Being an American comes with a basic expectation that the U.S. is supposed to be the greatest country on earth. This mentality is ingrained in our minds as a practical benchmark for measuring our standard of living. As a product of this, we constantly ask ourselves: Am I living a life that is noticeably different from any other country? If the answer is no, we are required to spark debate and action on the issues preventing this from being true. This means that citizens should not be lectured into accepting expensive groceries, high gas prices, unaffordable housing, and a dollar that buys less now than it did five years ago as some kind of character-building exercise. But that is exactly what some are asking of young Americans. When the cost of ordinary life rises, and purchasing power falls, the correct American response is not stoic acceptance. We actually have no moral obligation to accept less than the absolute best economic conditions from our government. Treating economic pain as a rite of passage or complaining about it as a moral failing is a political error. Republicans who adopt that posture are repeating the exact mistake Democrats made under Biden, and they will pay for it with younger voters. Between 2021 and 2026, the cumulative rise in consumer prices has left the dollar weaker in everyday transactions. Just because Americans have seen inflation stall in the last couple of months does nothing to change the reality that prices are still nowhere near pre-Covid levels. Food-at-home, energy, shelter, and transportation costs have all moved higher in ways that demoralize young Americans just starting out in life. Those entering the workforce or trying to form households face rents and home prices that consume a larger share of income than the same life stage required a generation earlier. Telling them that this is simply the way things are, or that complaining about it reveals a lack of grit, does not influence anyone. It only signals that everyone in charge has decided the problem is their attitude rather than the conditions themselves. Continuing to hold the position that young Americans are struggling because they “just don’t have what it takes to succeed” is only going to radicalize them against traditionalism and into the hands of the Mamdanis of the world. If Republicans are serious about their new crusade against socialism and communism, then they need a better answer to the cost of living issue than mocking those who are bringing attention to the very real issue. Read more from @MaryRooke_ below ⬇️

Employers say losing access to 200,000 Haitian workers will force them to raise pay, recruit Americans and rethink how they operate. They apparently consider that a crisis. Read more from @ambermarieduke below ⬇️

For the final question of Wednesday’s White House press briefing, I asked Karoline Leavitt if the president’s patience with Thune was running thin. She didn’t hold back: “The president spoke about this directly yesterday. His patience is running out. He wants to see as much of the SAVE America Act passed as possible by the August recess. He knows that’s what the American people want to see passed. He was just traveling on the road yesterday, spoke about this, and there was very loud applause from the people in the audience, the everyday Americans, because voter ID is common sense. They want proof of citizenship in our elections, and the president feels very strongly about that,” Leavitt said. “And I would just add, the American people elected Republicans overwhelmingly to lead not just this White House but also the House and the Senate. The House did its job. The Senate needs to do its job too.” And with that, she ended the briefing. Read more from @reaganreese_ below 👇

OPINION: Anybody with even passing interest in university scholarship kind of already knows the social sciences are basically made up. In some cases, literally, as in they invented datasets in their studies and then published them as if they were real. The “Grievance Studies Affair” is a perfect (and deliciously subversive) recent example of just how fugazi the social sciences are. In it, Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose set out to prove the social sciences “lacked rigor” — or more directly, were totally made up — by inventing what they believed to be clearly absurd social science research and attempting to get it published. They did end up getting 7 papers accepted in academic journals, the most infamous of which cast “urban dog parks” as “rape-condoning spaces” and petri dishes for “canine rape culture.” A new study that actually does have rigor essentially proved the thesis of 2019’s Grievance Studies experiment. Published in Nature April 1, the Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) project trying to replicate 164 studies found that a stunning 49% of the studies they reviewed could not be replicated. And they even broke it down by field. Econ/Polisci scored the highest at around 60%, then sociology cratered at around 25%. The most shocking of all: Social sciences research in the education field notched a big fat zero. Yes, zero percent of the scholarship SCORE sampled on education was replicable. This makes total sense if you’ve ever read DOCTOR Jill Biden’s dissertation, which I have, and I will never get that approximately 40 minutes of my life back. Between the summers of 2021-2022, American taxpayers spent about $39 billion on graduate-level student loans. Some of that doubtless went to EdDs like DOCTOR Jill. You think her doctorate would make her more capable? Probably not. In a more sane world, those billions would go to ICE or a wall or even just everyone gets one free hot dog at the ball game. Anything but fake credentials and fake studies. Read more from @GPIngersoll below ⬇️