October 18, 2026

SALENA ZITO: The House Is Restless Again. It Has Been Before.

The voters have been telling the parties this directly. Among independents who lean Republican, according to Pew Research 55% say a major reason is that Democratic policies are harmful, while only 30% credit Republican policies. Among those who lean Democratic, 51% point to the harm done by Republicans, and only 34% to anything Democrats have done.

Those are the voters who decide who controls the House, and they lean away from one party more than toward the other.

Yet each new majority behaves as though it has been embraced. It grows the government it promised to restrain, spends money it promised to save, or pushes the agenda its base wants over the one swing voters were promised, confident the country is behind it. It isn’t. Those voters were never committed, and they take the keys back as quickly as they handed them over. That is why the next wave tends to come so soon.

That brings us back to what our restlessness says about us. Gilded Age voters were living through a transformation they didn’t fully understand, and they kept firing whoever was in charge because no one had yet shown them that the new economy had a place for them. We are living through another transformation. The future is again being built in Western Pennsylvania, on old mill sites and above old gas fields. Many voters still aren’t sure it’s being built for them.

In three weeks the House will tell us what we think, as it always has. Whoever wins should remember that the voters handed them the keys. They didn’t hand them their hearts.

As America’s Newspaper of Record reminds voters, choose wisely next month:

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

FIRST ANDRZEJEWSKI SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: How many college kids do you know these days who would recognize the suffocatingly liberal dominance of campuses across the country and decide it’s time to start an independent, conservative school paper that demands transparency and accountability?

Meet Ben Rothove, a senior at the University of Madison-Wisconsin who recognized as a freshman that liberal censorship had to be challenged and he was the man to rally friends and allies to found and run their own independent student newspaper. This ought to give all of us hope for the survival of genuine journalism.

Posted at 1:32 pm by Mark Tapscott

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE HOPENCHANGE: Obama, Whose Own IRS Targeted the Right, Clutches Pearls Over Ilhan Omar Raid and Wow, That Was Dumb.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THEY AREN’T IGNORANT…:

…it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so, the wise man once said.

Posted at 1:07 pm by Stephen Green

OUT ON A LIMB: Trump blames France violence on immigration.

Donald Trump said immigration had “shattered” France after protesters and looters ransacked Paris.

The US president blamed Saturday’s violence, which saw shops raided and government buildings set ablaze, on the country’s immigration policy.

In a Truth Social Post, Mr Trump said: “France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country.

“Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!”

Earlier, JD Vance, the US vice-president, wrote on X: “Western liberals imported the Third World into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility.”

Vance added he hopes that “Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.”

Meanwhile, the Israel War Room news aggregation account is having fun trolling les pouvoirs publics:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

IS PARIS SCUFFLING?

Or to paraphrase CNN in 2020, mostly peaceful but surprisingly fiery scuffles.

Bari Weiss needs to get CBS’s social media team under her control:

UPDATE: Sasha Stone: Riots in France — a Warning for America.

MORE: Hot Takes: Internet Rips CBS News for the Worst Tweet on French Riots Since ‘Mostly Peaceful.’

UPDATE (10/18/26): CBS News Deletes Social Media Post That Described Violent, Fiery French Riots As ‘Scuffles.’

Fortunately, it’s screenshotted above.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

FRANCE IS ONCE AGAIN PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1939: “They came prepared. They had the addresses of town halls. They had addresses of Jewish shop owners. In a street in Marseille, all businesses owned by Jews were set on fire. Businesses run by Muslims weren’t.”

Related: Touching Themselves. “Given ongoing events, and lifted from the comments, a reminder, were one needed, that there are titillated creatures who want to see your homes burn.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 10:42 am by Ed Driscoll

ROBERT STACY MCCAIN: Michael Tracey: Hero for a Crazy Time.

Having flattered Tracey by comparing him to Christopher Hitchens, I’ll further flatter him with another comparison. Like Hunter S. Thompson, Tracey knows the value of using vivid language. In the very first sentence of this piece about Kristy Makuta, we find “the defamatory maelstrom of Epstein hysteria” — a decisive choice of words, an upfront declaration of authorial intent. Promoters of Epstein hysteria are responsible for “a tornado of unrelenting slime … noxious falsities … a tsunami of pure sleaze … loads of demented garbage,” Tracey declares in the space of a single paragraph. Further displaying his penchant for strong and colorful description, Tracey labels Makuta’s claim to Epstein victimhood ”one of the craziest cons in all of Epstein lore,” involving “brazenly faked” evidence in “a whirlwind of unvarnished lunacy.”

To back up these strong phrases, Tracey has the receipts. He knows how to obtain court records and utilize them to debunk the bogus victimhood claims by which these grifters have profited through litigation. You really need to read the whole thing to understand how the “Epstein files” has spiraled completely out of control, with clearly innocent people (including Democratic Party fundraiser Dana Chasin) being smeared as participants in child sex-trafficking. Decent people out to be outraged about these lies, and yet somehow Michael Tracey is the bad guy for telling the truth?

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 10:14 am by Stephen Green

IT ISN’T LIKE THEY WEREN’T WARNED:

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green

COMMIES HATE THIS:

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

FASCISM:

Posted at 7:56 am by Glenn Reynolds