The 1800 presidential race between Adams and Jefferson was an intense battle between two friends-turned-adversaries. But despite a contentious press and a heated political climate, neither the Federalists nor the Democratic-Republicans saw the election as the last of its kind.

Democrats today, however, seem to have a much bleaker view on the future of democracy in America. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, prominent voices in the Democratic Party asserted that the 2024 election would be the final one the U.S. would see if Republican nominee Donald Trump won.

It is strange, then, that in the election’s aftermath, Democrats keep stressing the importance of a “peaceful transfer of power” come Jan. 20, 2025.

If the Nov. 5 election truly was the last of its kind because Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, then how are Democrats so willing to give up power to the one who supposedly will destroy fundamental features of American democracy? They routinely compared Trump to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, perhaps sparking at least two assassination attempts. […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

That’s just common sense—and common courtesy to women. Yet Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, is being crucified by Democrat House members for wanting women’s spaces to be for women only.

“This is not just bigotry, this is just plain bullying,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., whined to Axios. A co-chair of the House Equality Caucus, Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., told Axios, “The cruelty is the point.”

Mace announced her resolution Monday, a couple months before Tim McBride, who wishes to be known as Sarah McBride, is slated to begin his first House term. (McBride announced he had “transitioned” while a student at American University in the 2011-2012 school year.) Mace’s resolution would require lawmakers and staffers to use bathrooms matching their birth sex.

Asked by reporters if her resolution was related to McBride, Mace said, “Yes.” […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

The results are in, and on Nov. 5, Americans officially rejected the high prices and spiraling costs that defined much of the Biden-Harris administration—including the least affordable housing market in U.S. history.

Rather than being chastened by the national shellacking he, his vice president, and his party received, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is pursuing an audacious move that could throw the housing market into disarray and put homeownership even further out of reach for middle-class Americans.

In a high-profile lawsuit filed last month, the DOJ is seeking to crack down on a case of alleged home-appraisal bias in Colorado, but the lawsuit could set a worrisome new precedent for the relationship between mortgage lenders and appraisers. The consequences could be sweeping, and they may weigh most heavily on the black homeowners and aspiring homeowners who the DOJ is ironically trying to protect with this lawsuit.

The DOJ is alleging that an appraiser, Maksym Mykhailyna, undervalued a black woman’s Denver home while she was applying for a refinance. Undervaluation typically results in a higher interest rate and a lower loan amount.

The Biden administration has made cracking down on this kind of alleged discrimination a focus, and Vice President Kamala Harris has led the White House’s efforts. Yet, the DOJ’s case hardly proves the appraiser undervalued the home. Even more importantly, the DOJ fails to show that unlawful racial bias skewed the appraisal results or that this singular incident is indicative of systemic discrimination permeating the appraisal industry.

These crackdowns over an illusory problem have been repeatedly and correctly criticized. The administration is fundamentally trying to expand the federal government’s role in housing with little understanding of how meddling with the appraisal process would ultimately affect prices and homebuyers.

The DOJ lawsuit and much of the Biden administration’s efforts on this issue are misguided. In this latest effort, the Justice Department is going beyond holding an allegedly prejudiced appraiser accountable. Along with Mykhailyna, the DOJ also names Rocket Mortgage, the lender with whom the homeowner was seeking a refinancing, as a co-defendant.

The DOJ’s decision to go after the mortgage lender for the actions of an appraiser in this case not only contradicts federal law, but also risks reversing years of housing industry reforms that keep home prices in check.

Setting precedent to hold lenders accountable for the actions of independent appraisers would reintroduce the conflicts of interest that helped inflate home prices and created a housing bubble in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. A repeat of those circumstances would make homes even more expensive and put homeownership even further out of reach for many Americans.

Passed in the wake of the 2008 crisis, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act explicitly bars mortgage lenders from influencing appraisers. The legislation established appraiser independence by mandating that lenders order appraisals through third-party companies called appraisal management companies. These companies are a critical degree of separation between lenders and appraisers that protect the housing industry from the conflicts of interest that led to the 2008 disaster. The DOJ’s efforts to punish the lender in the Colorado lawsuit threaten to erode the independence of appraisers.

Before 2008, there were no appraisal management companies, and appraisers were heavily dependent on the mortgage lenders that assigned them work. That conflict of interest led appraisers to overvalue homes in order to authorize bigger and more profitable loans for the mortgage lenders. That fueled the market bubble that eventually popped, tanking the global economy, nearly toppling the entire financial sector, and setting many American families back years.

If the Biden DOJ has its way, the U.S. could return to the pre-2008 housing industry. The potential for baseless lawsuits alleging undervaluation will incentivize both appraisers and lenders to overvalue properties—fueling yet more home price inflation and injecting more risk into the system.

Housing costs are already out of control. Minority communities across this country are disproportionately locked out of homeownership. Rather than pursuing splashy headlines for baseless lawsuits that would ultimately hurt Americans and further exacerbate prices, the government should be diminishing the footprint of the government-sponsored enterprises—namely, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—that have helped create a second housing bubble in the past 20 years.

The bottom line is that the DOJ’s misguided efforts here could wind up hurting all aspiring homeowners, including the very people of color who the Biden administration says that it is trying to stand up for.

Existing civil right laws already protect homeowners against racially biased appraisal practices. These laws should continue to be enforced. Regulators or legislators could task the appraisal management companies with keeping a more watchful eye over the appraisers and potential trends in their work. But the effort to burden the mortgage lenders with the responsibility of solving appraisal discrimination is not only misguided, it is deeply harmful to aspiring homeowners, the housing sector, and the financial industry.

The incoming Trump administration should immediately audit the Biden administration’s backward housing reforms and halt this lawsuit before it causes damage to the system. Woke, affirmative action policies are misguided and wind up hurting everyone. Voters want a return to simple, logic-driven policy, and this is one area to start with.

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

Trump’s big win should serve as a lesson for those who blindly trust the “experts,” whether pollsters or government bureaucrats who wield control over the budget and the economy.

The worst 2024 high-profile polling miss—by 16 points—came from the pollster who the media establishment put on the highest pedestal, Ann Selzer, whose 2012 polling for The Des Moines Register famously foreshadowed Barack Obama’s upset of Mitt Romney in Iowa.

Politico and others referred to Selzer’s polling as the “gold standard.” Clare Malone of ABC News’ FiveThirtyEight wrote a particularly gushing feature on Selzer in 2016, saying:

When Homer wrote of his hero Odysseus, he was ‘that godlike man.’ The D.C. poets use the same laudatory epithet-style when they sing of Selzer; she is uniformly ‘the great’ or ‘most respected’ or, as I saw on a book jacket recently while walking through the Des Moines airport, ‘Iowa’s polling queen.’

When Selzer’s Nov. 2 poll, released three days before the election, showed Kamala Harris winning the safe Trump state of Iowa by three percentage points, Harris supporters who follow polling were exuberant, ready to pop the champagne. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said, “If anybody is accurate, it’s likely to be Ann Selzer.” […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

Many assumed Vice President Kamala Harris, as a woman, would have secured the vote among young women in the 2024 presidential election. However, according to an exit poll from The Associated Press, that was not the case.

It turns out at least 40% of Gen Z women who are under the age of 30 chose to vote for Donald Trump in what experts have described as a “historic comeback” for the former president.

It seemed Harris believed the best way to reach young women was to make abortion the epicenter of her campaign. In the 100-plus days of her candidacy, she touted the claim that a Trump victory would mean all so-called “reproductive freedoms” and “rights” would be stripped away.

And while at least 13% of registered female voters listed abortion as their top issue, there were a large number of women who didn’t share this concern. According to The Daily Mail, 40% of this demographic said their No. 1 issue was the economy. Eleven percent named immigration as their biggest worry. […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

Trump did not have success with Hispanic voters because of “anything conservatives did,” but rather “things that the Left has done,” according to Mike Gonzalez, author of “A Race for the Future: How Conservatives Can Break the Liberal Monopoly on Hispanic Americans.”

The “Left has actually done 95% of it, of the work” of driving Hispanics to the Republican Party “by going crazy, completely crazy over woke issues that are completely rejected by Hispanics,” he said.

Gonzalez, who serves as a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the central issues that drove Hispanic voters across the aisle to Trump. […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

On Tuesday, Donald Trump earned 9,443 votes in the county, which is 97% Hispanic or Latino, and Kamala Harris received 6,845 votes, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office.

Starr County is located in the Rio Grande Valley and is one of 18 Texas counties that sits on or within 20 miles of Mexico’s border. Trump won 14 out of the 18 Texas border counties, many of which were Democrat strongholds.

Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy, and Cameron counties comprise most of the Rio Grande Valley. Despite voting for Joe Biden in 2020, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008, all four Rio Grande Valley counties supported Trump in 2024.

Trump’s victory in the valley “is historic,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said during a recent conversation on “The Daily Signal Podcast.” […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

But during Tuesday’s election, Golden State voters said they’ve had enough of rampant crime.

By an overwhelming margin, voters passed Proposition 36, a measure that will ncrease penalties for property crime, illicit drug use, and retail theft. By the latest count, over 70% voted “yes” on Prop 36.

The measure essentially repudiates Proposition 47, a soft-on-crime law approved in 2014 that drastically reduced penalties for a whole host of crimes.

That wasn’t the end of California’s turn against the most noxious elements of the Left’s criminal justice reforms. […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

Meanwhile, Alaska voted to do away with ranked choice voting, after adopting it just four years ago.

District of Columbia voters approved Initiative 83 to allow unaffiliated voters to vote in a party primary. It also would establish ranked choice voting for general elections beginning in 2026.

South Dakota voters rejected a measure to replace party primaries with a ranked choice voting system, Ballotpedia reported.

Supporters of ranked choice voting outspent opponents by at least 2 to 1, and often 10 to 1, according to campaign finance reports cited by Ballotpedia. […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

Final polling averages suggest that Trump has the advantage—and the momentum—heading into Election Day. Real Clear Polling has Trump edging out Harris by 0.1% in national polling and up in enough swing states to pass the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.

There has not been an election-altering October surprise—no Hunter Biden laptop, no missing emails. If there was one, however, it was President Joe Biden calling Trump supporters garbage.

“Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something,” the president said during a virtual event, “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

The comments outraged Trump’s supporters, just as Hillary Clinton’s comment calling them “deplorables” did in 2016. Nevertheless, the Trump campaign took the comments in stride. Following Biden’s comments, the former president held a press conference from the cockpit of a garbage truck with full campaign branding on the side.

Trump has completely derailed my evening. I have spent 90 minutes laughing at this man’s genius.

Again, hate em if ya want, but our 45th president just showed up in a garbage truck and is now speaking at his rally in an orange garbage man vest. I can’t even. #MAGA pic.twitter.com/FN1oFORjyJ

— Lindsay In South Carolina (@LindsayJPitcher) October 30, 2024

The former president even did a rally wearing a sanitation worker’s high-visibility vest after the stunt.

Left-wing media outlets have been after Trump since his first run for office in 2016.

The Media Research Center released findings on Oct. 28 that showed Trump’s media coverage was 85% negative compared to Harris’s 78% positive coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news broadcasts for the 2024 presidential race. Media Research Center analysts reviewed 660 stories about the presidential election on the news channels from July 21, the day Biden ended his candidacy, to Oct. 25.

In the 2016 presidential race, both Trump and Clinton received high amounts of negative coverage, with 91% negative for Trump and 79% negative for Clinton. In the coverage for the 2020 race, Trump received 92% negative coverage and Biden received 66% positive coverage.

Nevertheless, media bias has not prevented Trump from broadening his support.

Standing room only at Vance rally in Holland, Michigan, with a long line out the door! pic.twitter.com/xAatpL6ARe

— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) October 29, 2024

Trump, with a bold alternative media strategy, has brought together a motley crew of voices across the political spectrum, such as former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., entrepreneur Elon Musk, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, R-Hawaii.

During a recent interview on Fox News, Gabbard said she asks people in the audience to raise their hand if they are a Democrat or a former Democrat whenever she speaks at a Trump event.

“In almost every event, somewhere between 35-50% of the room will raise their hand,” she said in the Oct. 29 interview on Fox & Friends Weekend.

What excited Gabbard even more was the reaction of Trump supporters to those whose hands were raised. Trump supporters “stood up and cheered and welcomed them [Democrats and former Democrats] and just surrounded them, really, with love and kindness.”

Gabbard said a lot of people shared their experiences with her after the event.

“I had so many people come up to me at the end of that saying, ‘I came in here afraid. I’ve never been to a political rally before. I didn’t know what to expect. I’m a Democrat, lifelong Democrat, never voted before.’ Different variations of this, but each walking out saying, ‘I’m voting for Donald Trump because of what I experienced here today,’” Gabbard said.

American voters may have come to Trump rallies for the fun, but Trump needs them to stay for Election Day to win.