Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) is rightfully urging lawmakers to enact harsher penalties for criminals amid rising crime rates in New Mexico. The special legislative session scheduled for Thursday is a ripe opportunity for policymakers to protect communities that have been ravaged by violent crime due to years of leftist legislation.

Lujan Grisham’s proclamation cited a “dangerous intersection” between crime and homelessness and the “revolving door” that keeps violent criminals in communities, as reported by the Associated Press. A crucial aspect of her argument was that thousands of cases in recent years, many of which involved violent felonies, were dismissed due to “competency questions.”

As expected, there has been pushback from many on the far Left. State House Speaker Javier Martínez, an Albuquerque Democrat, claimed at a news conference that Lujan Grisham is “uninformed” and the plan could “backfire.” Meanwhile, Daniel Williams of the ACLU of New Mexico believes the proposal represents “rushing into legislation where there are some real risks of harm.”

These notions that there may be unintended consequences aren’t wrong, but they represent a miscalculation of the costs and benefits of the program. Crime rates in the Albuquerque metropolitan area are about three times that of the rest of the country. Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said Wednesday that the city spends $1 million a month on housing vouchers and that it had to clear 1,000 homeless encampments in June alone. The most ironic and shameful aspect of this inquiry is that over $800 million has been appropriated to address crime problems over the past three years. How that much money led to increased crime is anybody’s best guess.

Well, it’s actually not that difficult to figure out why homelessness, gun crimes, and panhandling have become more prevalent in New Mexico. The aforementioned “revolving door” creates an incentive structure that implicitly motivates wrongdoers to commit crimes.

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Cracking down on illegal activity requires proactive rather than reactive policy. It’s not enough to punish a criminal after a crime has been committed — the purpose of long sentences and hard-on-crime legislation is to prevent an offense from occurring in the first place. When criminals know that they’ll likely get off the hook or receive short sentences, they are significantly more likely to engage in criminal activity. Soft-on-crime policies that stem from leftist politicians have heartbreaking ramifications. Our cultural conscience no longer cares about administering justice to those who harm others.

The far Left is incapable of comprehending this basic logic, apparently. It makes sense though, given that logic and reason are substituted for ideology on that side of the spectrum. It’s a blessing that we have politicians such as Lujan Grisham who are willing to do the right thing despite being attacked by their contemporaries.

President Joe Biden further patronized his supporters last night in an awkward interview with Lester Holt that featured hypocritical rhetoric and alienating answers.

Most of the backlash from the interview stems from Biden’s Oval Office address on Sunday when he said that the country needs to “lower the temperature in our politics.” Biden, of course, spent much of the next day’s interview doing the exact opposite by relentlessly attacking former President Donald Trump. 

Biden’s hypocritical nature was on full display, certainly. His delusional responses to Holt’s simple questions, however, are far more detrimental to his reelection prospects than his ironic condemnations of the former president. 

Holt rightfully brought up the disconnect between Biden’s interpretation of his poor debate performance last month and the outcry it caused among those on the Left. While the president has used excuses such as a head cold and a hefty travel schedule to ease the worries of Democrats, members of the liberal media and his own party called for him to step aside following the disastrous debate. The most startling answer from Biden came when Holt asked a simple yet essential question: “Who do you listen to on deeply personal issues like the decision whether to stay in the race or not?”

Biden’s equally delusional and disturbing answer was straightforward: “Me,” he said simply.

Such a disillusioned answer should frighten the public at large, but it’s the Democratic Party that most directly incurs the cost of Biden’s lack of self-awareness. The fact that he’s doing unscripted interviews at all is bizarre, and answers such as this will only further incentivize left-leaning voters to stay home come November. Once heralded as a charismatic politician with a distinct ability to connect with the people, “cool Joe” continues to cement himself as just another egotistical statesman who cares far more about his sense of self than he ever will about his constituents. 

The final question of the interview once again involved a debate, but this time, Holt inquired about the one scheduled in September. 

Holt referenced Biden’s poor performance at last month’s debate before asking, “What happens if you have another performance on that par, on that level?”

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Biden’s response came out as a whisper: “I don’t plan on having another performance on that level,” he said. Most would imagine that he hadn’t planned on performing the way he did last time, either, but the nation will have to wait until September to see if Biden can course-correct.

Maybe he should spend two weeks at Camp David next time instead of just one. 

More than 100 people were shot in Chicago this past weekend amid calls for the city to take further steps to combat gun violence. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other city leaders asked for more federal resources for “community support,” while others more cogently blamed Illinois’ lenient policies on crime. 

The victims included women and children. Nineteen people died. The city of Chicago is unfortunately not foreign to violence over the Fourth of July, as 57 shootings occurred during last year’s holiday weekend. Erica Pinkerton, the childhood friend of a 74-year-old woman who was shot and injured, heartbreakingly described July 4 as “assassination day.” This disturbing increase in violence from last year reflects a dire need for steps to be taken in the name of combating such malicious violence. 

Johnson referenced the dark nature of the shootings when he said, “This is a choice. The choice to kill. The choice to kill women, the choice to kill children, the choice to kill the elderly.”

Yet no arrests were reported. The perpetrators of these crimes will most likely pay no price for the pain they’ve caused, while the victims won’t ever receive the justice they so crucially deserve. This repetition of violence stems from the fact that criminals incur little risk when they carry out these shootings. When 109 people get shot between Wednesday and Monday, but not a single person gets arrested, it’s easy to see why stories such as these aren’t uncommon in Chicago. Unfortunately, these killers are still loose in the city and will inevitably spur more tragedy. 

This is not to blame the heroic police officers who are trying their best to protect their communities but to raise awareness about the difficult nature of combating gun violence. Chicago public officials are taking steps in the right direction, however, by calling for assistance from the federal government, questioning Illinois’ liberal bail reforms, and urging communities to foster stronger relationships with the police officers tasked with keeping them safe. 

Johnson has claimed that more federal resources will help the city enforce efforts to take guns off the street. He also has urged the public to speak up if it knows someone who has participated in the violence. Alderwoman Jeannette Taylor of Chicago’s 20th Ward believes the most important ingredient in solving the problem is combating the anti-police rhetoric in the city by urging Chicagoans to develop relationships with police officers. 

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Illinois’ soft-on-crime policies are also directly to blame. The Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity-Today Act took effect on Jan. 1, 2023. It reduced certain felonies to misdemeanors and eliminated cash bail in the entire state of Illinois. 

Human beings respond to incentives, and criminals are no different. Lenient policies such as this one actively remove the risk associated with crime and incentivize criminal activity. When zero arrests are made over the course of 109 shootings, and criminals know the justice system rarely administers any, heartbreaking tragedies are going to continue to happen in cities across the country.  

Newly released data regarding the housing market’s continual deterioration further threaten President Joe Biden’s reelection chances.

If he stays in the race, that is. 

Nonetheless, whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being will be hampered by the fact that home affordability has sunk to its lowest point since 2007. 

A new report from Attom reveals that the cost of mortgage payments, property insurance, and taxes accounted for just over 35% of the average wage in the second quarter. That number was at 43% for more than a third of U.S. markets despite 28% being considered the baseline percentage for affordability. The cost of a typical home was 32.1% a year ago.

This news is timely given that the latest report from the Mortgage Bankers Association reveals that mortgage rates rose above the 7% mark last week, from 6.93% to 7.03%. Mortgage loan application volume also fell last week, dropping by 2.6% on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the market composite index. 

This plethora of new data further confirms that the current nature of the housing market is one of a crisis. The cost of living is unsustainable for so much of the public amid perpetual inflation, sky-high interest rates, and rising child care costs. 

The state of the economy is naturally the top issue for voters heading into November. Biden had the opportunity to ease their qualms during last Thursday’s presidential debate against former President Donald Trump in the first question of the night. 

He displayed many typical talking points, first by blaming Trump and second by claiming that he “brought out a position where we have 800,000 new manufacturing jobs.” 

No matter the strange wording, Biden’s common claim that he created 800,000 manufacturing jobs is highly misleading given that most of those gains were due to a bounce back from the pandemic. Only 34,000 manufacturing jobs have been added since October 2022. Almost every claim Biden makes about Trump’s poor handling of the economy and his success is derived from the economic pitfalls of COVID-19. 

Biden addressed the housing crisis directly when he said that he will make sure to “reduce the price of housing” by “building 2 million new units.” 

Such a claim indirectly asserts that high housing costs are due to a lack of supply. Michael Fratantoni, MBA’s senior vice president and chief economist, begs to differ. He said in a statement that “Purchase applications decreased the final full week of June, even as both new and existing inventories have increased over the past few months.”

Though Biden having no grasp on economics isn’t news, his patronizing and misleading rhetoric has only worsened as his presidency has continued. There’s a strong disconnect between the perception of the economy and the romanticized version touted by the Biden administration. 

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The Left so often picks its brain trying to figure out why middle-class voters don’t buy Biden’s story. 

Come on, folks, he’s from Scranton!

First lady Jill Biden’s appearance on the cover of Monday’s Vogue magazine would be darkly humorous if it weren’t so disturbing and condescending. 

It was just last Thursday night that her husband, President Joe Biden, gave a frightening performance at the presidential debate against former President Donald Trump. Joe constantly mumbled and coughed, looked scared to be onstage, and lied in almost every answer. 

That’s not to mention that Jill Biden had to help him walk offstage at the end of the night. At an Atlanta hotel just moments later, she spoke to her husband the way a mother would to her child, congratulating him for “doing such a great job” while Joe Biden smiled vaguely. 

These alarming moments circulated on social media and in the news, with many pundits opining that it was Jill, not Joe, who so badly wants “four more years.” Her tone-deaf appearance on the cover of Vogue confirms these speculations, but it’s the contents of the in-depth article that prove just how out of touch with reality she and her avid supporters really are. 

The piece is, of course, highly complementary and seeks to showcase a version of Jill Biden who’s selfless, motivated by a desire to help others, and down-to-earth.

She loves Gabriela Hearst dresses and “has ‘em in every color.” Anthony Bernal, a senior adviser to the first lady, somehow claimed that “at her core, she’s a private person.” Right, because posing for the cover of Vogue represents a need for privacy. She goes to the grocery store in Wilmington, Delaware, apparently, so she knows that food prices are rising. “I raised three kids, and did the food shopping for how many years before we got to this job? It’s not like I don’t know.”

That job she has now, however, involves living in the White House, supporting her husband in his role as commander in chief, and enjoying Secret Service protection as she travels around the country extolling the grand virtues of the Democratic Party. The first sentence of the piece said the quiet part out loud: “If you want to know what power feels like, try to get yourself driven around in a motorcade.”

Jill Biden’s snarky narcissism is on full display when pressed by author Maya Singer about the accomplishments of Joe Biden’s administration. “It’s the first and only time I see her temper spark,” Singer wrote. 

Jill Biden’s response lists the American Rescue Plan of 2021, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as evidence of her husband’s success. “If people knew what Joe’s done,” she thinks, then maybe he wouldn’t have liberal pundits calling for him to relinquish the nomination to another candidate. 

It’s the public’s fault, of course, that Joe Biden has a terrible approval rating. The people just “don’t know,” according to the first lady.

What the public knows that she doesn’t is how blatant a desire she has for power and political validation. Her lack of self-awareness is astonishing, but far worse is how far she will go to prove that her husband “is the only person for the job.” Accusations of elder abuse aside, her continual push for Joe Biden’s reelection threatens both the health of the nation but also that of her husband. Thursday was a dark day for the entire country, but it was Jill, not Joe, who was the true harbinger of such horror. 

Singer’s piece ends, comically and predictably, with an indirect jab at Trump. 

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Referencing the role of a public servant, she wrote: “Negotiate, reconsider your assumptions, and sometimes, agree to disagree, agree to lose. Only a tyrant would say otherwise.”

Truer words have never been spoken.