This past Wednesday was April 15 — the notorious day on which most federal income tax returns are due. But as millions of Americans received tax refunds, some received bigger […]

The post Here Are the States Getting the Biggest Tax Refunds appeared first on The Western Journal.



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Democrat and socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday the city is not actually experiencing a much-reported exodus of wealthy residents over high taxes. A surge of affluent […]

The post Mayor Mamdani Says Exodus From New York Is Just Your Imagination appeared first on The Western Journal.

New winds are shaping conversations about citizenship in the U.S. and Europe.

As the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the Trump administration’s constitutional argument for tighter birthright citizenship, Italy’s Constitutional Court has already signed off on a law raising the bar for would-be citizens. Italy’s rationale is instructive for the U.S., whose prow seems pointed toward consequences the Italian government is now trying to correct.

Italy’s new law renders citizenship less touristy and likelier to indicate meaningful membership of the self-governing society within its borders. By contrast, in the U.S., the citizen/noncitizen distinction is losing substance within America’s permeable borders and beleaguered immigration enforcement.

Although how tightly countries should draw circles around citizenries is debatable, whether citizenship ought to be a meaningful distinction should be a settled question. But in present-day America, it’s not. That’s a problem.

Diluting citizenship as a meaningful distinction threatens democracies and empires alike. This is as true today in Italy and the U.S. as it was in ancient Greece and Rome.

Countries can become and will longer remain what they ought to be—just, self-governing societies—by ensuring citizenship means something real within their borders.

Italy’s New Citizenship Restrictions

Since its formation as a unified country in 1861, Italy has granted citizenship to people descended from at least one Italian citizen—even if their closest link was a great-great-grandparent. This constitutional principle is jus sanguinis, meaning “right of blood.” Until recently, applicants have not been required to speak Italian, reside in Italy, or pay the taxes that come with living there.

That changed in March 2026, when the Italian Constitutional Court upheld the “Tajani Decree” over lower-court objections.

A new two-generation limit now requires applicants to trace their ancestry to a parent’s or a grandparent’s Italian citizenship. Additionally, that family member’s citizenship must be (or have been) exclusively Italian, not dually held with another country. New applicants must also, as my Grandma Gargiulo, 91, says, “talk Italian good.”

Media vs. Administration

As in the U.S., in Italy the administration’s policy has rankled the media more than, well … citizens.

Although applications submitted before the policy’s adoption are grandfathered in as valid, relatively few who intended to apply have missed their chance. Some would-be Italians within this vocal minority are now out significant time and money that they spent preparing to apply under the old rules. But most of the outrage appears feigned by media with little or no stake in the policy change.

In fact, most coverage ignores why it may be wise for Italy to draw a tighter circle, if only to reduce fraud and inefficiency. “Nationality cannot simply be a tool for traveling to Miami with a European passport,” stated Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, for whom the new law is named.

Besides clogging the system, the ratio of potential applicants to actual Italian residents is absurdly disproportional. Until 2025, some 60 million to 80 million Italian descendants worldwide could have applied for citizenship—in a country of 61 million residents. Scaled to America’s population of 342 million, the same loosely drawn circle could invite up to 513 million people worldwide to apply for citizenship with a reasonable presumption of acceptance.

In short, having offered citizenship too loosely for decades, Italy is now making citizenship mean something more.

Strength of Distinction

If Italy’s citizen/noncitizen distinction is waxing stronger, America’s is waning. But challenges posed by U.S. immigration, law, and enforcement have weakened citizenship as a definition—if not de jure, then de facto. Officials dilute citizenship as a meaningful distinction when they fail to enforce—or even to regard—citizenship as a vehicle for appropriately conferring rights on lawful citizens and, just as appropriately, not on others.

Despite moving in contrary directions, Italy’s policy oddly parallels America’s own citizenship policy—which is so hotly contested, it has become fused with immigration and law enforcement policy. The similarities go beyond lopsided media coverage.

Although America does not share Italy’s “right of blood” policy, something like it is the historically-enforced interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Just this month, the Trump administration argued before the Supreme Court that the U.S. currently construes this amendment too broadly, and that the nation thus too casually confers citizenship on people born within its borders—including babies planted by cartel lords and the Chinese Communist Party.

Thus, Italy and the U.S. occupy different spots on a timeline. Though the younger country, Italy has already reached its threshold of pain caused by a weak citizenship distinction. Despite residing in a country that has reached its 250th year, Americans sharply disagree about whether their nation’s own pain threshold for weakly distinguishing citizens from noncitizens lies behind or ahead.

3 American Positions

Broadly speaking, Americans take any of three positions on citizenship and immigration law. One faction maintains sharp distinctions between the legal status and rights of citizens versus noncitizens, and it would prosecute violations. This faction accepts that although some good would-be citizens may be excluded, a country must draw the line somewhere. This position roughly parallels the Italian government’s today.

The second American faction accepts citizenship distinctions and immigration law enforcement in theory, but—like opponents of Italy’s new law—it wants to make the distinctions fewer and softer. For example, in the past, the U.S. has granted legal amnesty to illegal immigrants who have flown under the radar long enough. Essentially, this concession rewarded illegal aliens for not making trouble. This second American faction accepts the risk of incidentally awarding amnesty to some number of bad actors, including potential threats to American safety and security: Every lot has a few bad apples.

The third faction eyes distinctions between citizens and noncitizens as dubious, even irrelevant, particularly regarding who has a right to live in America. This faction’s root objection is not to how, but to whether citizen/noncitizen distinctions are to be enforced. Changing the law would be nice; disregarding current law is easier and faster. Hence, much of the outcry against the Trump administration’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The objections are not merely to the Trump administration’s methods (although their occasional madness makes a decent scapegoat). The real objection is to distinguishing citizens from noncitizens at all.

Classical Cautionary Tales

The American faction that minimizes citizen distinctions accepts the security risks of practically open borders. Revealingly, this position has no corresponding champion in Italy’s jus sanguinis controversy. But the Italian nation’s ancestors tried it before. It went poorly.

In 212 A.D., Caracalla (successor to Commodus of “Gladiator” infamy) granted citizenship to all free residents of the Roman Empire, instantly naturalizing 30 million people living between Scotland and Syria. But “citizenship, once granted, became irrelevant,” writes Cambridge University’s Mary Beard in her epilogue to “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome” (2015). “For no sooner had one barrier of privilege been removed than another was put up in its place, on very different terms … with unequal rights formally written into Roman law. … The new boundary between insiders and outsiders followed the line of wealth, class, and status.” Simply put, when governments erase citizenship distinctions, the people invent new ones—often unjust ones.

Writing from Athens 500 years earlier, Plato predicted similar trouble with eroding citizen/noncitizen distinctions. He listed it as a step in a democracy’s descent down the slippery slope from self-government to despotism. As the “infection of anarchy” spreads, Plato wrote in the “Republic,” “citizens, resident aliens, and strangers from abroad are all on an equal footing.” (Eerily, the U.S. is also losing other distinctions that Plato says doom a democracy, e.g., authority of parent over child, of teacher over student, of human over animal).

Like ancient history and political philosophy, America has its own tales cautioning against minimizing citizenship’s distinction. Undeniably, enforcing U.S. citizenship and immigration law comes with its share of tragedies. But more obviously—because more frequently—so does failure to enforce these laws, resulting in compromised borders, fraud, addiction, and violence.

That is why Italy’s decision to draw a tighter and more solid circle around citizenship is so instructive to Americans. Italy’s present (soon to be past) problem depicts the future of the U.S. Each day the U.S. draws a looser and more perforated circle around citizenship, the meaning of citizenship becomes less recognizable. The consequences of America’s too permeable circle were foreshadowed by Italy in 1861-2025, epitomized by third-century Rome, and forewarned in Plato’s Academy.

This is not to say the Italian administration’s policy or the Trump administration’s enforcement cannot be improved. Most policies can be. But U.S. citizenship and immigration policy will only deteriorate—and will continue to write preventable tragedies—if Americans feel squeamish about maintaining citizenship as a meaningful distinction, albeit with charity for all and with malice toward none.

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

The post American Immigration Policy Could Learn From Modern Italy, Ancient Rome, and Plato appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Google is quietly strangling pro-gun journalism — punishing any website that dares republish Second Amendment reporting. Call it what it is: censorship.

The post Google Is Quietly Censoring Pro-Gun Websites — And It’s Working appeared first on The Truth About Guns.

A recent cocaine seizure in southern Mexico points to a new trend as traffickers have increased land smuggling operations in response to the aggressive interdiction actions taken by the U.S. government, which have sunk numerous vessels in international waters.

The post Cocaine Seizure in Southern Mexico Points to New Trend appeared first on Breitbart.

French President Emmanuel Macron said a French soldier was killed and three others injured on Saturday morning in an attack on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

The post Macron: On French Soldier Killed, Three Injured in Lebanon Attack appeared first on Breitbart.

Friday on FNC's "Hannity," talk show and Fox News host Mark Levin expressed his concerns about a post-Trump world with either a so-called "isolationist" Democrat or Republican president who would not uphold a deal with the Iranian regime.

The post Levin Urges Trump to ‘Finish Off’ the Iranians — In the Spirit of George Patton, Russia appeared first on Breitbart.

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a new tax policy targeting the second homes of her constituents as residents of the Empire State are already fleeing elsewhere. The new […]

The post New Yorkers Flee as Hochul Unveils New Property Taxes to Pay for Mamdani's Pricey Social Programs appeared first on The Western Journal.

New York is so committed to nullifying immigration law that it refuses to relinquish an alleged arsonist accused of killing four people in New York City.

That was reported by the New York Post and Fox News on Thursday. According to those reports, Roman Ceron Amatitla—who is a Mexican national illegally living in the U.S.—is accused of a heinous crime but could end up being released.

The accusations against Amatitla are enraging.

According to the New York Post, he’s been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder and first-degree arson in connection to a fire at a building in Flushing on March 16.

Just before starting the fire, Amatitla allegedly “entered and exited the Avery Avenue building multiple times, urinated in front of the apartments, and then went to a nearby gas station—where he bought a beer, stole a second one, and took a pack of matches after refusing to pay for a lighter.”

Then, according to authorities, he went into the building a final time, lit a piece of paper on fire, and threw it into a stairwell.

After that, the New York Post reported, he “stayed in the immediate area to watch people burn and jump from the windows.”

One of the victims was 3 years old.

Amatitla should have never been here, but now that he allegedly killed four Americans and hurt seven others you would think that New York, despite its status as a sanctuary state, would quietly relinquish him to federal authorities.

Nope.

The Department of Homeland Security put out a statement about the situation, saying that on April 14, DHS requested that the New York City Department of Corrections not release Amatitla. But NYCDOC refused to cooperate in any way with federal authorities.

“This monster set fire to a building and watched as innocent people, including a three-year-old, burned to death. New York City sanctuary politicians REFUSE to cooperate with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and are committing to RELEASING this MURDERER onto New York streets,” DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis wrote. “New York’s sanctuary politicians must stop putting politics above public safety. We are calling on Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani to commit to honoring this detainer and turning him over.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order preventing local authorities from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul has also decided to further hamstring local police departments from cooperating with ICE. So much for her being a “moderate.”

Even for New York, the refusal to work with ICE in this case is remarkable.

Think about it for a moment.

If you are a Democrat and your goal is to convince the American people that you’ve moderated on your extremely unpopular immigration ideas, an easy step to take would be to let ICE at the very least have the accused mass murderers.

But as we’ve seen with the “Maryland Dad” situation, Democrats are willing to go to bat for even domestic abusers, human traffickers, and all kinds of other violent criminals to maintain their open borders position.

In a way, it makes sense.

If they were to give these folks over to ICE it would mean they’d have to acknowledge that ICE agents aren’t the Gestapo and may actually be keeping Americans safe.

That goes against virtually all their messaging since President Donald Trump’s election. So, you get situations like this where even the most seemingly evil, bloodthirsty criminal is protected from deportation.

In this case, I’d seriously doubt Amatitla would escape jail time, even in New York. But this case highlights how sanctuary cities and states struggle to deal with even the worst of the worst.

New York is shielding thousands of violent criminals in their fanatical devotion to thwarting U.S. immigration law. Not only do these violent criminals escape deportation, but it seems in many cases they escape any kind of justice.

DHS stated that that New York’s failure to honor ICE detainers has led to the “release of 6,947 criminal illegal aliens since January 20. The crimes of these aliens include 29 homicides, 2,509 assaults, 199 burglaries, 305 robberies, 392 dangerous drugs offenses, 300 weapons offenses, and 207 sexual predatory offenses.”

How many of these people go on to commit other crimes? Given the record of repeat offenders, likely quite a few.

That’s what the nation has to endure to appease the Left’s open borders madness.

The post New York Refuses ICE Detainer for Illegal Alien Accused of Killing 4 in Arson appeared first on The Daily Signal.