Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

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

We’re about 60 days into the Iran war, and we’re getting a lot of mixed signals from the media, from the administration, from the Iranians, of course, who have no real government, there’s nothing more than a series of competing factions, of which we’re not sure who has the power in Tehran. 

But we should review very quickly what the options are. So, what are Iran’s options? Because people have made a fundamental logical error that survival is the same as victory or advantage. It’s not. Iran’s survival hinges on what the United States prefers to do, whether militarily, politically, morally, ethically.

But just because a nation survives doesn’t mean that it’s winning. Nazi Germany was flattened, but it survived. Japan was flattened, but it survived. So just because Iran now is talking loudly and boastfully does not mean it has not been soundly defeated.

The next question is, will the regime survive, at least? And they have three options. The first is the soft—the non-hardliners or the soft-power people could come in. The parliamentary elected officials, such as they are in Iran, could capitulate. They wouldn’t capitulate and say, “We give up.” 

They would say, we meet your demands, and those would be international inspections. There’s surrender of enriched uranium and inventories of their missile, rocket, and drone programs, and they’d have to give that up.

Or number two, they could continue what they are just starting to do as I speak—that is, they could start sending out their PT boats, these small fast craft that have rockets and some light artillery, machine guns, torpedoes, and attack tankers.

And then if we were to reply, they could hit the Gulf states, or they could hit tankers, or they could even shoot missiles at our fleet.

Or I think their preferred option is delay, delay—the same 47 years that we’re all accustomed to through seven different presidents.

Yes, we want to negotiate. Yes, we will give up our nuclear enrichment. No, we won’t today. Yesterday we said we will, but we thought it over. Yes, we will give up our missiles. But why don’t you make Hezbollah exempt from the deal. Again, like a rug merchant: barter, barter, delay, delay. And why are they doing this? 

They feel that they’re only six months away from the midterm elections, and when they hear Democratic senators such as Chris Murphy say that it was awesome that Iran—when they lied and said 12 tankers had broken out of the blockade—it was a complete lie. But when Chris Murphy, a U.S. senator, voiced and amplified that lie, and not only did that but editorialized and said it was awesome, that gives them hope. 

So does Tom Friedman, who said, well, I’d like him to lose, but not if it empowers President Donald Trump. So does Tim Walz and Chris Murphy going over to a socialist conference in Madrid. So, they feel that they can help build opposition, of course, in Europe and in the United States. 

One of the ironies is that the Arab Middle East, at least the Gulf states, are more pro-American right now and for this war than is the American Left. But they think the American Left can put pressure on Donald Trump, get elected in the midterms, control the House and Senate, and then enact the War Powers Act and cut off funding. That’s not going to happen, but that’s one of their strategies. 

What is our retaliatory strategy? We have a lot. Right now, we have a blockade, and we’re waging economic warfare. We’re trying to stop the importation of weapons and the selling of oil to starve the regime out. The problem we’re having with this, even though it’s reportedly costing them $420 million a day, is that there are avenues on the Caspian Sea where they can import Russian weapons. 

They have a rail line through two different countries that goes into China. They can import; they have mechanisms other than airlifting weapons into Iran. And so we don’t really know—and we don’t really know to what degree. There are Iranian oil tankers all over the world in transit from before the blockade, so it might take longer than we think. 

That’s a decision Donald Trump will have to make. And the pressures upon him will be the world economy, the price of gas in the Western world, the midterms coming up, his polls, and defections among his own MAGA supporters, etc., etc.

But otherwise, we can talk and talk, talk as they do. But the cards are in our hands because they are hemorrhaging money and we’re not. And we don’t need their oil. We don’t need their natural gas. We don’t need their petrochemicals. We only feel the pressure from others who are our friends that do need them. 

The second thing we can do is if they start to try to break the blockade, as they had recently by attacking tankers. We don’t have to go back to war. We can just kind of shrug and say, “Well, I guess you don’t want this bridge.” And then just announce—today—we’re going to announce it in advance. We’re going to take out this bridge, and tomorrow we’ll take out one of the four or five nuclear—excuse me—electrical generation plants. 

Not a full-scale war, but just tit for tat. But their hits will be very small, and our hits will be very great, and that will accelerate the economic strangulation. Or if they continue to do this, and we feel that the war has gone on too long, then we can hit where 90% of their oil comes from. 

And I say that because Venezuela is very rapidly making up the difference in Iranian oil, which, by the way, was going mostly to China—80% of it anyway. But the United States is ramping up production; Venezuela’s ramping up production. The more that we can enforce this blockade, the more Middle East oil gets out. 

So we could just say to Kharg Island, to the Iranians: We’re not going to hit your storage facilities. We’re not going to destroy the ability to pipe oil to Kharg Island and store it, but we are going to destroy the dock works, the cranes, the ports, so that you can fill up the oil all you want, and for the regime that follows you—hopefully a democratic or transitional government—but you’re not going to be able to export oil, even if you get a ship in there. 

And so we can say, well, if you have one of these Liberian tankers that’s masquerading as if it’s neutral but is actually controlled by China, it’s going in close to the Iranian coast, it’s going to park at Kharg, it won’t be able to get any oil because we can damage it from the air without invading. 

The bottom line is we have a lot of alternatives, and Iran has very few. But remember another thing: defeating an enemy soundly and then demanding unconditional surrender and forcing that government to abdicate are two different things. They’re very different, and the latter requires a lot more time—probably boots on the ground. 

It’s not on the agenda, but that does not mean that we can’t strangle this regime and make life go on as usual for the West and our partners. And I think you’ll see more of that in the upcoming days. 

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

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Commerce Department tapped a new director for the government’s safety-centered artificial intelligence organization, but later decided to go in another direction, sources familiar with the matter tell The Daily Signal. 

Collin Burns, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, was tapped to lead the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, but while Burns was in the onboarding process, the Commerce Department selected a different person to lead the organization—Dr. Chris Fall.

A Commerce Department official thanked Burns for his willingness to serve, but said the department decided to move in a different direction. Fall served in the first Trump administration at the Department of Energy as the director of the Office of Science.

“Dr. Chris Fall has been selected to serve as the next Director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI). Dr. Fall brings the scientific leadership needed to ensure America leads the world in evaluating frontier AI models and advancing the technical standards that protect our national and economic security,” a Commerce Department spokesman told The Daily Signal.

Burns’ hiring would have been significant because he most recently worked at Anthropic, an AI company currently at odds with the Trump administration. 

Anthropic declined the Pentagon’s request for unrestricted use of its artificial technology. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security.”

However, Axios reported that the National Security Agency is using Anthropic’s powerful new model, Mythos Preview. Anthropic has only allowed Mythos access to about 40 organizations due to its potentially dangerous cyber hacking capabilities.  

The Commerce Department created the then-AI Safety Institute in November 2023 at the direction of President Joe Biden. Last June, the Trump administration renamed the agency to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, marking the administration’s embrace of AI development. 

“For far too long, censorship and regulations have been used under the guise of national security. Innovators will no longer be limited by these standards,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said at the time of the name change. “CAISI will evaluate and enhance U.S. innovation of these rapidly developing commercial AI systems while ensuring they remain secure to our national security standards.”

The story previously said that Burns would leave CAISI.

Wednesday’s California gubernatorial debate in San Francisco laid bare the results of 16 years of one-party Democrat rule: sky-high gas prices, tent cities, crumbling roads, and declining public safety, paired with little more than excuses and fantasies from the candidates.

The four Democrats—Tom Steyer, the self-styled “anti-billionaire” billionaire; Katie Porter, the climate alarmist; Matt Mahan, the eternal “San Jose success” salesman; and Xavier Becerra, the “experience candidate”—offered the same tired script of blame, subsidies, and government expansion. Only Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton brought reality to the stage.

Moderators opened with the question every California family feels in their wallet: Should we cut the gas tax?

Steyer blamed the war in Iran and demanded new taxes on oil company profits—ironic from a man who built his initial fortune at Farallon Capital investing heavily in fossil fuels before pivoting to green activism.

Porter delivered a climate sermon, claiming “we don’t breathe clean air,” and called for replacing the gas tax with a vague general-fund tax while pushing harder to eliminate fossil fuels.

Mahan acknowledged the gas tax is regressive and said he would suspend it for relief to working families, but quickly pivoted to class warfare—making corporations and the wealthy pay more.

Becerra fixated on potholes, blamed President Donald Trump (and mistakenly cited the war in Iraq), offered no actual solution, and fell back on his “experience.”

Bianco and Hilton spoke plainly. Bianco noted that Democrat policies have crippled the oil and auto industries, and that despite California having the nation’s highest gas tax, the revenue fails to fix roads amid rampant waste, fraud, and abuse. California now has some of the worst roads in the country. Cut the waste first. Hilton was even more direct: highest gas tax, worst roads, yet the state imports oil instead of using its own.

Both rejected new mileage taxes on electric vehicles. Hilton called for cutting spending and taxes across the board, while Bianco nailed the core issue: Sacramento doesn’t have a revenue shortage—it has a reckless spending addiction.

The same divide appeared on homelessness. With roughly 187,000 people living on California’s streets, Democrats issued polite report cards on Gavin Newsom’s failures. Porter gave a B grade, proudly calling herself “a notoriously hard grader,” and insisted it’s just a “housing problem” solvable with more prevention and shelter. Mahan touted his San Jose model and pushed for forcing people indoors. Becerra awarded an A for “effort,” floated zero-percent loans, and promised to keep people housed “no matter what.” Steyer pushed emergency housing that required neither cleanliness nor sobriety.

Bianco and Hilton cut through the illusions. This isn’t primarily a housing shortage—it’s mental illness, drugs, and alcohol. End the endless NGO grift, redirect the money to real treatment, enforce the law, and require people to accept help. Hilton gave Newsom a straightforward F grade. Porter’s claim that the “majority of homeless are working” only revealed how detached some candidates remain from reality.

On English proficiency for commercial truck drivers—an issue where California is the only state that refuses to ensure big-rig drivers can read road signs or communicate in English—Democrats reacted with outrage when shown a video of a California Highway Patrol officer administering a language proficiency test to a man who clearly couldn’t speak English.

Becerra vowed to fight the Trump administration’s “reckless” and “discriminatory” policy. Porter and Steyer invoked systemic racism and racial profiling. Mahan hid behind San Jose statistics. Bianco demanded an end to issuing licenses to unqualified drivers and called out the “racist garbage” excuses. Hilton strongly supported full compliance, citing the real dangers posed by drivers who cannot understand road signs.

Across other topics, including billionaires and AI, insurance costs, and utility rates, Democrats pivoted to attacks on Trump or corporate actors while pushing more regulation, subsidies, and taxes.

Becerra’s repeated boasts about his “experience fighting crises” rang hollow given his record as attorney general targeting pro-life activists and pregnancy centers, and as HHS Secretary losing track of over 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children.

Closing statements confirmed the split. Democrats recycled claims of San Jose success, accumulated experience, and anti-corporate purity. Bianco and Hilton stood apart as outsiders, warning that the Democratic platform is simply more of the same failed status quo.

California still has extraordinary natural advantages and talented people. Yet 16 years of one-party rule have delivered persistently high gas prices, sprawling tent encampments, failing infrastructure, and eroding safety standards.

Last night’s debate offered no real solutions from the Democratic candidates. Instead, it laid bare the real choice confronting California voters in the June top-two primary: double down on excuses, endless subsidies, and green virtue-signaling, or embrace spending discipline, regulatory restraint, and honest accountability to results.

Only Bianco and Hilton were willing to name those trade-offs plainly.

Californians, who live the consequences daily, must now decide whether fantasy or reality will guide the state’s next chapter. Think different. Vote different. The cycle of failure need not be permanent.

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

President Donald Trump is set to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month for a historic bilateral meeting in Beijing. China is reportedly optimistic about the visit, hoping that U.S.-China relations can be improved after years of tension. However, caution is warranted—appearances can be deceiving.

Some in Washington are also optimistic, promoting the idea of a “G2”—a partnership in which the U.S. and China would jointly exercise global leadership, similar to the G7 model. Trump himself has occasionally considered the concept.

The president can use the Beijing meeting to pursue improved relations with China. Yet achieving real progress requires clearly communicating what changes in Chinese behavior are necessary to make a rapprochement possible.

A G2 partnership is unattainable at present. China actively leverages its assets against the U.S., and the Chinese Communist Party does not seek to align its governance with American standards or values.

Trump’s approach to the longstanding conflict with Iran has focused on prioritizing American and allied security; encouraging democratic movements within; and disrupting terrorist organizations such as the Quds Force, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, China has pursued its own interests, such as buying Iranian oil and, reportedly, shipping military equipment to Iran. While Trump has stated that China has agreed not to supply weapons to Iran, Chinese companies are exploiting the economic turmoil from the war, all while Beijing positions itself as a peacemaker—largely for economic reasons, in stark contrast to America’s tougher stance.

China does not see the Iran conflict as a chance for global security or democratic reform, but as an opportunity to antagonize the U.S. Xi, a vocal critic of Trump, recently compared America’s Iran policy to “the law of the jungle,” dismissing concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its history of violence.

For decades, the U.S. fostered a global system of peaceful trade and friendly competition. China entered this system and sought to exploit it, subsidizing domestic industries and manipulating currency to make exports cheaper, among other unfair practices.

Despite American openness since the 1970s, China has sold illicit fentanyl precursors to Mexican cartels, leading to thousands of American deaths. China also exploits U.S. openness to foreign investment and immigration, engaging in large-scale intellectual property theft that enables rapid advancement up global value chains without the costs normally involved.

Intellectual property theft is part of a broader espionage campaign targeting American ideas and state secrets. Huawei, a major Chinese tech conglomerate, is used by the Chinese state to spy on the U.S. and challenge American dominance in 5G and AI. The FBI warns that Huawei, which controls 30% of the global telecom market, poses risks even to America’s nuclear arsenal.

There is no justification for the Trump administration to stop using creative strategies to counter Chinese power. For instance, to challenge Huawei, Trump approved the merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks, forming a new tech leader capable of competing with China in critical technologies like AI and 5G.

While mergers require careful scrutiny, some lawmakers—including Sens. Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren—alleged it was a backroom deal. Nevertheless, the U.S. intelligence community has been clear that this move will help safeguard U.S. national security and provide a strong competitor to Huawei.

Trump has imposed tariffs on China, closed Confucius Institutes on American campuses, and called out China’s trade abuses. He has demonstrated a clear understanding of China’s long-term intentions.

Trump is right to meet with Xi. As former U.K. Ambassador Harold Macmillan said, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” Still, these talks occur against the backdrop of a genuine threat to American interests from Chinese antagonism.

Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was asked about the idea of a G2. He responded that while China and the U.S. have significant influence, there are more than 190 countries in the world.

Wang’s remarks were not a genuine call for multilateral cooperation. Instead, they reflect China’s ongoing efforts to weaken the U.S. and undermine other nations committed to freedom and human rights.

Trust in diplomacy must always be accompanied by verification. Constructive partnership remains distant, and given China’s actions, America may be better off as a G1.

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

As rumors swirl that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito might retire at the end of this term, allowing President Donald Trump to name his replacement before the 2026 midterm elections, the justice could not have wished for a better send-off than Mollie Hemingway’s masterful and well-researched biography.

“Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution” captures Alito’s life story, his rise to the nation’s highest court, his judicial philosophy, and how the stars aligned to enable him to write the opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade (1973).

Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and senior journalism fellow for Hillsdale College, writes that an old Latin phrase best captures Alito’s fearless determination to follow the law: fiat justitia, ruat caelum, which translates to “let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

When Alito wrote the opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the heavens did appear to fall. A hostile news outlet published the full draft opinion, and pro-abortion activists launched a horrific pressure campaign to stop the opinion’s finalization. Vandals targeted pro-life pregnancy centers and Catholic churches, and many began protesting outside of justices’ homes. At least one agitator attempted to assassinate a justice.

“In spite of political threats to the legitimacy of the court—accompanied by very real threats to the justices’ own lives—Alito had quietly and consistently delivered justice while also anchoring the team through its most controversial decision in half a century,” Hemingway writes. “The heavens had fallen, and Alito had done his duty, unawed.”

Who Is Alito?

After setting the stage with Dobbs in the introduction, Hemingway delves into Alito’s history. The justice grew up in an Italian American Catholic family in New Jersey, served in the military during the Vietnam War, and distinguished himself as a brilliant legal mind early on. Unlike Chief Justice John Roberts, he didn’t play the game to try to get nominated to the Supreme Court, but lightning struck and President George H.W. Bush gave him the opportunity.

Hemingway describes Alito as an “improbable justice.” While many Washington politicos succeed through “relentless diplomacy and self-promotion,” Alito “arrived at his position solely because of his intellect and hard work.”

While telling Alito’s story, Hemingway interweaves important details about the legal profession, explaining why the philosophy of Originalism—returning to the original public meaning of the Constitution—became so important.

‘The Best Court’

Hemingway next recounts the building of “the best court in history.”

She traces the history of each member of the current court, from Democrat nominees like Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Republican nominees from Trump’s first term and before: Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. She analyzes each justice’s character and role on the bench.

Hemingway praises Kagan as “the smartest liberal justice,” and a “formidable writer.” She warns about Barrett’s “characteristic caution,” and heavily criticizes Roberts for essentially rewriting the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) on the fly to save it in 2012.

“Roberts never publicly supported the conservative legal movement in speeches and was never associated with its organizations, yet he skillfully conveyed the message that he was conservative,” Hemingway notes. Roberts seems too concerned with how the media perceives him, and Hemingway warns that his bowing to “political pressure politicized the court and encouraged similar pressure campaigns in the future.”

After setting up the court’s composition, Hemingway delves into Alito’s judicial philosophy as a “practical Originalist.” While Alito aims to restore the original public meaning of the Constitution, his approach differs from Thomas.

Thomas “plants a flag where he believes the court should be,” laying out “his vision in his opinions” and hoping to move the legal culture to catch up, but Alito “is more interested in the tactical work of assembling a majority to seize new ground today.” Hemingway notes that Alito’s history as a circuit court judge prepared him to deal with concrete cases more than abstract principles.

Overturning Roe

Hemingway breaks down the complex ecosystem of abortion law and the Supreme Court’s previous futile attempts to address it, before narrating Alito’s central achievement.

She recounts the many courageous decisions that had to happen in order to reverse Roe. She recounts how Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer tried to peel Justice Brett Kavanaugh off the decision.

In the end, the court overturned Roe, and Alito shepherded this key win through a complex process. It took a man of undaunted principle and unflinching courage to achieve this massive victory—and to stick by it, under pressure.

The full character of that man emerges from Hemingway’s prose, and Americans will be educated and edified by her masterful work.

If Alito does decide to retire, this book will help him do it on a high note.

Republican leaders in Georgia told The Daily Signal that Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is campaigning for reelection, is presenting himself as a moderate by emphasizing broadly popular issues rather than embracing what they describe as a sharply partisan voting record.

“He’s a great politician,” Rep. Rich McCormick, R‑Ga., said. “When he sees me at the airport, he comes up to me, knows my name, and asks how my kids are. He’s a good politician. He pretends that he’s not in a party that openly supports socialism.”

Rep. Andrew Clyde, R‑Ga., told The Daily Signal that Ossoff attempts to rebrand himself during election years.

“Once every six years, Jon Ossoff tries to distance himself from the radical Left Democrat agenda in order to convince Georgians he’s one of us,” Clyde told The Daily Signal. “But we aren’t fooled. His voting record shows support for policies that restrict Second Amendment rights, expand abortion access, increase taxes, and weaken voter ID laws.”

Nick Puglia, the National Republican Senatorial Committee press secretary, said Ossoff campaigns differently at home than he governs in Washington.

“Jon Ossoff says one thing in Georgia but does another in D.C.,” Puglia told The Daily Signal. “Ossoff is a fraud who fights for the radical Left’s open‑borders and tax‑hiking agenda.”

The Republicans’ remarks come as Ossoff has appeared to focus his campaign on bipartisan priorities such as veterans’ care, health care, and education, rather than on elements of his voting record that include opposing voter identification requirements while his campaign events require multiple forms of ID. Republicans also point to his support for green energy initiatives, positions on illegal immigration, and backing of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

“That doesn’t represent our values,” Clyde said. “We must fight to defeat him in November and return him to his deceptive career of fake journalism.”

McCormick echoed Clyde’s criticism, arguing Ossoff opposed the SAVE America Act because of its potential political consequences.

“He votes against it for the same reason New York City requires three forms of ID to shovel snow,” McCormick said. “They know exactly what they’re doing.”

McCormick added that allowing roughly 10 million people to enter the country illegally could amount to the equivalent of 14 additional congressional seats.

“They’ve been trying to skew the future of America,” he said. “[Former President Joe] Biden was the first to realize that the only way to keep the future of a party alive—a party with outrageous claims and beliefs—was to strike down the SAVE America Act.”

McCormick also criticized Ossoff for failing to condemn Hasan Piker, a Democrat social media figure who has made antisemitic remarks and previously said the United States “deserved” the Sept. 11 attacks.

Piker is actively promoting Ossoff.

“He’s working for him,” McCormick said. “He agrees with them.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly 1.4 tons of methamphetamine in a routine commercial truck inspection at a California border crossing.

The seizure points to a broader trend of transnational criminal networks using legitimate trade infrastructure to smuggle industrial-scale narcotics into the United States.

On April 14, CBP officers with the Otay Mesa Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facility in San Diego, California, referred a 2017 Freightliner Cascadia and its trailer, driven by a Mexican citizen, for secondary inspection after the truck arrived at the crossing from Mexico. According to CBP, the shipment manifest declared the cargo as corrugated cardboard boxes. However, officers found 300 packages of methamphetamine concealed within the trailer’s front wall, totaling 3,078.1 pounds and carrying an estimated street value of nearly $5 million.

According to CBP, transnational criminal organizations routinely attempt to exploit legitimate trade by concealing narcotics in otherwise lawful cargo and using misleading manifests. Officers are trained to identify indicators of illicit activity and remain vigilant in detecting and interdicting illegal narcotics from entering the U.S.

The incident highlights an organized effort to use ordinary paperwork to exploit a commercial trade lane and move a massive narcotics load through a port of entry that processes enormous volumes of lawful commerce every day. The bigger story is whether the U.S. has the manpower, technology, and operational ability to detect and prevent sophisticated cartel activity moving through legal channels disguised as legitimate trade.

In this case, a nonintrusive inspection revealed anomalies in the trailer’s front wall, and a canine unit alerted officers to the same area. A further search uncovered methamphetamine. The case has been turned over to Homeland Security Investigations for further investigation, which now has responsibility for identifying the broader network behind the smuggling attempt.

Otay Mesa Port Director Rosa E. Hernandez praised the officers’ work as “unwavering guardians,” saying their diligence prevented illegal narcotics from entering the country and kept communities safe.

“Supported by the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, our CBP officers at ports of entry are unwavering guardians,” said Hernandez. “Their diligence prevented illegal narcotics from entering our country, so our communities are kept safe from dangerous drugs.”

Earlier in April, CBP officers intercepted more than $1 million worth of cocaine hidden in a commercial passenger bus at the Hidalgo Port of Entry in Texas.

The Trump administration scored two legal victories this week in combating illegal immigration.

Appeals courts cleared the way for building a Florida immigration detention center that President Donald Trump calls “Alligator Alcatraz” and halted a California law requiring agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to unmask.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday stopped enforcement of the California law.

“This Department of Justice stands in unwavering and total support of the brave men and women of ICE who put their lives on the line every day to enforce our immigration laws and keep American citizens safe,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a post on X, regarding ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Justice Department’s Civil Division defended the case.

“Today’s legal victory in the 9th Circuit halts enforcement of California’s mask ban for ICE agents and is a big win to protect law enforcement,” Blanche continued. “Congratulations to DOJ’s Civil Division on this major win in the 9th Circuit—another decisive victory in this administration’s effort to remove illegal aliens from this country.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom had signed the bill requiring ICE agents to remove their masks, which he touted as the “first in the nation.”

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have argued that agents need masks for privacy reasons, as people have taken their photos for online posts, threatening them and their family members.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office, which defended the state in the case, did not respond to an inquiry for this story by publication time.

In Florida, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed a lower court’s injunction against the construction of an ICE detention center for illegal aliens in the Everglades.

In a post on X, the Justice Department called the court ruling a “decisive victory in our effort to deliver on President Trump’s immigration agenda.”

The lower court had determined the facility did not comply with federal environmental review laws.

“This fight is far from over. Alligator Alcatraz was hastily erected in one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country without the most basic environmental review, at immense human and ecological cost,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in a statement after the appeals court ruling. “We are pursuing every legal avenue available to right this wrong.”