SACRAMENTO, CA — After being accused of multiple counts of sexual assault, Representative Eric Swalwell issued a fierce denial today, insisting that he never assaulted any of the Chinese spies he slept with.

For more than a decade, American politics has undergone a decisive shift thanks to President Donald Trump. This shift places the economic interests of middle- and working-class families squarely at the center of national policy.

Early in his tenure, Trump issued an executive order directing the federal government to eliminate regulations that deny consumers the benefits of a competitive marketplace. The proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern railroad merger stands in stark contrast to this effort, so it should come as no surprise that there is growing concern from around the country.

Seven state attorneys general in Republican states, led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen, are asking the U.S. Department of Justice to provide greater scrutiny of the merger. This follows letters from nine Republican state attorneys general led by Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee, Brenna Bird of Iowa, and Kris Kobach of Kansas. Additionally, more than 50 Republican state legislative leaders from across the country have expressed serious reservations about this $85 billion consolidation.  

Vice President JD Vance captured the essence of this thinking during his comments to a conservative audience with his statement warning about the dangers of monopolies, arguing “it’s bad for liberty, and it’s bad for prosperity.”

This is a return to foundational conservative principles about dispersed power, genuine competition, and economic opportunity for working-class Americans. Real conservative jurisprudence, from the trustbusting of Theodore Roosevelt to the consumer welfare standard articulated by Robert Bork, has always recognized that protecting competition at times requires challenging consolidation.

Consider who gets hurt when railroad monopolies are allowed to tighten their grip. It’s the farmer in Iowa who can’t negotiate better rates to ship grain. It’s the factory worker in Ohio whose plant closes because shipping costs make U.S. manufacturing uncompetitive with foreign countries. It’s the small business owner in rural America who faces take-it-or-leave-it pricing from the only railroad serving his region. These are the Americans who helped put Trump and Vance in office, and Republicans are right to fight for them.

The attorneys general correctly warned that concentrating “too much power in too few hands” risks squeezing out American manufacturers, farmers, and consumers. When four railroad companies already control 90% of freight traffic, adding more consolidation doesn’t enhance competition. Far from it. It only fuels market distortions and monopolies that harm the overall economy. 

This unprecedented and costly railroad merger would be particularly devastating for workers and producers here at home. The deal would favor intermodal container shipments that can pivot to trucking, benefiting foreign-made goods while U.S. manufacturers moving chemicals, grain, steel, and bulk commodities would be locked into paying increased rates to one railroad with nowhere else to turn. Foreign competitors would get flexibility while American workers get higher costs and worse service. That’s not “America First.” 

Free markets thrive on competition, and increasing monopoly power in any form is the first step toward losing both liberty and prosperity. In line with this broader movement toward enhancing competition, the Surface Transportation Board has advanced important reforms aimed at dismantling the entrenched barriers that have long stifled competition in the freight rail industry.

The proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger represents exactly the kind of consolidation that Republicans should oppose. Vance is right: We must defend the working Americans who depend on competitive markets to earn their livelihoods. The fact that Republican state leaders and the conservative legal movement recognize this truth once again proves that the Republicans are focused on delivering for the working class.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The post Conservative Leaders Are Right: The UP-NS Rail Merger Is a Bad Idea appeared first on The Daily Signal.

KANSAS CITY, MO — Kansas City Royals manager Matt Quatraro pinned the team's loss on local fan Jim Greller, who failed to put on his lucky socks today.

U.S. — A group of sports science experts have ruled that a game cannot be classified as a sport if it is possible to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes while playing.

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By Kelli Ballard

Remember the cry to “Defund the Police” that echoed across the left side of the aisle like political cheerleading that encouraged action before common sense could catch up? Different cities tried varying plans, but no matter how they sliced the cake, the results kept coming out half-baked: Less police meant more crime. Some districts decided […]

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told left-wing activists Thursday that the Trump administration was carrying out an “all-out assault on civil rights” by opposing diversity, equity and inclusion. President Donald […]

The post Hakeem Jeffries Tells Activist Audience DEI Is Explicitly Written Into Constitution appeared first on The Western Journal.

This year’s midterm elections aren’t just about who wins in November; they’re about who wins fights over gerrymandering taking place right now.

Nowhere is the battle fiercer than in Virginia, a state where voters just six years ago approved a constitutional amendment to take partisanship out of congressional redistricting.

Now Democrats want to make an exception to the rule Virginia voters approved by a nearly two-thirds majority in 2020: They want this year’s congressional map to be drawn up by their own state legislators, erasing the districts set up by the bipartisan board established by the amendment just a few years back.

It’s no surprise when a state like Texas or California that leans overwhelmingly toward one party indulges in partisan gerrymandering.

But Virginia is a purple state, and its congressional representation—six Democrats, five Republicans—currently reflects that.

Yet, if Democrats get their way on April 21, they’ll be able to seize 10 of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats for themselves, in the most brazenly unjust reapportionment seen anywhere in decades.

This isn’t about making a blue state bluer or a red state redder; this one’s an effort to manufacture a virtual monopoly for one party, depriving millions of the other party’s voters of their representation.

One thing the sheer audacity of this move suggests is that Democrats nationwide aren’t quite as confident as they pretend to be about winning the midterms fair and square.

If they expect voters coast to coast to repudiate President Donald Trump’s GOP in a landslide, why resort to such extreme measures in a place like Virginia?

Either Democrats are more worried than they let on, or they want to do more than just win—they want to annihilate their competition.

They’re proving far more ruthless than Republicans, who balked at the opportunity last year to redraw Indiana’s congressional map from a 7-2 partisan split to a nine-seat GOP sweep.

What Democrats are attempting in Virginia is tantamount to legalized election theft, if voters are unwise enough to approve the amendment they’re pushing.

There’s a political cost for this attack on small-d democracy: Gov. Abigail Spanberger, for one, is paying a price in her polling.

She was elected by a whopping 15-point margin last year and was soon touted as the Democrats’ new face of moderation, which is why she was the party’s choice to respond to Trump’s State of the Union address this year.

Yet her approval ratings are already poor, with a Washington Post survey at the end of March finding 47% of those polled gave her a passing grade, while 46% disapproved of her performance in office so far.

The numbers are similar to polling on the amendment to give Virginia’s Democrat-controlled legislature the power to draw the congressional districts for the midterms: 50% say they approve, 47% disapprove.

The amendment can pass with a simple majority, but if the polls are right, Democrats have no margin to spare, and early voting reports so far indicate there’s particularly strong turnout in Republican areas of the state.

The early vote is outpacing early voting in last year’s gubernatorial election, too.

Arguably, the amendment shouldn’t be on the ballot at all: it’s faced several legal challenges, with the state Supreme Court ultimately deciding the April 21 election can proceed even while doubts about its legality remain to be settled later.

The very wording of the amendment is illegal, Republicans contend, since state law specifies the text accompanying the measure “shall be limited to a neutral explanation,” while the amendment itself is tendentiously worded as an attempt to “restore fairness.”

Who wouldn’t vote to restore fairness?

The campaign for the amendment has been a master class in deceit and manipulation, with even news outlets in the deep-blue D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia noting the copious use of “pink slime” techniques by the “Yes” side.

Those techniques involve propaganda disguised to look impartial—like a made-to-purpose publication branded as The Virginia Independent, which the Arlington-based news site ARLNow.com describes as “a partisan newspaper advancing Democrats’ arguments.”

That slime has been flooding into voters’ mailboxes, including mine.

Maybe my blue suburb hasn’t been a target of whatever efforts the Republicans are making—though the other possibility is that the GOP just isn’t trying as hard.

Texas kicked off the latest wave of redistricting ahead of the midterms, as Republicans there looked to widen their advantage over the Democrats.

Yet as the divergent examples of Indiana and Virginia show, it’s the Democrats who are more hellbent on winning, even if they have to turn state constitutions into confetti to do it.

Politics is a test of wills, and if Republicans fail this one, they’ll almost certainly fail in November, too.

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We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

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