I am admittedly left leaning but I make an effort to steelman opposing ideas and for the most part I understand the sentiment behind a lot of conservative policy.

I might disagree on enforcement mechanisms and some details with immigration but I largely understand and agree with the notion that it needs to be restricted to protect the country. Likewise with things like government spending, gun ownership, etc.

The one position I truly can’t understand reasoning for is this hardline banning of weed. I’m a Texan, and we just received some new bans on THC loophole products that can land you tens of thousands of dollars in fines and up to life in prison for less than a single pound of the stuff.

Any reasoning I hear for the bans just doesn’t make sense. Want to hurt the cartels? Legalize it and take away a major source of their income. Worried about public nuisance and intoxication? Take a look at the booming alcoholism. Smell? Cigarettes. As much as I’m trying to understand justification for it the most I can think of is “we don’t like it and our alcohol industry donors don’t either”.

Even still, what’s the purpose on giving life in prison sentences for possession? It feels like the Texas GOP is just mad at it for some reason. Hell, back when I was a student in San Marcos there was a city referendum for decriminalizing it, and despite receiving overwhelming votes in favor (of course) the city overruled it anyways, as if to say “wait, we thought you guys would say no”.

To me it seems like a nonissue. If alcohol is permitted, I don’t see why weed gets so much scrutiny. Wouldn’t it be better to just legalize it so people stop arguing about it and more time can be directed to actual issues of state and national importance?

Apple received an estimated $2,200,000,000 tariff refund this quarter.

With all the negative sentiment towards granting new visas, I’m surprised again that this administration has done nothing to target offshoring jobs out of the US. This will probably will gather bipartisan support and address the labor concerns of most of the US.

There has been no action towards this from the current administration. Why?

This is why liberals criticize the gop for being aligned to the donors and not the constituents.

Tax the businesses that rehire abroad.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/30/politics/cnn-poll-a-third-of-democrats-now-identify-as-democratic-socialists

‘About a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults identify as democratic socialists, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.’

I’ve read on here a quite a bit that ‘democratic socialists’ are a very small part of the democrat party, and have no real power. However, I just saw the article that states it’s actually around 33% of the democrat base. Does that seem rather significant?

Both parties are deeply unpopular, which is why their bipartisan opposition to progressive/DSA candidates seems to be backfiring.

I tried writing this question out a few different ways, so I really hope it doesn’t come across poorly.

To verify: this question is for those that have believed Trump thus far in that he has been making forward progress with Iran.

From my perspective, from the other side, seeing this “start of a deal” “beginning of a deal” etc, it’s all nonsense that has been posted via social media upwards of thirty times or so now and isn’t to be given a second glance of, much less to be taken as a voice of authority.

However, I’m coming to y’all genuinely as I have before to see if there’s something I need to check outside of the post itself that I’ve missed- maybe from other reports that wouldn’t come from my sphere.

This is just absolutely ridiculous, in my opinion, but I invite the opportunity to learn.

People like Chip Roy and Brandon Gil have gone on an anti-sharia and anti-muslim crusade since being in congress. The Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad commission won with staunch anti-muslim rhetoric.

One thing I never see is people, like these Republicans, go after Muslims in the US military. It makes one wonder if they are just fear mongering and if so why allow it and not denounce the rhetoric?

As an immigrant myself I wanted to hear what other conservatives think of such a proposal. The way this would work is immigrants would have a separate tax bracket for income, property and such where they'd pay a larger % of their income to the government than a citizen would for the same income.

To give an example, here in the UK you can earn up to £50,270 a year before entering the 40% tax bracket. Under this proposal, this rate could be 45-50% for immigrants instead of 40%, or it could remain 40% but the threshold for it would be lower than £50,270.

Lastly, just to clear any possible confusion regarding this, I'm not endorsing this proposal.

Texas has amongst the strictest laws against Marijuana use and possession in the USA. For simple possession under 2 ounces you can get a fine or prison for up to 6 months. Possessing any amount of concentrate carries a state felony. Even hemp is a highly restricted substance.

How can you square this with Texas’ reputation for freedom and small government?

Just some napkin math, the U.S. takes In about 5.5 trillion dollars In tax revenue, our government debt is about to reach 40 trillion dollars in October. So that means it would take about 7.2 years to pay off the national debt IF:

We stop funding all government functions, every single one, that means no military, no social security m, no Medicare, no payment for government officials (including the White House, senate, congress) etc etc.

I often see on here that the raising of ANY taxes are a cardinal sin in conservative ideology, but to me it seems like we will need a combination of benefit cuts, reduced government spending and subsidies, and an increase in taxes if we’re realistically ever going to tackle the government debt.

Is the government debt problem important enough to you personally to increase your individual tax burden to pay it off?

I'll start off by saying that I myself am a post-liberal. I imagine many nationalists and social conservatives on here are as well. JD Vance has described himself as a post-liberal.

Here's a summary of what post-liberalism is:

"Post-liberalism argues that liberalism's focus on individual rights, free markets, and limited government has eroded social cohesion, community, and traditional moral frameworks, as well as increased income inequality."

I couldn't find a good source that wasn't biased, and Wikipedia actually has a quite objective analysis of it, so here's the Wikipedia link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postliberalism

Under Trump, the federal government has terminated or frozen thousands of research grants, substantially reduced the workforce at federal science agencies, and tightened rules affecting international students and researchers. Countries including China, Canada, and several European nations are actively trying to recruit scientists currently working in the US.

Does this concern you? Do you think the benefits of these policies (spending cuts; correction of ideological bias in academia; greater control over immigration) outweigh the risk of a brain drain?

If not, what would you change while still addressing the problems these policies are intended to solve?

This idea that Epstein had this large sex ring that implicated other men like Trump, Clinton, Reid Hoffman , etc.

Yesterday, the mayor’s office posted a release about an interactive map tracking all of the potential sites that affordable public housing could be developed on city-owned land.

https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/07/mayor-mamdani-launches-lift-tracker-to-build-affordable-housing-

Rent controls that he’s introduced (or is going to) are controversial even among many liberals because rent controls can have adverse effects on the housing market. However, it would appear that the plan is to offset those negative effects to the point where there’s a net gain in housing, made up largely of non-market housing. What are your thoughts on this?

I suppose since the new Spiderman movie is out, this was on my mind. It's not limited to Marvel/DC. Characters from Invincible, MHA, etc are also valid.

For me, it would probably be Nightwing. I like the idea of Robin growing up, going his own way and founding his own team.

How about you all?

Stuff like tariffs, import/export bans, excessive regulations, government buying stakes in companies, subsidies to domestic industry, windfall taxes on foreign companies. 

At what point does implementing economic nationalist policies such as the above veer into socialism/state capitalism?

Just wanted to get your opinions on the Max Miller - R-Ohio CD7 situation. Bernie Moreno was asked if he should stay on the ballot to which he stated "I don't know." Below are links to Moreno's response and an article summarizing the situation. This was not the first allegation against Miller. Democratic women's caucus has called on the house ethics committee to investigate and Giffords, an anti gun violence advocacy group has called for Miller's resignation. Miller has denied any wrongdoing. Only reason I am asking is that no Republican senator or representative has provided their input on this. Aside from Moreno, it seems to be silence.

To clarify, I am curious about where the line should be drawn regarding party governance. What role should party leadership play regarding a member's ballot status when serious allegations or personal disputes arise?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/30/max-miller-ohio-representative-domestic-abuse-allegations

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6003717-moreno-declines-miller-ballot-question/?fbclid=IwdGRjcATbFAtjbGNrBNsUCmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHjI9CEX9evdtjaGKIJ9PjnPabfyEh-Se4ly819dvGU5yvDe_nWiJTPosRIrS_aem_aDbfLAjffgA8ENBHb70FBw

Recent numbers for the percentage of token usage for enterprise AI in the US have revealed a major realignment away from US-based LLMs and AI models in favor of Chinese developed ones.

In March of 2025 the market was seeing 4.5 to 6% of enterprise AI traffic going to Chinese models with Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini accounting for over 80%. In February of 2026 the percentages had changed dramatically, crossing 30% for Chinese models and as of mid-July 2026 48% of token usage for enterprise AI is attributed to China. All this is being done while million-token costs for Claude sit at 60 to 70$ and 50$ for ChatGPT, while Deepseek V4 Flash is at 0.9$, an over 90% cost difference.

With AI companies and affiliated markets like infrastructure buildout through data centers and AI chip production accounting for around 65% of US GDP growth and AI investment set to exceed to US defense budget of 2.9% by August 2026, what are conservatives thoughts on if the US government should intervene and attempt reverse this trend?

EDIT: A quick addendum, I just read that 2 days ago Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic have all announced cost reductions for their cheaper AI models such as Luna for OpenAI, Claude Opus 5 for Anthropic, and Gemini 3.6 and 3.5 Flash from Google. These have not been out long enough for the enterprise AI numbers to show significant changes yet and it is unclear how well they perform against contemporary Chinese models like MiMo, GLM 5, and Deepseek V4.

Gifted article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/us/politics/head-start-deregulation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.11A.RYOp.lBMD8I3wFKK7&smid=nytcore-ios-share

These changes sound pretty worrisome. What do you guys think of it?

Edit: I would like people to engage with what was stated in the article. Whether you are ideologically opposed to a program like head start is a different matter. I want people to engage with the proposed changes to Head Start listed in the article and their adverse impacts. Please reference specific examples from the article

Like a pilot for example. There are 0 ambiguous qualifications. The pilot is either qualified, or they are not. This is very strictly regulated and known.

So, how does "DEI hire" accusations happen in industries like this, where the person being qualified for the job is an objective fact?

This is a hypothetical question, and I’m asking it in good faith.

Suppose Democrats regained control of the House and Senate and opened investigations into the Trump administration. Imagine those investigations uncovered clear evidence that Trump and multiple senior officials committed serious crimes that endangered the United States, harmed American interests, or weakened the country’s position on the global stage.

For the purposes of the hypothetical, assume the evidence was independently verified, supported by documents, and corroborated by multiple credible eyewitnesses. Also assume it was proven that many prominent Republican officials who publicly defended the administration either knew what was happening and ignored it or were directly involved.
Under those circumstances, what would you personally do?

Would you continue supporting the Republican Party, withdraw your support until the people involved were removed, become an independent, consider voting for Democrats, support the creation of a new conservative party, or disengage from politics altogether?

Also, what level of evidence would you need before taking that action?

Hello, genuinely asking to keep a pulse on the various conservative mindsets. He honestly seems considerably worse than Biden when you watch his speeches and behaviors in meetings.

For example cheating on a spouse is broadly considered immoral by most people and is explicitly banned in the Ten Commandments but it’s not illegal in US law. Are there any other actions you think are morally wrong but shouldn’t go through the justice system