A Georgia teacher has been accused of committing child sex crimes against six teenagers, according to multiple reports.

Maris Nichols — a 25-year-old biology teacher at Alexander High School in Douglas County — was arrested May 8.

‘The alleged behavior is unacceptable and violates the professional standards all employees are required to uphold.’

WSB-TV reported that Nichols was charged last week with multiple counts of child molestation, improper sexual contact by an employee, grooming of a minor for sexual offense, and one count of tampering with evidence.

A judge set Nichols’ bond at $74,000.

The judge ordered Nichols to remain under house arrest except for medical appointments, religious services, and legal consultations. The Times-Georgian reported that Nichols also must wear an ankle monitor, undergo a mental evaluation, avoid contact with minors not related to her, and stay away from the school.

The Times-Georgian obtained arrest warrants saying Nichols had sex with a student in a closet next to her classroom between 3:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. on April 23.

According to court documents obtained by WAGA-TV, Nichols also had sex with the same student inside a Hummer off campus in Douglasville.

Investigators added that Nichols allegedly sent nude photos and videos of herself to multiple students, including videos of herself masturbating with a sex toy during live video chats with at least two teens under 16, WAGA reported.

The arrest warrant said Nichols had sex with another student in the back seat of his truck at a golf club.

Nichols also sent explicit messages to two male students that detailed sexual acts she wanted performed on her, according to the arrest warrant.

The warrant added that a female student received videos containing nudity from the teacher, who also urged the student to watch the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movies before asking to discuss the salacious films.

The New York Post reported that Nichols instructed one of the teens to whom she sent sexual messages to delete their communications.

RELATED: Female elementary teacher, 25, turned in by husband for alleged sexual misconduct against underage student: Court docs

In a letter sent to parents that Fox News obtained, the Douglas County School System noted that it’s “deeply troubled” by the accusations.

The school system launched an internal investigation “upon learning of the alleged misconduct” and has cooperated with state and local law enforcement in their investigations.

“The alleged behavior is unacceptable and violates the professional standards all employees are required to uphold,” the letter stated, adding that it can’t provide additional information regarding the allegations.

School officials did not reveal if any disciplinary action had been taken against Nichols or if she had been terminated. But she was not listed Wednesday among the staff on the high school’s website.

During Nichols’ bond hearing earlier this month, her attorney Christy Draper said the case was an “unfortunate situation.”

“She is a solid member of this community. She’s never even had a speeding ticket before,” Draper said, according to the Times-Georgian. “This is not your typical person that you see in these kinds of situations.”

“The truth is eventually going to come out,” Draper added. “It’s going to show that this alleged victim is more the perpetrator of this situation. This is a lot more technical and a lot more complex than what meets the eye.”

However, a prosecuting attorney called the defense attorney’s allegations “egregious,” the Times-Georgian reported.

Draper gave a statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that read:

As this matter is currently under active investigation, we will not provide a detailed comment at this time. We are fully committed to getting to the bottom of these allegations and ensuring that every relevant fact is brought forward.

The arrest warrant did not specify the ages of the alleged victims but did note they all were teenagers.

Nichols was hired as a teacher at Alexander High School in May 2023.

WAGA reported that Nichols also has been a “player personnel director” for the high school football program.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to Blaze News‘ request for comment.

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​Teacher arrested, Teacher sex scandal, Child sex crimes, Georgia, Maris nichols, Crime 

Newly released Department of War documents shed light on possible aerial capabilities of UFOs.

On Friday morning, the Pentagon announced a document dump of more Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena files, revealing the findings of a current U.S. intelligence official.

‘The object then split into two and changed direction.’

The official said that in 2025, he was part of a team sent to investigate unusual noises and sightings of “orb-like” objects near a sensitive U.S. military facility.

“Our mission was to investigate loud thuds heard in the mountains on the test range, which coincided with … sightings reported over the previous several nights,” the government official wrote.

While flying at low altitude in a helicopter, the intelligence officer discovered “a large cave entrance with no visible end in sight,” but saw no safe landing spot.

Realizing they were low on fuel, the pilots took him to a prearranged rendezvous point and dropped off one unknown official before heading to a tanker for refueling. Before long, their Joint Operations Center had detected hits on radar, in the same area sightings were made on previous nights.

Using infrared goggles, ground teams soon reported seeing a UAP and described it as “super hot,” low to the ground, and moving at high speed.

“The object then split into two and changed direction,” the officer said of the ground team’s description, but this wouldn’t be the only time the unidentified object seemingly performed the unbelievable maneuver.

RELATED: Vast image ‘reminiscent of the grim reaper’ appears over Los Angeles

Luis Gutierrez/Norte Photo/Getty Images

The officer and the two pilots soon arrived and scanned the area with night-vision goggles, infrared, and the naked eye. The ground team then informed them that the foreign object had risen from the ground and moved within 10 feet of the helicopter before dropping below it and speeding off.

“The pilots observed it through NVGs and saw it split into two as a smaller object emerged before it accelerated out of sight,” the officer recalled.

The helicopter allegedly pursued the object, but was unable to match its speed. The officer was later told that several fighter jets in the area were asked to help identify the UAP.

The “close UAP encounters” allegedly lasted over an hour and took place when the helicopter was asked to search a nearby mountain.

RELATED: Why Big Tech’s biggest just signed on to build the Pentagon’s AI army

Luke Sharrett/Getty Images

The report’s summary said the incident occurred sometime in 2025 and referred to the official encountering unidentified “glowing orbs” both at close range and at a distance.

It further described the object as accelerating away in two different directions. Numerous “higher-altitude” orbs were described as the objects that came close to the helicopter.

Photos are featured along with the report, including ones that allegedly show the object after splitting in two. However, the bulk of the photos are dated as being captured in 1999.

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​Return, Ufo, Uap, Pentagon, Department of war, Tech 

Pope Leo XIII issued a papal encyclical in 1891 titled “Rerum Novarum,” which the Vatican notes “became the document inspiring Christian activity in the social sphere and the point of reference for this activity.”

In that groundbreaking document about the just ordering of society, Leo XIII applied Catholic doctrines to the modern conditions that manifested as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

Besides rejecting socialism as a means of remedying social ills and setting the stage for localism, the late pope expounded on the Church’s doctrine on work, private property, the rights of workers, the obligations of the rich, the dignity of the poor, and other timely terms and issues.

‘It can only bring about conflict more quickly and render it more impersonal.’

The current pope, Leo XIV, has set out in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” to do for his era what his predecessor did 135 years ago.

The Roman pontiff has, accordingly, scrutinized “the great trends of our time, particularly technological advances,” through the lens of the Church’s Scripture- and tradition-based social doctrine — that living “legacy of wisdom, where we find principles for thought, criteria for discernment and judgment, and concrete guidelines for action.”

While the pope covers a great deal of ground in his encyclical, five remarks stand out as especially provocative and/or memorable.

1. The two cities

At the outset, Pope Leo XIV raises the questions of where man is going and toward which goal does he wish to orient himself.

Leo XIV notes that in the era of AI, mankind is faced with a choice — not whether or not to embrace technology, which he does not regard as a force intrinsically antagonistic to humanity — but of whether to “construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

RELATED: It’s not easy being pope — Leo’s big new tech encyclical proves it

Alessandra Benedetti – Corbis/Corbis/Getty Images

The American pope suggested that the choice will inevitably dictate how the transformative technology of the age is employed, given that this technology takes on the “characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.”

Following in the footsteps of Nimrod and choosing the first option would mean giving way to an ancient temptation and pursuing “a single language, a single technology, a single direction”; building a society “on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency”; and working toward a “future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means.”

The second option would similarly mean dominating the heavens but rather patiently cultivating a “space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end” — a place “less visible and less spectacular” that is founded on the common good and has for its bedrock a firm relationship with the Almighty.

Building for the common good necessitates resisting the “Babel syndrome” that animates transhumanism and other vainglorious efforts to correct what God has created and instead “accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected,” said the pope.

2. Falling victim to achievement

Leo XIV observed that within the ascendant technocratic paradigm previously denounced by Pope Francis, there is a “tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control, and profit alone shape personal, social, and economic decisions.”

‘Speed and efficiency should never be the supreme motivating force for the irreversible decisions.’

This contagious way of looking at the world — which threatens to reduce “creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency” — has spread in concert with “the expansion of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology,” said the pope.

Pope Leo XIV warns that unless technological progress advances with corresponding ethical and social progress, “the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: ‘having more’ without ‘being more.'”

3. More dehumanization on the battlefield

Sensitive to the increasing ease of war-making, “tragically marginal” efforts to prevent conflicts, and the “perpetuation of conflict as a source of power and income,” the pope discussed the need to rein in and regulate the use of AI where the battlefield is concerned.

Leo XIV noted that moral judgments of a lethal or irreversible nature cannot be reduced to calculation and should not be entrusted to artificial systems.

RELATED: Killer drones have conquered the skies. Can we ever be safe again?

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images

Leaving the work of killing and ruination to machines neither makes war more morally acceptable nor removes the intrinsic inhumanity of conflict, said the pope; rather “it can only bring about conflict more quickly and render it more impersonal, lowering the threshold for resorting to violence, transforming defense into threat prediction and thus reducing victims to data.”

‘Decisions now seem to be driven almost exclusively by economic calculations, justified through media distortions.’

Where AI and automated systems are involved, the pope advocates for:

holding those who design, train, authorize, and employ the technology used in strikes accountable;ensuring that “speed and efficiency should never be the supreme motivating force for the irreversible decisions made in the context of war”;requiring technology that facilitates attacks to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants and factor in the impact on defenseless populations;requiring weapons systems to retrace and reconstruct their decision-making processes “so that accountability and blame are not collapsed into ‘the machine'”;keeping decisions to use lethal force under human control; andavoiding an international AI arms race.

Leo XIV notes, “While AI can enhance the defense and protection of civilians, it can also lower the threshold for the use of force, shield people from responsibility, and foster a culture in which the enemy is reduced to a statistic and the victim to ‘collateral damage.'”

4. The new colonialism

After noting that the “Church renews her firm condemnation of all forms of slavery, trafficking, and the commodification of persons,” Leo XIV discussed a novel form of colonialism incubated in the digital economy that “appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information.”

The pope railed against the mining, aggregation, and analysis of individuals’ data — especially information about their health and genetics — noting that such information affords the powers that be “structural leverage over the future, for they can shape needs and markets. They can also decide, before others, to whom medicines, investments, and protections will be allocated.”

The remedy, according to the pope: restore “to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom, and for whose benefit.”

5. A false realism

The pope rails in his encyclical against realpolitik — politics based on doing what is regarded as expedient rather than what is understood as morally or ethically right — particularly as it relates to war.

Leo XIV, certain that “we live at a time of significant spiritual and cultural blindness,” characterized realpolitik as a “truly irresponsible” form of false realism that “sows in consciences and in society an attitude of resignation to the inevitability of war and dismisses peace and dialogue as utopian or irrational positions that ignore the risks at stake.”

While stressing that “peace is neither a naïve hope nor merely the absence of war” and is “always possible as the fruit of justice and charity,” the pope recognized that the prevailing climate of pragmatism and nihilism has nevertheless set the stage for “new wars that are perhaps even more dangerous than those of the past, since they tend to disregard all ethical limits.”

“Decisions now seem to be driven almost exclusively by economic calculations, justified through media distortions, manufactured enthusiasm, and ‘dreams’ that inevitably shatter, generating frustration and further violence,” wrote the pope. “When people come to believe that nothing is genuinely true and that principles are hollow words, then the fuse in their hearts is lit for new eruptions of intolerance and aggression.”

Just as he rejects this “false realism,” the pope rejects the encompassing “culture of power,” highlighting an alternative: the “civilization of love.”

“Christians see the darkness and acknowledge it for what it is, yet they do not merely gaze upon it passively, for they know the light and understand that the darkness has not overcome it and cannot defeat it (cf. Jn 1:5),” wrote the pope. “For this reason, even when suffering seems to have the last word, Christians serve the good and are sustained by a theological hope that gives reality both meaning and direction.”

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​Artificial intelligence, Industrial revolution, Leo xiv, Politics, Pope, Transhumanism, Technology, War, Data, Big tech, Tech 

This situation has happened to me twice in recent months. I meet a guy around my age (50s, 60s). We talk and find we have things in common. I’m excited to possibly make a new friend.

In both cases, there was no political discussion. I didn’t say anything about politics. And they didn’t either, which was a welcome relief.

These guys should be playing golf and awaiting grandchildren, not defending trans activism or walking in Pride parades.

In both situations, the subject of children eventually came up. I don’t have any. They both did.

That’s when things got tricky. One of them announced he had a gay daughter. And the other informed me that he had a trans son.

Supporting the supporters

In both cases, I nodded my head when they told me this, as if their children’s sexuality were a normal thing to bring up, which it is, in my progressive coastal city.

I also saw, in both cases, that these fathers were genuinely supportive of their gay or trans kid. Of course they were. It’s their kids!

I nodded along with them, showing that I was supportive of their kids, too, and that I supported them for supporting their kids.

At the same time, I know from experience that these situations are often more complicated than they appear. Like, are their kids actually gay or trans? Or are they just thinking about it? Or talking about it? Or experimenting with it?

Whenever I hear a parent say his high school or college-age kid is gay or trans, I think to myself: Let’s see what the kid tells you in a year or two.

The truth is that it has become almost mandatory for even the most well-adjusted young people to question their sexual preference and gender identity.

They’ve been receiving this messaging for decades now. Their schools, their teachers, and the entire society have told them: “Being gay is great. Being trans is awesome. Why not consider becoming one of those yourself? You might like it. You might discover it’s your true nature.”

But is that accurate? Most people turn out to be heterosexual. So why are our schools and educators so eager to get young people going off in all these different directions?

Why are these people involved in any aspect of a young person’s sexuality?

Forced participation

Another thing I notice: Nobody talks about the toll these situations take on the parents. Having a trans or gay child can be quite a lot to deal with.

It forces parents to concede — at least implicitly — that all this sexual identity talk is a good idea. In effect, it turns them into progressive Democrats.

Also, it’s a lot of stress. Older people didn’t have to navigate sexual identity when they were young. They don’t have any experience with these situations. Most of them just got married and had kids. And some of them didn’t.

But there wasn’t an entire culture war built up around what choices people made. You were free to do whatever. This was America.

RELATED: The return of Drag Queen Story Hour?

Irfan Khan/Getty Images

Gay until graduation

All of this reminds me of a close friend whose only child (a son) came out to her as gay while he was in high school.

Naturally, she supported him. Though at one point she privately said to me, with a sigh, “I guess I’ll never hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet.”

But then, two years later, the son decided he wasn’t gay after all. So all that anguish was in vain.

But then, another year later, the son started dating a trans person!

All of this was quite confusing and difficult for my friend. But of course, she couldn’t say anything or even commiserate with her friends, lest she be labeled a bigot.

Let’s just (not) be friends

It seems unlikely that I’ll ever hang out with either of these two guys I met. They have too much on their plates. And because of their children, they now have a stake in the sexual identity debates.

And this during a time when they were supposed to be letting go of their children. These were supposed to be their “empty nest” years.

They did their duty. They raised good kids. In both of these cases, the parents had put them through college.

These guys should be playing golf and awaiting grandchildren, not defending trans activism or walking in Pride parades.

But fathers love their children. So naturally, they want to help. They’ll do anything they can for their kids.

Grumpier old men

It used to be that older men were expected to become grouchy and conservative in their old age. But even that natural evolution has been subverted.

Now their lives are affected by LGBTQ politics almost as much as their children’s — which, I suspect, is exactly how the LGBTQ crowds like it. Anything that disrupts traditional families is all right by them.

​Culture, Gay children, Lgbt, Lifestyle, Parenthood, Traditional families, Blake’s progress 

A male who broke into a Memphis home early Tuesday morning came face-to-face with the armed homeowner, who was more than ready for him.

Memphis police told WMC-TV that officers responded just after 1 a.m. to a shots-fired call at a home on Eldridge Avenue in the North Memphis area.

‘This is my home. I mean, I should be able to enjoy it without people comin’ through the window on me.’

When officers arrived, they learned the homeowner caught an intruder breaking into the residence — and the homeowner was holding the suspect at gunpoint, the station said.

Police added to WMC that the suspect was lying face-down on the bedroom floor. The station’s video report below about the incident says the homeowner fired two shots.

RELATED: ‘I didn’t have any hesitation’: Gun-toting homeowner says he spotted intruder in his house and ‘just let it fire’

Officers commanded the homeowner to put the gun down, the station said, adding that they then checked the suspect — Simeon Pratcher, 33 — and found he was not wounded.

Pratcher told police he came through the window because he thought no one was home, WMC reported, after which he was taken into custody without incident.

Pratcher is facing charges of aggravated burglary and possession of burglary tools, the station said. Jail records indicate he remained behind bars Wednesday morning, and no bond amount is listed. His next hearing is Wednesday morning.

The video report also notes that the homeowner experienced a break-in just days earlier, during which his home was ransacked and items worth thousands of dollars were stolen.

“This is my home,” the victim told WMC in the video report. “I mean, I should be able to enjoy it without people comin’ through the window on me.”

After the previous break-in, two people were arrested, the station said.

“I’m not runnin’,” the defiant homeowner told WMC.

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​Home invasion, Memphis, Tennessee, Homeowner shoots at intruder, Arrest, Jailed, Guns, Gun rights, Self-defense, Crime, Second amendment 

In a recent interview, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pushed back against claims that taxing billionaires more would meaningfully improve life for working Americans, arguing that even dramatically increasing his tax burden would do little to solve inflation or lower costs for families.

“People sometimes say that, you know, I don’t pay taxes. That’s not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes … if people want me to pay more billions, then let’s have that debate, but don’t pretend that that’s going to solve the problem,” Bezos said.

“You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. You can’t connect those two things. Not logically,” he added.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray couldn’t agree with Bezos more, pointing out that he also “bleeds terribly” during tax season — but the government largely just wastes his money.

“And so, what happens is you could double that, or you could triple it, or you could quadruple it. It’s still going to the government, and they’re still wasting it on crap,” he adds.

But Bezos wasn’t done, taking on high rent costs as well.

“I recently saw somebody blame it on Airbnb. OK, Airbnb is not the cause of expensive rent … it’s already been outlawed in New York City and rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb isn’t causing high rents,” he said.

“What’s really causing high rent is government intervention. We subsidize demand with things like tax policy, which is fine, but at the same time, we constrain supply. We constrain supply with things like zoning and permitting. Why does it take so long to get something permitted to build?” he continued.

“If you want rents to come down, econ 101, really simple,” he said, explaining that you can’t subsidize demand and constrain supply.

“If you do, prices are going to skyrocket. But this is not anybody’s fault other than government policy. And this is fixable. Again, this is a skills issue,” he added.

“We should put together an economic commission. Featuring Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, you probably want to avoid Bill Gates,” Gray comments.

“But you know, get these guys together who know how to be successful and understand economics and help us craft a makes-sense tax policy in this country where you’re not just pounding people who are successful,” he adds.

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​Airbnb, Bill gates, Billionaire, Elon musk, Inflation, Jeff bezos, Pat gray, Pat gray unleashed, Tax policy 

Establishment Republicans are not the only ones who have suffered stunning electoral upsets lately.

After more than two decades in Congress, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) lost the Democratic primary runoff on Tuesday to Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas), a man not only 40 years Green’s junior but who just took his seat in Congress a few months ago.

‘The President of the United States is a racist, a bigot, a misogynist, as well as an invidious prevaricator.’

Texas Republicans can take credit for forcing a contest between two sitting Democratic congressmen. After the Texas congressional district map was redrawn, the 9th district suddenly became much redder, compelling Green to seek the 18th district seat currently occupied by Menefee.

Neither Menefee nor Green managed to crest the 50% of the vote needed to win the Democratic primary outright on March 3. Menefee eked out a slight edge over Green that night, 46% to 44%.

By contrast, the primary runoff on Tuesday was a blowout in which Menefee trounced Green nearly 70% to 30%. The outcome was so unexpected that NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki called it “jarring.”

Menefee was gracious in victory, stating, “Congressman Green, brother, I want to give you your flowers. I want to thank you for your service to people across Houston and Harris County.”

Green claimed the loss would mark the move “to another chapter in life,” adding, “I plan to continue to have a career associated with service.”

RELATED: Rep. Al Green forced into runoff with candidate half his age after failing to get 50% of Democratic primary vote

Rep. Christian Menefee and other Democrats; Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty Images

The extent to which Green has “served” his constituents in Texas since he was first elected in 2004 is a matter of debate. Even the Houston Chronicle acknowledged that Green is not necessarily as well known for “shepherding high-profile legislation” as he is for building “influence through seniority and committee assignments.”

At the national level, Green, a former president of the Houston chapter of the NAACP, is probably best known for his race-based activism and anti-Trump animus.

“The President of the United States is a racist, a bigot, a misogynist, as well as an invidious prevaricator,” he railed in July 2019. “To say that Donald John Trump is unfit for the Office of the President of the United States is an understatement.”

Since Trump began his first term in office in 2017, Green has introduced or co-sponsored articles of impeachment against him at least four times. Green has also been forcefully removed from each of Trump’s last two State of the Union addresses, most recently back in February, when he carried a sign that read, “Black people aren’t apes!”

Trump is not the only racist Republican in Green’s eyes. Green has also leveled accusations of racism against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger, and all the Texas state lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who helped redraw the congressional map.

The 18th District of Texas is deep blue, and Menefee is expected to coast through the general election in November against Ronald Whitfield, who secured the Republican nomination in March after earning just 4,500 total votes.

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​Al green, Democratic primary, Establishment republicans, Texas republicans, Politics 

As the Trump administration and congressional Republicans work to lower Americans’ cost of living this year, they should be guided by a simple principle: All affordability is local.

Democrats and too many establishment Republicans still think they create jobs, economic growth, and opportunity. Whenever high prices pinch consumers, lawmakers huddle up with K Street lobbyists to see what big business, big tech, and big banks want … and give it to them.

Yet they scratch their heads as corporate profits surge while working families’ monthly bills only climb higher.

Corporate consolidation makes life easier for lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians. But it makes life much more expensive for everyone else.

We’ve seen this pattern again and again. Obamacare. Federal student loans. Subsidized mortgages. The Build Back Better inflation bomb. These policies doled out billions to insiders and middlemen but left everyday Americans holding the bag.

Instead of writing more checks this time, congressional Republicans should focus on rewriting the rules that are contributing to our affordability crisis. Federal regulations — mostly imposed by deep-state bureaucrats, not elected legislators — cost the U.S. economy more than $2 trillion per year. That’s five times the size of last year’s Working Families Tax Cuts legislation.

Reforming these regulations would lower prices, spur job-creating investment, and produce the broadly shared prosperity Republicans promised on the campaign trail.

Their first priority should be to reform the federal permitting process, an issue the White House and Congress have been working on together. However, despite real progress to improve efficiency and remove unnecessary red tape, the response has yet to match the urgency of the moment.

The permitting process has become a punchline — it’s wasteful, corrupt, and self-defeating. Federal agencies are blocking massive, urgent infrastructure investments in energy, mining, defense, transportation, AI computing, and manufacturing. Sometimes it seems like the U.S. economy’s greatest rival is not China, but our own government.

Our energy needs alone warrant wholesale regulatory reform. The United States today has neither the energy production nor transmission capacity we need to keep up with AI-driven electricity demand. New rules should be streamlined, transparent, and, most of all, fair. Our economic competitiveness and national security depend on these investments. A more prosperous, more secure future is not going to build itself.

The second priority, related to the first, is housing. President Trump has already signed executive orders to reform regulations that are holding back new home construction. Congress needs to follow his lead. The inability of working families to afford homes today has metastasized into more than an economic drag — it’s becoming a social crisis.

Current housing regulations seem intentionally designed to drive up home prices. This is great for well-off Boomers who see their homes primarily as 401(k)s with finished basements. But it’s catastrophic for young couples hoping to get married and start families.

By some estimates, the U.S. housing shortage is already more than 4 million units. Federal regulations should not stand in the way of new home building — nor should Washington subsidize state and local governments’ regulatory obstruction.

RELATED: A ‘Soviet’ housing fix from Congress

Michal Fludra/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Federal rules drive up costs in every sector of our economy. Health care, education, business, and occupational licensure all present golden opportunities to reform-minded policy entrepreneurs in the House and Senate.

And while they’re fixing regulations in those industries, Congress should also key in on the industry that ties them all together: banking. Right now, federal banking regulations are tilted in favor of the big banks, unfairly hamstringing some community banks and forcing many others to merge or close.

Industries dominated by huge corporations always seem robust. But as we saw during the financial crisis — and as we see every time an artificial bubble bursts — healthy, consumer-friendly markets are diverse and decentralized.

While outright bank failures have remained relatively limited in recent years, community banks are steadily disappearing through mergers, consolidations, and voluntary closures. In 1990, there were around 12,000 community banks scattered across the U.S. Today, only around 4,000 remain.

According to the FDIC, the number of community banks continues to decline each quarter, with 44 of them either closing or being absorbed by larger institutions in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone. That trend matters because community banks are not interchangeable with Wall Street giants.

Corporate consolidation makes life easier for lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians. But it makes life much more expensive for everyone else.

Too many federal regulations treat all banks the same, putting compliance burdens on small lenders that only megabanks can afford.

These regulations squeeze resources out of the local financial institutions that growing communities rely on. Especially in the AI era, the real-world human economy will depend more than ever on personal relationships, community solidarity, and interpersonal trust. Right now, Washington disadvantages those things and the community banks defined by them.

The American people are ready to make our economy affordable again — as soon as Washington lets them. Streamlining federal rules will allow Americans to build, drill, mine, invest and lend, and compute and compete as never before.

Lawmakers must remember that a more affordable economy is a more local, more cooperative, and more human economy. Regulatory reform — from national infrastructure to community banking — is an investment in America’s most powerful and undervalued resource: our people.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at The American Mind.

​Big banks, Big business, Big tech, Corporate profits, Cost of living, Democrats, Obamacare, Trump administration, Opinion & analysis, Inflation, Affordability, Housing