Category Archives: Government

REGULATIONS CAUSING NEW HOME BUILDING TO BE SO EXPENSIVE!

Reasons Home Buying Has Become So Expensive

America’s housing market is in deep trouble, with prices soaring beyond the reach of everyday families chasing the dream of homeownership. This isn’t just a market glitch—it’s a man-made mess rooted in decades of poor decisions that have strangled supply and inflated costs. Market experts lay out three core culprits behind this affordability nightmare, and fixing them could restore opportunity for millions.

First off, zoning rules across the country act like iron gates, blocking new homes from being built where they’re needed most. Communities cling to outdated restrictions that favor the status quo over growth, leaving potential buyers out in the cold.

“There are just many, many ways to halt and stop development,” said Joseph Gyourko, professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “And we’ve gotten very, very good at it in the United States.”

Then come the land-use hurdles, a tangled web of regulations that pile on expenses and drag out timelines for builders. From local mandates forcing developers to foot the bill for infrastructure like roads and utilities, to outright efforts to slow down progress, these barriers turn affordable projects into luxury-priced realities.

Jim Tobin, president and CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, put it plainly: “Regulatory burdens really do add up on the unaffordability index. We estimate that 24% of the cost of a single-family home is embedded in regulations at all three levels of local, state and federal government. That comes out to roughly $94,000 in regulatory costs.” He added, “Sometimes there are communities that just regulate because they want to impede growth, they don’t want more homes built.” And on the delays: “Time is money in real estate. You own the land, you’re paying taxes and, while you wait for local approvals, costs keep rising. Then many communities require developers to install sewer, water, roads and electrical infrastructure and all of that gets folded into the final price of the home.”

Financial policies round out the trio, keeping interest rates elevated and regulations tight, which chokes off new construction. Cutting back on wasteful government spending could ease borrowing costs and clear the path for more homes, revitalizing the market that underpins American wealth-building.

E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, explained: “The best way to thaw this frozen housing market is to reduce government spending to relieve pressure on interest rates and roll back burdensome regulations. [He added that such steps] would in turn increase production of new homes.”

This crisis hits hard at the heart of what makes America strong—families building equity through their homes, passing on stability to the next generation. As Tobin warned, “The more we delay ownership, the later we delay wealth creation in this country. And that’s the challenge ahead of everybody right now.”

Without bold action to boost supply, we risk a generation locked out of the prosperity that homeownership brings, weakening the economic foundation we’ve fought to build.

NANCY PELOSI, THE GREEDY DEMOCRATIC OPPORTUNIST FINALLY LEAVING WASHINGTON!

How Nancy Pelosi Betrayed the People She Pretended to Protect

Pelosi leaves behind a party addicted to performance and a nation more cynical than ever.

by John Mac Ghlionn

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will retire from Congress this year (Fox News/Youtube)

Nancy Pelosi’s farewell was less a retirement than an encore — one final pirouette in the long, exhausting pageant of American power. For nearly forty years, she ruled Washington like a monarch in pearls and Prada. A mistress of manipulation whose smile stretched wider than the chasm between her sermons and her sins. When Barack Obama gushed that she was “one of the best speakers the House has ever had,” he wasn’t lying. Pelosi could speak. She could sermonize, sanctify, and spin with unmatched flair. What she never managed was to see beyond herself.

Pelosi will be remembered as a pioneer…. What she truly built was a dynasty of deceit, a system where influence erases consequence.

Her gift was never governance; it was performance in its purest form. Pelosi turned morality into marketing, and the House into her own Broadway stage. The taxpayer was merely her patron. When she wasn’t preaching unity, she was kneeling in a Kente cloth beside Chuck Schumer, a tableau so contrived it made Hollywood blush. The moment was hailed as courage by the credulous and as comedy by everyone else. Yet it defined her perfectly: the politics of pose over purpose, where conviction is cosmetic and every crisis demands a wardrobe change.

Behind the podium, she preached compassion; behind closed doors, she perfected profit. Her husband, Paul Pelosi, traded stocks with timing so immaculate it bordered on clairvoyance. From Tesla to tech IPOs, the Pelosi portfolio outperformed the market like divine revelation. Any other citizen might have faced indictment; Pelosi faced applause. “We’re a free-market economy,” she quipped once, flashing that lacquered smile. Indeed — and few have freeloaded on freedom with such finesse.

In Washington, she ruled not by charm but by fear, flattery, and an inexhaustible supply of donor cash. Committee seats became favors; loyalty, currency. To her admirers, she was Saint Nancy, defender of democracy. To her detractors, Machiavelli in Manolo heels. Both descriptions fit. She was relentless, calculating, and convinced that virtue, like diamonds, mattered only when it caught the light.

Under her watch, the Democratic Party traded its working-class conscience for an identity crisis. The language of labor was replaced by the lexicon of grievance; solidarity gave way to sanctimony. She made politics about feelings, not fairness — optics, not outcomes. The party of Roosevelt became the party of hashtags, curated for social media rather than sustained by substance.

Pelosi learned early that outrage paid better than compromise. Every cultural wound became a weapon — every tragedy, a means to tighten her grip. When George Floyd’s death convulsed the nation, she moved quickly, not toward compassion but control. She spoke of justice while supporting policies that gutted police forces and left the poorest neighborhoods to fend for themselves. Businesses burned, families fled, and those meant to be helped were hurt most. Yet the fury persisted, because it served its purpose. Pelosi understood what few dared admit: outrage could be organized, monetized, and endlessly recycled. The country didn’t need healing — not when division had become the Democrats’ most dependable currency.

Her true genius, though, was survival. Scandal never stuck, but it should have. When she was caught sneaking into a shuttered San Francisco salon at the height of California’s COVID lockdowns, maskless and defiant, it wasn’t just vanity on display. In truth, it was hierarchy. Ordinary citizens were fined for walking their dogs without a face covering, but the Speaker of the House could stroll in for a blowout. And when caught, she didn’t apologize — she blamed the owner for “setting her up,” as though she were the victim of a sting, not the author of hypocrisy. It was a perfect parable of Pelosi’s power: the rules were for the ruled. The scandal should have ended her career; instead, it reminded Washington who still ran the show. The city forgave her not because it believed her, but because she was one of them — a creature of privilege thriving in a town where shame is optional and memory is short.

Meanwhile, the country she claimed to serve crumbled under her watch. Her San Francisco mansion — marble, manicured, and guarded — stood as a monument to the very inequities she railed against. Beyond its gates lay the city she abandoned, a wasteland of fentanyl, filth, and fear. She preached equality while presiding over decay, promising dignity to the same people left to step over needles and corpses. The contrast might have been tragic if it weren’t deliberate — progress for her class, paralysis for everyone else.

To her supporters, Pelosi’s retirement marks the end of an era. To history, it should mark the end of an illusion. She was the architect of a new American decay — one built on branding, not belief; on image, not integrity. Under her stewardship, the Democrats became a hall of mirrors: billionaires, bureaucrats, and activists echoing each other’s delusions, feeding each other’s arrogance, and scorning the very people they swore to serve. She presided over the death of dialogue, turning debate into denunciation. Every disagreement became a moral crime, every opponent a heretic to be hunted rather than heard.

Pelosi will be remembered as a pioneer, the first woman to wield the Speaker’s gavel. But titles are cheap. What she truly built was a dynasty of deceit, a system where influence erases consequence.

The curtain falls, the crowd disperses, but the stage remains — still propped up by patrons, lacquered in lies. Pelosi leaves behind a party addicted to performance and a nation more cynical than ever. She exits not as a leader, but as proof that corruption, when accessorized correctly, can pass for class.

ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS ARE MOVING ONTO ARMY BASE HOUSING TO HAVE SECURITY AND AWAY FROM CRAZY LIBERAL PROTESTERS

Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases

Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, and others have taken over homes that until recently housed senior officers.

toy soldiers stationed in front of a house — Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic

The former White House adviser Katie Miller—mother of three young children, and wife of the presidential right-hand man Stephen—walked out of her front door one Thursday morning last month and was confronted by a woman she did not know.

When she told this story on Fox News, she described the encounter as a protest that crossed a line. The stranger had told Miller: “I’m watching you,” she said. This was the day after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. It also wasn’t anything new.

For weeks before Kirk’s death, activists had been protesting the Millers’ presence in north Arlington, Virginia. Someone had put up wanted posters in their neighborhood with their home address, denouncing Stephen as a Nazi who had committed “crimes against humanity.” A group called Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity warned in an Instagram post: “Your efforts to dismantle our democracy and destroy our social safety net will not be tolerated here.”

The local protest became a backdrop to the Trump administration’s response to Kirk’s killing. When Miller, the architect of that response who is known for his inflammatory political rhetoric, announced a legal crackdown on liberal groups, he singled out the tactics that had victimized his family—what he called “organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting peoples’ addresses.”

Stephen Miller soon joined a growing list of senior Trump-administration political appointees—at least six by our count—living in Washington-area military housing, where they are shielded not just from potential violence but also from protest. It is an ominous marker of the nation’s polarization, to which the Trump administration has itself contributed, that some of those top public servants have felt a need to separate themselves from the public.

These civilian officials can now depend on the U.S. military to augment their personal security. But so many have made the move that they are now straining the availability of housing for the nation’s top uniformed officers.

Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, moved out of her D.C. apartment building and into the home designated for the Coast Guard commandant on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, across the river from the capital, after the Daily Mail described where she lived. Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live on “Generals’ Row” at Fort McNair, an Army enclave along the Anacostia River, according to officials from the State and Defense Departments. (Rubio spent one recent evening assembling furniture that had been delivered to the house that day.)

Although most Cabinet-level officials live in private houses, there is precedent for senior national-security officials, including the defense secretary, to rent homes on bases for security or convenience. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, whose family is in Washington only part-time, now shares a home on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, a picturesque site next to Arlington National Cemetery.

His roommate is another senior political appointee to the Army. (When Driscoll moved in, his washing machine wasn’t working, so for the first few weeks of his stay on base, he lugged his laundry over to the home of the Army chief of staff, General Randy George.)

Another senior White House official, whom The Atlantic is not naming because of security concerns related to a specific foreign threat, also vacated a private home for a military installation after Kirk’s murder. In that case, security officials urged the official to relocate to military housing, according to people briefed on the move, who like many others who spoke with us for this story were not authorized to do so publicly.

So many senior officials have requested housing that some are now encountering a familiar D.C. problem: inadequate supply. When Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s team inquired earlier in Donald Trump’s second term about her moving onto McNair, it didn’t work out for space reasons, a former official told us.

There are scattered examples from previous administrations of Cabinet members residing on bases. Both Robert Gates, defense secretary under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Jim Mattis, Trump’s first Pentagon chief, lived in Navy housing at the Potomac Hill annex, a secure compound near the State Department. Mike Pompeo, CIA director and secretary of state during Trump’s first term, lived at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall.

The grand homes they occupied, some of which date back more than a century, offer officials an additional layer of security and ample space for official entertaining.

But there is no record of so many political appointees living on military installations. The shift adds to the blurring of traditional boundaries between the civilian and military worlds. Trump has made the military a far more visible element of domestic politics, deploying National Guard forces to Washington, Los Angeles, and other cities run by Democrats.

He has decreed that those cities should be used as “training grounds” in the battle against the “enemy within.”

Adria Lawrence, an associate professor of international studies and political science at John Hopkins University, told us that housing political advisers on bases sends a problematic message. “In a robust democracy, what you want is the military to be for the defense of the country as a whole and not just one party,” Lawrence told us.

But the threat assessment has also changed in recent years. Trump has survived two attempted assassinations; Iran has stepped up its efforts to kill federal officials; and political violence—such as the June shooting of two Democratic Minnesota lawmakers, the murder of Kirk in September, and the shooting at a Texas immigration facility two weeks later—is a real danger.

The result is straining the stock of homes typically allotted to senior uniformed officers on Washington-area bases. Some of those homes, designed for three- and four-star generals, lack sufficient bedrooms for families with young children. Many have lead-abatement issues and require significant repair.

The Army notified Congress in January that it planned to spend more than $137,000 on repairs and upgrades to Hegseth’s McNair home before he moved in. Both Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin, and Austin’s State Department counterpart, Antony Blinken, faced protesters at their northern-Virginia homes, which were not on bases. Gaza protesters who set up camp outside Blinken’s house, where he lived with his young children, spattered fake blood on cars as they passed by.

Robert Pape, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago, told us that the threat of political violence is real for figures in both major parties. He noted that Trump has revoked the security details for several of his critics and adversaries, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and John Bolton, the former national security adviser from Trump’s first term who has been the target of an Iranian assassination plot.

“The correct balance would be: Trump should stop canceling the security detail of former Biden officials,” said Pape, who is also the director of the university’s Chicago Project on Security and Threats. “The issue is both sides are under heightened threat; therefore the threat to both should be taken seriously.”

In most cases, the civilian officials pay “fair market” rent for their base home, a formula determined by the military. Hegseth, in keeping with a 2008 law that aimed to make Gates’s Navy-owned housing arrangement more affordable, pays a rent equivalent to a general’s housing allowance plus 5 percent (in this case, totaling $4,655.70 a month).

The moves, however, can also save the government money. In some cases, base living can reduce the cost of providing personal security to officials, one person familiar with the relocations told us, because protective teams do not need to rent a second location nearby as a staging area.

Base living—in the unofficial Trump Green Zone—has also become something of a double-edged status symbol among Trump officials. No one wants to deal with threats; both the Millers and the unnamed senior official were not looking to leave their homes.

But the secure housing does confer upon the recipient a certain sheen of importance that sets them apart from all of the other officials ferried about in armored black SUVs. Administration officials now find themselves vying for the largest houses, not unlike the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that has long played out among senior military officers.

The isolation of living on a military base, at least for civilians, has also created a deeper division between Trump’s advisers and the metropolitan area where they govern.

Trump-administration officials, who regularly mock the nation’s capital as a crime-ridden hellscape, now find themselves in a protected bubble, even farther removed from the city’s daily rhythms. And they are even less likely to encounter a diverse mix of voters—in their neighborhoods, on their playgrounds, in their favorite date-night haunts.

After the Kirk assassination, the Trump administration designated antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no centralized antifa organization, no organizational ties have been established to Kirk’s alleged killer, and the category of domestic terrorist organization has no meaning in federal law. The identities of the activists behind the harassment campaign that helped persuade the Millers to leave their home have not been publicly disclosed.

Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity—ANUFH, pronounced, they say, enough—has organized protests near the homes of Miller and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. Its website calls for “strategic, nonviolent action,” and its efforts appear to have stopped short of making any explicit threats of violence. (A representative of the group declined to comment, as did the Millers.)

But the protests were designed to make the Miller family take notice. Stephen Miller has been an architect of Trump’s deportation policy, invoking a centuries-old law to send migrants to a Salvadoran prison and urging immigration-enforcement officers to aggressively find and arrest as many immigrants as possible.

He regularly derides Democrats with inflammatory language, calling judicial rulings against the administration a “legal insurrection” and calling the Democratic Party “a domestic extremist organization.”

“Will we let him live in our community in peace while he TERRORIZES children and families? Not a chance,” ANUFH captioned one Instagram post in July that shows a photograph of the Millers and their children.

(The Millers have both posted family photos online that show their children’s faces.) Weeks later, the group took credit for covering the sidewalk near the Miller home with chalk messages such as Miller is preying on families, although it said in a post that it had spoken with Stephen Miller’s security beforehand to make sure that the group wasn’t violating any laws.

Katie Miller responded with an Instagram post of her own, a video of the chalked words STEPHEN MILLER IS DESTROYING DEMOCRACY! being washed away with a hose. She argued in a subsequent appearance on Fox News that although the protesters may not be violent themselves, they were inciting the kind of violence that killed Kirk. “We will not back down. We will not cower in fear. We will double down. Always, For Charlie,” Katie Miller wrote, echoing her husband’s rhetoric.

“WE ARE PEACEFULLY RESISTING TYRANNY,” ANUFH responded in a post. “GUNS KILL PEOPLE. CHALK SCARES FASCISTS.”

Earlier this month, the Millers put their six-bedroom north Arlington home on the market for $3.75 million. The listing promised “a rare blend of seclusion, sophistication, and striking design.”

BLOATED GOVERNMENT WORKERS SET FOR MASS RESIGNATIONS…FINALLY!

SHUT IT DOWN! Mass Federal Resignations Coming This Week

More than 100,000 federal workers stand ready to submit their resignations this Tuesday if the government shutdown cannot be averted, setting a record for the single largest exodus from government service in American history. This wave comes as part of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, which has already prompted around 275,000 departures through various voluntary and mandatory measures. The move aims to trim excess from the federal bureaucracy, with the White House estimating annual savings of $28 billion once fully implemented.

At the heart of this program lies a strategy to reshape the workforce without immediate disruptions. Participants receive full pay and benefits for up to eight months while on administrative leave, a setup that has drawn scrutiny for its $14.8 billion price tag but is defended as a cost-neutral bridge to long-term efficiencies.

White House spokesperson explained the rationale plainly: “In fact, this is the largest and most effective workforce reduction plan in history and will save the government $28bn annually,” adding that there was “no additional cost to the government” since these salaries would have been paid anyway.

This approach reflects a push toward an at-will employment model, similar to private sector norms, where the Office of Personnel Management has long argued that outdated job protections hinder adaptability.

Workers who opted into the program often describe a mix of relief and regret, rooted in years of mounting pressures. One longtime employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) captured the sentiment: “Federal workers stay for the mission. When that mission is taken away, when they’re scapegoated, when their job security is uncertain, and when their tiny semblance of work-life balance is stripped away, they leave. That’s why I left.”

Such accounts reveal how entrenched routines in federal agencies can erode purpose over time, especially when layers of red tape slow down responses to crises like natural disasters. By streamlining staff, the administration seeks to refocus efforts on core duties, potentially allowing remaining teams to operate with greater speed and accountability—much like how private disaster relief organizations prioritize rapid deployment over bureaucratic hurdles.

The broader context includes threats of a government shutdown if Congress fails to approve funding by the deadline, with the Office of Management and Budget instructing agencies to prepare for mass firings via reduction-in-force procedures. This could push total reductions beyond 300,000 by year’s end, surpassing any single-year drop since World War II. Agencies like the Internal Revenue Service have already shed 25% of their staff through layoffs and buyouts, a change that could ease the burden on taxpayers by curbing overreach in audits and enforcement.

Another USDA worker, who faced probationary firing and reinstatement earlier this year, noted: “At that point, I felt they could terminate me at any time. It’s hard to focus on your work when they can just send you an email and you can be gone, and they completely changed the terms of my work. I was hoping things would stabilize and there would be an opportunity to go back, but now it doesn’t look like there will be an opportunity.”

The federal government is way too big. Just about any reductions in size and scope, whether forced or voluntary, would benefit the nation. We can easily recover from the vast majority of job roles being eliminated. We may not be able to survive the bloated and growing government.

8000 PUBLIC EMPLOYEES MAKE MORE THAN THE PRESIDENT, SOME OVER $1 MILLION!

More than 8,000 public employees get paid MORE than the president

Nearly 300 getting paychecks for $1 million and up

By Jeremy Portnoy, Real Clear Wire

Topline: The President of the United States has the most important government job in the country, but even with a $400,000 salary, he is far from the highest paid. There were 8,752 public employees at the federal, state and local levels that earned $400,000 or more in base salary in 2024, according to thousands of open records requests filed by Open the Books.

Key facts: The list of employees includes researchers, doctors, university professors and many more. In total, the 8,752 employees earned just over $4.76 billion in base salary. There were 290 people with salaries of at least $1 million.

The top 10 highest-paid employees are all football coaches at public universities. Kirby Smart at the University of Georgia earned the most with a $12.2 million base salary, far more than Thomas Allen in second place at Indiana University.

Every state except Delaware and Montana had at least one person making more than $400,000. California had the most such employees with 890 people earning $465.8 million in total, but Texas spent the most on its high earners with $538.4 million paid to 806 people.

Florida (533 people), Utah (525) and Ohio (488) were the other states with the most $400,000 earners.

The federal government has 995 people on the list — all doctors, most of whom work for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Alexander Nyerges, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, was the top-paid public employee not affiliated with a university. He made $1.2 million.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.

Background: Open the Books’ auditors file over 60,000 open records requests each year to capture every salary paid to public employees across the nation.

Our list of top earners does not include employees whose base salaries are below $400,000 but boosted their earnings in other ways.

For example, one of Los Angeles’ top firefighters had a base salary of $232,603 but collected $644,456 of overtime last year. Ferry workers in New York City earned overtime payments of up to $500,000. Several major cities have reported only their base salaries in response to Open the Books’ open records requests, and not their other sources of compensation, making a comprehensive list of other top earners impossible.

Summary: As taxpayer-funded salaries across the country continue to rise every year, how long will it be until a $400,000 payout is commonplace?

TRUMP DOUBLED HIS SUPPORT FROM BLACK VOTERS, BUT MOST ARE CONSISTENTLY VOTING AGAINST THEIR OWN BEST INTERESTS? WHY?

How Trump nearly doubled his support from Black voters

New data shows historic gains made by the president among this racial demographic.

After the presidential election in November, exit polls suggested that Donald Trump could credit his victory to support from young adults, voters lacking a college degree, and Hispanic and Black men. His improvement among Black voters was noteworthy at the time, but new data — based on voters whose participation is confirmed in state election records — confirms that his share was historic.

Trump is the first Republican presidential nominee in nearly half a century to win at least 15 percent of this bloc, according to the Pew Research Center, two points higher than exit polls showed. This means Trump nearly doubled his support from Black voters compared with 2020, increasing from 5 to 10 percent among women and from 12 to 21 percent among men.

Reports attributed this shift to several factors: the appeal of MAGA’s swaggering brand to Black men, the resurgence of Black conservatives after Barack Obama’s presidency and a generational rift among the nation’s most uniform bloc.

Republican strategists in the post-civil rights era believed that if their candidates could win just 20 percent of Black voters, the party would have a stronghold on the White House and “become a majority party.” Trump came closer to that number than Ronald Reagan and every Republican presidential candidate since. Black Republicans are already pushing Trump and the party to take outreach to Black voters seriously if they want to maintain control of Congress.

Trump’s improvement isn’t due to his delivery on campaign promises or better outcomes for Black voters. Though his continued support of historically Black colleges is welcome, he hasn’t kept his word on nearly any other policy promise made to the group. Their economic situation is worsening: Unemployment is up; income and homeownership are down. And it isn’t his style or persona that is winning them over. Only 5 percent of Black Americans strongly approve of his performance, earning him the group’s lowest approval rating since 1983, when Reagan opposed creating a federal holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. So, what explains Trump’s success?

The easy but incorrect answer is that a growing number of Black Americans are comfortable voting against their interests. The truth is that their party loyalty is fraying and more of them are less likely to link their personal interests to the group’s. A century ago, about 90 percent of Black people lived in the South, creating political bonds as they survived oppression. Scholars have chronicled how segregation and injustice shaped the group’s long-standing solidarity at the ballot box, making civil rights the basis for its politics. But the 1960s were many elections ago — the vast majority of Black voters today were born after the end of Jim Crow and after the Great Migration diffused the Black experience beyond the South. Trump is the first Republican president to benefit from the resulting diversification.

There’s a wide-ranging realignment happening in American politics. The usual cleavages along racial, educational and class lines are changing, and Black America is not immune. A recent study found that 3 in 5 Black voters prioritize health care and cost-of-living concerns over civil rights policy. Younger ones are less partisan, consider racial identity differently in their politics and think most about socioeconomic mobility. Moreover, the Black immigrant population has doubled in the past two decades, and 1 in 5 Black people are either foreign-born or the children of immigrants. In a two-party republic, especially a polarized one, changes in loyalty to the Democratic Party mean some increased support for Republicans.

Perhaps Trump’s campaign sensed the opportunity was ripe for seizing, but if that’s true, the outreach did not reflect it. At a 2024 campaign stop in South Carolina, Trump complained about his criminal indictments before adding: “A lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me. … It’s been pretty amazing but possibly, maybe, there’s something there.” He attended a conference of Black journalists in Chicago where he questioned whether Kamala Harris was Black and amplified false claims that Black immigrants in Ohio were eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump’s success is because an evolving electorate made room for him, not the other way around.

Ideological diversity among Black voters, despite a history of partisan voting, mirrors most groups in America; they are not a monolith. And they are not static, either. Because of the successes and failures of previous generations, their politics, allegiances and priorities change. This generation of Black voters is the first to grow up in an accessible democracy and witness a Black president and vice president — of course their politics have evolved.

There have been three times when 95 percent of Black voters supported the same presidential candidate: during Reconstruction; in 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was effectively on the ballot; and in the Obama campaigns. But rather than signal the beginning of a new politics — such as the idea of a post-racial America in 2008 — maybe these moments were the culmination of the previous struggle. Reconstruction facilitated democratic participation denied at the country’s founding; the civil rights era realized the progress sought during Reconstruction; Obama’s presidency was a product of a half-century of Black electoral solidarity shaped by civil rights legislation.

Trump’s historic showing suggests the realignment underway includes Black voters who are willing to give precedence to factors other than the parties’ rhetoric or records on racial equality. That doesn’t mean Republicans will soon hit their holy grail share of 20 percent nationally. If history is a guide, the party is more likely to squander this opportunity than to appreciate it. Next year’s midterms will offer the best clue as to whether the increased Black support is the party’s or if it is Trump’s alone. Either way, the game is changing.

What readers are saying

The conversation explores various perspectives on the factors contributing to Donald Trump’s increased support among Black voters in the 2024 election. Many participants suggest that misogyny played a significant role, with some Black men reportedly reluctant to vote for a female…

KRISTIE NOEM FAST TRACKED MILLIONS OF DISASTER AID FUNDS…AND QUESTION? DOES THE USA HAVE THE BEST LOOKING GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, COMPARED TO THE UGLY, UGLY ONES APPOINTED BY OBAMA AND BIDEN???

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, speaks with Mayor Teresa Heitmann of Naples, Florida, and City Manager Gary Young on a damaged historic pier in the city on Aug. 29. Credit: Tia Dufour/Department of Homeland Security

Kristi Noem Fast-Tracked Millions in Disaster Aid to Florida Tourist Attraction After Campaign Donor Intervened

The DHS chief has been widely criticized for slowing down FEMA’s response after natural disasters. Texts and emails obtained by ProPublica point to an effective way to get help faster: have one of Noem’s big donors make the ask.

For months, the complaints have rolled in from parts of the country hit by natural disasters: The Federal Emergency Management Agency was moving far too slowly in sending aid to communities ravaged by floods and hurricanes, including in central Texas and North Carolina. Many officials were blaming Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, whose agency oversees FEMA.

“I can’t get phone calls back,” Ted Budd, the Republican senator from North Carolina, told a newspaper this month, describing his attempts to reach Noem’s office. “I can’t get them to initiate the money. It’s just a quagmire.” The delays were caused in part by a new policy announced by DHS that requires Noem’s personal sign-off on expenses over $100,000, several news outlets reported.

But records obtained by ProPublica show how one locality found a way to get FEMA aid more quickly: It asked one of Noem’s political donors for help.

The records show that Noem quickly expedited more than $11 million of federal money to rebuild a historic pier in Naples, Florida, after she was contacted by a major financial supporter last month. The pier is a tourist attraction in the wealthy Gulf Coast enclave and was badly damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022.

Frustrated city officials had been laboring for months, without success, to get disaster assistance. But just two weeks after the donor stepped in, they were celebrating their sudden change of fortune. “We are now at warp speed with FEMA,” one city official wrote in an email. A FEMA representative wrote: “Per leadership instruction, pushing project immediately.”

Along with fast-tracking the money, Noem flew to Naples on a government plane to tour the pier herself. She then stayed for the weekend and got dinner with the donor, local cardiologist Sinan Gursoy, at the French restaurant Bleu Provence, according to records and an interview with the Naples mayor. This account is based on text messages and emails ProPublica obtained through public records requests.

Noem’s actions in Naples suggest the injection of political favoritism into an agency tasked with saving lives and rebuilding communities wiped out by disaster. It also heightens concerns about the discretion Noem has given herself by personally handling all six-figure expenses at the agency, consolidating her power over who wins and loses in the pursuit of federal relief dollars, experts said.

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said that politics has long been a factor in federal disaster relief — one study found that swing states are more likely to get federal help, for example. But “I’ve not heard of anything this egregious — a donor calling up and saying I need help and getting it,” he said, “while others may be getting denied assistance or otherwise waiting in line for help that may or may not come.”

In a statement, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, “This has nothing to do with politics: Secretary Noem also visited Ruidoso, NM” — where floods killed three people in July — “at the request of a Democrat governor and has been integral in supporting and speeding up their recovery efforts.”

“Your criticizing the Secretary’s visit to the Pier is bizarre as she works to fix this issue for more than 1 million visitors that used to visit the pier,” McLaughlin added. She did not answer questions about the donor’s role in expediting the funding or Noem’s relationship with him. Reached by phone, Gursoy said “get lost” and hung up. He did not respond to detailed follow up questions.

Noem has been criticized for creating a bottleneck at FEMA. When the floods hit Texas this summer — ultimately killing over 100 people — it took days to deploy critical search-and-rescue teams because Noem hadn’t signed off on them, according to CNN. Budd, the Republican senator, said this month: “Pretty much everything Helene-related is over $100,000. So they’re stacking up on her desk waiting for her signature.”

Noem has denied there were delays in the Texas flood response and has defended her expense policy, saying it has saved billions of dollars. “Every day I get up and I think, the American people are paying for this, should they?” she recently said. “And are these dollars doing what the law says they should be doing? I’m going to make sure that they go there.”

Once a sleepy fishing town, Naples is now home to CEOs and billionaires (a property listed for $295 million recently made headlines as the most expensive home in the U.S.). The city is known as an important stop for Republican politicians raising money, and Noem has held multiple fundraisers in the area. State credit card records suggest she visited Naples at least 10 times during her last four years as South Dakota governor.

Noem’s top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, also appears to own a home in Naples near the city’s pier, according to property tax records. Lewandowski is an unpaid staffer at DHS serving as Noem’s de facto chief of staff. (Media reports have alleged the two are romantically involved, which they have both denied.) Lewandowski told ProPublica that he was not involved in the pier decision and that he was not in Naples during Noem’s visit.

For the first seven months of the Trump administration, the pier reconstruction was in bureaucratic purgatory. The city had long been struggling to secure the regulatory approvals it needed to start building, and emails suggest Trump’s wave of federal layoffs had made the process even slower. “These agencies are undergoing significant reorganizations and staff reductions,” a city official told a frustrated constituent in early August. That “sometimes means starting over with new reviewers — something we’ve faced more than once.”

McLaughlin said “both past FEMA and the City bear responsibility” for the delays. She listed “several failures” since the process started in 2023, including “FEMA staff changing up” and indecision by the city government.

By this summer, Naples officials were getting desperate. In June, one tried to enlist Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to press FEMA to move ahead. “We were told yesterday that Secretary Noem would have to ‘personally’ approve the Pier project before FEMA funding would be obligated,” the city official wrote to the senator’s staff. The Naples mayor, Teresa Heitmann, also personally wrote to FEMA. Heitmann said she was “perplexed” by the delays and begged the agency for guidance.

Heitmann had long been paying expensive Washington consultants to help her city navigate the process. But she was “feeling increasingly helpless,” she later said, until she had the idea that would finally put her project on the fast track. On July 18, the mayor emailed a Google search to herself: “Who is the head of Homeland security?” She was going to go straight to Noem.

Heitmann determined that her best bet for getting Noem’s attention was Gursoy. A Naples cardiologist, Gursoy has no obvious experience working with the federal government; much of his online footprint centers on his enthusiasm for pinball. But Gursoy gave Noem at least $25,000 to support her campaign for governor in 2022. That was enough to put him near the top of Noem’s disclosed donor list. (In South Dakota, campaign contributions remain relatively small.)

On planning documents for the 2024 Republican National Convention obtained by ProPublica, the Florida doctor is listed as an attendee affiliated with the delegation from South Dakota, a state he has no apparent connection to besides his support for Noem. Heitmann told ProPublica that Gursoy introduced her to Noem at a political event at a private home in Naples while Noem was governor.

“Hello it’s Teresa,” the mayor texted Gursoy in early August. “I really need your help.” She explained the tangle of bureaucracy she’d been contending with. “FEMA is holding us up,” Heitmann wrote. “Kristi Noem could put some fire under the FEMA employees slacking.”

Gursoy responded: “Okay. I will get on it.”

The next week, on Aug. 11, the doctor gave Heitmann an update. “Kristi was off for a few days for the first time in a long time, so I left her alone,” he said. “I just txted her now.” Within 24 hours, he had exciting news. He told the mayor to expect a call from Noem’s “FEMA fixer” shortly.

The identity of the “fixer” is not clear, but by Aug. 27, Naples officials were seeing a “flurry of activity” from Noem’s agency. That day, a FEMA staffer told the city that “FEMA is intending to expedite the funding” for the pier. “Secretary Noem took immediate action when I reached out to ask for help,” the mayor soon posted on Facebook.

Two days later, Noem flew to Naples. Her schedule listed a 30-minute walk-through at the pier with the mayor, followed by a nail salon appointment and dinner at Bleu Provence, which serves wagyu short ribs and seared foie gras. Noem then stayed through the weekend at the four-star Naples Bay Resort & Marina. Heitmann told ProPublica she wasn’t at the French dinner but Gursoy was. “I didn’t ask her to come, but she showed up,” the mayor told the local news. “I was very impressed.”

Before she left town, Noem posted about the Naples pier on Instagram. She was finally getting the project back on track, she said. “Americans deserve better than years of red tape and failed disaster responses,” Noem wrote. “Under @POTUS Trump, this incompetency ends.”

PROPUBLICA IS A DEMOCRATIC MOUTHPIECE AND CONSTANT COMPLAINER….THEY BASICALLY HATE SMART WOMEN THAT TRUMP HAS APPOINTED, INSTEAD OF THE UGLY, AND STUPID ONES APPOINTED BY OBAMA, BIDEN AND OTHER “DUMBOCRATS”.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT STIFLES THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE, GIVES UNPRECEDENTED RIGHTS TO MIGRANT HORDES WHO INVADED ENGLAND-IS FRANCE AND GERMANY NEXT?

It Still Doesn’t Matter: Now the Entire British Establishment Is against the British People, Things Will Only Get Worse

by Raw Egg Nationalist August 30th, 2025 1:26 PM

This week, the British people were told again, “It doesn’t matter:” their views on the government’s immigration policies, and their desire to be safe in their own communities, are simply irrelevant

It Still Doesn’t Matter: Now the Entire British Establishment Is against the British People, Things Will Only Get Worse

Image Credit: CARLOS JASSO / Contributor / Getty Images

It doesn’t matter.

That was the message—those precise words, blunt, unequivocal, brooking no dissent—that Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivered to the British people last summer in the aftermath of the brutal murder of three little girls at a dance class, in Southport. Six more were left in critical condition with stab wounds, as well as two teachers.

Decades of anger at the effects of the multicultural experiment, an experiment conducted without the approval of the British public and which tens of millions have voted to bring to an end at multiple elections, suddenly boiled over. Britain was convulsed by protests.

The country was on a knife-edge.

Although initial rumours that the perpetrator of this heinous crime was a Muslim immigrant were quickly shown to be wrong—and it was hardly an unjustified assumption—they were nevertheless directionally true. The killer was not an Englishman or, indeed, as the media tried to suggest, a swarthy Welshman like me. The killer was Axel Rudakubana, the anthracite-black son of a Rwandan immigrant.

It was later revealed that Rudakubana had bragged at school about bringing a new Rwandan Genocide to the UK and had downloaded ISIS atrocity manuals; though these facts were conveniently made to disappear. Other pertinent facts, like why Rudakubana’s family left Rwanda during the Genocide and the role of Keir Starmer himself in granting them asylum, may never see the light of day.

As unrest spread across the nation, Starmer took to the podium and addressed the British people, telling them in no uncertain terms, though his voice wavered, that the protestors were “far right,” participants in “violent thuggery;” their protests were not protests at all; their grievances, no grievances; and that they would face the “full force of the law,” whether they had participated “directly” or by “whipping up this action online and then running away themselves.”

Among those caught in the dragnet was Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor. She sent an angry Tweet about burning down migrant accommodation and swiftly deleted it a few hours later. Days after Starmer’s speech, she was arrested, railroaded through the “justice system” and sentenced to 31 months in prison, despite being told that if she pleaded “not guilty” she would not be made an example of. A Labour councillor who told a baying mob that the “far right” protestors should have their “throats cut” walked away from court a free man.

The protests, and the British government’s extraordinary heavy-handed response drew outrage at home and abroad. When the State Department issued its annual global human-rights report this month, Britain was singled out as a nation where individual liberty is in full, headlong retreat. The President and Vice President have both voiced their concerns about Britain on multiple occasions, including during official visits. Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy were both made to squirm exquisitely as they were forced to deny that active censorship and persecution is taking place, but their determination to continue that censorship and persecution has remained undiminished.

This week, the British people were told again, “It doesn’t matter.”

It still doesn’t matter.

On Friday, three judges at the Court of Appeals voted in favour of the government and overturned a High Court injunction against the owners of the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex that prevented them from continuing to house asylum seekers. The Bell Hotel has been at the epicenter of renewed nationwide protests against the government’s insane immigration policies, following the sexual assault of a 14-year-old British girl by an Ethiopian man being housed there. The injunction would almost certainly have led to further local injunctions against the policy of housing asylum seekers in hotels and other private accommodation.

For a moment, it seemed as if the rights of the British people to be safe in their own communities would triumph—or if not triumph, at least secure a rare, temporary, win.

Those hopes have now been dashed.

The three Appeal Court judges ruled the initial injunction had been “seriously flawed” and contained “several errors in principle.”

They said that upholding the High Court order could lead to further disorder by showing that protests—legal protests that were, for the most part, free from violence and lawbreaking, despite the strength of feeling—could actually achieve something. And that couldn’t possibly be allowed.

Lord Justice Bean: “If an outbreak of protests enhances the case for a planning injunction, this runs the risk of acting as an impetus or incentive for further protests—some of which may be disorderly—around asylum accommodation. At its worst, if even unlawful protests are to be treated as relevant, there is a risk of encouraging further lawlessness.”

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, had this to say in response to the decision: “Keir Starmer has shown that he puts the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British people who just want to feel safe in their towns and communities.”

Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, agreed: “Illegal migrants have more rights than the British people under Starmer.”

The protests have continued. The police, emboldened by the decision, have adopted a more aggressive approach. At least three men were arrested outside the Bell Hotel on Friday.

Protestors are now predicting serious civil unrest.

One group conspicuously involved in the protests has been the “Pink Ladies,” ordinary British women who’ve donned pink t-shirts and taken to the frontlines to raise their voices for the rights of British girls and women not to be assaulted and raped by foreign men who shouldn’t even be in their communities in the first place.

Carmen, a member of the Pink Ladies, spoke to The Guardian. “We come every week—march, protest,” she said, “and today’s ruling is just devastating, absolutely devastating. It will probably cause civil unrest.”

This is a conclusion that’s hard to resist. The level of popular anger is simply unprecedented. I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime. The tension is palpable, even in small towns and villages far from the unrest. Ordinary people are freely giving voice to opinions that would have seemed outlandish and extreme, beyond the pale, just years or even months ago—about immigration and the legitimacy of a government that ignores the will of the people as a matter of policy, about what it actually means to be British.

Despite its pretensions to total control, the British government is not in control. Nowhere is this more in evidence than on social media, and especially X, whose owner Elon Musk declared nothing short of a holy war against Keir Starmer and his cronies on Friday.

Musk accused the British government of “treason against its own people.”

“A nation with a government against its own people shall perish from the earth!” he Tweeted, before warning that, “The nightmare happening to Epping and hundreds of other towns in Britain and Ireland will come to your town too, unless it is stopped by the people.”

The Trump administration has made the promotion of free speech abroad one of its flagship policies. European attempts to bully and bring Elon Musk to heel have not gone over well.

During the election campaign, the EU’s intimidation caused JD Vance to threaten that the US might even leave NATO if the EU didn’t back off. The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires proactive censorship by social-media companies at the algorithmic level if they are to avoid punitive fines, is actively infringing the First Amendment rights of Americans, and the Trump administration knows this.

Some have asked how soon until Starmer bans X in Britain. The British government’s loathsome new Online Safety Act, which was intended to protect children from exposure to harmful content, has already been used to censor footage of the protests in the UK. 4Chan and Kiwifarms have now filed a US lawsuit against Ofcom, the British media regulator, claiming the Act is limiting the fundamental rights of Americans, just like the DSA, and of course they’re right. 4Chan has already been threatened with fines for refusing to cooperate with Ofcom.

Starmer’s government may indeed go further in its quest to silence the British people and their cries for freedom, but if it does, it will surely face harder pushback from the Trump administration.

I won’t make any predictions at this point. Predictions make fools of us all. But one thing is clear: The fight is not over.

It’s just beginning.

THIS IS WHAT FAT MAN GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS WANTS FOR THE STATE OF ILLINOIS..EVERYTHING FREE TO ILLEGAL ALIENS AND FOR THEM TO VOTE ASAP. NO THEY ARE NOT MIGRANTS!!!! THEY ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS WHO VIOLATED THE LAW.

IF AN AMERICAN IS CAUGHT IN MEXICO WITHOUT A VALID VISA,,,IT IS VERY SERIOUS JAIL TIME IN THE THE WORST PRISONS YOU CAN IMAGINE…

ALASKA SUMMIT MEETING NOTES “ACCIDENTALLY” LEFT BEHIND ON A PUBLIC PRINTER AT THE HOTEL BY STATE DEPARTMENT DUMMY!

Government papers found in an Alaskan hotel reveal new details of Trump-Putin summit

President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin arrive for a joint press conference at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025.

President Donald Trump, right, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin arrive for a joint press conference at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.

Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees.

At around 9 a.m. on Friday, three guests at Hotel Captain Cook, a four-star hotel located 20 minutes from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage where leaders from the U.S. and Russia convened, found the documents left behind in one of the hotel’s public printers. NPR reviewed photos of the documents taken by one of the guests, who NPR agreed not to identify because the guest said they feared retaliation.

The White House and the U.S. Department of State did not respond to requests for comment about the documents.

Pictures of two documents about the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska that were found in a public hotel printer in Anchorage.

The first page in the printed packet disclosed the sequence of meetings for August 15, including the specific names of the rooms inside the base in Anchorage where they would take place. It also revealed that Trump intended to give Putin a ceremonial present.

“POTUS to President Putin,” the document states, “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.”

Pages 2 through 5 listed the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members as well as the names of 13 U.S. and Russian state leaders. The list provided phonetic pronouncers for all the Russian men expected at the summit, including “Mr. President POO-tihn.”

Pages 6 and 7 in the packet described how lunch at the summit would be served, and for whom. A menu included in the documents indicated that the luncheon was to be held “in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin.”

A seating chart shows that Putin and Trump were supposed to sit across from each other during the luncheon. Trump would be flanked by six officials: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to his right, and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff to his left. Putin would be seated immediately next to his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, and his Aide to the President for Foreign Policy, Yuri Ushakov.

During the summit Friday, lunch was apparently cancelled. But it was intended to be a simple, three-course meal, the documents showed. After a green salad, the world leaders would dine on filet mignon and halibut olympia. Crème brûlée would be served for dessert.

DON’T MAKE D.C. A STATE-IT MAKES NO SENSE FOR THAT DANGEROUS SLUM TO BE A STATE!

DC was established by Congress under the Residence Act of 1790, allowing President George Washington to select a site for the federal capital along the Potomac River, not exceeding 10 miles square (100 square miles).

Land was ceded by both Maryland (about 69 square miles) and Virginia (about 31 square miles) to form this diamond-shaped district that we now call D.C..

The cessions were formalized; Virginia transferred its portion in 1790, and Maryland followed in 1791.

This included areas like Georgetown (from MD) and Alexandria (from VA).

By the 1840s, many residents in the Virginia portion of DC felt neglected by Congress, faced economic stagnation, and believed slavery would soon be abolished in D.C.

In 1846, Congress passed legislation retroceding the Virginia portion—now Arlington County and the City of Alexandria—back to Virginia.

President James K. Polk signed it into law

That law reduced D.C. from 100 square miles to about 68, establishing retrocession as a viable, constitutional path.

Virginia’s land was returned without issue, and it thrives today as part of Virginia, not D.C..

In spite of that precedent, some argue that D.C. should now become a state.

But D.C. alone (rather than as part of Maryland) doesn’t meet the criteria we’ve historically applied to statehood.

Although the Constitution doesn’t specify minimum population or geographic size, our states have been admitted as territories with balanced economies—agriculture, industry, and diverse resources.

We have “never” admitted a state that consists of just a single, geographically compact, urban enclave—whether heavily dependent on the federal government (as D.C. is) or otherwise.

D.C. lacks anything close to the industries, natural resources, opportunities for growth, and amenities found in literally every other state.

It’s just a city—one city—and therefore can’t be accorded the status of a sovereign state using the time-honored criteria.

More importantly, the Founders quite intentionally created D.C. as a “neutral” federal district to serve as the seat of the U.S. government under Article I, Section 8.

They did so specifically to prevent any one state from wielding undue influence over the national government.

Making DC a state would subject the seat of the U.S. government to a state, entangling the capital city in that state’s politics.

It’s not about partisanship. It’s about preserving the constitutional design and preventing our nation’s capital from becoming subject to one state.

To give D.C. residents representation in Congress, we could instead follow the Virginia precedent. Retrocede most of D.C. to Maryland, excepting a small corridor—just a few blocks stretching from the White House to the Capitol and the Supreme Court.

This small federal enclave would remain under congressional control—allowing the centers of power in Washington to remain under exclusively federal control—while the rest of D.C.’s residents would gain full voting rights and representation as Marylanders.

This solution would give D.C. residents what they deserve—state-level representation—without upending the Constitution or creating an anomalous micro-state.

This approach would be practical, historical, and fair.

Maryland ceded the land that’s now D.C. at the dawn of our constitutional republic. It can absorb it back again, just as Virginia absorbed its previously ceded territory in the 1940s.

Let’s prioritize the Founders’ vision over political power grabs.

D.C. should either remain a federal district or revert back to Maryland. But it’s not a state, and shouldn’t be considered for statehood (unless it’s to be part of Maryland again).