1) Democrats and Big Insurance Companies: A Love Story

The CEOs of the health insurance giants testify today on Capitol Hill. These are companies whose stocks have skyrocketed, thanks to a continuous flood of subsidies from taxpayers under the “Affordable Care Act.” Most Americans say health care has become more expensive and more frustrating to access than ever.

A new battleground survey was conducted by McLaughlin & Associates for Unleash Prosperity Now's Most Favored Patient initiative.

The poll highlights voters’ concerns related to rising health care costs, patient issues, and potential reforms being considered by Congress and the Trump administration. Our take away: keep trashing the fat and happy insurance companies. As we reported on Tuesday, 75% of voters in battleground districts have an unfavorable view of the insurance companies. Their profits have nearly tripled since Obamacare passed.

The Left has fallen in love with the insurance conglomerates. They may throw some punches at the big insurers, but that’s for show.

The only health care bill Democrats have voted for - over and over - is one that shovels even more tax dollars to these insurers with zero reforms.

Where is Bernie Sanders when we need him?

2) Hey Republicans: Stop Funding the Left

Our friends at EPIC have done a great public service in spotlighting the proliferation of earmarks in the Republican budget bill this year.  We know the amount of money is not excessive in the grand scheme of things, but as our old friend and Senator Tom Coburn used to say, “earmarks are the gateway drug to trillion dollar spending bills.”  

What is particularly outrageous is the multitude of Democrat earmarks that are related to gender identity and sex change operations. Why would taxpayers have to fund these?  Why would Republicans agree to this? Here is a short sample:

• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) included a $3 million earmark to the Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC), a Brooklyn-based local activist group, for “community facility enhancements.” The FAC promotes increased welfare spending, economic and environmental regulations to burden private sector construction, and socialized housing.

• Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) included a $2 million earmark for pediatric mental health services at Rady’s Children’s Hospital in San Diego. Rady’s operates a center dedicated to pediatric “gender affirming care” including gender transition surgeries for minors.

• Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) included more than $3 million dollars for Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hennepin operates a pediatric gender and sexual health clinic that provides both mental and physical care to children, adolescents, and young adults. The clinic offers puberty blockers and hormone treatments, as well as referrals to surgeons and specialists for gender surgeries on children.

• Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) included a $1 million earmark for New York City’s Metropolitan Opera Association (Met Opera) to make elevators compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act… The Met Opera has an annual budget of more than $330 million and has assets of more than half a billion dollars.

• Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) included a $375,000 earmark for arts education to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts.

• Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) inserted  a $1.5 million earmark for pedestrian safety signals in San Francisco… This project is located in the infamous Tenderloin neighborhood notorious as a focal point of crime, homelessness, drug use, public defecation, and other types of disorder.

3) No, Pacific Islands Aren't Sinking Due To Rise of the Oceans

Climate change is soo yesterday, but the more the data roll in, the more the lies of the alarmists (e.g. polar bears are going extinct) are exposed.

One of the loudest scare tactics came almost 30 years ago at the famous 1997 Kyoto Protocol conference. The Prime Minister of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu warned his nation was “sinking into the Pacific Ocean.”

There was an immediate rush of hysteria with headlines such as: “Tuvalu Sinks Today - The Rest of Us Tomorrow?”  Tuvalu threatened to sue the U.S. and Australia for not ratifying the Kyoto climate treaty.

But the computer models were wrong.

A review of dozens of peer-reviewed studies published in the journal “Climate At A Glance” shows that sediment shifts, reef dynamics, natural island-building processes and better coastal management allow islands to adjust to any gradual sea level rise.

4) Trump Slides Down the Laffer Curve

Wait: wasn’t the Trump Big Beautiful Tax Bill supposed to cause a new rising tide of red ink? In today’s Wall Street Journal, economist Alan Blinder warns of “the fiscal effects” of the Trump tax cut, which he says will make the deficit much worse.

Huh? So far, the opposite has happened.  

The new federal budget data for the first three months of FY2026 (Oct-Dec 2026) have been released and revenues have leapt $141 billion (13%) higher than at this point last fiscal year.

The biggest increase in revenues came from individual and payroll tax receipts. Here is a quick summary from the Bipartisan Policy Center:

• $105 billion (12%) increase in individual and payroll tax collections

• $69 billion (322%) increase in customs duties because of increased tariffs in effect for most imported goods

• $28 billion (-26%) decrease in corporate income taxes as H.R. 1 allowed corporations to take larger deductions for certain investments in their 2025 estimated tax filings.

The idea behind allowing companies to write off their investment in factories, equipment, machinery, and R&D was to increase business investment due to the lower tax penalty. It’s working. The latest Atlanta Fed Bank report shows investment soaring. This means future tax revenues will be higher than expected.  

The bad news is that government spending is continuing to grow like weeds, but the revenues are so high that the deficit is FALLING.

5) Odds Defying

It’s being called the Cinderella sports story of modern times:

The Indiana University Hoosiers, a basketball school with the losingest record in college football history, won the national championship with a final record of 16-0, the most single-season wins ever.  

Our favorite sports writer, Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal, wrote of this amazing season: “This team began the season with longer odds than a lobster in a restaurant tank”

So we did our own back-of-the-envelope calculations and found that the odds of IU winning all 16 games - including wins over Oregon twice, Iowa, Ohio State, Alabama, and Miami - was roughly one in 1,500.

Those were about the long shot odds that the political geniuses gave Trump to win the 2024 election.

6) What’s for Dessert?

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