsel charges that the library board and supervisors violated Ash’s First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religious liberty and Fourteenth Amendment rights, in addition to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Louisiana’s constitutional religious liberty protections, and the state’s Preservation of Religious Freedom Act,” McCarthy reports.

Ash’s attorneys informed the Louisiana parish authorities that the bottom line on their actions in firing the pastor “is this: there is no compelling government interest in requiring Mr. Ash (or other employees) to lie; or to affirmatively use false pronouns that do not accurately reflect biological sex, particularly outside the hearing of the person who dislikes accurate, sex-based pronouns. The Library has acted unlawfully in firing Mr. Ash.”

More to come on this case. Like Trump said, “fight! fight! fight!”

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE PUZZLING: Of the latest trends in American church attendance — young men outnumber young women — plus a bit of a progress report on HillFaith.org. As I contend in my latest Substack column, you don’t have to be a Bible-thumper to appreciate the public policy differences in perspectives represented by the Sermon on the Mount and Critical Race Theory.

NEW CIVIL WAR IN GAZA: Multiple Palestinian clans or gangs are fighting against Hamas and it seems quite possible a final internal convulsion is at hand. Richard Pollock has details on Substack.

THE SKUNK SHUTDOWN DEMS ARE STUCK WITH: Capitol Hill Democrats insist millions of Americans will lose health insurance if those “temporary” Obamacare Pandemic tax credit subsidies aren’t made permanent; otherwise, they will keep the government shutdown.

But, as even The Washington Post editorial board has come to see, the fundamental problem is not the Obamacare subsidies but Obamacare itself, which, as I detail this morning on The Washington Stand, has been a catastrophe for American healthcare.

MORE MEN THAN WOMEN IN CHURCH NOW: For as long as memory serves, women have been more active than men in churches, but, as Amanda Hughes reports on HillFaith this morning, a new data analysis by Barna Group finds the reverse is now true in America.

“Patterns in church participation showed a reversal over the past 25 years in attendance where women led the household in spiritual growth and church activity. Now, research tells a different story where more men, 43 percent, and fewer women, 36 percent, reported attending church on a weekly basis,” according to Hughes.