The law says that each school board must develop policies to “restrict student cell phone and smart device possession and prohibit student cell phone and smart device use on school property from bell to bell.” All public elementary and secondary schools are required to implement those policies.

In Henrico County, that means students can’t pull out their phones without a teacher’s permission, and they aren’t allowed to wear smartwatches. So far, the policy seems to have been welcomed by students there.

The Daily Signal spoke with several students in a Henrico County High School.

“I like the cell phone ban because it encourages students to talk to each other, and it makes it harder for students to use phones to cheat,” one student said.

“I like that teachers are allowed to take the phones if they see them in class,” another student said. “I also like that students are able to keep their phones in their backpacks in case of an emergency.”

Yet another noted that forcing students to put away phones removes an instructional barrier.

Some districts didn’t wait for the state government to act. “This is our third year with cell phone-free schools in Goochland,” Goochland County Public Schools Superintendent Andrew Armstrong told the Daily Signal. “We have prohibited use and possession of cell phones at all times bell to bell since 2023-2024, including transitions and lunch time. Implementation continues to be effective.”

Armstrong added that the step was taken to help students focus throughout the day. “Our teachers and staff have always maintained their classrooms in a way that prioritizes student focus on learning,” he told the Daily Signal. “A more significant impact is fewer distractions in ‘non-instructional’ time in class transitions. Students come into class ready to learn and not focused on what they were seeing on their phones.”

Districts are concerned about more than personal electronic devices. Some Virginia schools are also limiting the amount of time that students spend on district-issued devices. The Chesterfield and Henrico school districts changed their policies for this year, so kids won’t spend so much time working on school-issued electronics.

Elementary school students in Chesterfield will only take their laptops home “based on instructional needs and academic enrichment opportunities,” as decided by their principal. Henrico will also send younger students home without electronics and will limit how long they may look at screens in class. Its new policies limit daily use to 15 minutes in pre-K, 45 minutes in kindergarten, an hour in first grade, 75 minutes in second grade, and 90 minutes in grades three through five.

A fresh round of statewide changes to electronic device policy may be in the works for next year. State Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, said he will unveil a draft policy to limit the use of educational technology in schools when the state Legislature returns in January.

Meanwhile, Virginia stands to benefit from a $17 billion settlement that a coalition of attorneys general reached last week with Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. The tech giant had faced accusations that it “knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms.” As part of the agreement, Meta will impose daily time limits for young users, limit use during the school day, and provide additional, user-friendly parental controls.

Virginia will receive at least $353 million from the agreement. “With this relief, Virginia will finally be able to put substantial resources behind initiatives to undo these harms, prevent future harms, and change the face of how young people interact with social media for years to come by continuing to hold social media companies accountable,” Attorney General Jay Jones announced. Meta did not admit guilt or legal wrongdoing in settling the case.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. 

The more you look around us today, I think a good description of 2026, culturally, economically, socially, politically, is that we are in a modern medieval world.  

Maybe we’re progressive regressives, and I don’t mean that just in the sense that progressives are regressive, and they are, but that one part of our society is advancing at lightning speed to the future and progressing. But the other part is regressing, and regressing at a phenomenal pace back to what I would call the medieval period. 

Remember, the medieval period was roughly that area in time after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, roughly A.D. 500 to around A.D. 1300 to 1400, the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. In medievalism, we often talk about primitivism after the destruction of the classical world during the Dark Ages, the early medieval period, and it’s characterized by epidemics, bubonic plague, typhus, typhoid, smallpox, terrible sanitation in urban centers. They had forgotten the Roman use of sewage and aqueducts. 

There were open borders. National states popped up that couldn’t defend themselves, so you saw castles and walls pop up all over the European countryside in a way you had not during the Roman period. In cities, they were walled, towns even, and the gates closed at dusk to prevent gratuitous crime. 

But at the same time that this was happening, you had some of the greatest works of literature in the Western world. You had Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” Dante’s “Inferno,” St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica.” And if you look at the architectural expertise and scientific knowledge of architecture, it was progressing at a geometric rate when you look at the huge cathedrals at Seville or Cologne. 

I should remind everybody that around 536, Santa Sofia was created, the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. It would be the largest church in Christendom for a thousand years. And everything from the mass production of crossbows to eyeglasses was a product of the medieval period, even if, as I said, the daily lives of most people were wretched. 

Now let’s switch to the modern period. All of us now can call anywhere in the world in seconds on our iPhones. Anything you want to know, past, present, future, you can just get on a cheap computer and ask an artificial intelligence program from the many free platforms. You can watch movies, you can watch entertainment on satellites. Anything you want is at your fingertips. 

The nation itself is exploring space. We’re getting close to conquering cancer. I can attest to that. Computers allow you to write without even speaking. You can, unfortunately, compose a whole term paper or a book with AI. You can make a movie with AI. 

Yet at the same time that’s happening, look at what’s going on in Berkeley here in California or Los Angeles. We’re seeing outbreaks of medieval diseases that we thought had been conquered years ago, given our sophisticated knowledge of sewage and water treatment. We had a typhus breakout in Los Angeles. We had leptospirosis, a rat disease, in Berkeley. 

You look at the homeless camps all over our major cities. People are just out in the open fornicating, urinating, defecating, injecting drugs. There’s tons of feces that has to be removed, and it’s so strange in this modern medievalism. 

We have sophisticated researchers who go into a hospital in Chicago or go to a cancer center in San Francisco and have to check the bottoms of their shoes to make sure they don’t have feces as they go into their space-age laboratories. 

It’s really funny. In the medieval period, public hangings and beheadings were sort of public events that people flocked out to see. Is that any different than our glorification of murderers? 

And there is a difference. Luigi Mangione, they named an opera after him in California. The killer of Charlie Kirk brought people jubilation. I won’t even get into Lindsay Clancy, who strangled her three children and became every woman to the feminist left.  

At least in the medieval period, they knew that the murderer had done something wrong and was being punished. In the post-medieval period, we are glorifying that murderer, and that’s really striking. 

And so what I’m getting at is we are the most regulated, the most advanced, the most modern, the most scientific society in history, even as we can’t solve problems that were solvable, and the medieval period would have died to know the solutions that we have in our hands to make sure we have clean water, to make sure there is no crime, to make sure there is no disease, to make sure that people don’t defecate on the street. But we don’t do it. We willingly don’t do it. 

Now, the question to finish is why? 

We have an elite that has embraced a very toxic ideology throughout history, and that is mandated, government-sanctioned equality of result. And they have divided, therefore, to further that ideology, the world into victims and victimizers, an arbitrary classification, sometimes based on class, but increasingly on race. 

And once they identify someone as a victim who’s not responsible for his plight, then it’s the duty of the society to allow him to express himself. If you have a lot of teenagers who want to loot a jewelry store, then you say they were hungry and they needed food.  

If you see homeless people living on the street, then it was because of something the majority culture did to them. 

And the result of that is when people engage in very dangerous antisocial behavior, an elite will tell the rest of us that they’re not subject to law enforcement. or they’re not subject to the laws that apply to the rest of us. 

But there are two really pernicious addenda here. 

Number one, the people who do this on the Left, who believe in this mandated equality and a binary of victim and victimizer, are never subject to the consequences of their own ideology. Nancy Pelosi‘s home is not surrounded by homeless people. Jane Fonda doesn’t have to trip over people injecting drugs when she walks outside her door. The Hollywood stars in Malibu who champion the homeless have very clear security. You can’t get near their homes. 

In other words, we, the lab rats, are those upon whom they experiment. 

And there’s another reason as well. It’s not just that they experiment on us. and this ideology is not applicable to itself, but more importantly, they believe that they are morally superior because most of them are agnostics or atheists. They have lost their God, but they have found it in a post-Enlightenment caring, abstract though it may be, for victims. 

And when you put this religious element to it, because it makes no sense to allow medieval diseases and medievalism to dominate your cities in crime, filth and homelessness, but they do it. They feel morally superior, and it gives them meaning in their life in a way that we, the majority, find not morally superior, but morally repugnant. 

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

Speaking at a dinner in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday evening, Trump said that, in the final month before the election he will prioritize 35 battleground races he believes Republicans can win. The president’s aligned super PAC, MAGA Inc., has more than $400 million saved up, which some were speculating the president planned to keep for himself.

“I’m going to take the final 30 days, maybe a little bit more than that, because it’s all about 35 races,” he said. “I’m going to go to every one of those 35 places, and we’re going to see if we can get everyone elected,” he continued.

“I’m doing it for the speaker. I’m doing it for [Sen.] John Thune. I’m doing it for [House Majority Leader] Steve [Scalise]. I’m doing it for our great chairman, thank you, Joe [Gruters]. I’m doing it for the legendary [Rep.] Jim Jordan. We’re going to win for Jim. We got to keep you in the same position,” he added, highlighting key Republican leaders.

While he didn’t announce a state-by-state spending plan, he added that he is relying on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s team to direct him where to spend.

The president did say he would not be rallying in safe Republican districts, like the speaker’s district in Louisiana, but would be focusing on the more contentious races. He has promised to support Dan Sullivan, running for Senate in Alaska, and Ken Paxton, running for Senate in Texas.

The president made his first MAGA Inc. stop in South Carolina for Sen. Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, which helped secure her the Republican nomination. The president also sent Vice President JD Vance to Michigan earlier this week to a MAGA Inc. rally in support of former congressman Mike Rogers, in his race against Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed for Senate.

Trump said he will be doing everything from rallies to remote town halls, which he said he could possibly reach 10 per night.

The races Trump will focus on will be races where the Republican is either tied or very close. “In some cases, you can be losing by a lot, and we’ll bring you over the line. But mostly, it’s if you’re close, and I think we’ll get all those people elected. But I’m going to have to work,” the president concluded.

Trump has been fundraising for MAGA Inc. since 2024 and, according to The Wall Street Journal and Federal Election Commission reports, has brought in nearly $800 million since then.

The three-monthslong campaign, which coincides with the school holiday season when parents are most likely to take their daughters abroad for the procedure, will conclude on Sept. 2.

Hoardings on bus shelters are warning parents: “Female genital mutilation should never be part of the journey.” The advertisement features an image of a young girl whose genitals have been mutilated.

The charity “Excision, parlons-en!” (Let’s Talk About Female Genital Mutilation!) is offering an awareness kit as it partners with the French government. According to statistics provided by the nongovernmental organization, 180,000 girls risk being “cut” each year in Europe.

Female Genital Mutilation Plagues Muslim-Dominated Areas in France

The prefecture of Seine-Saint-Denis in the Paris region, which has an estimated Muslim population of 800,000 people out of 1.8 million inhabitants (44.4% of the population), has the highest rate of female genital mutilation, with 1 in 10 women at risk of being victims of the procedure, in 2026.

A study conducted at the André-Grégoire Hospital in Montreuil, a suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, found that nearly 12% of women giving birth were affected by female genital mutilation. 

According to Excision, parlons-en!, 500,000 women have already been forced to undergo the procedure across Europe. France has the highest number of victims (60,000), with Belgium (13,000) coming second.  

In 2019, France had 139,312 adult women and 10,688 underage girls who had undergone female genital mutilation, according to the Interministerial Mission for the Protection of Women against Violence and the Fight against Human Trafficking. 

France outlawed female genital mutilation in 1983, with a sentence of 10 years in prison, or up to 20 years for cutting a girl under the age of 15. Parents who oversaw female genital mutilation are treated as “accomplices” to the crime. The law also applies to parents who send French-born children abroad to be cut.

By 2024, France had granted refugee status to 20,000 girls under the age of 18 to protect them from the risk of being genitally cut in their country of origin. 

Flagging off the campaign in July, the Prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis said it was “raising awareness about Female Genital Mutilation before the summer holidays.” The prefect noted that “FGM is an unacceptable violation of the integrity and fundamental rights of the women and girls who are victims of it. It must be denounced and condemned internationally, as well as in France.”

Islamic Justification for Female Genital Mutilation

“The Quran says nothing on this issue, but Yusuf al-Qaradawi, considered one of the greatest spiritual leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, long treated ‘female circumcision’ as a matter of religious jurisprudence,” Dr Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, a global authority on the movement, told the Daily Signal.

“This issue intersects with a normative universe that radical Islam has significantly developed in France: that of controlling women’s bodies and sexuality,” Bergeaud-Blackler, author of “The Brotherhood and its Networks: The Investigation,” explained.

“While Islamic religious authorities in France hardly endorse this practice, they fail to confront the problem, which affects a growing number of young girls, particularly from Sub-Saharan Africa,” the anthropologist added. Female genital mutilation is more commonly justified through the Sunnah of Mohammed; that is, conversations that the founder of Islam had during his travels.

“Any insistence that FGM has nothing to do with Islam is simply unserious. Granted the practice predates Islam, is not directly commanded in the Qur’an and most Muslims thankfully don’t practice it,” Nuriyah Khan, a leading British women’s rights activist, told the Daily Signal.

Khan, a fellow of the Ideological Defense Institute, noted that “the classical Shafi‘i school of Sunni jurisprudence classifies female circumcision as obligatory, while the Dawoodi Bohras, a Musta‘li Isma‘ili Shia community centered in India, have long practiced ‘khafz,’ the community’s term for female genital cutting as a religious rite.”

“That does not mean Islamic jurisprudence is its only cause. Culture, family pressure and the desire to control female sexuality all play a part,” she observed. “However, Islam is part of that conversation whether campaigners like it or not. We will never tackle FGM honestly if every discussion begins by denying the belief system used to justify it.”

British Medical Journal Attacks Campaigns to Outlaw Female Genital Mutilation

In 2019, the French government launched the “National Plan for the Eradication of Female Genital Mutilation,” which includes “15 measures aimed at strengthening the detection of the risks of excision, training professionals and raising public awareness of this harmful practice.”

The government sanctioned 5 million euros from 2020 to 2022 and 2.5 million euros in 2023 to develop comprehensive care units for victims of female genital mutilation. 

In 2023, the Minister for Gender Equality convened the monitoring committee for the National Action Plan to Eradicate Female Genital Mutilation, announcing it would fight female genital mutilation through a “sexual and reproductive rights roadmap with €250 million in funding over five years.”

Government plans to crack down on female genital mutilation have suffered a setback, however, with the September 2025 issue of the British Journal of Medical Ethics warning that campaigns and policies against female genital mutilation are likely to cause more harm, “despite their grounding in human rights and health advocacy.”

“This discourse, driven by a heavily racialized and ethnocentric framework, has led to unintended but serious consequences: the erosion of trust in healthcare settings, the silencing of dissenting or nuanced community voices, racial profiling and disproportionate legal surveillance of migrant families,” the peer-reviewed article in the prestigious medical journal warned.

The journal also warned against a “troubling double standard that legitimizes comparable genital surgeries in Western contexts while condemning similar procedures in others,” failing to mention that female genital mutilation in the context of Muslim communities is almost always coerced, unlike cosmetic genital surgery, which is undertaken to create a “designer vagina.”

The 25 co-authors, made up of academics from the University of Cambridge, the University of Bristol, the University of Brighton, and Sussex Medical School, noted that anti-female genital mutilation laws, such as protection orders by family courts leading to confiscation of passports, “construct parents as potential perpetrators” and “disrupts trust within families and causes harm to entire communities.”

“This is an abhorrent act and we should call it what it is: mutilation,” lawmaker Claire Coutinho stressed. “It is beyond belief that members of the medical profession would want to smooth out the harsh realities that face young girls undergoing this awful practice in the name of ‘diversity.’”

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

2025-2026 SOL Failure Rates in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties

Source: Virginia Department of Education School Quality Profiles

Note: In FCPS, 41.1% of students are classified as economically disadvantaged; in LCPS, 24.7% are classified as economically disadvantaged.

Results for history and English writing SOLs are omitted from this table because the districts have primarily moved away from tests in favor of more subjective Project-Based Assessments.

The contrast between overall student performance and the performance of economically disadvantaged students is particularly disconcerting. In both school divisions, economically disadvantaged students were roughly twice as likely to fail their reading, math, and science SOL assessments as the overall student population.

These results should prompt a serious examination of whether Fairfax and Loudoun are getting sufficient academic returns on their substantial education spending.

That question is particularly important because both school divisions have faced budget pressures even as their enrollments have declined and their budgets have continued to grow. When student enrollment falls but expenditures continue to rise, district leaders should be able to clearly demonstrate where the additional money is going—and, more importantly, whether it is improving student outcomes.

In fiscal year 2026, for example, FCPS employed 2,346 non-school-based central administrators, whose combined salaries totaled more than $272 million. Even modest shifts in spending priorities could put more resources directly into schools—potentially supporting additional teachers, smaller student-to-teacher ratios, tutoring, intervention, and other academic supports.

The same scrutiny should apply to Loudoun County. LCPS has also experienced declining enrollment while maintaining a growing budget. Yet 38% of its economically disadvantaged students failed the reading and math SOL assessments, and 42% failed science.

Money alone does not guarantee academic achievement. Fairfax and Loudoun are two of Virginia’s most affluent communities, and their school systems spend enormous sums educating their students. The latest SOL results demonstrate that the central question is no longer simply how much these districts spend, but how effectively they spend it.

Parents and taxpayers should demand more than annual budget increases and promises of additional resources. They should demand measurable academic results. If district leaders want to ask taxpayers for more money, they should first be prepared to explain why existing resources, including hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to central administration, are not producing better outcomes for the students who need help most.

A school system’s first obligation is to educate its students. When academic performance is struggling, taxpayers deserve to know that their dollars are being directed toward that mission—not toward expanding the bureaucracy that surrounds it.

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

“They’re going to try to raise your taxes,” he said. “They’re going to try to stop us from preventing money going to fraudsters. They’re going to try to investigate and investigate and investigate rather than legislate things that are in the best interest of the American people.”

Vance described this outcome as a “nightmare.”

“I think it’d be bad for the American people,” he said.

The vice president, who filled the role of White House press secretary for the first briefing since Karoline Leavitt’s departure, made the pitch for Americans to vote for Republicans in the midterms.

“Do you want to live in a country that has safety and security and prosperity? If the answer is yes, and I think most Americans do, then vote for congressional Republicans over congressional Democrats on every single issue,” he said in response to a question from the Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan.

Vance chairs the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. He said Democrats take the side of “fraudsters, of criminals, and of far-left interest groups over the side of the American people.”

“We are trying to take money out of the hands of fraudsters, so that people who rely on Medicaid or people rely on food stamp benefits, they’re able to get what they need because we’ve ensured that Americans’ people’s tax dollars actually go where it’s supposed to go, rather than fraudsters,” he said. “Democrats have fought for the fraudsters, and Republicans have fought for the people who deserve these benefits and the American taxpayers who are paying those benefits.”

The administration has also “tried to make it easier to build additional energy capacity,” Vance said. “If you look at oil and gas policy, Democrats for a generation have gone to war against energy.”

He also touted the administration’s crime policy, saying Democrats have fought the president every step of the way.

“On every issue where we’ve been successful in promoting law and order, the Democrats have been for the criminals, and we’ve been for the American people,” he said.

Vance called out Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

“If you stand for working people, then why have you supported the same policies that for 40 years shipped the Michigan auto industry to foreign nations?” he asked. “We are the people who have been fighting for the jobs of Michigan autoworkers. We’ve been the people willing to stand up both to the big corporations, but the big foreign competitors, and say, ‘You are not allowed to steal American industry anymore.'”

Republicans stand for “you,” while Democrats stand for “somebody else,” he said.

“Elect the commonsense people to Washington,” he concluded, “and we’ll keep on doing great work.”

The legislation will focus on defining human trafficking to prevent offenders from using loopholes and to ensure that someone who signed a nondisclosure agreement will still be required to report sexual misconduct, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.

Comer spoke in an exclusive interview with the Daily Signal.

Comer led the probe into the government’s handling of Epstein’s case by the committee, which held interviews and depositions with dozens of people, many of them high-profile individuals, and gathered about 3 million documents.

“We also hope to have legislation that deals with human trafficking and to prevent some of the things that we think were allowed to happen, that the law is unclear on with some of these girls,” Comer told the Daily Signal. “It’s going to deal with human trafficking laws. It’s going to define grooming.”

He added, “It will also deal with non-disclosure agreements to where and if people knew about sexual misconduct, that they’re required to report it, even if there was a nondisclosure agreement.”

The committee held depositions behind closed doors and later released transcripts and videos with major figures who were close to Epstein when he was alive. This included Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former President Bill Clinton, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Comer noted that Hillary Clinton agreed with some of his policy suggestions to prevent similar situations.

“When I talked to Hillary Clinton, when she was doing her deposition with us, we told her we would like to do some legislation on human trafficking,” Comer said. “She thought that was good because some of the women, after having told their stories, probably wouldn’t have met the legal definition of being human trafficked, even though it seems they were. So we want to try to make sure there’s no loophole in the law that would allow another person like Jeffrey Epstein to be able to lure women from other countries to his island to be abused.”

The congressional investigation will wrap up at the end of the congressional session, with a final report or summary of the findings, Comer said.

“The government failed, and that’s what, when we wrap all this up, that’s going to be the conclusion: The government failed the victims,” Comer said.

Comer said the committee will likely make a referral to the Justice Department at the conclusion of the investigation, but he was not ready to name anyone. He noted that there are still a few people the committee wants to depose.

He added that he does not believe some of the testimony, but does not have the evidence to suggest it is false.

The Justice Department initially charged Epstein in 2008 with operating a sex trafficking ring, luring dozens of underage girls to his mansions in Palm Beach, Manhattan, and elsewhere. In 2008, Epstein avoided federal prosecution by entering into a non-prosecution agreement in Florida, pleading guilty to state-level charges of soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution. He served 13 months in jail.

More than a decade later, federal prosecutors in New York arrested Epstein in July 2019 on new federal sex trafficking and conspiracy indictments. But before his trial could take place, Epstein died by what is believed to be suicide in his Manhattan prison cell in August 2019.

Comer said it’s still difficult to say why the failures happened.

“Every failure that seemed like it could happen, happened. Now, did it happen because he was influential?” Comer asked. “Did it happen because he was an asset of some government agency of ours or another? I don’t know. Or did it happen because of incompetence by the government? I think any of those three are possible answers to why it happened.”

Comer said this was the most thorough investigation of Epstein’s inner circle, and it unfortunately came decades after his crimes.

“No one ever interviewed the key players around Epstein,” Comer had said prior to the committee’s investigation. “No one interviewed his staff. No one interviewed his legal team and accountant, and no one interviewed any of the men that the victims identified as being abusers.”

He noted the vast failures to stop Epstein were somewhat similar to the government’s failures ahead of 9/11, when government agencies had information that could have stopped the attack, but none were communicating.

“You had several different states that were investigating Epstein, as well as the Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York. I don’t think any of those entities were communicating with each other, as you can tell now from all the evidence, and I’ve subpoenaed all the evidence,” Comer said.

“New Mexico didn’t know what was happening in the Virgin Islands and the Virgin Islands didn’t know what was happening in Florida and the Department of Justice in New York didn’t know what was happening in those other three states, as well as Palm Beach didn’t know what was going on in New York City,” Comer said.

“This was this guy that was committing crimes in at least four different locations, at least New York City, the Virgin Islands, Florida, and New Mexico, and there probably were more,” Comer said.

Victor Davis Hanson: Just thinking about Iran, there’s some developments today that we, on one of the islands in the strait, thought that they were, I think we were pretty assured that it happened, were arming missiles that had, I’d never really heard of this, but mines on them, and so that they could reclaim control of the Hormuz.  

So then we took those out, and then they replied by sending eight or nine missiles to Jordan, which didn’t do any damage. And now, as I’m talking, I think [President Donald] Trump is considering hitting them. 

A lot of us, I think we said on this podcast, we expect an October [surprise] … I didn’t quite expect a September surprise. But Iran has to do something because it is being squeezed economically, culturally, medically, politically, militarily, and its economy is ruined.  

The only thing I’m troubled by is I understand that we did a lot of damage for the first 38 days. But I don’t understand, since we were six months from the midterms, why we didn’t spend, as we’ve said on this podcast, another 22 weeks, 23 weeks, 24 weeks, and obliterate Pike Mountain with B-1s coming back again, maybe three or four missions. Just hit it, hit it, hit it. 

I’m not aware of the inventory status of our bunker busters, but I didn’t know why we didn’t take out some of their dual-use bridges, their TV communications, crater their airport, and really do a lot of damage early, and then start what we’re doing right now in April. In other words, complete economic sanctions, blockades, shut down their access to foreign exchange, everything. Secondary sanctions against those who trade with them. I think they would’ve been kaput by now. 

Jack Fowler: Yeah. 

Hanson: Not that they won’t be, but …  

Fowler: Well, do you think it has something to do with Donald Trump’s belief and his talent for being a negotiator? Do you think that has something to do with it? 

Hanson: I do. I think you overestimate … I think the difference is … The Chinese have a sense of their own self-interest. The Russians have a sense of their own self-interest. We learned that. I mean, they were the biggest, those two countries were the biggest mass murderers in history, really, [Josef] Stalin and Mao [Zedong]. But I’m not sure Iran does. 

I know everybody’s rational, supposedly, and I know that these people who say that they’re waiting for 72 virgins in paradise seem to be pretty savvy investors when it’s stealing money from the people and buying townhouses in the choice locations of Paris or London.  

That said, I just don’t think that you can believe what they say. I don’t think you can believe anything they agree to. 

They have a different vision. Their vision is that this is a corrupt world. The West, the Western colonial experience, harmed them, was an insult. There were great days of the past when there was a caliphate, and then the Ottomans, at least, even though they suffered, the Iranians and the Arabs suffered terribly, mostly the Arabs under the Ottoman Empire. 

The point they have is they want to create a Sharia, radical Islamic, ninth-century, kind of like the Taliban only in Shia terms, with a headquarters in Tehran run by a bunch of theocrats with nuclear weapons and using the oil and making the Gulf Arab states subservient in the way that Hamas and the Houthis are, and using the combined oil of their own and the Arabs to really shake down and destroy the West. 

They hate the West. I’ve heard this so often: “Well, Victor, there’s a million Uyghurs, or Muslims. The Chinese treat them as slaves.” 

Yes, but they don’t hate the Chinese. 

“Well, Victor, Victor, [Vladimir] Putin, in the third Chechnyan war, he leveled Grozny. He just wiped out thousands of Muslims.” 

Yes, he did. He doesn’t hate Islam. They don’t hate Putin like they hate us. They hate us because we’re successful, we’re wealthy, we dominate the culture of the world, and they know that it’s a narcotic. 

The best example of that is on the eve of Sept. 11th. The 19 murderers, where were they that week on the eve of when they were gonna commit mass murder and be such Puritans? They were in Vegas partying it up. 

And what was [Osama] bin Laden doing before we got him? He was thumbing through his porno collection. 

Well, they are so repressed that they hate the titillation and the seduction of what they think is a corrupt West. So, they’re never gonna listen to Trump. Never, never, never. They’re only gonna listen if they have no choice. 

So, if he continues to squeeze them, squeeze them, squeeze them, one of two things will happen. Either they will come begging him to stop, and I doubt that’s gonna happen, or there will be a popular uprising at some point, or they will starve if we continue to do it, or something will stop Donald Trump. 

And what would stop him? Beause here we’re getting to the meat of the argument. They really do believe that the democratic socialists of the Left, the Islamicist voice in America, the Ilhan Omars, the Rashida Tlaibs, the Zohran Mamdanis, the Hasan Pikers, the Abdul El-Sayeds, they really believe that they’re on their side. When El-Sayed said, I have to be careful about criticizing the death of being celebratory in tone about the death of the Supreme Leader, he was on the hot mic. 

Well, he said on the hot mic, “Be careful. That wouldn’t go down too well with my constituents.” 

So, they really believe that they’re winning demographically and politically, and that there are forces in the United States and this new democratic socialist-Democrat-Islamicist coalition that will stop Trump once they win the midterms and either cut off funds, which they won’t do, or, in some strange way, have resolutions. Who knows? 

They have something … I’ll just finish this rant. They have some evidence for this because I mentioned that when you have ex-presidents visiting at heightened tensions, like [Barack] Obama planning to go to [Mark] Carney, or you have, as John Kerry was negotiating in Paris, basically privately while we were getting out of the Iran deal, or you have the Left really cheering on our enemies or calling this Trump’s war, you could make the argument that they have confidence. 

There’s reason for their confidence that you can call off the United States, that there’s people on the left that agree with them and wanna stop Trump by any means necessary. 

And so, they would rather see the United States hurt if that involved the destruction of Trump. By all means, they wanna destroy Trump. That’s their issue. And if they can do it with collateral damage to the United States, that doesn’t bother them at all. 

When he says he’s going to have record natural gas and oil production, or he’s bragging that he closed the border so there’s zero illegal immigration de facto, or they sent back 300,000 criminals, or we have more space launches suddenly under his tenure than the whole world combined, not even close, or that our AI companies now are nine out of the top 10, our software companies are nine out of the top 10 worldwide, we’re racing ahead on AI, they don’t care. They don’t. That doesn’t matter at all. 

And if you sit down with a leftist and you say, “We went up to … We had 5% inflation for four years, and we had cumulative 22% inflation. And the first year we had 1.9% under Trump. We don’t know what it’s gonna be, but it won’t be 5%.” 

They don’t care. They’ll say, “The unaffordability that we caused is your fault.” 

So, it’s an irrational hatred. That’s one reason I wrote the book about Trump, “The Counterrevolution,” because I don’t think that even he sometimes realizes that you can’t negotiate with the Iranians, but you also can’t ever, ever be … Don’t expect any credit from the Left. 

This isn’t the Democratic Party. This isn’t even Bill Clinton’s kind of left-wing version of it. This isn’t even Barack Obama’s Left, Left, Left revolutionary wing. This is different. This is a nihilist, young, millennial, I don’t know what you want to call them, but they detest him to such a degree that they want him and everybody with him to fail. 

I can see it just by writing good things about him. When I get classicist, because I still keep up in classics, I try to write an article a year. I’ll have people who I knew very well, but just the fact that I wrote a book about Trump, they’ll write and say, “He was a terrible classicist. He sold his soul to Trump and da, da, da, da, da, da.” 

They’re so full of hatred, and they’re not empirical. And some of our best friends that we used to know. 

When Robert Kagan writes an article that the Iran war is lost, when Iran has no functional military and it’s on the edge of bankruptcy, and OPEC is splintering apart, and Israel is stronger than ever, and the Gulf states collectively have much more clout than they’ve ever had, and he says that Iran is winning, that can only reflect the deductive hatred of Trump. 

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

A parent’s worst nightmare occurred on June 20, 2024, when 5-year-old Dalilah Coleman suffered a catastrophic, traumatic brain injury after an 18-wheeler driven by an illegal immigrant slammed into the vehicle she was riding in during a multi-car crash in California.

Before the crash, Marcus Coleman said his daughter was preparing to start kindergarten and enjoyed swimming, gymnastics, and playing with her siblings.

Dalilah, now 7, is nonverbal and relearning how to walk after suffering the injury. She has also been diagnosed with diplegic cerebral palsy and global developmental delay.

The case comes as California has emerged as the nation’s leading source of commercial driver’s licenses issued to illegal immigrants.

Dalilah’s father testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement during a hearing examining sanctuary policy.

During the hearing, Coleman confronted Democrat lawmakers who support sanctuary policies, accusing them of showing concern for his family only while he was testifying before Congress.

“I reject your guys’ sympathy, to be honest. There’s no way you guys are sorry.”

He said none of the Democrat lawmakers had previously called or reached out to him, including during his previous visits to Capitol Hill.

“This, here in this room, is the only time you guys care.”

The father then pointed to what happened to his daughter as the real-world consequence of what he described as government failures.

“When Washington talks about illegal immigration, immigration status, commercial driver’s licenses, and enforcement failures, eventually people become numbers. Dalilah is not a number. My daughter is what those statistics look like when government safeguards fail. And my family is what those failures look like two years later.”

While criticizing sanctuary policies, Coleman told Democrat lawmakers, “I hold each and every one of you responsible for it, and I always will.”

He called on Congress to strengthen requirements for commercial drivers, arguing that the government should verify a driver’s identity, immigration status, work eligibility, training, and qualifications before allowing them on the road.

He also criticized California policies that allowed Partap Singh, an Indian national who was in the country illegally, to obtain a California commercial driver’s license.

California has emerged at the center of a broader national crackdown on commercial driver’s licenses issued to illegal immigrants.

Earlier this month, federal authorities arrested 95 illegal immigrant truck drivers, 76 of whom had commercial driver’s licenses issued by California.

A federal audit done in 2025 found that of roughly 145 records reviewed, about 26% of commercial driver’s licenses for certain foreign drivers failed to comply with federal requirements.

That data has fueled calls for stricter licensing requirements.

In lieu of the lack of support from Democrat lawmakers, Coleman has worked with Republicans to advance Dalilah’s Law, which aims to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses by requiring training, U.S. citizenship, and English-language proficiency standards.

Coleman said he plans to keep fighting for those changes.

“Until this system changes, I will continue using my voice for the little girl whose life was forever changed by its failures.”

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service will issue the proposed regulation Thursday to restore merit.

“Under President Trump, this Administration is standing up for America’s students by ensuring racial discrimination has no place in American education,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Daily Caller. “Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature.”

Bessent added the proposed regulations “establish a clear standard, and the institutions that continue to use discriminatory practices will no longer receive the benefits of federal tax-exempt status.”

The proposed regulation will “put institutions on notice,” said IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano.

“Private educational institutions that promote discriminatory practices will no longer be afforded the benefits of federal tax-exempt status,” Bisignano told the Daily Caller.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service are citing Supreme Court precedents from Brown v. Board of Education, Bob Jones University v. United States, and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. These cases addressed racial discrimination in education and, in the case of Bob Jones University v. United States, upheld the revocation of tax-exempt status based on racially discriminatory policies.

The Justice Department has investigated other private universities for alleged race-based discrimination practices, including Yale University School of Medicine, the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and Duke University School of Law..

“Parental rights are paramount in the operation of America’s public schools, and Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools does not know children better than their own parents,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the division, said in a statement on the lawsuit Tuesday.

“The Department will not tolerate school districts playing fast and loose with federal law in the service of radical gender ideology,” Dhillon added.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, accuses the school district in Kansas City, Kansas, of violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (1974) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (1978). These laws protect parental access to student records and require parental consent before students participate in federally-funded surveys on sensitive personal topics.

The school district adopted a Transgender Guideline in 2024 stating: “If any staff member learns a student is transgender or gender non-conforming, that information should be relayed to the school principal without delay. The school principal should discuss available accommodations and resources with the student or the student’s parent or legal guardian, including the availability of a planning meeting.”

Yet, “if it becomes known that the student does not want the student’s parent or legal guardian included at this stage, that request will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.” The policy states that requests “will be evaluated by the executive director of student services & family support, director of student support programs, executive director of equity & inclusion, and the district’s attorney.”

The lawsuit alleges that the policy allowing, and in some cases mandating, the intentional withholding of student records from the student’s parent violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The lawsuit also alleges that the policy requires the district to ask sensitive personal questions of students, without parental consent, as required by the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon had already investigated the school district and determined on July 1 that the district had violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and on Aug. 25, that it had violated the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.

The school district said in a statement Tuesday that it has fully complied with the federal laws in question, despite the gender secrecy policy.

“Contrary to the allegations in the complaint, the district maintains that it is in full compliance with FERPA and PPRA and is disappointed by the DOJ’s decision to file the lawsuit,” the district said. “Because this matter is now pending in federal court, the district will respond to the complaint through the appropriate legal process and will not make any further comment at this time.”

The Supreme Court ruled against gender secrecy policies in Mirabelli v. Bonta.

McMahon celebrated the lawsuit.

“For decades, schools operated with little accountability as federal parental rights laws like FERPA and PPRA went unenforced, allowing some districts to cut parents out of deeply personal matters involving their own children,” the education secretary said. “That era is over.”

According to the New York Post, the resource guide referred K-12 students to Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” to explain the largest terrorist attack in American history. Screenshots of the 16-page “Muslim Studies Curriculum” obtained by the New York Post showed that the attack was “launched” in response to America’s support for Israel and the American military presence in the Middle East.

New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino told the Daily Signal that the organization’s guide and reference to Bin Laden’s manifesto prove that “CAIR is a terrorist organization.”

“There’s really no other way to put it. They’re the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it’s frankly insane that we’ve allowed them to operate in the United States at all, much less gain such a level of influence that they’re now involved with school curriculum,” Paladino continued.

In her statement, Paladino argued that the recommendation for students to “study” the writings of Bin Laden qualifies the organization to be banned from the United States, while having its leadership “rounded up, arrested, and expelled from the country.”

“[This] should not surprise us at all, because like Osama Bin Laden, their goal is to destroy the country,” Paladino concluded.

A spokesman for the New York Republican Party told the Daily Signal that the guide, as seen in the New York Post, serves as “further proof that they [CAIR] are providing aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.”

The Fordham University College Republicans told the Daily Signal that “the responsibility for the September 11th attacks rests solely with the terrorists who carried them out, and that distinction should never be forgotten.”

The college group added that the “controversy” surrounding the guide “reflects a broader and increasingly troubling debate over how the September 11th attacks,” which is a rhetoric that is “now being used in material directed toward children.”

The guide obtained by the New York Post claims that the 9/11 hijackings increased Islamophobia in the United States. “While Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism existed long before the 9/11 attacks, this time period marked a stark shift in US policy and state-sponsored Islamophobia in the US and abroad. There was immediate backlash against anyone perceived to be Muslim,” the guide read.

The guide also describes the conflict in Gaza without mentioning Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization responsible for killing, raping, or kidnapping more than 1,000 Israeli citizens on Oct. 7, 2023.

When the New York Post contacted CAIR for comment, “CAIR didn’t deny pulling the hyperlink, and referred The Post to an attached note that vaguely explained changes to an earlier document,” the New York Post claimed.

CAIR-NJ, CAIR, and Teaching While Muslim did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

The now-retracted guidance has also been met with harsh criticism in Washington.

Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., told the Daily Signal that the reason CAIR failed to mention Hamas when describing the situation in Gaza and instructed young children to read Bin Laden’s manifesto is that CAIR is an “unabashed Muslim terror organization.”

“They should be treated like criminals, let alone a nonprofit status,” Fine continued. “They are a Muslim terror front group. They redacted the guide because they got caught.”

In his interview with the Daily Signal, Fine stated that it is pointless for CAIR to release a guide to fight back against Islamophobia in the first place, since the “fear of Islam is rational.”

“How can you fight back against something that doesn’t exist?” Fine concluded.

The Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, signed by Trump Wednesday evening, extends already approved government funding until Dec. 11. The clean continuing resolution passed both chambers of Congress with massive bipartisan support, 90-6 in the Senate and 370-48 in the House.  

“Responsible governance means putting the well-being and stability of the nation first, and this legislation does just that. It protects our national security, preserves critical services, and denies partisan shutdown agitators the leverage they have repeatedly sought,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole said.  

“The bill is simple by design, no poison pills, no divisive wish lists, and no political gimmicks. Just a clean, straightforward measure that keeps the government working, provides more time to address full-year bills, and trades the familiar cycle of Senate Democrat brinkmanship for something far more useful: certainty,” he continued. 

Congress has made a habit of missing the Sept. 30 deadline to pass its annual appropriations packages, ultimately leading to a government shutdown. The last shutdown, in 2025, was deadlocked by congressional Democrats for a record-breaking 43 days while they attempted to reinstate subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. 

The House Appropriations Committee has successfully passed all 12 fiscal year 2027 bills out of committee, and they are ready to be voted on by the full House. The lower chamber has also passed three fiscal year 2027 appropriations bills: Agriculture and FDA; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; and National Security and State Department.  

“What I want to see in the interim is us continue to move the appropriations bills off the House floor,” Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told the Daily Signal ahead of the vote.  

However, the Senate Appropriations Committee stands deadlocked by Democrats and has not finalized a single bill.

While Congress now has an extension until Dec. 11, this may have only postponed a shutdown. If the fiscal year 2027 budget is not passed by then, December could bring a government shutdown along with the holidays.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a temporary injunction late Wednesday, writing, “The 2026 Executive Order is almost certainly unconstitutional … for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth.”

Boardman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, also asserted, “The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth.'”

The Supreme Court upheld citizenship for anyone born in the United States in a June decision, but Trump issued a scaled-down executive order last month preventing birth tourism, arguing it was consistent with the court’s findings.

“We have activist judges that are going after everything Trump is trying to do while they turned a blind eye to the actual corruption and the destruction of America underneath the Biden Administration,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News Thursday morning.

Mullin said that birthright citizenship “has become a cash cow for illegal activity.”

“Here President Trump is saying, hey, hold on a second, this illegal activity has to stop. I’m going to use my authority to do that. Then you have an activist judge sitting on a bench saying, nope, nope, you’re not doing that,” Mullin added.

A White House spokesperson told the New York Post, “This is just another ruling from an activist judge appointed by Biden attempting to thwart President Trump’s commonsense agenda.” 

Christian podcaster Bryce Crawford asked the vice president and former venture capitalist if he had ever been in a room where he felt an evil presence.

“I think that you know I made a living as an investor in Silicon Valley sort of right before the AI boom really started,” he said. “I sort of got into politics, and you know there are things that some of the companies you see happening where you feel like there is some really, really weird spiritual dark energy.”

Vance referenced a “burial ceremony” for a retired AI model. In 2025, fans held a “funeral” for Claude 3 Sonnet.

“When they get rid of one model and announce a new model, they actually hold a burial ceremony for the old model, and like the employees apparently will cry,” he said.

“That makes me feel very uncomfortable,” he added. “And there’s some some dark spiritual things going on.”

Vance also told Crawford he would not be surprised if the “Antichrist was walking among us.”

“But again, I try not to focus too much on it,” he added.

Vance warned against using AI for marriage advice due to its sycophantic design.

“A buddy told me that his his wife was using like ChatGPT, or maybe it was one of the other ones, but was using that as like a marital counselor,” he said. “And they sort of have this moment of realization that like this is the worst marital counselor ever because it just tells me that I’m right all the time.”

“There’s there’s no real human feedback,” he said. “It sort of short circuits that social part of our brain where we respond to other people’s wants and needs and just completely like I think that’s kind of satanic.”

The relationship has also moved beyond mere purchases. Apache fuselages and C-130J empennages are manufactured in India for U.S. original equipment manufacturers’ global supply chain. The two countries are pursuing production of GE F414 fighter jet engines in India, alongside cooperation on Javelin missiles and sonobuoys.  

Strategic convergences, especially over China, and a joint commitment to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific explain part of this transformation. However, the upward trajectory in bilateral ties has coincided with another important shift: the reform of India’s defense sector.

India formally opened defense production to private companies before Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to office, but the sector remained dominated by state-owned enterprises and notoriously difficult for both private domestic companies and foreign companies to navigate. 

Under Modi, foreign investment rules were liberalized. First, by raising the defense Foreign Direct Investment limit from 26% to 49% and eventually allowing up to 100% under certain conditions. Industrial licensing requirements were simplified, and procurement rules were repeatedly revised to create greater opportunities for private manufacturers and foreign partnerships.

The government also established defense industrial corridors to develop manufacturing clusters and supply chains. Importantly, the corporatization of the colonial era ordinance factory boards was a major industry signal that even the most entrenched parts of the Indian defense ecosystem can be reformed.

The Indian government has also broadened who can participate in defense. Innovations for Defense Excellence was launched in 2018 and was inspired by the U.S. Department of War’s Defense Innovation Unit. Innovations for Defense Excellence created a mechanism for startups and smaller technology companies to work directly on military requirements.

The Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 and its various amendments further streamlined acquisition rules and created additional pathways for foreign companies to manufacture in India, especially through the Buy (Global) and Strategic Partnership models. Government testing infrastructure was strengthened, and parts of defense research and development have also been opened more widely to private industry, startups, and academia.

These reforms were designed to advance India’s own objective of building a stronger domestic defense industry. However, by virtue of being pro-business they also made India a more accessible and commercially viable market for American companies. U.S. firms gained more Indian partners, more avenues to invest and manufacture locally, and pathways into one of the world’s largest defense markets.

India’s defense reforms and the growing U.S.-India defense ties are especially relevant under President Donald Trump, whose approach with regard to allies and partners has emphasized reciprocity, greater purchases of American goods, and more burden-sharing. A stronger Indian defense market creates more opportunities for U.S. companies, while a stronger Indian defense industry makes India a more capable security partner.

Importantly, India pays for its defense and defense equipment entirely on its own rather than relying on U.S. gifts, grants, or loans.

The benefits also extend beyond the bilateral U.S.-India relationship. India is now exporting defense equipment to 80-plus countries, including in Southeast Asia. As India becomes a larger defense producer and exporter, it can help shoulder more of the regional security burden.

For the Trump administration, India increasingly represents an ideal partner: one that buys more from America, builds with America, and contributes to balancing power in the Indo-Pacific.

This commentary is part of a regular series of articles from the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Subscribe to the Davis Dispatch to learn more.

The initiative, Pathways to Dairy Net Zero, was backed by then-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during U.N. Climate Week in September 2021, saying it would “position U.S. farmers, ranchers and forest landowners as leaders in addressing climate change.”

In a letter Thursday to Trump administration Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, leaders of two conservative-leaning groups ask the department to “disclose the current nature and scope of USDA’s affiliation with P2DNZ, including any funding, staff participation, grants, contracts, data sharing, technical assistance, or other support”; and to “immediately withdraw USDA from P2DNZ.”

“American food policy should be determined by farmers, consumers, and their elected representatives, not by private, unelected, or foreign organizations able to dictate terms through concentrated market power,” says the letter to Rollins signed by Sal Nuzzo, executive director of Consumers Defense, and Cameron Sholty, executive director of Heartland Impact, and first shared with the Daily Signal.

It accompanied a 39-page report titled “The War on Dairy: Foreign Influence Subverting America’s Dairy Sector,” about the potential economic harm of Pathways to Dairy Net Zero.

In a stark warning, the report says: “What begins as ‘guidance’ quickly becomes obligation. In the end, American small farmers are left decimated.”

The net-zero emissions program for the dairy industry is marketed as a “voluntary, science-based” sustainability effort. But the report’s authors contend the initiative can function as a form of private regulation because net-zero commitments can become embedded in lending standards, procurement requirements, processor and purchaser contracts, and supply chain reporting.

“In practice, a dairy farmer may be told that compliance is voluntary while still facing the loss of credit, market access, a processor, or a purchaser for refusing to adopt standards regulators did not write and voters did not approve,” the report says.

“For small- and mid-sized dairy operations, the burdens are especially severe. Monitoring systems, data collection, reporting, audits, third-party verification, consultant fees, and capital improvements impose fixed costs that large producers can spread across greater volume, but smaller farms cannot,” the report adds. “As margins tighten, more independent producers may be forced to sell or leave the industry, accelerating consolidation and making the domestic food supply more fragile.”

For its part, the dairy net-zero movement characterizes itself as “dedicated to reducing dairy’s greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years.” A major focus is methane reduction when cows digest their food, sometimes simply referred to as “cow farts.” Pathways to Dairy Net Zero says farmers can reduce those emissions through measures such as improved feed and manure management, greater production efficiency, changes in energy use, carbon sequestration and other measures.

“First comes uncertain and often contested climate modeling. That modeling is then translated into rigid and arbitrary accounting targets,” the report says. “Those targets evolve into ESG frameworks. And those frameworks, in turn, are enforced, not by voters or legislators, but by multinational banks, corporations, boardrooms, and contract terms buried deep in supply chains.”

The groups say “the cost of feed, fuel, financing, equipment, processing, and compliance, those expenses are ultimately reflected in the price families pay for milk and other staple foods.”

Its scale analysis concludes that eliminating all emissions from U.S. dairy production would reduce global emissions by only a few tenths of a percent, the report says, which would not justify the burden.

The groups note that the structure of Pathways to Dairy Net Zero is similar to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, or GFANZ. The report says GFANZ used coordinated pressure from financial institutions and corporations to advance ESG standards.

The report also raises concerns about the effect of climate-related agricultural policies on America’s dependence on foreign suppliers, including China, and describes food production as a national security issue.

The report identifies other organizations that Pathways to Dairy Net Zero lists as participants or supporters in North America, including Cargill, Coca-Cola, Dairy Farmers of America, Dairy Management Inc., Environmental Defense Fund, Land O’Lakes, the National Milk Producers Federation, Starbucks, and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, along with the USDA.

The letter notes that Rollins herself has previously criticized climate policies that could hurt American dairy producers and pointed to actions the Trump Agriculture Department has already taken, including canceling Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities and ending taxpayer support for solar projects that take productive farmland out of agricultural use.

Titled “Denouncing Sharia Law in the United States,” the resolution obtained by the Daily Signal will reaffirm that the “primary role of elected officials in the United States of America is to provide for the security and protection of its citizens as well as preserving the liberties provided to them by the Nation’s Founders.”

The resolution adds that the U.S. Constitution is the only rule of law permissible in the United States, and that “any legal or political doctrine that places itself above the Constitution threatens the stability and unity of the Nation.”

Language of a press release obtained by the Daily Signal said Self will file the resolution on Thursday in an attempt to deny “Sharia law and any competing legal framework” the ability to undermine the American system.

The resolution claims that “Sharia does not recognize the right to liberty as evidenced by forcing submission to Allah over individual autonomy; restricting religious freedom and free speech; no respect for gender equality concerning the rights of women, those who live unapproved lifestyles, and the lengthy list of characteristics for which United States law does not permit discrimination, and restrictions on those under Sharia, including diet and social activities.”

“Whereas the supremacy claims of Sharia have proven to put women, dissidents, and non-Muslims into danger from the consequences resulting from Sharia’s unequal legal standards and community-enforced norms, exposing individuals to pressures that undermine the safety and rights guaranteed in the Constitution,” the resolution continues.

Co-sponsors of the resolution—including Reps. Eli Crane, R-Ariz.; Randy Weber, R-Texas; Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; Buddy Carter, R-Ga.; and Barry Moore, R-Ala.—told the Daily Signal that they stand behind Self’s effort because the rise of Sharia law in the United States could erode “our God-given freedoms.”

Self’s introduction of the resolution comes after controversial Islamic complexes, such as the East Plano Islamic Center in Texas, which critics say could impose Sharia law over their properties, have emerged throughout his home state.

“I am proud to join Congressman Self’s concurrent resolution denouncing Sharia law and opposing its implementation anywhere in the United States,” Weber told the Daily Signal. “We cannot stand by and watch while foreign ideologies threaten American democracy, as we are seeing on Ali Akbar Court in Irving, Texas, and in ‘Muslim-only’ communities across the country.”

Crane told the Daily Signal that the “draconian” system he witnessed while serving in the Middle East will unravel the moral fabric of American society and degrade the U.S. Constitution.

“The American people deserve to know where their representatives stand on this rising threat, and this resolution puts every member on the record for all to see,” Crane continued. “I applaud Rep. Keith Self for his tireless work as co-chair of the Sharia Free America Caucus. We will continue working proactively to spare our nation the consequences we’ve already seen play out across Europe.”

Gosar echoed his colleagues remarks, and told the Daily Signal that “no ideology or system of law can supersede the Constitution or the individual liberties it guarantees.“

Moore told the Daily Signal that “America has one Constitution, one system of laws, and one standard of justice,” and that he is “proud to stand with Congressman Self in making it clear that Sharia has no place as a competing legal authority in the United States and in defending the rule of law and the freedoms that generations of Americans have fought, sacrificed, and prayed to preserve.”

Self’s office told the Daily Signal that it remains hopeful the resolution will soon be brought to a vote on the House floor.

In the last year, data centers have become a serious issue in the Lone Star State, with many criticizing how data centers are buying land, using resources, and taking from residents. 

Last month, the State Affairs Committee heard testimony from residents and local elected officials who raised concerns about water supplies, noise levels, and electricity demands.   

Additionally, Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered state regulators to conduct a comprehensive audit of data centers seeking to connect to the Texas grid, effectively pausing future data center projects until the review is complete.  

Under the order, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and the Public Utility Commission will collect information from each data center project, including whether facilities are paying their own costs, how they plan to supply power, whether they rely on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas for electricity, whether they provide and reuse their own water, and what measures they will take to reduce impacts on neighboring property owners and communities. 

Abbott has also pushed for more restrictions on data centers to protect Texas’ power grid. 

Abbott’s campaign press secretary, Eduardo Leal, told the Daily Signal that the governor’s “top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life.” 

“He has directed Texas regulators to ensure data centers do not take water needed by communities or power needed by the Texas grid, do not disrupt neighborhoods or rural communities, lower electricity costs for consumers, and pay for their own electricity infrastructure. Any project that fails to meet these standards will be denied connection to the Texas grid. He has also called for eliminating data center sales tax breaks. Simply put, data centers must pay their own way, and Texans must come first,” Leal said.  

“Governor Abbott will work with the Texas Legislature to codify these commonsense standards into law,” he added. 

Although Abbott has acted on the data center issue, his Democrat challenger, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, is accusing the governor of causing the problem, noting that he signed laws that gave tax breaks to the data centers. 

Hinojosa, who has represented District 49 since 2017, also has a record of voting in favor of tax incentives for data centers during her time in the Texas House.

In her first year in office, Hinojosa voted in favor of House Bill 4038, a bill that changed the definition of a “qualifying job” under the Texas Tax Code Section 151.359, which qualified data centers for the state’s sales-tax exemption program. 

While the bill did not create an entire data center tax exemption program, it made it easier for the centers to meet the state’s job-creation requirements for tax incentives.  

In 2023, Hinojosa voted in favor of House Bill 3104, which took the 2017 bill further by expanding the state’s sales-tax exemption framework to cover a new type of data-center campus. This included data centers that were part of a framework to cover connected data-center projects, including facilities on separate, noncontiguous parcels. The bill passed the House but never made it out of the Senate. 

Hinojosa is now calling for a total pause on data centers and is demanding a special legislative session to write permanent laws surrounding data centers. 

On her campaign website, she states that Abbott needs to issue an executive order to put an immediate moratorium on new data centers, writing that “Abbott is the sole person who can fix the mess he made.”

Hinojosa cites House Bill 2712, passed and signed into law in 2015, which created a generous sales-tax exemption for large data center projects. 

To qualify, the data centers had to be at least 250,000 square feet, create 40 qualifying jobs, make at least $500 million in capital investment over five years, and contract 20 megawatts of transmission capacity. The law gave qualified data centers an expanded sales-tax exemption for gas and electricity used directly by a certified large data center. 

In an interview with AP News, Hinojosa said that if she is elected, she would block a permit for any data center that did not benefit residents or if residents didn’t have a say. 

Bret Swanson, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Technology and the Human Person, told the Daily Signal that there are real concerns around data centers, but statewide bans of the facilities could endanger multitrillion-dollar, short-term investments and tens of trillions of dollars in medium-to-long-term economic growth. 

Swanson said that instead of banning data centers, state and local authorities should find solutions for the power concerns raised by residents, such as having data centers build their own power plants on site and not draw power from the grid.

“The White House administration actually offered up what was a voluntary pledge, which almost all the AI big data center companies signed onto, which was to basically agree to hold harmless electricity … saying they will agree to in one way or another pay the utility enough so that the utility does not need to raise prices for regular consumers,” Swanson said.

Swanson also addressed residents’ concerns about water usage and not having a voice in the matter.

“I think that’s where the data center companies themselves, and Abbott through various means, should maybe first request that local communities can say that in order for us to approve this data center or zoning, the data center has to bring their own power with them or bring their own water with them,” he said.

“There may be stories where data center firms are not cooperative, but I think, for the most part, they are getting the message that they need to be accommodating and proactive in addressing these concerns.” 

Swanson added that Texas residents deserve to have a say in whether data centers get built.

“I believe in local control. Some communities will say ‘yes,’ and some communities will say ‘no,’ and I think that’s probably a good thing,” he said. 

Election Day is Nov. 3. 

Hinojosa’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment by publication. 

Led by the ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., Democrats painted a Republican push led by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, as a wasted effort to undermine the July Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Barbara.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., added that Roy’s permanent Trump Secure Border Act has already been passed out of the House Judiciary Committee this summer and has not been brought up for a vote because House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., does not believe in the contents of the legislation.

The act would codify “necessary reforms to asylum processing, treatment of unaccompanied minors, penalties for visa overstays, and limits on parole authority to ensure that a new administration could not abuse loopholes or vague statutes to open the border,” Heritage Action Government Relations Director Daniel West told the Daily Signal.

Raskin then compared the effort to Nazi Germany, which “stripped” German Jews of their citizenship in the 1940s, and referenced the “war on terror” that he said President Donald Trump’s administration is carrying out through Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He also referenced deceased immigration enforcement protesters Alex Pretti and Renée Good, who died while obstructing ICE operations in Minneapolis.

The witnesses present at the hearing, which included former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, and Immigration Accountability Project Policy Director Rosemary Jenks, disputed the claim that there is no evidence that birth tourism is a widespread issue.

During her opening remarks, Jenks noted that the subject of the Trump v. Barbara Supreme Court case, Barbara, a woman whose real name was never publicly disclosed, admitted that her reason for fleeing Honduras was that she wanted to have her child on American soil, so that she and her family could benefit from U.S. citizenship.

Cuccinelli added that what is in question is not the issue debated by the Supreme Court in July or by House Democrats present at the hearing. Instead, he argued that the hearing focuses on illegal immigrants, not the offspring of slaves, whom he said the constitutional clause was originally intended to address.

Cuccinelli then suggested multiple actions Congress could take to codify the demands of the committee’s Republican majority, including shutting down the birth tourism industry and pursuing a constitutional amendment.

Birth Tourism Industry

Raskin, instead of asking the witnesses about birth tourism, asked about the consequences for individual Americans if the court had sided with him.

Law professor Jonathan Weinberg responded to Raskin’s question by stating, “We would have to look around and wonder if we’re truly Americans or not; we’d have to examine our bloodline and find American lineage,” even though the argument against birth tourism does not examine American bloodline lineage and instead only excludes noncitizens.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., reiterated that the hearing was not called to express agreement or disagreement with the Supreme Court, but instead to identify ways in which Congress can prevent noncitizens from traveling to the United States to give birth.

Cuccinelli agreed and added that an effort against noncitizen parents traveling to the United States to give birth “does not change the status of the child,” a point Democrats seem to have reiterated throughout the hearing.

This is an effort that only “targets people who are fraudulently taking advantage of the United States,” Cuccinelli continued.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., ignored the arguments that were being made, however, and reverted to an argument not at issue in the hearing, which is the Supreme Court’s ruling and the president’s desire to circumvent the court.

Her colleague, Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., echoed Jayapal’s claim, stating that the hearing is a waste of time because it does nothing to address the war in Iran or the public’s demand for housing and health care.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, refuted the claim and slammed the Democrats on the panel for wanting to derail the congressional hearing.