Yesterday, I opened up a letter addressed to me from a retired school teacher I've known for several years. She is conservative, she is Christian, and she is a patriot that is very concerned, like several conservative pollsters are reflecting of late, that President Donald Trump got off to a great start but has lost the base of support he had in 2024 because of an over-emphasis on foreign policy and not enough attention on the issues that won him the White House a little over 14 months ago.
She knows her concerns will never be able to reach the President or his team directly, so she outlined her thoughts and sent it to me, because I produce a radio show on which Mr. Trump and his cabinet have appeared dozens of times over the years, appealing to me to be the messenger and conduit.
I have neither the "juice" nor the inside track for which she gives me credit, but I figure I do have a column that is fairly well read here, and certainly could at least address her concerns, and perhaps serve as something of an interlocutor between desires, well-intentioned though they may be, and realities.
Attention Team Trump: I know President Trump never sleeps, but while we still have a slight GOP majority, you must pass legislation on these following items (order of priority) to make sure they become the permanent law of the land so no "dip-wad Dem" will completely undo all the amazing accomplishments you have done.
Right at the onset, she puts her finger on the conundrum disproving NeverTrump, Inc.'s constant accusation that Donald Trump has made himself a king. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a veteran of political battles for over half a century, was the latest person to make the absurd claim this week about the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue turning the presidency into a monarchy. And at 85-years-old, Pelosi looks and sounds like the biggest fight of her life these days is control over her dentures, which increasingly appears to be a losing enterprise.
The House majority is two. And by two, that includes Thomas Massie, the nut from Kentucky who really makes it a working majority of one. And in that conference of Republicans, you have hard-right conservatives like Chip Roy who never want to give an inch to the middle, and you have members like Mike Lawler, who constantly look for ways to force the conference to give in to him so he can appeal to a center-left district electorate in New York.
In the Senate, there are 53 Republicans out of the 100-seat chamber, with 60 being required to move anything of substance without reconciliation measures being taken. Sure, you could bust up the legislative filibuster, but there are more than three Republicans who are institutionalists and will simply never go along with that. Among them are Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. McConnell is retiring, and hopefully, Kentuckians will return another conservative to the Senate in November. But the simple math is if you wish to impose your will in the Senate, there are really two avenues - work harder and elect more Republicans until you get over 60 before engaging in the purity test purge, or repeal the 17th Amendment, restoring the appointing of senators back to state legislatures.
Currently, 30 of the 50 states have Republican majorities, while Democrats only control 17 statehouses. That's 60-34 right there, with three states that have split houses. Assume they also split in sending senators to Washington, you're looking at something like a 62-38ish Republican-controlled Senate.
That's the Constitutional answer. The President can and has proposed legislation to codify a lot of the executive orders, and the Congress has included a bunch of them in the One Big Beautiful Bill. But without busting the filibuster, something the President very much wants done but probably will not get without Herculean efforts in the Senate, that's the check and balance that keeps Trump from governing like a king.
1. Election Integrity - ID required for voting; no mail-in ballots; ballots in English Only; watchers within 5 feet of counters; voter rolls audited annually, etc.
The White House is taking this issue very seriously, and not a day goes by without the President, Vice-President, or the Press Secretary calling for exactly that. You saw action in Georgia, where DNI Gabbard is attempting to ensure election integrity, where fraud is widely-suspected. The SAVE Act is very much in the news this week, and pressure is building in the Senate to turn the legislative filibuster into a talking filibuster to ensure a final vote up or down, simple majority vote. But the laws of Senate physics I mentioned above are what's preventing the final step from being taken on what is an 80-20 issue, regardless of party or race affiliation. Senate Democrats will never cave, because the simple truth is they are relying on illegal aliens finding ways to vote. Without it, they feel they are entering a doom loop, no longer competing seriously in national elections. And Republicans are worried that giving away the filibuster will make them powerless to stop the really bad stuff from happening when Democrats eventually do win control in Washington.
2. Ban Sharia Law and public call to prayer in America - Forever!
As a fellow Christian, I appreciate the sentiment. However, the First Amendment to the Constitution literally begins with, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That doesn't mean protection of your religion or my religion. It means any or no religion at all. Islam is not my religion of choice for a variety of reasons, but if a mosque issues a call to prayer, what that tells me as a believer of Christ is that there are a whole bunch of people who need to hear the Gospel. As for Sharia law, we have one rule of law in this country, guided and protected by the U.S. Constitution. I'm confident, for now, that the Constitution will survive Sharia law.
3. Immigration System Streamlined - Hold all visas from countries that do not assimilate, merit-based, end abuse of birthright citizenship, English as the mother language for the country, pathway for lawful DREAMers to assimilate without amnesty or voting, outlaw of sanctuary cities.
Again, I think this issue is equal in importance to this administration. They are about to hear oral arguments in the Supreme Court on birthright citizenship. As for legislation, I think there's a deal out there to be had. Hugh Hewitt has spent quite a bit of time on it. DREAMers and illegals here who have contributed to the system and kept their nose clean for decades, despite the original sin of illegal entry, can be regularized without the benefits of citizenship, like voting. In return, sanctuary cities end, period. The problem is, Democrats do not want a solution and are not willing at this point to negotiate on the subject in good faith. They want the issue for use as a political bludgeon. If you wish to make this immigration reform a reality, there is only one avenue, and it's not Donald Trump waving his scepter. It's electing more Republicans at all levels. That's on all of us conservatives, the ones who elected Donald Trump in 2024.
4. Homeless/drug addicted/mentally ill must get off the streets - (I'm consolidating for space, but she wants more federal programs/mandates to force states to deal with this problem.)
In red states, this societal blight is being effectively countered and treated in most parts of the country. In blue cities, it's still a disaster. It's that simple. The President's drug interdiction program has resulted in drastic drops in fentanyl deaths last year alone, and drug trafficking into the country is finally being tackled in a real way for the first time in decades. The bottom line, though, is the single most effective way to treat those that need help on the streets, and for the addictions that all-too-many times brought them there, is not government programs, but religious-based ones. Locally, the Orange County Rescue Mission has done far more to rehab people from a life of despair and addiction on the streets than any government program will ever dream of accomplishing. In Los Angeles, the L.A. Mission and Union Rescue Mission do the hard work every single day of offering a hand up to those who reach for it. Enable these ministries to do the ministry work at a local, one-on-one level, and you'll begin to get the upper hand. Federalizing it with mandates to the states is just not the most efficient way to tackle that subject.
5. Conduct state audits every 3 years for total transparency to see if federal programs are being defrauded or wasted.
Again, maybe not the automatic three-year cycle you desire, but those audits are indeed happening across this government. It's one of the hallmarks of the Trump administration in the first year. Hundreds of billions in fraud have been discovered and recovered, and states that do not comply with federal mandates have already had their issue-related funding pulled.
6. Health Care - Incentivize more health care professionals to cover shortages, reforms, affordability.
The President yesterday unveiled TrumpRX.gov, a new portal to streamline and find the cheapest price for prescription drugs anywhere in the world. This administration is doing everything it can think of to bend the curve of the upward cost spiral in healthcare, the least of which is to introduce market forces into the healthcare industry by bypassing insurance companies and block-granting money to individuals by way of healthcare savings accounts to shop for their own healthcare needs. It's a super complicated issue that's been exacerbated by over a decade of gasoline Barack Obama and Joe Biden administration officials being poured on the bonfire of healthcare costs, but it's obviously been a priority with this administration.
7. Made IN USA - all products must be made in the USA
Eventually, yes, as much as is possible. There might be a widget out there that is only found exclusively in one specific region in the world, and it's not possible or practical to make it here. But $18 trillion dollars' worth of foreign investment commitments Donald Trump received last year alone has re-ignited the manufacturing base like crazy in this country. Plants are being built and spun up as fast as possible. It just takes time to shift back to a manufacturing society from a service industry. Impatience is fine, so long as you understand the realities of logistics involved in shifting gears. It's happening, and you'll see the movement back to American-made goods continue to roll out...unless the country throws out Republicans the next few cycles and we usher in the Mamdani-like socialists/communists/Marxists to national power.
8. Gov't funded benefits (SNAP, etc.) - audit more, prevent fraud.
One of the benefits of the Democrat-produced government shutdown late last year was that it exposed a lot of fraud in these welfare programs for which the Democrats were holding the entire country hostage, in order to restore funding for illegal aliens abusing them. Since the government has reopened, the heads of the respective cabinet agencies have begun to do just that - identify the fraud and cut off funding that perpetuates it.
9. Eliminate No Consequences - (She wants to eliminate reason of insanity defenses and other legal loopholes to get out of stiff penalties for committing crime).
Every step of the way for the Trump administration, since the first day on January 20th, 2025, there has been litigation filed to block it from the enforcement of existing law, reorganizing agencies that Constitutionally fall under the Article II responsibility of the president, and other legal challenges designed to hamstring Trump at every level of the judiciary. Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican Senator, was the last Senator to attempt a crime reform bill that would have legislatively brought about some of the items she requested. Democrats, including some Democrats who originally worked in good faith with Scott to shape the bill, killed it in the end. Again, barring the abolishment of the legislative filibuster, there is a stalemate in the Senate for passage on anything of actual significance, because Democrats know if common-sense reforms were to pass, it would weaken their power as a party. It's the chaos from bad policy and bad law that allows Democrats to survive, politically. It gives them issues with which to weaponize, and opens up avenues for fraud and abuse to be exploited for their political and electoral advantage.
And every time a Democrat gets into the White House, you'll get a couple of hundred new judges, whether it be district, appellate, or the occasional Supreme Court seat, that will be the future ideological sleeper cells, activated into action when a Republican president sets policies objectionable to the progressive left. If for no other reason than to maintain that Constitutionalists continue populating the federal bench instead of radical leftist, and oftentimes lawless judges, you have to work and vote for Republican presidents AND Republican senators. Every time. Sitting out elections because you're frustrated at one bad vote here or one political stance there is no longer an option. You have to understand that the change you want to see is obtainable if every election, large or small - midterm, off-cycle, or special, is treated with the same importance as a presidential election.
10. Better communication and optics - narrative building.
This is the hardest one of them all. On the one hand, there has never been a better communicator in our lifetime than Donald J. Trump. His message resonates with tens of millions of people who would otherwise never consider voting for a Republican. Simultaneously, his message galvanizes hatred with almost half the country to the likes this country has never previously experienced. He has been, and will remain, his own biggest advocate and his own worst enemy.
The Trump administration is blessed to be chock-full of wonderful communicators. Whether it's J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, or Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, this team has as much capacity to shape narratives and articulate Trump's vision and agenda as any administration in my lifetime. So why is everyone freaking out in doom about the midterms?
The accomplishments of the first year of Trump 2.0 are staggering if you list them all out. I wrote almost 3,000 words in a column about them after the first 90 days last year. The downside of this administration is they're moving so doggone fast on so many fronts at once, all fronts that needed addressing, by the way, that it never really slowed down long enough to communicate the results to the base the way they did the promises during the election season.
It's like a recording artist. Taylor Swift has been the bee's knees, according to my daughter, since I married into this family. She's a master at her own promotion. She records and releases a record. She goes on tour. She does the interviews she needs to do. She conquers the world.
Donald Trump has done some more rallies of late, and a few interviews with the outlets that he did a lot more as Candidate Trump, but the whole of the administration needs to super-serve the base a lot more this year than they did last year. Resistance media will never give them a fair shake, even though Trump continues to grant them interviews. But if Trump and his team saturate more of the podcasting world, avoid the cranks, but stick to the ones that resonate especially with the next few generations, and reassures them that their concerns are heard and being addressed with positive results, that, and the economy continuing to hum along at 5%-plus GDP, will go a long, long way to help achieve success in the midterms.
The Republicans are already stacked with millions of dollars, well ahead of the Democrats in the campaign war chest, for November. The electorate, you and me, just needs to nominate solid candidates that resonate with the key issues in which Republicans dominate - economy, crime, immigration. Yes, the administration needs to do more, but we, the base, need to be smarter and more tactical in candidate selection than Democrats are shaping up to be. Let the left nominate and elect the radicals like Comrade Mamdani. For us, we must nominate and elect normies, and you'll see Republicans win the normies in the fall and keep the pipeline going to make this the second consecutive American century.
This retired teacher's handwritten note at the top of her letter was, "Help me please!" Hopefully, I was of assistance in amplifying her concerns to the right people. What I would say in response is that we are truly blessed to live in a country where we have the ability to, unlike a lot of places (Iran comes to mind), help ourselves. Give me the same intensity, interest, and turnout we saw in November 2024, knowing we're playing the long game, and eight months from now in the midterms, you'll soon see a lot of what you desire accomplished.
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