"Is there a war on appliances? Or is it a war on you?

I'd tell you to keep your cool, but that's going to be hard when Team Biden takes away your air conditioner. ...

Many readers will remember the Biden team's recent abortive effort to regulate gas stoves largely out of existence. ...

Before that, the Energy Department had nixed Trump-era regulatory reforms designed to allow 'quick' dishwashers, as well as similarly improved washers and dryers. ...

Now, in the latest episode of Team Biden's 'war on appliances,' the Energy Department has turned its attention to air conditioners, specifically room air conditioners of the sort used disproportionately by poor people, minorities and the elderly to keep cool in summer heat.

New energy-efficiency regulations promise to make these units more expensive for consumers and potentially less reliable and less effective at, you know, actually cooling things off."

Read the entire article here.

"America is fast approaching another needless emergency -- the raising of the national debt ceiling. This impending crisis isn't an accident but a result of the inaction of various actors who refuse to confront fiscal reality, sit down, negotiate and make hard decisions for the sake of our nation's future. While all parties have a responsibility to negotiate in good faith, recent actions make clear to me that the Biden administration is determined to pursue an ideological agenda rather than confront the clear and present danger that debts and deficits pose to our nation.

"Our national debt stands at nearly $31.5 trillion, or close to $95,000 for every man, woman and child, and represents 120% of our gross domestic product. Annual budgetary deficits have averaged $2.71 trillion since October 2019. Since Covid-19 began, we have added more than $8 trillion to the national debt. Despite explicit direction from Congress to pay down our debt in the Inflation Reduction Act, the administration seems more determined than ever to pervert that law and abuse existing authorities to increase spending.

"When President Biden and I spoke before Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act last summer, we agreed that the bill was designed to pay down our national debt and shore up America's energy security. ... Yet instead of implementing the law as intended, unelected ideologues, bureaucrats and appointees seem determined to violate and subvert the law to advance a partisan agenda that ignores both energy and fiscal security. Specifically, they are ignoring the law's intent to support and expand fossil energy and are redefining 'domestic energy' to increase clean-energy spending to potentially deficit-breaking levels. The administration is attempting at every turn to implement the bill it wanted, not the bill Congress actually passed. Ignoring the debt and deficit implications of these actions as the time nears to raise the debt ceiling isn't only wrong, it's policy and political malpractice."

Read the entire article here.

"Journalist Matt Taibbi testified March 9 before a congressional committee on the vast federally funded 'censorship-industrial complex' the Twitter Files exposed.

"That same day, an IRS agent swooped down on his New Jersey home.

"Maybe the timing of that IRS visit was a coincidence, like someone who forgets to take off his ski mask before entering a bank.

"The IRS agent ordered Taibbi to contact the agency regarding his tax returns from two prior years.

"House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is outraged and sent a letter Tuesday demanding information from the Biden administration since 'the IRS's action could be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate a witness before Congress.'

"Regardless of whether the untimely IRS visit to Taibbi's home was moronic or malicious, the power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy political opponents."

Read the entire article here.

"Societies advance through the creation, expression, and evaluation of alternative ideas. Therefore, for almost a millennium, we have had universities where ideas and discoveries are born and different perspectives are debated in 'marketplaces of ideas' or 'learning communities.' Yet there has been a decline in rational, reasonable discourse on issues of the day on modern campuses. This has been demonstrated by numerous suppressions of speakers, including one recently -- and most shockingly -- at the Stanford Law School, where a federal judge, Stuart Kyle Duncan, was prevented from speaking by a student protest, aided and abetted by the law school's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dean.

"The university's own administration was helping to lead the suppression of speech and ideas. It is incidents like this one that have made members of university communities afraid to express themselves, fearing potential negative outcomes (e.g., insults, attacks on character, possible physical attack, or efforts to dismiss) from individuals opposed to their viewpoints. Hence, expressed viewpoint diversity is on a notable decline. We are moving at least partway in the direction of universities in 20th-century totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. And this movement has spread to the broader society.

"Individuals are increasingly engaging in self-censorship -- the consequences of using an inappropriate word become too costly, so we muzzle our expression."

Read the entire aricle here.

"The American Dream is at risk of death, thanks to decades of terrible economic policy and social engineering from the left.

"A new Wall Street Journal-NORC survey tells the tale: 80% say the nation's economy is poor or not so good; 47% see it getting even worse over the next year.

"And 44% disagree that people like them and their families have a 'good chance' of bettering their living standards, while 78% are 'not confident' that their children's lives will be better than their own -- the highest level since NORC began the poll in 1990.

"The proximate causes are clear. Ever since President Joe Biden took office, he and his allies have at every turn adopted policies designed to wreck the economic lives of average Americans and laughed off the consequences."

Read the entire article here.

"The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank has grabbed the headlines, obscuring one of the most significant events of the year: the list of President Joe Biden's tax increases inside his 'budget.' ... So what is on President Biden's tax hike wish list?

"The highest personal income tax rate since 1986. ...

"The highest capital gains tax since Jimmy Carter. To a rate twice as high as Communist China. ...

"A corporate income tax hike to 28% from the current 21%. Higher than China's 25%. ...

"An unconstitutional wealth tax on 'unrealized gains.' ...

"Quadruped Tax on Stock Buybacks: a tax on your IRA or 401K. ...

"President Biden will try to assert that some of these taxes hit only the rich or large businesses. In speeches he does not finish the sentence. If he spoke honestly, the full sentence would be, 'I will tax the rich ... first. Then you.'"

Read the entire article here.

"Financial regulators have ignored their post-2008 rule book to contain the latest banking panic. And on Tuesday Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tore it up by announcing a de facto guarantee of all $17.6 trillion in U.S. bank deposits. Regional bank stocks rallied, but it's important to understand what this moment means: the end of market discipline in U.S. banking. ...

"Letting uninsured depositors at SVB and Signature take a modest haircut would have provided useful market discipline. The Administration is doing the opposite. It's creating moral hazard that will seed future trouble by encouraging more risky behavior by bank management and reducing caution among depositors, investors and creditors.

"The Administration is presenting its intervention as a one-off. But once regulators do something, they create the market expectation that they will do it again. And if they don't, the ensuing market panic will invariably impel them. Biden officials are crossing a Rubicon here, and they're doing it essentially by fiat without approval by Congress."

Read the entire article here.

"President Biden's FY 2024 budget promises to reduce future deficits by $2.8 trillion over the next 10 years. That's a big number. It is not enough, however, to prevent the debt from climbing to a record 110 percent of GDP in 2033, up from 98 percent this year and more than twice its average over the past 50 years.

"It is also not enough to prevent interest on the debt from doubling over the next 10 years and reaching a record high as a share of the economy by 2032. The record is 3.2 percent of GDP in 1991. It reaches 3.3 percent of GDP in 2032 in the proposed budget.

"How can a deficit reduction plan of nearly $3 trillion still leave the debt and interest costs at record levels? The answer is simple. Deficit reduction is calculated from a baseline of projected deficits that assume no changes are made to current law. Baseline deficits in the president's budget total $19.9 trillion over the next 10 years, meaning that even with $2.8 trillion of deficit reduction the federal government would still accumulate $17.1 trillion of new deficits, adding to the total debt.

"To put it mildly, we are in a very deep hole and it could get even deeper than the Biden budget projects."

Read the entire article here.

"More than 1.6 million foreign nationals have been apprehended or reported evading law enforcement officers after illegally entering the U.S. in fiscal 2023 through February, according to Customs and Border Protection apprehension data and gotaway data obtained by The Center Square.

"When reporting February enforcement data, CBP stated nationwide total encounters for fiscal 2023 through February totaled 1,285,056, excluding gotaways.

"Including monthly gotaway totals previously reported by The Center Square based on data obtained by a Border Patrol agent, at least 358,124 known gotaways in the nine southwest border sectors fiscal year were recorded through February.

"Combined, apprehensions and gotaways totaled at least 1,643,180. The number is likely higher because the total doesn't include all CBP sectors and Office of Field Operation data."

Read the entire article here.

"On Tuesday, one Russian SU-27 fighter jet forced down a U.S. surveillance drone, leading it to crash into the Black Sea.

"This was the first highly consequential military encounter of the kind that could have resulted in a direct conflict between Russia and the U.S.

"Even if Moscow and Washington manage to avoid such a catastrophic clash, their proxy war over Ukraine, which is in its second year, will transform the world in the long term, nevertheless."

Read the entire article here.