January 2, 2026

TRUMP  IS MR DEREGULATOR: Rod Martin turns over his Substack column space for a day to Americans for Tax Reform founder and chief Grover Norquist, who provides a comprehensive cataloguing of the many ways President Donald Trump is draining the regulatory swamp in Washington, D.C.

Posted at 3:14 pm by Mark Tapscott

ROGER KIMBALL: The Somali Fraud Scandal is a Turning Point.

What made Shirley’s video the tipping point, the tocsin that finally shook the world awake? The legacy media has largely avoided covering the issue. Indeed, it has savaged reporters such as James O’Keefe who exposed elements of the fraud in 2020, and did the same to activist Christopher Rufo who has done so more recently.

But for reasons that are not entirely clear, those earlier exposés, while hard-hitting, failed to generate the near-universal outrage that Shirley’s matter-of-fact reporting has.

I say “near-universal” because there are dissenters. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, for example, pulled out the “white supremacist,” “racist” and “Islamophobic” cards in response to Shirley’s video. The accusations fell completely flat. Why? Egregious overuse. People are no longer frightened by those content-free, rhetorical boogeymen. Such accusations are merely epithets designed to end conversation, not acknowledge the truth.

Confronted with the fact that Somalis have systematically pilfered billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in order to enrich themselves, bribe politicians and fund terrorist activities in Somalia, the public are outraged – and rightly. They see now how Democrats coddle illegal immigrants, lavish them with taxpayers’ money and then cultivate them as Democratic voters. And speaking of voters, did you know that Minnesota has same-day voter registration and that one registered voter can “vouch” for 8 others in his precinct who do not have ID?

Musk cut to the chase: “The Democrats are so upset about the situation because they’re losing – you know if we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave and they’ll lose voters.” Bingo. There are some 80,000-100,000 Somalis in Minneapolis alone. How is it that they live so well?

The canny chap who writes under the name Cynical Publius may well be correct that “in large swathes of humanity, there is no actual concept of ‘fraud,’ particularly fraud against the government.” Instead, there is a categorical imperative to get away with whatever you can “to help yourself and your tribe.” The problem is, notes Publius, that “introducing a fraud-based culture based on tribalism into America is like introducing some sort of lethal virus into a population that has no natural immunity. The virus will spread and grow, unchecked, because it is so alien to the host.”

The virus must be neutralized or it will destroy the host. . . . And as much of the “Somali community” as possible should be repatriated to where it belongs: Somalia. That is why God made Tom Homan.

Indeed.

Posted at 3:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: More than half of UC Berkeley disability accommodations are ’emotional.’

At UC Berkeley, this year has the most students registered as disabled since 2020, according to the data.

The data, which only goes back to 2020, shows the number of students who received disability accommodations increasing every year. In 2020-2021, there were 4,153. The following year there were 4,585. This year, there are 5,711.

The greatest percentage of disabled students this year have “psychological” or “emotional” impediments. There are 2,528 registered, representing more than 50 percent of all students with disabilities at the university.

The next most common is ADHD/ADD, with 1,675 students. According to the data, 287 students have a learning disability, 290 face mobility problems, 71 struggle to hear, and 63 have impaired vision.

When most people hear “disability,” they imagine the total of 424 students in wheelchairs, or with hearing or vision loss.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green

NOW WHO’S BEING NAÏVE, KAY? Zohran Mamdani Can’t Ruin New York City.

In the mid-1990s, New York was well past its industrial and shipping heyday, but the signs were still all around. The city was grittier than it would soon be—we were right on the cusp of the major decline in crime that would sweep through nearly all American cities. It was so gritty, in fact, that my parents forbade me from applying to college in New York. They thought the city was too pricey and dangerous, even though they loved it.

Today, the city is much richer and fussier than it was. Parents are still fretting about its dangers and expense. Mayors come and go—remember when Rudy Giuliani was “America’s mayor”?—and New York remains fundamentally itself.

Zohran Mamdani won the 2025 mayoral election on a platform that included fare-free buses, city-owned grocery stores, and a rent freeze for rent-stabilized units, plus equity-centered education policy and an oddly status-quo policing plan for a one-time defunder/abolitionist. As this issue of Reason unpacks, there are many reasons to fear such policies will be ineffective at best and deeply counterproductive at worst. And as my parents’ diktat shows, when governance and policy get bad enough, that can scare off potential residents and visitors alike.

But a single mayor can’t ruin New York City, because New York City is not reducible to policy choices.

John Lindsay has just entered the conversation: “In the midst of an economic boom, crime exploded. Instead of reforming what had, in fact, been the best big city school system in America, he left it in tatters. He promised to better incorporate African Americans but left the city polarized.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

HE’S CERTAINLY EARNED HIS RETIREMENT: A 5 million percent return in 60 years leaves Warren Buffett’s legacy unmatched. “From 1964 — the year before Buffett took control of Berkshire — to 2024, the one-of-a-kind conglomerate delivered a compounded annual gain of 19.9%, nearly double the S&P 500′s 10.4%, resulting in an overall return of more than 5.5 million percent, according to the company’s latest annual report. The shares added another 10% to that return in 2025.”

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green

MAMDANI: SOUTH AFRICA IS MODEL FOR NEW YORK.

The newly-minted Mayor had the stage, but graciously acknowledged that the real star was socialism. “I was elected as a Democratic Socialist and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist.” He hailed an “era of big government,” vowed to govern “expansively and audaciously” and said he would “set an example for the world.”

The grimace-cum-smile on Chuck Schumer’s face – sitting hostage-like behind the mayor, who he has yet to endorse or even say if he voted for – told its own story about exactly how thrilled the mainstream Democratic party is to go into the midterms later this year, and more importantly the 2028 presidential campaign, with Mayor Mamdani as the party’s principal standard bearer. At some point grinning and bearing it won’t be an option, the radical Mamdani platform will have to be embraced or disavowed. It won’t be pretty.

So what can New Yorkers look forward to under their energetic and muscular new form of socialism? Mayor Mamdani gave them clues, advising them to “look to Madiba and the South African Freedom Charter.” The charter that Madiba – Nelson Mandela – helped forge with the ANC was the blueprint for post-apartheid South Africa. It opens with the words “our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality.” Suggesting that apartheid is alive and well in New York will have brought another big gulp from Schumer and the Democratic establishment. The Democrat Socialists of America have so far failed to persuade the country that apartheid exists in Israel, so it’s ambitious to think they can make the case for its existence in New York. This is testing the very limits of grievance politics. And the current almost failed state that is South Africa, with white farmers fleeing to America as refugees, bodes particularly ill as a template for New York.

As in South Africa, the enemy in Mamdani’s New York is often white people. He has already vowed to target “whiter neighborhoods” for higher taxes. In his inaugural speech he zoned in on another set of unprosecuted criminals: billionaires. They think they “can buy our democracy” and for too long New York has belonged to “the wealthy and well-connected.” Billionaires seemingly the scourge of the city and also neatly the solution to its problems – just increase their taxes.

Are we sure it isn’t San Marcos?

UPDATE:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

THIS WILL END WELL: Zohran Mamdani: I’ll show the world whether the Left can govern.

Zohran Mamdani said he would show whether “the Left can govern” in his inaugural address as New York mayor.

Mr Mamdani declared he was not scared of being seen as “too radical” and vowed to “audaciously” embark on “big government” plans that critics have warned will bankrupt small businesses and endanger the public.

The new mayor, who had been sworn in just hours before at midnight on Thursday, addressed tens of thousands of supporters in Manhattan, accompanied by the US’s most high-profile progressive figures.

“There are many who will be watching. They want to know if the Left can govern,” Mr Mamdani said.

Speaking behind a lectern outside City Hall, where a dais had been erected for the occasion, he continued: “They want to know if the struggles* that afflict them can be solved. They want to know if it is right to hope again… We will set an example for the world.”

True Mamdani-ism has never been tried:

* Mamdani seemed eager yesterday to express his own personal struggle, or “Kampf,” as it is sometimes called. In any case, his inauguration was a definite triumph of his will:

Why, it’s as if:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

JOHN BOCH: When the Mainstream Media Encourages Violence Against Their Competition. “I can hear a collective sigh of relief from America’s law schools when they learn that Gerstein never got a JD. He’d be about as welcome as Jeffrey Dahmer at an annual alumni gathering. He is a Harvard grad though, just like other great minds like…David Hogg, proving yet again that was once a prestigious degree is now nothing more than a pricey piece of paper.”

Posted at 1:04 pm by Stephen Green

ANALYSIS: TRUE.