1) Red States Gain Nearly $200 Billion in Extra Income Due to Domestic Migration
The stampede out of blue states accelerates.
For the four years from 2019 through 2022, the Red States gained 2.23 million net domestic migrants, all at the expense of blue states.
The net effect is that red state population increased by 4.5 million, compared to blue state population as a result of net domestic migration over the four years. This is the equivalent of roughly eight or nine additional red state congressional seats.
As a result, the Red States gained $191.93 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI), while the Blue States lost that much taxable income.
Seven of the ten top states in net domestic migration were red, led by Florida, which gained 793,000, and Texas, which gained 600,000. North Carolina, also a red state, ranked third, gaining 275,000 net domestic migrants.
Ten of the eleven worst-performing states/DC were blue, with California having the largest loss (1,072,000), New York having the second largest loss (887,000), and Illinois with the third largest loss (376,000).
Seven of the top ten states in net adjusted gross income (AGI) change were red. Florida also led in this category, with its four-year gain of $116 billion. Texas was second, at $31 billion. Arizona was the top-ranked blue state, placing third, at $17 billion.
The largest income losses were in California ($79 billion), New York ($67 billion), and Illinois ($35 billion). Yet Dems are floating governors Gavin Newsom of CA and JB Pritzker of Illinois as top
Veep candidates.
2) As Senator, Kamala Voted to the Left of Bernie Sanders
Well, there’s no pretending that Democrats are about to nominate a moderate centrist for the presidency. The National Republican Senatorial Committee kept an extensive file on Kamala Harris's Senate career just in case this moment arrived.
They found that in 2019, the Californian was ranked the most liberal U.S. senator. We admit that the NRSC is not exactly an unbiased source, and as a nonpartisan organization, we do not support them. But their analysis was based on data from the nonpartisan, independent congressional tracker GovTrack.us. Kamala was the least likely Democrat to sponsor bills with Republican cosponsors. She's a "uniter" just like Joe.
And how's this for a knock-out punch: the first bill she introduced in the Senate was to guarantee taxpayer-funded lawyers to illegal aliens. She also supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
It appears that as border czarina, she unilaterally adopted that policy. And eight million illegal immigrants later, here we are.
3) Most Democratic Governors on the Veep Short List Flunked COVID
It's considered likely that Kamala would pick a Governor as her running mate.
But there's only one Democrat who handled COVID well - and that was Jared Polis of Colorado.
As we look back at our landmark CTUP/FreedomWorks Report Card on how governors performed during COVID, we find that virtually every Democratic governor now under consideration for the president or vice president slot got a D or an F grade. They were ALL lockdown artists. Here are the grades:
Jared Polis, Colorado: A
Andy Beshear, Kentucky: C
Roy Cooper, North Carolina: D
Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan: D
Gavin Newsom, California: D
J. B. Pritzker, Illinois, F.
Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania wasn't governor yet during the pandemic, but Pennsylvania got an F under his Democratic predecessor.
This map (click it for the full report) shows how governors handled COVID:
Good news. Robbie Collin, the chief film critic for London's Daily Telegraph, has looked over a pile of pictures in the pipeline and says we may have reached Peak Woke when it comes to popular movies.
He notes that for years Hollywood executives have ritualistically and awkwardly inserted gay characters into movies to appease their left-leaning "woke" workforce and prove their progressive bona fides. But many audiences now find gratuitous symbolism to be patronizing and inappropriate – especially for kids.
Recently, audience figures for such message movies have been falling. The latest Star Wars series, The Acolyte, features a coven of lesbian witches – and has been savaged by fans.
By way of contrast, there is Twisters. It's a film with astonishing special effects about people who drive into tornadoes for two hours. Thankfully, there are no "woke" messages or attempts to tie tornadoes to climate change. There were many tornadoes before 1970.
Director Lee Isaac Chung, says the absence of moralizing is on purpose: "I wanted to make sure that we are never creating a feeling that we're preaching a message, because that's certainly not what I think cinema should be about," he told CNN. The star of Twisters, Glen Powell, was even more blunt: "If you're telling people what to think, you're not allowing them to feel."
Another film that's now in theaters is the rom-com Anybody But You. An old-fashioned film that tones down the sex, the movie has been a surprise hit, already making ten times its $25 million budget.
Collin, the film critic, is under no illusions that Hollywood's retreat from preposterous progressive messaging is sincere or a sign that executives there have seen the error of their ways. He says he suspects the only ideology really at work here was immortalized by the great Groucho Marx who once cracked: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
5) Video of the Day: Right vs. Left – Who's better for the economy?
In case you missed it, Unleash Prosperity cofounder and economic advisor to former President Trump Steve Moore, debated Ernie Tedeschi, former White House CEA chief economist under President Biden, on Squawk Box yesterday. They squared off on which policies would be best for the American economy over the next four years.
