“From this day forward, the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty,” the president said upon signing the bill on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.

“To anyone who truly loves America, nothing could be more inspiring than to contemplate this rededication of our youth, on each school morning, to our country’s true meaning,” he continued.

“The Soul of an American President: The Untold Story of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Faith,” written by Alliance Defending Freedom founder and former President Alan Sears and two co-authors, Craig Osten and Ryan Cole, details how faith was important to the 34th president well before he entered the White House.

“In World War II, he saw the concentration camps and it shook him to his core,” Osten told the Daily Signal. “He was convinced this is where a godless society ends up. He also looked at what was happening in the Soviet Union and the destruction of their churches.”

During the bill-signing remarks, Eisenhower made a subtle reference to the Cold War.

“In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future. In this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons, which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war,” Eisenhower said.

Critics of the bill have dismissed it as a geostrategic move to claim the moral high ground against the Soviets.

Osten stressed it was much more than that for Eisenhower.

“He looked at what was different about America. He believed the Soviet Union’s weak link was that it was an atheistic society,” Osten said. “It’s not that he was using religion as a weapon, but he did want to remind America of its spiritual roots.”

Osten added the president “wanted to make sure America didn’t drift the way Russia and Germany did.”

After the bill-signing ceremony, the former Supreme Allied commander met with an American Legion gathering at the Capitol, where he and the others recited the pledge with the newly added words “under God.”

As for the pledge itself, it had quite a journey before Eisenhower’s monumental act.

The first version of the pledge, which skipped from “ … one nation indivisible … ,” was interestingly enough written by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy in 1892 to mark the 400th anniversary of the discovery of North America by Christopher Columbus. It caught on that year, and schools and civic organizations began reciting it in the following decades.

It was during World War II, on June 22, 1942, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt officially recognized the pledge in signing the U.S. Flag Code.

It was well after the war, in 1951, that the Catholic group Knights of Columbus resolved to call on Congress to add the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Rep. Louis Rabaut, D-Mich., introduced legislation adding the words to the pledge; the measure then passed both the House and Senate.

Though Catholics initiated the effort, Protestants weren’t far behind.

The measure gained significant momentum after Eisenhower listened to a sermon in February 1954 by the Rev. George Docherty at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., a church frequented by former President Abraham Lincoln.

“To omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive factor in the American way of life,” Docherty preached.

The pastor said “under God” would include all faiths, such as Jews and Muslims. However, he added, “An atheistic American is a contradiction in terms. If you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.”

That sermon convinced Eisenhower, according to The Washington Post.

Almost two months after the Flag Day bill signing, Eisenhower wrote a letter of gratitude to the Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Luke E. Hart.

“And this year we are particularly thankful to you for your part in the movement to have the words ‘under God’ added to our Pledge of Allegiance,” Eisenhower wrote in the Aug. 6, 1954, letter. “These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded.”

At issue are not only the many rules and regulations surrounding what can go into 401(k)s and similar savings plans, but also the flimsy legal framework governing fiduciaries—the ones who manage your money. Many investment options are excluded, either by law or by common practice, as fiduciaries try to avoid both legitimate and frivolous lawsuits.

Asset classes like private equity, digital assets, and real estate effectively became the purview of “accredited investors” with very high net wealth and government workers with public pensions. Most Americans—those private-sector workers on Main Street—were left out.

For folks with a typical 401(k) retirement plan, this meant lower returns on their investments. U.S. private equity has delivered the highest long-term returns compared to public equities and other asset classes—even after fees—averaging 3 percentage points (about 20%) better annual growth than the S&P 500.

The disparity has been exacerbated in recent years because of volatile inflation and interest rates, which have crushed bonds. The Biden administration oversaw the bond market’s worst four-year run in a century. The traditional 401(k) allocation, which is heavy in fixed-income assets, performed very poorly, especially compared to private equity.

The groundwork for a sea change was laid last August, with President Donald Trump’s executive order that directed agencies to clean up the rules around investment savings and provide a more robust legal framework for fiduciaries. The Department of Labor has now responded with historic reforms that will empower savers and keep the trial lawyers at bay.

The reforms make it easier for retirement plans to consider private-market exposure, while clearly outlining how fiduciaries still must prioritize prudence within their clients’ portfolios. It’s a healthy balance to help achieve the highest risk-adjusted rate of return.

The move has bipartisan support, with 57% of voters favoring expanding retirement investment options, and 61% supporting private equity access, specifically. Put simply, Main Street wants access to Wall Street, and that access has become increasingly difficult under the current regulatory morass.

Restricting the average American to investing in publicly traded companies has been increasingly stifling. From 1997 to 2024, the number of publicly traded companies was cut by more than half, from about 8,800 to less than 4,000. Consequently, it has become more difficult for savers to diversify and protect their investments.

Additionally, the S&P 500’s gains in 2024—and more recently—were driven in substantial part by just seven large-capitalization technology companies, further underscoring the need for alternative investments in retirement portfolios.

Retirement planning should change as the economy does. With companies taking longer to go public, private firms now represent about 87% of all U.S. companies, up from 62% in 2002. This regulatory reform creates a level playing field with an asset-neutral framework, meaning no asset class is inherently prudent or imprudent.

That’s important for savers because not all bonds, stocks, or private equity are created equal. To treat every mutual fund or bond fund as if it’s a prudent investment based solely on their asset class is absurd. It’s like saying Spirit Airlines—which went out of business—and American Airlines—which remains profitable—were equally prudent investments.

Despite this proposed rule change being both popular and sensible, people like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are decrying the change as a Wall Street ploy. Ironically, her own state’s public pension fund has greatly benefited from investing in private equity, earning almost 17% annual returns for the last decade, the fourth best among 200 U.S. public pension funds.

Better returns on investment shouldn’t be confined to government workers or Wall Street elites. It’s long past time for the average American to have access to these savings options, and fiduciaries shouldn’t fear frivolous lawsuits when doing their best for their clients.

More regulatory reform is needed, such as avoiding overly burdensome liquidity requirements that might still effectively ban certain assets or investment trusts, but the current change from the Department of Labor is a huge step in the right direction for the average American.

Originally Published by TheDerrick.com.

Sali Berisha, leader of the Albanian opposition party, confirmed to the Daily Signal Friday that the State Department lifted sanctions against him on Thursday. The State Department had sanctioned Berisha, a former president and prime minister who steered the Balkan country after the fall of communism in the 1990s, for “corrupt acts,” such as misappropriation of public funds to enrich relatives. Berisha denied the claims.

“As of yesterday, following an in-depth review of my case by the Department of State, my family members and I are no longer barred from traveling to the United States of America,” Berisha, head of Albania’s Democratic Party, told the Daily Signal. “Thus, an unjust decision made by the previous U.S. administration against me and my family was rectified.”

Berisha, an avowed opponent of Hungarian American billionaire George Soros and his son Alex, suggested that Soros played a role in the sanctions against him. George Soros had worked with Edi Rama, Albania’s prime minister. Alex Soros, who now runs his father’s Open Society Foundations, has repeatedly met with Rama.

“I would like to thank President Trump’s administration and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio for correcting this unfair decision, which was entirely based on the corrupt lobbying of Edi Rama and his mentor, George Soros.”

The Open Society Foundations did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment about whether George or Alex Soros played a role in Berisha’s sanctions.

The State Department confirmed that it has issued waivers for several designations under 7031(c) of the Financial Management and Budget Transparency Act from the previous administration.

When then-Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., pressed Blinken for evidence of Berisha’s alleged corruption, the State Department stonewalled him, Zeldin told the Washington Free Beacon in December 2021.

Soros Influence

Alex Soros has posted many photos of himself with Albania’s Socialist Party Prime Minister, Edi Rama, often calling the foreign leader his “brother.” Open Society Foundations launched and funded so many non-governmental organizations in the country that critics say it dominates civil society, and American tax dollars funneled through the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development dovetail with Open Society Funding.

Critics like Berisha say Open Society pushes “anti-family” policies in Albania and worked to entrench Rama’s power.

Open Society Foundations touted its influence in a 2021 “fact sheet” on the Balkan country. George Soros’ foundation—which would become OSF—spent more than $57 million building 275 schools and kindergartens across the country in the early 1990s, and OSF touted that almost 70% of the population “has benefited from these schools.”

Last year, Albanian journalist Sami Neza said that Soros has so dominated the NGO space that no civil society groups can exist outside his influence. He said that he can count on one hand the number of staff at Albanian NGOs without a connection to Soros. Neza serves as executive director at the Center for Transparency and Freedom of Information, which received a contribution from the Charles Koch Institute in 2020.

Open Society earmarked $600,000 to support the process of overhauling the judicial system, according to the 2021 fact sheet.

Rovena Gashi, then general prosecutor in Albania, sent a letter to Congress submitted into the record in May 2017 outlining the close ties between the Soros Foundation and the bodies carrying out the justice reform.

“It appears that while Soros and the OSF are trying to influence many places in Europe, Albania has been ‘targeted’ for extra attention,” Steven Bucci, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former Army Special Forces officer who was stationed in Albania for about two years, previously told the Daily Signal.

“Soros appears to have made Albania a virtual laboratory of socialist conversion,” Bucci added. “If America wants to push back on the international Soros / OSF agenda, Albania is the place to engage!”

First, after roughly 100 years of essentially unchallenged dominance, Delaware’s role as the undisputed home of corporate charters ran into an iceberg in the form of Elon Musk. On Jan. 30, 2024, a Delaware court struck down Musk’s executive compensation package despite it having been approved by shareholders. This was arguably one of the factors leading to a “Dexit” movement that continues to reverberate loudly more than two years later.

Second, after roughly 90 years of responding to inquiries from corporations regarding their plans to exclude otherwise statutorily authorized shareholder proposals from company proxy statements, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Nov. 17, 2025, that it was no longer providing such guidance, though it also said that it would not object to any exclusion grounded on as little as a corporation’s bald claim of a reasonable basis.

Third, after at least 50 years of a leftist one-way ratchet that started as corporate social responsibility and progressed into ESG and DEI turned corporations into the equivalent of campaign posters for Democrats, executive orders from President Donald Trump (along with anti-ESG laws from several states) have significantly undercut the ESG and DEI industrial complex (made up of asset managers, proxy advisors, and CEOs pining for affection at the World Economic Forum).

There is certainly more than one way of framing this shift, but to the extent it can be loosely organized around freeing corporations from activist pressures, one obvious question is whether the correction has spilled into overcorrection. Specific questions related to issues on that front might include these four:

Does Texas’ offering corporations incorporating there the options to limit shareholder derivative lawsuits to holders of 3% of the corporation’s stock, and to limit shareholder proposals to holders of 3% or $1 million of the corporation’s stock, insulate management and controlling shareholders too much?

Is limiting shareholder voice via proposal or lawsuit at this time precisely the opposite of what anyone wanting to walk corporations back from the leftist ledge they were standing on should want—given that conservative shareholders were just beginning to make effective inroads to arguably entrenched leftist corporate bureaucracies?

Do apparent wins on the part of the anti-ESG movement to insulate corporate management from activists signal an end to any meaningful role for corporate values beyond maximizing the bottom line? If not, how should values beyond profit maximization be balanced against concerns of activist overreach going forward?

As the culture war that divides our nation shows no signs of abating, does the recent corporate governance realignment increase or decrease the likelihood that corporations may serve some type of unifying role by seeking to find ways to connect with the broadest customer base while engaging a broad swath of stakeholders without the pressure of activists imposing mob rule?

One place where we might find some answers to these questions is The Heritage Foundation’s upcoming panel discussion taking place on June 25, 2026, titled “Back to Business: Refocusing Corporations on ROI.” Panelists include Justin Danhof, director of policy, Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Department of Labor; James R. Copland, senior fellow and director of legal policy, Manhattan Institute; and Lawrence A. Cunningham, presiding director, John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, University of Delaware.

Panelists will have an opportunity to discuss the issues flagged above and as set forth on the event page. More generally, they will discuss “the evolving role of shareholder engagement in modern corporate governance,” including “fiduciary duty, shareholder rights, corporate neutrality, and long-term value creation.”

Regardless, one thing seems certain: Neither proponents nor opponents of ESG and DEI and their various offshoots have any intention of conceding to the other side, and any claims of victory by either side are likely premature. Whether the recent and on-going corporate governance realignment will reduce tensions and improve outcomes remains to be seen.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

In 1861, Democrats led efforts to “secede” from the Union to oppose Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed the expansion of slavery into the Northern Territories, an expansion expressly forbidden by Congress in the Missouri Compromise. In 2026, Democrats are again trying to nullify federal law to prevent another Republican from enforcing immigration laws duly enacted by Congress.

This week, the Justice Department filed an important lawsuit against Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the state’s infamous attorney general, Jay Jones. The lawsuit explains how two laws that Spanberger signed directly conflict with the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause.

In an echo of the nullification battles preceding the Confederacy, Virginia had sought to dictate exactly how the federal government would enforce the law.

The Virginia Lawsuit

The lawsuit describes Virginia’s laws as “blatantly unconstitutional” because they violate “the principles of intergovernmental immunity that flow from the Supremacy Clause.”

One law seeks to dictate exactly what federal immigration officers wear—or do not wear, in the case of face coverings. The other law seeks to void all federal immigration contracts with state and local law enforcement, unless the federal government meets certain requirements.

In both cases, Virginia is dictating how the federal government enforces immigration law, a direct inversion of the Constitution. The lawsuit lays out five different ways these laws violate the supremacy clause, and asks the court to block their enforcement.

The “moderate” Democrat Abigail Spanberger is far from alone, however. The lawsuit notes that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently struck down a California law requiring federal immigration officials to display identification.

How Did We Get Here?

President Joe Biden’s policies enabled millions of illegal aliens to enter the country, and Donald Trump won reelection in large part due to this immigration crisis. Yet Democrats have demonized Trump’s efforts to deport some of the illegal aliens who entered in the Biden years, and the Department of Homeland Security has reported that federal agents face increased threats from this demonization.

Between Jan. 20 and Dec. 31, 2025, Homeland Security officials reported 275 assaults against agents compared with 19 during the same period in 2024, for an increase of 1,347%. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents reportedly experienced 66 vehicular attacks in that same period, a 3,200% increase from the two in 2024.

In response to these threats, ICE agents have taken to wearing masks to protect their identities, and Democrats have continued to ratchet up the rhetoric.

The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the gestapo, Adolf Hitler’s secret police. Others have echoed that rhetoric, describing Trump’s efforts as authoritarian or “fascist.”

After ICE surged in Minneapolis, agitators began swarming ICE agents. Two anti-ICE agitators lost their lives at the hands of immigration enforcement, emboldening activists further.

On Jan. 18, anti-ICE agitators even invaded a church during a service. At one point, they chanted, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!” The agitators face federal charges, but Democrats and a local prosecutor have defended many of them, claiming they had a right to protest.

Neo-Confederate Rhetoric

Comparing ICE to the gestapo is bad enough, but many Democrat politicians have taken this opposition a step further.

Walz, the Democrat governor of Minnesota, threatened to deploy his state’s National Guard troops against federal agents, in what would have been a direct military confrontation against the federal government.

When a reporter asked about the prospect of state troops facing federal agents, Walz gave this response: “We’ve never been at war with our federal government.” His statement suggested he meant “we’ve never been at war” with the administration before.

Of course, Walz was far from alone in opposing immigration law. Governors like JB Pritzker of Illinois, or Gavin Newsom of California, or Tina Kotek of Oregon, openly say that immigration law should not be enforced in their jurisdictions.

Even Virginia’s so-called moderate governor has joined this neo-Confederate effort to oppose the enforcement of immigration law.

While Virginia’s nullification laws, like those of California, are not likely to survive in court, it is quite revealing how far Democrats are willing to go.

Trump won reelection in 2024 in part because Biden opened the border. Now, Democrats are engaging in the same nullification tactics they did before the Civil War—just to stop Trump from deporting a fraction of the Biden-era illegals.

I urge the American people not to buy the Democrats’ rhetoric. They’re no longer getting their way, and they’re throwing a tantrum. Unfortunately, this kind of tantrum can have serious consequences.

I did not become conservative because I stopped caring about the environment. My commitment to the environment is what led me there.

When you walk the same pastures every day, your perspective changes. You watch when the birds return. You notice when the creek is running low during a dry spell. You watch as that creek and a worn-out field learn to hold water again. When you steward one piece of land for many years, eventually, it teaches you.

The land taught me that stewardship belongs in the hands of the people closest to it. My path to conservatism was not paved by economics or foreign policy. It was paved by fence lines, calving seasons, and a growing understanding that if you want to protect something, you first have to know it.

I started to realize that many of the people making decisions about the land had very little relationship with it. I am not questioning their intentions. I am questioning whether someone who has never depended on the land should have more say over it than the people whose lives are tied to it.

The people who first taught me about healthy soil and healthy ecosystems were not all conservatives. But as I spent more time in agriculture, I realized that the people rebuilding grasslands, restoring wildlife habitat, protecting water, and trying to leave something better for their children were, more often than not, conservatives.

Maybe that is why those two words, conservative and conservation, sound so much alike.

Maybe they were never meant to be separated.

Whether we talk about natural resources or our customs and institutions, both ideas begin with the same instinct: to preserve what is good.

Conservatism, at its heart, is about preserving goodness and beauty. We want to preserve families, faith, local communities, inherited freedoms, and civilization-sustaining traditions. We understand that inheritance matters and that we have an obligation to pass something worthwhile to the next generation.

Why should that instinct stop at the edge of the pasture?

In many ways, America’s farmers and ranchers have always understood this.

The overwhelming majority of the people who work the land lean conservative. They know when the springs stop flowing, when the topsoil begins to disappear, when pollinators become scarce, and when a pasture finally comes back to life after years of careful management. Their children drink that water. Their livestock graze those grasses. Their future depends on leaving the land healthier than they found it.

Many environmental policies are written far from the landscapes they seek to manage. Rural Americans have experienced firsthand how well-intentioned ideas can create unintended consequences when they ignore the wisdom of the people who actually live with those ecosystems every day.

I am not saying those people do not care about the land. I am saying there is a different kind of knowledge that comes from depending on it.

The answer is not to abandon conservation or the people that hold fast to it. The answer is to bring it home. There is another ancient command from the Book of Genesis that sits alongside tending the garden: “Be fruitful and multiply.”

For most of human history, those two ideas would have been understood as inseparable. A healthy people depended on healthy soil, clean water, abundant wildlife, and nourishing food. The fertility of the earth and the fertility of the family were simply different expressions of the same abundance.

Today, we talk about collapsing birth rates as though they exist in isolation. We worry about infertility, chronic disease, and children growing up sicker than their parents. At the same time, we watch our soils lose organic matter, our food become increasingly industrialized, and our landscapes absorb an ever-growing load of synthetic chemicals.

These are not separate crises. This is one crisis.

The Make America Healthy Again movement is beginning to reconnect ideas that never should have been separated in the first place: healthy soil, healthy food, healthy bodies, healthy families, and healthy communities.

A civilization that cannot regenerate its land should not be surprised when it struggles to regenerate itself.

I often hear conservatives speak passionately about preserving faith, family, and freedom. They are right to do so. But those things do not exist apart from the world around us. Families need healthy food. Communities need clean water. Nations need productive farmland. Children deserve to inherit a country that can still feed them.

If conservatives believe that creation is God’s handiwork, then stewardship is one of our first responsibilities. Conservatives cannot concede the care of the earth to progressive politics. Taking care of America’s land is an act of gratitude and obedience. We have the moral high ground, and we must defend it.

Conservatism is not simply about conserving ideas. It is also about conserving the conditions that allow civilization itself to flourish.

What exactly are we conserving if our fields can no longer produce food, our rivers can no longer sustain life, and our children inherit a world less abundant than the one we received?

The first commands God gave humanity were to tend the garden and to be fruitful and multiply.

Those were never separate callings; they were always two parts of the same story.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

A host of speakers discussed a variety of topics appealing to the physical, mental, and spiritual development of women. From what it looks like to be a godly woman to what it looks like to be a healthy woman (which are not separate), attendees were given a road map of how to live a purposeful life. Throughout the weekend, one thing was made abundantly clear: Feminism is dead. RIP.

The video introducing the conference demonstrated the destruction feminism has wrought on American society. It opened by describing the bold, brave women who forged a new path preceding and during the founding of America, as well as the women of the frontier and those who were called to service to rebuild the country in the years after the Great War.

These women did not take up their mantle because of feminism. They were empowered to act because it was their duty to the Lord, the nation, and their families.

Feminists like to act as if women were helpless victims before their ideology came along to save them. That is simply not true.

Since the dawn of time, women have served as educators, healers, and—most importantly—mothers. As Erika Kirk said in the video, “Strength has never been defined by self-interest. It was found in sacrifice. In service to something higher than self.”

Feminism changed that. From its inception, it has fought to re-order God’s design and promote self-interest as a virtue. It encouraged women to take over roles, attitudes, and spaces designed for men. As Charlie Kirk once said, feminism was about wanting women to become men and, eventually, not to need men at all.

While many people define feminism differently, from its inception, the core of the ideology has been rooted not in service and obedience to God, but in power. It has always denied the fact that the most powerful tool a woman possesses is her biology—her ability to usher in new life—and the unique attributes that accompany that gift. When her biology is devalued, dismissed, or discarded, a woman may seek to fill that void through other avenues like career or activism.

Our current culture demonstrates what happens when women believe that freedom consists of rejecting the responsibilities that they once embraced with pride like homemaking and caretaking. Contemporary women are awash with resentment, anger, and bitterness. These sentiments were on full display not only in segments of the video, but outside the walls of the hotel amongst the loud and caustic women protesters who surrounded the entrances.

They threatened attendees and behaved in a way that has become a stereotype of modern liberal women: hysterical and unhinged. Or as my friend and colleague Scott Yenor likes to say, “medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome.”

These women were not unattractive because of their physical characteristics (although outside appearance often reflects inner states). They were unattractive because they are filled with hatred over God’s design for their lives, married or single, mothers or childless. And they were a far cry from the bright and uplifting young women I met at the conference.

The women inside the halls, elevators, and gathering spaces were well put together, with care for their appearance. They were not all models, but they were pretty because their hearts were seeking not mere human words of encouragement, but God’s wisdom and truth. That kind of love radiates from the inside out.

Luckily the number of women inside the building far outnumbered those outside. This is reflective of the culture at large, at least within the conservative movement. As feminism seems to be increasing on the political Left, it is sharply decreasing on the Right.

More young women are waking up to the failed promises of feminism and embracing a modern womanhood that, while it may look different from women in the past, seeks to first fulfill one of God’s principal commandments to mankind: to be fruitful and multiply.

Alex Clark, one of the leading voices in Turning Point as well as in the MAHA movement, spoke to how young women, even in what she called their “single season,” can heed the call of God. Clark said that women can’t be expected to just “sit under an overpass and wait for our husband to fall from the sky.”

She encouraged women to live their lives. Travel, learn to cook, read good books, get healthy. In essence, become the woman a man would want to marry.

That is the difference between the path of feminism and the path of a woman seeking God. The means, like personal growth and development, may look similar. It is the intentions and ends that are different. One seeks to satisfy self. The other seeks to satisfy God.

So, the question is not what action a woman should take, but whom it serves.

Feminism is not dead because women no longer seek purpose—it is fading because it misidentified where that purpose comes from. It promised fulfillment through autonomy and self-elevation, but what it often produces is restlessness and dissatisfaction.

What I witnessed in San Antonio was not an absence of ambition, but its redirection—away from the self and toward something higher.

The future will not belong to the loudest voices demanding liberation from responsibility, but to those who willingly embrace it.

“But today, our immigration system is broken—and everybody knows it,” Obama said.

“Families who enter our country the right way and play by the rules watch others flout the rules,” he said. “Business owners who offer their workers good wages and benefits see the competition exploit undocumented immigrants by paying them far less. All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America.”

Obama then claimed he had made progress in securing the border.

“When I took office, I committed to fixing this broken immigration system,” he said. “And I began by doing what I could to secure our borders. Today, we have more agents and technology deployed to secure our southern border than at any time in our history. And over the past six years, illegal border crossings have been cut by more than half.”

According to the Pew Research Center, when Obama was sworn into office in 2009, there were 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States. Over the next two years, that increased to 11.5 million. Then, during Obama’s final six years in office, it modestly declined, hitting 10.5 million in 2017, the first year of President Donald Trump’s first term.

In his Nov. 20, 2014, address, Obama vowed to focus immigration enforcement on those who posed “actual threats to our security.”

“[W]e’ll take steps to deal responsibly with the millions of undocumented immigrants who already live in our country,” Obama said.

“And that’s why we’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security,” he said. “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids. We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day.”

Did Obama’s policy work?

On Aug. 25, 2015, nine months after Obama delivered this address to the nation, Manuel Alberto Cortes Cuan, a Mexican citizen who had already been deported four times during Obama’s presidency, was deported for a fifth time.

In a sentencing memorandum presented on May 8 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros summarized Cortes Cuan’s immigration history.

“Cortes Cuan, a citizen of Mexico, has a history of five prior deportations from the United States,” said this memorandum. “Notably, each deportation occurred after Cortes Cuan sustained criminal convictions while unlawfully present here.”

At the end of 2009, “Cortes Cuan stole a jacket and sweatshirt from an individual victim,” said the memorandum. “About a month later, on January 10, 2010, Cortes Cuan stole multiple pairs of jeans, shirts, and a sweater from a second individual victim. … Then, on January 27, 2010, Cortes Cuan committed the offense of escape while in the custody of Harris County officials.”

“On February 2, 2010, Cortes Cuan was convicted of the escape and theft offenses and sentenced to 90 days of imprisonment, to be served concurrently,” said the memorandum. “Defendants criminal convictions came to the attention of immigration officials, and, on March 31, 2010, ICE deported defendant after he served his sentences.”

Then he came back—across Obama’s border.

“Sometime after his March 31, 2010, deportation, Cortes Cuan illegally reentered the United States,” said the U.S. attorney’s memorandum. “On July 26, 2010, Cortes was arrested in Houston, Texas for misdemeanor criminal trespass to property or a building, and he was later sentenced to 20 days imprisonment.”

“On August 5, 2010, Cortes Cuan was deported from the United States a second time,” it said.

Then he came back again.

“On January 13, 2011, Cortes Cuan was convicted of a felony theft offense (upgraded in severity due to his prior theft convictions), and misdemeanor evading arrest, and was sentenced to 90 days and 35 days of imprisonment, respectively,” said the memorandum.

He was deported again on Feb. 9, 2011—and came back again.

“Sometime after his February 9, 2011 deportation, Cortes Cuan illegally reentered the United States,” said the memorandum. “On August 4, 2011, defendant was arrested in Chicago for misdemeanor retail theft and two counts of theft of lost or mislaid property.”

“On September 29, 2011,” said the memorandum, “Cortes Cuan was convicted of retail theft and sentenced to 6 months of court supervision.”

But then he was arrested, convicted and deported again.

“On August 23, 2013, Cortes Cuan was arrested in Chicago for possessing burglary tools and misdemeanor retail theft,” said the memorandum. “On September 27, 2013, he was convicted of possessing the burglary tools and sentenced to approximately one day of time served. … On approximately March 11, 2014, Cortes Cuan was deported from the United States for a fourth time.”

But that was not the last time.

“On August 8, 2014, Cortes was arrested in Chicago for aggravated assault in operating a motor vehicle, criminal damage to property, aggravated DUI, and criminal damage to property,” said the memorandum.

“Cortes Cuan’s conduct was a serious risk to public safety, and an officer discharged his gun after Cortes Cuan almost struck the officer with his vehicle,” said the memorandum. “On April 7, 2015, Cortes Cuan was convicted of aggravated assault and aggravated DUI and sentenced to 24 months probation.”

“After receiving a second-chance sentence of probation on June 11, 2015, Cortes Cuan was arrested for misdemeanor battery in Norridge, Illinois,” said the memorandum. “On August 25, 2015, Cortes Cuan was deported from the United States for the fifth time before completion of his battery case. … Because of the intervening deportation, Cortes Cuan was subsequently convicted of this offense on June 26, 2025 and sentenced to eight days imprisonment.”

And he came back again.

“Sometime after his August 15, 2015 deportation,” said the memorandum, “Cortes Cuan illegally reentered the United States.”

As noted in a June 8 press release from the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Cortes Cuan has now been sentenced to prison for unlawfully reentering the United States.

“Cortes Cuan was previously deported from the United States on five occasions,” said the release. “Cortes Cuan, 38, pleaded guilty in April 2026 to one count of unlawful re-entry after removal. On June 3, 2026, U.S. District Judge LaShonda A. Hunt sentenced Cortes Cuan to 14 months in federal prison. The conviction subjects Cortes Cuan to removal from the United States.”

And it is no longer Obama’s border he would encounter if he tried to cross it.

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Bass cannot claim zero tolerance for mismanagement while asking taxpayers to keep funding a system facing the serious allegation by a federal judge of “obvious fraud.”

“They should use their own money to do it,” I said of the city’s desire to have the agency funded. “And at the end of the day, that is still taxpayer money because you are looking at federal and state dollars.”

Furthermore, the welfare fraud extends far beyond California and Minnesota and does not stop at state lines nor is it confined to one political party.

Federal officials came into Ohio last week, led by then-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, to announce a model for detecting and prosecuting fraud before taxpayer dollars disappear. The Justice Department announced the first federal-state partnerships to fight fraud, which expanded data sharing and brought charges against nine defendants for their alleged participation in more than $42 million in fraud schemes.

Leaders across the country need the political will to follow the money, demand stronger funding controls on the front end, and act promptly when warning signs appear. The Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald, is building that model nationwide. The days of paying first and auditing after the money disappears are over.

Before government officials demand another check from taxpayers, they should answer a simple question: Where did the money go?

The president of the American Cornerstone Institute has led the production of “Star Spangled Adventures: The Movie,” which will premiere June 14 at the Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Part of the Freedom 250 Initiative, the event will include family activities and a color guard presentation before a screening of the film.

Featuring Carson as one of the characters, the film is part of the American Cornerstone Institute’s Little Patriots initiative to foster American values among kids by telling the great stories of our nation. 

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom,” said a character in the movie’s trailer. “You are Americans, and that means you have freedoms and rights. But that also means you have responsibilities, and one of them is to know what America stands for.”

Throughout the movie, Liberty the Eagle acts as a guide and takes viewers from the earliest days of the nation’s founding to momentous events of the last century. Each scene recounts milestones in America’s story and the role of the men and women who shaped our nation.

Starring Kevin Sorbo and Rich Little as voice actors, “Star Spangled Adventures: The Movie” tells vignettes of American history in the voices of modern celebrities. 

“Families from across America are joining us for a historic afternoon celebrating faith, freedom, and America’s 250th birthday,” Carson said. “This is more than a movie—it’s a moment to inspire the next generation of patriots.”

Sami Winc: So, Victor, let’s turn again to the Karmelo Anthony case, just for a minute. We did talk on Friday about it. But Jasmine Crockett—who probably doesn’t deserve press, but since she kind of represents an extreme segment of the United States, we’ll give her some attention here. After the trial verdict and sentencing, she got on a podcast and said that the knife was not really a weapon, basically, that it was just too small and who could consider it a weapon?

I think she was trying to argue with the murder charge. I don’t know. She didn’t actually say that.

Victor Davis Hanson: She’s a lawyer, and she’s such an ignoramus. She really is. She reminds me of Graham Platner. He was from the upper-upper-upper middle class, and then he plays Joe Working Man, Oyster Man, while his dad’s friend gives him an island to work on, and his mom is his only customer. And he went to a prep school, right?

She’s the same way. She grew up in an upper-upper-middle-class family in the suburbs, and then she created, she didn’t develop it naturally, this inner-city ghetto accent. She uses that and gets sassy, and then when she gives a serious interview, she turns it off, and she’s acting as if she’s a professional.

But she’s also an abject racist. All she talks about is white, white, white. White people, white people, white people, white people. Well, I said ignoramus without being defamatory, but evidential. She doesn’t understand the law. What does it matter if I take a rock and hit someone—if you took a rock and smashed Metcalf’s head, the rock is a murder weapon. It doesn’t matter if there was a two-by-four in the tent and he charged him and hit him with a two-by-four. That’s a murder weapon. The only distinction is if it’s illegal to carry a knife of a particular—then that’s an accessory felony. But that doesn’t matter, because that’s an accessory charge. The main charge is murder—using a murder weapon. It could be a rock, it could be a two-by-four, it could be a piece of steel, it could be a knife, it could be a gun.

But she’s all hung up on that. And then she almost implied—she said, if somebody was beating me down and was 300 pounds, I wouldn’t just restrict myself to the fists.

Everything about that was a lie. He doesn’t weigh 300 pounds. He weighed 35 or 40 pounds more than Karmelo, and he was about the same size.

And more importantly, he didn’t beat him down and knock him down. He sat there—about 15 times, he said to everybody, I’m not leaving, and what are you going to do about it?

Then finally, he said he didn’t want to fight, but he gently tapped him back. That’s not beating you down.

So, then she’s suggesting that he beat him down, he weighed 300 pounds, and then he had no choice to stab him through the bone into the heart, and then she would do the same thing. That’s what she was implying.

And then, the worst was when they unleashed those thugs that were outside the courtroom. And the family came out, and they said, we’re going to urinate on your son, your brother’s grave. And people on social media said, go check his tombstone. I’ve already smeared feces on it.

It was horrible, just pre-civilizational.

All these things. Now we hear that Decarlos Brown is going to sue the FBI, who cut a poor [Ukrainian] immigrant’s throat. And we had a young kid walking near his home in Philadelphia, and what happened? Two people came up, African American young people, and they stole his phone. He asked for it back, and they shot him and killed him. Killed him right in front of his house.

This is all happening at once. Then you superimpose that on what’s happening in Belfast, or with the attempted beheading and blinding of a person. And people are starting to realize that there is a common thread. It transcends just illegal immigration.

The thing is, if you create in the West this binary, which Barack Obama started, that it’s not black-white anymore, it’s non-white versus white, and class does not matter. The Sikh family can be millionaires, like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s family, who’s Hindu, or Sikh truck drivers can be driving for a multimillion-dollar trucking firm, but they’re victims. Therefore, they don’t have to have a license the way everybody else has had to get one.

But if you start saying that these people have innate grievances that have to be conceded by the majority, and you keep demonizing white, white, white, white, white, white, white, and then you add to that the idea that they can’t do anything, and ha ha, I’m a Sikh guy, and I just took out my ceremonial sword that they let me have and which they don’t let anybody else have, even though it was probably 8 inches rather than 5. And then you stab somebody and you think, ha ha, the fact that I had this weapon and I used it means they gave me preferential treatment. And the fact that all I have to do is hit the race button and they’ll come out here and exonerate me, as I kind of show them a superficial little thing on my eye. And then my family can hide the weapon and say he’s a racist, and they’ll let him bleed to death.

That’s all predicated on the idea that I’m protected.

And when you add the idea of immigration into it, that you come to a foreign country, and this is the Irish and British indigenous population, and you give them exemptions and entitlements, and then they reward that magnanimity with ingratitude and anger, then it’s time to call an end to it.

And here in the United States, if you, like Jasmine Crockett, and if you, like half the [Congressional] Black Caucus, cannot finish a sentence without saying white, white, white, and the whole intention of the civil rights movement, according to Martin Luther King Jr., the archetypal leader, was to downplay race: the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

But it has been accentuated with DEI because it is a get-out-of-jail ticket, and it is a ticket on the fast track to employment, promotion, retention. All you have to do is play a minority person, and you’re going to get preferential treatment.

And the final absurdity, as I said last time, when you have three generations of Americans, for that matter Europeans, that were born after the civil rights movement, passed civil rights legislation, passed, they grew up not with Jim Crow, not with institutionalized discrimination, not with Lester Maddox, not with George Wallace, but affirmative action, affirmative action, DEI. And they went along with it, as everybody did. Yet, at the end of that three-generational, in 2026, racial relations are a lot worse.

Because the more that you claim that a particular tribal group, white people, owe you something for something that happened that they had no part in, and especially to a group that doesn’t understand the present—Jasmine Crockett doesn’t know what segregation was. And so it’s not sustainable.

And after the Karmelo Anthony verdict, they showed pictures of black people going up and hitting white people. One guy was on a bike. Did you see that? He just knocked him off and said, you’re a juror. He wasn’t. Then he tried to go to a bus stop and attack a couple.

That’s not sustainable because what’s finally going to happen, the elite white who created this, the left-wing elite white is going to find out that they’re not exempt. Because the people who are racist who are attacking white people don’t care about their politics. In fact, they have contempt for the elite white because they feel they’re a lot easier prey.

They don’t go down to rural Alabama and do it. They don’t come out here to southern Fresno County and attack the Hispanic population or the Oklahoma diaspora. They never do that.

They go into big cities where they’re in the plurality, and then they attack tourists or other people. But they have no idea that America is not the faculty lounge at Stanford, white America. It is not John Kerry and Bernie Sanders. It isn’t. It’s the deplorables, and they’re not going to put up with it.

And you can see what’s happening in Britain.

And it’s tragic because when you have people like Jasmine Crockett and they’re not being cross-examined, then the entire Black community suffers, even though they’ve got brilliant people. They have to speak out about it.

Paige Loud, who ran in the Democrat primary to represent Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, had strong words for Platner’s strategist, especially since she’s no longer a candidate. In addition, a woman claiming to have been Platner’s romantic partner posted to X about his tattoo.

Loud posted on Instagram her thoughts on Platner’s strategist, Daniel Moraff, referring to him as “a misogynistic, sexist piece of s—.” Loud added that Moraff is “[a]lso a terrible liar LOL.”

Screenshots of the post were shared on X by Politics & Poll Tracker and on Facebook by The Maine Wire. Townhall also covered Loud’s post, pointing out that Loud wasn’t the only one to speak out against Platner’s campaign this week. On Monday, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former campaign manager, titled “I Know Firsthand Why He Shouldn’t Be U.S. Senator.”

Maine’s 2nd Congressional District has increasingly been a race to watch. President Donald Trump won the district in 2016, 2020, and 2024, with Maine offering an electoral vote to the popular winner in each of its districts.

In 2024, the race between retiring Rep. Jared Golden and Republican Austin Theriault was the closest in Maine’s history and involved a recount before Theriault conceded. Golden has often voted against his party and announced last November that he was retiring, with his vote record making him a member worth mentioning for Thursday’s episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast.”

In addition to reading Loud’s comments on air, host Tony Kinnett agreed that it is “dead on correct” that Loud “makes you wonder what other Mainers are not saying what’s on their mind about Platner,” and that Maine’s 2nd Congressional District will be “a close race to watch.”

Speaking about Golden, Kinnett said, “He is a moderate Democrat who often broke with Democrats to vote alongside Republicans on a lot of commonsense measures.” He added that in his wake, there are “a lot of Democrats who are trying very, very hard to secure the independent-heavy Democrat territory,” and “they’re struggling to do so.”

Kinnett referenced various scandals plaguing Platner, as he mentioned a liability for fellow Maine Democrats “running alongside” the Senate candidate.

The open seat remains one to watch, especially as a potential GOP pickup, given that the Cook Political Report rates the race as favoring the Republican. Former Gov. Paul LePage is the Republican nominee, while the Democrat primary is drawn out by rank-choice voting, since none of the candidates won a majority of first-choice votes. Loud came in fourth place, with 10.3% of the vote.

In addition to reading Loud’s comments on air, Kinnett also recounted the story of an ex-lover on X and covered by Fox News, with Kinnett also noting that the woman posted text messages. The woman detailed when she confronted Platner about his Totenkopf tattoo associated with Nazis.

According to this romantic partner, who recognized and asked about the Totenkopf symbol, Platner responded that he kept it as a reminder that the United States, and by extension himself, were “the bad guys, a blood brand of sorts that would serve as a constant reminder of his growth and change, but a mark that he would always carry.”

It was an explanation that Kinnett mocked, noting “it fits, because beneath all of the scandals, he is still a garbage, worthless socialist.”

He also discussed how other Democrats have reacted to Platner. “Other Democrats out there that are also running in Maine have made the case that … there’s no way that he actually gets to the end of this race and beats … the milquetoast, middle of the road, wishy-washy, Charlie Brown, freaking Susan Collins,” Kinnett added.

Speaking to Fox News, a spokesperson for the Platner campaign said, “Graham repeatedly said he picked a skull-and-crossbones tattoo off a wall in Croatia to commemorate surviving Ramadi and his friends who were killed there. Graham has also since covered up the tattoo and answered countless questions about it.”

“Year after year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were funneled to LAHSA with little accountability,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a statement Thursday. “Meanwhile, homelessness skyrocketed. Taxpayers will no longer bankroll an organization that puts its own self-interests ahead of the Americans it was created to serve.”

The New York Post reported in March that taxpayers are paying up to $1.5 million per homeless person in Los Angeles. This amount is nearly eight times larger than the average 50-year-old’s retirement fund and more than 20 times larger than the average 35- to 39-year-old’s retirement fund, per Fidelity Investments reporting.

While much of these funds are sourced from the city and county of LA, nearly $1 billion in federal taxpayer dollars have gone toward LAHSA since 2021.

Despite this, homelessness in LA has doubled since 2013.

The HUD press release cites multiple instances that the agency claims “establish a clear pattern of fraud,” including poor financial management and internal controls, conflicts of interest, and false certifications and statements.

“During a 2025 assessment, LAHSA failed to provide documentation to verify the existence of nearly 2,300 housing sites for which it was responsible,” the press release said. “The agency’s former CEO resigned after she and LAHSA violated federal conflict-of-interest rules by committing more than $2 million in federal funds under LAHSA’s control to her husband’s employer.”

Despite the increase in homelessness, some of the LAHSA shelters remain merely half-full, the letter states.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass criticized the Trump administration’s move to defund LAHSA. While she admitted she had concerns about the agency, she stated that these federal cuts do “nothing to house people.”

“Ultimately, people will lose their lives,” Bass claimed.

The letter, however, states that the agency “cannot ignore” the blatant fraud.

“Turning over billions of dollars from American taxpayers to an organization under investigation and suspected of gross misuse of federal funding and ‘obvious fraud’ does nothing to reduce homelessness,” the letter states. “Indeed, diverting dollars from worthy programs to LAHSA merely makes the homeless crisis worse.”

On Thursday, the Small Business Administration released a proposed rule that would end racial discrimination in federal contracting under the category of being “socially disadvantaged.”

It’s a huge win for those who support equality before the law.

“Under the new rule, individuals will no longer be considered ‘socially disadvantaged,’ and therefore eligible for the 8(a) program, simply because they are a member of a racial minority group,” the Small Business Administration wrote in a statement.

This may sound shocking, but the federal government has been handing out what amounts to race-based small business loans for nearly half a century. President Donald Trump is putting an end to that.

Now, instead of just handing out loans based on race, the SBA plans to keep the program alive but with the criteria of “fact-based evidence of social disadvantage.”

“It will end a system of racial favoritism, restore equal treatment under clear and objective criteria, and keep the 8(a) program open to job creators of every race,” SBA announced. “Importantly, Americans discriminated against by unlawful DEI and race-based practices in the public and private sector can now qualify for 8(a) contracts.”

All are welcome, and that’s not just a slogan.

The Trump administration has done a remarkable job of eliminating racialist DEI initiatives from federal policy. As the State Leadership Initiative noted on X, this move by the SBA is just one in a long line of initiatives to bring “fairness back to government contracting” by eliminating a huge amount of fraud and ending claims

U.S. civil rights policy has been warped and racialized for some time, but the problem accelerated under President Joe Biden. His administration essentially took cues from Ibram X. Kendi and other so-called antiracists who insist that colorblind policies are actually worse than direct, explicit racism.

To correct the wrongs of history as they see it, they’ve gone with the “two wrongs make a right” approach and promoted racist policies in the name of eliminating racism.

As Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez wrote in 2024, the Biden administration “jammed DEI into every policy and government department.”

Biden signed an executive order effectively mandating racial hiring in the federal government, though the list of the aggrieved expanded beyond race, too.

Biden’s 2021 order on “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” his administration announced that it would “advance opportunity for communities that have historically faced employment discrimination,” which included “people of color; women; first-generation professionals and immigrants; individuals with disabilities,” among others.

Some of these practices were ruled unconstitutional by the courts but the government continued to skirt federal law.

The 8(a) Business Development Program was one of the dubious programs that was expanded under the previous administration, as SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler noted in her statement about the proposed rule change.

Even after a 2023 ruling that “de facto race-based 8(a) eligibility for certain minority groups was unconstitutional” the Biden administration continued to use the program to favor certain racial groups and handed these loans out like candy.

“From 2021 through 2024, the Biden Administration approved roughly 2,100 new 8(a) firms, compared with just 65 approved to date under the Trump Administration,” the SBA’s announcement noted.

Under Biden, the message was clear: White men need not apply. But if you were the “right” race, you could get a loan with practically no questions asked.

When would enough discrimination in the name of fixing past discrimination be enough to call it even? The woke legions who brought us these policies would likely say that they would continue when all outcomes are equal. Though they are, of course, highly selective about which unequal outcomes are more worthy of fixing than others.

It feels somewhat ironic that the most extreme version of DEI policies were brought to you by such a mediocre—to be charitable—white, male president. It should be clear now that Biden was propped up as the “moderate” face of an extremely radical regime.

Trump’s election essentially put a halt to this long-term and accelerating perversion of civil rights. Even more impressively, his administration has successfully begun unwinding the DEI tentacles from our government and our society.

Perhaps we will finally be able to say that Americans can expect to be treated according to their merit and their character instead of their skin color. That was the dream, right?

Graham Platner just revealed the Democratic Party’s emerging midterm agenda: permanent resistance. Platner won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Maine by roughly 72% of the vote. So, he survived, as every voter has seen across America, months of damaging stories involving online comments, explicit messages, a Nazi tattoo, and continuing later to uncover that there have been serious allegations involving the treatment of women, multiple women.

Platner has denied these allegations of physical abuse, but the most revealing part of this is his statement of his campaign—and it had nothing to do with the scandals, nothing to do with what Americans were hearing about the man he is. It was his explanation of what Democrats should do if they regain power in Washington.

Platner said Democrats need a theory of power, and then he went on to describe it: use committee hearings, use investigations, and use subpoenas. Haul Trump administration officials before Congress day after day after day to halt any progress. Keep the White House so occupied that it cannot function, that it strictly can only respond to these subpoenas and these hearings.

And that deserves a lot of attention because Platner is actually selling Democrats a governing philosophy that’s built around paralysis. Resistance used to be a reaction just to President Donald Trump, but now resistance is becoming the product of the Democrat Party. This is the Democratic midterm pitch that’s taking place right here, and it’s revealing in real time: Give us power and we can stop the other side from using theirs.

And once that becomes the goal, the standards for candidates, everything starts to change. And you saw this firsthand. Congressman Ro Khanna actually gave us the clearest example. Khanna called Platner’s conduct misogynistic, shameful, and wrong. When he was asked, though, whether he believed Platner’s accusers, again, he doubled down. He said yes. But then Ro Khanna continued to support Platner.

So, just listen to the sequence I laid out. Ro Khanna condemns the behavior. He said he believed the women. Then he explained why Platner still deserved the Senate nomination and Democratic support. That is the moral waiver that Democrats are allowing for today.

That’s the real standard because the candidate still remains useful. The red line continues to move because Democrats believe this Senate seat in Maine is way too valuable to lose, and the waiver is granted because Platner’s promises are becoming a weapon against President Trump and the entire administration.

So, that’s the larger political angle that we’re looking at. Trump did not just reshape the Republican Party. President Trump changed what Democratic voters reward. For years, remember, Democrats accused Republicans of saying voters are overlooking controversy because they wanted a fighter. But now a growing part of the Democratic base actually appears to be making its own version of that bargain, their own version of the fighter.

The baggage becomes easier to excuse when the candidate promises confrontation, and that’s exactly what Platner is promising. The warning signs become easier to rationalize when the candidate channels anger and rage. Again, that’s what Platner is promising. And the normal standards of political conduct start to look negotiable when the candidate offers a path to power for Democrats.

And voters have already seen the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, right? Look at the rise today. When you sit back, voters have watched Bernie Sanders build a national movement. They’ve watched AOC continue to become part of the most recognizable voices in Congress and the Democrat Party.

So, voters are watching this entire progressive caucus push the party toward a larger role in government, whether it’s in health care, economy, or daily life. I mean, this is where the party is going, and Americans understand what a leftward ideological shift really looks like. Platner’s just signaling what that next phase is.

Progressive policy is giving ways to institutional warfare. That’s what Platner’s promise is. The campaign promise is no longer simply a larger government, which is what Democrats have promised in the past. It is a government consumed by subpoenas, hearings, investigation, and again, paralysis. Now, let me be clear.

Investigations are important. Congressional oversight is legitimate. No president, no politician, nobody is above the law. If there’s evidence of wrongdoing, Congress has the duty to investigate and make sure that the American people see the accountability. But what Platner is promising is the conclusion before the investigation even begins.

Platner’s actually nailed something. The frustrations are real, cost of living is real, as people are pushing on affordability, there’s distrust with Washington, and a lot of Americans believe the political system has actually stopped listening to them a long time ago.

So, there’s frustration and distrust, and this is what Platner understands best. He speaks to the anger. He speaks to voters as being a disruptor. He actually sounds like a weapon aimed at institutions that voters already distrust. That’s why he got 72% of the vote.

Public anger can be channeled into reform, or it can be weaponized into political warfare. A healthy political party actually gives voters a reason to believe that life will improve if one party wins a seat or regains power. It offers an agenda.

And Platner is actually offering something more combustible. He’s promising to make Washington stop working, and Democratic leaders are showing us how much they’re willing to do to overlook in exchange for that promise. Graham Platner is really a test, a midterm test, a Democratic Party test. The party just revealed its answer.

When the Senate seat is valuable enough, the standards will continue to move, the goalpost will move. Everything is movable. When the candidate promises permanent resistance, the moral waiver completely appears. And when Donald Trump is the target, political warfare now becomes the agenda and the goal.

Maine is giving the country a preview of the midterms. Resistance is the product, and the moral waiver is going to be the price. And at the end of the day, control of Congress will be the delivery system, and the choice is up to the voters in Maine.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will expire at midnight on Friday after Congress failed to reach an agreement on warrantless searches. FISA currently grants the federal government authority to surveil foreigners without a warrant, but conservatives, fighting for reforms, argue that it can be used to spy on Americans and collect data.

The extension bill failed Thursday night, 198-218, with 19 conservative hawks joining 199 Democrats voting against it. Though both groups were opposed to the legislation, it was for very different reasons.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., says there’s no point in trying to stay in Washington to attempt another vote.

“Just now, I attempted to pass a short-term extension for three weeks, a clean extension, no changes to the law, just to make sure that the people are not subjected to great harm, and the Democrats—199 of them—voted against it and applauded themselves as they left the building,” Johnson said.

“What would be the point of me going through this exercise over and over? The House has done every single thing.”

According to Reps. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., both members of the House Freedom Caucus, the government collects hundreds of millions of international communications every year.

The problem, the two lawmakers said in a recent op-ed, is that the CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency are able to specifically search through information to find American communications. “This backdoor search inverts the ‘foreign’ part of FISA,” they wrote.

The argument for resolving the issue quickly comes down to national security. The surveillance FISA allows includes extensive counterterrorism efforts for the FIFA World Cup, America 250, and increasing global terror threats—vulnerable situations the White House sees as essential. However, House Republicans are blaming President Donald Trump for muddying delicate negotiations.

When Tulsi Gabbard resigned her seat as director of national intelligence, Trump tapped Bill Pulte, a housing official with no intelligence background. Democrat leadership agreed that no matter what aspect of FISA is on the table, it should not be overseen by Pulte.

“It doesn’t matter what else they do; Pulte has got to be gone,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

However, on Thursday, Trump nominated Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, for the position. Clayton was formerly chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the head of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

“Few people anywhere in the legal community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump said on Truth Social. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”

Clayton is someone Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., says he can confirm “fairly quickly.”

“I don’t know what realistic is, but we’re going to probe the limits of it,” he said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has scheduled a Wednesday confirmation hearing for Clayton.

Yes, according to a verified complaint filed in a federal court Tuesday, a young man who claimed to identify as female not only competed against a teenage girl in girls’ wrestling, but also digitally penetrated her vagina, causing lasting pain.

How can anyone defend transgender sports policies after this?

The Alleged Sexual Assault

According to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, a 16-year-old girl, identified as K.M.K., unknowingly faced off against a male in a wrestling match on Dec. 6. Had she known her opponent was male, she would not have competed.

“During the match, the male athlete sexually assaulted K.M.K., shoving his fingers through her spandex clothing, digitally penetrating her vagina, and holding the position for several seconds,” the lawsuit states. “Visibly distressed, K.M.K. shouted to her mother, who was videorecording the match, that the opponents fingers are ‘in my c—hie!'”

The lawsuit describes the incident in detail, providing a record of exactly what the girl claims happened.

“The opponent reached between K.M.K.’s legs with his left hand, and pushed fingers hard, through her singlet, her Nike Pro spandex shorts, and her underwear,” the lawsuit states. “The opponent’s fingers penetrated her vagina for several seconds, causing great pain.” The lawsuit also claims the male athlete “groped” K.M.K. again before the match ended.

Understandably, the teen girl “felt deeply violated.” She was so in shock that she effectively forfeited the match, allowing the male to win. He took third place in the competition, which enabled him to compete for higher honors, while she lost those opportunities.

“The male athlete was entitled to be honored at any awards ceremonies, the male athlete was entitled to take K.M.K.’s podium spot, and the male athlete was entitled to receive K.M.K.’s medal on a ribbon for his neck,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit states that vaginal penetration “is not a legal wrestling move, and it is not something that could easily happen accidentally. Wrestling singlets are very tight spandex and so the fabric resists pressure, and K.M.K. was wearing three layers of fabric.”

The lawsuit also cites Washington criminal statutes, which define “sexual intercourse” to include “any penetration of the vagina or anus however slight, by an object.” Washington law penalizes rape in the third degree as a class C felony, defined as sexual intercourse without the victim’s consent.

Failure to Act on Sexual Assault Claims

According to the lawsuit, both the victim and her mother reported the alleged assault on Dec. 8, but the school did not follow its own policies requiring a report and investigation into the claims in a timely manner.

The lawsuit claims that 13 girls later expressed discomfort to school administrators because two boys had been using the girls’ bathroom and locker room when they were competing in girls’ wrestling. The alleged sexual assault victim identified her former competitor as one of these boys.

K.M.K. asked the school district to change its policy, allow her to change teams, or at least give her notice if she would be expected to compete against a male. The district allegedly refused.

K.M.K. and her mother, represented by the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, sued, claiming that the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, the state superintendent, the school district, and school officials violated their rights. Among other things, the lawsuit claims defendants violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and violated K.M.K.’s 14th Amendment rights by placing her in “state-created danger.”

The lawsuit seeks an injunction restoring fairness in girls sports and awarding K.M.K. any victories she lost at the hands of a male competitor.

An Indictment Against Transgender Policies

Alliance Defending Freedom has won multiple cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, and the jaw-dropping train of abuses documented in this case cries out for justice.

Whether or not K.M.K. prevails in court, this case illustrates the horrific truth about transgender sports policies.

While many men who claim to identify as women may not do so in order to seek an advantage, these men have a biological edge over women in most sports competitions—even before puberty. The vast majority of them also do not likely seek to compete against women merely for the opportunity to prey on these women sexually.

However, when policies remove the guardrails and allow men into women’s private spaces in the name of gender identity, they enable unscrupulous men to take advantage. I do not know the man’s side of this story, but it is beyond the pale for a man to rape a woman in a women’s sports competition.

At the very least, this incident should finally wake Americans up to the danger of these absurd policies. It is high time we protect women, rather than making them vulnerable in the name of political correctness.

But having just emerged from the Biden era, with its heavy-handed regulation of energy, automotives, and appliances, the U.S. is now entering a new period in which the government is becoming a strategic shareholder. The idea, ostensibly, is to use taxpayer money to support key industries like mining and microchips while allowing Americans to participate in any share price appreciation.

As President Donald Trump put it regarding his plan to take a stake in OpenAI, “pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner.”

In addition to taking direct stakes in Intel and various mining companies, Trump’s 2025 executive order seeks to establish a sovereign wealth fund, in which the U.S. government—currently $39 trillion in debt—would use its business acumen to invest in a portfolio of companies.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., loves the idea, though with a twist. He recently proposed the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would empower the government to take a 50% stake in America’s largest artificial intelligence companies.

“This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us—and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people,” Sanders posted on X.

Where Trump advocates supporting strategic industries and profit sharing, Sanders talks about promoting social justice. But whatever the motivation, free-market economists say America should avoid going down this path.

“The United States did not become the global economic powerhouse it is because the government, and specifically the executive branch, without input from Congress, took ownership of private companies,” Tad DeHaven, a policy expert at the Cato Institute, told the Daily Signal.

“We’ve certainly had enough history to know that state-owned firms tend to be less productive and focused more on pleasing politicians and bureaucrats than on pleasing their customers,” DeHaven said. “It’s an inherently corruptive venture.”

State ownership, critics say, corrupts both politicians and the companies they acquire.

“Mixing government and business has a long track record of graft, cronyism, and increasing the chances of insider trading by government officials,” Jeffrey Degner, a policy expert at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the Daily Signal. 

“Firms will take their eye off the ball—shareholder returns,” he said. “Instead, the focus can change to investments in projects that are politically favored but not supported by genuine market signals.”

Perhaps a greater concern is that companies could effectively become agents of the state, engaging in activities like censorship and illegal surveillance, which are legally prohibited for government officials under the Constitution. There are already many examples of this, even without the state being a shareholder.

They include the FBI compelling banks to data mine customer accounts without warrants or probable cause following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot; the Biden administration leaning on social media companies to censor posts that contradicted government messaging; federal and local law enforcement hiring private data brokers to gather information en masse on Americans’ buying habits, travel, and church attendance; and New York state regulators pressuring insurance companies to deny policies to disfavored groups like the National Rifle Association.

“Consider the Biden administration’s pressure applied to social media firms during the COVID lockdowns,” Degner said. “Imagine the silencing of free speech if the government had already taken ownership stakes in these firms!”

Government ownership of companies is not new, but to date, it has been largely an emergency, temporary measure. The federal government took stakes to prop up banks during the Great Depression through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and through the Troubled Asset Relief Program during the 2008 mortgage crisis. In 2009, the federal government acquired a 60% stake in General Motors in an effort to keep the automaker afloat, although taxpayers ultimately lost more than $10 billion when the shares were sold. 

What is different this time, however, is that the goal is not to rescue and divest, but to become a long-term corporate partner, and in the case of the Trump administration, bypassing Congress. Many analysts fear that once a president takes upon himself the power to buy companies, this precedent will be further exploited and expanded by future administrations.

“The concern here is what is the appropriate role and responsibility of not just the federal government but the executive branch itself, and it’s a bipartisan problem,” DeHaven said.

“There [is] nothing stopping the next Democratic administration using these stakes to put their thumb on these companies, across industries and across the broader economy, to effectuate outcomes that they desire,” he said. “But it’s not a Democrat thing and it’s not a Republican thing, it’s a ratchet effect—the tentacles are going to get deeper and stronger, unless it’s stopped.”

Drawing a line of separation between government and private industry in America will likely require action from lawmakers.

“Congress could pass legislation to prohibit both itself and the executive branch and its agencies from taking an ownership stake in any private company,” Degner said. “The constitutional authority to make such purchases is shaky to begin with.”

Failing that, the “ratchet” of government control over the private sector will likely continue to tighten.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

On Friday, New Jersey finished counting in the state’s 9th Congressional District Republican primary, and Clifton City Councilwoman Rosie Pino defeated Tiffany Burress to advance to a November faceoff against Democrat incumbent Rep. Nellie Pou, The Associated Press reported.

While California received national attention for slow-arriving mail votes that flipped the outcome of the Los Angeles mayoral primary election, New Jersey is among at least 17 states and the District of Columbia that keep counting mail ballots arriving after Election Day. At least two states allow ballots to arrive up to two weeks after Election Day.

Across the nation, in previous years, ballot counts have dragged out because of permissive state laws. However, a highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling could change that.

What Will SCOTUS Decide?

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month in a case that could mitigate the likelihood of taking weeks to know who won an election. In the case of Republican National Committee v. Michael Watson, the Mississippi secretary of state, justices will essentially decide if Election Day is the final deadline for votes to arrive. Mississippi counts votes that arrive up to five days after Election Day.

A majority of justices seemed favorable to the RNC during the oral arguments in March.

“Nearly a week after the primary, it is completely unacceptable that ballots are still being counted,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a public statement earlier this week, referring to California. “That’s why the RNC is aggressively fighting in the Supreme Court to stop ballots received after Election Day from being counted. Americans deserve timely election results they can trust.”

Interestingly, this week, even The New York Times editorial board called for Congress to impose a national deadline of Election Day for ballots to arrive, but argued the Supreme Court should not fix it.

“With California refusing to change its system and a few other states having similar problems, the appropriate remedy is a federal law,” the Times said. “That law should establish Election Day as the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive and set basic standards for efficient vote counting.”

The editorial, first published on the Times website on Wednesday, added, “The Supreme Court may act on this issue before Congress has a chance.” However, it adds, “In our view, current federal law does not provide a clear answer, which means that states would retain the freedom to decide. We believe both that the Supreme Court should not establish Election Day as the national deadline for ballot arrival and that Congress should.”

What About Other Jurisdictions?

California allows seven days post-Election Day for ballots to arrive for counting, while New Jersey allows for six days. Several other states allow straggler ballots to be counted if postmarked by Election Day.

Illinois and Utah count ballots arriving up to 14 days after Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, as long as the ballots are postmarked by Election Day. Alaska and Maryland allow ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted up to 10 days after the election. 

The District of Columbia, New York, and Oregon also count ballots arriving seven days after the election. West Virginia has a grace period of five days.

Nevada and Ohio count ballots received up to four days after Election Day, while Kansas, Massachusetts, and Virginia count ballots arriving up to three days after Election Day.

Washington state law says that ballots received after the election with postmarks before Election Day are counted; no deadline is specified for when they must be received, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Have Lengthy Counts Flipped Other Races?

In the last U.S. House race called in the 2024 election, Republican John Duarte led for more than a week after Election Day before Democrat Adam Gray eventually won the race for California’s 13th Congressional District by 187 votes after mail ballots and cures were processed.

In the 2024 election cycle, Republican incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel was leading on election night for California’s 45th Congressional District. However, Democrat Derek Tran won after weeks of additional mail-ballot counting.

In a 2024 Oregon state House of Representatives race, Republican Tracy Cramer led by about five points on election night, but Democrat Lesly Muñoz won after the counting of late-arriving ballots.

In the 2022 Nevada U.S. Senate race, Republican Adam Laxalt led on election night, but Democrat incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won after days of mail-ballot counting. This secured a narrow Senate Democrat majority.

In the 2024 primary for Washington state lands commissioner, it appeared the Republican had advanced to the general election on the night of the vote. As additional ballots came in, the outcome changed.

That is, unless “Israel fatigue” undermines the effort.

“Iran is losing $450 million [a day] through the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz,” Amit Segal told the Daily Signal, before adding that Iran’s losses on the economic, social, and military fronts have sped up the fall of the Iranian hostility.

Iran is currently weakened by American and Israeli strikes, ongoing since June 2025, which claimed the lives of the regime’s top officials, virtually wiped out its air force and navy, and damaged infrastructure, ammunition, and weaponry. President Donald Trump announced the commencement of military operations against Iran last year, citing the need to stop the regime before it reached its nuclear ambitions.

Additionally, since the commencement of the retaliation against the regime in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, about 30% of the regime’s missile capabilities have been eliminated as of March.

However, despite the advancements, the commentators said that the potential fall of the Iranian regime could be at risk because Israel is losing the support of Western nations.

Segal told the Daily Signal that the Western world’s growing rejection of Israel stems from what he describes as “Israel fatigue.” This weariness has led people to ignore conflict in the Middle East and withhold support for the war, which Trump claimed would last weeks or months.

As a result, a lack of international support plus global efforts to obstruct the Israeli military has “slowed Israel’s military progress,” prolonging the war, according to Segal.

“Israel fatigue” also has created an opening for Westerners to begin embracing anti-Israel propaganda and antisemitism.

“You wake up in the morning in Oklahoma or Washington, D.C., or New York City or San Francisco … and you keep hearing about a tiny country that is a 12-hours flight from here,” Segal said. “And then you’ll hear that they fight Hamas in Gaza, they fight in Syria, and in Iran. It’s not surprising that you might come … to the conclusion that the Israel is actually the aggressor.”

Josh Hammer, an American Jewish lawyer and Newsweek’s senior editor at large, echoed Segal’s remarks.

Segal added that the best solution to this problem is to win the war Israel is fighting against Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

“I think that the best remedy for this situation is to decisively win this war and stop fighting for a few years,” Segal continued.

As seen in the recent week, Israel has progressed its campaign to win.

The Israeli military has engaged in recent air strikes on multiple fronts, including against Iranian funded radical militants occupying parts of Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and Yemen.

After the Iranian regime fired a barrage of ballistic missiles against civilians in Israel last week, which were intercepted before they hit the ground, Israel intensified strikes against Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon. Israel then began strikes in Iran as well.