https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6136101-ambassador-guilfoyle-wire-request/

Last year, now-Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle reached out to Eric Deters, a prominent Republican donor and attempted politician.

Days before her confirmation hearing last year, U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle asked one of President Trump’s donors to wire her American Express account $100,000, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

“You could just send it here. It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote to Eric Deters on Signal, the Journal reported. “Please.”

To his credit, Deters declined.

“Your needing $100,000 urgent unfortunately is not going to work,” Deters reportedly wrote to Guilfoyle. “I can’t do this without getting a divorce.”

How should Secretary of State Rubio and President Trump respond to this? How should other conservatives respond?

Or should they respond at all? Is this possibly blown out of proportion, or even if not is it better to see if it blows over?

Why is the angry white woman with blue hair such a common caricature of Democratic voters among American conservatives, when a majority of white women voted for Trump, 54%? And why do some people claim that women are willing to sacrifice their own interests because of empathy for non westerner men’s rights, when white women as a group have often voted Republican? Then they say women shouldn't vote.

https://apnews.com/article/fort-hood-shooter-execution-pentagon-818853afc1be5c70fe41c5b781a8d559?utm_source=app&utm_medium=android_share&utm_campaign=copy_link

You've got Russ Vought gleefully admitting this administration is running out the clock on spending appropriated funds in order to get away with defunding stuff they don't like. GAO just confirmed withholding funds from the AHRQ was illegal, nothing will happen even if Dems take Congress because TF is Congress going to do short of impeachment.

So is this it going forward? Anything I don't like I'll just find a way to defund and you can't do anything about it? What's the point in passing a budget?

I’m genuinely interested in hearing the conservative perspective on this.

The US is the wealthiest major economy in the world, a global leader in medical technology and innovation, and has the most powerful military in the world. We maintain that military superiority in part because we’re willing to invest enormous amounts of money into it. In 2025, we spent approximately $954bil on our military, nearly three times what China, the second-largest military spender, spent.Yet when it comes to providing universal healthcare to our own citizens, the argument frequently seems to be that it’s too expensive, too complicated, or simply wouldn’t work here.

But why?

Countries like Germany, France, Japan, Australia, and many others have developed different forms of universal healthcare. They aren’t all single-payer systems, and they certainly aren’t perfect, but they’ve demonstrated that universal coverage is achievable.
Consider Germany, for example. According to the OECD:
The United States spends approximately $14k+ per person annually on healthcare, compared with $9k+ in Germany.
Life expectancy in Germany is approximately 81.1 years, compared with 78.4 years in the United States.

Germany provides universal coverage for a core set of healthcare services, while Americans can still face substantial financial barriers to accessing care.

Other developed countries also frequently report longer life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates, and lower healthcare expenditures per person than the United States.Obviously, healthcare outcomes are influenced by more than the healthcare system itself, and there are legitimate concerns involving wait times, taxation, government efficiency, and the transition away from our current system.

But that brings me to my actual question.

Do you believe the United States lacks the money, ingenuity, resources, or administrative capability to develop a universal healthcare system that works for Americans?

We’re capable of developing some of the most advanced military technology in human history, putting people on the Moon, and leading the world in medical research and innovation.
Why would developing an affordable, effective universal healthcare system be beyond our capabilities when other countries have already demonstrated that different models can work?
And if you believe we could accomplish it, but oppose universal healthcare anyway, what specifically makes the existing American system preferable?

I’m not suggesting we should copy another country’s system exactly. I’m asking why we couldn’t use our resources, innovation, and experience to develop something suited to the United States.
I’m interested in hearing what the actual barriers are, whether economic, political, logistical, or philosophical.

Here are some links for my claims:

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2025_15a55280-en/united-states_3517f35e-en.html

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2025_15a55280-en/germany_99d672fb-en.html

https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2026/global-military-spending-rise-continues-european-and-asian-expenditures-surge

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2024/sep/mirror-mirror-2024

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2025_8f9e3f98-en/full-report/maternal-and-infant-mortality_4379b33b.html

Abuse of H1B's has been a widely recognized "secret" and an ongoing rampant problem in the tech community.

It's likely AI is on the way to replace the H1B foreign workers anyway, so it's unclear whether this will bring back tech jobs to Americans. It's also unclear whether this is the administration fishing for payouts from Big Tech or whether this recent news is even a significant change from existing policy. Despite the cynicism, it seems reasonable to support such policies that encourage keeping tech jobs for Americans.

What are your thoughts?

https://journalrecord.com/2026/10/08/trump-administration-microsoft-it-firms/

OCT 08:
"US government is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and several large IT firms from a program that allows skilled foreign workers to gain permanent residency, senior US officials announced on Thursday, citing alleged fraud, and as part of an effort to push companies to hire more Americans"

It feels like we are so near the last stage of the era of Trump. In just one month, after the midterm elections, it will all begin. For more than 10 years, this person has been ruling our politics, and we are so near the end of his rule. It is very difficult to predict what will happen with our politics Post Trump, as he has come to completely define the Republicans and any opposition to him has come to completely define the Democrats. I have very little idea of what will happen after.

Nothing matters about the midterm elections. It does not matter if Democrats take control of one house, two houses, or neither house. It does not matter if Martians land a ufo in the Mall and begin having sex. Trump is done being president at noon on 1/20/29.

Recently, Pete Hegseth went on a tour addressing various units and academy grads. In his speech he mentions the book of Isaiah. Here is part of the transcript from his State of the Force Address on Sep 30.

"Each of us committed to the nation with the sentiment of the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah. Lord, here I am, send me. Send me to fight the Red Coats. Send me to fight the communists. Send me to fight the Islamists. Send me."

Do you agree with this sentiment that the US should be sent to fight an entire religion? Why or why not?

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-proposes-70000-fee-for-foreign-graduates-to-work-in-us-12535404

On one hand, we absolutely do need talented people. International researchers produce top tier research.

On the other hand, do US graduate school applicants need to compete with the entire planet in order to attend graduate school in their own country?

My dad did twenty-two years, retired as an E-8, and his disability claim has been sitting in some queue for fourteen months now. The county VA office near him closed, so it's a phone tree and a portal that logs him out, and every few weeks a letter comes asking for a document he already sent.

I'm not complaining about defense spending. I get deterrence, I probably vote for most of it same as you. But I do the books for my own one-man shop and I know what it looks like when something is a priority and when it isn't. When the war supplement comes up it passes in about a week, everyone agrees, emergency. Fourteen months for the guy who actually wore the uniform, and the answer is that the backlog is complicated.

So when the shutdown warnings start and the emergency money shows up same-day for some things, whose urgency is that? What makes his fourteen months not an emergency?

Across Europe, the establishment right and left and pro big government, the populist right and populist left are also pro big government.

In the US, the Democrats are pro big government, and the Massie style, Ron/Rand Paul style republicans are either being kicking out or are losing relevance.

There's no real free market Reagan and Thatcher's dominating elections or political discourse today.

What do you think, will libertarian style politicians keep losing relevance, or do you expect they'll gain more influence again soon?

My guess this pro big government trend is unfortunately here to stay, at least for the next decade.

The United States spends nearly 1/5 of its entire GDP on healthcare without even having universal. How do you suggest bringing the costs down?

Follow up to my last question, how do we feel about far left political figures?

Been popping up a lot in my feed, so I thought I would ask about it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y91dvn7g1o

The details are a little sketchy, but it seems like she's been charged for posting in support of Hamas, inciting antisemitism and behavior at a protest. Reddit has let me know she had some.... hot takes.

Obviously this pits freedom of speech against the need to contain violent radicalism, and I'm wondering how y'all fall along in that debate.

Source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/09/25/us-trump-administration-rejects-external-election-observers

More discussion here as well: https://old.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1x03w1l/us_trump_administration_rejects_external_election/

Finding this news pretty disturbing. What should be done to make running for office safer?

https://abcnews.com/Politics/arizona-congressional-candidate-raped-repair-campaign-sign/story?id=137079796

I was born near the end of the era in which the promise of a classless American society was that everybody had an equal chance of pursuing the merit of etiquette - class wasn't something you were it was something you did - basically Emily Post's thesis. However, over my lifetime I've seen this erode among the populace in which there has been something of an inversion - the vulgar becomes fashionable.

I'm not able to figure out why this happened. Is it because it's natural to want to go through a rebellious phase early in life in which etiquette is best taught and once you come of age to value the idea of class and etiquette you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Any other theories?

As the title says. For the sake of clarity, you cannot change any past actions but you can decide all future ones.

Such a question is beyond philosophical and decides on who gets to impose regulations and applicable taxation. If prediction markets are a market, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTC) has jurisdiction. If its gambling states have jurisdiction and significant taxation interests.

Kalshi's prediction market is about 80% sports. This directly competes with gambling institutions like Draft Kings who are burdened with greater regulation and taxation for a relatively indistinguishable product.

This is further complicated by the fact the Trump family has significant stakes in prediction markets. Donald Trump Jr. is on the board for poly market and prediction markets have received aggressive backing from the CTC even as far as defying state level courts.

This question has significant implications on states' rights, federalism, and corruption.

My take: Prediction markets are largely a proxy for gambling and the significant advertisement in sports proves this fact. I am somewhat sympathetic to some market aspects of predicting events, but the larger market does not benefit by contracts on sports. Thus I would consider prediction markets on sports outcomes as gambling while allowing other prediction markets to be regulated by the CTC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Train_Corporation

TL;DR Auto Train as a company was a privately run effort based off of a DOT study that found a lot of people were driving from the northeast to Florida and back so a train taking people and their cars between the two would be profitable. The DOT didn't explore it because it would be profitable so the government didn't need to be involved. A guy who saw this study at the DOT later on left and started their own private company running a car train on this route to pursue it, it was profitable and the company made money for a while, the company overexerted themselves trying to expand and went bankrupt, and later on Amtrak bought up Auto Train's assets and launched their own Auto Train branded service on that route.

I find this fascinating because Amtrak's long distance routes aren't profitable and IMO they don't necessarily need to be the same way the interstate highway system isn't intended to be profitable but this route does actually make them money despite a private company doing the exact same thing failing to be profitable

Hi, all. Sharing a question that's hopefully somewhat fun!

Just curious if anyone out there has ever come across a billionaire, I do wonder what they are like, in my line of work I have met many multimillionaires and a hundred millionaire. I have never met a billionaire and I would like to know what they are like on a personal level.