TUESDAY: Bernie Moreno's a red state senator!

TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2026

He agrees with Elizabeth Warren: The madness of the current rulers keeps us focused on topics like this:    

Karoline Leavitt Returns to Blast ‘Deranged’ Algae Protesters at Reflecting Pool   

For the full report, just click here. "Only the Democrats could hate beautifying our nation’s capital," the press sec thoughtfully said upon her return from maternity leave.

Karoline Leavitt is back at her post—and childbirth hasn't tamed her! That said, the distractions never cease at this point. That would include the current tussle concerning algae and its discontents.   

(If you stand it on its end, the Reflecting Pool would be taller than major skyscrapers, the president has thoughtfully said on several occasions. On this campus, one youthful analyst quickly retorted: If you stand Interstate 95 on its end, it would reach even higher than that!)

Algae growth is in the news. Topics like the one discussed below almost never are at this point. Guest essay headline included:   

Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren: Our Plan to Save Social Security

One of us is a Republican from Ohio who built a business that generated hundreds of jobs. The other is a Democrat from Massachusetts who built a career protecting consumers from financial tricks and traps.

We don’t agree on everything, but here’s one thing we do agree on: Congress must act now to save Social Security for generations of Americans to come.

Social Security is a core component of our nation’s promise—a covenant between the federal government and Americans who pay into it throughout their working years so they can retire with dignity.

That promise is at risk of unraveling. For years, seniors in Ohio and Massachusetts have told us how concerned they are about the future of Social Security. A new report from the trustees who oversee the Social Security Trust Funds shows they are right to worry: Unless Congress acts, the fund from which most Social Security beneficiaries are paid will be significantly depleted by late 2032. After that, Social Security benefits could be cut by more than 20 percent.

That promise of Social Security is at risk of unraveling? Within living memory, claims like that were routinely dismissed, often correctly so, as a scare tactic from some on the right, or were scorned as a bit of hyperbole from centrist budget hawks.   

Within living memory, that's how it was! Today, along comes this guest essay—and a proposal—from Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), but also from Elizabeth Warren.

(We pause to let Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld issue their extremely tired Pocahontas jokes.)   

We may return to their proposal at a later date. It arrives in the New York Times two weeks after this guest essay by Jason Furman, which we cited when it appeared:

I Worked in the White House. We Never Imagined This Problem Would Get This Bad.  

The first major public policy issue I worked on in the White House, almost 30 years ago, was President Bill Clinton’s call to “save Social Security first.” Though the fund wasn’t projected to run dry for another three decades, the country seemed gripped by the issue. A few years later, George W. Bush felt strongly enough about the looming crisis that he spent much of his political capital pushing a strategy to resolve it.

This week the Social Security trustees announced that the trust fund for retirees and survivors will be exhausted in just six years. That’s six years before tens of millions of Americans could see their benefits cut by 22 percent. The crisis is closer than anyone in the Clinton or Bush years ever imagined we might let it get...

Furman was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama. We never thought it would get this bad, the headline on his guest essay said.   

How do Furman's representations fit with the claims and suggestions of Moreno and Warren? How do his representations fit with their proposal?

That's a conversation you're unlikely to see! Inept as such discussions often were, there was a time, within living memory, when budget discussions were commonly spotted, even in major newspapers. Given the madness of the age, such discussions are near extinction and such sightings have become very rare.   

Also this:   

We continue to peruse the (improved) results among 9-year-old students from last year's NAEP testing. Those results came from the Long-Term Trend version of the NAEP, not from the so-called "Main NAEP."

There are various ways to present those new data, depending on where you decide to start your comparison. Having said that, we'll also say this:

Below, you see the start of the news report in the New York Times about those new test scores. In our initial mention of those new scores, we said you'd see no further discussion of this matter, and our pledge to you was correct:

Younger Students’ Test Scores Bounce Back After the Pandemic

After years of dire test scores coming out of the pandemic, new national test results released on Wednesday offered a glimmer of hope—at least for younger students.

The nation’s 9-year-olds, who were in preschool when the pandemic hit, have made a significant recovery in reading since 2022, and are now caught up to where 9-year-olds were immediately before the pandemic, according to a key federal exam. They are getting closer to being caught up in math.

The Times report continued from there. In the near future, we'll show you several ways to think about these new test scores. In the face of the fight against the killer algae, the discussion will end right there!

Meanwhile, two solons have agreed on a cure. One is a D and one is an R. Who ever heard of that?