At a press briefing designed to look like a happenstance meeting with reporters on the sidewalk outside of the governor’s mansion in Richmond, Spanberger addressed a Washington Post/Schar poll that showed her losing 11% of her approval since November’s election, when her approval rating was 57.4% to 46%.

Her answer was more cringe than an impromptu chat with Kamala Harris: “If everybody hated me, why is everybody putting my face on their mailers for the referendum?” Spanberger said.

Excuse us, madame governor, but that wasn’t the question.

Two folks I have recently spoken to could shed some light on the issue for the governor if she were to reach out to them. Rather than waiting for her Cheshire grin to vanish, let’s lay it out.

First, I spoke with former state Sen. Chap Petersen, a Democrat from Fairfax County, and asked him if diving headfirst into the redistricting vote contributed to the decline in her support.

“I think it was a mistake—I felt like it was really a bad mistake for her to start her administration that way on such an openly partisan issue.” Petersen said.

“You know, I think when she got started, she ran successfully as a moderate Democrat, someone that was going to work with both sides, work across the aisle,” he added. “She got elected with a very large majority, which I think reflected that, and she got dragged into this redistricting issue, which she had not run on. [Redistricting] had not been part of her platform, and I think that was a mistake.”

Other partisan issues Spanberger downplayed on the campaign seem to be the crux of Spanberger’s flailing popularity. Twenty gun ownership-restricting bills have already passed the Virginia General Assembly during Spanberger’s term. Democrats also proposed a massive expansion of items open to sales tax, which didn’t make it through, but it’s the thought that seems to count with Virginia’s voters. And while Democrats propose new taxes, little progress has been made on the affordability issue.

Even more problematic for Democrats, in Richmond and in Washington, is polling that suggests “no” will carry the day for Virginia’s April 21 redistricting referendum.

Redistricting failure would be yet another sign that Virginia’s Democrats seemed to have awakened the sleeping elephant that sat out the 2025 gubernatorial election. Coupled with the tattered coattails of the governor, it does not bode well for Virginia playing a major role in flipping the U.S. House of Representatives for Democrats.

And things seem poised to get worse for the governor’s affordability agenda.

Stephen Haner is a policy analyst for the Thomas Jefferson Institute, and after a lifetime spent on both sides of the lobby, he correctly predicted that if Spanberger rejoined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Virginians would be paying more for their electricity.

“It’s going to be a big number” he said, “And it’s going to be far more than it was when we were paying it three years ago—on a typical bill it was $3 or $4. So, we were paying about $15 or $16 a ton at the end three years ago. It is now $25 or $26 a ton, and it’s going to keep going up because in 2027 they’re reshuffling all the rules. They’re eliminating a lot of the allowances.”

The proposed budget creates a new category for “large consumers” of energy (namely, data centers). Nevertheless, the rates on consumers are going up anyway.

I asked Haner if data centers are really making the average Virginian pay more for their electricity. “Nobody really sort of put RGGI and the data centers together either, but again, their raw material is electricity,” he replied. “So RGGI raises the price of their electricity and their raw materials as well. That [means] they’re going to be paying a huge amount of this money when the time comes.”

Just like all of us.

On April 6, the Virginia Mercury reported that state officials “expect the commonwealth to participate in the program’s September (RGGI) auction once regulations to reestablish the CO2 budget trading program are finalized. Dominion Energy plans to petition the State Corporation Commission in June to add the cost of those credit auctions back onto ratepayer’s bills.”

Later that day, the Virginia Public Access Project exposed that the governor, who said on the campaign trail she does not take donations from corporate entities, accepted a $100,000 contribution from Dominion Energy for her inaugural fund.

Perhaps the party that ran on affordability has forgotten that believability may be their bigger problem.

The post Spanberger’s Problem Isn’t Affordability. It’s Believability appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Early in his tenure, Trump issued an executive order directing the federal government to eliminate regulations that deny consumers the benefits of a competitive marketplace. The proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern railroad merger stands in stark contrast to this effort, so it should come as no surprise that there is growing concern from around the country.

Seven state attorneys general in Republican states, led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen, are asking the U.S. Department of Justice to provide greater scrutiny of the merger. This follows letters from nine Republican state attorneys general led by Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee, Brenna Bird of Iowa, and Kris Kobach of Kansas. Additionally, more than 50 Republican state legislative leaders from across the country have expressed serious reservations about this $85 billion consolidation.  

Vice President JD Vance captured the essence of this thinking during his comments to a conservative audience with his statement warning about the dangers of monopolies, arguing “it’s bad for liberty, and it’s bad for prosperity.”

This is a return to foundational conservative principles about dispersed power, genuine competition, and economic opportunity for working-class Americans. Real conservative jurisprudence, from the trustbusting of Theodore Roosevelt to the consumer welfare standard articulated by Robert Bork, has always recognized that protecting competition at times requires challenging consolidation.

Consider who gets hurt when railroad monopolies are allowed to tighten their grip. It’s the farmer in Iowa who can’t negotiate better rates to ship grain. It’s the factory worker in Ohio whose plant closes because shipping costs make U.S. manufacturing uncompetitive with foreign countries. It’s the small business owner in rural America who faces take-it-or-leave-it pricing from the only railroad serving his region. These are the Americans who helped put Trump and Vance in office, and Republicans are right to fight for them.

The attorneys general correctly warned that concentrating “too much power in too few hands” risks squeezing out American manufacturers, farmers, and consumers. When four railroad companies already control 90% of freight traffic, adding more consolidation doesn’t enhance competition. Far from it. It only fuels market distortions and monopolies that harm the overall economy. 

This unprecedented and costly railroad merger would be particularly devastating for workers and producers here at home. The deal would favor intermodal container shipments that can pivot to trucking, benefiting foreign-made goods while U.S. manufacturers moving chemicals, grain, steel, and bulk commodities would be locked into paying increased rates to one railroad with nowhere else to turn. Foreign competitors would get flexibility while American workers get higher costs and worse service. That’s not “America First.” 

Free markets thrive on competition, and increasing monopoly power in any form is the first step toward losing both liberty and prosperity. In line with this broader movement toward enhancing competition, the Surface Transportation Board has advanced important reforms aimed at dismantling the entrenched barriers that have long stifled competition in the freight rail industry.

The proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger represents exactly the kind of consolidation that Republicans should oppose. Vance is right: We must defend the working Americans who depend on competitive markets to earn their livelihoods. The fact that Republican state leaders and the conservative legal movement recognize this truth once again proves that the Republicans are focused on delivering for the working class.

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

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Nowhere is the battle fiercer than in Virginia, a state where voters just six years ago approved a constitutional amendment to take partisanship out of congressional redistricting.

Now Democrats want to make an exception to the rule Virginia voters approved by a nearly two-thirds majority in 2020: They want this year’s congressional map to be drawn up by their own state legislators, erasing the districts set up by the bipartisan board established by the amendment just a few years back.

It’s no surprise when a state like Texas or California that leans overwhelmingly toward one party indulges in partisan gerrymandering.

But Virginia is a purple state, and its congressional representation—six Democrats, five Republicans—currently reflects that.

Yet, if Democrats get their way on April 21, they’ll be able to seize 10 of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats for themselves, in the most brazenly unjust reapportionment seen anywhere in decades.

This isn’t about making a blue state bluer or a red state redder; this one’s an effort to manufacture a virtual monopoly for one party, depriving millions of the other party’s voters of their representation.

One thing the sheer audacity of this move suggests is that Democrats nationwide aren’t quite as confident as they pretend to be about winning the midterms fair and square.

If they expect voters coast to coast to repudiate President Donald Trump’s GOP in a landslide, why resort to such extreme measures in a place like Virginia?

Either Democrats are more worried than they let on, or they want to do more than just win—they want to annihilate their competition.

They’re proving far more ruthless than Republicans, who balked at the opportunity last year to redraw Indiana’s congressional map from a 7-2 partisan split to a nine-seat GOP sweep.

What Democrats are attempting in Virginia is tantamount to legalized election theft, if voters are unwise enough to approve the amendment they’re pushing.

There’s a political cost for this attack on small-d democracy: Gov. Abigail Spanberger, for one, is paying a price in her polling.

She was elected by a whopping 15-point margin last year and was soon touted as the Democrats’ new face of moderation, which is why she was the party’s choice to respond to Trump’s State of the Union address this year.

Yet her approval ratings are already poor, with a Washington Post survey at the end of March finding 47% of those polled gave her a passing grade, while 46% disapproved of her performance in office so far.

The numbers are similar to polling on the amendment to give Virginia’s Democrat-controlled legislature the power to draw the congressional districts for the midterms: 50% say they approve, 47% disapprove.

The amendment can pass with a simple majority, but if the polls are right, Democrats have no margin to spare, and early voting reports so far indicate there’s particularly strong turnout in Republican areas of the state.

The early vote is outpacing early voting in last year’s gubernatorial election, too.

Arguably, the amendment shouldn’t be on the ballot at all: it’s faced several legal challenges, with the state Supreme Court ultimately deciding the April 21 election can proceed even while doubts about its legality remain to be settled later.

The very wording of the amendment is illegal, Republicans contend, since state law specifies the text accompanying the measure “shall be limited to a neutral explanation,” while the amendment itself is tendentiously worded as an attempt to “restore fairness.”

Who wouldn’t vote to restore fairness?

The campaign for the amendment has been a master class in deceit and manipulation, with even news outlets in the deep-blue D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia noting the copious use of “pink slime” techniques by the “Yes” side.

Those techniques involve propaganda disguised to look impartial—like a made-to-purpose publication branded as The Virginia Independent, which the Arlington-based news site ARLNow.com describes as “a partisan newspaper advancing Democrats’ arguments.”

That slime has been flooding into voters’ mailboxes, including mine.

Maybe my blue suburb hasn’t been a target of whatever efforts the Republicans are making—though the other possibility is that the GOP just isn’t trying as hard.

Texas kicked off the latest wave of redistricting ahead of the midterms, as Republicans there looked to widen their advantage over the Democrats.

Yet as the divergent examples of Indiana and Virginia show, it’s the Democrats who are more hellbent on winning, even if they have to turn state constitutions into confetti to do it.

Politics is a test of wills, and if Republicans fail this one, they’ll almost certainly fail in November, too.

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Celebrated economists never penned any open letters warning that the preceding Peronists’ or Kirchnerists’ perverse blend of fascism, socialism, and unionism would drive Argentina—once one of the world’s wealthiest nations—into destitution, unemployment, soaring inflation, and bankruptcy.

But that’s how it always goes.

Political scientist Ian Bremmer warned, “Economic collapse is coming imminently.”

Felix Salmon, then chief financial correspondent at Axios (now at Bloomberg), argued that Milei’s “wrecking ball” policies would plunge Argentina into “a deep recession.”

When the U.S. provided Argentina with a $20 billion currency swap line last year, former New York Times columnist and Milei critic Paul Krugman argued that there’s “no plausible scenario in which even $20 billion in U.S. loans will save Javier Milei’s failing economic strategy.”

Argentina only tapped around $2.5 billion of that funding and then fully repaid the loan in January of this year with interest, far ahead of schedule.

Well, Argentina’s 2025 gross domestic product also blew past expectations, growing 4.4%, the highest in years. The International Monetary Fund expects the GDP will grow at similar rates in 2026 and 2027.

When Milei’s socialist predecessor Alberto Fernandez reopened the economy after COVID-19 and saw the entirely predictable rise in GDP, popular Nobel laureate economist and Hugo Chavez fan Joseph Stiglitz called it an “economic miracle.” Over the next year, inflation rose to 97%, while poverty spiked, real wages fell, and GDP stagnated.

Since Milei’s party won power in 2023, inflation has dropped over 200%, plunging to the lowest level in eight years.

Though this is likely the fastest any nation experiencing hyperinflation has improved its position in modern history, Stiglitz still warns that Milei is leading Argentina into “crisis.”

Yet it had a fiscal surplus for the second consecutive year in 2025, marking the first time since 2008 that it accomplished the feat, and the poverty rate dropped significantly in 2025, reaching its lowest level since 2018.

The crisis Milei took on was stark: In the first half of 2024, around 52.9% of the population was living in poverty, with 18% in extreme poverty.

Poverty fell 14 percentage points, to 38%, last year. It is at 31% now.

Milei did all this the old-fashioned way.

He removed price controls, got rid of tariffs and opened trade, privatized a slew of government-run agencies, cut red tape, weakened union monopolies, made major cuts in spending, and eliminated an array of needless state jobs.

In other words, all the usual stuff that free marketers preach will work—and experts warn us will bring on Armageddon.

True capitalism has never been tried. But even partial capitalism works every time.

And we never run out of examples.

After gaining independence and moving away from a planned economy in the 1990s, Estonia was one of the first former communist nations to embrace free-market solutions. It soon became one of the most successful, tech-driven economies in Europe.

The Poles moved slower, but they also shed socialism for capitalistic reforms, abandoning price controls and scaling back state power.

Now they’re one of the few former communist nations economically on par with the West.

In the 1980s Ireland was the poorest nation in Western Europe. After its stagnant economy adopted a slew of laissez-faire reforms, deregulations, and lower taxes, Ireland not only grew to have a higher GDP per capita than Britain but became the third-wealthiest nation in the world.

Singapore, once destitute, transformed into a free-market economy and now edges out Ireland on the world’s-richest list.

South Korea, also once one of the poorest nations, undertook economic liberalization efforts in the 1980s and accelerated them in the 1990s, shedding its top-down government-controlled protectionist economy for a market system.

Now it’s one the world’s most dynamic economies.

For its first decades of existence, Israel was a one-party quasi-socialist state with a union-run economy that was constantly teetering on the edge of economic crisis.

It wasn’t until the 1990s, after an extensive deregulation of Israel’s economy, that the nation experienced an explosion of productivity and quality of life.

Israel’s per-capita GDP now outperforms most European nations, while its tech sector outperforms most of the world.

Yet no matter how many times the technocrats or socialists or progressives are proven (sometimes catastrophically) wrong, they are never treated as the radicals.

No matter how often free-market reforms work to better the lives of millions, they will never be credited.

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The post Argentina Is Booming—Capitalism Remains Undefeated appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Last year, President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act defunded Big Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood of almost $800 million in taxpayer-funded Medicaid reimbursements, dealing a significant blow to the nation’s largest abortion franchise.  

In July 2025 alone, Planned Parenthood shuttered 25 clinics across the country, and the total number of closures has reached 47. Planned Parenthood cannot seem to survive on its own without a $792.2 million crutch from hard-working Americans who, by and large, do not want to be complicit in its practices.

While the one-year defunding of Big Abortion businesses in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” demonstrated one of the largest legislative wins in pro-life history, the defunding is set to expire on July 4, 2026. Come America’s 250th, taxpayers will be footing the bill for the nation’s largest abortion franchise once again.  

Little do many realize, however, that funding Planned Parenthood also means propping up one of the nation’s leading providers of so-called gender-affirming care: cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and referrals for mastectomies and other sex-rejecting procedures.

In a 2025 study analyzing Planned Parenthood’s insurance claims, the American Principles Project found that 80% of Planned Parenthood clinics provide so-called gender-affirming care, while 70% provide abortions. That’s right—more Planned Parenthood clinics provide “gender-affirming care” services than provide abortions. 

In a similar expose, The Free Press published that from 2017-2023, Planned Parenthood filed 12,000 gender related insurance claims for children aged 12-17, and that 1 in 6 children and young adults who took cross-sex hormones received them via Planned Parenthood.

Concerned Women for America, drawing from Planned Parenthood’s annual reporting, also reported on a 1,514% increase in total “transgender services” 2021-2022, from 15,902 services to 256,550 services.

Planned Parenthood is not ashamed of its preeminence in so-called gender-affirming care nationwide—the franchise brags about being the “second largest provider of hormone therapy.”

Even as the cultural tide turns on the ills of chemical and surgical mutilation, the corporation’s business model is ever-increasingly centered on “transing” vulnerable children and adults. 
 
In a 180-degree turn from the Biden administration, Trump has made historic strides in ending the chemical and surgical mutilation of children. In a single year, around 40 pediatric “gender-affirming care” clinics have closed nationwide, citing the president’s executive order “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” as their cause for closure.

The White House has also executed a historic clampdown on fraud, waste, and the abuse of government resources—namely, hard-earned American taxpayer dollars.
 
The impending Independence Day refund will hand back upwards of $800 million in taxpayers’ money to a corporation that demonstrably exists to kill babies and sexually mutilate children—on the 250th birthday of our nation, no less.

American taxpayers should not be forced to float an ideology-driven gender-affirming care business, especially not in the wake of over a year of resounding successes against those very abuses. The American taxpayer dollar is to be stewarded, not wasted on testosterone for teenage girls.

The good news is that the July 4 refund is avoidable—Congress and the White House should do everything within their power to draw up a reconciliation bill that includes a provision to permanently defund Big Abortion providers.

Planned Parenthood should not be empowered by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to dole out puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-rejecting procedure referrals to American youths.

Any corporation neck deep in child mutilation—Planned Parenthood chief among them—should not receive a single cent from American taxpayers.

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

The post Will Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Abortion and ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ in 2026?  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Laffer became famous upon his recognition as adviser to President Ronald Reagan before and after the 1980 election. Laffer has a top-notch pedigree, including degrees from Yale and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford. He then spent time at the University of Chicago. He was a colleague of Friedman, among others, while at Chicago.

Most people associate Laffer with Reagan, but he became notable in 1974 when presenting his thoughts to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as part of the Ford administration. It was then that he drew his famous thought on a napkin to illustrate his beliefs about government’s raising tax rates.

The bell curve drawing was named the “Laffer curve” by Jude Wanniski, who was sitting in on the meeting. The legend was thus born, and the Laffer curve has become one of the most discussed economic ideas related to government levels of taxation. Ronald Reagan used it as his basis for the Reagan tax cuts in 1981 and 1986.

The simple idea of the proposal is that higher tax rates are ineffective in creating revenue. Lowering marginal tax rates increases government revenues. If tax rates are raised, revenues will decrease.

I have had vivid debates with people on the left about this economic concept. They instinctively think the idea is counterintuitive. As is often the case, these folks have ideas of how government works in theory, but when reality is different they choose to ignore reality. I encourage them to look at the four major periods where rates were cut during the Kennedy, Reagan, Bush, and Trump administrations.

Review the records of federal government revenues after the tax rates are adjusted down, and anyone can see that revenues escalate significantly during all four periods. The political left wants to spend oodles on government programs that largely waste money. If reduced tax rates produced more revenue, they should get behind the idea. Empirical evidence does count for something.

If a policy produces more tax revenue, can someone characterize it as a “tax cut”? It is a rate adjustment, not a tax cut.

A recent study from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, authored by Rachel Moore, Brandon Pecoraro, and David Splinter, examined previous studies of the Laffer curve. It found that Laffer’s theory was even better than was previously suggested by those studies. Many previous studies used tax bases either too broad or too narrow, and the new study draws attention to those flaws.

“Prior studies, however, largely overlook the Laffer curve’s shape, rely on simplified tax functions, and often omit shifting across business types and tax interactions,” the authors write. “We show that modeling distinct tax bases more accurately and incorporating these interactions lowers the revenue-maximizing top tax rate and the associated revenue gains, yielding ‘flat’ Laffer curves.”

When I asked Laffer about the new paper, he stated, “This paper is a huge step in the right direction, and the research is very impressive. But, in the long-term context of settling the academic debate, there is much further to go.”

“It’s long been true that the U.S. government could collect all of the revenue it currently collects with two flat rate taxes of approximately 12% each: one on unadjusted gross personal income and the other on value added at the corporate level—no deductions, no credits,” he continued. “Any tax rates beyond this level are, based on research, in the prohibitive range of the so-called Laffer curve.” 

“When looking at the world, incentive rates should always be used when deriving behavioral issues, not tax rates per se. The question always to ask is: Where is the tradeoff between giving money to people who don’t work and cutting tax rates on people who do work?”

Simply put, the prior studies of the Laffer curve used imprecise tax assumptions. Using more accurate current tax information produces even surer results that benefits decrease when income tax rates are raised. Increased tax rates are less beneficial for creation of tax revenues than previously thought.

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

The post The Laffer Curve Is Even Better Than We Thought appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Senate’s process of reconciliation allows for the chamber to pass budget legislation with a simple majority vote, with limits on what can be included. Although Republican leadership has decided on a narrow bill to fund border security efforts, House conservatives fear the reconciliation package is their last chance to secure policy wins ahead of the midterm elections without needing Democrat support. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said that the second bill must be as “narrow” as possible in order to meet Trump’s deadline.

“They’re gonna have to limit the scope,” said Rachel Bovard, Conservative Partnership Institute vice president, “because, if they open it up, it’ll become a Christmas tree.”

Leadership’s approach is likely to run into trouble with the conservative Freedom Caucus, which has several priorities for the second reconciliation bill: completely fund the Department of Homeland Security, defund Planned Parenthood, pass the SAVE America Act, and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

Speaker Mike Johnson has discussed the possibility of a third reconciliation package after that to accomplish other priorities. 

Some conservatives say a third reconciliation bill could succeed if funding of the Iran operation is withheld until then, making its passage essentially mandatory. However, most of the caucus lacks confidence the Senate will succeed in passing a third bill with the other priorities included.

“This is the last train leaving the station,” Bovard said of the second reconciliation bill.

“I really need it all to be together,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., told The Daily Signal of an expanded package. “You can’t depend on the Senate on issues like declining Planned Parenthood and other pieces. I think it has to all be together.” 

Unless the president asks for something different, Stutzman said Congress should follow the same map as the first successful reconciliation package, the One, Big Beautiful Bill. 

The One Big, Beautiful Bill restricted Medicaid reimbursements for Planned Parenthood for one year, but that provision expires on July 4, 2026. A major priority for the pro-life movement is extending that policy so the abortion giant doesn’t get a renewed cash flow on America’s 250th birthday. 

“The strategy of a second, big, beautiful bill is the way that I would see it getting across the finish line,” Stutzman said, “because I just don’t trust the Senate to keep the priorities in a third bill that would go over there.”

Bovard said Freedom Caucus members don’t have much incentive to support a narrow reconciliation bill without their desired provisions on voter ID, reforms to FISA, or defunding Planned Parenthood. However, she sees the potential for a deal with limited FISA reform being added into reconciliation 2.0. 

“But right now, there’s nothing to come to the field for,” she said. 

Stutzman fears the Senate’s failure to expand the reconciliation package could cost Republicans the midterms. 

“My biggest fear is that the Senate is going to cost us the election in 2026 if they don’t pass some of this policy that our base is expecting us to pass,” he said. “Our voters are already deflated because they feel like we’re not doing what we said we were going to do all because of a filibuster rule.”

The post ‘Last Train Leaving the Station’: GOP Push for Narrow Border Bill Sparks Backlash Over Missing Pieces appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In Missouri, the White House had a call with the conservative sponsor of an AI safety bill to discuss softening it, the legislator said. The legislation would establish the harms caused by an AI system as the responsibility of its owner or operator.

In Tennessee, a state senator admitted on the Senate floor that the White House had called and asked him to strike multiple provisions from his child safety and transparency bill.

“It will happen in every state,” a source close to AI policy told The Daily Signal. 

“We are proud of the President’s National AI Framework,” a White House official told The Daily Signal. “The Trump Administration is eager to work with partners who will help us implement that policy and achieve a comprehensive AI framework that serves all Americans. This approach will protect children, prevent censorship, respect intellectual property, and safeguard communities while ensuring America remains the undisputed leader in AI and technological innovation.”

In February, the White House contacted Florida Speaker of the House Daniel Perez and his staff members about opposing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bill to establish limits on artificial intelligence, including protections for minors, The Daily Signal first reported.

A week before that, the White House sent a letter pressuring a Utah lawmaker to kill his bill requiring tech companies to publish safety and child-protection plans.

Missouri

Republican state Sen. Joe Nicola introduced the Missouri bill that would prohibit AI from having the legal status of personhood and ban harmful deepfake videos. He said he is discouraged by the White House’s intervention in his bill, but said he will not give up on regulating AI.

“I’m very frustrated, to be quite honest,” he told The Daily Signal.

When Nicola presented the bill for floor debate, he said two fellow Republicans stalled the process by raising concerns about President Donald Trump’s executive order preempting state laws that place “onerous” guardrails on AI innovation. 

The senators told Nicola they were concerned about the federal government withholding almost $90 million in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program funds, which their constituents in rural Missouri depend on for internet access, he noted.

Nicola responded that other states like Texas had passed AI protection bills without the White House withholding any funding. 

The state senator said he then called White House Intergovernmental Affairs Director Alex Meyer to advocate for his bill.

“I told him my purpose for it, and that I didn’t want to hinder innovation,” he said. “We want to leave growth, but we’ve got to start from some guardrails, and I would prefer that the U.S. government and Congress do it, but since they’re not, I’m elected to do what I can to preserve freedom and liberty for the people in Missouri,” he said.

Meyer said his bill was overly broad and that some of the penalty provisions were “a bit steep,” Nicola said, and expressed concerns that the bill would impose overly strict limits on developers, hindering innovation. 

“I disagree,” Nicola said. “I’ve had lawyers look at this. I’ve worked with some other AI organizations, told them what I wanted to do, what I wanted to accomplish, and I think we have a good piece of legislation.”

Nicola is now working on the 11th version of his bill to address the White House’s concerns. 

“I’m willing to soften it for the developers, but we still need to hold people accountable for these deepfakes,” he said. 

Nicola says he was promised a conference call with the White House AI policy shop, but a week later, the meeting has not materialized.  

“I’d take great offense that the president would threaten us by withholding federal funds from protecting our people,” the Missouri Republican said. “That’s why I was elected, it’s what I’m doing here, and to be told I can’t do that, that ‘they’re gonna threaten you,’ that makes me want to push back even harder.”

Tennessee

The White House appeared to follow a similar playbook in Tennessee after Republican state Sen. Ken Yager introduced a bill prohibiting misleading statements by AI developers and chatbot providers about major safety risks. His bill would also require transparent child safety plans.  

“The White House called this morning about the bill,” Yager said on the Senate floor April 7. He presented a new amendment to his bill “at the suggestion of the White House” that deleted portions of the legislation to focus instead on child safety and transparent reporting. 

The Daily Signal reached out to Yager’s office for comment, but did not hear back by publication time.

A source involved in the Tennessee legislation said he was surprised that the White House involved itself in AI policy in the home states of Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., key players in Senate negotiations over the National Framework on AI. 

“The idea that you would go into Hawley’s state and Blackburn’s state, who are critical people to get on board with the national framework, that are pretty far off now from the weaker standards in the House, this sabotaged a lot of negotiation,” he said. 

The post SCOOP: White House Strong-Arms 2 More States on AI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Virologist Simon Wain-Hobson, a professor at the Paris-based Institut Pasteur, accused Fauci and Collins of “professional failure” in the COVID-19 pandemic and the lead-up to it when speaking in March to more than 100 NIH officials.

“Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins are guilty of offenses far worse than ‘professional failure,’” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told The Daily Signal.

“They were clearly involved in a purposeful cover-up of their support for and funding of dangerous gain-of-function research that more than likely produced the coronavirus and allowed them to unleash their mRNA injection on an unsuspecting global population,” Johnson added.

Fauci, Collins, and other NIH officials have denied conducting gain-of-function research or that such research led to the COVID-19 pandemic. The term “gain-of-function” describes a risky research process of making a pathogen more dangerous or contagious for the purpose of studying a response.

Paul D. Thacker, an independent journalist and former Senate staff investigator, first reported on his Substack, The Disinformation Chronicle, on the private remarks by Wain-Hobson to NIH officials.

The virologist’s remarks should be reviewed, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., a doctor who was a member of the former House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, said.

“I’ve continually said that questions regarding the origins of COVID-19 and gain-of-function research should always be addressed with transparency and seriousness,” McCormick told The Daily Signal. “If a respected virologist like Simon Wain-Hobson raises concerns about past leadership at NIH, those concerns should be carefully reviewed.”

“Early publications associated with NIH leadership, including Dr. Fauci, shaped the initial narrative and may have limited broader scientific debate,” McCormick continued. “Transparency and accountability at the NIH are essential for public trust. The whole point of science is to have robust debate, and the minute you sterilize that debate, it is no longer science.”

Collins is the former director of the National Institutes of Health. Fauci is the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

During his remarks, Wain-Hobson pointed to a 2011 Washington Post commentary by Fauci and Collins that defended controversial research.

“We can’t have the safety of society being dictated without discussion,” Wain-Hobson said. “I think that was a professional failure.”

He further accused the American Society for Microbiology of “obfuscating” how dangerous gain-of-function research is. The society did not respond to inquiries for this story.

After retiring, Fauci became a professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy. The Daily Signal contacted the media relations office at Georgetown University to seek comment from Fauci. The Daily Signal also contacted Leading Authorities Inc., a speaking bureau that books Fauci for public speeches. No one responded by publication time.

The Daily Signal also reached out for this story to the Harry Walker Agency, which books Collins’ speaking engagements; to AAE Speakers, which lists Collins as one of its speakers; and to an email address still listed for Collins on the NIH website. No one responded by publication time.

The post What Lawmakers Say About Virologist Calling Out Fauci, NIH on COVID-19 appeared first on The Daily Signal.

“The OPT program should not exist; it is a purely regulatory creation with no statutory basis,” the Florida Republican wrote in a letter obtained by The Daily Signal.

The Optional Practical Training program, created in 1992, allows foreign students to remain in the United States to work for nearly four years after graduation. Scott says this takes jobs away from U.S.-born college graduates.

Employers receive a tax break for hiring foreign graduates under the program, giving foreigners an advantage over U.S. citizens, Scott argues.

“The jobless rate for recent graduates with computer engineering degrees is nearly double the general unemployment rate,” the letter says, “and the unemployment rate for recent computer science graduates is over 50% higher than the general jobless rate.”

More than half a million student visa holders currently have OPT work permits, the letter says.

Scott argues this creates a national security risk by bolstering China.

“Many OPT recipients from Communist China have jobs in universities and Big Tech firms, giving them access to sensitive technological information and intellectual property,” Scott wrote. “We cannot continue opening the door to an enemy nation that will happily use our own research against us.”

The Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman warned in a 2020 report that the OPT and STEM OPT programs “have remained a source of concern in recent years due to their vulnerability to fraud and indicators that they are being leveraged by foreign governments as a means of conducting espionage or illicit technology transfer in the STEM areas.”

More than 33,000 Chinese nationals hold special STEM work permits under the program that allow them to stay in the U.S.

Scott cited reports that the Trump administration planned to end the program.

The Department of Homeland Security has said it “will amend existing regulations to address fraud and national security concerns, [and] protect U.S. workers from being displaced by foreign nationals.“

Before President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2025, Forbes reported that the “upcoming Trump administration rule is expected to end or restrict Optional Practical Training.”

The post EXCLUSIVE: Senator Urges Trump to End Program That Gives US Jobs to Foreign Graduates appeared first on The Daily Signal.

While the U.K. and Mauritius signed a preliminary deal in May 2025, it still required parliamentary approval, and the United States has substantial input in the decision, as well. Britain had exiled the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands—a small series of atolls in the Indian Ocean strategically located between Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands—when detaching the islands from Mauritius before Mauritius gained independence in 1968.

“The decision by Britain’s Labour government to drop the Chagos bill from the king’s speech is a massive and humiliating defeat for Keir Starmer,” Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal after the news broke Friday.

“Keir Starmer had made the Chagos surrender deal his top foreign policy priority, and the fact that this deal is no longer going through Parliament is a huge blow to Starmer’s far-left agenda,” Gardiner added.

While the Labour Party had hailed the deal as an effort to decolonize the Indian Ocean islands, critics warned that the deal would undermine the Diego Garcia U.S. military base. The agreement would have given Britain a 99-year lease for Diego Garcia. Critics also characterize Mauritius as a close Chinese ally, so surrendering the islands could strengthen China’s influence in the region.

The U.S. used Diego Garcia to launch some of the attacks in Operation Epic Fury.

“As the president has repeatedly stated, Diego Garcia’s strategic location makes it of great importance to the national security of the United States,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “He will never allow the U.S. presence at Diego Garcia to be undermined or threatened for any reason. Recent developments have proven him right once again.”

“Diego Garcia, a strategically placed island base, has enabled U.S. power throughout the Indian Ocean region, directly supporting and engaging in strike missions today in Iran, and during the Global War on Terror in Afghanistan,” Brent Sadler, a 26-year Navy veteran and senior research fellow at Heritage, told The Daily Signal.

“Loss of this base or compromising its operational viability through Chinese (or other powers’) encroachment on it would be a severe blow to U.S. and Western influence and power projection in the region not easily replaced.”

Gardiner credited Trump’s opposition for the bill’s defeat, saying Trump was the “key reason” behind it.

“The United States has stopped the Chagos surrender deal from moving forward and this is great news for the American people, and also, frankly, for the British people, as well,” he said.

“The Heritage Foundation has led the fight against the Chagos deal in Washington for the last 18 months,” Gardiner added, calling the deal “one of the most dangerous threats to U.S. national security in many decades.”

“As long as President Trump is in office, there’s zero chance of the Chagos deal moving forward,” he concluded.

Liu Pengyu, a representative of the Chinese Embassy in the U.S., disputed concerns that China might have supported the Chagos Islands deal in order to weaken the U.S.

“China adheres to the fundamental principles of international relations, including mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs,” Liu told The Daily Signal.

“China firmly supports the United Nations decolonization process and fully understands and supports Mauritius’s legitimate and reasonable claims on decolonization.”

“China has no self-interest in this matter,” he concluded.

The post ‘HUMILIATING DEFEAT’: UK Prime Minister Pulls Deal to Sacrifice Islands Housing Key US Military Base appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Immigration advocates sued the Trump administration last month, arguing that the asylum process should take “years” to conclude and that lawyers want “at least a year” to prepare for court hearings while applicants remain in the United States, The Daily Signal previously reported.

However, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols of the District of Columbia, a Trump appointee, said in his opinion that immigration law is clear on the timing of cases.

“Immigration judges are directed to resolve cases ‘in a timely and impartial manner’ and, absent exceptional circumstances, should complete administrative adjudication of an asylum application within 180 days after the application is filed,” his 27-page opinion said. He also ruled that plaintiffs “likely lack standing“ in the case.

Plaintiffs accused the Trump administration of having a “Somali fast-track policy,” giving lawyers a compressed timeline of just four months or less to prepare for hearings of Somali asylum applicants. They argued the timeline was “essentially impossible.”

However, Nichols didn’t buy the argument from the Hines Immigration Law firm and the Advocates for Human Rights, both based in Minnesota, which sued the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.

“The unrebutted record does suggest some form of coordinated effort directed only at nondetained Somali aliens. But the effects of that effort are felt most directly by the aliens themselves, who are not parties before the Court, and who have their own avenues to challenge removal decisions that violate their constitutional or statutory rights,” he determined.

“The organizations bringing this lawsuit allege different and more muted harms, which are not clearly redressable by the Court and which do not seem irreparable.“

The plaintiffs were represented by Democracy Forward, a liberal legal group that has sued the Trump administration on multiple fronts. In a joint statement Friday, they expressed disappointment.

“The Somali fast-track policy singles out one nationality and forces people through rushed immigration proceedings that make it nearly impossible to secure counsel or fairly present asylum claims,” the joint statement says.

“By allowing this policy to continue, Somali asylum seekers remain at risk of being pushed through a system that denies them the time and support needed to navigate complex legal proceedings,” the statement later adds.

In the complaint, the two plaintiffs argued that there is precedent for a lengthy process for immigration cases.

“In the past, IJs [immigration judges] have scheduled merits hearings for as far as two or three years out, with no indication that their calendars could not ‘go out’ that far,” the plaintiffs’ complaint says.

The plaintiffs’ complaint argues the policy “substantially impedes” their work by speeding up the timeline to prepare for a hearing, leaving attorneys in some cases with “almost no time to gather and submit evidence.”

The judge determined, “Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that their injuries are likely to be redressed by relief that the Court has power to enter.”

The post Federal Judge Rejects Challenge to Trump’s Fast-Track Immigration Policy appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The president passed over two-term incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and gave his coveted endorsement to Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La.

The Louisiana primary is set for May 16. A crowded ballot makes it likely the election will go to a runoff slated for June 27. Sitting Sen. Cassidy is going up against Letlow and former U.S. Rep. John Fleming, R-La., who currently serves as the state treasurer.

Letlow came into the race late but quickly received the sought-after endorsement from President Donald Trump. The president noted in his endorsement video that Letlow had been a “friend” and had been “as loyal as can be.”

Cassidy was unlikely to receive any support from Trump after he voted to impeach the president for the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. At a recent campaign stop, Cassidy told NBC that the 2021 vote “might be” a liability for his campaign and acknowledged it is a vote “people will remember” him for.

“Bill Cassidy is collapsing under the weight of his anti-Trump record,” a Letlow campaign spokesperson, Katherine Thordahl, told the Daily Signal. “While Julia Letlow is building an insurmountable lead thanks to President Trump’s complete and total endorsement.”

Cassidy did not respond to a request from The Daily Signal for comment.

However, neither candidate looks likely to cross the 50% vote threshold needed to win the primary and avoid a runoff. Fleming’s entry into the race has siphoned conservative votes from both Cassidy and Letlow.

Fleming was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus.

Fleming told Punchbowl that the White House has twice offered “anything they could” to get him to step out of the race. “I said no, of course, and diplomatically said no,” Fleming told the outlet. The White House has denied these claims.

Letlow’s Trump endorsement could also provide a boon to her campaign financially in the future. The president’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., has more than $300 million in its war chest.

She has been backed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s aligned super PAC, Make America Healthy Again. The group pledged $1 million to Letlow, likely due to Cassidy’s lack of support for the secretary and skepticism of his health policy.

Cassidy ultimately voted to confirm Kennedy, but sparred with Kennedy over the efficacy of vaccines and other health-related issues.

Cassidy is featured on the Senate Leadership Fund’s 2026 candidates page, representing Louisiana, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee has financially backed him.

The post Louisiana Senate Primary Tests Power of Trump Endorsement appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Future of Funding

The Department of Homeland Security—which handles vital responsibilities such as border security, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service—has been shut down since Feb. 14, and it is unclear whether Congress will reach an agreement to fully fund it soon.

Right before leaving town for recess, the Senate passed a bill that would have funded the whole department except for border security and immigration enforcement.

The plan was to include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection in a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would require no Democrat votes.

The House of Representatives promptly rejected this plan, as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., described it as an effort to “defund the police.”

But days later, President Donald Trump, Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., agreed to return to this piecemeal approach of funding the agency.

The battle is not over yet. The House Freedom Caucus, a conservative faction of the House of Representatives, is agreeing to the budget reconciliation strategy, but says members want the entire department funded for the rest of Trump’s presidency via this process.

“We cannot leave ICE and CBP hanging with nothing but hopes and prayers that reconciliation 2.0 comes together,” the group wrote in an April statement.

“We can fund DHS for the rest of the President’s term to ensure Democrats can never again take our nation’s security hostage. We will never hand Democrats their ultimate prize: A defunded ICE, handcuffed CBP, and criminal aliens terrorizing our communities.”

Funding an entire department via a party-line reconciliation bill would be a shock to the normal business of Congress, where the annual funding process is usually based on bipartisan compromise.

The way that Johnson handles this issue could determine the future of government funding in Washington.

Moreover, Republicans will have to come to a consensus on their next reconciliation bill, as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, have mentioned, including ambitious entitlement reforms and defense spending in a potential bill.

Surveillance

Republican leaders are in for a tough legislative push next week, as they try to gather the votes to reaffirm the federal government’s controversial authority to surveil foreigners without warrants. The authority expires April 20.

Many House Republicans and Trump have argued in the past that this power is easily abused, resulting in the inadvertent surveillance of American citizens.

Trump has called for a clean extension of the authority.

Back in 2024, Congress agreed to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Several members of the House Republican Conference demanded reforms to the authority, some of which were ultimately granted.

Johnson has argued that the current reforms suffice and have protected American citizens.
“Last time it was up for reauthorization, we instituted 56 substantive reforms to FISA,” Johnson has said.

“By every measure and review, those are working just as we planned. We’ve not had the abuses that were happening before those reforms,“ he said.

But some members want more safeguards included, including a warrant requirement that failed to gather enough support in a 2024 amendment vote.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., called herself a “a NO on FISA reauthorization without warrants” in an X post on Friday.

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, similarly urged “reforms to close the loophole that allows the federal government to purchase citizens’ private data.”

If House Republican leadership holds the line and refuses to alter FISA, it may need to rely on Democrat votes to pass an extension. 

Leadership can probably pass the bill via this strategy, since Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House intel committee, has given an extension of the authority his blessing.

The post As House Returns Next Week, Giant Tasks Loom appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Trump administration shrank the federal workforce to its smallest number since the launch of LBJ’s Great Society. This incredible stat, little remarked upon by the media, was dredged up by X user Christian Heiens.

“Since Trump took office, over 352,000 Federal employees have been fired, resigned, or retired and were not replaced,” Heiens wrote on X. “The Federal workforce is smaller today than at any point since 1966.”

Pew Research also noted this considerable decline in the federal workforce in March.

“A total of 348,219 people quit, retired, were laid off or otherwise left federal employment last year – an 80.8% increase from 2024,” Pew wrote. “At the same time, 116,912 people started working for the federal government – a 55.6% decrease from the year before.”

Pew noted that the biggest cuts hit the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, celebrated this all-around good news.

A quick look at the numbers provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the figures to be correct. Since President Donald Trump retook office, his administration has done more to reduce the federal workforce than pretty much any president ever. That includes Trump 1.0.

The only larger drop-off in government personnel occurred at the end of World War II, for obvious reasons. Of course, FDR and Harry Truman were in no way small-government presidents. It was the New Deal in the 1930s that mushroomed the size of the federal government beyond anything the Founders could have imagined.

The Great Society in the 1960s grew the government even more and arguably created the far more pernicious federal leviathan that we have today.

One could argue this administration marks the first serious curtailment of that governmental transformation. Even the limited-government-minded President Ronald Reagan failed to seriously reduce the size of the federal government despite some considerable tactical victories.

This is much more significant.

Early on in Trump’s return to the White House I called this Trump’s “Dark New Deal.”

His administration isn’t just reducing the federal workforce—a gargantuan task given the level of civil service protections and inertia in its favor—he’s specifically targeting the most noxious parts of the bureaucratic perma-state. My wife Inez Stepman, a policy analyst for the Independent Women’s Forum, correctly noted this fact.

This is a historic counterrevolution against the deep state.

It’s happening because the administration is fundamentally changing how the bureaucracy functions.

Don Devine, Reagan’s “terrible swift sword of the civil service,” explained some of what’s going on in Law & Liberty.

Devine wrote in September that Trump is not just “cutting the size of government by firing good civil servants” as the media suggests. Instead, the administration appears to be “fundamentally reforming the federal bureaucracy with the legal support essential to change how government is actually administered.”

The changes came as a result of a few Supreme Court decisions, including the reinstatement of the Professional and Administrative Examination test in August, which allows the federal government to bring an element of “merit” back to civil service hiring. Several agencies, including the Department of Justice, are already reviving merit-based hiring.

It was blocked by courts since 1981 because they ruled that it caused black and Hispanic applicants to be hired at lower rates. DEI has been in our federal hiring practices for some time.

This change is happening while Trump is clearing out the Left’s patronage networks within the federal government, whereby federal bureaucrats shovel money at various left-wing nongovernmental organizations and favorable programs often right under the noses of Republican presidents.

There’s a reason Trump’s return to office was met with panic in Washington.

While this is perhaps bad for the economy in the nation’s capital, it’s a good thing for the future of limited government and an even better thing for the American people.

It’s not often that you can say that our president does anything quietly, but this rarely remarked upon revolution could pay dividends not just today, but in the decades ahead.

While the next Democrat administration will undoubtedly try to return things to how they were, this administration is laying down structural changes that will be hard to immediately undo.

When you combine that with the Supreme Court’s abandonment of the so-called Chevron doctrine, in which courts deferred to federal agencies, you can see through squinted eyes something that actually resembles republican governance.

That’s worth celebrating.

The post Trump’s War on the Deep State Is Paying Off appeared first on The Daily Signal.

“President [Donald] Trump has always been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, disruptions that the Administration has been diligently working to mitigate,” White House spokesman Kush Desai wrote in a Friday statement on the March inflation report.

The report suggests the consumer price index—the benchmark price of a bundle of common consumer goods—was 3.3% higher than a year before.

This annualized rate of inflation is a 0.9% uptick from the 2.4% rate in February.

Core inflation—which excludes the volatile categories of food and energy—is up 2.6% year-over-year, a 0.2% increase from February.

Desai argued the report paints an overall positive picture of the economy amid volatility in energy costs.

“Although gas and energy prices are seeing volatility, prices of eggs, beef, prescription drugs, dairy, and other household essentials are falling or remain stable thanks to President Trump’s policies,” Desai said.

He added, “As the Administration ensures the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, the American economy remains on a solid trajectory thanks to the Administration’s robust supply-side agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and energy Abundance.”

Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli operation in Iran, commenced on Feb. 28, meaning the report should reflect wartime price shocks. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil waterway, has been stalled ever since.

Democrats are likely to attack Republicans for the inflation numbers as midterms approach.

“Skyrocketing inflation, the highest in years, all because of Donald Trump’s unnecessary, ill-planned, reckless war of choice,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a post on X.

“It’s another reason we must end this war now. Americans are paying the price for Trump’s idiocy every day.”

Both Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., have announced they intend to advance war powers resolutions to force Republicans to support or oppose Trump’s authority to continue the Iran operation.

The post White House Has a Message to Cool Inflation Worries appeared first on The Daily Signal.

After winning by an electoral landslide, on Jan. 20, 2025, President Trump issued his executive order to fulfill that promise. The American Civil Liberties Union promptly filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order.

That executive order was the subject of oral arguments in the Supreme Court on April 1, 2026. Trump attended in person.

For reasons explained below, the court should sustain Trump’s executive order because the people elected Trump, and any ambiguities in the 14th Amendment should be construed in favor of the people—which is different than construing the amendment in favor of Trump.

The purpose of Trump’s executive order is clearly stated: “The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift. The Fourteenth Amendment states: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ That provision rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’s shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), which misinterpreted the Constitution as permanently excluding people of African descent from eligibility for United States citizenship solely based on their race.”

Trump’s executive order also acknowledged that, “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”

On April 1, the lawyer representing the American Civil Liberties Union in its challenge to Trump’s executive order relied primarily on the 1898 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark for her arguments in favor of birthright citizenship for the children of parents not in the U.S. legally. She suggested that this “landmark decision” established that children born on U.S. soil are citizens regardless of their parents’ status.

As the parents of the child at issue in Wong Kim Ark were in the U.S. legally, to suggest that this “landmark decision” established birthright citizenship for the children of parents not legally allowed to reside in the United States defies logic.

The issue argued in the Supreme Court on April 1 centered around ambiguities in the phrase in the 14th Amendment, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Even though the final Section of the 14th Amendment, Section 5, grants Congress “the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation,” the 14th Amendment, Congress has never enacted legislation clarifying the ambiguities in the phrase, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

When dealing with ambiguities in the 14th Amendment, unless or until Congress exercises its powers under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to clarify ambiguities by legislative enforcement, the Supreme Court should construe the ambiguities in favor of the people, who reelected Trump.

Thirty years ago this month, the American Legislative Exchange Council published my article “The Forgotten Preamble: Introduction to the Bill of Rights Gives More Meaning to the Tenth Amendment.” In it, I pointed out how the Preamble of the 1789 Bill of Rights explains the purpose of the Bill of Rights as “in order to prevent misconstructions or abuses of its power,” i.e., abuses of powers delegated by our Constitution to our federal government. In this light, I suggested:

“Whenever federal courts and agencies are forced to ‘legislate’ by construing legal ambiguities, they should utilize the final Article of the Bill of Rights – ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people’ – as an interpretive rule to construe ambiguities against the proffering party, i.e., against Congress (See United States v. Heth, 1806.). … [A] Tenth Amendment rule of construction would provide a practical safeguard against federal encroachments on powers that neither the states nor the people have ever delegated to the national government.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch explained in his June 28, 2024, concurring opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which struck down decades of “Chevron deference” to unelected government bureaucrats: “Chevron deference sits in tension with many traditional legal presumptions and interpretive principles, representing nearly the inverse of … contra preferentem.”

Trump repeatedly promised to “end birthright citizenship” for children born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents, and then did just that on the first day of his second term. Now, the Supreme Court should resolve ambiguities in the 14th Amendment using contra preferentem and thereby avoid frustrating the will of the people.

It’s our government after all.

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

The post The Case for Resolving Birthright Citizenship in Trump’s Favor appeared first on The Daily Signal.

America First Legal asked the Justice Department and the Education Department to investigate Montgomery County Public Schools, alleging that the school district has a policy of facilitating students’ social “gender transitions” while concealing them from parents deemed to be non-supportive.

The group says that the policy “Gender Identity in Montgomery County Public Schools“ accommodates student gender transitions, including changes to names, pronouns, school records, bathroom and locker room access, and overnight field trip sleeping arrangements.

“The Handbook repeatedly instructs staff to condition parental involvement on whether the parent is deemed ‘supportive’ of their child’s gender identity,“ the complaint states.

The Daily Signal asked the school district whether it would challenge any characterizations in the complaint.

Montgomery County Public Schools spokeswoman Liliana López told The Daily Signal, “We are aware of the complaint. We will reserve comment until we have had the opportunity to review it.”

America First Legal contends these actions by the school district could violate parental rights under the First Amendment, the 14th Amendment, and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a 1974 law that gives parents the right to inspect school records and control their disclosure until their child reaches 18.

“Montgomery County Public Schools has constructed an elaborate system designed to keep parents in the dark about some of the most consequential decisions affecting their own children,” Ian Prior, senior counsel for America First Legal, said in a public statement.

“Federal law and the Constitution are unambiguous: Parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children and to access their children’s education records. MCPS’s policies turn both of those principles on their head,” Prior continued.

Last year, the Supreme Court sided with a group of parents against the school district in a 6-3 decision in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor. The court granted the parents a preliminary injunction as their lawsuit continued, allowing them to opt their children out of reading explicit books in school with gender and sexual content.

The school district reportedly reached a settlement in February with the parents, agreeing to pay them $1.5 million and to allow them to opt their children out of reading such books in the future.

America First Legal’s 13-page complaint alleges that the school district violates the free exercise clause by excluding parents from critical decisions about their children’s identity and well-being.

It further alleges violations of free speech and the equal protection clause, saying the school district discriminates against parents who disagree with gender ideology.

The post Another LGBTQ Controversy? Trump Admin Asked to Investigate Maryland School District appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on X that the two measures had been previously agreed with the United States and warned that negotiations would not start until they are fulfilled.

There was no immediate comment from the White House.

Earlier, Vice President JD Vance, who will lead the U.S. delegation, set off for the talks in Pakistan, saying he expected a positive outcome. But “if they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive,” Vance added.

Iran has been unable to obtain tens of billions of dollars of its assets in foreign banks, mainly from exports of oil and gas, due to U.S. sanctions on its banking and energy sectors.

President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire in the six-week war on Tuesday, just hours before a deadline after which he had threatened to destroy Iran’s civilization. However, the truce is tenuous with Israel’s continuing bombardment of Lebanon and the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz proving key sticking points for both sides.

The ceasefire has halted the campaign of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran. But it has so far done nothing to end the blockade of the strait, which has caused the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies, or to calm a parallel war waged by Israel against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

Iran was doing a “very poor job” of letting oil through the strait, Trump said in a social media post. He also warned Tehran against trying to collect fees from ships crossing it. “That is not the agreement we have!”

Israel has also said that its parallel campaign against militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon was not part of the agreed ceasefire.

Israeli strikes continued across southern Lebanon on Friday, with more than a dozen people reported killed in various towns. One strike killed eight members of Lebanese state security forces, the country’s state media said.

Originally published by Reuters.

The post Iran Demands Lebanon Ceasefire, Unfreezing of Assets Before Peace Talks appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In statements made to The Daily Signal on Wednesday, three members of the caucus said they will not allow such a bill to be enacted.

The members specifically called out the DIGNIDAD (Dignity) Act of 2025, introduced in July by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., which would grant legal residence to certain illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States since at least 2021. The bill has bipartisan support, with more than two dozen co-sponsors.

“The DIGNIDAD Act is a mass migration bill that gives mass amnesty to millions,” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal. “It stops President [Donald] Trump from deporting illegal aliens swiftly.”

Other Freedom Caucus members echoed Gill’s criticism, saying they oppose any legislation that they believe rewards illegal immigration.

“I will not reward illegal aliens with citizenship because they provide cheap labor to the wealthy donor class,” Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal. “Doing that makes us no better than the Democrats. Dignity for Americans, not for illegals.”

Fine added that he “will never vote for amnesty.”

Other members also expressed their opposition to such legislation.

“The correct amount of amnesty for foreign invaders is zero,” Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., said. “Illegals don’t get to break our laws and then get rewarded with staying in our country. I want every last one of them deported now.”

Rather than receiving legal residency, the lawmakers said illegal immigrants should face mass deportations.

“I don’t care if you got here last week, last month, last year, or 30 years ago,” Fine said. “If you came here illegally, you’re going home. The most important thing we should be doing in this country is mass deportations.”

Freedom Caucus members also argued that the Salazar proposal is deeply unpopular among House Republicans and GOP voters.

“It’s a massive betrayal of everything voters elected us to do,” Gill said. “Voters demand mass deportations, not amnesty.”

“There are about 20 Republicans who have co-sponsored the bill—less than 10% of the conference,” Fine added. “I think they would have a very difficult time getting anywhere near a majority of Republicans on board.”

Salazar and another co-sponsor, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., have pushed back against those claims in recent days, arguing that the DIGNIDAD Act should not be labeled an amnesty bill.

“Calling the DIGNITY Act ‘amnesty’ isn’t just wrong,” Salazar wrote on X, responding to Gill’s criticism. “It’s a deliberate distortion, and it exposes just how little you know about the bill. This is enforcement first: zero tolerance for criminals, permanent border security, and hard-earned requirements to step forward and face the law, so American workers are protected, not undercut.”

Lawler defended the bill during a Sunday appearance on Fox News’ “One Nation with Brian Kilmeade,” calling it a bipartisan effort to address the nation’s broken immigration system.

The proposal, Lawler said, would “get people out of the shadows” by granting legal status, short of citizenship, to long-term illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years, remained crime-free, paid taxes and fines, maintained employment, and avoided public benefits.

Despite those assurances, Fine suggested the Freedom Caucus will remain opposed to the legislation and any similar measure.

“Freedom Caucus members like me are willing to say no amnesty, period,” he said. “Others want to get along and manage the decline politely. I think it’s important to be clear with my constituents: I will never vote for amnesty. Never.”

Salazar and Lawler did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Freedom Caucus Takes Strong Stand on Amnesty appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Jack Fowler: Pam Bondi has been given the boot as attorney general. Do you have any thoughts on that, Victor?  

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I don’t know the intricacies. She’s very pleasant. She’s very close. She’s a very good, nice person. She had a good record in Florida, but she came in late because of the Matt Gaetz misadventure. 

And so, they needed somebody and I think [President Donald] Trump expected two major task forces for her. One was fraud.  

Elon Musk said that from the very beginning, when they were doing the DOGE, and the DOGE, I thought there would be indictments, you know, left and right from what they found out. And there haven’t been.  

So, the very idea that [Vice President] JD Vance … he’s a lawyer and that’s really good, but he’s not an attorney in the sense of a prosecutor. The fact that he’s leading a commission and it’s not a Senate, like a Harry Truman investigation during World War II, but that shows you, there hasn’t been people at DOJ. 

There should be a very high, famous prosecutor who should be doing that. I’m gonna have a federal task force on fraud. We give this money to the states and that hasn’t happened.  

And then the other thing is all the Left says, “Well, you can’t conflate the AG and the president. They have to have a firewall. How dare you?” 
 
Come on. Who do you think Bobby Kennedy was? He was the attorney general when John Kennedy [was president]. You’ve seen those pictures about every five minutes. They’re walking together. He didn’t do anything unless John Kennedy [was involved]. 

Who do you think John Mitchell was? He was the bond lawyer for Richard Nixon. Who do you think Eric Holder was? Why do you think that he said he was the wingman? The wingman of Barack Obama? Why do you think he defiantly refused a congressional subpoena? And he knew he had complete exemption in a way that Steve Bannon, for example, or Peter Navarro didn’t, because he knew what Obama would say. He would back him.  

So, they needed somebody, what I’m getting at, independent, but to investigate the misuse of the federal government to go after people. And people are getting frustrated.  

They didn’t do anything with the IRS under Obama that went after targeted groups on their political affiliations, right before an election. 

They didn’t do anything for Operation Crossfire Hurricane. They didn’t do anything for [James] Clapper and [John] Brennan lying under oath. 

If anybody believes that James Comey, for 245 times, an FBI director said he didn’t remember or didn’t know while under oath, and that’s not lying? 

They should have indicted Joe Biden’s ghost writer when he said to Robert Hur, “I just erased that subpoenaed oral transcript. I was worried about hacking, so I just took it upon myself to destroy federal evidence.” 
 
When they were doing the [Robert] Mueller investigation, they were missing all sorts of FBI phones. Remember that? They turned them over, and they said, “Oh, I don’t know. Somebody erased them.” 

And when Andrew McCabe said, “Don’t worry. He’s not going to be elected. We need an insurance policy,” they had it all. 

John Durham was a very good guy, and he was very thorough, but it was just a nothingburger. And so, people got really frustrated. They got really frustrated when Fani Willis got up in that stand and lied her head off that, “Oh, it’s a black thing that I use cash. How dare you suggest they should have receipts.” 

Or she used federal monies for at-risk use to go after Trump, or that crazy Alvin Bragg shoehorning or bootstrapping or whatever you want to call it, a minor federal offense into a state mega felony. It wasn’t even an offense. 

So, what I’m getting at, there were all these indiscretions and nobody in the Justice Department ever seriously did anything about them.  

And yet, when there were Democrats in power, my gosh. I’m not asking the Republicans to appoint a Fani Willis, or an Alvin Bragg or a Jack Smith or Letitia James, but my gosh. 

I think people get very frustrated, Jack, because they saw all of that lawfare—get him off the ballot, raid his home. They’re not asking for that. They’re not saying we should be like that, but what they’re saying is these Democrats did all that. 

It was all illegal. It was all politically inspired. We’re not asking to go down to their level. We’re just asking to hold the people who did something wrong accountable. And we are not doing that at this time. We’re not doing that.  

The Democrats said when we get back in power, hello. I’m Susan Rice. We’re gonna go after all of you. I’m James Carville, and I just say you better be careful because as soon as you get back in there, we’re gonna get the Trump family.

We’re gonna get the Trump family spouses. 

Fowler: And Victor, if I may, a backdrop to this, too. It’s not Bondi’s fault, but you see these judges in Minnesota who are giving these pathetically tiny sentences to these terrible fraudsters. 

How come these people are getting away with it? 

Hanson: Yeah, and I think you’re absolutely right. I think sometimes the administration’s not communicating well. There were two big issues. They weren’t the biggest, but they were big issues when he got reelected. 

One was, are we going to finish the wall? And the second is, why don’t we, you know … Leonard Leo, he had a falling out with Trump and all the problems he’s had. 

He’s gone off in a strange direction, I guess. But he did get these people appointed. 

So why have we, I don’t know. I have no idea whether we have the same amount, fewer amount. The Democratic opposition is more rabid than the first. I don’t know. 

But it does seem like we’re not getting all of these federal judge billets filled quickly with conservatives, and time is running out because if they lose, they’re never gonna confirm them. 

They could be Thomas Jefferson, and they wouldn’t confirm. 

So we need to get the judges appointed, audited, confirmed, and we need the wall all the way to the canyons of East Texas, the whole thing.  

It’s 2,000 miles. I guess there’s 400 or 500 miles that the terrain makes it impossible. But we should then cover that with sophisticated electronic surveillance, et cetera, et cetera, and then just build this wall all the way. And we’re not doing it. 

At least we’re not being told we’re doing it. That would help people during the midterm to be apprised of that. 

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

The post Victor Davis Hanson: Why Trump Grew Frustrated With Pam Bondi appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Under Virginia’s current congressional map, adopted after the 2020 census, two districts have a majority-minority voting age population. However, the Democrats’ proposed redistricting maps would dilute those populations.

A.C. Cordoza, who was the sole black Republican in the state’s House of Delegates before losing his reelection campaign in November, condemned Democrats as “completely hypocritical.”

“These are southern Democrats, who are using their power to disenfranchise African American voters, and minority voters,” he told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday. “Tell me how that is not the definition of Jim Crow, and they can’t do it.”

“They just can’t, ’cause it is, and they know it is,” Cordoza, who served two terms in the House of Delegates, added.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups have condemned Cordoza’s Justice for Democracy PAC for sending flyers opposed to the redistricting ballot initiative. The flyers state, “Just like Jim Crow, they want to silence your voice.”

Phillip Thompson, executive director of the National Black Nonpartisan Redistricting Organization, condemned the mailers as “juvenile, foolish,” as well as “tone deaf and completely cynical.”

Yet Thompson acknowledged that the new maps do indeed weaken minority voting blocs.

“The proposal maintains one distinctly black-influence district while dispersing black voters among other districts,” he noted. The new maps “may solidify Democratic support but are not necessarily structured to enhance black political influence.”

Why Cordoza’s Claim Holds Water

According to the Virginia court records for the congressional maps adopted in 2021, the voting-age population in the 3rd Congressional District was 41.96% white, 45.37% black, and 7.37% Hispanic.

The 4th Congressional District also had a majority-minority voting-age population, with 45.18% white and 54.82% minority voters. The black voting-age population of 42.14% and the Hispanic voting-age population of 8.26% together form a minority-influence district that meets the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

By contrast, the proposed 3rd Congressional District has a 45.1% white voting-age population, larger than the 41.17% black voting-age population. Combined with the 7.19% Hispanic voting-age population, the two-minority bloc still reaches less than 50% of the district’s voting-age population.

The proposed 4th Congressional District has an outright white majority voting-age population, at 50.7%. The black voting-age population (38.9%) and Hispanic voting-age population (6.04%) no longer match the white population.

While the Supreme Court is considering two cases about the racial requirements for redistricting in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the act’s requirements remain the law for now.

The NAACP’s Virginia chapter endorsed the maps as a response to Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts in Texas and other states. Those efforts came after the federal government concluded that the 2020 census overcounted the populations of Democrat-leaning states and undercounted the populations of Republican-leaning states.

“When Black communities lose the ability to elect candidates who represent our needs, our entire democracy suffers,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement endorsing the redistricting effort. “The NAACP will continue to fight, in Virginia and across the nation, to make sure our maps—and our democracy—reflect people.”

Yet Thompson, the leader of the black redistricting organization, noted that “most of the announced Democratic candidates for the newly established districts are white, and most of the institutional support, money and endorsements have been directed toward these candidates.”

He acknowledged that “some black Virginians have expressed frustration with the maps, questioning why at least one of the new districts was not drawn to better represent regions that could support black candidates.”

 Cordoza, the Republican former delegate, picked up on that theme.

“I’d rather them just come out and say, ‘We want power, we want a power grab,'” he told The Daily Signal. “I want them to say it. We all know it.”

The post ‘DEFINITION OF JIM CROW’: Republican Turns the Tables on Democrats’ Redistricting Rhetoric appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A state court on Tuesday pronounced DeCarlos Brown Jr., the man accused of killing Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in a random knife attack on a North Carolina train, “incapable to proceed” until a psychiatric evaluation is complete.

From my colleague Fred Lucas, who reported on the latest from this case: “A judge still has to accept the findings of Brown’s December mental evaluation, and the court could proceed if it determines Brown’s mental capacity is restored, WBTV reported. However, if the judge determines Brown is not capable of standing trial, the state charges would be dismissed.”

The ruling drew understandable fury on social media, including from members of Congress.

Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., called the decision “DESPICABLE.”

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., wrote that the decision was eroding American faith in our justice system.

Rep. Josh Williams, R-Ohio, wrote that only societies with a “death wish” could allow a man with such a long criminal history to suddenly be declared incompetent for trial.

It’s easy to see why North Carolina hasn’t executed a death row inmate since 2006.

On a positive note, if there really can be one in this story, Brown faces federal charges. So, even if the state charges against Brown are dismissed, it doesn’t mean he will escape prosecution, as Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon noted on X.

The state court’s current decision, even if in this case it’s justified, is outrageous for several reasons and points to why the killing of Zarutska infuriated so many Americans in the first place. Well, not the leftist political leaders of Providence, Rhode Island, who are more angry that people they don’t like are paying tribute to her. But let’s leave that aside for now.

It’s absurd that only now is the 34-year-old Brown suddenly deemed incompetent to stand trial after decades of evidence that he was unfit to roam freely in society. This wasn’t a man who committed his first violent crime after a sudden onset of schizophrenia.

Brown, who comes from a family of violent jailbirds, had been previously arrested 14 times in North Carolina since 2007. The list of crimes he’d been accused of includes assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and several other misdemeanors. In some cases, the charges were dismissed. In others, he was convicted. He often failed to show up in court.

After Brown was finally convicted of breaking and entering in 2014, he was sentenced to “30 days in jail and 24 months supervised probation,” according to WBTV.

Not even six months later he was arrested and convicted of robbery with a dangerous weapon after he attacked a man and stole his phone. That’s when he finally got a “serious” prison sentence of five years.

After his release in 2020, Brown continued to be arrested time and again, including for violent crimes.

Brown had been out of jail on cashless bail when he allegedly killed Zarutska. He’d been arrested for inappropriately dialing 911. Brown said he was being controlled by a “man-made” object according to the affidavit.

He spent only two days in jail when a local magistrate released him after he promised to appear in court. A judge ordered an evaluation of Brown as he roamed the streets. That was just weeks before he stabbed and killed Zarutska.

Why is it that only after being accused of committing a most heinous crime is this man suddenly incompetent to stand trial? Why is it that the man appearing in all these mug shots wasn’t deem unfit for society long ago?

That’s the outrage.

Brown has spent his entire adult life being a menace to everyone around him. He appeared to have been in control of his actions when he assaulted and robbed people in the past. If he wasn’t, how was that not determined long ago after his fifth or 10th arrest? Even Brown’s mother said he should have been institutionalized rather than being set free.

This points to how the American justice system, in too many cases, has been warped to give repeat offenders second, third, 15th, near limitless chances.

Most Americans aren’t criminals, but most crimes are committed by the same people. A system committed to traditional justice instead of social justice would keep this small number of people behind bars. In many cases, indefinitely.

The Left thinks that’s unjust and cruel.

But, as the oft-repeated Adam Smith quotation correctly concludes, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”

In this case, a 23-year-old woman had her life brutally cut short because the system wasn’t committed to justice.

What the Zarutska murder and the legal system’s response to Brown’s life of crime reveal is that there will likely be many more innocent Americans hurt and killed who could be saved if only our policymakers and courts allow them to be.

The post Despicable: Judge Declares Accused Killer ‘Incapable’ Despite Decades of Crimes appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This week, Spanberger announced signing multiple business investment bills into law that will bring a total of $7.1 billion and 3,250 jobs to the state. She said in a news release that from her “very first day in office,” she has been working to “create a stable business environment so companies can hire, expand, and continue to invest in [the] Commonwealth.”

However, some Virginians have noted that the deals included in the bills were made while former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin was in office.

Four companies listed in Spanberger’s announcement—Hitachi Energy, Eli Lilly and Company, AstraZeneca, and Avio USA—pledged their investments in 2025, while Youngkin was still the sitting governor of Virginia.

“[Former] Governor Youngkin is happy that Virginians are being reminded of some good news, even if it means Gov. Spanberger taking credit for the economic deals he secured for the commonwealth,” a Youngkin spokesman told The Daily Signal.

“The last three months have been nothing but horrible news for Virginians, as Abigail Spanberger broke every single promise she made on the campaign trail and now has the lowest approval rating of any Virginia governor this century,” the spokesman added.

After 80 days in office, Spanberger’s favorability rating sits at 47%, compared to Youngkin’s approval of 54% at the same point in his term.

The Investments

Hitachi Energy announced in September 2025 that it planned to invest $1 billion in manufacturing by contributing to the production of grid infrastructure.

“$457 million USD is dedicated to a new power transformer factory in Virginia, the largest such facility in the U.S., with the support of Governor Youngkin and the commonwealth’s congressional delegation,” the company said in a press release.

In September, Eli Lilly and Company announced plans to build a $5 billion manufacturing facility near Richmond, Virginia. Youngkin was quoted in the company’s press release.

“This new facility in Goochland County will create 650 great jobs, along with 1,800 construction jobs, and deliver some of the most advanced medicines in Lilly’s portfolio, powered by the unmatched talent of our Virginia workforce,” Youngkin said.

The biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced in October that it was increasing its investment by $500 million in Virginia, bringing the company’s total investment to $4.5 billion. The company announced it would build a new manufacturing facility, creating 3,600 new jobs.

“I also want to thank Governor Youngkin and his team for their energy and vision,” AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in the announcement. “We have found in Virginia an amazing team that moves at incredible speed to build a better future for this Commonwealth and the American people.”

The only investment announced after Spanberger won the November election was Avio USA in December, though Youngkin was still in office at the time. The announcement mentioned both Youngkin and Spanberger, thanking them by name.

Youngkin’s Future

Virginia’s former governor, appearing this week on “The Sean Hannity Show,” said he plans to remain involved in the state’s political issues. After being out of the office for six weeks, Youngkin said he is “just chomping at the bit” to get back to work.

“I have more to give. I just do,” Youngkin told Hannity. “Every morning I woke up literally bounding out of bed, ready to roll—and that was the most purposeful I’ve ever felt in my whole life.”

As the state’s controversial redistricting referendum approaches a special election vote on April 21, Virginians are seeing more of Youngkin. He will appear at multiple “Vote No” rallies this weekend across the commonwealth.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Hitachi’s decision to invest $457 million in Virginia was announced in April 2025. It was announced in September 2025.

The post Spanberger Is ‘Taking Credit’ for Youngkin’s Economic Deals appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On Thursday, House Democrats attempted to advance a War Powers Resolution that would restrain the president’s ability to use force against Iran. 

Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., entered a pro forma session of the House of Representatives—a perfunctory meeting where no legislative business generally occurs—and attempted to pass the resolution by unanimous consent. 

Ivey’s attempt to get recognition was ignored by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who filled in as speaker and gaveled out the session. 

The messaging stunt suggests Democrats remain interested in countering the administration’s policies in the Middle East, or at least forcing congressional Republicans into difficult votes on the matter.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told The Daily Signal in a statement, “President Trump has been transparent with the Hill since before Operation Epic Fury began, and administration officials provided over 20 bipartisan briefings for Members of Congress to keep them apprised of military updates.” 

She added: “As the President said, many points have already been agreed to during the diplomatic process, and we are far along with a definitive agreement to deliver long-term peace in Iran and across the region.” 

A War Powers Resolution failed in early March in a 212-219 vote. Congress has been out of session since March 27. 

Two Republicans voted for the failed resolution, while four Democrats voted against it. 

It remains unclear how durable the ceasefire will be, as Israeli and Iranian strikes have occurred since the beginning of the truce, and Trump has declared his intention to keep American weapons and personnel in the region. 

House Democrats are seeking to tee up a vote on a war powers resolution when Congress returns to session.

Such resolutions are privileged—meaning they automatically come under consideration without needing leadership’s approval. 

“A two-week ceasefire is woefully insufficient. Accordingly, we have demanded that the House come back into session immediately in order to vote on our resolution to permanently end the war in the Middle East,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a statement on Wednesday. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also has said Senate Democrats intend to force a vote in his chamber on the Iran conflict.

There is little chance such a resolution could acquire a veto-proof level of support, but it could be an important test of congressional backing for the president’s Iran posture. 

But apart from Democrats’ attempts to force Republicans into up-down votes on Trump’s war powers, some key stakeholders are arguing they should have a say in Trump’s dealmaking with Iran. 

On Wednesday, a day after Trump and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had announced the start of negotiations, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the Senate’s most vocal Iran hawks, said he wished for engagement from the administration on the talks. 

“I look forward to the architects of this proposal, the Vice President and others, coming forward to Congress and explaining how a negotiated deal meets our national security objectives in Iran,” Graham wrote on X.

The South Carolina senator added that he would like to see Iran presented with a tough deal. 

“The last thing I’m interested in is for Iran to be able to save face,” Graham wrote. “I’m interested in a deal that will stop their maniacal drive to a nuclear weapon among other things.” 

One important variable is the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act—a law Congress passed to require the administration to submit nuclear agreements with Iran to Congress. 

The law requires that the president submit any agreement relating to Iran’s nuclear program to the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees for their review.

The post As Trump Seeks Iran Deal, Congress Wants Say on Foreign Policy appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Designating Hamas Affiliates in America Act of 2026, introduced Thursday by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, aims to block CAIR’s assets and prohibit Americans from dealing with the organization.

“CAIR is not some innocent 501(c)(3) organization—they facilitate terrorism while operating under the guise of a nonprofit,” Roy told The Daily Signal.

If enacted, the bill would also revoke CAIR’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status and require the secretaries of state and treasury to submit a report on why the organization possibly meets the SDGT criteria.

“This bill makes it clear: Their assets must be frozen, their tax-exempt status revoked, and all Americans should be prohibited from supporting them. No organization that aids terrorism should financially benefit from it, especially on U.S. soil,” Roy added.

A bill summary provided to The Daily Signal by Roy’s office added that “the civil rights organization dedicated to protecting the rights of American Muslims has harbored ties to terrorist organizations including Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other extremist groups while operating under the guise of a non-profit, reaping the benefits of having a 501(c)(3) tax status.”

Roy, a co-founder of the Sharia Free America Caucus, added in the bill summary that the legislation builds on findings from the federal government’s terrorism financing case against Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in 2008.

The Holy Land Foundation, the largest American Islamic charity at the time, was convicted of funneling over $12 million to Hamas front groups.

During that investigation, the FBI identified CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator, and Roy’s bill summary claims that CAIR’s “30-year history is replete with associating with terrorist groups and individuals who want to undermine the security and values of the U.S. and its allies.”

Roy’s office alleged that CAIR honored convicted terrorist and alleged Palestinian Islamic Jihad financier Sami Al-Arian in 2014, and that in 2020, CAIR-Florida featured Al-Arian in its livestream interview series.

In 2006, Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida, was convicted of providing material support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization, and was eventually deported after serving his prison sentence, his office added.

When contacted by The Daily Signal, CAIR did not issue a reply on the representative’s bill, but directed the request to its past comments on Roy.

“This rhetoric follows a history of exclusionary policy proposals from the Congressman, including his recent calls to halt all U.S. immigration based on what he described as ‘Muslim immigrant violence,’” CAIR said in March in response to a social media post from Roy. “Representative Chip Roy’s public demand for the exclusion of an entire faith group is a shameful betrayal of his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.”

The post EXCLUSIVE: Roy Introduces Bill to Designate CAIR as Hamas Affiliate appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The investigation follows growing concern from lawmakers and regulators that the NFL’s expanding web of cable and streaming deals has made it harder—and more expensive—for fans to watch games.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and other members of Congress have raised concerns about the difficulty for consumers to watch games across multiple paid platforms, saying the streaming deals drive up costs and create confusion for consumers. The warnings have prompted the Federal Communications Commission to seek public comment on the issue.

Last month, Lee wrote a letter asking the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the NFL.

“To watch every NFL game during this past season, football fans spent almost $1,000 on cable and streaming subscriptions. In practice, this requires subscribing to multiple streaming services and maintaining high-speed internet in addition to a traditional cable or satellite bundle,” Lee wrote.

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 grants the NFL limited carve-outs to antitrust law to allow teams to negotiate packages of TV rights.

When the law was enacted, consumers watched games on broadcast TV, and streaming platforms didn’t exist.

In a statement on Thursday, an NFL spokesperson said, “The NFL’s media distribution model is the most fan- and broadcaster-friendly in the entire sports and entertainment industry.”

The spokesperson added, “With over 87% of our games on free, broadcast television, including 100% of games in the markets of the competing teams, the NFL has for decades put our fans front and center in how we distribute our content.”

The Daily Signal first reported this week on a poll that found 84% of respondents said NFL games should remain on broadcast TV or be available on both free and paid viewing platforms.

The poll found that 93% of respondents said it is important for live sporting events to be available on broadcast television so they can be interrupted for local emergency alerts, such as tornado warnings. The poll was conducted by the Internet Accountability Project.

The Daily Signal did not immediately receive a response from either the Justice Department or the NFL for this story.

The post Report: DOJ Probes Whether NFL Is Pricing Out Fans appeared first on The Daily Signal.

“The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” President Donald Trump’s wife said in a rare address from the White House. It was not immediately clear what prompted Melania Trump to speak out now. 

She said she had never had a relationship with Epstein or his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, with whom she said she had only a casual correspondence.

“I never been friends with Epstein. Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach,” she said. “To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell.”

“I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met my husband, by chance, at a New York City party in 1998,” she said. 

She called on Congress to provide women victimized by Epstein with a public hearing centering on survivors.

Evidence in multiple legal and criminal cases has shed light on Epstein’s ties to many prominent people in politics, finance, and business—both before and after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges, including soliciting an underage girl.

Epstein was arrested again in 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors. His 2019 death in a Manhattan jail cell was ruled a suicide.

Melania Trump did not say why she chose to speak out on Thursday, but Marc Beckman, her senior adviser, told Reuters in a statement, “First Lady Melania Trump spoke out now because enough is enough. The lies must stop.” He said, “It is time for the public and media to focus on her incredible achievements as First Lady, the lives she has positively impacted, and her commitment to our nation.”

The Trump administration, under pressure from Trump’s political base, ordered the Justice Department to release files tied to criminal probes of Epstein in compliance with a transparency law passed by Congress.

The files released by the Justice Department include a 2002 email from Melania Trump to Maxwell about a New York Magazine piece on Epstein.

“Nice story about JE in NY mag. You look great on the picture,” the email says. “Give me a call when you are back in NY.”

Melania Trump on Thursday described her email to Maxwell as just “casual correspondence,” adding: “My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trivial note.”

Donald Trump has said his association with Epstein ended in the mid-2000s and that he was never aware of the financier’s sexual abuse. Records previously released by the department show Trump flew several times on Epstein’s plane in the 1990s, which Trump has denied.

After the financier was first accused of sexual misconduct, Trump called the police chief in Palm Beach to say that “everyone has known he’s been doing this,” according to an FBI interview record.

Melania Trump said on Thursday that she first “crossed paths” with Epstein in 2000 at an event she attended with her husband. 

“At the time, I had never met Epstein and had no knowledge of his criminal undertakings,” she said.

The post Melania Trump Says She Never Had a Connection to Epstein appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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

Once again, NATO is in crisis. It seems like this is happening every three or four years. It predates and will postdate President Donald Trump. We are engaged in a bombing campaign to disarm the Iranian theocracy that, for 47 years, has killed Americans in embassies and military installations. 

It supplies the terrorists of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. It funds and subsidizes terrorists in Europe, tried to kill President Trump—I could go on forever. 

So, we decided enough is enough, because we felt that their ballistic missiles had a range that could harm Europe and soon us, and that was proven by its launching of two missiles toward Diego Garcia islands in the Indian Ocean. 

And what was the result of our NATO allies when we said, “We don’t have to do it, we’ll do the heavy lifting along with Israel, you don’t have to do anything. I know we helped you in Ukraine. I know we helped you in Serbia. I know we helped you, French, in Chad. I know we helped you, British, when you went to the Falklands on that long adventure and you needed fuel and reconnaissance and resupplies and Tomahawks. 

“We know all that, but we’re not asking that. All we want to do is land at the bases that we share with you on your soil under NATO.” So, Spain said, “Nope, can’t do it. You can’t fly through our airspace.” We said, “Well, maybe if we’re going from our base in Britain, we’ll go across France.”

Nope, can’t do that either. 

“Well, how about when our bombers want to refuel in Italy?” No, you can’t do that. Can’t do that. “Well, how about Diego Garcia? We’ve used that before.” And Mr. [Keir] Starmer, “Not our war, not our war.” 

I think somebody should have said the Falklands were not our war either. And 1939, 1940, it wasn’t our war either in 1941, 1942, but we came over there. But nevertheless, that was what they wanted to do. 

So, the question is, what do we do? Well, we’ve almost finished the campaign in Iran. Apparently, we didn’t need those bases, because we’re still supplying them very well with bases we do have access to. 

The Greeks have been wonderful. There’s a NATO base at Souda Bay, Crete, and they’re helping repair the new Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.

It seems to me that when they say they won’t do it, part of it is they can’t do it. 

They have made a series of investments, policies, protocols that have paralyzed that entire continent. They have dreamed of utopia and the good life, and the result is their fertility rate is 1.3. They are shrinking. They are aging. They’re not competitive. So, they don’t have the manpower, even though they have a 450 million-person population. Europe is larger than us by 100 million. 

And even though they have $22 trillion gross domestic product, which is the third largest, apparently they don’t want to invest that in their own defense , or they haven’t so far. They don’t want us to use it when we need it. 

They have no energy to speak of. They went whole hog, a complete Green New Deal—solar, wind. We’re not going to use our natural gas reserves. We’re not going to drill for them. We’re going to be dependent on the Middle East and Russia. 

So, we’re going to put you in an absurd situation, U.S.: You’re going to come over here to Europe to defend us from a potential [Russian President Vladimir] Putin invasion while we beg you not to sanction that oil. We need it. So, we want to give him money for the oil so he can use the money to buy arms to invade Ukraine and maybe us. 

When Trump said it was crazy, they laughed at him. 

It’s not just energy. It’s not just fertility. They have no borders, so to speak. They’ve had millions of people coming from a hostile Middle East and Arab world who had no intention of fully integrating, assimilating, and acculturating. 

Under their systems of parliamentary democracies, those factions have some veto power over policy. But more importantly, they’re terrified of Islam. They’ve had so many terrorist incidents, they think the only proper way to deal with radical Islam is to appease it, and appeasing it is what they do. 

Add all that up. They also have a utopian idea of defense. They had been pretty much unarmed until the invasion of Ukraine, and now they’re trying to catch up. 

But when you have a continent that has been unarmed, that is shrinking in population, that has high-priced, limited energy, that has energy shortages, that doesn’t have the confidence to defend its own borders, and that has let in millions of people who don’t like their host, the result is it can’t defend itself. 

And therefore, it creates an exegesis to explain that reality. And the exegesis is: We are morally superior to you. We have all these bases. We have the ability. We have fleets. You don’t. And we think, as morally superior people, we don’t want you using them, and we don’t think you’re protecting us on your unilateral crusade. 

Yes, the missiles could hit us. Yes, they could be nuclear-tipped if you hadn’t intervened. But that’s not our problem. Our problem is you trying to use these bases for your misadventure in Iran. 

Even though the Iran thing is going perfectly well, it’s a month into it. We’ve almost destroyed the war-making potential of Iran. 

So, what’s the future? Do we get out of NATO? I don’t think we get out of NATO. I think we just let it die on the vine. 

We just say, “You know what? We were a full NATO member. Oh, you want us to go into Ukraine again and defend you, but Ukraine’s not a NATO power. There’s no Article 5. This is your problem. This is on your doorstep.”

“Oh, you want us to go into Serbia and the Serbs are acting up again? That’s not a NATO problem either. They’re not attacking any NATO nation. I don’t remember Kosovo being in NATO.” 

“Oh, you want to go into Africa to your old colonies and stop the Islamists from taking over Chad? That’s not our problem.” 

“Oh, you think that Argentine government might want the Falklands back someday? That’s not our problem.”

That’s our attitude.

Meanwhile, we can have very productive bilateral, coalition-of-the-willing relationships. We can say to the Czechs, we can say to the Poles, we can say to any of them, “You know what, we’d like to have a base in the Azores, Portugal. What do you want to do? 

“It’s up to you. You want a bilateral agreement because NATO doesn’t mean much anymore. But we will have a special relationship with you, and we will guarantee your territorial integrity and national security in exchange for a partnership.” 

And I think we could find six or seven European powers that together would make ideal alliances with the United States. And then we can just go through the motions with NATO. 

Don’t cause any more trouble with them. Just say, “You guys are wonderful, and we’re going to treat you like you treat us. We are one of 32 nations, and we’ll pay one-thirty-second of the budget. 

“We’re tired. You guys have had two big world wars. You’ve been the birthplace of Western military dynamism. Go to it. Re-arm. We’ll just kind of lag along, half-walk, and we’ll tell you we’re a fine NATO power.” 

We’ll be kind of like Canada. Canada pays about 1.5%. We’re on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, like Canada. You love Canada. You don’t like us. We’re going to be your Canada. 

We will expend as much effort and as much arms and as much intervention as Canada does, and that will be the new NATO.

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

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The White House said on Wednesday the joint military operation with Israel achieved its core objectives “with overwhelming strength and lethal precision,” and press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “a victory for the United States of America.”  

War Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down at the Pentagon on Wednesday, calling the operation a ”decisive military victory.”

However, there is also a second message coming from the White House and the Pentagon.

President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that U.S. military assets, weaponry, and personnel will remain “in and around Iran“ until any “REAL AGREEMENT” is fully honored. Reuters reported that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said U.S. forces are ready to resume combat if diplomacy fails.

The real question now is not whether the administration landed a serious blow, but what will prove that the operation produced long-lasting strategic success.

Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday called the current arrangement a “fragile truce” and said Trump is ”impatient” with the pace of progress.

The administration has said the mission was clear from the start: destroy Iran’s missile capability, cripple its navy, sever its support for proxy forces, and ensure Tehran never acquires a nuclear weapon. 

The White House has tied that next phase of the ceasefire to specific outcomes: no path to a nuclear weapon, an open and secure Strait of Hormuz, and full compliance with what Trump called a “real agreement.” 

Vance will lead the U.S. delegation to Pakistan for the first round of peace talks with Iranian officials on Saturday, the White House announced Wednesday.

Iran’s lead negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned this week that Israel had violated the ceasefire by continuing attacks against the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, and added that the U.S had violated the agreement by insisting that Iran abandon its nuclear ambitions, Reuters reported.

“In such a situation, a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations were unreasonable,” he said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he is seeking direct talks with Lebanon that would include disarming Hezbollah.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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