Author’s Note: For years I’ve fought for staunch conservatives to lead my state’s GOP. This has been futile and I’ve come to realize that RINOs in office can do more good than conservatives on the sidelines watching Democrats make policy. I’ve concluded that the path to getting conservatives in office begins with helping “palatable” Republicans defeat Democrats first. We’ll focus on getting America First patriots into office here when circumstances allow it. In the meantime, I’m forced to choose the lesser of two evils.
In the Golden State, where Hollywood glamour meets Silicon Valley innovation, the political landscape often feels like a battleground between extremes. But amid the noise, a quieter truth emerges: moderate California Republicans are increasingly aligning with the everyday concerns of ordinary Californians, while many Democrat politicians veer toward radical policies that alienate the very people they claim to represent. This isn’t about party loyalty—it’s about practicality, common sense, and putting people over ideology.
California faces real challenges: skyrocketing housing costs, rising crime rates, failing public schools, and an economy strained by overregulation. Moderate Republicans, often dismissed as “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only) by conservatives in Middle America, are stepping up with solutions that resonate with the state’s diverse population. Their stances may not align perfectly with staunch conservative principles, but they’re a far cry from the leftist insanity coming from Sacramento today.
Take housing, for example. The state’s homelessness crisis has ballooned under decades of Democrat dominance, with tent cities becoming a fixture in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Moderate Republicans like Assemblyman James Gallagher advocate for streamlining building permits and reducing burdensome environmental reviews to increase affordable housing supply—policies that directly address the needs of working families squeezed out of the market.
Contrast that with radical Democrats, who push for measures like rent control expansions and “housing as a human right” mandates that sound noble to bleeding heart liberals but often exacerbate shortages by discouraging new development. Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration has poured billions into homelessness programs, yet the problem persists, with critics pointing to a lack of accountability and an overemphasis on social services without enforcement of anti-camping laws. It’s a classic case of corruption clothed in “good intentions” that pave the road to inefficiency, leaving everyday Californians—teachers, nurses, and small business owners—frustrated and underserved.
On public safety, the divide is even starker. After the George Floyd protests, radical elements within the Democrat party championed “defund the police” movements, leading to budget cuts in major cities and softer approaches to crime, such as Proposition 47, which reclassified certain felonies as misdemeanors. The result? A surge in shoplifting, car thefts, and smash-and-grab robberies that have made neighborhoods feel unsafe.
Education is another arena where moderate Republicans shine. California’s public schools rank near the bottom nationally in math and reading proficiency, despite high per-pupil spending. Radical Democrats have prioritized controversial curricula, including expansive gender identity education and ethnic studies mandates that some parents view as divisive. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans like State Senator Brian Dahle support school choice initiatives, voucher programs, and charter school expansions to empower parents and improve outcomes. This approach puts power back in the hands of families, not bureaucrats in Sacramento.
Economically, the story repeats. California’s high taxes and regulatory maze have driven businesses and residents to flee to states like Texas and Florida. Radical Democrats double down on green energy mandates and wealth taxes that burden the middle class, while moderate Republicans propose tax relief for small businesses and incentives for job creation in underserved areas. It’s no coincidence that in recent polls, a growing number of independents and even some Democrats express support for these pragmatic ideas.
Of course, not all Democrats in California are radicals, and not all Republicans are moderate. But in a state where Democrats hold supermajorities in the legislature, the radical wing always sets the agenda, leading to policies like high-speed rail boondoggles that cost billions with little to show. Moderate Republicans, though outnumbered, offer a counterbalance that’s closer to the pulse of the people—focusing on fiscal responsibility, personal freedom, and opportunity for all.
As California heads into future elections, voters should look beyond labels. Moderate Republicans aren’t trying to turn back the clock; they’re fighting for a future where policies are palatable to centrist and left-leaning Californians, not just the ideologically pure. In a state as dynamic as ours, that’s the kind of leadership we need to thrive. It’s time to recognize that true progress comes from the center, not the fringes.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
