Many Americans today feel as if home ownership is a pipe dream. The prices, even for modest homes, are just too steep.

But why? What’s the real reason homes have become so unaffordable?

The answer is multifaceted, says Glenn Beck.

No doubt the broken economy is part of the problem. “We have to fix the fraud,” he urges. “The latest numbers from the GAO, the Government Accounting Office, is that they estimate that our government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion every year based on fraud between 2018 through 2022.”

However, there’s another factor most are unwilling to grapple with: Our expectations have increased.

In the 1950s — “the golden era of America,” says Glenn — the average size home for a family of four was “983 square feet.” Today, it’s “2,500 square feet.”

“If I told you you could afford a modest home of that size (under 1,000 square feet) and raise your family in it, would you take it?” he asks.

But the main driver behind the skyrocketing price of homes, he says, is the increase in land prices.

“Why is land so expensive?” Glenn asks. “Because our government made it that way” through “zoning laws, permits, restrictions, [and] endless layers of EPA approval.”

“We didn’t run out of land. We restricted the access to the land,” he emphasizes.

Add to that the immigration boom, which led to “an overwhelming demand for homes,” and you get the situation we’re in today.

But America has been in a similar predicament before and survived it, says Glenn. After WWII, millions of soldiers returned home eager to buy homes and start families, resulting in a housing shortage “far, far worse in many ways than what we’re facing today.”

Our answer back then was simply to build faster.

“Homes were built in days, not months — days,” says Glenn, noting that “the GI Bill,” “the interstate highway system [opening] up the land that had never been reachable before,” and “the government [getting] out of the way” are what allowed this to happen.

“Prices rose at first because everybody needed a home, and then they stabilized because supply caught up with demand,” he continues.

But today, things are different.

Instead of “unleashing builders,” we’re “restraining them”; instead of “expanding supply,” we’re “constraining it,” says Glenn.

“This is why the most important number is not the price of a home. It is the ratio between a home price and income,” he explains. “In 1960, the average cost was two times the average annual income. Today it’s over five times.”

“That’s the difference between opportunity and exclusion; that’s the difference between a young family starting a life and one stuck renting indefinitely.”

Today, we’re a nation that believes more in “obstruction” than “building” — a nation that cares more about the “planet” than “people.”

Once upon a time, “the country believed that growth was good, expansion was good, opportunity was something that you created, not something that you rationed,” says Glenn, “and somewhere along the way, that whole mindset of America changed.”

“We didn’t lose the land. We didn’t lose the resources. We’ve lost the will. And until that changes, this doesn’t get fixed,” he warns.

Contrary to popular belief, the American dream isn’t dead, he insists. It’s simply on pause until we can fix the long list of issues barring many Americans from buying homes.

While we have little control over fraud, government regulation, and land prices, we do have control over our own mindsets. Glenn urges his listeners to remember that the American dream isn’t about status — “it’s about freedom and opportunity and hard work and faith and building a life with the people that you love.”

“Let’s remember what it means to actually be happy,” he pleads.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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​Affordability, American dream, Demand, Economy, Fraud, Glenn beck, Home ownership, Immigration boom, Land prices, Obstruction, Supply, The glenn beck program, Zoning laws, Epa approval, Blazetv, Blaze media 

Why is the National Education Association encouraging students to skip school?

Yesterday was May 1 — May Day — and across the country, activists staged coordinated demonstrations under the banner of “no work, no school, no shopping.”

These are sweeping political claims, touching on immigration policy, cultural debates, and national partisan conflicts.

The National Education Association — with roughly 3 million members, making it the largest labor union in the United States — was among the organizations supporting the effort. On its website, the NEA offers organizational resources for participants, including a “solidarity toolkit.”

May Day? Mayday!

The union frames May Day as part of a long tradition of labor activism, tracing its roots to the late 19th-century movement for the eight-hour workday.

Broadly speaking, that’s true.

But May Day also carries a more complicated legacy. Over the course of the 20th century, it became closely associated with socialist and communist movements worldwide, and in the United States it has often re-emerged as a vehicle for broader political protest.

That broader agenda is evident in some of the demands the NEA highlights.

Among them:

“Stop the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration.”“Stop the attacks on our communities, including policies targeting immigrants, people of color, Native people, people with disabilities, and those who identify as LGBTQ+.”

These are not narrowly labor-oriented concerns. They are sweeping political claims, touching on immigration policy, cultural debates, and national partisan conflicts.

Mission creep

Which raises a more basic question: What does this have to do with the NEA’s stated purpose?

The organization describes its mission as “to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.”

Encouraging participation in a day of protest framed explicitly around “no school” sits uneasily alongside that mission. And May Day is just the tip of the iceberg

According to a new report from watchdog group Defending Education, teachers’ unions have spent more than $1 billion on political activity since 2015 — including roughly $669 million at the federal level and $336 million at the state and local levels.

Some of that spending aligns with what most people would expect. In California, for example, unions spent more than $20 million backing Proposition 15, a 2020 ballot initiative that would have raised taxes on commercial properties to increase funding for public schools and community colleges. The measure ultimately failed.

But much of it extends far beyond that.

RELATED: ‘Eco-Socialism’ now! Inside Sunrise Movement’s ‘revolution’ playbook

Defending Education | Robert Gauthier/Getty Images

PAC mentality

Defending Education’s report highlights tens of millions directed toward major Democrat-aligned groups, including:

$32 million to Senate Majority PAC.$25 million to House Majority PAC.$60 million to the State Engagement Fund, a progressive funding hub that supports state-level campaigns and advocacy.$44 million to For Our Future, a Democrat-aligned organizing group focused on voter turnout and elections.

At the state level, unions have also poured money into targeted political fights — opposing school choice initiatives, backing candidates, and influencing local school board races.

In California, union spending has extended into high-profile contests as well. The California Teachers Association’s PACs spent $1.8 million opposing the 2021 recall of Gavin Newsom and committed millions more to a 2025 ballot measure related to election policy.

The same report also points to funding for organizing groups like the Midwest Academy, which describes itself as “committed to providing organizers with the practical skills needed to address the challenges of forging change in a system rooted in white supremacy.”

It has received $1.7 million from the NEA since 2015 and has helped produce activist training materials tied to sustained protest efforts.

Out of school

Teachers’ unions have always played a role in politics. When that role is tied directly to classrooms — teacher pay, school funding, working conditions — the connection is clear.

But as their spending and activities expand into broader political organizing, electoral campaigns, and now protest mobilization, that connection becomes harder to define.

Unlike most political organizations, teachers’ unions are funded by member dues — payments that many educators make as a practical requirement of their profession. That makes their political activity qualitatively different from a typical advocacy group or PAC.

The question isn’t whether unions should — or can — be entirely “apolitical.” It is whether their current scope reflects the priorities of the educators who fund them — and the students they have pledged to serve.

​Culture, Donald trump, Education, Lifestyle, National education association, No kings, Public schools, Socialism, Teacher’s unions, May day, Counterrevolution 

Pope Leo XIV announced appointments of U.S. bishops that some characterized as being anti-Trump after a public feud with the administration.

Among the appointments were bishops that had criticized the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, as well as the strengthening of immigration enforcement.

‘We are a diverse nation with people from all over the world. Diversity is a good thing. Diversity is of God.’

Washington Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar previously claimed that immigration enforcement had caused fear in immigrant communities.

“The federal government has pursued a ‘shock and awe’ campaign of aggressive threats and highly visible operations of questionable legality that go far beyond mere immigration ‘enforcement,'” he said.

Menjivar has been named as the new bishop for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia.

Father Robert Boxie III has been named as the new auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Washington, but he previously defended policies on diversity.

“In a lot of ways we have made great progress, but in so many ways, I feel like we’re regressing,” Boxie said in an interview with OSV News in 2025.

“It’s really frustrating — especially this moment that we’re living in. The attacks on ‘DEI’ — I don’t even know what that means anymore. It’s a term that’s been hijacked. It means a lot of things to a lot of different people.”

He went on to defend diversity as central to the U.S. and to the Catholic Church.

“I think at its core, it’s what America is all about. We are a diverse nation with people from all over the world. Diversity is a good thing. Diversity is of God,” he continued. “And the fact that it’s been turned into something negative — or something that should be avoided or not talked about — just flies in the face of who we are as Americans.”

RELATED: Vatican finally responds to Trump’s invitation for Pope Leo to join Board of Peace

A third bishop referred to the rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as “sickening unrest.”

Others rejected the framing of the appointments as having any political dimensions at all.

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​Pope leo vs trump, Bishop appointments, Anti immigration bishop, Catholics vs trump, Politics 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fired back at the ActBlue Democratic donation organization after it filed a lawsuit Friday accusing him of violating the Constitution.

Paxton filed a lawsuit last month accusing ActBlue of illegally accepting donations forbidden by campaign laws. The portal has faced similar allegations from Republicans for years.

‘It is retaliation against constitutionally protected political speech and association, and it is exactly what the First Amendment forbids.’

The ActBlue lawsuit accused Paxton of violating the organization’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the Constitution.

“ActBlue is trying to take me down,” Paxton responded on social media. “I sued the fundraising platform for deceiving Americans by lying about its donation processes that allow fraudulent and foreign donations. I will hold those who break the law accountable.”

ActBlue’s chief legal officer, Lawrence Oliver, made the case against Paxton.

“Ken Paxton has spent more than two years using the power of his office to investigate, harass, and sue ActBlue,” Oliver wrote in a statement.

“The timing of Paxton fighting for his political life in his run for a U.S. Senate seat and his use of the Attorney General’s office to attack ActBlue should not be lost on anyone. He is wasting taxpayer dollars to benefit his political ambitions,” he added.

“That is not law enforcement,” Oliver concluded. “It is retaliation against constitutionally protected political speech and association, and it is exactly what the First Amendment forbids.”

Among the claims made against Paxton was that his investigators tried to use an American Express gift card on ActBlue in an attempt to show the ease with which illegal donations could be made. Although they failed three times, ActBlue alleges that Paxton hid these facts from the Texas court.

RELATED: Texas AG Paxton accuses Democrat donation portal ActBlue of illegally funneling foreign money into US campaigns

ActBlue also reposted a message from a Democratic activist against Republicans on social media.

“Let’s be clear about something: the only reason Republicans are targeting ActBlue is that they want to destroy the Democratic Party’s ability to raise money from small-dollar donors,” the post reads. “It’s a completely bulls**t attack, and people in glass houses should not throw stones.”

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​Ken paxton vs actblue, Actblue free speech, Actblue fraud, Democratic donations fraud, Politics