We'll keep this short and sweet.

Policy delivery matters. The President's approval rating is around 42. The economy is not great. The labor market for young people is bad. Inflation is not good. Tariffs may or may not revitalize the American manufacturing base over the long run, but right now the positive effects have not yet been seen. Mass deportations will deliver improvements in quality of life and housing costs, but right now they just deliver reports about photogenic immigrants being allegedly brutalized by ICE agents. It's harder than ever to buy a house. American voters still vote on fundamentals. As impressive as so much of the policymaking from this administration has been, ultimately American voters decide based on whether their day-to-day life is improving or not.

Democrats are the party of political violence. Most of those results were predictable. The election of Jay Jones was not. He fantasized about the murder of his political opponents and children in a text message chain, the context of which made it undeniably plain that these are his sincere beliefs and not jokes or ill temper. The overwhelming majority of Democrats still supported him to be the chief law enforcement officer of a state, and Democrat voters in Virginia still voted to put him in that office. This fact cannot be denied or wished away. We now have to deal with it.

The changing GOP coalition means off-years are harder for us. Vice President Vance touched on it in his own election post-mortem, which is very much worth reading: "Scot Pressler, TPUSA, and a bunch of others have been working hard to register voters. I said it in 2022, and I've said it repeatedly since: our coalition is 'lower propensity' and that means we have to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past." This used to be a problem for Democrats, and now it's a problem for us, and we have to learn.

Demographics is destiny. Why did New York City, a city wounded by 9/11, vote for an avowed Islamist Hamas fan who pals around with terrorists? The most striking fact of the election is that Mamdani lost native New Yorkers and won recent arrivals to New York.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Immigration — Sen. Jim Banks has a new letter out calling on former President Donald Trump to terminate the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, arguing it unfairly rewards corporations for hiring foreign graduates over American workers. Banks’ letter, sent to Trump advisers Stephen Miller and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, condemns OPT, correctly, as an illegal creation of unelected bureaucrats that bypasses congressional authority and undermines US labor. Nearly 500,000 foreign graduates, many from China, work in the U.S. under OPT, often in STEM fields, while American graduates face unemployment. Banks says the program gives employers a 15% tax break to replace US talent and poses national security risks. He urges Trump to end or cap OPT, impose a wage floor of $90,000–$115,000, and require companies to prioritize American hires.

#Life — The Daily Signal reports that a broad pro-life coalition, led by Live Action and joined by groups such as Students for Life, National Right to Life, and The Heritage Foundation, has launched a campaign to block Planned Parenthood from regaining full federal funding on July 4, 2026. The effort follows the OBBBA which temporarily halted Medicaid payments to abortion providers for one year after Planned Parenthood received over $800 million in 2023. Now they want to make the defund permanent. They point to Planned Parenthood’s record profits, rising abortion numbers, and allegations of fraud and misconduct as proof it does not represent women’s healthcare needs. Republicans in Congress are expected to revisit the issue during January’s budget reconciliation.

#Banking — A new NBER paper by Howard Bodenhorn and Youwei Xingargues that long-term, trust-based relationships between banks and borrowers significantly expand access to credit and reduce collateral burdens. Drawing on a dataset of 55,000 nineteenth-century loans, the authors find that an additional year in a borrower’s relationship with a bank raised loan size by 5.6%, while multiple prior loans correlated with a 4.7% increase in credit extended. Though interest rates showed only minor variation, the data reveal that banks rewarded reliability and punished defaults selectively, cutting ties with about half of defaulters while offering greater value to those who reestablished trust. Looks like that old chestnut that having bankers who have personal relationships with their clients is good is really true. The Civil Rights Act probably makes it illegal, though.

#ACA — Good new report from the good guys at the Paragon Health Institute on ACA subsidy myths. It argues that Democrats and sympathetic media have distorted public understanding of the ACA's temporary COVID-era subsidy expansions. Polls showing strong public support for these subsidies rely on misleading questions that imply all ACA subsidies would vanish if the enhanced “Biden COVID Credits” expire. In reality, of course, the ACA’s original premium tax credits remain permanent and still cover over 80% of average enrollees’ premiums. Paragon’s own polling finds 53% of voters favor returning to pre-pandemic subsidy levels, contradicting claims of overwhelming public backing for extension.

#SocialSecurity — Romina Boccia has an op-ed at the Journal arguing to change the Social Security CPI. She argues that the program’s reliance on the 1970s-era CPI-W exaggerates cost-of-living increases, costing taxpayers an estimated $204 billion over the next decade. She notes that Congress already adopted the more accurate chained CPI for tax calculations in 2017—raising $134 billion in additional revenue—but refuses to apply the same measure to Social Security benefits.

#NewYork #SelfRecommending — Reihan Salam on the election of Zohran Mamdani.

#NASA — It looks like the dispute over NASA has ended, with President Trump appointing Elon Musk's favored candidate Jared Isaacman, instead of folding it under DOT.