Sixty-two years and $22 trillion later, the U.S. poverty rate sits at roughly 11 percent, almost identical to where Lyndon Johnson found it in 1964. The government ran the most expensive social experiment in human history and produced nothing measurable. Bureaucracies perpetuate themselves, and this policy worked exactly as designed.
When Washington transfers purchasing power to the poor through SNAP, Medicaid, housing vouchers, and 126 other overlapping programs, it doesn’t eliminate scarcity; it relocates decision-making from individuals to administrators. Those administrators develop career interests in perpetuating dependency, because a solved problem eliminates their department.
Free market thinkers identified this perverse incentive structure before Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act. Every dollar taxed from productive activity carries a deadweight cost before it reaches anyone’s dinner table.
Capital formation lifts people out of poverty. You build wealth through savings, property rights, and voluntary exchange, none of which $22 trillion in redistributed spending actually produced.
LBJ asked the highly reputed statesman on his staff, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to do see some research on “how we can help the black folks.” Moynihan’s research led him to warn LBJ not to expand welfare to the black community because it would drive men out of the households and destroy the black family. Despite this warning, LBJ did just that in his Great Society. The reason? He wanted to steer the black vote from being historically pro-Republican to pro-Democrat. In that, he succeeded, at the price of dooming black families to fatherless homes, poverty, drug use, crime, and the creation of a permanent, unemployable, sociopathic sub-culture.
Insane! Under JB Pritzker’s Illinois’ SAFE-T Act, offenders on electronic monitoring can ‘turn OFF’ the device for 2 days! …every week!
The approved legislation says that offenders can get at least 2 days of movement each week outside their residence with NO monitoring….what could possibly go wrong here?
Yes…two days every week…free to roam! So this is supposed to make our communities safer? another Crazy JB Pritzker idea that puts criminals first!
For all the non-lawyers in the room, here is what happened today at the Supreme Court and why President Trump is allowed to continue building the new White House ballroom.
Every law student learns fairly early that there is generally no such thing as taxpayer standing. Just because you don’t like how the federal government is spending your tax dollars does not mean you have the right to sue the government over that spending.
There is a broader principle behind that rule that is important to understanding today’s decision: You do not get to sue the federal government simply because you believe the federal government is doing something wrong.
As a general rule, the government cannot be sued unless it has permitted the lawsuit. And even when Congress has created a way to sue the government, you still have to satisfy the Constitution’s requirements for bringing a case in federal court. One of those requirements is called “standing.”
In plain English, standing asks a very simple question: What did the government do to you?
It is not enough to say, “The government is breaking the law.”
It is not enough to say, “I don’t like what the government is doing.”
And it is not enough to say, “I am a citizen and I want a federal judge to make the government stop.”
You generally have to show that what the government is doing is causing you a real and particularized injury.
That principle controlled today’s Supreme Court decision.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to stop President Trump from constructing the new White House ballroom. But an organization needs someone with standing to bring that challenge. The Trust relied on one of its members, a woman who lives in Washington, D.C., and expects to visit the neighborhood around the White House about once a month.
Her claimed injury was essentially this: She is interested in historic architecture, she likes looking at the White House as it traditionally appears, and when the new ballroom is completed she is not going to like looking at it.
That was not enough.
The Supreme Court held that mere “offense, disagreement, or distaste” over what the government is doing is not the kind of concrete and particularized injury that gives someone standing to sue.
And this is the part of today’s decision that I suspect will be misunderstood.
The Supreme Court did not rule that President Trump has the legal authority to build the ballroom.
The Court expressly said:
“Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project.”
That is an incredibly important distinction.
The question of whether President Trump has the legal authority to build the ballroom is one question.
The question of whether this particular person has the right to walk into federal court and ask a judge to stop him is another question entirely.
Today, the Supreme Court decided the second question, not the first.
The woman simply did not have standing to sue.
And there is a good reason standing matters.
If merely believing that the President is acting illegally were enough to sue, virtually every controversial action taken by every President could immediately become a federal lawsuit brought by virtually anyone who disagreed with it.
That is not how our constitutional system works.
We live in a constitutional republic with three branches of government. The President is not above the law, but federal judges are not general supervisors of the Executive Branch either. Courts decide actual cases brought by people who have the legal right to bring them.
Congress is not powerless here. Quite the opposite. Congress controls federal spending, legislates concerning federal property and the District of Columbia, conducts oversight, and can enact laws restricting what the President may do.
If Congress believes President Trump has exceeded his authority, Congress has constitutional tools available to do something about it.
And if someone who actually has Article III standing brings the proper lawsuit, the courts may ultimately decide whether the President has the legal authority to build the ballroom.
But that was not the case before the Supreme Court today.
Today the Court decided something much simpler:
You don’t get to stop the President in federal court just because you don’t like what he is doing. You first have to show why you have the legal right to be the person asking the court to stop him.
This plaintiff couldn’t do that.
And that is why construction of the White House ballroom can continue.
I have to admit, I’m enjoying the outrage over Lake Ontario being renamed Lake America.
For years, we were told that names matter. Names carry meaning. Names make statements about who we are and what we value. Whenever some old name offended the political sensibilities of the moment, changing it wasn’t treated merely as permissible. It was regularly celebrated as an act of moral courage.
The Biden administration changed the federal names of hundreds of geographic features because the existing names contained a term it considered derogatory. The Pentagon renamed military installations across the South. Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty. Fort Hood became Fort Cavazos. Fort Benning became Fort Moore. Fort Polk became Fort Johnson.
Nobody told us names were sacred then.
Princeton removed Woodrow Wilson’s name from its School of Public and International Affairs. Yale removed John C. Calhoun’s name from one of its residential colleges. The Cleveland Indians became the Guardians. The Washington Redskins disappeared and eventually became the Commanders. Aunt Jemima became Pearl Milling Company. Uncle Ben became Ben’s Original.
Even mountains weren’t immune. In 2015, the Obama administration officially changed the name of Mount McKinley to Denali for federal purposes.
And through it all, we were told pretty much the same thing. That language evolves. Culture changes. Names are symbols. If a name no longer represents our values, change it.
Fair enough.
But apparently that rule came with an asterisk.
Donald Trump changes Lake Ontario to Lake America for purposes of the United States government, and suddenly everybody discovers an almost religious devotion to historical nomenclature. Now we’re told the old name is centuries old and carries historical importance. So did plenty of the names they wanted changed. Now we’re told renaming something is unnecessary, provocative, and political.
Welcome to the last decade.
But that really isn’t the point.
The point is that the people now acting horrified by politically motivated renaming helped create the age of politically motivated renaming. They spent years teaching us that names aren’t merely descriptions. They’re declarations. They told us government has every right to reconsider the names it uses, and that changing an old name can say something important about the values of the present generation.
Trump apparently listened.
The difference is that instead of renaming something because America should be embarrassed by its past, he renamed something because he thinks America ought to be proud of itself. And I suspect that’s what bothers some of his critics more than the name itself.
For years, the approved direction of travel was away from old American names, old American heroes, and old American traditions whenever somebody found them insufficiently enlightened. Trump went the other direction.
And it’s driving the liberals crazy.
Is it necessary? Probably not. Is it subtle? Not remotely. Is it quintessentially Trump? Absolutely.
But spare me the argument that renaming things for political or cultural reasons is some shocking new violation of American tradition.
That ship sailed a long time ago.
They just never expected Trump to climb aboard.
ABOUT LAKE AMERICA
What’s the name of the river that separates Texas from Mexico?
The Rio Grande?
That’s right. The Rio Grande.
If you’re standing on the north bank.
But if you wade across and stand on the south bank, what’s its name then?
If you say, “The Rio Grande,” you’re an American.
But if you say, “The Rio Bravo,” you’re a Mexican.
Because that one river has two names. One officially recognized by the American government and one officially recognized by the Mexican government.
Kind of like the Persian Gulf.
On its eastern shores it is the Persian Gulf, on its western shores it is the Arabian Gulf. One body of water, two names, reflecting the values, heritage and pride of the nations which surround it.
A last example: The South China Sea. One body of water, officially known as the South China Sea to China, the East Sea to Vietnam and the West Sea to the Philippines.
Which means if Canada wants to call the easternmost body of fresh water between itself and the United States Lake Ontario, and the United States wants to call that same body of fresh water Lake America, it would be in keeping with a practice established around the world for centuries.
Kind of like the practice of governments changing the names of geographical features for political reasons, like Presidents Obama and Biden did some 650 times.
You knew that, right?
In the last two Democrat administrations, the federal government went on a spree, scrubbing the map of names, people, words and races it found politically unacceptable.
Remember Mount McKinley, Point Barrow, Squaw Peak and Fort Polk?
So, the precedent is broadly and repeatedly established by Barack Obama and Joe Biden — a president can name any damn thing any damn thing for any damn reason.
Like Trump did.
Like Trump trolled Democrats into believing he did.
It’s like he’s got a laser pointer and they’re a roomful of cats. He plays them like a fish.
He posts on Truth Social and they shit their pants. He scribbles with his giant Sharpie and their heads explode.
He says something about Lake Ontario and they completely forget the six-month anniversary of the Iran War. The Democrats and their puppets on the evening news.
Moron politicians with social media posts from the shore, breathless reporters doing Man On The Street with men on the beach, indignant Canadians spitting on America, earnest Native Americans explaining etymology.
He leads them around by the nose.
“Republicans take Trump seriously, but not literally,” a smart man said. “Democrats take Trump literally, not not seriously.”
And so he trolls them, for fun and sport. And distraction.
Because the same Democrats and reporters who seem to believe Trump gives a damn what Lake Ontario is called are completely oblivious to the real issue at hand — which is how the Canadians have lived like leeches off American prosperity for generations.
Take 2025, for example.
Last year, Canada’s trade surplus with the United States was about $150 billion. That means that as a result of trade between the two nations, they ended up $150 billion richer and we ended up $150 billion poorer.
That happens because they rip us off. They rig the game to enrich themselves and impoverish us.
That grabbing of American cash becomes more galling when you look at the rest of Canada’s top-10 trading relationships, in which it runs a trade deficit with every nation except the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
In fact, if it wasn’t ripping the United States off for $150 billion a year, Canada would run a net trade deficit with the world, meaning that each year it would export wealth and become poorer and poorer. But it takes our money to paper over its weakness.
If it wasn’t siphoning off America’s prosperity through unfair trade practices, Canada would fall on its financial face.
We carry it on our backs, at the expense of American jobs and prosperity.
And that’s what has Trump pissed off. That is what he cares about.
Poul Thorsen, one of the key scientists whose research is used to “prove” that vaccines do not cause autism has been charged with 22 counts of fraud, including falsifying reports on vaccines.
According to published reports, Danish vaccine researcher Poul Thorsen will plead guilty on September 1, 2026 to federal charges that he stole over one million dollars in grant funding he received from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Thorsen is accused of using Centers of Disease Control and Prevention money, earmarked for autism research, for his own purposes; the Danish-born researcher was studying the possible link between vaccines and the rise of autism rates.
Charges against him raise questions about whether he was deliberately falsifying vaccine data to ‘prove’ that vaccines do not cause autism and have nothing to do with the rise of autism in the United States.
According to author and investigator James Ottar Grundvig, Thorsen’s guilty plea is “a huge victory for justice in the generation-long controversy.” He continued, “CDC hired mercenary scientists, here and abroad, to cook data on MMR and thimerosal studies, to erase the autism signals in vaccine research. They were desperate to keep the trust in the myth that vaccines are ‘safe and effective.’”
According to U.S. Attorney Hertzberg, the charges, and other information presented in court: From 2000 to 2009, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, awarded over $11 million to two governmental agencies in Denmark to study the relationship between autism and exposure to vaccines, between cerebral palsy and infection during pregnancy, and between childhood development and fetal alcohol exposure.
In 2002, Thorsen, who had worked as a visiting scientist at the CDC when it was soliciting the grant applications, became responsible for administering the research money awarded by the CDC.
Thorsen allegedly stole more than $1 million of the CDC grant money by submitting fraudulent documents to the Danish government, Aarhus University, and a Danish hospital where scientists performed research under the grant.
From February 2004 through June 2008, Thorsen allegedly submitted over a dozen fraudulent invoices, containing the forged signature of a CDC laboratory section chief, that falsely claimed a CDC laboratory had performed work and was owed grant money.
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