Rajiv Malhotra

Europe got the low-level Islamic foot soldiers. America got something more dangerous. We imported the sophisticated leadership. The doctors, the lawyers, the engineers, the professionals. The ones who arrive with credentials, set up the organizations, and execute a deliberate plan. Each group has a purpose: CAIR and its affiliates for politics and lawfare. Muslim Student Associations for campuses. Islamic schools and mosques for the next generation. Charity and “community” networks that double as parallel societies. They push Islam into every sector - government, schools, media, corporations, law, medical, sports, city councils - while simultaneously building mini-Islamic states where, from birth to death, you never have to deal with a non-Muslim. Arabic on the signs. Sharia norms in the neighborhoods. Halal everything. Parallel courts, parallel finance, parallel education. Funded by the same Gulf money that bankrolls Europe’s problems. In America, they are quieter for now, more professional, and far more effective than street riots. We are being conquered from within... and Republicans still will not name the threat capturing our country!

History was made last night. For months, we were saying that 2026 was the most consequential midterm election of our lifetimes. Unfortunately, we were right. Sometimes history is to be celebrated; other times, it is to be mourned. Always, it must be reckoned with. 2026 was not simply a blue wave; it was a blue tsunami. It was an ass kicking. It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation. What happened, and why? What are the consequences, and where on earth do we go from here? When all the votes were counted, the problem wasn’t turnout. Instead, our voters, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, showed up and voted, and rejected our candidates, voting Democrat instead. We’ve lost the House. We’ve lost the Senate. When all is said and done, we will have lost eight to 10 Senate seats. We lost in historically red states, like South Carolina and North Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. We lost in purple states, like Michigan, and New Hampshire, and Georgia. And we just barely won by just a single point in bright red states like Florida and Louisiana, and then there’s Texas. Nowhere are the consequences of this election greater than Texas. In the Lone Star State, we lost every single statewide election. For weeks, I had been publicly warning on this podcast that we were in very real danger of losing everything in Texas. Far too few believed that was possible. I am very, very sorry that it came to pass. Texas has not had a Democrat governor since 1994. We haven’t had a Democrat senator since 1993. Now we’ll have both. Why were the results so overwhelming? Pundits and analysts will break down the results for weeks or months or even years to come, but several things are already evident today. Years ago, the very best political advice I ever got was from Heidi. She said, “It’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about their kids, their families, their hopes, their dreams, their futures.” Too many politicians forget that. Take the state of Kansas, for example, a state that has not elected a Democrat senator since 1932. It just did. Here’s what exit polling showed were the top issues in Kansas. Number one, cost of living, energy, and groceries. That was listed as number one by 30.6 percent of voters. Corruption. Number two, 18.5%. The cost of the Iran war, 10.1%. The candidates are terrible, 7.9%. The Canada trade war, 7.6%. The GOP didn’t do enough to support Trump, 6.6%. Republicans didn’t pass the Save America Act, 5.6%. Trump’s focus on monuments, 5.5%, and data centers and AI, 3.8%. The top issue, cost of living, is very real. Too many in politics dismissed it. They didn’t understand. They pointed to the macro numbers showing the stock markets soaring, median income at record highs, and poverty at record lows. Those data are true, but they don’t tell all of the story. Here are some stats that are a lot more real and personal. Spam, Hormel’s processed meat substitute, broke record sales, selling 113 million cans last year. That is nearly as much spam as was sold during the entirety of World War II. 29 percent of Americans have used buy now, pay later for groceries this year. That’s double the share just two years ago. In August, banks repossessed 42% more homes than they did last year. In 2024, car repossessions topped 2.3 million, above the 2009 peak in the middle of the Great Financial Crisis. In 2025, 6% of 401k holders took hardship withdrawals, paying penalties. That is a record, and triple the norm. And here’s one that’s really stunning. Americans made more than 75 million paid plasma donations in 2026. That’s another record. That means 200,000 Americans every single day, with a needle in their arm, just to pay for groceries. That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care. Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high. Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive, and over. It needs to end, and we should never, under any circumstances, give the Ayatollah billions of dollars. There’s a very real economic disconnect. Our K-shaped economy is a yawning divide. Last year, we saw the world’s very first trillionaire, a modern-day Thomas Edison, at the very same time that millions were struggling to feed their families. Data centers being constructed were turning billionaires into centibillionaires, while simultaneously the average American’s electricity bill went up 30% in the last five years. Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain. So, what do we do now? We need to listen and respond. We need to champion economic policies that make a real difference in working people’s lives, and we need to deal with the consequences. Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter. But Texas, today at least, is blue. As we sit here today, I am the only statewide elected Republican who remains in Texas. That’s not something I ever thought I would say. We can be certain that the Democrats in Austin and in Washington will overshoot. In Texas, they will try to raise taxes dramatically. They may even try to adopt a state income tax, or even a California wealth tax. They will try to shut down the energy industry, destroying jobs across our state. They will embrace the radical transgender agenda. They will persecute those they perceive to be enemies, especially Elon Musk. And in Washington, they will attack Trump every single day, constantly. Impeachment hearings, subpoenas, his family, cabinet members, business leaders, open persecution, and nonstop retaliation. Make no mistake. Nationally, the radicals are in charge. The communists and the Islamists who have taken over the Democrat Party have now taken over the United States Congress. They will be unleashed. Sadly, that means many Americans will be hurt. Texans will be hurt. Their assault on business will make Texas a much less attractive place to start or grow a small business. Texas will become more like California if they succeed in halting all new investment into AI. The economic results will be dramatic. Over $700 billion in new projects are scheduled to start in the next year. If the Democrats shut them all down, our country will very likely go into a recession. That will suit the Democrats just fine. They’ll just blame it all on Donald Trump. In the next two years, we need to do two things. One, fight the madness. I will work with Democrats when they’re willing to be reasonable. Last night, I called James Talarico. I congratulated him on his very impressive victory. It was a pleasant conversation, and I told him that I looked forward to working with him to try to benefit Texas. So, if there are things like flood relief for the Hill Country, or trying to get the space academy to Texas, he and I will work together. But if the newly elected radicals push policies that hurt Texas, raising taxes, destroying jobs, opening the border, releasing violent criminals, threatening our children, undermining our constitutional rights, I will fight with all of my strength to defend Texas and to defend the Constitution. And number two, we need to rebuild, getting behind policies that directly benefit the constituents we lost. There’s a complicated story, no doubt, of what happened on Election Day, but as I see it, the key constituencies we lost were blue-collar voters, what had rightly become the core base of our party, Evangelical Christians, who didn’t show up with the same numbers and fervor as prior elections, farmers and ranchers. Tragically, we alienated rural America. Young people, who excitedly had voted Republican in 2024, and who shifted hard blue this cycle. And of course, Hispanics. For Hispanics, there’s a strong overlap with young people and blue-collar workers. In 2024, just two years ago, I was proud to carry Hispanics statewide in Texas by six points, and we swung the Rio Grande Valley red for the first time in a century. It can be done, but in this election, those Hispanic voters overwhelmingly went back Democrat. We have got to turn that around. And for young people, we need to be the party of the future. We need to champion policies that expand their future. Our two single biggest legislative accomplishments of the past two years, Trump Accounts and the school choice tax credit, which will unleash tens of billions of dollars in new scholarships for kids, are generationally powerful. I was proud to author both of those transformational policies, and yet too few candidates all across the country ran on that record. Too few voters were even aware of what we’d accomplished for their kids and their future. But we need to build. We need to expand to continue creating a new investor class for hundreds of millions of Americans, help everyone, every American, become an owner, to have real skin in the game, to create new generations of capitalists ready to reject socialism. People voted as they did because they were angry. Ironically, the Democrats that they elected are going to advance policies that will make affordability worse. The Democrats want gas prices higher. They want to ban gasoline engines altogether. Their extreme environmental mandates will drive up food prices and the prices of everything else. But hear me now: we will bring Texas back. I am filled with hope and optimism. Texas will be red again. We have not suddenly become a bunch of tofu-eating, gun-banning, tutu-wearing pinko commie liberals. That ain’t us. Texas is still Texas. We will rebuild as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives. The way we built the Texas economic miracle in the first place, and we will build and rebuild America as well. When the zealots overreach, and they will, we will stand ready to lead in the direction of freedom, of prosperity, of safety, and security, and common sense. We will return to a new dawn of freedom in America. It is dark right now, but it is always darkest before the dawn, and morning is coming. That is my fervent prayer, and that is my commitment to you.

I’ve known @jamescrabtree for many years & have always been an avid follower of his writing. But this latest piece of his really caught my attention. It’s a fascinating & at times startling account of the contradictions within China’s economy. James describes being “blown away by the power of its tech ecosystem” during a visit to Shenzhen. But he also describes an economy in which: “Investment is falling, demand is weak, property is in free fall, and private business has stopped spending.” And his description of the extraordinary intensity of competition in China’s EV industry is quite an eye-opener: “The EV market is a well-known bloodbath: well over a hundred brands are locked in relentless price wars, margins are razor-thin, and almost nobody besides a handful of sector leaders is making money.” Of course, that very intensity of competition has helped create some formidable global players. But the larger picture James paints is of an increasingly K-shaped economy, where remarkable technological progress coexists with deep economic stresses. There’s a German word, Schadenfreude, which means taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. That’s certainly not the sentiment with which I read this piece. Nor would I take any pleasure in a potential downturn in the Chinese economy. But it did make me reflect on how we sometimes seem to view the achievements of other nations through a magnifying glass, & our own through a microscope trained on every flaw. There’s much to admire & learn from China. And much that we in India still need to improve. However, there’s enormous value in looking at every economy, including our own, with the same critical eye. Neither excessive admiration nor excessive criticism should get in the way of deeper understanding…

As an Iranian who has been closely following US politics from the outside over the past two years, let me tell you what was the reason behind the midterm election results in my opinion. Many were blaming the Iran war. The war in Iran was essentially a proxy war whose battlefield happened to be in Iran, but behind the scenes, a complex network of global powers was involved. China, Russia, Arab nations, the Democrats, and most importantly, the UK and European liberals were the lifelines and supporters of this regime, they had no intention of ever letting the Islamic regime in Iran go. The Islamic regime functioned as their tool, their financial cash cow, and their asset in the region, to entangle the US in the region and weaken it. Trump confronted and stood against this entire network. He knew the regime was holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage, but he had the courage to step up, take the risk, and push forward. In response, they had no tools left except the narrative war. A big sophisticated network started warmongering rhetoric and propaganda. Beyond the mainstream media, they even recruited right-wing podcasters like @TuckerCarlson , who suddenly flipped their positions and began spreading false narratives. One of their primary tactics was stoking antisemitism and exploiting societal sensitivities, repeating lies until they were accepted as absolute fact. They kept claiming this was Israel’s war, which it simply wasn’t. I grew up in Iran and was forced to chant "Death to America" every morning at school, but I never once said "Death to Israel." This regime was obsessed with US, you are just so lucky you got Israeli intelligence in keeping you updated on the threat. Without Israel, you may had learned about it after a nuclear 9/11. This was America’s war, a fight against a system that was being weaponized to undermine the United States. As for the necessity of this conflict, Trump had known for years (dating back to his first term) what needed to be done with this regime. Why this timing? Because the people of Iran rose up in January 2026. If you had paid attention, the military buildup started immediately afterward because any meaningful action had to tap into the energy and courage of the Iranian people. No one in the media tells you that the Islamic regime massacred 75,000 people in Iran, and suddenly that horrific atrocity became a non-issue, completely brushed aside by those who are obsessed with Gaza. The fearmongers constantly tried to claim that this is just another "forever war," when in reality, Trump was actively preventing a repeat of the Iraq and Afghanistan disasters. What happened back then was a sudden, uncalculated collapse with no plan for the aftermath, plunging those countries into chaos and trapping America in a quagmire. But this time, Trump was handling it in a very controlled manner, applying limited, gradual pressure to steadily weaken the regime so the people could take their country back themselves, without needing any American boots on the ground. They knew full well that there were no boots on the ground in Iran and that their claims were baseless, yet they intentionally made mountains out of molehills to distort public opinion and hence bail out the regime. But it changes nothing for @realDonaldTrump , he finishes what he starts, and this will become his lasting legacy. Sadly, by making these choices, Americans have deprived themselves of domestic progress Trump could have offered, and even worse, let the enemy within inside the Senate and the House. I truly hope this serves as a wake-up call so that by 2028, these lies won’t work on you anymore.

This @sunandavashisht piece is straight from the heart. "For Indian-Americans, this is perhaps the first time that their political choices have produced such deep anxiety about their place in the country. Those who moved away from the Democratic Party and supported Trump in the hope of a rational debate on immigration now find themselves disappointed and disillusioned. They did not vote for a politics that would make their own legal immigration journeys suspect. The 2026 midterms, therefore, are more than a referendum on Trump's policies. They are also a moment of political reckoning for Indian-Americans. The community is increasingly wary of strengthening Maga further, but it is hardly finding an easy alternative. Traditionally fiscally conservative, committed to meritocracy, and supportive of firm action against illegal immigration, many Indian-Americans no longer see the Democratic Party as their natural political home either. The party's increasingly progressive establishment, and what they perceive as its flirtation with ideological extremes, has created its own discomfort. Indian-Americans find themselves searching for a political centre in a country where both parties appear to be moving further towards their respective extremes. Read: firstpost.com/opinion/from-m…

Let me tell you another fun fact. Muslims love to claim they invented algebra, revolutionized medicine, and made all the major contributions to science. What they leave out is that the people who actually did the work were Persians. -Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician and astronomer who developed systematic ways to solve cubic equations and helped create one of the most accurate solar calendars of its time. -Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was a Persian physician whose Canon of Medicine shaped medical teaching across Europe and the Middle East for centuries. -Al-Khwarizmi was a Persian mathematician known as the father of algebra; the word “algorithm” comes from his name, and he helped spread the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, including zero. These were the same people Muslim invaders forced to convert, mocked as “Majoosi” for being Persian, tried to push into speaking Arabic, and whose libraries and cities they burned. The contributions came from Persian minds, not from Islam. Islam’s historical pattern is simpler: invade, slaughter, and destroy.