Trump’s genius—in raising his fist amid an assassination attempt, donning the apron of a McDonald’s fry cook, and riding shotgun in a trash truck—carried the day. However, the Left’s slings and arrows against the former president also helped propel him to victory by exposing how cynical and conniving his opponents were.

The Left committed at least six massive political miscalculations that also amount to transgressions against America’s political order. These moves helped Trump win, but they also exposed the forces he will face in a second term.

1. The Lawfare

Left-leaning prosecutors brought multiple civil and criminal cases against Trump, most of which revved into high gear last year after he announced in November 2022 that he would run for president again in 2024.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, campaigned on the prospect of prosecuting Trump, and her office began investigating the Trump Organization in early 2019. She sued in September 2022, alleging that Trump had violated the law by exaggerating his net worth, though none of his business partners claimed to be victimized by this alleged exaggeration.

Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron demanded Trump and his companies fork over more than $350 million to the state in February. Engoron initially ordered Trump to post $454 million bond, but an appeals court agreed to lower the amount to $175 million.

In March 2023, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to pay pornography star Stephanie Clifford, known by her stage name Stormy Daniels, “hush money” after the 2016 election. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney at the time, gave Clifford $130,000 in October 2016, and Trump reimbursed Cohen in a series of payments after Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017.

On May 30, a jury convicted Trump on all 34 felony counts. His sentencing hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 26, though the former president has appealed the verdict in light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, argued that Trump had interfered in the 2016 election by altering business records after the election.

Improperly appointed special counsel Jack Smith led an investigation into Trump for alleged lawbreaking regarding his challenging the 2020 presidential election results and inspiring the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

In August 2023, a grand jury approved an indictment against Trump. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a trial to begin March 4, but Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court ruled July 1 that the president has “absolute” immunity from charges stemming from “core constitutional powers” and “presumptive immunity” for all other official acts.

Smith launched another case against Trump regarding his alleged improper retention of classified documents after his presidency ended Jan. 20, 2021. Smith, whom President Joe Biden appointed in November 2022, charged Trump with 40 felonies in the case. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in July, ruling that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional.

Smith is reportedly wrapping up both prosecutions in the wake of Trump’s election victory.

Biden later confessed that he had improperly retained classified documents from his years as vice president and U.S. senator, yet he faced no charges. Special counsel Robert Hur investigated Biden and interviewed him, ultimately declining to bring charges in part because a jury would find Biden sympathetic as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and because his “diminished faculties” made it less likely he intentionally violated the law.

Republicans demanded that the Justice Department release the audio of Biden’s interview with Hur, since the special counsel’s report cast grave doubts on the president’s ability to carry out his duties.

Each of these legal cases arguably represented a political attack on Trump through the legal system, often on trumped-up charges. Trump became the first former president convicted of a felony, yet the partisan nature of these attacks led Americans to suspect that the Left was abusing the system to prosecute its top enemy. The lawfare almost certainly backfired, as well it should have.

2. The Ballot Challenges

In a similarly egregious political attack, activists and Democratic officials moved to strike Trump from state ballots on the claim that he had incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Supreme Court definitively (and unanimously) ended this argument in March, ruling that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution does not disqualify Trump from appearing on ballots. (Trump had never been charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.)

At a time when Democrats were running as the “party of democracy” and warning that Trump would end democracy, they also sought to disqualify the former president at the outset. This effort also backfired.

3. The Nazi Comparisons

Throughout this election cycle, Biden, Harris, and others on the left have suggested that Trump represented a threat to democracy. They condemned him as racist and authoritarian. They continued to do so even after he faced multiple assassination attempts.

Yet the most absurd moment arguably came toward the end of the campaign, when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, noted that Trump would hold a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. On the day of that rally, Walz said, “Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden. There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square garden.”

Walz was straining to connect Trump’s rally to an American Nazi Party rally in February 1939. Not only was there a gap of more than 80 years between the two rallies, but Madison Square Garden’s location physically moved in both 1926 and 1968. The Madison Square Garden that hosted the pro-Nazi rally is not even the same building that hosted Trump.

Furthermore, Madison Square Garden hosted multiple Democratic Party events, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s last 1936 campaign speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1976, 1980, and 1992.

The idea that Trump echoed Nazis simply by choosing a venue—which had been twice rebuilt since the 1939 event—is ludicrous on its face.

IT'S REAL: MSNBC did indeed include the chyron "TRUMP'S MSG RALLY COMES 85 YEARS AFTER PRO-NAZI RALLY AT FAMED ARENA."

This echoes Tim Walz's attack on Trump, citing the rally. Yes, pro-Nazi Americans rallied at Madison Square Garden in February 1939. Does this taint… pic.twitter.com/rg2hIvWRQn

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) October 28, 2024

4. Hiding Biden’s Decline

The fact that Biden was no spring chicken—even in 2019 and 2020—should not be lost on anyone, but for most of the 2024 presidential election, the White House, the legacy media, and the Democratic establishment brushed off concerns about the sitting president’s declining mental acuity.

None other than Kamala Harris repeatedly insisted that Biden was A-OK.

“Our president is in good shape, in good health, and is ready to lead in our second term,” Harris said in February. She praised him as “vibrant.”

WATCH: Over 6 minutes of Kamala Harris covering up Joe Biden's cognitive decline.

For years, she said Biden is "very bold and vibrant" and is "tireless in terms of working." Kamala claimed Biden "is gonna be fine," and said he "is in good shape, in good health."

Kamala LIED. pic.twitter.com/d2domPIUOA

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 7, 2024

Despite his disastrous performance in the June 27 debate with Trump, Biden repeatedly insisted he would remain in the race. Only after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama leaked that they had met with Biden, pressuring him to withdraw, did the president finally announce he would leave the race and back his vice president.

Early Wednesday morning, CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper tried to bring up any counties where Harris was “outperforming Biden in 2020,” but not one county showed the vice president winning 3% or more votes than Biden did four years before.

NOT. ONE. COUNTY.

Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper bring up CNN's interactive map showing if there was any county in the country where Kamala Harris outperformed Joe Biden by 3% or more.

Were the Democrats smart to swap out Biden at the last moment for Kamala Harris? pic.twitter.com/kJYm0gEQZp

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 6, 2024

5. The Kamala Switcheroo

Speaking of Kamala Harris, who, exactly, is she? That’s not a rhetorical question.

There’s tough-on-crime prosecutor Kamala, whom she sometimes plays on TV. There’s radical-Left activist Kamala, who briefly got a voting record score to the left of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Then there’s cackling Kamala trying to be bubbly, as she briefly was for the “joy” and “vibes” election the legacy media tried to foist on Americans when the Democratic elites propped Harris up as the savior early in her brief campaign.

Finally, there was angry, scolding, Trump-is-a-fascist Kamala, who also wiggled out of taking any policy position that would differentiate her from the sitting president while she was running a “change” election.

Is it any wonder Kamala Harris never won a primary in the 2020 Democratic contest?

That’s right—the last-minute switcheroo that was going to “save democracy” from Donald Trump involved someone who didn’t win a single Democratic primary in 2020 or 2024. It involved someone who claimed she wasn’t Joe Biden but never created any daylight between her policies and those of Joe Biden.

Worse, it involved a candidate who branded her opponent a fascist when she herself had the record of trying to prosecute pro-life journalists, demanding donor information from conservative nonprofits, and demonizing fellow Americans for disagreeing with her radical stance on abortion.

Democrats chose a nominee who had been tasked with solving the crisis over illegal immigration, even though it got worse on her watch. They chose a nominee whose answer to every question was “I grew up in a middle-class family.” They chose the garden goddess of word salads, whose grand achievement was explaining that Ukraine is a country in Europe.

KAMALA: “Ukraine is a country in Europe.

It exists next to another country called Russia.

Russia is a bigger country.”

Glad we cleared that up.

Source: Morning Hustle pic.twitter.com/IEXrjUJkgj

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 24, 2024

What does Harris’ duplicity have to do with her awkwardness and her lack of primary victories? Just this: Americans knew she was being foisted upon them under false pretenses, and Tuesday’s election results suggest that they really didn’t like that.

The Biden-Harris switcheroo suggested that the real power behind the administrative state wasn’t the man sitting behind the Resolute Desk but a shadowy network of elites pulling the strings behind the scenes. Perhaps someone should write a book about that. (My book on this exact subject, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” is available for pre-order now and releases on Jan. 21, 2024.)

6. The Closing Argument

After all this, Harris delivered a “closing argument” packed with lies and predicated on demonizing her opponent.

Yet the legacy media seized on comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remark at Trump’s Madison Square Garden event that Puerto Rico was an “island of garbage,” and Biden revealed his disdain for Trump’s supporters by responding: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

By calling Americans who oppose his chosen successor “garbage,” the sitting president of the United States sent a clear and chilling message—even if Biden attempted to clarify it later.

Trump, always the showman, defused the insult with his comedic charm. He donned the orange and yellow reflective vest of a garbageman and sat in the front of a garbage truck. He spoke about it at his rallies, remarking that the safety vest made him look thinner.

On the one hand, Americans saw a Democratic puppet who couldn’t present a genuine personality, and on the other hand, they saw a man who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty (metaphorically, of course) by working at McDonald’s and getting into a garbage truck.

The idea that this man—who faced unprecedented criminal charges, disgusting attempts to remove him from the ballot, and assassination attempts—represented the true threat to democracy just could not stand.

Rather, the entire campaign revealed the exact opposite. Only one political party tried to disqualify its opponent from the very beginning of the race. Only one party fanned the flames of hatred despite assassination attempts against its target. Only one struggled desperately to change the playing field at the last minute after lying to the American people the whole time.

Trump won this election, despite every norm the Left broke to try to take him down.

Now, he has to make sure his victory sends the appropriate message: that the elites can’t force their way on the American people. That struggle has just begun.

Final polling averages suggest that Trump has the advantage—and the momentum—heading into Election Day. Real Clear Polling has Trump edging out Harris by 0.1% in national polling and up in enough swing states to pass the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.

There has not been an election-altering October surprise—no Hunter Biden laptop, no missing emails. If there was one, however, it was President Joe Biden calling Trump supporters garbage.

“Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something,” the president said during a virtual event, “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

The comments outraged Trump’s supporters, just as Hillary Clinton’s comment calling them “deplorables” did in 2016. Nevertheless, the Trump campaign took the comments in stride. Following Biden’s comments, the former president held a press conference from the cockpit of a garbage truck with full campaign branding on the side.

Trump has completely derailed my evening. I have spent 90 minutes laughing at this man’s genius.

Again, hate em if ya want, but our 45th president just showed up in a garbage truck and is now speaking at his rally in an orange garbage man vest. I can’t even. #MAGA pic.twitter.com/FN1oFORjyJ

— Lindsay In South Carolina (@LindsayJPitcher) October 30, 2024

The former president even did a rally wearing a sanitation worker’s high-visibility vest after the stunt.

Left-wing media outlets have been after Trump since his first run for office in 2016.

The Media Research Center released findings on Oct. 28 that showed Trump’s media coverage was 85% negative compared to Harris’s 78% positive coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news broadcasts for the 2024 presidential race. Media Research Center analysts reviewed 660 stories about the presidential election on the news channels from July 21, the day Biden ended his candidacy, to Oct. 25.

In the 2016 presidential race, both Trump and Clinton received high amounts of negative coverage, with 91% negative for Trump and 79% negative for Clinton. In the coverage for the 2020 race, Trump received 92% negative coverage and Biden received 66% positive coverage.

Nevertheless, media bias has not prevented Trump from broadening his support.

Standing room only at Vance rally in Holland, Michigan, with a long line out the door! pic.twitter.com/xAatpL6ARe

— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) October 29, 2024

Trump, with a bold alternative media strategy, has brought together a motley crew of voices across the political spectrum, such as former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., entrepreneur Elon Musk, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, R-Hawaii.

During a recent interview on Fox News, Gabbard said she asks people in the audience to raise their hand if they are a Democrat or a former Democrat whenever she speaks at a Trump event.

“In almost every event, somewhere between 35-50% of the room will raise their hand,” she said in the Oct. 29 interview on Fox & Friends Weekend.

What excited Gabbard even more was the reaction of Trump supporters to those whose hands were raised. Trump supporters “stood up and cheered and welcomed them [Democrats and former Democrats] and just surrounded them, really, with love and kindness.”

Gabbard said a lot of people shared their experiences with her after the event.

“I had so many people come up to me at the end of that saying, ‘I came in here afraid. I’ve never been to a political rally before. I didn’t know what to expect. I’m a Democrat, lifelong Democrat, never voted before.’ Different variations of this, but each walking out saying, ‘I’m voting for Donald Trump because of what I experienced here today,’” Gabbard said.

American voters may have come to Trump rallies for the fun, but Trump needs them to stay for Election Day to win.

Both Democrats and Republicans brought lawsuits.

Some matters already have been settled. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court sided last week with Virginia by allowing the state to remove the names of 1,600 noncitizens from the voter rolls. And in Pennsylvania, Republicans successfully sued to extend early voting hours.

However, courts tossed other election cases on procedural grounds or cases remain unsettled and could prompt arguments in close elections.

Here are eight issues to look out for, both on Election Day and after.

1. Voter Registration in Pennsylvania

At least four jurisdictions in Pennsylvania are investigating potential voter registration fraud.

State prosecutors in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County are investigating two batches of about 2,500 voter registration forms that may include several hundred fraudulent forms.

As of Monday afternoon, the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office had determined that 17% of the forms were fraudulent. Another 57% were determined to be legitimate, WPMT-TV (Fox 43) reported. The rest were still being investigated.

York County officials also are investigating potential voter registration fraud. Of a batch of 3,087 forms, about 24% were declined after being found to be duplicate requests.

York County also is reviewing challenges to 350 overseas mail-in ballots.

And the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office last week identified fraudulent voter registration forms. A specific number wasn’t given and the investigation continues, the Pocono Record reported.

Berks County also referred two potential voter registration violations for investigation.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry, a Democrat, said attempts to submit fraudulent voter registration forms in the four counties “have been defeated.” Henry said her office is working with local law enforcement.

“While we will not be divulging sensitive information about these investigations, we want to clarify that the investigations regard voter registration forms, not ballots,” Henry said in a public statement, adding later: “The investigations are ongoing, and offenders who perpetrated acts of fraud will be held accountable under the law.”

2. Undelivered, Duplicate Ballots

In Erie County, Pennsylvania, Democrats sued over a debacle concerning absentee ballots.

Judge David Ridge ruled Friday that Erie County must offer a new set of absentee ballots to almost 20,000 voters who didn’t receive them. The state judge also said the county would have to stay open longer office hours until Election Day.

The vendor wasn’t able to confirm the status of between 13,000 and 17,000 absentee ballots requested by Erie County residents before the deadline, USA Today reported. In addition, 1,200 county residents who said they would be out of town requested absentee ballots. On top of that, 365 duplicate ballots were sent to voters.

3. Overseas Mail Ballots

Republicans lost three federal lawsuits regarding a law called the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which governs how Americans living overseas can vote in federal elections.

The GOP lawsuits over UOCAVA focused largely on nonmilitary overseas voters, many of whom indicated no intention to return to the United States.

Six Republican members of the U.S. House sued Pennsylvania over the state’s counting procedures. The GOP lawmakers’ complaint says that about 15,000 nonmilitary American voters living abroad but casting ballots in Pennsylvania elections should have to provide the same personal identification as Pennsylvania residents.

But U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner determined last Tuesday—one week before Election Day—that an injunction could “upend the commonwealth’s carefully laid election administration procedures to the detriment of untold thousands of voters.”

Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Sima Patel ruled against the Republican National Committee’s challenge to rules in the U.S. law. The RNC challenge was based on nonresidents’ dependents who live abroad voting in state elections. Patel ruled that the GOP lawsuit was an attempt to “disenfranchise” voters.

Similarly, North Carolina Superior Court Judge John Smith ruled that the RNC challenge “presented no substantial evidence” of fraudulent voting.

4. 218,000 Arizona Voters With No Proof of Citizenship

Arizona state Judge Scott Blaney last week ordered the office of Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, to release the names of voters who were misclassified as not being required to show proof of U.S. citizenship, The Associated Press reported.

Fontes initially said that the number of misclassified voters was thought to be 98,000 registered voters who lacked proof of citizenship and thus could not vote in state and local elections. However, a revised estimate put the number more than twice as high, at 218,000 voters who lacked proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Arizona state officials contend that a coding glitch caused the problem. Arizona law requires proof of U.S. citizenship for voting in state and local elections, but not in federal elections. The concern is that the 218,000 voters without proof of citizenship could vote in state and local elections because of the glitch.

Arizona state law requires proof of citizenship for voting only in state and local elections, not federal elections such as for president or Congress. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prevents a state from imposing proof-of-citizenship requirements for federal elections.

So, Arizona voters lacking proof of citizenship would be able to vote in the presidential election, just as in any other state. However, these voters normally would not be allowed to vote in state and local elections in Arizona.

The total of 218,000 voters without proof of citizenship—who may vote in federal elections but not state elections—prompts concerns because federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting or registering to vote.

The America First Legal Foundation sued for the voter registration records.

Blarney, in his ruling, rejected Arizona’s contention that the information would provoke violence. He gave Fontes a deadline of noon Monday to release the names of the 98,000 misclassified voters.

5. Georgia Ballot Centers

The Trump campaign and the RNC sent letters over the weekend to county ballot processing centers, asserting the reopening of the offices was illegal.

The letters called for sequestering the ballots received after Nov. 1, Georgia’s deadline for receiving absentee ballots. The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit as well.

The RNC contends that the Democrat counties of Chatham, Clark, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett accepted Saturday in violation of Georgia law.

6. Nevada Postmarks

The Nevada Supreme Court last week determined that mail ballots that arrive three days after Election Day with no postmark will still be counted.

Nevada uses universal mail-in voting.

The state’s highest court rejected a challenge brought by the Republican National Committee, which argued that when a ballot lacks a postmark it’s difficult to know whether it really was sent before Election Day.

The court also determined that ballots with smudges and indecipherable writing would be counted.

7. Iowa and Noncitizen Voting

Although the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Justice Department lawsuit against Virginia for removing the names of 1,600 noncitizens from the voter rolls, the United Latin American Citizens of Iowa sued Iowa’s Republican secretary of state, Paul Pate, and election officials from five counties over removal of noncitizens’ names.

Pate sent a list of 2,176 registered voters who were suspected noncitizens to local election officials in Iowa.

The plaintiffs filed their complaint Oct. 30. On Sunday, an Iowa judge denied the motion for a temporary restraining order or temporary injunction, and determined that the voter registrations would not be restored before Election Day.

The judge determined, however, that any individual would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot.

8. Unsent Mail Ballots in Georgia

In this case, the Democratic National Committee sued Cobb County, Georgia, alleging that the county’s Board of Elections failed to send mail-in ballots to more than 3,000 voters who requested the forms.

Georgia law requires elections offices to send ballots within three days of receiving a request. The deadline to receive a request was Oct. 25.

The elections board announced it didn’t get all ballots sent on time, and planned to send some by express shipping. However, Democrats, in their complaint in state court, contend that wasn’t sufficient since that’s not enough time to ensure ballots would be counted.

Democrats are suing to extend the deadline to receive ballots from Nov. 5 to Nov. 8.

Americans are tired of talking heads and the opinions of editorialists masquerading as journalists. But this should not be confused with declining interest in news or politics; viewers are simply moving to channels where they can get an unfiltered view of the candidates from personalities they trust.

If there is one clear lesson from the 2024 election cycle, it’s that candidates for public office must be prepared to engage in this new media landscape to stay competitive, especially on long-form podcasts.

The last time we had a shift this significant was 1960, when America saw the first televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The Kennedy-Nixon debate underscored the power of television to shape public perception.

Remember, past is prologue. Take, for example, Donald Trump’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Already, it’s racked up about 45 million views—just on YouTube alone. Trump’s interview with Theo Von received 14 million views. For her part, Kamala Harris’ appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast received 733,000 views and she received 665,000 views on the “All the Smoke” podcast.

While traditional media audiences are shrinking, these appearances have outperformed the average audiences of these podcasts oftentimes 10 to 1. Remarkably, the candidates’ episodes are even outpacing episodes featuring internationally known Hollywood celebrities.

Voters are hungry to hear from the candidates on an unfiltered, authentic platform, and podcasts are filling that need.

This shift is redefining how viable candidates will approach media going forward. Those who want to succeed in politics but are afraid, or unable, to allow the public a view into who they really are going to have a ceiling on their career if they don’t do long-form interviews.

Political campaigns are going to change in two ways due to this dynamic.

1. Candidates need to get comfortable in their own skin, open up and answer personal questions about heartache, addiction, and what makes their spouse smile. This open, honest, and unvarnished content mirrors what the public is receiving in their social media feeds already, so it makes sense that they are demanding the same transparency from their political leaders.
2. It’s going to transform the way political professionals engage with the electorate. According to GWI, a consumer research company, the “typical” internet user spends almost 2.5 hours each day using social media platforms, equating to more than one-third of their total time online. As a result, campaign resources should shift to talking to the electorate where they are spending their time, which is on their phone. That is where people are getting their news, listening to podcasts, vegging out, and forming opinions about who they will vote for.

The reason these podcasters and creators carry so much influence is because of the community and trust they build with their audience. As James Clear, author of The New York Times bestseller of “Atomic Habits,” says about changing opinions, “Facts don’t change our minds. Friendship does.”

This election year, I was part of an effort that enlisted thousands of podcasters and social media personalities to encourage unregistered and low propensity voters to engage in the political process. Content creators in coordination with Vote4America delivered billions of impressions to tens of millions of voters. The posts calling on people to engage in the election significantly overperformed the average post of the creator, much like the success of the Trump and Harris podcast appearances.

We won’t know the full effect of all this content until all the votes are counted, but we can already see that 8.5% of all early votes are being cast by previously eligible first-time voters, meaning they are of age to have voted in past elections but decided not to.

The authenticity and trust of these podcasters and content creators is clearly having an effect on voter behavior.

What Jeff Bezos got wrong was his slight at podcasts as “unresearched.” The public clearly disagrees.

Americans are choosing podcasts over Bezos’ newspaper as their trusted source of news and information. Traditional media and candidates for office now must grapple with the new expectations of the electorate: unfiltered, unedited, authentic content.

It has transferred a tremendous amount of wealth from hardworking Americans to the federal government.

The root cause of this disaster—reckless government spending and money-printing—should serve as a reminder that the federal deficit is the bank robber, the Fed is the getaway car driver, and you are the bank.

The past few years have seen consumer goods prices increase more than they had in the prior 30 years, while staggering price increases for construction materials have helped push homeownership out of reach for tens of millions of Americans.

This whirlwind of economic horrors comes from the combination of dramatically expanding government spending and a Federal Reserve willing to print enough money to paper over deficits with inflation.

Since the beginning of COVID-19, the annual level of federal spending has increased 45%, while the Fed has increased the money supply by 37%. Spending newly printed dollars in this way doesn’t magically create new goods and services. Instead, it has created the classic recipe for inflation; namely, more dollars chasing fewer goods and services.

This policy has inflated away nearly 20% of the purchasing power of the dollars in your paycheck and bank account.

Consumer goods price increases from October 1990 through January 2021 ran about the same as the increase from January 2021 through June 2022—roughly 14.3%. In other words, about 30 years of price increases thrown at households in less than a year and a half. To make matters worse, the increase in construction materials prices has been even larger, 26.4% since President Joe Biden took office.

No wonder house prices have soared over the past few years. While this does increase the equity of current homeowners, it also tends to lock people into their current homes and box young families out of owning a home altogether.

When the government runs a large deficit—as it is now with over $2 trillion in annual deficits—the Fed has a choice: It can print money to accommodate and soak up the new debt, creating a ticking time bomb of inflation, or it can leave the money supply unchanged and allow federal deficits to crowd out private access to funding, sending interest rates through the roof as money becomes scarcer.

That leaves prospective homeowners without financing to buy a home and leaves businesses without investment capital to expand operations and create more jobs and goods and services.

With inflation rapidly climbing early in 2022, the Fed chose the latter. By pushing interest rates higher, the Fed didn’t alleviate the burden of high levels of government spending. It simply shifted the pain of the burden from runaway inflation to runaway interest rates, exacerbating the worsening financial picture for American families.

Mortgage rates soared from around 2.8% in January 2021, when Biden took office, to over 7.5% by October 2023. The Fed, on its own, couldn’t remove the burden from American families, it could only choose the type of burden.

That has left homeownership less affordable than it has been for generations. In January 2021, first-year interest costs on a typical new mortgage were around $8,200, or 16% of a full-time median worker’s annual pay when President Donald Trump left office. Today, it’s around $21,900, consuming more than 36% of a full-time median worker’s annual pay.

This bludgeoning will, tragically, have lingering effects as well. Today, a new mortgage on a median home will cost $320,000 more in just interest costs over 30 years than that of a mortgage from the end of 2020—a tremendous 257% increase in total mortgage interest costs.

If a new homeowner were able to, instead, keep this money and invest it over the same 30-year period, he or she could easily have more than $1 million more saved up for retirement.

The cost of the inflation and interest rate surges have levied a truly crushing burden on the backs of hardworking American families that will likely echo through generations to come.

First came the mammoth $430 billion plan birthed before the ’22 midterms that made the student loans of 40 million borrowers eligible for cancellation.

That died the following spring at the Supreme Court only to be succeeded by the “Saving on a Valuable Education” plan, which drastically reduced the income borrowers must contribute toward repaying their loans at an estimated 10-year cost of $475 billion.

SAVE, which two Democrat-appointed judges enjoined in April, was then followed by four related rules canceling the debts of borrowers who have spent a long time in repayment without actually repaying their loans.

The latest proposal is another example of the administration’s ingrained reflex to respond to its own unpopularity with spending. Although the general objections to it are familiar, still, specific features of the latest plan are worth examining, especially because of their timing.

At this stage, the proposed rules would not be finalized until 2025. Moreover, the rules’ stated pretension is to provide an avenue for debt cancellation for “student loan borrowers for generations to come.”

The rules create two new paths for cancellation: a one-time automatic cancellation initiated by the secretary of education for loans at risk of default and an ongoing option that borrowers can access by application that “holistically” demonstrates the borrower’s hardship.

Purportedly, these address borrower needs not “sufficiently” covered in the preceding rounds of rulemaking or by readily available loan deferrals. That may be the closest the administration gets to acknowledging the redundancy of its plan that layers forgiveness atop forgiveness.

Much like the previous efforts, there’s a good deal of dissonance in how the administration presents the rule to different audiences. The Department of Education heralds the rules publicly as a courageous achievement, power procured through a righteous fight to provide “hope to millions of struggling Americans,” something no other administration has done before.

At least that last bit is true. But the rules themselves attempt to speak softly and modestly to a mostly legal audience, insisting that they are not the creation of some strange new power, but only a specification of how the secretary intends to apply the discretion that he has always had.

And though the rule is supposed to help “millions,” the secretary assures would-be critics that he will exercise his discretion only in “relatively rare” circumstances where “the costs of enforcing the full amount of the debt are not justified by the expected benefits.”

So, rest assured, dear taxpayer, these rules will save you money despite all appearances that your money is being given away.

Officious paternalism works tolerably well as a description of the rules’ tenor. The administration promises to anticipate and address borrower needs before they even arise by authorizing the Department of Education to cancel loans automatically if the department deems them at risk of defaulting.

How does the department make that determination? By consulting a “non-exhaustive” 17-factor list, of course. How else?

The borrowers the administration hopes to assist are evidently so distressed that they have not even bothered to apply for relief. Perhaps after years of COVID-19-based transfer payments and the gratuitous benefits of previous loan pauses and cancellations, borrowers are just accustomed to receiving without asking.

But then it falls to the rest of us to ask: Does any other segment of the population receive this much financial solicitude from the federal government?

The proposal’s most audacious quality is not its indulgent attitude toward borrowers, but its insouciance toward the matter of legal authority.

Since it took office, the Biden-Harris administration has combed the statutes for the few stray words they could morph into transformational debt-cancelling authority.

To date, they’re still searching for a rationale that would satisfy a judge. But the fact is, they are out of plausible alternatives, so they are recycling the same tortured reading of the Higher Education Act used to justify two of the preceding attempts.

Courts have already previewed the merits of this argument: Two Democrat-appointed judges have found that opponents of the rules are “likely to succeed on the merits” of their legal challenges. But that has in no way dissuaded the administration from this fourth attempt because the administration refuses to take the hint.

In the twilight of Biden-Harris administration, its policy approach resembles a movie studio that has misunderstood its audience and run out of ideas to keep them engaged.

These rules are sequels that appeal only to the most niche audience—the coalition of organizations dedicated to the abolition of student debt and their enablers within the Department of Education.

With the broader American audience, the approach is a liability. A poll conducted by University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy found that 40% of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the Biden-Harris administration’s repeated intrigues to transfer student debt to taxpayers. Another poll from the libertarian Cato Institute found that roughly 70% of Americans disapprove of student-loan cancellation when apprised of its effects on taxes and inflation.

Nevertheless, the administration persists in offering the same non-cure for the student-debt ailment. Despite the administration’s professed interest in addressing “root causes,” these rules, like their predecessors, barely acknowledge, let alone address, the variables that have made higher education such a debt-intensive undertaking or the variables that make the American economy one in which it is difficult for borrowers to repay the burdens they have assumed.

Instead, it cues up another installment of bourgeois socialism, a redistribution of monies to those who have spent too much money to attain fewer privileges than they would like.

Trump says that states should be able to decide whether, and to what extent, to restrict abortion. Harris, as well as some Senate candidates, claim in their ads that electing Trump would lead to a “national abortion ban.” That’s unlikely, since Trump says he would veto such a ban if Congress ever passed one. “Veto,” Merriam-Webster tells us, is the opposite of “approve.” Ya don’t say.

Harris, in contrast, says that states should have no say at all and that Congress must prevent them from limiting abortion in any way. As a senator, she co-sponsored the Women’s Health Protection Act, federal legislation that would prohibit state or local governments from doing anything that could, even potentially or indirectly, limit abortion. This would include measures that large majorities of Americans, in pro-life states or even nationally, support, such as bans on elective abortions after a certain point in a pregnancy.

But it gets worse. Not only would the Women’s Health Protection Act prevent any pro-life laws or policies going forward, it would require state and local governments to repeal any already on the books. In other words, no state anywhere in America could, no matter how its citizens felt about it, ever have any laws, rules, regulations, practices, or anything else that could conceivably (yes, that pun was intended) limit abortion in any way.

Today, 41 states prohibit abortion during different stages of pregnancy. Fourteen of them ban abortion from conception, four after six weeks, two after 12 weeks, two after 15 or 18 weeks, and 19 after 20 weeks. Lest you think that these abortion “bans” actually prevent many abortions, nearly 94% of abortions nationally occur before 12 weeks.

The Women’s Health Protection Act would require every one of these 41 states to repeal its abortion ban. Mississippi’s 15-week ban, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2022, covers only 4% of abortions, but it still has to go. Utah’s 18-week ban only prohibits about 2% of abortions, but it’s still too strong. Eleven states ban abortion after “viability,” or when an unborn child might live outside the womb. That’s generally considered to be at about 24 weeks, but that law is also out the door.

Harris’ claim that the Women’s Health Protection Act simply “codifies” Roe v. Wade is not only false, but it’s especially deceptive coming from a lawyer who should know better. Even the Supreme Court in Roe said that states may ban abortion after viability and used words such as “mother” and “unborn children” more than 100 times. Except for the “W” in its title, the Women’s Health Protection Act doesn’t even use the word “woman.”

Roe v. Wade did not require taxpayers to pay for elective abortions, but this act would. Roe v. Wade also allowed states to require at least some level of parental involvement, such as notification or consent, when a young girl gets an abortion. This act would not.

In other words, the Women’s Health Protection Act would prefer coercion of a girl to have an abortion over any chance that her family or friends might help her decide otherwise.

Abortion is on the Nov. 5 ballot, and the choice is pretty stark.

Abortion advocates like Harris call themselves “pro-choice” but, it turns out, want to deny any choice to anyone about whether to protect human beings in the womb.

Thomas Jipping serves as senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its Board of Trustees.

“CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote. “It was a Disgrace to our Nation!”

“Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” he added. “We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T!”

Trump clarified that the legal exposure “extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.” He also warned, “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2024

Trump’s warning follows the style of a “cease and desist” letter. For example, if a newspaper printed something that someone considers to be defamation, the allegedly defamed person’s attorney would write a letter to the newspaper, warning of a lawsuit unless the paper retracts the claim and ceases to continue publishing such claims.

Trump did not clarify which laws he considers the alleged cheaters to have been violating, but the Biden-Harris administration has recently attempted to stop states like Virginia and Alabama from removing aliens from their voter files. A federal judge ruled Friday that Virginia must put the names of aliens back on the rolls. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the commonwealth’s Republican governor, pledged to appeal the ruling to higher courts, and to the Supreme Court, if necessary.

The Justice Department sued Virginia after it removed the names of 6,303 aliens and Alabama after it moved 3,251 aliens to an “inactive” list.

Keep in mind that it’s a felony under several federal statutes for an alien to claim fraudulently to be a citizen so he or she may register to vote or vote in U.S. elections, including 18 U.S.C. §§ 611, 911, and 1015(f). The Justice Department has a duty to enforce these statutes, something the agency apparently has no interest in doing under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

The federal voter registration form established by the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, not only asks applicants whether they are U.S. citizens, it requires them to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens.

The form has a strict warning that if the would-be voter provides false information, he or she may “be fined, imprisoned, or (if not a U.S. citizen) deported from or refused entry to the United States.”

However, the Justice Department claims that Virginia and Alabama violated the law’s 90-day preelection deadline for “systematic” list maintenance programs. This, according to the DOJ led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, prevents all “systematic” removals from a voter registration list within 90 days of an election.

What the Justice Department fails to point out is that the 90-day deadline is in the second part of a section of the National Voter Registration Act that deals only with the removal of the names of registered voters who have moved.

The first part outlines the rule for removing the names of individuals who have moved to a different residence either within the state or another state. The second part then applies the 90-day deadline for such removals.

That section of the law also says that the deadline doesn’t apply to “correction of registration records” or to removal of names of voters who have requested it or who have died or become ineligible due to a criminal conviction or mental incapacity.

The common factor in all of those exceptions is that each deals with individuals who were eligible to vote when they registered but subsequently became ineligible.

The 90-day deadline obviously doesn’t apply to an alien who wasn’t eligible to register to vote in the first place and, in fact, was committing a felony violation of federal criminal law by registering.

Critics, including the Justice Department, have claimed that those exceptions are the “exclusive” reasons that a state may remove the names of registered individuals from the voter rolls.

In 2012, in Arcia v. Detzner, a federal case out of the Southern District of Florida, Judge William Zloch said that claim would “produce an absurd result.”

Zloch ruled that would mean a state couldn’t “remove from its voting rolls minors, fictitious individuals, individuals who misrepresent their residence in the state, and non-citizens.”

The 90-day deadline, the judge decided, “simply does not apply to an improperly registered noncitizen.”

In another 2012 federal case, U.S. v. Florida, Judge Robert Hinkle of the Northern District of Florida concluded that Congress drafted these provisions of the law to deal with the removal of names of registered voters “on grounds that typically arise after an initial proper registration.” The provisions don’t apply to “revocation of an improperly granted registration of a noncitizen,” Hinkle ruled.

In fact, the judge wrote, “the NVRA does not require a state to allow a noncitizen to vote just because the state did not catch the error more than 90 days in advance.”

Moreover, the Justice Department is also wrong in claiming that the law bars all “systematic” removals of voters’ names.

As Hinkle ruled, during the 90-day period “a state may pursue a program to systematically remove registrants on request or based on a criminal conviction, mental incapacity, or death but not based on a change of residence.”

What “matters here,” the federal judge added, “is this: none of this applies to removing noncitizens who were never properly registered in the first place.”

It is true that in a deeply flawed, cursory analysis, a divided panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the Southern District of Florida decision and held that the 90-day deadline did apply to the removal of aliens’ names from voter rolls.

But Florida didn’t appeal this obviously wrong decision by two appeals court judges to the entire 11th Circuit or to the Supreme Court. The 11th Circuit panel’s decision not only is wrong based on the text of the statute, but any interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act that would force a state to allow an ineligible alien who violated criminal law by registering to remain registered so he may cast a ballot in an upcoming election likely would render the law unconstitutional.

In 2019, in Bellitto v. Snipes, another case arising out of Florida, a different 11th Circuit panel held that in applying the NVRA, “Congress would not have mandated that the state register” an individual who “is not eligible to vote.”

If the NVRA does not require a state to register an ineligible alien to vote, it cannot be construed to require a state to maintain and continue the registration of an ineligible alien.

Alabama and Virginia should fight the Justice Department and be willing to take these cases all the way to the Supreme Court. Maintaining the security and integrity of the American election process and protecting voters against foreign interference that voids their votes requires no less.

Read Hans von Spakovsky’s complete Legal Memorandum: “The National Voter Registration Act Does Not Prevent States From Removing Aliens from Voter Registration Rolls at Any Time.”

The Daily Signal fact-checked many of her claims.

‘Terminate the Constitution’

Harris touted the fact that former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., endorsed her against Trump. The vice president said Cheney backed her due to “a legitimate fear, based on Donald Trump‘s words and actions, that he will not obey an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“He himself has said he would terminate the Constitution of the United States,” she added.

The claim traces back to a post Trump wrote on Truth Social on Dec. 3, 2022. In that post, the former president wrote of the 2020 presidential election, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

He added, “Our great ‘Founder’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Fellow Republicans criticized his comments, and Trump later clarified that he would not terminate the Constitution.

In a follow-up post, he condemned the legacy media’s interpretation of his post.

“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Dec. 5, 2022.

Kamala Harris repeats the claim that Trump would "terminate the Constitution of the United States."

That's an exaggeration. He briefly called for the "termination of rules" in order to reverse what he claimed to have been a fraudulent election, and he later clarified that… pic.twitter.com/8zaFqYZ2eo

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) October 24, 2024

Hitler’s Generals

Harris said she believed Trump is a fascist and she repeatedly tied him to the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Harris claimed that Trump said to his generals “in essence, why can’t you be more like Hitler’s generals?”

Remember that anonymous-sources Atlantic article claiming Trump didn't want to pay for the funeral of that "f—ing Mexican"? The article that @MarkMeadows denied and @mguilen_ (the sister of the murdered Army private) condemned The Atlantic for? Kamala Harris just referenced… pic.twitter.com/s02qzMfPMD

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) October 24, 2024

The vice president was referencing an Atlantic article by Jeffrey Goldberg citing anonymous sources, claiming Trump said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

Trump spokesman Alex Pfeiffer said the claim is “absolutely false,” and that “President Trump never said this.”

That article claimed Trump ordered then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows not to pay for the funeral of 20-year-old Army private Vanessa Guillén, calling her a “f—ing Mexican.” Meadows denied the story and Guillén’s sister accused The Atlantic of “exploiting my sister’s death for politics.”

Wow.
I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today. https://t.co/o8cDrKOKBV

— Mayra Guillen (@mguilen_) October 22, 2024

‘Suckers and Losers’

Harris claimed that Trump referred to members of the military as “suckers and losers,” that “he demeans people who have taken an oath to sacrifice their life for our country.”

The claim that Trump called members of the military “suckers” and “losers” originates from a 2020 article published in The Atlantic relying on anonymous sources. Trump has consistently disputed the reports.

‘Price Gouging’

Harris attributed inflation to “price gouging.” When CNN’s Cooper asked her about whether the Trump administration or the Biden administration was responsible for inflation, she suggested that her experience as attorney general in California would help her fight inflation.

“How I come to it is probably a new approach grounded in a lot of my experiences as a former attorney general, where I took on price gouging and part of my plan is to create a new approach that is the first time that we will have a national ban on price gouging, which is companies taking advantage of the desperation and need of the American consumer and jacking up prices without any consequence or accountability,” she said.

Kamala Harris suggests price gouging is responsible for inflation.

FACT CHECK: Pants on fire

The consumer price index has increased less than the producer price index, which means that companies, on a whole, are taking a loss on prices. They are tightening their belts as… pic.twitter.com/B6rISafDOw

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) October 24, 2024

Other Democrats, such as President Joe Biden and Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., have attributed inflation to companies’ greed.

As Heritage Foundation Research Fellow EJ Antoni pointed out, there is a far more obvious culprit: government spending.

As Antoni noted, “One of the functions of money is that of a measuring tool. If a yardstick were to shrink from 36 inches down to just 30, it would take 120 of these shortened yardsticks to cover the distance of a football field, instead of 100. As the dollar has lost value, it takes more dollars to measure the value of the things we buy.”

While Americans feel the pain of inflation, so do businesses. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “businesses have gotten the short end of the stick,” Antoni explained. “The producer price index is used to measure inflation on the products and services businesses buy—sometimes called wholesale inflation—and that index has risen 17.5% since Biden took office. Conversely, the consumer price index, the widely cited metric for inflation faced by American families, is up 17.1% over that same time.”

“Businesses have actually been sheltering consumers from some cost increases in an effort to maintain market share and not lose customers,” he wrote. “That also explains why, according to the Biden administration’s Census Bureau, total corporate profits have fallen for the last six quarters after adjusting for inflation.”

“If alleged price gouging were really the cause of inflation, did businessmen magically become greedy when Biden took office?” Antoni asked. “Were corporations never greedy in the 40 years leading up to Biden’s inflationary expansion of government? Businesses haven’t even passed all their higher costs on to consumers; if they’re trying to be greedy, they’re doing it all wrong.”

If inflation is caused by corporate "greed" then why are producer and consumer prices both up by 19% since Jan '21 w/ consumer price increases only just recently catching up to price increases faced by businesses? Asking for a friend… pic.twitter.com/EBLwxyEEwR

— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) April 15, 2024

‘Women Have Died’

When discussing state abortion laws in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down the abortion precedent Roe v. Wade (1973) in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), Harris claimed, “Women have died because of these laws.”

She has repeatedly mentioned the name Amber Nicole Thurman, suggesting that she died due to Georgia’s law restricting abortion.

Yet Thurman died after she took the abortion pill, which caused complications and left parts of her twin unborn babies inside her.

Thurman legally obtained abortion pills in North Carolina to end the lives of her unborn twins, but she could not know without an ultrasound (which the FDA had required only a few years beforehand). Five days later, she began to abort the twins, but both babies’ remains remained in her uterus. She began to develop sepsis and went to the hospital.

Doctors hospitalized her, but she died before they could perform a dilation and curettage to remove the remaining parts of her unborn babies.

Harris blamed Thurman’s death on a law restricting abortion, but the law would not prevent the removal of the babies’ remains when they were already dead. The FDA’s loosened restrictions on the abortion pill, not Georgia’s law, is arguably to blame for this tragic death.

'WOMEN HAVE DIED': Kamala Harris claimed that "women have died because of these laws," referencing state laws restricting abortion after Dobbs v. Jackson.

Yet the cases she repeatedly brings up, those of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, actually have more to do with the… pic.twitter.com/sTKIdvYcEp

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) October 24, 2024

Prefer to Run on the Problem

Harris repeated her claim that Trump killed a bipartisan border bill earlier this year “because he’d prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

Yet critics have warned that the bill would have cemented Biden’s open-border policies into law.

Cooper pressed Harris on why the Biden administration used executive orders to reverse many Trump border policies in January 2021. He noted that illegal aliens crossed the border in large numbers after those orders, and the numbers only decreased when Biden issued other executive orders. He asked her whether she regrets the weaker border policies.

Harris replied that only Congress could solve the ultimate problem. Cooper again pressed her on whether Biden should have issued the 2024 executive orders sooner, and she replied, “I think we did the right thing.”

'I THINK WE DID THE RIGHT THING': Kamala Harris tells Anderson Cooper she does not regret the Biden-Harris administration's executive orders reversing Trump's border policies, even after she acknowledged that later executive actions helped stem the border crisis. pic.twitter.com/UGdXVBIVPv

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) October 24, 2024