Commentary: Gun Owners End 2023 Proving Gun Control Advocates Wrong

Hunting

As 2023 drew to a close, millions of peaceable Americans geared up for a new year that will bring with it many new limitations on their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

In California, for example, Jan. 1 was the date to ring in the state’s plethora of new restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in public, courtesy of SB 2, a law passed in the wake of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen to punish concealed carry permit holders for having their rights vindicated by the Supreme Court.

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Commentary: Americans Embrace Religion, Reject Religious Bigotry

People Praying

More than half a century ago, Time magazine famously asked, “Is God Dead?” The black and red cover, the magazine’s first to include only text, sparked countless angry sermons and thousands of letters from readers accusing Time of engaging in tasteless nihilism, Marxist pandering, and outright blasphemy.

The question, which typified the counter-culture movement and the intellectual radicalism of the 1960s, was far off the mark both then and now. The United States has always been and remains a very religious nation despite steep declines in attendance at churches, synagogues, and mosques – trends that have captured far more headlines in recent years than the nation’s enduring faith. America is also a majority Christian nation, though other religious groups and affiliations and those identifying as non-believers are growing.

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Part-Time Jobs Are Booming Under Biden as Americans Look to Make Ends Meet

Uber Driver

More Americans are having to take part-time jobs as consumers struggle with economic factors like high inflation, while full-time employment has sunk in tandem, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Around 133,196,000 workers were employed with full-time jobs in the U.S. in December, which was down from 134,727,000 in November — a drop of more than 1.5 million, according to the BLS. During that same time frame, the number of Americans employed in part-time positions rose by 762,000, while the number of people with multiple jobs increased by 222,000.

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Commentary: Democrats Lie About Election Integrity as Republicans Work for It

A couple of months ago, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that it would hold its 2025 All-Star Game in Atlanta, Georgia. This news is more than just a sports scheduling update: it represents the unraveling of Democrat conspiracy theories about election integrity in Georgia and across the country. 

In 2021, a host of leading Democrats – from Stacey Abrams, to Raphael Warnock, to Joe Biden – spread rampant misinformation about election integrity in Georgia, aided by a sympathetic mainstream media. The MLB was bullied into moving its game out of Atlanta, costing local businesses $100 million in projected revenue. They were lying about Georgia’s Senate Bill 202, which strengthens voter ID protections, expands early voting hours, and protects bipartisan poll watching, among other common sense functions. Polling shows that a strong majority of Americans support the measures contained in Senate Bill 202. However, Democrats saw an opportunity to unfairly demonize their political opponents and claimed, with no evidence whatsoever, that the law was aimed at suppressing minority voters. 

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Commentary: America’s Last Stand Is the Most Important Book in America

Thomas Paine

Nearly two and a half centuries ago, the 18th-century American colonists were confronted with a choice: whether or not to continue living their lives as British subjects and supporting the crown or to sever their ties with Great Britain and declare their independence. The choice may seem obvious and easy today, but at the time—circa 1776—a great many colonists were hesitant to choose freedom, and others even supported the crown. They needed persuading.

Fortunately, a virtually unknown immigrant named Thomas Paine felt compelled to persuade the American colonists to choose freedom. His pamphlet, Common Sense, was published on January 10, 1776, and its influence cannot be overstated. It was read by the modern equivalent of 15 million people at the time and provided the fuel the colonists needed to choose independence.

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Bidenomics: Unemployment Insurance Claims Leap as over 1.8 Million Americans Receive Benefits

State unemployment insurance claims rose last week by 12,000 while the number of people who are receiving benefits reached 1.875 million for the week ending Dec. 16, according to seasonally adjusted data released Thursday by the Labor Department. 

Seasonally adjusted initial claims hit 218,000 for the week ending Dec. 23 after rising by 12,000, according to the latest data. 

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Commentary: 11 More Examples of Defensive Gun Use to Fend Off Criminals

Gun Bullets

As cities across the country reel from explosive crime rates, many politicians at the local, state, and federal levels are too preoccupied with disarming peaceable American gun owners to identify, arrest, and prosecute actual criminals adequately.  

Two masked attackers met their match last month when they attacked Los Angeles resident Vince Ricci as he walked toward the front door of his house. The pair brandished a firearm at Ricci, who pulled out his own gun and shot at the thugs, who ran away.

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Americans Are Turning to Even More Financing Options as Savings Run Dry

Couple Credit Card

An increasing number of Americans are turning to buy now and pay later (BNPL) services like layaway as they continue to drain their savings and interest rates on credit cards grow, according to Reuters.

Credit card debt, with its high interest rates, in aggregate exceeded $1 trillion for Americans in 2023 for the first time ever, leading many Americans to use BNPL services that charge a far lower 2% to 8% fee instead, masking a considerable source of debt, according to Reuters. The search for cheaper financing follows declining savings for Americans as they spend through their reserves, holding only $768.6 billion in October, down from over $1 trillion held in May and even further from the all-time high of almost $6 trillion held in April 2020.

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Americans Turn on TikTok: 54 Percent Support Banning Social Media App

TikTok User

TikTok might be popular among America’s youth, but a majority of voters view it as a threat to the United States. An even higher percentage favor a federal ban of the social media platform.

RMG Research, a polling firm led by Scott Rasmussen, shared its latest survey data exclusively with The Daily Signal. The poll was conducted Dec. 18-19 among 1,000 registered U.S. voters.

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Americans Sour on Big Pharma After Pandemic, Opioid Crisis: Poll

COVID Pfizer

Public opinion on the pharmaceutical industry has declined sharply over the past decade, according to new polling released by Gallup.

The proportion of Americans who believe pharmaceutical companies provide good or excellent services declined 21 points between 2010 and 2023, according to a poll released Monday. Public controversies over COVID-19 vaccines and the opioid crisis have implicated the pharmaceutical industry in recent years.

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Commentary: With ‘White Christmas,’ Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby Helped Make Christmas a Holiday That All Americans Could Celebrate

Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin was a Jewish immigrant who loved America. As his 1938 song “God Bless America” suggests, he believed deeply in the nation’s potential for goodness, unity and global leadership.

In 1940, he wrote another quintessential American song, “White Christmas,” which the popular entertainer Bing Crosby eventually made famous.

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Commentary: COVID Redux

Masks People

Life is hard if you do not learn from your mistakes. With Covid, political leaders and public health authorities engaged in a series of missteps, miscalculations, and manias that amounted to an extreme overreaction to the disease.

First, statistical models overstated the risk of the disease by an order of magnitude. Then, even after these miscalculations became apparent, other extreme measures like lockdowns, mandatory masking, coercive vaccine mandates, and a million other indignities ensued. In the end, almost everyone got Covid, almost everyone survived, and, while the economic countermeasures increased our national debt by 30%, the economy soon recovered too.

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Study: More Americans over the Age of 65 are Heading Back to Work

Old People Working

A new study released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center reveals that a rising number of Americans over the age of 65, the normal age for retirement, are heading back to work to earn higher wages.

According to Axios, the number of older Americans returning to the workforce has been consistently rising since the late 1980s, with one major decline during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic. Some of the reasons for this increasing return to work include changes in Social Security law forcing older Americans to keep working even past 65 in order to receive their full benefits; additionally, there has been a shift away from pension plans that normally would force most Americans to retire by a certain age, in favor of 401(k) plans that allow for ongoing workforce participation.

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Existing Home Sales on Track for Worst Year Since at Least 2008

Existing home sales are on track for a dismal year, likely dropping 18% and on course for the worst year since at least 2008’s Great Recession and possibly the worst since 1995. 

And while prices may soften in 2024, single-family homes will remain out of reach for many Americans, National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said Tuesday in the real estate organization’s annual summit. 

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Commentary: Americans Turn on Globalists Saying Government Spending, Greed, and Global Issues Drive Inflation

A new survey reveals inflation is still the primary concern for Americans by a wide margin, and the public is beginning to turn on big government and recognize government spending and globalism as the culprits behind a dwindling standard of living.

This comes at a time when the country is poised to choose between another four years of excessive spending and an evaporating middle-class or return to an America First philosophy that strengthens the middle-class and structures international policy in our favor.

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10 Revelations That Changed Americans’ Understanding of Events on January 6

Videotape of a Capitol door being mistakenly unlocked. Photos of gallows being set up outside without any police interference. Officers exhorting protesters to storm the Capitol. Intelligence warnings of potential violence that went unheeded. Major changes to testimony.

A year after the Democrat-led House Select Committee on Jan. 6 ended it works, major new revelations have emerged from House Republicans led by Rep, Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga, about how the Capitol riot unfolded that fateful day and the security failures that occurred in the days and hours ahead of the violence.

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China is Running an Operation to Get Americans Hooked on Illegal Drugs, Former DEA Boss Warns

Fentanyl

Police operations from California to Maine have busted Chinese nationals operating illegal marijuana growing sites. U.S. officials have clear evidence China is providing Mexican drug cartels the precursor chemicals to make the fentanyl flowing into America. The Drug Enforcement Administration has substantial evidence dating back a decade of Beijing’s role in flooding U.S. cities with a wide range of addictive and harmful drugs.

Experts say there is growing evidence that communist China has launched concerted operations to hook Americans on drugs as part of a larger effort to supplant the United States as the world’s No. 1 superpower. Adding to the problem, the insecure border of the Biden era has only accelerated operations that have killed tens of thousands of Americans from fentanyl poisoning alone. The National Center for Health Statistics reported that drug overdose death rates involving fentanyl increased by 279% from 5.7 per 100,000 in 2016 to 21.6 in 2021.

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Faith in the American Dream Plummets Under Biden: Poll

A majority of U.S. voters feel that the “American dream” cannot be achieved, according to a poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NORC.

Approximately 36% of voters said that the American Dream – as defined by the notion that if an individual works hard, they will get ahead – was attainable, down from 68% who said the same last year, according to the WSJ/NORC poll released on Friday. Roughly two-thirds of voters feel the economy is in poor condition as inflation continues to outpace wages and prices continue to rise.

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Poll: Americans Say Schools Should Focus on Math, Reading, and Writing

A large majority of voters say that public schools should focus on the basics – math, reading, writing, science and social studies – to improve the quality of public education in the country.

That’s according to the latest The Center Square’s Voters’ Voice poll conducted in late October in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights. The poll of 2,605 likely voters includes 1,035 Republicans, 1,074 Democrats, and 496 true Independents, and is among the most comprehensive in the country.

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Biden Admin’s Regulatory Overhaul Will Burden Americans in the Name of Fighting Climate Change

President Joe Biden’s administration finalized guidance Thursday likely to burden Americans with costlier regulations to fulfill administration priorities such as combating climate change.

Biden’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is enacting new guidance that would require regulators to consider priorities like inequality and climate change when analyzing the costs and benefits of regulation. The White House argued the guidance is necessary so that regulations are issued with up-to-date analysis and information.

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Poll: Most Americans Believe A.I. Will Lead to More Misinformation in 2024

A new poll released on Friday shows that a majority of Americans believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to more misinformation being spread on the Internet during the 2024 presidential election.

According to The Hill, the poll from AP-NORC and the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy found that 58% of Americans believe AI will lead to an increase in election misinformation. Among respondents who said they have “heard a lot or some about AI” 61% believed in the threat of more misinformation.

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Americans’ Distrust of Corporate Media Climbs to Record High: Poll

Distrust in corporate media among Americans has soared to a record high, according to polling published by Gallup.

The amount of Americans who trust legacy media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to cover the news “fully, accurately and fairly” plunged to 32%, tied for the lowest since 2016, according to the poll. The highest ever percentage of Americans — 39%— state they do not trust the media whatsoever, and this figure has consistently risen since 2018.

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Mortgage Rates Soar to Highest Point in 23 Years as Americans Struggle to Buy Homes

Mortgage rates have continued to rise for the seventh straight week, reaching their highest point in over 23 years, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).

The average 30-year mortgage rate for Americans reached 7.9% on Wednesday, up from 7.7% just one week ago, the highest point since September 2000, according to a press release from the MBA. Mortgage applications sank even further following the high rates, with application volume declining 1% from the previous week when seasonally adjusted, the lowest weekly pace since 1995.

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More Americans Are Going Hungry as Biden Boasts About the Economy

The number of Americans who were food insecure increased from 2021 to 2022, despite President Joe Biden boasting about the success of the economy following the recent release of new economic data.

In 2022, 12.8% of American households, or 17 million households, had difficulty at some point during the year providing enough food for all members of their family, compared to 10.2% in 2021, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The data, which was released in October 2023, comes as Biden testifies to the strength of the American economy following substantial Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023.

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Commentary: Americans Won’t Fight for the Globalists’ Agenda

Imagining a cascade of catastrophic escalations plunging humanity into the next world war is no longer a stretch, and it could happen fast. Israel invades Gaza to destroy Hamas, and Hezbollah goes to war. America targets Hezbollah to help defend Israel, and Iran and Syria, with Russian assistance, attack Israel. Hezbollah cells strike targets within America, and Israel and America strike targets inside Iran. Russia launches a major new offensive in Ukraine with support from Belarus. China openly supports Russia and Iran with weapons. All of this is more plausible than ever.

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Florida Moves to Fly Stranded Americans Out of Israel

After Hamas attacked Israel, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the state would be advancing greater sanctions against Iran. He also declared a state of emergency and issued an executive order to activate the national and state guard and other agencies to help bring Americans home who are stranded in Israel. 

According to some news reports, there are roughly 20,000 Americans, including many, who are stranded in Israel. They are unable to get out because of commercial flight cancellations and other travel and logistics disruptions due to the ongoing war with Hamas. 

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Poll: Support Declines for Political Involvement by Corporate America

A new survey shows that more Americans are turning against efforts by big corporations to get involved in the political process and advocacy for major political issues.

As reported by Axios, the new poll from the Public Affairs Council shows that 57% of Americans support major companies getting involved in the issue of race relations, compared to 66% who supported such efforts last year. On the issue of abortion, only 36% of Americans support the input of big corporations, down from 41% in 2022.

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Federal Law Charges Americans for Rescue Flights from Israel While Illegals Get Free Travel, Hotels

Thousands of Americans are looking to flee Israel amid fighting between the government and Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. government is moving to provide them assistance, but not for free.

Over the weekend, Hamas terrorists based in the Gaza Strip stormed a number of Israeli border towns, taking hostages, raping women and inflicting considerable human casualties, including infanticide. The Israel Defense Forces have since launched retaliatory strikes on Gaza and the conflict is ongoing. The State Department confirmed on Thursday that it was working to arrange charter flights for American citizens and their immediate family members.

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More Americans Back UAW Strikers than Automakers: Poll

More Americans support the United Auto Workers (UAW) over the major auto companies as their strike for higher wages and more benefits nears its fifth week, according to the Associated Press.

The UAW is currently engaging in a partial strike against the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — and have expanded to 44 different plants across the country since its Sept. 15 start, most recently resulting in workers at Ford’s biggest and most profitable plant walking out of the job on Wednesday. Around 36% of Americans sympathize with the striking UAW workers, while only 9% support the automakers in the dispute, with the rest of the 53% of Americans not swayed either way, according to a recent poll from the AP’s NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

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Americans’ Support for Arming Ukraine Dries Up as War Drags On: Poll

Support for arming Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression has dropped among Americans across the political spectrum, according to a Thursday poll.

Only 41% of Americans believe the federal government “should provide weapons to Ukraine,” a five-point decrease since May, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey. Though some respondents were unsure, 35% of Americans disagreed with the notion that the U.S. should be sending weapons to Ukraine.

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Poll: One-Third of Democrats Say Americans Have ‘Too Much Freedom’ of Speech

A new poll from RealClearPolitics shows that a staggering number of registered Democrats think there is “too much freedom” to speak freely in the United States.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the RCP survey on Friday revealed that 34% of Democrats believe that Americans have “too much freedom” of speech, compared to just 14.6% of Republicans who believed the same. By contrast, 46% of Republicans believe that Americans have “too little freedom,” with only 22% of Democrats agreeing.

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More Americans Taking Second Jobs, Part-Time Work as Inflation Continues to Rage

An increasing number of Americans are taking up part-time work and even getting second jobs as worsening economic conditions such as high inflation have chipped away at their finances, according to experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The median real weekly earnings for Americans are down 2.1% since the first quarter of the Biden administration, with data from August showing a spike in the unemployment rate and a job market that is beginning to cool, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Due to wages failing to keep up with inflation and debt levels increasing, workers are increasingly taking part-time jobs and even second jobs in order to make ends meet, according to economists who spoke with the DCNF.

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Commentary: Recession May Be Coming After 514,000 More Americans Struggle to Find Employment

The national unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics jumped from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent in August as an additional 514,000 Americans said they could not find work in the Bureau’s household survey. Now 6.3 million Americans are said to be unemployed, the highest in more than a year.

But it did not come with a commensurate drop in the number of Americans saying they were working, which also increased by 222,000 to 161.48 million.

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Report: Millions of Americans Struggling Due to Medical Debt

A new report suggests that middle-class Americans are struggling with greater medical debt than any other class of Americans, with one out of every four having unpaid medical bills.

As Axios reports, the data comes from the left-wing think tank Third Way, which calculates that as many as 17 million middle-class Americans – those making between $50,000 and $100,000 per year – are struggling to pay off medical debts. Middle-class Americans in particular are even less likely to qualify for Medicare than low-income Americans.

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Americans Overwhelmingly Back Cutting Regulations to Boost Energy Production, Poll Shows

An overwhelming majority of Americans support the idea of tearing up regulations to boost domestic energy production and independence, according to a new poll by Power the Future (PTF) obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Of those surveyed, 90% found at least somewhat convincing the argument that permitting reform would strengthen U.S. energy independence, enhance national security and allow the country to stand tall in the face of geopolitical challenges, with 64% of respondents saying that the idea was extremely or very convincing to them, the PTF poll found. Eighty-eight percent of the poll’s respondents support improvements to the federal permitting system for energy infrastructure projects in order to keep energy affordable and reliable.

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Poll: Nine in 10 Americans Worried About Fentanyl Overdose Deaths

Fentanyl

Nearly 90% of U.S. voters are concerned about fentanyl trafficking as drug overdose deaths continue to mount in the U.S. ahead of the 2024 election, according to a new poll. 

The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, found that 57% of those surveyed are very concerned about fentanyl overdose deaths. An additional 32% are somewhat worried, or 89% overall indicating some level of concern.

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Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Concerned About Situation at Border

The vast majority of Americans are concerned about the situation at the U.S. border, according to new polling.

The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, conducted in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights, asked 2,500 registered voters, including 1,000 registered Democrats, 1,000 registered Republicans, and 500 independents: “How concerned are you about the situation at the border?”

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Americans Want McConnell to Resign amid Health Concerns: Poll

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell faces intense opposition to his remaining in elected office, a recent survey has revealed.

64% of eligible voters said that he should resign, according to a Redfield & Wilton poll, conducted for Newsweek. that figure includes members of both parties. The same percent of Biden voters said McConnell ought to resign while Trump voters expressed the same sentiment by an even wider, 71%, margin.

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Gallup Poll: Fewer Americans Have Confidence in Higher Education

On Tuesday, a new Gallup poll suggested that Americans across all demographic groups are less confident in the institution of higher education than they were several years ago.

According to Axios, the Gallup survey in question shows that just 36 percent of Americans report having confidence in colleges and universities. In 2018, that number stood at 48 percent, which itself was a drop from 57 percent in 2015.

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Commentary: Limiting Short-Term Health Care Plans Will Hurt Americans

Mike Pirner had emergency gall bladder surgery shortly after buying short-term medical insurance plan (STM), for $150/month. The costs associated with the procedure were $100,000 — Mike only had to pay his $2,500 deductible, which was also his out-of-pocket maximum. President Biden has proposed rules released Friday of the July 4th week that would limit these plans to three months, with one additional month possible. Currently, these plans can last up to three years. 

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Americans Move to Red and Blue States as Polarization Deepens

As political polarization is on the rise in the United States, Americans are increasingly moving to either deep-red states or deep-blue states in order to live among others who share their political beliefs.

According to the Associated Press, 48 out of the 50 states have one party in control of their state legislature. In 28 of these states, the party in control has a veto-proof supermajority in at least one chamber. As a result, Republican-controlled states are implementing more conservative policies while Democratically-controlled states enact more left-wing policies.

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Poll: Number of Americans Who Fear They Will Not Reach the American Dream Is on the Rise

In a recent survey, a rising number of Americans say that they do not think they will ever achieve the American Dream.

As reported by the New York Post, the poll by NORC – University of Chicago saw 75 percent of overall respondents say that they felt they had either achieved the Dream or were on their way to achieving it. However, 24 percent said that they feel the Dream is out of their reach, and that America is no longer the “land of opportunity.” In the previous year’s poll, only 18 percent shared this sentiment.

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Commentary: Get Outdated Regulations Off the Books to Allow Americans to Access Nation’s Capital

The Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) is the only airport in the country that operates under limited federal perimeters. This limitation unnecessarily constrains the general public’s access to flights while simultaneously increasing costs of tickets. 

DCA, unlike other airports in the United States, has a federally mandated limit on the number of flights that are allowed in and out of the airport if travelling 1,250 miles or more. This constraint creates an imbalance between supply and demand, leaving travellers to face the repercussions of limited flights, limited flight times, lost productivity due to the need to make flight connections and increased costs. 

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