NEW FRACKING REVOLUTION IS HERE: If you haven’t read Rod Martin’s latest on the all-but-unheralded development of petcoke-blend proppant, you might as well be back in the days of whale oil. And oh by the way, if the DSA looneys get in power, we can all forget being warmed in the winter and A/C-cooled in the summer because they will kill this new technology.

5 MILLION LOST JOBS IF DSA GETS ITS WAY: New economic analysis of the projected impact of raising the Minimum Wage to $25 per hour sees more than 5 million jobs lost, with the biggest impact by far being on women and teenagers.

EVIDENCE EXPERTS LAUD GOSPELS: Two men who know a thing or three about what constitutes trustworthy evidence — one a former investigative journalist, the other a former LA police detective specializing in solving cold murder cases — explain on HillFaith this morning why they concluded the Gospels are trustworthy sources about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

CONGRESS CLOSES HUGE TRANSPARENCY LOOPHOLE: But the issue now may be if President Donald Trump will sign it into law. Check it out in my latest for The Washington Stand. 

WHERE DID ALL THE MEN GO? It’s true, a growing legion of men are dropping out of the workforce. They just stop looking for work. The result is not merely economic damage; the traditional family structure, among much else, suffers grievous damage when hard-working, responsible men aren’t available for marriage.

Writing for The Washington Stand, Zachary Patton, a talented young journo, offers this prescient analysis of the problem:

“A major driver of this contraction in the workforce is the direct consequences of social safety net expansion. What was once designed with the intention of being temporary cushions during economic recession has morphed into a permanent way of living for millions of able-bodied Americans.

“Divided amongst state-funded disability benefits, nutritional assistance, and low-income housing subsidies, the economic estuary that exists between a demanding career and remaining jobless has dried up to almost a point of non-existence. When safety nets mitigate non-work without demanding an exchange, the motivator to persevere through demanding labor dissolves.”

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO: In-person, open-mike, no-holds-barred Town Halls in which citizens ask the senators or representatives why they voted they way they did in Congress on issues important to their state or district? Suddenly in August 2026, almost nobody in Congress is holding these VIP events.

HOW ONE GOP LOCAL ASPIRANT RESPONDED TO ICE: Orlando Sanchez is an Hispanic-American seeking election in November as a Republican to be the next Harris County (Houston, Texas) County Judge seat. The Texas megatropolis has in recent years trended strongly to the Democrats on congressional and local office contests.

Sanchez is seen as an unusually strong GOP contender, however, and his recent oped in the Houston Chronicle addressing an ICE shooting that killed a local undocumented immigrant is a solid illustration of why Sanchez could well be a Republican bright-spot of the 2026 mid-term elections. Here’s the heart of his oped:

“In moments like this, some will demand that we choose between compassion and the rule of law. I reject that choice. A person’s immigration status does not erase his humanity. A badge does not erase accountability. And grief does not erase the need for facts.

“The most dangerous thing a leader can do after a tragedy is decide too quickly what the tragedy means. Some will use this shooting to condemn every law enforcement officer. Others will see the badge involved and excuse whatever happened before the evidence is known. Both instincts are wrong because they replace judgment with politics which weakens public trust.

“Harris County needs a steady hand. We need an investigation the public can trust. This includes evidence that is preserved, witnesses who are protected, agency actions that are reviewed, and facts that are followed wherever they lead. If video exists, secure it. If reports were filed, review them. If witnesses saw something different from the official account, hear them before they are removed and sent beyond the reach of investigators. That is how justice works.”

FIRST, CHATGPT, NOW GROK4: Yesterday on HillFaith, it was ChatGPT compiling a perfect score; today on PJMedia, it’s Grok4 with another.

CHATGPT PASSES SCRIPTURE TEST: With all the discussion and debate about AI products coloring responses with ideologically biased analyses, I thought it might be interesting to test the ChatGTP’s scriptural knowledge. Sure enough, as I report on HillFaith this morning, the response to my five questions was amazing.

GUESS THE ISSUE THAT GIVES GOP 46 POINT LEAD: When Republicans demand an end to tax-funded Obamacare premium subsidies going direct to insurers’ bottom lines, voters give GOP candidates a 46-point advantage over Democrats. Are Senate Republicans listening?

CAN AI BE TRUSTED? Maybe, maybe not, according to Just Facts, which just released a fascinating and impressive analysis of the answers provided by four major AI products to 100 questions specifically designed to elicit evidence of ideological bias to the Left or the Right. Can you guess how they did? Check out my latest Substack column.

FAKING IT ALL OVER AGAIN: Remember Hillary Clinton’s unbelievably fake Southern accent on the 2016 campaign trail? Well, putting up fake fronts is even more prevalent among Democrats these days, according to the Issues & Insights (I&I) crew.

“This week, to cite just the most recent example, a group of ‘Republicans for Talarico’ disbanded after it turned out that they were actually just a bunch of lifelong Democrats in disguise, but not before MS NOW gave them some free airtime,” I&I explains, referring to Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.

Then there is AOC, apparently so uninformed about Dixie susurration, that she’s now trying out her own Yankee-fied nonsense on the campaign trail. And don’t forget Michigan Democratic Senate aspirant Abdul El-Sayed, who has described himself as a “Dr.” despite having no such license. There are many more at I&I.

MYSTERY OF THE SERVICE & INVESTIGATIONS STAFF: Remember that concluding scene in the first Indiana Jones flick in which the lone bureaucrat in a huge government warehouse pushes a cart loaded with stuff never likely to be seen again?

Well, there is a real-life instance akin to that scene playing out now regarding the once-mighty Service & Investigations staff of the House Appropriations Committee. It’s mostly lefty public administration types agitating about it now, but there are good and solid reasons for libertarians and conservatives to take notice as well, as I explain in today’s column on “Mark Tapscott’s Copy Desk.” And don’t miss the neat illustration, courtesy of chatGPT.

SENATE GOP BLOWS IT, AGAIN: When Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) sent home all the members of the upper chamber of Congress, one important but obscure piece of business left undone is the Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act approved by the House in June, with 29 Democrats voting for it.

For reasons as yet unclear, none of the Senate’s most talented and energetic anti-waste and fraud warriors have introduced a companion measure to the House bill. In fact, the House bill hasn’t even been assigned to a committee for hearings and markup, the essential step in the progress to a full Senate floor vote. There’s more to this story, as I report today for The Washington Stand.

NIMBYS AND DATA CENTERS: Rod Martin gets email, lots of it, especially when he writes about the importance and potential benefits of AI-related data centers. In his latest on the issue, he responds to a recent raft of critical email and in the process provides a historically, economically and technologically informed case for more data centers.

WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE: Great question and one that requires careful thought. The latest “What Would You Say” from the Colson Center takes on the challenge and offers three points to ponder.

JESUS PARABLE AND WASTE, FRAUD: United Citizens Foundation in Las Vegas got three federal grants between 2023 and 2025 totaling more than $937,000 dollars. The Department of Justice Inspector-General audited the grants and found more than $360,000 that should be returned to the government. The foundation’s COO offered in an interview with The Washington Stand a strong dissent to the government’s claims.

But the problems pointed out by the government struck yours truly as the kinds of things grant applicants should be screened for prior to a decision on who gets the federal tax dollars. More evidence that a major part of the explanation for the massive waste, fraud and corruption problem in federal spending lies with incompetent management by federal administrators.

POLITICAL APPOINTEES SHOULD KILL BAD GRANTS: Democrats in Congress are up in arms over President Donald Trump’s proposal to give executive branch senior political appointees authority to pre-screen proposed federal grants and to terminate previously approved and continuing funding streams.

In fact under the Constitution, as I write today in The Washington Stand, the President can delegate authority to carry out the his policies that voters endorsed when they elected him to trusted senior political appointees. Democrats are angry because Trump is implementing a counter to the power of the unelected career bureaucrats who routinely dispatch hundreds of billions of tax dollars to far-Left groups.

ESSENCE OF EVIL: In China, the authorities grab Uyghurs and take their usable organs. They die, but somebody else favored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gets a new lease on life. Here in the West, we do the same thing, but shroud it in an antiseptic appearance.

Wesley Smith, writing in Science & Culture, explains:

“Hastened death and organ-harvesting have already been conjoined in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium. (In the latter two countries, some cases have involved mentally ill patients.)

“The practice has been supported in prominent medical journals. It is not alarmism to note that the idea is gaining ever wider acceptance among the medical and bioethics intelligentsia.

“But killing and then harvesting doesn’t go far enough for some mainstream bioethicists. Where euthanasia is legal, they don’t see why organ procurement can’t also be the means of death for patients who want to donate. In other words, don’t just kill and then harvest; harvest to kill.”

ABOUT THOSE PAYMENTS TO DEAD PEOPLE: Readers may recall my news story in The Washington Stand last week on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent going forward with a requirement that all payments submitted to his department for issuance be pre-screened for deceased recipients. I noted that such computer database matching is not new and in fact one of President Ronald Reagan’s “junkyard dogs” started it in 1981.

That story also posed the question of why has it taken nearly five decades for the federal government to do what common sense requires, that being stop sending tax-funded checks to deceased recipients? Well, here’s the heart of the answer today on The Washington Stand.

TRUMP’S WORST ENEMY – HIMSELF: This by Patriot Post’s Nate Jackson captures the why using two very recent illustrations.

JUSTICE FOR FAUCI: Sooner or later, there will be an accounting and accountability, as World Tribune’s Christine Dolan explains. The many vaccine-injured to whom Fauci refuses to apologize will not be denied. And if you need more info on the vaccine-injured, Dolan provides it here.

TDS HEADLINE OF THE YEAR: You just knew it would be from The New York Times because the Old Grey Lady is Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) Central. It goes like this: “In Trump’s Economy, Job Gains Go to Women. That’s Not an Entirely Good Thing.” Yes, it really does say women getting jobs is “not an entirely good thing.”

Posting a headline like that by the NYT is like tossing chum in the water, for the Issues & Insights crew. They may be swimming miles away, but they smell this TDS manifestation instantly and go for it. You can read the result here. 

WHEN REALITY BITES ANTHONY FAUCI: He took the Fifth 119 times in response to questions a Senate panel about statements and actions he took from 2014 to January 2025, a period covered by the presidential pardon Anthony Fauci got from Joe Biden. But Fauci’s evasions, misrepresentations and outright lies are catching up with him, as I report on PJ Media, and that presidential pardon won’t help him if and when Florida’s Attorney General hauls Fauci into state court.

HERE’S THE REAL REASON DEMS LOVE OBAMACARE SUBSIDIES: It’s called campaign cash and its worth hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Democrats in Congress by the biggest health insurance companies.

As I explain today on Substack, those subsidies, by the way, generated $27 billion in federal tax dollars going to those same companies who in turn wrote beacoup checks to their Democratic friends. Let’s see now, does such an arrangement qualify as a conflict-of-interest, a con game, or just pure political corruption?

You haven’t heard a word about this from the Mainstream Media, but, boy, are we all going to hear from now till Election day in November about how terrible are President Donald Trump and (all but four) Senate Republicans because they allowed the temporary Obamacare insurance subsidies to expire as scheduled on the last day of December 2025.