Commentary Culture Investigations

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Ivan’s Infinite ImaginationBy Maureen SteeleThere was a time when parents didn’t have 10,000 choices about what their children watched. A handful of networks, studios, and executives decided what America’s children would see.

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Pixabay // Pixabay Content LicenseBy Monty DonohewCan Iran’s mullah dictatorship govern the country while losing the war?

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ChatGPT for American ThinkerBy Janet LevyA movement that aligns with the goals of Agenda 21 and the globalists.

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PicrylBy J.B. ShurkLeftism is a deadly disease.

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American Thinker AIBy Steve McCannThe left told them that only anger against perceived injustices creates meaning and happiness, and they’ll destroy everything in their paths to achieve those goals.

Photo Credit:Image: Ivan Radic via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

FlickrBy John F. GaskiWhy do young people love communism so much nowadays?

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American Thinker AIBy Vince CoynerSome laughed, thinking it impossible to destroy the American economic juggernaut, but decades later, we’re $40 trillion in debt.

When Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D., N.M.) served as a Las Cruces city councilor, he backed a measure to send up to $50,000 in COVID relief money to his former employer while filing financial disclosures stating he held stock options in the company, records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. Vasquez now says they “had no value.”
On Feb. 16, 2021, Vasquez voted for a $977,000 COVID relief package that redirected up to $50,000 from hotel lodging for first responders to a program providing remote monitoring equipment for patients recovering from COVID-19 after leaving a hospital. That equipment was supplied by Electronic Caregiver, which has also been known as LifeSupport Medical and SameDay Security. Vasquez worked as the company’s executive vice president of public relations, according to his LinkedIn profile. Vasquez was also repeatedly named as a representative of the company between 2011 and 2013.

Vasquez disclosed holding stock options in Electronic Caregiver at the same time he approved the company’s COVID relief funds. His annual financial disclosure listed the company under a section asking councilors to name “all businesses in which you have any financial interest, including stock or any other equity interest” every year between 2017 and 2021.

Vasquez and the company now say he didn’t actually hold the stock options. In a letter from its chief operations officer, Electronic Caregiver said Vasquez “was granted 50,000 employee stock options in 2012,” but the “options were subject to a minimum four years of tenure requirement for vesting.” Vasquez left the company after two years and did not “directly purchase” the shares, meaning “the options did not vest and were forfeited in accordance with the plan’s guidelines.” A spokeswoman for Vasquez said the options “had no value for at least six years at the time of the city council vote in question.”

The spokeswoman suggested that Vasquez knew he no longer held the options and disclosed them anyway “in the spirit of maximum transparency.” The disclosures, however, ask councilors like Vasquez to list businesses in which they hold active financial interest, and none of Vasquez’s disclosures noted that the options had expired or held no value. After the Free Beacon reached out for comment, Vasquez updated his disclosure forms, which campaign spokeswoman Patricia Socarras Santiago said was “to make it abundantly clear he had no financial stake in any business while holding office.” She did not provide evidence that Vasquez was aware the options had expired.

City policy stipulates that councilors cannot “use their positions for personal gain or to give unwarranted benefit or treatment to any person” and requires them to “inform their supervisors in writing of reasonably foreseen potential conflicts.” Given that Vasquez appears to have believed he held the stock options and therefore stood to gain from the grant awarded to Electronic Caregiver, he could have chosen to recuse himself from the proceedings. Las Cruces city council minutes show others recusing themselves over conflicts of interest, though Vasquez did not.
The revelation of Vasquez’s disclosures comes as the second-term congressman seeks to defend his seat against Republican challenger and Marine veteran Greg Cunningham in a district President Donald Trump won by 2 points in 2024. It is not the first time Vasquez’s employment history has landed him in hot water.
In 2004, for example, a former colleague of Vasquez’s at a Las Cruces call center accused Vasquez of calling the center, asking for “Chris,” and, when asked to elaborate, responding, “Chris, the n—er,” using a racial slur, the Free Beacon reported. A police report detailing the incident redacts the caller’s name, but a city records custodian told the Free Beacon in 2024 that the suspect identified in the report is Vasquez.
Vasquez has had other run-ins with the law. During his 2024 campaign, police in El Paso, Texas, executed an arrest warrant against him over his failure to appear in court in 2002 after being charged with driving without a license, driving without insurance, and disregarding an “official traffic control device,” the Free Beacon reported at the time. In 2007, an argument between Vasquez and his then-girlfriend led police to visit his home “in reference to a possible domestic,” according to a police report.
The post Dem Congressman Backed COVID Grant for Company in Which He Disclosed Stock Options While Serving on City Council: Gabe Vasquez Now Says the Stock ‘Had No Value’ appeared first on .

The Democratic nominee for Colorado’s Third Congressional District, Dwayne Romero, has made housing affordability a tent-pole issue for his campaign, accusing “Wall Street behemoths” of “buying up homes and driving up rents.”
Yet, for years, his real estate firm has made big money selling multimillion-dollar luxury homes in Aspen, where residential property is so expensive that even the city’s doctors and lawyers can’t afford to live. Romero also holds stakes in BlackRock, Blackstone, and Airbnb, his personal financial disclosure shows.
Romero told a Grand Junction news outlet that his top priority is “affordability” and that “prices and housing costs” is the most important issue to “all of the people in our district.” His campaign website notes, “We need to make sure the people who live in and love our district—from young people to families—can stay here. Right now, they are being priced out.”
The real estate firm Romero heads and cofounded, the Romero Group, boasts that it has sold “over 50 Million in real estate” since 2023. Its recent sales include $24.5 million and $23.8 million homes in Aspen, which sits within the third district and has the world’s most expensive residential real estate of any ski resort, according to a November 2023 study.
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Housing costs there skyrocketed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and have priced out the majority of its workforce. Last year, there were 34 sales over $20 million—nearly triple the amount sold for that price in 2024—while the median single-family home sale price was nearly $14 million, a roughly 37.4 percent increase compared with the third quarter of 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Aspen is also home to some 80 billionaires, who have “run out the millionaires,” the Colorado Sun quipped in 2018, leaving blue-collar and even middle-class families in the lurch. Less than 30 percent of its workforce live in town, and most of them bought their homes decades ago, according to an Outside magazine article describing how the ultrawealthy have replaced the ski town’s “Gonzo Soul.” The rest, including doctors and lawyers, are forced to commute up to 90 miles, the Aspen Daily News reported in 2024. Vacation housing in Aspen is also exorbitant—a studio apartment listed on Airbnb was going for $550 per night—a discounted rate—midweek in late August.
Even the cheapest residential property the Romero Group recently sold is unreachable for the typical family, going for $2.9 million in Glenwood Springs.
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The contrast between Romero’s housing affordability rhetoric and his real estate firm has not stopped national Democrats from lining up behind him. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently added Colorado’s third district to its “target list” of “districts in play,” meaning that Romero will receive strategic support from the group. The massive and rural district covers the Rockies’ western slope and most of the state’s southern border and has been held by a Republican for 15 years. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R.) won it by less than 1 percentage point in 2022 before moving across the state. The incumbent, Jeff Hurd, won by nearly 5 points in 2024.
Romero’s own Aspen home is worth between $5 million and $25 million, according to his financial disclosure form. Pitkin County assessed the four-bed, three-and-a-half-bath home at $5.7 million, but properties in Aspen often sell off-market through cash deals for far greater than their estimated value, in part due to the city’s highly competitive market.
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Romero did not return a request for comment.
Romero’s financial disclosure shows that he holds shares worth between $1,001 and $15,000 each in Blackstone and Airbnb, which have been accused of worsening housing affordability by, respectively, buying up residential real estate to rent and converting long-term housing into short-term rentals. He also owns mutual funds managed by BlackRock, which has faced similar accusations of reducing housing supply by buying up inventory. All three companies have disputed those claims.
“We need to build more housing and bring down the cost of staying here,” Romero wrote on his website. “Let’s stop Wall Street behemoths from buying up homes and driving up rents, repeal outdated red tape that hinders construction, and invest in housing construction in our rural communities.”
Romero’s firm does manage an “affordable housing community” that serves Aspen and several towns in the surrounding area—though it’s located 21 miles away from the ritzy ski city.
The post Colorado Dem Running for Congress on Housing Affordability Sells Luxury Aspen Homes for Tens of Millions appeared first on .

Five years ago, the war in Afghanistan claimed its final martyred Americans: 13 service members killed (and dozens of others wounded) in a bombing attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan as final evacuation of American troops was ongoing. None of the broadcast network evening newscasts paused to honor the fallen.There was a solemn Pentagon ceremony honoring three Marines who performed heroic actions that day, and whose awards were upgraded after an investigation. Per Fox News:Secretary of War Pete Hegseth upgraded valor awards Wednesday for three Marines who risked their lives to save others during the deadly Abbey Gate bombing, saying their original award submissions were “inappropriately” downgraded after one of the darkest days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. “For half a decade, this building allowed bureaucratic caution, or maybe politics, to stand in the way of proper recognition,” Hegseth said during a Pentagon ceremony marking exactly five years since the Aug. 26, 2021, terrorist attack.”Today, on this milestone anniversary, we declare that those days are over.”Hegseth presented upgraded Bronze Star Medals with “V” devices for valor to Gunnery Sgt. Jonathan Eby and Lance Cpl. Jordan Houston. Cpl. Michael Gretzon received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with a “V” device for valor. The article further notes that there is a trove of classified documents on the Afghanistan that was recently discovered, “stashed and hidden away in safes where they would not be found.” It is simply galling that the networks made no time for this story.Instead, ABC’s World News Tonight covered a third O’Hare tire blowout in as many days. The CBS Evening News covered the California mom arrested for smashing a school bus window and pulling her kid out, and NBC Nightly News aired bodycam video of the arrest of 49ers owner Jed York on prostitution charges. All of these on A-block.Even with the untimely passing of Dolly Parton still completely dominating the news, there was no excuse for the elitist Media Evening News looking the other way as America remembers the sacrifices made on August 26th, 2021, the horrific decisions (under a friendly administration) that culminated in the bombing of Abbey Gate.