1) Be Fruitful and Multiply

Regular HOTLINE readers know that we are very worried about the trend of a population implosion driven by declining birth rates. This is a bigger threat to our future than the national debt. The birth rate has fallen in half over the last 50 years. Why is it happening?

One major contributor to America’s low birth rates is that young people aren’t getting hitched anymore. In 1960 the average male was 23 years old when first married. Now, that median age is 30. For women, the median age of marriage has risen from 21 to 28. That means women have fewer years for childbirth.

In 1950, roughly two of three women over the age of 18 had taken wedding vows, versus slightly less than half today. 2024 was the first year in American history where less than half of women were married.

The Economist notes a related troubling trend:

“Among Americans aged 25-34, the proportion living without a spouse or partner has doubled in five decades, to 50% for men and 41% for women. Since 2010, the share of people living alone has risen in 26 out of 30 rich countries.”

What does all this have to do with the economy? Nations with declining populations don’t grow their economies. Love and marriage are also generally associated with happiness and productivity. A nation that lives alone and without children is a prescription for economic and social disaster.

2) Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Board Is Out of Money - Forever We Hope

Elizabeth Warren’s creation of the fiercely anti-business CFPB is funded out of Federal Reserve earnings. But as we've previously noted in the HOTLINE, the Fed has been running big losses.  So - sorry - it has no earnings to pass out to the government lynching mob.    

As of yesterday, the CFPB officially agrees. So time to turn out the lights.

The irony here is that Progressives designed the CFPB funding mechanism to avoid the accountability that comes with being funded by Congress via appropriations. But now that alternative funding mechanism may lead to the troublesome agency being mothballed.

Hoisted in their own petard.  

3) The IRS Will No Longer Be Doing Your Taxes

Speaking of useless and invasive government programs, there’s more good news to report.  The IRS’s Direct File program - a free, federally funded tax filing service invented by the Biden admin - will not be part of the 2026 tax season or any other.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was right on when he declared: “It wasn't used very much, and we think that the private sector can do a better job." He noted that less than 0.5% of last year's tax returns used Direct File.  

The program was created without consulting Congress even though private-sector tax prep companies have offered their own free versions to filers with annual income below $83,000 for over two decades.

Earlier this year we called for exactly this action:

"It's a conflict of interest of the highest order... The agency charged with extracting every possible penny for the federal bureaucracy cannot be impartial and get you -- the taxpayer -- every dollar you're owed in your refund. impartial and get you -- the taxpayer -- every dollar you're owed in your refund.'

DirectFile, RIP.  Score one for the often criticized DOGE initiative headed by Elon Musk, which continues to pay dividends.

4) Shocking Math Scores From California

The University of California San Diego is a selective admissions college in the once-prestigious University of California system, with an admission rate of about 28%. So most of the kids who get in are at the top of their class in student achievement.  But now we learn that a shocking number of even these A students can't do elementary school math.

Math 2 is UCSD's remedial course for 1st through 8th-grade material.

This year 665 students (8.5%) are enrolled in Math 2, versus 0.5% as recently as 2020.

Another 256 are in Math 3B, which is high school remediation. Remember: these are kids who were almost all at the top of their high school class, so imagine how little all the other kids have learned.

The report includes some of the questions used to assess the Math 2 students and the woeful percentages of students that got them right:

This is the Newsom lockdown legacy - though we doubt many graduates from the public schools in some other parts of the country would fare much better answering these math questions.

Time to privatize the schools.

5) Some 70,000 Climate Change Delegates Fly to Brazil to Save the Planet

The 30th annual international climate conference, known as COP30, has begun in the luxurious hotels in the Brazilian city of Belém. Over 70,000 (!) delegates and climate activists are attending the two week (!) boondoggle.

Something tells us they didn't swim to get there.

But this year's real story is that the political climate is shifting against the hysteria. Only a minority of nations have submitted plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions - and even they are lying.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the conference that while its agenda used to be heralded internationally "today sadly that consensus is gone." His government proceeded to prove that by pulling out of a $125 billion fund created by Britain to support rainforests.

Because more and more industrialized countries are scaling back on pledges to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, the new climate hero - you're probably not going to believe this - is China.

André Corrêa do Lago, the Brazilian diplomat running COP30, hails China for its cheap solar panels and EVs that are "low-carbon solutions for everyone."  Never mind that the Chinese are responsible for multiple times more air pollution than the next five biggest emitters! President Xi is filled with good intentions. Really!

Meanwhile, the new villain at COP30 is billionaire Bill Gates, who last month paused his giving to climate groups with a warning that they are "diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world," including fighting poverty and improving human health.

Gates's words terrified the climate delegates not so much because they are worried about the future of the planet, but because his words may signal the climate gravy train could soon be sidetracked.

6) They’ve Found a Way To Keep People From Leaving New York!

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