Aaron MacLean invited the Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran to appear on the current edition of his School of War podcast. Doran seeks to explain where we are now and why. Doran’s analysis is the most acute I have read or heard. I thought some readers might find it of interest.

Aaron hismelf is now the national security analyst for CBS News and a Free Press columnist. Among other things, Aaron formerly worked on Capitol Hill as senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton. He served on active duty as a U.S. Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009–2010. Following his time in the operating forces, he was assigned to the faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was the 2013 recipient of the Apgar Award for Excellence in Teaching.

In that sense it resembles the proposed billionaire tax that has made its way onto the California ballot this November. We have been following the proposed tax and its federal counterpart in several posts on Power Line (with more to come).

California billionaires have already paid exorbitant taxes on their wealth as they earned it. Because it would be retroactive to January 1 if adopted in November — but see the Tax Foundation’s “Mid-Year Movers and the Califorania Wealth Tax” for possible wrinkles — the flight of the California billionaires has already begun.

Today the California Post editorial board addresses the flight of Califorania billionaires to avoid the new tax:

California’s proposed “billionaire tax” will be collected by the Franchise Tax Board if it passes in November. But it should really be run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, because it looks like a hunting license — targeting the billionaires who have left the state.

The California Post reported Wednesday that the state intends to go after wealthy taxpayers who left the state to avoid the possibility of having to give up 5% of their wealth.

Three wealthy individuals in particular are thought to be in the state’s crosshairs: White House adviser David Sacks, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

All are great innovators. All three left California, as they stand to lose potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet all could face deep audits by the state to determine whether they can somehow be declared California residents.

You can be sure that the state taxman will find any excuse to declare these individuals to be California residents. Cash-hungry California is already seen as one of the most aggressive states when it comes to residency.

As the Eagles sang: “You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave.” Not when it’s the Hotel California.

We should be making it easier for wealthy people to stay in California — not because they are forced to do so, but because they want to do so.

Their wealth would be far more productive if it were invested to grow California’s economy than if it simply passed through the fingers of government bureaucrats.

You can be sure that the state taxman will find any excuse to declare these individuals to be California residents. Cash-hungry California is already seen as one of the most aggressive states when it comes to residency.

Think of all the businesses that these wealthy investors could start; think of all the jobs they could create.

Instead, California has chased them away. And now California wants their money, so it can pay for public health care whose costs are out of control.

The citation of “Hotel California” has become all but obligatory in commentary on the tax. However, what happens in California doesn’t stay in California. As the editorial notes: “If Gavin Newsom has his way, it will not matter what state California’s billionaires flee to, because the wealth tax would apply throughout the country.”

Businesses in top industries, from health care to renewable energy and manufacturing, understand the benefits of investing and growing in Minnesota.

Proud be ranked a top 5 state for business.https://t.co/xGCcdrmIV3

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) July 11, 2026

A top five state for business? That is an utter joke. Minnesota taxes small businesses more heavily than any other state, and businesses are fleeing the state as fast as they can. That is why job creation in Minnesota is less than one-third the national average.

CNBC also ranked the states as “best states to live in.” In CNBC’s view, the best states to live in are all blue, and the worst are all red–including the states to which people are flocking. John Phelan explains:

This ranking is completely bogus. As I noted last week, these rankings of “Top States for Business” are not correlated in any meaningful way with what businesses actually do, such as start themselves or hire people.

CNBC strips out one component of its “Top States for Business” ranking, “Quality of Life,” and bills it as a ranking of “best states to live in.” Let us remind ourselves of what this measures:

As more companies mandate that their employees return to the office, they are also looking for locations that offer the best quality of life. We rate the states on livability factors like per capita crime rates, environmental quality, and healthcare. With studies showing that childcare is one of the main obstacles to employees entering or re-entering the workforce, we consider the availability and affordability of qualified facilities. We look at worker protections, including livable wage policies, paid leave, and rights to organize. We look at inclusiveness in state laws, including protections against discrimination of all kinds, as well as voting rights and secure election systems. And with surveys showing a sizeable percentage of younger workers would not live in a state that bans abortion, we factor reproductive rights in this category as well.

It is, then, a ranking that equates more “liberal” or “progressive” policies with a higher “Quality of Life.”

Completely absurd. Here is the kicker: John did the math, and it turns out that being one of the “best states to live in,” per CNBC, is negatively correlated with people moving there:

We might expect a ranking of state’s “Quality of Life” to be somewhat correlated with where people choose to live. Once again, however, CNBC’s ranking fails this basic test.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between CNBC’s “Quality of Life” rankings for 2026 and a state’s rate of domestic in or out-migration in 2024-2025 per 1,000 of the 2024 population taken from the Census Bureau. Not only is the relationship negative – in that the lower your CNBC “Quality of Life” ranking the higher is your rate of domestic in-migration – but the relationship is statistically significant.

At this point, you really can only laugh. CNBC’s very “worst states to live in,” the bottom of the barrel in their rankings, are Texas and Tennessee–two states to which Americans are moving in droves. Which means that the rankings are utter BS.

But we knew that already. I hazard the guess that not a single American will be fooled into staying in a blue state, or refraining from moving to a red state, by CNBC’s absurd rankings.

Today the House of Representatives voted on an amendment offered by outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie to cut off aid to Israel. The amendment was defeated easily:

The US House of Representatives defeats an amendment to cut off aid to Israel, despite nearly half of Democrats supporting it, reflecting the growing rupture between the party and Israel.

The House votes 314 to 104 to defeat the measure, offered as an amendment to a State Department spending bill by outgoing Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Besides Massie, the only Republican to back the measure, 103 Democrats vote in favor, a sharp departure from previous years in which bills supporting Israel passed almost unanimously.

It is a sign of the times. Still, there were fewer votes for Massie’s measure than many had predicted. The party’s leadership split on the amendment:

The issue has also divided party leaders. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader, said on Tuesday he would oppose Massie’s amendment, saying it was “too broad.”

Nicely hedged.

But on Wednesday,the No. 2 House Democrat, Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, said she would support it. “We should not provide a blank check for military aid to any country that does not comply with US law, interests, and values,” she said in a statement.

My interpretation is that pretty much all the Democrats in Congress would love to cut off aid to Israel, but the time is not yet right. While anti-Semitic elements dominate among Democratic activists, most Americans continue to support the U.S.-Israeli alliance.

A gang of asylum seekers who raped a woman on Brighton beach and filmed the “predatory and callous” attack have been jailed for up to 21 years each.

Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, from Iran, and Ibrahim Alshafe, an Egyptian, attacked the woman, who was “incapacitated” and “staggering in the street”, in the early hours of October 4 last year.
The victim, who cannot be identified, was “led into the darkness to be used as a sexual plaything”, the jury at Hove crown court was told.

Moments later the pair were joined by Karin Al-Danasurt, 21, also from Egypt, who filmed the attack on his phone. He laughed and repeatedly called the woman: “Dirty bitch, dirty bitch.”

The court noted that the rapists showed no remorse, presumably because their religion told them that what they did was A-OK.

The rapists knew each other and at the time of the attack were living at an asylum hotel in Lower Beeding, near Horsham in West Sussex, the court was told.

Ahmadi and Alshafe met on a small boat from France, arriving in the UK in June 2025. Alshafe and Al-Danasurt, who reached the UK in October 2024, were room-mates at the hotel.

So they were being supported at taxpayer expense. Why?

[Alex Norris, the border security and asylum minister, said] “I want to be absolutely clear — there is no place for foreign criminals in the UK. Sex offenders will be denied refugee protection, and we will do everything in our power to get them out of the country.”

But why were they in the country in the first place? Why did England want them? Also, there is this:

Following his conviction it was reported that Al-Danasurt had arrived in the UK after allegedly being convicted of murder in Egypt. The court was told this had still not been independently verified or confirmed.

Most European countries have accepted a quota of “refugee seekers” out of a misguided sense of duty, or guilt. A few, like Poland, have flatly refused. No one actually thinks the “refugee seekers” provide a net benefit to the host country, and in the U.K., urban politicians have been saying that rural areas–the Cotswolds, for example–should be made to take their “fair share” of asylum seekers. Again, no one thinks the presence of these people is desirable.

Meanwhile, all across Western Europe those who are trying to push back against mass third-world immigration, on behalf of the majority, are being censored, suppressed and in some cases barred from running for office.